Indian Women’s History and Rural Education, G.S. Dutt’s Signed Biography of Saroj Nalini Dutt, 1937 Inscription

G S. Dutt

Book

Dutt, G.S., A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini, Founder of the Women’s Institute Movement in India, signed copy dated 1937, preserves the life and reform work of Saroj Nalini Dutt within the history of women’s education, rural self-help, and social welfare in Bengal. Saroj Nalini Dutt founded Mahila Samitis, or women’s institutes, to support education, cooperation, vocational training, and social improvement among women, especially outside Calcutta; accounts of her work identify her as a pioneer of women’s rights and grassroots women’s organization in Bengal. The biography also records a husband’s continuation of his wife’s public mission after her death in 1925, when Gurusaday Dutt founded the Saroj Nalini Dutt Memorial Association to carry forward her work.

Dutt, G.S. A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini, Founder of the Women’s Institute Movement in India. Publication city and publisher not supplied, publication date not supplied. Signed by G.S. Dutt on the front endpaper with the inscription, “With Sincere Regards from G.S. Dutt,” dated 1937. The book centers Saroj Nalini Dutt’s efforts to bring social, economic, and educational advances to Indian women in rural Bengal, especially through women’s institutes that provided instruction, mutual aid, and vocational training. The volume’s significance is strengthened by its presentation inscription from Gurusaday Dutt, an Indian civil servant and reformer, whose memorialization of Saroj Nalini connected domestic biography, women’s organizing, and rural reconstruction in late colonial India.

The Saroj Nalini Dutt Memorial Association later became connected to international women’s organizing through the Associated Country Women of the World, and the association’s centennial observances in 2025 attest to the longevity of the institutional legacy created from Saroj Nalini’s work. Number of volumes, pagination, illustrations, binding, dust jacket status, and size are not supplied. Signed and inscribed front endpaper dated 1937; further physical condition details are not supplied, so overall condition cannot be determined from the description. A meaningful signed association copy linking biography, memorial activism, and the development of women’s educational and vocational reform in Bengal.

Item #15028

Price: $425.00