Pandita Ramabai’s in America: Central New York
Connections
Maryanne Felter, Ph.D. and Daniel Schultz, Ph.D.
Cayuga Community College,
Auburn, New
York 13021
felterma@cayuga-cc.edu
schultz@cayuga-cc.edu
Inderpal
Grewal argues in Home and Harem that narratives about Ramabai’s travels through India, England,
and the USA
do not fit the traditional western view of “Euroimperial travel as formation of
a unified self” (Grewal 185). Most
western biographies present Ramabai’s travels in terms of the “grand tour,”
although as Grewal notes, “they often do not include within them all that she
read and the people she met on those travels” (185). In fact, since India did
not actually have “the equivalent of the European ‘Grand Tour’ [. . . . ],
[l]ong distance travel usually occurred within the paradigm of pilgrimage to
holy places and was not basically oriented to the secular experience of
excursion and education [. . . and] travel outside India remained a rarity”
(Kosambi “Returning,” 33). Not only was
Ramabai’s journey rare, the difficulty of discussing Ramabai’s American
experience stems from the fact that nowhere are her agenda, her contacts, her
booklists, or her reactions neatly catalogued;
her book on America,
The Peoples of the United States (1889) has only recently (in 2003) been
fully translated and available to non-Marathi speaking American readers. This
new translation of Ramabai’s book “serves the wider feminist agenda of
reclaiming women’s writings and the postcolonial interest in old travelogues
which challenge the established paradigms” (Kosambi “Returning,” 7). For the
first time it is possible for English speakers to read about Ramabai’s American
journey in her “own words.”
Ramabai
came to America from England, as
Antoinette Burton has argued, in part because “she could not comfortably remain
at the heart of empire. Imperial England proved to be inhospitable ground for her
developing reform consciousness” (Burton
46), especially under the suffocating influence of Sister Geraldine at
Wantage. But she also found in Britain’s
former colony fertile ground not only for gathering artifacts and observing
“the other,” but for informing the American public of the plight of Hindu
widows. Ramabai scholar and translator,
Meera Kosambi, notes that “Women travelers to colonial India could not transcend colonialism and did
not attempt to build feminist bridges; Ramabai, traveling in the opposite
direction to the USA,
was able to make feminist connections across the racial-cultural divide, partly
through the shared bond of Christianity” (Kosambi “Introduction,” 5).
Ramabai visited the United States at a time of rapid
social change. As the old order was
eroding, the outlines of an alternative were beginning to take shape. Conventional ideas were challenged by the
spread of science and the growth of protest movements. Abolition, suffrage, feminism, temperance,
minority rights and labor reforms were issues that America was grappling with in its
search to construct a more viable social order.
The tempo
of social change was not unique to America, or even to the West. India, too, was seething with
social unrest. From roots early in the
nineteenth century sprang Indian movements for social reform, focusing on
problems of caste, polytheism, purdah, prostitution, child-betrothal with its
mandatory post-puberty consummation, and sati. The defeat of the Ilbert Bill [1]
in 1883, with its racist, sexist undertones, and, in the subsequent year, the
court’s reversal of the Rakhmabai case,[2] revealed the stubborn resistance of the Raj
to any meaningful reform. Thus by the
time Ramabai left for England
(1883) nationalism provided a basis for secular reform divorced from religion;
the number of all-India associations increased, the most famous of which was
the Indian National Congress in 1885. Despite her “sinful” past (as a widow)
and her “polluted” present (as a Christian),
Ramabai led a multi-cultural, multi-religious delegation to the INC
meeting of 1889 (Kosambi “Introduction” 7).
As in America,
the reforms were often couched in terms of family stability, patriarchy, social
conservatism, and religion--the sexist constructs women in both countries were
beginning to challenge.
