Perin Naoroji Captain - A Life Dedicated to India's Freedom

Family Background
Perin Naoroji Captain was the granddaughter of the scholar-politician Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, and thrice its president. Naoroji was a British MP as a member of the House of Commons. 

Perin was born at Mandvi in Kutch, Gujarat on 12 October 1888. Her father Ardeshir was a doctor and Dadabhai Naoroji’s son. He died when she was yet five years old. Perin came from a large family of eight children, many of whom took up the nationalist cause. She married the eminent lawyer DS Captain in 1925. The couple did not have children. 

Perin Naoroji Captain

The Beginnings 

As a student at Sorbonne in Paris Perin met the nationalist Bhikaiji Cama who lived there in self-exile, and was a close associate of VD Savarkar. At the time Cama was deeply involved in trying for the release of Savarkar who was in prison at London for defying the British. Perin became a close friend of Kamala Nehru there. 

Later Perin and Savarkar attended the first Egyptian National Congress at Brussels. In London Perin and her sister Gosi worked with Polish organisations against Czarist Russia and learnt from a Polish revolutionary to use firearms and assemble bombs. This activity brought her under surveillance by the British, but that did not deter her. It is interesting that despite this early exposure to how violence was being used in other parts of the world Perin, Gosi and another sister Nurgis (the Captain sisters who married three brothers) turned completely to non-violence as the path to follow under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1911 Perin returned to India. She met Mahatma Gandhi in 1915 and became convinced that his approach to securing India’s freedom from British rule was the right one. From 1920 she took to wearing khadi and began working for the nationalist cause in right earnest. In 1921 she was one of a group that established the Rashtriya Stree Sabha, a nationalist wormen’s organisation run on Gandhian principles.  

Public Life

The Civil Disobedience Movement

The Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 was a watershed moment in the history of the struggle for freedom in India. This movement was the method that the Indian National Congress decided was the means to attain Purna Swaraj (complete independence). The movement spread all over India. In Bengal Matangini Hazra was one of the prominent activists.

Perin Captain’s leadership qualities saw her playing an active role in many other areas, but the Civil Disobedience Movement was a defining episode in her public life.

Perin Captain addressing a political meeting on Chowpatty Beach in Bombay, 1930 Source: Women of India, Tara Ali Baig

Perin had had a long association of social and political work with stalwarts working in the field, well before the call for Civil Disobedience by Gandhi. Although from an influential family and well known to the leading lights of the era, Perin was a Congress worker who served the country by taking part in the big issues of the day. She was a hands-on political worker, did not shy away from the hurly-burly of public engagement and underwent multiple jail terms like most national leaders at the time.

During the Civil Disobedience Movement Perin with several other women under Desh Sevika Sangh played a prominent role in going from shop to shop in Bombay asking the owners not to sell imported cloth. Thus far the colonizers had crippled Indian weavers and the textile segment by exporting raw cotton and importing textiles into India. This boycott of British textiles in India was a direct hit at manufactured goods from Britain. The group also made continuous appeals to shoppers to participate in the Swadeshi movement and not buy imported fabric. In the first ten months of 1930 as many as 17,000 women were convicted for this activity. Closing shops was unlawful, and now shopkeepers were also arrested along with the women for boycott of foreign goods.

Her Arrest and its Aftermath

3rd July 1930 was the fourth day of Boycott Week in Bombay. There were crowds on the streets shouting boycott slogans, lorryloads of volunteers passing around flags and pamphlets to boycott British goods, house to house collection of Swadeshi pledges (2,00,000 pledges had been signed thus far). Mahatma Gandhi sent Perin a cable to “alert Congress to scrupulously avoid all violence, direct indirect passive or active” by any of the picketers. Perin replied that the instruction would be carried out. The Bombay Chronicle of 4 July 1930 reported the arrest of Perin that morning as she was setting out to the Congress office for a day’s work. She ‘cheerfully submitted to the officers’ who came to her home. 

