Friday, July 24, 2009




{Two women, side by side, one nude, the other in a red gown, by Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918). The art was drawn in 1916. Gustav was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau (Vienna Secession) movement.}

Indian Feminism and Sexual Discourse

1901
She was born into a Christian family in Bastar (now Chhatisgarh) in 1901 when her father, a doctor by profession, stayed away in Burma (now Myanmar). Later she studied medicine at Cuttack Medical School where she earned her LMP (the degree for Medical Practitioner during British Colonial times) in 1921 and started her career as the superintendent of the Cuttack Red Cross. During this time, she got involved with a fatherly person and was caught red handed by his wife. They had physical relations, but her lover cum mentor wholeheartedly wished her marriage with a suitable person.


The period between 1921 and 1927 was also a productive phase of her literary life. She wrote several volumes of poems like Anjali and Archana, and novels on social issues like Bharati and Parasmani in Oriya. Through her writing, she protested against purdah, child marriage, caste system, untouchability, discrimination against women. And she advocated women's rights, steps towards their empowerment, and widow remarriage.


While working with Red Cross and also while in a relationship with her mentor lover, she got herself involved with a barefoot doctor and imposter who settled in Delhi. Her mentor was against her marriage with that unknown person, but she resigned from her service and became an Aryasamajis. She got married to that stranger and left for Delhi and opened a clinic in Chandinichowk.


She began to write in Hindi while continuing her writing in Oriya. She came out with a volume of Hindi poems entitled
Baramala. She also became an influential editor of several Hindi periodicals such as Mahabir, Jeevan and Nari Bharati. Kuntala Kumari was invited to deliver the convocation addresses at Allahabad University and at Benaras Hindu University. That was a mark of rare recognition accorded to a woman of those days.


But her marital life was not happy and her husband exploited her as a source of income to which she wanted to resist. She died at only her 37 years of age with illness and mental trauma. Eminent Hindi novelist Jainendra Kumar’s novel
Kalyani was based on her struggle and her pathetic life.


She was Kuntala Kumari Sabat, the veteran feminist poetess and writer of Oriya Literature. Though her pre- and post-marital life were not so peaceful and her life was dangling between love, sex, oppression, and harassment by the male-dominated mentality of feudal India, we never find any sexual agony or find any of her own saga of life in her poems, rather than she always tried to hide her sexual expression with a coated version of mysticism in the form of Sufi ideology. This trend was prevailed for many years and even after few decades in the beginning of post colonial. where era we can see the poetess expressed their love feelings as a form of Bhakti poems.



1914
In 1930, a Romanian young boy met a 16-year-old Indian girl and both fell in love. The boy had come to India to study Indian Philosophy and the girl was his teacher’s daughter. They couldn’t hide this affair and were soon caught by the mentor. The boy was asked to leave the mentor’s residence and never to contact the girl again.


Later, the boy became a world famous philosopher and wrote a semi-autobiographical novel first published in Romania in 1933. It was written specifically for a literary prize and sold very well in Romania, garnering both fame and money. The novel was translated into Italian in 1945, into German in 1948, into French in 1950, and into Spanish in 1952.


The girl was married at the age of twenty and had two children. She engaged herself in writing and published volumes of poetry and prose, wrote many books on Tagore, but was not famous until 1974.


However, the girl was not aware of that Romanian novel until she heard about it from her father who had visited Europe in 1938 or 1939. She also came to know that the book was also dedicated to her. But it was not until 1972, when a close Romanian friend of the author came to Kolkata, and she finally understood that the author had described a sexual relationship between them in his book. She subsequently had a friend who translated the novel for her from the French and she was shaken by his depictions. In 1973, when she went to America to attend a seminar on Tagore. She met the author again after 43 years and talked personally to him. She also warned the him that she would sue if his book ever came out in English. The author assured her that he wouldn’t publish the English version of his novel. But perhaps she didn’t believe the author and she herself couldn’t check her agony -- the agony of her love being misrepresented. So she wrote a novel.


Later after her death, in 1974, the University of Chicago Press published the English translation of both the Romanian and Indian novels both as companion volumes depicting two sides of a romance. In her novel, she wanted to paint how an Indian girl fell in love with a western boy, depicting the whole thing as being more concerned with emotion rather than to physical co adherence.


