MEDICAL ETHICS
(Invited lecture at Yenepoya Medical college-Kodial Bail,Mangalore)
Dr Suvarna Nalapat
(Retd Professor &HOD Pathology Amritha Institute of medical sciences )
Format of the lecture/paper
.
1.Introducing the subject.
2. Gestalt.
3.How to decrease frustration?
4.Satisfaction in life
5.How do you work and learn?
6.conclusion /gurukulam as I envisage.
In 1925, “Young India “, a patriotic magazine of MahatmaGandhi mentioned seven social sins.These were
1.politics without principles
2.wealth without work
3.pleasure without conscience
4.knowledge without character
5.commerce without morality
6.science without humanity
7.worship without renunciation.of Ego.
We are witnessing all these social sins today.I restrict my views to general ethics for humanity with a capital E for medical ethics,as far as we doctors are concerned.Science without humanity is the social sin that we as doctors should try to eliminate first,from our professional sphere of activity.How can we do this?
1.we need examples/models among us for the younger generations to emulate.A Guru who is a rolemodel,and a professional Gurukula where students feel at ease to follow the profession ethically and efficiently.
2.we need a curriculum of medical ethics incorporated into all university programmes of medical education,and this should be a part of an institute of Human values in Healthcare.
Ethics is the energy behind all good actions.Is there a formula like E=MC2 ,for every doctor to follow regarding his professional ethical excellance?
E=e3-F would be an alternative .(E for efficiency ,three “e”s for enthusiasm,expertise and experience .and f for frustration) When there are frustrations in the environment(society)we live ,our enthusiasm is taken away from us and whatever is our expertise and experience in profession ,we cannot achieve 100%efficiency(E)..
Can we ever get out of the frustarating malpractices of our profession?Can our profession become beneficial to society by enforcing a medical ethics which can be of use to everyone in the society?
Gestalt
Based on Gestalt psychological studies I give an emphatic answer YES .Gestalt is a set of patterns.A dynamic system within a dynamic system acting upon each other.We learn from the world around.Thus we change our views and attitudes to life,we educate ourselves,and by our learning,wisdom and experience we can change the world around from which we have learnt.
As shown below in figure ,our environment gives us values,its good and bad aspects which we imbibe .Individual ,in turn,can contribute to the sociopolitical ,economical,spiritual,and cultural environment by actions,thoughts,speeches.(karma,manas,vaacha)Prophets and great personalities were doing this.Every individual has the potential to do this.If such a personality is amongst us,he/she is an asset to us,to the world,nation,state,to institutions,and to homes where they live and work.
FIG 1.gestalt.
E-economic environment
P-political
c-cultural
S-social
social contagion theory of Alport is worth mentioning in this context.A person with a strong ethical background is the real cream of society,not the one who has got into a particular profession.Such creams of society should be there in the healing art.
Medicine is not a mere science as the medical professionals(many of them!!!!)think,it is a science and art combined.It heals the wounds of the body and mind and the wounds inflicted by the environment on the human organism as a whole.It is a profession concerned with healing of body,mind,intellect and the soul.A purifying act .A noble profession ,indeed!!
Therefore ,the dire need to recognize our role in society .
Everyone knows that ethics should be part and parcel of human life to have a good social life.But many do not know how to apply that to daytoday life,especially in a corporate ,competitive world,where the morally strong and disciplined people are sidelined and marginalized by the clever and the immoral.It is here that we should understand the golden formula ,I mentioned earlier.E=e 3 –f.
How to decrease frustration?
1.By concentrating on your professional excellance,improving the quality of work done in profession.
2.By concentrating on a universal language through which you can communicate to all-(Music.) as a healing art.
3.By understanding and practicing the golden rule of all ethics(including medical ethics)is that nature and human life is a divine blessing –a sacred precious opportunity to love and serve others and thus to participate in a divine plan.
4.Reduce the desires which is the rootcause of all malpractices.
Remembering that all of us are children of God,will alter our relationships and make our works better,and we feel that we are serving the divine sparks of nature by our karma/profession.By this feeling we ourselves are manifesting our divine nature.
Naturally it follows that a doctor practicing profession with a feeling that all are children of God cannot discriminate them on the basis of caste,creed,sex,or social status.They are needy,approaching to be served ,and he/she the healer of pains,(bodily,mentally or intellectually.)They are the less fortunate children,and she/he the more fortunate one to have had a chance to serve them.The daasa or daasi of God,who heal the children of God.
The daasa in Arabic is translated as the Abdul of God,who heal with love,compassion,(medical) knowledge.In Budhist and Hindu traditions the mahaabhishak (great doctor)with a bhinnachakshu(different view).Through the spirit of service and love we keep alive the spirit of God .We eliminate hatred,jealousy,quarrels,classwars and religious persecutions,(the opposing qualities which spring from our ego,known as Kaama in Budhist and Indian traditions ,satan in semitic traditions) from society.Thus reduce the pains of society.By removing the opposing or negative qualities in oneself,we can eliminate them from society.
Our selfishness makes us think that we need everything best.We want every luxury.And every profession has become just a means to get them.When we don’t get what we need ,we become disturbed,angry,jealous,frustrated.When we get it,we become vain,selfglorious,proud snobs.Acquisition of wealth is not a sin if done with fair means.It improves the economy of our society.We have to curb only malpractice,not practice of profession.
