‘My Writing is an Expression of Stinging Experiences’

Image courtesy: Aalochana

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As told to Urmila Mohite

Edited by Urmila Mohite

Translated from Marathi by Maya Pandit and Wandana Sonalkar 

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MY maiden name was Kumud Somkunwar.  I was born and grew up in the locality now known as Ananda Nagar, in Nagpur. At that time this area was called Seetabuldi Maharpura. The city was thus divided into colonies according to caste: so, there was Telipura (locality of the oil extractor caste), Maharpura (locality of the Mahar1 caste), Malipura (locality of the gardener caste) and so on. I attended the municipal corporation school there up to the fourth standard. My high school education was in the Bhide Girls’ School. After matriculating in the eleventh standard, I joined what is now Nagpur College — Morris College in those days.  As this was a government college, one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in Nagpur, all subjects were taught there and they also offered postgraduate courses. 

My family’s circumstances were rather straitened. We were seven children. My father worked as a pleader’s clerk. His income was quite meager as it was a private job and he would be paid only if the pleader got any cases. But my father was an educated man, he had completed his matriculation. My mother also had passed the vernacular final examination. So, education was considered to be quite important in my house. Besides, my father was a Royist2 and a follower of Mahatma Phule. So, the atmosphere in our house was charged with a critical and rational spirit. But in fact, we used to stay with my maternal grandfather’s family and the atmosphere there was quite different. They were very religious. They would observe many traditional Hindu customs such as abstaining from meat during the months of Shravan and Kartika.  Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had not yet converted to Buddhism at the time.

I was born in 1938. We lived in that locality till 1945.  That is where we gained an education, listened to and read many things during those years. There was a small library there. Thus, I got into the habit of reading and thinking a lot right from a tender age.  This appetite for engaging critically with every issue I encounter comes from my father. The atmosphere around us was, of course, not very conducive to education. The language around was loaded with curses, of the kind one reads in Dalit literature, in the writings of Namdev Dhasal or Daya Pawar. There were quarrels breaking out almost every minute; hardly an atmosphere conducive to education. We would be able to study only after midnight, after everyone around had gone to bed. Any reading, or even preparation for the next day, would be possible only after twelve o’clock. In this situation, we had two struggles going on simultaneously: the struggle for daily bread and our struggle for an atmosphere for study. Our house of course was an environment conducive to education. 

Almost all my friends were from other castes, especially Brahmins, and I felt the difference between their houses and ours quite sharply. Their mothers would always be doing something or the other for them. They would make some snacks for them in the afternoons and evenings; they would take care of their studies, and so on. Their lives constantly revolved around their daughters. Why, they would even carry hot cocoa in thermos flasks for them during the time of examinations! As for us, we were worried whether there would be anything to eat when we went home. That anxiety would be nagging us from deep inside. On top of everything else, there was the terrible atmosphere in the locality outside!  … If the municipal water supply failed in our colony, we would be forced to go to Telipura or Malipura nearby for water. And then those people would abuse us and fight with us, even if their taps were overflowing with water. What was worse, they would wash the taps to purify them after we had collected water from there. I directly experienced the oppressive practice of caste discrimination there every day. Even in our primary school, they never touched us or allowed us to touch them. If nobody was there to do this, we had to go away a long distance to get a drink of water, which was tedious. Summer was worse, because we would get so thirsty! One day, unable to take it anymore, I rebelled. I just rushed into the water room, which created a great furore. It was a girls’ school, where the school servants belonged to the Kunbi caste and teachers were all Brahmin women. The Brahmin teachers did not mind it so much, but the women from the Bahujan castes beat me heavily with thick sticks, because I had polluted everything by touching the water vessel.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar was a huge influence on us right from our childhood. His birthday would be regularly celebrated every year in our localities even when he was alive. That would be a great festival for us. Special food would be cooked, with fried delicacies such as papdya, kurdaya, and we would even cook mande, just as is done on festivals like ‘Akshaya Tritiya’. Mande is a popular sweet dish in our part of Vidarbha. We would sweep the front yards of our houses clean as for the Diwali celebration, spread fresh cow dung, then draw colourful ‘rangolis’ on the floors and decorate our houses. The whole area would become festive. I remember all of this from when I was four or five years old. Generally, on Gudhi Padva day, the toran, or garland hung on the frame of the front door, would be made with Mango leaves. But during the Ambedkar birthday celebrations, this toran would be made with flowers. Babasaheb has undoubtedly been a great inspiration for me and I can say that he taught us how to live; but he was an equally great influence on my father and grandfather as well.  

