Rewriting History
Rewriting History

Author: Uma Chakravarti

Publisher: Zubaan

Published: 2014-10-27

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 9383074639

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In this classic study of Pandita Ramabai's life, Uma Chakravarti brings to light one of the foremost thinkers of nineteenth-century India and one of its earliest feminists. A scholar and an eloquent speaker, Ramabai was no stranger to controversy. Her critique of Brahminical patriarchy was in sharp contrast to Annie Besant, who championed the cause of Hindu society. And in an act seen by contemporary Hindu society as a betrayal not only of her religion but of her nation, Ramabai – herself a high-caste Hindu widow – chose to convert to Christianity. Chakravarti's book stands out as one of the most important critiques of gender and power relations in colonial India, with particular emphasis on issues of class and caste. Published by Zubaan.

Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter
Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter

Author: Pandita Ramabai

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0253215714

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"... [A] rare and remarkable insight into an Indian woman's take on American culture in the 19th century, refracted through her own experiences with British colonialism, Indian nationalism, and Christian culture on no less than three continents.... a fabulous resource for undergraduate teaching." —Antoinette Burton In the 1880s, Pandita Ramabai traveled from India to England and then to the U.S., where she spent three years immersed in the milieu of progressive social reform movements of the day. Born into a Brahmin family and widowed while still young, she converted to Christianity while in England. In India, she was an activist for the education of women and the improvement of the status of widows. Abroad, she was iconized as a champion of the "oppressed Hindu woman." The Peoples of the United States is Ramabai's comprehensive description of American life, ranging from government to economy, education to domestic activity. As an account of a Western society by an Indian woman and a feminist, it reverses the established equation of male, Orientalist travel narratives. First published in Marathi in 1889, it is offered here in an elegant and engaging English translation by Meera Kosambi, who also provides a critical introduction and extensive annotations.

Revisiting Modern Indian Thought
Revisiting Modern Indian Thought

Author: Suratha Kumar Malik

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-08-12

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1000416887

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This book presents a comprehensive account of the socio-political thought of prominent modern Indian thinkers. It offers a clear understanding of the basic concepts and their contributions on contemporary issues. Key features: Explores the nature, scope, relevance, context, and theoretical approaches of modern Indian thought and overviews its development through an in-depth study of the lives and ideas of major thinkers. Examines critical themes such as nationalism, swaraj, democracy and state, liberalism, revolution, socialism, constitutionalism, secularism, satyāgraha, swadeshi, nationbuilding, humanism, ethics in politics, democratic decentralisation, religion and politics, social transformation and emancipation, and social and gender justice under sections on liberal-reformist, moderate-Gandhian, and leftist-socialist thought. Brings together insightful essays on Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Dayānanda Saraswati, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Pandita Ramabai, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, Jyotirao Govindrao Phule, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Ram Manohar Lohia, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Vinoba Bhave, Acharya Narendra Deva, Manabendra Nath Roy, and Jayaprakash Narayan. Traces different perspectives on the way India’s composite cultures, traditions, and conditions inf luenced the evolution of their thought and legacy. With its accessible style, this book will be useful to teachers, students, and scholars of political science, modern Indian political thought, modern Indian history, and political philosophy. It will also interest those associated with exclusion studies, political sociology, sociology, and South Asian studies.

Indira Bai
Indira Bai

Author: Gulvadi Venkata Rao

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-06-10

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0199096635

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Indira Bai, born in an orthodox Saraswat Brahmin family in the small town of Kamalapura, is married and widowed as a child. The bright, curious girl resists forces of social conservatism—the mindless chores and cruel rituals of widowhood. To reform her, the head of the religious mutt is brought in. When he tries to seduce her, a distraught Indira runs away to eminent lawyer Amrita Raya’s house. Encouraged in her pursuit of knowledge and freedom, Indira acquires a matriculation degree and later chooses to marry Assistant Collector Bhaskara Rao. This novel, laced with feminist intent, traces Indira’s self-fashioning into a modern, educated, and assertive woman. Published in 1899, Indira Bai documents the transformation of the Saraswat Brahmin community based in the erstwhile South Canara region of Karnataka due to the encounter between the Kannada social world and colonial modernity. Simultaneously, this text of social history represents the pan-Indian churning provoked by the reform movement in the nineteenth century, with its central focus on the condition of women.

Pandita Ramabai
Pandita Ramabai

Author: Meera Kosambi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-22

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1317334000

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This book looks at the life of Pandita Ramabai, one of the major social reformers of 19th-century India. Her unique life trajectory spanned across a pan-Indian, orthodox Hindu mould to being part of Brahmo Samaj and Prarthana Samaj, and further to Christianity. At the age of 30 she had travelled widely within India and across the world, from USA and UK in the West to Japan in the Far East. She reported these fascinating journeys to international friends and fellow Maharashtrians in both English and Marathi. Fighting conservatism and marginalization she set up several projects to empower women, notably, the Sharada Sadan in Mumbai and the Mukti Mission in Kedgaon near Pune in Maharashtra. This work locates Pandita Ramabai within her liminal social milieu and discursive networks during various phases of her life, and traces her diverse ideological routes along with her critical writings, some of which have been retrieved and/or presented in English translation here for the first time, including The High-Caste Hindu Woman and the newly discovered Voyage to England. Offering a comprehensive insight into aspects of 19th-century Indian society — religion and reform, women’s rights and feminism, social movements, poverty, and colonialism — this book will greatly interest researchers and students of South Asian history, sociology, and gender studies.

At the Heart of the Empire
At the Heart of the Empire

Author: Antoinette Burton

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0520919459

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Antoinette Burton focuses on the experiences of three Victorian travelers in Britain to illustrate how "Englishness" was made and remade in relation to imperialism. The accounts left by these three sojourners—all prominent, educated Indians—represent complex, critical ethnographies of "native" metropolitan society and offer revealing glimpses of what it was like to be a colonial subject in fin-de-siècle Britain. Burton's innovative interpretation of the travelers' testimonies shatters the myth of Britain's insularity from its own construction of empire and shows that it was instead a terrain open to continual contest and refiguration. Burton's three subjects felt the influence of imperial power keenly during even the most everyday encounters in Britain. Pandita Ramabai arrived in London in 1883 seeking a medical education and left in 1886, having resisted the Anglican Church's attempts to make her an evangelical missionary. Cornelia Sorabji went to Oxford to study law and became the first Indian woman to be called to the Bar. Behramji Malabari sought help for his Indian reform projects in England, and subjected London to colonial scrutiny in the process. Their experiences form the basis of this wide-ranging, clearly written, and imaginative investigation of diasporic movement in the colonial metropolis.

Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words
Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words

Author: Ramabai Sarasvati

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13:

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Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) is a key figure in the social reform movement underway in western India. Following an orthodox Hindu childhood steeped in Sanskrit, she eventually converted to Christianity during a stay in England and later became deeply involved in a feminist campaign in the US to raise funds for residential schools for widows in India. She was an influential public lecturer, campaigner, and writer. This book collects a wide range of her writings, both in English and translated from the Marathi, and it will prove an invaluable resource for women's studies, women's history, and sociology.