DIFFERENT REGISTERS
View from the summit
C.S. LAKSHMI
IN 1940, Lady Yashodabai Joshi was urged by her family to write her memoirs. Yashodabai Joshi had been bedridden for six or seven years. She was not in a position to write her memoirs, as her fingers did not move. So she dictated it to her daughter Manik till one month before her death. When she began to dictate she felt that life's journey was like climbing the Himalayas with many obstacles to cross. "But now the summit is near and my legs are heavy with fatigue. So I rest in this sheltered place and calmly survey the long vista of my life," she says in the author's note. When she dictated it she meant it only as a document to be kept within the family. And so it remained after her death in 1948. But in 1965, her daughter Manik decided to publish it under the title Amchi Jeevan Pravas. And in 2003, Manik's son V.V. Bhide decided to publish it under the title A Marathi Saga.
Crucial years
Yashodabai's memoirs cover a long span of life from 1868 to 1948. Her narration covers so many important areas of these years touching upon caste, marriage, women's education, national politics and family history that is intertwined with all this. The photograph on the cover is one of assertion and symbolic of what Yashodabai stood for all her life. The photograph, taken probably in a studio, shows her seated on a chair wearing a traditional Maharashtrian nav-vari, with one hand placed firmly on her lap and the elbow of the other hand resting on a table. Held in that hand, facing the camera directly is a book. In a way, her narration is about how that book came to be in her hand and how she and her husband Sir Moropant Joshi viewed education for women as one of the most important reforms.
The memoirs begin with her childhood in Satara and her marriage at the age of six to a boy of 13. Yashodabai was born into a family of Chitpavan Brahmins but from a very young age begins to question the caste system. The maid Baija took her to her own house to play when told to do so. She always placed her on a blanket and gave her some toys to play with. Then would come the delicious smell of bhakris, rotis made of millet, being cooked by Baija for her meal. Yashoda would ask her for one but Baija would always tell her, "My dear Balutai, Brahmins must not eat anything cooked by the lower castes."
The world beyond
Baloo, as Yashoda was called in her childhood, would wonder why such caste restrictions existed. Not that she had any opportunity to voice her feelings, for, her strict, widowed grandmother ruled the house and she was the one who decided the movements of her daughters-in-law including where they slept. Her grandmother had a quick temper and a fierce temperament and she had a face to match. Yashodabai says that once the grandmother was said to have kicked open and broken down the door of the palanquin that had been sent to carry her to her parents' house because the palanquin bearer did not open the door fast enough. "We, the women, were like parrots in a cage," says Yashodabai, "except that our cage was a little bigger, consisting of the kitchen, the dining place, the prayer room, our back platform and the backyard... Of the world beyond, we knew nothing... "
Early marriage
In 1874, when Yashodabai was in her sixth year, a group of ladies came to look her over, bringing a marriage proposal with them. They had come to see her because someone had spread the rumour that the girl was rather deaf and lame. But they must have gone satisfied, for, when someone whispered in her ears that her mother-in-law was watching her while her grandmother was encouraging her to romp around playing phugdi, Yashodabai began to scream and cry. And that is how her marriage was arranged with Moropant Desai. Until she was 10, Yashodabai had to be sent every day to her husband's uncle's house that was in the same town and which represented her post-marriage family. Here also she observed how vulnerable women were. Once the husband left home, the women of the household gathered to talk and play games. On one such occasion, the uncle returned earlier than expected and beat up his wife so hard for her frivolities that she walked with a limp for the next few days.
Firm stand
Such incidents must have made a strong impression on her mind for one of the first things that Yashodabai did when she had the power to do so was to start a women's association called the Vanita Samaj and later a branch of the All India Women's Conference. Along with her husband she swore never to marry off her daughters while they were children and both of them wanted their daughters to be highly educated before they married. In fact, in 1928, Sir Moropant Joshi was appointed chairman of the committee which was supposed to tour the whole of India and explain the provisions of the Age of Consent Act. At Madras, after his speech, when he asked the audience for questions, a well-known and educated personality of the town got up and said, "Our scriptures say that if a girl's marriage is delayed beyond her eighth birthday, her father will be cast into hell. So, by this Act, is it not your intention that we should all be cast into hell?" Annasaheb, as Moropant Joshi was known to his family and close friends, replied: "There is an easy remedy for this. Since you wish to avoid going to the hell of your scriptures, do marry off your daughters before they are eight years old — only, you can then go to the prison of your government." There was much laughter and applause in the audience.
