Much of the world's literature has been dominated by a
canon that nearly dismissed women's writing more than two
centuries ago. The counter-canons that have emerged as
the result of this exclusion have helped to establish
women's writing in mainstream culture, but still in some
ways fail to acknowledge women's literature coming from
non-white countries. This essay is an attempt to
highlight some of the works produced by women in India
over the ages.
Although India has a history of ancient civilisations
such as the Harappa and Mohenjodaro, and of matrilineal
societies in the south, no written records of women's
literary prowess exists predating the 6th century BC. The
emergence of the first body of poetry by women in India
could be attributed to the advent of Buddhism. Perhaps it
was the freedom offered by the religion, the way of life
it offered to women, and the principle of equality that
it propagated which allowed women to pen their thoughts
for the first time.
Buddhism offered women the opportunity to break away from
the restrictions of home life, a major factor in the rise
of Indian women's literature in the early 6th century BC.
The earliest known anthology of women's literature in
India has been identified as those belonging to the
Therigatha nuns, the poets being contemporaries of the
Buddha. One of these, Mutta, writes,
So free
am I, so gloriously free, free from three petty
things - from mortar, from pestle and from my twisted
lord. [Tharu and Lalita p.68]
Mutta's works,
translated from Pali, offer an explanation through their
interpretation. Religious escapism was the only way out
for many women who were frustrated with a life inside the
home. They chose to join the Buddhist sangha (religious
communities) in their attempts to break away from the
social world of tradition and marriage. Thus emerged
poems and songs about what it meant to be free from
household chores and sexual slavery.
Although the early forms of writing addressed the issue
of personal freedom, the poetry that followed later was a
celebration of womanhood and sexuality. The Sangam poets
that dominated the era between ca. 100 BC-AD 250 wrote
extensively about what it meant to have a female body.
The translation of Venmanipputi Kuruntokai's 'What she
said to her girlfriend' reads,
On the
banks shaded by a punnai clustered with flowers, when
we made love my eyes saw him and my ears heard him;
my arms grow beautiful in the coupling and grow lean
as they come away. [Tharu and Lalita p.73]
The content
of the poem is bold for its time because it is expressing
a woman's pleasure in sex. The poems written around this
age echo a sense of sexual liberation.
S. S. Kalpana says that the 'commentaries that accompany
these poems mention songs women used to sing while
transplanting seedlings, drawing water and husking paddy'
[Tharu and Lalita p.71]. Women apparently sang to keep
vigil on the ripening grain and to ward off spirits.
These songs took the form of poetry when written down.
According to A. K. Ramanujan, who translated most of the
poems of the Sangam age, disparities in gender are
evident in the way women have written about their
experiences. Some of the poems echo the need for bodily
love and passion, the foolishness of war and the 'spears'
that men left with to wage wars.
The ten anthologies and eight long poems of the Sangam
age are the oldest and most prominent body of secular
poetry extant in India. According to S. S. Kalpana, the
absence of mythological references and Sanskrit words
suggests the possibility that they were written before
the Aryan take-over of northern India. This was also the
time when the University of Nalanda was set up (c.a. 100
BC), which opened its doors on an equal basis to women.
Most of the university records have been lost, but one
can assume that the women scholars contributed to the
expanding body of literature
Among the poets who wrote in the 12th century AD came the
medieval Kannada poet, rebel and mystic, Akkamahadevi,
whose life and writing challenged the patriarchal
dominance of the world at large. She is supposed to have
wandered naked in search of divinity.
The spread of Buddhism and the rapid acceptance of Islam
forced Hinduism to rethink the caste system. As Hinduism
underwent a revision of spirituality and basked in the
new-found outlook of the Bhakti movement, so did the men
and women associated with the religion. This is evident
in Akkamahadevi's writing as she uses the image of her
body to defy her critics when she says,
Brother,
you've come drawn by the beauty of these billowing
breasts, this brimming youth. I am no woman brother,
no whore. [Tharu and Lalita p.79]
As a radical
mystic it is no surprise that she uses the image of her
genitals to convey her understanding of the Bhakti
tradition and the Hindu idea of rebirth when she says,
Not one,
not two, not three or four, but through eight four
hundred thousand vaginas have I come. I have come
through unlikely worlds guzzled on pleasure and pain.
