CHAPTER: 2 VOICES OF PIONEER INDIAN WOMEN MEMOIRISTS: AN OUTLINE

Who to wed? Who to revere?

Couldn’t comprehend the male fear

Why to bow? How to conduct?

At each corner, obstacles erupt.

How to write? When to procreate?

What for the world is most appropriate?

I ask and get no replies……………………

Moments come, century flies

But the quest of female never dies!!!!

(Monika Choudhry’s Poem Quest)

2.1 Introduction:

Jai Shankar Prassad, the pioneer literary personality of Hindi literature is known for strong portrayals of women. A popular verse from one of his most widely read poems Kamyani (Part: II ‘Lajja’) reads,

“नारी! तुम केवल श्र饍धा हो

वव�वास-रजत-नग पगतल मᴂ।

पीयूष-स्रोत-सी बहा करो

जीवन के सुԂदर समतल मᴂ।”

Nari! Tum keval shraddha ho,

vishwas-rajal-nag-pal-tal mein. Piyush strot si baha karo,

Jivan ki sundar samtal mein.

[Oh woman! You are honour personified, under the silver mountain of faith flow you, like a river of ambrosia, on this beautiful earth.]

The woman is a beautiful creation of God on this beautiful earth. She is a living embodiment of affection, love, compassion, tenderness and so on. In Indian culture and literature, the aesthetic beauty of women represented extraordinarily. Millions of people of the world appreciate Vatsayana’s Kamsutra and Bhartuhari’s Shrungarshatak. Mahakavi Kalidas exceptionally represents the aesthetic beauty of women in his epics. In Meghdoot, the protagonist Yaksha sends messages to his beloved wife by rainy clouds, he narrates aesthetically the beauty of his wife. He appreciates the physical beauty of his wife by these words: तन्वी श्यामा, शिखरिदषणा, प啍वबिम्िोधिोष्टि, मध्यक्षमा, चि啍तहरिनोप्रेक्षना,

ननम्ननाभीही, श्रोक्षीभिा, हलसगमाना, स्तोकनमा, स्तनाभया車 etc. In Vedvyas Ramayan, Shri Rama narrates Sita who lost in the forest and Shankuntla’s narration in Abhigyan Sakuntlam is wonderful. Whether the great poet Bhash, Ban, Shudrak or Jagannath all of them make immortal the female characters in their great works. The female characters of the all renowned Sanskrit scholars were emancipated and evolving modern female.

In Manusmruti (around 1250 BCE and 1000 BCE respectively) of course, it is a controversial religious book, though it appreciates women in Adhyay-3. Sloka-56:

यत्र नायस्य तु पू煍यन्ते िमन्ते तत्र देवता:।

यत्रैतास्तु न पू煍यन्ते सवायस्तत्राफला: क्रिया:।

[Where women are honoured, divinity blossoms there, and where ever women are dishonoured, all action no matter how noble it may remain unfruitful.]

During the Vedic period, there was no gender discrimination. Women were respected and secured a higher position in society. Women were worshipped as a Shakti means power and strength. Shatapatha Brhamana associated with the Sukla Yajurveda, the wife is often said to be the completion of the husband: he becomes complete ‘Self’ only when he is married: ardho ha va esa atmano yaj jaya tamad yavaj jayam…..

“A full half, surely, of one’s self is one’s wife. As long as one does not obtain a wife, therefore one can never be reborn, for he then remains incomplete. As soon as he obtains a wife, however, he is reborn, for then he becomes complete.” (Patrick 106)

Women of this period were actively participating in cultivation, cattle rearing, weaving, dyeing, war type of equipment and materials manufacturing etc. In the education field women were progressive. They were not inferior to men. As far as education and religion is concerned, women and men were equal. They could study Vedas and also received religious teaching. In later-Vedic civilization, women like Gargi and Maiteyi were considered to be highly intellectual.

“Women enjoyed far greater freedom in the Vedic period than later in India. She had more to say in the choice of her mate than the forms of marriage might suggest. She appeared freely at feasts and dances and joined with men in religious sacrifices. She could study, and like Gargi, engage in philosophical disputation. If she was left a widow there was no restriction upon her marriage.” (Will 401)

The degradation of women had started from the post-Vedic period. The renowned sociologist Prabhati Mukherji has noted some important factors for the low status of women. These factors are Brahamanical austerities on the whole society, caste system widespread, joint family system, women deprived of education and foreign invasions.

The status of women gradually declines in Dharmashastras and Purans. The girls were deprived of formal education and restricted from learning and preaching Vedas. Sons were given more importance than daughters. Some new evils like child marriage, widow burning or Sati, Jauhar and Devadasi were prevalent in those days. During the Buddhist period the status of women was somewhat improved, however, no drastic change could found. During the Mughal period, the condition of women became the worst. The Mughal invaders brought with them their own culture. For them, a woman was the sole property of her father, brother and husband, and she does not have any will of her own. This ideology spread among Indian society and they have also begun to treat their own women like that. The Mughals were polygamists and kept their wives in Purdah. These evils spread in the Indian society.

In the twentieth century, the great reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidhyasagar, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Dhondo Keshav Karve, Swami Dayanand Saraswati and Mahatma Gandhi have struggled a lot to give honourable and prestigious status to Indian women in a society which they deserve. In Muslim society, Khwaja Altaf Husain Hali (1837-1914) and Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah (1905-1982) introduced education for girls. In South India, Rao Bahadur Kandukuri Veerealingam Pantulu (1848-1919) encouraged women’s education and remarriage of widows while Sir Raghupathi Venkataratnam Naidu (1862- 1939) opposed the Devdasi tradition and worked for the eradication of untouchability. Credit goes to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkarji that the constitution of independent India changed the social, cultural and religious backbone of Indian society by the various acts in favour of women. As a result, today Indian women have equal rights of education, religion, politics, services and wages as men have.

Thus, in the Vedic period, the voices of women spread to all directions because they were enjoying the equal status to men. In the post-Vedic period the standard of women decreased so that women’s voices suffocated and muffled and in the present 21st century the voices of women increasingly heard in the parliament, courts and in the streets.

2.2 Voices of the Earliest Indian Women Memoirists:

During the pre-colonial time, the contribution of Indian women in the field of self- writing non-fiction literature was trivial but notable and well appreciated in all literary circles.

In the mid-sixteenth century, according to the Mughal history, a Mughal princess Gul-Badan Begam had written a historical memoir Ahval-l Humayun on account of her brother Humayun after being persuaded by her nephew Akbar. She was born to the Mughal Emperor Babur and Dildar Begam in 1523 in Afghanistan. In 1898, her written manuscript was translated by a British scholar Annette Beveridge and known as Humayun Nama. This historical memoir deals more with political and administrative matters of the Mughal Empire and less about herself. Susie J. Tharu and K. Lalita writes on the Gul-Badan Begam’s historical memoir,

“Such histories commonly gave accounts of the major public events that had taken place, political crises that threatened the state, battles that had been fought, and grants or honours that had been given. Not so Gul-Badan Begam’s. The focus on her unusual account is the everyday life of the royal family. She speaks of anxieties and the pressures as the womenfolk experience, then even the emperor’s travels are charted through the minds of the women in his household. We watch with them from the ramparts as the men ride away to war and anxiously scan the horizon for their return. Gul-Badan Begam’s history is one of life in that large household and of warm enduring friendships.” (Tharu 99)

Generally, Indian women were treated as a silent character in Indian history. But the spiritual voices of Maharastra state’s Varkari Sampradaya women saints spread widely in the 17th century. There were many women saints associated with this Varkari Sampradaya - Janabai, Muktabai, Gonai, Rajai, Ladai, Kanhopatra, Soyarabai, Nirmalabai, Banka, Vanka, Bhagu Maharin, Gangabai, Sakhubai, Vithabai and Bahinabai. The contribution of these women in the field of spiritual literature is unexceptional.

Bahinabai (c. 1628-1700) was the last great woman saint of Varkari tradition. She was the first Indian woman to write a spiritual memoir Atmanivedana in seventeenth- century later translated by Justin E. Abbott into English Bahinabai Gatha. Bahinabai’s spiritual guide, the saint Ramdas in his Dasabadha refer to Atmanivedana to the surrendering of the self to God. This memoir contains 473 verses among them first 73 verses portraits her early period life. These verses are called abhangas.

