Ahead of their Times: Essays on Women Autobiography in India [1 ed.] 9789353240301

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Ahead of their Times

Ahead of their Times: Essays on Women Autobiography in India

Edited by K. Purushotham

About the Author

Dr. K. Purushotham is Professor of English and Registrar, Kakatiya University, Warangal. A literary critic and a translator, he works in the areas of women writing, Indian writing, Dalit writing and critical pedagogy. His recent books include The Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit Writing (co-ed), Interrogating the Canon: Literature and Pedagogy of Dalits (Kalpaaz), Black Lilies: An Anthology of Telugu Dalit Poetry (Critical Quest), English for Fluency (Orient BlackSwan), English for Employability, (Orient BlackSwan). He has translated poetry, fiction and non-fiction from Telugu to English, and brought out translation anthologies. He has edited literary journals and served on the editorial boards as editor, guest editor, consulting editor and associate editor of prestigeous national and international journals. He has carried out funded research projects on language and literature. His works are prescribed in different universities at the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels. Prof Purushotham has been a recipient of several national and international awards such as State Award to Meritorious Teachers, Government of Telangana and Fellow of the Royal World of Scribes (FRWS), Pentasi B Philippines World Poetry Festival, in recognition of his teaching and research.

About the Book Women autobiographies, a generic term for life narratives, histories, memoirs, testimonios and hagiographies, has emerged as a genre, consequent to the postmodernist thrust on the identity and the attendant politics surrounding it. Primarily aimed at communicating the subordinated predicament of women, the writings claim the agency. Based on memory, experience and identity, women narrators reproduce the cultural modes of self-narrating, simultaneously critiquing the status quo. When it comes to the personal lives of the women, there is nothing personal about women's personal lives: the personal is political too. Women, writing the autobiography is a means of finding the agency. It is, therefore, worth exploring as to what compels women write autobiographies. Ahead of their Times: Essays on Women Autobiography in India is an attempt in this direction. The work focuses on select women autobiographies covering those autobiographies written from 1876, the first woman autobiography ever written, to the ones written in the new millennium, encompassing a period of century and a quarter. It includes the works of Indian women autobiographers that include Rassundari Devi, Pa Visalam, Urmila Pawar, Laxminarayan Tripathi, Pinki Virani, Manju Bala, Anjum Jamarud Habib, A. Revathi, Binodini Dasi, besides several other Dalit and transgender writers. The autobiographers in the book are from either the marginalised or the stigmatised sections of the society. This book merits significance because of the fact that the writers of the essays selected those women autobiographers, who are least discussed or not discussed earlier. The women autobiographers in question challenge the hegemony in all the forms, including class, caste and gender, re-locating their own identity in respective categories. They debunk the set patterns of female writers. The authors of the essays present the analyses of the histories of politicised selves in respective autobiographies. What is unique

about the interpretation is that instead of reading the autobiographies as the usually known creative or imaginative writing, the authors explore the works in opposition to the masculinised, rational and objective form, which infact, undermines the experiential category. They set up impersonal protocols of the public and political disputes. The authors see how women actually end up breaking into these formal structures, and thus change the rules of the game.

©Author All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored, adapted, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, micro-filming recording or otherwise, or translated in any language, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the prior publisher’s written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. The views and opinions expressed in this book are author(s) own and the facts reported by them have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. First Published, 2020 Published by

Cataloging in Publication Data—DK Courtesy: D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. Ahead of their times : essays on women autobiography in India / edited by K. Purushotham. pages cm ISBN 9789353240301

1. Indic prose literature—Dalit authors—History and criticism. 2. Indic prose literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Autobiography—Dalit authors. 4. Autobiography—Women authors. I. Purushotham, K., editor. LCC PK2907.U56A34 2019 | DDC 891.4 23

Contents Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction: The Narrating Self and the Narrated Self — K. Purushotham 1.

“Aaydan1 (Weave of our Lives): Caste, Gender, and Feminism in Dalit Women’s Writings in Western India” — Varsha Ayyar

2. Towards an Inclusive Transgender Autobiography — Akshaya K. Rath and Ananya Parida 3.

First Person Singular: Reading Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban (My Life) — Sanjukta Dasgupta

4. Indian Lesbian Writing and the Question of Genre — R. Azhagarasan 5.

Recognition Reflections

of ‘Transgender’ as ‘Third Gender:’

— Sanjiv Kumar 6. Pa Visalam’s Autobiographical Novel

Some

— Meera Rajagopalan 7. Narrativizing Rape: Issues, Challenges and possibilities in Aruna’s Story — Lahari 8. The Politics of Representation: Revisiting Dalit feminism in the context of Dalit women autobiographies of Maharashtra. — Aparna Lanjewar Bose 9.

The Dynamics of Dalit Fiction and Autobiography: A Reading of Manju Bala’s ‘Dwando’ (Conflict) — Indranil Acharya

10. Analysis and Performance: The Pedagogy of Autobiographies — H. Kalpana Rao 11.

Incarcerated in Person but Not in Spirit: Prison Narrative of Anjum Zamarud Habib — Vandana Pathak

12.

A World Beyond Pink and Blue: New Perspectives on Gender Roles — Neha Arora

13.

Text as Socio-cultural Archive: A reading of Binodini Dasi’s My Story and My Life as an Actress — Ujjwal Jana

Acknowledgements The idea of bringing out Ahead of their Times: Essays on Women Autobiography in India, was conceived after bringing out the proceedings of a national seminar on “Women’s Autobiographies in India” organised by the Department of English, Kakatiya University, Waranagal. Subsequently, the academic collaboration with some of the friends from different universities, over a period of time, shaped the idea of the book. When I requested them for contributions on the theme, one contact leading to the other, they responded promptly and positively, and waited without complaint about the inordinate delay in bringing out the book. Without them, the book would not have seen the light. I sincerely thank you all: Akshaya K. Rath, Ananya Parida, Aparna Lanjewar Bose, R. Azhagarasan, Indranil Acharya, H. Kalpana Rao, Lahari Behera, Meera Rajagopalan, Neha Arora, Sanjiv Kumar, Sanjukta Das Gupta, Vandana Pathak and Varsha Ayyar. I owe it to Kakatiya University for grooming and shaping me into what I am now as an academician. I thank my research students Dr B. Suvarna and Dr Rajitha Devi for reading the draft. Finally, I thank Gyan Books, New Delhi and its editorial, production and marketing teams for the production of the book and for taking it to the readers. The efforts of all of us, let us hope, will serve the intended purpose of the book.

Contributors Akshaya K. Rath teaches at National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. Ananya Parida teaches at Department of English, Lokanath Mohavidyalaya, Korua, Odisha Aparna Lanjewar Bose teaches at English and Foreign Languges University, Hyderabad. Azhagarasan, R teaches at Madras University, Chennai. Indranil Acharya teaches at Vidyasagar University, Midnapur. Kalpana Rao, H teaches at Pondicherry Central University, Puduchery. Lahari Behera teaches at Government College, Dayananda Vihar, Landiguda, Koraput, Odisha. Meera Rajagopalan works at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Neha Arora teaches at Rajasthan Central University, Ajmer. Sanjiv Kumar, Central University of Haryana, Jant Pali village. Sanjukta Das Gupta teaches at Calcutta University, Kolkatta. Vandana Pathak teaches at A.D. & SmT. R.P. College for Women, Nagpur. Varsha Ayyar works at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.

Introduction: The Narrating Self and the Narrated Self — K. Purushotham If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. —M

T

I Women autobiographies, a generic term for life narratives, histories, memoirs, testimonios and hagiographies, has emerged as a genre, consequent to the postmodernist thrust on identity and the attendant politics surrounding it. Though these narratives blur genre boundaries, they depict the ‘I’ with a focus on the private self revealing a split between the public and the private selfrepresentations. The women autobiography is a means of resolving the cultural, social, political and gender conflicts between the narrating self and the narrated self. Violating the parameters of the canonical autobiography, they create testimonios of gender, caste, class and religion, and provide an alternative source of the histories of gendered relations. The works narrate the self vis-a-vis family, society and politics bearing witness to the subordination of the women and their struggle for agency. Narrated in the first person, and the narrator being a protagonist of the events recounted, the unity of the narration could be a significant personal experience. Primarily aimed at communicating the subordinated predicament, oppression, suppression

and struggle for emancipation, the writings claim the agency, expecting the reader to respond and judge her predicament. Based on memory, experience and identity, the women narrators reproduce the cultural modes of self-narrating, simultaneously critiquing the status quo. Women autobiographies generate new possibilities of being read seeking affirmation in the correcting mode. By bringing the personal life into the public domain, women’s narratives challenge and articulate the gender concerns relating to the caste and the religion. Therefore, they cannot be reduced to narrations of pain and sorrow or memories of a hateful life but go beyond these. They also have a bearing on the research and the pedagogy in that, the historical narrators of experience are a means of introducing counter views on the gender. The life narratives perform the roles of projecting women’s triumphs inducing guilt in the minds of those, who are responsible for women’s predicament by recounting how they were wronged. Reading woman’s life narratives without a political ideology stands the risk of foregrounding women’s suffering and pain, which get into the pitfall of self-pity. The narrations bring new insights into the male dominant academic institutions, assuming importance in the construction of the curriculum. The theory and criticism examine women’s life narratives exploring links between the historical devaluation of women, their writing practices, exclusion of their writing from the canon of conventional autobiographies, cultural biases in defining the selfhood, revising the prevailing concept of autobiography from different perspectives.

II Why would one read and interpret the personal lives of the others? One immediate answer is, when it comes to the personal lives of the women, there is nothing personal about women’s ‘personal’ lives: the personal is political, be it a celebrated or the unspoken lives of the

women. Women writing autobiography, therefore, is a means of finding agency. Conventionally, autobiographies are not given due importance in the literary space. However with the emergence of identity writing, the autobiographies are prioritised in the academics. Women autobiographies, especially have occupied the centre stage in the academic discourse since the women write about the Otherness. Women autobiographies provide insights into the dense and varied sources of information that may be relevant to studies in history, literature, sociology and other allied disciplines. In this sense, the women autobiography needs to be problematised in terms of the domestic, interior and affective spaces of society, which are all political. The autobiography enables the emergence of the gendered subjects, who were hitherto made invisible. The women autobiography accounts for the consequent redefinitions of what defines the political erena. What calls into question, therefore, is the difference between men and women writers: writing is considered a privilege for and domain of men; men write as human beings. Women, contrarily, are required to remember that they are women. Consequently, women autobiography turns out to be gender-centric. Readers anticipate what to expect in women autobiographies, but not in men’s. It is, therefore, worth exploring as to what compels women write autobiographies. While some are trained and established writers, the others are less experienced as writers; their writings are intended only for private reading by the family and friends. For women, it is to relate a particular personal experience, and men, to retell their involvement in a movement, activity or politics. Writing or reading the women autobiography is an attempt at recounting of a family history. The writers express themselves through the autobiographies, be it recounting childhood memories, recalling the inequalities between brothers and sisters in education, food and clothing, fixed work roles and the wages they received, the unpaid work women are involved in without having official records, personal

thoughts relating to marriage, love or romance. The autobiographies reveal women’s aspirations: what is expected of them, and what they actually aspire to. Some autobiographies glorify their childhood, dividing life into before and after marriage. The conventional autobiographies offer a polished account of the life. There have been a number of autobiographies by women that deserve mention. The women have written in a genre which implies self-assertion and self-display without actually doing so. Some of the conventional autobiographies include, Maharani: The Story of an Indian Princess (1953) by Brinda, which is the story of a woman trying to defy the social canon and male supremacy. Her crime is that of not delivering a male child, a common grievance of women. She is sent abroad to learn the educated, western ways. Back home, she is expected to be docile and dumb. She has to undergo a painful operation for getting a son. Another writer, tormented for not begetting a male child was Kamala Dongerkery. Her autobiography On the Wings of Fire (1968) depicts that autobiographies are written by means of selfcontentment, to vindicate herself. Kamala Dongerkery was harassed by her mother-in-law, an example of internalisation of the patriarchy. However, she struggled hard to make a name for herself as an expert in handicrafts. Another autobiographer, Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, was known for her enchanting beauty; she was voted to be the most beautiful woman of the world. However, her beauty would not have been known had she remained herself behind the purdah; had she not joined politics. Gayatri Devi’s The Princess Remembers (1977) is an instance of mixing private life with the public one. She also narrates her contribution to the state of Jaipur. One writer, who searched for certain image of the Indian women, was Dhanwanti Rama Rau, who published An Inheritance (1977). She portrays the weaknesses and foolishness that women are forced to inherit. A woman, who studied at Presidency College, Madras, was

unfortunately trapped in a loveless marriage. However, undaunted, she pursued teaching career to be a fulfilled woman. Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, published her autobiography, The Scope of Happiness (1979), which describes her crusade for rights of the Indian women. The book delineates as to how she managed her political career and personal life. Durgabai Deshmukh’s autobiography Chintaman and I (1980) describes her turbulent childhood, marriage, separation from her husband, father’s influence on her and her protest against Devdasi and purdah systems. Vijay Raje Scindia’s The Autobiography of the Dowager Maharani of Gwalior (1985) is a very sad tale of a woman’s lonely battle in life; about her estrangement with her only son, Madhav Rao. Portraits of an Era (1988) by Tara Ali Baig is an autobiography which is more concerned with outer world than with the self. The book refers to varied personalities like Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and his Parsi wife Petit, Sarojini Naidu, Rajendra Prasad, Homi Bhabha. She also brings in Somerset Maugham, Anna Pavlov, Dalai Lama, Uday Shankar, Devika Rani and many others. This is more a piece of informal history than an autobiography. Prema Naidu’s In Love with Life, is a narrative of positive aspect of married life. Dilip Tiwana’s A Journey on Bare Feet (1990), a narrative of the gender discrimination, reads like the story of every Indian girl. Sharanjeet Shan’s In My Own Name (1991), is about the discrimination in the brought up of children. Mrinal Pande’s Daughter’s Daughter (1993) is all about the pain of girls, recounted from the memories of her mother’s suffering on account of not begetting a son. Leila Seth is the one who took up the challenge to chose the profession of a lawyer. Shaukat Kaifi and Durga Khote found their career as actors. Khote was the forerunner in opening her own production house. Amrita Pritam and Kamala Das debunk the set pattern of the women writers challenging the society. The conventional autobiographers attain a certain standing in the society on account of family lineage or personal achievements; they challenge the patriarchal

set up. But the offbeat women autobiographies, which costitute the present work, is about a different world of women, hitherto unknown in the writings.

III The present book focuses on select women autobiographies, randomly though, covering those written from 1876, the first woman autobiography ever written, to the ones written in the new millennium, encompassing a century and a quarter. It includes the works of Indian women autobiographers that include Rassundari Devi, Pa Visalam, Urmila Pawar, Laxminarayan Tripathi, Pinki Virani, Manju Bala, Anjum Jamarud Habib, A. Revathi, Binodini Dasi, besides several other Dalit and transgender writers. The autobiographers in the book are from either the marginalised or the stigmatised sections of the society. This book merits significance because of the fact that the writers of the essays have selected those women autobiographers, who are least discussed or not discussed earlier. The women autobiographers in question challenge the hegemony in all the forms, including class, caste and gender by re-locating their own identity in respective categories. They debunk the set patterns of female writers. The authors of the essays in the book present analyses of the histories of politicisation through an exploration of the works. What is unique about the interpretation is that instead of reading the autobiographies as the usually known creative or imaginative writing, the authors explore the works in opposition to the masculinised, rational and objective form, which infact, undermine the experiential category. They set up impersonal protocols of public and political controversies. The authors narrate how women actually end up breaking into these formal deliberative structures, and thus change the rules of the game.

Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban (My Life), published in 1865, and considered the first woman autobiography in India, that too by a rural woman, is significant for two reasons: that the work vindicates that the domain of reading and writing does not belong to men alone; and that the work was written against the background of denial of education to women or at the most women were educated clandestinely. What the first generation women writers wrote was about women’s lives in nineteenth century. Though the pre-independence autobiography generally dealt with the narration of contentment, Sanjukta Dasgupta explores the way Rassundari Devi debunks the myth of women’s contentment. Varsha Ayyar’s “Caste, Gender and Life Narratives” examines the inextricable relationship between caste and the question of women, focusing on the gender discrimination within the caste category. The author chooses women’s autobiography from the western India. Varsha Ayyar juxtaposes the “epistemic occlusion and closures” of the upper caste feminists and Dalit males vis-a-vis Dalit women, and their contributions. The way the Dalit women are marginalised is explained with focus. The author traces the genesis of feminist consciousness in the writings of the Dalit women, and more importantly, their participation in the anti-caste politics. She concludes by writing that the feminist consciousness is an inherent feature of the Dalit movement. “Towards an Inclusive Transgender Autobiography” by Akshaya Rath and Ananya Parida is devoted to the discussion of what is termed, sexual minority. The authors reinterpret the transgender as against the popular perception as prostitutes, kidnappers and beggars, who are, however legally declared as the distinct cultural group. By relating the argument to A. Revathi’s The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story and Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi, they formulate the argument that “gender has been re-formulated as a genre to bring in the transgender life-experience to the fore.” They interpret that the new genre breaks “gender norms in heteronormative and patriarchal

ideologues, which women’s autobiographies initially rebelled against, and the base of both women and transgender autobiographies are the same.” The authors state that the genre of women’s autobiography is not an exclusive subject. They further propose that the transgender autobiographies need to be read in the Indian context for an inclusive textual enquiry. R. Azhagarasan’s “Indian Lesbian Writing and the Question of Genre” interestingly examines the Indian lesbian writers: Ruth Vanitha, Suniti Nam Joshi and Ismat Chukthai with a focus on the difficulty in fixing these within the frame of the Indian lesbian writing. He questions its generic vision by raising such important questions as: Do we call them lesbian writing because they were written by Lesbians or because they narrate a lesbian experience or because they foreground the writers’ lesbian experience? Do these writings take us towards the relation between lesbian writing and autobiography? Should all lesbian writing be autobiographical? What kind of relationship is established between the lesbian writing and Indian lesbian writing? Azhagarasan’s essay answers the questions by relating them to the general and sexual categories by identifying the generic diversity. Sanjiv Kumar’s “Recognition of ‘Transgender’ as ‘Third Gender’: Some Reflections” explicates the two categories, and the way they confuse because of the synonymous use of the terms. He explains that one is about consensual sex and another sexually oriented towards homosexual relations. Similarly, Sanjiv Kumar illustrates as to how “the criminalisation of unnatural sex prevents the consensual sexual relationship among the eunuchs and it is perceived as the failure of the courts to distinguish between two very different situations—of nonconsensual sex and consensual sexual relations.” This kind of perception, he argues, would imply that the difference among the categories would blur: male adult seducers or abusers of young boys, men who forcibly rape other men, and male homosexuals (who indulge

in consensual sexual activities). Lest, they would fall into the pitfall of being considered as one. Meera Rajagopalan’s “Pa Visalam’s Autobiographical Novel” examines the Tamil work, titled Mella Kanavaay Pazhan Kadhayaay, an autobiographical novel. The work, interestingly renders life in fiction. Meera Rajagopalan focuses on how Pa Visalam remembers the past by adopting the technique of linear unfolding of the events as seen by a growing girl. Though subjective, Meera Rajagopalan interprets as to how the events impact life of the protagonist. Pa Visalam’s admixture of romance, history, politics, social history and customs, resulting in an autobiographical narrative, is illustrated critically. The author interprets that Pa Visalam’s liberties with trespassing the genres is a successful technique that ended up in the autobiography. Lahari Behera’s “Narrativizing Rape: Issues, Challenges and Possibilities in Aruna’s Story” attempts at the discussion of the problematic of sexual violence against women. The author explains as to how the work experiments with the combination of the genres by breaking various stereotypes attached to the perpetrator and survivors of sexual violence. Virani’s employment of the romanticised and graphic language creates the binary in order to portray the brutality behind rape. Lahari elaborates as to how the characterisation refrains from the usual stereotyping in respect of Aruna’s health, the loss of her voice, her right to decide the course of her life subsequently. Aparna Lanjewar Bose’ “The Politics of Representation: Revisiting Dalit Feminism in Dalit Women Autobiographies of Maharashtra” undertakes the study of Dalit women’s narratives which do not follow “the conventional Marathi male/female autobiographical tradition or the defining characteristic of the Dalit male narrative tradition,” because of which some of them are not recognised. Therefore, they are the source of the traditions to the elitist reader testifying the power of these texts. The pain and suffering expressed in the narratives, is not restricted to any particular religion, caste, class, and sect but becomes universal, according to the author.

Indranil Acharya’s “The Dynamics of Dalit Fiction and Autobiography: A Reading of Manju Bala’s Dwando (Conflict)” articulates the grievances, and relief from the grievances. As against the conventional feminist writings, the Dalit women narratives are similar to the Australian Aboriginal women writing, which did not figure in the feminist movements. The author argues that it was so because of the white feminist movement, which failed to represent the grievances of Black aboriginal women of different tribes. H. Kalpana Rao’s “Analysis and Performance: The Pedagogy of Autobiographies,” an essay dealing with the teaching of the women autobiographies, argues that it would be reductive if a course on autobiography is evaluated solely through a written examination. She proposes that the students be allowed to write personal essays interacting with the text and illuminating one’s own thoughts. It could also be left to the discretion of the teacher concerned regarding the mode of evaluation and adjudication, and adds that teaching autobiographies enriches the existing dimensions of the gender, and provide a nuanced reality to the lived lives. Vandana Pathak’s “Incarcerated in Person but not in Spirit: Prison Narrative of Anjum Zamarud Habib” is about prison writing. The prison accounts, she argues, provide voice to many voiceless persons, who had a definite role to play in the history of the nation. Interpreting Anjum Habib’s Prisoner No.100 an Account of My Nights and Days in an Indian Prison, she argues that the prison narrative opens up new dimensions of understanding the gender. This essay contributes to the genre, Prison Writing. Neha Arora’s “A World Beyond Pink and Blue: New Perspectives on Gender Roles” deals with the modernism’s overturning of the established ideological paradigms. With the challenging of the elite writer, the readers prefer diverse genres experimenting with the forms and the themes. The publication of Angarey (1932), there emerged a broad platform for the progressive and radical ideas. This collection of

ten short stories and an Urdu play, was extremely radical in subject and treatment. Ujjwal Jana’s “Text as Socio-cultural Archive: A reading of Binodini Dasi’s My Story and My Life as an Actress” interprets as to how Binodini Dasi is self-reflexive with the author reflecting on the vicissitudes of herself. She foregrounds a greater degree of subjectivity. From historical perspective, the work provides ample evidences of the institution of the theatre, theatrical practices, role of the actors and actresses, gendered representation in theatre, category of the audiences and also the playwrights and directors in Calcutta. Binodini Dasi’s autobiography has profound social, cultural and historical significance. The texts need to be revisited and reinterpreted in the contemporary perspective. The work has immense possibility of research in terms of culture studies and gender studies, Ujjwal Jana views.

1 “Aaydan1 (Weave of our Lives): Caste, Gender, and Feminism in Dalit Women’s Writings in Western India” —V

A

For, while the tale of how we suffer, how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” — James Baldwin

Introduction Contemporary literary studies and bourgeoisies literary festivals2 in India have paid less attention to the “mainstreaming” of Dalit literature3 and more specifically to Dalit women’s writings. Despite the rich content markedly defying hegemonic writing styles of the established elites, Dalit writers, and their writings are yet to be the fully embraced in the mainstream. It is only recently that sporadic attention and literary awards have been given to Dalit writers. These recognize the subversive language, colloquial expressions and radical content that set Dalit literature apart from the traditional literature

produced in India. Despite being subversive, anti-hegemonic and anticanonical Dalit writings are far from becoming a norm. A voluminous amount of Dalit literature already exists in different regional languages, but these works are not yet translated thus confined and readily labeled as regional. Dalit literature has immense potential and universal appeal, but that remains underachieved considering its outreach and scale at which Dalit literature has been translated into different languages is still marginal. Deo and Zelliot (1994) reviewed Dalit literature spanning over twenty-five years and underlined its tradition and repertoires enriched with fiery luminaries, organic intellectuals teaching in colleges and universities not only emerged from “protest literature” but “progressed well” by becoming consistent with their writings and inclusive politics. The Marathi Dalit literary included and widened the ambit of “Dalit” term in the most authentic ways by bringing into lore writings from diverse castes and languages. The most distinctive aspect of this inclusion was to incorporate different caste such as Mang, Chambhar, Kaikadi, Adivasis and even regions like Gujrat and Karnataka. Dalit Marathi writing and its influence had grown in neighbouring states of Gujrat and Karnataka and Marathi Dalits were considered as big brothers for their rootedness in Ambedkarian politics than the novice Gujrathi writers (EPW, 1984). In a society where caste regulates access to all forms of capital, this was an accomplishment of Marathi Dalit literary circle to embrace inclusiveness, of different regional languages, and writers and intellectuals from diverse caste backgrounds. Albeit, it’s inclusive characteristics, this chapter is concerned with experiences and participation of Dalit women writers and their experiences. Secondly, it examines texts written by Dalit women in order to analytically examine caste, gender and its intersections and organization of everyday life in the Hindu social order. Dalit women writers have contributed immensely through their writings through their autobiographies, poems, testimonies and

historiography. They unapologetically and feistily brought out contradictions of Dalit patriarchy and wider Dalit movement. Their narratives are experience based and candid accounts and descriptions of how caste patriarchy operates in both the private and public realm provide invaluable insights. The narratives of women writers like Babytai Kamble and historiographers4 Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon, throw light on aspects such as nation-building processes and location of Dalit women, role of labour, caste and structured gender relations. Additionally collective memories of women in Dr. B.R.Ambedkar (1891-1956) movements remind us of their participation in the movement, contributions and assertions. Thus the life narratives, texts, and vocabularies of Dalit women are not only about poverty, stigma, humiliation, victimhood, and indignities but also about “agency” the quest to participate as “equals” as women and as modern subjects state with sharp political consciousness gained through their participation in Dr. Ambedkar’s movements. Despite such a rich and profound history of Dalit women’s voices in the Marathi writing tradition, they are relatively less popular, underexplored in comparison to upper caste Hindu women and male Dalit autobiographies /poems thus consigning them to the extreme peripheries, epistemically obscured and unclaimed. One must also note that Dalit writers, in general, face this complex predicament of the mainstream occlusion. Paradoxically, in the regional context, Dalit literature is indispensable. In Marathi writing tradition without Dalit literature, and celebrated poets like Namdeo Dhasal5 Sharankumar Limbale6 would appear insubstantial. Retrospectively the journey of Dalit literature through decades of the 1960s until 1990s has been remarkable. The productions of texts have grown exponentially and a variety of forms such as prose/poetry, fiction/non-fiction were used to capture and articulate Dalit stories. Strikingly only a few biographical works were translated most of the fictional works remained confined in the regional quarters. Out of wide-ranging writing genres available in this tradition, autobiographies

have been the most popular among the Dalit writers (Deo and Zelliot, 1994, Bhongle, 2002, Poietvin, 2002). Dalit writers have shared their stories about their personal and public life extensively by using autobiographies. Most of the prominent autobiographies were Dalit men, but autobiography as a genre also attracted writers from diverse social groups across caste, language, and regions (Deo and Zelliot, 1994: 42). Few notable autobiographies met profound success and made formidable impressions, the most prominent being Daya Pawar’s’ Balut7, Laxman Mane’s Upra depicting life of the Kaikadis (a nomadic tribe), another came from a Chambhar writer Madhav Kondvilakar (Deo and Zelliot, 1994). These works have won literary prizes and statewide recognition and enlisted as essential readings on understanding caste society. Nevertheless, a rigorous content analysis and deep political engagements with these texts are still lacking. There have been few attempts made at capturing the essence of Dalit women autobiographies, but they are mainly from the literary point of view. Social sciences in particularly have been oblivious in using these biographical and fictional works of Dalit writers as a focal point to understand Dalit worldview, for its rich anthropological and sociological significance, for invaluable insights that it offers in the understanding socio-cultural milieu, lived realities and also the landscape of their literary imaginations. On the contrary, in the West, black autobiographies and Holocaust survivor’s memoirs and narrative are considered invaluable as it illuminates the personal, social, political and historical dimensions of the terrible times and the wrongdoings of their society. Also, their experiences of trauma, survival, will to overcome pain, oppression reminds of the terrible tragedies that are part of human history but also highlight a unique human spirit to overcome these cruel injustices are inspiring for the younger generations. It also serves as reminders of the tragedy stemming out of prejudice, the extensive and inhuman violence and ultimately the unhealed wounds of the past. These autobiographies, narratives, memoirs are chapters in the human history about the dark side of humanity but also opportunities for recovery, healing, and forgiveness

for those who lived and survived these tragedies. At the heart of this project for readers is taking through these horrific experiences. For writers, it is the act of writing that’s the most important. The act of writing is said to make us “humans”. Ironically, this writing itself is about dehumanizing events and experiences and its recovery and documentation are critical. Contrary to the west, where narratives of slaves, Jewish survivors have been preserved, cherished and some of them made as films and part of popular culture, in India, occlusion of Dalit autobiographies is unparalleled and remarkable. Dalit autobiographies relatively have received less scholarly attention besides Dalit writers are discriminated and continue to experience secondary treatment, exclusion and humiliating experiences in literary circles dominated by the upper castes (Bharti, 2014) Traversing through these mazes of epistemic closures and occlusions at an individual and collective level, Dalit writers also face the structural limitations emerging out of the traditional market in India that has seemed readership. Dalits writers face serious disadvantages as their stories, characters, language are anti-traditional and do not reflect the shared culture, language, memory with the upper castes. Despite that Dalit writings have navigated through these inherent impediments. Most of these writers did not have material comforts and worked without adequate resources, support mechanisms and social capital8. The writers from the margins thus face dual disadvantages both ways- while creation of a text (out of material deprivations) and secondly once the book is created it becomes unpalatable (due to the dominant aesthetics of the elites and the upper castes). Unsurprisingly in the literary platforms such as Sahitya Akademi, Dalit writers continue to face exclusion; discrimination and their sessions/discussions are scheduled towards the end (Bharti, 2014). Dalit women face multiple disadvantages in the literary platforms of both the dominant upper castes (where they treated as inferior

because of their Dalit and gender identity) and within the Dalit literary circles they are treated as second-class citizen owing to their gender identity. Women’s sessions are scheduled towards the end where audiences are bored and not interested in listening to what women writers have to say and contribute (Pawar, 2008). So the treatment meted out in literary circles of the privileged to Dalits, Dalit women writers continue to face these disadvantages and similar treatment even within their literary circles. Despite these hindering circumstances at multiple levels, Dalit writings are profound, poignant, and eclectic and have embraced different genres of writings such as poetry, short stories, diaries, and autobiographies. These writings are available diverse languages in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Marathi, Guajarati, Punjabi and Hindi, almost all regional languages, yet these writings remain on the margins mostly obscured, unnoted and uncelebrated. Also, content wise, Dalit literature has depth, radical elements and subversive, nonetheless, still Dalit writers are yet to be fully recognized within India and achieve a global recognition in the form of translation, world literary honors and recognition, their stories adapted in popular culture and so on, despite the globalization. Regardless, Dalit literature has existed and continues to progress despite hurdles and devaluation meted by the elite institutions and caste governed contemporary literary circles dominated by the upper castes (EPW 1982). Besides the hostility, exclusion and devaluation by the elite and hegemonic cultural spaces dominated by the privileged castes, there are other challenges that contemporary Dalit writers face. Not only do the mainstream publishers ignore Dalit stories and writers but also this culture of devaluing (one’s own) is prevalent within the Dalit community. For instance, few contemporary Dalit intellectuals have criticized autobiographies and its contributions consistently. The writings are also criticized for nurturing victimhood or glorifying accounts of their accomplishments, reducing it to mere a narrative or a

life journey of “arriving” in the middle class (Kamble, 2013, Teltumbde,)9. Secondly, the middle class among the Dalits hold these autobiographies as a source of embarrassment (Guru, 2007) forcing the Dalit readers to walk down the memory lane that is filled with humiliation, poverty, stigma and caste torments. Even in the decades of 1990s, many writers received criticism from within their castes/ tribes/community for “revealing less than respectable facets of groups life” (Deo and Zelliot, 1994:43). The spade of criticism has also culminated into different sexist undertones and politics. Dalit (male) intellectuals particularly have criticized Dalit women’s autobiographies for restricting to a particular form of genre or attributing these acts of writing as emerging from a leisurely pursuit of (“Dalit middle- class women” prototypically underscoring the narratives of upward mobility and accomplishments. This act of writing, publishing then itself invited disgust and disdain from some of the intellectuals. Also, Gopal Guru (2007) already pointed out Marathi autobiographical works also became an object of embarrassment for the upwardly mobile Dalits who resisted revisiting the memories of caste indignities. Another interesting criticism has come from Professor of Literary Studies Aniket Jaware, who insists Dalit literature has great potential but the deployment of dialects/ language difficulties posit for English translations are limiting, and characteristically autobiographies somehow meet the cliches -a happy ending10. Markedly, there are multiple reasons for disowning Dalit autobiographical works both by outsiders and insiders (community members and intellectuals). Exception to the criticism hurled at Dalit autobiographies, Guru (2008) defends these writings and emphasizes how acts of writing about self is linked to individualism that articulates itself in the conditions of modernity thus “unique” (emphasis mine) to emerge in a caste governed society. Ironically, Dalit autobiographical writings are persistently devalued, trivialized, ridiculed and criticized

for being either “destitute literature” or implying “arrival” “happy ending”- a life journey of a Dalit upgrading into the middle class. Moving beyond the appreciation, approvals, and validations, ironically even the content, language, words and aesthetics of Dalit writings are summoned by disparagement. What has been overlooked is the ontological frameworks of Dalit world, sociological and cultural complexities of caste and gender, gender roles, gender relations, village life for untouchable as a community, poverty, stigma, assertions, politicization and making of a nation-state from the untouchables experiences are regarded inconsequential. Such themes that are intrinsic in Dalit writings are hardly discussed or deemed significant for its critical insights to understand the nature of Indian society. From a gender perspective, no distinction between Dalit women’s writings and its distinctiveness, purpose, utility, significance and contribution to understand Dalit patriarchy and social/public patriarchy seems to be appreciated or discussed. This caste-patriarchal culture of trivializing and devaluing of Dalit literature especially of Dalit women’s literature undermines not only the role and contribution of Dalit women’s episteme and agency but also reduces women’s expressions merely as “middle-class”. Strangely this critique either of deriding, devaluing and occluding Dalit literary works is not unknown. In Maharashtra, which has one of the oldest writing traditions in the country (Poitevin, 2002) the mainstream had condemned the language used by Dalit writers, calling it as raw and crude. Retrospectively demonstrating, an interesting symposium on Dalit literature in the 1980s documents how one commentator named Sarojini Vaidya was unable to comprehend why it was impossible to conduct a dialogue with Dalit writers within the frameworks of the established aesthetics (EPW, 1982: 97). Sarojini Vaidya’s center of universe and frames perhaps were traditional and Brahaminical, which she did not want to decenter, displace or render it as “problematic”. The question is how could Dalits have a dialogue or

tell their stories in the language of the established aesthetics, which has stood up against the very existence of untouchables and lower castes, their shared culture and language? Decades later, in 2013, at a conference on Dalit and Adivasis women held at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, a woman Professor of English, had ridiculed Dalit writings as “crude, unrefined and unsophisticated11. Another criticism against Dalit writers is their preoccupation with experience, which was called as “limiting” and “narrow” (ibid: 62). It was expected “Dalit writers must extend their analysis and visions to areas beyond the ones they have been handling” (ibid: 62). Evidently, from the decades of 1970s to the recent 2013, the codes of literary writings, language, and vocabulary used by Dalit writers did not appeal to the sensibilities and aesthetics of the elite upper caste, however interests by the scholars based outside India foregrounded the potentials of this literature. Devalued locally for lacking the aesthetics and preoccupation of the Brahmanical writings, the core of Dalit aesthetics, stories and writing style has been anti-Brahmanical and intensely closer, accurate and authentic to the experiences, languages and lived realities of Dalits. In response to such criticisms emerging out of such socio-cultural hegemonies of the Brahmanical benchmarks, Dalit writers like Daya Pawar, Laxman Mane12 have spoken against the Brahmanical sensibilities and aesthetics. In fact, Dalit literature and writers such as Namdeo Dhasal’s literary expressions became the focal point and earned appreciation from the Brahmin socialists13. In particularly, Dhasal’s stories, poems were graphically censured world of the underbelly. The prostitutes, the pimps, the poverty, the depravation, and destitution was graphic, but his poetry did not evoke pity and helplessness but rage, destruction and hope of recreating new social systems by re-imagining liberation of those who are trapped in this painful maze of poverty, stigma, exclusion and dehumanization. Dhasal’s powerful poetry enriched by words he chose to revolt, describe, rebel are from repository of Dalit vocabularies, exclusive and unavailable to the Brahmins. His expression utilizes dialects; nonbrahmanic pronunciations and profanity (apparently unused by the

upper castes) are not only subversive but has rage and invective articulations de-sanitized from the Brahamanical sensibilities. It is for this language and content of Dhasal shook up the middle-class readership (largely Brahmins). The thread of criticism against Dalit Literature is not unanimous and linear. The exception to this trivializing trend is reading of Poitevin (2002) who illuminates on the essence and significance of Dalit literature. Deo and Zelliot (1994) insist on reading Dalit autobiography as illuminating the social and political awareness of individual’s life story, their collective significance and meeting a group identity- thus Dalit writers can successfully travel from autobiography to sociobiography and this is a distinguishing character of Dalit writers that sets them apart from the upper caste autobiographers appearing almost narcissistic. Even progressive socialists groups in Maharashtra had high expectations from Dalit writers and underlined their writing potentials are “radical and emancipatory” (EPW: 1982). Few of the progressive publishers14, writers and critics engaged with Dalit writers offering commentaries, publishing literary works of the Dalit Panthers and so on. Nonetheless, the legacy of such fiery, subversive, rebellious tradition of Dalit literary writings, Marathi Dalit writers have not received serious scholarly attention from the mainstream academicians. Dalits writings and its repository can offer critical insights into “everyday life”. This systemic exclusion, occlusion has resulted in a huge loss to academicians particularly those who are interested in advancing feminist ideas and theories of social justice. On Historical Exclusion, Devaluation of Dalit Articulations: AntiVedas/Shastras and Feminist Consciousness Social exclusion of the untouchable caste is not new in Indian society. In fact, social ostracism is justified through the karma doctrine and Hindu cultural norms. Thus, to understand the contemporary exclusion of the literary productions of Dalit writers one must

retrospectively understand that despite its significant contribution, “body of untouchables” in the modern dominant literary spaces is an extension of practices found in the historical accounts of Bhakti movement (devotion movement)15. Bhakti saints and their experiences underline accounts of social exclusion, practices of untouchability, identity and social stigma. The practice of untouchability manifests not only as a social prescription but also an inherent part of Hindu social life. In particularly, the historical exclusion of literary and creative expressions of untouchables was never acknowledged despite its subversive and rich content. This can be mapped to experiences of Bhakti Saint, Chohkamela, a 14th century Mahar saint who was allowed to worship and praise Lord Vitthal at the famous Pandharpur temple in Maharashtra but even after his death was regarded as “polluted” “polluting” therefore not allowed to enter inside the temple. The physicality of a sacred space such as a temple despite the devotion of a polluted Mahar body unfolding in the same space creatively and metaphysically yet body has severe limitations and is also regulated disciplined and demarcated distinctively by the caste codes. Even death could not defy the practices of body pollution in this creative and devotional space. Even to date, the famous cenotaph Chokhamelyachi Payri (Chokha Mela’s Step) is constructed outside the temple adhering to the strict social codes of caste. This pollution of “ Mahar body” (male and female) and its treatment in public spaces is a salient feature and a whole experience of embodying polluting caste across generations. The emphasis of understanding Bhakti Saints and their assertions, therefore, is manifold but mainly to understand the critical discourses set by the untouchable and lower caste saints through their creative expressions. Bhakti expressions were thus the first platform enmeshed in the spiritual domain but also raised critical questions of caste society. Bhakti tradition can be alternatively read as a continuum of writing tradition of the Mahars (Dalits) in particular. The writing legacy of the untouchable castes and their creative expressions to articulate caste questions, therefore, dates back to 14th century and

thus helpful in understanding the acts of employing writing itself as a spiritual and a political tool to articulate their social life, Brahmin supremacy, caste experiences and embedded grief in the caste society. In this line of Bhakti tradition, another prominent name and contribution that is significant but systematically excluded is the voices of Chokhamela’s wife Soyrabai who often referred herself as “Chokyachi Mahrin”, meaning Mahar woman/wife of Chokhamela (Zelliot, 2010). It was Eleanor Zelliot who revisited and extensively studied these untouchable saints who wrote many abhanga (verses) about their social status, angst, pain and anger against Vedas and the Brahmins. Soyrabai is also known to have articulated about her lowly status, poverty, untouchability and body pollution. Her poems could also be read as early women’s writings in the Marathi tradition with explicit caste consciousness and body politics. Along with Chokhamela and Soyrabai, their radical son, Karmamela relatively younger but a fierce voice in the family and its tradition is the most rebellious. Karmamela does not even spare God, and he critiques God Vitthal for his “bigotry” and “double standards” of practicing discrimination against untouchables. (Zelliot 2000, 2008, King, 2005). The subversive consciousness of this Mahar family preceding Ambedkar and his leadership is remarkable. Chokhamela in one of his poems calls the life and death itself as polluting and the Vedas and Shastra itself as pollution (Zelliot: 2010). This could be read as defiance and illustration of “Mahar militancy.” Genesis of questioning caste, Vedas, and its supremacy thus has a historical and social significance. This subversive, defiant and radical writings and articulations are thus embedded in the Mahar-Marathi literary tradition, yet ironically the creators themselves have faced peculiar exclusion rendering total invisibility and forced to be epistemically occluded. But what is the most interesting and insightful is the feminist consciousness in the Bhakti tradition that needs recovery..

In this legacy of defiance, the most neglected and ignored contribution has been of Nirmala, sister of Chokhamela, who unarguably displays “feminist consciousness” and “feminist sisterhood” towards Soyrabai. Nirmala’s, poems has clear underpinnings of feminist consciousness. Nirmala’s abhangas (verses) are praising the God Vitthal but also underscores limitations of “worldly married life, sansar” (Zelliot, 2010: 83) even before modern feminists of Europe wrote about life of a housewife and drudgery. Nirmala never mentions her husband, an identity that Soyrabai preferred to hold onto thus upsetting the patriarchal elements of taking after God/husband been the identity of a woman, highly predominant in those times. Besides Nirmala’s feminist praxis in reflected when she also reprimands her brother Chokha Mela for nearly abandoning her sister-in-law Soyrabai during her labour pains. Zelliot has already illustrated how Nirmala who otherwise is deeply respectful of her brother yet admonishes him for forsaking Soyrabai in her critical time. The poem depicts her subtle mediation but also forthright feminist consciousness. The verses are as following, “Tell me; you are my elder brother- how could you act so thoughtlessly? How could you come running here without asking her? My sister-in-law will cry wildly. He (Chokhamela) said, “Vithu (Vithoba) will take care of everything. I have put my burden on Him. Nirmala says, “This is not fair, to give Vithoba such trouble (Abhanga 14) Cited in Zelliot (2010: 82-83)16

The above verses clearly indicate how Nirmala as a sister-in-law and as a sister of Chokhamela wants her brother to be accountable and responsible towards Soyrabai. She, in fact, makes Chokhamela understand it is wrong of him to trouble Vithoba rather Chokhamela should take responsibility of comforting his wife in such a delicate situation. Despite Zelliot’s scholarship that throws light on this radical Mahar family in the Bhakti tradition, surprisingly none of the feminist in Maharashtra seem to have viewed Nirmala’s poems as the embodiment of feminist consciousness considering this belonged to the 14thcentury era preceding feminist consciousness that emerged in Europe much later. It is not to suggest there has been the absence of scholarships reclaiming this kind of work but evidently overlooking these contributions of Mahar women seems to indicate kind of explicit exclusion. This blatant exclusion raises suspicion about the sincerity of upper caste feminists to acknowledge and credit untouchable women’s expressions as poignantly and deeply feminist. In the next section, the continued politics of exclusion and devaluation of the critical anti-caste and feminist voices of Mahar women is discussed.

