THE REFORMERS
Keshub Chandra Sen and Suniti Devi
1838–84 / 1864–1932
Well known for her philanthropy at home, Victoria also championed social reform in India, lending her name to the education of boys and girls, and also to schemes to improve nursing and midwifery. In 1870, the Bengali reformer Keshub Chandra Sen met with the queen at Osborne House, seeking her support for vernacular and Englishlanguage schools in India.
Sen used his good contacts at court to help set up the National Indian Association with Mary Carpenter, raising money for the cause of Indian female education both in India and in Britain. The queen deputed her daughter, Princess Alice, to get involved with the project. In the 1880s, Princess Louise of Prussia (the Duchess of Connaught), who married Victoria’s third son, Prince Arthur, accompanied her husband to India. With the queen’s encouragement, she used her time in Mumbai and Pune to continue the campaign for extending western-style primary education.
There were, however, limits to the queen’s Indian philanthropy. A beacon of religious tolerance, she steered clear of missionary evangelicalism, and would not lend her name, despite pressure to do so, to reforming the zenana, the secluded status of many Indian women. Chandra Sen met the queen only once, but his daughter, Suniti Devi, who married the Maharajah of Cooch Behar (the ruler of a small state in Bengal), enjoyed a longer stay in England in 1887, the year of the queen’s golden jubilee. She met with Victoria just ahead of the celebrations, later recalling the intimacy and informality of the occasion. Suniti modelled herself on Victoria as a modernising matriarch, writing a series of books about the role of women in Indian history and culture.