The Bahinabai Gatha narrates Bahinabai’s or Bahini’s birthplace Devgaon in western Maharastra to Brahman parents. Her father was Audev and mother's name was Janaki Kulkarni. Bahinabai says while other girls wanted to play with toys she was chanting the God’s names. At the age of five, she was married in Shivpur to a Brahman astrologer, Gangadhar Pathak, who was thirty years old and widowed. Bahini and her husband left their home because of a family quarrel. They wandered in Maharastra and finally settled in Kolhapur where a learned brahmin named Hariram Bhatt gave the family shelter in the courtyard of his house.

There is an interesting story of Bahina’s attachment with a calf. Hariram Bhatt gave Gangadhar a black cow and a calf. The calf likes Bahina and followed her everywhere. Gangadhar did not like this. One day, when Bahini went to listen to Jayram Gosai, a well-known Kirtankar had come to Kolhapur. Bahina attended the kirtans with her family as usual, the calf followed her. Jayram Gosai noticed this and appreciated the bond between the two. However, one ekadasi the house in which Jayram Gosai was giving his kirtan was so crowded that the calf was removed. Noticing this Jayram Gosai called the calf back and patted it and put his hand on Bahina’s head. The next day Gangadhar overheard this matter; he rushed to the house and beat Bahinabai severely. Gangadhar only untied her when he saw that both cow and calf were refusing to eat, but after two days the calf died. At the calf’s burial, Bahini fainted and remained unconscious for four days. In her unconscious state, she saw Lord Vithal before her and she was enlightened. She had also seen Saint Tukaram who taught her the mantra Rama-Krishna- Hari. She became a disciple of Tukaram and spends her time singing Tukaram’s Abhangas.

The Bahinabai’s husband had a narrow and orthodox religious outlook and was therefore against to her deep worship for religious pursuit and her affection for Tukaram who was a low-class shudra. Again her husband beats her and threatens that he will abandon Bahini and go into the forest. Bahinabai narrates in her abhanga,

“My husband had made up his mind to leave us on the morrow, when suddenly he was stricken ill and for seven days his body was burning with fever. Even from those he knew he accepted no advice. I was at his side day and night. He rejected the medicines given to him. He suffered intense pain. For more than a month he rejected food and endured excruciating pain. The various gods and family deities were pleaded within special ways, but there was no cessation of his sufferings. He exclaimed, ‘I am about to die. How I insulted Pandurang and Tukoba! And it was then that this suffering came to me. Tukaram, then O Tukaram, you who in al he universe, perform now a miracle’. Says Bahini, “My husband repeated’, Pandurang is the inner witness of this change.” (Abbot)

According to Atmanivedna, Bahinabai believes in pativrata Dharma and bhakti. She says that,

Bhrataract seva toci amha deva

Bhratara svayameva parabrahmana

[I’ll serve my husband, he’s my god; My husband is the supreme Brahman.]

Sadguru bhratara sadana bhratara

Satya ha nirdhara antarica

[My husband is my guru, my husband is my way

This is my heart’s true resolve.]

Bhratara darshana vina jay disa

Tari teci rasa patakanci

[A day spent without the sight of my husband

Will be a heap of sin.]

This memoir draws attention to the compatibility of the householder life and bhakti (devotion) but the memoirist also suggests that grhastha and bhakti are necessary. However, it seems that Bahini would have preferred to live as a renunciant but could not do so because she is female and married. She writes,

Striyece sarira paradhina deha

Nacale upava viraktica

[Possessing a woman’s body and subject to another body

I was not able to embark on renunciation.]

Bhratara tyagita vedasi viruddha

Paramartha to suddha sampadena

[Leaving one’s husband is contrary to the Vedas;

One would never attain pure spiritual knowledge.]

The authoritative Brahmanical tradition, here represented by Vedas, had taught Bahina that her body impeded for obtaining spiritual knowledge or attaining liberation. Thus Atmanivedna represents Bahinabai’s life as a great devotee and a great householder. Bahinabai may become an example for married women who can associate themselves with the ideology of Bahinabai if they are torn between household, family, profession or community. They can remain faithful to their wifely duties and still participate fully in bhakti tradition.

This memoir reveals the life of Bahinabai who was a victim of domestic violence under patriarchal domination. Gender bias also disclosed in the anecdote of Jayram Gosai blessing turn into severe beating by Bahina’s husband to Bahinabai.

The feminist voice is also reflected in this memoir. She laments her female birth, which kept her away from the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures like Vedas and sacred mantras. Bahinabai writes in her abhanga,

“The Vedas cried aloud, the Puranas shout,

No good comes to woman”

“I was born with a woman’s body

How am I to attain truth?”

“They are foolish, seductive, deceptive –

Any connection with woman is disastrous.”

“If women’s body so harmful,

How in this world will I reach Truth?”

During the nineteenth century, the way women’s lives began to change because of the British conquest of India. As a result, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, several women educated and participated in the various activities of the society. Under the colonial supremacy new educational, religious and social institutions were established for the emancipation of women. Gradually, the traditional household mentality of Indian society for women has weakened. Women come forward with education and spread their knowledge in different sections of the society and proved themselves equal to men. Geraldine Forbes, the researcher of Colonial India and specifically the lives of women of that time, writes in her book:

“Many of the ‘new women’ were also educated in their houses and then sent to girls’ school. Parents who cared about female education waited until their daughters were older before arranging their marriages or occasionally allowed young married women to continue their education. Older brides became mothers at a late age and often played a greater role in child-rearing. Often there were opportunities to exercise some choices of their own and consequently, their status was far less derivative than had been true for a previous generation.” (Forbes 29)

She also claims that,

“As a consequence of the changes set in motion by the British conquest of India by the end of the 19th century there were a number of women who were educated, articulate, mobile, and increasingly involved in public activities. In the rural setting, life was dominated by the household – for both men and women. With increasing urbanization and the growth of new professions associated with colonial domination, work was increasingly separated from the home. Paralleling this change was the establishment of new educational, religious and social institutions. As families moved from village home to the cities, they increase their contacts with ‘foreigners’ and witnessed the erosion of the traditional household activity. Like boys of an earlier generation, some of these girls attended educational institutes. Social gatherings were unrelated to family affairs and new religious ceremonies. These ‘new women’, as they were called, were part of a modernizing movement which sought to modify and gender relations in the direction of greater equality between men and women.” (Forbes 28)

In the early twentieth century, Ramabai Ranade wrote her memoir in Marathi Amachya Ayushyatil Kahi Athavani which was published in 1910, after the death of her husband in 1901. It was translated into English Ranade - His Wife’s Reminiscences by Kusumvati Deshpande in 1960. This memoir deals with the life that began with her early childhood, marriage at the age of eleven to the western educated and judge Mahadev Govind Ranade who was a widower and thirty-two years older than Ramabai.

In this memoir, she expressed her feeble voice boldly and honestly. She provides a vivid and poignant picture of women like her who were married to a western educated husband. Her husband taught her English and Marathi. She faced boldly the senior women of the husband’s family who taunted her regarding education. Being a dutiful wife she retained her peace and tried her best to achieve her goal to learn languages. She disclosed that she was writing letters, scanning newspapers and books and managing many of affairs on behalf of her husband when Mr Ranade became a judge of the Bombay High court in 1893. (Chandra 6)

This memoir is a unique piece written by a dutiful wife for a scholar husband. It presents a colourful and inclusive description of Mr Ranade. The main focus of the memoirist is to narrate the personal life of Mr Ranade than public life. An only devoted and obedient wife can appreciate her husband by the words – reformist views, tolerance, shrewdness, practical wisdom, cautiousness, intelligence, sincerity, patience, self-respect, love for nature etc.

“The only merit I possessed in life was to be born in a decent family. Apart from that, I had neither looks nor complexion, virtue more wisdom, nothing that would have made me worthy of my husband. It was only by God’s grace that I was blessed with such a partner in life and with a sense of utter fulfillment.” (Deshpande 94)

Some other characters are also portrayed by Ramabai like Tai Sasubai who was against Ramabai’s education. The character Shakharam Naik, who always misinterprets the abhangas and some other characters like Mamanji, Vansa and Vithu uncle.

Another outstanding life story of a pioneer Marathi writer Laxmibai Tilak had written a memoir Smritichitren originally in Marathi later on translated into English under the title I Follow After by E. Josephine Inkster and Louis Menezes as Sketches of Memory. It was published in four parts between 1934 and 1937. So after the death of her husband when she started to feel lonely, her son Devdatta asked her to write the memoir of Reverend Tilak. She composed her memories and it’s become the testimonials of her memoir namely I Follow After.