The Romanian author was Mircea Eliade and the Indian girl was Maitreyi Devi. The English translation of the Romanian novel is entitled
The Bengal Nights while the English translation of the Indian novel is entitled It Does Not Die.


1919
After six years of dating incidents of Maiytreyi, a young poetess of Punjab married an editor of a literary magazine to whom she was engaged in early childhood and changed her name. Later she became the author of 70 works, which included novels, short stories, and poems. She was elected a fellow of the Sahitya Akadmi, in India, as one of the 21 immortals of literature. She was honored with the Padma Vibhushan, the Jnanpith Award and the Padma Shree. She also received three D Lit degrees from Delhi, Jabalpur, and Vishva Bharti Universities.


She was born in 1919 in Gujranwala, now in Pakistan, the only child of a school teacher, a poet and an editor of a literary journal. When she was 40 years old, she got herself involved with an Urdu poet and left her husband, but that Urdu poet did not prepare to marry her as he had a new woman in his life. Later, she became involved with another painter and lived the last 40 years of her life with that artist, who also designed most of her book covers. For the rest of her life, she maintained her two lovers with equal potency of love and without any confrontation.


The author was
Amrita Pritam, who died on October 31, 2005 and her two lovers were Imroz and Sahir Ludhianvi. Penguin India has published a book entitled Amrita-Imroz: A Love Story (ISBN: 0143100440) by Uma Trilok.


1934
In 1934, after four years of romance of Maitreyi-Eliade, a Keralite girl was born and spent her childhood in that city. She began writing at the age of 17 in both Malayalam and English. At the age of 15, she got married to a man 15 years elder to her and their first son was born after only one year of their marriage.


In her writing, she soon got involved in controversy as her writings were a type of confession where she did not hide her sufferings and her traumas that started from her teenage years and then went on and on. She was the first woman writer to write and discuss about her sexual desires in her writings. She did not hide in her writings either her lesbian relationships or her husband’s homosexual tendencies, nor did she hide her extra-marital relationships. But strangely enough, her husband always supported her writings.


In Chapter 27 of her most discussed and controversial autobiographical book
My Story , she writes, “During my nervous breakdown, there developed between myself and my husband an intimacy which was purely physical … after bathing me in warm water and dressing me in men’s clothes, my husband bade me sit on his lap, fondling me and calling me his little darling boy….I was by nature shy… but during my illness, I shed my shyness and for the first time in my life learned to surrender totally in bed with my pride intact and blazing.”


Though in numerous interviews, she praised her husband for showing his support for her writings, in her book
My Story, she told that her husband supported her writings because her writings were a source of income for him. However, her husband died after a long illness. She later tried her luck in politics and failed.

At the age of 65, she converted herself to Muslim to marry a young man. After converting herself to Islam, she argued that Purdah in Islam is the most wonderful dress for women in the world. And she had always loved to wear the purdah as it gives women a sense of security. Only Islam gives protection to women. About her conversion to Islam, she told that she had been lonely all through her life. At night, she used to sleep by embracing a pillow. But she was no longer a loner. Islam was her company. According to her, Islam is the only religion in the world that gives love and protection to women. But in 2006, she issued a statement at a book release ceremony organized by Kairali Books in Kochi that she deeply regretted converting to Islam and was disillusioned with the treacherous behavior of her Muslim friends. She claimed that all her wealth amounting to several lakhs, gold ornaments, books and other valuables had been looted by Muslims.


She was
Kamala Das or Madhavikutty or Kamala Surraiyah. She had been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1984 along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer. Apart from that, she received many awards for her literary contributions like the Asian Poetry Prize, Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries, Asian World Prize, Sahitya Academy Award and Kerala Sahitya Academy Award etc. She passed away on 31 May 2009 in Pune at the age of 75.


The Role of Sexuality From a Colonial Perspective


These four feminist writers of the last century, opposite to each other’s character, tried to raise women’s voices, which apparently may seem very contradictory, confusing and even delineating different values for feminine aspects. Following the work these feminists, anyone can argue that womanhood is, as a whole, a paradigmatic myth, which incorporates multiple myths of the woman in a mystic form. We have no way to oppose this parenthesis. But as a female (please note that I am not saying the word ‘feminist’), I can feel every situation was true for me if any day I would be either Maitreyi or Kamala or Amrita or Kuntala. It is a very vague argument why Maitreyi was not like Kamala or Amrita was not like Kuntala. Maitryi could admit her relationship with Eliade as Kamala did. Why didn’t Amrita bore all her pathos as Kuntala did? These are vague arguments.