Open house
Yashodabai herself began to be educated by her husband only when she was 18 years old. Despite a busy career as a lawyer, Annasaheb took time off to educate his young wife. It is this new found literacy that spurred her on to take a keen interest in the meetings of the newly formed All India National Congress and in promoting the cause of education for women and remarriage of young widows. Annasaheb and Yashodabai kept an open house, which did not prevent anyone from being their guest on the basis of caste or class. Moreover, Annasaheb had refused to do the Prayaschitta ceremony, which was a purification ceremony for crossing the seas, after he returned from abroad.
Criticism from the community
For all this they had to face constant criticism fro their community and were ex-communicated from the community and not invited to partake of food in the homes of orthodox Brahmins. No priests would come to officiate at their functions and they had to bring priests from Benares for this purpose. Yashodabai says that so strong was the hold of custom that the slightest departure would bring down a storm of criticism. When she started going out in shoes putting a shawl over her shoulders, people jeered at them. Even great and famous men did not dare go against the custom. She cites the example of the great freedom fighter and politician Lokmanya Tilak who came to invite them for the thread ceremony of his son and said: "I dearly wish that you should dine with us but you have not done the Prayaschitta, so I shall not be able to seat you with us in the same row." Annasaheb was given a place away from others in the feast. Yashodabai says that she understood the compulsions of Tilak but that she would have admired him had he shown courage in this matter as he had shown in much greater issues.
Yashodabai admits her own limitations too. She educated her daughters, sent her eldest daughter abroad to study medicine and in arranging their marriages always allowed them to express their views freely. In fact, when a proposal came for one of her daughters from the Raja of Sangli, the daughter clearly said that she would not be enamoured merely because he was a Raja, there had to be something in the man for her to agree to the marriage. When a proposal came for another daughter from a family known for its greed for dowry, she told the person who brought the proposal even before he approached her parents, that she had to be valued not in terms of money. Yashodabai and her husband made it clear to anyone who came with a proposal that there would be no dowry paid and that their daughter's opinion would count.
No embellishments
But when it came to accepting proposals Yashodabai preferred proposals from within her community. If one of her daughters had chosen to marry otherwise, she may not have objected. But despite her criticism of the terrible Pune Brahmins, and Brahmins in general, she wanted her daughters to marry within the community and she says that fortunately all her children married within the community. Yashodabai could have avoided stating that fact and no one would have known what her limitations were. But she wants to state things without any embellishments in her memoirs and does not spare herself also. She even narrates the incident when she went with her husband to Benares and according to custom wanted to offer a lock of her hair to the priest as offering to Ganges. Annasaheb got so annoyed with her that he cut off half her hair and offered it to the priest!
She and her husband act as hosts to some very interesting people. Once a young man in white turban and saffron clothes met them in Mahabaleshwar looking for a place to stay and they invited him home. Since he wore saffron clothes everybody called him "Swami". Yashodabai's child used to cry a lot at night. One evening, the young sanyasi asked her to put the child in his cloth cradle and the child slept peacefully that night. He did that every night of his stay and the child grew up to have a peaceful temperament. The young sanyasi left after a while and later became the famous Swami Vivekananda. A person who called himself "Singh" stayed with them. He was considered one of the radical revolutionaries. He disappeared from their lives and much later, he returned as Sant Nihal Singh, an American journalist, the radical revolutionary who migrated to the U.S. and later settled down at Dehradun. He never admitted to his earlier stay with them. But he visited them in 1937 for four days a second time and they found him staring for long at a framed piece of embroidery hanging on the wall in Annasaheb's study, that "Singh" had embroidered and presented to Annasaheb 36 years ago.
Sceptical about politics
Yashodabai lived long enough to see India attain her freedom although she was sceptical about what its politics would be, for, she and her husband had already experienced some of its negative aspects. But the story she narrates is not only of her family and the women and men of her times, but also the story of a nation preparing itself for freedom and her own family's role in the politics of the nation.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women).
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