Babasaheb converted to Buddhism in 1956.  I was in the Intermediate class at college then. Following Babasaheb, I too converted to Buddhism. It was a collective conversion to Buddhism, and I understood the nature and scope of a mass conversion on that occasion. Earlier, I had been aware of individual conversions. And later in my life too, I witnessed such conversions. Once there was a case of a Hindu – Muslim marriage.  According to the law of the time, people with different religions could get married either through registration under the Special Marriage Act or through conversion. So, I had to call on people of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in order to carry out the inter-religious wedding. We invited the activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to convert the Muslim girl to Hinduism and had to solemnize the marriage behind closed doors.  So, I knew what an individual conversion was like … with holy chants or baptism according to Christian scriptures. But Babasaheb’s conversion was something totally different. Literally lakhs of people were getting converted here. There was a Bhikkhu called Mahachandramani Thero, who would chant the Panchsheel and Namo tatsa prayers and the huge masses of people repeated the chants after him, without any other rituals. Even today, among Buddhists, at every ceremony at the turning points of life — whether it is the naming ceremony of an infant, birth, marriage or death — the Panchsheel or Trisaran is chanted. In our Indian religions, whether it is Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or the Sikh religion, I feel that the domestic rituals are extremely oppressive. They have to be followed verbatim. But when conversion involves hundreds of thousands of people, then we see something completely different, something totally solemn. The sound of millions of voices chanting   the Panchsheel or Trisaran rising into the air transforms the atmosphere entirely.   I experienced that magic for myself at the time of the 1956 conversion. 

**

I earned my Master’s degree in Sanskrit. There are many reasons why I came to like Sanskrit so much.   A little way beyond our colony, there were some chawls with a mixed population, with Gujarati, Bengali and Maharashtrian Brahmins. They would perform many rituals and ceremonies. One of the programmes I found quite enchanting was the thread ceremony for the initiation of young boys. It was the mantras that made it so interesting for me. Also, I had grown up listening to my grandfather reciting scriptures such as the Pandav Pratap, Shivaleelamrut and the Puranas5. My Grandfather had two wives and the elder one would offer a religious discourse to people, explaining these books. Maybe it was a combined effect of all this…. but when I began to read, I felt so attracted to this language. Later on, I came to know that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar was denied permission to learn this language … he had to opt for Persian and Arabic instead! So, it became an issue of self-respect, dignity and identity for me. Many people from our community also tried to dissuade me from studying this language by telling me that Sanskrit was not our language, that it was very difficult, that I could not cope with it at all!  But that only reinforced my attraction for the language. Statements such as “Oh, she is only a girl! How can she manage to learn this language?” are all examples of the usual attempts to discourage girls and to dampen their enthusiasm. “Even men find this language difficult! At the most, men from good families should try it! Why should she take a path which is not meant for us!” and so on and so forth. This is how they tried to stop me.

However, I received support from my teachers. There were teachers who had a very positive attitude towards me. There was one Mr. Hatekar; he was a good man. He used to feel, this girl comes from a community which needs medical doctors. Sanskrit, he felt, was limited to certain rituals and worship. He strongly believed that I should train to be a doctor. But I felt otherwise. There were several women, even women from our community, who were training to be doctors at that time. But nobody would study Sanskrit.  There was also a teacher called Mr. Gokhale. His wife was so orthodox that she cooked their meals wearing sowale, or ritualistically pure clothes worn by Brahmins. But he encouraged me a lot and that had a very positive impact on me. I would always stand first in my class. However, I did not get a job immediately after my M.A.  I remained jobless for two years. I was in the merit list of the university and at that time there was a lot of talk about reservations. But there was no reservation of seats in education at that time. It was only after pressure from the movement built up, that reservations in education became a reality. Of course, the employment situation was vastly different from what it is today. The practice of colleges asking for “donations” from prospective employees was unheard of.  I found it even more difficult to get a job because of my Sanskrit. It wasn’t just me alone! I had a friend called Padma Joshi (a very Brahmin surname), and she was a gold medalist! But she also found it very difficult to get a job. She was forced to train as a teacher, obtain the B. Ed. Degree, and finally she found a job   as a school teacher. So actually, my teachers were quite right in what they were saying, that Sanskrit was a dead language and I would not get a job quickly. Besides they were also aware of how bad my home situation was. They knew that I had to work, earn money and help educate my siblings too. They really had much good will for me.

