How a revolution was typed

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Few, if any, feminists are likely to mention the typewriter when they think of the developments that made women a part of the modern workforce. But much before the advent of the computer, the typewriter wrought a quiet revolution, democratising society in a way hitherto not experienced.

India was perhaps one of the few societies where men used the typewriter more than women did; nevertheless, its arrival signaled the start of changes big and small. “The typewriter brushed aside the traditional functions of the scribe,” says Dr David Arnold, an eminent historian from the University of Warwick, who recently delivered a talk on The Rise of the Indian Typewriter: 1890-1960 at the Seventh Godrej Archives Annual Lecture. “Typewriters existed alongside phones, calculators and duplicators, requiring new clerical skills.”
The government was the foremost organisation that required the services of typists (and typewriters) en masse, and firms like the Bombay Typewriter Company strove to fulfill the demand. Typing and secretarial schools also mushroomed.
“Ninety per cent of all typists in the US in the 1930s were women,” says Dr Arnold. “Initially, many of the typists in India were European women.” Their ranks slowly swelled with more locals. “Between the 1890s and the early 1900s, the YWCA in Calcutta noted a steady increase in the number of women who enrolled in their training programme for typists. Many of the trainees were Anglo-Indian women, which led to their association with (secretarial) professions.”
The associations could be stereotypical, and Dr Arnold points to films like Guru Dutt’s Mr and Mrs 55, which highlighted the notions prevalent at the time, such as the idea that women who worked in offices were sexually available.
“In the census of 1931, 350 women stated their profession as typists,” says Dr Arnold. But there might have been considerable social pressure even on them. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was not in favour of women seeking employment outside the home, says Dr Arnold, citing speeches made by the father of the nation in 1917 and 1927. Typists particularly came under attack, with Bapu ruing the loss of calligraphy and calling typing a “cover-up for laziness”.
This is characteristic of the somewhat antagonistic engagement Indians had with modernity, and literary accounts of office life often painted the typewriter as a symbol of oppression. Perhaps that’s the reason why none of the Indian writers of note have been photographed with their typewriters. “If you see photos of George Bernard Shaw or George Orwell, they’re often depicted alongside their typewriters, but has anyone seen photos of Tagore with a typewriter?” asks Dr Arnold. “R.K. Narayan was one of the few writers to mention his ‘first, battered typewriter’, but did Indian authors have the same intimate connection with their writing machines?”
That’s a question for the ages.