Satisfaction in life
We should feel happy for what we are.We are doctors ,well educated,fortunate to have the opportunity of the noble profession of Healing art.We know that all the differences in status –castes,religions,creeds and language differences –are human constructs.Look beyond the human constructs of differences ,to see the eternal truth.The cell functions in the same way in all humans,the biological,morphological ,physiological,pathological phenomena follow the same rules in all humans.Is there difference in a squamous carcinoma cell of a Hindu ,Muslim,or Christian?All look alike under microscope.
A teacher has a divine wick in his/her student to be kindled .Kindle it with knowledge,enthusiasm,and goodness.The pay and the economic benefits will naturally come when you practice the profession.
How do you work and learn?There are four different ways depending upon individuals.
1.with sradha (concentration)doing work and learning profession
2.Practicing profession without knowledge or sradha.
3.without knowledge but with sradha
4.without sradha but with knowledge.It goes without saying that the first is the best way.A doctor having this method,having compassion to all living things,is the Mahabhishak(the great doctor)in Indian tradition,both Budhist and Hindu.
To restore values to the society we have to keep values ourselves.We find unhealthy competition everywhere.Observe the world around and find out the fields where there is erosion of values.You will be surprised.It applies to our medical field too.But don’t get frustrated over the scenario.Don’t get entangled in the grievous practices and keep away from them .Cultivate efficiency ,gain experience and expertise and keep up the enthusiasm throughout your life.Create an atmosphere of positive values around you.Initially people will laugh at you for being impractical in a competitive moneyoriented world.But ,later on your life and ideals will be appreciated .You will get the satisfaction of having infused values into a society where you lived and learnt,by words,deeds and thoughts.Build up a new world around you ,healthy ,in every aspect,without separatisms ,or negative thoughts,with love and harmony and universal brotherhood.Health is not mere physical health,it is mental ,intellectual and spiritual health,.Be steadfast in your decision to achieve this golden state of health for all .
There is no shortcuts to medical ethics.Practice ethics rigourously throughout life and you wil l reach a stage when your example will spread light into the lives and minds of many.
Music ,the universal language of peace on earth.
Music is a universal language,enjoyed by all ,including birds,animals and plants.The cosmic music of the spheres and stars is in each and every one of us.Reducing stress inflicted by the worldly life of day to day existence through harmonious music is an ageold custom and practice of human race.The use of raagaa as therapy is a key to achieve the universal brotherhood,love and international harmony and peace,at the same time giving physical ,mental,intellectual,and spiritual health to all of us.
The efficiency of human beings is increased by soft melodious divine music which brings down frustrations,increase power of concentration and cognition and memory and thereby our performance in the worldstage.
CONCLUSION
GURUKULAM AS I ENVISAGE
To become an educationist and to plan for the coming generations of people a way of life and education is no easy task to be done by people who never have thought about the problems of the society and of education and its goals.For this activity one may have to learn many arts and sciences ,should have a loving mind and a sharp extraordinarily receptive intellect and a love for nature and nurture.And one should have lead a life of purity as a model for the students to emulate.But ,these things are of the past,and not practical, ,some people argue.And others think that a gurukula is the function of celibate nuns and sphincters or of swamins and sanyasins.Both hese arguments are false and dangerous to society.If parents and householders do not set examples for children ,who else can set example?If ethics is impractical,we have to question the people who say so.And decide whether they are fit to be in the posts they hold to lead children and the nation.
In ancient India every gurukula had a guru and a gurupathni,and both lead an exemplary life of studies and austerities and a fruitful and honest domestic life so that the students learnt the ways of a good householder along with scriptures and sciences and professional skills...A Gurukula style of education which I envisage for the 21st century teachers and students is not one run by sanyasins and celibates but by human beings living a householder’s life ,fulfilling all duties of the householder and achieving excellance in learning,and in duties at the same time free from desires for money,power and professional rivalries. .A place where the good citizens of the world and of the nation are created ,useful to society ,nation and world and above all to themselves ,to their family and to the institutions they work for.
Bharath is the cradle of civilizations and in this ancient land of rishis Guru is equivalent to God.Guru and shishya makes a meaningful whole in generating vidya and upholding the traditions.Before they start a learning process they chant together.
Sahanou yasa:sahanou Brahmavarchasam(let us aquire fame and divine energy together).In the generation of Guruparampara for creation of knowledge ,Guru is the poorvaroopa,shishya is the uthararoopa and their sandhi is vidya and their offspring is prediction (pravachana).Medicine being a predictive science the teachers and students have to chant together “let me be filled with intellect(medha)and by that nectar of intelligence let us develop dhaarana(understanding).My body and mind are healthy.My words are sweet as honey.Let all the ears hear that sweet voice of love.God is hidden in the cells of my medha .Let my knowledge be preserved for posterity and propagated by the coming generations (of shishyaas).”
Then the Guru continues to pray alone:”Let there be more and more students in my care.Let them come even from distant places .Let them be happy ,intelligent,disciplined and thirsty of knowledge.”
