WomensWorld

	What do women write about? Everything under the sun, is the answer that one hears in chorus. What is it that women can’t write about? There is a pause—and one group says (and this is almost unanimous) Religion, Politics and Sex. You then wonder: what is there left to write about? When the women belong to a religious minority leading an embattled existence, whose very identities are under siege, it is amazing to see how much they can and do write about. But even women who claimed that they could write about religion and politics said they couldn’t write about sex. Many said they couldn’t write about themselves. And yet they write. Persistently. Secretly. Writing seems an addiction, a mechanism for survival. One woman spoke of how the minute her husband left for work, she would simply drop whatever she was doing and rush to pick up a pen and paper, pouring out her emotions, until it was time for him to return. The meal may be late and the house a mess, but at least she’d got her writing done. Another writer said she had performed a special do rakat namaz so that she would be able to attend the workshop, and for its success.

	For most women writers in the country, writing remains an isolated, solitary activity, often surreptitious, generally unacknowledged and undervalued. Although the number of women writers may well run into some thousands, they are still invisible, encounter all manner of obstacles in expressing themselves freely, and experience many forms of direct censorship simply because they are women.

	What is it that connects women to writing? And what is it that defines and determines the contours of that writing? What are the limits of the freedom that women are allowed in self-expression? Is a poem or a short story like an exotic sweet or a neatly embroidered handwork or a well-trained voice, to be displayed on occasion as a sign of feminine accomplishment? Marked by measured cadences and neatly drawn lines—never flamboyant, never demanding attention, just gently drawing praise with modest, womanly grace.

	These are the questions and confusions that haunted us during and after a series of ten workshops on women and censorship in India. These workshops in Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Bangla, English and Tamil—held in different and varied surroundings, brought up new issues and allowed fresh insights into the nature of censorship that women face. The thread that ran through most of them was disconnection: the disconnection between what women said and what they wrote; between their spoken words and their silences; between their husbands’ and fathers’ apparent encouragement and support, and their explicit, disapproving silence when a norm was violated. Between women as the subject-matter of writing, and women as subjects and writers. Between language, literature and social movements, and the emergence of women’s voices. Between language and gender, gender and genre.

	The workshops were designed to enable writers to share experiences, thoughts and feelings in a friendly, informal environment. They were loosely structured, and featured no academic papers or formal presentations. The idea was to encourage participants to think and talk about their lives as women and as writers and, in the process, determine whether or not gender influences their experiences and perspectives and, consequently, their writing.

	The primary purpose of these interactions is to collectively determine whether or not female creative writers in India face any form of censorship (direct or indirect) from any quarter: the state, the market, community leaders, society at large, families and/or, even, themselves (i.e., self-censorship). A second but equally important objective is to elicit writers’ opinions on whether or not anything can and should be done about gender-based censorship, as well as their thoughts on possible cooperative efforts to counter obstacles to free expression by women.

	Presented here are excerpts from the narrative reports of our 10 workshops, conducted between 1999-2001, culminating in a National Colloquium of writers from the 10 languages, in Hyderabad in July 2001. The reports highlight the issues raised and discussed by approximately 175 women in the course of our workshops.
	Ammu Joseph; Vasanth Kannabiran; P. Lalitha- Kumari (Volga); Ritu Menon; Gouri Salvi.


	Bengali Writers’ Workshop English Writers’ Workshop Gujrati Writers’ Workshop Hindi Writers’ Workshop Kannada Writers’ Workshop Malayalam Writers’ Workshop Tamil Writers’ Workshop Telugu Writers’ Workshop Urdu Writers’ Workshop Regional Workshops