CC BY
2DOI: https://doi.org/10.24412/cl-36892-2024-9-62-67
Pages: 62-67
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: INITIATIVES OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE AND BUSINESS
4th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
LADY ABALA BOSE: TA'LIMCHI, OLIM VA HINDISTONDA AYOLLAR
HUQUQLARI UCHUN MAYOQ
Sen Gupta, Shatarupa
Dotsent Kalkutta qizlar kolleji Kolkata, Hindiston
MAQOLA HAQIDA_
Annotatsiya: An'anaga ko'ra, oiladagi ayollar yosh avlodning birinchi o'qituvchilari hisoblanadi. Hoh ertak yoki doston aytib beradigan buvilar, xolalar qofiya o'qishlari yoki kundalik yumushlar bilan shug'ullanayotganda son va alifbo o'rgatuvchi onalar. Shu nuqtai nazardan aytishimiz mumkinki, ko'pincha erta maktab ta'limining asosini tashkil etuvchi bolalarning erta ta'limini ta'minlashda ayollarning roli juda katta._
LADY ABALA BOSE: AN EDUCATIONIST, A SCIENTIST AND A BEACON FOR
WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN INDIA
Sen Gupta, Shatarupa
Assistant professor Calcutta girls' college Kolkata, India
ABOUT ATRICLE_
Abstract: Conventionally, the women in a household are the first teachers of the younger generation. Be it the grandmothers narrating the fables or the epics, the aunts reciting rhymes or the mothers teaching numbers and alphabets while going about their daily chores. In this context, we can say that women have an immense role to play in ensuring early education for children which often forms the basis of early schooling._
Kalit so'zlar: ayollar ta'limi, ayollar huquqi, fan ta'limi, iqtisodiy mustaqillik
Key words: women's education, women's right, science education, economic independence.
ЛЕДИ АБАЛА БОЗЕ: ПЕДАГОГ, УЧЕНЫЙ И МАЯК В ЗАЩИТУ ПРАВ ЖЕНЩИН
В ИНДИИ
Сен Гупта, Шатарупа
Доцент
Калькуттский женский колледж Калькутта, Индия
О СТАТЬЕ_
Аннотация: Традиционно женщины в семье являются первыми учителями молодого поколения. Будь то бабушки, рассказывающие басни или эпосы, тети, декламирующие стишки, или матери, обучающие цифрам и алфавиту, занимаясь повседневными делами. В этом контексте мы можем сказать, что женщины призваны сыграть огромную роль в обеспечении раннего образования для детей, которое часто составляет основу раннего школьного обучения.
If we go back to the colonial era in the Indian sub-continent, the 19th century and early 20th century saw the Britishers and the Indian Renaissance Men lay much emphasis on women's education. Nonetheless, this zeal was not without its agenda. While the British tried to create a Victorian society, by relegating women, the role of helpmeets, the Indian Renaissance men sought to educate women to prove that they were not as 'barbaric' or backward as the British painted them to be. Education, for its own sake, for women was almost lost in this contest[1].
And yet we come across several women pioneers who paved the way for meaningful education for women with emphasis on reason and scientific knowledge and understanding. They lighted the spark of the idea of equality and introduced the concept of feminism in a traditionally patriarchal society which believed that women were best kept out of view in their andar-mahal or inner chambers of the home.
One such trail-blazing woman was Abala Bose from Barishal in present day Bangladesh. She was the daughter of Durga Mohan Das and Brahmamoyi Devi, who were ardent followers of Brahmaism. In 1870, Abala's family was ostracized by the people in her village as her parents advocated widow remarriage. Her life-long zeal for the betterment of the widows came from her mother who spent her life in trying to improve the living conditions of those young and old women who had been abandoned by their families after the deaths of their husbands. Her father was one of the founders of the Bethune Collegiate School for Girls in Calcutta and Abala went on to study there. Later she wanted to study medicine but was denied admission to Calcutta Medical College due to her gender. She thus, went to Madras and there continued her medical studies. She had to give up midway due to ill health. She was one of those rare women who
Ключевые слова:
женское образование, права женщин, научное
образование, экономическая независимость.
chose medicine as a profession in early 20th century, when most of the Indian women were still in the process of becoming comfortable with their presence felt in the public space.