Whenever an educational institution is trying to draw more students to it,apart from the curriculum and the syllabus,a feeling of oneness between the teachers and students and a bond of love between them is essential.The student ,after leaving the institution nostalgically remembers the people who have given them love and a feeling of security.A good educational institution should be a home away from home,and good teachers should be giving parental(motherly/fatherly)affection ,love and care and advice (councelling)and should not be policemen and women making life difficult for them.Children are always good.The only thing that they need is proper love and care,not to turn to bad things and company.They are not criminals who needs constant vigil from the teachers.
We have to revive the old gurukula system of India where the guru is a father/mother figure and the student is the son/daughter and in such a situation only one can give security and a feeling of belonging to the students and by sharing their happiness and sorrows the teacher becomes part of his/her training programme and of life.
Only by creating such an atmosphere in the campus (and in the houses and nation and the world )we can make it a happy place to live in and study and work.The happiness(aananda)or bliss is always associated with sath,chith (truth and energy of intelligence).Happy environment is the best for intellectual and physical work.Each and every faculty member should be able to understand this and create such an atmosphere in the college campus and each and every student should be able to respond to it by their natural instinct.For this the gurukula should have good and happy teachers,intelligent and free individuals leading a dutiful and pure domestic life.(This is applicable to homes as well)
India is a country rich in culture and its traditional ways of healthcare including ayurveda,yoga and Raagachikitsa.These are the ways of life to promote health and are preventive measures as well as curative.The villages in India at present lack proper healthcare and this is mainly due to lack of willing doctors to work in the villages,due to lack of proper watersupply ,lack of nutritious food and the environmental pollution and lack of awareness.The economically backward rural population do not get access to proper prevention ,therapy and information about diseases and healthrelated topics.The changing economic sociopolitical and civil structures and use of new drugs ,insecticides,pesticides and other chemicals also have contributed to spread of various types of diseases in rural population ,in tropical underdeveloped and developing countries.A better identification of such problems at a regional level and providing solutions to the problems for future needs is essential.
Let us become physically,mentally,intellectually and spiritually healthy world citizens and make a new nation and a new world of love and peace for the coming generations . .The gestalt field theory of educational psychology is defining human beings as dynamic systems within dynamic systems growing by the environment in the field in which they live,and stimulating the growth and development of the field they live in.Let us not be mere products of the environment we live in ,but also the creators of a healthy environment for the coming generations to live in and enjoy a fruitful life..
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Heralding winds of change.Les Miserables and Kerala society
HERALDING WINDS OF CHANGE:
How Nalapat NarayanaMenon’s Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES transformed the Kerala society.
(On 7.10.2000,Vijayadasami day was the 113th birth anniversary of Nalapat.It was the 75th year of his translation of LesMiserables .This paper written to commemorate the occasion was presented later in the Department of foreign languages ,at Cochin University).
.
In history we often find perceptions of some beings translated to the aims of many.To analyse how the perceptions of Victor Hugo through his translator Nalapat ,influenced the pre-independent youth of Kerala ,we have to first analyse the Indian scenario at that time.
The Indian Scenario.
For practical purposes the Indian scenario can be divided into four eras.(methodology followed by M.K.Naik in his A history of Indian English Literature.)
1.From vedic times to 1857 revolt
2.The winds of change (1857-1920)
3.Gandhian whirlwind(1920-1947)
4.Postindependent Era.
Nalapat (1887-1954)belonged to the second and third era with the fag ends of his life spanning over to the post-independent period.During the winds of change phase ,the Indian ethos gradually underwent a seachange from the shock of defeat and frustration and the trauma of inferiority feeling to a newfound selfawareness and confidence.The confident authenticity of Vivekananda ,Aurobindo,Tagore,Tilak,Gokhale and Ranade vivified the sociopolitical scene.India’s rediscovery of identity became a vigorous and allabsorbing quest and she learnt enough from the west to progress from imitation to assimilation and creation.
During this period ,Nalapat established his confident but silent discourse and identity .He learnt Sanskrit ,the veda,jyothisha,occult sciences,became a member of the theosophical society (1917),translated Edwin Arnold’s light of Asia,wrote biographies of vivekananda,Dayanandasaraswathy,Vallathol and went to Almorah for renunciation,and took an active part in Indian National congress and its activities.He had translated even part of Leadbeater’s occult writings dealing with visualization of angels with kirlion photography.An ardent vedanthin and theosophist ,practitioner of truth and nonviolence throughout his life,a solace and strength to the women and children around,he combined the personality of thinker/poet/philosopher/scientist/reformer rolled in one.He had internalized the Indian Rishi and the Budha ,before he came across Christ in the form of Monsieur Francois Bienvenu Myriel, in Les Miserables And he lost no time in recognizing in Monsieur’s model Christ ,his own ideal rishi and the Budha.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915.In 1920 the nationwide nonco-operation movement was launched.Nalapat,an ardent Gandhian ,chose to stay away from the movement because he had started to translate his magnum opus the very same year.The decision to translate Hugo’s classic (Nalapat named the translation Paavangal,which means the poor)at the most historic moment in the Freedom struggle of India shows his commitment to to the cause as well as his personality ,as E.M.S.Namboothiripad,the Marxist thinker has rightly put it.To Nalapat,like Hugo,the Republic was the mother of all citizens.And he wanted to educate the young men and women of his times on Hugo’s philosophy.To change a degenerate political and social system ,the cleaning up should start at individual level and then spread horizontally.Collective thinking of society is a late manifestation .Romanticism,relism,liberal humanism and the revolutionary ideas of Hugo were ideal tools to be used to educate a decadent society and sow the seeds of action in its youth.Nalapt used it in the most needed hour of India’s history.The preface of the translator reads thus.”The proud boundaries created by men are of no value to God.National histories may differ.But human history is always the same.”The book ,as Hugo puts it”,will be useful to any society where ignorance and misery prevail,where women sell themselves for food and shelter ,where children lack love,home and education”.