In this memoir, she shares her personal experience at a wider scale. She was born in a Hindu Chitpawan Brahmin family in 1869 at Jalapur near Nasik, Maharastra state. She was married at the age of 11 with a scholar, teacher and poet Narayan Waman Tilak. Her husband is the central character in this memoir. He was a scholar but his nature was whimsical. He was deeply influenced by the principles of the Christian religion and was converted to Christianity. The Hindu Bhramin society was orthodox and conservative. Due to her husband’s action, Laxmibai faced many difficulties. The so-called society treated her as a widow. It was impossible to live as a wife of Reverend Talk. At first, she was shocked by her husband’s decision and has no plan to follow him. But like a dutiful wife, she helped him in his work and acknowledged the truth that caste distinction was man-made and not God given and later she also converted to Christianity.

In this memoir, she has come across some persons from her childhood. They are the family members, relatives, her husband, in-laws and the near and dear people of her husband, her mother, Nana (her father), Bhikutai, Nanasaheb Pendase (Bhikutai’s husband), her aunt, Govindrao Khamdote (her aunt’s husband), Narayan Rao Tilak, Mahadeo, Dr. Balamtain Saheb are the central figures. All other characters come occasionally and depart after playing their due roles. Her family is her world for which she sacrificed and reconciled throughout her life and she always remained dependent on her relatives, husband and son.

Through this memoir, Lakshmibai Tilak has given a message to the female of the world how to find their own identity and overcome from difficult situations. In the whole sketch, she never claimed herself as a feminist, but her feminist sensibility is observed in every action of her life.

“Truly, I did not understand the psychology. Nor do I yet understand it. I believe Jijai (Tukaram‘s wife) did not understand it either, nor yet the wife of Socrates. Had they both written their lives, the world would have understood the difficulties they faced in running their homes. Of others’ minds, they may have known nothing, but well did they know the tumult of their own.” (Tilak 70)

Both Lakshmibai Tilak’s and Ramabai Ranade’s memoirs are rare records of the little-explored but politically significant struggle of women caught between the bold public gestures of the new westernized men they were married to, the public promises of freedom held out to them, and the personal lives that were bound anew into private spheres. Their stories capture the oblique paths they trod across these grids. (Tharu 161)

2.3 Voices of the Pre-Independence Era Women Memoirists:

Early Indian women's memoirs are generally based on domestic problems and day to day life issues, blended with spiritualism as above mentioned while pre-independence memoirs revealed the ‘self’ as well as of patriotism and urge for the independence of the nation. It means, the theme of the individual consciousness of the early Indian women's memoirs shifted to pre-independence period with the theme of national consciousness and feminine consciousness. Pre-independence women memoirists vividly presented their issues with the air of nationalism among whom Renuka Rey (My Reminiscences: Social Development during the Gandhian Era and after) was a noted freedom fighter, social activist and politician of India narrated her life and times. She has boycotted British Indian education under the influence of Gandhiji. She was nominated to the Central Legislative Assembly as a representative of the women of India. She worked hard for women rights and inheritance rights in parental property. Manmohini Sahgal (An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life) was an active participant in the Indian struggle for independence. She narrated her life story and her active role in the Indian freedom struggle. Manikuntala Sen (In Search of Freedom: an Unfinished Journey) narrates her life and times as a communist party leader. This memoir spans the years from approximately 1936 and ends with China-India War of 1962. This memoir is less personal and more about the country’s freedom struggles. Anis Kidwai (In freedom’s Shade) was a writer, an activist and politician. She sacrificed her life for the rehabilitation of the refugees of the bloody partition of Hindustan and Pakistan. This memoir is a detailed account of the partition time and rehabilitation process of the victims. Bina Das (Bina Das: a Memoir) was an aggressive freedom fighter of Bengal. In this memoir, she recounts the story of her involvement in the shooting of the British Governor of Bengal, Stanley Jackson.

Anis Kidwai and Bina Das were social workers and politicians. The life story of both women is a message in itself. They fought for the nation’s issues with full of patriotic feelings. Their contribution to the nation will be remembered in the form of their memoir.

In the pre-independence era, Anis Kidwai was the pioneer partition women memoirist. Being a social worker and a politician, she was the eyewitness of the horror of India’s partition. She was born in a Muslim family in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh in 1906. She had written an unfinished Urdu memoir Ghubar-e-Karrwaan published in 1983. She had written another memoir of partition Azadi Ki Chhaon Mein – the book was largely written over about six months between September 1948 and January 1949 but remained unpublished until 1974. The book, written in 1949 was eventually published by the Quami Ekta Trust run by D.R. Goyal and Subhadra Joshi in 1974. The National Book Trust published the book in Urdu in 1978 and Hindi in 1981. Later it was translated into English by her granddaughter Ayesha Kidwai and published as In Freedom’s Shade in 2011.

In 1919, at the age of thirteen, Anis was married with Shafi Ahmad Kidwai, who was an administrator of the Municipal Board of Mussoorie. It seems to have been a happy marriage, until Shafi Kidwai was murdered in October 1947. A distressed Anis met Gandhiji in Delhi. He advised her to work for those who lost everything will give her a reason to live. She joined the Shanti Dal, a peacekeeping organization that worked in the resettlement camps and helped secure food and blankets for refugees. She started her humanitarian service from Delhi refugee camps like Purana Qila, Humayun’s Tomb and then moving out of the city with young students of Jamia trying to stop the rioting mob.

She worked with Sushila Nayayar, Subhadra Joshi and many other social workers of that time. ‘Throughout all this, she kept a diary of her daily experiences, the madness, the cruelty, the greed the depravity, the unspeakable horrors that human inflicted upon other humans. She also saw and recorded instances of great love, great courage has shown, great sacrifices made and great risks taken by ordinary unarmed people to help and save others like themselves.’ She had written her memoir Azadi Ki Chhaon Mein is based on those diaries.

Anis Kidwai initiates the first chapter of the memoir by recollecting about India’s first Independence Day:

“I remember well that first 15 August—the designated day of liberation, rung in by the horrifying shrieks of terror resounding from Calcutta across to East and West Punjab. The day when the corpse of Delhi was being mangled underfoot, the day when women were being dishonoured. A day of freedom, yes, but freedom slashed and streaked with blood. A day choked by smoke and fire. The Government House echoed with the victims’ moans and entreaties, yet we were happy. Or, truthfully, we forced ourselves to be happy. All else aside, the long years of struggle had borne fruit. Whatever else had happened, at least the yoke of slavery was undone. Perhaps with this freedom, the demons of communalism would also soon be exorcized. True, the nation was divided but even separate, the two parts could live in peace and prosperity.

But on this day, even this feeble consolation was not to be available to many of us and we were to experience again a sense of servitude, of alienation, of otherness. I went searching for happiness that day but everywhere I went— and Begum Hayatullah and I had scoured the best part of the city by foot, rickshaw, car—there was the same gloom, the pall of despair that stifled the hope we once nurtured.

The tricolours flutter could not lift our hearts, nor the roars of ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’, or celebratory slogans charge us with triumphant pride. Signboards and posters in Hindi seemed to mock us. Hearts and spirits benumbed, our blood was cold.

On that day, India took its first steps back into the past.” (Kidwai 1-2)

This memoir is the record of the piteous condition of abducted women during the partition time. On the skeleton of the abducted, raped and murdered women during partition India has got the independence. Anis Kidwai gave the frightening account of pre-teen aged speared through their vaginas, of infants being chopped to pieces, of a pregnant woman being stabbed their wombs, women raped, abducted, sold off again and again. The human barbarities didn’t stop, it continued – doctors refusing to treat patients, sucking infants being beheaded or strike out to the wall. Of course, In Freedom Shade is a scholarly history, but it gives us a detailed account of a terrible time of Indian history.

Bina Das, known as ‘the Bengali Tigress’, writes her memoir, which is quite different from Anis Kidwai’s memoir. Of course, both memoirists had written their memoirs in their vernacular languages and later translated by their dear kinships, but both memoirs spread the colour of patriotism and nationalism.

Bina Das was born on 24 August 1911 at Krishna Nagar in Nadia district of West Bengal. She was a Bengali revolutionary and freedom fighter. She had written her life story Srinkhal Jhankar in Bengali in the early 1905 and has been translated into English entitled Bina Das: A Memoir by her niece, Dhira Dhar, was published in Zubaan Book. In addition to this, Bina’s elder sister Kalyani Bhattacharya published a memoir called Bengal Speaks in 1944 dedicated to Bina Das.

