WomensWorld

	EMBROIDERED TALES
	Kannada Writers’ Workshop Mysore, Karnataka 12-14 May 2001
	*We of the older generation of writers have been wearing the veil of censorship like a nine-yard sari.*
	Shailaja Udachana
	The trail of evocative comments left by women writers participating in the series of workshops on gender and censorship across the country was taken forward by women writing in Kannada when they gathered together in the ecology-inspired Green Hotel in Mysore, Karnataka, in May 2000. Fifteen creative writers from different parts of the state attended the 2-1/2 day workshop. Cultural critic Tejaswini Niranjana and her colleague, P. Radhika, her colleague at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, who had helped with the identification and location of the writers, also participated in the discussions. In what has become a familiar experience in the course of organising these workshops, a number of invitees were unable to attend this get-together for a variety of reasons, several of them gender-related. As Nemichandra remarked, “There are many forms of censorship that occur long before we begin to write. Even the problems we encounter while trying to make it to a conference like this are part of the experience of censorship.” Despite this unfortunate reality, there was a fair amount of diversity among the participants in terms of age, class, creed, caste/ethnicity, geographical location, ideology/perspective, genre of writing, and occupation (other than writing). Still, as the lone Dalit participant reminded everyone in an impassioned intervention on the last day, the unintentional problem of ‘token representation’ remained unresolved. *“What is most interesting for me is the censorship within us, the cultural policeman who is inside us…”*
	Du Saraswathi
	Like its predecessors, this seventh workshop in the series began with introductions, both of the participants and the project. This was followed by a general discussion on the question of gender-based censorship, which revealed that the experience was all too familiar, even if the concept had hitherto not been addressed so directly or articulated so clearly. The issues identified in Chapter 5 of The Power of the Word (translated copies of which had been made available to participants ahead of the workshop) obviously made sense to the writers in the context of their own experiences. Presentations by Tejaswini and Radhika of the experiences of two women writers who had faced “erasure” of different kinds at the hands of the Kannada literary establishment, decades earlier, served to accentuate the reality as well as the dangers of gender-based censorship. One of these women, Nanjangud Tirumalamba, was a popular writer who published 28 books within 20 years at the beginning of the 20th century. Negative criticism by a man, who later went on to become one of Karnataka’s most well-known litterateurs (Masti Venkateshwara Iyengar), led to her eclipse from the Kannada literary firmament -- from around 1917 until the late 1970s, when a visionary woman academic, Chi Na Mangala, resurrected her works. Apart from being patronising and presumptuous, the critique by Masti included objections to the use of “bad words” by a woman writer, the incredible (according to him) outcome of a story in which an erring husband apologises to his wife and emerges reformed, the unbelievable (also according to him) account in a story of a man seeking a relationship with an invalid woman, and so on. The other writer, Anupama Niranjana, was not personally obscured in quite the way Tirumalamba was; nevertheless, one of her novels, Madhavi, almost vanished from the literary scene thanks to the silence with which it was greeted by major critics. Published in 1976, the novel retold the poignant story of Madhavi, a long-suffering minor character from the Mahabharata. Challenging the traditional image of Madhavi as a paragon of “womanly” virtues such as obedience, submission, patience, endurance and sacrifice, Niranjana recreated the character as an alternative role model. It was clear that this new “counter-icon” was unacceptable to the literary establishment. The novel received virtually no serious critical attention despite the fact that its author was already a prominent writer. Such disregard was obviously unwarranted because, according to a number of workshop participants, the novel signalled a new direction in Niranjana’s own work and represented a turning point in women’s writing in Kannada. Discussions on these two early examples of the silencing of women’s voices through censure or neglect then gave way to the core part of the workshop: the sharing by participants of their experiences, thoughts and feelings as writers and as women. A poetry reading session in the evening, on the second day of the workshop, turned into a very special event because of the welcome presence of Vijaya Dabbe, a writer and critic who had miraculously survived a debilitating health crisis and was just beginning to emerge from a long period of isolation. The session was also enlivened by a dramatic presentation by Du Saraswathi of her satirical play about beauty contests. *“My writing is like the lazy-daisy stitch that my grandmother taught me.”*
	Sa Usha
	*“Writing is like ‘kasuti’ – an embroidery of memories through which women try to forget their pain and understand their lives.”*
	Vaidehi
	Many of the threads linking the earlier workshops were also discernible in the Kannada one. One of these was the imagery of weaving, stitching and embroidery used by a number of women writers across the country in talking about their writing. Among the others were familiar issues such as choice of literary form and language, diverse forms and agents of censorship, taboos relating to subject matter, and the need for an enabling environment—possibly in the form of a network of women writers. The autobiographical form emerged as a major subject for discussion in the workshop and served to highlight the multiple ways in which gender-based censorship operates. The discussion revealed, for one, that the form is conspicuous by its relative absence in Kannada literature, with few men and even fewer women having written autobiographies. It was pointed out that Sharada Hemmige’s autobiography, written when she was 80 years old and published in 1998, was only the second autobiography written by a woman in Kannada. The rarity of autobiographical writing by women was particularly intriguing in view of one noticeable feature of most participants’ accounts of their experiences as writers and women: their emphasis on ancestry and lineage. Almost all the writers made a point of describing their family backgrounds and acknowledging the influence of specific family members on their development, as human beings and as writers. Grandfathers and fathers figured prominently in these accounts, but so did a number of grandmothers and mothers. For some the father figure was obviously a significant source of support and encouragement, while for others he embodied domination and provoked insecurity, fear and resentment. As Nemichandra put it, “Only when I was able to come out of my father’s shadow was I able to write.” The relationship between mothers and daughters on the other hand, came through as rather more complex. Almost every writer who talked about her mother spoke of the love they shared. Several mothers, including some who were themselves illiterate or barely educated, were credited with having encouraged their daughters to study, write and pursue their dreams. Yet it was evident that even beloved mothers were not always viewed as role models. For instance, Sa Usha, who spoke of her deep love for her mother, has nevertheless written a poem addressed to her (“Ammanige,” “To My Mother”) that explicitly states her determination to chart a different path for herself:
	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 say: “You’re seventeen already Don’t flash your sari in the street Don’t make eyes at passers-by Don’t be a tomboy riding the winds.” 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 I am just spreading my hood I’ll sink my fangs into someone And leave my venom. Let go, make way. Circumambulating the holy plant In the yard, making rangoli designs To see heaven, turning up dead Without light and air. For God’s sake, I can’t do it. Breaking out of the dam You’ve built, swelling In a thunder-storm Roaring through the land, Let me live very differently From you, mother. Let go, make way.