Social influences and the women’s issues
In the neighbouring Tamilspeaking provinces E.V.Ramaswami Naicker had become a strong influence and was raising a Dravidian /feminist discourse. The selfrespect marriages conducted by him were asserting the Dravidian concern of gender equality .Gandhi stressed the need for emanicipation of women and the downtrodden.But many did not consider the women’s issues seriously.This was not the situation in kerala.The women of the lower castes were comparatively better in status than the Brahmin counterparts.There arose a series of reformations in the Brahmin society in which the Dravidian matriarchal equality rights were granted to women.The social activist instrumental in this reform was V.T.Bhattathirippad.He was influenced by Nalapat and Hugo as we see from his autobiographical writings.He wrote:I was aware of the state of women in my own community.Early widowhood resulting from marriage of little girls to old men.How can I stop it?Who am I to stop it?”Again to quote him,”I was gropping in the dark corridors of Brahmanism.Nalapat took my hands and brought me out.He taught me that the aim of my life should be destroying that corridor.From that day onwards I understood that if a Brahmin joins hands with a shoodra there wont be any catastophe.I was in front of all revolutionary events in the Brahmin community,like removal of ghosha(purdah),mishrabhojan(inter-caste dining),widow remarriage ,and intercaste marriages.But Nalapat was behind all these “.V.T.Bhattathiripad cites examples from his own experience to prove the revolutionary behaviour of Nalapat and his family,including his own mother.He also quotes profusely,references from Paavangal in his autobiography.Hugo knew that one could assess the level of civilization of a man in society by his/her actions to women ,children and the weaker sections of society.His Monsieur Beanvenu and Jean Val Jean were examples of this excellent civilized behaviour.They loved and served people irrespective of class,gender,political/religious beliefs out of compassion .Hugo and his translator wanted this to happen in their society.And in fulfilling this aim,V.T.was chosen by Nalapat ,to create a social change.
Political influence-E.M.S.Namboothiripad
The social impact made by Les Miserables was direct but the political inflence was indirect.E.M.S.Namboothiripad,an active member of the yogakshemasabha (a council of namboothiri Brahmins of which V.T also was a member)and the Indian National Congress in its early days and who turned socialist/communist/Marxist ,was responsible for the political impact.Though located in his classical Marxist position ,E.M.S attempted a wholistic approach while looking at Nalapat’s personality.He observed that Nalapat ,conscious of the need of the time ,as a true social thinker revolutionized not only the Malayalam prose style prevalent at that time,but also the viewpoint of a whole generation of Malayali youth ,including himself.The revolutionary whirlwind in Hugo’s mind was transferred through the mind of Nalapt to the new generation and E.M.S. feels that Nalapat had succeeded in his endeavour ,judging from what followed in the political history of Kerala.According to E.M.S ,Paavangal hastened the revolutionary pace in Kerala and evoked intense social changes.It made young men and women active participants in the process of social change.
The aim of Nalapat ,as E.M.S rightly guesses,was not a movement with extreme leftist ideology and like Hugo ,he was not a proponent of a bloody revolution as that of France.Here the speech of swami Ranganaathaananda ,made in Sylhet,East Pakistan ,inMay 1949,can be recalled.Speaking on the role of religion in politics he said, “Behind the government ,the constitution,the state ,lie the society ,the matrix of all forces,the womb of constitutions,and revolutions,placid like a calm lake at one period,erupting like a volcano at another.A moving,changing,struggling mass constituted of ego-centers belonging to varying levels of intellectual ,moral,and spiritual evolution.Political revolutions and even social revolutions engineered by politico-economic forces ,such as a socialist or communist revolution of these types may upturn states and shake up societies.But only for some time.After a few years ,the impulse looses its dynamism and societies resume their even course as before with only slight modification and changes.This was the lesson of the French Revolution ,as is also the lesson now becoming slowly evident of the mighty Russian revolution.The price we pay is out of all proportion that leads us to view a violent revolution as the product of historical necessity or as a factor of social progress.The only revolution initiated by a great spiritual teacher and the ideology and movement proceeding from him,gently but steadily ,shapes human desires and emotions and judgements in terms of certain lofty and spiritual values realized and taught by the teacher.It alters the ratio of social forces through profound transformations in individual men and women and effects an all-round refinement in human morals and manners”.