Once the news of her arrest spread, the Municipal Corporation of Bombay adjourned, the Sugar Merchants’ Association passed an unanimous resolution to boycott British refined sugar,  and other merchant associations went with the boycott. 

The Municipal Corporation of Bombay passed a resolution that “Mrs. Captain was an accomplished lady and was a grand-daughter of the late Dadabhai Naoroji popularly known as the Grand Old Man of India. Mrs. Captain was a lady of sound and sober views and took her education in England. It was Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji who first started the idea of swaraj for India and Mrs. Captain took her education in England under the guidance of her revered grandfather. Self sacrifice and service were the mottos of her life and she was acting upto her honest conviction with courage.” 

When Perin and other women activists were released from prison, a mile long chain of about 5,000 women led by Sevikas welcomed them back. There were crowds of women reportedly 10,000 strong at both ends of the parade. Such active participation of women in the freedom struggle was in part possible because of the example and the leadership of Perin and her compatriots.  

The struggle for freedom - The Implications for women

The wholehearted participation of women gave as much a fillip to the women’s emancipation movement as it did to the struggle for freedom. The women volunteers in the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements had a huge impact on the general perception about women’s capabilities. The menfolk were in prison so the women took charge. Women from the most aristocratic and orthodox families to the poorest participated. They took not just the British administration but even their own menfolk by surprise. This participation opened up avenues for social and political rights for women. 

As the Congress party was in the forefront of the struggle, Perin and her sisters were in the thick of all party activities in Bombay (now Mumbai). Perin became the first woman president of the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee in 1932. 

For better clarity of purpose and organisation, many smaller bodies were merged into the Gandhi Seva Sena of which Perin became the Honorary General Secretary, a post she held until her death. The Gandhi Seva Sena promoted khadi by selling rural and khadi products from their stores. One store is still in business in Mumbai selling herbal cosmetics, oil and pulses.

Khadi, also known as khaddar, was originally from Eastern India but eventually was woven by people from all over the country. It is handwoven cloth made of natural fibre, mainly cotton, but also to a lesser degree of silk and wool. It is traditionally woven with the spinning wheel, the charkha. During the freedom movement Khadi became the symbol of India’s resistance to imported cloth and of self-reliance. Today Khadi has had a rejuvenation and is also used by fashion designers in high-end clothing. 

Greater Responsibility

In 1937 the Congress Party came to power in eleven provinces in the provincial elections held under the Government of India Act 1935. These were Madras, The Central Provinces, Sindh, Punjab, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, NWFP, Assam, Bombay Presidency and United Provinces. This development raised expectations of a greater role for the party in the future and the need to prepare for it. The Indian National Congress formed a National Planning Committee with Jawaharlal Nehru as Chairman. Perin was member of the sub-committee ‘Women’s Role in a Planned Economy’ with several others who were active in the freedom movement and in women’s associations. The committee  debated and planned policy for issues such as women’s social, economic and political status, education, marriage, maternity and succession. The committee’s report was absolutely clear that the position of women should be on an equal footing to that of men in the India of the future. 

After India’s Independence

Perin was appointed Chief Commissioner of Bharat Guides and had a hand in voluntary social welfare work among young girls. She was honoured with the Padma Sri in 1954, the first batch of civil awards presented in independent India. 

Perin Naoroji Captain died in Jahangir Nursing Home, Pune in 1958.

Reference 

1. Gandhi, Women and the National Movement 1920-47 - Anup Taneja

2. Women in Satyagraha - Aparna Basu

3. Gandhi’s Passion. The life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi - Stanley Wolpert

4. The Bombay Chronicle, 4 July 1930

5. https://dinyarpatel.com/naoroji/family/

Saalamarada Thimmakka - The Power of One for the Environment

Environment Crusader

The environment is the focus all over the world like never before. Greening our surroundings, halting climate change are no longer buzzwords about the future, but the need of the present, here and now. Here is one individual who did not start her mission of planting trees with any lofty ideals or with any thoughts of grabbing headlines or making a statement. Thimmakka is known today for the nearly 400 Saalamara, Banyan Tree in Kannada, that she planted for a length of 4-5 kilometers from her village Hulikal to Kudur in Karnataka. But that is not all. Thimmakka has planted about 8,000 trees in over 80 years.  

