Toru Dutt and International Women’s Day

GJV Prasad

I began writing this column on March 4, the birthday of one of our most interesting writers, and completed it on March 8, the International Women’s Day. The writer is Toru Dutt, who was born in 1856, nearly a century after the Battle of Plassey (1757) that helped establish the East India Company rule, a year before the First War of Indian Independence, and two years before the resultant British Raj. These dates are important because Toru Dutt was born into a family that was swept up by the historical changes, by the challenges to their old way of life.

The Dutt family was a well-established orthodox Hindu family but Toru Dutt’s paternal grandfather was one of the early advocates of English education. Her father, Govin Chunder Dutt, worked for the English government, but more importantly, he converted with his entire family to Christianity in 1862, when Toru was a young child. Her mother, Kshetramoni Mitter, was a reluctant convert but became a practising Christian later. The children heard stories from Hindu epics and Puranas from her.

Toru Dutt’s father was a poet and a polyglot. He encouraged Toru, his third child, to learn French, English and Sanskrit. The family went to France in 1869 and to England in 1870. Toru and her sister Aru continued to learn French and attended Cambridge University. They returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1873. Aru died in 1874, by which time Toru had begun to publish in magazines. Her remarkable collection, ‘A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields’, was published in 1876. This brought her to the notice of critics and because Edmund Gosse praised it, it was published by Kegan Paul later. The volume is one of the translations from French (and one poem from German but through French). The collection showcases not only Toru Dutt’s reading in French and her skill in translating poetry in English, it also testifies to her self-confidence as a critic; her notes are a treat to read. She has only one original poem in the volume (and of the 165 poems, eight are translated by her sister), and this fact highlights why she is such an interesting figure for us. Toru Dutt was a pioneer in both Francophone and Anglophone Indian writing! But these were translations, you may mutter, and eight of them by her sister!

Toru Dutt died on August 30, 1877. She was 21. Among the unpublished manuscripts she left behind were two novels, ‘Bianca’, or ‘Young Spanish Maiden’ (written in English), and ‘Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers’ (written in French). While her father had ‘Bianca’ published in 1878, he had ‘Le Journal’ published in 1879. ‘Le Journal’ was published in France by Didier.

Toru Dutt is the quintessential postcolonial writer, pulled towards the West, converted to and practising a religion different from the majority in her land, feeling alienated in both the land she goes to (and returns from) and the land she was born in. She suffers from a sense of decontextualisation. It was this feeling that the father also had, or perhaps he was giving into the feeling of nationalism that was stirring in Bengal, for he encouraged Toru to study Sanskrit once they were back in Calcutta. This resulted in another posthumous publication, ‘Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan’ (1882).

Toru Dutt was perhaps the first Indian woman to write a novel in English. She was also perhaps the first Indian woman to write a novel in French. They may not be masterpieces, they may not have had the same impact as her poems (and letters), but they make for interesting reading. Both show literary influences, both seem amateurish. Both also show her yearning for a freer life, one that could allow her personal choices, one with possibility of love. These are romances written by a young girl/woman caught in the mesh of colonialism and change, in a life of ideas that didn’t speak to her reality.

As we look around today, we see many such young women in our country still. May things change, and our wishes for Happy Women’s Day come true every day.

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