I wrote many letters during this period. Yashwantrao Chavan was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra then. Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister and Jagjeevan Ram was the Railway Minister. I wrote to them all, “You proclaim loudly that there is reservation in jobs but everywhere I go I am told that there is no vacancy. Or then they appoint their own people on the vacancy.” So, one day Yashwantrao Chavan invited me to see him.   He asked me, “Why don’t you do a Ph. D.?”  I retorted saying, “I have problems making ends meet for a square meal every day.” Anyway, I waited for a whole year and then joined the M.A. class in English. Sometime later I wrote a story with the title, “The Story of my Sanskrit”.  Gangadhar Pantawane published it in his Asmitadarsha magazine.  

There were many reactions to this story and then people began to feel that what had happened to me was not right. I had ended that story with “It was Kumud Pawde who was given the job, not Kumud Somkunwar!” So, the job was indeed given on paper to Kumud Pawde, who was a person belonging to the Scheduled Caste (but now married to a man from the Maratha caste), on the recommendation of Yashwantrao Chavan, a man from the Maratha caste. This was, of course, my own interpretation of what happened! But even though I was given a job, they were not willing to allow me to join. They kept on saying, “Send her to another college; our scriptures will be corrupted!”  Now the books prescribed for the Sanskrit course were already in abridged versions, made by European and British scholars.  Surely, they had already polluted the original books by studying and abridging them? But I wasn’t supposed to touch them. They couldn’t tolerate it if I studied the original Vedas.

I have studied the Vedas in their original Sanskrit form, and I know that during the Vedic period, the caste system had not become so rigid. The Varna system was based on the type of labour one did. Many Kshatriya warriors became rishis7 later on; that is, they became Brahmins. Many kings, like King Janak, became rishi. Brahmins also fought battles. Parshuram, Vishwamitra were good examples of this. 

Manu had forbidden women to read the Vedas, but in spite of this prohibition, women not only recited the Vedas, but also wrote and contributed to them.  There are many suktas or verses that are written by women.

The Government of those times had instituted a prize for an accomplished Sanskrit Scholar, to be awarded on the day of Narali Poornima, the auspicious full moon day in the month of Shrawan. I received this award in 1987.  I was felicitated at the hands of the Shankaracharya8 in Pune.   To mark the occasion, women from the Tilak Vidyapeeth (Tilak University) in Pune recited Vedas before the Shankaracharya.  It was a historic occasion! I delivered a speech in Sanskrit. I addressed the Shankaracharya, saying: “Those very women and Shudras whom you had forbidden to learn Sanskrit, have managed to save it from extinction today!” And it is a fact that it is mostly girls who opt for Sanskrit today in colleges. My students have showered so much love and affection on me. Even today when I meet them, they tell their children, “You are unfortunate because you never learned Sanskrit from Madam!”                           

My knowledge of Sanskrit came in very handy at the time of the Riddles controversy9 of 1987, when the Government of Maharashtra’s project of publishing B.R. Ambedkar’s complete works reached his writings in later years: in 1954 he had written a scathing critique of Hindu mythology under the title “Riddles in Hinduism”. On a later occasion it so happened that Jagjeevan Ram, then Union Railway Minister, unveiled the statue of Dr. Sampurnanand (former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and a Sanskrit scholar) in a ceremony, the Chief Minister of the state Mr. Kamlapati Tripathi washed the “polluted” statue with milk and purified it.  So Jagjeevan Ram made a caustic public comment, “These Brahmins used to eat beef too! What can they teach us?”  This led to a great debate in the Times of India with a demand for proof of this statement. The Shankaracharya filed a case in the Allahabad High Court. In that case also, 

I was able to produce authentic evidence from the Sanskrit texts in court. The case was subsequently withdrawn. The invocations to be chanted during the performance of the Yadnyas (ritual sacrifices) contain detailed descriptions of how animals were sacrificed. 

