How a feminist flipped the colonial travelogue on its head

In the 19th-century Pandita Ramabai travelled America delivering lectures on how the caste system and patriarchy shaped the trajectory of women’s lives. When she came back to her home India, the feminist explained America's customs around gender and race relations, and their experiment with democracy. IDEAS explores her rich life and legacy. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2025. Guests in this episode: Radha Vatsal is the author of No. 10 Doyers Street (March 2025), as well as the author of the Kitty Weeks mystery novels. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she earned her Ph.D. in Film History from Duke University and has worked as a film curator, political speechwriter, and freelance journalist. Tarini Bhamburkar is a research affiliate at the University of Bristol. Her research explores cross-racial networks and international connections built by British and Indian women's feminist periodical press between 1880 and 1910, which sowed the seeds of the transnational Suffrage movement of the early 20th century. Sandeep Banerjee is an associate professor of English at McGill University and a scholar of Global Anglophone and World literature, with a focus on the literary and cultural worlds of colonial and postcolonial South Asia. Readings by Aparita Bhandari and Pete Morey.

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How a feminist flipped the colonial travelogue on its head is an episode from Ideas by CBC.

This episode is 00:54:08 long.

This episode was published on Apr 29, 2026.

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