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Returning the American Gaze: Pandita Ramabai's The Peoples of the United States, 1889

In a world plotted on the Western, patriarchal meridian, Pandita Ramabai's life trajectory (1858-1922) left a dual and seemingly contradictory but logically interrelated imprintinternational iconization as the emancipator of the highly troped "oppressed Indian womanhood," and erasure from the collective memory and official history of the Indian society of her origin. Her Marathi travelogue United Stateschi Lokasthiti ani Pravasavritta (The Peoples of the United States, henceforth uslp), published in Bombay in 1889, 1 was located at a juncture which marked the onset of the iconization, and barely predated the process of erasure. Ramabai's experience of the U.S. was predictably mediated by the British connection; and at a general level the American encounter became an instantaneous site for multiple intersectionssolidarity of a former British colony with the current "jewel" in the British imperial crown, Anglo-American rivalry for leadership of social reform in India, "enlightened" liberal Christian intervention in Hindu India's social matters. At a personal level the experience of friendly acceptance, warmth, and generosity was a novel and rewarding one for Ramabai, who had recently contested imperial power "at the heart of the empire," and penned through her letters a critical ethnography of British society (Burton 1998, 1, 3). It is this triadic relationship of India, England, and the U.S. which frames uslpa critical ethnography of American society, which spans a wide range from polity to economy, and from religion to domestic life, written from a unique vantage point shaped by an already eventful life.2 This essay is formulated as an introduction to uslp through a few selected excerpts, and situates the book within the multilayered contexts of Ramabai's life and the international arena for her activities and activism.3