A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

Author:Neel Mukherjee [Mukherjee, Neel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Constable Robinson
Published: 2010-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

VI.

There it is, her name, in the respectful and prominent upper case customarily afforded to the author: VIOLET CAMERON, appended to the essay ‘Some Thoughts on Industrialization in Bengal: A Reply to Nikhilesh Roy Chowdhury’. And that juxtaposition is what stops Miss Gilby in her tracks as she is walking along the verandah, idly leafing through this latest issue of the Dawn, dated October 1903. It is no secret that Violet has been a member of the Dawn Society from ’97 or ’98. In fact, Miss Gilby collaborated with her on an essay on the education of Indian girls, which was published in these pages in ’99 along with articles by Annie Besant and by the Irish lady who went under the name of Sister Nivedita, and which went on to have far-reaching effects in the Anglo-Indian community not the least of which was the final excommunication of both Mrs Cameron and Miss Gilby from the society of their ‘own kind’, as James didn’t fail to point out repeatedly. But this coming together, this dialogue conducted at a distance between two people who have never met but have heard so much of each other through her, this sudden discovery of her inadvertent role of (of what? catalyst? channel? conductor?) medium, a role she has been so comprehensively ignorant of, this sends a thrill down her spine. It is as if all the coincidences of her worlds were chiming together in a big, resonant harmony.

She rushes into her study and takes in the article in one sitting. There are half echoes and muted soundings in Violet’s words: Miss Gilby has herself heard similar ideas from her and has had long discussions with her about self-government and that area forbidden to women – economics. The article appears at once familiar and strange. Violet seems critical of an unthinking and wholesale transplantation of Western industrialism to India, arguing that this will lead to similar problems faced by the West as a consequence of industrial capitalism – the stark division of the wealthy and the poor, class conflict, the gradual erosion of moral values and traditional modes of life and living.

One has only to cast a passing glance at the reports of the various commissions and blue books, which investigated the state of industrial life in the factories, mines and workshops between 1833 and 1842; or to read the pages of Engels’s ‘State of the Working Classes in England in 1844’ to convince oneself of the truth of the total degradation and suffering of the English working classes brought on by the Industrial Revolution, she has written.

The implied position of Mr Roy Chowdhury appears to be in favour of economic independence from British rule by a steady process of industrialization, which would then also become a remedy for the growing poverty of India. Miss Gilby’s head swims in the attempt to reconstruct his position from Violet’s essay. She is so fired up with curiosity that she immediately writes a note to him and summons Lalloo to deliver it.

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