women's rights

Black Friday

Date: 
18 Nov 1910
Event location: 

House of Commons, Westminster

About: 

Emmeline Pankhurst, Sophia Duleep Singh and other suffragettes were part of a procession to the House of Commons to protest that a limited suffrage bill had been stalled in parliament. Police clashed with the procession and 120 women were arrested. [See individual entries for more information]

Tags for Making Britain: 

Millicent Fawcett

About: 

Millicent Fawcett was a prominent feminist and suffragist. She was married to Henry Fawcett, Liberal MP who often voiced Indian concerns in Parliament and was a member of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress.

In July 1867, Millicent Fawcett was asked to join the executive committee of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and was one of the speakers at its first public meeting two years later. In 1874 she joined the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage, which merged into the new Central Committee for Women's Suffrage in 1877. In 1896 she was asked to preside over the joint meetings of the suffrage societies, which resulted in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She was President of the NUWSS from 1907 to 1919.

Through her prominent suffragist role, Fawcett met Indian women such as Sophia Duleep Singh and Mithan Lam. During the First World War, she became involved in the issue of women's social, political and educational status in India, an area in which she had become interested through her husband and retained after the conflict came to an end.

Date of birth: 
11 Jun 1847
Connections: 

Syed Ameer Ali, Mithan J. Lam, Emmeline Pankhurst, Sophia Duleep Singh, Cornelia Sorabji

National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies

Contributions to periodicals: 

Englishwoman

Mother's Companion

Secondary works: 

Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999)

Holton, Sandra Stanley, ‘National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (act. 1896–1918)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/96378]

Howarth, Janet, 'Fawcett, Dame Millicent Garrett (1847–1929)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33096]

Rubinstein, David, A Different World for Women: The Life of Millicent Garrett Fawcett (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991)

Strachey, Ray, Millicent Garrett Fawcett (London: John Murray, 1931)

Archive source: 

The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, London

City of birth: 
Suffolk
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Date of death: 
05 Aug 1929
Location of death: 
London, England
Tags for Making Britain: 

Emmeline Pankhurst

About: 

Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the foremost suffragettes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century period in Britain, whose tireless campaigning in the face of family tragedy, police brutality and failing personal health has made her an icon of British politics. She was born on either 14 or 15 July 1858 (see Purvis p. 9 for discussion of this matter).

Emmeline married the barrister and political activist Richard Pankhurst in 1879. The Pankhursts were close friends of Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party. They were also early members of the Fabian Society following their move to London in 1886. In the spring of 1900 (two years after Richard’s death), Pankhurst left the Fabian Society on account of its refusal to oppose the Boer War, which she interpreted as an act of imperial aggression.

Visitors to the Pankhursts' Russell Square home in the 1880s included Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian to become an MP. Later Indian connections included Emmeline’s work with the prominent suffragettes Princesses Sophia and Catherine Duleep Singh, daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh (last Maharaja of the Sikh empire in Punjab) and his first wife Bamba Müller. Sophia was also the god-daughter of Queen Victoria, and marched with Pankhurst to Parliament on 'Black Friday' in 1910.

During the First World War, opposing two of her daughters, Sylvia and Adela, Pankhurst campaigned with her eldest daughter Christabel for the war effort. In 1916 and again in 1920, Pankhurst addressed the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, a Canadian society initially founded in 1900 to promote patriotism for those leaving to fight in South Africa. In 1920 Pankhurst spoke of the need for women to be loyal to the Empire in order to aid recovery in the aftermath of the war. By 1925, Pankhurst espoused a ‘maternal, imperial feminism that gave high priority to women’s role in raising the moral tone of the nation and Empire’ (Purvis, p. 338).

Emmeline Pankhurst unsuccessfully stood as Conservative candidate for Whitechapel and St George’s in 1926. The Conservative Party was then under the leadership of Stanley Baldwin, for whom Pankhurst proposed a vote of thanks at a large Conservative Party meeting in the Albert Hall, London. The revelation in the press that her estranged daughter Sylvia had had a child out of wedlock horrified Emmeline, and curtailed her campaign. She died two years later, the same year as equal voting rights were extended to women in Britain.