In the Chambal region, there is a story about how the river Charmavati came into being. There was a king called Ratidev Verma who killed so many cows in his Yadnyas that their leather made a huge mound. Then there was a heavy downpour and the water flowing from that mound came to be called the river Charmavati.  All this is so fascinating! 

**

I got married to Motiram Pawde in 1962. It was an inter-caste marriage. Motiram Pawde was what one might justifiably call a born social worker. His education in a Christian college strengthened his urge to do social work even further. Dr. Moses was the principal of the Hislop College then. He had opened a night school for young people deprived of education, such as waiters in hotels, boys employed to do the cleaning work in hotels, mill workers and others like them. Motiram went to this school to teach when he was in his first year of college and said that he would teach pro bono. At that time, Dr. Moses made him swear on the Bible that he would continue to teach there. “You come from a well-to-do family! You don’t need a job. You must promise to do this work!” he said.  Motiram’s family owned farm lands and he was an only son; doing a job was really not a priority for him. Later he became Headmaster of the school. There was one more reason. In his college Motiram became the president of the Students’ Union and Mr. C. D. Deshmukh, our first Finance Minister came to inaugurate the Union. Dr. Moses said, “I am basically a Christian missionary; yet I work hard to educate the children of Hindus.  But no one from among you has come forward to take up this responsibility!” C. D. Deshmukh heard this and asked Motiram, “Why don’t you accept this challenge?” 

C.D. Deshmukh’s question pierced Motiram’s heart and after his M.A., he started a night school called Jawahar Night School. Many poor working girls from localities like Malipura, Maharpura, Telipura etc., who worked as domestic servants in the Brahmin locality, began to attend the Jawahar Night School. Even today the school is running well. In fact, my younger sister now works as Head Mistress in that school. No less than fifty girls, who have jobs cleaning pots and pans as domestic servants, attend that school in the evening.  

Those days, girls were not allowed to go out in the evenings. And parents also would hesitate to send their wards to school if there were male teachers around. So, Motiram came to our home one day to seek permission from my father for me to teach in the school. My father gave his permission on the condition that Motiram would personally accompany me and bring me home after school hours. This was how we got acquainted with each other in the Jawahar Night School.  

My husband started the Jawahar night school in 1958, using Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s first name and four years later, in 1962, we got married. My husband did not propose to me directly. He talked to my younger sister first and she broached the topic with my father. My father was a very progressive man. He said, “Fine, but this marriage must be taken seriously. It should not be only for the sake of fun. If you want to marry, it should be for keeps. Otherwise, such marriages do take place and then they break. That won’t do!” Of course, there was a lot of opposition to our marriage from our communities, his and mine as well.  There are educated people in both communities but they are very orthodox. They prefer marriages to take place within their own communities. Secondly, they also think that if good girls from our community get married outside, that would create a problem for the boys and girls in the community. People from my community were opposed to our marriage because they did not want ‘good’ girls to go out of their community. I had received quite a few such letters at the time of our wedding. Even those people who gave me gifts, wrote to me saying, “Your marriage may be good for you but we find it quite painful! This should not have happened.”  People from my husband’s side were of course vehemently opposed to our marriage. Even today Maratha families from the villages such as the Patils and Deshmukhs, are rigidly orthodox and have a feudal outlook.  They even go to the extent of killing the transgressors. In Vidarbha there are many instances of such ‘inter-caste’ couples being killed and thrown on railway tracks. But my husband reasoned with his father. My mother-in-law was a very kind and fine woman, quite progressive in her outlook. But my father-in-law was an arrogant man, terribly orthodox, just as village leaders generally are. He was the Patil of the village too! So, there was nothing surprising or novel in his being so strongly opposed. But my husband stood absolutely firm on his decision, “Even if the God Brahma comes to try and convince me, I won’t listen to him”, he said.  “Besides, is there anything bad in the work I have done so far?”  To which his father answered, “Don’t talk to me about other things! But if you get married to this girl, your sisters who are already married will suffer at their in-laws’ place because of this.” 

