1.Ramabai’s obituary is reprinted in her Testimony , 42-46; see also Shah, Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai , xi (all references to Shah are hereafter cited as PRLC ); and Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , n.p. (preface).

2. Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , vol. 1, 243.

3. See Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief , 5. I am grateful to Meera Kosambi for sharing her work and her insights with me.

4. Bapat argues that she contested “the Orientalist discourses set up by colonialists of all species and nationalists of all hues." See his “Pandita Ramabai," 229. See also Chatterjee, “Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question," 233-53; Tanika Sarkar, “Hindu Wife and Hindu Nation," 213-35; Sinha, “Reading Mother India," 6-44; Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Mother India and Mother Victoria," 20-37; and Anagol-McGinn, “Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered," 100-118.

5. I am grateful to Meera Kosambi for pressing this point. For accounts of Ramabai in America, see Jayawardena, White Woman’s Other Burden , chapter 3; Bapat, “Pandita Ramabai," 224-52; and Grewal, Home and Harem , chapters 4 and 5, published as this manuscript was being revised.

6. Kosambi, At the Intersection , 8-9 and 68.

7. For objections raised against Ramabai’s proposed travel to England, see Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian Conversions , 146-47.

8. Radha Kumar, History of Doing .

9. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian Conversions ; see also her “Indian Response," WS 61-71.

10. Notes of Conversations with Ramabai," The Cheltenham College Ladies Magazine 3, no. 10 (September 1884): 122-23; Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 8. Eugene Stock called Father Goreh one of the most “zealous and faithful evangelists" among native converts in India. See History , vol. 2, 167.

11. Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened," 66. I am grateful to Uma Chakravarti for reading early versions of this chapter.

12. See Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian Conversions , 13.

13. Ramabai, Testimony , 7.

14. Ramabai, Testimony , 6. Also quoted in Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 19.

15. See Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 5.

16. According to Tanika Sarkar, “Orthodox Hindus of these times believed that a literate woman was destined to be a window." “Book of Her Own," 36.

17. Ramabai, Testimony , 5.

18. Ibid., 9.

19. Ibid., 10; see also Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 31-35.

20. Ramabai, Testimony , 17, 20, 28.

21. Quoted in Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 75.

22. PRLC , 17.

23. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 26; PRLC , 17; Ramabai, Testimony , 10; and Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 78-79.

24. Kosambi, “Meeting of the Twain," 2-4; see also Cornelia Sorabji’s account of her father’s persecution upon conversion in Therefore .

25. Ramabai, Testimony , 11-12.

26. Ibid., 12.

27. Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 244; see also Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened," 66; and Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 22.

28. Ramabai, Testimony , 13.

29. Ibid., 13-14.

30. Ibid., 15. Phule is also known as Jyotiba. See Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 211-12; and Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society .

31. Ramabai, Testimony , 15.

32. PRLC , 17.

33. Ramabai, Testimony , 16; and PRLC , 18.

34. Ramabai, High-Caste Hindu Woman , 12-14. And chapter 3.

35. Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened," 66-67.

36. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 45.

37. PRLC , 18; Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 6. The significance of this ceremony should not be underestimated since, as Meera Kosambi has noted, marriage is the only religious sacrament to which a Hindu woman is entitled. See her introduction in Kosambi, Women’s Oppression in the Public Gaze , 5.

38. Ramabai, Testimony , 17.

39. David Arnold estimates that “in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, an average of 1.75 out of every 1,000 of the population of British India died of cholera annually," with a fairly significant peak in the late 1870s. See Colonizing the Body , 164 and table, 165.

40. Ramabai, Testimony , 18. For a discussion of the Prarthana Samaj in its local religious reform context, see Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India , 141-44.

41. O’Hanlon, Comparison , 15; Padma Anagol-McGinn points out that Ranade’s wife lamented his failure to support her when relatives abused her for attempts to become educated. See her “Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered," 108.

