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FROM THE ARCHIVES Returning the American Gaze Pandita Ramabai's The Peoples ofthe United States, 1889 MEERA KOSAMBI In a world plotted on the Western, patriarchal meridian, Pandita Ramabai's life trajectory (1858-1922) left a dual and seemingly contradictory but logically interrelated imprint—international !conization as the emancipator ofthe highly troped "oppressed Indian womanhood," and erasure from the collective memory and official history ofthe Indian society ofher origin. Her Marathi travelogue United Stateschi Lokasthiri ant Prauasauritta (The Peoples ofthe United States, henceforth uslp), published in Bombay in 1889,1 was located atajuncture which marked the onset ofthe¡conization, and barely predated the process oferasure. Ramabai's experience ofthe U.S. was predictably mediated by the British connection; and at a general level the American encounter became an instantaneous site for multiple intersections—solidarity ofa former British colony with the current "jewel" in the British imperial crown, Anglo-American rivalry for leadership ofsocial reform in India, "enlightened" liberal Christian intervention in Hindu India's social matters. At a personal level the experience offriendly acceptance, warmth, and generosity was a novel and rewarding one for Ramabai, who had recently contested imperial power "at the heart ofthe empire," and penned through her letters a critical ethnography ofBritish society (Burton 1998, 1, 3). It is this triadic relationship of India, England, and the U.S. which frames uslp—a critical ethnography ofAmerican society, which spans a wide range from polity to economy, and from religion to domestic life, written from a unique vantage point shaped by an already eventful life.2 This essay is formulated as an introduction to uslp through a few selected excerpts, and situates the book within the multilayered contexts ofRamabai's life and the international arena for her activities and activism.3 [Meridians:/eminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 188-212]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 188 Ramabai's point ofdeparture was a deeply fissured India under British colonial subjection. In the words ofan anti-imperialistBritish liberal, the countrywas divided into two Indias—"Anglostan," comprising the small affluent pockets ofBritish presence in the presidency towns, civil-military stations, and hill resorts; and "Hindustan," or the vast increasingly impoverished subcontinent (Digby 1901, 292-93). This binary exacerbated the existing urban-rural divide in terms ofincomes, education, and levels ofliving. Additionally, a consciously deployed British policy highlighted religious tensions, while the mainstream Hindu community was fragmented by a hierarchical caste structure. Hierarchy also organized the extended familyalong the sex-age grid, sanctioningthe dominance of men over women, and of older members over younger ones. This extended family formed the entire "social universe" ofwomen (Kosambi 1998a). A rigidly patriarchal definition ofwoman as wife-mother led to the Brahmin customs of pre-pubertal marriage for girls, followed by immediate post-pubertal consummation ofmarriage, earlyand perpetual motherhood, and the often inhumane treatment ofwidows considered completely superfluous in this social scheme. In Maharashtra (the Marathi-speaking region ofwestern Indiawhichwas Ramabai's ancestral home) the widow's marginalization was enforced through deprivations such as a meagerdietand lackofphysical comforts, mandatory ritual austerities , and physical disfigurement resulting from regularly shaving oft" herhair. Women were denied a traditional education, whichwas religious in content and reserved for Brahmin men; the new secular Western education was made available to the lower castes and women, but fewwomen were allowed schooling, tied as theywere to domesticity. The newlyemergent ideas ofcompanionate marriage prompted some young reformist men to teach theirwives basic literacy at home, with the limited intention ofbroadeningtheirinterests withoutencouragingindependent thinking, which would subvert the family's established authority structure. It was almost in the interstices ofthe extreme social pressures which circumscribed the lives of her upper-caste contemporaries that Ramabai 's life unfolded. Born in an orthodox Brahmin family ofwestern India, Ramabai was given a Sanskrit education and allowed to remain unmarried throughout her childhood by her selectively liberal father in defiance of the prevalent rigid norms. The family's frugal, peripatetic Brahmin lifestyle of seamless pilgrimages and rituals, aggravated by austerities and occasional starvation, led to the deaths ofRamabai's parents and sister in a famine. During her subsequent visit to Bengal with her brother, RETURNING THE AMERICAN GAZE 189 she was awarded the titles of...

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