Sumita Mukherjee

Using the Legislative Assembly for Social Reform: the Sarda Act of 1929

In 1929, the Legislative Assembly of India, a body of representative Indian politicians, passed a law making the minimum age of marriage 14 years for girls. In contrast to the debates in the 1890s from which the 1891 Age of Consent Act was passed by the imperial legislature, there were intense debates in 1920s India involving British and Indian social reformers on the issue of marriage. Marriage affected the majority of the population and involved all communities, and this was the first legislation to impose a minimum age. Child marriage was seen in the eyes of some Indians and outsiders as an outdated and particularly harmful tradition, but many Hindus justified the practice as a religious necessity. The article explores how Indian reformers were able to defy opposition and use the new governing mechanisms given to them to pass legislation on a matter of national concern.

Indian Messiah: The Attraction of Meher Baba to British Audiences in the 1930s

This article considers the British reception of Meher Baba, an Indian religious figure, who first travelled to Britain in 1931. Following a tradition of Indian religious figures who toured Britain and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Baba was removed from organised religion and placed emphasis on self-realisation, and attracted large British followings notably dominated by women. This article argues that the 1930s witnessed a continuing interest in Indian religious figures and adherence to Orientalist stereotypes about Indian religiosity despite changing political dynamics. Exploring a range of public and private responses to Baba, following comparison with his contemporary Jiddu Krishnamurti, and discussing the role of British mediators Paul Brunton and Francis Younghusband, this article explores British impressions of Indian religious figures in the 1930s and how they were informed by notions of race, religiosity, and gender.

The Reception Given to Sadhu Sundar Singh, the Itinerant Indian Christian ‘Mystic’, in Interwar Britain

Abstract In 1920 and 1922, an Indian Christian called Sadhu Sundar Singh toured Britain. Widely renowned in the global Christian community in the interwar period, Singh was notorious for certain stories of miracles, for his appearance and for the ways in which he epitomised Eastern Christianity. Using Singh’s correspondence and a range of newspapers, this article argues that British audiences were attracted to Singh because of his appearance and ethnicity and because he conformed to stereotypes of essentialised Indian spirituality despite his Christian faith. It argues that the reception to Singh in Britain must be understood in relation to the perpetuation of Orientalist understandings of Indians and Indian religions in the interwar period.

The Staging of Sakuntala in London from 1885 to the 1920s

Kalidasa’s Sanskrit play, Sakuntala, was well known to Western audiences by the nineteenth century. Written in the early centuries of the Common Era, this ancient drama was translated into English by Sir William Jones in 1789 and then by Sir Monier Monier-Williams in 1872. It was the first Indian drama to be translated into English. The writer and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also fascinated by Sakuntala, Jones’s version having been translated into German in 1791. Goethe praised the drama’s beauty in his poetry and used it as inspiration for the opening of his play Faust. It was the title of an overture by Karl Goldmark, written in 1885, which was performed numerous times in concerts and for radio in Britain, and the subject of an opera written by Franco Alfano in 1921. The romantic story is derived from an incident in the epic Hindu poem Mahabharata, focusing on the plight of Sakuntala, a young girl who falls in love with a King named Dushyanta when he is on a hunting trip. They become secretly betrothed and then Dushyanta returns to his kingdom. However, a curse is put on Sakuntala, resulting in the King losing all memory of her unless she can present him with a ring which will restore it. As Sakuntala sets out to meet Dushyanta again, she loses the ring, and when she presents herself at court the King dismisses her, as he has no recollection of their betrothal. It is only years later that the two are reunited * when the ring, having been swallowed by a fish, is retrieved by Dushyanta. He also chances upon his son at that time and finally recognises both him and Sakuntala. This essay will review the British press reception to the staging of Sakuntala in UK theatres during the imperial era, with particular reference to the Gaiety production of 1885 by the Parsee Victoria Dramatic Company, two productions by the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1899 and 1912, and the 1919 performance at the Winter Garden Theatre produced by Laurence Binyon, among others. How were the various productions of Sakuntala in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century adapted for evolving British tastes in light of increased exposure to Indian artistic culture in this period? In December 1885, a troupe from Bombay, known as the Parsee Victoria Dramatic Company, staged Sakuntala at the Gaiety Theatre. The Gaiety was opened in 1868 on the Strand in London and could house about 2,000 people. Sakuntala was one part of a four-part programme that also included comedy sketches and Solomon’s Sword, an opera in Hindi. Parsee theatre dominated urban India from the late nineteenth century, combining professionalism with cultural fluidity and taking on plays in a range of languages, as well as other forms of entertainment such as magic and comedy, as evident in this particular programme (see Hansen). The production then moved on to the Opera Comique in Aldwych in London. On 14 December 1885 the Pall Mall Gazette secured an interview with Mr Nazir, acting manager of the group, who explained that the original Company, of which this was an offshoot, had been created twenty years before. Forty-four men and women had travelled to Britain in the troupe, consisting of actors, dancers, musicians and stage-hands as well as jugglers, snakecharmers and acrobats. They had also brought a substantial wardrobe for their performances, as was usual for Parsee theatre. The part of Sakuntala, however, was played by a man, C E Polishwalla. The performance was regarded mainly as a ‘novelty’ * and even ‘too much novelty’ by The Times. Their reviewer doubted the capacity or interest of British audiences to appreciate such an alien programme:

The All-Asian Women's Conference 1931: Indian women and their leadership of a pan-Asian feminist organisation

ABSTRACT In January 1931, the All-Asian Womens Conference (AAWC) convened in Lahore. Forty-five female delegates met to discuss common social and political concerns of women in Asia, such as infant mortality, suffrage, education and rights of inheritance. Organised by Indian women, along with the Irish Theosophist Margaret Cousins, the AAWC spoke to visions of pan-Asianism that were reflected by male Indian nationalists at the time. Keen to counteract the Euro-American centrism of international womens organisations, Asian women discussed the ways they could organise together. This article analyses the rhetoric within the conference, through its reports, correspondence and international newspapers and periodicals. It discusses the ways pan-Asianism was conceived by Indian women in the 1930s and explains why there was only ever one meeting of the AAWC.

The Emergence of a British Hindu Identity between 1936 and 1937

The size and influence of Hindu communities in Britain noticeably grew and developed after World War II. In particular, the 1948 Nationality Act which gave Commonwealth citizens the right to settle in Britain, and then the enforced exodus of South Asians from oppressive regimes in Kenya and Uganda in the 1960s and 1970s, saw a large increase in Hindus of Indian origin arrive in Britain. These relatively contemporary British Hindu communities have been discussed by sociologists, political scientists and other analysts in terms of their large temple-building projects in Neasden, Leicester and elsewhere; their status as Non-Resident Indians (NRIs); and their financial links to the Hindu Right and their political arm the Bharatiya Janata Party in India.1 Decades earlier, in the 1930s, when there were merely a few thousand Hindu residents in Britain, Indian immigrants faced and discussed similar concerns about their links to the Hindu Right, the shaping of Indian identities, and the question of whether building temples would cement the public presence of Hindus in Britain. Yet, they also faced other broader political concerns about their roles as British subjects within the empire, the interplay of various international and imperial networks, and the ways in which Hinduism should be projected internationally in a world where Western cultures dominated public discourse.