The Indian ladies’ magazine, 1901–1938: from Raj to Swaraj

Abstract

By the fin de siècle, colonial India had witnessed vast social and educational reforms in the forging of a public sphere amongst Indian elite and service communities. Often categorised as a period of colonial modernity, writing for and by women in various regional communities grew from the late nineteenth century. These publications took the form of domestic manuals, periodicals and magazines and attempted to navigate the role of women in the twentieth century. The Indian Ladies’ Magazine (henceforth ILM), an English-language magazine published in Madras by Kamala Satthianadhan, an Indian Christian, was one such publication. It had two runs, between 1901 and 1918 (published monthly) and between 1927 and 1938 (published bi-monthly) and was the first Indian English-language woman’s magazine to have a female editor (30). The second run was edited by Satthianadhan’s daughter Padmini Sengupta. The magazine became one of the earliest mediums by which women could cut across cultural identities to instruct, converse and debate in a public forum as contributors and readers. Its readership was made up of English, Anglo-Indian and Indian English-educated middle-class women— a minority within a minority.