Ramabai “had all the elements required for a ‘great’
character: she was articulate, learned, forceful—a woman who got considerable
media attention when she first burst upon the public arena in the 1870s”
(Chakravarti i). Ramabai had been to the
States several times, including a two-year period in 1886-1888, and again about
ten years later. She was a very public
figure, giving talks at various colleges and organizations, raising money for
her child-widows mission, and associating with many famous nineteenth century American
figures. Meera Kosambi says that “Ramabai was instantly lionized in the USA as an
internationally reputed advocate of the Indian women’s cause” (Kosambi
“Introduction” 10). She was perceived by the West as a model
Christian convert, someone who would fit into the mold of conservative
Christian social reform. She was famous
enough at the time to merit inclusion in Frances Willard’s Glimpses of Fifty Years: The
Autobiography of an American Woman (1889); and her connection with Willard
was so important that when Anna Gordon wrote Willard’s biography, The Beautiful Life of Frances Willard, [3]in
1898, she included a tribute from Ramabai, who described Willard as “The mother
of Reform; the brave champion of the oppressed; the great leader and queen of
womankind” (Gordon 399-400).
Ramabai’s
mentor, Sr. Geraldine, collector of the letters available in English, wrote of
her: “I should say without question that the influence of her friends in America brought
out the best side of her character.
Undoubtedly activity suited her, it kept her brain and body continually
at work and while in America and under the influence of great workers, the
channel of her thoughts was kept pure and clean” (Ramabai Letters and Correspondences henceforth LC 414). Sr. Geraldine’s
racist and orientalist assumptions are clear in her book: she likes to believe
that England , her Anglican order of nuns in particular, was a profoundly
important influence in Ramabai’s development, but she concedes that “America
without doubt expanded and enlarged her [Ramabai’s] ideas” (Ramabai LC 397)[4] :
Not finding
all she desired among our insulated people [the English], she went farther
afield and among the free-born Americans, some of whom could recall the telling
of the story, from a grandsire’s lips, of their national independence gained.
[sic] She found in more ways than one an answering mind, which made her soon
perceive that it was from among them she could gather the stories of education
and culture, as well as the material riches which she needed to train her mind,
and strengthen her heart, and furnish her future institutions. (Ramabai LC
400)
Ramabai
did, indeed, take something from America although Inderpal Grewal
argues that Western biographies of Ramabai attribute far too much to Ramabai’s
travels and her association with Westerners. How much did Ramabai learn from America? Was
her tour of this country one where she gained knowledge that she took back to India, or was
it simply a money-making enterprise?
Ramabai
brought home a good deal of information about American culture to which Indian
women responded: “American society seemed like a utopia to [Indian women]. . .
.Kashibai’s review [United Stateschi
] indicates the appeal of the book for both expanding female readers’ horizons
and reinforcing their incipient feminism which only needed an outlet for public
expression” (Kosambi “Introduction” 18).
Sr.
Geraldine tells us that, in fact, Ramabai’s “ideas took concrete shape in America”
(Ramabai LC xviii-xix). But perhaps
what Ramabai found in America
was not a set of new ideas but support from elite women and men who had already
been struggling with many of the same issues she herself had been struggling
with in India:
slavery, education, suffrage, and spirituality. According to Kosambi, Ramabai’s
book about America “amply reflects [her] affinity with the country that had
freed itself from the colonial yoke a century earlier—in her glowing
description of the American Revolution, her repeated comparisons of America’s
superior political, economic, cultural, and religious situation with England’s,
in her conspicuous solidarity with both the women’s movement in America and
American blacks” (Kosambi “Introduction” 20).
Although Ramabai’s travels led her all over the USA, it is her time in Central
New York that we found particularly intriguing. Central
New York in the Nineteenth Century, unlike today, was a hotbed of
activity, ranging from abolition to utopian communities to the establishment of
the new religious sects to women’s suffrage. Many well-known figures lived in
the area, and many more were well-known in their own day but are virtually
forgotten today.
The heart of Central New York, Auburn, on the eve
of Ramabai’s visit, then, was not only a focal point of social change and
innovation, but also a leader in commerce and industry. Its location on the Owasco outlet provided
water power for industries and the New York Central and Southern Central
Railroads provided transportation for raw materials and manufactured
goods. Probably its most famous
educational institution was the Auburn Theological Seminary, established in
1819 for candidates for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church: “The seat of
the institution was fixed at Auburn in consequence of the liberal contribution
towards its endowment by several of the citizens” (Storke 49). One of its early Presidents, Samuel Miles
Hopkins (1847-1901) received Harriet Tubman as a regular visitor and his
sister, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1869 for the express purpose of
raising money for Tubman (Shosa 41). Of
its graduates, 186 became missionaries to such foreign lands as Hawaii, Turkey,
Palestine, Siam,
Greece, Philippines, and India.