42. “Ramabai Sanskrita," reprinted from the Times of India in The Cheltenham College Ladies’ Magazine 3, no. 10 (September 1884): 116. For Stree Dharma-Neeti’s reception in Maharashtra, see Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 125-35 and 138-42.

43. Chakravarti, “Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges," 138.

44. O’Hanlon, Comparison , 17.

45. See Kosambi’s review of O’Hanlon’s translation of Shinde in The Indian Economic and Social History Review , 276-78. One of these Maharashtrian women was Anandabai Joshi. “When I think over the sufferings of women in India in all ages," she wrote, “I am impatient to see the Western light dawn as the harbinger of emancipation." See Dall, Life of Anandabai Joshee , 38.

46. See Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened," 73-74; Anagol-McGinn, “Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered," 100-118; Charles Heimsath, “Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of consent Bill, 1891," 502; and Chandra, “Whose Laws?" 187-211.

47. O’Hanlon, Comparison , 1. Her sentence was later commuted to transportation.

48. Dyer, Pandita Ramabai , Chapter 2; PRLC , xii.

49. Karve, Looking Back ; Athvale, Hindu Widow ; and Kumar, History of Doing , 43-44. Karve’s Hindu Sharada Sadan at Poona was begun as an alternative to Ramabai’s Sharada Sahan, which was then being boycotted. For details see Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai .

50. For a discussion of Saraswati, see David Kinsley, Kindu Goddesses , chapter 4.

51. “The Education Commission," JNIA (November 1882): 639-40.

52. Ibid.

53. Dorothea Beale, “The Marchioness of Dufferin’s Report," EWR April 15, 1889, pp. 145-52; “The Countess Dufferin Fund," EWR January 17, 1894, pp. 140-41. It was a claim that also guaranteed work for English women in India and elsewhere in the “East." See Nair, “Uncovering the Zenana," 8-24; and Jane Hunter, Gospel of Gentility .

54. LMR , Nov. 1882, 640-41.

55. PRLC , p. 18.

56. Ibid., xii. Calcutta Medical College was the first in Bengal to admit female students in 1883; women were admitted to Campbell Medical School as hospital assistants in 1887 and for a three-year course in 1888. See Forbes, “Medical Careers and Health Care for Indian Women," 519, and From Child Widow to Lady Doctor . Possibly Ramabai did not want to return to Madras because of trouble she had experienced there over her views on female education. See PRLC , 17-18. Rukhmabai, a child wife who had taken her husband to court, came to England in the late 1880s and eventually got her medical degree from Glasgow. See Women’s Penny Paper , May 18, 1889, p. 5; Englishwomen’s Review , January 15, 1889, p. 47; and Rukhmabai’s “Indian Child-Marriages," 263-69.

57. PRLC , 7, and Ramabai to Canon Butler, July 3, 1885, 73-74

58. PRLC , xii; Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 243.

59. Shah translates this as “The Duties of Woman," while Lalita and Tharu Translate it as “Morals for Women." As Meera Kosambi points out, the latter was the English title under which the book was first registered, in keeping with government regulations. See her translation in Pandita Ramabai , 54 and ff. Kosambi also questions how connected the book was with an intention to come to Britain, since it was advertised well before Ramabai had contact with the sisters of the CSMV (private correspondence).

60. Sister Geraldine to the dean of Lincoln, PRLC , July 1, 1885, 71-72.

61. PRLC , xx.

62. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 146.

63. Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 243. Another such Indian woman was Rassundari Devi, who published her autobiography, Amar Jiban , in 1876. See Tanika Sarkar, “Book of Her Own," 55.

64. PRLC , xv-vi; Dyer, Pandita Ramabai , 35. Mano was also baptized at the same time; see Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 106.

65. This in any event was Ramabai’s narrative of it in 1907. See Testimony , 19-20. See also PRLC , 11. Meera Kosambi suggests that “possibly there was some hidden dimension to her conversion, born out of personal loneliness and social isolation." At the Intersection , 73. Elsewhere Kosambi argues that “the awakening of a feminist consciousness seemed to have played a major role in Ramabai’s conversion." See Pandita Ramabai , 184.

