NEW DELHI, 4 October 2006 — To get a glimpse of India beyond its growing urban centers, globally-connected businesses and the song-and-dance world of Bollywood film, one can turn to the myriad voices in the country’s regional literature, specially those of women.
Women writing in some of India’s 14 regional languages and innumerable dialects have been producing a body of bold and powerful works that speak of the worlds of the marginalized and oppressed.
There is the world of Jashoda, who has been milk-mother to innumerable children, but dies a lonely death in Maheshwata Devi’s short story Breast Giver. Or that of Alma Kabutari, the young girl from a “criminal” tribe who wages a solitary battle till she finally grasps political power in Maitreyi Pushpa’s novel named after the protagonist. Or the yearnings and desires of the traditionally deprived young widows in Indira Goswami’s The Moth-eaten Howdah of the Tusker. Mahashweta, Goswami and Pushpa are among several Indian authors whose works are being showcased at the Frankfurt 2006 Book Fair where India is guest of honor.
These women paint detailed and sensitive pictures of the societies they write about - be it Mahashweta’s tribal belts of the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand, Pushpa’s highly feudal and patriarchal Bundelkhand region of central India, or Goswami’s poignant pictures of the widows of Assam and the town of Vrindavan.
“If you want to know a country, understand its villages. If you want to know a society, get to know its women,” Pushpa quotes a saying that she says stayed with her.
Researchers often contact Mahashweta, Pushpa and Goswami. Their texts are now part of language, gender and social studies in institutions in India and abroad.
Mahashweta is one of the most widely read modern Indian authors. She writes in Bengali and has been translated into all major Indian languages as well as English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian and some others.
“After Rabindranath Tagore, it is Mahashweta Devi’s writings that have reached further than anybody else,” says Ganesh Devi, a scholar, literary critic and social activist, who has been working with India’s tribal people for several decades.
Ganesh Devi is scheduled to speak at the Frankfurt Book Fair in a special session devoted to Mahashweta’s writings. Mahashweta is India’s “Cultural Ambassador” to the fair.
Eminent scholars see Mahashweta’s works as rich sites of feminine discourse, but the author dislikes being labeled a woman writer. “I write about the oppressed. My works are equally about men, women, children,” she says.
For most of these authors, folklore, songs and the oral tradition are the inspiration for their tales. Mahashweta often adds painstaking research from archival sources.
Women, even in India’s most feudal and patriarchal societies, have always expressed themselves through ditties, songs, tales for their grandchildren — sung and spoken largely in the confines of their homes.
“Just because they had no voice it did not mean women had no thoughts,” says Pushpa. She found a story in each song her grandmother sang to the beat of her dholak or drum, for weddings, birth ceremonies and all the other occasions that were the highlights of the woman’s life.
Her novel Chaak (The Potter’s Wheel) is based on these songs and is the story of the journey of a woman from home to the panchayat or India’s elected village council.
Katha (tales), a small publishing house based in Delhi, is showcasing an English translation of Pushpa’s Alma Kabutari at Frankfurt along with books by Goswami and Hindi writer Krishna Sobti.
There are several niche publishers in India who are translating regional literature into English. Some are niche within niche like the Delhi-based Zubaan (speech) devoted solely to women writers.
Award-winning Assamese writer Indira Goswami is among one of the authors most widely translated into other Indian languages.
She sometimes spends years living in the backdrop of her novels, far away from her university campus home in Delhi. Her Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker is based on her family and her childhood experiences in Assam.
Her Man from Chinnamasta, which is going to Frankfurt along with the author, is about resistance to the tradition of animal sacrifice, which is practiced in the famous Kamakhya temple in Assam to this day.
“It’s a horrible and cruel sight,” says Goswami. “There are rivers of blood flowing on festival days.” She has read the religious texts governing these rites. “So in Chinnamasta I ask if you can change tradition to stop human sacrifice, why not change it to exclude animal sacrifice,” she says.
Most of these women writers have faced severe criticism and opposition from their peer groups and from wider society.
Women’s sexual desires have always been a taboo subject in India’s highly patriarchal society. “When I write about such issues, they say I am encouraging sex,” says Pushpa. “But when a woman walks to freedom, it includes freedom of the body and mind,” she adds.
But for each bit of opposition, non-literary criticism, and in the case of Goswami, even a threat to her life, there are hundreds of fans whose support, the authors maintain, is quite overwhelming.
Mahashweta’s work gave a voice to the tribal communities. Goswami’s books have created awareness about the treatment of widows and animal sacrifice.
These women authors are also committed to their causes. Mahashweta is founder of a tribals’ rights forum and Goswami is interlocutor in talks between the Indian government and an Assamese secessionist rebel group.
Pushpa says women often tell her that her stories give them courage. “But they also tell me things I have missed. Each of them has a story to tell.”