I think the transformation of a woman’s heart from Kuntala to Kamala must be possible due to the development of feminism in India. The reason and development of feminism in India is different from that of the Western world. The pre-colonial social structure and the role of women reveal in them was theorised into feminism. It was more a social than any individual matter. Female mass was considered equal to male mass but the status of the individual female body remained as puritan as it was in feudalistic patriarchal society. In pre-colonial India, we see that plural marriage was allowed for males and even we find our male intellectuals, writers, politicians were able to get married to another woman in the case of the death of their first wife.
It is also ironically true that the female mortality rate was considerably higher in comparison with males due to lack of proper nutrition. But we never find a single instance of any woman remarrying after became a widow in those days, though the marriage of widows was legalized from the early days of British rule.


Women were taught to act as a goddess of sacrifice and as Simone told us in her
The Second Sex, the women were trapped into an impossible ideal (the myth of the mother, the virgin, the motherland, nature, etc) by denying the individuality and situation of all different kinds of women. So we find when our pre-colonial feminists used to write essays, they often chose the titles like “Women’s Duty for Household” or “The Legendary Female Figures in Indian Myths,” where the patriarchal tone was still there. So an attempt to reconstruct Indian womanhood as the essence of Indian Culture through the Nationalist movement could be seen where the individual feminism was deliberately denied. Kuntala and Maitreyi were products of these pre-colonial societies.


The largest and the most mainstream women's organisation in India at this time was the All-India Women's Conference. A wing of Indian National Congress, it was founded in 1927, was many-layered, and always attempted to reflect the regional diversity of the movement. Within one year of Maitreyi- Elliad’s meeting at Kolkata, the Indian National Congress passed the Karachi Resolution in 1931 where 'swaraj' or 'self rule' in free India was declared, but the gender issue was still marginalised as evidenced by the fact that only one of the resolutions expressly mentions protecting women's rights (as part of workers' rights).


Undoubtedly, post-colonial India was different from that of pre-colonial India and women’s education was flourishing. And the age-old binaries that had characterised dominant philosophical and political thinking on gender were reconstructed with an array of oppressive patriarchal family structures: age, ordinal status, relationship to men through family of origin, marriage, and procreation, as well as patriarchal attributes: dowry, siring sons, etc., kinship, caste, community, village, market, and the state were put into questionable range. Along with these questions, ‘rights of women’s bodies’ are also seen as antithetical to these patriarchal milieus.


I have to write this article in support of Kamala Das or Amrita Pritam because some of our scholars always try to carve a separate identity for sexuality other than feminism. They define feminism in order to avoid the uncritically following as the protest for male hegemony and in their conception; sexuality has no role to protest such hegemony. If feminist writing during twentieth century colonial India was characterised by societal hierarchies and a need to demarcate an Indian identity, feminist debates in post-colonial India dealt with ways in which feminist sexualities were practiced. This is why the whole country mourns the demise of Amrita and Kamala.

22 comments:

  1. There has been always a difference between pubic and private for women....making personal into public, which was always easy for the men, in fact has been mostly problematic for women, more so for women writers. This is my fast and first reaction as soon as I read this blog..I will come back and post my comments and appreciations on specific points later on..good job, well done,Hiranmayee

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  2. a very well written article . All the authors were great in their own right and for me personally their achievements were reflections of their love life. They had the courage to accept, admit and not let not themselves being exploited although society did try its bid. In conclusion men or even for that matter society is stil governed by rules of morality which sadly swings towards men and the irony is that most women support this view. HAs the time come to accept women with their desires as not abnormality but natural and normal? Can we women accept each other with our diverse sexual needs and not toe the line set by the limits society dictates. I hope and pray that women have more choice in meeting their sexual needs.

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  3. "In the face of exploitation and domination, sexual agonies are not expressed as they should have. It is quite natural in women as sex is usually associated wiht love. When love loses its significance, the pain and agony takes on a diferent meaning with the sexual element abruptly or momentarily dying a natural death."