Brief History of Feminist Marathi Writings in Western India Vidyut Bhagwat (2004) outlines women’s writings in Marathi tradition based on their feminist volition, underpinnings, and consciousness, in three phases. She divides it as, pre-colonial period, colonial era and post-1967. Bhagwat has also not made any distinction between women’s writing based on caste and their social location. For her, the first phase of women’s literature in Marathi begins from 13th century AD to the beginning of the colonial rule at the end of the 18th century (ibid: 299). Subsequently, the colonial period begins with 1818

until the independence. She underlines emergence of Dalit women writers in the post- 1967 as the third and the contemporary phase but without revealing the caste identities of the women writers. Although Bhagwat does not assign any caste markers, one can cull out Dalit women’s writings from this tradition if one is already acquainted with caste locations and has knowledge about Marathi Dalit literary circle. Bhagwat, who wrote on other Bhakti saints, has wholly ignored these articulations of Nirmala thus displaying “caste-feminist amnesia.”17 This exclusion, invisibility rendered to Mahar women’s voices probably has resulted out of obliviousness or result of the deliberate exclusion of overlooking these significant contributions that embody feminism, anti-caste politics, and radical humanism. The consequences of these omissions are voices of untouchable women are instantaneously made invisible. One may also question what could be at the heart of such exclusion and how does one comprehend the role and contribution of this Mahar subversive family for their times and particularly women? How does one understand such articulation and expressions find no mention in such pivotal texts, commentaries that locate feminism in Marathi writing tradition? Post-Bhakti period, the articulations of Nirmala and Soyrabai were carried forward by those associated with Mahatma Fule’s Satyashodhak Samaj18. Subsequently, one of the most prominent voices from of the colonial phase belonged to Mukta Salve, an untouchable girl belonging to Mang19 caste whose work Vidyut Bhagwat yet again has omitted. Nevertheless, Mukta Salve’s essay was later reclaimed by other feminist historians, sociologists, literary scholars and critics (Tharu and Lalita, 1993, Rege, 2006). Mukta Salve was the student of Savitribai Fule, who had started the first school for educating the untouchables and lower caste Hindus. This was to challenge the “Brahminical hegemony” of keeping women down through the oppressive caste patriarchal traditions. This initiative of educating children of untouchable castes and lower caste Hindus was part of the radical social movement of Jotiba Fule (1827-1890) who had founded Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth Seeking Society) to counter

the Brahmanic hegemony in social, cultural and political spheres in western India. Mukta Salve was trained in the tradition of Satya Shodhak (Rege, 2006). It is also said that even at the age of fourteen years, Mukta penned an award-winning essay and honored by Major Candy. In her essay, she powerfully described the tragedy of human life and what it meant to be untouchables under the Brahminical social order. She expressed her concerns about the feud within the untouchables, Mangs and Mahars plight of untouchable women (distinctly separate from upper caste women), sufferings of women and children and overall tragedy of human life. She wrote, “O learned pundits, wind up the selfish prattle of your hollow wisdom and listen to what I have to say. When our women give birth to babies, they do not have even a roof of their houses. How they suffer in the rain and the cold! Try to think about it from your experience. Suppose these women suffered from puerperal disease, from where could they have found money for the doctor or medicines? Was there ever any doctor among you who was human enough to treat people free of charge? The Mang and Mahar children never dare lodge a complaint even if the Brahmin children throw stones at them and injure them seriously. They suffer mutely because they say they have to go to the Brahmins’ houses to beg for the leftover morsels of food. Alas! O God! What agony this! I will burst into tears if I write more about this injustice” (Pawar and Moon, 2011) This fierce, poignant essay written by Mukta Salve is yet to be fully reclaimed by Dalit movement and mainstream feminist movement albeit Rege (2006) underlines Mukta Salve’s essay on the grief of Mahar-Mang as the first feminist testimonial. It is also presumed that “politics of difference” has been foregrounded by the seminal essays of Gopal Guru and Sharmila Rege on “Dalit women

talk differently”20 emerged at the backdrop of Beijing Conference on Women and formation of Dalit women’s group within the country. I agree with the readings of Sharmila Rege that scripts of difference, politics of identity, varied experiences of women in caste society, intersectionality and feminist consciouness were first pronounced and underlined by Mukta Salve. Similarly, the idea of sisterhood and feminist consciousness was exhibited by Nirmala, Chokhamela’s sister, who is forgotten from the chapters of feminist consciousness in India. But it is Mukta Salve who wrote with clarity and directness about the differential treatment, fate, and experience of untouchables, children and women meted out at the hands of the Brahmins. Her voice is the radical voice emphasizing “social difference” as intrinsic to understand the plight of untouchable as a community and women’s experiences specifically. Her essay not only has dissident content but it also takes on patriarchy (she authoritatively demands the attention of the learned Pundits of Pune), and dismisses their supremacy of Vedas by calling them “hollow.” Mukta Salve also accentuates the differences that existed between Dalit and Brahmin women and hostility of caste that corrupts even the most innocent members of society, the children. The significance of this heartbreaking writing indicates that such a young girl was trying to articulate lived life and experiences of untouchable women in the most authentic ways but without invoking pity but rather questioning the caste supremacy. Mukta Salve also wrote about the conflict, mistrust and feud between Mahars and Mangs, in an attempt to reconcile the caste differences and bring together these two competing castes together as allies. These writings need to reclaim as earliest forms of expressions of women articulating, practicing and theorizing caste inequalities, and scoping “radical humanism” despite their continued dehumanized existence. This can also be seen as writing tradition of the Mahar-Mang women which also foreground continuity of the writing tradition. Thus, history of Dalit Feminism, Humanism, and anti-caste consciousness clearly has a longer trajectory than seminal

essays of Guru (1998) and Rege’s (1999) on “Dalit Women Talk Differently”. In fact, feminist underpinnings are embedded, inalienable and form a fundamental core of Dalit women’s writing tradition in Maharashtra. The post-colonial phase particularly the late 1960s, two decades after India’s independence, Dalit women’s writings made entry through the literary circle. Most of the work was written in Marathi language and only later they were translated (Bhagwat, 2004). In Maharashtra, writers such as Meena Gajbhiye (1978), Kumud Pawde (1981) Hira Bansode (1984), Baby Kamble (1986), Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon (1989), Urmila Pawar (2003) etc. have used more than one genre such as poetry, fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies and memoirs to express their life experiences, anguish, pain, suffering, humiliation, indignities as women and as Dalits in a caste society. These writings also mark the presence and encounters with “multiple patriarchies” (Sangari and Vaid 1989,) which they had to face and overcome as women of lowliest origin in the caste society. Confronted by both-Dalit patriarchy and public/ caste patriarchy- these women have not only articulated male oppressions in their life but also point out the democratic politics of the wider Dalit-Bahujan movement. These writers were readily recognized as “voices of women” (Deo and Zelliot, 1994) in Dalit Marathi writings. In contemporary writing tradition in western India, Dalit women writers continue to express and write on several themes. Notably in this tradition is the contemporary writer Pradnya Daya Pawar, well known as a Marathi, a feminist writer who has been controversial for her feminist critiques of “Dalit patriarchy.” Her short story collection Afawa Khari Tharawi Mhanun (So That The Rumor Becomes The Truth) has been controversial for its critical content on patriarchy; violence etc. This work is yet to be translated. She recently returned her five state awards and compared the increased intolerance and soft fascism towards arts, history, social science, and literature (Nagpaul, 2015). From Mukta Salve to the current writings of Pradnya Pawar

these narratives and articulations have taken on and critiqued Brahmanical hegemony, patriarchies, and institutional violence. It indicates that Dalit women in Marathi literary traditions will continue to articulate and use creative writing to explode in the literary world. Despite the caste-patriarchy or lack of academic engagements with their writings, the usual belittling and dismissing by Dalit male intellectuals, Dalit women’s writings have immense potential of contributing not only to the literary world but academic disciplines such as sociology, history, and feminist studies. But first, it is important to foreground how these articulations came were excluded. It is at this intersection of caste bias displayed by upper caste feminist that has translated and crystallized into other biases namely sexist bias through which Dalit male intellectuals seems to have undermined and overlooked Dalit women writings or just dismissed them as being middle class. In contemporary times, Dalit women writers face the same fate of struggling to make their voices heard but often are sidelined in Dalit literary associations (Pawar, 2008, Pawade, 1998). It is at this juncture of devaluation, invisibility and exclusion of Dalit women writers, I attempt to engage and examine three-book length studies, two autobiographical works, Baby Kamble’s (2008) The Prison We Broke and Urmila Pawar’s (2008) Aaydan: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs and lastly feminist historiographical works of Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon (2008) We Also Made History. I chose two autobiographical works as representative of two voices within the Mahar community that articulates women’s labour, sexuality, caste, and feminist underpinnings. The third book is a pioneering historiographical work that will enhance and illuminate the contributions of the Dalit women in the Ambedkarite movement. Additionally, it throws light on the patriarchal politics prevalent in the Dalit community. The historical significance of these books is it offers insights into the pre-colonial and post-colonial India from the perspective of Dalit women and highlight other significant contributions of women as not submissive and passive subject but and active contributors and participants of Ambedkarite movement. The

earlier scholarships have examined life narratives and historiography to a small extent but have not taken a systematic inquiry of these texts.

Against Epistemic Blinding From the 14th century Marathi saints to the roars of Dalit Panthers, demonstrably writing appears as an inalienable tradition of MaharsMang- Chambhar21 in Western India. Bhakti was devotional, spiritual movement but it also critically engaged with the caste question, stigma, and pollution. On the other hand, Dalit Panthers22 were politically active, had literary background and were an atheist, not only challenging the existence of Gods and Goddesses but their pivotal role in the damnation of Dalits. Dalit Panthers advocated revolutionary ideas for the annihilation of caste and imagining a caste-class revolution both in the Marxist and Buddhist way. Writers that emerged from Dalit Panther’s movement and their literary work was regarded crude, brutish, violent, profane and masculine. Namdeo Dhasal, known as the father of Dalit literature (Zelliot, 1994) rose to a significant popularity, an exceptional poetic voice and his works garnered attention, created controversies, and generated interest but he also received unparalleled attention. His work is still being recovered, translated and published widely both in vernacular and English language and unanimously called as the foremost subaltern poet in India. On the contrary, Dalit women writers, especially in Maharashtra, are yet to get the deserving attention, recovery and respect it warrants even within the Dalit literary circles. Unlike Nirmala and Soyrabai, who find honorable mention in Zelliot’s foundational and the most significant scholarly work on Bhakti saints, not many scholars are ready to revisit these works. Despite the fact that Dalit women’s writings have used diverse genres of writing, both fiction and nonfiction, historically, it is assumed that Dalit women have confined to one form of the genre- autobiographical. Some regard Dalit female

writings as an appendage to Dalit male writings and thus secondary. Remarkably, Dalit women’s writings display a profound feminist consciousness, expresses the anguish of the samsara, a worldly marital world of women (drudgery that European feminist writers wrote postenlightenment!) is extraordinary considering these women belonged to untouchable castes and lived life amidst stigma, poverty, and social exclusion and faced double discrimination. The dedicated work of historiography by Moon and Pawar (2008) evidently is none to secondary or an appendage to Dalit male writers projects. Despite these women’s writings available in English and the local languages in forms of novels, poetries, short stories, and autobiographies, Dalit women are mostly relegated a marginalized existence both within the mainstream, and the Dalit community. It is only recently Urmila Pawar’s autobiography Aaydan was recommended as a compulsory reading and now translated into different languages. In India, epistemic closures to Dalit writings have been the consistent exception being some of the left leaning vernacular and feminist press who encouraged and published Dalit writers to aid them to express their lived lives. Baby Kamble’s work would have never seen the light of the day had Maxine Bernstein, a sociologist who was visiting India on a fellowship not inspired Baby Kamble at the right time. Prisons We Broke is not only the first modern autobiography of a Dalit woman but also contextualizes the workings of caste, gender in a soon to be independent India. It oscillates between primordial caste identities to the postcolonial identity of Dalit women as modern subjects of the state. Similarly, Urmila Pawar’s work Aaydan also speaks about her friendships with non-Dalit feminists and their encouragement. The first English translation was published of Aaydan was published by Stree, a Kolkata-based feminist press. Along with that Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon’s Aamhi Ithihaas Ghadavala, We made History Too is of enormous historical and sociological significance and Stree Uvaach; a Mumbai-based feminist group played a significant role in encouraging Pawar and Moon to document the oral history of Dalit women.

Evidence of vernacular left leaning press and the progressive independent feminist presses in India have been instrumental in translating and publishing Dalit women’s writings. With this alliance, the articulations of Dalit women writers being readily made available beyond the regional limitations, a hurdle encountered by Dalit writers underlines the bridges built by feminist and left with the Dalit writers. But it may be pertinent also to understand despite the efforts, success and availability of Dalit women’s writings now available in the public domain they face a peculiar challenge of being dominated and overshadowed by Dalit literary patriarchs. Besides, Dalit literary patriarchs23 such as Namdeo Dhasal, Sharan Kumar Limbale, Baburao Bagul, Daya Pawar, Laxman Mane whose works unquestionably represent quintessential “Dalit writings” ironically also obscures Dalit women writings and articulations. Also, works of upper caste feminist writers such as Mahashweta Devi, Shashi Deshpande, Kamala Das, are featured as “standard” feminist writings and texts. This demonstrates the “savarnaisation of the feminist writings and masculinisation of Dalit writings” an equation so eloquently put forth by Sharmila Rege in which Dalit women apparently are double “outcastes” or as Hira Bansode called Dalit women as “twice Dalit” (Novetzke, 1993). Thus, Dalit women writers, therefore, have remained on the extreme peripheries in the castepatriarchal world despite their significant contribution both in literary form and in Ambedkar’s movement (Pawar and Moon, 2011). Despite the publications available in the public domain about the narratives about lived lives of ordinary untouchable women, caste and gender experiences meted out first-hand and cruelly authentic yet the borrowed upper caste imaginations and their rendering win more accolades than Dalit women. It is at this double marginalization, and “epistemic silencing” and sidelining of Dalit women’s writings in Western India, I attempt to situate significance of Dalit women’s writings from the sociological and historical point of view.

II On Genres and Fuzzy Boundaries Ian Jack (2003) explains the writing genres are becoming “fuzzy” and traditional boundaries between autobiography and memoir are collapsing. Although the above two are used interchangeably he makes a distinction- autobiography is “usually a record of accomplishment” whereas “deeds, fame and interesting life are not necessary ingredients of the memoir.” The memoir is more of a collage of different forms of writings, at times novel, at times, literary, to make itself interesting, it goes beyond of “recording the past, it wants to re-create it” (Jack, 2003). Now, whether Dalit women writings are autobiographical or fit in as a memoir is debatable. However, a common element is while writing autobiographical work or a memoir; women have to “recreate” the experiences and accounts of their lived realities often marked by pain, humiliation, social degradation but also political aspirations and undying quest for demanding dignity, equality and liberation forms the core of Dalit women’s literature. Putul Sathe (2013) discusses how autobiography as a literary genre has been “implicitly masculine and middle-class (Sathe, 2013). Besides, what has been hegemonically available to the west was masculine thus women writings itself breaks the privileges of “white and masculine” and centers women as marginalized subjects, using the very act of writing about the self is therefore intensely political (ibid: 26). She underlines autobiographies of the marginalized groups means powerless people decide to recover their voices which go beyond narrow billet of individual lived life (narcissistic worldview perhaps) and becomes a collective - to quote her, “people in position of powerlessness- women, black, working class- used autobiography as a form” and mostly these texts became “ texts of the oppressed and the

culturally displaced, forging a right to speak both for and beyond the individual” (ibid: 26). Although it may be noted that popular genre of autobiographies is a post-Ambedkar phenomenon in Western India, however, there is no dearth of Dalits fiction to express both their literary creativity and foreground caste oppressions, hardships and ugliness of the caste society. Nevertheless, autobiographies/memoirs were the preferred and popular forms of Dalit writings. Bhongale (2004) reckons some fifty autobiographies were written in Marathi between 1975 through 1990. He divides them into broad categories based on gender and tribe, autobiographies written by Dalit male, Dalit female and the tribal experience whose works are classified as outcastes/outside because of their location outside the pale of caste order. Bhongale calls tribals necessarily as “Dalit writings” because “the term Dalit itself includes all sorts of exploitation- social, economic, political, religious, etc. and willingness to raise a voice to protest against it” (ibid: 210). He emphasizes that difference between the Dalit autobiographies with the others is the “I, in Dalit writings is never an individual; he is representative of all the oppressed races in the world. These autobiographies are the moving sagas of human suffering and helplessness” (ibid: 210). The most significant aspect that Bhongale considers is “Dalit autobiographies are not written to relate to life-long experiences of an individual but to expose an ugly facet of social reality which had remained unnoticed and unknown to the civilized ways of the world” (ibid: 210). Also, he also emphasizes on the “ ageold social injustice,” “dehumanized social conditions” and “collective consciousness” as meaningful patterns and conditions present in all the Dalit writings. The “I” is just the medium and the spirit of these books is to triumph over and transcend the caste boundaries to become universal. Significantly an important aspect is the “collective consciousness of the community (Bhongale, 2004) an inherent part of Dalit autobiographies be it female or male.

Bhoite and Bhoite (1977) go beyond the classification of genre and content analysis of Dalit writings and its forms. Rather they emphasized on the necessity of considering “Dalit Literary Movement (DLM) as a “social movement and not as a literary movement alone” (ibid: 74). As the sociologist, they underscored the richness of the “sociological significance” and its enormous importance for its profoundly sociological underpinnings of the Dalit writings. Decades after this insights into considering DLM as a social movement, we must attempt to revisit it to capture the experiences of Dalit women in this social movement and its significance.

Significance of Dalit Women’s Writings Despite these voices trying to rescue, recover and address Dalit writings to be considered as a repository on movements, surprisingly Dalit writings remain on the margins and peripheral. Sarkar (2008) has already emphasized on the marginalization of Dalit women in the conventional and critical historiography of Maharashtra. Despite the availability of path, breakings work of Baby Kamble, Pawar, and Moon that can contribute richly to addressing this marginalization and critical historiography yet we see the lack of engagement with these texts. By and large, it was the upper caste women who have mostly dominated mainstream Indian feminist movement and writings. Dalit women are still largely invisible, and their absence is marked in the mainstream feminist literature. Even in the regional literary movements, Dalit women and their prominence are rare unlike the powerful Dalit male writers like Namdeo Dhasal, Arun Kamble, Raja Dhale, J.V.Pawar, Arjun Dangle, who dominated the Dalit literary circle. The dominance of Dalit patriarchs was salient not only in literary circles but also in Ambedkarite movement. Ambedkarite movement

and its careful readings fail to document women as equal and important participants (Pawar and Moon, 2011). Similarly, in the women’s movement, role, and contributions of Dalit women are mostly unaccounted. Paik (2009) notes the scholarship on nationalist movement and women’s movement in India is dominated by descriptions of upper caste women in whose narratives caste and its intersections with gender, patriarchy, class and accounts of women trapped in caste, agrarian relations are nearly absent. Paik further underlines this as systemic “historiographical problems.” She questions “how does one explain normative historiographies and feminist account’s selective ignorance and continuous occlusion of the Dalit woman as active historical agents?” (ibid: 40). It is at this invisibility and deliberate omissions of Dalit women’s histories and writings it is critical to situate these Dalit autobiographies and historiography of Dalit feminists becomes invaluable. These interventions must be regarded as the most important seminal texts for its insights, narratives and depicting the life of those who were the most invisible in the caste-patriarchy order. Specifically, these three texts from Western India have enormous significance for bringing the most neglected and silenced lives to the fore and offer powerful insights into these women’s personal and public/ community life, their life forces, agencies, participation in the Ambedkarite movement. Finally, their critical insight into the making and unmaking of “nation” which in principal is deeply Brahmanical is a recurrent theme. These texts not only address invisibility of Dalit women in the critical historiographical sense but also throw light on the critical and suppressed voices within the third world feminist articulations. These texts and life narratives are both, anti-caste and feminist therefore extremely crucial and incisive.

Insights from The Prisons We Broke, Aaydan: The Weave of my life and We Also Made

History Baby Kamble’s biography is a depiction of Mahar community who lived on the outskirts of Phaltan in Maharashtra. Kamble vividly described in the first chapters how the Mahar community lived, worked, labored and largely relegated dehumanized existence, preindependence. Poverty, ignorance, superstition, and Hindu hierarchical caste relations consistently feature in the narrative that captures ethnographic details of caste relations of Mahar, Mang and the village headman, the Patil community. The striking aspect although is few Mahars were financially well off, had become contractors, worked with the British as butlers and spoke fluent English, therefore, the binary of Dalits as poor, victims is fractured. Kamble also highlights how women’s status and position were that of subordination both in the village, community and in a family. In her account, she describes life of her mother was caged in the four boundaries of their house. Mahar women had to work hard in the community. They had to collect fuel wood, hide under thorny shrubs seeing the site of the touchable castes and with the same polluting bodies they had to sell the fuel wood drenched with their sweat and blood to the upper castes. Carrying out the daily chores, facing the violence of their men and sexual abuse of high caste men and exploitation at the hand of upper caste women is embedded of being a wife/woman and Dalit women were no exception. Even in the community, women’s life was shaped and influenced by superstition, abuses, and violence and governed by Hindu religious life and customs. However, the transformative and critical aspect of her work is her anger against the dehumanizing caste system and how Dr. B.R. Ambedkar brings life force and alters her life and existence along with that of the community. Ambedkar liberates them from the village duties of removing and instructs women to stay off cooking and eating the dead carcasses of animals.

Gopal Guru writes it is evident that “cultural life of Dalit women in thinly anchored in Hinduism in comparison to the thick bed of ritual practices that upper caste women’s daily routines, rituals” (Guru, 2008) he also adds this aspect of Hindu cultural life and its imposition on women to carry rituals is “colonization of time and space”. However, one must note that it is Ambedkar who liberated the Hindu Mahars from the village duties and demeaning Gaavki (caste services) and temple prostitution. Kamble’s gives a vivid account of how parents offered their children to become Potraj24 and Muralis25. A Dalit woman may not be so embedded in Hindu cultural life post-religious conversions but it was not long ago she was forced into religious prostitution under the tradition of Devadasi26. Also for Hindu woman she carries the cultural weight of Hinduism, has a comfortable life with dignity, does not have to labour and depend on somebody else for earning a livelihood or respect and is free of worries of poverty, stigma, and humiliation. She also does not have to worry about her children being taken away from her for religious prostitution or temple- whereas for Dalit women in accounts of Baby Kamble, a Mahar woman had to carry the weight of dual labour, sacrifice her children to religiously sanctified sexual slavery and be a living testimony to indignities hurled toward her and the community and family. This difference and juxtaposition of Dalit is in contrast to that of upper caste women. Baby Kamble’s account informs about these anxieties that Dalit women undergo. However, the radical element of Kamble’s writings is her analysis of the Hindu religion and the place it gives to women and children, whose sexuality and labour is appropriated cruelly in the name of religion and tradition. But she also readily recognizes how tight the grip of Hindu religion was on the psyche of Mahar women. Kamble writes “Hindu philosophy had discarded our dirt and thrown us in their garbage pits, on the outskirts of the village. We lived in the filthiest condition possible. Hindu rites and rituals were dearests to our hearts.. the haldi- kumkum in their tiny boxes was more important than even a mine full of jewels. We desperately tried to preserve Hindu

rituals...... these rituals were, in a sense an outlet for their oppressed souls. This is how they sought to find solace in their terrible lives... ” Kamble also underlines how women’s bodies and sexual reproduction was marked by superstition. Then Mahar women gave birth to many children. Most of the children did not survive and would die due to unhygienic conditions, lack of food, security, disease, superstitions, lack of education and so on. Women went through horrible practices post delivery of child some of which Kamble has already described vividly. However, the most exploitative element that stands out is the practices of devoting eldest son to the deity as Vaghya or Potraja (Kamble, 2008: 18-19). To offer the son to the god was considered prestigious and honorable. This itself challenges Gopal Guru (2008) lack of ability to look at the trauma, sacrifice and pain of Dalit woman in her Hindu life where she either had to partake in sexual prostitution or offer her children for the services of Hindu Gods and Goddesses makes her more vulnerable than upper caste Hindu woman who enjoys protection and dignity. Urmila Pawar’s memoir The Weave of my life, Pawar gives a very detailed descriptive and explicit account of her life, both private and public. Narrating a story about one’s love life, marriage, domestic violence are not common themes in Dalit women’s writings. Though references to domestic violence and exploitation of women are recurring themes but very few women had descriptions of them falling in love or the act of choosing a spouse of one’s choice, or descriptions of their sexual experiences is almost forbidden. Urmila Pawar’s story narrates her early childhood spent in the western coast of Maharashtra, Ratnagiri and her life filled with childhood memories of her family, village life, her upper caste Brahmin and Kunbi friends, practices of untouchability. Geographically, Baby Kamble’s life narrative is set in Phaltan whereas Urmila Pawar’s childhood was spent in coastal Maharashtra. The terrain, geography, the language, dialect and the food consumed by these two Dalit women is very distinctive yet their socio-cultural

life and miseries are bound by polluting caste becoming a connecting factor. Pawar narrates how the Mahars were treated in the Shimga festival, popularly known as Holi. Holi/shimga was one of the most popular festivals in her village and the Kulwadi castes, Marathas and Bhandari men would celebrate it, but the Mahar men performed the real labour. Mahar men had to do the laborious task of identifying and lifting and taking the thick trees from the hills to the village for the bonfire. And once the tree trunk is placed, and other rituals of applying turmeric, vermilion was performed; the Mahars would have to disappear and appear, as they were invisible. Then a ritual of howling and cursing, prayers were held, they were called as garhane, which was long prayers said to the God for the well-being of the villagers and averting calamities that may strike the village. However, the well being, prayers were not meant for Mahars. On the contrary, the rituals of cursing, howling was directed towards Mahars (Pawar, 2008: 47). Pawar also details how the young Mahar boys had no enough food to eat but would get intoxicated so they could carry out the labour and toil without feeling too much or without thinking too much about their existence. Pawar’s insightful work also takes us through her personal life, exploration of sexuality and how women were obliterated and treated as second-class citizens in the Dalit literary circles. In a literary meet at Dhule, Asmitadarsha Sahitya Sammelan, Pawar and some seveneight women were in a chair for a panel discussion on women’s problems. The audience was mostly women. Pawar asked one of the activists about his absence in the session where she was a panelist, and he had responded that ‘since this was women’s panel discussion, he went out, and he found no reason why a man should attend that, so he excused himself and came out for a stroll (Pawar, 2008: 280). The insights that one can gather from Pawar and Moons’s contribution to documenting, recovering and giving the long due acknowledgment to the Dalit women’s histories is a colossal contribution. In words of Urmila Pawar, she pays tribute to these Dalit

women who had to face caste slurs, abuses and face poverty, discrimination and physical abuses at the hands of their own families and from the upper castes who dominated their every aspect of life. Urmila Pawar underscores how women were berated, abused, harassed, humiliated yet they fought for their rights and community’s rights. Many of the Dalit women who participated in Baba Saheb’s movement had to face domestic violence. They mentioned how their husbands beat them up. Shantabai Kamble, Babytai Kamble said they tolerated their husband’s abuses but still continued to carry out the movement related activities. Despite the contribution of Dalit women, they are readily and so easily forgotten. For women like Laximibai Kakade, Geetabai Pawar “ they had tears in their eyes” when they came to know their contributions were finally being recognized and acknowledged (Pawar, 2008: 295). One also learns from these path-breaking historiographies that women like Jaibai Chowdhary started first girl’s school in Nagpur in 1924. There were women wrestlers like Chandrika Ramteke and Shantabai Sarode. Anjanibai Deshbhratar and Geetabai Gaikwad started women’s hostels in Nagpur and Nasik. Dalit women like Radhabai Kamble is considered as the first female trade union activist. In 1929, the British Government sent a Labour Commission to survey working conditions of industrial laborers. Radhabai Kamble testified along with other labour activists and leaders. Radhabai also used to work for the Scheduled Caste Federation, and she fought against both the employers who gave unfair treatment to the workers and to the Brahmin and upper caste labour elders who held the Scheduled Caste Federation and its members in contempt. There are at least forty-one life sketches 27

Fighting Private (Dalit) and Public (Brahmanical) Patriarchy: Underpinnings of Feminist Consciousness

Throughout the literary tradition and in narratives of Dalit women’s writings themes of caste culture, gender roles for women, and their treatment and “place” in the community have been discussed thoroughly. In Aaydan- Urmila Pawar writes about how women worked hard and looked after children their own and other working women’s and offered child care support. This kind of women’s support was also accentuated in Baby Kamble’s autobiography. This culture of creating a support system for women and carrying out gender roles underpins three consistent practices in the Dalit community-women offered support and care to other women, orphaned children in the community. The presence of state to help these women was nearly absent. Lastly, raising children, cooking, feeding and caring for the family was women’s responsibility coded in patriarchal gender roles allocated unequally to women and men. Unlike the upper caste women who did not have to deal with public patriarchy, Dalit women faced discrimination, violence and challenges at multiple levels. One stark difference that is noted consistently is also Dalit women have always been concerned about the treatment and humiliation meted out to their men despite their veiled patriarchal violence against Dalit women. Unlike feminist S Anandhi’s partial reading where she read that Dalit women leverage community over gender, reading of these three texts offer us rich insights into the complexities of lived life of Dalit women. In Dalit women’s narratives, a common theme that bound them together is Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar. Besides, the role of education, associated with Christian missionaries, the British, the Ambedkarite movement and finally the thirst to seek knowledge and participate in the self-respect movement of Ambedkar is core to this activism of Dalit women across the times. To take part in Dr. Ambedkar’s movement, Dalit women had to look after their children, fight out against their husband, take their beatings and abuses and some of the women did not even marry and dedicated themselves as a full-time activist in the movement.

Some of these women also started girl’s school; hostels meant for girls, Jaibai Chowdhry laid this foundation as early as 1924. Whereas Radhabai Kamble, a unionist and perhaps the first woman trade unionist had to fight the Hindu hoodlums, trade unionist who played caste politics against the members of Scheduled Caste Federation intimidating Dalit voters in Mumbai (then Bombay) and even murdered a Scheduled Caste Federation candidate. These women also pinpointed how the real upper caste women treated, exploited and humiliated Dalit women. The social difference and locational difference of caste and its outcomes are clearly pronounced in the life sketches and experiences of Dalit women. Also, these women came from different parts of Maharashtra, from Solapur, Nagpur, Nasik, Phaltan, Pune, and Bombay but what united these women were three commonalities they shared- caste patriarchy, the systemic and institutionalized caste violence, experience of Dalit patriarchy, and lastly agency acquired through Ambedkar’s movements. These women also account for the encouragement and early exposure they gained through Ambedkarite movement. Therefore, their experiences of their private patriarchy are not linear and straightforward to comprehend. In most cases, like Urmila Pawar mentions she and her husband both of them read Dr. Ambedkar’s works, in accounts of young Shantabai Bhalerao whose father was chauffer to the Governor General Montague-Chelmsford, he was progressive and economically better off unlike other Mahars, who were destitutes. Shantabai’s father took her to Mahad Satyagraha and made her give a speech while she was very young; she also vividly remembers the burning of the Manu Smriti. Shantabai later was married while she was seventeen years old. She and her husband had marital discord because she was participating in the social work and movement whereas his husband wanted her “to be a wife who would only be his housewife” (Pawar and Moon, 2008: 241). These women clearly had feminist consciousness, and they also practiced it to educate and help other Dalit women. Along with the instrumental roleplayed by feminist fathers, openness of Ambedkarite movement to

foster an encourage women’s participation is extraordinary considering the positions women were assigned.

Making of a Modern Dalit Woman: Buddhist and Political In the hierarchal caste order, untouchable caste is positioned the lowest in the society. Accounts of vitaal (body pollution) have been well documented in the Bhakti tradition. Subsequently, reports provided by Mukta Salve, a fourteen-year-old student of Savitrimai Fule, who was from Maang caste gave a heartrending picture of the situation and social and living conditions of Mahar and Mangs. She pinpointed how the Brahmins dominated every sphere of life and treated untouchables Mahar and Mangs worse than donkeys! She underlined how some of the Brahmins intimidated and killed Mahars/Mangs if they wanted to pursue education or pass through the gymnasium, the act of transgression would cost them cutting of Mahar-Mang head which then would be played as a ball and severed by the swords of the Brahmins. Mukta also wrote about how the untouchables were not employed, given opportunities and their women gave birth without any roofs over their head. Their situation was worse than animals, she noted. At the age of fourteen, Mukta Salve had clarity and had the grip of castegender intersections and how it impacts the untouchable women. The second significant disabling factor that affected untouchable women adversely was the religious prostitution. The tradition of temple prostitution and slavery profoundly changed how Dalit women’s sexuality was appropriated. It was in 1908, Shivram Janba Kamble, a close associate of Baba Saheb organized first rebellion group against this custom of dedicating young girls to God, the article was first published in Somwanshi Mitra in 1908 (Pawar and Moon, 2008: 92). Dalit women did not have any social standing nor any

honor. In the name of religion, young children both girl and boy were taken as Nachyas/Potraj and Murlis. These traditions, customs of damnation, humiliation and exploitation of untouchables and their women was embedded in Hindu practices. Women had to carry out dead carcass in villages, in accounts of Babytai Kamble, the life of Dalit woman was profoundly and adversely impacted by Hindu custom, rites, and rituals. Dalit women themselves guarded their goddesses and haldi-kumkum more than their life. It is in the background of such oppressive and exploitative religiouscaste structure, Dalit women organized under Baba Saheb Ambedkar and carried out various satyagrahas, marches, protests against anti-Devadasi and participated in the Buddhist conversions. The emphasis on girls education is a remarkable part of Dalit movement foregrounded in accounts of almost all Dalit women’s writings. Even before Ambedkar entered and radically altered the face of an assertion of untouchables, untouchable women and their education have been of extreme significant. Along with education, an important theme that is recurrent is religious conversion. Dr. Ambedkar made the famous proclamation to convert and change his religion on 13th October 1935 at Yeola. Women and men in millions of number joined Dr. Ambedkar. Pawar and Moon (2008) write that women participated and organized their conferences, meetings to give support to the call for conversion. This was one of the earliest and most important signs that women were trying to forge a new identity- that gave them the status of humans and as equals. Janabai More stood on behalf of women’s community to support conversion. Bombay Presidency Mahar Parishad had given a call for conversion; subsequently, a conference and meeting for women was held in Dadar from 30th -31 May 1936 in Bombay (now Mumbai). Another strong voice of Sonubai Daavare who said, “we should embrace faith in which we have the right to be treated with humanity. It is not possible for us to have these rights in the Hindu religion. Dr.

Ambedkar is fighting for the progress of seventy million untouchables... without a religious revolution, we have no hope. Hinduism at root is based on inequality. Why should we stay within a religion that considers us lower than animals? So let us all give our support to this resolution”. (Pawar and Moon, 2008: 181). There are many such accounts of women and their quest to walk on the path shown by Dr. Ambedkar. It is also reported that women asked Baba Saheb to give any faith but not give that religion which has veil for women (ibid: 184) The point that may be noted is the journey of Dalit women who were stuck in the dehumanizing practices of Hinduism walk on the path of conversion and express strongly their views on religion and how it should help them express their identity and live their life. These women not only liberated themselves from the clutches of Hinduism that foundationally treats women as unequal and inferior but they also chose a religion that promises them equality and dignity. Urmila Pawar also writes she stopped wearing the mangal sutra (often worn by Hindu women as a symbol of their marital status and slavery) and gave up all the practices associated with Hinduism. This leap both culturally, and faith-wise is perhaps the most progressive and emancipatory project every taken in the history of women’s movement. Hindu women and their damnation are inevitable in their religion yet they have never asserted and stood against their religious damnation. On the other hand, Dalit women with all the impediments and vulnerabilities created an agency and rose against religious exploitations.

Summary and Conclusion This chapter attempts to map the historical tradition of largely Mahar (Dalits) women’s writing and articulation that underpin feminist consciousness and praxis. The chapter illuminates how writing as a medium was deployed by Dalit women to document their life as

women and as untouchables in a caste Hindu society. The autobiography as a genre emerged as the most potent and extensive form in Marathi literary circles. Both non-Dalits and Dalits used it. However, Bhongale notes that Dalit writers preferred autobiographical form to the fictions. The relevance and significance of autobiographies of the oppressed communities such as the slaves or Holocaust survivors have reached an incredible amount of respect and invited scholarly attention. However, Dalit narratives are yet to achieve global stature and become normative. Albeit few disciplinary scholars from the literature have paid attention to the Dalit writings, however, the other disciplines are yet to engage with these texts. This chapter also underpins how Mahar women’s writings can be useful to understand patriarchies, women’s life, caste and hierarchal organization of sexuality, and most importantly a place of women in the pre and post-independent India. The chapter also dwells upon the critiques of Dalit writings and continued devaluation by the Dalit male intellectuals. It also informs us that Dalit women are projected either as victims or as passive women is a lopsided account. On the contrary, it is evident that Dalit women have made consistent efforts to critique and question Hindu caste system and finally they received a critical agency through Ambedkar, which manifested into modernity and widespread acquisition of political consciousness. The chapter also expels myths that Dalit women have not been producers of knowledge; in fact, historiographers like Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon have contributed immensely in recovering and documenting lives and works of women who contributed immensely to Ambedkarite movement. Aditya Nigam had suggested “that no Dalit histories could be produced till dalit themselves started writing their history- much like feminists- points to the deeper problem with academic histories written from the distance of a scientist, ever unable to share the experience of oppression” (Nigam, 2000). In fact, the efforts taken by Moon and Pawar explicitly shows the abilities, commitment to recover women’s

history and movement in itself is a radical feminist praxis in order to recover women’s voices, histories and acknowledge them deeply. It is not that Dalit women did not write, it is that “epistemic occlusion and closures” played by the upper caste feminists and Dalit males is the foundational were Dalit women, and their contributions have been sidelined and devalued. Nevertheless, the genesis of feminist consciousness can be safely traced to the writings and expressions of the untouchable caste women, and their quest for anti-caste politics and feminist praxis should remind us of the feminist consciousness are innate to Dalit movement.

Notes 1. The title of this chapter is inspired by Urmila Pawar’s memoir Aaydan first published in 2003 by Granthali, Mumbai. Aaydan is a generic terms used in Konkan region of Maharashtra for making things out of bamboo, other meanings of the term being Awata, meaning utensil, weapons. Pawar (2003) used this metaphorically to remind about her mother’s work, weaving of Aaydans, cane basket. Pawar writes the very act of writing is “organically linked” and it is this weave that bounds women in pain, suffering and agony that links them (Pawar, 2003: x). I extend the concept and title Aaydan to the current generation of Dalit Feminist to suggest how caste, gender, pain, agony and suffering continue to impact but also bind younger generation of Dalit women in lived life and poetic sense. 2. Geraldine Rose and Gowda Sridhar (2014) are United Kingdom based publishers who underscored the character of the Indian literary festivals as bourgeoisie platforms with enormous attention, resources such as well-known writers curating the festivals, backed by corporate and media sponsorships and as a space have become successful to have

served as a launching pad for promoting Indian English writers. Most of these prominent writers are upper caste, upper class and entangled into making controversial remarks on Palestine, Caste and openly associated with promoting their writings based on religious myths, violence and caste prejudices. Some of the most popular young writers in India are Amish Tripathy who mostly writes stories based on Hindu mythology, whereas Chetan Bhagat another young management graduate writes for demography that is exclusive- upper caste, city-based and upper class. Despite their exclusive audiences who also lack political perspective and sociological understanding of stratified caste society these writers have emerged as the most sought after despite of their shallowness and exclusivity representing stories only of a certain section of Indian society (retrieved from http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/article_free.asp? pid=the_indian_market_for_books_and_translations). 3. Dalit Literature is called as “protest literature” and offered referred as “literature of the oppressed” exploded on the Indian scene in the 1970s and made profound difference in the field of Marathi literature, and it influence spread to neighbouring states of Kannada, Gujrat (Deo and Zelliot, 1994: 41). The term Dalit was self-chosen by writers mostly who preferred the identity of Dalit, meaning oppressed but also militant and self-defined identity marking subversive, political consciousness. It is a vernacular subaltern termalthough it was meant to bring into ambit all the excluded and oppressed groups such as Nomadic Tribes, Landless, prostitutes, peasants, labourers etc. the term post- 1980s has been stuck with exuntouchable caste writers. Here, it suggests the real practice of the term Dalit was used in the Marathi literary circle and included voices of Chambhars, Mangs who otherwise do not participate and remain in the

Hindu fold, excluded and criminalized tribes, nomadic tribes, and other untouchable castes from neighbouring states of Gujrat. 4. Urmila Pawar and Meenaxi Moon (2008) originally published their work on “Oral History” of Dalit women’s participation in Ambedkarite movement. This work is pioneering and foundational in theorising Dalit Feminism. The genesis of the project documenting the feminist oral history of Dalit women germinated from the encouragement of a Bombay feminist group Stree Uvaach and feminist such as Chhaya Datar who encouraged Urmila Pawar to draw from the works of Stree Shakti Sanghatana, a Hyderbad based group who published collection of memoirs of women who took part in the Telangana movement, this work is considered as he first feminist oral History in India (Sonalkar, 2008: 5). 5. Namdeo Dhasal is the most acclaimed, feisty poet in Marathi literature who was the founding member of Dalit Panthers Party , Deo and Zelliot (1994) call him as the first Dalit patriarchy in Marathi literature. 6. Sharankumar Limbale is one of the prominent poet, author and literary critic in Maharashtra. His best-known work is Akkarmashi (1984) The Outcaste. His father belonged to the Maratha caste and mother to Mahar caste. His struggle for identity, legitimacy and sense of belongingness that accords dignity, acceptance is the central theme besides being raised by a single mother. His hatred for being illegitimate son of a feudal Maratha and stigmas associated with it is expressed constantly, he wanted to rape his own mother because of her allegedly promiscuous encounter with the Maratha man his father. His story also depicts life of those who are utmost stigmatized within the socially stigmatized groups.