This profound change induced by Bienvenu in Jean Val Jean and its effect on many individual lives(of Fanteen,Cosette,Fushalwang,Javert,people of M city)is the theme of Hugo.Nalapat being an advocate of nonviolence ,was never in favour of bloody revolutions ,which proudly shows up the list of their martyrs to exploit public sympathy.His path was more spiritual and in this he resembled Bienvenu.
Literary Influence.
Prof. Joseph Mundassery (the first education minister of Kerala and noted literary critic)Kuttykrishna Maarar(literary critic)Novelist P.C.Kuttikrishnan have remarked how the style of Malayalam literatute was revolutionized by the translation of Paavangal.Mundassery said”It made thoughtless people think,silent people talk”.A critic ,M.R.Nair alias Sanjayan said that the elegy Teardrops written by Nalapt is a first class poem by a second class poet.Probably this is the best example of a longlasting comedy of the entire Malayalam literature.On this remark,a series of critics and academics have wasted time,quoting this wherever they could,and argueing whether Nalapat was first class or second class.But none of them seems to have realized that Sanjayan has taken that phrase to criticize Nalapat from Nalapat’s own translation of Hugo.In Les Miserables Hugo describes the battle of waterloo as the first class victory of a second class general(Lord Wellington)and Nalapt had faithfully translated it.This phrase was taken from Nalapt,to criticize Nalapat,to compare him with other poets of Kerala by a critic.This ,if we look at closely is a real tribute in disguise,to give the poet the satisfaction of a last laugh.Maarar,the eminent critic ,who never had any direct contact with the western literary methods was benefited by his contacts with Nalapat,and evolved a system of criticism in Malayalam ,based on the western style and benefited the branch of Malayalam literary criticism.The use of colloquial language styles in novels and short stories is perfected by many writers in kerala such as Uroob,M.T.Vasudevan Nair,Madhavikuuty.This style of using Malabar colloquial language was first introduced into Malayalam literature by translation of Paavangal by Nalapat .Hugo’s use of soliloquy and freeflowing narrative has come to stay in Malayalam literature after Nalapat’s translation.
In 1925,when the first edition of Paavangal came into print ,society was awakened.The young men and women of the time took up the challenge .At present ,in the time of separatist forces ,Les Miserables gives us an intellectual and humanistic solution to our problems.The silent discourse of Nalapat ,like the character Bienvenu in the classic he translated ,gives us new insights.The year 2000 ,marks the 75th birthday of the translation.The message of Hugo is still valid to us,the Paavangal of India and kerala,who still suffer the atrocities on the poor,downtrodden,the child and the women,and this book and its ideas come and knock at our door to awaken us from a slumber and make us elect only those who are morally perfect and humanistic to our powerpositions,in politics,in society and in all departments which deals with the nation’s economy,education and defence.
How Nalapat NarayanaMenon’s Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES transformed the Kerala society.
(On 7.10.2000,Vijayadasami day was the 113th birth anniversary of Nalapat.It was the 75th year of his translation of LesMiserables .This paper written to commemorate the occasion was presented later in the Department of foreign languages ,at Cochin University).
.
In history we often find perceptions of some beings translated to the aims of many.To analyse how the perceptions of Victor Hugo through his translator Nalapat ,influenced the pre-independent youth of Kerala ,we have to first analyse the Indian scenario at that time.
The Indian Scenario.
For practical purposes the Indian scenario can be divided into four eras.(methodology followed by M.K.Naik in his A history of Indian English Literature.)
1.From vedic times to 1857 revolt
2.The winds of change (1857-1920)
3.Gandhian whirlwind(1920-1947)
4.Postindependent Era.
Nalapat (1887-1954)belonged to the second and third era with the fag ends of his life spanning over to the post-independent period.During the winds of change phase ,the Indian ethos gradually underwent a seachange from the shock of defeat and frustration and the trauma of inferiority feeling to a newfound selfawareness and confidence.The confident authenticity of Vivekananda ,Aurobindo,Tagore,Tilak,Gokhale and Ranade vivified the sociopolitical scene.India’s rediscovery of identity became a vigorous and allabsorbing quest and she learnt enough from the west to progress from imitation to assimilation and creation.
During this period ,Nalapat established his confident but silent discourse and identity .He learnt Sanskrit ,the veda,jyothisha,occult sciences,became a member of the theosophical society (1917),translated Edwin Arnold’s light of Asia,wrote biographies of vivekananda,Dayanandasaraswathy,Vallathol and went to Almorah for renunciation,and took an active part in Indian National congress and its activities.He had translated even part of Leadbeater’s occult writings dealing with visualization of angels with kirlion photography.An ardent vedanthin and theosophist ,practitioner of truth and nonviolence throughout his life,a solace and strength to the women and children around,he combined the personality of thinker/poet/philosopher/scientist/reformer rolled in one.He had internalized the Indian Rishi and the Budha ,before he came across Christ in the form of Monsieur Francois Bienvenu Myriel, in Les Miserables And he lost no time in recognizing in Monsieur’s model Christ ,his own ideal rishi and the Budha.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915.In 1920 the nationwide nonco-operation movement was launched.Nalapat,an ardent Gandhian ,chose to stay away from the movement because he had started to translate his magnum opus the very same year.The decision to translate Hugo’s classic (Nalapat named the translation Paavangal,which means the poor)at the most historic moment in the Freedom struggle of India shows his commitment to to the cause as well as his personality ,as E.M.S.Namboothiripad,the Marxist thinker has rightly put it.To Nalapat,like Hugo,the Republic was the mother of all citizens.And he wanted to educate the young men and women of his times on Hugo’s philosophy.To change a degenerate political and social system ,the cleaning up should start at individual level and then spread horizontally.Collective thinking of society is a late manifestation .Romanticism,relism,liberal humanism and the revolutionary ideas of Hugo were ideal tools to be used to educate a decadent society and sow the seeds of action in its youth.Nalapt used it in the most needed hour of India’s history.The preface of the translator reads thus.”The proud boundaries created by men are of no value to God.National histories may differ.But human history is always the same.”The book ,as Hugo puts it”,will be useful to any society where ignorance and misery prevail,where women sell themselves for food and shelter ,where children lack love,home and education”.
