THE MEMOIRS OF DR. HAIMABATI SEN: FROM CHILD WIDOW TO LADY DOCTOR

By Tapan Raychaudhuri and Geraldine Forbes

Tapan Raychaudhuri, one of the best-known historians of modern India, achieved the rare distinctions of an Oxford D. Litt. and an ad hominem chair at Oxford and was an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony’s College. He also held the Chair in Economic History at the Delhi School of Economics, taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, Australian National University and El Colegio de Mexico. His publications span many areas of social and economic history.

Geraldine Forbes is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History and Director of Women’s Studies at the State University of New York, Oswego. Her publications include Women in Modern India and Positivism in Bengal. She is Series Editor of FOREMOTHER LEGACIES: Autobiographies and Memoirs of Women from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9788194597339

Book preview

TAPAN RAYCHAUDHURI, one of the best-known historians of modern India, achieved the rare distinctions of an Oxford D. Litt. and an ad hominem chair at Oxford and was an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony’s College. He also held the Chair in Economic History at the Delhi School of Economics, taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, Australian National University and El Colegio de Mexico. His publications span many areas of social and economic history.

GERALDINE FORBES is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History and Director of Women’s Studies at the State University of New York, Oswego. Her publications include Women in Modern India and Positivism in Bengal. She is Series Editor of FOREMOTHER LEGACIES: Autobiographies and Memoirs of Women from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

OTHER LOTUS TITLES

FORTHCOMING TITLES

ROLI BOOKS

This digital edition published in 2020

First published in 2020 by

The Lotus Collection

An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd

M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market

New Delhi 110 048

Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.rolibooks.com

Copyright © Geraldine Forbes, Tapan Raychaudhuri, and S.K. Sen, 2020

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

eISBN: 978-81-945973-3-9

All rights reserved.

This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.

In memory of

Nomita De (1928–1991)

granddaughter of Haimabati Sen

Contents

Translator’s Note

Introduction to the Memoirs

Om Tat Sat

Family and Ancestors

Childhood

Married Life

Life as a Widow

Benares

Calcutta

Wanderings in East Bengal

Wanderings in East Bengal—II

Return to Calcutta and Remarriage

Pilgrimage

Medical School

Chinsurah

Householder

Old Age

Glossary

Appendix A

Appendix B

Index

Haimabati Sen (c. 1966–1933)

Translator’s Note

Translating Haimabati’s memoir proved to be much more difficult than I had expected. Her racy style, folksy dialogues, details of domesticity, including long lists of utensils and items of food, all presented problems of their own. Especially difficult was her habit of forming putative relationships and referring to sundry people in terms of the minutae of Bengali kinship terminology. In all this I have tried to stick to the original as far as possible without making the English text entirely unreadable.

Transliteration presented another age-old problem. The dilemma was whether to fall back on conventional practice, that is, transliterate as if the Bengali words were really Sanskrit or stick as closely as possible to the Bengali pronunciation. I have chosen a middle path. Where the words are obviously Sanskrit [for example, Siva, Sakti, and so on,] or people have spelled their name in English in the Sanskritic way [such as Sivnath], I have, by and large, stuck to the Sanskritic convention, but not gone the whole length. For instance, I have written Sivnath following the writer himself, but not Sivanatha. Elsewhere, I have tried to reproduce the Bengali pronunciation [such as Haimabati, not Haimavati].

We have tried not to deviate from the text as far as possible, except to avoid tedious repetition.

I am grateful to friends and colleagues who have read the translation and offered helpful suggestions. My special thanks to Dr. Theodor Zeldin who encouraged me to publish the volume and to Professor Mushirul Hasan for help with finding a publisher.

Tapan Raychaudhuri

The Silver Medal for Midwifery awarded to Haimabati Sen in 1893 by Campbell Medical School

Introduction to the Memoirs

In 1933 Haimabati Sen, a medical doctor and prominent citizen of the district town Chinsurah in Bengal, died at home surrounded by her family. Haimabati had been ill for at least two months but patients kept coming, hoping the lady doctor would be well enough to see them. At the time of her death only a few people knew of the hurdles she had overcome during the course of her career. Married and widowed by age ten, she married a second time, struggled through a special programme for medical assistants, and developed her practice in a hostile environment.