Later she married the young scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose and after his knighthood, came to be known as Lady Abala Bose. Her travels with her husband took her to England, Italy, America and Japan where she keenly observed how women in different societies were treated and struggled to make their presence felt. She was especially impressed by the status of women in Japan and observed that child-birth, irrespective of the gender of the child, was an occasion for celebration. This was very different from India, where the birth of a female child was considered as a curse rather than a boon. She also observed that women in Japan could travel in public with men without having to practice any kind segregation. For her, the Japanese women were epitomes of women's empowerment where they had freedom of speech, education and movement. She chronicled her experiences in Japan in articles which were published in the Bengali periodicalMukul (First Bloom) in 1915[2].
After returning from her trip to Japan, she decided to take up the cause of educating the widows of India, who were pushed to the periphery of the marginalized group of women.
In this paper, I propose to examine the life and times and work of Lady Abala Bose and how her campaign for women's education - especially those rendered widow at a young age and deemed as an economic and social burden by their families - remains relevant in the 21st century, when there still exist women without education. This paper will also try to look at her thoughts on education and the role of women in furthering it how women's participation in the political process can bring about a sea-change in educational policies which will benefit the coming generations.
Due to her travels and her own experience with the education system prevalent in India in the 19th Century, Abala Bose had developed a clear idea why education was important for women. In the colonial period, women were victims of a two-layered marginalization - as 'natives,' they were marginalized by the colonial rule and as women, they were the marginal within the patriarchal Indian society, which proved its masculinity through control over the mind and bodies of their womenfolk. As Partha Chatterjee had stated that for the Indian men the home was a sacrosanct space where women had to take on the responsibility of nurturing their husbands and children. A woman had no claim to expertise in any kind of knowledge if she did not know how to care for her home. [3]
During her travels, Lady Bose, started making notes on the system of educational instructions given to children in different countries. Based on these observations, she came up with her own unique understanding where she believed that education, in the long run, would
bring economic independence to women. She was especially impressed with the Montessori system of education for pre-school aged children and she realized that in this context, women as mothers and teachers had a potentially big role to play.
She was passionate about her cause and thus in early 20th century, established the Brahmo Girls' School and the Nari Shiksha Samiti (Women's Educational Committee). Due to her exposure to medical studies, she also correctly realized that India could only progress if women also made equal strides with men in the realm of science and technology. It is said that, to realize her objective, she invited Chittaranjan Das (Indian freedom fighter), Rajen Mukherjee (industrialist), Sir Nilratan Sircar (doctor), and Prafulla Chandra Ray (Chemical scientists) on the same platform to talk about and advance the cause of women's scientific education and to take this ambition forward.[4]
In March 1927, she wrote in Modern Review[5], a monthly magazine published in English by Ramananda Chatterjee that a woman does not need education only to find a good marital partner or become desirable daughters-in-law. She further emphasized that women need education because above all, a woman has a mind with its own identity and then a physical identity. Such thought in the early 20th century India, was ahead of its time and space. She deftly argued that to educate the girls well, it was important to train their teachers first and to ensure that more families were forthcoming about the education of the girl child, it was important for educated women to take on the role of teachers.
She also realized that only education would not be enough to break the shackles of patriarchy across the classes and thus set up the Mahila Shilpa Bhavan (Women's Entrepreneurial House) in Calcutta and Jhargram in present day West Bengal. Here she arranged for training of women in tailoring, weaving, making leather goods, pottery etcetera so that they could become small-scale entrepreneurs.
Lady Bose' time was one of major transition in the Indian sub-continent. The idea of India as a nation had taken roots and women had a role to play in its realization. Taking forward the colonial discourse on women as able helpmeets of their husbands, the new nation builders emphasized on women's education as they felt that only educated mothers could bring forth a healthy and independent generation of new Indians. The men who were involved in nation building, argued that to bring up disciplined children who would later become model citizens, the mother had to be educated. As 'good wives and mothers,' they were expected to have specialized knowledge about hygiene, home management, stitching and sewing. They were also expected to have rudimentary medical knowledge so that they could successfully treat and cure minor ailments which would benefit the man of the family economically. Women's education for
its own sake or for the purpose of economic independence was not given any thought at all. It was unthinkable to let women go out of their private space and earn for themselves or their families on the strength of their education or training.
