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BETWIXT REBELLION AND RECONCILIATION |
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Telugu Writers' Workshop |
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28 February- 2 March 1999
Chennai |
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Introduction
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Leading Telugu writer and Marxist intellectual, Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao once said, “The thing I can do with utmost freedom in life is writing. No material or emotional limitations can prevent me—there is no other work I can do with such freedom”. Gurzada, Chalam, Kutumba Rao and several other male writers engaged in literary creation in total freedom, without having to take social restrictions or prohibitions into account. Romantic poets like Krishna Sastri said, “I will flood the world so that it streams with songs of freedom.” Freedom was a fundamental principle of their poetry. The question that confronts us is: how much of this freedom that male poets celebrated so widely, is available to women? Are they free to write about whatever they want? What are the forces that hold them back? What are their experiences in the course of writing? What social and familial factors affect their creativity? Why did they take to writing as vocation and avocation?
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Till recently, women writers occupied little space in Telugu literature. While there are rare examples of women’s writing from the 15th century onwards their works were seldom accorded the respect or status they deserved. Few scholars have made a serious attempt to assess the literary value of the works of Molla, Muddupalani, Rangajamma, Tarikonda Venkamamba and countless others. Nor has there been an effort to identify the specific character of women’s writing, or recognise the variety of social limitations that come into play with regard to women’s literary creativity. In the modern period, even as late as the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been no discussion of either their literary output or of the opportunities available to women who write. Literature has sprung from movements—social reform, romantic, progressive and revolutionary. Significantly, while social reform movements focussed on women, the writers who were considered pioneers of the literature were primarily men.
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In progressive poetry there are no significant women poets. Right upto the 1970s, women were generally absent from contemporary social and literary movements; from the ’50s onwards however, many women writers appear in prose, particularly novels. The earliest group of women who focussed, with sensitivity and a critical eye, on women and their place in the family and society were Malathi Chandur, Achanta Sharada Devi, Sridevi, Latha, Vasireddy Sita Devi, and Ranganayakamma. Many others who wrote fiction during this period had no connection with the powerful progressive literary movements, nor does one find an echo of the concerns of those movements in their fiction.
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The drawback of the literary movements that emerged—and this is particularly true of left, progressive and revolutionary trends—was that they never found it necessary to welcome women writers into their fold, or pay serious attention to their writing. They progressed as male literary movements. Ranganayakamma, who wrote about relationships in the family and male dominance, was labelled anti-male and kept at a distance by progressive and revolutionary movements. They also dismissed Latha’s work which dealt with women’s sexuality, as being anarchic, loose and imitative of Chalam. No attempt was made to grasp the content of her writing. This was the literary environment in Telugu till the 1980s. Writers like Volga and Ranganayakamma entered revolutionary movements because of their own political commitment.
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It was from 1975-1985, the International Women’s Decade, and as a result of the discussions and issues raised by women’s movements the world over, that there was a growing awareness among women that they had been denied legitimate space to articulate and voice the confusion and questions that beset them. Women now began to speak about their experiences, their position in the family, their sexuality, motherhood, and labour. For the first time they realised that it was possible to think freely and explore these issues independently, without the interference or guidance of men. This realisation resulted in a tempestuous wave of women’s writing entering the hitherto calm waters of Telugu literature, bringing in its wake a turbulence and tension never experienced before.
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after being
planned to perfection with
weep like this walk like that laugh like this
comb out your very life like this-
when the tangled noose tightens
the dying declaration
flows effortless
like a rhyme learnt by heart
-- Kondepudi Nirmala |
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Translated by Vasanth Kannabira |
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It was in this context that the women and censorship project came into existence. The Telugu writer’s workshop was the second in a series of workshops with women writers from 10 Indian languages.
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The workshop was conceived as a space where women writers could come together to discuss the different kinds of censorship that come into play in their lives: the visible, the invisible, the declared, the implicit, the familial, social and literary censorships that delimit and define the shape and content of their writing.
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The participants ranged in age from Abburi Chaya Devi who was 61 years old, to Shahjahan who was 22; the social cross-section included six brahmins, six kammas, two yadavs, one reddy, one vaisya, one Muslim and one mala. Even this small sample is a telling indication of which castes have the opportunity to enter the field of literature, and which ones find it difficult to do so. Many of these writers had already participated in workshops organised by Asmita and were acquainted with each other. We felt that taking the writers away from home to a residential workshop would help them focus on the difficult issue of censorship with greater clarity. Our workshop was held at a training centre on the seashore some 60 kilometers from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, which was once the cultural centre of Telugu literature. Even today senior Telugu women writers live in Chennai, among them Achanta Sharada Devi, Kalyani Sundari Jagannath, Malathi Chandur, and Bhanumathi Ramakrishna. We felt that spending time together, mixing the old and the new would encourage an interchange of ideas and experiences.
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Most women writers said that they did not have a place of their own to sit and write in, nor did they have any fixed time for it. Many wrote after the household was asleep. Writing in the day was seldom tolerated by the family—a hundred chores would suddenly materialise. Satyavathi described how she would start writing the minute everyone left home, neglecting her housework. The moment the family returned she would return to her housework and attack it with speed, having savored the few hours of peace. Every one of the writers complained of lack of time. They squeezed out their need for writing in the course of cooking, rearing children, working at home and outside. On the one hand there was the fact of not being able to take to writing as a profession, on the other that neither family nor society took women’s writing seriously.
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Discussing the subject matter of their writing, many women said that they couldn’t write about sex. They wanted to, but couldn’t. They also said that they wanted to demystify the glorification of motherhood in literature and show it in its true colours, but hadn’t yet been able to do so.
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One writer said she that had never been able to write about the way her husband treated her. This was her fist attempt to share that experience, and she said that she might try to write about it now.
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Many writers said this was the first time they had sat down to analyse what they could write about and what they couldn’t. And why they couldn’t. They had recognised all kinds of explicit and implicit censorship that operated on their writing. They felt the need for mutual support and networking to overcome these controls. Regular meetings, discussions, bringing value and visibility to their own writing, constant reflection together as a group, contact with writers of other languages and wider networks, were all identified as needs by the women present.
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Volga
Workshop Co-ordinator
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Participants |
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1. Chandralatha (26) Novel. |
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2. Chaya Devi Abburi (60) Short stories. |
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3. Geeta K. (28) Poetry. |
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4. Ghantasala Nirmala (42) Poetry. |
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5. Janakibala Indraganti (56) Short stories. |
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6. Jaya. S. (46) Poetry, short stories. |
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7. Kalpana Rentala (36) Poetry, short stories. |
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8. Nirmala Kondepudi (42) Poetry. |
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9. Rajani Pattibandla (38) Poetry. |
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10. Satyavathi Kondaveeti (42) Journalist, editor. |
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11. Satyavathi. P. (57) Short stories. |
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12. Shahjahana (24) Poetry. |
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13. Silalolitha (40) Poetry. |
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14. Sujatha C. (40) Short stories. |
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15. Swarooparani Challapalli (28) Poetry. |
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16. Varalakshmi K. ( 53) Short stories. |
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17. Vasantha Lakshmi (46) Journalist. |
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18. Vimala (42) Poetry. |
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19. Volga (49) Novelist, short stories, poetry.
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