Krishnobhabini Das's Englande Bangamohila : An Archive of Early Thoughts on Bengali Women's Nationalism and Feminism

In: Journal of women's history, Band 20, Heft 1, S. 197-216

Abstract

In 1864, Krishnobhabini Das was born in a zamindar (landlord) family in a village of southern Bengal. She was a self-taught woman. In 1882, she went to London with her husband. In London, while her husband taught India-bound British civilians Indian history and culture, she spent most of her time in the British Library. In 1885, she published her travel narrative, Englande Bangamohila (A Bengali Lady in England) , in Bengali. While on the surface the book was a travel narrative, in reality this book emphasized a spirit of nationalism and feminism to middle-class Bengali female and male readers. In this article, I have analyzed Krishnobhabini Das's concept of nationalism and feminism based on the contents of her travel narrative, her sketchy biography, and some of her poems. These writings have collectively become a corpus to construct Krishnobhabini's home life, which sheds light on the condition of the majority of nineteenth-century Bengali women irrespective of their class backgrounds. Thus her biography and her writings, especially her travel narrative, serve as an archive for nineteenth-century Bengali women. Her experiences as a woman made her sensitive to the Indian societal restrictions as well as to the colonial support of the Indian patriarchy. Her home life as well as social customs made her aware of her double subjugation: oppressed as a woman and oppressed as a Bengali/Indian woman in a colonial context.