The Memoir

Haimabati Sen wrote her memoirs in Bengali during the last decade of her life. After her death these notebooks became the property of her second son, also a doctor, with whom she shared a practice. He read the memoir, showed it to his children, and put it away with his private papers. When he died, it went to his eldest son, Colonel S.K. Sen. It was more than half a century later that Nomita De, Colonel Sen’s younger sister and Haimabati’s granddaughter, was introduced to me by my friend and colleague Jaya Chaliha and talked about her grandmother’s life. Some time later Nomita asked her brother for the manuscript, showed it to me, and I discussed it with Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri. He was excited by the document and committed himself to a joint project to translate, edit, and contextualize the memoir.

This manuscript is a unique document for a number of reasons. First and at the most obvious level, this is the most detailed personal narrative, so far uncovered, which has a bearing on the lives of Indian women born in the nineteenth century. This narrative contains an account of marital intimacy in child marriage and documents the sexual and economic exploitation of women within the middle-class Bengali Hindu family. Second, this life story of an unknown woman is a history of rare courage and persistence. It is the autobiography of a child widow, who, driven from pillar to post, still nourished an ambition for higher education and eventually trained as a medical practitioner. It also illustrates, in great detail, the hurdles she encountered to earn an honourable living in a man’s world, and the impossibility of freedom even for one as spirited as she. Haimabati’s account causes the reader to focus on the structure of the institutions that shaped her career and governed her life—for example, the purdah hospital that employed her elevated gender above race, and made gender a new form of authority in the delivery of Western medicine. While women’s roles were undergoing redefinition and change, the family structure remained patriarchal. Those women who, like Haimabati, were gaining an education, marrying later, and pursuing careers, remained subject to its authority. As we looked closely at Dr. Sen and her times, Professor Raychaudhuri and I concluded that this was, indeed, a valuable historical document.

The Context

Haimabati Ghosh was born c. 1866 in what became Khulna district of Eastern Bengal. Her family traced its lineage to the illustrious hero of Bengal, Maharaj Pratapaditya, and owned extensive land but by the time Hem was born, it was in straitened circumstances.

The memoir describes the impact of colonial domination on rural Bengal. When the British encouraged the cultivation of indigo, entrepreneurs seized the opportunity, acquired land and forced peasants to cultivate the crop. Hem learned about foreign domination through family history: her grandfather’s war against Rainy, a rapacious indigo cultivator. Historians corroborate the evil deeds of Rainy and portray Hem’s grandfather, Sibnath Ghosh, as a friend of the peasants. The war was financially devastating and Hem grew up watching family fortunes diminish. The addiction of her relatives to traditional landlord vices—drinking alcohol and patronizing the theatre and brothels—hastened their decline.

While Hem’s mother was disappointed her first child was female, Hem’s father ordered the playing of celebratory music and forbade people to treat his child like an ordinary girl. He called Hem Chuni Babu [Mr. Chuni] and allowed her to do as she pleased. While other girls were confined to the house, Hem dressed like a boy and spent her days in the outer quarters with her brothers and cousins. When they had their lessons, Hem sat at the edge of the circle but was never officially admitted to the class. Generally, females were denied formal education. Many people believed an educated girl would become an early widow, while others worried that literacy might facilitate illicit liaisons. But this world was changing.

Fortunately for Hem, a school inspector, an employee of the new bureaucracy, noticed her intelligence and asked her father to let her study with the boys. There were, at the time, periodic standardized exams and Hem was allowed to compete with her brothers and cousins. At the same time, she avoided lessons in the household arts which were intended to prepare her for marriage. When she was nine years of age and thoroughly engrossed in her lessons, her mother and grandmothers decided it was time to arrange her marriage. Hem was married when she was nine and a half years old.

