Stree Shiksha, or educational reforms for women, was one of the main battlegrounds on which perceived contests over civility, progress and nationalism were fought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While Brahmo reformers like Rammohun Roy are well-known, lesser-known reformers like Sarala Ray often disappear in dominant historical retellings. Ray was the founder of one of the first girls’ schools in Calcutta, the Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School, which continues to this day. The aim of this article is to uncover and examine the many contributions of this figure and the tensions within them.
Early reformist socialization and rebellious youth
Sarala Ray was born on November 26, 1861 to the eminent Brahmo social reformer Durgamohan Das. According to Geeti Sen (1996), Durgamohan Das was a lawyer and one of the first members of the Sadharon Brahmo Samaj, which disbanded in 1878. He received the title of “female emancipator” and actively supported the Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya, which Annette Akroyd had opened. A school where his own daughters were enrolled. In 1878 this school was merged with the Bethune School and the students were recognized as Bethune Students.
Ray was therefore born into an environment of reform for women, particularly through education. The idea of emancipation, particularly for a certain class of Bengali women, was an obvious feature of her childhood. This undoubtedly shaped not only her personal vision, but also the way she imagined the then modern citizen of the nation.
Sarala Ray, the eldest daughter of the family, was also a prominent figure in the family history, according to Geeti Sen. She was considered a rather unconventional rebel in her personal life, described by Sen as follows: “She held “a kind of “salon” in her house, which was a meeting place for prominent social and political figures from all over India.” She was also one of the first women to smoke in public (Sen, G., 1996, p. 59).”
Contributions to Street shiksha
Anusuya Ghosh (2022) writes that although Sarala Ray was unable to pursue higher education herself due to her early marriage to PK Ray, the first Indian principal of the Presidency College in Calcutta, she was actively involved in promoting educational reforms.
Sarala went to Dacca with her husband and founded a school for women and a Mahila Samiti for women in Dacca. She was soon appointed as the secretary of Brahma Balika Shikshalaya; However, she had to give up this position prematurely when her husband moved to London. During her stay in London, she learned about Western educational practices and later applied them in various ventures. There she founded the “Indian Women’s Education Association”. After returning to the country, at the request of Swarnakumari Devi, she joined the Sakhi Samiti, whose aim was to train young girls to become teachers who would later work for the Samiti.
In 1920, Sarala Ray founded the Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School in Calcutta, which is considered her greatest contribution to education. According to Abala Bose’s memoirs, the idea for the school came to her shortly after the death of her beloved son and at a time when she was suffering from this grief. She saw her dear friend, the late Gopal Krishna Gokhale, in her dream, and there he seemed to advise her to devote herself entirely to the service of her nation, to throw herself into work, that was the only way to escape her misery. She suggested that the funds raised could be used to build a memorial to Gokhale in Bengal, which had been lying idle for this purpose.
With the help and support of many eminent personalities, the Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School, named after her dear friend Gokhale, was officially opened on April 8, 1920 with six students. According to Ghosh (2022), the idea was to create a space that offers students the best of the Orient and Occident and promotes holistic development.
She created a differentiated, separate curriculum for primary and secondary schools. She advocated a kindergarten method for young children. For the older ones, she wanted to get to know all facets of life and therefore decided on a wide range of topics. In terms of curriculum, she was actually ahead of her time and even suggested replacing higher Bengali with Arabic or Urdu to ease the entry of Muslim students and also made complex subjects like comparative religion, history, geography etc. an integral part of the new curriculum.
Vision and goal
Ray wanted to create educated, dignified women who would fit perfectly into the emerging Bengali Bhadralok class. She argues in her lecture at the Benaras Women’s Conference, which appears in the Saral Ray Centenary Volume of 1961, that women are responsible for promoting the “moral endurance” of men. It is the unconditional devotion of women that has “spoiled” men and led to their moral and ideological degradation. Women have become obstacles to men’s development due to their submissiveness and inadequate use of their “latent powers.” Women must therefore themselves come out from the shadows of darkness and acquire education and awareness to uplift men and thereby the entire nation. They need to evolve and become self-reliant to bring the nation forward.
