UNIT-V C-11

AMAR JIBAN (1876) THE FIRST BENGALI AUTOBIOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY A WOMAN

Introduction:

Rassundari Debi (1809-1899) was born around 1809 in Potajia a village in erstwhile East Bengal. She
belonged to an upper caste wealthy Hindu family of landed zamindars. Her autobiography 'Amar
Jiban' is significantion the context of Indian literature, especially, women's writing as it is a story of
the evolution of a woman who was denied of education, who was confined only to the domestic life
and carried out perfectly the roles imposed on her by the society, i.e., a daughter, wife, a daughter-
in-law, a mother and finally the lady of a household.
This chapter endeavours to discuss the main aspects of the autobiography from a feminine
perspective.

Amar Jiban (1876) as an autobiography:

It is the first autobiography written in Bengali language by a woman. Tharu and Lalita (Tharu & Lalita,
1991) view that Rassundari Debi's autobiography
"was a major event for modern Bengali prose, which was still in an incipient stage."
In order to be able to have a deep understanding, first, one needs to understand the features of an
autobiographical narrative. Therefore, let us discuss some essential of autobiographies.
a. An autobiography is a medium of self- expression: The author narrates his/her own life history
presenting before the reader variousrelated incidents that happened in their life. In doing so the
narrator, most often, uses the first person point of view.

b. The author narrates his personal development: An autobiography is a tale of the author's own life.
However, each and every mundane incident is not a part of the autobiography. In the autobiography,
the author endeavours to portray his/her development as a person within the greater historical,
social and cultural milieu. The strategy applied is the 'revelation of the author's self-discovery'

In Amar Jiban, we get a comprehensive depiction of the four stages of Rassundari Debi's life - her
childhood, her life as a bride after her marriage, attainment of motherhood and finally, as the lady of
the house. Each chapter of the autobiography begins with verse composition praising Lord
Dayamadhav. The autobiography has been written in two parts. The first part was written in 1868
and final part of the autobiography was written in 1896 by her at the age of eighty eight. There are
sixteen sections in the first part, whereas, the second part consists of fifteen sections.

Her childhood:

The first phase of her life that is described in her autobiography is Rassundari's childhood. She begins
by remembering her childhood days. As she tries to remember, she recalls her memories as a
six/seven year old child. She remembers how other girls and boys bullied her. But she was too timid
to cry out aloud. There were two reasons for her
doing so, one, due to the unbearable pain she had to endure and secondly and more significantly, to
save these girls from punishment or scolding. Another memory was that she was scared of child
lifters.

"Whenever a kid gave me a thrashing, I would recall them. I would remember that my mother told
me that child lifters take away kids who beat up others. That was why I would never cry out, I would
only shed silent tears, thinking fearfully that they might be taken away by the child lifter." (Roy, 2021,
p. 57)

The feminist outlook of Rassundari Debi

This autobiography is noteworthy as a woman's literary endeavour to counter the patriarchal

restructuring of gender. It asserts a kind of silent resistance: This can be read as a production of
revolutionary practise, the topic of confrontations is, of course, a disturbing one.

After her marriage, her separation from her mother was unbearable to her. The feminist outlook of
Rassundari can be perceived from the question that she had asked her mother on her first visit to her
maternal house after her marriage where she referred to her husband as a "stranger". This shows
how different she was from the other girls of her time. When other girls accepted marriage as
destiny or as a normal stage of life, she did not do so. "Ma, why did you give me away to a stranger?"

It was quite rare on the part of a woman to refer to her husband as a stranger.