This was somewhat earlier than usual. According to the 1881 Census, only about five percent of Bengali Hindu girls were married before age 10 but most were married by age 12.¹ [The percentage among the upper castes was probably higher.] Child marriage, practised among the higher castes for many centuries as a custom supported by sacred law (Smriti), became even more widespread in the nineteenth century. Suitable partners were difficult to find within the same caste, and especially difficult for kulin families like Hem’s. Among kulins, the highest strata of brahmin, baidya and kayastha caste society, fathers had to marry their daughters within their sub-caste. Available brides far outnumbered the supply of desirable grooms; to meet the demand many men practiced polygamy. Any man who chose monogamy would be pressured to remarry as soon as his wife died. Suitable matches were essential to maintain caste purity, but there were other reasons for favouring early marriage. An unmarried girl was her father’s responsibility and any sexual transgression would damage the family’s reputation. Moreover, people believed a young daughter-in-law would more easily learn the ways of her affinal family and be less difficult than an older bride.

Child marriage offended British officials and foreign missionaries who asserted that this custom made Indians physiologically and psychologically weaker than people from Western countries. The penal code of 1861 made 10 the age of consent and defined sexual relations with a female below that age as rape. Indian reformers during the age of reform also found child marriage objectionable, but for different reasons. Harking back to the Golden Age, defined as the Vedic era before Hinduism had succumbed to various accretions, they declared adult marriages the norm. Pandit Vidyasagar, one of the great Bengali reformers, worked for widow remarriage as well as female education, and opposed the evils of polygamy and child marriage. Keshub Chunder Sen, a famous leader of the Brahmo Samaj, urged inclusion of a minimum age for marriage in the Marriage Act of 1872. This bill, applicable only to Brahmos and others who swore they did not belong to the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, or Jain community, set the minimum age at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. But this Act affected only a small number of people already convinced of the disadvantages of child marriage. In the 1880s the age-of-consent issue reappeared and resulted in an Act in 1891 that raised the age of consent to 12. This deeply offended many Hindus who resented the colonial state’s authority over sexual relations within marriage.

Early marriage did not always mean immediate consummation, although couples were not as closely supervised as some defenders of this custom would have us believe. Advocates of early marriage argued that the first ceremony was simply a betrothal and consummation followed only after the girl reached puberty. This may have been true in some families, but there is ample evidence that pre-pubescent girls were not considered too young for sexual relations. As a new bride Hem returned to her natal home and was later sent to live with her husband. But it was not concern about the age of consent or the onset of puberty that determined her return; she was sent to her husband’s home when her mother-in-law asked for her.

Hem’s family had nothing to do with the reformist agenda. The child received the education of a boy because she was the favoured daughter of her autocratic landlord father. He was not committed to gender equality; he simply wanted to pamper his favourite child. When the ladies of the house decided to arrange the child’s marriage, Hem’s father ranted and raved but he did not stop the marriage.

The marriage was badly mismatched. Hem’s bridegroom was a 45-year-old, twice-widowed man with two daughters only slightly younger than her. A drunkard and debauchee, he was annoyed that his egg had not yet hatched and confided to a paramour his intention to teach his young wife the facts of life. According to Hem he fell ill and died of a ruptured liver before he could carry out his plan. Within a year of her marriage, Hem was a virgin child widow.

When Hem became a widow c. 1876, reformers had identified child widowhood as a social problem, but schemes to educate widows and make them useful citizens were more than a decade away. Vidyasagar had talked about the endless misery caused by child marriage, because it left so many girls widows, and had urged his associates to abandon this practice. And, in 1884, Behramji M. Malabari, a Parsi journalist, wrote his ‘Notes’ on ‘Infant Marriage’ and ‘Enforced Widowhood’, blaming the mistreatment of widows on child marriage. In many cases young widows without children found it difficult to claim a share of their husband’s property and were seen as outsiders in their natal homes. Like many women of her generation, Hem became a drudge in her in-laws’ home. But she differed from most women because she could already read and write and was determined to pursue her education.

