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Abstract
Pioneering women’s periodicals in Bengali in the second half of the nineteenth century eloquently deplore the social confinement of women. Contesting this paradigm of female immobility, travelogues written by Bengali women simultaneously start to appear in the pages of such journals as Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Bhāratıī, Antaḥpur, etc., from the 1860s onwards. Unlike the famous nineteenth-century Bengali travelogues by Krishnabhabini Das and Svarnakumari Debi, these other writings have only very recently drawn attention. After laying out the state of the art, I will first introduce two of the established travelogues. Thereafter I will look at these still largely unknown writings, measure their significance for a women’s public and the Bengali literary sphere, and evaluate their setting in terms of gender and class. Shorter and less spectacular, the accounts in these periodicals are nonetheless a significant body of literature. They furnish detailed insights into the travel conditions and social framework women in those days experienced, and amply bear witness to the literary sentiments travelling inspired.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to one of the anonymous South Asia peer reviewers and my co-editors, particularly Charu Gupta, for their constructive criticism of earlier drafts of this article. Raja and Sulagna Mukhopadhyay and Abhijit Bhattacharya have helped me to get hold of the sources, and Alokeranjan Dasgupta has given me invaluable advice with this contribution as always.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Anonymous, ‘Baṅgıīẏa hindusamāj saṃskār’, in Baṅgamahilā, Vol. 1, no. 4 (Śrābaṇ 1282 BE/1875), pp. 73–8 (73f).
2. Māẏāsundarıī, ‘Nārıījanma ki adharmma?’, in Baṅgamahilā, Vol. 1, no. 4 (Śrābaṇ 1282 BE/1875), pp. 93–4 (94). Also quoted in Damaẏantıī Dāśˡgupta, Āmādiger bhramaṇˡbttānta: ūnabiṃśa śatābdıīr baṅgamahilāder bhramaṇˡkathā (Kalˡkātā: Gāṅˡcil, 2016), p. 22f.
3. Anonymous, ‘Pacambār Dṛṣya (Ekˡjan Bhramaṇˡkārıī Bandhu Haïte Prāpta)’, in Mahilā, Vol. 3, no. 1 (Śrābaṇ 1304 BE/1897), pp. 15–8 (15).
4. Imagery of darkness and light pervades the reformist discourse of the nineteenth century in general. As for the women’s periodicals, the early issues of Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, for instance, provide many examples.
5. Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Vol. 3 (1274 BE/1867–68), pp. 489–96, for instance, features a biography of American female educationist Margaret Mercer.
6. Cf. Jolita Zabarskaite, ‘“Greater India” in Indian Scholarship and in the Public Domain’, in ZIS, Vol. 34 (2017), pp. 259–88 (267).
7. Pārtha Caṭṭopādhyāẏ, Bāṃlā Bhramaṇ-Sāhitye Muktacintā (Kalˡkātā: Mitra o Ghoṣ, 2012), pp. 30–3; and, in greater detail, Dāśˡgupta, Āmādiger Bhramaṇˡbttānta, pp. 39–52.
8. Simonti Sen, Travels to Europe, pp. 3–5.
9. Sandeep Banerjee and Subho Basu, ‘Secularizing the Sacred, Imagining the Nation-Space: The Himalaya in Bengali Travelogues, 1856–1901’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 49, no. 3 (2015), pp. 609–49.
10. See Hans Harder, ‘The Masters at Home: The British and Britain in Bengali Travel Accounts’, in Hans Harder and Beate Eschment (eds), Looking at the Coloniser: Exploring Cross-Cultural Perceptions in Middle Asia, the Caucasus and Bengal (Würzburg: Ergon, 2004), pp. 131–46 (131f.), in which I still advocated that this somewhat schematic set-up was adequate—a position I partly revise in retrospect.
11. Marina Carter, Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British Empire (London/New York: Leicester University Press, 1996).
12. Paṃḍitā Ramābāi, Yunāiṭeḍ·sṭeṭ·s·cıī Lokasthiti āṇi Pravāsˡvtta (The Situation of the People of the United States and the Narration of the Stay Abroad) (Muṃbaıī: Nirṇayˡsāgar Chāpˡkhānā, 1889); cf. the English translation and extensive introduction by Meera Kosambi in Pandita Ramabai, Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter: The Peoples of the United States (1889), trans. and ed. Meera Kosambi (trans. and ed.) (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003). Cf. also the in-depth analysis of the text in Inderpal Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), Chap. 5 (pp. 179–229).