66. I am grateful to Alison Fletcher for encouraging me to specify this point.

67. Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 245-46; PRLC , xxiii-iv; Kosambi, At the Intersection , 92. Ironically, as Kosambi notes, there was much in Ramabai’s early writings that echoed Tilak’s socially conservative views; see Pandita Ramabai , 117.

68. Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing , 246.

69. PRLC , 7. Sister Geraldine had been the sister-in-charge at St. Mary’s School, Poona, but she was “invalided home" in 1883. She had met Ramabai while in India. See Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , n.p. (dedication).

70. This remained the case even at the height of their disputes. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , June 21, 1885, 65.

71. Ramabai kept in fairly regular contact with the sisters at Wantage until 1898—the first year “that we received no tidings from her," according to Sister Geraldine. She visited England in 1898 but did not stop to visit either the CSMV women or Dorothea Beale. PRLC , 355.

72. Pandita Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , October 1884, 27-28.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., 29.

77. Ibid.

78. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , 22 September night, 1885, 88-89.

79. Among them was Canon Westcott, whose Historic Faith Ramabai asked Sister Geraldine to read. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , Bath, October 1885, 101-2. Westcott was Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and a New Testament scholar, whom Ramabai had met while in England (PRLC , 20). He rejected the more orthodox Protestant view that Hinduism and Islam were depraved, and “encouraged potential missionaries at Cambridge to listen for things of value from people in other cultures rather than merely preaching at them." It is not surprising that he appealed to Ramabai. Jeffrey Cox, “Independent Englishwomen, 166-84. My thanks to Jeff Cox for sharing a prepublication draft of his essay with me."

80. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , 22 September night, 1885, 88.

81. Ramabai, Testimony , 21.

82. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , Bath, October 1885, 103.

83. Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 172.

84. Ibid., 176-77.

85. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , Bath, October 1885, 104.

86. Sister Geraldine, who had been in India, may have suspected the Unitarian women because they were known to be sympathetic to Brahmoism. See Kopf, Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind .

87. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , April 22, 1885, 32.

88. See for example Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , June 16, 1885, 62-63; and Raikes, Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham , 179-81 and 192-93.

89. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , June 16, 1885, 63.

90. Ibid., 62-63.

91. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , June (Monday), 1885, 70: “For if we were to become like or as equally perfect with the Father, we should undoubtedly be so many supreme Gods, as the Vedantists say."

92. Sister Geraldine to the Bishop of Lincoln, PRLC , July 1, 1885, 72.

93. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , June 24, 1885, 66; Beale to the Rev. Canon William Butler, July 1885, 77-8; Ramabai to Beale, June 185, 125-26.

94. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , June 21, 1885, 64-65.

95. Beale to Canon Butler, PRLC , July 1885, 77-78.

96. For a discussion of women’s communities in Britain in this period, see Vicinus, Independent Women . Chapter 3 is devoted to “church Communities: Sisterhoods and Deaconesses’ Houses."

97. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , August 27, 1885, 35.

98. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 8, 1885, 50.

99. Beale to the Bishop of Bombay in England, PRLC , May 22, 1884, 40.

100. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire , 71.

101. Cox, “Independent Englishwomen."

102. See Stock, History , vol. 2, 74, and vol. 3, 460-64.

103.Biship of Lahore to Beale, PRLC , May 9, 1884, 38; Rt. Rev. Dr. Mylne, Bishop of Bombay, to Beale, May 21, 1884, 39. See also Kosambi, “Indian Response," WS-67.

