Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922): Author Profile
Though she was born and raised in the southwestern state of Maharashtra, after her parents died, she and her brother found their way to Calcutta in 1878, where she was briefly married to a Bengali lawyer who subsequently passed away. The marriage created social obstacles for her, as Ramabai was born a Brahmin but her husband Bipin Behari, was from the Shudra caste. As a young woman who was deeply knowledgeable about Sanskrit Hindu texts -- which she had learned about from her father -- she was already poised to be an influential figure. (In traditional Hinduism, women were excluded from knowledge of scriptures.) Pandita is, to be clear, not actually her first name; it’s an honorific she received after proving her knowledge of Sanskrit scriptures to a group of Sanskrit scholars at the University of Calcutta. It seems important to note that she continued to use this name, and publicly identify herself as “Pandita Ramabai,” even after converting to Christianity (her Christian name upon Baptism was “Mary Rama”).
Ramabai’s brother died in 1880, and her husband died in 1882, leaving her to raise her daughter Manorama on her own.
In 1883, Ramabai traveled to England to study and teach; it’s thought that she only seriously began to study English at this time. Initially she had planned to study medicine, but was forced to drop out because she had imperfect hearing. Shortly thereafter, she converted to Christianity and taught Indian languages to the Wantage sisters in England. In 1886 she came to the U.S., and stayed for two years, giving lectures, meeting with women’s groups, and aiming to call attention to the situation of Indian women. Her most influential book was a critique of the status of women in Hinduism, called The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1888); she wrote that book in English -- it was aimed at western feminist readers. She published The Peoples of the United States (1889) specifically for Indian readers.
Scholars have been particularly interested in the role of religious conversion in shaping Ramabai’s thought. For a generation of Indian readers, her conversion to Christianity and her championing of women’s rights seemed to suggest a kind of self-hatred. There was a suspicion that her feminism came from external influence, and that her Christianity might have been only a strategic ploy to gain patronage from wealthy Christian benefactors:
The conservative Hindu skepticism was voiced in The Mahratta’s (4 November 1883) cynical assertion that “the learned lady has deceived and disappointed alike her friends and foes” and “enrolled herself into the charitable clan of Christ” for monetary reasons. In her subsequent writings Ramabai herself explained her conversion as a natural outcome of her spiritual quest and intellectual conviction (Ramabai [1907] 1992: 26; Kosambi 1992). In any case, if Ramabai’s conversion resolved her spiritual tensions, it also created fresh problems. Her theological doubts and contestation of colonialism led to considerable friction with the Anglicans. (19)
But upon closer examination we see that her approach to both Christianity and feminism are more complex than one might expect. In her letters we see her frequently arguing with her English mentors -- the ones who brought about her conversion -- and pushing them on gender issues. Could it be that she used Christianity to support her feminism -- with her feminist commitments being primary and Christian faith secondary?
There are two letters from Ramabai’s published correspondence that might be helpful documents to look at as we might attempt to unpack Ramabai’s relationship to religion:
It seems to me that you are advising me under the WE to accept always the will of those who have authority, etc. This, however, I cannot accept. I have a conscience, and a mind and judgment of my own. I must myself think and do everything which GOD has given me the power of doing. . . . Although priests and bishops may have certain authority over the church yet the church has another Master Who is Superior even to the bishops. I am, it is true, a member of the Church of Christ, but I am not bound to accept every word that falls down from the lips of priests or bishops. . . . Obedience to the law and to the Word of God is quite different from perfect obedience to priests only. I have just with great effort freed myself from the yoke of the Indian priestly tribe, so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything which comes from the priests as authorized command of the Most High. At the same time I am not willing to offend anyone or to do wrong. But can you or your friends prove that giving lessons to boys is a wrong thing?
(Ramabai in a letter to her friend and mentor, an Englishwoman named Sister Grenadine, May 12, 1885)
And here’s another letter expressing a very different sentiment:
I beg of my Western sisters not to be satisfied with the looking on the outside beauties of the grand philosophies, and not be charmed with the long and interesting discourses of our educated men, but to open the trapdoors of the great monuments of the ancient Hindu intellect, and enter into the dark cellars where they will see the real working of the philosophies which they admire so much. Let our Western friends ... frequently go to the hundred of sacred places,... Jagannathpuri, Benares, Gaya, Allahabad, Mathura, Brindaban, Dwarka, Pandharpur, Udippi, Tirupaty and such other sacred cities, the strongholds of Hinduism, and seats of sacred learning, where the Mahatmas and Sadhus dwell, and where the ‘sublime’ philosophies are daily taught and devoutly followed. There are thousands of priests and men, learned in the sacred lore, who are the spiritual rulers and guides of our people. They neglect and oppress the widows and devour widows’ houses.... They send out hundreds of emissaries to look for young widows and bring them by hundreds and thousands to the sacred cities to rob them of their money and their virtue.... Thousands upon thousands of young widows and innocent children are suffering untold misery and dying helpless every year throughout the land, but not a philosopher or Mahatma has come out boldly to champion their cause and to help them .... The educated men and learned priests... mourn over a few women who have the boldness to declare themselves as free women and to follow their conscience; but they say nothing of the thousands who die every year or lead shameful lives.... Let not my Western sisters be charmed with the books and poems they read. There are many hard and bitter facts we have to accept and feel. All is not poetry with us. The prose we have to read in our lives is very hard. It cannot be understood by our learned brothers and comfortable sisters of the West. (1894. Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai, pp. 312-314)
Scholars have been looking over those letters carefully and interpreting them, along with her other published books and essays, to try and answer those questions.
While in the U.S., Ramabai attracted quite a following from American women’s groups, who gave her substantial financial support for her plan to return to India to start a school for Hindu widows. In a number of cities, those groups formally came together and formed “Ramabai Associations,” which continued to raise money even after Ramabai ent home in 1888. The school opened and was successful, though Ramabai had some significant challenges in sticking to her initial pledge not to try and convert the young women enrolled in the school to Christianity.
She also opened a shelter for women called the Mukti Mission, in response to another terrible famine in India in 1896. That center housed and nourished hundreds of girls, though with a much more explicitly Christian and proselytizing framework.
In the last two decades of her life Ramabai published much less in terms of books and essays for public consumption, and instead worked on a Marathi translation of the Bible.