Saalamarada Thimmakka

A difficult beginning

For many years, the tree planting was a joint effort by her and her husband Bekal Chikkayya. Thimmakka never went to school and had begun to work even as a ten year old. Soon, as was the custom she was also married. Thimmakka and her husband Bekal Chikkayya spent their lives in poverty as labourers at a quarry. They remained childless after many years of marriage. The thought of planting trees and looking after them like children grew from wanting to nurture, to parent.

Why the Banyan of all the trees? Because it’s saplings were easily available at the time and it was a hardy, local species that could be easily grafted. The Banyan is a shade-giving tree and hosts bird life and insects that love its deep foliage and its fruit, the Fig. Thimmakka and her husband planted the saplings in the monsoon. They looked after the young saplings by carrying water for them in two pots from their well, twice a week. It was a walk over four kilometers each time. They then built a thorny fence around each sapling to ward off animals. Some of those trees are now over 70 years old. This level of care for over 80 years is surely nothing but a labour of love.

At the time there was no value for the work the couple had put in. They often had to face the unkind jibes of others in the village over their childlessness and their care for the trees. In 1996, Thimmakka's life again took a dip. Chikkayya passed away and she was left with no assets and no support. But she had her ‘children’, all the trees she had planted over the decades. 

Recognition for her work

A journalist heard of her tree-planting efforts and wrote about her work in the Kannada daily Prajavani, which came to the attention of Prime Minister Deve Gowda. She received the National Citizens Award from him in New Delhi and then set up the Saalumarada Thimmakka Foundation, now run by her foster son. The Foundation works in the area of environment initiatives. Several other awards also came her way. An organisation for environmental conservation in the USA has been renamed Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education.

So today, some 24 years after her husband passed away, the wheel has turned a full circle. Her work has become well-known and she is recognised as a sterling example of a green crusader.  When one school child showed her what was written about her in their textbook, she discovered she was now Saalamarada Thimmakka - ‘Thimmakka of the Banyan Tree’.

Thimmakka was awarded the Padma Sri in 2019 by the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, for ‘distinguished service in the field of environment’. The unforgettable image of this cheerful and diminutive lady blessing the President as he handed her the award comes to mind immediately. Her simplicity and sincerity shone through in the glittering ceremony at Ashoka Hall, Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

At the ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi 

Next on the wish-list

Thimmakka’s wish-list now is not long. She only desire is to plant more trees and that the trees she has planted all these years not be cut. And that her village gets a hospital so that villagers don’t have to travel the distance for medical aid.

Thimmakka's focus

Thimmakka exemplifies the impact of sincere effort without thinking of short cuts or rewards. The fame she had garnered, the awards she had won are not her focus even now. Her only thought is for her trees, always her trees. As she says, she loves to plant and look after trees until they are old.

Matangini Hazra - Freedom's Champion

India won independence from British colonizers by the continuous efforts of not just the important freedom fighters who are justly remembered today, but also by the spirited defiance of people from all over the country. Each of them contributed in their own way by never being defeatist and complacent, always working towards throwing off the foreign yoke. 

Matangini Hazra

Statue at the Maidan, Kolkata

(Wikipedia, PK Niyogi)

Setbacks were no impediments

Matangini Hazra (1870-1942) was born in the village Hogla in Tamluk, Midnapore district, Bengal in the family of a poor farmer. Child marriage was prevalent at the time and Matangini was married as a young child to a rich widower Trilochan Hazra, who was 62 years old. She did not receive an education. After her husband died she returned childless to her parental home at the age of 18, to a life of poverty at the edge of society. The immediate years thereafter in her life were uneventful as she immersed herself in social service, unknowingly preparing herself for a bigger role in society. Later in life she was inspired by Gandhiji. She spun yarn and wore khadi, so much so she came to be affectionately called Gandhi Buri (Old Lady Gandhi in Bangla).