Central
New York, then, was vibrant with all the crosscurrents of social
change—liberalism, social gospel, abolitionism, women’s rights. Many outspoken leaders of these various
interests overlapped in their pursuit to improve American society and belonged
to diverse denominations. For example, Washington Gladden was a Congregationalist (see Handy 19-37), Richard Ely, a Presbyterian (see Handy
173-83), Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist
(see Handy 253-63) [5],
and Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian (see Halloway) [6] all had connections to Central New York .
Although we
[in India]
belong to different denominations and religions, we can and must unite in the
work of the national and public good [. . . .] At least in this world we have to
live in the same country and on the same earth. At least in this world we do
not find that the excellent divine gifts, such as sunlight, rain, wind, earth,
etc. are available only to us and not to those of other [religious] beliefs[. .
. .] Hindus, Mohammedan, Christians, Shaivites, Vaishnavites, devotees of
Ganapati, Shias, Sunnis, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians,
Trinitarians and believers in thirty-three core gods—all these should put aside
religious animosity and unite themselves in order to serve the country.
(Ramabai Through her own Words fn
183)
Two Central New York women, Harriet Tubman and
Emily Howland, were two of the many who were impressed by Ramabai on her tour
through America.
The admiration was mutual, for Bodley writes that Ramabai was “deeply impressed by and [. . .] interested
in the work of Western women, who seem to have one common aim, namely, the good
of their fellow-beings. It is my dream
some day to tell my countrywomen in their own languages this wonderful story,
in the hope that the recital may awaken in their hearts a desire to do
likewise” (Bodley xx).
Prominent Central New York women, including Matilda Jocelyn Gage,
Lucretia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, and Antoinette Brown, [8]
were working and networking in the years preceding Ramabai’s visit.
Martha
Coffin Wright (1806-75), Lucretia Mott’s sister, relocated to Aurora,
New York, and then to Auburn in 1839, where she was active in the
abolition movement. A co-author of the
“Declaration of Sentiments,” she penned numerous articles for the suffrage
movement. Her daughters, especially
Eliza Wright Osborne, continued their mother’s reformist work. Her home was a meeting place for female
activists such as Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, Emily Howland, and
Elizabeth Smith Miller (Cuddy 30-37). Osborne’s son, Thomas Mott Osborne
(1859-1926), later became a famous prison reformer. And one of the references that Ramabai makes
in United Stateschi is to American
attitudes toward prison reform and electrocution as a method of capital
punishment: “The people here believe that works such as improving the
conditions in prisons, visiting the prisoners, advising them, etc. are pious
deeds [. . . .] In many States, electrocution is used for capital punishment,
instead of hanging” (Ramabai Through her
own words 192). Prison reform, too
might be something that she learned about in Central New
York. [9] New
York State
was embroiled in discussions of the benefits of electrocution as a “safe and
painless” method as early as 1881. By
early 1887 Westinghouse and Edison were competing for the honor of providing
the correct source of current for the project.
It was during this time that Ramabai was staying in Auburn. Although he had not officially begun
his campaign for prison reform, Thomas Mott Osborne might well have been one of
the people Ramabai met while in town: “Osborne’s earliest recollections were
associated with distinguished men and women of liberal tendencies who gathered
at his parents’ home in Auburn—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, the
Motts, the Garrisons, and others.
Sometimes Tom was allowed to accompany his mother and father on visits
to these people” (Chamberlain 33). In
fact, the Osborne house was something of a legend in town: Anna Howard Shaw notes in her autobiography, Story of a Pioneer, “the best talk I
have heard anywhere was that to which I used to listen in the home of Eliza
Wright Osborne in Auburn, New York when Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Emily
Howland, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Ida Husted Harper, Miss [Harriet] Mills and I
gathered there for our occasional weekend visits” (Shaw 240-1). So it is
possible that Ramabai had at least met Thomas Mott Osborne in his mother’s
house (he was living there after graduating Yale from 1886-8 while Ramabai was
in Auburn) and perhaps talked about the question
very important to the Auburn community of the
time of possible electrocution in their prison.
