Indian Videshinis: European Women in India

Ian H. Magedera

Description

Sonia Gandhi, Princess Niloufer, Princess Durru Shehvar, Simone Tata, Sooni Tata, Saint Teresa The Mother, Margaret Cousins, Sister Nivedita Annie Besant, Jeanne Dupleix.
What happened to Sonia Gandhi as she moved from the Italian born wife of the non-political son closer and closer to the centre of power? Before she became Mother Teresa, how did an Eastern European-born outsider in the Loreto order criticize ‘memsahib’ nuns and claim that she would renew Christianity in India in 1947? These are just two of the ten stories captured in this book that illuminate the careers and Indian identity formation of European born women and their deep, and sometimes controversial, influence on education, religions, spirituality, commerce and politics in India. For their Indian supporters and opponents, these women were both Indian and videshinis (foreign women); they were also non-British and thus separate from the colonial power. They may have been the last outliers of the intercultural contact around the freedom struggle, but their integration by Indians now holds a lesson in inclusivity for the country.

Sujets

• Women
• Religión
• Biography
• Modern language
• Mother Teresa
• Spirituality
• Politics
• Non-fiction
• Colonial
• Christianity
• Autobiography
• Society
• Foreigner
• India
• Sonia Gandhi
• Liverpool
• Mère Teresa
• Culture
• Commerce
• Éducation
• 1947
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788193626092
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

INDIAN
VIDESHINIS
 
OTHER LOTUS TITLES Ajit Bhattacharjea Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir Aitzaz Ahsan The Indus Saga: The Making of Pakistan Ajay Mansingh Firaq Gorakhpuri: The Poet of Pain & Ecstasy Alam Srinivas Women of Vision: Nine Business Leaders in Conversation Amarinder Singh The Last Sunset: The Rise & Fall of the Lahore Durbar Bertil Falk Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi Hamish Mcdonald Ambani & Sons Kunal Purandare Ramakant Achrekar: A Biography Lucy Peck Agra: The Architectural Heritage Lucy Peck Delhi a Thousand Years of Building: An INTACH-Roli Guide Madan Gopal My Life and Times: Munshi Premchand M.J. Akbar Byline M.J. Akbar Blood Brothers: A Family Saga M.J. Akbar Have Pen, Will Travel: Observations of a Globetrotter M.J. Akbar India The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation’s Unity M.J. Akbar Kashmir: Behind the Vale M.J. Akbar Nehru: The Making of India M.J. Akbar The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo The Sinking of INS Khukri: What Happened in 1971 Madhu Trehan Tehelka as Metaphor Moin Mir Surat: Fall of a Port, Rise of a Prince Defeat of the East India Company in the House of Commons Monisha Rajesh Around India in 80 Trains Noorul Hasan Meena Kumari: The Poet Peter Church Added Value: The Life Stories of Indian Business Leaders Peter Church Profiles in Enterprise: Inspiring Stories of Indian Business Leaders Prateep K. Lahri Decoding Intolerance: Riots and the Emergence of Terrorism in India Rajika Bhandari The Raj on the Move: Story of the Dak Bungalow Ralph Russell The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of my Moving Pen R.V. Smith Delhi: Unknown Tales of a City Salman Akthar The Book of Emotions Shahrayar Khan Bhopal Connections: Vignettes of Royal Rule Shantanu Guha Ray Mahi: The Story of India’s Most Successful Captain Sharmishta Gooptu Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation Shrabani Basu Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan S. Hussain Zaidi Dongri to Dubai Sunil Raman & Rohit Aggarwal Delhi Durbar: 1911 The Complete Story Sunetra Choudhury Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India’s Most Famous Thomas Weber Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women Thomas Weber Gandhi at First Sight Vappala Balachandran A Life In Shadow: The Secret Story of ACN Nambiar A forgotten Anti-Colonial Warrior Vir Sanghvi Men of Steel: India’s Business Leaders in Candid Conversation Zubin Mehta Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life
FORTHCOMING TITLES Prateep K. Lahiri A Tide in the Affairs of Men: A Public Servant Remembers Aruna Roy The RTI Story: A People’s Movement for Transparency
 

 
ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2018
First published in 2018 by
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Copyright © Ian H. Magedera, 2018
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In hope and with confidence, this book is dedicated to one of its future readers: Esther M. Magedera
 