Civil Disobedience and other protests

A notable feature of the freedom movement at Midnapore was the large numbers of women who participated. Matangini’s public life has been recorded since 1930 when she took part at Alinan, West Bengal as a 62 year old in the Salt Satyagraha (March - April 1930) called by Mahatma Gandhi as a part of the Civil Disobedience movement which spread all over the country. In Bombay (today's Mumbai) Perin Naoroji Captain took a leading part.

Matangini joined the various protests despite her age. Women picketed liquor shops from which the government earned a hefty revenue. Matangini was arrested, like thousands of others at the time, for breaking the Salt Act. She was punished upon her arrest, but that did not deter her and immediately upon her release participated in the Chowkidari Tax Bandha (movement for abolition of Chowkidari Tax). 

The agitation against Chowkidari Tax

Resentment was building up among the people against the age-old practise of taxing villagers to pay for chowkidars (watchmen and caretakers). The chowkidars were ostensibly employed to support the police in far-flung areas. They were, however, detested by villagers since they additionally acted as spies and worked for the local landlords. 

Popular opinion was that this tax had to be abolished in Bengal. Resentment with the practice was high because the government regularly confiscated huge tracts of property disproportionate to the tax accrued. Once the protest began, the agitators were beaten and tortured. Matangini Hazra got fully involved in the agitation. The governor of Bengal, Sir John Anderson, constituted an illegal court to try everybody in the movement. Despite tight security Matangini sneaked into the court premises and staged a black flag demonstration. She was arrested with several others. Her sentence this time was for six months and she was lodged in Behrampur jail.

More oppression did not stop service of the needy

This arrest only served to steel Matangini’s resolve to fight harder for India’s independence from the oppressive British rule. After she was released, she joined the Indian National Congress which was in the forefront of the struggle for freedom. Matangini continued to be deeply involved in all manner of protest against British colonial rule and continued her service of the people. She was badly injured when lathi-charged by the police at the Mahakuma Congress Conference, a district-level meeting at Serampore. Soon after that a periodic small-pox epidemic hit Bengal, and Matangini worked tirelessly amongst the afflicted. This spirit of service inspite of severe personal difficulties endeared her to people.

The Quit India Movement and its aftermath

The political and social scene in India was filled with turmoil and agitations as the Quit India Movement began in August 1942. When all the leaders of the Congress Party were arrested after Gandhiji’s inspirational call of ‘Do or Die’ in the course of this agitation, several protests were launched locally all over India. Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code that prohibits the assembly of 5 or more people and the holding of public meetings was then imposed by the government. 

The plan in Midnapore, however, was to capture the police station, the court and other public buildings. In defiance of the prohibitory order, at 72 years of age, Matangini led a procession of 6,000 Congress supporters, mostly women, with a flag in her hand. The flag was saffron, white and green, with a charkha in the centre. As chants of Vande Mataram rent the air the police opened fire. Matangini was first hit on one hand and then the other. The third bullet hit her on her forehead even as she continued forward, appealing to the police to stop. 

Matangini Hazra died for her cause, with no thought for her own safety or well-being. She did not hanker for honours, nor did she care for any personal benefits. 

A people’s hero

An interesting fall-out of Matangini Hazra’s death was the impact it had on the people. The residents of Midnapore declared independence from British rule soon after, in 1942. The people remained very agitated, they took over all government offices. No British official was allowed to enter for years. It took an appeal from Gandhiji to the people - to join in fighting for a just cause, to not allow the situation to deteriorate that would lead to bloodshed if armed forces were sent by the government, that all would together fight for the independence of the whole of India - before they bowed out. This was the impact of Matangini Hazra.

Today, nearly 80 years after she lay down her life Matangini Hazra continues to be remembered by a grateful nation. A statue of hers stands in Midnapore at the spot she was shot. Hers was the first statue of a woman to be put up in Kolkata, at the Maidan, in 1977. Schools and streets in West Bengal are named after Matangini. In 2002 when India released postage stamps to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Quit India Movement, Matangini Hazra was one of the freedom fighters honoured in the series.