Bina was a daughter of Beni Madhav Das, a well-known Brahmo Samaj leader and teacher of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and social worker Sarala Devi. Bina and her elder sister Kalyani became active members of a revolutionary group Chhatri Shangha for women in Calcutta. On 6th February 1932, she has fired five shots at Bengal Governor Sir Stanley Jackson in the Convocation Hall of the Calcutta University, the Governor who was not injured. She was imprisoned for nine years. Her statement before the tribunal jury of the Calcutta High Court, she said,

(I have quoted the entire speech of Bina Das deliberately so that the confessional and patriotic voice of the memoirist one can understand.)

“I confess that I fired at the Governor on the last Convocation Day at the Senate House. I hold myself entirely responsible for it. My object was to die and if I had to die, I wanted to do it nobly, fighting against this despotic system of government which has kept my country in perpetual subjection to its infinite shame and endless sufferings, and all the while fighting in a way which cannot but tell. I fired at the Governor impelled by my love for my country which is being repressed and what I attempted to do for the sake of my country was great violence on my own nature too. It was a severe injury to the family to which I belong and the Institution where I was having my education — an Institution which loved me dearly and exercised the highest influence on my life and character, and which I looked upon with all regard due to a mother; but the love for my country was always supreme in my mind; and I felt very deeply in my heart at the miserable condition of my country. All the ordinances, all the measures to put down the noble aspirations for freedom in my countrymen, came as a challenge to our national manhood and as indignities hurled at it. This hardened even the tender feminine nature like mine into one of a hero's mould.

I had been thinking — is life worth living in an India so much subjected to wrongs and continually groaning under the tyranny of a foreign Government or is it not better to make one supreme protest against it by offering one's life away? Would not the immolation of a daughter of India and of a son of England awakens India to the sin of its acquiescence to its continued state of subjection and England to the iniquities of its proceedings? This was one question that kept thundering at the gates of my brain like incessant hammer blows which would neither be stilled nor muffled.

My sense of religion and morality is not inconsistent with my sense of political freedom. I believe that a person who is a slave politically cannot realize God who is the embodiment of the spirit of freedom and has made His sons and daughters free to share in the joy that is in Him. I have held, therefore, that political freedom is organically connected with religion and morality; and there ought to be no conflict between them. In fact, I feel in my heart of hearts that the best and the divine in humanity cry out in revolt against all forms of tyranny in this world.

Political freedom, religion and moral ideals should, therefore, be blended together into one harmonious whole and the subject races inhabiting this globe should be politically free. It was for the purpose of bringing this fact home 1 selected as my field of action, the Convocation Hall of my sacred alma mater.

I studied in the Diocesan College for my B.A. degree and passed with Honours in English and my father sent me to that College for an additional course of study for B.T. Degree, in order to bring me into closer touch with truly Christian souls and to give opportunities to see the best side of British Character. I gratefully acknowledge that I have immensely profited by my study under the Sisters of my dear College. But at the same time, with the comparative knowledge of things, I felt with deep anguish that the true Christian spirit was not much in evidence in the administration of a Christian Government.

The series of ordinances savouring of Martial Law, to my mind, showed nothing but a spirit of vindictiveness and were only measured to crush all aspirations for freedom. The outrages perpetrated in the name of Government at Midnapore, Hijli and Chittagong (my own district), the refusal to publish the Official Enquiry Reports and many more of such instances, were things I could never drive away from my mind. The outrages on Amba Debi of Contai and Niharabala of Chittagong literally upset my whole being. I used to help the wife of a Detenu in her studies as a work of love. Every day I saw with my own eyes the sufferings of the poor girl who was leading the life of a widow during the lifetime of her husband, as also the demented parents of the Detenu, slowly sinking into their graves, without their having the faintest notion of the supposed guilt of their son.

I attended the court proceedings during the trial of my sister Kalyani. She was punished to serve a term of rigorous imprisonment for having allegedly attended a meeting which could not be held and for being a member of an unlawful society only on the basis of the evidence of her having a proscribed leaflet in her possession. This was to my mind grossly unjust. Though she is an Honours Graduate who had earlier lived in all the comforts of a middle-class family, yet ignominy was hurled on her during her prison-life. What with the jail- dress and jail-diet of ordinary convicts classified as third-class prisoners, and the sleepless nights amongst such criminals militated against my whole being. I saw all these with my own eyes and also witnessed the bitter tears welling out of the eyes of my dearest parents. I thought that such must be the sufferings of innumerable others. All these and many other incidents worked on my feelings which worked themselves into a frenzy. The pain became unbearable till such time I felt that I would go mad if I could not find the relief in death. I only sought the way to death by offering myself at the feet of my country and invite the attention of all by my death as a mark of the most immaculate form of protest against the situations created by the repressive measures of the government, which can unsex even a frail woman like myself, brought up in all the best traditions of Indian womanhood.

I can assure all that I could never have any personal grudge against any person or anything on earth; I have no sort of personal feelings against Sir Stanley Jackson, the man and Lady Jackson, the woman. But the governor of Bengal represents the system of repression which has kept enslaved 300 million of my countrymen and countrywomen.

Now I stand alone before the judgment seat of God and open myself before Him and pray for His all-forgiving love to wash me clean so that I may be a worthy offering to Him. May I see the benignant countenance of the Mother Divine and feel Her loving embrace for me - even for - at this most solemn moment of my life. If it be Her will that I should die, then let it be so. If She wills that I live, let me consecrate my life to the service of suffering humanity, which is the fondest longing of my heart if She out of Her infinite mercy spares it to be used by Her as Her instrument. May God fulfil Himself through my death or my life, if it so pleases Him. They will be done. Oh, Lord.” (Das B India of the Post)

This speech discloses her immense love for the country and for the sake of the country she was ready to do anything even to die. She passed seven darkest years in the jail even though her courage and dedication to the country remained the same. When people surprised and wondered about her seven years imprisonment, she replied,

“People exclaim in surprise ‘seven years in jail?’ As we look back, we also wonder how we survived for seven years. But prison life was not the period of a total loss. Today when I try to balance my life, I do not want to describe the seven prisons-bound years as time wasted, My near and dear ones lament the loss of the best years of my life in the dark abyss of bondage. In a way this is true. But there is another side to it. First, we never bowed the pressure of conflicts and chastisements of prison; we never succumbed to the pain of suffering. There was some secret source of strength in our hearts that sustained us through the difficult years. The fountainhead was our ideal. We did not think of ourselves as separate units. We knew that this chapter of our life will all its good and bad, with all its gain and loss, was a part of history, the history of a nation fighting the battle for freedom. They lay our deepest consolation, our most profound sense of fulfillment.” (Das B 37)

This memoir contains the information about her last meeting with Subhashchandra Boss before his sudden disappearance, her consent for the working class in the rice mills of Tollygunge especially women workers worked under terrible conditions for a meagre pay of five annas per day, her political career started with M.N. Roy, one of the founders of the Communist Party of India, influenced by Gandhi’s ideology and so on. She was one of the chief organizers of the Quit India protests in Calcutta and was imprisoned again in 1942. She continuously fought for the independence of India.

Another outstanding memoir by Malka Pukhraj’s Song Sung True: A Memoir is one of the rare documents written by a singer widely regarded as a former courtesan in the court of the last Hindu Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Raja Haris Singh. She dedicated this book to her husband and Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. She started her career as a courtesan and singer in the Maharaja’s court at the tender age of nine. She has written her memoir in Urdu with an extensive smattering of words in Dongri (her mother tongue), English and Punjabi and even some French phrases. Salim Kidwai, a historian and a professor of Ramjas College, Delhi University translated in English and published in 2003. This is a life story of a poor peasant girl living in hardship and later became a courtesan in the Maharaja’s court at the tender age of nine.

Malka Pukhraj was performing the role of a tawaif in the court of Raja Haris Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. The word tawaif belongs to the Mughal era, at that time a woman who performed the role of a tawaif was a respectable post in the court of kings. Like former tawaif of her time, Malaka was equipped with many arts – singing, dancing, acting, poetry recitation, composing literature, multilingual and so on.