7. Deo and Zelliot (1994) describe Balut refers to the system in the village in which the Mahar, an untouchable caste in Maharashtra were given grains and other “rights” for performing obligatory village duties often degrading and inviting wrath such as passing on messages of death notices, removal of carcasses of animals, doing services and petty jobs given y the village headman and visiting official (Deo and Zelliot, 1994: 64) 8. According to Bourdieu (1986) social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources linked to possession of a durable network with a patterned, stable and institutionalized relationships of reciprocity trust coming from recognition and acquaintance. He adds the volume of social capital possessed by a given “agent” depends on the size of the network of connection he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural and symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those whom she/he is connected, being part of the network accrues and brings profits and thus solidarity is possible (1986). Extending the concept of social networks, one can assume lower caste may act as a barrier to lead to disadvantages and certain membership in group are forbidden owing to the rules of group membership thus depriving the lower castes of both networks and profits that social capital is said to bring (retrieved from www. marxist.org) 9. Prof Ramesh Kamble’s critique on Dalit Women Writings at a workshop held in TISS, 2013, date unable to retrieve, organized by Prof Bipin Jojo, TISS, Mumbai 10. Closed workshop discussion at Delhi on Caste and Gender, dated 4-5th December, 2015. 11. A conference organized at Tata Institute of Social Sciences by DTSW and RTI - Dalit and Adivasi Women’s Conference,

a heated debate followed 12. Laxman Mane is a well-known Marathi writer and social activist in Maharashtra. His autobiography Upara (An Outsider) was published in 1980 on the plight of the nomadic tribe, subsequently he also received the Sahitya Adademi Award in 1981 13. Vijay Tendulkar is an acclaimed writer, dramatist in Maharashtra and well-known as a progressive socialist intellectual of Brahmin community 14. Granthali is an independent progressive publishing house based in Mumbai which has idealistic left leanings intellectuals 15, 16. Bhakti Movement is understood here mainly as literary production space where common element that bound people together was through devotion to the Lord Vitthal and I argue that is the oldest platforms used by untouchables of Maharashtra to creatively address Brahamanical caste system and their systematic dehumanization 17. Details of other verses by family of Chokhamela are discussed by Zelliot in her chapter on early voices on untouchability from the Saints 18. Peterson Nancy (2001) Against Amnesia: Contemporary Women Writers and Historical Memory is an invaluable work for its underscoring deliberate amnesia played by the dominants in reminiscing the public history of oppressed communities. She emphasizes the role of writing literature, historicizing it in fictional works is a highly critical project which women writers should often engage with. I am trying to suggest here there is deliberate amnesia embodied by the

upper caste feminists to obliterate historical events, past of Dalit women which we must enduringly resist 19. Satyashodhak Samaj- Truth Seeking Society was founded by social radical Mahatma Jyotiba Fule who not only started the first school for untouchable women but has contributed to the well being of abandoned, widowed, women of the Brahmin community and a long time associate of non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra 20. Mang caste is the second largest untouchable caste in Maharashtra and considered to be lacking in political awareness than Mahars 21. Dalit Women Talk Differently, the classic essays are part of the Economic and Political Weekly, 1998 and conversations that took place between Gopal Guru, Sharmila Rege and Chayya Datar 22. Philip Constable in his extremely important article on early dalit literature and culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Western India documents the muchneglected history, contributions and associations of Dalit assertions. Constable demonstrates the struggle for independent cultural identity is not in the 1970s but much older tracing it to the founding of Anarya Dosha Pariharak Mandal and its founder Gopal Baba Valangkar in 1888, who was a long associated of Mahtama Jotiba Fule. Valangkar belonged to Mahar community but he established ADPM (date unsure 1888 or 1890) and brought together MaharChambhar military officers founding separate association to establish an independent cultural identity of the outcastes, liberation from the Hindu mode of life (Constable, 1997) 23. Dalit Panthers was a literary and activist based movement that was started by young radical Dalits from a Buddhist

neighbourhood in Worli, it created an enormous impact in the literary and resistance struggles of Dalits in the 1970s 24. Here, I am referring to Dalits as “oppressed” though Limbale, Mane are not of untouchable caste backgrounds 25. Vaghya/Potraja are the male ritual worshippers of the god Khandoba and goddesses like Ambabai who played drums or were offered to god as child to carry out temple duties 26. Muralis are girls/female offered to God Khandoba in marriage 27. Several scholarships on Devdasis with several commentaries and notes on the tradition, in the accounts of Dalit Feminist narratives Devadasis as a tradition was nothing but celebrated sexual exploitation of women of untouchable caste 28. Pawar and Moon have interviewed, given accounts, life sketches and contributions of forty-one Dalit women who contributed to Dr Ambedkar’s call and movement, however, I have highlighted only few and this is not an exhaustive account and review of these women and their contributions

References Azad, Gurinder (Interviewers) and Bharti, A (Interviewee) 2014. We want to break the caste system through literature (Interview Transcript) Retrieved from http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=7229:break-the-castesystem-through-literature-because-it-has-more-fortressesthere-anita-bharti&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132

Bhagwat, Vidyut (2004) Marathi Literature as a Source for Contemporary Feminism. In Chaudri, Maitreyi (Eds.), Feminism in India. 286-296. New Delhi. Kali For Women. Bhoite, Uttam and Bhoite, Anuradha (1977). “The Dalit Sahitya Movement in Maharashtra : A Sociological Analysis”. Sociological Bulletin 26 (1). 60-75. Bhongale ,R (2002) Dalit Autobiographies : An Unknown Facet of Social Reality. Indian Literature. 46 (4)(210). 158-160. http://dx.doi.org/29-02-2016 Constable, Philip (1997) Early Dalit Litereature and Culture in Late Nienteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Western India. Modern Asian Studies. 31 (2) 317-338. http://dx.doi.org/2902-2016 Deo, Veena and Zelliot Elenor (1994) DALIT LITERATURETWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PROTEST ? OF PROGRESS. Journal of South Asian Literature. 29(2) 41-67. Rose, Geraladine and Gowda, Sridhar (2014, October, 16) The Indian market for books and translations retrieved from http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/article_free.asp? pid=the_indian_market_for_books_and_translations G.P.D (1982) Dalit Literature. Economic and Political Weekly, 17(3) 61-62 doi 29-02-16. -(1982) Marathi Writers and the State. Economic and Political Weekly. 17 (4) 96-97 doi. 29-02-26 Guru, Gopal (1995). Dalit Women Talk Differently. Economic and Political Weekly, 30 (41-42). 2548-2550 —————— (2007) Afterword. (Kamble Baby, Chennai. Orient Longman

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Jack, Ian (2003, February 08) When autobiography becomes memoir, Guardian retrieved http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/08/featuresrevie ws.guardianreview25 Kamble, Baby (2011) The Prisons we Broke (Maya Pandit, Trans). Hyderabad. Orient Blackswan. King, Anna (2005) Introduction. In The Intimate Other: Love Divine in Indic Religions. King, Anna and Brockington, John. New Delhi. Orient Longman. Nagpaul, Deepti (2015, October, 15) Undeclared Emergency now is worse than 1975, Indian Express, retrieved from http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/undeclaredemergency-now-is-worse-than-1975-says-writer-pradnyapawar/ Nigam, Aditya (2000) “Secularism, Modernity, Nation: Epistemology of the Dalit Critique”. Economic and Political Weekly. 35 (48) 4256-4268 Novetzke, Christian (1993) Twice Dalit: The Dalit Poetry of Hira Bansode. Journal of South Asian Literature. (28,) 1/2. 279-295 Omvedt, Gail (2006) Dalit Visions. New Delhi. Orient Blackswan. Paik, Shailja (2009) Amchya Jalmachi Chittarkatha (The Bioscope of Our Lives) Who Is My Ally in Economic and Political Weekly, 44(40) 39-47 accessed on 29-02-26 Pandit, Maya (2011) An Interview with Baby Kamble in B. Kamble The Prisons We Broke (M. Pandit, Trans), Hyderbad. Blackswan.(Original work published 1982) Pawar, Urmila (2009). The Weave of my Life (M.Pandit, Trans) Kollkatta: Stree-Samya (Original work 2003)

Pawar, Urmila and Moon, Meenaxi (2014). We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement (W. Sonalkar, Trans). New Delhi. Zubaan (Original Work Published 2006) Pawade, Kumud (1998) Dalit Streenychya Sanghtananchi Avashyakata (The necessity for Dalit Women’s Organisations) Sugava. Dalit Mahilanche Prashna. 33-34 Poitevin, Guy (2000) Dalit Autobiographical Narratives: Figures of Subaltern Consciousness ,Assertion and Identity. Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences, Pune, India, retrieved from http://www.ccrss.org Rege, Sharmila (1998) Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of Difference and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position. Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (44) ———— (2000) ‘Real Feminism and Dalit Women: Scripts of Denial and Accusations. Economic and Political Weekly. 35 (6). 492-95. ————(2013) Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonios. Zubaan. New Delhi Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid , Sudesh (1998): Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. New Delhi. Kali for Women. Sathe, P (2013) Ethnography of the Marginalised Self: Reading of Dalit Women’s Autobiographies. Women’s Link. 19 (4) 25-32 Still, C (2008) Dalit women in the Social Justice Revolution in India. Public Policy Research, 15 (2), 93-96. Tharu, Susie and Lalita, K ed. (1993) Women Writing in India: 600 BC to Present. Vol 1 New York: Feminist Press, CUNY.

Zelliot, Eleanor (1980) Chokhamela and Eknath : Two Bhakti Modes of Legitimacy for Modern Change. Journal of Asian and African Studies 15 (1-2) 136-156 ———— (1982) A Note on Baburao Bagul. In Journal of South Asian Literature (17) 1. p 56. ———— (2000) Sant Sahitya and its Effect on Dalit Movements: Intersections: Socio-cultural Trends in Maharashtra. Ed, Kosambi, Meera. Orient Longman. New Delhi. ———— (2008) “Chokhamela, His Family and the Marathi Tradition”. In Aktor, Mikael ————— (2010) From Stigma to Assertion: Untouchability, Identity and Politics in Early and Modern Indian. (Delige et al). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 76-85.

2 Towards an Inclusive Transgender Autobiography — Akshaya K. Rath and Ananya Parida

Abstract With the emergence of a set of theoretical, cultural and political factors, alterity is given prominence in everyday life. The margin as a subject of critical analysis is systematically represented in several academic disciplines. This is a world-wide phenomenon that impacts upon our understanding of what was regarded earlier as “sexual deviance” or “sexual minority” in the Indian context. Transgender life is a less explored and much misunderstood subject. Always perceived as prostitutes, kidnapers and beggars, the hijras of India are a despised lot who always stand in prejudiced roles in social narratives. Breaking the Indian binary gender construction and social hierarchy, the community transgresses gender roles, and after decades of struggle now it is given the status by the Apex Court as a ‘distinct cultural group.’ Transgender Autobiography is only an immediate phenomenon

which provides them with a platform to present their life narrative. A. Revathi’s The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story (2010) and Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015) are the primary yet seminal narratives that repudiate the stereotypical notions about the community. In these cases, gender has been reformulated as a genre to bring in the transgender lifeexperience to the fore. This new genre breaks gender norms in heteronormative and patriarchal ideologues, which women ’s autobiographies initially rebelled against, and the base of both women and transgender autobiographies are the same. This article questions the genre of women’s autobiography as an exclusive subject and negotiates reading transgender autobiographies in the Indian context for an inclusive textual enquiry. Key Words: Transgender Autobiography; Autobiographical Narratives; Gender and Genre.

Introduction Modern scholarship on transgender narrative is a recent phenomenon in India though representations and studies pertaining to the community are established. There remain several sociological and anthropological enquiries pertaining to the transgender community in India. Serana Nanda’s Neither Man nor Woman (1999) and Gayatri Reddy’s With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (2005) throw light on the issue to a significant extent. In most of these enquiries, a first-hand narration of the transgender person is limited to interviews of the urban representative. Viewed from this angle Transgender Studies in India is chiefly on a community that is despised and is studied upon, and an exclusive transgender representation from their own point of view has hardly come to the fore. Documentaries such as Hijra, from Inside (2013) by Laurie

Colson, Mein Hijra Hoon (2012) by ISOMES Mass Communication students and Transindia (2015) a film project taken up by Meera Darji are attempts in bringing transgender life to the public domain. Furthermore, sympathetic interviews from Project Bolo supported by UNDP, interviews by Sanjeevani Booti, an education center for sexually-transmitted diseases in Varanasi, and interviews by Shanoor Shirvai have focused on hijra life extensively. In bringing the ghettolife of the community to the fore, these texts narrate transgender life in India with an aim to prevent Aids-risk and other sexually transmitted diseases. Salman Rushdie’s interview with Laxminarayan Tripathi is an example that aimed at providing material for an anthology AIDS Sutra (2008), a collection of Aids stories. Significantly, transgender studies as a distinct discipline has hardly come to the fore and is much neglected in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The media and the popular culture have been instrumental in establishing a distinct image of the transgender community. Surprisingly, the popular culture, just like the orthodox tradition, has been instrumental in establishing a stereotypical image of the transgender person as dancing, begging, pimping and stealing children. The loud make-up and everyday-harassments are as real as the imitation of the representation. A reformatory movie like Water (2005) could not but address the issue representing a eunuch pimping for the high-caste. Sadak (1991), a movie dealing with the plight of women who were forced to work in brothels portrayed a hijra as the head of a brothel. The popular culture has consequently provided ugly encounters and inaccurate assumptions of hijra life, thereby rendering consequential disservice to the image of the community. It is because the hijra story is never narrated by a hijra herself, but passed on orally that the transgender community could never be projected in any positive light. A few significant events in the last two decades have given rise to a growing consciousness on the transgender community moreover. With the emergence of a set of theoretical, cultural and political

factors, alterity is given prominence in everyday life. The margin as a subject of critical analysis is systematically represented in several academic disciplines. This is a world-wide phenomenon that impacts upon our understanding of what was regarded earlier as “sexual deviance” or “sexual minority” in the Indian context. As the academia is relatively tolerant about the issue lately, queer studies became a discipline in the 1990s. Nearing 2000s Indian cinema has produced films with more sympathetic representations of hijras. Films such as Tamanna (1998) and Sabman Mausi (2005) have given a constructive picturisation of the hijras. In Queens! Destiny of Dance (2011), Seema Biswas and Laxmi Tripathi draw critical attention of the audience towards vulnerable condition of hijras. Such portrayals have been instrumental in presenting discriminatory behaviour of society towards the community and they aspire to break the existing stereotypes disapproving popular representations of them. Transgender Autobiography is only an immediate phenomenon which provides the community with a platform to present their lifenarrative. A. Revathi’s The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story (2010) and Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015) are primary yet seminal narratives that repudiate the stereotypical notions about the community. In these cases, gender has been re-formulated as a genre to bring in transgender life-experiences to the fore. This new genre breaks gender norms in heteronormative and patriarchal ideologues, which women’s autobiographies initially rebelled against and the base of both women and transgender autobiographies are the same. Highlighting traditional mythologies, this article questions the genre of women’s autobiography as an exclusive subject and negotiates reading transgender autobiographies in the Indian context for an inclusive textual enquiry.

Transgender Life and Narratives

Transgender life and narratives are surrounded by mythological tales and in presenting their mythological tales does the community seek a cultural history. A. Revathi and Laxmi Tripathi present the tales of their origin—like anthropological and sociological studies—and rehearse the stereotype of blessings and curse though as scholars we need to understand that a community without history needs to create one. A community without a spokesperson needs to create icons— mythological or otherwise—to look for a tradition within the perceived heteronormative tradition. Oral literatures, tales, folklore and mythological gender transformation are abundant in Indian culture but they lack a historicity, and moreover, oral literature is a rare site of academic pedagogy. The popular notions that prevail surround stories of castration, sexual perversion and anatomical differences, and govern the site of transgender scholarship in the Indian context, and transgender autobiographies make sense of these narratives. Ridiculed, ostracized and harassed on several occasions, transgender presence has been looked down upon in all ‘civilized’ spaces. Several studies reveal that although they have an auspicious presence during celebrations of marriage and birth, they also have an inauspicious potential for supernatural damage for which they are quite infamous. Serena Nanda suggests that the sexual ambiguity of the hijras as impotent men— eunuchs—represents a loss of virility, and this undoubtedly is the major cause of the fear that they inspire (1999, 6). There is a general understanding that hijras take to insulting and cursing people/families who do not meet their demands of gifts and money. Notwithstanding the nature of such representations in cultural perceptions, hijras are sought after in many occasions and in several other occasions they form a despised group much prone to everyday harassment by general public and police. Gayatri Reddy in her With Respect to Sex (2006) extends the debate further and presents the discourse of hijra life in a sympathetic manner. Not surprisingly, The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (2013) hardly has an entry on the hijras of India, and in global scenario they are an invisible community that needs serious

representation. In all such cases moreover there is a relative lack of documentation in the way tales and folklore of the hijra community come to the fore, and in several cases the transgender autobiographies in question refer to the need to re-consider the mythical representations. With regard to religious belief, origin of the community and their life-style, autobiographical narratives correspond to social and anthropological enquiries. Gender transformation is central to the definition. A hijra can be defined as a person who is born a male and later took up feminine pattern of lifestyle, or a person born female who could not menstruate and develop male characteristics. In both the cases, Nanda claims, “the irregularity of the male genitalia is central to the definition” (1999, 14). Indeed hijras claim their founder to be “a woman, but not a normal, she did not menstruate” (15). Therefore they are left ‘in-between’ male and female, confused and unidentified. Dictated by a thirst for identity, emasculation becomes a way out from the curse of impotence and offers rebirth of a new soul. It is through surgical removal of sexual organ that male sexuality is renounced and it becomes the central definition of hijra identity in society. With emasculation they are identified as hijras, a position comparatively stronger that the position of being ‘neither male nor female’. Emasculation is the dharma otherwise called as nirvan—rebirth, and it is observed that some of the rituals of nirvan match with childbirth ceremony. Van Gennep (1960) writes that “through the operation, the former, impotent male person dies, a new person, endowed with sacred power (shakti), is reborn” (quoted in Nanda 1999: 26). This indicates the process of leaving an ambiguous body and soul and making it a definite one, a proper hijra. Hijras worship their mother goddess Bahuchara mata and in the south Pothiraja mata who is known to be the creator, the nurturer and also the destroyer. She holds absolute power to grant and take away fertility, which is later transferred to the hijras after their nirvan (Herdt, 1996). Consequently to get an identity they enter the hijra community, only to learn the signature clapping

and to become ritual performers or sex workers. Unheard and despised, they remain in the margin under the burden of poverty and insecurity. In the autobiographies, both Laxmi and Revathi narrate similar stories about the blessing of Rama to the transgender community. When Rama went on exile for fourteen years, he was bid farewell by his subjects till the edge of the forest. He asked his companions, “All of you, men, women and children, go back to your houses. I’ll complete my fourteen years of exile and return to rule over you” (Revathi: 45). Everyone left except those who were neither men nor women. They stayed back waiting for Rama to return and when on the way back to the kingdom Rama happened to know about the incident, he blessed them granting a boon; their blessing and curses would come true. According to another tale from the Mahabharata, when Krishna gave up the guise of Mohini, he had foretold that “there will be more like me, neither man nor woman, and whatever words come from the mouths of these people, whether good (blessing) or bad (curse) will come true” (Nanda: 20-21). Both Laxmi and Revathi in their narratives tell the tale of their origin to contextualise modern life and seek importance in their profession. Hinduism believes in the congress of male and female principles in all human beings. Transcending one’s own sex is a prerequisite to achieve salvation. The male-female union is always considered powerful in Hindu texts—Shiva’s Ardhanariswar is most famous among all. Androgyny, impersonation of opposite sex, sex changes, both among deities and humans, are frequently noticed in Indian mythology. This consequently provides a cultural history to the transgender community. The myth surrounding hijras are wide-spread. Hijraism, on the one hand, is seen as a disease, and on the other hand, religious sects like Islam and Hinduism have accommodated myths that powerfully posit them in the history of South Asia. Myth has it that Vishnu, Vishnu’s incarnation Krishna and Arjun were androgynous. Vishnu had

transformed himself into Mohini to take back the sacred nectar from the demons; Krishna transformed himself into a beautiful woman to kill the demon named Araka; and Arjuna had to live as a eunuch for a year as a dance-teacher. The classical Hindu texts have references to such ambiguous characters who are ‘neither male nor female’ and hijras are often seen to be taking aid of these iconic characters from cultural and religious texts to command their position in the mainstream society. Krishna’s son Sambali’s notorious alternative sexual activities of dressing up as Sambali, that later became synonymous with ‘eunuchs’ and Shikhandi’s tale of revenge are other examples, which are of ample importance in this context. While Hinduism gives a mythological encounter of the eunuchs, Islamic tradition finds traces of eunuchs in its history. In Hinduism they were never ascribed a cultural role and often castration and eunuchism is sympathised. Islam moreover had ascribed them to faithful roles as guards to secure the ladies of the harem under the Mughal rule providing them a professional duty. Saleem Kidwai asserts that eunuchs, considered the most reliable slaves, served several kings as prized possessions. They could not have progeny and there was less reason to swindle (2000, 108). Unlike Hindu culture that projects eunuchs as an exclusive group, Islam differentiates them according to their sexual activity and dressing preference. It asserts that eunuchs are sexually inactive but hijras are sexually active and work as ritual performers which indicates their sexual ambiguity linking the elements of the erotic and the ascetic. With such tales of origin and development do the narratives present hijra-life as a culturally-mediated life and there is much ambiguity and confusion in detailing transgender life in the Indian context.

Transgender Autobiographies Life and narrative are one. In minoritarian literature, narratives unlike structuralist thought draw more from the lived personal

experience than the constructed and allied social texts. In Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story, Revathi provides historical references when hijras waited upon the queens and princesses and were given a place in society. The status enjoyed by them soon came to an end with classstructure strictly implying gender segregation. In addition to colonial subjugation, a degree of social stigma was further generated during the nationalist period when the freedom struggle took a masculine turn. Consequently, without patronage and with strict social exclusion, they were bound to choose professions against the hijra ideal, viz., prostitution, begging, etc. Disowned by family, exploited by her gurus and harassed by local policemen and rowdies, Revathi journeys from home, reaches various stages of life and finally she questions firmly: “Who is responsible for what has happened to me?” (22). A degree of self-consciousness and self-questioning and subsequent textual representation—Spivak reminds us—empowers the subaltern voice. Revathi realises: “Marginalised by mainstream society, denied a legal existence and dispossessed of their rights, hijras turn to their community and its culture for comfort and for nurture. In the hijra community there is no high or low—hijras do not observe caste or religious differences and there are hijras from both poor and rich homes” (sic., 62). A sense of womanhood is what she aspired during her school performances: “To the world, it appeared that I was dressing up and playing a woman, but inside, I felt I was a woman” (12). As Revathi proceeds narrating her transgender plight, the personal becomes political. She speaks for her whole community and becomes a spokesperson for the despised. She presents the life of hijras in both rural and urban societies indicating that the rural society is relatively tolerant and understanding towards the issue. While Revathi provides an inclusive account of the hijras equalising their suffering with all minority groups based on class and gender, Laxmi in her autobiography particularises hijras as the most downtrodden among the country’s minorities. Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi is an inspecting narrative that encompasses the journey of a performative hijra, who

being sodomised at the age of seven, undertakes the journey of a politically-mediated transgender icon, and succeeds in achieving some valid pages in personal and public life. True to the nature of peripheral identity bestowed upon the Other, Laxminarayan—sodomised, rejected, humiliated and frustrated—quickly learns the gendered difference granted to him by nature, and transforms—socially and mentally, if not physically—his subject position as a transgender hijra soon to become an activist against the socio-political difference bestowed upon his Being. “Maturity came to me early—at an age when most boys still go about in shorts and make a nuisance of themselves,” a ravished Laxmi—transformed from the male-bondage of being Laxminarayan— would propose (9). The effect of such a transgressive statement would come with constant sexual assaults— imposed, invited or otherwise— that changed Laxminarayan forever, and consequently in childhood he “became secretive and incommunicative, hiding [his] feeling from [his] family and friends. Suddenly it felt as if [his] childhood was over and [he] had grown up before [his] time” (7). The misery of not being granted a childhood which has a deep impact upon the personhood can be located in the development of Laxmi as a transgender icon who would voice for the “voiceless” and break socio-cultural taboo prevailing in the heteronormative world. In Laxmi hence life-work is a political journey where “passivity” was to be fiercely negated and she decided “to raise [her] voice against the things...against [her] will” (8). Not only does the life-narrative present the development of Laxmi, the hijra, as a political being, it also encompasses a growing solidarity with the community that is highly vulnerable to rape, violence and Aids. There is a perpetual vocalization of returning to innocence that does not exist or is granted to the hijra community from childhood. So the narrative structures the breaking of hijra myth prevalent in society and shows that the traditional professions granted to her/them—begging, dancing, blessing or otherwise—be turned upside-down. Dance and activism hence are taboo-breaking apparatuses consciously taken up in life and writing, and as is acknowledged familial support is highly central to

Laxmi’s furthering the cause of the hijra community. “Dancing comes naturally to us hijras,” Laxmi would show her own stereotypical image but soon would present the “vocation” against “passion” and “activism”. “Our main occupation is to perform badhai at weddings or when a child is born. But can badhai alone fill our stomachs? Obviously not, and so we supplement our earnings by begging on city streets and going to the shops. We also do sex work and dance in bars and night clubs. Dancing comes naturally to us hijras” (156). Constant craving for position and identity is marked throughout the autobiography. She claims, “God loves the hijra community and has created a special place for it outside the man-woman frame” (40). She presents a picture of two worlds existing in the same society: “there is the ghetto and there is the mainstream”. The autobiographies in question provide multiple perspectives. Revathi’s account, the first in the literary canon, is more personal, whereas Laxmi’s is more professional; Revathi runs away from her family to be supported whereas Laxmi gets familial support and is educated by her family. Laxmi is hence in an advantageous position and without castration she firmly holds that she is a hijra. As a deviation, Revathi finds respite from patriarchy through castration. When nani sent him off for operation, he affirms “I felt that finally the female in me would be freed from her male body” (sic., 67). Clad in sarees, make-up and feminine gesture in both Revathi and Laxmi demand a third-gender recognition but they still stick to the orthodox segregation of binary gender construction. With women’s identity they are mapped in the periphery and with transgender identity they become hyperinvisible.

Towards an Autobiography

Inclusive

Transgender

The common threat for both women’s and transgender autobiographies are patriarchy. Revathi’s and Laxmi’s autobiographies, both conscious of creating primary texts for the community, hint upon a slow but remarkable change among people and assume the acceptance of transgender autobiography as an emerging genre in literature. In “Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender,” feminist philosopher Cressida Heyes notes that transgender, transsexual, intersex, and queer activist scholarship has issued fundamental challenges to the ways in which feminism was framed in previous generation (2013: 201). That gender is culturally constructed is now a dominant viewpoint in cultural anthropology. The increasing acceptance of the cultural construction of gender draws significantly on historical sources on alternative gender roles in a wide range of cultures, past and present, of which the hijras are a significant example. Moreover, how do transgender autobiographies break the discipline of autobiographical narratives? How do they aspire becoming inclusive in their choice of subject and destabilise patriarchal norms? How do they make the discipline of women’s autobiographies inclusive? There remains a tradition of writing against patriarchal ideologue with which women’s and transgender narratives present their base. Both Revathi’s and Laxmi’s life-narratives are a case in point. With Me Hijra, Me Laxmi writing-subversions multiply on a constant basis. It is not an autobiography in the traditional sense of the term. The Mahanagar journalist Vaishali Rode sat through multiple sessions with Laxminarayan Tripathi to compose a commissioned assignment of writing Laxmi’s “autobiography”. That Laxmi’s story is narrated to a journalist which is then written in Marathi further to be translated into English undermine the first-hand narrative to a significant degree. It academically and politically negotiates much in the making of a hijra autobiography. Laxmi, tormented during the sessions, owing to her father’s battle with cancer, gave interviews at intervals and narrated her life-experience and the autobiography may be denounced as a serious compromise on the accounts narrated. That Laxmi was

sodomised at the age of seven, constantly ravished by cousins and seeks the help of Ashok Row Kavi and not his family and in their short meeting she understands her “difference” as a gay person can at best be described as mature reminiscences of the journalist-biographer. In this category the narrative lacks the vocabulary in presenting Laxmi’s psychology and becomes a superficial narration of the events. That Laxmi invites his brother’s friends to have physical relationship with her so that the brother does not go astray is also doubtful because a sexual encounter of this kind is natural and it is a phase of sexualization of children in Indian context. At best, this autobiography may be castigated as a biographical fiction. In Revathi’s case, the events are fluid and break the linear sequence of time and place with mature reminiscences abruptly inserted, and the narrative does succeed in projecting the serious life of a growing hijra child. Both the narratives are politically-mediated and are the products of commercially-bound publishers. The flaws are constant but merits are also many as indicated above. Moreover, that does not take a serious reader to neglect the larger issue of hijra cause, and Me Hijra, Me Laxmi and Truth about Me stand as primary texts representing the transgender community. Being iconoclasts, Revathi and Laxmi break strict gendersegregation present in the Indian society, aspire to be women, and narrate the story of their personal and political activism. The common theme is the dominance of patriarchy—an original plight of women’s autobiographical narratives. Breaking gender roles, these autobiographies represent a community. They raise voice for the despised ones and voicing for the despised is to break the subaltern status and to achieve solidarity. Through this solidarity they are able to come to the centre stage and gain a political attention for identityconstruction. With political activism they are subsequently destabilising the orthodox understanding of cultural ideologues relating hijra life. Hence, political activism gives way to cultural activism. All these have contributed to a growing acceptance that has

been slow in coming and Laxmi and Revathi have negotiated much on personal and professional fronts to be heard in public.

Conclusion The Indian academia has deliberately sidelined transgender studies for decades. Though there have been a handful of studies to explore the lives of hijras in the Indian context, the scope of the subject has not gone beyond an anthropological enquiry into their behavior patterns and there is much to be done in this regard. It is with the Apex Court’s verdict for a constitutional status of the Third Gender people as a distinct cultural category, the hijras of India who have been treated as a despised lot are slowly in the process of gaining some recognition. This judgment marks an endeavour to mainstream the third-gender population in the country. After the Apex Court’s pronouncement, the UGC has also stated that much remains to be done in order to ameliorate the discrimination and deprivation suffered by transgender community in Indian society (February 2015). And as a more recent step, the Odisha government has welcomed the change and has decided to implement five sub-schemes launched by the central government promoting transgender education and sanitation. Along with these recognitions, it is high time transgender studies be reinstituted in the mainstream literature to present itself as a distinct academic discipline, and women studies need to restructure itself accommodating transgender studies. To make it a proper subject of study in the academia, transgender autobiography has to be made part of women’s studies/autobiography so that women’s autobiography becomes inclusive.

Works Cited

Bullough, Vern L. Sexual Variance in Society and History. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1976. Chatterjee, Indrani. Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India. New Delhi: OUP, 1999. Herdt, Gilbert. Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. New York: Zone, 1996. Heyes, Cressida J. “Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender.” The Transgender Studies Reader 2. Eds. Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura. Routledge: New York, 2013: 201-212. Kidwai, Saleem. “Introduction: Medieval Materials in the PersoUrdu tradition.” Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. Eds. Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita. New York: St. Matrin’s Press, 2000: 108-9. Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. USA: Wadsworth, 1999. O’Flaherty, Wendy. Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: Chicago, 1980. Pattanaik, Devdutt. Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You. New Delhi: Penguin, 2014. Peterson, Laurence W. “A Right to Exist: Eunuchs and the State in Nineteen Century.” Modern Asian Studies. 21(2), 371-387. 1987. Ramanujan, A.K. “Who Needs Folklore? The Relevance of Oral Traditions to South Asian Studies.” Manushi. 69, 1986. Reddy, Gayatri. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India. USA: Chicago, 2005. Revathi, A. Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story. New Delhi: Penguin, 2010.

Rushdie, Salman. “Hidden the Bodies the Secrets of their Lives.” AIDS Sutra. Ed. Negar Akhavi. New Delhi: Random House, 2008. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. USA: U of Illinois Press, 1988. Tripathi, Laxminarayan. Me Hijra, Me Laxmi. New Delhi: 2015.

3 First Person Singular: Reading Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban (My Life) — Sanjukta Dasgupta Nineteenth century Bengal was about the East India Company, English education in India, the sepoy uprising or the first war of India’s independence, the Brahmo Samaj, schools for girls, higher education for girl students, colleges for girls and Calcutta University. Narratives, written during this time of social transformations, such as fiction, personal essays, memoirs and autobiographies were invariably about a male-centred world and a woman-centric home. Women’s education was about facilitating companionate marriages, teaching pre-school children at home, that could include girls as well. In the urban affluent and middle class families, specifically in Calcutta, basic understanding of the English language was preferable though not the norm, and expectedly native women’s cooking, needlework, knitting and other associated skills as embroidery, alpana, painting on floors during religious ceremonies were considered essential. And yet during this time, a few women, despite a stiff societal resistance to booklearning, read, wrote and published their writings. This was a singular feat in an environment that discouraged literacy for women, a hostile environment that created the fear that literacy would inevitably lead to

a metamorphosis of the woman from domestic angel to a wandering ‘witch.’ Among a few well known autobiographies written in the nineteenth century Bengal, the autobiography of Rassundari Devi/Dasi is unique as it is not only the first Bengali autobiography to be published but it was far more remarkable as it was written and published by an elderly woman, a sixty-seven year old widow who lived in rural Bengal, who had never had any formal education and wrote in her native tongue, Bangla. As a literary genre, the autobiography has a complex identity. Is autobiography about documentation or is it a literary sub-genre, a creative construction superimposed on lived experiences of the autobiographer? Is the autobiography a fine mesh or documentation and representation? Fictional narratives as well as autobiographies and memoirs take on dimensions beyond the imagination of the author, when readers read, receive and respond to the text. Perhaps this is the reason why Salman Rushdie observed in his memoir Joseph Anton, how a creative text re-invents itself as it is received by the readers of the world. Rushdie wrote: When a book leaves its author’s desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator’s have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it (Rushdie 90). But there seems to be a significant distinction regarding women’s writing, as women began writing about their own lives as lived histories, in their memoirs, diaries and letters. Life writing or

autobiographies by women were inevitable according to Virginia Woolf, as their lives were one of confinement within the domestic. Basic education and very little opportunity to travel made women writers concentrate on the micro politics of daily living as the central discourse in their literary writing. But late nineteenth century onwards women were exposed to both critical and creative reading material which simultaneously enriched and liberated their minds. So Woolf commented that women were eventually able to write as a creative artist rather than a diarist, “Reading and criticism may have given her a wider range, a greater subtlety. The impulse towards autobiography may be spent. She may be beginning to use writing as an art, not as a method of self-expression” (Woolf 86). Critical response to the western autobiography has been varied, tracing back to Derrida’s response to Barthes autobiographical representations and going further back even to St Augustine. The first two women’s autobiographies by English women are The Book of Margery Kempe (1373-1438), a dictated mystical tract. Margery Kempe, deeply religious, went on several pilgrimages to Europe, and recorded her religious trances. It has been hailed by the church, but what is interesting is that the tract also contained her statements about domestic issues including childbirth and madness. The second English autobiographer was Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) who however was also known for her active interest in scientific experiments and treatises. For this essay the interesting text is Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, more specifically the last chapter titled, “The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life.” This text is often regarded as the first extant secular autobiography by an Englishwoman. However, in the case of Bengali women’s autobiography it is not quite possible to determine whether a woman autobiographer had a clear agenda about self-exploration through self- expression and thereby gained liberation from the invisible but inexorable lines of control. So Karl Weintruab’s observations though tenable may not

address entirely the compulsions that made Rassundari Devi and other Bengali women write about their lives: The genuine autobiographical effort is guided by a desire to discern and to assign meaning to a life. This effort is usually dominated by the writer’s “point of view,” in the most literal sense of the coordinate point in space and time at which the autobiographer stands to view his life. The essential issue is that such a point in time is located on the lifeline of the writer somewhere beyond a moment of crisis or beyond an experience, or a cumulative set of experiences which can play the same function as a crisis. (Weintraub 664) Referring to Rassundari Devi’s autobiography Amar Jiban (1876), Tanika Sarkar had observed, “Autobiographies involve a relationship between two entities, the narrating self and the narrated self in the text. Despite their seeming convergence or identity the gap between the two cannot close entirely” (Sarkar 214). Moreover, autobiography as a text is essentially the irrepressible urge to share one’s life with another, as described in Paul De Mann’s essay, “Autobiography as de-facement,” where he referred to the autobiography as a sort of face-making. In these days of social networking and Facebook infiltration into the privacies of personal lives, the need for autobiography seems to have received a new interpretation and fillip. Therefore, Sturrock views: We are entitled to suppose that there is something like an urge to autobiography within any individual, seeking expression at every level from the loosely and ephemerally conversational to the enduringly artistic. And following on from that, we may suppose that there are drives and thematic configurations whose combination in a text is specific to autobiography and which it is the business of the theorist to identify. In

short, the autobiography has its own distinctive language or rhetoric. (Sturrock 286)

II Rassundari Devi’s autobiography Amar Jiban (My Life) was first published in 1876, according to available evidence, though the manuscript was perhaps ready for publication around 1868. 1868 was the date identified by Rassundari herself as the date of publication of the first edition. But Ghulam Murshid, Tanika Sarkar, Baridbaran Ghosh among others have stated in their introductions to Amar Jiban that Rassundari had made a mistake in identifying the date. The actual date of the first publication was 1876 and not 1868, as 1876 is the date of the first edition recorded in the Bengal Library catalogue. By this one understands that Rassundari was about sixty-seven years old when the first edition of the book was published. In her scholarly critical reading of Amar Jiban, Tanika Sarkar analysed extensively both context and text that were integral to the writing of Amar Jiban. Rassundari was born in 1809 in the colonial undivided Bengal. Her native village Potajia was in the Pabna district of East Bengal. After the Indian independence, East Bengal was reborn as East Pakistan and then after the Bangladesh war in 1971, it was reborn, this time as a new nation-Bangladesh. Rassundari was married to Sitanath Roy at the age of twelve, and her marital home was located in Ramdia village in the Faridpur district, also in Bangladesh now. Rassundari secretly and painstakingly taught herself to first read and then write at around the age of twentyfive, despite rigorous home administration as well as giving birth to twelve children in rapid succession. Rassundari’s life and her scripting of herself unambiguously titled as Amar Jiban is the life of a woman in rural Bengal, born in an economically advantaged household, and married to a similar family

of the landowning class. Yet, unlike Calcutta where schools for girl students had been set up, young women had the option of higher education by studying as undergraduate students in Bethune college for girls, and the first female graduates Chandramukhi Basu and Kadambini Ganguly received their degrees in 1874, rural Bengal lagged significantly behind in terms of women’s education. It must be noticed that that the first female graduates from Calcutta University, founded in 1857, Chandramukhi Basu was a Christian and Kadambani Ganguly was Brahmo. Both these religious orders were accredited as being far more progressive in their attitude to the position of women in society, than that of the Hindu faith. The patriar chal control of Hindu women was extremely severe, and it was feared that acquirement of reading and writing skills by women would often lead to social ostracism and domestic violence, physical, verbal and psychological. Rassundari (1809) was born in the first decade of the nineteenth century when education for women was still at a rudimentary stage and it required tremendous activism and will powerof enlightened men such as Rammohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and others, to justify that women’s education was essential for the progress of the nation and society.Apart from referring to the subversive Kali Yug as an enabling time for women in terms of acquiring literacy skills, interesatingly, Rassundari’s autobiography however does not reflect her awareness or opinion about British occupation of India, she repeatedly addressed the location of her birth as “bharatvarsha”. Though there was no nationalist ideology in her writing, her writing did emphasize the burgeoning evidence of pacing the path of modernity as observed by Tanika Sarkar-”Her resistance to her inherited and imposed world lies in her act of writing in more ways than one. In this sense, AJ is a very early text of modernity.” (Sarkar 5). Further in the titling of her autobiography Sarkar noted an act of supreme and unprecedented assertion, “The book calls itself- with a sort of thundering audacity-My Life. It makes a bold and a bald statement, presumptuous in the extreme, in a woman householder” (Sarkar 216).

Amar Jiban can be identified as a secular text despite the surfeit of references to Rassundari’s religious faith, yearnings and thirst for gaining more information about Chaitanya and the Vaishnava cult. As stated in Amar Jiban, the desire to read the religious texts had primarily drawn Rassundari towards a pursuit of printed words enscripted in books usually read by men. The publication of Amar Jiban registered the first step a Bengali woman from a village in East Bengal took towards scripting her own subjective self, in the mode of the ecriture feminine, the exclusive mode of feminine writing, enabling stifled female voices to be heard and enabling a gendered creative journey outside the lines of control. Rassundari Devi was a path-finder and expectedly it was a small step, a subtle, slow but steady footfall that made the ground beneath the feet of her successors more secure. Women autobiographers and memoirists have many similar responses to their life experiences, the sameness often being quite significant. For instance, Pandita Ramabai, the Marathi woman writer and activist who later converted to Christianity, regarded the Christian religion as far more liberating than the Hindu religion of her birth and nurturance. Ramabai had married a Bengali man based in Silchar, Assam and spent some time in Calcutta. She wrote in her book The High-Caste Hindu Woman published in 1887, about the transition from girl to married woman that Rassundari Devi so vividly described in Amar Jiban. Ramabai wrote, “Childhood is indeed, the heyday of a Hindu woman’s life. Free to go in and out where she pleases, never bothered by caste or other social restrictions, never worried by lessonlearning, sewing, mending or knitting, loved, petted and spoiled by parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, she is little different from a young colt whose days are spent in complete liberty. Then lo, all at once the ban of marriage is pronounced and the yoke put on her neck forever!” (Kosambi 147) In fact, when one reflects on the evolution of the status of ordinary women from those who grew up in colonial India to those who grew up in post-colonial India, the changes are truly inspiring. In the early

nineteenth century, Rassundari Devi was self-taught and was married off at the age of twelve, whereas the disadvantaged Dalit writer from Maharashtra, Urmila Pawar (born 1945- ) not only married the man with whom she was having an affair, she passed her BA and MA examinations after her marriage despite her husband’s resistance, she wrote and published short stories and read her stories in literary seminars as stated in her autobiography the Weave of My life, written in Marathi. The book was published in 2003; in 2008 the translated English version was published. (Pawar 228-229; 245). The social evolution had indeed happened, though it took about 127 years for the transformation. Yet remarkably, not unlike Rassundari’s Devi’s deep reverence for education and knowledge Urmila Pawar writes in her autobiography, “Education is that nectar which once tasted makes you feel thirstier still! I was intoxicated with the study of literature, the poems and stories.”(Ibid 240). This thirst for knowledge that liberated the mind is the identifiable common factor that perhaps binds women belonging to diverse locations, centuries, races, religion, class and caste. Chitra Deb’s book Antapurere Atmakatha (Life-Narratives from Indoor Spaces) is a pioneering and emotive survey of the life-writings of fifty-six Bengali women of the nineteenth century who had written and published memoirs, diaries, autobiographies and reminiscences. The first woman among these fifty-six women writers was Rassundari Devi who acquired the skills of reading and writing in utmost secrecy, by stealing loose pages from her husband’s books as well as pages from her son’s alphabet book (Deb 5). The act of stealth was also a symbolic act of resistance, a subsersive act, an active protest against the denial of education to those born female. It seems scripting the self however had become an accepted mode of women’s writing since Amar Jiban. In this connection, it is interesting to note that in 1912, when Rabindranath Tagore ‘s Gitanjali was receiving international recognition culminating in the Nobel prize for literature in 1913, in the city of Calcutta a Bengali stage actress,

born in a red light area published her memoir Amar Katha ( My Story). This was no less a revolutionary act.Binodini Dasi scripted her journey from the seclusion of an impoverished home in the red light area, to the Bengali commercial stage in colonial Calcutta in simple, lucid prose, confident though not free from sentimentalism.( Bandopadhyay 39). Rassundari Devi was not alone; she was a path-finder who inspired her younger sisters to break the silence. Again in 1921, a memoir titled Atmakatha (My Life) was published. The writer was Saradasundari Devi,( 1819-1907) generally introduced as the mother of the well known religious reformer Kesab Chandra Sen. The English translation of the memoir is of forty-seven pages, while the translation in English of Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban, by Tanika Sarkar ran into 76 pages. However from the available preface to Atmakatha it becomes obvious that Saradasundari was unable to write and from her memoir it seems she could read, but nowhere in the memoir does she express any elation about having reading skills or mentioning the books she had read. Atmakatha sawthe light of day due to the efforts of Saradasundari’s grandson Jogendralal Khastagir, who coaxed his grandmother to narrate her life, which he states he took down meticulously, and it seemed Saradasundari heard the draft versions and made changes too, suggesting additions and deletions. The reliability of autobiographies and memoirs have often seemed to be a point of debate, and a dictated autobiography from oral accounts involves also the subjective persona not only of the autobiographer but her auditor as well. As Khastagir wrote in the Foreword to Atmakatha, “I have described earlier how I listened to Sarada Debi and how, in her presence, I wrote her autobiography...The flaws and shortcomings in this book are wholly mine. Before printing the book I have omitted two sections at the request of many elders.” (Atmakatha 22). This omission on the request of “many elders” tells us that the memoir tract could have been longer if the censoring had not happened. This candid confession in itself directs our attention to the

fact that the scribe in charge of recording the oral narrative may well play an intrusive role in the making of the narrative. Also, in terms of literary style, the contrast between Rassundari’s and Saradasundari’s styles of narration become too obvious. Rassundari’s life-narrative exuded the spirit of a creative writer with a skilful and sensitive command of words, vivid and emotive images creating powerfully the impact of incidents and feelings. In comparison, Sarasunduri’s dictated life-narrative seems bare, matter of fact, recording a life of many experiences from the domestic space to sites of piligrimages, in a terse prose, though like Rassundari refraining from blaming anyone, a textual strategy that seems generational. Sarasundari died in 1907, the book was posthumously published in Dhaka in 1915. The original title of the book was Kesabjanani Debi Saradasundarir Atmakatha (The Life Narrative of Devi Saradsundari, mother of Kesab). Here too, is a crucial difference. Rassundari personally supervised the publication of her self-written autobiography, the second edition being published in 1888, two years before she died.

