: Rani Rashmoni: When A Bengali Widow Outwitted The East India Company #IndiaNEWS #History For all of history, Indian women have been championing social change, pioneering important movements, and making

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Rani Rashmoni: When A Bengali Widow Outwitted The East India Company #IndiaNEWS #History
For all of history, Indian women have been championing social change, pioneering important movements, and making invaluable contributions to society. But as can be seen from our history books, their contributions are all too easily forgotten.
One such forgotten heroine is Rani Rashmoni, a ‘rani’ who wasn’t really a queen, and yet ruled the hearts of the people to such an extent that they bestowed the honor on her.
From fearlessly taking on the East India Company to founding the iconic Dakshnineshwar Kali temple, Rashmoni left an indelible mark on the history of Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta).
Source: Alchetron
A Woman Entrepreneur Ahead of Her Time
Rashmoni was born on 28 September 1793 in the small village of Halisahar in Bengal into a kaivarta (fishermen community) family. Her father was a poor labourer, who married his daughter to Raj Chandra Das — the scion of a wealthy zamindar family from Jaan Bazaar — when she was still in her teens.
Das was a progressive husband; educated and unconventional for those archaic times. Impressed by how astute she was, he encouraged his young wife to follow her heart and gave her unfettered access to his trade business.
Together, they built up a great fortune, channelling much of their wealth towards public welfare, from building pyaus (reservoirs of drinking water) for the abandoned to setting up soup kitchens for the hungry. The couple also built two of Kolkata’s oldest and busiest ghats, the Ahiritola Ghat and the beautiful Babu Rajchandra Das Ghat, or Babughat.
Babu Ghat (Source: Wikipedia)
However, Das passed away in 1830, and the years after his death saw Rashmoni passing through her toughest time. Battling patriarchy and the then-prevailing societal stigma against widows, the mother of four young daughters took over the reins of the family’s sprawling business – something that was virtually unheard of in those days.
When her husband’s adversaries and acquaintances heard this news, they were delighted by the prospect of an easy takeover, assuming that the kind-hearted widow would not provide much resistance. They would soon learn otherwise.
Displaying astute business sense, Rashmoni fended off these attempts, managing her work with exemplary pragmatism and the help of Mathura Nath Biswas, an educated young man married to her third daughter. For the rest of her life, Mathura babu (as he was called) would remain her trusted confidante and right-hand man in all dealings.
In the years that followed, Rashmoni raised her voice for two important causes — one, to fight against prevalent social ills like polygamy, child marriage and sati; and two, to support trailblazing social reformers like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, even submitting a draft bill against polygamy to the East India Company.

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