The
woman who links virtually all the personalities and movements during this
tumultuous period of social change was
Emily Howland (1827-1929), Quaker, abolitionist, founder of a contraband school[10] for blacks in Virginia in the post-war South
(King 14-32), advocate for world peace, women’s suffrage, and educator, who was
born and lived most of her life in Sherwood, New York. Howland’s interest in education was continued
by her opening of the Sherwood Select School in 1882, and by sponsoring women
for continued education, as in the case of Amanda Hickey, as well as in her
connections with the George Junior Republic (King 5-7; 12). Howland heard Ramabai speak when Howland
attended her lecture at Wells
College in 1886. The two
corresponded at least until 1888.
In the
hamlet of Sherwood sits Howland’s Stone Store run by Slocum Howland
(1794-1881), father of Emily Howland. Here, upstairs amidst a collection of
artifacts brought back from Emily’s and her niece Isabella’s world tours, sits a
pastel portrait of Ramabai done by one
S.W. Underhill (no date).
Photo courtesy of Sherwood Stone Store, Sherwood, New
York
Except for
some journal entries written by Emily Howland, nothing much is written about
the meeting of Howland and Ramabai, but it was a true meeting of minds between
two women, one young, one old, who had much in common, including a social
activism rooted in faith. Emily Howland was interested in all of the causes
that would have attracted her and Ramabai to each other. She worked down south in the Freedman’s Camps
(Myers 47) where her feelings for these displaced people made her a likely
sympathizer with Ramabai’s young widows.
Howland’s support for education included not only freed slaves but also
talented young women whom she sponsored in medical schools. These experiences gave Howland an idea of the
kinds of obstacles Ramabai faced in her mission to help Hindu widows. On 21
August 1886, Howland wrote that Dr.
Amanda Hickey, a local Auburn physician, introduced her to Ramabai and that
they had a good talk about Christianity and Hindu widows. Emily Howland and
Ramabai had much in common.
Probably
the most famous name associated with Auburn
is Harriet Tubman (1820/1-1913) whose 19 trips brought out over 300 slaves
(Bentley 58)[11]
from the South. As a result of a blow on
the head received by an overseer, Tubman suffered from blackouts for the rest
of her life, during which she often had talks with God. Her escape from slavery in 1849 was the
beginning of a life-long mission of administering to her downtrodden African
American brethren. Friends included such
prominent Central New York abolitionists as Frederick Douglass, and Reverend
Jermain Loguen,[12] a
leader of the AME Zion Church
in Syracuse, New York,
who introduced Tubman to William Seward (DAB
vol 11. 368-9; Telford). It was this
connection with Harriet Tubman that led
Ramabai’s admirers to call her “the Moses of her Hindu sisters” ( Ramabai LC 400).
Ramabai visited Auburn a number of times. In a letter to her
daughter, dated 8 January 1888 (Ramabai LC
205), she tells of meeting Harriet Tubman. It was Emily Howland who took
Ramabai to meet Harriet Tubman in Auburn,
where Tubman was living out the last years of her life on South Street. Tubman, despite the poverty
of her circumstances, was active in suffrage, education, and temperance
movements and managed to support a house of poor, indigent, crippled, and
homeless blacks. Tubman was quite famous
at the end of the nineteenth century and her house became a mecca for numerous
luminaries such as Booker T. Washington (Conrad 223-4).