III I don’t know how to write, I am almost an ass The little I can write is due to your grace Whatever I say or think within my soul All that is about reaching out to you. (Amar Jiban 45) It is apparent that Amar Jiban is not just about being the first autobiography written by a Bengali woman in the nineteenth century. It is a pioneering contribution to literary studies on multiple levels. It is a document of the life of an economoically stable rural woman in Bengal. It is graphic and distrubing description of a married woman’s

life that entailed ceaseless domestic drudgery without any appreciation or reward. It is a chilling description of the use of a married woman’s sexualized body and the consequent reproductive slavery. Rassundari had given birth to twelve children when her age was between eighteen and forty one. She had very sparing help in the rearing of the children though the house of her husband employed about eight servants. Her relationship with her husband was one of obedience and submission which is the reason why she was unable to even inform her husband that due to certain domestic issues she could not have her meals for about two days. Such innocuous yet excruciatingly painful problems had to be shrouded in silence and secrecy, if the woman had to earn the status of being a good, self-effacing, dutiful and obedient wife in the marital household. It is a known fact that such issues are mostly dismissed by the patrirachal system as trivial though their impact on the person concerned can be traumatic. That it was traumatic becomes obvious as Rassundari recorded this incident in great detail, instead of erazing it from her memory, as expected from a good and dutiful wives. As it was a common practice in middle class households that the wife would eat only after the husband had partaken of his meal and departed from the dining area, her husband remained innocent about the micro details of domesticity. The daily chores executed by women in the family with the zeal of crusaders were expectedly considered to be too degrading for men to even notice. Child bearing and child rearing were shorn off any sentimentality in Rassundari’s descriptions. Tanika Sarkar points out, “AJ deconstructs the iconic figure of the ideal Hindu woman in two very crucial ways: the work that is meant to be emotionally satisfying, aesthetic activity is taken up one by one and shown as work:tending the family idol, cooking and feeding others, serving guests, mothering. They are listed as labour, not as works of art or emotional release. Moreover they are described as punishingly hard work. She evacuated the image of nurture of all associations with emotional fulfilment.” (Sarkar 251).

Though Rassundari never referred to any sense of claustrophobia within her marital home, she does refer to the fact of her imprisonment; she described herself as being a bird in a cage unable to use her wings to fly out to the bedside of her ailing and dying mother. She cursed her birth as a female for this failure, though elsewhere she seemed to be in denial about her entrapment as she dedicated each turn of thought to the divine spirit of Parameswar, her friend, philosopher, guide, confidante and confessor. Repeatedly Rassundari talked about her desire for learning and for reading devotional books, specifically Chaitanya Bhagavat. Rassundari expressed her happiness about the fact that young girls were slowly being admitted to schools and were receiving formal education in schools and some even in colleges. Two years after her marriage, at the age of fourteeen Rassundari first felt the compelling urge that she had to become literate. The irony in the following lines describe the social environment vividly, “At that time my intense desire was to learn how to read and write and to read the scriptures. But such was my fate, at that time women did not learn to read and write. At that time, people said it seemed Kali Yug had arrived. Now it seems women will take up men’s jobs. So long this was never the trend, but it has become a trend now. Now it’s the females who are going public and the men are like boulders, at our time there was no such predicament. Now this is the age of a female King. What else will we have to witness in the days ahead. Now it is such an environment that the bhadralok clan will become extinct. Now it seems all the females will get together and pursue the acquirement of reading and writing skills” (Amar Jiban 28). Another aspect of Rassundari’s text is her repeated reference to her body as an exclusive and attractive phenomenon observed by her mind. She makes many refrences to the youthfulness of her body and the eventual child bearing, expressing her wonder about the spectacular designing skills of God, in decorating the human body. At a later stage as she grew old, she even remarked how slowly but surely God once again unclasped all the jewellery of youth as age advanced,

making the body look like a derelict shorn of the magic aura of youth. This is a rather surprising analysis of biological changes in the sexualized female body, closer to the imagination of a poet than a memoirist. Rassundari observed in the tenth chapter of her autobiography that till the age of twelve, her body was tender and without much strength and she was dependent for its maintenance on others. After marriage at the age of twelve Rassundari wrote that she was “deprived of the immeasurable affection of the father’s household and had become totally dependent on strangers (paradheen) in the marital home” (Amar Jiban 58) In the next six years, by the age of eighteen significant changes took place in her body, worthy of notice. And she wrote, “In the meantime Parameswar had equipped my body with all required appendages and decorated my body-boat. What a strange thing! Imagine the clever ploys! So many things are happening to my body and I don’t know why these are happening. Is it magic or a dream...?” (Amar Jiban 58). Rassundari then referred to the birth of her first child, followed by the birth of her eleven other children and thereafter to the marriage of some of her children as she reached the sixth decade of her life. She ruminated about the changes happening to her body around this time, the change in her ways of thinking and feeling and even the change in her sartorial preferences. The death of her husband in 1867 and her widowhood set her off on a different path in her life, which she referred to by stating that even if a woman had given birth to a hundred sons, if her husband died before she did she would inevitably be pitied as the unfortunate one. (ibid 60). In the eleventh chapter Rassundari referred to the decay in her body in some detail by using both verse and prose. It is indeed remarkable how throughout the autobiography this woman from rural Bengal had referred to the stages of biological changes that her body expressed, from girlhood, wifehood, motherhood to old age and widowhood.She wrote, “ the various things with which Parameswar had decorated my body, now

slowly He was removing these things one by one from my body. “ (ibid 62). In this connection it must be noticed that though Rassundari acquired writing skills while her husband was living, and she had stated that her book was first published in 1867, the same year that her husband died. However, the first extant copy of the book gives a later date, 1876, referred to earlier, which is about eight or nine years after her husband died. The book was thus published when Rassundari was a widow, transitioning a third time in her life’s journey. First it was girlhood in her parental home, a period of twelve years, then it was wifehood cum motherhood in her marital home till the age of sixty or thereabouts followed by the stage of widowhood, when two editions of Amar Jiban were published. Rassundari recorded in her autobiography that her sons encouraged her to read and write and even provided her with writing tools as ink, pen and paper. In this respect Rassundari seemed to be more fortunate that Ashapurna Devi’s fictional woman protagonist Subarnalata whose sons ridiculed her writing skills as there were many construction and spelling errors, compelling the humiliated and devastated mother to make a bonfire of her maunscripts on the terrace of the house. Interestingly, women writers have seemed to express their creativity and non-domestic skills more freely when they ceased to be sexually active, that is at the post-menopausal stage and during widowhood, usually when they were free from nuturing of minor children or were childless. Such women have shown remarkable energy and creative dynamism as in the case of Rassundari Devi, the elite woman writer Swarnakumari Devi and Rokeya Sultan, among others. Referred earlier too, the publication history of Amar Jiban was rather intriguing. From all available evidence therefore as supported by Ghulam Murshid, Tanika Sarkar and Baridbaran Ghosh in the Bengali preface to the fourth edition of Amar Jiban it is certain that the first

edition was published in 1876, the second edition was published in 1898, through the efforts of her son Sarasilal Sarkar. Rassundari was eighty-eight years old then. Jyotirindranath Tagore, elder brother of Rabindranath Tagore wrote the preface to this edition. The preface praised Rassundari for her complete dedication to religious practices and to the divine spirit as inspiration and support. However, for the purpose of this essay the first paragraph of the preface seems noteworthy. Jyotorindra Tagore wrote not without some gentle humour, “This book has been written by a woman. Not only that, it has been written by an old woman who is eighty eight years old. So I became particularly curious to read the book. I had resolved that I would underline with a pencil if I came across some noteworthy expressions. As I read on, the book was filled with my pencil marks. In fact, her life experiences are so astonishing and her writing style has such a simple spontaneous mellifluous flow that having begun to read it, it is not possible to stop till one has read it entirely.” (Amar Jiban vii) Rassundari died in 1899, a year after the publication of the second edition... The third edition was posthumously published eight years later in 1906, almost eight years after the death of its author. The fourth edition was published in 1956, almost fifty years later. For this essay, I have used the fifth edition which was published in 2008 to commemorate Rassundari Devi’s bicentennial birth anniversay. This edition was reprinted in 2011. The Afterword written by her grandaughter Saralabala Sarkar apart from informing the readers about Rassundari Devi’s visit to the city of Calcutta, also tells us that the picture of Rassundari Devi on the cover of this edition of Amar Jiban is the only available picture of this extraordinarily talented woman writer whose life-writing truly makes her a phenomenal woman. Interestingly, Rassundari Dasi is the name on the cover of the Bengali edition. I have preferred to use Devi rather than Dasi, as the subservient suffix Dasi or maid seems totally inappropriate for a person such as Rassundari.

Another striking feature of this simple secular autobiography of a rural housewife is the incessant prayerful address to a spiritual mentor, a manly all powerful omniscient, omnipotent diety addressed as Dayamadav and sometimes as Paramsewar. The address to the deity, the healer, support and guide is almost like a supplicant asking for favours, knowing that the deity was ever present though not visible. Is this spiritual and psychological dependence on the divine mentor a required narrative strategy of the woman autobiographer to ward off speculations and perceptions about a transgressive wife pushing against the lines of control? The entire text exudes this sense of being immersed in the overwhelming devotion to God, who seems to be the detached observer of all the micro details of Rassundari’s life. It seems God or Parameswar therefore is hailed as the confidante, counsellor, mentor and the sagacious friend in need that she never had in real life. Let us take for instance the sequence described in detail in the fifth chapter of the autobiography, though instead of chapter Rassundari Devi had titled each break in the narrative format as an essay or composition (Rachana). In this section Rassundari described her futile attempt to eat her afternoon meal, which became possible almost at the end of two days, due to a continuous stream of hindrances. These hindrances included giving away her afternoon meal to a man of the lower caste, in the evening of the same day, after serving dinner to her husband she tried to eat but was interrupted because the oil lamp blew off and the children began crying in the dark and needed attention. As her husband disapproved of children crying she had to attend to them and when they fell asleep it was too late for eating anything, as she was entirely exhausted. The next day, when she was just about to have her meal, while nursing her infant son in her lap, the child defecated on her lap and urinated on the rice on her plate. If translated, this is how the lines would read, “As soon as I sat down to eat, my son who was in my lap, began shitting (hagiya dilo) on my lap and then peed so much on the rice that the rice on the plate floated away.” But the following line is

truly remarkable, “Noticing this incident created by Parameswar, I began laughing. That I had not eaten a meal I didn’t reveal this to anyone, it remained within the recess of my mind.” (Amar Jiban 32). This narratorial strategy of feminization by using God as confidante warded off speculations and suspicion of deconstruction of the ideal stereotype of the woman as the silent, self-sacrificing, all-enduring shock-absorber. It is obvious that if the narrative was divested of the innumerable references to God as confidante and support, then the text reduced to half its existing size would have been regarded as an autobiography of a nineteenth century woman rebel of undivided Bengal.

IV In the late twentieth and early twenty first century with the change in the social and cultural environment both globally and locally, women’s autobiographies are no longer about denial, deviance, elision, the life narratives and the testimonios are about baring every intimate detail experienced within the domestic space. Specifically according to cultural critics, since the 1990s, the autobiography has re-invented itself and the make over is truly astonishing. In the significant chapter title “In the Wake of the Memoir Boom” Susan Cheever comments, “Memoir is the Barbie of literary genres. It exaggerates the assets and invites the reader into an intimate alternative world, sometimes complete with a dream house. We hungrily buy and read memoir even as we express contempt for it. Memoirs are confessional and subversive; memoirs drop names. Memoirs print whispered secrets on their covers in 24-point type”. (Smith and Watson Ed, 127) Therefore, in the culturally liberated era of globalization of the 21st century where would readers and researchers situate a text such as Amar Jiban, written by a married rural woman in a vernacular

language in colonial Bengal, now Bangladesh? A close reading can only underscore how Amar Jiban challenges in its simple, direct and lucid prose contemporary life narratives and simultaneously foregrounds a woman autobiographer’s overwhelming dependence on a spiritual Muse who is also a support, guide and shield . This spiritual mascot seems essential for the woman creative writer’s act of subversion through writing about the intimate details about her life in the first person. In Amar Jiban Rassundari Devi’s emotive responses to her world of domesticity and her own identity within the closely guarded walls of domesticity, administered by severe religious and patriarchal control are narrated powerfully,and the two texts, the autobiography as text and the author as text commingle with astonishing compatibility.

Works Cited Bandopadhyay, Debjit. Binodini Rachana Samagra Kolkata: Patra Bharati, 2014. Deb, Chitra. Antapurer Atmakatha Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2005 First published 1984. Debi, Saradasundari. Atmakatha (My Story). Trans. Bandopadhyay Sinjini Kolkata: Dasgupta and Company Private Limited, 2013. Ghosh, Baridbaran, ed. Rassundari Dasi Amar Jiban. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2011. Karl Weintraub, “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness.” Critical Inquiry. Vol. 1, No. 4 (June, 1975). Kosambi, Meera (Edited with translations). Pandita Ramabai Through Her own Words. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. Pawar, Urmila The Weave of My Life. Kolkata: Stree, 2008.

Rushdie, Salman Joseph Anton: A Memoir. London: Vintage Books, 2013. Sarkar, Tanika. Words to Win: The making of Amar Jiban: a Modern Autobiography. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999. Smith, Sidoine and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2010. Sturrock, John. The Language of Autobiography Studies in the First Person Singular London: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own. London: Flamingo, 1994.

4 Indian Lesbian Writing and the Question of Genre — R. Azhagarasan

I The flood of autobiographies by marginal communities—women, dalit and indigenous people—especially during the turn of the century, seemed to serve a definitive function in the world intellectual history. They made significant challenges to the intellectual world which has been obsessed with theory. The challenges made by these autobiographical narratives demand a rethinking on the questions concerning the function of literary, philosophical and political spheres. If the global market threatens to turn these autobiographies into mere objects of commodity, the academic world transforms these autobiographies into representations of identity, ignoring the aesthetic/ cultural vision of these narratives. Discussions on ‘women’s writing’ quite often privilege the gender identity. The overemphasis on the biological identity in women’s writing will only result in the neglect of its generic potential. Neglect of which may result in the misconception that ‘women’s writing’ has nothing to offer to those belonging to other fields. My interest in

‘Women’s Writing’ is part of the course, ‘Autobiography and the Question of Genre’ that I offered at the M.Phil level. The turn towards generic potential in the context of women’s autobiography would raise following questions: Are ‘women’s autobiographies’ called so just because they are ‘written’ by ‘women’? Can we reduce the genre to a simplistic category of biological identity? How are we to understand the theoretical implications of ‘body writing’? If the categories of caste, gender, region, nation have such overdetermining influence on genre, how can we understand ‘genre’? If it offers a world view peculiar to the body that writes, how does it transform itself into an aesthetic object? This paper takes up the case of Indian Lesbian Writing through a reading of the autobiographical account of activist and editor of Manushi, Ruth Vanitha, the autobiography Goja by the Indian diasporic writer, Sunithi Nam Joshi and the short story “Quilt” by the Urdu writer Ismat Chukhtai.The autobiography of Audre Lorde (Zami, subtitled as ‘bio-mytho-graphy’) and Sunithi Namjoshi (Goja, subtitled ‘A Fable’) show how women’s writing can rupture the boundaries of the genre of autobiography, even women’s autobiography. A reading of the contemporary Indian women’s writing from this perspective may help us to identify the rise of new genres, which cut across our traditional understanding of ‘genre’ and move towards a renewed understanding. To accomplish this, the paper follows Bakhtin’s idea of genre as “forms of seeing and conceptualizing reality” and tries to show the diversity within this seemingly identifiable category, ‘Indian Lesbian Writing’ and suggest its generic vision which combines socio-cultural and biological categories. The argument of the paper also has a pedagogical implication. It tries to argue that this kind of understanding/complicating the genre question is very important in the classroom context to prevent the student from getting caught in a rigid theoretical framework. In my classroom, the question of ‘women’s autobiography’ normally remains

part of the discussions on the internal dynamics of Autobiography and on the nature and function of ‘genre’. The questions posed in the beginning of the paper may help students understand that genre is not just a literary category, but social and cultural category. Such an understanding of genre through a study of autobiographies - woman (even dalit) - may help us resist the reductionistic understanding of ‘women’s autobiography’ and explore their ways of seeing and perceiving social reality. Hence the study of ‘Indian Lesbian Writing’ in the Indian classroom demands a reading/understanding of this body of writing/body writing, moving beyond the stereotypical understanding of the so-called ‘lesbian writing’ in order to perceive its poetics. Such a poetics may accommodate the vision of the bodily subject and its larger implications. It is important to note that here we witness a return of the ‘author’ as against the post-structuralist notion of the ‘death of the author’. This ‘author’ is not a simplistic return to the traditional author, but a revival of ‘author’ as a ‘bodily subject’ and his/her perception of the world. In other words, it hints at the complex relation between the ‘author’ and ‘the speaking subject’. In a sense, it foregrounds the ‘singularity of literature ‘against the theoretically guided understanding of literature. This notion of ‘author’ as a ‘bodily subject’ seem to offer a renewed understanding of the ‘bodily subject’ insisted in phenomenology. In the light of phenomenology, we can understand how in autobiography the speaking subject speaks for ‘life itself’. Hence autobiography ceases to be a genre in the traditional sense and becomes a metaphor for the kind of writing that is located in the hiatus between ‘I for Oneself’ and ‘I for the Other’. In the context of women’s writing, the category of ‘gender’ functions more than an identity as it engenders a new aesthetic vision, which is a new vision of the world.

II

This paper takes up three writers, popularly regarded as ‘Indian Lesbian writers’—Ruth Vanitha, Sunithi Nam Joshi and Ismat chukthai —with a view to showing the difficulty in fixing these within the frame of ‘Indian Lesbian Writing’, and tries to raise questions regarding its generic vision. Do we call them Lesbian writing because they were written by Lesbians or because they narrate a Lesbian experience or because they foreground the writers’ lesbian experience? Do these writings take us towards the relation between Lesbian writing and Autobiography? Should all Lesbian Writing be autobiographical? What kind of relationship is established between the ‘Lesbian Writing’ and ‘Indian’ Lesbian Writing? We may find easy answers to these questions by relating it to national (Indian) and sexual (Lesbian) categories. But, what is the function of the word, ‘Indian’ here? Does it contribute to the generic category called, “Indian Lesbian Writing”? What is ‘Indian’ in “Indian Lesbian Writing”? Such questions may be answered only when we pay attention to the inter-penetration of various discourses that led to the evolution of a new genre. Juxtaposition of the personal/critical writings of Ruth Vanitha, the short story, “Quilt” by Ismat Chugthai and Sunithi Nam Joshi’s rewriting of fables and her autobiography will help us identify the generic diversity of ‘Indian Lesbian Writing’. Talking about her work in the feminist movement, and about Manuzhi, the magazine that she edited, she says: The one major exception to the overall intellectual stultification I experienced was the 1989 tenth anniversary issue (no.50), which focused on medieval women bhakta poets. The research, reading, translation and writing I did for this issue was wonderfully fulfilling, opening up new horizons and illuminating my growing attraction to my Hindu ancestral past. I made contact with scholars and devotees, who provided information and texts. This experience prepared me for my later work on Same-sex Love in India. (35)

These words may help us identify the “Indian” Lesbian experience within the cultural-religious locus. However this is not unconnected to the Western Lesbian and Marxist movements. Talking about her involvement in the women’s movement, she recollects how she accidentally identified her own writings as “Lesbian”: We invited speakers, such as Vina Mazumdar and Florence Howe, and put up handmade posters in the university; some college authorities were displeased by this use of my room. In her overview of the American women’s movement, Howe gave a two-sentence account of lesbianism, which once again had the light-bulb effect, but this time in a much more personal way, as I realized this was a name for the feelings I had expressed in poems and letters, but had not been able to connect to anyone else’s experience. (22-23) The turn towards lesbianism helped her to critically reflect upon the limitation of women’s movement to issues such as dowry, wifebeating, rape and its neglect of issues concerning pleasure. But, she was always under the fear of being branded “Western” for talking of lesbianism and traced the source of same sex relationship in ancient Indian tradition. In this light, she showed how editors, translators and critics of Urdu gazal poetry - rehthi and rehtha- suppressed the female voice in their works. Ruth’s ability to transform her lesbianism into a reading strategy may help the students to resist an easy definition of not just Indian Lesbian Writing but also think of the larger question of genre and its function. If Ruth traced lesbianism in the Indian mythical tradition, the Diasporic writer settled in Canada, Sunithi Nam Joshi, attempted a rewriting of Indian fables. The tale ‘Signpost’ becomes a metaphor for the fate of those women who dare to desire: So the witch, having understood at last that her amazing powers were wanted by no one, of no consequence, and in all probability likely to alarm, turned into a tree. She never sprouted leaves, never grew flowers. In effect she

was dead. Her life had been useless. But in her death she was useful. Disguised though she was, the townsfolk knew her. They pointed out to precocious little girls as a clear example of what it is that happens (100). Unlike Ruth, Sunithi is not guilty of being branded Western. In her autobiography, Goja (subtitled as “Fable”), she says :”It may be that behind the labels-poet, lesbian, artist, bohemian, poor person, studentI was guilty of a more fundamental crime: I was unwilling to serve the family and to confirm to society. ... I had thrown in my lot with the West; very well then, let the West look after me” (77). She records same guilt in her poetry too: I did not Come into being A full-grown lesbian With a knowledge of English, A trained brain And sexual politics Inscribed upon it (India 118) These range of writings by Ruth and Sunithi Nam Joshi show us the dynamics of what we regard as ‘lesbian writing’, that combines tale, poem, memoir, autobiography, critical writing. They represent a lesbian life of the authors themselves. Both the writers seek to go back to a Hindu tradition. Contrary to such an easy identification, the popularly known lesbian story, “Quilt” by Ismat Chughtai, did not arise out of the author’s personal lesbian way of life and the story distances itself from the autobiographical mode. It was a pure fiction by a hetero-sexual Muslim woman writer, who was part of the progressive writers association. But, unlike Ruth and Sunithi, her writings were banned

and she did not try to go back to tradition. “Quilt” was radical not just in its content but also in its form. It was about a lesbian relationship witnessed from a child’s point of view. Despite its lesbian content, it invites readers to appreciate its form - a modernist experiment in storytelling. It is interesting to note that while the Hindu radical feminist goes back to tradition, the Islamic radical critiques religion and remain secular. Hence, Ismat’s “Quilt.” instead of helping us, poses difficulty to our understanding of lesbian writing by distancing itself from the mode of autobiography. In her memoir, A Life in Words, she clarifies this : I was staying with my brother when I wrote ‘Lihaaf’. I had completed the story at night. In the morning I read it out to my sister-in-law. She didn’t think it was vulgar, though she recognized the characters portrayed in it. Then I read it out to my aunt’s daughter who was fourteen years old. She didn’t understand what the story was about. I sent it to Abab-e-Lateef where it was published immediately. (25-26) Lesbianism is rooted in a specific socio-economic situation that criticises Muslim male’s material desire that adversely affects the woman’s desire. Ismat was just curious about same-sex relationship like Dostoevsky who handled the same theme in his Netochka Nezwanova. When we cite such an example from a male writer, students will find the easily identifiable ‘lesbian writing’ confusing. The issue will get further complicated when we witness a similar mode of writing in a totally different kind of writing. Now, let us take the poem by Bama, whose writings are fixed within the label of dalit writing. The poem is titled .”The Scent of My Mother.” in which the writer merely recollects her feelings for her mother. She says: The scent of Mother I remember it well And can still smell

Its special fragrance At night while in bed The softness of its folds Would caress my face I would kiss it and kiss it And drift off to sleep And all would be bliss(46). In Oxford Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing, the editors included this poem mainly to complicate the stereotypical understanding of ‘dalit writing’ as a corpus that represent a dalit way of life. Reading Bama’s poem may disclose our limited understanding of ‘lesbian writing’ in the Indian context and may open new ways of understanding the genre question in general, accommodating the sociocultural and aesthetic view of reality. This will help the students think of the ways and means of relating Indian Lesbian Writing to issues pertaining to the mainstream culture. It is this possibility of breaking stereotypes that was suggested, rather insisted by Audre Lorde, the American, Black, Lesbian writer, in her talk “Learning from the 60s”: As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match somebody else’s norm. I learned that not only couldn’t I succeed at that game, but the energy needed for that masquerade would be lost to my work. And there were babies to raise, students to teach. The Vietnam War was escalating, our cities were burning, more and more of our school kids were nodding out in the halls, junk was overtaking our streets. ... You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars

are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other to recognise our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.

Works Cited Vanitha, Ruth, “‘More Lives than One’: Manushi and the Women’s Movement.” Making a Difference: Memoirs from the Women’s Movement in India. Ed Ritu Menon, New Delhi: Kali for Women & Women Unlimited, 2011: 20-36. —. “Thinking beyond Gender.” in Feminism in India, ed Maitrayee Chaudhuri, New Delhi: Women Unlimited & Kali for Women, 2004: 69-79. Sunithi Nam Joshi, Feminist Fables, London: Sheba Feminist publishers, 1981. —. Goja: A Fable, North Melbourne: Spinifex, 2000. —. India, Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables. London: Only Women Press, 1989. Bama. “The Scent of My Mother.” The Oxford Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing, Ed Ravikumar and Azhagarasan. New Delhi: OUP, 2012: 45-46. Lorde, Audre. “Learning from the 60s.” Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007: 134-144. Chughtai, Ismat. “Quilt.” Trans. Tahira Naqvi and Syeda S. Hameed. The Quilt and Other Stories. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1990.

—. A Life in Words, New Delhi: Penguin, 2012. Bakhtin, Mihail. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.” in The Dialogic Imagination, Trans Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Ed Michael Holquist, Austin: Univ of Texas Press, 1981: 84-258.

5 Recognition of ‘Transgender’ as ‘Third Gender:’ Some Reflections — Sanjiv Kumar According to the American Psychological Association (APA), Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Behavior that is compatible with cultural expectations is referred to as gendernormative; behaviors that are viewed as incompatible with these expectations constitute gender non-conformity (APA). Therefore, any initiative or development that questions the existing gender identities is considered as misplaced and incompatible. The set of beliefs, perceptions and presumptions about the gender-specific roles get defined with the entirety of the gender construct which is deeply rooted and manifested in the psyche and behaviour of the people. It is widely accepted that Gender identity refers to an individual’s selfidentification as a man, woman, transgender or other identified category. In this context, Judith Butler, awidely known American continental philosopher and gender theorist, has rightly elaborated the concept of gender as a subtle and strategic project which only rarely becomes manifest to a reflective understanding. For her, Becoming a gender is an impulsive yet mindful process of interpreting a cultural reality laden with sanctions, taboos and prescriptions. The choice to assume a certain

kind of body, to live or wear one’s body a certain way, implies a world of already established corporeal styles. To choose a gender is to interpret received gender norms in a way that organises them anew. (Butler 40) Next to the Gender is the question of sexual orientation which refers to the sex of those to whom one is sexually and romantically attracted. This orientation may classify the people in various categories including homosexuals (gay or lesbian) who are oriented towards the members of their own sex; heterosexuals who are attracted to the members of the other sex;and bisexuals who get attracted to members of both sexes.Different categories based on sexual orientation are provided an appropriate theoretical framework by Gay Studies and Queer Theory. In the postmodern world, the categories determined by the sexual orientation are not fixed as there are the chances that a heterosexual woman turns into a homosexual and vice versa in due course of time. This sexual fluidity is defined by Lisa M. Diamond as the “situation-dependent flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness. This flexibility makes it possible for some women to experience desires for either men or women under certain circumstances, regardless of their overall sexual orientation (Diamond 3). Gay Studies and Queer Theory address the political ramifications, social predicaments, advantages and dangers of culturally fixed categories of sexual identities and the ways in which they may be performed, transgressed and queered while ‘Queer Theory’ has been claimed as giving voice to those elided or marginalised by ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ studies—bisexuals, transsexuals, sadomasochists (Goldman 525-26). The term queer includes those who openly wear sexual identities like lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and those who use indigenous terms like hijra, kothi, panthis to describe themselves. (Kumar 8) The comprehensive document of historic Supreme Court judgement pronounced on April 15, 2014 explicitly defines ‘transgender’ as an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity,

gender expression or behaviour does not conform to their biological sex. It also includes the persons who do not identify with their sex assigned at birth, which include hijras/Eunuchs who, in this writ petition, describe themselves as “third gender” and they do not identify as either male or female. The hijras are not men by virtue of anatomy, appearance and psychologically, they are also not women, though they are like women with no female reproduction organ and no menstruation. Since hijras do not have reproduction capacities as either men or women, they are neither men nor women and claim to be an institutional “third gender”. Among hijras, there are emasculated (castrated, nirvana) men, nonemasculated men (not castrated/akva/akka) and inter-sexed persons (hermaphrodites). TG also includes persons who intend to undergo Sex Re-Assignment Surgery (SRS) or have undergone SRSto align their biological sex with their gender identity in order to become male or female. They are generally called transsexual persons. Further, there are persons who like to cross-dress in clothing of opposite gender, i.e transvestites. Resultantly, the term “transgender”, in contemporary usage, has become an umbrella term that is used to describe a wide range of identities and experiences, including but not limited to preoperative, post-operative and non-operative transsexual people, who strongly identify with the gender opposite to their biological sex; male and female. (SC) Going back to the historical paradigms of the issue, the transgenders were accorded the position of immense respect in the HinduMythology, Vedic and Puranic literatures and they also played prominent roles in the royal courts of the Islamic world.Tracing the history of eunuchs, Ina Goel remarks: History is replete with stories of their non-threatening bodies because of which they were entrusted with guarding the royal harems during the rule of the Mughal dynasty. The king of course ensured that the hijras were

castrated and therefore unable to impregnate the women in the harem. (Goel 78) Similar views are held by Serena Nanda in her ethnography, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India where she emphasizes hijras as a ‘third sex’. She argues that the hijras are an institutionalized third gender that has its roots in ancient India, and that has been strengthened by the historical role of the eunuchs in the Mughal Courts. She further asserts that “I believe ... ancient Jain and Hindu texts supports the view that the hijras are a separate sex/gender, which is, however, marginal rather than equal to male and female” (Nanda 144). The Supreme Court judgement records the ancient past of the transgenders as portrayed in Ramayana, Mahabharata, Jain texts, Vedic and Purana literatures and royal courts of Mughal period. Paradoxically, the most inhuman and heartrending part of the story was that the Criminal Tribes Act,1871 notified the hijras as one of the criminal tribes though numerous dedicated initiatives were introduced to restore the lost respect of the transgenders in the postindependence period. Wolfenden Committee Report on Homosexuality and Prostitution in September 1957 was pioneering as it set out to rectify the English criminal law by implementing rationalising views of John Stuart Mill who argued passionately for a private space, free from state interference, even if it involves activities that members of a society don’t like, as long as they don’t harm anyone - popularly known as the Harm test (Gupta 4817-18). Similarly, Delhi High Court’s ruling in 2009 that overturned Section 377 and decriminalized homosexuality came as a great sigh of relief for the transgenders. In the recent past i.e. in the year 2009, Election Commission of India took a first step towards bringing the transgenders in the mainstream when transgenders were allowed to choose their gender as “other” on ballot forms. Most importantly, in 2006, in response to well-documented patterns of abuse, a group of international human rights experts met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to outline a set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity and the landmark

Supreme Court judgementstudies and considers the Yogyakarta principles which largely address a broad range of human rights standards and their application to the issues concerning sexual orientation and gender identity. These twenty nine principles are based on the sublime democratic vision where— All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. All human rights are universal, interdependent, indivisible and interrelated. Sexual orientation and gender identity are integral to every person’s dignity and humanity and must not be the basis for discrimination or abuse. (Yogyakarta Principles) With the pronouncement of the judgement upholding the rights of the transgenders and eunuchs by the Supreme Court of India the debate over the issues concerning gender has intensified in India. The verdict has come as a blow to the established notions defining the binaries ofgender. The landmark judgement has been hailed as a human rights document as it addresses the concerns of the transgenders and eunuchs in India who have been struggling for recognition and identity in a democratic country guided by the sublime vision of justice for all. Highlighting the relevance of the judgement as a judicial initiative towards protecting the human rights of the minorities, K.S. Radhakrishnan and A.K. Sikri, the judges observed: We are of the firm opinion that by recognizing such Transgenders asthird gender, they would be able to enjoy their human rights, towhich they are largely deprived of for want of this recognition... Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue.(SC) Further, the judgement records the robust commitment of the judges for the cause of sustaining the constitutional values enshrined in the Constitution of India and, therefore, it is emphatically remarked:

... there seems to be no reason why a transgendermust be denied of basic human rights which includes Right to lifeand liberty with dignity, Right to Privacy and freedom of expression, Right to Education and Empowerment, Right against violence, Right against Exploitation and Right against Discrimination... Now it’s time for us to recognize this and toextend and interpret the Constitution in such a manner to ensure adignified life of transgender people. All this can be achieved if the beginning is made with the recognition that TG as third gender.(SC) The judges were quite conscious of the fact that the transgenders cannot realise the human rights unless they are assigned their proper ‘sex’ and the existing gender construct doesn’t leave any space for the recognition of the transgenders as it is limited to either male or female. Considering the transgenders as either male or female is improper as well as indignified because it deprives them of their right to be recognised with their appropriate sex categorization. One hundred thirteen page judgement records the predicament of Laxmi Narayan Tripathy, a hijra applicant who was born as a male and growing up as a child, she felt different from the boys of her age and was feminine in her ways. On account of her femininity from an early age, she faced repeated sexual harassment, molestation and sexual abuse, both within and outside the family. She was constantly abused by everyone as a ‘chakka’ and ‘hijra’ leading her to jointhe Hijra community. The ambivalent gender-identity of Tripathy didn’t permit her to be the part of mainstream life; rather, she was perpetually subjected to serious discrimination throughout her life. Tripathy was aware that the non-recognition of the identity of hijras/transgender persons by the State has resulted in the violation of most of the fundamental rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution of India.Therefore, on the pronouncement of judgement, Tripathy observed “Today, for the first time I feel very proud to be an Indian ...

today, my sisters and I feel like real Indians. because of the rights granted to us by the Supreme Court.” (Tripathy) However, the Supreme Court judgement is just like a Pandora’s Box as it has raised many perplexing questions concerning the validity and relevance of the previous Supreme Court judgement upholding the colonial provisions of section 377 of IPC. In its judgement on 11th December, 2013, the Court pronounced that “Section 377 IPC does notsuffer from the vice of unconstitutionality.” (SC 2013). The Indian Penal Code, 1860 provides that “. whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with [imprisonment for life].. Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section” (IPC, 1860). Paradoxically, both of the judgements cite the constitutionality of the provisions of the verdict, though contradictory in nature. We are currently faced with a situation where the ‘third gender’ has been given recognition, but homosexuality continues to be criminalised. If one can determine his or her gender, why can’t the same person also determine his or her sexual orientation? Besides, transgender people can also be homosexuals. (Ghosh) Here, the two categories seem to have been confused as one and the same i.e. one that of transgenders and eunuchs performing consensual sex and another that of those who are sexually oriented towards homosexual relations. Similarly, the criminalisation of unnatural sex prevents the consensual sexual relationship among the eunuchs and it is perceived as the failure of the courts to distinguish between two very different situations— of non-consensual sex and consensual sexual relations which implies that male adult seducers or abusers of young boys, men who forcibly rape other men, and male homosexuals (who indulge in consensual sexual activities) are all considered as one.It has made homosexual sexual relationship synonymous to rape and equated homosexuality with sexual perversity and, therefore, section 377 is considered as the biggest affront to the

dignity and humanity of a substantial minority of Indian citizens. Reflecting on human tendency for homosexual behaviour as a natural phenomenon since the evolution of human civilisation, R.C. Kirkpatrick observes that “Homosexuality is an emergent quality ofindividual selection for same-sex affiliation and has been a part of the human experience, perhaps all primate experience, since its inception.” (Kirkpatrick 398) No doubt, the affiliation and recognition of the transgenders in India has sent a positive signal across the world regarding India’s commitment to protect and sustain the democratic human values. It has significantly added to the enthusiasm and excitement of the human rights activists who dream of a utopian situation where the fundamental rights of the marginal sectionsare savoured and valued. The two landmark judgements on gender and sex issues have engaged the academia in the pursuit of finding a viable solution to the emerging contradiction. The recognition of transgenders as ‘third gender’ is hard to be digested by those who have deeply internalised the notion of absolutely binary gender propositions. For them, the idea of ‘third gender’ is a remotely imagined concept and any democratic move to accept the transgenders in the mainstream is considered by them as a serious threat to the entire sociological structure.So, sociology in India lacks ‘sexuality’ as a separate sub-field and even the engendered sociology recognizes only men and women as legitimate subjects. The presence of gender identities beyond heterosexual binary is rendered invisible. (Kumar 4) Obviously, the hon’ble Supreme Court has given sufficient reasons for celebrations to the minority community of transgenders who are now in a position to determine their identity beyond the existing gender binaries. The impact of the verdict might be assessed with the fact that the international media published this news with the most spirited and high-sounding idioms. The international news agencies, UNDPand human rights agencies hailed the initiative as a historic milestone towards realising the vision of inclusive democracy. The

Lesbian, Gays, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) groups are in celebration mode and expect to have a sustainable and viable solution to the questions concerning the free choice of sexual orientation also.Long live our faith in robust Indian democracy!

Works Cited http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf. The Indian Penal Code, 1860, Act No. 45 of 1860, 6th October,

http://districtcourtallahabad.up.nic.in/a rticles/IPC.pdf. 1860.

Butler, Judith. “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex.”Yale French Studies, No. 72, Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century. (1986), pp. 35-49. Diamond, Lisa M. Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. London: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print. Goel, Ina. “Beyond the Gender Binary.” Economic and Political Weekly. April 12, 2014.Vol. XLIX no. 15. pp. 77-78. Goldman, Jane. “Introduction: Works on the Wild(e) Side— Performing, Transgressing, Queering.” Ed. Julian Wolfrey. Literary Theory: A Reader and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.525-536. Gupta, Alok. “Section 377 and the Dignity of Indian Homosexuals.”Economic and Political Weekly. November 18, 2006. Pp. 4815-23. Ghosh, Rudroneel. “Right to live as third gender or homosexual should be recognised as a natural right.” The Times of India. September 12, 2014.

Kirkpatrick, R.C. “The Evolution of Human Homosexual Behaviour.” Current Anthropology. Vol. 41, No. 3 (June 2000), pp. 385-413. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/300145. Kumar, Pushpesh. “Queering Indian Sociology: A Critical Engagement.” CAS Working Paper Series. Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, May 2014, CAS/WP/14-7. pp. 1-29. Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. London: Wadsworth Publishing House, 1999. The Supreme Court of India, Civil Appellate Jurisdiction, Civil Appeal No.10972 of 2013.11th Dec. 2013. The Supreme Court Of India, Civil Original Jurisdiction, Writ Petition (Civil) No.400 OF 2012 with Writ Petition (Civil) No. 604 of 2013, 15th April 2014.http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/wc40012.pdf . Tripathy, Laxmi Narayan. India now recognizes transgender citizens as ‘third gender’. The Washington Post. April 15, 2014. Yogyakara Principles: The Application of International Human Rights in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles_en.htm.

6 Pa Visalam’s Autobiographical Novel — Meera Rajagopalan Pa Visalam’s work in Tamil Mella Kanavaay Pazhan Kadhayaay is an autobiographical novel where the author’s life is rendered as a story —a remembrance of the past, a straight forward telling of events through the eyes of a growing girl. It is, perforce, subjective, but the events that impact the heroine’s life are real life incidents. The storyline in the novel which runs parallel to Visalam’s life, is this: a young girl, one of the younger children of a highly placed government officer, grows up in the pre-independence Nanjil Nadu, then a part of the Travancore-Cochin State. A warm cohesive rambunctious family is presided over by an affectionate, enlightened, generous father. But, the father’s forward looking ideas do not descend to giving importance to her education (after all she is a girl!) and she is often left in a no man’s land of private tuition and tutors. However, the heroine’s questing mind finds sustenance from a variety of things around her. Her father’s humanism affects her deeply as does the generous giving spirit of her mother who treats the birth of every grandchild as a unique event. To these is added the multifarious interests of her brothers one of whom introduces her to Communism which acts as her shield and salvation in later life.

