Rassundari Devi And “Amar Jiban“
Consider a mother of 12 who becomes agitated at the sight of paper or a book. It is someone who wishes to become literate so that they can read religious books and recite hymns. Rassundari Devi, writes in her autobiography that she used to curse herself for having such evil desires because women from “cultured” households did not learn to read.
Women who were literate were shunned and stigmatised by society. If an old, traditional woman saw a piece of paper in the hands of a young girl, she would make a fuss. Nonetheless, her desire triumphed over societal apprehensions. Rassundari Devi tore a page from her husband’s religious book and stole one of the leaves from which her son practised writing.
These two items were hidden in her kitchen. When she was not doing household chores, she tried to match the words on the leaf to those on the page. When she was learning to read, she would hide the page and the leaf under a utensil or the stove if she heard footsteps.
In today’s world, the way this woman learned to read and write would appear to be strange. Rassundari Devi later wrote an autobiography called “Amar Jiban” (my life) about her struggle. She recalls the times when she first learned to read and write in her autobiography:
“I used to be impatient to listen to the Ramayana recitation, but those were different times. Women had no freedom. They could not take any decision on their own. Just like any caged bird, women were imprisoned too. I could read (religious books) a little bit. But I did not have free time and more importantly the fear of getting caught and punished was always looming over me. Later on, I decided that I would read “Chetna Bhagat” (a religious book) in the morning when all three of my sister-in-laws were busy in religious rituals. Still, I had to read while I hid in some nook and corner of the house as one of my maidservants kept the vigil.”
In 1876, the first part of Amar Jiban was published. The publication of a woman’s autobiography in Bengali was a historic event. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati’s “The High-Caste Hindu Woman” (1887) and Tarabai Shinde’s “Stri Purush Talana” (1882), in which men and women were compared and caused ripples in the society of the time, were published much later than Rassundari Devi’s Bengali autobiography.
Swarnakumari Devi, a member of the Tagore family, became involved with Bengali literature much later, in 1884, when she began editing a Bengali literary magazine. The foreword to the second edition of Amar Jiban was written by Jyotirindranath Tagore. He was a well-known author and Rabindranath Tagore’s older brother. He writes in the foreword:
“I started reading “Amar Jiban” with an excitement. I had decided that I would mark important and interesting sentences with a pencil. While reading, I realised that the whole book had been marked with a pencil. Her life story startles us. Her writings are so simple, honest and powerful that it is impossible to put down the book without completing it.”
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, upper caste Hindu and Muslim women lived under the veil in a manner similar to that of prisoners (purdah). In the novels of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, we find descriptions of women’s plight.
In Amar Jiban, however, the description is even more powerful. Even in her kitchen, she had to work with her ghoonghat (veil). When speaking to domestic workers, she had to lower her voice so that no male worker or family member could hear her.
Even a woman’s voice was imprisoned within the veil’s cage. Amar Jiban is a document that describes how the purdah was a part of Bengali culture. Women had become accustomed to such practises as a result of centuries of patriarchal dominance, and they believed it was their rightful duty to remain in this prison.
She recounts an incident to do with the purdah that occurred when she was 25 and her son was learning how to ride a horse:
“There was a horse ‘Jay Hari’ in our house. One day it was brought in front of the woman’s courtyard so that I could watch my son ride. I heard someone saying that it was the horse of my husband. It struck me suddenly that I couldn’t go in front of this horse. It would have been shameful if my husband’s horse saw me, so I hid inside the house.”
Even from a horse belonging to their husbands, women considered it their duty to hide at the time. We can only speculate on how they would have acted in the presence of a man. The psychology of Bengali women was rooted in purdah. It was impossible for them to imagine life without it.
Amar Jiban also explains how the normalisation of the veil, kept women from attending school. It was a method of social exclusion. The story of Rassundari Devi dates back over a century and a half. Women can now come out and pursue education thanks to changing circumstances.
However, we must remember that it was the sacrifices and actions of strong women who paved the way for future generations of women.
Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain And “Sultana’s Dream”
Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, or Begum Rokeya, was a prominent feminist figure in Bengal’s history, born in 1880. Begum Rokeya is regarded as the founder of the Bengali women’s rights movement.
Begum Rokeya is a writer, philosopher, educator, activist, and feminist who has a long history of advocating for women’s rights through her works and writings. In 2004, her name was added to the BBC’s list of the “Greatest Bengalis of All Time”.
Begum Rokeya’s writings advocated for gender equality. She implied that men and women should be given equal rights and representation on all fronts, in her novels, poems, short stories, science fiction, satires, treatises, and essays.
At the time, this was a novel concept. She thought that a lack of education was to blame for women’s lack of equal rights and representation. Let’s ponder upon her conception of the feminist utopia in “Sultana’s Dream”.
She established the first ever school for girls in Bengal, despite facing a lot of opposition. The Muslim Women’s Association was established by her in 1916. This group advocated for women’s educational and employment rights.
Sultana’s Dream is one of her most popular works. Begum Rokeya’s utopian feminist novel, published decades before her time, imagined a world in which gender roles were reversed and women ruled. In addition, the novel discusses technological advancements and uses logic and reasoning to debunk popular gender stereotypes.
