The White Woman's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule.

The "myth of the memsahib," which is rooted in the fiction of Kipling, Forster, and Orwell, has long lingered in the history of British India. This traditional view of European women in the British Empire has been unrelievedly negative. Fiction writers and filmmakers, as well as historians, have portrayed the memsahib (literally the master's woman, but generally used to refer to British women in India) as a frivolous, self-absorbed creature, more concerned with idle flirtations and lawn tennis than with understanding the "real" India in which she lived. More seriously, critics have condemned the British woman in India for institutionalizing a virulent racism that poisoned the previously amicable relations between (male) British imperial rulers and their Indian subjects, created a racially-segregated society and led eventually but inexorably to the downfall of the British Empire. Only recently, with the burgeoning interest in women's history and the emergence of feminist historiography have historians dispelled this myth through critical examination of the diverse roles of women in the British Empire and a more nuanced assessment of the complex interactions of race and gender in the imperial context.

The intervention of women's historians in the field of imperial history has followed a trajectory similar to that in European and American women's history. First came the effort to recover the histories of exceptional women whose lives and achievements had faded from historical memory. Historians also began to pursue the everyday experiences of ordinary women. Working with the rich trove of memoirs and letters left by European women in India, historians sympathetically detailed the physical, financial and emotional hardships experienced by the typical memsahib. Feminist historians attacked the stereotype of the racist memsahib head on. Arguing that Western women were, like the colonized peoples, oppressed by the patriarchal imperial hierarchy, they postulated the existence of empathetic bonds between the two subordinated groups. Far from being racist, feminist historians argued, European women reached out to their fellow sufferers, the "natives," through charitable, social service and medical endeavors. Most recently, historians such as Barbara Ramusack and Antoinette Burton have begun to explore the complex interconnections between feminist women in the metropole and developments in the Empire. The intricacies of colonialism, however, complicate the assessment of women's place in imperial history. Asian feminists have argued that Western feminist models, methods and goals are inadequate to chart and assess the progress of women in Asia. The history of Asian feminism (and of Western women's role in that movement) can thus be understood only when viewed in the dual contexts of Asian culture and the legacy of Western imperialism.

In The White Woman's Other Burden, which examines the lives and work of Western feminists in British India (now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar), Kumari Jayawardena ambitiously attempts to participate in many of these ongoing debates. First, she focuses on Western women who achieved renown (and in some cases, notoriety) for their involvement with South Asian feminism, politics, or culture, but who have since become a "distant memory." Second, Jayawardena examines these women's lives from an avowedly feminist perspective, emphasizing their awareness of the patriarchal hierarchy and their efforts to rectify for themselves and for other women the resulting imbalances of power. Finally, Jayawardena grapples with the thorny issue of assessing Western feminism in an Asian context, evaluating her subjects with what she describes as an "Asian 'feminist gaze'."

Jayawardena is most successful in achieving her first goal of recovering the histories of hitherto forgotten women. The white women of her title are not the memsahibs who, along with their husbands, fathers and sons, heeded Kipling's injunction to disseminate Western civilization among the "benighted" peoples of the Empire. Rather, these Western women shouldered the very different burden of bringing the benefits of education, social reform, political freedom or personal liberation to their Asian sisters. Structured as a series of biographies, the book is divided into five parts, corresponding to the five different types of women profiled: missionaries and other religious women; social reformers; theosophists and orientalists; Western disciples of Asian religious figures; and socialists. Although some of the women, such as Annie Besant and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita), will be familiar to those with an interest in South Asian history, most of her subjects are, indeed, women who have hitherto been hidden from history. All of the biographical sketches are lively and informative, and Jayawardena does an excellent job of summarizing basic facts and enhancing them with more esoteric details. She expertly distills, for example, the history and thought of the Theosophical Movement and compresses the many lives of Annie Besant into twelve action-packed pages. Most interesting, however, are accounts of the less well-known figures, such as Florence Farr, Shavian actress and friend of Ezra Pound, who ended her days as principal of a girls' school in Colombo, or the socialist women actively involved in Sri Lankan politics in the 1930s and 1940s.

The project of reclaiming forgotten women, however, often makes for strange bedfellows. The Sisters of Loreto, the Irish Catholic Nuns who established convent schools throughout India for the genteel education of proper (and wealthy) young ladies would undoubtedly be aghast to find themselves linked with the likes of Agnes Smedley, socialist, revolutionary and mistress of Virendranath Chattopadyaya, a leader of India's nationalist movement. Jayawardena argues that the common thread linking such different women is feminism, i.e., "a consciousness of injustices based on gender hierarchy, and a commitment to change." This sweeping definition raises more questions about the nature of feminism than it answers, however. For example, how is the reader to assess the feminism of Madeline Slade, the upper-class British woman who became Gandhi's personal assistant. Her devotion to the Gandhian cause and to the leader himself challenged "the established gender roles for white women." Yet her duties in the service of the Mahatma - cooking, cleaning, washing and drawing Gandhi's bath - echo women's traditional subservience to men. Is it, therefore, a feminist act simply to challenge the existing power structure even if such subversive activity apparently reinforces women's subordinate role? Similarly, the connection with South Asia, which Jayawardena presents as a second unifying theme among her subjects, is often tenuous. Several of the women never visited South Asia. Others became interested in India only during their marriages to politically active Indians; their enthusiasm for South Asia collapsed along with their marital relationships.

For reader and author alike, however, the greatest challenge in assessing the role of Western women in South Asian history lies in understanding the complex dynamics of feminism and anti-imperialism. Like Socialist women in Europe who often abandoned their feminist goals for the benefit of the broader workers' movement, Western feminists in India frequently faced accusations of impeding the "greater" struggle against British imperialism. Feminist criticisms of child marriage, purdah or female illiteracy appeared to play into the hands of British imperialists who argued that Indians were too "uncivilized" to assume the responsibilities of self-government. However, the position of the militant anti-imperialists, who argued that Westerners must abstain from all criticism of and interference in Indian culture could, where women were concerned, "legitimize existing repressive structures." Not surprisingly, Western women responded in a variety of ways to this dilemma. Some, like the educator Annette Ackroyd and Katherine Mayo, opponent of child marriage and author of Mother India, openly criticized the status of women in Indian society and argued that India should not be accorded self-government until women's disabilities were remedied. Others, such as Annie Besant, an ardent feminist in England and an equally ardent nationalist in India, renounced efforts to import Western feminism to India, believing that one should "wear sandals in India and shoes in the West." Some women, like the socialists, attempted an uneasy and generally unsuccessful reconciliation of the feminist and nationalist positions, while others, such as the orientalists, stripped their ideological beliefs of immediate political import by camouflaging them in academic esoterica.

Is feminism (or at least Western feminism) thus inherently incompatible with the anti-imperialist struggle? Although Jayawardena professes to analyze her subjects from the perspective of an Asian feminist, she finds no resolution for this difficult paradox. If anything, her sympathies seem to lie with those women who conform most closely to traditional conceptions of Western feminism. The debate, however, has thus far been dominated by the views of (male) Indian nationalists and (female) Western feminists. As Jayawardena notes, the "key question" to be researched and discussed further is the reaction of Indian women to efforts on their behalf by their western "sisters." Her book provides a stimulating introduction to the crucial issues in this debate and opens the door to continuing investigation of these questions.

Mary A. Procida University of Pennsylvania