	Tr. A.K. Ramanujan

	In one of the very first interventions on the first day of the workshop, Hema Pattanshetty talked about the dismissive way in which a major critic dealt with the first comprehensive collection of poems by Kannada women poets (Pranayini, compiled by Shashikala Veerayya Swamy and Sukanya Maruthi). According to him the poems in the anthology were not only boring but could not be called poems at all, and they certainly could not be compared to poems by male poets. Later, however, it turned out that he used some poems from the same book in a programme conducted by the Kannada Sahitya Parishad. Banu also referred to the comments by a well-known cultural critic who wrote the editorial note for the publication, Special Volume of Women’s Poetry in Kannada, which implied that no contemporary woman writer has been able to match the poetry of Akka Mahadevi, the celebrated 12th century mystic poet and social rebel. However, Nemichandra offered an alternative view of the current situation, pointing out that women have come a long way from being almost completely ignored just a couple of decades ago. According to her, the efforts made by organisations such as the Karnataka Lekhakiyara Sangha and alternative journals such as Manasa and Achala, have ensured that today nobody can totally disregard women’s writing. “Women and the literature they have created are the subjects of many doctoral theses today,” she pointed out. “Even if critics do not praise our work they cannot ignore us. In fact, we can take even their criticism as indirect praise because it is clear that they cannot ignore us even if they do not like our work.” In addition, she pointed out, a few women critics have entered the field and have begun to make a difference. Several writers highlighted the need for a network of writers to extend support to colleagues threatened by different kinds of censorship. According to Banu, while Kannada writers are fortunate in the existence of a large membership organisation such as the Karnataka Lekhakiyara Sangha, it is necessary to ensure that the organisation plays an active role in extending support to beleaguered writers. Highlighting the fact that this had been done successfully when Sara Abubaker was man-handled in Udupi, and bemoaning the relative absence of such activism subsequently, she called for a more interventionist role for the organisation. Most writers agreed that an actively supportive network at the district, state and national levels would go a long way towards reducing the threat of gender-based censorship.
	Ammu Joseph Workshop Co-ordinator

	Partcipants:
	1. Banu Mushtaq (50): Poetry, short stories, novels, journalistic writing. 2. B.T. Lalitha Nayak(55): Poetry, short stories, novels, radio plays, journalistic writing. 3. Dr. Kamala Hampana (65): Poetry, short stories, criticism, translation, academic writing. 4. Du Saraswathi 5. Gudibande Purnima (49): Poetry, short stories, novels, plays, journalistic writing 6. Hema Pattannashetting (46): Poetry, short stories, essays, memoir, plays, diaries 7. H.P. Champavathi 8. Mamta Sagar (34): Poetry, short stories, essays, plays, scripts, journalistic and academic writing 9. Nemichandra 10. P. Radhika 11. Shailaja Udachana (64): Poetry 12. Shashikala Veerayaswamy (52): Poetry, essays, memoirs, scripts. 13. Sa Usha (46): Poetry, novels, essays, criticism, radio and journalistic writing 14. Savitha Nagabhushana (40): Poetry, novels, memoirs, essays 15. Tejaswini Niranjana 16. Usha P. Rai (55): Poetry, short stories, novels, essays, memoirs, journalistic writing 17. Vaidehi (55): Poetry, short stories, novels, children’s plays, essay, memoirs, translation.