Cameos of Twelve European Women in India- 1757-1857 (An Old and Rare Book)

About the Book The cameos of twelve European women in India, have been selected to reveal the various facets of their lives in a foreign land, where besides being a wife, a daughter or a sister, each woman establishes herself with her individuality and personality, some as daring travelers, some as writers, actresses or artists. It was as if the exotic land India which helped them to develop their dormant qualities.

About the Author Anjali Sengupta was born in Calcutta in 1917 in a family which had a liberal and national background. She had her early education at Loreto House, Calcutta, which was followed by a distinguished university career. She married an eminent doctor, but kept up her love of literature and history, by reading, by travel and by writing articles. She turned to serious writing after her husband's death and this publication is the result of over three years of deep study and research.

Foreword The Banded by century of the Company Babber's regime, dappeared from India weidin d years they had struck rools in the wo sler intend, then try the plethora of Raj stores coming up these days, that the interest in the British imtodia deres little sign of receding. While Britis secall the past with stalgia, some in an thers in an ulting noel, the interest of the Indians, on the whole, does not to have This perhaps understandable Doe celerate even ignore the past, especially if cha past happens to be not a distant one Whether we like it or not, the British had stuck on. We reacted in varied ways. The recollections are not always happy, the memory rankles in our minds. But there is no gainsaying that for en hundred years we Jad lived together and in doing so had influenced each ether in ways of thinking, and, in consequence, in our actions which are supposedly manifestation of thigh A British visitor in India today can perhaps detect many survivals from the days when his forebears pressed the brightest jewel in the crown.

Even if the concept of the jewel is left out, as it may well be, the fact remains that lives of the two peoples at commoner's level came close enough. At the beginning the contact was of convenience, if not of compulsion The early Britons in India, cut off from home, thousands of miles across the seas, before the Sirs opened its canal, was almost a lost soul, exposed to all the risks of living among a people of whom they knew little or nothing and none too sure if he would ever set his foot on the land of his birth again. He seat, of necessity, less conventional, lenimular and more communicative. While his role as a merchant made him seek contact with the natives, biological urges induced him often to choose Indian woman as his partner in life for all practical purposes. He dined in Indian style and enjoyed the hookah' as much as nautches He would not even hesitate to offer prayers to the native presiding deity if it suited his purpose. He had his arrogance, but he thought it expedient to restrain it, or at least attempted to as far as possible. There were a few whose interests were not merely those all traders, impervious to the land and its people d culture They tried to book beneath the surface and und to diver India's culture To them India was me Dan a land of wandering faun, make amen, acrobats and rope-walkers, Rajalis in damling robes and glittering palates There were still others whose imaginations were steered merely by the riches tut also by the beauties of the Indian scene-its rivers, cascades, mountain, finery landscapes, the bright sunshine and the Lee Irion. They were the artist-explorers eager to carry India's image abroad.

There was a marked change in the average Briton's attitude and mattock towards India and things Indian, once the Tapir had become a settled fact. He was then amative to the point of arrogance and paraded a racial superiority. A cleavage ensued, resulting in a situation in which the twains would not agree to meet. The author of the present treatise in her Introduction has probed into the reasons for this change and the readers would readily agree with her analysis.

History, as told by the Britons themselves, depicts the stages in the shaping of the British mind in India. Many of them who strutted along the stage are, by now, only shadowy, fleeting figures. Man. Anjali Sengupta who presents this cameo, led by natural instinct, has chosen to recapture twelve women character whose visits to and stay in India cover a span of one hundred years.

**Contents and Sample Pages**