[Tharu and Lalita p.80]
Another poet
of the Bhakti tradition was Sule Sankavva, who according
to Vijaya Dabbe wrote poetry that could startle
contemporary sensibility with its combination of the
sacrosanct and the sacrilegious. Writing as a prostitute,
her sentiments about the duplicity of society at large
are strongly echoed in her only surviving poem, in which
she says,
In my
harlot's trade having taken one man's money, I daren't
accept a second man's, sir. And if I do, they'll
stand me naked and kill me, sir. [Tharu and Lalita p.81]
The poetry
which followed a century later reflected the economic
hardships of most women. It was still in the tradition of
the earlier poets who used religion and god, and the
discriminatory alignment of the oppressive caste system
that worked against them, to define their writing.
Among the women who wrote was Janabai, the Varkari saint
poet of the low caste Sudra community of Maharashtra, who
in defence of her lower-caste status lowered the position
of god to that of a fellow sweeper who aids her when she
is tired and doesn't mind shovelling dirt for her. The
same trend was observed with other lower-caste women who
wrote to criticise the Hindu caste system which the
Bhakti tradition had failed to eliminate.
This was also the period in India's history that
witnessed invasion and gradual settlement by the Persian
Empire. The rise of Islam, not only as a religion but
also as the framework of the Mughal dynasty that ruled
India for almost three centuries thereafter, brought a
new set of experiences and influences to women's
literature in India. Muslim women had to be literate to
comply with the requirements of the Holy Koran which made
it mandatory for every Muslim, male or female to pray.
Women made use of this rule of the religion to write
about themselves and their experiences. One of the
earliest to write was Princess Gul-Badan Begum who in
1587 completed the Humayun Nama which details
the life and history of one of India's most powerful
Mughal kings. She wrote so 'beautifully' in Persian that
when translated into English in 1898, her translator
Annette Beveridge described it as the first novel-biography
ever written by an Indian woman.
In ca. 1730, Muddupalini, a courtesan in the kingdom of
the Nayaka kings of Tanjavur in the south of India, was
born. Since the rulers of the Nayaka dynasty were
scholars and poets, lovers of music and literature and
patrons of the arts, they granted extensive patronage to
women educated in the art of dance and music. There were
other distinguished women poets and scholars in their
courts who were recipients of this patronage. One of them,
Ramabhadramba, writes about women in the Tanjavur courts
who composed poetry in eight languages.
Maddhupalini's Radhika Santwanam consisted of
five hundred and eighty four poems about the relationship
between Krishna and Radha. In an unusual third section,
Krishna complains that Radha insists on making love even
though he doesn't want to. According to K. Lalita, no
other Telgu poet, man or woman, has written about a woman
taking the initiative in a sexual relationship. Her
compositions created a stir in the literary world when
they were published almost two centuries later. The
erotic poems in her most reputed work, Radhika
Santwanam, stunned even the most liberal of readers
and critics.
Traditionally the only women who had access to
scholarships and the arts of literature and dancing were
courtesans. Their status in society was of high standing,
and because of the wealth they accumulated due to
patronage, their property endowed them with the ability
to choose their lovers and friends.
Another courtesan who was raised within the Asaf Jahi
Sultanate in the Mughal Empire was Mahlaqa Bai Chanda,
who received an 'elaborate education and composed
beautifully' [Tharu and Lalita p.120] as a court poet and
songwriter. Her poetry was collected and published after
her death in 1824 as Gulzar-e-Mahlaqa (Mahlaqa's
garden of flowers). According to Afeefa Banu most of her
poems are composed in the Ghazal form which originated in
Iran.
Around the 18th century, however, a combination of
factors led to the decline of women writing in India. The
East India Company, established in 1600, whose initial
purpose had been to trade, gradually took over as rulers
and thereafter the British government established its
rule in India. As a result of princes and kings losing
their kingdoms, and being restricted by a small privy
purse, there was loss of patronage to women in courts.