Ramabai and
Tubman were committed to helping members of oppressed groups. Both women were
extremely religious and each was “about her father’s business” and saw religion
(Christianity) as the salvation for their respective people. Both were willing to incur the wrath of their
neighbors for unpopular causes, both were actively involved in challenging the
pervasive sexist/misogynist stereotypes of their respective cultures—Ramabai by
dint of her education, her late inter-caste, inter-religious marriage, and her
religious conversion; Tubman by her late marriage and preference for field
work, as conductor on the underground railroad, by organizing societies to
feed, clothe, and shelter escaped slaves, and by serving as a spy and scout for
the Union forces. Both women saw the
need for broad-based support if their cause was to be successful. Both Ramabai and Tubman were ecumenical in
their approach for funding. Both women
used proceeds from their books to further their work. And both women were rewarded with recognition
from Queen Victoria. Sister Geraldine remarks on the connections
between the two women:
Such characters as President
Lincoln, whose life she read, and then made a digest of in a letter to her
child, and even more that of Harriet Tubman, the Negress and runaway slave
called the Moses of her people[, . . .] She too would be the Moses of her Hindu
sisters, and lead them out of darkness and the slavery of the evil one into the
light of the Glorious Gospel of Christ.
And the Americans, with their open-handed generosity and Catholic
sympathy, and withall a greater power of demonstration than is possessed by the
English people, were ready to enter into her plans and forward them. Funds and plant [sic], books and pictures,
workers, assistants, and teachers were asked for and secured. (Ramabai LC 400)
Although
there is no mention of Tubman’s meeting Ramabai in the Tubman materials we
looked at, nor do the local history collections or the Tubman house library
have any information about it other than what we have placed there, Ramabai
records these meetings in a letter to her daughter dated January 8, 1888. She
tells Manoramabai about American slavery, the underground railroad, and
Harriet’s courage in leading her people out of slavery to safety in Canada.
She ends the letter by making her point to her daughter:
They [Harriet and her husband]
are poor, but they are happy now because they are free. Harriet [now about 68
years old] still works. She has a litle
[sic] house of her own, where she and her husband live and work together for
their own people. I saw some orphan
children and old people unable to work for themselves who are taken care of and
supported by good old Harriet, who works for them[. . . .]They are worthy
children of God and we should always try to be as good and better if we
can. You know, my dear child, there are
thousands of little children like you and women like me in our dear India who
are as badly treated as the slaves in olden times. I hope my child will remember the story of
Harriet and try to be as helpful to her own dear countrywomen as Harriet was
and is, to her own people. (Ramabai LC
208)
Ramabai
clearly identifies Harriet’s plight as her own: women in India are slaves.[13] And High Caste Hindu Woman, the book Ramabai wrote while she was in the
United States touring, speaking, and collecting money for these women back
home, shows that “women, being one-half of the people of this country, are
oppressed and cruelly treated by the other half” (Bodley xvii). Sr. Geraldine
mentions that Ramabai “had experienced poverty and all that it means in a
society which attaches greater sanctity to the cow than to the human being, and
in the name of Karma rationalizers [sic] its callousness to both” (Ramabai LC xviii). So when Ramabai talks with
Harriet about slave conditions in America, she knows first-hand what
Tubman describes. She tells Manoramabai,
“Some few years ago they used to buy and sell these poor coloured people just
as if they were cats and dogs. Some good
people said it was wicked to treat them like animals, for they are just as good
and loved children of God as any other white persons” (Ramabai LC 208).
In
“Religious Denominations and Charities in the USA,” a chapter from United Stateschi (1899), Ramabai makes these links once again.
In the context of a discussion of American slavery, Ramabai discusses the caste
system :
In our own
country the three [upper] castes including Brahmans also believed that the
people of the Shudra caste were created by God only to serve them, and that
such service was their only means of salvation. (Ramabai Through Her Own Words 184)
We know from Howland’s journal that when the two
women met, Tubman said to Ramabai, “You
is from where they burn widows,” and Ramabai replied, “They do not do that
now.” They discussed, according to
Howland, how reform began not with the English but among the Indians
themselves. And Howland notes that
Ramabai had “a strong national feeling as we have” and that she does not like
being a conquered people (Howland Journal August 21, 1886). [14]
It might be
that her reading of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Century
of Dishonor (Ramabai LC 174) gave
her some insight as to the plight of the conquered peoples of America. The public lecture tours of Ponca Chief
Standing Bear in 1879 served as the catalyst for Jackson to write her expose.[15] With him was Suzette La Flesche, and Omaha
Indian, whose eloquence about the injustices to the native and their subsequent
suffering stirred the consciences and opened the purse strings of her
audiences. A number of organizations
were established to assist them. Another
La Flesche sister, Susan (1865-1915), was a graduate of the Women’s Medical
College of Philadelphia (1886-89) attending at about the same time as Anandabai
Joshee, returning to the reservation to assist her people. Perhaps this too was something which
impressed Ramabai on her American visit (Thomas et al 359-60; Green 165-178).
