A woman for all seasons

Professor Nico Slate's book is an ode to a fascinating, courageous and multi-talented woman who lived through many chapters of India's evolution and built lasting institutions, including the IIC

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay – The Art of Freedom

Author: Nico Slate

Publisher: Fourth Estate /HarperCollins

Pages: xx +365

Price: Rs 799

Biographies and autobiographies are, for the most part, engaging commentaries on a country’s life. They bring an intimacy, an engagement, a “this is how it happened” twist to people, occasions and incidents. This remarkable life story of one of India’s most courageous and multi-talented women does just that. A part of the Indian Lives series edited by Ramachandra Guha, the volume represents years of prodigious research by Nico Slate of Carnegie Mellon University.

That the typewriter was almost a prosthesis on Kamaladevi’s many travels helped record her point of view on an extraordinary range of issues, controversial and mundane. Clearly, “her main art form was the written word”, and she not only wrote several books, but also essays and articles on the entire gamut of her interests and commitments, be it political involvement, working for refugee rehabilitation, handloom and handicrafts or institution-building.

In 1914, when she was 11 years old, her widowed mother, Girijabai Dhareshwar, arranged Kamaladevi’s marriage to a boy a few years older than her from a wealthy Mangalore family. Though she became a widow within a year, Professor Slate notes that Kamaladevi never reflected publicly on this life-changing event and, to her mother’s credit, was not expected to lead the constrained life of a widow. Girijabai encouraged her to become aware of the groundswell of reform and nationalism in the country, and when she enrolled at Queen Mary’s College at Madras, she met Harindranath Chattopadhyay, actor and writer. He was soon to be Kamaladevi’s second husband.  Shortly after, when she discovered that he was a serial womaniser, she accelerated a commitment “to her social and political work”. By then, she was a mother, her son Ramakrishna having been born in 1923. In 1927, secretary-ship of the newly-formed All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) gave her status and confidence, and in 1930, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began his historic salt satyagraha,  Kamaladevi was able to convince a somewhat reluctant leader to include women in every aspect of the struggle.  On April 6, she was among the seven satyagrahis chosen to break the salt laws in Bombay (now Mumbai).

Professor Slate notes that while the salt satyagraha “complicated Kamaladevi’s relationship with Gandhi, the struggle brought her closer to her sister-in-law Sarojini Naidu”. In fact, one of the more interesting aspects of the book is the author’s comments on the delicate intricacies of Kamaladevi’s personal and familial webs and, occasionally, her somewhat ambivalent relationship with the powerful and articulate Sarojini. 

Kamaladevi believed that the salt satyagraha was a transformative moment for the women of the country. It also coincided with an emotionally-charged time for her, not only professionally but also personally as shortly afterwards she was to file for divorce from Harindranath. Professor Slate writes that “[U]nlike Mirabehn and many other Gandhian activists, Kamaladevi would never become a disciple of the Mahatma” — and yet, it was to him that she turned at the time of grave personal crisis. By then, she had also become critical of the AIWC and of the women’s movement, both of which, to her mind, were dominated by a bourgeois mentality. In 1937, she campaigned with Jawaharlal Nehru for the provincial elections, and shortly after, he proposed her name for the Congress Working Committee (CWC). Gandhiji opposed it, writing to Nehru that while “her ability is unquestioned”, he knew “things which have worried me about her”. Though the author speculates on whether the divorce had influenced the Mahatma, Kamaladevi herself felt that the reason was a critical article she had written on Vallabhbhai Patel — and a feeling that she was not “a very disciplined and manageable person”.

Undaunted by this setback, Kamaladevi became more radical in her thinking, and was soon working on linking “the women’s movement to labour activism and socialist organising”. It was interesting that, by 1939, though denied a place on the CWC, she was poised to become a significant nationalist leader and at the forefront of the women’s movement; yet, she chose to take her 17-year-old son abroad to study. While in the US, Kamaladevi forged links with African Americans — and had a first-hand experience of Jim Crow racism on a train in the South.

After returning to India, in addition to her fundamental commitment to the nationalist cause and, as she wrote, “women’s right to any profession” with equal pay for equal work, Kamaladevi’s interests diversified to include theatre, cooperatives and her love for handicrafts. 

Later in life, she was instrumental in the establishment of a number of institutions, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi and India International Centre. If one were to elaborate on Professor Slate’s comments that Kamaladevi lived through so many chapters of this country’s evolution, one would add that in the process she raised a son single-handedly, negotiated skilfully with the likes of Nehru and Gandhi, built institutions of repute, and worked to give Indian theatre, crafts and crafts persons an enduring salience. She was, indeed, a woman for all seasons.

The reviewer edits the Indian Journal of Gender Studies