No sound of bangles

In a free society too, there are powerful forces which work to silence women. A recent pan-Indian colloquium in Hyderabad, 'The Guarded Tongue', rounded off two years of work on Gender and Censorship by the women's group Asmita. KAVERY NAMBISAN reports on an examination of wounds that paradoxically proved strengthening.

MAHADEVIAKKA, the 12th Century Kannada poet, was probably never invited to a writers' forum. It is equally unlikely that Lady Murasaki who wrote the first novel by a woman (The Tale of Genji, in 11th Century Japan) or the Sixth Century BC Greek poet Sappho would have had such an opportunity. It is in the last 200 years that women have had a chance at the big stage.

Or so it seems.

Mother, don't, please don't

Don't cut off the sunlight

With your sari spread across the sky

Blanching life's green leaves....

Don't play that tune again

That your mother,

Her mother and her mother

Had played on the snake charmer's flute

Into the ears of nitwits like me....

(Sa. Usha, "Ammanige", translated by A.K. Ramanujan.)

Who cuts off the light? At a three-day National Colloquium of Women Writers held in Hyderabad recently, 62 women writing in 11 languages voiced their deep concern about various ways in which a woman writer finds herself silenced. Especially poignant was the fact that every writer present had faced censorship in some form: open, vicious and virulent; or insidious, silent and invisible.

The Colloquium - surely the first of its kind - was organised by Asmita in collaboration with a few committed friends. The five women who brought about this vital and unique event - Ritu Menon, Vasanth Kannabiran, Ammu Joseph, Volga and Gouri Salvi - do not need my salutes, but I need to salute them. Over the last two years they had organised workshops in each separate language dealing with the same issue, and this all-India Colloquium was the culmination of their efforts. They made it possible for women writers to meet and make comparisons across languages and literatures; to understand how their experience is similar, and how different; to examine how class, caste, community and gender influence a woman's writing; and importantly, to discuss unofficial, gender-based censorship.

Back home after this exhilarating experience, I recollect faces, voices, attitudes; the unofficial party where we clinked glasses; how we listened to readings, argued, agreed and disagreed, and came away strengthened.

Bengali writer Nabaneeta Deb Sen, who gave the keynote address at the Colloquium, spoke with sensitivity about a woman's relationship with her writing. "We consider ourselves free spirits but our words remain unfree," she said. "Women are latecomers to writing and unwelcome." Writing has for long been considered a male domain. The reaction to women writing has usually been something like Dr. Johnson's disparaging remark about a woman preacher reminding him of a dog walking on its hind legs

Referring to the belittling of women writers, Deb Sen related an incident at a lavish party at which she was asked to recite a poem, having been mistaken for another woman poet who wasn't there. She went to the mike and said, "I'm sorry, I'm not ----- but I am Mahasweta Devi and I will now read out my entire new novel to you." At which the host became very uneasy.

What makes a woman's way of writing different? Poet and critic Rukmini Bhaya Nair described it as breast-beating or crying about her plight, while a man beats his chest ( la Tarzan, and of course the gorilla). She also described a woman's style as being non-linear and a man's style as linear and attributed this to the fact that a woman's life is full of interruptions. Every woman writer longs to have more space in which to write, to voice her thoughts. But space means power, which the patriarchal mindset does not believe in relinquishing. Today's consumerism celebrates and exploits woman as a sex symbol while fundamentalists use repressive tactics to "protect" womanhood. Between these two dangerous tendencies hangs the question of a woman's freedom.

Feminism is a dangerous word. A woman who writes in her own voice is considered a threat to the family. While the need to break out of any form of censure is a common need of all women writers, self-censorship is harder to tackle. Many Urdu writers choose to write in a male voice so as to gain acceptance. They prefer to leave subjects like politics, religion and sex to the men. The Hindi poet Azra Parveen felt that her poetry was trapped inside her, stuck to her ribs. Mridula Garg was arrested and fought a court case for two years because in her novel Chittcobra she dared to write that the sexual act was devoid of all pleasure for her heroine.