Published works: 

My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1914)

Date of birth: 
14 Jul 1858
Connections: 

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Stanley Baldwin, Lord Curzon, Charlotte Despard, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mohandas K. Gandhi, David Lloyd George, Keir HardieDadabhai Naoroji, Sylvia Pankhurst, Catherine Duleep Singh, Sophia Duleep Singh.

Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, Independent Labour Party (joined 1893, left in 1903 on account of the hall dedicated to her husband not admitting women), Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage (joined 1880), Women’s Franchise League, Women’s Liberal Association (left 1893), Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

Contributions to periodicals: 

The Suffragette (aka Britannia)

Votes for Women

Secondary works: 

Bartley, Paula, Emmeline Pankhurst (London: Routledge, 2002)

Chaudhuri, Nupur, and Strobel, Margaret, (eds.), Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and resistance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992)

Grewal, Inderpal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (London: Leicester University Press, 1996)

MacKenzie, Norman and Jeanne, The Fabians (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977)

Pankhurst, Christabel, Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the vote (London: Hutchinson, 1959)

Pankhurst, E[stelle] Sylvia, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst: The Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Citizenship (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1935)

Pankhurst, E[stelle] Sylvia, India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: Sunshine Publishing House, 1926)

Purvis, Jane and Holton, Sandra Stanley (eds), Votes for Women (London: Routledge, 2000)

Purvis, Jane, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002)

Archive source: 

Letters and papers, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam

Manuscripts, Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London

Correspondence with the Independent Labour Party, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics

Correspondence, Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, London

Letters to C. P. Scott, John Rylands University Library of Manchester

Correspondence with Adelaide Johnson, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

City of birth: 
Hulme, Lancashire
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Emmeline Goulden

Date of death: 
14 Jun 1928
Location of death: 
London
Tags for Making Britain: 

Charlotte Despard

About: 

Charlotte Despard had a long and varied career in public life. In 1870, Charlotte French married Maximilian Carden Despard, an Anglo-Irish businessman who had worked in the Far East. Despard travelled with her husband to India and other Asian countries and wrote novels until his death in 1890.

Despard was very religious, and turned from her converted Roman Catholic background to Theosophy in 1899. She became a vegetarian and was Vice-President of the London Vegetarian Society in 1931. She was a member of the Executive Board of the World Congress of Faiths in the 1930s.

Despard became a Poor Law Guardian in Lambeth, London, in 1894. She was known to wear simple black clothing and sandals. She was a leading member of the suffragette movement in Britain, as a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1907, the suffragette movement split over methodology and Despard then presided over the Women's Freedom League. She was heavily involved in the Women's Tax Resistance League. Sophia Duleep Singh was also a prominent female tax resister. In 1909 Despard met Mohandas Gandhi in London in relation to her work with the WFL. 

In 1918, Despard stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate when women over 30 were given the vote. Despard had shown her sympathies for the Irish Home Rule League, and despite her socialist-pacifist leanings, became involved with Sinn Fein. Her involvement with Sinn Fein was a blow to her brother, John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1921, Despard moved to Ireland and shared a house with Maud Gonne. She continued to travel to London and Europe, but died in Ireland in 1939.

Published works: 

Economic Aspects of Woman's Suffrage (London: King, 1908)

Jonas Sylvester (London: Sonnenschein and Co., 1886)

Collins, Mabel and Despard, Charlotte, Outlawed: A Novel on the Suffrage Question (London: Drame, 1908)

The Rajah's Heir. A Novel (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1890)

Theosophy and the Women's Movement (London: Theosophical Society, 1913)

Date of birth: 
15 Jun 1844
Connections: 

Annie Besant, Mohandas Gandhi, Maud Gonne, Keir Hardie, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Sarojini Naidu, Emmeline Pankhurst, Sophia Duleep Singh.