Although as a young girl Matangini Hazra had the odds stacked against her in every way from the start of her life, as a woman she took charge and rewrote her life’s trajectory to emerge a role model for her can-do spirit and the refusal to accept defeat.

Ref:

Banglapedia, National Encylopedia of Bangladesh 

Bipin Chandra and others, India’s Struggle for Independence

Durgabai Kamat - The First Actress of Indian Film

Durgabai Kamat and Kamalabai Gokhale

When I came across the name of Durgabai Kamat, I was intrigued. How much of a risk-taker she must have been to be willing to participate in an absolutely new venture such as film making! I read all the available literature on her and her times, it appears she only worked in one film. Her milieu was actually the stage. Durgabai’s daughter Kamalabai, however, acted in about 35 films in her career, right up to Gehrayee (1980).

When Dadasaheb Phalke, the pioneering film maker in Indian cinema made the first Indian film Raja Harischandra in 1913 he was forced to cast male actors impersonating females. This was because it was taboo for women to work in films and theatre in the conservative society of the time.

Following the huge success of Raja Harischandra, for his second film Mohini Bhasmasur Phalke decided to cast women for female roles in defiance of societal norms. 

Beginnings

Durgabai Kamat was Phalke’s choice for the important role of Parvati. Durgabai was a pioneer female actor in a travelling theatre company who was born in 1879. She had studied upto the then-7th standard, currently the 10th standard. She married Anand Nanoskar, a History teacher at the JJ School of Arts, Mumbai. When the couple parted ways in 1903, she decided to bring up her young daughter Kamalabai on her own. Kamalabai travelled with Durgabai on the theatre circuit, being homeschooled due to their unsettled lifestyle. She began acting on stage from the age of four. 

Path-breaking role

Phalke cast Durgabai as Parvati and young Kamalabai as the lead, as Mohini in Mohini Bhasmasur. It was filmed in Nashik where Phalke had set up his studio. The mother-daughter duo could shoot at the time since the travelling theatre company Durgabai worked in had temporarily ceased operation. The film was on an episode from the Hindu epics. Essaying her role of the Goddess in this film, Durgabai had an unwitting hand in beginning the process of changing the pervading low opinion about actresses. Mohini Bhasmasur became a pioneering  film in many ways - it had the first female actor and the first child actor of Indian cinema. Another first was Phalke’s wife Saraswatibai, his tireless collaborator. She helped wash the film, among performing many essential filmmaking tasks, which effectively made her the first female laboratory assistant in Indian cinema.

Mohini Bhasmasur was released on 1st January 1914 and the entire cast was taken to Bombay (as it was then) to watch it on the big screen at Coronation Cinema. Unfortunately, the film has not survived to the present day.

Durgabai’s legacy

Durgabai had to battle social stigma at every turn in the early days due to her choice of career, but that did not deter her one bit. Her family continues to be deeply engaged today in cinema. Kamalabai Gokhle went on to have a long career in films. Her grandsons and Durgabai’s great-grandsons Vikram Gokhle and Mohan Gokhle became well recognised for their acting prowess.

                                                                 Kamalabai Gokhale

                                                                    Source: Wikipedia

Chandravati (Chandrabati) Ramayana - The Feminine Perspective

Chandrabati / Chandravati was a medieval poet, born around 1550 CE in Kishoreganj, Maimansingh now in Bangladesh. She is considered the first woman poet in her mother-tongue Bangla. Her legacy continues to be preserved, not just as academic interest, but woven into the fabric of women’s lives in rural Bengal even today through her verses.

Chandravati and Aatukuri Molla, first woman poet of Telugu literature and the author of the Telugu Ramayana, were among the writers who wrote the enduring Sanskrit epic Ramayana in regional languages to bring it closer to people.