At the beginning of the memoir, Malka Pukhraj narrates her birthplace of Hamirpur Sidhadhar villages located at Jammu and Kashmir state. She described how the people of her village, both Hindu and Muslim respected Baba Roti Ram as a saint. She recounts how she got her name. After her birth, grandfather brings her to the saint for his blessings; the saint without even looking at the newborn baby, describes “I do not know if it is a boy or girl.” But she is “Malka-muazzamuma – the great empress.” In this way the great singer’s future musical ‘reign’ came to be predicted at her birth, the first part of her name bestowed on her by a Sufi mystic, the second ‘Pukraj’ (jewel), given to her by a beloved aunt. (Pukhraj 47)

Malka Pukraj received lots of love from her grandparents. Her grandfather was a poor hard working peasant. He managed the joint family household that contained his daughter and beloved granddaughter (Malka). Malka’s father was a gambler and Malka’s mother hated his gambling habit so she no longer lived with him.

Malka compares the hardworking rural women of her home with elite, aristocratic women. She ironically juxtaposes the simple, hardworking and morally upright life of her peasant family with the lazy immoral aristocratic women, who she observed when her visit to Delhi for formal training in the courtesans arts, Malka recalls, “The air, graces and ways of the women from elite families were also very amusing […] (these) women would get up in the morning and then come sit on the takhts, and lean on the bolsters. Maids would place a silver paandan and spittoon close to them. The whole day they would talk to each other or visitors with a rolled-up Paan (beetle leaf) stuffed in their cheeks. They had nothing to do with any of the housework.” (Pukraj 47)

At the age of three, she started her journey to learn the classical music. She learned the musical art from two male ustad (teacher) – Ali Baksh and Mian Maula Baksh Talwandiwale. In those days, male teachers were teaching classical music and song. It was not simply to learn it at the tender age of three. She underwent the most rigorous training.

In this memoir, she shared her personal relationship with Maharaja Hari Singh. She recollects that whenever he returns from a trip, he brought for her many gifts like ‘platinum bracelet studded with diamonds and black stones or ‘platinum watch the cover of which was studded with diamonds and rubies’ or ‘a platinum ring with three rubies surrounded by diamonds’. She also accompanies him on a hunting trip. She writes, “that my accompanying him on the hunt was bound to invite comments that he could not now even hunt without me.” (Pukhraj 125) Because of Maharaja’s deep interest in Malaka, his wife mostly lives alone. Malka learns a lifelong lesson and writes, “A woman’s life is centred on her husband. Lord knows how she survived – without parents or husband.” (Pukhraj 113)

The romantic life of Malaka with Maharaja was disturbed by the communal riots broke up in the preceding year of independence between the Hindus and Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir state. The court of Hari Singh divided between two parts – Hindu courtiers and Muslim courtiers. Political upheaval preceded in the court. Hindu courtiers were not happy with Malka’s personal relationship with the Maharaja. The rumour spread that “Malka had tried to poison the Maharaja.” (Pukhraj 204) In the interest of safety for herself and her family, she decided to resign from the Maharaja’s service and moved to Lahore. She left the court after singing the last song she would ever sing for the Maharaja. It is a Pahari – a folk song of the region. The government press paper headline was “The Raj of Malka Pukhraj Ends.” (Pukhraj 121)

Later in the second part of the memoir, she recounts her life in Lahore – the new settlement. After the partition of Hindustan, she preferred to live in Pakistan. She started her new life in Lahore with performing her art for upper-class people. She writes how she laid strict rules for the audience, “I would sing for no one after eleven at night and even further, she would not permit her audience to consume alcohol while listening to her.” (Pukhraj 121)

2.4 Women Memoirists of the Post-Independence Era:

There is no doubt that the Memoir is a type of genre in English writing, which originated in the west and then spread into the east. Initially, this form of writing was adopted by the male member of the society. On the contrary, women were confined to the private domain wrote only diaries. Male writers had always been free to write about their life and get it published. On the contrary, women writers, who had been forced to be private if not silent, confined their thoughts to diaries. The genre of writing about self has been practiced by people for centuries. But it is very difficult for women writers to write about their private life and get it published. Their voice kept silence and suffocated.

As women were denied education the productions of literary works by women were almost negligible. But in the latter part of the eighteenth century, with reforms in female education and opening up of English medium school for girls, women began to receive an English education.

In the post-Independence period, Indian women memoirists wrote abundantly. They played a vital part to constitute of the society. They have a voice – a rainbow colour voice. Memoir offers an alternate space, as Linda Anderson pointed out in her work Autobiography, “A place from which to contest their socially sanctioned position of silence and submission.” (Anderson 15) She further says, “Difference is the term that is used to replace the notion of gender identity as something innate, drawing attention instead to how ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are meanings produced within and through language. These are social constructs over and above the biological constructs.” (Anderson 15)

Tharu and Lalita in their voluminous work Women Writing in India have mentioned that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century several self-life narratives came out initiating the beginning of a new genre of creative writing by women. These memoirs “are a personal testimony of the new sense of worth these women experience as ‘individuals’ whose specific lives were of interest and importance.” (Tharu 160)

After the independence of India, rich and unique life writing was written by Padmini Satthiananadhan Sengupta (1906-1988) a novelist and nonfiction writer. She was a daughter of a famous literary family of the Satthiananadhan. She has written a book The Portrait of an Indian Woman published in 1956 is a unique genre of literature. It is a memoir as well as a biography. In this portrait, Padmini offers at once a memoir of her own growing years and a biographical sketch of her mother Kamala Satthiananadhan. Her mother Kamala was an educator, writer and editor of the Indian Ladies’ Magazine. This life writing was published shortly after the independence of India. This book carries a Foreword by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, distinguished professor of philosophy, Vice- president of India at the time that the book was published and later, president of India. Padmini recollects her mother Kamala was graduating from Presidency College, Madras in 1898. She was the first woman in South India to complete her graduation. She married Samual Satthiananadhan who was Christian by the cast. Padmini in her memoir recollects the distinguished Indian women educational, activist Pandita Ramabai, the famous Indian Parsi lawyer Cornelia Sorabji, and Rani Lady Harnam Singh of Punjab. She also writes about prominent white women educational and writers of her mother’s friends.

Padmini also recounts her mother’s friend Sarojini Naidu the freedom fighter, social worker, poet and nationalist leader. Kamala and Sarojini played a vital role for the emancipation in society. Kamala pursued to achieve Coronation Medal and an MBE from the British government, while Sarojini preferred the path of Gandhiji and struggled for the independence of India. In this life-portrait, Padmini observes her mother as an Indian Mother. This is the outstanding life writing contains the history of an Indian women educationalist, social women the educational history and public histories of Indian women’s education.

After the independence of India, many women came forward to share their voices in the form of life writing especially in the memoir genre. They were not famous writers, but at least on the high position in the society or wives of prestigious persons. They were doctors, teachers, lawyers, social workers, social activists, politicians, historians or wives of a prestigious person of the society. In their memoirs, they write less about themselves and more about their dear and near ones. The less famous women memoirists of the post- independence era are Sushama Sen (Memoirs of an Octogenarian, 1971), Urmila Huksar (The Future That Was, 1972), Prema Nandakumar (The Mother of Sir Aurobindo Ashram, 1977), Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (An Inheritance: the Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, 1977), Sunita Deshpande (And Pine for What, 1995), Prema M. Naidu (In Love with Life: Memoirs of a Lady Doctor, 1990), Vimla Patil (My Time: Memoirs, 1997), Lalithambika Antherjanam (Cast me out if you will: Stories and Memoirs, 1998), Manmohini Sahgal (An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life, 1994), Lakshmi Sahgal (A Revolutionary Life: Memoir of a Political Activist, 1997) and Pramila Jaypal (Pilgrimage: One Woman’s Return to a Changing India, 2000).

At the early post-colonial India, the life of women’s was confined in domestic traditional style like education, marriage, childbearing, nurturance, family responsibilities. In contrast, men were also educated, married, had children and became householders but their lives extended beyond the family to careers and clubs and political activity. As was common in many of the prestigious households in early twentieth century Calcutta, the style of life for males differed considerably from the style followed by the females. (Mazumdar xii)

Just like Padmini Sengupta, Sudha Mazumdar outcries for the women’s rights, liberty and honour. Her work, A Pattern of Life: Memoirs of an Indian Woman is her personal life story. It reflects the life of women in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. It proclaims against the orthodox norms, customs and taboos of the contemporary Bengali society. She was a pioneer memoirist of the post-colonial India. She was a translator, essayist and short story writer.