She wanted students to develop a passion for education. In her presidential address at the AIWC in Madras, she spoke about how educational institutions must focus on character building and mold women into desirable citizens. She advocates for the extent of spiritual realization alongside intellectual development in these schools. She believes that all social ills stem from a lack of education. She speaks of “rights and responsibilities of citizenship” as an important but often ignored topic that needs to be emphasized in schools. She envisioned a separate education committee, led exclusively by educated women, that would design a specific curriculum to disseminate education tailored to women’s current needs and societal expectations of them. Sarala Ray writes, “There are now women in the country who know what kind of femininity they want to produce through their educational institutions.”
Oindrila Mitra (2022) says she also wanted to break the image of women as incompetent teachers and therefore, contrary to the trend at the time of predominantly male teachers teaching in women’s schools, she hired an exclusively female teaching staff at the Brahmo Balika Sikshalaya. She preferred to use the term “pedagogical specialists” rather than “Sikhika” or teacher for herself and the teachers employed.
She envisioned that Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School and its approach to women’s education would differ in many ways from other established girls’ schools. The first is that, unlike others that have settled into a mechanical, almost factory rhythm, this school would have a personal touch, real thirst for knowledge, creativity and interest in self-realization and not just certifications. Unique subjects such as fine arts, physical education and home science. Were also made part of the curriculum here. A third point that made this school unique was the employment of native speakers to teach languages (Hindi, Bengali and English) properly. During this time, Sarala Ray tried to develop a “modern” holistic curriculum. Their goal was to make women self-sufficient beings who no longer needed the support of men for their own growth. She wanted to give women the status of legitimate, deserving citizens of the nation.
The problem of reform
Ray’s persistent emphasis on “honor and grace” serves as a reminder of the “ideal woman” imagined at the time; It has a strange touch of Victorian morality mixed with the aspirations of the newly emerging Bhadralok class. The greatest concern of these reformers seems to be self-actualization, the kind of self-actualization that ultimately benefits a much larger circle. What remains strangely unmentioned in all this are the stark, utilitarian effects of education; In the case of female education, it may only be used in the realm of the mind. The inner spiritual reality that Chatterjee (1987) speaks of is the only one that needs to be improved, refined and redefined, while the outer material world waits to be conquered by those promoted by the “severer faculties” of the inner sphere, men. The “immortality” of the spiritual spirit is simultaneously used to elevate the stature of women and to mark out the “right” territory for them.
Sarala Ray remains an unmissable name in the discourse Street shikshaespecially in Bengal. The school she founded is still considered one of the most sought-after knowledge institutions in modern-day Calcutta. Her innovative curriculum approach and creative vision have undoubtedly contributed to this. Although she remained steadfast in her goal of educating women to be worthy subjects of the nation, the very “sense of value” she aspired to seemed to be intertwined with class, morality, caste and gender hierarchies. This examination of her lifetime allows us to go beyond the narrative of the male social reformer and complicate the motives, positions and challenges of visions of emancipation.
References
- Chakraborty, R. (2009). Education and Empowerment of Women in Colonial Bengal. In response to the West. Amsterdam University Press.
- Chatterjee, P. (1987). The nationalist solution to the women’s question. At Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta eBooks. Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA68886664
- Chattopadhyay, K.L. (1987). The Brahmo reform movement in 19th century Bengal – a modernizing force. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 48, 478-479. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44141742
- Ghosh, A. (2022). Sadhana Centenary Volume (2019-2021). Navana Printing Company.
- Karlekar, M. (1986). Kadambini and the Bhadralok: Early Debates on Women’s Education in Bengal. Economic and Political Weekly, 21(17).
- Mitra, O. (2022). Sadhana Centenary Volume (2019-2021). Navana Printing Company
- Sen, G. (1996). A collage of family portraits. India International Center Quarterly, 23(3/4).
Shrestha Bandopadhyay is a researcher, author and trained sociologist with expertise in feminist theory, critical policy analysis and community-based research. Her work focuses on marginalized communities, gender dynamics, and digital media, and she has published in respected journals. Shrestha holds an MA in Women’s Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a BA in Sociology from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She is also an accomplished Bharatanatyam and Manipuri dancer. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.