Chandravati’s legacy

Chandravati wrote a woman-centric version of the Ramayana in the late 16th century, although left incomplete. Her Ramakatha is but one of the many that have been narrated and written in India and its neighbouring lands over centuries. The difference in her Ramayana is its unique female perspective. The work belongs to the genre of folk narrative, pala gaan or ballad which originated in the eastern districts of Bengal, presently Bangladesh. Folk narrative keeps to the basic story of the Ramayana but departs from it in the details. Chandravati has the distinction of expanding the scope of pala gaan from the narrow and domestic to universal concerns of tragedy that envelopes an entire society. Her narrative moves away from the masculine themes of war and Rama’s story to that of Sita’s, and the events that impinge her life. It is about how bereft the kingdom of Ayodhya, of which Sita is queen, feels on her accompanying Rama to exile and the implications to her world when doom befalls Lanka where she is imprisoned. 

Chandravati's family

Chandravati's house in Mymensingh, Bangladesh

Chandravati’s father Dvija Vamsidasa was well known for his scholarship, and as the author of Padmaapurana. Chandravati herself was a scholar of Bangla and Sanskrit. In an autobiography in her Ramayana, she mentioned her mother Sulochana and that they lived on the banks of the Phuleswari. Encouraged by her father she took up writing, and assisted him in his work Manasamangala. She also composed two verse narratives Malua Sundari and Dasyu Kenaram, the only other works that are known today with her signature line and that directly reflect her times. These texts are still part of Bangla curriculum in schools. Chandravati attributed all her competence and the family’s escape from poverty to the Goddess Manasa. At the start of her work, she mentioned her grandparents, her parents, the goddess Manasa and the river which was the lifeline of the village. Her dedication could not be more different from the norm, she made no mention of classical poets or the pantheon of Hindu gods. 

Our knowledge of Chandravati’s life is from the only early account of it, written by Nayanchand Ghosh about a hundred years after her death.

Chandravati's personal life

Chandravati’s name is kept alive today at Kacharipara by the temple in which she worshipped and the Kabi Chandrabati Government Primary School near the temple. 

It is believed that Chandravati was deeply in love with Jayananda who jilted her to convert and marry a Muslim girl. This drove her to seclusion and worship at a Shiva temple her father built for her. 

The story of Chandravati and Jayananda goes like this. The couple met in a garden and fell in love. The families found the match very agreeable and a date for their marriage was fixed. However just days before the happy event, Jayananda met a beautiful Muslim girl on the river bank, converted to Islam and married her. This news came to Chandravati on the day of her marriage, shocking everybody not just because Jayananda jilted her but also because he abandoned his religion. Chandravati sought refuge in her temple, and encouraged by her father started to write the Ramayana to take her mind off her troubled life. Soon enough Jayananda realised his mistake and wrote to ask for her forgiveness. He knew his behaviour ensured there was no future for them but he wanted to see her one more time, and arrived at the temple. Chandravati was however in no mood to relent and resolutely kept the temple door shut. When all was silent outside she opened the door to go to the river, and discovered he had drowned. 

An account of Chandrabati’s life was written about 100 years after her death by Nayanchand, supported by local versions. He says loss and betrayal are the two recurrent themes in her work.

Chandravati’s singular view of the Ramayana

Indian literature abounds in heroic tales - the hero who performs great deeds is the focus front and centre, and the masculine is applauded. But what of women’s reactions and understandings of these episodes? What do they assimilate, take away from these narratives? Chandravati is among the earliest writers who looked into these questions, and expressed Sita’s view of the events of the Ramayana. 

Nabaneeta Dev Sen opines that Chandravati's Ramayana is not a devotional text but a secular one. The story is human drama and not divine mystery. It is a singular women's narrative from the female point of view. It is Sita's story from the beginning to the end.

Chandravati’s verse narrative is of less than 700 couplets. It includes episodes from various sources. She displays knowledge of classical texts and the other versions best known at the time in East Bengal - Valmiki’s in Sanskrit and Krttivasa’s in Bangla. She may have also been aware of them possibly by listening to narrations, which were very popular in Eastern India and adjoining areas, and has included them so that Sita’s world could be understood better. Yet, she does not set her work within any literary tradition. She narrates Sita's tale as she sees fit.