The question of whether a gender-equal utopia can exist is central to feminist utopia imagination. A feminist utopia envisions a world free of patriarchal oppression and gender binaries, as well as the violence that gender produces in people’s lives. A feminist utopia envisions a world free of gender binaries and discrimination. Radical feminism explains that a feminist utopia cannot exist if inequalities and discrimination exist due to gender binaries. It promotes the creation of a feminist utopia that is a critique of gender.
Although Sultana’s Dream is a feminist attempt to imagine a feminist utopia called “Ladyland”, the story itself is based on her own experiences as a Muslim girl child born to an upper class, Muslim family. Purdah, a system that confines women to the domestic realm, was strictly observed by the family’s women.
Rokeya’s father encouraged his sons to pursue a western education and a position in the colonial administration, while the family’s female members were barred from attending any educational institutions (no matter what they desired).
Rokeya and her older sister, Karimunnessa, were educated at home by Rokeya’s brothers, who were constantly interrogated by their family. Because her father objected to her studying Bengali, Rokeya’s older sister was married off before she turned 14.
In one of her works, Rokeya emphasised how her sister’s marriage prevented her from furthering her education. However, Rokeya’s civil servant husband encouraged her to continue her education after she married him.
Khan Bahadur Sakhawat Hussain, Rokeya’s husband, was an Urdu-speaking, western-educated, and “liberal” minded deputy magistrate in Bhagalpur. He encouraged Rokeya to write in Bengali, which she did, and she went on to publish “Motichur” in 1905 and Sultana’s Dream in 1908.
Rokeya’s work is outstanding. Sultana’s Dream is set in an imagined Ladyland where women appear to have unrestricted access to public spaces, free of social or religious constraints. Sultana considered the transformation of Ladyland from a male-dominated space to be unrealistic.
She first experiences herself as free by reclaiming a public space that is free of male gaze and surveillance. The story depicts the range of emotions experienced by women who are subjected to patriarchal oppression.
The writing style conveys feelings of rage, fear, and a constant desire to defy male authority. Rokeya makes several attempts to engage the female reader, reminding them of their own worth and challenging patriarchal power that confines them to the domestic sphere.
Women are depicted as being more rational and scientific than men in the story, with Sara (the protagonist’s imaginary friend) being a scientific researcher who believes that women are superior to men. Sultana is taken aback by Sara’s claim that men are unfit to work for women.
Sultana admires the way women manage and control their lives. She interrogates her friend about patriarchal assumptions about women’s inability to work rationally and outside the home. The reader is constantly reminded of the social and religious customs that plagued women’s emancipation throughout the story.
She focuses on women’s need for more education and challenges traditional practices such as child marriage and the purdah system. Rokeya draws on her own childhood memories of women, including her mother and other female family members, observing the purdah system and her sister’s child marriage.
She attempts to bring the issues that hampered women’s emancipation to light through the story. She makes a point about this by pointing out how the purdah system has changed from being about women’s seclusion to being about male seclusion.
Men are depicted as capable of advancing military power, while women are depicted as scientists. Rokeya emphasises the role of women in social and religious matters throughout the story. Religion is given the attributes of “love and truth” in the fictional dream, and killing another person is considered a crime.
The customs of Ladyland defy the male-dominated world’s kinship relationships. Rokeya attempts to highlight the significance of equality, women’s education, and freedom in Sultana’s Dream, which was written during colonial rule. Furthermore, Rokeya effectively mocks patriarchal oppression of Muslim women through this story.
The discrimination perpetuated by gender binaries is barely addressed in Sultana’s Dream. It attempts to reverse sexual roles by portraying men as the inferior sex. However, it only addresses the violence and discrimination perpetuated by the gender category.
Since then, it has provided a critique of patriarchy and its impact on women’s lives, but it has largely ignored the role of caste and class in perpetuating inequalities and discrimination.
Bengali Writers And Feminist Icons
Both Begum Rokeya and Rassundari Devi fought for their own rights and against male patriarchal oppression, as they have witnessed a lot of male dominance and have written about their own experiences and how patriarchal society structures and normalises oppression and dominance for years.
Women, on the other hand, are becoming accustomed to patriarchal oppression, martial rape, and sexual assault. In a way of religious sentiments, male dominance is always present. These stories also depict male dominance in a wealthy and well-known Bengali family at the time.
Begum Rokeya’s story depicts women’s anger, fear, and frustration in the face of male dominance, as well as how they grew up and failed to stand up for their own interests. The right to an education and the ability to express oneself are both protected rights.
The freedom to speak and express their true feelings, having an opinion on their likes and dislikes, and structural base oppression, such as “what should a woman do?” What is prohibited for a Muslim woman, as well as educational restrictions and exemptions.
In the story, Sultana’s Dream, set in Ladyland, where women are more rational than men in the real world, the delicacy of writing thoughts in a very bold and rational manner highlights her feminist utopia and her strong opinion on feminist science fiction.
Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban, is based on a true story about learning, getting education, and surviving as a woman from a wealthy and illustrious family. The desire to be an educated woman in a society dominated by strong male dominators, where women are regarded as housewives who are unable to do anything other than what they are expected to do. It was a real battle.
These two feminist reformers, educators, and writers provide us with the opportunity to express our bold ideas and create space for us to have our own opinion, give our opinion, and live our lives in our own prerequisite.