Sinn Fein, Women's Freedom League, Women's Social and Political Union, Women's Tax Resistance League

Contributions to periodicals: 

The Herald of the Star

The Vote: The Organ of the Women's Freedom League

Secondary works: 

Dixon, Joy, The Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001)

Hunt, James D., 'Suffragettes and Satyagraha: Gandhi and the British Women's Suffrage Movement', presented to Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion at St Louis, Missouri, 29 October 1976

Linklater, Andro, Charlotte Despard: Suffragette, Socialist and Sinn Feiner (London: Hutchinson, 1980)

Mulvihill, Margaret, Charlotte Despard (London: Pandora, 1989)

Mulvihill, Margaret, ‘Despard, Charlotte (1844–1939)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37356]

Archive source: 

Letters, diaries and papers, The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, London

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast

Minutes of the Lambeth Board of Guardians, London Metropolitan Archives

City of birth: 
Kent
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Charlotte French

Date of death: 
10 Nov 1939
Location of death: 
Whitehead, near Belfast
Tags for Making Britain: 

Sankaran Nair

About: 

Sankaran Nair was a lawyer who became a Judge in the Madras High Court in 1908. He played an active role in the Indian National Congress and served as their president in 1897. He founded and edited The Madras Review and The Madras Law Journal. In 1915, he became a member of the India Council.

Sankaran Nair visited Britain in 1920 as part of the Indian deputation to the Southborough Committee on Indian franchise. He had travelled with Herabai Tata and Mithan Lam to put forward the case for female suffreage in India. He served as councillor to the Secretary of State for India in London 1920-1. During his time in Britain he gave a number of addresses and was involved in a campaign for a residential club for Indian female students in London.

Sankaran Nair continued to pursue an active political career when he returned to India. In 1922 he wrote Gandhi and Anarchy which criticized Gandhi's noncooperation movement but also criticized Michael O'Dwyer and British suppression. He was chair of the All-India Committee which met with the Simon Commission in 1928-9.

Published works: 

Gandhi and Anarchy (Indore: Holkar State Printing Press, 1922)

Autobiography (Madras: M. Nair, 1966)

Date of birth: 
11 Jul 1857
Connections: 

G. K. Chettur (nephew), Mithan J. Lam, Herabai Tata.

Britain and India Association

Reviews: 

Britain and India Journal (mentions Nair's activities in Britain in 1920)

City of birth: 
Kerala
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Chettur Sankaran Nair

Date of death: 
24 Apr 1934
Location of death: 
Madras, India
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1920
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1920-1

Tags for Making Britain: 

Rukhmabai

About: 

Born in 1864, Rukhmabai was married at 11 years to Dadaji Bhikaji, then aged nineteen. When her in-laws insisted that she move into the marital home some years later, Rukhmabai refused and the case was brought to court. The case came to the attention of the British press as the issue of child marriage and the rights of women were brought to the fore. Although the case went in Rukhmabai's favour, an appeal went in Dadaji's favour.

A fund was raised for Rukhmabai to travel to England to study medicine. In 1889, she arrived in England. She enrolled in the London School of Medicine and qualified as a doctor in 1894 (having also studied at the Royal Free Hospital). She then returned to India and worked as the Medical Officer for Women in Surat for twenty two years and then in Rajkot for twelve years.

Published works: 

'Indian Child Marriage (an Appeal to the British Government)', New Review, 16 (Sept. 1890), pp. 263-9

'Purdah - the Need for its Abolition', in Mithan Choksi and Evelyn Gedge (eds) Women in Modern India (Fifteen Papers by Indian Women Writers) (Bombay: D. B. Taraporewala & Co., 1929)

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1864
Connections: 

Harvey Carlisle (wrote to The Times with Rukhmabai's letter in 1887), B. M. Malabari, Louisa Martindale (classmate at London School of Medicine), Sir Monier Williams (wrote to the press in relation to her case), Dr Edith Pechey Phipson (championed Rukhmabai in Bombay and helped raise funds for her to study in UK), Eve McLaren, Pandita Ramabai, Cornelia Sorabji.