In the autobiography Rassundari Debi's feminist perspective is revealed through her narration of
different incidents and her comments. With a tint of innocence mixed with her strong sense of
individual identity she narrates as her father had died when she was very young she had not seen
him. So, during her childhood she used to think that she was her mother's daughter. In fact, from the
tone of her narration it can be understood that she was proud to be her mother's daughter. From a
study of the book, it can be observed that she never felt the need of a father figure during her
childhood. It can be inferred that her mother must have been a very strong and confident woman.
She must have been able to manage the family so well that Rassundari as a child never realised the
absence of her father. When later on Rassundari discovers that she also had a father, she becomes
disappointed. This point is remarkable as the autobiography reveals a girl child of the nineteenth
century who was mentally free from the dependence on man. Even in her narrations of her life after
her marriage she mentions her 'karta' (her husband) only a few times. Tharu and Lalita comments in
their book in the following way:

"A persistent, almost tenacious sense of her individual identity, one that she struggles to hold onto in
most adverse circumstances, is a striking feature of her narrative." (Tharu & Lalita, 1991, p. 190)

Her views on marriage and widowhood:

From her descriptions we get a glimpse of the life of a widow in the nineteenth century in the section
where she recounts her widowhood after her husband's death in 1869. She remarks: "Toward the
end of my life I have been widowed. I feel ashamed and hurt by the realization that even if a woman
has lived her life fully, has brought up her children and leaves behind her sons and daughters to carry
on, her widowhood is still considered a misfortune." Her statements prove that the way the society
treated widows had not improved regardless of the reform movements of the nineteenth-century.

The language of 'Amar Jiban':

Tanika Sarkar (Sarkar, 2007) comments that Rassundari's writing is 'Dispassionate and devoid of any
feminine sentiments ...". She praises Rassundar's skill of narrating various incidents, thoughts etc.
with the help of limited vocabulary. Her control over her emotions is also exceptional.
At the apparent level, the autobiography is written by and is about an ordinary housewife of the
nineteenth century. However, what makes it remarkable is the point of view of the author, the
rebellion and struggle at an individual level that is revealed through her comments in the work
though in understated ways.

Her views on women education:

Though she did not get the opportunity to receive formal education, she was wise to realise that
education is the only path following which one can attain sacred truth. So, she states that women
should not be deprived of education. From her autobiography and other contemporary writings we
can comprehend that this deprivation was intentionally continued by various social agencies by
encouraging some superstitious beliefs. In her autobiography, the author describes these
superstitions and attacks on women education. A superstition that was prevalent in the society
associated girl education with widowhood. The extremists opposing women education during her
time even warned that education of women would lead first to adultery and eventually, to murder of
the husbands. Pathetically, in the year 1838 when the second report on Women's education in
Bengal was being prepared, Rassasundari, who was twenty five by then, still had to nurture her
ambition to read behind closed doors.

Rassundari taught herself to read and write to "escape the grind of petty domesticity" and she asks:
"Just because I am a woman does it necessarily mean that trying to educate myself is a crime"? Thus
she critiques the attitude of the society of the nineteenth century towards women education.
It is significant to consider at this point the role of the male members of the society enlightened by
western education in bringing reforms in women's education. According Sutanuka Ghosh Roy,

"The British officials who came to India had two kinds of responsibility : firstly they had the 'white
man's burden' of educating the ignorant natives, and secondly, they shouldered the responsibility of
the man's burden' of emancipating native women". They considered native women to be'ignorant'
and 'impure'. Later on, the British educated and produced a class of native men "Bhadralok" who
assumed the role of social reformers and became involved in the 'white man's burden' of '
reorganising the Bengali society.' She further declares that

"There were heated deliberations among the bhadralok samaj regarding the extent to which the
women should be educated and allowed to participate in the public sphere of life." Though these
bhadraloks encouraged women education, they were not in favour of complete independence of
women. What they sought was that the women should be educated in such a way that they still
remain fully dependent on the male counterpart or the head of the family. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy
emphasises that,

"The bhadraloks stressed the need for strict adherenceto traditional responsibilities of a respectable
Bengali home, which was considered an important precondition for a women's literary training. As a
result, the bhadramahilas internalised the hegemonic concepts of the new womanhood while
writing."