Chandravati’s choice of material sources was not whimsical, but purposeful. Tulsidas’s Ramayana has the tone of adoration for Rama, Valmiki’s was a hero’s tale. Chandravati’s forte is that she illustrates her particular understanding of the world around her. Her alterations reflect contemporary cultural, ethical and political attitudes, the important issues of 16th century eastern Bengal. 

Changing perceptions of the Ramayana over time

It is through this prism that one must read Chandravati’s work. The Ramayana is one of the most revered epics of India and many parts of Asia. In spite of this, offering a wildly differing viewpoint than one generally accepted for centuries is an act of courage and that of a thinking mind. Chandravati’s theme is the human cost of conflict and the justice (or the lack of it) meted out by the strong to the weak.

The Ramayana began to be viewed differently from the 15th century onwards. From Rama being glorified as the conquering hero and the best of men, later works spoke of him as Vishnu. They also began to look at the victims in the epic rather than only the victor. This is especially true of rural retellings by song, drama and verse which still resonate with the audience there, especially women. The retellings elaborate upon subjects close to home such as domestic relationships and Sita’s situation. Of late folklorists, political activists and scholars have begun to study these alternative versions.

The political scenario and its impact

The prevalent state of medieval Bengal added in no small measure to Chandravati’s melancholy. Literacy was low in areas away from urban centres. The local royalty, the Afghan Karrani dynasty, was busy thwarting the Mughal emperor Akbar and could not administer the land. This led to local chiefs asserting their power. Utter lawlessness prevailed. Women’s social status was low and official oppression on religious grounds was widespread. This upheaval resulted in slowly hardening strict rules for women which curbed their daily lives and essential freedoms. The gloomy social conditions were reflected in many medieval ballads of the time.

However it was not always so. The golden period for Bangla literature and the arts is considered to extend until 1525, under Sultan Allauddin Hussain Shah, a just and tolerant king. Society survived upheavals after the death of Shah due to the Vaishnava movement and the personality of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534). A flowering of arts and culture began, and an outpouring of literary and philosphical works, folk ballads, poetry and music ensued. The impact was such that inspite of being largely unschooled, women had cultural knowledge and could quote from the scriptures, having been amidst various forms of the oral tradition, and perhaps other art forms. As Mandakranta Bose says in A Woman’s Ramayana, “Theirs was by no means an unsophisticated social culture.”

The work - Chandravati’s Ramayana

Chandravati stamps her individuality at the very outset. Her work is not dedicated to the king as is the custom at the time but to her ‘sakhijan’, her female companions.

She begins the story with the birth of Sita and then brings in Mandodari, Ravana’s wife. In Chandravati’s Ramayana the two are daughter and mother. The behaviour of their respective husbands is a cause for agony to these women, and it is a joyless existence. Chandravati’s Rama is not the ideal ruler but the jealous husband whom Chandravati chastises for exiling Sita. She says this one action will be his ruin. Chandravati’s Ramayana may have been rejected by the educated class in her day but she has achieved long-lasting fame. Her Ramayana is on many village women’s lips even today when they sing for occasions under the nose of patriarchy. 

Her collaborators, centuries later

Any account of Chandravati and her work must also include the two men who collaborated to bring her work to the notice of the wider public centuries later - Dineshchandra Sen and Chandra Kumar De. Had it not been for De’s efforts and the encouragement he received from all quarters including Sen, Chandravati and her Ramayana would have remained unknown outside Bangla-speaking areas.

Chandravati and her Ramayana were famous even during her lifetime because her work was a part of the repertoire of village bards in rural Bengal. The change in the 20th century was that it came under scholarly review when Dineshchandra Sen began to collate the works of literature in rural Bengal. Sen collected 54 such ballads which offered a rich view of society. 

Cover Page of Eastern Bengal Ballads Mymensing
compiled by Dineschandra Sen

Dineshchandra Sen (1866-1939) was a noted writer, educationist and researcher of Bangla folklore. He was the founding faculty member of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature, University of Calcutta. He published Chandravati’s works and also attributed other works to her, although he did not offer evidence.