Social influences and the women’s issues
In the neighbouring Tamilspeaking provinces E.V.Ramaswami Naicker had become a strong influence and was raising a Dravidian /feminist discourse. The selfrespect marriages conducted by him were asserting the Dravidian concern of gender equality .Gandhi stressed the need for emanicipation of women and the downtrodden.But many did not consider the women’s issues seriously.This was not the situation in kerala.The women of the lower castes were comparatively better in status than the Brahmin counterparts.There arose a series of reformations in the Brahmin society in which the Dravidian matriarchal equality rights were granted to women.The social activist instrumental in this reform was V.T.Bhattathirippad.He was influenced by Nalapat and Hugo as we see from his autobiographical writings.He wrote:I was aware of the state of women in my own community.Early widowhood resulting from marriage of little girls to old men.How can I stop it?Who am I to stop it?”Again to quote him,”I was gropping in the dark corridors of Brahmanism.Nalapat took my hands and brought me out.He taught me that the aim of my life should be destroying that corridor.From that day onwards I understood that if a Brahmin joins hands with a shoodra there wont be any catastophe.I was in front of all revolutionary events in the Brahmin community,like removal of ghosha(purdah),mishrabhojan(inter-caste dining),widow remarriage ,and intercaste marriages.But Nalapat was behind all these “.V.T.Bhattathiripad cites examples from his own experience to prove the revolutionary behaviour of Nalapat and his family,including his own mother.He also quotes profusely,references from Paavangal in his autobiography.Hugo knew that one could assess the level of civilization of a man in society by his/her actions to women ,children and the weaker sections of society.His Monsieur Beanvenu and Jean Val Jean were examples of this excellent civilized behaviour.They loved and served people irrespective of class,gender,political/religious beliefs out of compassion .Hugo and his translator wanted this to happen in their society.And in fulfilling this aim,V.T.was chosen by Nalapat ,to create a social change.
Political influence-E.M.S.Namboothiripad
The social impact made by Les Miserables was direct but the political inflence was indirect.E.M.S.Namboothiripad,an active member of the yogakshemasabha (a council of namboothiri Brahmins of which V.T also was a member)and the Indian National Congress in its early days and who turned socialist/communist/Marxist ,was responsible for the political impact.Though located in his classical Marxist position ,E.M.S attempted a wholistic approach while looking at Nalapat’s personality.He observed that Nalapat ,conscious of the need of the time ,as a true social thinker revolutionized not only the Malayalam prose style prevalent at that time,but also the viewpoint of a whole generation of Malayali youth ,including himself.The revolutionary whirlwind in Hugo’s mind was transferred through the mind of Nalapt to the new generation and E.M.S. feels that Nalapat had succeeded in his endeavour ,judging from what followed in the political history of Kerala.According to E.M.S ,Paavangal hastened the revolutionary pace in Kerala and evoked intense social changes.It made young men and women active participants in the process of social change.
The aim of Nalapat ,as E.M.S rightly guesses,was not a movement with extreme leftist ideology and like Hugo ,he was not a proponent of a bloody revolution as that of France.Here the speech of swami Ranganaathaananda ,made in Sylhet,East Pakistan ,inMay 1949,can be recalled.Speaking on the role of religion in politics he said, “Behind the government ,the constitution,the state ,lie the society ,the matrix of all forces,the womb of constitutions,and revolutions,placid like a calm lake at one period,erupting like a volcano at another.A moving,changing,struggling mass constituted of ego-centers belonging to varying levels of intellectual ,moral,and spiritual evolution.Political revolutions and even social revolutions engineered by politico-economic forces ,such as a socialist or communist revolution of these types may upturn states and shake up societies.But only for some time.After a few years ,the impulse looses its dynamism and societies resume their even course as before with only slight modification and changes.This was the lesson of the French Revolution ,as is also the lesson now becoming slowly evident of the mighty Russian revolution.The price we pay is out of all proportion that leads us to view a violent revolution as the product of historical necessity or as a factor of social progress.The only revolution initiated by a great spiritual teacher and the ideology and movement proceeding from him,gently but steadily ,shapes human desires and emotions and judgements in terms of certain lofty and spiritual values realized and taught by the teacher.It alters the ratio of social forces through profound transformations in individual men and women and effects an all-round refinement in human morals and manners”.