And this is exactly what happened. Both his sisters suffered a lot in their marital homes. When their in-laws heard about our marriage, they began to serve food to them in the verandah just as they would do with persons from the Mahar caste. They would not be allowed to enter the kitchen or the Pooja room. During family weddings, they would not be allowed to mix freely with other guests for fear of pollution. Both my sisters-in-law really suffered because of our marriage.  My husband would say, “If their in-laws throw them out of the house, we will give them our own land.” But fortunately, or unfortunately, that did not happen. But I must admit that they had to undergo a lot of humiliation.

After our marriage, we had no contact with my in-laws for almost five years. Then, when my father-in-law came to visit us, he would never eat food nor drink water in our house. He would go to a nearby restaurant called Anandashram. He would never even touch the children. Once my young son crawled to the door of the verandah and he was afraid that he might fall down; so he called out to the domestic help to pick him up. He did not himself touch him. Later on, I wrote a story about this incident, titled “The Story of Apurva”. Often   people who came to visit us would look at me curiously as if I was something kept on display in an exhibition. 

Sometimes we had to undergo the most awful humiliation. I generally never attended weddings and other such ceremonies. My husband would go. A couple of times he was made to get up from lunch and asked to leave. Sometimes, they would bring him lunch and leave it wherever he was sitting rather than inviting him to sit with the others! That was how they demonstrated their opposition. 

After some five or six years, however, the situation began to change. We would often help poor people from the Maratha caste, like the Patils, Deshmukhs and Kunbis. They had simple needs. Health was the most important concern for them. Since Nagpur had a medical college, many people from the surrounding villages would come to consult doctors at the teaching hospital. But they would get exploited like all village people, because they did not have any influential ‘connections.’ Since both of us knew many people there, they would benefit from our ‘connections’. 

Another point in our favour was that my husband was known to help people with finding jobs.  Actually, my husband had opened his school on the understanding that no student would pay fees and no teacher would get salary. But many meritorious students from surrounding colleges offered to teach in the school because this school was a real test for teachers. The students in the school would generally be older than us teachers and teaching them was really a tough task; it required a lot of nerve as well as teaching ability. Apart from this, we would allow poor students to stay with us in our home.  Especially those who didn’t get into a student hostel or those who were so poor they could not pay the fees. We had a big bungalow and all our food grains would come from home as my husband’s family-owned farm lands.  We had to supply food and even clothes to these poor students. After our marriage, my husband told me, “You will have to cook for a lot of people.” I asked him, “How many?” He said, “Twenty-four people! Twenty-two students and the two of us! The boys will help you.”   So, the boys would make chapattis and clean pots and pans. I would cook the vegetables and other things. Once people realized that they did not have to pay money for their children’s education, they began to be drawn to my husband. Now those boys have grown up and entered into many different occupations. Those ten or fifteen years brought about a significant change in people’s attitudes towards me.

**

I had been writing since my college days. Writers like G. D. Madgulkar and P. B. Bhave, who lived near our college, knew that I was a budding writer.  Morris College was a tough place to teach in. There were so many well-known Marathi writers there, such as Bhavani Shankar Pandit, V. B. Kolte and Suresh Dolke. Even people who have recently retired from there such as the poet Grace or Yashwant Manohar belonged to the same college. In short, Morris College was quite a prestigious place in Nagpur. I used to write stuff which would be discussed among these writers too.  P. B. Bhave came to meet me personally and introduced himself. We had excellent relations with Madkholkar because of our writing. Once P. B. Bhave had brought G. D. Madgulkar to meet me. At that time literature meant short stories, critical articles etc. There was no Dalit understanding as such then, or the understanding that caste was a major aspect in literature. I feel that we take things lightly as college students. That is partly because we are so young then. P. B. Bhave’s stories on Pakistan, that is, on the post- partition period, had a tremendous impact on me in my college days.  

But later on, or after I had done my M.A., my writing gradually began to reflect Dalit consciousness. That was my Dalit experience speaking out! People from certain castes undergo especial sufferings. People from various communities, from Brahmins down to Scavengers, may be on the same level economically. If I cannot get bread to eat because of poverty, any poor person from the Brahmin or Kunbi or Maratha caste will be in the same state of economic deprivation as me. Economic deprivation and the suffering ensuing from that, is almost the same for everyone.  But the collective suffering that comes from being born in a specific caste is quite different. No-one chooses to be born in a particular caste. That is a natural given. It is you who have tied the person up in his caste, in a specific Varna, and begun to taunt and despise him for that.