One way or another, marriage, motherhood and the family encompass women and affect their writing. "I write a lot but not what I want to write," said Sudha Arora, who stopped writing for 12 years after marriage. The good-girl syndrome is usually appreciated by the family. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, mothers and mothers-in-law react harshly to women writing about sex. And yet, as one Urdu writer said, her husband regarded her writing as mere tarkari-sabzi, and therefore not important. Only men could write on important issues, or sex, and produce great writing. It is as though there is a tacit understanding between the male writer and the reader. The commodity sold is the woman.

Others feel the need to explore social issues and to write fearlessly about sex. Volga's short story "Ayoni" was refused by many publishers because of its descriptions of the raw cruelty of rape. When Chandralatha's novel about the life of a cotton- growing community won a coveted award, it was widely believed that the novel had been ghost-written, perhaps by her father. How could a 26-year-old woman write about such things? That Chandralatha had planned her novel with great care and researched thoroughly was immaterial.

There was a boldness and confidence in some of the oldest and the youngest of writers. But then -

When has my life been truly mine?

In the home, male arrogance

Sets my cheeks stinging

While in the street caste arrogance

Splits the other cheek open...

The poet is Challapalli Swarooparani, a Dalit Telugu poet, 28 years old. She has at a young age developed a quiet courage which strikes you at the very first meeting. There are others like her who know what they want and know that they will get there. Kannada writer Mamata Sagar combines her passion for writing with boldness of expression. When a book of her poems was published, a critic said that she does not write like a woman because "there is no sound of bangles in her poetry, no fragrance of flowers." At a Sahitya Akademi meet, a senior member announced that the poetry reading that day would be interesting because many beautiful women would be reading their poetry.

How about women reading beautiful poetry, asks Sagar.

What was brought into sharp, painful focus was the fact that gender censorship exists. At home, on the streets, in the community and in society. Added to this is the self-censorship a woman practises in order to not hurt her loved ones. She must be modest, even at the cost of truth. It is sometimes a question of survival, sometimes of compassion. The repressive voices of other women - mothers, sisters and mothers-in-law - are familiar to many women. Your family does not read what you write and thus silently condemn your work. Critics and literary forums ignore women's work. Literary chronicles generally lump all women writers together in one chapter - sometimes one paragraph - while devoting their wealth to individual men. Men bundle us together until we become faceless. Some women feel obliged to "write like men" because it is often considered the badge of good writing. Thus a woman's voice is silenced.

Erudite and learned writers like Bhaya Nair mingled thoughts with the passionately sincere like Shashi Deshpande and Saroop Dhruv; the verve of Hema Pattanashetty and Sagar was tempered by the wisdom of Rajee Seth, Pushpa Bhave and Sonal Shukla; the humour and maturity of Ajeet Caur and Deb Sen and the fierce determination of C.S. Lakshmi (Ambai) were comfortable next to the beautifully fulfilled creative silence of Vaidehi, O.V. Usha and Zuhara.

I found myself agreeing most of the time and disagreeing occasionally. Deb Sen's call that women should write androgynously troubled me. As did the constant harping that English writers are a privileged lot and that they have lost their mother tongue and now write in the father tongue. I believe that a writer - female or male - should choose the medium suited to her creative needs of that moment and not strain towards any medium; and that she should write honestly. I must write like a woman, like a man, a child, tree, flower, hill or stream. I should speak not only of myself, but as myself, changing to suit the subject I deal with. For the primary issue is not gender or language but Quality. A writer can never forget the need to write well.

There is a danger that we may get shrill, self-indulgent and even fanatic in our desire to be free from censorship. Freedom comes with responsibility. When the tongue is no longer guarded from within or without, when the woman writer is done with the burden of censorship, is her writing sure to sparkle and survive?

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