After the deaths of her father, mother, and mother-in-law, Hem found herself at loggerheads with her brother and her brothers-in-law. When neither would give her shelter, Hem went to Benares, the Hindu holy city. There were many widows in Benares and Hem assumed she would find refuge in the home of a relative. But this did not work out: her brother-in-law did not keep his promise to send money each month and her cousin’s wife saw her as a threat. Hem had to look for employment. Fortunately she was hired as a teacher in one of the small schools for girls established by Indian reformers. [We cannot trace this particular school but know that many of its kind existed.] Supported by local donations, these schools offered an alternative to missionary education. Often the school teachers were elderly brahmin men as was the case in the school where Hem got a job. She replaced this old man and in the process, incurred his wrath.

Hem’s adventures in Benares focus attention on the plight of unprotected young widows. She was about twenty years old at this time and by her own account, a beauty. Wherever she went, she attracted lecherous men and their attention produced gossip. Driven by an overwhelming desire to learn and hearing of accounts of homes in Calcutta where widows could live and study, she decided to leave for Calcutta.

In order to make this journey Hem asked her acquaintances for help and a member of her fictive kin produced a railway pass. In Khulna Hem belonged to a large extended family and had married into a family of equal size and connections. Abandoned by both families when she came to Benares, Hem turned to strangers and constructed new relationships. Bengali has a more complex and sophisticated vocabulary for kinship terms than English, so aunt or uncle does not convey the meaning of the original term. Hem called her new friends by kinship terms, thereby establishing new bonds of intimacy and reciprocity. Thrown into a hostile world without money or protection, she acquired a vast network of fictive kin who helped, defended, and sheltered her. It was a pattern she would follow throughout her life. Even after she remarried and had her own children, she continued to develop and maintain close emotional ties with people unrelated to her.

Armed with letters of introduction written by gentlemen in Benares, Hem arrived in Calcutta and went to meet Durgamohan Das and Sivnath Sastri, two of the best-known leaders of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. This movement is well known to those familiar with nineteenth-century Bengal but a summary of its development may be useful for those unfamiliar with its history. The Brahmo Samaj began early in the nineteenth century among a group of men who wanted to rethink their religious heritage. Rammohun Roy, a leading member of the new educated elite who advocated social reform, is best known for his vigorous attacks on the custom of sati. Rejecting idolatry, priests, and rituals, Rammohun was drawn to some of the ethical ideas of Christianity. He founded the Atmiya Sabha [Friendly Society] to further discussion of religious ideas; from 1815 to 1819 it met every week in his home. In 1828 he organized the Brahmo Sabha to meet for a weekly service and sermon. The young organization floundered after Roy’s death in 1833 until it was revived by Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) in 1843.

Debendranath, the author of the Brahma Covenant, a creedal statement, and Brahma Dharma, a volume defining the sect’s doctrine, and architect of revised Hindu rituals, is considered the founder of the Brahmo religion. The young men who followed him soon began to spread the word outside Calcutta. The most dynamic and energetic of these men was Keshub Chunder Sen who attracted his own following. The men who looked to Keshub for leadership wanted more dramatic action in the areas of caste equality, temperance, and equality for women. When they encouraged inter-caste marriages and the remarriage of widows, they gained the enmity of Debendranath’s associates who still saw the Samaj as a religious organization. In 1866 their differences led to a split; Keshub formed the Brahmo Samaj of India and Tagore’s group became known as the Adi or original Brahmo Samaj.

Brahmo missionaries set up mandirs [temples], schools, and associations in the districts to spread the word of reformed Hinduism and social change. However, schism was right around the corner. The Marriage Act, passed in 1872, set a minimum age of marriage for individuals who declared they were not Hindus. When Keshub agreed to his own daughter’s marriage before she was 14 years of age, his opponents linked this behaviour to other contentious issues: his growing interest in mysticism and a gradualist approach to women’s issues. The result was another split in the Brahmo Samaj.

In 1878 the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj was founded by those who rejected Keshub’s leadership. Prominent among them was Sivnath Sastri who stated the centrality of the woman question in these terms:

The Brahmo Samaj holds that the social and national regeneration of the country depends largely upon the education, elevation, and social emancipation of women... To the Brahmo Samaj the question of female emancipation has not come as a mere matter of social reform. It is involved in its religious principle.²

Sivnath’s co-workers included Durgamohan Das, Bipin Chandra Pal, Krishnakumar Mitra, Anandamohun Basu and Sasipada Banerji, all of whom worked to improve the condition of women through education, later age of marriage, and remarriage or training of widows. Hem met all of them and mentioned them in her memoir.