It is like that with women too. A woman is as intelligent as a man. But she is always told, “You are a girl. Your life is limited to cooking; don’t try to be too smart!” Even today, in the Maratha caste among the Patils and Deshmukhs, a woman is forbidden to come forward to speak. So only those who are upper caste, upper class and male are given a good generous measure of all things. And all the denials and even beatings are heaped on people from the deprived sections. 

When I began to think from this perspective, I realized that caste was a significant factor and so was gender. This was automatically reflected in my writing. The person who really made me write was Gangadhar Pantawane. “Go on, write, write” was what he would say to me always. It was as if he was fanning the embers within me! Another person was Dr. V. B. Kolte, from Hislop College. My husband Motiram was his student. He would ring him up to tell him that he should not stop me from writing.  “She may come up with a pretext,” he would say, “She will say I have to cook; or I have this work and that! But force her to write. She has been a good student of ours; don’t you dare to use her only as a cook!” 

I had participated in the Dalit movement right from my childhood days. We used to go on protest marches, take out processions, and we worked as members of the Samata Sainik Dal9. Afterwards we also took part in elections. But that would be along the lines that the community, the locality had decided. My conscious entry into the movement came through my writing. Initially, we were fired by the inner urge to live life as Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had asked us to live. We had our own sufferings, but I began to be loaded down with the thought that I have to write about all this. That drew me to the movement, to play a conscious role in it. Besides I must have felt a distinct consciousness of being a woman, as well as a Dalit, from my childhood. 

There were some elderly people in my house, like an uncle, a grandfather, or my maternal aunt’s husband, who would always say, “Why do you girls want to go out? Have your handful of grains, your share of food and go to sleep. You have children and household work; that’s more than enough for you!” This was how society thought. It wasn’t just these relatives; the entire community, the whole society, had similar views. Manu’s laws regarding women work in the same way for all Varnas of the society. My father actually was quite a progressive man. In fact, he encouraged his daughters more than his sons. But even so we had had all these experiences right from our childhood. … Once I was older, I began to feel things with a fierce intensity. 

My mother had a cousin, for instance, who was ‘married off’ at the age of ten. When she grew to puberty, her own father-in-law’s lustful gaze fell on her. When she complained about him to her husband, he thrashed her saying “How dare you talk about my father like this!” I took up the case of a woman whose sons locked her up in the bathroom. And she is not a Dalit woman; she is a high caste Maratha. I used to see that women who were respected by their husbands would usually be happy. But a woman who is not respected by her husband in spite of her hard work is never respected by other people, not even her children. It wasn’t that women suffered only because of their husbands; their fathers and brothers also contributed to their suffering. In those times, women would accept all this, saying that it was their fate and they had to endure it. Once the ideology, the perspective, of looking at these issues, began to develop, I was able to make sense of these experiences, analyze them and explain them in a systematic way. 

Evan today, there is little awareness in the Dalit movement about women’s rights. We women have to talk about it ourselves. When there are literary conventions, or any such programmes, sessions on women’s issues are always placed towards the end. And when women begin to speak, they are told to wind up quickly. 

The same thing applies to politics. I feel that Dalit men have not taken cognizance of economic and social issues as much as they should have.  During Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s time, all movements – political, economic and social – happened simultaneously. And he also wrote analytically on all these issues. But now what I see is that Dalit men are less engaged in social and economic issues and movements. Political issues are always the first priority for them and then, in second place, literary matter. Women’s issues don’t come into the picture for them. It is women who have brought gender issues to the forefront. Women fight on these issues. The men often proclaim loudly, “We don’t consider women inferior to us; we consider them as equals. And they are with us!” But the actual reality is quite different.  At least that is what I have experienced in my life.

**

My experience of the other women’s organizations is not very different either. I have seen that when you talk to them about gender issues in general, they come with you. But when it is specifically about Dalit women’s issues, they have little interest. On the contrary, they complain about us that we always talk about Dalit issues only. My experience at the conference at Nairobi was the same and the conference in Beijing, China10, was no different. In the mainstream women’s movement we always march together. But when we talk about Dalit women’s issues, they always laugh it off, or deride it, make fun of it. Even among the Dalit women, there is a class difference.