This profound change induced by Bienvenu in Jean Val Jean and its effect on many individual lives(of Fanteen,Cosette,Fushalwang,Javert,people of M city)is the theme of Hugo.Nalapat being an advocate of nonviolence ,was never in favour of bloody revolutions ,which proudly shows up the list of their martyrs to exploit public sympathy.His path was more spiritual and in this he resembled Bienvenu.
Literary Influence.
Prof. Joseph Mundassery (the first education minister of Kerala and noted literary critic)Kuttykrishna Maarar(literary critic)Novelist P.C.Kuttikrishnan have remarked how the style of Malayalam literatute was revolutionized by the translation of Paavangal.Mundassery said”It made thoughtless people think,silent people talk”.A critic ,M.R.Nair alias Sanjayan said that the elegy Teardrops written by Nalapt is a first class poem by a second class poet.Probably this is the best example of a longlasting comedy of the entire Malayalam literature.On this remark,a series of critics and academics have wasted time,quoting this wherever they could,and argueing whether Nalapat was first class or second class.But none of them seems to have realized that Sanjayan has taken that phrase to criticize Nalapat from Nalapat’s own translation of Hugo.In Les Miserables Hugo describes the battle of waterloo as the first class victory of a second class general(Lord Wellington)and Nalapt had faithfully translated it.This phrase was taken from Nalapt,to criticize Nalapat,to compare him with other poets of Kerala by a critic.This ,if we look at closely is a real tribute in disguise,to give the poet the satisfaction of a last laugh.Maarar,the eminent critic ,who never had any direct contact with the western literary methods was benefited by his contacts with Nalapat,and evolved a system of criticism in Malayalam ,based on the western style and benefited the branch of Malayalam literary criticism.The use of colloquial language styles in novels and short stories is perfected by many writers in kerala such as Uroob,M.T.Vasudevan Nair,Madhavikuuty.This style of using Malabar colloquial language was first introduced into Malayalam literature by translation of Paavangal by Nalapat .Hugo’s use of soliloquy and freeflowing narrative has come to stay in Malayalam literature after Nalapat’s translation.
In 1925,when the first edition of Paavangal came into print ,society was awakened.The young men and women of the time took up the challenge .At present ,in the time of separatist forces ,Les Miserables gives us an intellectual and humanistic solution to our problems.The silent discourse of Nalapat ,like the character Bienvenu in the classic he translated ,gives us new insights.The year 2000 ,marks the 75th birthday of the translation.The message of Hugo is still valid to us,the Paavangal of India and kerala,who still suffer the atrocities on the poor,downtrodden,the child and the women,and this book and its ideas come and knock at our door to awaken us from a slumber and make us elect only those who are morally perfect and humanistic to our powerpositions,in politics,in society and in all departments which deals with the nation’s economy,education and defence.
Mundana and Mundane .Madhavi In Chilappathikaaram
MUNDANA,THE MUNDANE ,AND ILANKOADIKAL’S MADHAVI:
Rejection of pleasure or assertion of womanhood?
(This paper was presented as invited lecture at Cochin university,Department of foreign languages )
Ilankoadikal,a prince of the erstwhile Chera kingdom and the author of chilappathikaaram was a renowned poet/singer /dancer/saint/monk who lived in the second century AD.His epic tells us many aspects of early Dravidian life and culture and of women in different strata of society of that period.Of the many women characters in the epic ,Madhavi is taken up here as a case study of feminist and feminine thoughts .Understanding the place and role of women in historical past depending upon oral traditions and literary sources is wellknown in the academic circles.(1).According to tradition Madhavi is a devadasi born into a family of prostitutes and is supposed to have lured kovilan away from his chaste wife Kannagi .But ,reading the text one finds that the renowned author/saint does not think like that.In this paper ,the characterization of Madhavi by a male monk is taken up and related to the emerging feminist theory and pleasure.
Feminist theory and pleasure-the twentyfirst century context
Modern university-educated women scholars are engaging with the politics of aesthetic pleasures and addressing the accusation that the feminist criticism is alienating and that it is “ruining everybody’s fun”.(2).Srividya Nataraajan ,a performing Bharathanatyam artist and a scholarly woman wellversed in in feminist theories as well as the traditional concept of rasa in arts is one among them.In a footnote to her essay ,she defines pleasure as follows:”Pleasure covers the sense of mastery or control ,wellbeing or selfaffirmation that arises from different kinds of involvement with the text and the with the social context.The kinds of involvement ranges from aesthetic one attuned to textural and aural effects in the text to a delight in the narrative alone.From a critical and evaluational engagement with the text and to a creative reworking of its creative fantasies.(Fn 2 ref 2).
