Memories of a Rolling Stone

Mazumdar

Introduction

My passport describes me as a social scientist, but very few know me today as one. I am better known as a ‘woman activist’, ‘a feminist’, ‘a trouble maker’, and a ‘gender specialist’ in undefined areas. Of all the descriptions that attach to me, however, the two I like best are: ‘recorder and chronicler of the Indian women’s movement’, and the ‘grandmother of women’s studies in South Asia’.

I have been a teacher of political science with an abiding interest in educational reform. Quite early on, I abandoned my chosen vocation of teaching to become a bureaucrat concerned with administering grants and planning the reform of higher education and its institutional mores. This shift from teaching to administration happened twice during my career. The first time was to the University Grants Commission. The second time was after a short spell of teaching in Beherampur University in Orissa. Though I seldom fail to cite the late Professors D.S. Kothari¹ and J.P. Naik² as my gurus, no one today thinks of me as an ‘educationist’. I’ve long been associated with two organizations: the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) which I helped to found, has been officially acknowledged as an educational organization, and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) of which I was founder Director, and which is still struggling for similar recognition despite being part of the family of institutes supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

Born in 1927, my life has straddled nearly three quarters of the 20th century and a decade of the 21st century. I have memories of India before and after independence, the world before and after the Second World War and of being personally involved in the ‘second wave’ of the Women’s Movement in India. I was born in a middle class family in Bengal – as the youngest of five children. The three brothers came first, then Didi (Vani) – my sister – and then me. My pet name was Khuku. Didi always worried much more about me than the brothers. I have taken the title of this volume from one of her favourite descriptions about me. Worried by my frequent job changes, she scolded me for becoming a rolling stone (I changed seven jobs in fourteen years!). And then, at the age of 53, with an unbroken record of 30 years of service in government funded public institutions – and three (out of four) children who were still students – I started the Centre for Women’s Development Studies with no guaranteed resource support. To my sister this was a gamble, for which I had no training. Fortunately, she lived long enough to see that the gamble had paid off.

No one in my family ever thought of recording the story of their life – not even my father or my uncle – both of whom contributed substantively to India’s development, materially and culturally. I resisted the idea for many years. The decision to do so in my 81st year was the outcome of two events: (a) my increasing realization of the younger generation’s ignorance of the historical origin and character of Indian feminism; and (b) the opportunity provided me to set this right to some extent, by the Human Resource Development Ministry, with my appointment as National Research Professor of Social Science in 2006. Fortunately I had some recorded memory in three documents that I could use as sources. One was the transcript of a long interview by Anita Anand for the Women’s Feature Service recorded sometime in the 1990s. The second was a paper written for a volume on women published by the National Book Trust, in the year 2000. The third was the story of the Bankura women which I wrote some years ago. The Bankura Project which the CWDS describes as action research began as an experiment of organizing landless peasant women to improve their strength and access to development resources. Over the years the women changed into my gurus – demonstrating courage and political leadership which taught me humanity.

History was always my first love. I hope other lovers of history will find this record of my memories of some interest. Basically this volume remains a tribute to the memory of the period and the persons who influenced the course of my life. I have mentioned only a few of them in this record – my parents and some of my teachers. As for the 10,000 plus women who became my gurus from the 1970s onwards – India’s forgotten majority – I have tried to fight their battles through the twin movements of Women and Women’s Studies.

Ateet (The Past)

(Rabindra Nath Tagore)

Why are you silent, oh past?

You have no beginning, nor any end –

All ages have poured their tales into you,

Mingling so many life streams, and thus –

Losing their own voices.

Still, fearsome silence!

Why don’t you speak?

You are not unconscious as I have felt,

Your stirrings in my heart at times –

Dropping treasures from days bygone ,

To enrich my life.

You work in silence –

In so many worlds,

But keep still and secret.

Oh, speak to my heart –

Of those forgotten by everyone else,

The stories of their lives, which you have stored –

Need a language, for others to know.

Oh Sage! Speak to me,

And help me record and give voice

To those lost memories.

