Converts, Bible Women, and Girl Graduates: Emerging Visions of Indian Christian Womanhood in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna (1889–1890)

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna (1889–1890) is an autobiographical novel by one of the first Indian women to attend medical school in Madras. Saguna is a New Woman narrative of spiritual and social development for both its protagonist and the emerging Indian Christian community. Written in English, it was serialized in the Madras Christian College Magazine , a periodical reaching British, Anglo-Indian, and Western-educated Indian readerships regionally, nationally, and in Christian missionary networks throughout the Empire. Satthianadhan investigates the origins of Indian Christian womanhood in Indian Christian conversion narratives and professional work, especially the mission-sponsored Bible Woman. Critiquing the ways in which female converts and Bible Women retain limited personal agency or occupy lowly positions in the community, Satthianadhan presents her protagonist as a New Woman who draws on the Bible Woman’s example of bold preaching and her own liberal education to ground her beliefs about society and religion in independent, rational thought. Satthianadhan promotes Indian women’s education reform as a movement to be embraced by the Indian Christian community and as a means through which its women can join theological conversations and champion social reform efforts in the larger, male-dominated, Indian public sphere.