CHENNAI: For the new mothers and seasoned ones alike of the 1860s, searching for tips and tricks on parenting, Anna Satthianadhan’s assuring prose flew to their rescue. In her book Nalla Thay or ‘The Good Mother’, Anna penned eight letters in simple Tamil addressed to her “dear sisters”, across the state. This slim book — which made Anna the first woman to publish her writings in Tamil — was peppered with similes, and short stories to highlight the importance of bringing up children with good “Christian values.”
Much like philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft who campaigned for girls’ education, Anna, too, went on to set up several schools for caste Hindu girls including in Chintadripet, Komaleeswaranpet, and Poonamallee. Her memory remains immortalised in the form of a tablet in the Zion Church in Chintadripet. Dubbed “the beloved wife of WT Satthianadhan”, on the tablet, Anna is so much more, as author and researcher Nivedita Louis explained during her recent lecture ‘Christian Women’s Contribution to the Print Industry in 19th century Madras’ at the Press Institute of India.
Of print & pioneering women
Let’s re-wind. The first published works in Tamil can be traced to the 1500s and are irrevocably tied to missionary work. The first record was the Romanised Tamil in the religious text of Cartilha em lingoa Tamul e Portugues, put together by the fisher community in Thoothukudi. This was later followed by the Catholic catechism Tambiran Vanakkam during the same period and then, the Tamil Portuguese dictionary in 1679.
Throwing the question of where were the women in the publishing world, Nivedita shares that the first tract in Tamil was by a woman aka Gnanadeebum Ammal, who translated Pike’s Early Piety. The advent of print publishing ushered a route for women to begin writing and publishing.
Oral history and personal writing aside, Anna remains the first to publish her writing. In her works, “Anna also writes about why she wants to remain rooted. She writes about Tamil men who (says) dress like European men but don’t think someone who doesn’t is lesser than them…She quotes the Kural — she was someone who read extensively,” says Nivedita. Anna’s daughters-in-law, Krupabai and Kamala, also have left a mark. Krupabai was the first woman English autobiographical novelist of India and Kamala was the first woman publisher of an English woman’s magazine of the country.
Anna’s contemporary Tabitha Bauboo is credited with publishing, Amritha Vachani, an “illustrated magazine for Hindu females”. She did voluntary service for 23 years at her husband Bauboo’s school. Black Town still holds the whisper of a memory of a printing press, Sathiadeepam Press, started by Tabitha and Bauboo. Amirtha Vachani was also printed in the same press at Black Town, and now copies of this magazine may be lying somewhere abroad, out of reach.
Retracing their steps
So, what did Anna and Tabitha have in common? “They stressed education for women, found an arena to read and write, took careful notes and built a strong generation, and were non-conforming of gender norms those days,” explains Nivedita. Both of these women have not made it to the mainstream and most of the city has not yet learned about these two trailblazers, as often, history is recorded by men.
“Men normally mention women in a single line or a single word and move on. It is for us to go deep and see what the women did. They did not have any contemporaries or frontrunners to look up to, they were charting their territory. It is for us to retrace them,” Nivedita says, adding that retracing the works of these women is what makes this author tick. After all who has heard of Meera Narayanan who was India’s first woman sound engineer? Nivedita recalls reaching out to Meera’s relatives, sifting through boxes in the attic of her ancestral home, and piecing together who the woman was through mere dusty photographs.
Nowadays, there is a narrative that women are being given so much freedom, points out Nivedita. “But then there is another section that says women are not supposed to do this or that. It is a neo-Hindutva thing that is cropping up, trying to say that we were so progressive in those days and now there is no point in regressing,” adds Nivedita. She asks a pertinent question: When women write history, who reads it?
As the author wraps up her presentation, the audience is left with ‘If this country has to prosper, it has to be ruled by its women and not the men’, as Anna’s daughter Annie Clarke wrote in the preface of
Nalla Thay.