Liberal Religion and the ‘Woman Question’ between East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth‐Century Bengali Women's Journal

• Published in: Sex, Gender and the Sacred pp. 51 - 66
• Main Author: Midgley, Clare
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 29.04.2014
• Subjects: feminism; liberal religious groups; social position; social reform; women education
• ISBN: 9781118833766; 1118833767
• DOI: 10.1002/9781118833926.ch2

Men and women belonging to liberal religious groups who believed that human progress could be achieved through combining a rational or intuitive, rather than a dogmatic, approach to faith with a radical agenda of social reform were in the vanguard of movements to improve women's education and social position in the nineteenth‐century world. This article explores how cross‐cultural interchange between members of leading liberal religious groups – British and American Unitarians and Transcendentalists and Bengali members of the Brahmo Samaj – shaped transnational debates on the ‘woman question’ through examining articles published in the leading nineteenth‐century Indian women's journal, Bamabodhini Patrika (Journal for the Enlightenment of Women). In the process, it contributes to developing a more complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between religion and the ‘woman question’ in colonial India. It explores the significance of Brahmo men's positioning of Unitarian women activists, rather than idealised Victorian housewives, as exemplars for Brahmo women, the impact of the rise of cultural nationalism in India and the anti‐feminist backlash against ‘strong‐minded’ women in the west on debates on the ‘woman question’ in Bengal, and how a sense of religious affinity shaped developing cross‐cultural friendships between Brahmo and Unitarian women.