Shortly
after Ramabai’s meeting with Tubman, on September 20, 1886, Howland notes that
she went to hear Ramabai lecture at Wells
College. And by November 3, 1886, Ramabai visited
Howland’s Sherwood
School and lectured
there. She spoke for an hour and then
fielded questions. After the lecture, Howland tells us that she and Ramabai
“sat up late and talked. She wants me to
go to India
with her. If it were not so far I would
go” (Howland Journal November 2-3, 1886).
If Harriet
Tubman impressed Ramabai as a strong force in American history, one who was a
model for the kind of work that Ramabai herself wanted to do in India, perhaps
something of Ramabai stayed with Harriet too. Ramabai “always wore white cotton
saris and wrappings in token of her widowhood (her short hair was for the same
reason), and the soft purity of it beautifully expressed her” (Adhav 45). We know that when she toured America,
Ramabai wore her native dress since Frances Willard comments on it: her Hindu dress, says
Willard, “Attests her freedom from the bondage of mantilla-maker and milliner”
(Willard 557). Tubman and Howland, too,
remark upon Ramabai’s dress: “Harriet said. ‘How pretty you are.’ She did look
pretty with her white Indian shawl draped about her” (Howland Journal 21 August
1886). When comparing the picture of
Harriet in the last years of her life, also in white, wrapped as if in an
eastern sari, we cannot help but wonder if Tubman was influenced by Ramabai.
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HARRIET TUBMAN C. 1912 ,widow
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For the
most part, old photographs of Harriet Tubman show her in dark colors, and, as
far as we have seen, never, other than in this one photo, does she have a shawl
wrapped over her head and shoulders. But
in a photograph taken after the death of her second husband in 1888, Tubman seems to be dressing like
Ramabai’s version of a Hindu widow. Did
Harrriet admire Ramabai as much as the Indian woman did her? We cannot prove, of course, Tubman’s motives,
nor do we have photos of every stage of her life which might show is that
Tubman often dressed in sari-white apparel.
But we find the coincidence here compelling. If America
had a profound effect on Ramabai, perhaps Ramabai’s impact on America was
stronger than we might think.
But Howland
and her niece Isabel did what she could to help Ramabai. After the death of her father, Howland was
left a wealthy woman, who “received requests from all over the country and from
India
[Ramabai] to sponsor educational and vocational programs for ‘fallen’ or
distressed women. She saw herself as
part of an active national and international sisterhood” (Breault 142).
Apparently, Howland stored copies of High
Caste Hindu Woman in her house in Sherwood, and there remains today a copy
of this book, with Emily Howland’s name in it from 1893, in the Howland Store
library. In September 1888, Isabel wrote to her aunt:
We have had
our meeting and shall continue to work for Ramabai—we have now five new members
to the circle (three at $1.00 and two at .50) and orders for four books—will
thee please send immediately half a dozen books and two more photographs”
(Isabel Howland letter to Emily Howland
24 September 1888).
Involved with a Ramabai Circle in Ithaca and drawing on the
Cornell community, Emily and Isabel were able to help Ramabai raise money for
her mission. Also in the Howland Store
is a photograph of Ramabai which was preserved in Miss Emily’s copy of High Caste Hindu Woman. Taken by the Veeder Photographic Studio, 32 North Street, Albany,
this may be one of the photos to which Isabel refers in her letter to her aunt.
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The letters show how much energy
it must have taken the women and men involved in the Ramabai Circles to raise
the kind of money that Ramabai needed to ensure the success of her mission.
This network of social activists in the United
States, particularly in rural areas such as Central New York, moved a dollar at a time, slowly but
surely to their ten year goal of $50,000.00.
Ramabai’s network was so successful that she was able to reach $20,000
in the first year of organization (Gould 1).