Contributions to periodicals: 

'Letter to editor', The Times (9 April 1887)

Notice', The Times (15 May 1894)

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Secondary works: 

Burton, Antoinette, 'From Child Bride to "Hindoo Lady": Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain', The American Historical Review 103.4 (October 1998), pp. 1119-46

Chandra, Sudhir, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women's Rights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

de Souza, Eunice and Pereira, Lindsay (eds), Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Archive source: 

The Times, 1887

City of birth: 
Bombay
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Mumbai
Current name country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Rukhmabhai

Location

London School of Medicine for Women NW3 2QG
United Kingdom
51° 33' 48.6144" N, 0° 11' 2.2236" W
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1955
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Location of death: 
Bombay, India
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1889-94

Behramji Malabari

About: 

Behramji Malabari was a Parsee journalist and writer. He was an advocate of women's social reform in India an a champion of women's suffrage in India. He met Mary Carpenter on one of her visits to India in 1875 and dedicated The Indian Muse in English Garb, published in 1876, to her. In 1880, he became editor of the Indian Spectator.

Malabari became known in Britain for his role in promoting women's rights, particularly those of the Hindu widow. On the case of Rukhmabai of 1885, a child bride ordered to live with her husband, Malabari wrote not only editorials in his own paper, but also letters to the editors of The Times. Florence Nightingale and Max Müller both became interested in the case and wrote commentary on it. Malabari's reforming role played a part in the passing of the 1891 Age of Consent Act in India.

In 1890, Malabari travelled to Britain. His journey and observations of British life were recorded in 1893 in The Indian Eye on English Life; or, Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer. The third edition, published in India in 1895, included a chapter that was not present in the British edition, on 'Sex', or women's rights.

Published works: 

The Indian Muse in English Garb (Bombay: Reporters Press, 1876)

Gujarat and the Gujaratis (London:  W. H. Allen & Co., 1882)

Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India: Being a collection of opinions for and against received by B. M. Malabari from representative Hindu gentlemen and officials and other authorities (Bombay: Voice of India Printing Press, 1887)

An Appeal from the Daughters of India (London: Farmer & Sons, 1890)

The Indian Eye on English Life; or, Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1893)

India in 1897 (London: A. J. Combridge, 1898)

Bombay in the Making: being mainly a history of the origin and growth of judicial institutions in the western Presidency, 1661-1726, with an introduction by George Sydenham Clarke (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910)

Example: 

Malabari, The Indian Eye on English Life; or, Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1893), Ch.2

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1853
Content: 

This is a travelogue of Malabari's visit to Britain in 1890. This chapter deals with his arrival at Dover and journey to London.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Indian Magazine and Review ('Three Hours with Miss Carpenter in Bombay', 91, July 1878)

The Times (letter to the editor, 22 August 1890)

 

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Reviews: 

Asiatic Review, October 1896 (review of Karkaria's biography)

Extract: 

What strikes an Asiatic  most, on getting out at Victoria Station, is the noise and bustle around him. Every man and woman - one might say every animal, and even some of the inanimate objects - seem to be full of life. The streets and thoroughfares of London present a sight in this respect, which it is almost impossible for the stranger to realize save his own eyes. I happen to have read a good deal about this, but what I actually see here exceeds my anticipation.

Secondary works: 

Burton, Antoinette, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)

Burton, Antoinette, 'From Child Bride to "Hindoo Lady": Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain', The American Historical Review,103.4 (October 1998), pp. 1119-46

Burton, Antoinette, 'Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siècle London', History Workshop Journal 42 (1996) ,pp . 127-46

Codell, Julie F., 'Reversing the Grand Tour: Guest Discourse in Indian Travel Narratives', Huntington Library Quarterly 70.1 (2007), pp. 173-89

Gidumal, Dayarum, Behramji M. Malabari: A Biographical Sketch, with an introduction by Florence Nightingale (London: T. Unwin, 1892)

Karkaria, R. P., India Forty Years of Progress and Reform. Being a Sketch of the Lfe and Times of Behramji M. Malabari (London: Henry Frowde, 1896)

Innes, C. L., A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Singh, Jogendra, B. M. Malabari: Rambles with a Pilgrim Reformer, with an introduction by Sir Valentine Chirol (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)

Relevance: 

Malabari's account gives an example of a South Asian view of London in the 1890s. He reveals the curiosities of London to foreign eyes. The account is almost anthropological in tone, thus demonstrating the agency and confidence Malabari feels in commenting on Britain.