Sivnath Sastri was leaving for England³ with Durgamohan Das when Hem arrived and she was entrusted to a Brahmo from East Bengal until their return. Hem has written a hair-raising account of her search for shelter in eastern Bengal. She recounted in vivid detail her virtual imprisonment and escape from a family of landlords, and stint as governess to a wayward rani. In this narrative neither Brahmos nor rajas have been spared. Hem’s encounter with Tara, a young widow who became pregnant in a home for widows, feeds our suspicion that conventional historical accounts have been purged of these unsavoury details. While Hem exposed some pious Brahmos as frauds, she praised others for their compassion and generosity.

During her sojourn in East Bengal, Hem lamented her fate. She had left her position as a teacher in Benares to come to Calcutta where she intended to enter a home for widows and study. Instead, she was passed from family to family where she shouldered more than her share of household work in exchange for shelter. Meanwhile, she was not without suitors. Whereas adult widows were of no social value in Hindu society, they were sought after as mates by Brahmo widowers with children and men ideologically committed to marrying widows. Hem scorned the proposals of men who simply wanted a housekeeper. Unfortunately, the man she liked had a shrewish mother who vetoed his proposed inter-caste marriage with a widow.

Finally, Hem convinced her guardians in Dacca that she should be allowed to return to Calcutta. When she arrived from Dacca, she met a number of young widows who were living with families and pursuing their studies. The young women attending medical school attracted her attention and Hem began to think about this as an option.

The notion that a woman must belong to someone, have a husband and a home, remained uncontested even in progressive circles. An adult woman who was potentially sexual but unpartnered was a dangerous creature. In Dacca, Hem’s benefactor told her she must marry or she would live her life at the mercy of the mistresses and masters of the homes where she took shelter. In Calcutta, her sponsors urged her to marry first and then look for a way to study. Hem gave in and agreed to marry Kunjabehari Sen, a Brahmo missionary whom some of the other widows considered too dark to marry. Hem was 23 years old at the time.

We know very little about the man Hem married. Hailing from Midnapore district, he was a minor player in the Samaj. In 1890, the year of their marriage, he was the manager of the Mission Press.⁴ He continued in this position until at least February of 1890 but by the end of April was replaced.⁵ His name appeared in records of the annual meetings: as a seconder of resolutions, a donor to various funds, and a nominee (not elected) to the General Committee. Hem recalled that he was criticized for marrying her so soon after her arrival in Calcutta and remembered his departure from the Mission Press as a response to this criticism. This may well have been the case, but a close reading of the record books alerts us to hostile factions at work. Kunjabehari was small fry among the big fish of the Samaj but he could be contentious at meetings. In 1891 and 1892 there were questions about how the accounts were kept and Kunjabehari and his friends pushed for an audit. It was an unpopular move and in the end the questioners offered their apologies to the faction in power and Kunjabehari was censured.⁶

After marriage Hem was allowed to study. Kunjabehari left to work as a volunteer with famine victims in Bihar and Hem became a boarder in one of the many small private schools for girls. When Kunjabehari returned to Calcutta, they began to live together and Hem became pregnant. The child was stillborn, leaving her deeply depressed. She then decided to accompany her husband on a pilgrimage to North India. After a long, arduous, and adventure-filled journey, the two returned to Calcutta to set up another household.

Now Hem was more determined than ever to continue her education. Fortunately a new experiment in medical education for women, a three-year course at Campbell Medical School set up by the Director of Public Instruction in 1887, was offering scholarships. Women were admitted in 1888.

The first medical school in Calcutta, opened in 1824, combined the study of Western medicine with that of Unani [Greek] medicine, practiced by Muslims, and Ayuveda, or the traditional Hindu science of healing. Collaboration went out of fashion in 1835 when Lord William Bentinck set up a new medical college where the language of instruction was English and the mode of instruction, European.

