ABSTRACT
Yamunaparyatan or YP published in 1857 is Padmanji’s best known and arguably the most important Christian vernacular intervention in the social and cultural debates of late-19th-century Bombay. A treatise on the suffering and sexual exploitation of widows, it epitomises Padmanji’s Christian feminist interventions that advocated the eradication of widowhood practices and endorsed widow remarriage, bolstering the 1856 Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act. YP was tremendously popular, evidenced by its substantial subscription list, containing the names of many influential social reformers from Maharashtra. The story of YP describes a newly married couple Vinayak and Yamuna and their journey through many regions of Maharashtra. Though Vinayak and Yamuna are Brahmins, they are already Christianised, or “internally” convinced of Christianity, but as yet un-baptised. YP begins with Vinayak and Yamuna’s marriage. Padmanji’s Christian feminism was complicated by Protestant masculine anxiety about the sexuality of public women, dancers, prostitutes, and entertainers that is evident from discussions in both VB and NN.