104. Bishop of Lahore to Beale, PRLC , May 9, 1884, 38.

105. Rt. Rev. Dr. Mylne, Bishop of Bombay, to Beale, PRLC , May 21, 1884, 39.

106. Ibid.

107. Bishop of Lahore to Beale, PRLC , May 9, 1884, 38.

108. Rt. Rev. Dr. Mylne, Bishop of Bombay in England, to Beale, PRLC , May 26, 1884, 44.

109. Canon William Butler to Beale, PRLC , June 15, 1884, 45. For an interesting parallel discussion of the contradictions of nineteenth-century African American women lecturing in public, see Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood , 6 and 63.

110. Beale to the Bishop of Bombay in England, PRLC , May 22, 1884, 40-42.

111. Ibid.

112. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 8, 1885, 50.

113. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 12, 1885, 58-61.

114. Ibid., 60.

115. Ibid., 61.

116. Ibid., 60.

117. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , May 8, 1885, 124.

118. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire , 102, 110.

119. PRLC , 8.

120. See “A School Treat in India," The Indian Female Evangelist 6, no. 39 (July 1881): 143-44; and chapter 3 on Sorabji, below.

121. Pandita Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , March 9, 1885, 34.

122. According to Sister Geraldine, “[T]he Society of St. John the Evangelist came to our relief and invited . . . [him] to their Mission House. There he was instructed, and eventually baptised and confirmed, after which he went back to India, and attached himself to some Mission." PRLC , 20.

123. See Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 70-75.

124. Pandita Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 12, 1885, 60.

125. Ibid., 59.

126. As Kosambi points out, widowhood was also equivalent to civil death in nineteenth-century India. See “Meeting of the Twain," 3.

127. Viswanathan, “Coping with (Civil) Death," 187.

128. Canon William Butler to Dorothea Beale, PRLC , July 5, 1885, 76. Emphasis in the original.

129. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the sisters at CSMV were trying to bypass or circumvent the proper ecclesiastical authorities.

130. Bishop of Lahore in England, to Beale, PRLC , May 25, 1884, 42-3.

131. Ibid.

132. Hunter is quoted in Rev. Canon William Butler to Beale, PRLC , June 15, 1884, 45.

133. Rev. Canon William Butler to Beale, PRLC , June 17, 1884, 45. Butler told Beale in the same letter (46) that he wanted to keep Ramabai in England until she was thirty (she was then 26).

134. Rt. Rev. Dr. Mylne, Bishop of Bombay in England, to Beale, PRLC , 26 May, 1884, 43.

135. Sister Geraldine to Beale, PRLC , May 6, 1885, 47.

136. Beale to the Rev. Canon William Butler, PRLC , July 1885, 78. According to Mary Fuller (1882-1965), who worked with Ramabai at Mukti Mission in Kedgaon, Ramabai became a Christian." Quoted in Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 45.

137. Beale to the Rev. Canon William Butler, PRLC , July 1885, 78.

138. Beale to Ramabai, PRLC , July 5, 1885, 130.

139. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , Friday [sic ], 1885, 135.

140. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , January 3, 1885, 31.

141. Ibid.; Beale to the Bishop of Bombay in England, May 22, 1884, 40-42.

142. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , January 3, 1885, 30-31. For a discussion of the Queen’s often unusual interest in India and Indians, see St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria , esp. chapter 9, “Indian Summer, 1887-1901."

143. Kamm, How Different from Us , 207.

144. Beale to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , April 1885, 33.

145. Beale to the Rev. Canon William Butler, PRLC , July 1885, 78.

146. Sister Geraldine to Rev. C. Gore, PRLC , 82. This was most likely the spring of 1885, though no date is attributed.

147. PRLC , 404.

148. Stock, History , vol. 3, 501.

149. For an elaboration of this imagery as it was constructed by Victorian feminists and female reformers, see Burton, Burdens of History .