In 1838 a Hindustani class opened to train subordinate doctors to serve the army. In 1853 a Bengali language programme began,⁷ and less than twenty years later, Campbell Medical School was established to accommodate the rising number of Bengali students. Campbell was located next to Sealdah Municipal Hospital, a pauper’s hospital established on the site of the Sealdah market in 1867. In 1873 it was renamed Campbell Hospital and attached to the Medical School.

The introduction of Western medicine to the Indian population is frequently viewed as an incontrovertible benefit of British rule. However, for much of the nineteenth century, only a few men and even fewer women benefited. The picture began to change with the introduction of the Dufferin Fund [the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India] and schemes to train female doctors and hospital assistants. Begun in 1885 by the Vicereine, Lady Dufferin, the Fund encouraged the building of hospitals run exclusively by and for women only, helped recruit trained personnel, and provided medical scholarships for Indian women. Indian women, according to numerous statements, memorials, and newspaper articles, were victims of dirty and lethal native midwives and desperately wanted Western medical practitioners. However, the fact that they observed purdah or seclusion meant they could not avail themselves of male doctors.

Sir A.W. Croft, Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, wrote in favour of opening the vernacular medical class at Campbell to women.⁸ In 1884 Kadambini Ganguly, a Bengali Brahmo, became the first woman admitted to Calcutta Medical College⁹ and a number of women, mostly Europeans and Eurasians, followed her example. But only a few Indian women had the formal education necessary for entrance. Admittance to the vernacular programme was much easier and Croft hoped this would increase the numbers.

Both English and Indian doctors objected to the proposal to open Campbell to women. Tackling the Dufferin Fund rhetoric, that Indian women wanted and needed women doctors, Dr. R.L. Dutt, Officiating Civil Surgeon of Rungpore, declared: There is no need for medical women of the Hospital Assistant class in the mofussil. No respectable girls would choose this profession and Indian women would not consult them. From his perspective, and he spoke as one of the few Indian men who had competed successfully for a position in the Indian Medical Service, this programme could bring European medicine into disrepute. He recommended that Indian women who wanted to become doctors attend medical college and those with less education take the midwife course.¹⁰

Government officials responded that medical college graduates did not want to practice in the districts and expected higher salaries than local authorities could afford. The proposed program’s entrance requirements: either the entrance examination, two subjects of this examination, the middle scholarship examination, the upper primary exam, or a special examination, would make it possible to recruit Indian women without formal education. The special exam was rather easy. It included reading and explaining a Bengali book such as Rajkrishna Mukherjea’s History of Bengal,¹¹ writing simple Bengali from dictation, and displaying an understanding of arithmetic to easy fractions and the rule of three. Any woman over age 16 could be admitted but there was no upper age limit. This differed from the programme for men that set the minimum entrance age at 16 and the maximum at 23 years. To make the programme additionally attractive, the government proposed providing 10 scholarships of Rs 7 per month (the scholarships for males were only Rs 5 per month) and free tuition. The proposal required women to study the same subjects as men but sit in the front seats of the classroom and learn dissection in a screened-off section of the room. It also excused women from night duty. Students from outside Calcutta could stay at Swarnamayi Hostel at Medical College; an omnibus was provided for the others by the Dufferin Fund.¹²

While this proposal was under discussion, J.M. Coates, the Principal of Calcutta Medical College, declared that there were jobs waiting for female medical practitioners. He had received numerous requests from district boards who could pay only Rs 30-40 per month when medical college graduates would not accept less than Rs 300 per month. Dr. S.C. Mackenzie, the Superintendent of Campbell Medical School, informed the government that he already had 15 candidates for the programme. These candidates were

. . . ladies belonging to the most respectable Brahmo families of Bengal—one of them is a relative of a pleader, another—a relative of a Government inspector of schools, another—a relative of the superintendent of a Zoological Garden, and two others are relatives of a teacher of a medical school.¹³