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  4. This is wonderful. You have given historical perspective. It shows how feminine sensibility was expressed in indian literature in last century. Female writings in India has taken a long journey.

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  5. I am think every one do the own way in they path. every thing is good if make our happiness and inside peac

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  6. A well written article.Feminism ad sexuality are very distinctly separate subjects.To me, in plain words,Feminism is a collective noun issue and Sexuality is a Proper noun matter.

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  7. would like to read again.
    interesting

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  8. A very systematic and well written analysis of faminist approach of literature in India. Though u have established the fact that their thoughts and voices are contradictory. I think, this is not contradictory, but paradoxical and the basic thing is that truth is always paradoxical. It can only then be on the same voice and tone, when raised by an organisation and pre determined for it, which can only be false and never be truth. So this seems a natural go through for the tought.

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  9. mahesh chandra dewedy3:16 AM

    Highly informative article about the four celebrities' love life and literary works. While I fully agree that in a male dominated society women's sexuality gets less freedom for exposure, yet I feel that it is to a great extent a natural trait of females. Females of most of the species fight shy in exposing their sensuality- at least initially.

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  10. cpaboobacker12:59 AM

    The most important aspect of this write-up is its clarity and evolution. It shows how from Kuntala Kumari Sabat to Kamala Surayya, women acquitred the strength to declare their selves to the world in a truthful manner. Sarojijiniji has written the essay with a definite sobriety; this, therefore, becomes a document on human rights with a perspective bent on women. Women are not only misused, but their openness is now a days misused by the male dominated literary world for purpose of profit.
    I should congratulate Sarojiniji for giving us a very sober piece of writing on women writers in India. The piece on Amrita Pretum is the most excellent compared to others.

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  11. This article is a gem to Feminist literature. You have taken much pain to collect data of these four eminent writers and analysed superbly pointing out the differences in attitude and courage of these different personalities. As you have stated postcoloniality made Kamala Das a brave and outspoken woman writer. Congratulations again and again!

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  12. I support your idea. It is true.

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  13. IT'S GOOD JOB VERY NICE GO AHEAD .............MINE ALL WISH WITH U.

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  14. Mam
    I was literally absorbed by your write.The way you have accentuated the varied shades of women lib from the pre-colonial to the present one is really thought provoking.

    Indian society as a whole still lacks the courage to accept a woman,who vouches for her choices, either socially, politically or sexually.

    Thank you mam for this wonderful article. Really helped to understand the psyche of our very eminent writers especially Amrita Pritam and Kamala Das and the insight in human emotions..

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  15. A.
    • Date of Birth:- 1901
    • Name :- Kuntal Kumari Sabat ,Bastar(C.G.)
    • Marital status :- Love with Romanian boy named Mircea Eliade
    • Creations :- Anjali ,archana,bharati,Parasmani,baramala,Mahaveer,Jeevanand Nari bahrti
    • Convocation address at BHU
    • Death on :-1938
    • Remarks:-Over her life eminet novelist wrote kalyani
    B.
    • Date of Birth:- 1914
    • Name :- Maitreyi Devi (Kolkata)
    • Marital status :-Love with a fatherly person and barefooted doctor
    • Creations :- Mircea Eliade wrote novel named The Bengal Nights in 1933 which was translated into Italian,German,Frenchand Spanish .
    • Maitreyi Devi wrote IT does not die .
    • Death on :- 1974
    • Remarks:- University of Chicago published both the novels .
    C.
    • Date of Birth:- 1919
    • Name :- Amrta Pritam ,Gurjanwala,Now in Pakistan
    • Marital status :- Affair with Imroz and sahir ludhianvi
    • Creations :-70 literary works awarded with Padma Vibhushan ,Jnanpith Award and Padma shree.
    • Death on :- 2005
    • Remarks:- Amrita_Imroz : a love story by Uma Trilok
    D.
    • Date of Birth:- 1934
    • Name :- Kamla Das,Keral
    • Marital status :- Converted into Muslim at age of 65 years
    • Creations Asian Poetry Prize,Kent Award, Sahitya Akademi Award
    • Death on :- 2009
    • Remarks:- Shortlisted for nobel prize in 1984

    From the above table ,I have analysed following observation about the role of sexuality :-
    1. Female were considered equal to male mass but the status of the individual female body remained as puritan.
    2. Women were taught to act as a goddesses of sacrifice.
    3. “Right of women`s bodies” still antithetical to patriarchal milieus.
    Salute to Madam Sarojini for such hard work to compile the autographies of great writers with frankness,without any distortion with history and true spirit of literture !
    Regards.

