'Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay' book review: A well-researched biography that looks at lesser-known aspects
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay got the first shock of her life when her father, Dhareshwar Ananthya, a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin, suddenly passed away. She was only seven. The second shock was learning that because her father had not left a will behind, the vast property went to a stepbrother.
“I woke up from a daze,” wrote Kamaladevi. “This was what mother had been alerting me about. Women had no rights and we should qualify to stake our claims and assert them. This question was not of possessions but of principle.”
Worried about her daughter’s future, her mother Girijabai arranged for her, at the age of 11, to get married. The groom was the son of one of Mangalore’s wealthiest men. A few years older to Kamaladevi, the boy died about a year after their marriage. Now, she had become a child widow and was expected to remain one for the rest of her life. In her book The Awakening of Indian Women (1939), Kamaladevi wrote, “Widows were souls in agony. They were relegated to a life of servility with scant regard for their feelings or needs. They are even regarded as objects of ill-omen.”
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom by historian Nico Slate sheds light on how she rose above all odds to become a noteworthy individual who helped shape India as we see it today. It chronicles how she handled a massive refugee rehabilitation programme following the Partition. She was the force behind the renaissance of handicrafts all over the country. She also set up several cultural institutions including the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the National School of Drama and the Crafts Council of India.
Kamaladevi was a driving force in the Independence movement. She was close to Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. This proximity allowed her to even stand up to Gandhi. On finding out that women weren’t part of his famed Dandi March, she confronted and told him, “The significance of a non-violent struggle is that the weakest can take an equal part with the strongest and share in the triumph.” Gandhi had no option but to permit women to take part.
Slate touches upon her relationship with Congress leader Sardar Patel. About her visit to Patel’s home at Bardoli (35 kms from Surat), where he took her around his garden and orchard, she wrote, “Here was a person other than the renowned ‘Iron Man’ handling seedlings with incredible sensitivity and with a rare soft light in his usual stern eyes.” The author also tackles the rumours of whether Kamaladevi had a romantic relationship with Nehru. He notes that there was nothing to show that there was a physical connection. The tenderness with which she wrote about Nehru was perhaps the reason for gossip. Sample this: “Those delicately shaped hands, the exquisitely chiselled feet, all so eloquent of a dream-laden soul, are today masked by the hard relentless marks of terrible struggle, which he so characteristically embodies in himself as the representative of a nation in the throes of a fierce battle.”
Slate, a Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, US, has brought out this book that provides an in-depth look at this magnificent personality. The third book in the ‘Indian Lives’ series, it has been edited by historian and writer Ramachandra Guha. In the foreword, he sums up aptly why documenting Kamaladevi’s life was imperative. “Perhaps only Rabindranath Tagore matched Kamaladevi in the range of multiple careers she led and the diverse social worlds she enriched.”
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom
By: Nico Slate
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 365
Price: Rs 799