13. Dāśˡgupta, Āmādiger Bhramaṇˡbttānta, pp. 50–1.
14. Ibid., pp. 29–31.
15. Ibid., pp. 14, 18, 31.
16. Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Introduction’, in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).
17. Shobhana Bhattacharji, Indian Travel Writing in India (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008); and Pramod K. Nayyar, Indian Travel Writing 1830–1947, Vols. 1–5 (London: Routledge, 2017).
18. Daniel Majchrowicz, ‘Malika Begum’s Mehfil: The Lost Legacy of Women’s Travel Writing in Urdu’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 43, no. 5 (Oct. 2020), doi: 10.1080/00856401.2020.1790726 and Charu Gupta, ‘Masculine Vernacular Histories of Travel in Colonial India: The Writings of Satyadev “Parivrajak”’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 43, no. 5 (Oct. 2020), doi: 10.1080/00856401.2020.1789314.
19. Cf. Sukla Chatterjee, ‘Breaking the Cage: Travel, Freedom, and English Society in Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā’, in ASIEN, Vol. 130 (Jan. 2014), pp. 8–23; see also Partha Chatterjee and Simanti Sen, ‘Foreword’ and ‘Introduction’, in Sıīmantıī Sen (ed.), Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dāser Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā (Kalˡkātā: Strıī, 1996).
20. Cf. Somdatta Mandal (trans. and ed.), Wanderlust: Travels of the Tagore Family (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2014). This anthology contains travel pieces by altogether eight women of the Tagore house. Among them, subtracting those of doubtful authorship, the writings of Svarnakumari Debi stand out as the earliest. Published from 1886 onwards, her travelogues include accounts of Prayag, Darjeeling and Solapur (pp. 103–39).
21. Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dās, in Sıīmantıī Sen (ed.), Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dāser Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā (Kalˡkātā: Strıī, 1996), pp. 5–6.
22. ‘Daśam Adhyāẏ: Iṃrāj Mahilā’, in Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dās, in Sıīmantıī Sen (ed.), Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dāser Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā (Kalˡkātā: Strıī, 1996), pp. 73–84.
23. ‘Ṣaṣṭha Adhyāẏ: Laṇḍan’, in Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dās, in Sıīmantıī Sen (ed.), Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dāser Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā (Kalˡkātā: Strıī, 1996), pp. 37–47. Cf., for instance, p. 44, where she describes the pollution in combination with fog as deadly and hellish, and quotes the common people’s complaints about it.
24. In Bhāratıī, the writing is published anonymously, but Mandal includes the text as that of Svarnakumari. Cf. ‘Praẏāg Yātrā’, in Bhāratıī, Vol. 10 (Baiśākh 1293 BE/1886), pp. 8–19, for the Bengali original, and Mandal, Wanderlust, pp. 103–17, for the translation into English.
25. ‘Praẏāge’, in Bhāratıī, Vol. 10 (1886), pp. 85–94; and ‘Praẏāg Darśan’, in Bhāratıī, Vol. 10 (1886), pp. 157–66, 202–13.
26. ‘Praẏāg Yātrā’, p. 9; and Mandal, Wanderlust, p. 104.
27. ‘Praẏāg Yātrā’, p. 9. Āryā-aśru means literally ‘the tear(s) of an Aryan woman’.
28. ‘Praẏāg Yātrā’, pp. 9–12; and Mandal, Wanderlust, pp. 105–8.
29. Quoted from Mandal, Wanderlust, p. 110f.
30. Mandal, Wanderlust, p. 111.
31. Another very special travelogue by a woman of the Tagore family is Prajnasundari Debi, ‘Jalapathe Kāśıī Yātrā (Boat Trip to Kashi)’, which appeared in 1897–98 in the periodical, Puṇya, Vol. 1 (1304 BE) in three instalments. Prajnasundari Debi (1871–1950) describes how her branch of the family, along with a considerable entourage of servants and boatmen, travelled to Benares in a bajˡrā, a large houseboat acquired by her father specifically for that purpose. Cf. Prajnasundari Devi, ‘Jalapathe Kasi Jatra (A River Trip to Kasi)’, in Mandal, Wanderlust, pp. 256–80.
32. The credit for most of these findings goes to Damayanti Dasgupta’s anthology, Dāśˡgupta, Āmādiger Bhramaṇˡbttānta. I scanned women’s periodicals on the Cross Asia database of Bengali periodicals before her book appeared, but due to many missing issues and because I did not consult journals that did not specifically target women, many of the texts she has edited escaped my attention. For all the texts that I could consult in the original and found included in her anthology, I add references to her book, abbreviated as ĀB, in the following.