Sudha Mazumdar had written five hundred and fifty pages on her life in Bengali language and later offered to Geraldine Forbes, who with her permission edited this manuscript and published in a book form. This memoir narrates the Bengali woman’s life story with intimate details of a woman’s life and experiences. It reveals the condition of a woman who was living in a staunch Hindu Brahmin family in a late colonial India.

She was born in upper caste, wealthy Bengali Brahmin family. Her father Tara Pada Ghosh was a landlord and her husband Satish Chandra Mazumdar joined the Bengal Civil Service and became a magistrate. She was married at the age of thirteen to this fellow. She was taught from childhood ‘to think of her father-in-law’s house.’ She was lucky to continue her education at mother-in-law’s home. She studied the Bengali literature, music, English grammar and household management. Later on, she got interested in social work. She worked to set up Mahila Samitis for the emancipation of the women. After the death of her husband, she abandoned all social works and attending meetings.

In the introduction part of the book, the editor Geraldine Forbes writes, “In the years covered by these memoirs, Sudha experienced first-hand the changes that were affecting middle-class Indian women. Female education, the end of seclusion, the integration of women into political activities in both social work and social reform, women’s entry into respectable professional roles, birth control, dress reform, and increased the age of marriage, nuclear families, and companionate marriage were all contributing to what journalists at the time called “the new woman”. The nineteenth-century saw the introduction of these changes, but it was not until the first decades of the twentieth century that the middle-class persuades them in earnest.” (Mazumdar xv)

Sudha’s memoir is a sincere representation of the monotonous life of a middle- class Indian woman of the early twentieth century. It unfolded the orthodox mentality of the so-called elite society of the post-colonial time.

Another most authentic life story, Fault Line: A Memoir written by Meena Alexander, a pioneer Indian-American memoirist, poet, novelist and critic. It recounts her migrant life in diverse parts of the world from a privileged and protected childhood in India, her turbulent adolescence in Sudan, her academic journey to England and finally her migration to Manhattan, New York. The basic features of this memoir contain the diasporic issues of uprooting and exile; racial and ethnic minority issues; the trauma of migrant memories, nostalgia and alienation and loneliness.

In the colonial India she was born into a Christian family in Allahabad in 1951. She was the eldest in her family, which consists of thirteen children. Her father was a government servant. Her parental home located in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Her father was transferred to Pune, Maharastra when she was four years old in 1955. After one or two years, her father was appointed to work in the newly independent Republic of Sudan. From age five to eighteen she regularly crossed between Sudan and India. Her childhood was disrupted by going to and fro from native to the foreign countries.

Meena received her Ph.D from Nottingham University in 1973, came back to India and started working in Indian universities. She was married to a westerner David Lelyweld in 1979 in Hyderabad and migrated to the west after marriage.

In post-independence politics, the contribution of the first generation Indian political women is unforgettable. They all present a chronological narrative so their work directly not come under the title of ‘memoir’ genre, even though they have used the word ‘memoir’ in the book title. The autobiographical memoirs of the three influential parliamentary women in post-independence politics: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s Inner Recesses Outer Spaces, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit’s The Scope of Happiness: a Personal Memoir and Renuka Ray’s My reminiscences: social development during Gandhian era and after. These women were struggling in the Indian nationalist movement of the 1920s where they actively participated in the struggle against British colonial rule. After Independence of India, they moved into various public careers in politics, government and civil society.

The eldest of these three women memoirists, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900- 1990), daughter of Motilal Nehru and the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru who started a successful political career as a first Indian ambassador. Between 1946 and 1962, she became an established figure on the international stage serving as Indian ambassador to Soviet Russia, the United States and Mexico, England, Ireland and Spain, and headed several Indian delegations to the UN, before returning to politics in 1962 as Governor of Maharashtra and a Member of Parliament. (Devenish 281)

Inner Recesses Outer Spaces is the life story of Kamladevi Chattopadhyay born on 3rd April 1903 into a Saraswat Brahmin family in Mangalore. She was the lover of art, music and theatre. At the age 14, she married and within a year became a widow. She continued her education under the guidance of her father-in-law who encouraged her to pursue studies. Later on, she came in contact with Sarojini Naidu’s younger brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay a poet, playwright and actor. Both fell in love and married despite the opposition of the contemporary society.

Like other elite higher class well-educated women of the time, she was enchanted by Gandhian ideals and joined the Indian National Congress. In the 1930s, she participated in Gandhiji’s Salt Satyagraha Movement and imprisoned. In 1936, she became president of the Congress Socialist Party. She was a bold politician, in some cases she didn’t agree with Gandhiji’s decisions. For example, when Gandhiji had opposed the inclusion of women in Salt Satyagraha, she had spoken out against the decision. One another example, Gandhiji favoured ‘birth control’ while she publicly announced that birth control is a woman’s right over her own body. She visited many countries to attend conferences about women’s rights. She raised many issues of Indian women in various countries. After independence, she was offered a prestigious post in the Indian government but she refused. She returns to its original artistic orientation through her involvement in the co-operative movement and the development of Indian handicrafts.

Another happy life-tale comes from the pen of Renuka Ray. Renuka belonged to one of the most advanced families of Bengal. This life writing centres on her experiences of a social reformist and a political leader. She narrates the position of women in the society and political scenario of her time. She was also enchanted by Gandhian thoughts and joined the Indian National Congress. This memoir unfolds the situation of women in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Women struggle against the evils of the society and male-centred authority is the prime subject of this memoir. She writes little about herself and more about public events.

Renuka Ray was the first woman to hold a state cabinet position as Minister of Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal (1952-1957) and was a long-standing Member of Parliament (1947-1952 and 1957-1967). In this period she advocated for the reform of social laws relating to women.

These three women’s autobiographical memoirs are encouraging the present younger generation to understand the events of the time. They are the pioneers of the nation-building and women empowerment. They were bold and outspoken in their respective field and always ready to fight for women’s rights. They narrate vivid pictures of nationalist struggle and the early years of independence in their writings.

In the early twentieth century, only the upper caste elite literate women who were born into wealthy families have been writing their life narratives. Almost all life stories of these women’s, as mentioned above, unfolded their personal, domestic life issues, the persona is in the centre. But in the late twentieth century, the Dalit women who were marginalized, compressed and oppressed by the upper class for centuries raised the voice not for ‘her’ but the emancipation of their community. In their work, the life narrator is not in the centre of the story but the whole community itself is a persona. Their story is the story of the community, not an individual. In the Dalit women’s life writing, the memoirist intention is not to depict the life of one individual but ‘beyond the realm of the self to the realm of the community precisely.’ From centuries, they were brought up in misery, discrimination and adversity and came out stronger through their literary works and social activities. The outstanding aspects of their life narratives are to explain motive, expose context and a call for social action.

The autobiographical memoir of the pioneer Dalit woman writer is Shantibai Krushanaji’s Majya Jalamachi Chttarkathi written by a Maharashtrian woman originally in the Marathi language. Later translated in English entitle The Kaleidoscopic Story of My Life published in 1983. It was telecast on television in a serial form named a Najuka in the 1980s. It’s considered the first autobiographical memoir was written by a Dalit woman writer. Another important Dalit woman’s life narrative is Bama Faustina Susairaj’s Kurukku written in Tamil later translated in English. It is a poignant Christian Dalit woman’s life narrative. The memoirist unfolded her own experiences of growing up within the Dalit community in Tamil Nadu. She resigned her teaching profession to become a writer. This memoir focuses on the condition of the Christian Dalit’s of her time. They were doubly discriminated in the Hindu majority state for being Dalit by birth and for being Christian by conversion.

Another significant portrayal of caste and religion discrimination has been found in Viramma’s Viramma: Life of an Untouchable (1977) is an intensely individual life story of Viramma an illiterate rural Pariah woman of Tamil Nadu. This memoir reveals the condition of the Pariah community women in the orthodox and rigid patriarchal society of South India. The narrator, Viramma recollects the agony of her childhood, early marriage, painful sex “horrible memory”, upper cast male’s sexual harassment and abuses, landlord’s exploitation, hard work and lower wages, discrimination in wages, superstitions and so on. In this memoir, she mocks the upper casts hypocrisy about untouchability as these people force Pariah women to breastfeed their children and exchanged their girls with Pariah boys in the hospital.

She ironically narrates the harsh life of Pariah women and compared with the comfortable life of the upper caste Reddy woman.