(Translated by Vina Mazumdar)

1. Chairman, Indian Education Commission (1960); and Chairman, UGC for several terms in the 1960s.

2. Member Secretary, Indian Education Commission (1960); then of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (1969-78).

1

The First Twenty Years (1927-47)

Ihave no memory of any ‘struggle’ through my childhood and adolescence. My strongest memories are of an atmosphere of security, affection, protection and contentment offered by a large extended family. My family was full of individuals who held strong opinions and were distinguishable by their differences in views, conversational styles and interests – (theatre, music, poetry, sports, history, and of course politics). For an unobtrusive bookworm like me there were ample opportunities to listen, observe, register and remember the gist and highlights of such debates.

How did I become a bookworm? How did I inherit my mother’s love for books, bypassing my older siblings? The age gap between my three brothers, my Didi and myself was the longest (seven years). All my siblings had joined school at the age of five, and had also had private tutors to help them with their studies. I, however, acquired literacy and numeracy from the family driver, Nagen. A Brahmin by birth, he had studied through the traditional medium in his village before coming to work for my father (who never learnt to drive in his entire life). Nagen missed his own children – left behind in the village – and became very fond of me. He taught me my letters and numbers, bought me books to read and showed me how to learn my tables by the traditional Indian method. Till today, it’s the Indian method I have in my head and I cannot use the British method or even British terms, at all. After Nagen took my father to office, I would find a dark corner in the house – usually between two large almirahs – to read the books that he had brought for me.

Whenever she spotted the new books, my mother would reimburse Nagen. She too had been educated only at home. Brought up literally within the jungles of Burma, where her father was building roads and bridges, my mother acquired literacy and numeracy from her mother. Before she was married at the age of 11, her father taught her some mathematics. It was her love of reading that saw her grow through the rest of her life. By nature, Ma was a very gentle person and found it difficult to be tough with any of us. Whenever she tried to discipline me, it was really more of a pretence. When she began to ensure that I had books to read including novels meant for adults, she faced some opposition from within the family – especially from my brothers – but she refused to give in to that. She would say, ‘Try to understand your sister, she’s tough, she will not get influenced in wrong ways!’ Even to hear her defending me to my brothers was an education – I learnt a valuable lesson about freedom and responsibility: the more the freedom, the more the responsibility. My mother always said, rights go hand-in-hand with responsibility. She died in 1959, just three years after my father’s death.

Ma also had a capacity to pick up other languages, especially for verbal communication. During the 11 years that she spent in South India where my father was posted, she managed to pick up enough Tamil, Telugu and Kannada – to communicate with her neighbours and friends. A retired medical doctor lent her his books – on Anatomy and Physiology – and she learnt enough to cope with her children’s minor ailments. Later she supplemented this learning with books on Homeopathy. When my first daughter was born, she gave me two books plus a small box of Homeopathic medicines, and warned me ‘The day I hear that for every minor ailment of this child, you have rushed her to a doctor and given her hard drugs – I shall know that all the investment on your education was a dead loss!’

I took her seriously and applied myself. After my marriage in 1952, my mother-in-law developed so much confidence in my capacity to find the right medicine – that she propagated it among neighbours and friends. She had identified my father as a Mahapurush from her first glimpse of him and attributed my ability to find the right homeopathic medicine to my descent from such an individual.

The joke in this peculiar faith of hers was that the Mahapurush – i.e. my father – was totally ignorant of any medical knowledge! Though vaidyas by caste, none of the three Majumdar brothers studied medicine. My Father-in-law (Dr Sourindra Nath Mazumdar) however was a renowned doctor who established the first well-equipped modern pharmacy (Royal Pharmacy) in Patna in the early 20th century. One of his brothers also became a doctor, but did not acquire the same kind of reputation. I never met either as they both died fairly young. I learnt about all this from my husband, Shankar.