The heroine’s charmed life of privilege gets a battering when one of her brothers, a pilot, is killed in action. Then comes her father’s resignation and the withdrawal of all the perks that she has taken for granted. But, that is not all. Her father gets diabetes and with his costly treatment, money becomes very scarce in the household. Then the beloved father dies, leaving her and her mother adrift in a barrenness of want. There is no money; they depend on the Rs. 30 that the brother, employed in Poona, sends every month. Even food becomes a problem and while the mother inveigles bitterly against the callousness of society, the daughter has to grow up instantly and tackle the situation head on. The heroine breaks out of her shell with the extremely reluctant acquiescence of her mother whose conservatism summons up goblins of disapproval, if not ostracism everywhere. This foray into public life brings them into contact with Communist ideology and the cadres in the area. These men, unlike her own children and relatives, are very helpful and even the mother, steeped in tradition and orthodoxy gets converted slowly to Communist ideology. The heroine becomes a cardcarrying member of the Party and slowly rises in the ranks only to discover that not all is honey and roses even in the Party that stands for equality. She finds herself sidelined because she is a woman and later because of her strong opinions and outspoken comments. The seeds of disillusion come to a head when she and her friend Nandan are marginalized and left to fend for themselves despite their unstinting support of the Party. In the broader realm, the Party itself splits up into two. The life of the heroine—who is unnamed throughout—can be divided into two parts. These are her ahavaazhvu and her puravaazhvu; roughly her life at home and her life in public. The heroine’s childhood is one of affection and privilege. She, the youngest daughter of the house, is surrounded by love and affection, not only by her parents, but also her older siblings who treat her with amused tolerance most of the time. The girl is bright, inquisitive, with an exploring mind and active imagination. A probing mind which

sometimes leads to nightmares “....A young boy climbs to the top of a mountain, holding an axe dripping blood. Down below, as far as the eye can see, and even beyond, a clamorous crashing sea..sea..sea.” (Visalam 2) This is her reaction on first hearing the story of Parasuraman’s matricide. The girl grows up with her parents and siblings, taking part, childlike in their hopes ambitions, quarrels, vexations and so on. Hers is the perfect childhood, safe with her family, even if their behaviour is puzzling at times and makes her wonder at the illogic of adults, like her father objecting to her sister wearing her favourite silk skirt when they go visiting a poor aunt, despite the fact they go in their big car! Or, why is it taboo for her sisters to wear daring blouses, when many women of her aatha’s generation do not wear blouses at all! Slowly she grows up and school beckons—a single roomed village school with a fat headmaster. This is where she learns her letters and is perfectly happy, but not for long as her father is transferred and she sent to her aatha and aunt in Kottaru because there is no Tamil medium school in the new place. So life goes on, with studies and games and shifting friends who come and go with her father’s many transfers. She is very fond of her generous father, a Deepavallipulli (spendthrift) and somewhat frightened of her stricter mother. Looking at herself objectively, she realizes that like her mother, she is rather vain about her looks and about being unusual. Being compared to Baby Saroja in looks thrills her even though she suspects it is not true. Her family appears unique to her and she glories in the sense of superiority in all her childish naivety. “When the other children touched the bow to examine it, oh! I felt so proud. The thought that we were different—better than—other people, somehow, in some way, occurred to me often and made me proud.” (23) Childhood ailments and remedies, school and homework, sisters getting married and coming for their confinement with their older children (when she feels relegated to oblivion) all these shape her life

and attitude. Her fondness for music and aptitude for it gets a great fillip when her father arranges for his friend Lakshman Pillai, the great musician, to teach her. A charmed and secure life, with only the minor pinpricks of classmate enmity and jealousy to ruffle the placidity. This gets a serious jolt when her grandmother’s friend and dhayakkattam partner Amalu aatha dies. The rituals of death frighten and fascinate her and the ostentation of the funeral convince her of her children’s affection for Amalu aatha. But, her appreciation of this devotion is shattered when soon after the funeral she finds the family squabbling about their mother’s proprety. And this disillusionment is enhanced when she begins to understand the notions of caste and untouchability. The first stirrings of her social conscience begin to trouble her. But, her life is hardly changed and she glories in the respect her father’s position brings with it. In one of his many transfers they are driven to their house ...” Was my Appa a big raja or what” she wonders. “When Amma got down from the car, the manner in which they moved away with folded arms to clear the path for her to enter the house reminded me of a queen entering her palace. When I got down from the car last - after all I am only a small child—they rushed and held my hand to help me. I then felt that I was a young princess alighting from her palanquin.”(39-40) Exclusiveness and perks, being referred to in school as the big officer’s daughter, these form the background of her life. She is happy and takes them for granted. Her god fearing tolerant parents are the greatest influence on her life. Then she is introduced to the poetry of Bharathi whose philosophy becomes one of mainstays of her later life. Outside events come and go, touching our heroine only peripherally. It is now the Second World War. Madras is bombed and this brings their chithappa and chithi to them with their small child. Then Singapore falls. The stories of the atrocities and the extreme privations of those caught there horrify her. She begins to realize that life has a darker side when Fate deals her and her family a terrible blow. One of her brothers, who has volunteered and become an Air

Force pilot, is killed in action. This is harrowing news both to the family and the young girl, who slowly begins to understand the tragic side of life. And along with this begins the glimmer of realization that she, for many reasons, may have to be the support of her parents in their old age. Gradually, the fortunes of her family begin to ebb with her father’s sudden decision to resign his job. For the first time, money becomes a bit of a problem and with it the social standing of her family begins to diminish. The most poignant reminder of this is evidenced by the doubtful selection of bridegrooms available to her sisters. But, while her parents, particularly her father who is the kaaranavan of the extended family, fret about it, the young girl carries on with her life in the usual carefree manner, “laughing and singing like a gamboling calf.”(83). However, the deteriorating health of her father, who has diabetes and needs insulin every day, begins to dawn on her consciousness and dreams of love and romance are gradually driven out to be replaced by the realization that the major responsibility to take care of her parents in their old age may be her portion in life. But, she is too young for it to weigh on her, even when her mother has to sell her bangles to buy her father Ovaltine. August 15, 1947. Independence Day fires her with patriotism. She rejoices to hear Bharathi’s song of universal equality being sung everywhere by the likes of D.K. Pattamal. But though sharing the fervor of loyalty and patriotism, she is sensitive enough to see the inequality and grimness that is prevalent. And, in perhaps her first foray into her puravaazhvu, she determines to do something about it. In her personal life, her father dies after suffering a great deal. She is unable to cry, her sorrow chokes her. All the relatives commiserate with her—a young girl about to finish school, who has been left fatherless. The usual rituals of death leave her uninvolved; she misses her beloved father too much. The fear of what the future holds for her and her mother gnaws at her guts. And her misgivings come true when, as soon as the mourning period is over, her sisters, and their

husbands, disappointed at getting nothing, quarrel viciously about the father’s property, accusing the parents of negligence and partiality. Soon, even this distraction is over, and she and her mother and one brother have to bear the burden of loneliness. Faced with widowhood and penury, her mother’s temper begins to fray. The girl’s sense of obligation towards her mother is at war with her need for freedom, a rather unhappy situation which is salvaged by her brother’s giving her The Communist Manifesto to read. “Do you know what book this is?.... The Communist Manifesto. ” I looked at him intently. “What does that mean, Communist?” “Don’t you even know that? Equality for all.” “And what does that mean?...(105). The philosophy of “Each person working and getting paid according to his needs” appeals to her sense of justice subsisting as she is with the barest minimum of necessities. The philosophy of Communism seems to make Utopia feasible. Her brother smuggles in more books for her which she devourers at night unknown to her mother, who has now become obsessed with the struggle for day-today existence—a mighty fall indeed from the pampered life of a big officer’s wife. Socialism and Communism are the girl’s salvation and she is therefore unable to be much of a companion to her mother. Things come to a head when she expresses her desire to go to the film Dr Kotnis ke Amar Kahani with her brother. She goes despite her mother’s strong objection and feels she has begun the first step in her revolution. Her brother gets a job in Poona. Mother and daughter are left alone to fend for themselves. Their only income is the Rs. 300 that the brother sends every month. While her mother is anguished by the lack of concern shown not only by society but, more tragically, by her own children, our heroine looks around her with new -found eyes and sees

inequality and injustice everywhere and longs for the trampled masses to find salvation somehow. Hunger now becomes a real problem for the two women. On some days they have to make do with just a tiny bit of puffed rice. The mother gives up and takes recourse to nostalgia and old memories. Not so our heroine. “My tears dried. I could feel the new blood coursing through my body.”(126) with that resolve she determines to the Communist magazine Janashakthi seriously. This proves to be a lucky decision. Pandiyan, the man who delivers the magazine is a dedicated Communist, who, intrigued by the heroine’s interest in Communism, gives her a lot of books to read. Her increasing knowledge of Communism coupled with their fast deteriorating financial situation, make her realize that her life as well as that of her mother is in her keeping; nobody, neither family nor friends are going to take the responsibility. Things come to a head when their tenant farmer, on whom her mother has been depending, cheats them with the lame excuse that the paddy has failed and he can give them only a portion of the rent owed. Her mother is distraught, but this final blow strengthens the heroine’s resolve to take their lives in their own hands. The first manifestation is her resolve to go their lands and inspect them. She asks her mother to accompany her as a chaperone. Though her mother is initially aghast—“She looked like she had stepped on fire” (136)—she grudgingly acquiesces and accompanies her daughter to their lands where the affectionate welcome given by some local residents, who remember her family increases her happiness exponentially. But the tenant plays hide and seek with them. Desperate now, the heroine decides to appeal to Pandiyan. Mother and daughter walk towards Pandiyan’s village, the mother with extreme reluctance, the daughter with growing exultation: There! The village was visible now. One of the southern parts of this far flung Bharat— Travancore —no, no—Thiru-Cochi Kingdom. A part of this kingdom was Nanjil Nadu—and, in a corner of Nanjil Nadu was this village. How special! It was a village that appeared very

special to me—a village with many salt-pans. Was that its only specialty? As far as I know, in all of Nanjil Nadu, it was the only place where thousands of women workers agitated for their rights.(146-47). From the heroine’s perspective, the visit proves a great success. She meets the local Communist leaders—the secretary N. Kolappan and many other cadres who treat them with so much affection and regard that even the mother is favourably impressed by them. As for the heroine, she is beyond happiness. All that she has thirsted for seem to be available to her. Tales of the heroism of the many poor men who struck work and more so of their families—wives and children—who braved hunger and deprivation to fight for their rights, fill her with admiration and resolve. Her new friends help with their problems. The cheating tenant is removed from his leasehold and all that is owed to them both as rent and rice is brought to them. Slowly the mother also is drawn into the circle due to the selflessness of the comrades and so, when they ask for the heroine to attend her first General Body meeting in Kottaru, she has no choice but to acquiesce albeit with great reluctance. The gradual, but unimpeded growth of the heroine in the Communist Party worries her mother. She is conservative enough to think a girl’s lot is marriage and family and worries that her youngest daughter’s activities will reflect badly on her granddaughters. Not so our heroine, who while sailing euphorically through the days, giving her first speech (about Bharathi) and slowly gaining confidence in her ability to be a good Communist, swears to her mother that she will not do anything to shame her family in any way. She also makes a lot of friends, like Comrade Nandan, with whom she feels a special rapport. Days go by and with them the heroine establishes her hold on the Party. She makes many public speeches in increasingly important venues: “Like chicks following the mother hen, I too followed the big leaders and spoke in meetings.”(178). Her home has, by now become an asylum and resting place for comrades who begin to use it freely.

More and more important Communist leaders like Devasahayam, Paramanandhan and others also visit her in her house to meet her and enjoy her mother’s delicious cooking. Comrade Nandan, who has appointed himself her unofficial mentor, also introduces her to many cadres. And he guides her away from the pitfalls that her emerging popularity in the Party makes her subject to. She is thrilled at her success and deems it a particular honour when Nandan and a few of his special friends ask her to join the writer’s association, the Kalangarai Vilakkam. The mother watches her from the sidelines, at once proud of her achievements, but at the same time worried about the ‘social stigma’ she feels will be associated with her daughter’s public espousal of a political cause and of her standing for elections as the Communist candidate. Traditionally, a girl’s place is in the house with her husband and children. And the old fashioned mother is afraid that society—the critical society—of Nanjil Nadu will condemn her and her daughter. Our heroine gets a Party card and is very happy. Her dreams have been realized, but she is saddened by the fact that she has no instant solution to the age-old problems that affect society—particularly those of patriarchy (that too in a matriarchal society) and of untouchability. The same social problems continue and neither good will nor the Communist Party have the magic wand to wave them away. Added to the societal woes is the acute shortage of money at home. Then, Comrade Sharma, the respected leader from Madras, comes to stay with them. An honourable compassionate man, he notices the straitened circumstances and queries her about her family. On hearing about the selfishness and disinterest of her sisters and their husbands who have abandoned them, he is shocked, but consoles her with “Our Party is a family. We are all here, so you need not worry. We are ready to help you” (207). The heroine’s unique position—a rare women among men, a talented orator with a mind of her own, an outspoken critic of certain aspects of society—impresses the higher ups in the Party, and she is

invited to make a speech in a meeting attended by the legendary Communist leader A.K. Gopalan. Terrified at the prospect, the girl feigns sickness to avoid it but to no avail. She is to be shown off by the local party and therefore she had to attend. Very nervously she addresses the huge audience and acquits herself fairly well. A.K.G. is pleased with her and her fame spreads. Slowly the Party ideology begins to unravel basically on the use of force. The visit of Krushchev and Bulganin, who oppose the Chinese ideology, polarizes the Party more and causes divisions, albeit in a very nebulous way at the beginning. But even this saddens the idealist girl, who is further disheartened in a personal way with the inequalities within the Party. She finds that powerful members and good orators are given more importance than real workers like herself, Nandan and their friends. While she seethes and frets about it, Nandan advises patience. The heroine goes to visit one of her sisters and her family. There, the realization dawns on her that she is in love with Comrade Nandan. Her vague feelings of attraction crystallize and although she is very happy, she is also fearful about Nandan’s feelings towards her. Meanwhile politics, national and local, begins to intrude in their lives. Nationally the Communist Party wins in a few local elections, which makes all the cadres very happy. But within the small local party itself petty jealousies and dissensions begin to rear their ugly head. Nandan and the heroine find themselves getting side-lined and the happy unity of the small group becomes a thing of the past. Though disillusioned, Nandan advices her to remain calm and accept things for the sake of the bigger ideal. In the midst of these ideological frustrations, Nandan declares his love for her in a letter. She feels humbled, but very happy. Her mother too shares her happiness since she has begun to appreciate Nandan. But, she is worried about what the future holds for them. It is at this juncture that the Communists win the elections in Kerala and E.M.S. Nanboodripad becomes the first chief minister of a freely elected

Communist state! There is great rejoicing in the party but Nandan finds himself completely ignored when it comes to being given office in the Party. Also, to get married, he has to find a job. He decides to go to Kerala where the Communist regime has set up training courses. Sadly the heroine sees him leave, and agrees when he asks her to wait till he qualifies and finds a job. But, things do not work that way. Her sisters, greedy to the end, forces the mother to sell her house, the house her mother has given her. Legally they are in the right as the house goes with the headcount and the mother has only one share in it. The mother and the daughter are dismayed at this disastrous turn of events, and the heroine with her pragmatic idealism (Prema NandaKumar)2 decides that the only recourse she has is to get married and take her mother with her. Nandan agrees. Without new clothes, not even a new sari, without garlands, without relatives, without a wedding feast, she gets married to Nandan under a tree with a Registrar presiding over the event. But all these are forgotten when the she tearfully turns around and sees Comrade Sharma and his wife waiting to give her away in lieu of her parents. Her marriage coincides with the breakup of the Communist Party in 1964. But, she is confident that a new life awaits her. “ What? I grabbed it (the magazine) from him. The news......’All the thirty-two leaders including Comrades A.K.G. and E.M.S. have repudiated Dange’s leadership and left the Party’. Now, a new chapter will begin” (264). It is on this note of optimism that the book rests. Mella Kanavaay Pazhan Kadhayay is a true rendition of Pa Visalam’s life though not the entire story as would be required by a straightforward autobiography. For instance, we do not know where she was born and what her very early life was. The account really begins in the second chapter of her life as Ellery Sedgwick3 advices those who write autobiography. And, as she ends it with her marriage in 1964, we do not know anything about her later life either. This

format gives the author a great deal of leeway; she can recall and narrate what she wants to without any set rules to dictate her choice making it a personal history of memories as she is both the subject and he narrator. Visalam shares her memories with the reader, and invites the reader to become her companion (Ambai,)4. The sense of immediacy, of participation enhances the story and sustains the reader’s interest throughout the narrative. Nanjil Nadu, where the story is set is very rich historically. At the time of the narrative, it was part of the Kingdom of TravancoreCochin, but earlier on it had been ruled by both the Chera and Pandyan dynasties. It had a very high literacy rate and the usual mixture of religions and castes. Unfortunately, it also practiced untouchability. Hence, our heroine when growing up wonders why the scavenger’s daughter cannot attend school, and later even as a Communist feels uncomfortable while visiting the scavenger Aadikannu’s house and sharing a drink with the family. This is the subconscious, ingrained prejudice of a traditionally brought up upper caste Vellala girl which the tenets of Communism are not able to erase. These are the facets of the novel that render it interesting as is the vivid descriptions of social habits and beliefs as seen through the eyes of a growing girl. The elaborate drama of death, as practiced in the region, first holds her attention when she sees her grandmother’s friend Amalu aatha’s cremation. Then comes her pilot brother’s death and finally, that of her father. Visalam describes these customs objectively, giving a clear insight into the social customs of the region at that period. And, as with death, so with marriage and childbirth. Each of these is described with clarity and sympathy of a precocious child, steeped in tradition, growing up in a fast change atmosphere of Socialism and Communism. Visalam’s book traces the history of her personal Communism. She first hears of the new ideology from her elder brother, when she is mourning for her father and in dire want of money. Through a tortuous passage she becomes a card carrying member in 1952. What is

interesting to note is not only her veneration for the legendary leaders like A.K. Gopalan, E.M.S. Namboodripad, T.V. Thomas, the Chittagong warrior Kalpana Datta, but also the relatively unknown Krishna Pillai who died in hiding, of a snake bite while exhorting his followers to move forward and not give up the struggle to establish a new society! In fact, it is his photo that she puts up on the wall of her house. Romance, history, politics, social history and customs—Pa Visalam has blended these expertly to produce a book that can be described as an autobiographical novel. And sui generis, this passport to wander off the main narration is one of the main advantages of the autobiographical novel over straightforward autobiography.

Works Cited Pa Visalam. Fading Dreams: Old Tales. Trans. Rajagopalan. New Delhi: OUP, 2012.

Meera

Prema Nandakumar. “Introduction.” Pa Visalam. Fading Dreams: Old Tales. Trans. Meera Rajagopalan. New Delhi: OUP, 2012. Ellery Sedgwick, from the Net. Ambai, Back cover of Visalam op.cit.

7 Narrativizing Rape: Issues, Challenges and possibilities in Aruna’s Story — Lahari One man. Plus a savage twist of one chain. And the thirty seconds for his sperm to release. Equals one broken woman. With brain damage so irreversible that it does not even register images. And perfectly healthy pupils but blind for life (Virani 1998: 57). Rape, as a serious literary theme remains a taboo or a practice exhibiting lack of aesthetic taste till now, in the Indian subcontinent. This could be termed as the reason behind the existence of a handful number of literary texts seriously engaging with the issue of rape in this region. It is not that rape as an incident or experience does not figure in a text, but rather it comes across as a stray, minor incident that the text could do without. There are also instances of the idea of rape being romanticized as seduction with the help of highly aesthetic vocabulary. In some other cases, rape is denigrated so fiercely that the survivor-character often takes her own life or unexplainably disappears from the text after which there is no discussion on the incident. In comparison to such poor and insensitive rendering of rape in literature, sociological studies and analysis have been more informed

and objective, to a certain extent. Thus, there is an ample body of rape narratives available on the social plane in comparison to literature. Rape narratives in the social plane are relatively academically more enriching and comprehensive. It is the literary rendering that holds a dubious status. Literature engaging with such theme is usually termed as non-serious or sensational literature, especially when it is in the form of autobiographical writings. As history suggests, autobiographies by women tend to be assumed as less truthful, more so when speaking about violence. Breaking silence around sexual violence has been read as a cheap stunt for publicity and sensation. Moreover, generally, rape is considered to be a woman’s issue; hence deemed as not having any universal value. Thus, it is considered a literary taboo, particularly when conveyed from a female point of view. Often a question is asked as to whether a text so deeply embedded into a personal and traumatic experience can really have literary and artistic value. I concluded from my research that the women writers narrativizing on sexual violence never wanted their texts to be of great aesthetic value. They meant to speak about violence, and they did it, sometimes shocking at the point of being gross, and at times, poignant at the verge of sentimentality. As a researcher, I do not consider this imperviousness to literary aesthetics a drawback. I believe that it rather adds to the note of sincerity in the tone of the subject in these texts. Thus, in a nutshell, the attitude towards rape narratives has been rather discouraging due to the social stigma and literary taboo that rape as an incident is. In many cases the concerned women writer’s inability to transform this traumatic experience into an aesthetic entity has also led to the belief that such themes can never surpass the ‘personal’ to emerge into a universally acknowledged artistic entity. As we know, the themes and styles which are considered worthy of literary discussion are always set by male standards which exclude the authenticity of women’s experience as a subject for literary analysis. The women writers who still tread the less travelled path and write

about sexual violence against women are branded as sensational writers looking for cheap publicity. Their writings, whether confessional in nature or not, are read as episodes from the writer’s own life. These writings traverse a complex terrain between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, experience and memory which makes it impossible to brand it belonging to either pure fantasy or a slice of the writer’s own life. Thus in literature, it is a formidable task to write about an issue like rape due to prejudiced reception. A rape narrative could be defined as any narrative that engages with the issue of rape in a detailed and informed manner. It gives account of rape as a traumatic experience, charts out emotions and abuses that lead unto it and the aftermath of rape. It is generally nonlinear, as a linear account of a rape would make it a story. Instead, it brings together numerous complexities such as different perspectives, sometimes conflicting, ‘small’ abuses that lead unto rape, different identities, socioeconomic and spatial realities that make rape as a complex entity. Understandably, such a narrative need not be only about rape as such but several other emotions, events, attitudes that are bound up with it. A rape narrative is not any text wherein there is an instance of rape in the story. It requires ample amount of an informed discourse around the issue even if not in an obvious manner which problematizes the crime. Rape need not be the only issue a rape narrative grapples with; however, it should one of the major issues the text engages with. Rape narratives could exist in a literary as well as non-literary plane. Various political and academic debates surrounding rape as a crime, an experience and social reality belong to the nonliterary category. Thus, a single entity or isolated incident of rape can give rise to different narratives constituting various ways of viewing a reality. Within the literary plane itself, there are different genre based perspectives of a reality, examples being prose essays, fictions, autobiography, biography, memoir, stories etc. Even though these are all literary exercises dealing with the same issue, their preoccupations, challenges, strategies differ to a great extent.

In addition to scanty number of available rape narratives, attitude towards such texts has been rather discouraging due to the social stigma and literary taboo around rape as an incident. In many cases, the concerned (woman) writer’s inability to transform this traumatic experience into an aesthetic entity has also led to the belief that such themes can never surpass the ‘personal’ to emerge into a universally acknowledged artistic entity. Traditionally, the themes and styles which are considered worthy of literary discussion are always set by male standards which exclude the authenticity of women’s experience as a subject for literary analysis. The women writers who still tread the less travelled path and write about sexual violence against women are branded as sensational writers looking for cheap publicity. Their writings, whether confessional in nature or not, are read as episodes from the writer’s own life. These writings traverse a complex terrain between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, experience and memory which makes it impossible to brand it belonging to either pure fantasy or a slice of the writer’s own life. Thus in literature, it is a formidable task to write about an issue like rape due to prejudiced reception. Writers and theorists have discussed various challenges that generally we come across while writing a rape narrative. The way silence around sexual violence is an undesirable state; similarly representation of such violence, if not done carefully, turns out to be a worse disaster. Some feminists see graphic representation of rape as second violation: “As feminist we are caught between a rock and a hard place: the erasure of rape from the narrative bears the mark of a patriarchal discourse of honour and chastity; yet showing rape, some argue, eroticizes it for the male gaze and purveys the victim myth. How do we refuse to erase the palpability of rape negotiate the splintering of the private/public trauma associated with it?” (Virdi 266) Feminists all over somehow agree that graphic and titillating details around rape sensationalizes it and encourages voyeurism in many readers. They all seem to agree that rape narratives which refuse voyeurism and exploitation must be brought into the mainstream framework. In the ‘Introduction’ to Feminism, Literature and Rape

Narratives, Zoe Brigley Thompson and Sorcha Gunne conclude that “Now what is at stake is not just whether we speak about rape or not, but how we speak about rape and to what end” (3). The question of ‘how’ has been dealt differently by different writers. Certain writers have felt that a symbolic representation can compensate graphic description of rape. Another predominant opinion is subverting the myths around rape through a representation that attempts to break reductive and negative myths about sexual violence. Though employing graphic and explicit language while depicting rape has been discouraged by feminists, its absence could also be interpreted as puritanical attitude towards female body, both in pleasure and pain. The big question that emerges then is if a graphic depiction can still contribute to breaking myths around rape and the emergence of a subversive rape narrative without being voyeuristic in nature. Women writers engaging with the issue have adopted different modes of narrativization in their rape narratives. While fulfilling the specific necessities of a particular genre, their adoption of language, mode of narration and characterization has been largely different from each other. In this article, I draw focus upon Pinki Virani’s Aruna’s Story, a narrative based on a true incident. Aruna’s Story: The True Account of a Rape and its Aftermath is a definitive and atypical rape narrative. Fictional or autobiographical medium has invariably been adopted in narrativizing rape in the Indian subcontinent. However, Aruna’s Story belongs to a different genre, journalistic prose bordering between truth and imagination. In the ‘Author’s Note’ to the text, Pinki Virani voices her hesitation, discomfort before writing the book. The book is not entirely a journalistic piece of writing, though the theme and the narrative style are more or less so. The book even when titled as it is ‘Story’, is not a complete fictional account of trauma of a woman post-rape. Aruna’s Story is indeed a brave attempt by Pinki Virani to translate the trauma of Aruna’s life into words, break the silence that was imposed upon her since her assault.

However, the cutting edge of Aruna’s Story does not lie within the text; the subtitle gives the readers a glimpse of what Virani attempts to attain within the text. A book review titled ‘Ten Minutes to Hell’ by Malavika Karlekar questioned Virani’s choice of the subtitle ‘The True Account of Rape and its Aftermath’. Her argument is that, “To start with, the subtitle is misleading, a concession perhaps to the USP worldview; Aruna was not raped, but was a victim of what, according to Section 377 of the IPC, is an Unnatural Offence; the only charge made by the hospital was “attack on nurse with intention to rob”. Thus Sohanlal was sentenced to seven years imprisonment on charges of attempt to commit murder and robbery” (1998). I read Virani’s choice of subtitle as a resistance against the legal and societal understanding and implications of rape. It reveals how law, more often sexist and misogynist, takes precedence over the definition, and thereby the experience of abuse by a woman. Law, by the virtue of its strict limited definitions, denies the reality of a woman’s experience who has been subjected to abuse. A survey of law reveals that rape has always been defined from the male point of view - around penetration. The penetration as the touch-stone of proving a rape not only reflects the ideology of male ownership of female sexuality; it is also a male point of view on what makes a woman feel violated. The penile-vaginal intercourse which proves that rape has occurred (leave aside the absurd subdivisions such as successful penetration, partial penetration, ejaculation in the vagina etc.) in a particular case, is also the corner stone around which heterosexuality as a social institution is fixated. A rape victim’s feelings of trauma, violation and consequent resentment of men and any sort of physical contact with men as an aftermath of rape are never addressed by law. Virani’s choice of the subtitle can be explained in two ways: firstly, the leap in time frames between the assault Aruna was subjected to and the writing of the book. But, even when today, the understanding of ‘penetration’ as in the statute book has been widened to all other possibilities besides penile-vaginal penetration, when Aruna’s Story was published, it was a part of the demands for rape law reform by women’s groups, changed only

recently. Despite demands from various feminist groups, the exception existed in the statute book. Thus, Virani’s decision to call the assault rape and name her book after it does not seem to be a matter of her inclination towards legal definition and change in time frame. The fact that, Virani, without providing any explanation, decides to call it rape is in itself a potent gesture. In the Author’s Note, Virani writes, “In the course of my investigation I discovered how exactly Aruna had been raped. I also discovered to my shock, that the rapist did not serve a sentence for it. This is when I decided that Aruna’ real story had to be told” (1998). Thus, what impels Virani to write a book on trauma suffered by a rape survivor, her primary focus is rape, and not what Sohanlal was accused of and served the sentence for. By calling this choice of Virani a loophole in her writing, we tend to miss her point and give into the stereotypical and sexist understanding of rape. Moreover, writing is a mode of resistance to the existing knowledge, understanding and discourse on a certain issue. Virani’s act of writing ventures to do this despite the silence around a violence Aruna was subjected to and traumatized thereafter for a lifetime. At the beginning of ‘Author’s Note’, Virani writes about her initial hesitation in writing a book about Aruna’s life: “As a journalist, I report on events in order to fulfill people’s right to know. To write an entire book, would I be exploiting Aruna Shanbaug’s condition?” (1998) Her fear materialized when a section of the readers of the book, people who directly or indirectly came to know about Aruna’s condition, considered her to be a self-seeking writer looking for popularity exploiting Aruna’s silence and suffering when she pledged for euthanasia for Aruna. Virani begins the book with Aruna’s rape - the act and its aftermath. Later she goes into the details of situations which triggered off the incident, concretizing it with responses of people who were close associates of Aruna. In my analysis of Aruna’s Story, I would study the nuanced discourse among nurses, doctors and general public that follows the incident of Aruna’s rape along with the intersections of class, caste, gender and power relationships among the characters in the ‘faction’ and its signification in an act of sexual violence. Because

Aruna was silenced for her entire life by the act, in no situation of the book, we get an inkling of her responses, extent of her trauma, the heart breaks she suffers. Virani, in the first two sections of the book, describes in a flash back manner Aruna’s life at the hospital and her village, her dreams with the climax of rape turning her into a flesh and blood consuming body that gets wasted day by day. The final section of the book deals with Aruna’s persistent vegetative state that just prolongs. As it is not a completely ‘fictional’ narrative, the characters and the incidents also throw light upon the ‘reality’ of the society, the motives and responses and mindsets. Sohanlal is a temporary sweeper in KEM hospital from a lower ‘Bhangi’ caste. Aruna’s Story begins with him - he setting up a trap for Aruna’s ravishment in the dark cold alley of dogs lab. Virani takes five pages to narrate Aruna’s rape and Sohanlal’s fantasy of raping her as he waits for her hiding in darkness. The ‘dog chain’ which he uses in assaulting Aruna is a potent symbol, especially when coupled with the nature of Sohanlal’s fantasy: “Her, with only the dog chain on her. Around her waist. Resting on her curves, caressing her navel. Above which rise and fall those small round, creamy breasts. Her light-brown nipples tautening in his cupped palms as she stands there, berating him in front of everybody. He would tighten his palms, squeezing the nipples sharply. She would walk away” (Virani3). Virani’s choice of language for describing Sohanlal’s fantasy poses a serious and controversial question. The passage borders on elements of erotic to pornographic with the image of dog chain on Aruna’s body as a symbol of confinement. The erotic language of Sohanlal’s fantasy and the violence inherent in the pornographic images raises several questions: the rape that ensues the fantasy is an outcome of lust or as feminists argue, a desire to overpower, or is it both? If the first passage throws a glimpse into Sohanlal’s lustful longing for Aruna, the cold calculated plan he has set up to take her does not correspond to the assumed spontaneity associated with lust. In addition to lust, there is also an element of vengeance and reverting power equation in Aruna’s rape. In the monologue of mind, Sohanlal thinks: “Holding it up, he

will swing one end of the dog chain in front of her. Those eyes which have looked at him with contempt, will fill with fear. That mouth which has belittled him, time and again in front of people, will beg for mercy. He will undress the bride, slowly, as she implores him to let her go. He will take her once, that’s all, she will learn her lesson from it forever” (4). Even when the desire to teach her a lesson surfaces in Sohanlal’s thought, it is not devoid of the erotic tone that comes with it - ‘undress the bride’. Is the violence in the text delivered in erotic language or erotica in itself an equation of unequal power relationships? Can rape be delivered in a language with erotic overtones, or even fantasized so? What I find striking about the first section describing Aruna’s undoing, her rape is that the actual act of rape is a complete demystification of the concept of lust and erotic which crowd Sohanlal’s mind before he pounces upon Aruna. This could be interpreted as a strategic device that Virani employs to break the stereotype of lust and desire triggering the beginning of sexual violence. In contrast to the erotic description of Sohanlal’s fantasy of ravishing Aruna, the actual act of rape is a rendering of brutal cruelty upon a woman. Virani describes of the spectacle of violence graphically in an emphatic note as if to break all existing stereotypes on the lustful desire of a man for a woman resenting his advances resulting in rape. Because the rape that Virani presents before readers has the dirty ‘impure’ menstrual blood, vomit, spit and more blood around the crime scene. The struggle between the survivor and the accused is not soft pornography of seduction and submission, but a brutal fight for life: “He holds both her wrists in his left hand, with the back of his right he slaps her on her right cheek. She sags. He shoves her down on the desk with her back to the wood, clenches her ankles between his, straddles her thighs, leans over and rips open her blouse...He grasps her wrists in his left hand again, yanks her forward from the desk towards himself, swoops down on her, his mouth on hers and bites her on the lower lip drawing blood. While biting her lower lip, he pulls up her bra. Then he throws her against the desk, yanks up her saree and petticoat, and starts to pull down her panties. She is

menstruating. He withdraws his hand. She draws her legs in, kicks him in his midriff, makes to run. He grabs her from behind, knocks her to the floor, picks up the dog chain and warps it around her neck” (6). I see Virani’s decision of translating the brutality and violence in rape into graphic language rather than using a simple affirmative statement ‘He raped her’ as an attempt on her part to foreground violence in rape. In films, literature and popular belief it might have been represented for ages in soft pornographic language, as an act of conquering a helpless woman’s body and love, but women’s experience of sexual violence has different undertones which does not correspond to the male imagination of the same. The longish passage of Aruna’s struggle to fight off Sohanlal, and he overpowering her with brutal force is a symbolic rendering of the reality of sexual violence. Aruna survived the assault on her body, bore the trauma silently, but became a catalyst for a greater cause. As Virani writes the nurses in KEM hospital went on a strike demanding greater security and safety during working hours in the hospital premises, and nurses from other hospitals too joined their cause. And this was the first time in the history of independent India that nurses were on a strike. However, the bright picture apart, the silence of the hospital authority on the alleged rape of Aruna throws patriarchal values into question. It remains an open secret among the acquaintances, police and common public that Aruna was raped. Due to the limitations in the existing law, it was not considered rape but ‘unnatural offence’. Ironically, Sohanlal was accused of neither. The antiquated Law did not believe that the crime was serious enough to be called rape deserving hars her punishment; the society believed that keeping up a face of virginity and chastity was more important than convicting the accused. And thus, Aruna’s story, though known to everyone, never gets the status of truth because of the silence surrounding it. Virani discusses another important issue in the course of taking stock of the responses of nurses to Aruna’s rape. The senior nurses hold Aruna more or less responsible for her condition. They remain

sympathetic to Aruna and grieve for her; hence it’s not exactly victim blaming. But they believe that women have to be responsible for their words, actions and attitude. Matron Belimal voices this point of view: “My point is that women themselves have to be constantly careful, not just about their bodies but also their minds. This is how Indian women have always been, right down the centuries. Nowadays there is a lot of talk about equality between the two sexes...there is no such thing as equality. Not between men and women, not between classes of people. There are balances, disturb them and you invite trouble” (48-49). This observation strikes a chord with the prevailing blatant misogyny in our society. Interestingly, women are not only considered to be responsible for their actions but also for men’s. It is so because it is popularly assumed that there is always a woman behind a man’s success or failure. Thus, it is not surprising that the pattern of discourse among nurses reiterates the same thought process. Instead of holding Sohanlal guilty of his actions, the senior nurses question on the conduct of Aruna in her harsh dealings with Sohanlal, which they believe she should have avoided. Even other nurses, who remain consistently sympathetic to Aruna’s condition, believe that the tragic flow in Aruna’s character was her ‘mouth’. She was direct, cryptic and sharp in her dealings with others. She lacked the feminine qualities like being soft spoken, docile, and unambitious; hence, was deemed responsible for Sohanlal’s retaliation in the form of rape. Rape, as a criminal act, a social taboo, and a traumatic experience has legal, social and personal ramifications, often overlapping in nature. In Aruna’s Story, readers never get to know about Aruna’s response to her rape, as she is silenced completely in a comatose state. As the accused is never charged of rape, the legal understanding and responses to it is never part of the debate. The remaining category is the social implication of the act, which in Aruna’s Story is ample. Even when in this particular text, rape is not part of the trial, feminists have protested for long the existing misogyny in rape trials, where the victim’s conduct, her relationship with the accused, and even the class and caste of the victim are scrutinized. In a similar vein, in Aruna’s

Story, the social justice system in the form of responses of acquaintances as well as strangers seem to hold Aruna accountable for what happened to her. But a striking difference between the legal and social judgement of accused-victim relationship is that whereas intimacy is frowned upon and regarded undesirable, the social discourse in case of Aruna believe that Aruna’s harsh treatment of Sohanlal brought upon her the ‘misfortune’. Thus, both intimacy and aversion between accused and victim are assumed to be catalytic for the any act of sexual violence that appears as a rupture. Taslima Nasreen refers to this tendency in society not as victim blaming but ‘women blaming’. She reasons, a victim, whether male or female, is not held responsible for his/her gender rather her actions which are assumed to have triggered off a crime, whereas in cases like sexual violence, harassment or molestation, a woman who is abused is often held responsible despite what she does or does not do to shun the act or distance herself from the accused. Virani, in the first section of Aruna’s Story, in a flash back mode, time and again, brings in instances of Sohanlal’s revelation of his sexual desire for Aruna. During the police interrogation, which Virani quotes extensively, there are two sweepers who reveal Sohanlal’s eye for Aruna which he had confided to them. “Inder Gulamashi Bait Walmiki, sweeper: ‘A few months back the attendant in the dog lab, Laxman, went on leave. Sister Aruna Shanbaug told Sohanlal to do Laxman’s work. He resented it. She reported him. He told me he would take revenge by molesting her. I never took it seriously. Later when another altercation took place Sohanlal again repeated his threat of molesting her.” (34) Udayavir Channaram Walmiki, another sweeper recounts Sohanlal telling him that he would spend one month’s salary to sleep with staff nurse Aruna Shanbaug. From these self-revelations, we trace the existence of Sohanlal’s lustful interest in Aruna. Thus, it cannot be discounted that along with a motive of vengeance, Sohanlal’s sexual interest in Aruna was a factor behind her rape by Sohanlal. This gives rise to a controversial issue of whether desire or lust can be a factor behind sexual assault. Though in popular

belief, such a possibility is accepted, it is done so with an intention of justification of male antisocial behavior. However, feminist thought has discredited such a world view. In this particular text, the amalgamation of desire and violence throws numerous important questions into air. To what extent can we connect sexual desire with sexual violence? Is there an element of desire/ lust in sexual assault or are desire and violence exclusive categories? Is the discourse of desire constituent of certain amount of violence in the male psyche? How do we understand the notion of sadomasochism in this context? If it is absence of consent and not presence of violence which turns a sexual act rape, how do we understand violence in consensual sex? What is the role of pornography in propagating the view that women enjoy being subjected to violence? Women willingly subjecting themselves to violence in sex is a matter of male hegemony in women’s minds or women’s exercise of agency in their sexual behavior? Where do we locate Aruna’s experience among these mazes of consent and violence? In Aruna’s Story, ample space is given for discussion of intentions, socialization and societal mindset. Thus, the narrative provides not only an understanding of rape but also put forth a credible context for it. What emerges is not a set of characters polarized as ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but a society as a whole which is responsible for the emergence of such characters. Due to this strategy, her narrative achieves what Joanna Bourke hinted at in Rape.According to him, “Feminism should no longer theorize sexual violence ‘through an analysis of rape victims’ and their narratives, but that writers and academicians must turn the focus to men, the crisis of masculinity and the social factors that create rapists in the first place” (116). As part of the analysis, I have studied various responses to Aruna’s rape which reveals how societal attitude towards rape and rape survivors reiterates patriarchal mindset. Within the hospital premises, the knowledge of Aruna’s rape is ubiquitous: everyone knows the truth, but do not express, debate or publicize it publicly. It is pushed

under the carpet as if it is shameful for a woman to have been raped especially if she is engaged to get married to a doctor within the same premises of the hospital. Hence a case of rape and attempt to murder turns into physical assault and robbery. The dean Dr. Deshpande feels that mention of rape will create repercussions and it is in the best interests of the institution and staff that the issue be silenced from the beginning. Though staffs in the hospital discuss the rape among themselves, and it is a public knowledge, it does not get the status of truth. There is a significant difference between the discourse of Aruna’s rape among women and men. As mentioned earlier, the senior lady staffs believe that Aruna landed herself in trouble because she did not heed to the direction given by chief matron to uses the changing room for changing into her uniform. She was instead using the dog lab. There is also a hint at Aruna’s exercise of authority on staffs subordinate to her. Aruna’s sharp tongue and sincerity in duty brought her the downfall. Dr. Sundeep who is engaged to marry Aruna after being informed of attack on Aruna, once asks the Dean if Aruna was raped. He comes across as an atypical husband/boyfriend indeed in raising no questions, showing no anger for what happened to her to the extent of being indifferent. He shares close proximity with Aruna for a long time before getting married to a woman of family’s selection, and all this while he appears to be worried only about Aruna’s medical chances of recuperation. Other male characters, in a similar vein, do not ever discuss Aruna’s rape as an issue; or at least no such instance surfaces in the text. Whereas men seem to either ignore the issue or render it in the language of Sohanlal’s immoral lust and misconduct, women seem to foreground Aruna’s conduct and behavior behind her rape. Virani, as the writer, maintains a safe distance from both the perspectives when she recounts the dialogue between staffs; thus, what emerges is a nuanced debate. The second section of Aruna’s Story takes a leap into Aruna’s native place, the unknown Haldipur, a small village in Karnataka.

Aruna’s ambitious spirit, if not necessarily rebellious, surfaces here when decides to disentangle herself from the traditional family business of Udipi chain of South-Indian food. Her mother, a dutiful and hardworking wife finds her daughter’s temperament that of a stranger’s: “Sitabai was now exhausted. Why did Aruna question everything? Why couldn’t she just be accepting the way all women were” (Virani 91)? She decides to become a nurse against her family’s wish or rather beyond their comprehension as to why a fair and good looking girl like her should not look forward getting married and start a family rather than going to Bombay to start working as a nurse. The rest of the chapter builds the profile of Aruna, the ambitious, sincere, confident nurse who strives to excel in her field and does also. Coming from a rural lower class family, she dreams big and different from the rest of her company and is confident that one day she will be known in her field (108). Women who were close to Aruna such as Prema Pai and Nirmala also believed that her ‘muh futt’ ways would one day get her into trouble. Aruna did not fit in available frameworks for a traditionally ‘good’ woman. She claimed that she believed in marriage on the basis of equal partnership, and did not eulogize motherhood. She had applied for a course in nursing in England, and wanted to combine both career and family at a time. These aspirations were not taken kindly by even her well-wishers because these were not how women projected themselves in the era Aruna lived. Virani dedicates a significant portion of her book on Aruna’s life in KEM hospital. By doing so, she not only happens to build Aruna’s character, but also creates her identity as an efficient confident nurse, a hardworking woman with lofty aspirations. While constructing a rape narrative, the writer usually gives into a tendency of making victimization the sole identity of a rape survivor. Even the law on rape in IPC requires that the name of a rape victim/survivor should never be publicized. This law is double-bind. Though on the one hand it has the objective of protecting the identity of the concerned women, by doing so, it also turns the experience of sexual violence from an incident in her life to what defines that woman for the remaining life: a rape

survivor. Law which demands the anonymity of a rape survivor does it with the intent of protecting the identity and ‘honor’ of the woman because of the stigma attached to sexual violence. The effect of it is double-bind. It re-inscribes the concept of honour to a woman’s body so that the body does not remain her own but turns out to be a symbol of honour of a community and family. In Aruna’s Story, Virani by providing a detailed portrayal of Aruna as an individual and not just a rape survivor in a vegetative state breaks the cultural as well as legal connotations of writing about rape. Its effect is manifold. Aruna emerges as a flesh and blood human being, as ordinary as us with dreams and aspirations. Virani does not stop there. She further moves to humanizing the alleged psychopath rapist also. Aberration in the psychosexual development of men was typically viewed as the ‘cause’ of their sexually criminal tendencies by traditional psychoanalysts. A typical sex offender was supposed to be fearful, inadequate, sensitive, shy, impulsive, irresponsible, sexmaniac, who lacked social skills, had a self-concept confused in psychosexual areas of identification, and unable to evaluate the consequences of his own behaviour, or in the most redundant hypothesis, who had a troubling and torturous relationship with his mother or any other older woman in childhood. A study on convicted rapists reveal that many of them live normal lives, do decent job, and have friends (Scully 1990). Calling them mentally unstable psychopaths is equivalent to creating a nonexistent ideology without any truth value. Moreover, these theories ignore the role of society in nurturing aggressive masculinities and passive femininities, and setting them as norm.By bringing desire, lust, revenge and power equations into the character of Sohanlal, she breaks the stereotypical image of rapist as a psychotic. She contextualizes the motives, characters and their responses to an act of sexual violence as ‘common’ people do in their day to day life. Virani’s text was of immense interest to me because it was a ‘slice of reality’ text. Though there can be no universal explanation for why

a man commits rape, Virani gives enough space to studying the class, caste and family background of Sohanlal without resorting into justification or rationalization. There is an element of caste based stigma in the text, but Virani observes this reality, and does not go further to theorize upon it. Class, caste might be other forms of marginalization, but so is gender. In this text, Sohanlal is from lower caste and working class. But Aruna also had her part of struggle to become a nurse. There is no clear elucidation of a power relationship between Aruna and Sohanlal based on their class difference and hierarchy in profession. Virani hints at the ‘normalized’ usual practice of nurses asking people in lower ranks such as sweepers to do errands, but others except Sohanlal do not resist it openly. The entire context that Virani creates leading to Aruna’s rape is a fatal combination of power, lust and revenge. And because of this unusual mixture, the motive behind the crime seems very credible. Virani provides a credible and humanizing intention to the crime of rape in Aruna’s Story. Her attempt to give voice to Aruna Shanbag’s life gives a chunk of reality of Indian society: how men and women discuss rape, how it changes a woman’s life invariably even if not as cruelly as Aruna’s and finally, how little does a man pays for the atrocity he commits. Rape narratives, at both literary and non-literary planes, break the taboo, silence and, in certain cases, stereotypes, surrounding rape. Whereas non-literary texts engage with the issue at an informative, educational and academic level, literary texts have an unique way of discussing the ‘personal’ and ‘social’ aspects of rape. Aruna’s Story is a perfect amalgamation of ‘fictional’ and ‘factual’, ‘truth’ and ‘imagination’. It combines aspects of different genres and emerges as a completely new mode of narrativizing sexual violence. It is not a biography in the traditional sense, nor is it a fictional text. It is not a wholly journalistic document also for it brings in facets of imagination while re-creating the childhood of Aruna lying traumatized on the hospital bed. Traditionally, the gap between ‘literary’ and ‘non-

literary’ has been considered quintessential and irreconcilable. I have employed both perspectives to forge a more constructive view of sexual violence. For this purpose, I argue that the notions of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ associated with the literary and non-literary discourse on rape are insubstantial. I have demonstrated how Law, which is held as an objective discourse on crime and punishment, operates in a highly misogynist way in its dictum on sexual violence. The patriarchal notions of ‘honour’, ‘chastity’, and ‘virginity’ occupy the stronghold around which rape laws are formed and judgements pronounced. Aruna’s Story is a novel attempt at narrativizing sexual violence against women. It not only experiments and combines borderlines of different genres, but also breaks various stereotypes attached to perpetrator and survivors of sexual violence. Virani exploits both romanticized and graphic language to create a binary in order to portray the brutality behind rape. Her characterization touches a new high in its refrain from any form of stereotyping. The second part of the text is more devoted to Aruna’s past life and progress in the condition of her health. It succeeds in highlighting the predicament of a woman who loses her voice, and along with, her right to decide the course of her life. And ironically, side by side, Sohanlal lives on, never ever convicted of rape.

Works Cited Bourke, Joanna. Rape: A history from 1860 to the Present. London: Virago, 2007. Gunne Sorcha and Thompson Zoe Brigley. Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives. New York: Routledge, 2011. Karlekar, Malavika. “Ten Minutes to Hell.” Outlook (July 6 1998). Scully, Diana. Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Virdi, Jyotika. ‘Reverence, Rape - and then Revenge: Popular Hindi Cinema’s “women’s films.” Annette Burfoot and Susan Lord (eds) Killing Women: the Visual Culture of Gender and Violence, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2006. Virani, Pinki. Aruna’s Story. New Delhi: Viking, 1998.

