KRUPA: BRAHMIN,CHRISTIAN AND A NOVELIST

The first woman Novelist in India,wrote it in Ooty

It was in one of my regular visits to Ooty,on September 6,2013,I bought the book,Ootacamund,a History, by Frederick Price.Price wrote it at the request of Oliver Villiers Russel,the Governor of Madras,in 1908.Out of curiosity, I searched for the name, Krupabai Satthianadhan or her husband,Dr Samuel Satthianadhan.Samuel had died , in 1906,but Krupa in 1894.I searched for her name in vain.
Who is Krupa?the first Indian woman to study medicine.My interest was different:she was the first woman novelist in India to write in English.India's first feminist writer.She wrote the novel in Ooty ,started a Muslim school  there.Let us get down to brass tacks.

Krupa and Samuel(S)Satthianadhan story is one painted in letters;it is also the story of the coming together of two Hindu families converted into Christanity.Samuel's father Rev W T Satthianadhan was a first generation convert,who  was Thiruvengadam before.Krupa's father,Rev Haripunt Khisty was a Maharashtra Brahmin who got converted in the year Krupa was born,in 1861(I have seen Khisty wrongly written as Kristy;Khisty is a Maratha Brahmin surname).Her mother was Radhabai.

Samuel Satthianadhan,writer,educationist,reformer was born in 1860 to Rev William Thomas Satthianadhan and Annal Arochiam,born into the ancestors ruling Naicker family in Madurai.Thiruvengadam Satthianadhan was baptized as W T Satthianadhan in 1847 at Megananapuram  ordained in 1859,and was appointed to Tamil mission of the Church Mission Society in Madras.Dr Sundar Clarke,who was CSI Bishop of Madras,in his autobiography,Lead Us On(2005),traces the roots and finds that both the Satthianadhans and Clarkes are descendants of the first Indian to be ordained a protestant Pastor,C Arumugham born in 1698 at Cuddalore.Arumugham was the son of Chockanatha Pillai,a Cuddalore merchant,baptized in 1718 by the first Lutheran missionary in India,Bertholomaeus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar(Tharagambadi,Nagapattinam) Lutheran Mission and christened as A Aron.Aron had four daughters and one of them married  Devasahayam Pillai.I make a digression,here.

The legend is that,Devasahayam Pillai(1712-1752) was the son of Vasudevan Namboodiri of Kayamkulam,who was the priest in the Adikesava Perumal temple,Thiruvattar in Travancore.Born as Neelakanta Pillai in an affluent Nair family of Nattalam in Kanyakumari district,he was an official of Marthanda Varma.He came under the spell of the Dutch Naval Commander of Travancore,Eustachius De Lannoy and was baptized as Lazar,and his Nair wife Bargavi, as Gnanapoo Ammal. From Bishop Clarke's account we have to assume that Devasahayam Pillai had another wife.The Latin Church which has beatified him,believes he was killed by the King for conversion,which is in the realm of paradox. No records of conversion or execution exist.In Europe,at the time of Neelakanta Pillai,the Catholics and Protestants were in a belligerent mood,and the protestant De Lannoy would have never allowed Pillai to receive baptism from the Catholics.De Lannoy had a protestant church in Udayagiri.The claim of Devasahayam Pillai's execution has no basis, for two reasons:Dr Clarke's account states he lived;the Raja who kept a Christian De Lannoy in service would have never executed a person close to him.
Devasahayam Pillai's daughter,Muthammal,according to Clarke's account,married John Devasahayam who was ordained in 1896 as the first Indian Anglican priest.John Devasahayam's daughter Annal married Rev W T Satthianadhan,who many felt,should have been the first Anglican Bishop.But Rev Satthianadhan established a different precedent.He was made Presbyter of Chintadripet Church.He renamed it Zion Church and remained there for 30 years and his son in law,Rev William Devapriyam Clarke succeeded him.Rev W D Clarke's son Samuel Thomas Satthianadhan Clarke served the church during 1921-1944.Bishop Clarke was his son.
Annal's father John was from a Vaishnavite family in Mayavaram.Annal married her father's curate,W T Satthianathan (Thiruvengadam).Hewas born C.1830 in Sinthapathurai,Tirunelveli,in a Vaishnavite Naidu family.He came under missionary influence in CMS School,Palayamkottai;his family fixed his marriage,but he fled on the night before the wedding,at 14.