33. One of these is Jaladhar Sen’s Himalayan travels, discussed at length in Banerjee and Basu, ‘Secularizing the Sacred, Imagining the Nation-Space’, pp. 625–38, 646–7.
34. Sifting through this production is not an easy task since it consists of hundreds of thousands of pages of densely written text. Such systematic scanning may have to wait for functional Bengali OCR and a unified digital archive.
35. Ramāsundarıī Ghoṣ, ‘Kāśıīdarśan’, in Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā (1271 BE/1864–65); and ĀB, pp. 81–2. I have not been able to check the original since the respective number of Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā was not available to me.
36. Lakṣmıīmaṇi Debıī, ‘Bideś Bhramaṇ’, in Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Vol. 6 (Baiśākh 1277 BE/1870), pp. 55–6; Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Vol. 6 (Āṣāṛh 1277 BE/1870), pp. 83–4; and ĀB, pp. 83–6.
37. Lakṣmıīmaṇi Debıī, ‘Bideś Bhramaṇ’, p. 55; and ĀB, p. 83.
38. Lakṣmıīmaṇi Debıī, ‘Bideś Bhramaṇ’, p. 56; and ĀB, p. 84.
39. Himanshubala Bhaduri’s 1931 account of a journey to Scotland, England, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, actually outside our time-frame and by far the latest of the texts mentioned, sticks out as very exceptional. Himāṃśubālā Bhāduṛıī, ‘Bāhirer Pathe’, in Baṅgalakṣmıī, Vol. 6 (Kārttik 1337 BE/1931), pp. 950–5 (one of several sequels).
40. Damayanti Dasgupta has compiled short bio notes that provide helpful background information on the authors featuring in her anthology: ĀB, pp. 208–15.
41. The terms bhadralok/bhadramahilā are often used as exclusively Hindu categories, but in terms of class privilege and cultural ethos, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein comes very close to this formation. For a detailed account of the living conditions of Muslim women in colonial Bengal, cf. Sonia Amin, The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
42. This is contrary to, for instance, the beginnings of the vernacular novel, and not commensurate with the outspokenness with which the earlier confinement was at times denounced.
43. Nistārinıī Debıī, ‘Patra’, in Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Vol. 7, no. 5 (Agrahāẏan 1310 BE/1903), pp. 239–42 (239). This is a travelogue in letter form that describes the painful farewell in Bengal (p. 239), the journey by the Bombay Mail Express to Agra and a visit to the Taj Mahal, and the onward journey to Jhansi and, in a sequel (pp. 333–5), the continuation of the trip to Maharashtra.
44. R.S. Hossein, ‘Kūpˡmaṇḍuker Himālaẏˡdarśan’, in Mahilā, Vol. 10, no. 4 (Kārttik 1311 BE/1904), pp. 108–12. ‘(Mrs.) R. S. Hossein’ is written in English underneath an otherwise Bengali text announced as Mahilār Racanā, a woman’s work, and means Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein.
45. Anonyma, ‘Bideśˡbāsinıīr Patra’, in Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Vol. 5, no. 3 (Phālgun 1301 BE/1895), pp. 347–9; Bāmābodhinıī, Vol. 5, no. 3 (Caitra 1301/1895), pp. 373–7; and Bāmābodhinıī, Vol. 5, no. 4 (Jyaiṣṭha 1302 BE/1895), pp. 75–8, reprinted in ĀB, pp. 170–80.
46. Cf. footnote 31.
47. Kumārıī Kāminıī Sen, ‘Dārjjiliṃ Bhramaṇ’, in Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā (1293 BE/1886); cf. ĀB, pp. 106–9 (108–9).
48. Kumudinıī Kāstagıīr, ‘Mahıīśūrer Patra’, in Sāthıī (1300 BE/1893); cf. ĀB, pp. 123–26 (123).
49. Prabāsinıī Debıī, ‘Kāśmıīrer Pathe’, in Antaḥpur, Vol. 5, no. 2 (Bhādra/Āśvin 1309 BE/1902), pp. 118–22; and (sequel) Antaḥpur, Vol. 5, no. 2 (Kārttik 1309 BE/1902), pp. 130–2 (119f).
