সংসার রঙ্গ : রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর ও মৃণালিনী দেবীর পারিবারিক জীবন/ The rollercoaster ride of Sansara : Rabindranath Tagore and Mrinalini Debi’s conjugal life

Abstract

The nineteenth century in Bengal marked an important juncture in the history of India as far as women’s question was concerned. Both the British rulers as well as Indian reformers took up the cause of women’s improvement within the circles of society and family as a register of justification of colonial rule and reform efforts. The British claimed that it was them who were able to protect Indian women. This was because Indian men, particularly Bengali men were effeminate and quarrelsome without any manly prowess. On the other hand the Indian reformers, exclusively male, believed that real societal progress could be made if the condition of women be improved. In this the women themselves were absolutely passive as they lacked the ability to alter or improve their status. 

           Jorasanko Thakurbari, one of the most important cultural hubs of colonial Calcutta pioneered such reforms. The male members of the family often married uneducated young girls from villages of East Bengal and nurtured them later to turn them into sophisticated life companions. But there were instances even within the family of wives turning into sophisticated ladies with their own efforts. Or if we reconstruct this – the husband did not expect his wife to progress or change more than he had expected. I take up this question in the present essay by citing the example of Mrinalini Debi, wife of Rabindranath Tagore. She came as a child wife to Jorasako, an unsuspecting wife of a talented poet from a village in Jessore. She was not helped much by her husband in her studies and transformation. She was absolutely out of the mainstream reform project. Yet by her own efforts and tenacity she restructured herself into a mature and sophisticated woman. 

           In explaining this transformation, I attempt to underline the subjectivity of women within a colonial set up which both the British as well as the male reformers tried to suppress.