The times of Abala Bose may have changed, but the situation of women in India across all classes, still needs to evolve as there exist countless women who are denied education due to their gender or economic condition.
Being a teacher in a college which offers graduate education to girls, one of the toughest challenges we face is not educating the young women who are sent to college but to keep them in college for the minimum period required for them to leave with a Bachelor's Degree. Most of our students are either first-generation learners whose parents have migrated from the rural areas in search of better employment opportunities or second-generation learners who are first to enter college in their families.
In a metropolitan city like Calcutta, which has several top-ranking colleges under the various universities, there are quite a few colleges which cater to the children of middle income or lower income families. in one such college, where I teach, the first challenge for us is to convince the parents of the female students to send their daughters regularly for classes.
As teachers, we have often observed that in families with multiple siblings, the older female sibling is often pushed to take on the role of care-giver to her younger siblings. Given their age and experience, it is a role which cannot be justified as often our students lose their years of studies to relieve their parents. Another challenge that we face is absenteeism due to economic reasons. Female students who come from single income poor families often try to cut down on their expenses by not attending college regularly. Their travel to and from college is perceived as an added expense which many parents unfortunately cannot afford or are not willing to afford.
Moreover, when a choice must be made between the education of a male child and a female child, the former is given preference as it is expected that in future, he would be the breadwinner for the family while the latter would be wedded off. Thus, marriage at a young age is also widely prevalent as it is perceived as an escape from economic hardships for at least one of the female children in a family with more than two children. In such situations, even if the female student is not willing, she is convinced to enter wedlock. As a result, the number of dropouts in an age when education is considered as one of the basic needs and rights is alarming.
To seek a redressal for this situation, the need of hour is awareness at multiple levels. Merely providing scholarships to these students would not be sufficient. The Central and the state governments have introduced several schemes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the girl
child, Teach the girl child), Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (Girl-child Prosperity Scheme), Kanyasree scholarships have not eradicated the problem completely as it is more important to change the age-old perceptions about the girl child and her role in building a strong and independent society.
In our experience, we have observed that individual counselling of parents often helps to change their perception. Also, as teachers, apart from teaching, we approach and encourage our students to talk to us about any challenges that they face regarding their education, health, nutrition, mental well-being, and safety. At a micro-level, in a single or a few colleges, we have seen positive results when teachers take on the role of not only teaching but also mentoring. Nonetheless, to ensure that more and more teachers- especially female teachers take on this role, it is necessary to train them adequately to be able to address, at least partially, the challenges faced by the female students. Along with gender sensitization, teachers need to have basic understanding about the laws protecting the girl child, the various schemes under which these students can avail help and effective counselling of their care-givers so that a holistic conducive atmosphere can be created to nurture the young minds. For, as the saying goes, the hand that rocks the cradle, can rule the world.
REFERENCES
1. Metcalf, Thomas R, Ideologies of the Raj, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 66-112
2. Gupta, Jayati, Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women: 1870-1940, (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2020)
3. Chatterjee, Partha, Colonialism, Nationalism and Colonized Women: The Contest in India, (American Ethnologist-Volume 16, No 4, November 1989), 622-633. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645113
4. Sethu, Divya, This Little Known 'Bose' Was a Feminist Icon Who Fought for the Education of Widows, (The Better India, January 2021). Stable URL: https://www.thebetterindia.com/246706/lady-abala-bose-indian-feminist-jagadish-chandra-bose-radio-science-women-education-widow-upliftment-british-raj-womens-suffrage-inspiration-div200/
5. Bose, Abala, The Present State of Primary Education in Bengal, (Modern Review, Calcutta, March 1927). Stable URL: https://southasiacommons.net/artifacts/2343473/modern-review-march-1927/3163939/
