The bride lay still in one corner of the marital bed. On the other side, the groom and the prostitute were too engrossed in each other to pay her any attention.
The year was 1875. The groom was a 45-year-old Deputy Magistrate. And the bride, frozen with fear, was all of nine. The transformation of Haimabati Sen, from the traumatised child bride into a gold-medal winning medical student and later practitioner, is a story both inspiring and heart-wrenching.
The story, written by Sen herself, was forgotten for eight decades before it was unearthed, translated, and published in 2000.
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Marriage and remarriage
Sen was born in in a rural and orthodox family of an ‘upper’ Kulin Kayastha caste in Khulna district (now in Bangladesh) in 1866. The quick-witted, first-born child was allowed by her father to wear male clothing and learn reading and writing from her male cousins. However, strict social rules of the time demanded an early marriage within the Kulin Kayastha sub-caste. So, Sen was married off to a drunk and debauch with two daughters almost her age. The groom’s same caste status and his Deputy Magistrate position outweighed all other considerations. Indrani Sen, scholar and an associate professor of English at Delhi University, points out that although the legal age for consummation of marriage had been fixed at 10 in 1860, it did not deter Sen’s husband to try to force himself on her. However, he died a few months later of pneumonia leaving Sen a virgin child-widow.
Over the next few years, with the deaths of her father, mother-in-law and mother, Sen lost all shelter and support. Bengal at the time followed the Dayabhaga school of law, which allowed a widow to inherit her husband’s property. Family members would often resort to ill-treatment and fraud to compel the widow to give up her claims on the property. Cheated by her brother and brother-in-law of her father’s and husband’s property, Sen moved to Varanasi where she taught in a girls’ school for some time. But she soon returned to Bengal; she was about 20 at the time. Her experiences made her fully acquainted with the dangers women faced without the shelter of marriage or family. Her thoughts were bitter: “I…wondered, do I suffer all this simply because I am a woman? Would anyone have inflicted so much suffering on a man?”
After her return, she joined the Brahmo Samaj, possibly attracted by their sympathetic views towards widows. Diplomat and scholar Meredith Borthwick has written that the Brahmo Samaj provided education and vocational training to widows and sometimes facilitated their remarriage.
Sen’s marriage at the age of 25 to Kunjabihari Sen created new problems. Though two children followed as time went on, her husband remained impulsive, eccentric and unable to provide a steady income. Sen soon realised that she would have to helm the domestic ship.
Trading medals
The practice of medicine was one of the few new careers open to women at that time. In 1885, the Dufferin Fund was created by the Vicereine, Lady Dufferin, to provide financial aid to women training to become doctors, nurses, and midwives. Sen opted to study for the Vernacular Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery (VLMS) degree at Calcutta’s Campbell Medical School (now Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital) in 1891. The fact that VLMS classes at Campbell were taught by Indian teachers using the regional language made Sen go for it. The textbooks were in Bengali or translations from English, and no formal education or knowledge of English was required at the time of admission. This was in sharp contrast to the ‘more prestigious’ MB or MD degrees conferred by the Calcutta Medical College at the time where British teachers taught the students who had to have a BA degree for admission. Sen had to balance her studies with all the household chores; she also supported herself and her husband with her scholarship.
In the final examinations, Sen topped the class and was to be awarded a gold medal. However, in a shocking display of what Sen has called ‘institutionalised gender discrimination’, her male classmates launched a vehement protest. They boycotted classes, picketed the building, and flung stones at the carriage conveying female students to college. Petitions were made to the inspector general and the lieutenant governor. Public opinion supported the male students. The general sentiment was that ‘it is a mistake to pamper women’.
The men won. Sen was persuaded to give up her gold medal. Beset by financial worries, the ever–practical Sen accepted silver medals instead (awarded for every paper that she topped in). She made just one request—that she be granted the monthly scholarship of Rs 30 to be able to attend lectures at Calcutta Medical College. She completed the course successfully, winning the Lord Dufferin and Lord Elgin medals.
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World of medicine
Although qualified as a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery by 1893, Sen found it difficult to get a job. Her husband refused to let her accept one where she would have to stay in the hospital quarters. Private practice too had many obstacles because it was dominated by male doctors who brought in their own midwives. Once, Sen was called to assist in a complicated case of childbirth in a European household. After the successful birth following an excruciatingly long labour, she was paid Rs 50 while the male doctor received Rs 1,500 and his midwife got Rs 150. She observed wryly, “This was the situation of women doctors and midwives in Calcutta. They could get cases with the help of a doctor but when it came to fees, the doctor took the lion’s share…Lady doctors and midwives are but pawns in the hands of the male doctors.”
By a stroke of luck, the next year Sen got the offer of a job at the Hooghly Lady Dufferin Hospital, less than 50 km from Calcutta. She received accommodation and permission for private practice. Her husband raised no objections this time.
Sen worked at Lady Dufferin Hospital for almost two decades. With a steady income and a growing private practice, she was able to fend for her family. But more struggles awaited her. Her boss, the assistant civil surgeon, began to harass her with innuendos about sexually transmitted diseases under the garb of ‘training’ her. When he was banned from entering the women’s section of the hospital following complaints to his superior, he retaliated by harassing her in other ways.
“Every night someone came and defecated in the vat where we stored our water, on the first floor near the door, on the stairs, and in the pot for cooking rice. We kept the door locked but the fellow would come and smear feces on the doors and windows. This happened every day but we could not find out who did this or when. One day…the same thing had been done to the carriage. Things became intolerable,” Sen wrote.
One night, when the assistant civil surgeon sent thugs to her house, Sen fought back with a wooden rod, sending them scurrying. Complaints to the police did not help since the inspector of the local police station was a close friend of the assistant surgeon. The harassment stopped only after an English man was appointed as the district magistrate.
Despite three more pregnancies, a demanding workload, life-threatening illnesses affecting her children, and the eccentricities of her husband who would often disappear for days, Sen remained undeterred from her duties.
“My job was a vow I had taken to serve at this hospital. It gave me many opportunities to do useful work. I got something very noble out [of] my dedication to this work,” she wrote.
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Champion of women
Haimabati Sen would have probably had fewer financial worries if she had not taken in children abandoned after their mothers’ death in the hospital. Their stay with her varied from a few days to several years. All her life, Sen tried to help other women crushed under the harsh rules of patriarchy. Professor and author Geraldine Forbes comments that Sen’s sympathy for their plight led her to treat patients for free, stay at the hospital even when she was already exhausted, and shelter child widows and pregnant girls.
In Forbes’ analysis, Sen’s achievements become all the more significant when we remember that she was not a part of any contemporary organisation espousing social reform for women. She hadn’t even read any feminist writings being published in Calcutta at the time. She still fully recognised the social restrictions and hardships suffered by women, challenges that men never had to face.
Her memoir portrayed in vivid and horrifying detail the ‘systematic and pervasive violence faced by women of her generation’.
By writing directly and honestly of her life experiences, Haimabati Sen broke the deep silence that shrouds the tormented lives of so many of her sisters.
Dr Krishnokoli Hazra teaches History at the undergraduate level in Kolkata.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)