“What would it be like if we were as civilized as you, always clean and beautiful? But don’t worry, we can’t stay beautiful as long as you. Young, yes, we’re as strong as tamarind seeds, but after the children start coming, it’s all over. We lose blood with each child and on top of that, there’s all the work we get through: planting out, weeding, harvesting, looking after the cattle, collecting cow dung, carrying eight jars of water, and then pounding, winnowing the millet, hulling the paddy, taking it to the rice mill in Tirulagan and all the work at home and in the ur. A Pariah woman loses her strength and beauty very early. The Reddi women only have to sleep, eat and do a few little jobs in the kitchen: they can keep very clean, very civilized. We come home in the evening exhausted, covered in sweat. We don’t take the time to wash. We got to bed as we are. The women in the ur wash several times a day. We don’t have the same life! And yet we’re the ones they try and sleep with!” (Viramma 52)

Some other important life narratives written by Dalit women are P. Sivakami’s Anandhoyi (The Taming of Women), Gogu Shyamala’s Father may be an Elephant and Mother only a small Basket, But...’, Babytai Kamble’s Jina Amuche (The Prisons we Broke) and Kumud Pawde’s Anthaspot (Thoughtful Outburst).

2.5 Voices of the Contemporary Women Memoirists:

At present, memoir mania is widely spread in the literary world. The number of people are writing memoirs. They are giving the title of their written work – Memoir. Today, the word memoir has become a fashion, whereas some years ago ‘autobiography’ might have been the word of choice.

The memoir is a literary genre which unfolded the innermost suppressed feelings of a writer. A memoir is a form where the very aim of the writer is to reveal self from all angles. Traditionally, women have been oppressed and suppressed under male-dominated society. The women of India have been taught to be obedient to the male-centric world. So the fact is that ‘they can talk about power, but are powerless, they can discuss liberty, but are imprisoned.’ In this scenario, they have chosen literature as one of their arms to fight back to the male-dominated society.

The writing of contemporary women is not the revolts against the patriarchal society. They write to define their identities, to find themselves and their position and to recollect the past and consider the future. They write to explore the world, to understand themselves and their local contexts, to develop questions and to propose answers. The voices of contemporary Indian memoirists address questions of sexuality, love, relationship, politics, economic realities and disparities, private or secret experience, etc.

The Memoir is a teaching document. It not only teaches the memoirist about herself but also instructs readers as they learn from the text by communicating with the memoirist. She is defending her work before an audience or readers. According to Susan Engel:

“Autobiographical memory is, on the one hand, a deeply personal, subjective and vivid construction of the past, a construction that reveals, creates, and communicates a personal identity. But we constantly use these memories in public transactions. To that extent, we expect reliability, accuracy and objectivity. What and how we remember has consequences for our own lives and lives of those included in our memories”. (Engel 21-22)

The majority of the contemporary women writers have been choosing memoir form to express their suppressed and suffocated voice. It is a form in which memoirist uses both material realities and imaginary possibilities. The Indian contemporary women memoirists used a style that is at the same time narrative and descriptive, factually testimonial and anecdotal fictive. Therefore, it is not surprising that memoirs have become popular with women. It is women who most often take up the memoir form for the specific purpose of revising cultural contexts so that their experience is not denied.

When a woman is going to write a memoir, she writes to initiate a certain process. She recalls her all history and memories with her own views, her reflections of her own life are all mingled in her memoir to make it sharpen. “Memories establish a connection between our individual past and our collective past (our origins, heritage, and history). The past is always with us, and it defines our present; it resonates in our voices, hovers over our silences, and explains how we came to be ourselves and to inhabit what we call ‘our homes’.” (Agnew 5)

Today, women’s memoir writing as it emerges into life-writing practice is a mixture of ‘confession’ and ‘autobiography’. We can also say it is a different kind of life- writing practice because it asserts female-gendered life stories and female-gendered selfhoods.

Contemporary women writers recollect emotions and merge it with past events. They write memoirs with realities – the sensations and the resulting feelings and thoughts of the self as well as the viewpoints, opinions, actions and reactions of others significantly involved in the event. They wish to retrieve the emotions and thoughts of the past – fears and desires, waves of anger and delights. This is the voice of self.

“I prefer the term memoir for literary reasons, but for etymological ones as well. By its roots, memoir encompasses both acts of memory and acts of recording – personal reminiscences and documentation. The word record, which crops up in almost every dictionary definition of memoir, contains a double meaning too. To record literally means to call to mind, to call up from the heart. At the same time, the record means to set down in writing, to make official. What resides in the province of the heart is also what is exhibited in the public space of the world.” (Millar 2)

Almost all memoirs written by Indian women were revolting against the patriarchal tradition, male-dominated tradition or a male-centric tradition. This tradition always considered a woman’s sub gender and keeping them in a marginalized position. The Indian women memoirists have written their memoirs in the contemporary socio-cultural scenario. They outburst their agonies, rages, pathos and complaints against the patriarchal custom in the form of memoirs. Indian women memoirist of the twentieth century like Kamla Das (A Childhood in Malabar), Sudha Majumdar (A Pattern of Life: The Memoir of an Indian Woman), Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau), Romola Chatterjee (Courtyards of My Childhood: A Memoir), Haimabati Sen (Because I am a Woman: A Widow’s Memoir from Colonial India), Thrity Umrigar (First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of the Indian Childhood) these and many are the best example of painful recollection of childhood which grown under the male-dominated environment.

Kamla Das the pioneer Indian poet, short story writer, autobiography writer in English as well as in her mother tongue Malayalam. She writes her name Kamla Das in English as well as Madhavikutty in Malayalam. She was born in March 1932 in Punnayoorkulum in the Malabar district of Kerala. She was the daughter of V. N. Nair a former managing editor of the widely circulated Malayalam Daily Matrubhumi, and Nallapatt Balamani Amma, a popular Malayali poetess. She has written two self-life narratives My Story (1976) is the world-famous controversial full length autobiography, which is a poignant account of her married life while the second A Childhood in Malabar (2003) is an excellent narration of her joyful childhood in Malabar.

Kamala Das’s A Childhood in Malabar: A Memoir (2003) was originally written in Malayalam, and was later translated into English by Gita Krishnankutty. Kamala Das in the preface of her memoir, she writes,

“Often I would grow physically tired with the effort of remembering and the weight of memory would prove too heavy a burden for me as I journeyed through a childhood in which I had shuttled between Calcutta and Malabar, shifting between three different cultures: of Kerala where I used to spend the long summer holidays, of Calcutta where I lived with my parents and the British culture I encountered at St Cecilia’s, the school I went to while we were in Calcutta. I slowly learned to sort out these memories, to find words for them, to arrange them in some kind of sequence.” (Das K Preface ii)

Of course, she passed her childhood joyfully because she was born into a prestigious and wealthy family. She was growing up in well-to-do households with many servants. She has written this memoir to explore the influence of patriarchal dominance in the society of her childhood time. A Childhood in Malabar is a reflection and richly detailed account of her memories of growing up in Malabar and Calcutta. This memoir depicts the society of her time, which was thoroughly dominated by male authority while women were considered the embodiment of love, affection and care but confined in household work. She recalls her grandmother, “I had been in Ammamma’s care for about two years. A period during which she had drawn the deepest satisfaction for rubbing freshly made coconut oil into my hair every day, then washing out the oil with powdered green gram, drying my hair and combing it neatly.” She further recollects about her grandmother, “Ammamma was no feminist but she was extremely feminine which must have been why she discovered heaven itself in her husband’s demonstrations of affection and in attending to his needs […..] He was thoroughly male what he needed was a sweet-natured and soft spoken wife.” “You must never say anything offensive to your husband.” – these were the words of her grandmother repeatedly told the author.

She recounts that her father was failing to perform his responsibility when she was a child. Her father never cared for her. So she deprived of getting fatherly love. She recalls, “when I was nine, my father, coming home on leave, found me to have become too rustic for his liking and immediately admitted me into a boarding school run by the Roman Catholic nuns. I went with him in a taxi, carrying with me a long black box shaped like a child’s coffin in which my grandmother had packed my meagre belongings.” In this way, the seeds of the male-centric ideas were sown from her childhood that her father never cared for her which had been growing with her age and so that her marital life was also disturbed. Her voice of courage sprung from her writing encouraging the all generation women to fight against the patriarchy, the oppression and fight for rights.