Within my own extended family, the best storyteller I remember was my uncle – the historian, R.C. Majumdar, who was full of interesting tales about the ‘struggles’ and adventures of the three brothers (known as PCM, SCM, RCM) in their young days. These stories helped me to understand how being good and responsible students had reshaped the lives and social beliefs of three brothers from a poverty-stricken large family in rural East Bengal. Their background provided a rationale for unostentatious living, and conferred a value on simplicity, home-tailored clothes, with an emphasis on self-generated entertainment. The one exception permitted was books. My mother’s struggle to educate herself through reading was indulged by my father. She bought me books and magazines from her household savings so I could become a voracious reader long before I started school as an eight-year old in 1935. My belated entry to school meant missing kindergarten – and a subsequent weakness in command over the English language – which remained a problem for the next few years. My mother told me that the only way to overcome this handicap was to start reading English fiction. I took her seriously and the first book I borrowed from the school library was Two little Cavaliers which had a story that was located during the Civil War in England. Though I had to struggle to overcome my fear of the language, the historical background fascinated me. Ma then introduced me to her favourite authors – Charlotte Younge (a 19th Century novelist), Marie Corelie (who was very critical of the lack of humanity of the Papacy) – and eventually – Baroness Orczy – the creator of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

By this time I had found a friend – Leila Bose, who was also a neighbour – and was unhampered by any fear of the English language. We became ardent admirers of the Scarlet Pimpernel series, and also of Louisa May Alcott’s volumes titled Little Women, Little Men etc. The friendship persisted long beyond our school days – though we went to different educational institutions. Leila was married considerably before me and moved away from Bengal, but we kept up an occasional correspondence, and sometimes we managed to meet when she came to Delhi. I learnt from her daughters of her death in 2006.

The Diocesan Girl’s School,³ where I studied, had an educational philosophy and political strategy that avoided identification either with the Raj, or missions more interested in religious conversions. I had followed my aunts (Ma’s two sisters – Lily and Prafulla Sen) and my sister (Vani) to this institution. Unlike Ma, her sisters – much younger than her – were allowed to study not only in school, but even up to College. Rangamashima (Lily) was a brilliant student, and was even permitted to go to London University for further studies. Unfortunately something went wrong there – and she was sent back with a medical doctor escorting her. No one told us what had really happened to destroy her mental balance. She continued in that state until she died in the early years of the Second World War. None of us ever found out the reason for her breakdown – but the fact that it had happened provided much support to the conservative members of the Majumdar family – who later opposed my Oxford trip in 1947.

Chotomashima (Prafulla) was a competent student, not brilliant like her sister. In 1935 she accompanied our family party on a trip to Banaras, Gaya and Patna. Baba had acquired a new spacious car, which could accommodate the parents, Didi and myself, and Chotomashima, in addition to the driver, Nagen.

While searching for a place to stay in Banaras, Baba ran into the son of his old friend, Ramani Mohan Ghose, – Nalini Mohan (Nanida for all of us) – who had followed his father into the Postal Services. He lived in a large, spacious bungalow, and persuaded our parents that we should move into his house. The outcome of this unexpected event was a love match between Nanida and Chotomashima two years later, despite opposition from Ma’s conservative uncles (her mother’s brothers). Though a runaway marriage, Chotomashima’s insistence ensured that later a sacramental ceremony was performed by Professor Gaurinath Shastri of Calcutta University, acknowledged for his scholarship in Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy. The outcome of this ‘unusual’ (for those days, because it was intercaste) marriage was a very happy family, of two sons and two daughters, all good students who went on to being socially productive and successful.

The Ghose quartet (Shankar, Bhaskar, Arundhati and Ruma) are still around and remain mostly in Delhi, as virtually the only surviving members of my kin from my own generation. Tragedy hit them in the 1990s – when Shankar’s son – Sanjay – who had become a Gandhian social activist, was killed by terrorists in Assam. He and his wife had come to see me before leaving on what was to be Sanjay’s last trip. The political situation in the Northeast was already disturbed, so I was worried. But they had cast me in the role of the only activist among their kin – so the only avenue open to me was to suggest some caution. I believe their Gandhian advisers did the same.