Since these were women with education, the association of
educated woman with 'bad' women became common. This led
to the loss of education for women and the production of
women's literature almost came to a standstill.
The trend of educating women began again in the late 19th
century with the rise of the reformist movement in India
which saw more women's participation in rebelling against
British rule. This led to a new stage in the development
of women's literature in India. The body of work produced
was often related to the freedom struggle and the reform
and nationalist movements. Although there were still
women such as Bhabani and Jogeswari whose writings in the
early 19th century questioned the patriarchal dominance
of their husbands, the majority concentrated on the
freedom struggle.
The earliest woman writing during the reformist period
was Savitribai Phule, who along with her husband
championed the cause of women's education. She was the
first woman teacher in modern Maharashtra and together
with her husband started the first school for girls. Her
writing carries the mark of an activist and scholar who
wholeheartedly believed in the cause of the untouchables.
Among the women writers who followed was Pandita Ramabai
Saraswati who was educated both in English and in
Sanskrit. In her The high caste Hindu woman she
argues against the patriarchal reading of the Hindu
scriptures and early scholarly works of learned Brahmins
which encouraged a repressive and demeaning
interpretation favouring the suppression of women.
Sarojini Naidu, dubbed the nightingale of India,
published her first set of poems at the age of sixteen
and went to England where she was educated at King's
College in London, and later at Cambridge. Her writings
as an activist and as the governor of Uttar Pradesh
reflect her honest and heartfelt concerns about the
situation of her country.
Towards the mid-nineteenth century more and more women
began to write in English. Some of them, such as Rokeya
Sakhawat Hossain, created a world of feminist ideologies.
In Sultana's Dream she talks about a world
dominated by women; a world which has imprisoned men in a
male equivalent of zenanas (women's quarters).
She creates a world that is much better than the one men
managed. In her woman's world, there are no wars and
there is constant scientific progress and love for the
environment.
Women's writing in the 20th century moved towards a
medium of modernism in which womanist and feminist
statements were combined with political messages. The
writings of women such as Hamsa Wadkar conveyed an honest
impression of a world of professional women whose careers
in television and stage segregated them as a class apart,
yet subjected them to the same brutality and force of
patriarchy. In her autobiography, Hamsa Wadkar talks
about her life as an actor from the age of eleven, her
marriage to a suspicious and abusive husband, the birth
of a daughter, her life after eloping with another man,
the imprisonment she faced at his home along with two of
his other wives, and her rape by a justice of peace.
Women writers such as Mahashwetadevi combined women's
causes with political movements. In Draupadi
Mahashwetadevi creates a world of tribal rebels whose
fight against a political system of enforced capitalism
has driven them to become Naxalites (supporters of a
Chinese-style Communism). Others such as Sashi Deshpande
build a platform of universal female experiences. In Binding
Vines she examines the experiences of women coming
from different echelons of society.
Over the years and throughout the political instability
which affected Indian society at large, along with a
myriad of other influences which have affected culture,
language and social patterns, women's literature in India
has evolved to show common experiences, a sense of
sisterhood and a range of female experiences that
question the recurring face of patriarchy.
Bibliography
Tharu, Susie and Lalita, K. (Eds). Women Writing in
India Volume 1, 600 BC to the Early Twentieth Century.
Oxford University Press. New Delhi. 1991. [Hereafter
referred to as Tharu and Lalita]
Banu, Afeefa (Ed). 'Mahlaqa Bai Chanda', in Tharu and
Lalita p.120
Dabbe, Vijaya (Ed). 'Akkamahadevi', in Tharu and Lalita p.77
-------- 'Sule Sankavva', in Tharu and Lalita p.81
Kalpana, S. S. (Ed). 'The Sangam Poets', in Tharu and
Lalita p.70
Lalita, K. (Ed). 'Muddupalini', in Tharu and Lalita p.116
© Sherin Koshy, November
2004
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