8 The Politics of Representation: Revisiting Dalit feminism in the context of Dalit women autobiographies of Maharashtra — Aparna Lanjewar Bose The literature produced from the inspiration of Dr. B.R Ambedkar whose emacipatory struggle gave self respect and dignified life to countless millions is termed as Dalit Sahitya or Ambedkari Sahitya. This literature is different from other literatures and has its own peculiarities. In Marathi Dalit Sahitya, a narrative is a rich genre and more than 60 narratives have been published. Similarly Dalit narratives have also been written in Hindi Punjabi, Kanadda, Gujrathi, Bangla and English. Besides one also finds Dalit autobiographies/narratives published in almost every Indian language. Through them their position of revolt and protest is clear. Not just so even the language is revolutionary. The genre is explored to present their alienation, marginalization and restlessness. By presenting individual pathos pain and sorrow they present the collective pathos of their community and seem to be in constant quest of the self.

Dr. B.R.Ambedkar who is the inspiration of Dalit literature always felt that he should express the pain and suffering of his life through autobiography but he never found time to do so. To present the complete picture of Dalit life and experience, autobiography becomes an important genre. And this is proven by the reading of recent Dalit autobiographies which reveal the multiplicity of human panoramic life and living, surfacing the pain, agony, pathos and the humanness forcibly torn of the dalits. And this does not remain only at there level but moves to greater social and universal levels. The manner in which the despised, subjugated and oppressed humans in these autobiographies compel us to introspect in the same way or perhaps even greater the pathos, pain and sorrow of women’s life make us sit and think. The different directions acquired by her life become heartrending. Barring a few exceptions the autobiographies of Dalit men have only their own struggle to project. A Dalit woman though a human like him is denied her humanness by even Dalit men. Similarly, the presentation of women in these autobiographies doesn’t seem justified. Lack of self introspection, keeping a particular point of view about oneself permanent, Instead of presenting how we suffered till date, how the unjust social system made us suffer, how we evolved, grew and became intellectuals and How the same social system then applauded us, they talk mostly of how social system rejected us, how we suffered hunger, poverty and progressed etc beyond this the experiences we shared with others like us, or in an impersonal and objective manner looking at ones life is exactly what is strangely lacking in some with a few exceptions, such honest efforts have not been done. In some male autobiographies deliberate attempt is made to bring in flashiness, entertainment to which few Dalit women writers also appear lured. Neither do they intellectually move beyond the traditional framework of husband, home, hearth, children, parents, labor, familial discord, poverty etc. The manner in which Dalit male autobiographies don’t break the socio-cultural frame of their time in the same way the autobiographies by few Dalit women lingers within a

particular frame. Though there is enough scope in these male autobiographies to contextualize the socio-cultural struggle of people around them they consciously seem to avoid this and instead talk a lot only about themselves.But be it Jamuna of Daya pawar’s Balut or Kusum of Sharan Kumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi all these women characters are lost in the process of the writers’ history and growth. In coloring the women, they impede the credulous nature of the writers’ experiences and this aspect has been ignored by the male narratives. At times mothers, at times sisters or grandmothers are placed on pedestal and glorified but on the whole women have not been rendered justice in their works.How we lived, grew, evolved, dragged cattle, ate dead animal flesh, or leftovers and still became liberated and educated up to here it is fine but bringing in explicit sexuality and coloring it boldly makes one wonder whether all the hue and cry primarily was for the consumption of the elite society’s sexual interest quotient. Doesn’t Ambedkar ideology based on Buddha Dhamma, by which they swear, give any inspiration to them? Besides helplessness is there no self respect? Why doesn’t the positive progressive transformation of human appear? Narrating stories of past how the future can be built is what they say but what ought to be done in the present is not given a solution to. These are some of the limitations which could possibly be the limitations of this genre. Those autobiographies that have won accolades and awards as Dalit autobiographies have neither the thought nor ideology of the Buddha or Ambedkar which is the base of these writings. Only the pathos and poverty of their respective castes is presented. They do not present the differentness of dalit literature and the consciousness of protest central to this difference is not adequate. Dalit women autobiographies, surprisingly appear to have given enough justice to men whether it’s Shantabai Kamble’s ‘majya jalmachi chitarkatha’ (the kaleidoscopic story of my life, 1988), Babytai kamble’s ‘jeene Aamuche’ (our lives, 1986), Mukta sarvagod’s

‘miteleli kawade’ (closed doors, 1983), Kumud pawade’s ‘Antaphot’ (thoughtful outburst, 1981) shantabai Dani’s ‘ratdin Aamha’ (for us these night and days, 1990) or urmilla pawar’s ‘Aaidan’ (the weave of bamboo, 2003). Some of these women characters/ narrators speak of their parents’ grandparents’ history how they as women evolved, educated, loved and married but what role they played in the struggle for transformation is not very explicit. At times they tread cautiously on sensitive issues, appear secretive about few things and at times appear to have helplessly compromised with their condition. Have the Dalit women too like their male counterparts failed to emanate the Ambedkar-Buddhist ideology by which they swear? Are they less competent to give a direction to the Dalit community at large? Are they unqualified to give inspiration to the Dalit community? These questions are best left unanswered. Nevertheless One can only hope that they have more radical thoughts of transformation and espousal of the ideology which forms its base. In modern times, it is expected that the literature produced by women would discuss women issues, problems and social treatment meted out to them, in short what is expected is a literature which keeps her experience at the centre. Therefore there is always the possibility of seeing an unsuspecting quality, clarity and fluidity in women autobiographies as through its medium she gives expression to her peculiar experiences as a woman.The objective self analysis done through literature finds expression in some autobiographies. It presents an honest attempt to search the right and wrong the suffocating and stifling aspects of ones living. And while this quest is on as to why Dalit life is Dalit, a Dalit women writer doesn’t just hold society or patriarchy as primarily responsible, but reflects on how far and to what extent a Dalit woman herself can also be responsible for her state. This is explicitly explored by her in the genre of autobiography. The quest of self undertaken by a Dalit woman is never singular but has twin dimensions. First, the quest that we as women, had to suffer

immensely due to social disparities and second, in the name of society and culture, the exploitation we have faced or are facing as women. And precisely in this context her literary creation is done. It may be close to feminist discourses and yet it is different from feminist oriented literatures. The roots of Dalit feminist literary tradition can be found in women emacipatory thought of Gautam Buddha. The Therigatha ought to be applauded as the first feminist text of the world. And also as the first autobiographical rendering in poetic form. Dr. Lata Chetre in her book says the subject of Theri is women’s sorrow, its reasons and joy of self realization. They sought a rational re-examination of the core values of Hindu metaphysics and heralded an Indian enlightenment. The narratives written by Dalit women fall in 2 categories autobiographies or narratives/memoirs. Aarti Kusre Kulkarni in this context says that in an autobiography the narrator/writers life is presented in an expanded form having chronological periodisation. In contrast to this the self narratives or memoirs are concise where the pain and suffering underwent by both self and communities are the highlights besides experiences. (Dalit Swakathane) The historical contexts that are provided by these narratives center them in the debates and problems of the period. It would be interesting to note what is the dichotomy underscored in presenting the Dalit women’s relationship with the upper caste women? What do the brahminical dominated women movements sit to gain from assisting and endorsing the Dalit women’s saga of suffering? These narratives give voice to the gendered constraints, compulsions and limitations imposed by both class and caste. Does Literacy set them apart from most of their Dalit female counterparts? The analysis of these texts is to implicitly endorse the idea of Dalit aesthetics in which the idea that Dalit cultural production ought to be collective, committed and committing, that it ought to reflect issues confronting the Dalit community and ought to be grounded in social engagement, And moreover should possess the capability to spur the

audience/reader to greater enlightenment and action, are primary. Dalit women narratives came into public circulation 2 and half decades back and while most of them belong to the larger universe of Dalit, movement, and their politics differs by regions, communities and ideological positions, these narratives present the Dalit women’s interpretation of society. Some are extremely and unjustly biased towards their own Dalit men and are part of the representation politics of the brahminical women’s agenda who represent that as true Dalit feminism. My next discussion would be on this particular strategizing of brahminical feminist groups

II Infact Nothing could be more shameful than the fact that the whole Dalit women emancipatory agenda should get subordinated to the mainstream upper class brahminical women groups calling themselves “feminists” just because one or two so-called Dalit women pander to their whims by castrating their own Dalit men for petty purposeful visibility and write to please the taste buds of these feminists by projecting a whole chunk of Dalit humanity as the oppressor ,which not just negates the contribution of Dalit men in the process of Dalit women’s emancipation but defeats the whole purpose of the Emancipatory agenda of the Ambedkar movement. The closest affiliation that this Brahminical feminism has is towards Marxism and not Phule or Ambedkar not to forget that one was a strong votary for women’s education and the other for uniform civil rights. While the first generation of Dalit women autobiographers have a stronghold or impact of Ambedkar and his ideology on their psyche; the second generations have an impact of upper class/caste women’s groups and those one or two Dalit women writers being sashayed by the them are women like Urmilla Pawar and Pradynya Lokhande who have got systematically conditioned by these mainstream Brahminical feminists groups to pose and write in a certain way so as to ensure a berth

amongst the feminists and which they do so at the extent of compromising with the certain moral values those were nurtured by Dalit literature and movement in general. Therefore in their writings, there is no Dalit consciousness, no Ambedkarite thought propounded; ridiculously there is neither a proper Marx nor a Phule ideology emanating out. Pawar’s book “Aaidan” ( ‘A weave of bamboo’) especially is loose and dangling, unstructured and best fits the category of narrative fiction rather than an autobiography proper. Firstly, also because there is no fidelity to truth and the real and Secondly, it is shorn of Ambedkarwaad. For a certain group of writings especially autobiographies to be marked as Dalit autobiographies the writings should be Ambedkar centric or should entail the Ambedkar ideology in such a way that it should be able to trace the growth, evolvement and development of the writer’s thought with it. It should not be personal but communal in nature and socially oriented where the society or the community is placed at the centre and the writer writes with total social consciousness and commitment. but if the writings have no community involved and the writer writes without social commitment and without any connection with the society, that she claims she belongs to then, it is dishonesty; firstly, dishonesty with who you are secondly, to where you belong to and thirdly, what shaped you. And if this be so the writing is much a piece written for consumption for salability in the market. Pawar’s indulgence of being a self proclaimed feminist is alright but she is certainly not a Dalit feminist. Her brand of feminism is not Dalit feminism but chauvinism. Because unless there is an addressal and redressal to social cultural political exploitations, unless there is tenacity and persistence to fight humiliation, Unless there is an urge and anger to uphold one’s self respect and dignity at all levels rather than mute subservience and subordination, unless there is that intrinsic flowering of Dalitness and the consciousness of that Dalitism within and unless the world view of the writer becomes one with the Buddhist

philosophy and ideology envisaged by Ambedkar, it cannot stand the test of being called a Dalit creation and above all as a Dalit woman unless the delineation of diverse aspects of Dalit women’s subjugation and Dalit womanhood are rendered explicitly and unless there is strong potential voice of Dalit women’s consciousness bursting forth like a volcano, aiming to give a new direction to the entire Dalit community and movement as a whole, the test is not over still. She may be quite satisfied with her work as a projection of truth she perceives but unfortunately that’s not the complete truth. There are gaps and holes whenever she assumes a confessional tone. There is no authoritativeness, no matter-of-factness, only probabilities. And this can be guessed by even an average reader of her text. As far as the struggle of her mother is concerned till there the narrative tows the line well, but post marriage saga degenerates and deteriorates as a reality. The graphic description of her first night with her husband and her assumption of his chauvinism cements her own indigenous and underrated understanding of the human mind especially of the male psyche and her gendered determination to be in the opposite side because her assumptions have now become her convictions, are really ill-placed. The husband who may or may not have commented on her virginity on what she assumes and imagines he could/or may have commented, and not to forget they were two anxious love birds nestling together for the first time post marriage away from the prying eyes of elders, or then was it just Pawar’s mind at play for an imagined husband-oppressor -category. He was also her lover in real life atleast till the day they became man and wife so how then does the equation change overnight with marriage? It clearly appears that Pawar is romanticizing the idea of how a Dalit manhusband-oppressor could most likely be on the first night. It’s seems like an imagined real rather than a factual/actual real. She is cunning and deceitful enough to trap a living human being into the imagined vortex of moral/immoral issues, and present herself as a victim. Interestingly, her narrative comes out after the death of the same husband/oppressor whom she has projected as her enemy impeding her

every move. Even before she found enemies elsewhere in the society she finds one in her house (lodge) and that too on the first night after her marriage to her lover/husband. It is like giving a clean chit to Brahminical patriarchies and hierarchies from where stems the real problem, the real internalization process of superiority and subordination getting ingrained in the Dalit man’s psyche, that centuries of exploitation and oppression have left that indelible scar on his mental make that he gets reminded of his impotency when his sisters, mothers and daughters are raped repeatedly while their own women are placed on the highest pedestal as demigoddess meant to be worshipped by the Dalit men from a distance. So the only place where he is most likely expected to assert his manliness is his home and wife. But Pawar does not feel the need here to address to all these psychological issues within the Dalit community as a whole. Tying up a living hu/man, craving and throbbing with desires of sexual fulfillment, on the first night, into the realm of imagined morals of what should and should not have been is not just unreal/surreal but disgusting and clearly she has her own preconceived notions and predetermined ideas of husband/oppressor category whether based on hearsay or imagination as the case may be. This leads one to conclude if this is the real imagined or imagined real and whether Pawar knows the essential difference between the two. The upper class Brahminical feminist mind set is to highlight and present the Dalit patriarchy in the most pejorative manner. To view the Dalit man as a rapist as a wild savage/beast who has not only been constantly oppressing and posing a threat to the chastity and wellbeing of the Savarna Brahmin women (who not surprisingly find him more dangerous than their own men) but also his own women. So he becomes the primordial enemy number one of entire womenfolk in that sense, who has to be dreaded and stayed away from and at best shunned by the entire womenfolk. Does this somewhere reduce the historical burden and guilt of the upper caste man as the oppressor? Projecting and lauding the Dalit man’s presentation thus by a Dalit women like Pawar enables the mainstream Brahminical groups to

satisfy their native grudge against the Dalit man and to further dilute the Dalit agenda of active cooperation of both Dalit men and women for the cause of their emancipation. Brahminisim is an attitude- a state of mindset, an extreme notion of superiority possessed. Its a psychological ailment that has not been exorcised by some posing as feminists. It is to be understood that Dalit patriarchy was not born in isolation it stemmed out of Brahminical patriarchies/hierarchies but by showing only the perverse side of the former attempts are made to divert the attention from Brahminism and Brahminical partriachies just to prove that there is something more perverse and criminal called the Dalit patriarchy. Therefore Only those aspects are highlighted in attempts to translating such texts is that which ensures their own interests are not harmed. Secondly, attempts which are being made to project non Dalit writers as leading voices/or only voices for making significant and landmark contribution in the area of theorizing on Dalit feminism, further exposes the bias involved that to have voice and visibility a Dalit women cannot do without the savarna non-dalit/brahmin women. In a way also gravely defeating the very purpose of why a need for alternative feminism arose amongst some leading Dalit women writers of Maharashtra who stood up for radical change and wanted to carry the flag of their emancipation in their own hands, and who also endorsed that no one stands a better chance to speak about them but they themselves who live and experience violations at every step and walk of life. In other words, such projections and politics of representations indulged in by mainstream brahminical feminism mitigates the contribution of several of those Dalit women writers published in Marathi who never compromised on Dalit values and aesthetics but who relentlessly spoke and wrote religiously about Dalit women emancipation, the impact of Phule Ambedkar ideology on their growth and development as women writers, the importance of the Dalit men in their fight for justice, the necessity of not isolating him under an

“exploiter category” and the need to dissociate from mainstream upper class/caste feminism passing away as liberal intellectuals. Therefore, such strong Dalit women voices are deliberately shunned in bigger debates and platforms that attempt to articulate Dalit feminism and systematically sidelined by showcasing only that which is convenient for their purpose. Clamping down individualistic Dalit voices and bringing to the forefront women writers who may be Dalit by birth but bereft of Dalit sensibilities seems fashionable these days. Women like Pawar are soft targets and are exhibited on all forums for performing the greatest uphill task of presenting a Dalit man who best fits the description of these so-called upper class/caste feminists birthing Brahminism, in new way and who are not only part and parcel of the Brahminical patriarchy and hierarchies but also upholders of the same values that they once broke from to assert and carry the mantle of their liberation. The question is why such depravity and desperation to the extent of trading one’s Dalitism and consciousness of Dalitism just to be labeled as a feminist? Whether or not the stuff is of any literary consequence is other thing. Interestingly, Pawar’s so called autobiography lacks the stylistic and intrinsic dignity of being called a Dalit autobiography. It lacks a world view and even if she had any poetic vision it’s grossly perverse, inappropriate and corrupted. There is only reflection no action. Reflection on discrimination, caste, labor of men who were cruel, foul, suspecting inhuman, incidents of women to women oppression, the change conversion to Buddhism brought etc. all in a reported manner but she is never at the centre of activity. The criminalization of language, the ineptness of the narrative style and technique and the grotesque almost repulsive word delineation would not want anyone craving for more. To site an instance from her book the description of the word “Srikhand” which is a sweet dessert/ pudding is made thus “ekhadya chighadlelya jakhmatun pandhra piwda pu nighawa tasa srikhand nawacha padhartha” (the white yellow pus oozing out of a teased injury is Srikand)

Then the presentation of Urmilla having found a suitable match for her daughter from the dalit community who comes to the wedding venue with his guests and then returning this same groom and the guests from inside the wedding Pandal because her daughter had an affair with a man from UP. And then organizing the later wedding inviting her husband’s wrath, does not appeal to any sensible mind because if the writer is so conscientious about what’s right and wrong should have been equally conscientious also for the Dalit groom/ boy who paid a price for no fault of his. Pictures of humiliation abound especially those of her childhood but there is hardly any resistance on her part. The only resistance that comes in is from the other characters more importantly her mother. The struggles of those growing up as an adult are not at all presented and those which are there depict the struggle within the family fold and there is nothing exceptional about these. Also what she couldn’t achieve academically despite having conducive situations and encouragements to do so, writer quite inaptly renders her own justifications but doesn’t seem to have the boldness to speak of her inadequacies and shortcomings. She rather with subtlety garbs it as circumstantial necessity for not doing so Well to the question of whether it’s a representative Dalit woman’s life? The answer is Aaidaan does not even represent the reality of Dalit women in Konkan region to where she belongs save Dalit women elsewhere. Dr. Gangadhar Pantawane a noted writer claims that the Mumbai based writers like Urmilla Pawar and Pradhynya Lokhande keep the reader and selectivity in mind and for popularity they indulge in extremities of the sorts, making their writings spicier and juicier because a certain kind of reader is craving for it. Whether these writers have those quintessential experiences of their Dalitness and if so to what quantum? To what extent they experience their Dalitness whether that old experience of being a Dalit remains with them any longer or has become part of memory? Are some questions best left unanswered but what is certain is their brahmanisation has taken place.

In sharp contrast to these then are the autobiographies of Shantabai Kamble, Baby tai Kamble and Shantabai Dani. They are absolute truthful portrayals of themselves, their society and community in which they grew up, their individual contribution in the Dalit emancipation process and their development both as a Dalit and women who look back with remarkable objectivity to those aspects of their life that proved a corrective for an entire tribe. They never wrote for publicity or for social fashion but writing for them was a commitment. They never craved for publicity. They didn’t strike a certain pose nor ended proselytizing. Self eulogy had no place and arbitrary detailing was best avoided by them. Starting with Shantabai Kamble’s “Majya Jalmachi chitarkattha” (the kaleidoscopic story of my life) is an exceptionally heartrending presentation of the first Dalit woman teacher in Sholapur district who became an education officer. Here’s a woman who not just uplifts herself but sets out to good for herself so she could do good for others, who has the potential to uplift several others in the society. Despite numerous odds has a penchant for learning at a time when not many girls were enrolled in schools. Her tenacity to study hard, to earn herself the Government scholarship of Rupees three, to buy ink, paper and notebooks and make it to the 7th standard, Her feeling of anxiety when in the absence of money she has to stop abruptly, of missing school, the pain of seeing other boys go and despite all the odds the father’s persistence to send her to school, her mother’s untimely death and her brother offering to make bhakris so that she could attend classes. And finally the father brimming with pride and tears on seeing his daughter being the first Mahar*(dominant dalit caste) girl in Sangli district of Maharashtra to have cleared the 7th standard and becoming a teacher shows that, Howsoever grim and dark circumstances may be but the persistence to gain knowledge and education and thereby to do good for the community can fight those very circumstances. She has with fidelity, presented incidents like graphic images, of the paternal uncle of her husband who lived alone because “he could

not keep even one of the two wives”, of her stormy marriage to Kamble Master*(school teacher), his difficulties in making both ends meet, who was coaxed by his maternals to take a widowed cousin as a wife on the promise of fulfilling all his material demands and Shantabai’s conscious confrontation with Kamble master and demanding a customary breaking of marriage in front of members of the caste panchayat and going back to her father, later joining her duties, then the anxious prying neighbor advising her father the problem she would face living alone and a fearless father not giving a damn to people and saying defiantly “if the girl stays by herself well and good or else let her go wherever she wants we are not Brahmans you know” This shows reversal of gender roles and the maturity and greatness of purpose of how ethically strong and intellectually progressive Dalit community on the whole was. And later the same neighbor bringing a proposal from a widowed school teacher who follows Shantabai proposing marriage and her stoic defense of her own dignity by drawing a chappal and threatening him with dire consequences reflects on how women like her are not ready for compromises with their dignity. Images of the loss of child at child birth and the mothers determination to see her unborn children living and her conviction to make them survive at all costs keeping up to her personal, social and professional obligations. Incident about her 7 year old daughter and the values she inculcates as a mother and the daughter who in turn disallows a friend to touch the vessel in her house as a retaliation to what the latter did in her own house. Incidents like fighting against discriminatory practices of a woman from Kasar caste, or loaning money to her husband to build a house and returning to her husband after the 2nd one dies for want of stable life for her children or The loss felt by her after her father’s death, of all the ties of love and care having been broken and her sense of satisfaction that atleast she could give him food, clothes and cash after joining services; the monetary help she rendered to save her brother and her commitment to her family post marriage shows that despite the ebb and flow of life she retained its tenor uncompromisingly and the radical change she

brings within her entire household is exemplary. The adult education classes started by the Kamble couple for men and women and becoming role models for the Dalit community and the transition of a Dalit headmistress to become an education extension officer, evaluating several schools are rendered reassuringly. The resistance of Shantabai to everyday practices of untouchablity, Her fascination and yearning to listen to Ambedkar’s speeches, of taking the evening train to Sholapur to reach at 5 in the morning just to hear him say “educate your children, do not eat flesh of dead animals do not drag dead animals” and wanting to listen forever, Her anger against the traitors of the movement who embezzled funds of Ambedkar’s journal “muknayak” and so became his opponent, the frustration felt by Ambedkar at times etc. Further her liking for social service after the historical reconversion and the manner in which her village along with 32 other villages volunteer to celebrate this event is touching and graphic enough to make one relive the times. The aim deeply carved in her heart since childhood was that there is no progress without education and later instilling the same spark in her children Arun Kamble noted writer and Dalit panther activist, Chandrakant Kamble the noted artist and daughter Mangal Kamble a lecturer, despite her shortcomings in Shantabai one sees a woman ready to face any difficulty, who develops and in turn develops her children, and the society she belongs to. In Mitleli Kawade (closed doors, 1983) Mukta Sarvagod, presents the picture of a social worker who intends to emancipate her Dalit community. Without exhibiting her personal life she presents a social picture. This narrative is more of a personal memoir instead of an autobiography. Mukta endures the brunts of untouchablity, and aspires to gain literacy. Later when she comes to Pune for higher education she experiences casteism on a lesser scale. Thus quite truthfully she presents her story of a social worker who has pledged herself to the wellbeing of her people while at the same time renders the upper class, and caste attitudes in the society, the indifference shown by social system towards Dalit women education and

emancipation, the penury, poverty and slavish mentality of people within and without all find expression in an extremely lucid Mahar dialect and forefronts the restless urge of a social worker. She also candidly acknowledges the good treatment received from few people she encountered and the social change that has come about in Dalit life. Babytai kamble’s ‘jine aamuche’ (our lives) Speaks little about herself and presents a picture of the Mahars (a prominent dalit caste) of western Maharashtra. The narratorial style followed by Mukta sarvagod appears to be adopted here. She believes the Mahars to be original inhabitants of the land and feels memories of humiliation and enslaved lives need to be taken recourse to time and again for the future generation to know the ordeals faced by the previous generations. She speaks of the lowly conditions which were imposed and not out of choice and Ambedkar’s contribution in transforming that lowly life, The Hindu code bill and the rights it entailed for the womenfolk, his awe inspiring words of wisdom that ushered change in her life and gave her the courage to retaliate in face of discriminatory practices.etc She chides those who have forgotten Ambedkar’s principles and appeals the next generation of educated Dalits to be grounded to reality. she has rendered uninhibited and with a good sense of humor the myths, superstitions, traditions, the pernicious practices of Hinduism and its hold on the Dalit mind set, the influence of her father on her who believed good deeds were true earnings in life. Quite naturally she points out that “if one man could achieve so much with illiterate people like us why can’t a crore of us bring in change? One of the most noteworthy autobiographical contribution is of late Shantabai Dani her text titled Ratradin Amha(for us these nights and days,1990) renders the readers a historical ride from 1930’s onwards. Her journey from being social and political activist of the scheduled caste federation, with Dadasaheb Gaikwad who considered the right hand man of Ambedkar, to being the governor’s nominee to

the Maharashtra state legislative council, her book weaves her firm conviction that women who earn can live with self-respect, her observation in 1975 that international women’s year did not give thought to the backward class women but mainly the elite middle class participating everywhere. Her role in unification of different factions of the RPI Dalit panther and the Dalit Mukti Sena and how she did all the community projects with the help of men around her and at times had to travel on bicycles with men but none indulged in character assassination or mud-slinging shows the active cooperation of both dalit men and women. While recalling how frustrated their leader was with the Hindu religion towards the end of his life and the reasons that prompted him to accept Buddhism, she highlights one important feature of the Dalit movement that was no one was paid to come to Nagpur for conversion nor any arrangements for food made for the people, and yet the lowest of the low participated and became part of Ambedkar’s Diksha. The emotional farewell that the masses gave on his death is quite touchingly rendered. She speaks of injustices on Dalits Post-Ambedkar, the under representation of Dalit women, the deliberate attempts to spark off riots by the fundamentalists Hindus during the re-naming of Marathwada university as Babasaheb Ambedkar University, her ultimate commitment to development of educational institutions.etc All bring to the forefront the notable contribution of Dalit women to the Dalit emancipatory movement despite constraints of caste and gender.

III Women as the “other” constitute one of the building blocks of patriarchy. Dalit as the “other” constitutes one of the building blocks of castiest ideology. These Dalit women narratives argue that casteism and gender has attempted to destroy what they attempted to retain as culture. The challenge to create an authentic self may be faced by feminists but for the Dalit women it was even greater, having to

contend with multiple forms of marginalization- sexism, classism, casteism, and women to women subjugation. These texts suggest new ways of envisioning literary studies, not just as a repository of culture but also as a pedagogical resource in the work of transforming culture. Therefore the problem with theory also at times is its relentless and hegemonic representation of the material world and its inflexibility, its reference to itself and its marginalization of other kinds of experience both within and without its tightly drawn confines. There is always an analogy between the social and the psychological conditions of centuries old casteism and the conditions of Dalit post 1960’s and one needs to return to this analogy time and again in order to remind the readers that victimizations of Dalits in general and Dalit women in particular is the most consistent expression of Dalits troubled past as they still continue to be victimized by colonial and pervert caste Hindu mind sets and by the systematically programmed casteism of the exploitative systems in our country. Secondly, Dalit patriarchy becomes another manifestation of casteism-but definetly not the only most pernicious one as represented by Urmilla Pawar. The question then is Do the majority of poor Dalit women fit into the analysis of the texts? Does it stand as a testimony of the lives lived and experienced by all Dalit women in general? As vexing as these questions may appear the answer is, they are representative texts, and individual experiences are bound to be different but in that the revelation of what most of the Dalit women experience is the focal point. Dalit men are not absent from the discussion which suggests, the centrality of their fundamental presence in the lives of Dalit women and the necessity of committing to an even more broader emancipatory ideology that doesn’t exclude their men but believes that any struggle for justice and emancipation is not possible without the active cooperation of the male members of their community. Even though their maleness at times privileged them and allowed a comparatively greater access to power and public domain than their women. Therefore, all these texts quite possibly also analyze what it meant to be a Dalit female writer or what it means to be dependent on the

generosity of endorsement from the Brahmin upper class/caste women who simultaneously also formed the privileged oppressor. These narratives do not follow the mainstream Marathi male / female autobiographical tradition or the defining characteristic of the Dalit male narrative tradition. Some of them when written were not even accepted by the male brahminical critics and elites as part of an authentic literary tradition. And yet the fact remains that they represented the Dalit women’s ability to speak and write which empowered Dalit women under an oppressive system that forever wanted them to remain voiceless and uneducated. Dalit Women autobiography has to be read as a strategic necessity at a particular time rather than an end in itself. But as historical source these narratives document life from an invaluable perspective of firsthand experience and highlight the disparity of what ought to be and what is. From literary standpoint they form one of the most extensive and informative traditions designed to enlighten the elitist reader about the realities faced by them and the humanity of the Dalits who deserve to live as humans. Their widespread consumption and continuing presence and prominence only testify the power of these texts. Through their pain and suffering they have created their own culture of pain, and this culture of pain and oppression is not restricted to any particular religion, caste, class, and sect but becomes universal.

References 1. Lanjewar Aparna. “Dynamics of self and the Rhetoric of difference: Critiquing Marathi Dalit Women Autobiographies” in Randhawa Deepinderjeet ed., ‘Literatures of small cultures: an assertion of Difference”-: Patiala: GSSSDGS Khalsa publications, 2010. 2. Kulkarni, Aarti Kusre 2008. Dalit swakathane: sahityarup. Pune: Diamond publication.

3. Surya, Anil 1996. Ambedkari Swakathane: Ek Samajshastriya Adhyayan. Pune: Sugava publication. 4. Phadke, Bhalchandra.2000.Dalit Sahitya: Vedna Aani Vidroh. Pune: Srividya Prakashan. 5. Mulate, Vasudev. 2003. Dalit Aatmakathane. Aurangabad: Swaroop Publication. 6. Meshram, Keshav and Usha Deshmukh (eds.). 1997. Dalit Sahitya Stithi Gati. Mumbai: Mumbai University Press, Marathi Vibhag 7. Rege, Sharmila. 2006. Writing Caste Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonies. N.Delhi: Zubaan 8. Zelliot Elinor, and Mulk Raj Anand (eds.) 1992. An Anthology of Dalit Literature. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House 9. Dangle, Arjun (ed.) 1992. Poisoned Bread. Bombay: Orient Longman 10. Rao, Anupama (ed.) 2003. Gender and Caste. New Delhi: Kali for women 11. Jadhav, Manohar. 2001. Dalit Streeyanche Aatmakathane: Swarup ani chikitsa. Pune: Suvidha prakashan 12. Rooney, Ellen (ed.) 2006. Feminist Literary Theory. U.K: Cambridge University Press 13. Anderson, Linda.1997. Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century. Hernel Hempstead: Prentice Hall 14. Leitch Vincent B. (ed.) 2001.The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism N.Y.: Norton& Company 15. Malpas Simon 2007. The Postmodern N.Y.: Routledge

9 The Dynamics of Dalit Fiction and Autobiography: A Reading of Manju Bala’s ‘Dwando’ (Conflict) — Indranil Acharya

I The literary genre of autobiography and the powerful oeuvre of regional dialect enthused Dalit women to articulate their grievances and demand relief to their grievances. In general, 1947 onwards, feminist movement failed to see that a Dalit woman’s experience was radically different from the upper caste women’s experience. Dalit autobiography contributed a lot to address this issue of nonrepresentation of Dalit women’s experiences. Hence, in mainstream feminist writings one finds marginal representation of Dalit women’s voices (Shweta Singh, 40). Similar kind of situation prevailed in Australia where the Aboriginal women did not participate in the feminist movements especially of the last two decades of the 20th century. It was primarily because the movement was spearheaded by white feminist women of Australia. They failed to represent the grievances of Black Aboriginal women of different tribes.

According to Sharmila Rege, “There was thus a masculinization of and a Savarnization of womanhood leading to a classical exclusion of Dalit womanhood” (Rao, 90) Rege argues that even Dalit men’s representation of Dalit women is grossly inauthentic as they try to interpolate their own ideal views of a Dalit woman. The upper caste women, on the other hand, love to talk about the general victimization of women. But it unfortunately excludes the most painful reality of a Dalit woman where she is doubly cursed as a woman and as a Dalit. In his essay titled ‘Dalit women talk differently’, Gopal Guru underscores the need to consider internal (i.e. patriarchal domination within the Dalit society) and external (i.e. non-Dalit forces trying to homogenize Dalit issues) factors shaping Dalit women’s consciousness (Guru, 80). Keeping in mind the decidedly disadvantageous state of Dalit women there is an acutely felt need to represent this new reality in the form of autobiography- a medium for unrestricted assertion. The National Federation of Dalit Women was formed for the first time in 1995 in New Delhi. It was the first major consolidation of Dalit women in India. The Federation in its Draft Declaration criticized and rejected many vicious networks of gender exploitation including the ‘Devadasi’ system. In fact, the movement of Dalit women was quite similar to the movement of Black American women. There was a charge that the movement against racial discrimination served the interest of only the Black men. Within this larger global context Dalit women’s autobiographies began to hit the book market in the 1990s chiefly in Marathi, Tamil and Hindi. Such autobiographies delineated both personal and collective life experiences of the Dalit women’s world. There is greater emphasis on the experiential emotion than the choice of aesthetic vocabulary- a major requirement of Savarna literature. Scholars like Beverley are more willing to term this genre as ‘testimonio’ instead of ‘autobiography’. It is because in the ‘testimonio’ form the narrating self presents itself in a collective mode (Beverley, 92-93). Dalit life narratives violate the boundaries of ‘I’ in autobiography- the ‘I’ that represents the bourgeois individualism. The Dalit life narratives move away from the conventional narratives of

women wherein the focus is on women as wives, daughters, mothers etc. Dalit women’s role in running the family and earning livelihood is completely absent in Dalit men’s narrative. This is selective amnesia, deliberate and calculated. Dalit men’s autobiographies are silent on domestic violence-a major issue in Dalit women’s narratives. The poignant description of day-to-day private life of Dalit women would invariably lead to the revelation of the dark side of a patriarchal structure. Hence, Dalit men conveniently choose to forget their immoral behaviour to their women at home. Another interesting feature is the absence of any description of the complicit role of the other elderly womenfolk in perpetuating violence upon Dalit women. The subject of Dalit women’s autobiographies is thus not ‘I’ but ‘we’. A male Dalit autobiography like ‘Joothan’ completely silences voices of Dalit women. Here the collective ‘we’ is the Dalit men folk. There is one reference to the narrator’s wife who refused to use the surname ‘Valmiki’. Even ‘The Outcaste’ by Sharankumar Limbale refers to the mother and grandmother of the first-person narrator in an appropriating voice- the real feelings of these women remain unknown to the readers at large. But memory and representation create a new dialectic in Dalit women’s narrative. However, Dalit movement is precariously balanced on the sandstone of double standards, especially of male and female Dalit narratives (Singh, 46). The literary genre of autobiography has claim of genuine remembrance and retelling; but it also has a counter claim of genuine forgetting and omission. Thus, the narratives assume a political dimension as far as the strategy of representing the gender issue is concerned.

II The spurt in the writings of Dalit literature in Bengal is a much recent phenomenon, taking off in the 1990s. Here all the various genres of Dalit writings are found- autobiography, literary criticism, story, play, poem, novel etc. Even one notices the rise of a significant

number of Dalit women writers. They too are doubly marginalized as targets of caste oppression and gender oppression. Their untouchability has led to their social ostracism as well. One would also notice gender oppression and inequality within Dalit society- an embarrassing feature for male Dalit patriarchs. However, the self-portrayal of some young Dalit female intellectuals gives a completely opposite picture in the context of West Bengal. Authors like Drishadwati Bargi express in a tongue-in-cheek manner the so called progressive nature of Bengali Bhadralok or Bhadramahilas who encourage free mixing, beef-eating and bidi-sharing modern Bengali intellectuals. But this mask of a progressive individual drops when the upper caste teachers and students crack cruel jokes at the surnames of untouchable students. Poor performance in public examinations and poor command over English language are also made fun of particularly in the case of Dalit students. Upper caste male lovers also dare to ditch female Dalit lovers only for this caste consideration. There is a feeling of isolation in the Dalit woman’s mind as the Dalit friends of her own clan grow suspicious of her conduct and maintain an eerie silence over her affairs with the Savarna male lovers. For an emancipated Dalit woman certain questions inevitably surfaceShould I identify myself as a Dalit? Do I have the right to work on Dalit literature? Do I have the right with ‘commodity fetishism’? Drishadwati makes an explosive remark in this connection- “There are no Dalits in West Bengal because Dalits are not allowed to exist here.”(Bargi, 1) Unless the untouchables surrender to the dictates of the upper caste casteless intellectuals for their much-hyped acculturation, they are not recognized as such as social creatures. However, the new nomenclature, ‘dalit’ threatens to suspend the popular binary of upper caste emancipators and lower caste ‘to be emancipated’. This open challenge to the system of dependence renders the self-styled emancipators redundant. Hence, the brave ‘Chhotolok’

who rises above the prison house of narrow casteist politics, ultimately arouses the suspicion and jealousy of the so-called ‘Bhadralok’. In Bengal, Dalit writers as an organized unit prefer to gloss over the internal mechanism of exploitation in Dalit society. Even the women writers are not vociferous against the inadequate representation of their plight in the writings of male Dalit writers. They often maintain silence over the negative role played by the elderly Dalit women in perpetuating the agonies and sufferings of young Dalit women. It may be inferred that high level of educational attainment coupled with a relatively lesser concern with caste equation in Bengal has inspired the emancipated Dalit women to take up the challenging task of self-representation with gusto. Somewhere the urge to rip through the mask of double standard maintained by the Bhadralok mainstream was so intense that other little realities of internal disharmony did not command immediate attention. Coming down to the issue of Bengali Dalit autobiography one has to cope with a host of problems- mostly related to availability. Autobiography in the form socio-biography has found great popularity with Bengali Dalit writers. Even Kalyani Thakur, a leading Dalit woman voice in contemporary Bengal, can feel the oppressive rule of the upper caste intellectuals in the cultural circuit of the state. She has respect for Manju Bala, whose story has been chosen for detailed discussion in this paper. But the construct of a new Dalit woman of the 21st century remains a distant dream in the Bengal context. Unfortunately, no English translation of Bengali women’s autobiography is available in the book market. In fact, there is no fullfledged autobiography of any Dalit author in Bengali language as well. In an interview with Santanu Halder on 8th March, 2013, Manohar Mouli Biswas, a leading male Dalit intellectual, announced that he had been writing his autobiography, Amar Bhubaney Ami Benche Thaki (I

Live in My World). It is not known whether any English translation of it is available in printed and published form. Manoranjan Byapari, another noted Bengali Dalit writer, has published his autobiography, Itibritte Chandal Jiban (2012) in Bengali. But it is not certain if any English rendering of this autobiography is available in printed and published form. However, the first major anthology of Bengali Dalit women’s writing, available in English translation, is The Dalit Lekhika: Poems and Short Stories by Bengali Dalit Women. It was edited by Kalyani Thakur Charal and other Bengali women writers and published by Stree, New Delhi in 2014. Once again, it is pertinent to mention in this connection that this anthology does not contain any English rendering of any Bengali Dalit woman’s autobiography or a fragment of it. Negotiating with this dearth of Bengali Dalit women’s autobiography, it is rewarding to focus one’s attention on the domain of Bengali Dalit women’s fictional writings, especially short stories and novellas. It is chiefly because of their intimately autobiographical nature that such fictional texts may well be read as a Dalit woman author’s life narrative. One may recall archival resources to justify this approach to Dalit fiction as autobiographical writing. In his preface to ‘A Moveable Feast’ Ernest Hemingway remarks: “If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” (Flohr, 1) A note to the text on the following page explains that the book “concerns the years 1921 to 1926 in Paris”, that is, to be more precise, Hemingway’s years in Paris. And, indeed, the first person narrator of the text is Hemingway. However, when we browse through the pages it looks exactly like a novel or a collection of his short stories. So what is ‘A Moveable Feast’? Is it an autobiographical text? Is it a fictional text that is invented along the lines of personal memories? Or, to make things more complicated and as Hemingway suggests, a fiction illuminating facts?

Besides, many autobiographical stories are engaged in the idea of rites of passage. Rites of passage are changes we all go through. Although we may not experience them in exactly the same way, in any society there are some experiences that are common to most of its members. These happen periodically, throughout our lives. The important thing about these shared experiences, in terms of short fiction, is not that they happen (because by their nature there’s nothing unusual about them), but the psychological changes that happen because of them, which are as different as the people they happen to. They are called rites of passage, a term borrowed from anthropology, because they mark a change from one psychological “place” to the next. In fact, this phenomenon is illustrated in the life narratives of Dalit women writers. Manju Bala was born in 1954 in Naliakhali village of South 24Parganas district. She was born in an agrarian Namahshudra family. A poet and storyteller by choice, she completed her graduation in the Arts stream. She also edits a literary magazine titled ‘Ekhan Takhan’. Her position as a Dalit intellectual, like some of her female compatriots, is unique in terms of shared memories of suffering during her childhood and young adulthood days and a more significant psychological change that liberal education helped to usher in her consciousness. As a result, when she speaks about the miseries and sufferings of Dalit life she grows very serious. Especially when she waxes eloquently on the dead, meaningless rituals and their claustrophobic impact upon Dalit women and widows, she often breaks down in tears. She also advocates strongly against the abominable social system in which little children are trained to believe in the caste hierarchy and the need to sustain this unequal system.

III This paper looks closely at a Bengali Dalit short story, “Dwando” (Conflict) by Manju Bala. It was included in the first major attempt at

anthologizing Bengali Dalit writings of one hundred years. The anthology is titled Shatabarsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya1 and was first published in 2011. It was edited by Manohar Mouli Biswas and Shyamal Kumar Pramanik. This short story, included in the anthology, is the only story written by a Dalit woman. It was selected for its strong autobiographical flavor- a consistent harping on the humiliations and sufferings of an educated untouchable woman. “Dwando” (Biswas and Pramanik, 233-236) is the story of an educated Dalit woman of metropolis. It is a love story of an upper caste doctor and a Dalit woman. In the West Bengal scenario such socially unequal affair is not a Utopian dream; rather it is a realistic portrayal of the social equation as class concerns were more important than caste issues during the Marxist regime for more than three decades. The central protagonist of the story Banani manifests the sufferings and miseries of many Dalit women who experience the victim status in a so-called progressive mainstream society masking a brutal patriarchal mindset. No full-length autobiography of Bengali Dalit women writers can be found till date. But this narrative approaches the state of autobiography with a very vivid overlapping of social reality and personal sufferings. The narrative begins in the middle. Banani lies down with eyes closed in intense grief. Tears roll down her black cheeks. The locality is immersed in impenetrable darkness. Darkness has its terrible implications and it haunts her mind with myriad resonances. Banani has to spend a sleepless night. Her only daughter Tumpa is lost in a profound slumber. She has to stand by the window as sleep evades her eyes. Looking vacantly at the dark firmament she is reminded of her husband, an upper caste doctor. Her husband now sleeps in his mother’s room- deserts her deliberately. But theirs had been a love marriage-a very bold decision they could take together. Kalyan’s mother Renuka was a senior teacher at a higher secondary school- a so-called progressive upper caste woman. Kalyan was her only son, her only ray of hope. She lost her husband in the heydays of her youth

and had to fight against heavy odds to take care of her only son. Kalyan is an established medical practitioner now. Banani, the central protagonist, narrates her life story in the first person autobiographical mode. She was an inhabitant of the refugee colony. They were introduced to each other in a music school. He was a student of Medical College at that time. It was a love-at-first-sight story. In the first flush of love she forgot that she was a Dalit woman named Banani Mandal. Gradually, she became dissociated from her old ways of life. The cruel struggle for existence seemed to be a closed chapter in her life. One very glaring aspect of such Bengali Dalit narratives is the absence of any graphic description of the miserable plight of the Dalit woman at the time of growing up in her horrid colony life. The stage is set for the conflict, the age-old binary of Dalit and non-Dalit systems. A slice of open sky peeped into her dark, cloistered caste-ridden existence. Her Dalit friend Swapna warned her of future consequences. But Banani used to laugh away her suggestions. She never tried to look at the affair from a casteist point of view. She thought casteism was a dead issue in a modern progressive society. Moreover, Kalyan was a doctor- a respectable person in society. Kalyan used to visit Banani’s house on many occasions. Especially on her birthdays, he used to sing Rabindrasangeet on harmonium and impressed Banani and Swapna. Their developing intimacy became public in the refugee colony of Banani. After marriage the environment changed radically. As Banani tries to rehearse on her harmonium the mother-in-law rebukes her in a hoarse voice. Her Dalit origin is brutally reminded and it is considered blasphemous for the daughter-in-law. Renuka’s relation with Banani gets strained. Kalyan attempts to ease out the tension and pesters Banani to give up music for the sake of domestic peace. Even her dream of completing the M.A. degree from the university is jeopardized as Kalyan disapproves her study in order to appease the irate mother.