In my autobiographical account Antahsphot, I have written about one such experience at a Delhi Conference. The elitist Dalit women, wives of IAS officers from the administrative services, look at Dalit women from villages in the same way, with derision and contempt. 

There is no doubt that all of us have got to come together in the mainstream. I feel that issues of rape, dowry harassment, familial violence or security of widows, unmarried women and divorced women, are the same for all women across the entire social spectrum. Or the situation of class divisions within castes also is the same across all castes and Varnas. But caste deprivation is not something that everyone experiences. It is very caste specific and it is experienced only by people from particular castes. That is why struggles will have to be organized in a wider perspective and in special ways. Of course, there is one point that needs to be noted. If Savarna women take up Dalit women’s issues, Dalit men will oppose it more strongly. They generally say that Savarna women come and spoil our Dalit women. So, we must be careful about this. That is, we have to emphatically say, “Let Dalit women come forward and let them speak out about their own issues. You listen to them seriously; don’t look at them with derision.  You should accept their issues and support them.” I am not saying that the society will change if Dalit women enter politics.  That requires a different vision. Say what you will, but we have to accept that women also come under the hold of orthodox ideologies. A woman who can’t cook becomes an object of adverse criticism from other women.  

I remember once that there was this conference where the wife of a big Republican leader publicly declared, “If girls can’t clean pots and pans, what kind of girls are they?” We will have to denounce such traditional modes of thinking wherever we confront them. This lady was speaking from the stage as the wife of an important political leader; secondly, she was speaking from the men’s angle, and third, she was acting as a leader of that section of women among us who believe in patriarchal culture. But now there are women among us who are ready to refute such arguments. When she spoke like this, some women who were professors, stood up and said, “We have not come here to listen to such ancient drivel from Manu’s times. Are you trying to say that there was no Babasaheb in India or there is no Constitution, or that Babasaheb did not bring in the Hindu code bill?”11 There was a huge debate over this.   The point is that such traditional orthodoxies are being contested now. On the other hand, I have also seen some educated women teachers or school and college principals speaking the language of traditional orthodox ideology.                       

**

My medium of expression and articulation is literature. My experiences, what I want to say: that is my literature. And I do know how to write, to some degree. I feel that it is a very effective medium. 

We may say that nobody reads these days.  But people who are involved with agitations and movements can’t do without reading. They read a lot, they read even today. You see, even a person who lives in a tiny village in the back of beyond, eagerly reads even a tiny scrap of a letter that comes into her hands.  

We always experience this at the Deeksha Bhumi. Even tiny tots in the fourth or fifth class want to read Babasaheb’s books and nag their parents to buy those for them. The book exhibition held on this occasion is famous because of this. It is a huge exhibition and even people from small villages who we think would be unable to read, actually buy books to take away with them. Babasaheb’s contribution is really great in this sense. 

I have not really been a prolific writer.  I have produced more critical and discursive writing than literary stuff. My discursive writing has been based on logic and reasoning.  I have written extensively on women of the Vedic times. If these scattered writings were to be published as a collection, they would run into some four or five volumes. My other writing has been based on personal experiences. I really don’t write voluminously. Of course, one reason is that I am lazy. But I cannot write unless I feel an urge from within. It depends on how my experiences appeal to me, what they teach me and how much they really hurt me. I take up writing only when an experience leaves a deep mark of pain in my heart. I don’t write for the sake of writing. Take for instance my stories like “The Story of my Sanskrit” or “Apurva’s Birth”.  

Now this second story depicts my father-in-law’s refusal to touch my son.  Where did that attitude come from? It was the reflection of values that were deeply ingrained in him by the tremendous social influence of caste. This is common in people who believe in tradition; they literally get enslaved by it.  Otherwise, no one can be another person’s enemy. Leave aside personal animosity or jealousy. But what we get is a collective prejudice based on caste; if someone belongs to this particular caste, he must be like this, and so on. For instance, a person from the Pardhi12 community will always be thought of as a criminal. It is the British who are responsible for such associations. They branded some castes as criminal and gave rise to a new nomenclature: Criminal Castes, like we have Scheduled Castes today.  Now the system imposes a specific kind of life on them. If you want to survive, you will have to hunt animals. It is not one’s personal choice. On some days one finds some prey; on other days there is nothing, and one has to go hungry for several days at a time. Who would choose that kind of life of hunger and toil for himself? That life is forced on him, and it is the system that forces such a hard life on him. So, isn’t the system finally responsible for his misfortunes? 