Sutanuka Ghosh Roy precisely relates Michelle Foucault's definition of power that 'language and
knowing are closely linked to power'. (Roy, 2021). The knowledge of a woman enables her to use
language as a means to share her thoughts with others. Rassundari narrates her days full of drudgery
when she did not even have a morsel. Then abruptly she draws back her statement commenting that
such trivialities should not to be deliberated publicly.In another instance she says "It would have
been most shameful to refer to my eating in public,".

The style of the narrative:

According to Tanika Sarkar, there were two types of resources available to Rassumdari. (p 99)
According to her, one of these is the medieval or late -medieval mangalkavyas (verse narratives). And
the other type was Vaisnav hagiography, namely, Chaitanya Bhagavat and Chaitanya Charita.
Although none of these resources were autobiographic in nature, but we can perceive their influence
on the organisation of the book. She has divided the book into different small sections based on
specific 156 'Women's Writing themes. The style of her narrative is fast- flowing and vibrant.

The unique feature of Rassaundari's autobiography is

the intermingling of devotion (Bhakti) and self-assertion.

She has used the form of autobiography to express her

devotional thoughts. She used the medium of writing as a proof of her closeness to God as she
neither chooses to renounce her status of a housewife and mother nor aspires for any extraordinary
power or skills to prove it. Rassundari Debi's autobiography was approved by the

readers of her time because she conformed to the restrictions laid down by society on a woman.
When her writing was published, she had already played all the domestic roles of a wife, a daughter-
in-law, a mother, etc. associated with a woman. Moreover, as she was 'illiterate' (in the sense of
lacking formal education) she was not considered to be a threat to the male chauvinists. Another
noticeable feature is that her writing is full of apologies. She was careful enough not to trespass
traditional views and beliefs of the colonial nationalists. Her views were presented in the form of a
devotional pursuit. Rassaundari's writing is not marked by gendered attributes like emotionalism and
intuitiveness.

Rashsundari primarily discusses her concerns and fears, with the sole wish to be able to read
Chaitanya Bhagbat. Her romantic desires, conjugal life, or love are not discussed. When she
mentioned her body, she was talking about how her body adapted to the demands of the situation.
Her writing is modern because of her sexuality and her antagonism to the imposed reality.

There are no erotic elements or visual accounts, and there is no indication that a woman is speaking.

Regarding Rassundar's style, Tanika Sarkarobserves: "She underlines the distance and the difference
between the writing self and the written self." A reader reads an autobiography with the belief that
the experiences narrated therein are depiction of incidents precisely in the same way they occurred.
However, when the author wears the hat of a writer, a dual role of their 'self' one as the writer and
the other one, as the 'self' that underwent the experiences which are being narrated is required. The
'self' as writer presents the past life from her present perspective.

We can find this duality of the 'self' in Amar Jiban. She has depicted her life story with veracity and
impartiality. Rassundari was at the same time was a submissive homemaker and a woman who
forthrightly exposed the society that kept its women confined to the errands of the domestic life.
Women in the nineteenth century Indian society were the dwellers of the 'andarmahal' (insiders).
They were deprived of education and trained to be a devoted home maker instead. According to
Tanika Sarkar,

"Writing her autobiography helps her greatly to achieve self-actualization in the midst of the various
conflicts in her life. This brings us to an interesting aspect of an autobiography. It is a genre of writing
that occupies a sensitive area between the private and the public. Written obviously to be read by
the public, you find the author sharing things that she considers "private" and therefore not sharable
with the people around her!"

Conclusion:

In this chapter, the author has outlined the main facets of Rassundari Debi's autobiography. It
focuses on her 158 Women's Writing narration of her childhood, her views on the plight of the girls
and women of the nineteenth century as they were denied of education and their life was chained
by the petty but laborious domestic roles, and her opinion regarding marriage and widowhood. Also,
it reflects on the language and narrative style of a woman writer who was deprived of formal
education but who later on learned to read and write on her ownat the age of twenty five and who
eventually wrote an autobiography by the virtue of her sincere devotion and consistent efforts.