City of birth: 
Baroda
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Vadodara, Gujarat
Current name country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Behramji Merwanji Malabari

Phiroze B. M. Malabari

Date of death: 
01 Jan 1912
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1890
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y

Avabai Wadia

About: 

Of an elite Parsee background, Avabai Wadia arrived in Britain aged 14, accompanied by her mother and to join her brother. She attended Brondesbury and Kilburn High School in London where she was the only South Asian pupil. She excelled at school and went on to train as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, becoming the first Ceylonese woman to pass the Bar exams. As a direct consequence of her success, the Law College in Colombo opened its doors to women. She was called to the Bar in 1934 and eventually found a chambers willing to take on a South Asian woman. Committed to women’s rights, Wadia was an active member of a number of women’s organizations in Britain. She was also involved with the Labour Party and the Indian nationalist movement in Britain. On her return to India, she pioneered the family planning movement.

Published works: 

The Light is Ours: Memoirs and Movements (International Planned Parenthood Federation, 2001)

Example: 

Wadia, Avabai, The Light is Ours: Memoirs and Movements (International Planned Parenthood Federation, 2001), pp. 31, 34-5

Date of birth: 
18 Sep 1913
Content: 

In The Light is Ours, Wadia documents her stay in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Her account includes description of her experience of being the only South Asian pupil at a London school, her life as a law student, and her involvement in a number of women’s and Indian nationalist organizations where she encountered a wide range of socially and politically active men and women, both South Asian and Britain.

Connections: 

Annie Besant, Spitam Cama, Charlotte Despard, Pearl Fernando, M. K. Gandhi, Agatha Harrison, Elizabeth Knight, J. Krishnamurthi, Emily Lutyens, K. P. Mehta, Krishna Menon, Herbert Morrison, Sarojini Naidu, Rameshwari Nehru, H. S. L. Polak, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, Devika Rani, Uday Shankar, George Bernard Shaw, Dorab Tata, Meherbai Tata, Florence Underwood, Monica Whately.

Extract: 

Indians in England in the 1920s and 1930s lived in a totally different milieu from that of today. They were a tiny minority, and were in England as professional or business people, with or without families, or as students, and all faced overt and covert discrimination. We were singular, and singled out – favourably occasionally, but usually as the inferior subjects of a grand empire. This did not mean that we could not lead good lives and have friends for, in spite of an imperial consciousness and ineradicable colour bar, on a personal basis people were friendly and helpful. They were seldom rough, but a barrier between white and brown skins was maintained and caused harm at times. The discrimination was a given, not to be questioned.

...

My mother, as a good psychologist, decided I would wear sarees to school. This gave me an advantage as my difference from the other girls was then not merely in skin colour but in totality, and to be an individual won a kind of respect…Comments such as “How is it your finger nails are pink just like ours?” showed racial ignorance or prejudice, but there was never unkindness. I was the only Indian among hundreds of girls, although there was one other whose father was Indian, but she had been born and bred in London and counted as English. I had a small distinction all my own, for I spoke and wrote English like the best of the others, and my French teacher said I had the best French accent!

Secondary works: 

Fisher, Michael H., Lahiri, Shompa and Thandi, Shinder S., A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-Continent (Oxford and Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007)

Relevance: 

Wadia’s memoirs are of interest for the account they give of the reception and treatment of South Asians in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. It is important, however, to bear in mind that she is of an elite background and was probably treated comparatively well by the British as a consequence. The second extract gives evidence of an interesting assertion of cultural difference on the part of Wadia’s mother, as well as of a migrant attempting to compensate for their minority status through academic achievement in this early period.