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
A Pondicherrian Prelude: Jeanne Dupleix
Education and Activism: Annie Besant; Sister Nivedita; Margaret Cousins
Religion and Spirituality: The Mother
Religion and Spirituality: Saint Teresa
International Business and Commerce: Sooni Tata and Simone Tata
State and National Politics: Princess Durru Shehvar; Princess Niloufer
State and National Politics: Sonia Gandhi
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Biographical Information
Appendix 2: Saint Teresa’s Key Letters
Bibliography
 
PREFACE
This is a book about a number of European women who, over the last 120 years or so, have successfully moved to India and made important contributions to life there. The book thus links Europe and India, but will, it is hoped, appeal to readers who, like its subjects, are of many sorts and come from many places.
For readers interested in just one of these women, a good route into the book is to read the Introduction before moving directly to the individual chapter. The chapters, rather than being biographical cameos, are analyses of identity formation. They examine the ways in which these women absorbed themselves in India, sometimes taking on aspects of the identities of the Indians around them and manifesting these in their speech, dress, thought and sensibility. The book shows how they were accepted and also rejected by Indians, and how their various Indian elites mediated their absorption by acting both as their hosts and as their promoters in the new country.
As the world is experiencing hypernationalism and Indian society is living through a period of self-examination and transition at present, Indians and those interested in India need to be particularly aware about how that society is organized. By definition, the nation’s elites have been very good at promoting their own interests over many years. This book will demonstrate that one of their most successful strategies has been their porousness: their willingness to integrate non-Indians, and non-Indian women in particular. We may condemn what these elites have done; or the peer groups we belong to might prefer to emulate them; or we may simply be curious about how all this is possible. But it is vital to understand how Indian elites ensure their own continuity by supporting the influential careers of European-born women who work with them, while of course paying lip service to the mantra that they are acting for the good of the nation. If we bracket out their self-interest, we can also see that they are continuing the Indian tradition of accepting foreigners and carrying on, that has been such a prominent feature of the place for centuries.
All of these women either came with or developed special skills that benefitted their elites; many Indian-born women had these skills too, of course, but the unique attribute of these particular foreign-born women was that they were exotically European without being implicated in British colonialism. They were a living illustration of what the future should hold for the Indian nation; they represented an ideal non-colonial relationship between India and Europe and this is why their individual skills were so influential. The approach adopted here allows readers to make their own judgments about the value of these women’s contributions. Readers may begin to understand the negative side of a figure that they previously unquestioningly revered, or to comprehend that an oft-reviled foreign woman did after all have some positive effects on Indian society and social cohesion.
For the reader who is interested in the wider issues, the best way to approach the book is to read the Introduction followed by the Prelude, before moving on to the analyses grouped according to the women’s domains of activity in India – education, spirituality, business and politics. The Prelude uses the critical self-awareness that is a feature of postcolonial studies to refine the analysis of the ways that these women represent themselves and the ways that they are depicted by Indians (for example in relation to their dress and to how well or badly they speak Indian languages). The approach here goes further than the model of postcolonialism that is usually applied to India, bringing in references to colonialism in Latin America, and also avoiding postcolonialism’s frequent tendency to lose itself in its own terminological complexity.
This book aims to be different by combining both an analysis of the language used to describe these women and a focus on real-world processes and phenomena that touch the lives of the majority of Indians – such as voting and property rights. Despite its broad relevance, the book is wary of the tendency of much Western scholarship to apply a grand theory to complex processes in India. The case studies are substantial and representative; but they are also many-layered, covering in depth a wide range, both chronologically and geographically (from New Delhi to Puducherry, via Mumbai and Hyderabad). Each chapter can be read on its own; but it is hoped that readers will be spurred on to further discoveries of women who have similar stories to the one that prompted their interest in the first place. In each case, the photographs and epigraphs set the scene and summarize the diversity of views on the identity of the women concerned. The book thus brings the insights of formal research and scholarship into the dialogue among non-specialists in India, Europe and beyond.
The research that informed this book was done in Pune, Hyderabad and Puducherry, as well as in London and Paris. It sprang from a five-year UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project on French-language representations of India. That project defined the counterintuitive way that this book analyses power, concentrating on the role of the French as minor colonizers in India during the period from 1754 to 1954 – that is, from the year of the departure from India of Joseph-François Dupleix to the cession by the French of Pondicherry – the territory he once governed (with the other French possessions of Chandernagore, Mahe, Yanam and Karikal) – to the Union of Indian States. The project demonstrated the val