The Impossibility of Being Bimala: An Analysis of the Predicament of the Modern Woman in Colonial India

Abstract

The advent of modernity in the colonial period posed a serious challenge to Indian womanhood. Women1 were expected to transform themselves into an impossible image as it meant being contradictory things at same time. They were expected to emulate the ideals of chastity and purity of Sita and Savitri. Simultaneously, they had to be modern enough to be socially mobile and publicly presentable, i.e., represent tradition and modernity in some ambiguous proportion unfalteringly. Any deviation, failure on any one side was undesirable. Bimala’s character from Tagore’s Ghare Baire remains one of the truest depictions of this liminal position where women were caught in the crossfire between tradition and modernity. Forced to endorse Western learning, shun purdah and most important to think independently by Nikhil, her romantically idealist husband, Bimala does his bidding as an ideal wife must always do. But this enforced modernity sets her into some choices that not only leads her into getting infatuated by Nikhil’s friend, Sandip but also lead her to widowhood, the ultimate doom for a Hindu woman. Closely examined, coming out of purdah was not her choice but her husband’s. Similarly the modernity project introduced to Indian woman by male reformers directed them to be socially mobile and adequately modern. But women still remained the flag bearers of tradition and were still held responsible if anything went untoward in the changing social fabric. After all as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in his Prachina o Nabina makes clear in spite of his concern for hegemonic patriarchal intentions of reformers on women’s condition that loyalty to the husband is the fundamental duty of all wives. When Bimala deviates from this set path, she is faced with devastation in loss of innocence, infidelity and widowhood. The present paper aims to discuss the liminal position of the woman in late colonial India against the backdrop of reforms and nationalism, through the character of Bimala, representative of the new woman who with enormous responsibility of tradition over shoulders walked precariously the path of modernity. Janus-headed, the unsure Indian women tread the hazy way of the male reformer’s expectations and the more closely one looks into latter the more convoluted the women’s emancipation project appears.