 Satthianadhan,Annal,Son Samuel

Krupa's father Haripunt after conversion,joined the American Board Mission Society in their native Ahmed Nagar.He died early;Krupa's brother Bhasker who took over,too died early.The Church made arrangements for her to go to England in 1877,but could not make it because of ill health.She traveled alone from Bombay to Madras to reach W T Satthianadhan's home,where he became her mentor.Though she joined Madras Medical College and was first ranker initially,she had to drop out because of failing health.
Samuel Satthianadhan who studied in Anglican High School,Veperi joined Corpus Christi College,Cambridge in 1878 and returned to Madras in 1883.Thus began the courtship.They got married the same year.Samuel who started as Head Master in Ooty became Head Master of Rajahmundry High School after three years.Later he became a  Lecturer in Kumbakonam Govt Arts College and a Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy in the Presidency College,Madras.
Krupabai started writing in Ooty where Samuel got his first job as  Headmaster in Breeks Memorial School. Her first published article was A Visit to the Todas in South India Observer ,the story of an interaction with the aborigins,Todas.She began writing her first novel, the autobiographical,Saguna: Story of a Christian Life in 1886;it was serialised in the Madras Christian College Magazine,1887-1888.She co authored a paper on the conversion of  W T Satthianadhan with her husband,The Story of a Conversion in 1891.The second novel,Kamala:Story of a Hindu Life followed in 1894.Miscellaneous writings was published in 1896.She finished the manuscript of Kamala in a hospital bed in Madras.She was diagnosed with TB;she had lost her only child.She died in 1894,at 33.Kamala has more than an echo of the novel,Middle March by George Elliot.Krupa admired her.
Though a Christian,she has not used her novels to preach any religion.She condemned decadent customs.In one of her visits to Pune she had seen Pandita Ramabai(1858-1922),a Brahmin converted to Christianity,who was running a home for widows.It  left an everlasting impression on her.Krupa recollects in Miscellaneous Writings:
How much fuller,brighter and healthier the life of our girls would be if they could only throw off the trammels of superstition and prejudice and breath the healthy atmosphere of innocent enjoyment and culture!Pandita Ramabai's work is national in its effects,for the widows she is training are sure to take lead in the emancipation of the women of India.
Both her heroines,Saguna and Kamala live life on their own terms.Both have internalized the conflicts.But finally they seek truth in their own faiths.Kamala walks out on her husband but ends up in renunciation.Saguna is critical of native Christian women:
She knew that the native Christian community was very small,and that there was no society to speak of neither long skirts nor short skirts.Her mother wore a soree.But she attended an English school,and her thoughts were influenced by those with whom she mixed.And who knows what the rising Christian community may not aspire to in future?Nothing is so startling as the unconscious imitation of English customs and manners by the people of India.
Thus,her new woman is the quintessential Indian woman.

Ramabai

After Krupa's death, Samuel married a Telugu Brahmin woman,Kamala          Krishnamma. She,daughter of Oruganti Sivarama Krishnamma, was 13 years younger than him.She agreed to conversion on the condition that she will become a graduate.Kamala graduated from Presidency College in 1898,the first South Indian woman graduate.Then she bacame the first Indian woman to do an MA.She started the first Indian women's magazine,Indian Ladies Magazine.So she also becomes the first Indian woman Editor.After Samuel's sudden death of a heart attack in Tokyo,Kamala didn't turn to Samuel's family for help,her daughter Padmini Sen Gupta reminisces.She became Sanskrit tutor to a Rani to bring up her two young children.Padmini  authored the biographies of Pandita Ramabai and Toru Dutt,the Bengali poetess who died at just 21. I have never come across so many firsts in a single article.Thus,Samuel Satthianadhan becomes the first Indian male feminist!

Reference:
1.The Satthianadhan Family Album/Eunice Dsouza/Sahitya Academy,2005
2.The Portrait of an Indian Woman/Padmini Sengupta/YMCA Publishing House,Kolkata,1956
3.Krupabai Satthianadhan:The Portrait of an Indian Lady/Subhendu Mund/The Ravenshaw 4.Journal of English Studies 6:Summer 1996
5.Stories of Indian Christian Life/Samuel Satthianadhan & Kamala Ratnam 6.Satthianadhan/Srinivasa Varadachari & Co,Madras,1896
7.Caste,Culture and Conversion from the Perspective of an Indian Christian Family based in Madras 1863-1906/Eleanor Jackson/University of Derby/1999
8.Lead Us On/Bishop Dr Sundar Clarke/2005