Emily Howland’s organizational and networking skills stretched all
across Central New York. The archives include
a receipt for $1.00 from A.P. Granger of Canandaigua, Corresponding Secretary
of the American Ramabai Association, who
ordered 30 Ramabai reports at 2 ½ cents each (Howland papers Cornell). And this
same A.P. Granger, in a letter to Emma Sellew Roberts, of the A.M. Chesbrough
Seminary in North Chili, New York (now Roberts Wesleyan
College) enclosed a letter of
introduction from Dr. Augustus Strong [16]
for Ramabai in an attempt to make her mission in Rochester more successful (A.P. Granger
letter to Mrs. Roberts 19 April 1898).
Ramabai, concerned as to the circumscribed
curriculum of the Anglican sisters at Wantage, put her daughter for a time in
the A.M. Chesbrough Seminary in North Chili, we can only assume because of her Central New York connections. Manoramabai[17] and five other Indian young women studied at
this Free Methodist school, and Monoramabai herself stayed with Mrs. Emma
Sellew Roberts, the daughter-in law of the school’s founder, Benjamin T.
Roberts, and wife of the principal, Benson H. Roberts. Christian papers of the
time are full of news of Ramabai and her Mukti Mission, and the Chesbrough
Seminary and the Robertses were intimately involved in this work. The link to the Chesbrough Seminary provided
Ramabai with support from Free Methodists as Ramabai later moved from education
to evangelism.
Central New York,
then, provided Ramabai with many various experiences and connections. In
Howland and Tubman, Ramabai found not only kindred spirits but also lessons in
grass-roots organization. When Howland
told Ramabai “it is impossible to convey and idea of the hatred the whole
country felt towards the abolitionists” (Howland letter to Ramabai April 1888).[18] Ramabai must have seen her own position as a
Christian convert marginalized by the Hindu majority. Howland explained how abolitionists were
“called ‘a band of infidels’ intent on destroying religion and their country”
(Howland letter 1890): surely this must have struck a chord in Ramabai.
In her discussions with Tubman and Howland and
others, Ramabai must have learned the value of good publicity. As Howland said, “Many [abolitionists], being
persons of the best culture and all of intelligence and high principle, they
enlisted types largely in the service of their cause and in the northern
states, the fruits of their brains, either in argument, address, poem or
appeal, was scattered broadcast in journals, tracts, or books” (Howland letter
to Ramabai April 1888) Ramabai learned this lesson well: her High Caste Hindu Widow, which she sold
on her speaking tour, brought her cause passionately and forcefully to her new
American public. She took advantage as
well of the powerful missionary press, writing letters to the Christian public,
garnering the force of Christian organizations to her cause.
As she heard of Howland’s experiences in the
contraband camps and visited the Sherwood
Select School,
The Granger School, Wells College, Cornell
University (which had
already admitted women), Ramabai saw the potential for women networking to
achieve social change. Perhaps she heard Howland tell of Myrtilla Miner
(1815-1865), [19]
Howland’s colleague in the contraband schools in Washington, who “traveled and
solicited aid for the enterprise [her school for blacks] in the north” while
the school was “conducted by teachers who volunteered their services” (Howland
letter to Ramabai April 1888). This is, after all, what Ramabai herself was
doing.
In Tubman, Ramabai saw a woman who was an outcaste
yet who became the “Moses of her people” and continued to care for the
indigent, the crippled, and the orphaned of her people after slavery was
abolished. Maybe her own orphanage and
home for the indigent were additions to her original school for high caste
widows in part because of the Tubman
model.
Despite her
subsequent marginalization as events in India passed her by, Ramabai was
successful in the goals she sought to achieve.
Her American grand tour taught her something about American pragmatism
and practicality. Her travels with men
and women such as the ones we have looked at in Central
New York taught her much about American history, culture and
social problems. But it also taught her about the power of networks of women
who could organize in a grass roots fashion to effect change. It extended her contacts beyond India to World
Suffrage and Temperance Organizations and to Christian missionary groups, like
the Free Methodists, who had contacts all over the world. It linked her to
people with money and power which was the only way her dreams for her people
could be realized.
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