150. Sister Geraldine to Beale, PRLC , December 18, 1883, 21-22.

151. Sister Geraldine to Beale, PRLC , May 10, 1885, 54.

152. PRLC , 4.

153. PRLC , 343.

154. PRLC , xxix.

155. PRLC , 4

156. Sister Geraldine to Rev. C. Gore, PRLC , July 3, 1885, 83-84.

157. PRLC , 398-99.

158. Sister Geraldine to Beale, PRLC , May 25, 1885, 62.

159. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , October 1885, 103-4.

160. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , January 12, 1886, 166.

161. PRLC , 343.

162. Pandita Ramabai to Canon Butler, PRLC , July 3, 1885, 72.

163. Ramabai to Dorothea Beale, PRLC , September 1, 1885, 134

164. I am thinking here particularly of Lily in Shula Marks, Not Either an Experimental Doll .

165. She laid down similar conditions for Beale: “[Y]ou are sorry because I do not accept the Church doctrine without proving it; please say it quite openly, and I will tear to pieces the letter containing seventy-six pages, and which I have just finished writing, and never say to you one word about my difficulties." See Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 155.

166. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , October 1885, 107.

167. Ibid., 106.

168. Emphasis mine.

169. I am grateful to Leila J. Rupp for the idea of sisterhood as process, which she develops in both “Constructing Internationalism," 1571-1600 and “Challenging Imperialism," 9-27.

170. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , May 31, 1885, 155.

171. Ibid.

172. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , June 25, 1885, 68-69.

173. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , October 1884, 28.

174. Ibid.

175. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , Friday [sic ], 1885, 135.

176. “Other people may call me an infidel if they like, but I trust in Him alone who is my God, Father and Guide, and [Who] will surely show me His ways." Ramabai to Dorothea Beale, PRLC , August 15, 1885, 134.

177. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , no date except “St. Hilda’s: Sunday," 151.

178. Ramabai to Beale, PRLC , Friday [sic ], 1885, 135.

179. The letters on pages 150-54 are not dated.

180. This is where Manorama was boarded while Ramabai attended Cheltenham.

181. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , September 20, 1885, 84-86.

182. Ibid.

183. See Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 147. This letter is from Sister Geraldine to Dorothea Beale, January 1886.

184. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , September 2, 1885, 89.

185. Sister Geraldine to Ramabai, PRLC , October 5, 1885, 93.

186. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 20, 1887, 199.

187. Mano was instrumental in helping her mother with her work in India in the 1890s and after. See Dyer, Pandita Ramabai ; and PRLC , 365-424, passim.

188. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai , 97-104 (section entitled “The Nurturance and Upbringing of Children"); for Ramabai’s invitation to the United States, see 151-52.

189. I am grateful to Uma Chakravarti and Meera Kosambi both for helping me to clarify this point. As Sister Geraldine recounted in her introduction to the Shah volume (8), Ramabai had left Mano in the care of the sisters at Poona very briefly before she came to England in 1883. For Ramabai’s fund-raising efforts in the United States, see Jayawardena, White Woman’s Other Burden , chapter 3.

190. This is a variation of Tyrrell’s claim that Western temperance women “did battle for Christ and personal authority at the same time." Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire , 212.

191. Ramabai to Beale, “at sea," PRLC , February-March 1886, 169.

192. Ibid., 170.

193. See Adhav, Pandita Ramabai , 19 and 216.

194. Ramabai to Miss Noble, PRLC , July 6, 1886, 196.

195. Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, PRLC , May 12, 1885, 59.

196. See Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography ; and Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal," 184-85.

197. Kosambi, At the Intersection , 47. See also Kosambi’s translation of Stree Dharma-Neeti (1882) (Pandita Ramabai ,59), which reads: “Self-reliance, that is, dependence on oneself, is the unparalleled way to progress."

198. See Rachel L. Bodley’s introduction to Ramabai, High-Caste Hindu Woman , i-xxiv; PRLC , 171-224; Dyer, Pandita Ramabai , chapter 3. Grewal’s Home and Harem begins to do some of this work in chapter 5; see also Bapat, “Pandita Ramabai," 224-52; and Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai .