Rassundari Devi

Rassundari Devi was born in 1809 in the village of Potajia, in Pabna district. She was a Bengali
Woman Who Rebelled Against the 19th Century Patriarchal Society. Literate women were
considered bad in the society. Old traditional women would make it into an issue if they spotted
a piece of paper in the hands of a young girl. Yet, her desire outweighed her societal fear.
Rassundari Devi took out a page from a religious book of her husband and stole one of the leaves
on which her son used to practise writing. She hid these two items in her kitchen. She tried to
match the words on the leaf with those on the page whenever she was free from household
chores. The manner in which this woman learnt the art of reading and writing would seem like an
alien thing in the present world. Later on, Rassundari Devi recorded her struggle in an
autobiography “Amar Jiban” (My Life). During the 19th and early 20th century, upper caste
Hindu as well as Muslim women were living a life similar to that of prisoners, while living under
the veil (purdah). We find the description of the pathetic situation of women in the novels of
Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. But the description is even more
powerful in “Amar Jiban”. She had to work with her ghoonghat (veil) even in her kitchen. Her
voice had to be lowered while talking to maidservants so that no male servant or family member
could hear her voice. Even the voice of a woman was imprisoned in the cage of the veil.
“Amar Jiban” is a document that tells us how purdah (veil) was a part of the culture of Bengal.
Centuries of patriarchal domination had normalised women into living under such practices and
they considered it their rightful duty to remain in this jail. She writes about an incident when she
was 25 and her son was learning horse riding;
“There was a horse Jay Hari in our house. One day it was brought in front of the woman’s courtyard so
that I could watch my son ride. I heard someone saying that it was the horse of my husband. It struck me
suddenly that I couldn’t go in front of this horse. It would have been shameful if my husband’s horse saw
me, so I hid inside the house.”

Women, in those times, considered it their duty to hide even from a horse belonging to their
husbands. We can just imagine how they would have behaved in front of a man. Purdah (veil)
was rooted in the psychology of Bengali women. They could not imagine a world without it.
“Amar Jiban” also helps us understand how normalisation of purdah (veil) kept women away
from education. It was a tool to exclude them from society. Rassundari Devi’s story is around
one and a half century old. Circumstances have changed and women can now come out and
pursue education. But we should not forget that it was the sacrifices and actions of such strong
women that paved the way for later generations of women. Such inspirational figures are the
strength behind the present feminist and women’s rights movements.