Campbell Medical School opened its doors to women in 1888. Fifteen students were admitted, 10 with scholarships and five with fee waivers. At the end of the first year, 10 passed and were promoted to the second year. One student was re-examined and allowed to join her colleagues, while the remaining four failed.¹⁴ In June of 1889, 10 new students and one re-admitted student began their studies.¹⁵ Two from this batch failed but the class size remained the same as they were joined by a student who failed her second-year exams. The third class admitted to Campbell in June of 1890, included nine new girls and one who had failed the previous year. From this class two dropped out, leaving a first-year class of eight women.¹⁶ Women from the Brahmo Samaj were expected to join this programme but it also attracted women from other communities; by 1890 there were 12 Hindu women, eight Brahmos and eight Christians. Apart from one baidya and one vaisnav¹⁷, the Hindu girls were mostly brahmins and kayasthas.

These were the women Hem met when she returned to Calcutta. Most of the Campbell girls had gained admittance through the special entrance exam and all of them had received at least one scholarship. In addition to government scholarships, there were special Dufferin-fund scholarships and scholarships from district and municipal boards that required recipients to serve in that district after graduation. Hem knew about this programme but it was not until she had lost a child, travelled to north India with her husband, and returned to Calcutta that she decided to enter Campbell Medical School. She needed a purpose in life and a way to earn money; medical school seemed to be the answer because admission was relatively easy and successful candidates received scholarships. She sought her husband’s permission, asked for help from a Brahmo acquaintance, studied, and passed the exam. Hem entered Campbell Medical School in 1891. She was 26 years of age.

In 1891 the first-year class included 16 students—12 new women and four who had previously failed. Before long three women dropped out, leaving a first-year class of 13.¹⁸ Records of the Dufferin Fund provide us with Hem’s grades, a list of her scholarships, information about her first position, and a yearly report from 1894–1910, on her conduct as a doctor. She received a scholarship of Rs 7 per month from the government, plus school fees. In the first-year class exams she was placed third but the record of her final exams has been lost. In her second year, Hem was among the four students allowed to appear at the First Diploma Examination. She received the highest marks in two papers: Anatomy and Physiology, and Materia Medica.¹⁹ Hem’s account of her progress through medical school is fascinating. Her depiction of her first dissection class captured the fear and horror felt by women students confronting a naked male cadaver. To complete their work these students were required to break the rules of ritual and caste purity as well as taboos about sex segregation and female modesty. They succeeded only because a kind teacher helped them through the experience. Hem’s descriptions of classes, classmates and professors, and coping strategies add a human dimension to the few surviving records from Campbell Medical School in the 1890s. At this time Hem and her husband were living in a Brahmo shelter opened for Samaj workers in 1892. As well as studying medicine, she did all the housework and supported the family with her scholarships.

Hem did well in her examinations—too well in the eyes of her male colleagues. When she earned the highest marks and was about to receive the gold medal, male students went on a rampage. Government authorities called for mediation and Hem went, with an infant in her arms, to the Governor-General’s residence. Her account of this event cannot be verified with other records but that does not mean it did not happen. Many of the newspapers of this period have not been microfilmed and are too brittle to read and other records have been destroyed for lack of space. According to Hem, she gave up the gold medal, accepted silver medals instead, and received permission to attend lectures at Calcutta Medical College. She may well have done so but Medical College records did not include names of occasional students. The Dufferin Report’s entries on her final year did not mention a debate over the degree she would receive, but the decision to set up and give her a special award and the Lord Dufferin’s silver medal gives credence to her story. She also received the Viceroy’s Silver Medal.²⁰

Despite her illustrious academic career, it was difficult for Hem to find employment. In the job market she was disadvantaged by race, gender, an inferior degree, and lack of experience. European and Indian males with foreign or medical college degrees employed by the Indian Medical Service and sometimes holding teaching positions, had the most prestige. The decision to call in a Western-trained doctor was made by the male head of the family and he could enforce or bend the rules of female seclusion as he wished. The only zenana hospital in Calcutta, set up by the Dufferin Fund, hired foreign women. Indian women graduates of medical colleges complained about this discrimination and set up private practices where they competed with male doctors for patients. Calcutta’s government and charitable hospitals employed male doctors to attend to both male and female patients. Despite the rhetoric about the importance of female medical practitioners to care for female patients, in the capital city Indian women doctors were not in high demand, forcing Campbell graduates to look for positions in the mofussil.