Sen began a series of lectures in Calcutta University on The Bengali Ramayanas which was later printed as a book. He devoted an entire chapter to Chandravati and her Ramayana. His focus was not the epic itself but on how widely alternative Ramayanas, especially the Jaina versions, differed from Valmiki’s Ramayana.

The discovery of Chandravati’s work 

A local magazine in Mymensing ‘Sourabha’ first published in April 1913 an article by Chandra Kumar De about a few ‘kabi’ songs of the area. Dineshchandra Sen began to regularly read De's articles and chanced upon an extract of an old ballad on the story of Chandravati and Jayachandra in one of them. From this extract Sen wrote about Chandravati in his ‘Bengali Ramayanas’. This account about the discovery of a medieval poetess and her distinguised poetry was read with great interest by several Europeans. Some of the episodes mentioned in Chandravati’s account were found not to be from Valmiki’s version but from local oral traditions as well as from Kashmiri, Javanese and Malay versions. Thus began questions on why there were deviations. 

When Sen tried to trace Chandra Kumar De to get more details on Chandravati, he was told that De was almost completely uneducated ‘but possessed fine literary talents’. He was so poor that sometimes he was unable to afford a meal for days. Sen wrote to De offering medical help in Kolkata, so De managed the trip after selling his wife’s jewellery. He was depressed and sickly-looking due to a chronic illness. He was offered free housing and free treatment by well-wishers. 

De was from Mymensing, the son of a poor landless farmer. After his parents died, De worked as rent-collector so he travelled extensively and was in direct contact with peasants from villages near his home. He heard Baramashi songs that were never written down but passed on orally through generations. These songs describe the joys and sorrows of women through the 12 months of the Bengali year. He learnt to read and write by his own efforts and set to work, transcribing these songs. He then contributed articles to Sourabha about the songs.

Sen encouraged him to concentrate on collecting Bangla songs, not Sanskrit ones, from his district. To do this, stray verses known to a few villagers had to be written down and strung together from all over the countryside, verses known only within families. This was an arduous task. De travelled through the marshes of the district, inspite of his precarious health, to meet people who were not always ready to share their family heritage of verses. Only De’s zeal for his mission saw him succeed. The result of this exercise was Chandravati’s incomplete Ramayana, among other works. 

De sent the verses to the University of Calcutta and he was offered employment with a stipend that allowed him to continue collecting songs. He travelled to tens of villages in the districts of Sylhet and Mymensing, collecting portions of works that he then had to collate in proper order to publish. In a letter of 1921 De wrote,”It is a great inconvenience that one singer is scarcely found in this district who knows a whole poem. It is to be recovered from various persons living in widely distant places, so a long journey is required to get hold of one poem.” Sometimes, the villager he wanted to meet avoided him. Sometimes the kuchcha roads were unfit for any conveyance so he was forced to walk 55-65 kilometers a day. Still he persevered. 

Sen translated the the verses into English and published 4 volumes of Eastern Bengal ballads in 1923. Some of the poems were published as Purbabanga-Geetika in 1926.

Recognition for Chandravati today

In recent years Chandravati’s importance in the history of Bengali literature is increasingly being recognised. It is surprising that fame reached Chandravati so slowly, especially since the poems have her name attached to them unlike several others in Sen’s book which are anonymous. Her Ramayana is available in both Bangla and English. A contemporary study of Chandravati’s Ramayana reveals that her continued popularity is largely due to her ability to talk about women’s lives through the medium of the epic.

Reference -

1. A Woman’s Ramayana - Chandravati’s Bengali Epic by Mandakranta Bose

2. Building a Digital Feminary - Nabaneeta Dev Sen

3. The Ballads of Bengal, Vol. 3 - Dineshchandra Sen. First published in 1923.

4. Eastern Bengal Ballads Mymensing Vol 1 Part 1- Dineshchandra Sen Rai Bahadur, 1923

5. Rewriting the Ramayana - Nabaneeta Dev Sen

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