50. Prabāsinıī Debıī, ‘Kāśmıīrer Pathe’, p. 120.
51. Kamalekāminıī Gupta, ‘Rele Bipad (Satya Ghaṭanā)’, in Antaḥpur, Vol. 5, no. 4 (Śrābaṇ 1309 BE/1902), pp. 65–70.
52. R.S. Hossein, ‘Kūpˡmaṇḍuker Himālaẏˡdarśan’, pp. 108–12.
53. Mālatıī Bālā, ‘Āmār Śvaśurˡbāṛıī Yātrā’, in Mahilā, Vol. 14 (Āśvin 1315 BE/1908), pp. 76–8. Cf. my translation of this piece in this issue.
54. Gupta, ‘Rele Bipad’, p. 69f.
55. Anonyma, ‘Parbbat-Bhramaṇ’, in Paricārikā (Jyaiṣṭha 1287 BE/1880), pp. 14–6 (14); and ĀB, pp. 100–2 (101).
56. Anonyma, ‘Parbbat-Bhramaṇ’, pp. 16, 102.
57. Sen, ‘Dārjjiliṃ Bhramaṇ’; and ĀB, pp. 106–9 (106).
58. Sen, ‘Dārjjiliṃ Bhramaṇ’; and ĀB, p. 109.
59. Anonyma, ‘Bideśˡbāsinıīr Patra’, pp. 374, 173 (prakti debıīr krıīṛā kānan).
60. Snehalatā Sen, ‘Masurıī’, in Sakhā o Sāthıī (1301 BE/1894–95); and ĀB, pp. 181–5.
61. Sen, ‘Masurıī’, p. 182; seeing the Jamuna springs, she writes: ‘I cannot describe how unparalleled this scene is’.
62. Prabāsinıī Debıī, ‘Kāśmıīrer Pathe’, p. 132.
63. Cf. Esther Ruelfs, ‘Die Himalaya-Reise als Medium des Erhabenen’, in Samuel Bourne: Sieben Jahre Indien; Photographien und Reiseberichte 1863–1870 (München: Schirmer/Mosel, 2001), pp. 124–7.
64. Bhāduṛıī, ‘Bāhirer Pathe’, p. 950f.
65. Girıīndramoninıī Dāsıī, Deoghar, in ĀB, pp. 127–31. Damayanti Dasgupta gives Bhāratıī (Bhādra 1300/1893) as reference, but I could not find the text in that year nor adjacent ones.
66. Ibid, p. 129.
67. Hemalatā Debıī, ‘Uṛiṣyā Bhramaṇ’, in Antaḥpur, Vol. 5, no. 2 (Jyaiṣṭha 1309 BE/1902–03), pp. 35–8.
68. Ibid., p. 36.
69. Anonyma (apparently Mṛṇālinıī Rāhā), ‘Purıīr Biśeṣ Darśanıīẏa Biṣaẏ o Strıīsvādhıīnatā’, in Mahilā, Vol. 15, no. 1 (Śrābaṇ 1316 BE/1909), pp. 13–7.
70. On Burma, see Mṛṇālinıī Rāhā, ‘Brahmadeśer Kathā’, in Antaḥpur, Vol. 5, no. 8 (1902–03), pp. 161–4.
71. Hossein, ‘Kūpˡmaṇḍuker Himālaẏˡdarśan’, p. 111.
72. Sıīmantıī Sen, ‘Bhūmikā’, in Sen (ed.), Kṛṣṇabhābinıī Dāser Iṃlaṇḍe Baṅgamahilā, Egāro-Batriś; caudda f. Sen points out that Krishnabhabini seldom highlights her independent womanhood (nārıītver svātantrya), and that her keen interest in the situation of British women is about the only indicator separating her perspective from that of men of the time.
73. Simonti Sen, Travels to Europe, p. 23.
74. Damaẏantıī Dāśˡgupta, Āmādiger Bhramaṇˡbttānta, p. 79.
75. Ibid., pp. 71, 74.
76. Hossein, ‘Kūpˡmaṇḍuker Himālaẏˡdarśan’, p. 111.
77. Mālatıī Bālā, ‘Āmār Śvaśurˡbāṛıī Yātrā’, in Mahilā (1908), pp. 76–8; translation by Hans Harder.
78. Bideśe, lit. ‘to other countries’.
79. Translator’s note: Goalanda is a river-crossing over the Padma, west of Dhaka in today’s Bangladesh.
80. Translator’s note: The husband is not mentioned because, according to traditional Bengali Hindu etiquette, anything apart from the third person pronoun brings ill fortune if uttered by the wife. It appears that the husband had come to Howrah to pick up his young wife and accompany her on the onward journey, while her father remained behind.
81. Such danger occurs also with those who heed the new moon. The Editor.