Banai’s cosy domestic world is shattered. She cannot understand the sea change in her husband’s character. Music is in her blood. It was the most significant factor which cemented her bonding with Kalyan. Her Dalit father was a lyricist and music composer. In their colony of poor people her father’s music used to enthrall the luckless subalterns till quite late into the night. One day Banani’s mother, a chronic asthma patient, started gasping vigorously for breath. Her condition worsened and she passed away after a few days. The point to note is the absolutely sketchy description of a momentous event- her mother’s death. It is as if all other incidents are disposed of as distractions and the only conflict that is sustained with meticulous care is with her upper caste husband and his villainous mother. It is also curious to find why the narrator remains silent on the reactions of Kalyan’s mother during their marriage. It seems she approved the marriage but discord began after that. In the case the upper caste mother accepts Banani as her daughter in law doesn’t it project her in positive light to some extent? May be the narrator is selectively amnesiac to spare herself of this embarrassing fact. In an interior monologue Banani exposes the marks of torture all over her body- gifts, she says sardonically, of love from her husband and mother-in-law. She could not give up music as it was her second nature. And it has created a great turmoil in her family. Her husband is a changed person now. He gets crueler when Banani’s face wears a frightened look during a spell of physical torture. They have a little daughter- Tumpa. Banani desperately wants her to keep in the custody of her friend Swapna. She is childless. Banani spends her days in sheer terror. She dreams of a future when her daughter will be a greater doctor than her father. In the concluding paragraph of the story the author moves to the next generation when Tumpa has become a doctor. Her mother is no more. She is left with a photograph to cherish her memories. Another precious record that she has discovered from the room is her mother’s diary. She cannot remember her mother’s figure properly. Only that

ominous day recurs to her memory like an incurable disease. A hush fell on the house that day- all members maintained an eerie silence. Her mother was placed on a cot outside their house, incense sticks burning on the headstand. She burst into inconsolable fits of weeping as she looked at the mangled face of her dead mother. She learnt from a relative that her mother died of an explosion in the kitchen- a gas stove. The injury was so grave that she could not be taken to the hospital. All ended before that. Tumpa really feels delirious when she visualizes that tragic incident- the horrible suffering attached to it. The whole episode comes live before her eyes. Her heart-rending cry pierces the impenetrable silence of the benighted house. The entire narrative is modeled on the passive suffering of an educated Dalit woman in a perennially hostile social relationship status of a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. Of course, caste identity has attached a new dimension to the nature of suffering of the hapless Dalit woman. But the whole story raises great curiosity in terms of a neartotal absence of any protest by the victim. It is surprising taking into consideration the highly educated profile of the Dalit protagonist Banani. Graphic description of upper caste torture perpetrated upon Dalit individuals is an obvious reality in the narratives of Bama, Urmila Pawar, Sharankumar Limbale and many other Dalit writers in different states of India. But in most such cases the victim women are not educated enough to understand the vicious cycle of torture. They do not have proper knowledge of their rights and privileges in a democratic society. Quite obviously, the reader is confronted with many questionsIs the absence of high decibel protest a unique feature of Bengali Dalit emancipated woman? Is there any influence of mainstreaming that has silenced the rhetoric of protest? Does the conscious political agenda of covering up caste discrimination and foregrounding class conflict contribute to this erasure of retaliation? The scope of this paper is much larger. Many related issues could be taken up for discussion had there been sufficient number of Bengali Dalit autobiographical fiction available in English translation. To

conclude, the observation of the noted Marathi Dalit woman writer Urmila Pawar may capture the mindset of all Dalit women intellectuals in our countryI came into this world with the painful baggage of my caste, class and gender. The difficulty of being a woman, particularly a Dalit woman, with all the discriminations I observed made me want to write and express myself. (Biswas, 1) This act of writing as a cathartic experience gave a unique kind of manifestation of Dalit consciousness in Manju Bala’s autobiographical narrative.

Notes 1. The author of this paper is profoundly indebted to Manohar Mouli Biswas and Shyamal Kumar Pramanik, editors of Shatabarsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya, for the inclusion of a significant Dalit story by Manju Bala, a Dalit woman writer. Her contribution to the cause of Bengali Dalit literature is quite valuable. 2. Manju Bala’s story ‘Dwando’ is specially acknowledged for providing a basis for this discussion. Hope it will appear in English version in near future for the benefit of researchers.

Works Cited Beverley, John. Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Biswas, Manohar Mouli and Shyamal Kumar Pramanik, eds. Shatabarsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya. Kolkata: Chaturtha Duniya, 2011.

Biswas, Ranjita. 2014. “Charge of the Women Wordsmiths”. Spectrum, The Tribune (Sunday, May 25): 1-3. Flohr, Birgitt. 1998. The Relationship between Fiction and Autobiography. Essays for King’s College London (April, 1998), private archive. Guru,Gopal. “Dalit Women Talk Differently.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. XXX, No. 41-42 (Oct.14, 1995). Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. London: Arrow Books, 1994. Rao, Anupama, ed. Gender and Caste. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003. Rege, Sharmila. Writing Caste, Writing Gender: Reading Dalit Women’s Testimonios. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006. Singh, Shweta. Representation of Dalit Women in Dalit Men’s and Women’s Autobiographies. The Delhi University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, volume 1, 2014.

Websites Consulted https://www.itp.uni-hanover.de/~flohr/essays.html https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?id...bengali-dalit

10 Analysis and Performance: The Pedagogy of Autobiographies — H. Kalpana Rao Normatively, a reader accepts a fiction narrative for its imaginary world as well as for its representation of reality. Based on the notion of narrative techniques and the agelessness of classics, the genres of fiction, poetry and drama form a large part of the curriculum in English departments across the country. Moreover, in order to provide a mode of interpretation for these genres, criticism or literary theories as a paper is included. Unfortunately, in these syllabi making, autobiographies especially by women, are not taken seriously and also dismissed as being some one’s/another person’s life story. Even when autobiographical extracts are included, they are often analyzed on the merits of style and language. There is no attempt to review the presentation of the self because such writing is thought to be confessional. Additionally, male self-representations have generally been viewed as serious writing vis a vis women’s writing. The view is that women’s self-writing is merely stories of the self and the kitchen/ home. On the other hand, these writings reveal how women just do not “produce a fuller relation to the ‘real’ or to identity and authority” but portray extremely subtle methodologies of negotiation, circumlocutions and circumventions (Gilmore, 1984). Thus, these works provide a rich repository of women’s lives. Unfortunately,

within the dynamics of literature departments nor in academic discourses, are modes of interpretation to read such narratives thought of, nor taught about. In order to address this lacuna, the present paper besides chalking out the critical discourses on women’s autobiographies also reflects on how the space of the classroom should be opened to various ways of elucidation and interpretation. No doubt a great amount of deliberation is carried out in the analysis of autobiographies at academic discourses within labels such as gendered writing, gendered memories, importance of women’s narratives, historical contexts of women’s writing, articulation of gender, caste, class and religion, methodologies of deconstruction, self withdrawal and self inclusions, modes of representation and so on. At this point, for a serious researcher it may not strike one that these discussions were important or relevant but I am sure that when each one of us is caught in the hustle-bustle of the world and have a few moments of peace to ruminate and introspect at that point, the ‘I’ of each one of us looms large. We may not be writers depicting our lives but definitely, we all live in memories and recollections. Repeatedly, each one of us has at various junctures in our life moved into the spheres of the past. This paper is more an attempt to understand how one comprehends this relook into past, how to deal with testimonies, and how to analyze them within the confines of a classroom. The aim of the article is to reflect on how the space of the classroom should be opened to define the term autobiography and to chalk out the modes of teaching and designing such a course. Therefore, this article endeavors to visualize the aspects of teaching of autobiographies by trying to deliberate upon questions such as: What are the different definitions of an autobiography. How does autobiography reflect different positions? How does one build a Curriculum? How should one teach these texts? What could be the evaluative patterns?

Defining Autobiography The term ‘autobiography’ has been simplistically referred to as life story originating from the Greek word, ‘auto’ signifying “self,” ‘bios’ referring to “life,” and graphe meaning “writing”. Hence it could be translated as self life writing. The dictionary defines it as the story of one’s life written by himself/herself. According to Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, it is thought that Ann Yearsley initially coined the term. According to some other views, it was Robert Southey who anglicized the three Greek words in 1809. According to Robert Folkenfilk , “The term autobiography and its synonym self-biography,” having never been used in earlier periods, appeared in the late eighteenth century in several forms, in isolated instances in the seventies, eighties, and nineties in both England and Germany with no sign that one use influenced another” (5). Some of the early representations of such works are Augustine’s Confessions, Montaigne’s Essays of Myself, Teresa of Avila’s The Life. The functions of most such works were didactic in nature and were a process of creating consciousness through personal self-narrations. Autobiography, in recent times has had multiple meanings and definitions. ‘Autopathography’ is a term coined by G. Thomas Couser to characterize personal narratives about maladies or disabilities that marginalise the writer as abnormal, aberrant, or in some sense pathological. Yet, another popular term used to discuss autobiography is ‘testimony’. John Beverley defines ‘testimonio’ as “a novel or novellalength narrative in book or pamphlet form, told in the first person by a narrator who is also the real protagonist or witness of the events he or she recounts, and whose unit of narration is usually a ‘life’ or a significant life experience”. Other terms used are ‘autofiction’, ‘autography’ and ‘autogynography’. While ‘autofiction’ refers to the fictionalized projection of selves, ‘autography’ characterizes the instability of both the “I” and the category “woman” in feminist narratives (Perreault).

To characterize women’s self-writing, Domna C. Stanton’s influential essay, “Autogynography: Is the Subject Different?” opened the doors for yet another term. Audre Lorde used the word, ‘Biomythography’ to indicate the re-creation of meaning in one’s life, which is “invested in writing that renegotiates cultural invisibility”. ‘Ethnic Life Narrative’ symbolizes a type of autobiographical narrative present amidst ethnic communities within or across nations, that negotiates ethnic identification around multiple pasts and organization. Besides these there are a number of other such terms such as ‘Collaborative life narrative’, ‘Confession’, ‘Diary’, and ‘Memoir’. Susan Stanford Friedman in 1985 employed the term ‘Relational autobiography’ to characterize the model of selfhood in women’s autobiographical writing, against the autonomous individual. Inspite of such various terms, Suzette Henke felt that autobiographical writing functions as a mode of self-healing: “writing out and writing through traumatic experience in the mode of therapeutic re-enactment”; and therefore called it ‘Scriptotherapy’. Sidonie Smith in Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives differentiates between ‘life writing’, ‘life narrative’ and ‘autobiography’. According to her ‘Life Writing’ is a narrative that revolves around life such as biographical, novelistic, historical, or could be an explicit self-reference to the writer. On the other hand, ‘Life Narrative’ indicates memory, experience, identity, embodiment, and agency. She feels that ‘Autobiography’, by contrast, is a term for a particular practice of life narrative that emerged in the Enlightenment and has become canonical in the West.

Other Intersections Besides these plurality of terms and definitions, autobiography is connected to various literary theories or ideas such as Postcolonialism, Culturalism and Identity. David Huddart in Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography specifies that “postcolonial theory, in displacing

universalized subjectivities associated with Western thought, wants to emphasize how one universalization of subjectivity has always excluded other modes of subjectivity” (5) and thus relies on the narrative of an autonomous individual and the universalizing life story. The story would reveal an anti-colonial, active identity culled out and not the master narrative of the colonizer. Robert F. Sayre feels that autobiographies could turn out to be cultural documents, “Autobiographies... may reveal as much about the author’s assumed audience as they do about him or her, and this is a further reason why they need to be read as cultural documents, not just as personal ones”. Autobiography could also be creating in the process of writing multiple identities.

Building a Curriculum The biggest hurdle in all this is building the curriculum. Personally, when I thought of including texts into one such course I had to depend on online books as my town has only two small book shops. To my surprise, Flipkart had a section ‘biography’ where the first 5 books listed were Swaraj by Arvind Kejriwal, The Old Man and His God by Sudha Murthy, I Live For You by Dhanshree Kadam, Draupadi by Pratibha Ray and Vanity Bagh by Aneees Salim. The site, ‘amazon.com’ I thought would be better. They too had a section ‘biographies and memoirs’ which had sub sections such as ‘Arts & Literature’, ‘Actors & Actresses, Artists, Architects & Photographers’, ‘Authors, Composers & Musicians, Dancers, Entertainers’, ‘Movie Directors, New Age, Television Performers, Theatre’. I looked for the most popular and the one that popped up as number 1 was Twelve years as a Slave. I tried the section, ‘Indian Writing in English’ and found that they had a category ‘memoirs’ that contained books such as Reading and Writing: A Personal Account by V.S. Naipaul (Feb 28, 2000), A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian by Sarah Outen and Dame Ellen MacArthur (Jun 1, 2012),

Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal (New York Review Books Classics) by J.R. Ackerley and Eliot Weinberger (Jan 31, 2000) Meeting the Medicine Men: An Englishman’s Travels Among the Navajo by Charles Langley (Apr 10, 2008), and Shanti Bloody Shanti: An Indian Odyssey by Aaron Smith (Sep 1, 2013). Therefore, you see that this practical search did not even give me a list. Overall, the entire search was quite disappointing and distressing. One of the ways to design a curriculum could be to do it according to periods such as Early Post Independent Period and Later Post independent period The following works could be part of the two periods: (1) Savitri Devi Nanda (The City of Two Gateways 1950), Lakshmibai Tilak (I Follow After,1950), Nayantara Sehgal (Prison and Chocolate Cake, 1954); (2) Muthu Lakshmi Reddy (1964), Gayatri Devi, (A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur (1976) and Kamala Das (My Story, 1977) and Amrita Pritam (The Revenue Stamp, 1976). Yet another model for curriculum could be choosing texts based on categories such as women and marginalization (Bama’s Karukku); women and politics (Krishna Hutheesing, With no Regret), women and visual arts (Yamini Krishnamurthy’s A Passion For Dance), women and professions (I dare by Kiran Bedi) and so on.Other possible concepts could be to section them as informal writing, formal writing and speculative writing (Olney) where letters, memoirs and diaries could be part of informal writing and self narratives could be part of formal writing and fictionalized self writing could be part of speculative writing. The curriculum could also be designed by having units based on themes such as religious, intellectual, fictional, spiritual, political, caste and so on.

Teaching Methodologies

The questions that crop up, while teaching autobiographies are how are these works culturally and historically located. To whom are they addressed? How do they build an identity? Are they straightforward narrations or ambivalent? Are the presentations simple and honest or fabricated and convoluted? It is important that in the classroom students are made aware of reading strategies such as how to review the information at various levels: • authorship and the historical moments • cultural backdrops • narrative’s transformations • the narrative persona and identities • plots and modes • temporalities • ellipsis in the narratives • use of memory • trauma and testimony • authenticity of narration • the voice of the author • the relationships specified • motivation for self exploration and writing • methods of self enquiry • locations of experience • the autobiographical self productions • the production/representation of the Others

Another format of exploration as put forth by Sloan is structural, analytic self-exploration, through intensive “journaling of memories, present experiences and ...dreams” (Sloan, 2004, p. 118). The second theme according to her was explorations of community, culture and the reclamation of marginalized voices, whereby teachers examine how their identities were formed and reformed by their communities and cultures of origin, and how their teaching was shaped by often uncontested or unrecognized cultural practices and values. This included “feminist” examination of how mainstream cultures of teaching may marginalize particular cultural, class and gender perspectives. The third theme was examination of the narratives teachers’ tell about their own lives and pedagogy, to discover the ways in which teachers construct themselves as teachers, and pass on knowledge about teaching (Sloan 2004)

Evaluation It would be reductive if such course learning is evaluated solely through a written examination A better method would be to allow the students to write personal essays interacting with the text and illuminating one’s own thoughts. It could also be left to the discretion of the teacher concerned the mode of evaluation and adjudication. In conclusion, I personally feel teaching autobiographies would add to the existing dimensions of gender and provide a nuanced reality to the lives we live. A statement made by Kathleen Martingdale substantiates this point: The autobiographical extracts attempt to produce a counterdiscourse of feminist pedagogy about the possible meanings of classroom nurturing. This article is a look inside myself as a working-class daughter become feminist academic trying to understand my own

contradictory formation as a teacher at the same time promoting learning for critical consciousness. In disentangling those contradictions, I tell a different story about the categories used to name and pathologize working-class mothering and daughtering and I relate that story to what I see as the implicitly classist assumptions of most feminist pedagogical discourses (322).

Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter. Diary Fiction: Writing as Action. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984. Ashley, Kathleen, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald Peters, eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1994. Benstock, Shari. “Authorizing the Autobiographical.” in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, Ed. Benstock, 1033. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988. Beverly, John. From “The Margin at the Center: On ‘Testimonio’ (Testimonial Narrative).” In De/Colonizing the Subject, ed. Smith and Watson, 91-114. Bjorklund, Diane. Interpreting the Self: Two Hundred Years of American Autobiography. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998. Bongie, Chris. Exotic Memories: Literature, Colonialism, and the Fin de Siecle. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1991. Brodzki , Bella & Celeste Schenck.Ed. Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography, Ithaca, New York and London:

Cornell Univ. Press, 1988. Burr, Anna Robeson Brown. The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909. Buss, Helen M. Mapping Ourselves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 1993. Couser, G. Thomas Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Folkenfilk, Robert. Ed. “Introduction: The Institution of Autobiography.” In The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation, 1-20. Palo Alto: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993. Friedman,Susan Stanford. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998. Gilmore, Leigh. Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s SelfRepresentation. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994. Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell. Univ. Press, 2001. Henke, Suzette Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s LifeWriting. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Huddart, David: Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography. Routledge, 2008. Jelinek, Estelle C., Ed. Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1980. Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Trumansberg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press,1982.

Martindale, Kathleen. “Theorizing Autobiography and Materialist Feminist Pedagogy”. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de I’education, Vol. 17, No. 3, LaPedagogie feministe / Feminist Pedagogy (Summer, 1992): 321-340. Olney, James Ed. Autobiography: Essay Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton U Press, 1980. Olney, James, Ed. ‘On Writing Autobiography’: Studies in Autobiography, O.U.P., New York, 1988. Olney, James. Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton: Princeton U, Press, 1972. Perreault, Jeanne Writing Selves: Contemporary Feminist Autography. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1995. Sayre, Robert F. Ed. American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1994. Sloan, Kris. Essay review. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 36: 117-130. (2004). Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, eds. De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1992. Smith, Sidonie. Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives Univ of Minnesota Press. 2002. Smith, Sidonie. Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Stanton, Domna C. Ed. The Female Autograph. New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984.

11 Incarcerated in Person but Not in Spirit: Prison Narrative of Anjum Zamarud Habib — Vandana Pathak Oppression cannot arrest the thoughts of one Whose mind has the brightness of the moon (116)

Abstract A new kind of literature has been introduced in the syllabi of some Western Universities. This narrative is known as ‘Prison literature.’ Many Black American writers and Indian writers in the British regime have written accounts of time spent in prison. These narratives have provided voice to many voiceless persons who had a definite role to play in the history of the nation. Anjum Habib’s Prisoner No. 100 an Account of My Nights and Days in an Indian Prison is a prison narrative documenting her arrest under POTA and five years she spent in Tihar Jail. This paper is an attempt to explore this oeuvre as ‘Prison Literature.’

Key Words: Prison, Prison Literature, Prison Diaries, Arrest, Jail, Narrative.

Prison Literature Iftikhar Gilani, Sahil Maqbool, Joya Mitra and Anjum Zamarud Habib are among many political prisoners who have been charged and imprisoned in Indian prisons. In their years of imprisonment, they experienced torture, humiliation and human rights violation. All these three writers have documented, in the form of narratives, their years spent in prison and this literature is termed as ‘Prison Literature’ or ‘Prison Diaries’. Central Sahitya Akademi and Dhvanyaloka had organized a national seminar on “Prison Writing in India”. In his key note address delivered on the occasion, poet Keki N. Daruwala said, “it was a marginalised genre, and just as one of the crucial functions of democracy was to represent people unrepresented in history, literature too needed to be open to all and the unrepresented should be represented in it” (The Hindu). Shedding more light on this concept, he further added that Prison writing could be of many kinds, including sociological accounts chronicling life in prison, polemical against the State, or it could be creative and literary outpourings. He pointed out that the subject should not be viewed as only the writings of criminals or those of the pre-independence stereotypes — the heroic non-violent freedom fighter (The Hindu). K. Satchidanandan, Secretary, Sahitya Akademi, said that prison writing was a now a regular subject of study in many western universities, though it was a subject of debate whether it could be categorised as a separate genre of literature (The Hindu). A discussion on this topic was also held at Jaipur Literature Festival. The Editor of The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan, moderated a session on ‘Prison Diaries’, in which Iftikhar Gilani, Anjum Zamarud Habib and Sahil Maqbool opened up about the implications and consequences they faced both during and after their sentence and this

particular malaise that plagues the country (The Hindu, Prison Diaries). Mr. Varadarajan said that the prison diaries that came out of the years spent in jail by these three authors should be seen as a remarkable narrative form, as well as a political text and the indictment of those institutions that become complicit in the violence of the rule of law (The Hindu). Mr. Varadarajan added that a disturbing but common thread in the three books was the fact that all three authors found people turning their back on them post their arrests. Other texts that can be studied under the umbrella term of Prison Literature are Captive Imagination: Letters from Prison by Varavara Rao, The Bad Boys of Bokaro Jail by Chetan Mahajan, and Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir by Arun Ferreira.

Prisoner No.100 Prisoner No.100 an Account of My Nights and Days in an Indian Prison is the first person narrative of Anjum Zamarud Habib. Anjum was an excellent student and President of the students in the College. She was an N.C.C. Cadet Commander and a Badminton champion. She had won the Best Student title and was a favourite student of all teachers and enjoyed a good reputation in the College. Her leadership qualities were seen in the protest that she had organized in the hostel for providing quality food. She was a well dressed, firm, fearless and confident woman. She wanted to work for the rights of women and her community. She had made plans for the welfare of these ladies. She confesses, “I am of a revolutionary mind and consider politics to be a form of worship and I had entered politics with a simple desire to serve my community” (Habib,103). She worked as the head of women’s organization of the Hurriyat Conference. This organization was called Muslim Khawateen Markaz established in 1990. It worked for the social, political and human rights of women. She had begun documentation of the status of widows and orphans in Kashmir and taken up a programme for the welfare of these widows. The translator

says, “... ordinary lives had been touched and altered by this extraordinary situation of violence, death, destruction and resistance” (x). Thus, Anjum was an activist working for the welfare of Kashmiri women and wished to lend a voice to native Kashmiri women. She was invited for seminars to US, Pakistan and Thailands. In February 2003, she visited Delhi with all her files, newspaper clippings and money that she had collected for the Computer Center for Children in Kashmir, to get her VISA. At Delhi, Anjum was falsely implicated under POTA in 2003. The Hurriyat Conference Chairperson had promised the family to appoint a lawyer for Anjum. In the police investigation, he declared that he did not know Anjum and added that she was not a member of Hurriyat Conference. This proved to be a major setback for Anjum’s case and when a Hurriyat delegation met the Home Minister and appealed for the release of some Kashmiri prisoners in Delhi jails, Anjum’s name did not figure in their list. Anjum was implicated in a high profile case, imprisoned and released in the winter of 2007. These five years deeply wounded her and scarred her mind. This book is an account of the five years that she spent in Tihar Jail and hence this title. The original Urdu text has been translated into English by Sahba Husain and published by Zubaan in 2011. When the translator Sahba Hussain met her after release in Srinagar, her eyes were vacant and she had a feeble voice. The family members informed her that she could not sit on the floor as her knees hurt all the time. Hussain writes, She continued to speak softly, almost in whispers, ruminating-the five years spent in jail were much longer, a lifetime indeed where time had taken on a different dimension both spatially and temporally, both in psychological and emotional terms. It’s over now she said; her confinement as well as her life. Where do I go from here, where do I begin again? All the work I had

done thus far seems like a heap of waste, life has no meaning anymore, I am finished, she said (xi). Immediately after her release, Anjum slept on the bare floor and refused a mattress. A sleeping pill was an absolute must. She dreamt of jail, the iron bars, and jail staff. She could not walk in the street without someone holding her hand as a policewoman had always held her hand whenever she stepped out of the prison. She wanted to remain inside and could not eat homemade food. She could not change into a fresh set of clothes. She could not lead normal family life with her loved ones. She had become so habituated to jail life that her family had to constantly remind her that she was a free person. Anjum confessed, ... my family wants me to be happy, to smile and laugh now that I am free but I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel either happy or sad. I don’t feel hungry. I feel numb. I feel confused. My body hurts, my back is sore and my knees are stiff (xii). Sahba Hussain felt that she would require a long time to be her own confident self. The brutalization she had suffered and endured in the prison had scarred her mind as well as body. She could not erase all these imprints on her mind. She could not spend time with a counselor. Sahba suggested that she should write her narrative. Anjum wrote it pretty fast. Sahba describes her experience of reading it and says, “It was a moving, rich account written with simplicity of language and expression. Once she had started, it did not take her long to complete writing the book” (xii). The book does not have the form of a diary, a journal or a memoir. It does not possess a particular structure. Once she started writing, everything returned to her mind and she was aware that words would be insufficient to encapsulate the depth or intensity of her experience in the jail. After she had finished writing, she said, It was not easy for me to write down the account of my experience of spending five years in the soul searing

Indian jail. Each time I picked up my pen and sat down to write the dark and terrifying images from the jail would come alive in my mind, leaving me in a state of restlessness and despair. I would remain in that state for long. Somehow, I’d try and calm my nerves and start writing again but I’d soon be struck with such mental agony as the bloodied memories would crawl back and crowd my mind. This sense remained with me throughout the period of writing this book (xvii). Anjum was arrested on 3 February 2003 and was put in ten days remand. It was as if hell broke loose and many tortuous and lengthy interrogation sessions began. It appeared like a nightmare and her mind became blank. She was forced to sign a stack of blank sheets of paper. After her remand was over, she was sent to jail number six in Tihar. As she was entering Tihar jail, she felt “the high brown walls and iron doors were about to devour me and trap me-in their maze-like interior” (9). She was put in ward 8, barrack 4. The ward was large and the bathrooms were filthy. Anjum informs, “It is a jail rule that every new convict has to clean the ward along with the toilet and to run any other errands for the ward” (10). She could not eat the jail food as the rice and roti were half cooked and the dal was watery. She confesses, “ I lost my appetite when I saw the quality of food;....I found it hard to believe that other women were eating without any hesitation whereas I was not even able to swallow a morsel” (11). She has described the jail food as tasteless, sub-standard and as a result, she suffered from a constant stomach ache. She informs that the dal was rotten and vegetables were nauseating. When she was in the cell, she realized that “she was a victim of some conspiracy. I was restless, desolate and helpless, there was nothing I could do other than cry my heart out” (11). The barracks had more prisoners than could be accommodated so there were frequent quarrels and fights. There were chances of theft and pilferage. The atmosphere was dark, intimidating and suffocating. Chewing tobacco and smoking cigarettes was a common practice. The dirt and the squalor in the jail and filthy toilets, the unbearable heat in

summer and cold in winter too have been described in the oeuvre. She has hinted at the corruption and malpractices prevalent in the jail and how the authorities turned a blind eye and deaf ear to it. Dr. Kiran Bedi had initiated many new practices in Tihar. Anjum has narrated what had happened to those schemes after Dr. Bedi had left Tihar. In the largest prison of the world, she says, beasts lived behind human faces. Anjum Habib experienced a lot of hostility and resentment in the prison. She has narrated many instances of discrimination faced in the jail. She felt alienated and isolated in the prison. She was a Kashmiri woman labeled as a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘traitor’. In the interrogation, the IB officer took the credit of having made her famous as a Kashmiri terrorist. One officer had grabbed her by neck and stuck her across the face and said, “You are a terrorist and all you Kashmiris are traitors” (8-9). The media declared her to be an enemy of the country and a terrorist who funded organizations. One TV channel projected her as a dangerous woman terrorist. Due to this media image, some women prisoners looked at her with hatred. The inmates addressed her as “ an enemy of the nation” (213.)The Welfare Officer and the jail lawyer too treated her contemptuously. Sharing her feelings and experiences, she mentions, There is no respect for Kashmiri prisoners in jail; they are treated with such hatred and contempt there. I was the only Kashmiri woman in jail 6, in fact in the entire jail. I was in an alien city, amongst alien people, in a large and terrifying space. I was the only woman in Hindustan, a Kashmiri woman, arrested under POTA (14). She was implicated in a false case in the jail with five more prisoners and charged under serious sections of IPC. There were distorted reports published in the newspaper against her and to her dismay, she understood that, “jail authorities were against us; their anti-Muslim attitude bothered me immensely and the restrictions imposed on us were getting harsher” (51). On one occasion, a fellow

woman inmate without any reason picked up a fight with her and called her a deshdrohi-antinational and atankwadi-terrorist. Delhi Bar Association also refused to take up her case. Many women prisoners thought of her as a professional terrorist because of the distance she maintained from them. Thus, the jail authorities were not free from religious prejudice. Many religious organizations visited the jail to meet Hindu and Christian prisoners. Anjum Habib says, “... there was never a Muslim organization that has visited or was allowed to visit” (52). Hindu and Christian prisoners celebrated their festivals in the jail but the Muslim festivals were never celebrated in the jail. The Muslim prisoners had given an application before Ramadan saying that certain food items be made available in the Canteen during Ramadan. But those things were not made available and so on the first day, they were given an apple and roti each for sehri. Later on, they were given usual serving of roti, vegetable and tea for sehri. These food items were packed in polythene and given to them through the space between the bars. She felt very lonely and desolate in the jail in this festive period. She confides, “ The pain of spending lonely days in jail, away from one’s sisters and brothers, well-wishers, and from one’s own country can only be understood by one who actually undergoes this experience” (92). There were many restrictions imposed upon her in the jail. The attitude of the jail authorities towards her clearly indicated that they were prejudiced against her. “It is almost as though the jail mirrors the outside reality of alienation and discrimination that many suffer” (xv). She had to talk to the jail authorities from a distance as if she was an untouchable. The habshi women taunted her and beat her. They tore her clothes and the authorities said nothing to them. As a result, Anjum felt dishonoured and hurt. Once when she went to fetch water from the water cooler, the langar Munshi shouted at her and Nirmala Madam ordered the Munshi to throw away her jug and scolded her, “ If you take water from this cooler, my dharma will be ruined” (210). She had no other option but to complain to National Commission for Human Rights. Some authorities and prisoners had thought her to be a

professional terrorist and a fanatic Muslim terrorist. Due to all these problems, while learning Hindi, she tried to explain the meaning of the word ‘patriotism’ to all those prisoners who called her a ‘traitor’. She attempted to explain the value of religious intolerance to all those who nurtured religious prejudices. She realized that most of the Muslim women prisoners did not know the basic tenets and principles of Islam. She narrates the story of how she was beaten by Sandra and Elizabeth in graphic detail. Sandra was a six feet tall, strong built woman. She felt that Anjum had prevented Pakistani prisoners from talking to her and other habshi women prisoners. She started abusing Anjum. Anjum was on a fast and told her not to use abusive language. She told Elizabeth that Sandra had a misunderstanding regarding her. She adds, ... but she took long strides towards me and suddenly pushed me hard, my legs buckled under and I fell down on my back. Elizabeth grabbed me by the collar and began to tear at my clothes. She scratched me and dug her sharp nails into my chest which began to bleed instantly, she then pulled me by my hair but I could not do anything. The beating continued even as the matron and some of the women tried to free me from her clutches but she would not let go of my hair..Whenever this scene comes to my mind, it traumatizes me as much today as it did then (85). She has narrated stories of other women prisoners as well. Joy, a habshi woman and a patient of AIDS, had cooked pigeons in her cell and hence had a fight with her roommate. Many of these Habshi women suffered from AIDS. She has mentioned the death of an aged prisoner addressed as Gopali Ma. Shabbo was serving term for the murder of her stepfather along with her mother. Her brothers had testified in their favour. The proceedings were pending in the court of law. She died of anemia. She sheds light on Zohra’s death, a twenty six year old woman from Afghanistan, arrested under Drug Trafficking

Act. Zohra had died due to brutal beating of a policewoman and then due to medical negligence when she was taken to the hospital. Anjum and five other women were implicated in incidents following Zohra’s death. Zahida and Ruby were dragged into the net of prostitution. The narrator, by employing the technique of ‘story within a story’ shares their plight with the readers. In addition to these women prisoners, Anjum has also shared the story of the mad prisoner Bholi; how a woman prisoner tried to escape and was caught and the story of drug addict Khumaira. The translator Sahba Hussain, writing in The Translator’s Note, mentions, This is what is striking about the book-it provides a glimpse into the lives of different women inmates form different parts of the country and their own experience of serving the respective jail terms for the ‘crimes’ they did or did not commit. It is a world of women where violence stalks them closely, not only from the jail staff but from the women themselves. A world of contradictions: violence and intimacy, friendship and hostility, sharing and shunning, sympathy and longing, loneliness and learning and of course a sense of solidarity that is born out of a shared experience as prisoners are brutalized and dehumanized but refuse to surrender their minds and souls (xv). These women prisoners shared collective pain and suffering with each other in their years spent in the jail. They ate together, fought and quarreled with each other, nurtured love and friendship and this created a mutual bond among the prisoners. Anjum was arrested on 3 February 2003 and on 28 September 2007, the judge awarded her five year jail term and exonerated her from the Terrorist Act. At five in the evening, she was taken back to Tihar Jail and her name was entered into a register and she was handed

a prisoner card with 100 as her prisoner number. Thus she became Prisoner number 100 with a list of hard labour written on it. She was treated like a Mulaheza and made to go through a medical checkup. Later on, she challenged the order in High Court and was released on 8 December 2007. She has given an elaborate description of constant delays due to new dates being given, the trial being shifted, strike of lawyers, the judge being transferred, special powers not being conferred on the jail and the witnesses being absent. She says, “It is demoralizing for a prisoner to come for a court hearing, be lodged in the judicial lockup repeatedly and yet return without anything more concrete than a date” (206). Her family did not understand the significance of a court date for which she waited impatiently. She had become accustomed to such disappointments and setbacks. Her years in the jail were spent in court dates, mulaqats, jail humiliations and in eating tasteless food and adjusting with cold or intense heat. Anjum speaks about the violation of human rights of prisoners and their inhuman treatment. The jail authorities sent a patient to an outside hospital only when chances of her survival were low, or a prisoner was sent to an outside hospital only to breathe her last. The toilets were filthy and in shambles. Toilets were not repaired. In summer, it would be too hot in the lockup and in winter, it would be unbearably cold. Anjum’s feet would go numb. The policemen around the lockup ogled the women prisoners causing them a lot of embarrassment. The policemen felt free to crack cheap jokes with the women prisoners. The policewomen too were ruthless and dragged her or held her hand in a strong grip. They were rude and arrogant. They were partial to those prisoners who paid them enough money to allow them extra meting time with relatives. For the others, they had no considerations at all. The jail SMO, a Kashmiri pundit woman, declined to give Anjum medicines prescribed for her by ICRC in spite of her deteriorating health condition. In one particular court, she was not given legal assistance or help during interrogation which was her right. She never got a chance to speak in the court. She says,

Once one is caught in the police net, all rights are destroyed, including the right to life; not to mention the right to have a lawyer. It is a common practice for the police to treat us as worse than beasts, to look upon us with contempt and to behave in an insulting manner with us-indeed they do their best to destroy our image. To treat us as human beings is completely beyond their consideration; a sense of humanity and a culture of politeness and respect is alien to them (203). Sahba Husain felt that from the narrative it appeared as if Anjum and other prisoner inmates were not aware that their rights were being violated so easily. The translator has mentioned that Anjum told her how hellish it was to fall sick in the jail. Even though the pain was quite unbearable, the authorities did not treat any illness seriously except in situations of alarming health conditions when a prisoner was taken to an outside hospital for treatment. She had developed various symptoms due to hormonal imbalance. Immediately after Zohra’s death, she had a viral infection and later on was down with malaria. She had high fever. Many tests, including an x-ray, were done but her health continued to deteriorate. Due to the food in jail, she had constant stomach ache. She developed a heat rash all over body due to the intense heat in the cell. Gradually arthritis had begun to set in. Her daily energy levels were so low that she found it difficult to cope up with the daily jail routine. The sub-standard medicines in the jail did not help her at all. Once she was taken to DD Hospital for a thorough check up including an ultrasound. Each prisoner was escorted by policemen. It was very humiliating. Other patients would stand aside, cringe and looked at the prisoner contemptuously and with indignation. “A woman prisoner was much more of a spectacle, as though she had dropped from the sky or was an alien from another world” (137).

The writer felt that only a prisoner knew what she or he experienced in the jail and an outsider would not be able to guess it. These incidents of discrimination, alienation and violations of human rights affected not only the physical health but her mental health also. She confesses, “It was difficult for me to maintain my physical health or mental balance given the inhuman situation around me” (119). She felt that she was a broken woman inside. She had bouts of depression and anguish. In the lockup, she saw sad and withered faces. At times, she roamed around the ward like an insane person. She wondered if she had lost control over her emotions. She shares her feelings with readers openly, For a long time I had been feeling depressed and aggrieved. I have been in an environment where it was not possible to even breathe freely. I often felt I would choke because of my inner suffocation. At times I felt like crying aloud. Life had brought me to a new world where darkness stretched all around me. There was no respite or sense of comfort anywhere. All one saw were iron bars, metal chains and imposing high walls. The light and joy of outside world was beyond us and the sounds of happiness were totally lost. Problems regarding food, the lack of physical comfort, and long periods of separation from the loved ones, searing heat and ill health had ruined my world. I could compare this confinement of life inside the jail to a sort of death (182). Being locked in a prison caused a lot of emotional and psychological stress. The constant delays in her court case too exerted a lot of pressure on her mind. The Munshi and Matron found different ways to cause her mental torture. They would abuse and curse her and at times, spit on her. Matron Nirmala tried to intimidate her and she made efforts to make her isolated. Other women inmates did not talk to her as she was “an enemy of the nation”(213). Her peace of mind was

snatched away in jail. She accepts, “ ... and sometimes I felt it would be really difficult to maintain my mental balance, but somehow I managed” (93). There are frequent references to her state of mind in the text. Sentences such as “ prolonged periods of suffocation within the four walls of this cell” (97), “I was going insane with anxiety, not able to sit down or eat a single morsel of food” (98) and “ I suddenly felt as though my arms and legs had broken; as if there was no life in my body” (98), “Life had come to a standstill in jail” (164), “Now life would stretch only as far as the wards” (164) and “I had turned to stone by now” (214), etc are strewn throughout the text. She was away from the family, implicated under POTA and in another case of provocation too and her family was in crisis. Constant delays in her court case caused a lot of anxiety. It was difficult for her to bear the pain of separation and yet she had to cope up with the daily grind of jail. Her strength of character and her iron will and strength is evident through her awareness of her plight. She says, “To maintain my mental equilibrium, I had decided soon after landing in jail that I would join any class or project that was initiated by an NGO or the jail authorities” (179). She registered her name for painting and henna design courses. She learnt sewing there and was able to cut a kurta design on paper. She took lessons in music. She writes in an ironical manner, “In jail, you can do some things to ease the stress and I decided to join painting classes. I thought how ironical it was -my life had become so colourless, and here I was trying to compensate by splashing colour on the sheets of cartridge paper” (99). She had become actively involved in the Candle project. Candles prepared by her were appreciated by all and offered as gifts to visiting dignitaries. She says, “Making colourful candles helped me deal with my colourless existence here. The absence of colour cast a lasting shadow on my life even as I tried to entertain myself with fake, artificial means of happiness” (118). She joined Yoga classes for easing mental stress and pressure. She spent long hours at the pottery project to keep herself busy. She gifted some of the pottery items she had made to her family members. The SI had appointed her to look after the jail library.

She would open the library and issue books to few inmates. She filled in forms for those women inmates who appeared for exams through IGNOU. In addition to all these aspects, Anjum describes how the exhaustion had taken a toll on her body and her mind and soul were saturated with tiredness and disappointment. Her constant stress and anxiety, alienation and loneliness resulted in her frequent dreams. During the course of narration, she has highlighted the role played by Dr. Kiran Bedi in reforms in Tihar Jail and what happened to some of the schemes implemented by her in the jail. She has thrown light on the corruption and bribery prevalent in jail and courts and police department. Hurriyat politics, POTA and how the political parties wanted her to join them after release forms an integral part of the prison narrative. The treatment given to foreign prisoners and the role played by their embassies in providing reading material and medicines along with their regular visits to these prisoners brings out her loneliness and isolation. The superstitions prevalent in the jail and satsangs too have been discussed. In a very interesting manner, she explains how different prisoners keep a track of time. Talking about her book in an Interview, she said, “I am an ordinary, middle-class, educated Kashmiri woman. I am no writer and I do not know what the art of writing is. I wrote what I could, but at times I felt that my mind registered much more. It seemed like the thoughts were flowing and it was difficult to capture all of it” (Interview). Prisoner No. 100 is not in the form of a diary, neither a journal nor a memoir for the simple reason that Anjum had not maintained a diary or anything of this sort when she was in the jail. She “simply wrote as it came to her mind” (xiv). Her experiences in the prison were so terrifying and poignant that once she started writing “everything returned to my mind, although I was aware that words would not convey the depth or intensity of my experience in the jail” (xiv). That is why, she has been able to encapsulate all those experiences so effectively in her narrative, bringing out her indomitable will. This is the reason why the oeuvre

lacks a structure or a form. An autobiographical writing is always a therapeutical/ cathartic process. Such Writing helps to release emotions and the more effective is this emotional release; the better is the appeal and therapeutic value of the oeuvre. As Nayantara Sahgal has said, “Writing of any sort helps to put your own world in order, all the shapeless, bewildering fragments of it. It helps you to figure out what is happening in and around you.... There are things that will never be understood until they are written and sometimes not even then. But writing helps the process” (Sahgal,17). An analysis of language content of Prisoner No.100 is enough to justify why and how it can be called Prison Literature. This text employs many words related to the Police department, law and courts and prison or jail. The words related to Police department are ‘Posse of policemen’, ‘IB (Intelligence Bureau)’, ‘Special Cell’, ‘Interrogation’, ‘Interrogation Center’, ‘Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP)’, ‘Inspector’, ‘SubInspector’, and ‘Police Remand’, etc. Many words related to law and courts are seen in the text. These include words such as ‘State Prosecutor’ , ‘lawyer’ , ‘verdict’ , ‘convict’ , ‘jail term’, ‘rigorous imprisonment’, ‘judge’, ‘court room’, ‘plea’, ‘warrant’, ‘date’, ‘witness’, ‘lockup’, ‘case’, ‘proceedings’, ‘arzi’, ‘order’, ‘copy’, ‘witness procedure’, ‘argument’, ‘bail application’, ‘legal aid’, ‘challan’, ‘legal assistance’, ‘statement’, ‘junior lawyer’, ‘prosecutor’, ‘hearing’, ‘under-trial prisoner’, ‘documents’, ‘order’, ‘investigative officer’, ‘decision’, ‘produced’, ‘questionnaire sheet’, ‘defense witness’, ‘POTA’ and ‘judgment’, etc. The writer has used many words associated with prison. This long list includes words such as ‘Parole’ , ‘rigorous imprisonment’, ‘Cell’, ‘Barrack’, ‘Ward’, ‘Parole’, ‘Langar’, ‘Convict’, ‘Jail’, ‘Custody’, ‘Remand’, ‘Jail lawyer’, ‘Case’ ‘Ginthi’, ‘Chakkar’, ‘Mulakat’, ‘Maruti’ (the van that carried garbage from the wards), ‘Mulaqat’, ‘Inspection Ward’, ‘Court Morcha’, ‘TSP’, ‘Qusoori’. ‘Special Cell’, ‘Totan’, ‘Matron’, ‘Mulaheza’, ‘NHRC’, ‘State HRC’, ‘DG Prison’, ‘High Risk Prisoner’, ‘Deohri’ and ‘jangla’, etc. Slang words or prison lingo is not noticed in the text.