To get back to my school: Diocesan did not believe in annual or half-yearly examinations. Our promotion depended on the cumulative performance in class work and weekly tests – in which a minimum of 50 per cent was required to pass the exam. Prizes were awarded for those subjects in which students had obtained 75 per cent at the end of the year. Teachers discouraged reproducing language from books. What they focused on was comprehension. While upholding disciplined behavior, the School did not discourage initiatives taken by students to organize entertaining celebrations at the end of a term. During my last two years, Leila and I directed two plays performed by the senior classes. My key memories of school life are of enjoying my studies, but never getting worked up about examinations and never feeling competitive with my fellow students. I feel great pride that most students of Diocesan from my own generation are still socially productive.

The school greatly influenced me and later shaped my ‘unconventional’ behaviour with my students and colleagues, earning me much needed help, advice and loyalty from my junior staff in administration. The love for arguments and discussions initiated in the family, was further stimulated by the school.

My experience of college education in India was, however, very different. The World War (1939–45) had unsettled the family’s lives. A minor bombardment in Calcutta led to an evacuation of women and children. Calcutta University, still conducting the Matriculation (School Final) had to open extra centres for the examinees who had been evacuated outside Bengal. I appeared in Banaras, and started my college career in the Women’s College, Banaras Hindu University (BHU). A major reason for this was my father’s sudden decision to quit government service considerably in advance of his retirement date, because the Irrigation department (of which he was the Chief Engineer) was ordered to collaborate with the Army to mine all the dams and embankments in East Bengal in preparation for what the Army termed ‘strategic retreat’ before the advancing Japanese Army.

My father was a staunch nationalist. He was a designer and his foremost interest throughout his adult life had been in flood control and irrigation. Selected by Asutosh Mookherjee (then Vice Chancellor, Calcutta University) for a state scholarship, he studied at Glasgow University – the only institution in Britain which had courses on the management of rivers. He was recruited to the newly created Indian Service of Engineers (1910) while still in Glasgow and acquired first hand experience working on the construction of the Cauvery River Valley project as a part of Sir M. Visweshwaraya’s team. Two years were spent living in a houseboat on the Godavari canal where my second brother, then only two years old, created a stir by falling into the river! Fortunately he was rescued. All my brothers and cousins became expert swimmers during their school days – but no one ever thought of teaching us girls to swim. Pishima (my father’s sister) had learnt to swim while in the village home, but while she fought for our generation’s right to education, swimming remained out of our reach – a price for being female and growing up away from the village.

When my father found out that the Army needed his collaboration in mining all the dams and embankments in East Bengal, in pursuit of its scorched-earth policy, he just went back to his office, wrote a two line application asking for leave preparatory to retirement, (losing more than two years of service in the process) and came home by 3 pm. The only answer he gave to telephonic enquiries from his bosses was ‘My job is construction, not destruction. Since you have chosen the path of destruction, you will have to find someone else to do your job.’ My father’s premature retirement led to some major changes in the family’s life. In addition, it left a deep impression on my mind. I felt great pride that he would not participate in destroying what he and others had built in the country’s interest.

Fortunately he was offered another ‘constructive’ job by Tisco (Tatas) to complete their water supply project for the growing industrial town of Jamshedpur. The Tatas had sacked the English engineer who had designed and was building it. SCM (my father) identified the flaws in the design, redesigned it and completed the Dimna Nala project within a third of the cost and in record time. As luck would have it, by that time he had been appointed as a member of the Central Waterways, Irrigation, Navigation Commission to design various projects that Independent India was to take up, so he had another job waiting for him. That was why I accompanied my parents to Delhi just before India’s Independence.

Political change was in the air. The Cripps Mission, the end of the War, the advent of a Labour government in UK had heightened expectations of independence. The INA trials, the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi and the AICC meeting in Calcutta provided plenty of opportunity for students to engage in political demonstrations, serving as volunteers at massive political meetings, or providing medical/nursing services to victims of police firing etc. As Secretary of the Ashutosh College Girl Students Union I was involved and shouldered some organizing responsibilities, including a meeting to support the recommendations of the Rama Rao Committee on Hindu Law Reform (to expand the inheritance rights of daughters). Since many of the girls had never seen Mahatmaji, I arranged