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  16. Anonymous8:53 AM

    Hats off. Marvellous job. I am too little to comment more. Still you have encouraged young writers to shed aside stigma and prejudice if any. This persistent effort will be treated as a path finder for experimental writers . Thank you very much for your blogsite. Take care Pabitra Kar

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  17. It is beautifully written and also well collection of informations
    I agree with Gopal Nayak, “All the authors were great in their own right and for me personally their achievements were reflections of their love life. They had the courage to accept, admit and not let not themselves being exploited although society did try its bid.” But certainly all women are not like that.

    I think it is not 100% correct to say that it is due to male dominating society.
    An environment is created in society, I don’t know how it is created but everyone becomes slave to these environments, whose values are different for different regions, and are not absolute but relative.
    King Akbar has to punish his son saleem as he is not just father, but king of India. How a king helpless in front of society or environments.As he explain to Jodabai in very sad mood
    Elbert Einstein prove proves that our every observation like time, speed etc are relative not absolute, so the case may with the physical relationship between men and women.
    In the the life history of Abraham Lincoln, His grandmother Lucy hanks was summoned by the court to explain why he give birth a baby (Nancy, the mother of Abraham Lincoln) without marriage.
    It was punishable crime in USA in those days.
    In 1933 Dale carnage wrote a book how to win friends and influence people. The topic is irrelevant to present discussion.
    But in the book it was stated that author ,neighbors and other people were very furious on an editor of a newspaper, because he published Family planning methods advertisement in his newspaper, which they think young girls “not boys” can read it, and consequently it may have bed effect on their life.
    In 1960 sex revolution started in Europe which breaks all barriers.
    But we saw the president bill Clinton and Monica case, and it was supposed that free sex is allowed but consider to just unorganized thing and head of the state should not do it, and the president is narrowly escape from impeachment.
    But in subcontinent our environment is not very different from 17th century USA.
    For a long time we all believe that virginity of a women is most important thing. If a woman is raped or lose her virginity by any incident, unlike europe she thing it is the end of her life.

    A sad and horrible story was reported in news paper that some miscreants kidnapped and rape a woman, but after some days she was killed by her husband as he thinks “ to live with a secondhand woman is humiliation for him”.
    I don’t know how environment is created, but I am sure it can be changed by long endeavor.
    But certainly it cannot be changed overnight.

    अगर कोई लड़का हमरी बहॆन को सीटी मारकर बुलाए ऒर वो हमारे सामनॆ चली जाए ऒर रात गुज़ार कर आजाए। ये यहां नहीं होसकता बलके ज़ियादातर लोग उसकी पिटाई कर देंगे।
    सेहत के लेहाज़ से भूक पेटकी हो या sex की दोनों भूक ही कॆहलाएं गी लेकिन कोई पेट का भूका हो तो कोई ऒरत होया मर्द किसी के सामने हाथ फॆला सकता हॆ ऒर कॊई उसकी मदद भी करसकता हॆ। लेकिन दूसरी भूक में ऎसा नहीं होसकता। ये फ़र्क़ रहेगा कम या ज़ियादा ये कहा नहीं जासकता

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  18. thank you. fascinating material and in-depth orientation.

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  19. RAJAN SOORYA DHAS7:55 AM

    GOD CREATED MEN FROM HEAVEN WITH HIS IMAGE. AND WOMEN WHO BELONGS TO THE MOTHER EARTH KEEP TEMPTING THE MAN............
    WELL IF SHE PRACTICES YOGA AND PRAYER FOR POSITIVE ACTIONS HER SEXUAL POWERS CAN BE CONTROLED FOR GOOD DEEDS. BE GOOD.
    I READ ALL THE LINES YOU HAVE DONE A GOOD WORK. CONGRATULATIONS.
    LOVE,
    RAJAN SOORYA DHAS.

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  20. I got to know the real situations of social life of Indian women, specially regarding love life.

    Sharyf

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  21. I must appreciate you knowledge about the subject.Thanks for sharing the relevant stuff, I was searching since a very long time.

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