Question

Who wrote the autobiography titled ‘Amar Jiban’ ?
A) Rashsundari Devi
B) Amrita Pritam
C) Cornelia Sorabji
D) Indira Gandhi

Answer 1

Hint: She was born in 1800 in the village of Potajia, in the Pabna district. At the age of 12 she married Sitanath Sarkar from Ramdia village, Rajbari, Faridpur. She was a religious Vaishnavite by faith. With limited formal schooling, she also learned to read driven by Bhakti (devotion), out of her keen desire to read Valmiki Purana as well as Chaitanya Bhagavata.

Complete answer:
Aamar Jiban was published in 1876. It is the name of Rashsundari Devi’s autobiography and is the first autobiography written by an Indian. woman. Also the first written by any Bengali female. The book is about the status of women in the 19th century Indian society. It was the first full length book or autobiography published in the Bengali language.

Rashsundari Devi lived in times when social reform had barely touched the lives of any class women in India. Education was foreign concept for women and a literate woman was known as a wicked or cursed woman. But Rashsundari refused to remain an illiterate woman all her life. At the age of 26, she taught herself to read and write, and constructed herself an identity independent of her family, her husband and children. She not only learned with sheer dedication but also used it for self-discovery. Rassundari Devi was born to a rural zamindari family in the small village of Potajia in Pabna in 1809/1810.

Rassundari never received a formal education. Educating girls was considered a sacrilegious act those days. At the age of 12, she was married to a man named Nilmani Roy who belonged to a well-to-do landed household in Rajbari, Faridpur. Over the years, she hid and learned to read and later on to write.
Rassundari was widowed at the age of 59 and a few months after her husband’s death, she finished and published the first version of her autobiography in 1868 and its final version in 1897.

Thus, Option A is the correct answer.

Note: Written in Bangla, Amar Jiban narrates the life story of a 19th century struggle of women for literacy. It portrays the changing world of rural Bengal and situates the dealings of women there.