Hem’s opportunity for full-time employment came when she visited the Maharishi [Great saint] Debendranath Tagore in Chinsurah, an old Dutch settlement on the Hooghly river. She went with her husband and other Brahmos and while there, met local gentlemen who wanted a woman doctor for their city.

These men formed a committee, raised subscriptions, and approached the government. The government granted use of a portion of the old Chinsurah barracks and agreed to contribute Rs 1,200 per year from the Mohsin Fund²¹ to run the hospital. Female patients in the old Imambara Hospital (which had been treating both men and women) would be moved to the new Hooghly Dufferin Women’s Hospital as soon as it opened. The new Imambara hospital was completed in April of 1894.

Additional support for the hospital came from the municipality that mandated the hospital care for indigents, donations collected by Kumar Girindra Narain Deb, the joint-magistrate of Hooghly, and the Dufferin Fund which paid for the lady doctor and her staff.²² The first woman hired as the lady doctor in charge of this hospital was Sushila Debi, one year senior to Hem at Campbell. After graduation, Sushila Debi took a position at Bhagalpur but stayed only six months. She accepted the position at Hooghly with a lower salary and fewer benefits but resigned within a month, citing dissatisfaction with the doctor’s quarters. Hem was then hired.

Hem’s starting salary of Rs 40 per month, was later raised to Rs 50 per month. The Fund had hoped to staff the hospital with women but instead, hired two young men to serve as a dresser [nurse] and compounder [pharmacist], respectively. The hospital was somewhat smaller than Hem remembered in her memoir, accommodating between 20 and 30 patients and not the 50 she recollected.²³ It became immediately popular. During the few months it was open in 1894, the hospital served a total of 109 in-patients and 1,124 out-patients, and performed 13 major and 45 minor operations. The report on the Hooghly Dufferin Women’s Hospital concluded:

The institution . . . has already become popular, and looking to the large numbers of patients who already attend the hospital, and the report of its usefulness circulating amongst the native community, I think the institution is likely to prove very beneficial to the residents of the district.²⁴

What the report did not mention was the conditions under which Hem began practicing medicine. Placed under the supervision of the assistant-surgeon in charge of the Imambara Hospital and the civil surgeon,²⁵ Hem was sexually harassed, physically assaulted, and forced to take a bribe. The assistant surgeon, Dr. Badrikanath Mukherji, talked suggestively to her about venereal diseases, attempted to seduce her, and finally sent his henchmen to beat her up. The first time she complained, the civil surgeon admonished her for her arrogance, but later, another civil surgeon listened to her and ordered the assistant surgeon to stay away from the women’s hospital.

While Dr. Mukherji harassed her, the civil surgeons controlled her professional life. Designated Supervisor of the Dufferin hospital and called Boss by Hem, the civil surgeon submitted yearly reports on the work of the doctor and her assistants and the hospital’s expenditures. One civil surgeon sided with Dr. Mukherji; another objected to Hem’s version of purdah; another willingly took a huge bribe to sign a false death certificate; and still another (a member of the Brahmo Samaj) treated her kindly and took her side against an abusive husband. Generally these men commended Dr. Sen for her work and approved her expenditures, but they objected to the presence of two men on her staff. They complained that this violated the definition of a purdah hospital, maintaining that the presence of men would deter real (high status) purdah women from attending the hospital. The Dufferin Fund maintained that medical care for women had to be provided by women in Women-Only hospitals. It was common knowledge that poor women who worked alongside men did not observe purdah but this strata did not concern Duff’s founders. The women of most interest to the British were the upper classes and castes who observed female seclusion. British officials wanted to win the hearts and minds of the elite; zenana hospitals were their response to the Dufferin charge. Duff hospitals were to be staffed and run by women, and outfitted with the necessary curtains, partitions, and separate entrances to allow the