I had written an article titled “This is how the Savitri Vrata13 gets concluded”. That was about my mother-in-law’s sister, who was twelve years older than her. She was married at a holy site in Kashi. A story was told of a Banyan tree in Kashi (Banaras) which was supposed to have spread its roots to three holy places: Allahabad, Kashi and Gaya. During those times, it would be considered very auspicious and fortunate to get married at Kashi. So my maternal aunt-in-law and her young groom were taken by bullock-cart all the way from Narkhed in Maharashtra to Kashi by her father.  They were married at the holy place. She later gave birth to a baby at the age of fifteen but that baby died. None of her subsequent children survived. So finally, her husband decided to re-marry; She had no idea about this until one day he came home and coolly told her, “I am getting married to another woman. Prepare food for two hundred people and get ready to welcome them.” The second wife bore many children and my aunt-in-law had to do everything for her. She never even got new saris to wear. She had to wear the saris cast off by the second wife after childbirth. Her father was a rich man, an Inamdar, with property in land. One day her husband came to her and said, “Ask your father to make over his estate to your name”. She said, “Why should I do that? I have no children!”  So he countered, “Aren’t these your children?” and went on to threaten her, “If you don’t do what I tell you, I will strip you naked in the market place at Narkhed and beat you up!” She was so awfully hurt by this: the husband who is supposed to protect his wife was threatening to strip her and beat her. She quietly managed to send a message to her father’s house and returned there, never to go back again.   Even so, she would always fast on the day of the Vat Savitri Pooja, when women symbolize their prayer to attain the same husband in future births by wrapping threads around a banyan tree.  Women fast on that day to keep strictly to a vrata or vow, honouring their husbands.  This lady kept true to the vrata till she was ninety years old. She would not even drink water on that day. Towards the end she would find it a little difficult. My children would ask her to eat something as her health was failing but she would never listen to them. 

Finally, I said to her, “This fast that you are observing… your co-wife also must be observing it?  Haven’t you suffered enough in this life? Such humiliation, such insults! Do you really want to repeat the same life for the next seven births to come? Seriously?” She looked at me and said, “No, you are right.  I don’t want that! Go on, bring me food.” 

So, she understood what I was saying and it totally convinced her. It took her just a moment to give up a fast which she had observed from the age of fifteen till she was ninety. She was a woman of such iron resolve! When she realized that there was going to be a lot of problems surrounding the rituals to be observed after her death, she called my sister-in-law and asked her to make arrangements for her conversion to the Mahanubhava14 Sect.  This sect has no rituals for cremation. They follow the custom of burying the dead and anyone can carry out the burial once the grave has been dug. There are no ritual feasts and restrictions to be observed by bereaved relatives. She really jolted me by her decision to give up the fast and also her decision to convert to the Mahanubhava Sect. Such iron resolve! These are the experiences that find their way into my writing. 

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Notes
--From the Book “Aakash Peltana” (Marathi) 2018. 
This translation ©Aalochana and Kumud Pawde
--The Beacon wishes to thank Medha Kotwal Lele and Simrita Gopal Singh, co-founders of Aalochana Centre for making this translation available to the journal. 
--Aalochana Centre for Documentation and Research on Women,, founded in 1989 is a bilingual women’s resource and training centre based in Pune., India. www.aalochana.net    
One of its objectives has been to document women’s lives, their experiences, perceptions and their unheard stories.  
The resulting, ongoing oral history project has recorded voices of women from Maharashtra, some who have lived on the edge or traversed challenging terrains for causes they believed in, for example the anti-imperialist struggle, the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, the promotion of women’s education, the fight against casteism and for the rights of the working classes.  
Some of these accounts were published in Marathi as “Aakash Peltana” (When We Held Up the Sky) in 2018. This is currently being translated into English as a forthcoming volume.