In keeping with the motifs of this autobiographical text, the language of the book is very simple. The sentences are short and simple. The use of tropes is restricted and spartan. The style is factual and prosaic. Tropes like “.the jail is like getting sucked into a deep, bottomless pit.”(2), “ I felt I was drowning in a deep ocean” (4), “All this appeared like a dream or a nightmare” (4), “trap me in their mazelike interior” (8), “ You women are wild beasts” (47), “ In jail, even human beings are treated as insects” (68), “This is how the ‘game’ of my entry into jail was already fixed for five years” (173), “I felt a great sorrow weighing on my heart, as though a slab of stone had been placed on it” (178), “ I kept roaming in the ward like an insane person.” (178), “ I felt as if I was inside an iron manufacturing factory.” (178) and “I had turned to stone by now”, among many others, reflect her state of mind, trauma and anxiety. Anjum Habib’s erudition is reflected in her beautiful and significant quotations borrowed from Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahil, Anjum, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ghalib and Braj Narain Chakbast. To highlight the difference between the ‘inside world’ and ‘outside world’, she quotes Maulana Abdul Karim Azad to say, “Even in jail, the sun sets and rises, even here the stars shine, a dawn tears through the night and brings light. Even in jail, there is spring after autumn, the birds chirp but the meaning and essence of all this remains different from the outside, free world” (116-17). After five years on her release, she breathed in the open, free air and saw the moon and the stars. She was overwhelmed with a strange emotion and tiredness. She confides, “I was bereft of emotion, there was neither happiness nor a sense of sorrow. I seemed to have stepped into a world of its own kind, I was in a state of delusion, not being able to decide if I was still in jail or a free being now” (217). The only disturbing fact, I realized, was/ is that she considers Kashmir as a nation and describes her movement as the movement of Azadi. All the prisoners hated Kashmiri prisoners. She says bluntly, “There may be only a few in India and in Indian jails who did not hate

us; we Kashmiris had to tolerate a lot in Indian jails” (197). She felt that in her absence the movement had taken a new turn. “Lakhs of unarmed people had come out on the streets demanding Azadi and shouting slogans that reverberated the skies for days, a non-violent agitation against the mighty Indian state” (217). She mentions the rigid and brutal attitude and behaviour of GOI. She concludes her prison narrative with the sentence “As for me I had returned from hell and was ready to join the struggle again” (218). Whether as a reader, I/we agree with her view of Kashmir or not, her indomitable spirit is reflected in this concluding sentence. No one thinks of or dreams of imprisonment in life. It comes as a jolt and the entire life turns topsy- turvy. One becomes old at an early age and Anjum had all these experiences in the prison. She says, “I thought, one can apply an ointment on physical wounds but mental scars are too deep to heal even after one is released from prison” (109). She writes after her release, “ I am a free person today but the wounds and scars that the jail has inflicted on me are not only difficult but impossible to heal. The jail has left indelible, deep imprints on the core of my being along with several serious, complex questions that echo in my mind and I continue to seek answers to them” (217). The issue of Kashmir has been close to every Indian heart. An autobiography deals with a person’s journey from being to becoming. Anjum’s account is a first person narrative. Anjum Habib’s prison narrative deals with this Kashmir state, its freedom, notions of patriotism, political movements in Kashmir and five years spent by her in Tihar Jail. It revolves round her court dates and trials and tribulations in prison. It deals with the independence of Kashmir and the background is that of POTA and hence terrorism. It narrates/ sheds light on that part of her life which she spent in Tihar Jail and not her entire life. This account is significant as it reveals her persona overtly or covertly. It does not depict her life and developments there in, but does provide a glimpse into that traumatic phase of her life which is considered eventful in the history of the nation as well. Her fears,

anxieties, insecurities, frustration, irritation, anger, concern for family, etc are depicted as well. Her external routine life in Tihar and internal strife and trauma finds voice in this literary expression. It has been written with a woman’s point of view. Her identity, as it is revealed in this account, is a product of all these factors and her relationships in her life. She survived in the jail, in spite of hardships, humiliations and physical ailments, because of her optimism and self confidence: However somber the night, I still knew that The morning will be radiant Do not lament the dark clouds, dawn is inevitable Darkness is but a mere companion of the night (Sahir Ludhianvi, 118) Her resilience and spirit is reflected in her leading a local demonstration of women against the Indian Security Forces in her first public and political appearance. She marched in the front, holding banners, raising slogans, and addressing media. In an interview she declares, “Life in jail transformes one in many ways, she says” and adds “Incarceration can bind physically but cannot bind one’s conscience; no jail can cuff one’s thoughts or imagination” (Interview). That her stay in jail has made her more determined and strong willed is obvious after an analysis of Prisoner No. 100.

Works Cited Habib, Anjum. 2011. Prisoner No.100 an Account of My Nights and Days in an Indian Prison. New Delhi: Zubaan. All page numbers in parentheses have been taken from this edition of the text. Interview. Through the Eyes of Prisoner #100. http://www.thealternative.in/society/through-the-eyes-ofprisoner-100/, 1 July 2015, 7.30 pm.

Sahgal, Nayantara. Point of View: A Personal Response to Life, Literature & Politics. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997. The

Hindu. http://www.hindu.com/2004/09/26/stories/200409260317030 0.htm, 5 May 2015, 9.15 pm.

The Hindu, Prison Diaries. http://www.thehindu.com/books/prison-diaries-reveal-asordid-tale-of-torture-and-humiliation/article2818052.ece

12 A World Beyond Pink and Blue: New Perspectives on Gender Roles — Neha Arora Activism runs through my blood. It is the elixir of my life. —Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a hijra and an activist Stumbling through the struggle for Independence, meeting the challenges of economic and political changes, Modernism ushered in Indian society/ literature, overturning all the established ideological apparatus. Twentieth century, especially the post-Independence days saw a carnival of voices in literature. The writers changed, readers changed, the author-readers equation altered - it was no more an elite writer writing for the consumption of sophisticated reader, serving him the refined delicacies. Now, the readers preferred an assortment of diverse cuisines on their platter. Twentieth century Indian literature witnessed debates, controversies, bans, even fatwas regarding the themes and their treatment.The modern writers love to experiment in order to satisfy their hunger (as the readers too have become ‘demanding’). They could not remain oblivious to the contemporary social/ cultural/ political upheavals. The stir had already been created in the literary world in the early years with the publication of Angarey(1932) that provided a broad platform for progressivism and

radicalism. This collection of ten short stories and a play by Muslim writers, written in Urdu, was extremely radical in subject/ treatment, rewarding the writers with the chicest abuses. It was the emergence of a Brave New World. In the contemporary literary world, unconventional themes are welcomed andliterature has become more radical and realist. The writers need not be professionally trained but they realize the ‘might’ of the pen to let their ideology march ahead of crowd.In accordance with the changing social and literary world are the voices of Nalini, Jameela and A. Revathy. While Jameela unabashedly discusses her ‘profession’ of being a sex-worker, Revathy takes the readers by hand to see the world beyond the neat ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ divisions. Both the memoirs, The Autobiography of a Sex Worker (Jameela, 2005) and The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story (Revathy, 2010) are bold attempts to let the unheard screams be heard and also to understand the sociopsychological politics of their communities before declaring the verdict on their ‘unusual’ sexual patterns. J Devika, the translator of Jameela’s memoir writes: Fiery, outspoken and often wickedly funny, this candid account of one woman’s life as a sex worker in Kerala became a bestseller when it was first published in Malayalam... She has been a wife, mother, successful business woman and social activist - as well as a sex worker - at different stages of her life. This is NaliniJameela’s story, told in her inimitably honest and down-to-earth style, of her search for dignity, empowerment and freedom of her own. In the same vein, Gayathri Prabhu applauds Revathy’s attempt of being ‘the very first of its kind in India, uninhibited with regard to divisive gender lines, sexual hypocrisy of ‘traditional’ societies and the dismal lack of public discourse on the rights of sexual minorities.’ (Prabhu 2)Both Jameela and Revathy are unprofessional writers and both use the medium of writing to apprise their respective

communities as well as the ‘mainstream’ society of their rights. While the center ‘Jwalamukhi’ changed the course of Jameela’s life, ‘Sangama’ provided a platform to Revathy to see the world from, with the new perspective. At Jwalamukhi Nalini Jameeela came to know about the rights of sex workers; it imbued her with a sense of pride and transformed her into an activist, Sangama made Revathy into what she is today - a social worker and also an activist. Both, Nalini and Revathy are pioneers in challenging the accepted sex/ gender roles in India. For Revathi, ‘writing is activism’ and she comes closer to the mainstream society through her activism and her writings. Her first book UnarvumUruvamum(Feelings of the Entire Body, 2005) is a collection of interviews with hijras. Besides Revathy, Priya Babu’sNaan Saravanan Alla(2007), Vidya’s I Am Vidya (2008) and LaxminarayanTripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015) are some other works produced by hijras. The present paper proposes to understand the ‘new world’ or rather the ‘new perspective’ provided by Revathy to analyse the man-woman division and relationship. The paper reads into the complexities of being a hijra, the convolutions enhanced all the more because of the conflicting their psychological desires and the sociological expectations. Being the first of its kind in India The Truth About Me created ripples in the otherwise stagnant water of Indian literature. The book questions the heteronormative society for the exclusion of the Third gender. It dares to barge into the comfortable zone of the binary set-up and contributes in the agitation of redefiningsocial structure. Originally written in Tamil as VellaiMozhi, the memoir speaks for ‘her kind of people’. Revathi’snarrative challenges the ‘stereotypical and incorrect perceptions of sexual minorities’ by making them realize that hijrasare ‘capable of more than just begging and sex work’. It is apowerful plea to accept the existence of the ‘Others’ too within the social fold.

Hijras defined

The ‘man minus man’ (Flaherty, 1980: 297) or ‘man plus woman’ (Nanda, 1999: 17), hijras are a separate identity, fitting into neither category of the defined genders (male and female). It is derived from the Arabic word ‘hij’ meaning a journey that has begun but not ended, conversely, from masculine form to feminine but not complete woman. They are not men because they do not engage in masculine labour nor do they have any desire to have sex with women; they are not women either despite their feminine mannerisms (feminine names, dressing sense, gait, speech pattern and occupation) as they do not menstruate nor can give birth. Hijras are born males but grow up into a conflict over their sexual orientation/ inclination. Most of them undergo an initiation ceremony that includes the removal of the male reproductive organs. This is an interesting ritual of removing everything that defines ‘maleness’ but as the vagina is not created, it signifies, their moving away from ‘being male’ in order to ‘become woman’ but end up becoming the eunuchs, i.e neither man nor woman. Set on the binary structure of male and female, our ‘normal’ society fails to acknowledge millions of those who represent the grey colour of the black and white society. The feeling of ‘being’ trapped in the body of one sex contradicts with the innate desire of ‘becoming’ the other. But this moving away from ‘being man’ does not end up in their ‘becoming woman’ (and vice versa) thereby initiating the perennial conflict of identity crisis in them. The fractured existence becomes claustrophobic for them to survive and eventually they become the ‘outsider’ to our heterosexist and homophobic society. Usually the ‘normal’ society applies various labels for the people who are neither male nor female (or in fact, are both). Terms like transsexual, transvestite, eunuch etc are reserved for them and always used with a derogatory punch. The Hijras of South Asia, lady boys of Thailand, travesties in Brazil, transgender in USA, challenge the binary division of the society and suggest that there is more than the neat division into male and female, projecting a world existing beyond the usual pink and blue (‘pink’ signifying female and ‘blue’ is for male).Their existence expresses the urgent need of a new prism of

gender to develop new perspectives about sex and gender, and to understand their respective roles in society.

Historical Background: Colonial India

Pre

and

Post-

Besides the contemporary theories and acceptable notions about sexuality, there are several cultural and historical references to prove the existence of more than a binary constitution of society. In the 1617th century Mughal rule in India, hijras occupied important place of being the emperor’s confidants. However, with the coming of the British, they were pushed to the periphery and were criminalized under the Criminal Tribes Act 1871.The British rule in India especially and in all the Third World countries compelled the erstwhile colonized to accept the British notion of binary division of society. Henceforth, hijras, who had occupied culturally significant position in the past and had a legitimized existence for their religious powers, were marginalized, objectified, “stigmatized and persecuted” (Herdt11) to the extent of being considered ‘abnormal’ and to be laughed at. The Western dichotomous system expects all the societies of the world to conform to this dichotomous system as being ‘normal’. Due to the Western gaze, the cultural significance of the Third gender has dwindled and is compromised, reducing them to be aberrant objects. This has further decreased their healing powers in South Asian countries and they are forced to take up prostitution as a profession for survival, which goes contrary to their asexual characteristic. Unlike the Western societies, many non-Western societies had sanctioned legitimacy to the hijra community on the cultural and religious grounds. Herdt’sThird Sex, Third Gender extensively described the “neither male nor female” categories of various societies across the world. Indian mythology boasts of celebrating homosexuality as also the presence of people with ambivalent

sexualities (Third Gender) in the ancestral societies: the Vedas (1500 BC - 500 BC) mention in detail about the segregation of individuals into three separate categories, according to one’s nature or prakrati; even the seminal work on sexuality, Kamasutra(4th century AD) talks about the purushprakrti (male nature), striprakrti (female nature), and tritiyaprakrti (third nature). Other ancient texts too discuss the existence and acceptance of the Third sex in/by Indian society. The Sanskrit work Mahabhaya (200 BC) by Patanjali states the derivation of Sanskrit’s three grammatical genders from three natural genders. According to the Vedic astrology, even the planets are categorised as per the three genders, with Mercury, Saturn and Ketu representing the third gender. The Puranastoo make mention of three kinds of devas of music and dance: apsaras (female), gandharvas (male) and kinnars (neuter). After their analysis of Patanjalis’s second century BC grammar, Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling concluded that the concept of third sex “has been a part of the Indian worldview for nearly three thousand years.” (362)Besides this, the Buddhist philosophy also included the napunsakas (impotents), castrated, hermaphrodite etc under the common head. All these categories emphasise upon the procreation ability of the individual. However, the purush-napunsaka and pandaka (stri-napunsaka) division of the Jain philosophy reject the procreation ability to be the identity marker. They make the difference between the dravyalinga(biological sex) and bhavalinga(psychological sex), i.e the manner in which sex is practiced - whether they are the receptive partner (feminine) or penetrative partner (masculine). The Hindu tradition further boasts of several mythological instances to support the concept of equating hijras with god -(i) Lord Vishnu transformed himself into the most beautiful woman in the world to defeat a demon by seducing him, (ii) Arjuna lived as an eunuch for a year in exile, (iii) Lord Krishna took the form of Mohini to marry Aravan (Arjuna’s son with a Naga princess) before the latter could be sacrificed at the commencement of the Kurukshetra war, (iv) the lingapurana, the Ardha-narishwara form of Shiva (lord Shiva is

represented in the image of a phallus in a vagina, i.e united with his Shakti), and not to forget, (v) the boon given by lord Rama in the Ramayana, all justify that the existence and acceptance of the feminine within man does not in any manner make him powerless/ lesser man.According to the Hindu mythology, when lord Rama left Ayodhaya for exile, his followers came to see him off. At the edge of the city, he asked the ‘men and women’ to go back. Upon his return after fourteen years, he found the ‘in-between’ gender people still standing at the very point. Impressed by their devotion he granted them the boon of being revered at the major happy occasions in the Hindu society. Since then, their presence on marriages and child births has become auspicious. But ironically, people who themselves can neither relish the taste of marriage nor can get involved in ‘normal/ natural’ sexual consummation nor can bear children, their blessings are considered the most significant in the two major occasions of an individual’s life.

Inside the Community Researches prove the inter-hierarchal nature of the hijra community, even A.Revathi’s memoir (the text taken for discussion) corroborates the same. Such documents help in rectifying the misconceptions prevalent in the society about the Third gender. The very first misunderstanding is that of ‘hijras by birth’ and of ‘forced castration’. Though in some cases the anatomical complications do occur at birth, in most of the times it is the individuals (males) who switch over to the other sex (female); they are not forced but willingly opt for sex change. This ritual is called nirvaanam and is the most significant ceremony in the lives of hijras. Contrary to the belief that hijras are sex workers only, it is observed that the community has two sub-categories: the pure and the prostitutes. Ideally, hijras are semidivine beings and renounce sex (hence often called sanyasins) and thus the ritual of nirvaanam becomes essential. As the term literally means,

it signifies ‘re-birth’ and the hijracommunity sees it as the re-birth into a hijraform from a male. It involves operating upon the male genital and removing it permanently. All hijras believe that they are women trapped in male body and the emasculation process is a means to get rid of their male identity. Hijras are often referred to as sexual ascetics (sanyasin) due to their association with Lord Shiva. As aforesaid, within the hijra community too there exists hierarchical divisions: the Badhai (the pure one, who do not indulge in gratification of sensual desires) and the Kandra(those engaged in prostitution and hence, de-sanctified). Also, although the hijras are beyond the binary structure of the society, yet they seem to have internalised the stereotypical sexual roles of the society. Since during the sexual intercourse, they perform the role of the passive recipient rather than the active penetrator, they are placed in equality to women or in fact the namard (not males). However, prior to all this, the person needs to be accepted in the hijracommunity. A proper initiation ceremony is held and it is only then that the individual officially/ legally becomes the member of the community. The hijra community is primarily matrilineal and therefore the ‘woman’ figure is central to them. Following the Hindu joint family and the spiritual teacher-disciple tradition, hijra community too practices the guru-chela parampara, where after a ritual in the presence of the jamaat (the seniors of the seven families/ council of the elders), they swear the relationship and thereafter the guru becomes a motherly figure for the chela daughter. Likewise, the guru’s ‘sisters’ become ‘aunts’ and guru’s ‘mother’ becomes the ‘grandmother’ to the chela. Revathi elaborates: While there are no castes amongst hijras, there are houses or clans. There are seven clans or houses, and each has its own name. hijras can choose their guru from any house...Each of the seven houses has its own elected or chosen head, known as a naik. A

naik’sparivar comprises sister, younger sister, daughter, granddaughter and so on. (The Truth about Me 62) Even the god they worship is a female, Bahuchara Mata whose temple is near Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They believe that until the Mata desires, the nirvaanam cannot take place and that it is She who bestows Her blessings and power to bear the pain at the operation. (it must be remembered that these operations are mostly carried outclandestinely by unprofessional)

Re-defining social structure The resistance to rethinking by the heteronormative society needs to be resisted and a new framework must be constructed to incorporate the third gender with respect.Straddling between masculinity and femininity, the third gender unsettles the accepted social roles and categorization.The male/female division seems to be the normal and universal pattern. But reading deep provides ample examples from various cultures suggesting the existence of a society beyond this binary opposite.Gilbert Herdt’sThird Sex, Third Gender emphatically talks about many cultures that move beyond the binary constructions of sex and gender. It seems as if one’s sexual orientation only defines one’s personality. Talking in context to the connection between the non-reality of gender and non-absoluteness of heterosexuality, Ruth Vanita writes that ‘the two categories, “man” and “woman”, are not ultimate categories but are merely created by society to foster certain social roles, and to uphold institutions such as marriage and parenthood’. She further says, ‘if human beings are born male or female but are turned by society into “men” and “women” through such mechanisms as dress, social roles, division of labour and taught mannerisms, there is no natural or innate reason why an individual should be attracted or attached only to a member of the other gender category.’ (171)Many societies, even India (modern), do not provide space for variant sex/ gender roles. They are marginalised, stigmatised,

discriminated against and even criminalised. The hostile attitude of the heteronormative societies has replaced the tolerance of the past towards the third gender; for the homophobic society, the male compromising with his ‘maleness’ to adopt womanhood is a matter of grave concern (often misinterpreted as abnormality).

Indian vs the Western model of Gender Roles The case of Indian hijrasis an act of contradicting the Western idealized model of binary divisions of the gender roles. The Western ideology completely overlooked their cultural significance and objectified them as aberrations. This viewing of the hijras “solely within the framework of sex/gender difference... might be a disservice to the complexity of their lives and their embeddedness within the social fabric of India.” (Reddy 4) The binary sex assignment extends from being a biological categorization into the psychological, social, behavioural etc, eventually making ‘gender’ too be dichotomous. This is a very Western belief, not applicable in every culture such as India. This ‘neat’ arrangement does not fix those people who cannot be as neatly placed in either of the two. In view of this, “the Hindu Indian cultural system not only acknowledges multiple genders, but also incorporates the idea, in myth and reality, that sex and gender can be changed within an individual’s lifetime.” (Nanda 129) Literatures by/about them reclaim the lost cultural and religious dignity enjoyed by them in many societies of South Asia. This new literature challenges the classification of population universally on the Western labels, and provides a new prism to view the genders beyond the pink and blue. In the West, the Third Gender suffers societal stigma and the same Otherness is percolated in the South Asian societies, eventually changing the entire perspectives towards the ‘in-between’ gender. However, one must be careful in not confusing the Third Gender with ‘gender dysphoria’ as Herdt explains, “gender-reversed roles are not

the sole basis for recruitment into a third gender role.” (4748)Similarly, the Transvestite and Transgender should not be jumbled with hijras for their lack of religious significance within the cultural contexts. As aforementioned, several mythological references to Hinduism provide legitimacy to the hijras, promoting their social inclusion considering the intricate intertwining of religion and culture in South Asia. (Jagdish 4)

Being and Becoming: Identity Crisis It is an accepted fact that anyone who is asked, ‘are you a boy or a girl?’ would fetch a definite answer but the general understanding of our ‘established’ society fails to acknowledge those who are unsure of the answer. Trapped in the body of other sex, they live in perennial conflict with their innate desire of being the ‘other’. Their feminine emotions feel suffocated in the masculine body, escalating the irrepressible desire to be the other sex.The contradiction between their feeling and the body they are born with leaves them a fractured being for life. Maintaining two identities, in and outside home, creates identity crisis in them and the loneliness initiated from home becomes lifelong. In the desire for completeness, they reject their biological sex and opt for the other but it becomes traumatic because this moving away from ‘being man’ does not end up in their ‘becoming woman’ and probably this is the ‘incompleteness’ that Revathi, and almost all hijras like her feel. From the ‘incomplete male’ to the ‘incomplete female’, they eventually become the ‘outsider’ to our society. This dilemma between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ engulfs them in existential questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why are we unwanted?’, enquiring the society in turn: Why can’t hijra be accepted as an identity, like male and female? This further draws our attention towards the ingrained binary sex/ gender division. When Revathy shares her desire to be a ‘woman’ and all the efforts she makes to ‘fit’ into the feminine role (by keeping her

hair long, wearing saree, etc), it indicates a more conformist approach and not a radical one. Even inside the hijra community, the guru teaches her chela to adopt the feminine mannerisms and to display the stereotypical qualities of a woman - fear, anxiety, shyness etc, i.e not just biological transformation into a woman but also socially and culturally. Marriage being a part of ‘the normal expectation and main source of prestige form women in India’, having a husband is also important ‘self-concept for those hijras who view themselves as women’. (Nanda 122-23) This is again a very Western imposition which contradicts the situation of hijras in the pre-colonial India. The French travellerer Jean De Thevenot recalls his encounter with the ‘hermaphrodites’ in Surat: they were wearing “turban on their heads like men, though they go in the habit of a woman.” (Gannon 133) There was nothing “disgusting” (135) about them until the colonial ideology of diamorphism percolated in its colonies, categorising them as “physiologically abnormal” (138) as they cannot reproduce, hence ‘imperfect’ human beings. This creates a feeling of ambiguity amongst the Third gender and they keep struggling between being a hijra and a woman. Doraisamy/ Revathy expresses the fear of ‘his’ people: “I was afraid if the world knew I was a HIjra, I would be isolated.” S/he was constrained by society’s expectations of being either a man or a woman, only and s/he understood that “if I had to live in this world, I’ve got to adjust to its demands” (The Truth About Me 220). This is really unfortunate that the colonial ideology does not allow the Third gender to accept their own identity and traps them in some kind of shame as Loh observes, “Hijras read themselves as ‘deficiently masculine’ and ‘incompletely feminine’” (3).

Revathi’s Memoir: A Challenge to the Heterosexist and Homophobic Society Revathi’s narrative questions the heteronormative society which excludes the existence of the Third gender and engages in re-defining

the social structure. It is a scathing comment on the pre-defined social order/norms and dares to barge in the comfortable zone of the binary set-up. She unapologetically narrates her story, the story of her community that has been always ignored in the society and only addressed, infrequently, by some academics in the fit to do something new. From her biological family to hijra community, to the life of a sex worker to that of a ‘wife’ and eventually to a social worker in an NGO and a writer, Revathi proudly displays various hues of her life. Her narrative brings a flood of questions to the ‘settled/ poised/ calm’ society and helps in filling the textual void. By incorporating the basic details of the hijra community, Revathi provides the much required information about the ignored section of the world. Revathi gives an insider’s view - the relationship of a hijra within and outside her community; the cultural roles performed by them in the heteronormative society as well as the ritual constraints observed by them within the community. Starting with that of the Guru-Chela roles, nirvaanametc, she lets us know the pyramidal structural placement of hijras in both the communities. The heteronormative society is ‘educated’ for the first time about the world which exists simultaneously but is hardly paid any heed. She clarifies her aim in the Preface itself ‘to introduce to the readers the lives of hijras, their distinct culture, and their dreams and desires.’ Revathi was born a male (Doraisamy) but her inclination was always towards the males. S/he enjoyed doing the household chores, sweeping and swabbing, making kolams, washing etc., s/he loved being in the company of girls and even dressing up like women. This ‘irrepressible femaleness’ in her seemed ‘natural’ to her but unfortunately Doraisamy could never talk about his ‘confusions’ with any one. The homophobic society forbade him to transgress the norms and he had to live with such ‘questions and doubts’ (The Truth About Me 14). He felt like a woman ‘trapped in a man’s body’ and the yearning to be a complete woman ‘haunted’ him to the extent that one day he took the drastic step and dared to do the unthinkable. Her life

that began with dressing up as a kurathi, culminated in conducting nirvaanamupon him and thus becoming a full biological woman. Revathi reflects upon oscillating between the male and female livesin the early years of her life and of nurturing the desire of being a female, before culminating her ‘uneasy journey’ from Doraisamy to Revathi. However, the passage from a full-male to the biologicallytransformed woman (hijra) and finally into an activist fails to abate the gender ambiguity begun in her adulthood. Juxtaposing her courage to defy the mainstream society with the vacuum in her life, her memoir aims to foreground the perpetual ‘incompleteness’ in the lives of hijras in general, to which our ‘normal’ society seems to be entirely oblivious. More than discussing her life story, Revathi bares the psychological aspect of hijras life. Their desire, of ‘becoming’ woman, though is fulfilled, yet a kind of incompleteness lingers in their life. Biological transformation fails to give them emotional/ psychological satisfaction. The incapability of having natural sexual intercourse and of producing children leaves a dent in their psyche. Revathi drifted into sex work not out of financial compulsion but because of emotional and physical urge. All that she desired was to become a woman, marry an educated man and settle down in life but all these remain unfulfilled. Later in her life, she does meet two men and even gets ‘married’ to the second one (who un/fortunately was her senior in Sangama), but the itch (to live a normal life of a normal woman) remained with her all long. Although she adapted herself completely in her ‘wifely’ role, her husband failed to deliver his duties. Her happiness lasted for only a year; the taste of marriage opened her eyes to a bitter but real world. Her physical journey from Namakkal to Bangalore via Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, her biological journey from a male to a female, coincide with her psychological journey and she evolves into a mature individual. The transformation from sex worker to social worker was not rapid; it includes the half- realised desires of a wo/man to marry and settle down. She diverts the attention towards the

hypocrite society that abuses yet is scared of hijra, that wants them for blessings yet shuns them as unwanted, that is inconsiderate towards their existence as human beings. They are ‘marginalized by mainstream society, denied a legal existence and dispossessed of their rights’ (62). Revathi poignantly questions, ‘Can a hijra afford to fall in love?’ (94) and herself answers, since they are mere oddities and comic figures, who cares for what they want? ‘Who would want to marry a hijra?’ (94) Hanging between the two worlds/ existences, she justifies the complexity of ‘being man’ and ‘becoming woman’. But she displays abundant courage and emerges victorious by becoming the voice of Third gender. As an emotionally drained person, she laments: ...I too need to be with my loved ones. I want their affection. I want to experience pleasure. I long for respect. I want to live a life of dignity. I want to go to work as many women do. But who gives people like me love? Or respect? This world that exploits my youth and beauty does not know how to bring out the talent there is in me. If I have to live in this world, I’ve got to adjust to its demands. it is society and law - indifferent as they are to me - that have brought me to where I am today, where many of us are today. (219 - 220) However, her orientation at and eventually affiliation with Sangama metamorphosed her personality. Sangama works ‘for the rights of sexual minorities’ to rectify the incorrect perceptions prevalent in the society. Revathi got actively involved in the activities of the organization. Although recruited as office attendant, she was directly engaged in giving interviews, speaking for hijra rights, delivering lectures at seminars etc. She admits to have evolved as a person. Prior to her association with Sangama, she was scared of being isolated, but her stint with this NGO made her realize that ‘none of it was her (my) fault - the way the world perceived me and refused to

accept me, the manner in which it snatched away my rights and made it difficult for me to earn a living except through begging and sex work, the violence it contemptuously inflicted on me’ (244), and she was resolute to fight against such sexual violence and discrimination. Her determination to overcome the pressures and discriminations of the heteronormative society is reflected in the confidence she exudes in the present. (247) Once shattered after being sexually humiliated by a policeman (and later, several times), Revathy challenges the world and is proud of her femininity and her identity as a hijra.

Recognition demanded Their respectable position in the society in the past is re-defined now and in the contemporary times of transition and assertion, attempts are being made to rescue the hijras from extinction. Having once enjoyed the privileged place, they had to suffer much humiliation during the colonial rule and even after that. It is pathetic that although in India their population numbers around 500,000, they were granted voting rights only in 1994. Prior to this, they were put under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. But with the landmark judgement of April 2014, they have now got recognition as Third Gender. The relentless efforts of the activists like Revathi, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, AbhinaAher, and the likes have been significant contributions in their struggle for freedom. The passports and other government documents now include the (E) option too, besides the M (male) and F (female). The verdict of Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan(April 2014) opened new roads of hope for the neglected lots. In a case brought by the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) against the Union of India, he criticized the heteronormative society for discriminating against the third gender and emphasized upon the over hauling of our perceptions. Talking about the incomprehensible trauma of the Third gender, he reiterated the moral lapse of the society in being rigid in its approach. His move is no doubt laudable but at the same time, it must be

accepted that this remains confined to the official documents only, the society still needs to rework on its outlook. Serena Nanda’s seminal work, Neither Man nor Woman is a very authentic collection of hijras voice and reflects upon their changed roles in the society. She captures the eagerness of many hijras who wanted to ‘tell their stories to the public’ to let them know their existence as ‘full human beings’. (Nanda xvi) Revathi’s narrative expresses the urgency for the heteronormative society to come out of its rigid shells that observes hijras as aberration. The once valued, they are now ostracised; the royal servants/ confidants are forced into begging. Works like Nanda’s and Revathi’s foreground the Third gender ‘whose lives appeared shrouded in great secrecy and around whom there appeared to be a conspiracy of silence.’(xvii) Such attempts are necessary inputs to sensitise the society and also are effective counter discourses to counter the predetermined divisions of society’s psychology. They question the stereotypical image of hijra: Is roaming in the busy market-place, extorting money from passengers in trains, dressed as females the male voice shouting expletive, the gaudy makeup, dancing in bawdy songs, boldness (physical and in language) the only identity that the hijras have? They are not ‘different’, then why are they perceived ‘differently’? The unwelcoming attitude of the society,the acute discrimination and social exclusion that the hijras have faced since years have to be rectified.Revathi and Laxmi had to disrobe themselves of shame and temerity to uproot the (mis)notions about their people.

Works Cited Bose, Brinda.Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and Culture in India.New Delhi: Katha, 2002. Chakraborty, Kaustav. “North Indian Hijras and the Construction of ‘Tritya Prakriti’ in Indian Tradition: Exploring the

Possibility of a Third Perspective of Sexual/Gender Stratification.” Labyrinth Insight.Vol. 3 (January 2012): 2428. Flaherty, Wendy Doniger O’. Siva: The Erotic Ascetic. —. Women Androgens and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980. Gannon, Shane P. “Translating the Hijra: The Symbolic Reconstruction of British Empire in India.” Edmondon, Atta: University of Alberta, 2009. Herdt, Gilbert. Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Jagdish, Pooja S. “Mainstreaming Third Gender Healers: The Changing Perceptions of South Asian Hijras.” Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal. Summer (2013). Vol. 9.www.ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu. Web Loh, Jennifer. “Borrowing Religions Identifications: A Study of Religious Practices AmongHijras of India.” SOAS: London, 2011. Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. Prabhu, Gayathri. “Writing a Life Between Gender Lines: Conversations with A. Revathy about her Autobiography.” Writers in Conversation. Vol. 1 No. 1 (February 2014). http://fhrc.flnders.edu.au/w Web. Reddy, Gayatri. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra in South India. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005. Revathi, A. The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story. Trans. V. Geetha. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2010.

Sweet, Michael and Leonard Zwilling. “Like a City Ablaze: The Third Sex and the Creation of Sexuality in Jain Religious Literature.” Journal of the History of Sexuality. 6.3 (1996): 359-84. Tiwari, Esha. “Distortion of “Tritya Prakriti” (Third Nature) By Colonial Ideology in India.”International Journal of Literature and Art, Vol. 2 (2014) Web. Vanita, Ruth. “Same-Sex Love in India: A Brief Overview.” Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and Culture in India. Ed. Brinda Bose. New Delhi: Katha, 2002.

13 Text as Socio-cultural Archive: A reading of Binodini Dasi’s My Story and My Life as an Actress — Ujjwal Jana During the 19th and 20th centuries, there were successive outpourings of women autobiographies in Bengal. We have Rasasundari Devi’s Amar Jiban(My Life 1876), Binodini Dasi’s Amar Katha (My Story. 1912) Amar Abhinetri Jiban (My Life as an Actress, 1924/25), Saradasundari Devi’s Atmakatha (Autobiography 1913), Nistarini Devi,’s Sekele Katha (Tales from the Past 1913), Prasannamayee Devi’s Purbakatha (Tales of Yore 1917) followed by Sudakshina Sen, Jeeban Smnti (Memories of My Life 1932), Sarala Devi Chowdhurani,’s Jeebaner Jharapata (Leaves Shed from Life 1944), Bina Das’s Srinkhal Jhankar (Clanging Chains1947), Kailashbashini Devi’s Janaika Grihabadhur Diary (Diary of a Housewife1952); etc Except for Binodini Dasi, almost all writers were upper caste woman and descended from the educated and financially well to do families of Bengal. Binodini Dasi, and her works stand apart from the rest in that Binodini, coming of an impoverished, low caste family with dubious backgrounds, was the first generation professional actress in the public theatre in the 19th century Calcutta.

Amar Katha (My Story 1912) Amar Abhinetri Jiban (My Life as an Actress, 1924/25) are the first ever autobiographies in Bengali language written by a woman from the peripheral and marginal class of the society. The texts are a rare testimony to the travails, sufferings and protests of a first generation professional actress on a public theatre and they beautifully encapsulate the remarkably painstaking and arduous struggle of a female actress for an identity of her own. Amar Katha (My Story 1912) was written at the request of Binodini’s guru/mentor Girishchandra Ghosh and in fact her letters to her mentor were published in the form of this book. Rimli Bhattacharya, the translator and editor of Binodini’s works mentions that My Story was a saga of personal pain and suffering of the author written immediately after the death of her protector and her second work My Life as an Actress “originates from the conscious desire to recall and record an age gone by, and is addressed specifically to young(er) actresses” (Dasi, 19-20) The two texts are no simple autobiographies to inform the readers of chronicles of the personal and professional stories. For Binodini, writing was an act of asserting her identity/selfhood and registering her note of protest against the subversive forces of the society. The autobiographies provided her what K Satchidanandan says, “ a means for survival for women, a way of seeking freedom from patriarchal definitions, stereotypical images and expected social roles”(7) Binodini Dasi’s two narratives Amar Katha (My Story. 1912) Amar Abhinetri Jiban (My Life as an Actress, 1924/25) written at different stages of her life after her sudden retirement from the stage at the age of twenty three (1886) are the two significant archival documents providing us with the insights not only into her personal and professional lives, but the entire world view of the contemporary time. The trials and tribulations of personal and public life which Binodini has undergone constitute the crux of the narratives.

Recruited from the prostitute quarters of Calcutta to the theatrical space at the age of only eleven, Binodi had shot into an iconic theatrical figure. She bestrode the public theatre of Calcutta like a colossus for 12 years (1874-8-1886) playing more than eighty major roles in Great National Theatre, Bengal Theatre. She had the privilege of working with the major playwrights and directors of the time. In fact she started her career with a small role in Great National Theatre. Under the tutelage of Girish Chandra Ghosh, whom she called the Garrick of Bengal, she was exposed to the western theatrical conventions and actors and actresses. As the leading actress, she travelled with the theatre group different parts of India. As national theatre closed down, she moved on to Bengal Theatre and acted in several roles. To quote Dasi, “I played seven roles in the course of the same performance in this play. First, Chitrangada; second, Pramila; third,Baruni; fourth, Rati; fifth, Maya; sixth Mahamaya; and, seventh,Sita” (72). Her extraordinary histrionic skills were appreciated and praises were heaped on her by the contemporary theatre directors. She also mentions of Bankimchandra who came to see her in the role of Mrinalini and was highly impressed by her lively performance. Her encounter with Sri Ramakrishna instigated her spiritual transformation. Having watched her performance in Chaitanya-Lila, Sri Ramakrishna blessed her by saying “Ma, may you have chaitanya!”(Dasi 95). In the late 19th century in the colonial Bengal, theatres were mainly male dominated and access of the women to the theatrical space was very restricted. Males used to perform the roles of the women till the advent of the women to the theatre. It is interesting to note that at a time when Binodini came over to the public stage, most of the women performers on the stage were from the from a-bhadra (disrespectable’) households and low caste family backgrounds.Before Binodini joined the stage, all the first four professional women Golap, Shyama, Jagattarini and Elokeshi, were from the prostitutes’ quarters. Binodini too came from a prostitute’s family and proved to be a successful actress on the stage. In spite of her acclaimed reputation, she remained socially and culturally marginalized posited outside the

larger world of the bhadraloks and had to face the music of the patriarchal society. She could not climb up the social ladder because of her dark, murky past in spite of her envious performing skills on the stage. In course of her narrative, she eloquently moves to a state of lamentation and self denigration punctuated with a lack of self belief. Like most of the women actresses of the time, she was utterly vulnerable and in a patriarchal social set up had to bear with the influential managers and directors of the theatre for her living. Inevitably she fell a victim to the trappings of the cunning people and was betrayed and this is time and again articulated by Binodini in her narrative. Binodini’s early retirement from the stage at the height of her glory was completely unbelievable and came as a shock to many. Binodini attributes this to the act of betrayal and deception: I had taken retirement from the stage for various reasons andhad been living a life of joy and sorrow in isolation. The chief one of these many reasons was that I was extremely hurt by the deceptions that were practised on me, when after having tempted me in various ways; I was used to get something done. I worked and did whatever I had done because I loved the theatre very much. But I have not been able to forget the blows of deception. Therefore, I retired when the time was ripe (Dasi 106) In 1883, a rich businessman, Gurmukh Rai, offered to build a theatre for the company if Binodini agreed to become his mistress. Under pressure from her colleagues, and flattered that the new theatre would bear her name, Binodini agreed. However the theatre was registered as Star, because it was felt that naming it after a prostitute would be bad for business. She recounts of the experiences of being victimized and betrayed by her compatriots. Out of her sheer love and passion for theatre, and of course under pressure from her “friends”, she succumbed to the whims of one Gurmukh Rai, a rich businessman in 1883 who proposed

to her to build a new theatre in her name. When the theatre came into being it was not named after her as promised. The sheer act of betrayal crushed her psychologically and as already pointed out she took the decision to stay away from theatre for ever. Towards the end, Binodini becomes extremely harsh on the socalled bhadraloks and takes jibe at them. She exposes the hypocrisy and unmakes them in a naked way. She proceeds to justify the reasons for the degraded and polluted social environment. No women are born as prostitute in the mother’s womb and the society plays a principal role in making the women morally corrupt and degraded. She raises her accusing finger to the patriarchy and Kulinism of the Hindu Sical system. The Bhadraloks who patronized and promoted the women for public performances, ultimately proved to be the consumers of their flesh. Her constant self denunciations ironically allude to the disturbed and muddled social scenario. It is true that Binodini’s narratives are the tangible manifestations of her deep rooted anguish and pain lying deep into her hear and writing was a means of catharsis for her. In her own words, “I have written for my own consolation, perhaps for some unfortunate woman who taken in by deception has stumbled on to the path to hell” (Dasi 107) My Life as an Actress, which constitutes the second part of her biography, can be considered as a sequel to the first. This is fragmented and incomplete version of her life narrative, mostly focused on her performing life. At the beginning she makes her purpose clear to the readers, “I would like to recount properly all that had taken place in that age—what I have never forgotten and can never forget, what I loved once with all my heart and soul, whose attractions continue still to bind me— ...” (Dasi 128).The most interesting part of the narrative is travel accounts of the theatrical tour of the west. Binodini beautifully describes her exhilarating experiences of the milieu, location in Delhi, Lahore, and Vrindavan. Also she talks about her personal experiences and concludes by commenting her cordial relations with her mentor Girish Chandra Ghosh.

Binodini’s autobiography breaks new grounds in a number of ways. For the first time in Bengali language, it documents the trajectory of a professional actress from the margins and brings out the collective consciousness of the entire community thorough the personal narrative of Binodini. The testimony is personal but the message it conveys has far-reaching significance as far as selfhood of the women and subaltern representation is concerned. As a social and cultural archive, the autobiography represents the unheard voices of the people from the margins like Binodini and provides with ample evidences of class, caste and gender discrimination in the society. It has been the saga of the subaltern and marginalized who have been discriminated against for centuries and put under the control of the caste Hindus. The nationalistic discourse has always been elitist in nature and under the control of the upper caste people. This autobiography, in a sense, represents a fierce antielitist polemic. The autobiography throws much light on the vulnerability and predicament of the women, particularly from the peripheral and murky backgrounds in the contemporary society. The narrative provides with us ample evidences of social hierarchy and the cultural barrier which every individual from the below had to undergo. Binodini’s meteoric rise to a state of eminence through her ceaseless fight against a patriarchal society and a brave show of resistance foregrounds new discourses in the Feminist Studies. The documentary significance of the autobiography lies its self reflexive quality in that the author not merely reflects on the vicissitudes of herself and but foregrounds a greater degree of subjectivity. The autobiography, if studied from the historical perspective, provides ample evidences of the institution of theatre, theatrical practices, role of the actors and actresses, gendered representation in theatre, category of the audiences and also the playwrights and directors in the 19th and 20th century Calcutta.

Binodini Dasi’s autobiography has profound social, cultural and historical significance The texts need to be revisited and reinterpreted in the contemporary perspective. The work has immense possibility of research in terms of culture studies and gender studies.

Works Cited Dasi, Binodini. My Story and My Life as an Actress. Ed. and trans. Rimli Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998. Print. Satchidanandan, K. “Reflections: Autobiography Today Author(s).” Indian Literature Vol. 54, No. 2 (256) (March/April 2010) 6-9. Print.