Involved in events: 

All-India Women’s Conference

British Commonwealth League conferences

Celebration of Gandhi’s 62nd birthday (Women’s Indian Association)

Concerts at the Albert Hall, the Queen’s Hall and the Covent Garden Opera House

Dinner held at the Minerva Club to celebrate 89th birthday of Charlotte Despard, 1933

League of Nations, 1935

Meetings and festivities at Zoroastrian House, Kensington

Performances by the dancer Uday Shankar at the Arts Theatre Club

City of birth: 
Colombo
Country of birth: 
Ceylon
Current name country of birth: 
Sri Lanka
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
05 May 1928
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1928-38

Dhanvanthi Rama Rau

About: 

Dhanvanthi Rama Rau was born into a Kashmiri Brahmin family in the south-west of India. She attended Presidency College in Madras, graduating in 1917 with an honours degree and the Griggs Gold Medal in English, and progressing to an Assistant Professorship at Queen Mary’s College, Madras. She first arrived in England in 1929, when her husband Benegal Rama Rau, Financial Advisor to the Simon Commission, was asked to travel to England with the other members of the Commission for the writing of their report. Their daughters, Premila and Santha, then aged 9 and 6, travelled with them and became the first Indians to attend the Hall School in Weybridge. Initially the family lived at Oatlands Park Hotel in Weybridge, before moving to a flat in London when their daughters started to board at school. In her memoirs, Rama Rau describes the racism she experienced in 1930s England, and their struggles to secure a flat for this reason. The family were, however, in part protected by their social status and wealth which allowed them to travel throughout Europe when based in Britain.

In her memoirs, Rama Rau describes her work for organizations campaigning for Indian independence, which took her throughout Britain, as well as for a variety of women’s organizations. In 1932, with a group of Indian women based in London at the time, including Sarojini Naidu, she attended the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship in Berlin, leading the Indian delegation at the behest of Naidu. She continued to work for the Alliance and writes in her memoirs that the meetings gave her her ‘first experience of dealing with international work for women’s rights’ (p. 180). She also founded the Women’s Indian Association, an organization that aimed to provide links between Indian women in Britain and British women interested in India with Indian women in India. She was awarded the Kaisir-i-Hind gold medal by the British Government for her work with women’s associations.

In 1938, Rama Rau’s husband, by then Deputy High Commissioner for India, was called to South Africa by the High Commission. She followed him there, leaving her daughters in the care of a Jewish lodger, Lilian Ulanowsky. War broke out while all of the family were in South Africa the following year, and it was this that triggered their return to India.

Finally settled in Bombay in 1941, Rama Rau immersed herself again in social welfare activities, joining several women’s organizations, including the All-India Women’s Conference of which she was elected President in 1946. The squalid conditions of the Bombay slums led Rama Rau to establish the Family Planning Association of India of which she became President. She also served as President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Published works: 

An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (London: Heinemann, 1977)

Example: 

An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp. 170-1

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1893
Content: 

This is Dhanvanthi Rama Rau’s autobiography in which she describes her stay in England.

Connections: 

Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu, Motilal Nehru, Sylvia Pankhurst, Mrs Pethick-Lawrence, Santha Rama Rau, Eleanor Rathbone.

All-India Women’s Conference, British Commonwealth League, Family Planning Association of India, International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Townswomen’s Guilds, Women Citizens Associations, Women’s Indian Association.

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Extract: 

I was comparatively young, excitable when slighted, somewhat rash and certainly courageous enough to face so important a person as Eleanor Rathbone in the chair, and women in the audience like Sylvia Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick-Lawrence, stalwarts of the exceedingly controversial suffragette movement. I asked for permission to speak, and was graciously allowed five minutes. I did not speak on any of the subjects on the agenda, but merely disputed the right of British women to arrange a conference on Indian social evils in London, when all the speakers were British and many of them had never even visited India. Not one of them had even asked if there were any Indian women’s organizations that were dealing with the problems on the spot, the same problems that British women were exploring from the great and deceptive distance of fifteen thousand miles. I added that, even though we had offered to help with the conference when arrangements were being made, our offer had been ignored. I told them that educated Indian women were working in every province of their country to eradicate social evils and outmoded customs and prejudices, and we refused to accept the assertion that the removal of social evils in Indian society was the responsibility of the British. We were already assuming the responsibility ourselves, and we were sure we could be more successful than outsiders, especially those who were ignorant of the cultural patterns of our social groups and therefore could not be as effective as our own social reformers.

