India deeply disappointed Frieda Hauswirth, but she never gave up writing about it

The American came to India with the hope of furthering ‘tolerance and human understanding’. She left a decade later disillusioned.

Jan 9, 2024 - 13:30

India deeply disappointed Frieda Hauswirth, but she never gave up writing about it

When Frieda Hauswirth arrived in Bombay in 1920, she was brimming with anticipation and eagerness. India had always been a fascination of hers: she had read its epics, met its freedom fighters, been familiar with its thoughts.

By her side was her Indian husband, an agricultural scientist who wanted to set up a sugar plant in his homeland. Hauswirth was convinced that her “significant” inter-racial marriage would “tear down human barriers”, further “tolerance, and human understanding”.

But India left her tragically disillusioned. By the time she went back to the United States nine years later, her marriage had ended and the myriad contradictions of India had worn her down.

“I had come in search of an India with age-old traditions of spiritual calm and achievement, of great unselfish devotions, of deep indifference to worldly success, of smilingly tolerant aversion to the made Western rush towards nowhere,” she wrote. “But of this India, I found no trace…”

Still, India remained a part of her. Several of the books she wrote – starting with A Marriage to India (1931) – evoked the country, its history and infinite varieties. Even her gender activism and her art drew from her time in India.