How visiting Victorian England made Indian women feel about social equality back home

On the night of September 1, 1873, Pothum Janakummah Ragaviah, a wealthy woman from Madras, reached London’s Waterloo Station. It was 10.30 pm. She had travelled on a luxury liner via the Suez Canal, which had opened just four years earlier. The journey had taken six weeks – before the canal was inaugurated, it would have taken months.

As a first-time visitor, Janakummah expected the city to be dark and silent at that late hour. Instead, to her surprise, London was brightly lit by gaslights, brighter, she wrote, than moonlight. Beneath the lights, the “countless people of both sexes walking up and down” made for an energetic spectacle. It was as if she was witnessing the “true meaning of Fairyland”. Disembarking at Southampton, she had also noticed that it was women who were dispensing tickets and managing various administrative tasks.

In the late 19th century, a confluence of factors had made the journey between India and Britain easier than ever before. Besides the opening of the Suez Canal, the use of steam, rather than sails, had transformed shipping, making oceanic travel faster, safer, and no longer weather-dependent. Voyages could now be a leisurely experience rather than just transport. The Royal Mail Steamer Australia that Jankummah was...

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