Secondary works: 

Burton, Antoinette, The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007)

Relevance: 

Here, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau describes her uninvited participation in a ‘Conference on Indian Social Evils’ called by the MP Eleanor Rathbone. The passage provides a fascinating historical example of western ‘feminist’ constructions of South Asian women as passive and in need of ‘saving’ from cultural and patriarchal constraints. Rama Rau’s intervention here can be read as an act of political resistance against colonialist forms of feminism. Her assertive behaviour offers a glimpse of the ways in which female South Asian subjects might have impacted on British cultural and political life in this early period of migration.

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Hubli
Country of birth: 
India

Location

Oatlands Park Hotel
Oatlands Drive Surrey
Weybridge, KT13 9HB
United Kingdom
51° 22' 39.4608" N, 0° 26' 6.0576" W
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1987
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1929
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1929-30, 1930-4

Mithan J Lam

About: 

Mithan Lam was the daughter of Ardeshir and Herabai Tata. Born in 1898, her father was a manager of a textile mill and had been to Lancashire in 1913 to learn new ideas about the cotton industry. In 1911, on a holiday in Kashmir, Herabai and Mithan met Sophia Duleep Singh, who told them about the suffrage movement in Britain and inspired Herabai to become involved in women's rights.

Mithan was awarded a first class degree in economics from Elphinstone College, Bombay, winning a medal for the highest marks. Through her mother's connections, who was Honorary Secretary of the Women's Indian Association in Bombay, they were invited to go to Britain in 1919 to give evidence to a Royal Commission on Indian Reforms chaired by Lord Southborough.

Mithan spoke to MPs in the House of Commons and at public meetings in London on the issue of female suffrage in India. She then decided to stay on in England, enrolling on a Masters Course at the LSE in October 1919. Her mother remained in England to look after her. In 1920 the Inns of Court were opened for women and Mithan joined Lincoln's Inn in April 1920. She was one of the first ten women to be called to the Bar in 1923.

Upon her return to Bombay in December 1923, Mithan enrolled in the Bombay High Court and became active in womens' organizations and reform. She edited Stri Dharma, the journal of the All India Women's Conference, for five years. She married Jamshed Shorab Lam in 1933. 

Example: 

Mss Eur F341/147, manuscript memoir 'Autumn Leaves', Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras, chapter VII.

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1898
Content: 

On work for deputation to Southborough Committee in 1919. On the leaders of the British Women's Suffrage movement - Mrs Despard, Mrs Ogilvie Gordon, Mrs Millicent Fawcett and Mrs Corbett-Ashby.

Connections: 

Annie Besant (through Theosophical Society in India and then through women's rights), Madame Cama (met in Paris), Margaret Cousins, Charlotte Despard, Millicent Fawcett, Mrs Ogilvie Gordon, Ramsay MacDonald, Sarojini Naidu, Sankaran Nair, Sophia Duleep Singh, Agnes Smedley (president of the Lyceum Club), Lord Southborough, Herabai Tata (mother).

Contributions to periodicals: 

Jus Suffragii: The International Woman Suffrage News

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Extract: 

I would like to mention and acknowledge here the unstinted support and help these fine women of the various associations gave us; not only in arranging lecture meetings for us in London, but in many other places in England and Scotland, finding hospitality for us when we were speaking out of London, and passing resolutions supporting our cause, forwarding these resolutions to their M.P.’s etc.

Secondary works: 

Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Relevance: 

The networks and co-operation between British and Indian suffragettes.

Archive source: 

Mss Eur F341/147, manuscript memoir 'Autumn Leaves', Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Herabai Tata's Correspondence with Jaiji Petit, Nehru Memorial Library Archives, New Delhi

Involved in events: 

Address, 'Indian Women and the Vote', to public meeting of Women's Freedom League at Minerva Cafe, London, 3 December 1919.

City of birth: 
Near Nagpur
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

née Tata

Location

London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
51° 30' 50.1948" N, 0° 6' 59.6736" W
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1919 - December 1923

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