In the beginning of the 21st century, Sukanya Rahman wrote a masterpiece memoir on Indian dance and dancers, Dancing in the Family: An Unconventional Memoir of Three Women (2001). The trio is Esther Luella Sherman aka Ragini Devi, her daughter Indrani Rahman and Sukanya "Baby" Rahman. Ragini Devi, an American woman from Minneapolis, was convinced she had been a Hindu in a previous life and was reincarnated to devote her life to Indian dance. She helped to rescue ancient Indian classical dance forms threatened with extinction under British rule in India, and was instrumental in the revival of Kathakali dance, now one of the more familiar Indian styles. Her daughter, Indrani Rahman, continued this pioneering effort. She helped revive the long neglected Odissi dance and presented Indian classical dance throughout the world with her troupe of dancers and musicians. Sukanya, granddaughter to Ragini and daughter to Indrani, carried on the family tradition by teaching and performing the Bharata Natyam, Odissi and Kuchipudi styles of Indian dance in the United States and other countries. In a historic performance in New York City shortly before Ragini Devi died, the three generations danced together, in what Ragini called "the climax of my life [...] seeing the pure tradition safeguarded by Indrani and Sukanya.

Vidya Raoa, a proficient practitioner of the delicate art of singing Thumri and Dadra also a writer of a memoir on her guru late Naina Devi, Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji (2011). Vidya began to learn music in her childhood that was spent in Hyderabad. “Although I never consciously thought of becoming a professional singer, I was always very serious about music,” she says. After doing her graduation in Madras (now Chennai), she joined the Delhi School of Economics to do M.A. in Sociology. It was in Delhi that she became a student of Professor B. N. Datta to learn classical music. She joined the Centre for Women's Development Studies as a researcher and worked there for five years. It was singer Shubha Mudgal who suggested; rather cajoled her to learn from Naina Devi after Datta passed away. And thus began the exciting musical journey that saw the emergence of Vidya Rao, the performing artist. While she later learnt from several maestros like Mani Prasad, Shanti Hiranand and Girija Devi, it was Naina Devi with whom she spent the maximum time and, in the course of her conversations, learnt both about music and life.

Naina Devi's was an extraordinary life. At the age of 17, she was married to Ripjit Singh, youngest son of the Maharaja of Kapurthala. Widowed at 32, she distributed 300 acres of agricultural land among landless peasants, gave away her exquisite clothes and jewelry, moved to Delhi to lead a life of austerity, and started singing as Naina Devi so as to protect the dignity of her in-laws. Spending long hours with her while learning and talking has obviously given Vidya a rare insight into music and life and the way they influence each other.

Another great contemporary memoir of classical music written by Namita Devidayal’s The Music Room (2008). In this memoir, the memoirist portrayed the stories of her childhood. She was born in a family of business people, where girls were brought up for finding a good husband and knowledge of extracurricular activities like music and dance is a dream. In the second phase, she narrates her journey in music, her lessons under the guidance of Dhondutai Kulkarni. In this memoir, she narrates not only ‘self’ but also portrayed thoroughly life of Dhondutai, her teacher Kesarbai Ketar and other Hindustani classical music scholars.

“As for Namita Devidayal, she had had the privilege of learning music from ‘gaanjogini’ Smt. Dhondutai Kulkarni and to become a part of the exquisite lineage of the famous and one of the oldest of the Gharanas, Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana. Dhondutai, who is a singer of her own stature, learnt from Ustad Natthan Khan, Ustad ManjiKhan and Ustad Bhurji Khan (sons of Ustad Alladiya Khan, the founder of the Gharana. She is also the sole disciple of legendary Smt. Kesarbai karkar. The Music Room (2007) is an account of Devidayal’s lifelong traditional and rather unconventional ‘guru-shisya’ relationship and musical journey with Dhondutai Kulkarni that expands for not less than three decades.” (Roy 53)

Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars is originally a memoir under the mask of narrative non-fiction. As mentioned above, we have seen Dalit is a marginalized community, here the writer narrates community of marginalized dancing girls.

Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing is a painstaking story of a bar dancer. She met many bar dancers and conducted over hundreds of interviews with them. Faleiro meets Leela, a bar dancer in 2005. Through her character, Sonia Faleiro gives a clear picture about the world of bar dances, a world of sex, violence, gangsters, ugly politicians, policemen and prostitutes. Leela is nineteen years old girl and dancing in Night Lovers bar on Mira Road. Leela tells Sonia Faleiro about her past. She was from Meerut, a small town in the north. She was a good student, but she was banished from the classroom and playground. Her father, Mahohar used to beat her simple-minded mother, Apsara. He did odd jobs in the military cantonment in Meerut. He wanted Leela to act in blue films. When she refused, he sold Leela to the local police station at the age of thirteen. At the police station, she was repeatedly raped and given some money. Her father bought a television set with the money they gave him. He forced her to visit the police station. One night, she escaped from him and got on a train to Bombay. Finally, she was caught by a woman whom she believed that she would help her. The lady had the brothel camp who secretly imprisoned orphans and traffic them as sex workers. Leela eventually found her way to the dance floor of Night Lovers. She learnt how to attract the customers by dancing. She likes to show her watchable body parts to customers who are very much pleased to see and touch her womanly parts. She proudly stated about her customers “they think I dance for them, but really, they dance for me.” (Falerio 13) She became a dancer as well as a prostitute. When she was offered more money, she used to sleep with customers. In the beginning, Leela thought that she wanted to work as a dancer, not as a prostitute, but her conditions made her as a sex worker. She and her friend Priya had a dream of being housewives and mothers. No pity and no sorrow. They knew that they were sucked by customers and at the end their bodies are not needed to anyone. They dreamt that one day a rich man would come from the town will walk into the bar, fall instantly in love and say: “Your past is your past.”

“Ameena was a prostitute. She was so small, so she could have been mistaken for a child. She must have been beautiful once. She had full lips and her thick, black plait coiled all the way down to the floor. But her skin was scaly and covered with a film of sweat and pouches under her eyes were the colour and fullness of ripe plums.” (Falerio 127) Apsara ultimately deserts her husband and starts living with Leela just like a parasite. She ate food, watched T.V. and thoroughly enjoyed her life, which was disliked by Leela.

Some of the prostitutes who get pregnancy were unable to bear the burden of the child. Sonia observed that they kill their own child. But soon they would realize that a child was not a table, it was not a chair. It must be fed, it must be clothed, and it needed toys. “One day the child will go to school. What will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen, because I have seen it with my own eyes. One day I happened to pass a kachre ka dabba (dustbin) and in it, not even deep inside it, I saw a dead baby...It happened again. Another kachre ka dabba, another baby.” (Falerio 130) Sonia eventually proves that poverty makes criminals of everyone. The narrative ends up Sharma, in charge of a bar, expresses his long-time experiences about these women who had big dreams. "She will sell her daughter, even if she is her only child, her only family, because her mother sold her, and who is her daughter to deserve better?” (Falerio 211)

Women writing in India 600 BC to the present brings forth almost all women who have contributed to the field of writing in various languages. (Susie) Some of the recent works have made attempts to highlight the connection between sexual oppression and other forms of injustice. Then Dalit theology demonstrates the oppression based on the caste system and suppression of women. Indian women memoir authors draw our attention to the weaker aspects of the society. They are not claiming or arguing for their rights in their writings but they are expressing their inner urge, desires, hopes and dreams in the form of memoir. Obviously, it is found that they are not happy in the environment where they grow or has been growing. They have aptly chosen the genre of memoir as a medium to express their inner urge and feelings.

Notes:

Jauhar : It is a mass suicide prevalent in the Rajput tribe when people of Rajput became sure that they were going to die at the hands of the enemy then all the women arrange a large pyre and set themselves afire.

Devadasi: In this system girls were dedicated to temples in the name of gods and goddesses. They worship the temple gods by singing and dancing.

Varkari: It is a sampradaya within the bhakti (devotion) spiritual tradition of Vaishnavite Hinduism geographically associated with the Indian state of MaharastraSaint Samarth Ramdas: was one of the most respected spiritual saints of Maharastra state. He orally narrated Dasabadha means ‘advice to the disciple’.

Abhanga : It is a form of devotional poetry sung in praise of Hindu god, Vitthala or Vithoba.

Kirtankar : Performer of Kirtans.

Kirtans : Devotional musical discourses Ekadasi: Ekadasi is the eleventh lunar day of the fortnight of every lunar month of the Hindu calendar, viewed as a spiritually beneficial day.

Mantra: It means sacred chant.

Patvrata A devoted, dutiful and virtuous wife. Dharm:

Grhastha: A householder

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