writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

lonely life, as he would write, for he never remarried, though we were especially close in his aging
years. Today, I, Ma’s daughter, the mother of a daughter myself, a feminist, activist, and scholar, give
voice to her life story, her long silence, even as that story gives substance to the (ongoing) trajectory
of my own. Researching and writing this short essay, and reflecting on its larger message, has been
illuminating for me, so many years later, as it has been for my daughter and nieces, who never knew
their grandmother, her achievements in her day, her travails, who she was. A niece would remark
that she finally had a context for the photograph she had seen over the years, the group graduation
picture I have presented and discussed at the start of this paper.
Suchitra SAMANTA, PhD
Assistant Professor
Women’s & Gender Studies Program
Department of Sociology (0137)
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060
USA
ssamanta@vt.edu
Notes
1
I have used “Calcutta,” as the city was known during my mother’s life, rather than Kolkata, as it
is known today.
2
I have “discovered” Ma’s life from various sources: historical scholarship on women and
medicine in British India, surviving documents pertaining to her educational and work records,
and from what Hirsch calls “memory archives,” such as my father’s unpublished memoir, my own
memories, photographs, and anecdotal accounts of family and friends, especially those of my
sister, Sumita Pillai, my uncle, Bipul K. Bardhan Roy, and my aunt, Sima Deb. Hirsch, distinguishing
these from historical records, calls them ‘memory archives.’ (Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of
Postmemory,” Poetics Today, 29 (1), 1998:103‐128).
3
Narayan (2003), critical of Western feminist assumptions when applied to non‐Western
contexts, points to Hindu concepts of valued feminine potential, while Ashish Nandy notes the
inapplicability of Freud to the Indian context (cited in Moore‐Gilbert, 2009:xix; see also Samanta,
1992).
4
A.K. Ramanujan, “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?” in India Through Hindu Categories, ed.
McKim Marriott (New Delhi: Sage, 1990), 41‐58.
5
Swami Jagadiswarananda, trans. Devi Mahatmya (Madras, India: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1953),
7:19.
6
Devi Mahatmya, op. cit., 5:12‐80; 11:4‐23.
7
The married Bengali woman wears red on her person to symbolize this potential, and shares her
shakti substantively with the goddess (Devi Mahatmya, op. cit., 11:6). See Ronald Inden & Ralph
Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
8
The Vernacular Licentiate Practitioner of Medicine was acquired in medical “schools” rather
than in elite “colleges” like CMC (Bala 1991, 123).
9
After the Indian Mutiny (1857) the British withdrew support for government‐funded schools.
The Bengali bhadralok established and endowed girls’ schools which could teach in either English
or Bengal, or both. The bhadralok saw competence in English as a mark of status and upward
mobility, leading to white collar jobs, like medicine (Bala, 1991).
10
The tuition was five times more at medical colleges than at such schools (Bala, 1991).
11
Annual Report on the Working of the Medical College, Calcutta for the year 1935‐36, Page 25
12
Forbes (1994) notes that British women doctors recognized those Indian women who had their
degrees from England, but looked down on those with licentiate degrees from Indian medical
schools. The Women’s Medical Service was set up mostly for British women who sought medical
careers in India, and as a counterpart to the all‐male Indian Medical Service.
13
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Real and Imagined Goddesses: A Debate,” in Is the Goddess a
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