NEW RELEASE December 2013 Nonfiction

Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals (1865–1947)

Edited by Ipshita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi

8.5”x 5.5” pb, 466 pp, ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2; 81-906760-6-9 Rs 550; £40.00

Comprising translations of women’s writings of Brahmo, Hindu and Muslim writers of undivided Bengal (involving present-day Bangladesh), which were published in well-known Bengali periodicals (between 1865–1947), such as Bamabodhini Patrika, Prabasi, Antahpur, Bharati, Bangadarshan,Bharatlakshmi, Saogat, Nabanoor, and so on, this volume is the third reader compiled by the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, for the new Masters’ level courses in women’s studies.  

            Focussing on a period, of reform, conflict, change and debate, the reader explores the multi-layered social conversation about women’s issues and maps the changes in the life practices and beliefs of women as reflected in their writings with the progression of time. While there is Taherannesa writing in 1865 in Bamabodhini Patrika, and appealing, ‘O civilized men do not remain neglectful of educating women’, there is Saratkumari Chaudhurani’s article in Bharati, published in 1914, where she upholds the initiative of Swarnakumari Devi’s Sakhi Samiti for spreading education and literacy amidst women, helping widows, aiding orphans, and so on. Hence, the discourse that surfaces also follows the path of a historical narrative.

            This volume traces issues like relations between men and women, and amongst women themselves to more ‘public’ concerns like women’s education and employment; child marriage, seclusion of women and the position of widows. It upholds the dichotomy between the private and the public, and the prachina, the traditional, and the navina, the ‘new’, with the emerging woman proposing an alternate way of life, thereby extending the woman’s question beyond every aspect of women and men’s social existence; putting these writings in a larger context of reform, change and conflict; and projecting the discourse on gender issues as shaped by power relations between classes, castes and communities cohabiting in society.

Ipshita Chanda is Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University;

Jayeeta Bagchi is Assistant Professor in English, National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi.

NEW RELEASE December 2013 Nonfiction

Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals (1865–1947)

Edited by Ipshita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi

8.5”x 5.5” pb, 466 pp, ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2; 81-906760-6-9 Rs 550; £40.00

A write-up on Shoi Mela where Urmila Pawar's autobiography 'The Weave of My Life' (Stree Books) was awarded:

Picture by Sayantan Ghosh

Follow Us:        | Tuesday , November 26 , 2013 | Spotlight on women writers SUDESHNA BANERJEE

(From left) Amala Shankar, Mahasveta Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Soi Samman winners Urmila Pawar and Shashi Deshpande at the inauguration of the book fair at ICCR on Sunday. Picture by Sayantan Ghosh “Soi Mela is a forum for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration on Sunday. At her call, writers flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue Mog other than in Bengali and English. In the 13th year of the women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and Urmila Pawar. Explaining the choice, Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its writers because we have something to say,” she added. Introducing the Marathi author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.” Pawar’s words, simple yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen and felt.” Hearing her on stage was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself, “head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women. I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar. The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry performances and storytelling — all by women. A signature and a girl’s female friend. The dual connotation of the word shoi in Bengali found complete embodiment in and at the Soi Mela. The festival of women’s literature in India brought together friends and colleagues from across the country as well as their writings in the form of a book fair being held at ICCR till Tuesday. “Soi Mela is a forum for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration on Sunday. At her call, writers flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue Mog other than in Bengali and English. In the 13th year of the women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and Urmila Pawar. Explaining the choice, Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its writers because we have something to say,” she added. Introducing the Marathi author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.” Pawar’s words, simple yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen and felt.” Hearing her on stage was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself, “head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women. I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar. The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry performances and storytelling — all by women.

Review of Kancha Ilaiah's  Untouchable God  by THE HINDU :

UNTOUCHABLE GOD; Kancha Ilaiah, Samya, Rs.350

Sowmya Sivakumar:

An uncensored portrayal of the interplay between caste, gender and religion in India.

An unwritten disclaimer to Kancha Ilaiah’s novel Untouchable God could have read: 

The characters in this book may be fictitious but any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely deliberate. Which begs an additional tagline: This novel is not for faint-hearted, humourless Brahmins, especially those with an inability to laugh at themselves.

From a scholar whose books have been loved and despised, depending on which side you are; Ilaiah’s ‘fictionalised’ uncensored portrayal of caste, gender and religion and their nuanced interplay through the lives and manoeuvres of six Brahmins living in an India blistering for freedom from ‘the other’ is refreshingly non-pedagogical, yet steeped in history. It is intensely satirical and plants a giant slap on the faces of those who not only profess caste, but also those who like to believe that it no longer exists.

Ilaiah’s narrative comes alive in the stories of the slimy six — Veda Shastry of Tamil Nadu, Banerjee Babu of Bengal, D.C.Tilak of Maharashtra, Krishnamurty of Karnataka, Namboodri of Kerala and Appa Rao of Andhra Pradesh — culturally diverse zealots connected by the overarching camaraderie of being born Brahmins. As the stories unfold, Ilaiah peels off the layers of hypocrisy and strange schizophrenia that infests the world of upper castes to whom the very physical existence of untouchables is despicable but whose own existence inextricably depends on preserving the untouchables in their shit.

Whether it is D.C Tilak’s declaration (see quote) or Krishnamurthy’s and Appa Rao’s rather unsuccessful attempt to plagiarise a Dalit poet’s fiery works, the book effectively stereotypes just how devious Brahmin/upper caste minds work.

But Untouchable God is not just about an older generation of upper caste male Hindu bigots. Their relationships with, treatment and repression of women is a recurrent theme, whether through Namboodri’s sexual sambandham with a lower-caste Nair woman, the outburst by an unnamed young woman in Veda Shastry’s kitchen, the widows of Benares “who have to give themselves to the ‘priests’, their guests and friends” or the traded freedoms of an apparently poised upper-caste researcher Mala who grapples to shake off her own chains. By corollary, there are powerful characters like Sakku Bai and Saraswati and, later, references to the indispensable role of women in the American civil rights struggle, suggesting the inevitability of women’s liberation for striking at the foundations of caste.

Untouchable God rips apart hypocrisies at various levels. It mocks the dichotomous existence of thebhadralok communists represented by the lives and inner conflicts of junior Banerjee and the play-acting Gayatri Roy, just as it exposes the insidious seepage of caste into other religions in India.

The closing chapter places all these home truths on an international stage, by bringing in an African-American appropriately named Isaiah who travels to India inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Ambedkar to draw parallels with his own struggles with race. Of course, the book does not explain everything. The helplessness of the Dalit Ezhumalai, as he says, “do not do this thing, Isaiah, we will have to pay for it later when you are gone” contrasts with Isaiah’s own account of his family and the courageous black movement in America and questions about Buddhism are left unanswered.

The language is raw, provocative, scathing, dark, honest and firsthand. Through the lens of caste and religion, the story is actually a fine work on human behaviour in a stratified but interdependent society. At a time when Mirchpur and Dharmapuri are today’s realities, the novel is a disturbing reminder of how little has changed, amid how much. It makes us sit up, confront, laugh, question, hope, and hang our heads in shame, all at once.

Extract:…we are men of mind. Where are our hands? I tell you, our hands and instruments must be the Shudras and the lower castes. We must make them beholden to us.

http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/home-truths/article5335252.ece