The Scattered Leaves of My Life: An Indian Nationalist Remembers

Saraladebi Chaudhurani, born into the famous Tagore family of Jorasanko, was a nationalist, a patron of the arts, a writer and an editor. Her essays and articles in Ramananda Chatterjee’s Modern Review, as well as in Bharati and Suprabhat, highlight her insights into nation-building as well as gender relations, but it is her extraordinary autobiography—presented here in translation—that most clearly presents her personal and political convictions. Audacious, brilliant and outspoken for her time, Saraladebi's work adds nuance and cultural heft to a particular Indian variation of what has been called “muscular nationalism” within a colonial milieu. Women, womanhood and feminism occupy a contested position within Saraladebi's notion of such a nationalism, yet there is little doubt that she is among India's feminist foremothers.