The divergences between the stream of feminist thoughts include liberal feminism (based on faith in individualism).Psychoanalytic feminism ,interpreting culture in terms of individual psyche and collective socialization :And Marxist feminist theories:feminist theories linked to historical /cultural materialism which allow us to investigate a variety of cultural production and practices like Bharathanatyam ,classical music etc.One of the many agendas these new age women explore include their identity as Indians ,interested in theorizing indigenous cultural experiences and practices and their relation to literature.Investigating a cultural form like dance in Tamil Nadu meant taking to account controversies about caste ,religion,materialism and femininity,questions amenable to materialist feminist analysis,the question of body and body kinetics in performing arts,of tradition,pleasure and aesthetics.They are questioning the feminist argument that pleasure is at best selfindulgent and frivolous and at worst narcissistic and retrogressive and pernicious.The question of women’s pleasure in a patriarchial context is so troubled and guiltridden that females end up projecting their own doubts and censorship on the feminist theory .Pleasure affiliated to aesthetic comes under the purview of philosophy –the field of Kant,Abhinavaguptha,Bharatha,Sankara ,Ilankoadikal and other traditional thinkers /philosophers of east and west.Aesthetics is a privilege in the form of individual taste.To resist this individual self,feminists tend to regard with suspicion all the spaces that are defined by aesthetics.Collective moralism according to Cora Kaplan has developed in the socialist feminist thought which stagmatise sensibility itself.It is in this context of a new approach by twentyfirst century women like Srividya Natarajan ,we have to look at Madhavi ,the woman and the performing artist and her thought processes.
The subaltern question.
To consider the subaltern in the genre,one must distinguish between the figure of women as subaltern and the question of subaltern women(3).Woman as the subaltern is the universal woman in every culture and history and in literature written and interpreted by men.Whereas the subaltern women belong to the different classes ,castes ,races,occupations,nationalities,interpreted and expressed by women of these respective strata themselves .Madhavi is an interesting study material for any student of literature and social history because she is the subaltern universal woman interpreted by a man ,possibly an androgynous male,who knew the iyal,isai,and naatakam(literature,music and drama),the aesthetics of art ,and who renounced his political power,comfortable life style,domestic family life to become an ascetic himself. Hence Madhavi ,in his epic poem represents his alterego,or twin female principle with the very same quaklities,a character with Aathmaansa (part of self)of the author.Madhavi belongs to the daasi cult ,a member of the vedic daasi clan and representative of the golden age of Indian womenhood as Uma Chakrobarthy perceives it ,but she is not the captured subjugated or enslaved woman.(4).Instead she is a learned ,welleducated sensible free individual with a voice of her own and who chose to lead a life of chastity with a single man and the freedom to renounce pleasures and devote her life entirely to the service of God.She was the daughter of a fisherman.It is surprising that this low birth did not prevent her from rising to the highest post of Talakkol and to special rights like the palanquin ,specific functions in the royal court and in the temple.The low birth of her does not prevent the poet himself,a kshathriya upper caste man and an ascetic,to call her Malaipparum chirappin vaanavar magal(daughter of the divine ones,whose greatness is eternal ).The katalooragaathai(the song on the beach)gives the evidence of her fisherman birth.Kovalan tells her that her ancestors entering waves with the curve of their boats killed fish and likewise she enters his soul and kills him with her eyes.She belongs to the Parathavar race of the sangam age,the race also called the Thirai veedar (people who have made the waves their home)and also the descendants of Bharatha,the rishi concerned with the origin of Natyasaasthra,.In either way she is an example of the common woman of India,the subaltern woman.According to Natyasaasthra,(5)when Vishnu danced four vrithys (Bharathy,sathwiki,kaisiki,and Arabhaty)originated from him.Kaisiki is related to long hair of Vishnu and is the feminine laasya.It was born out of saamaveda(music )which is equivalent to Vishnu himself.When the poet says that Madhavi is the daughter of the Gods and is the descendant of the Bharatha race and of Urvasi,he is saying that she is a devadasi of the vaishnavite tradition.We find that her associates who erect a tent for her at the seashore are parathavar(fisherfolk)and aracher(kings),singers and dancers.
EDUCATION FOR THE SUBALTERN-JOBORIENTED.
What type of education did the subaltern get in those days?How did this help her to earn a respectable position and livelihood?Learning and earning from knowledge thus obtained ,being the most important tools of empowering the subaltern this aspect becomes important.It is the knowledge and position in society which gives the subaltern the courage to speak up their thoughts and to express their indignation at what is going on in the society.At the age of five Madhavi starts her education and by twelve she has learnt and is ready to display her talents in front of the August assembly of scholars .She had mastered mathematics(ganitha)writing skills,the five of language(akshara or letter ,vaak or word,artha or meaning,vritha or rhythm,and alamkaara or ornamental language )and the four of music (sruthy or pitch ,swara or notes,raga or melody,and thaala or rhythm).Literature ,music ,drama ,dance and mathematics were the branches of knowledge in which she was well versed.With this she became a Vaarasthree(a woman for temple service)leading a life of vow or vratha in temple doing service to the God.The devadaasi/daasa had a division of labour between them.
1.Thondu (service)which include charya and kriya.Servile tasks like digging the temple tank or well ,collecting the flowers for pooja,lighting the lamps etc are the charya.The performance of actual pooja within the sanctum sanctorum is kriya.
2.Yoga and naana.Yoga is meditation on God.Naana is knowledge of veda and its commentaries ,the Upanishads and other scriptures.
3.Thevaarappaattu.The othuvar(singers)sing songs called thevaaram in which the origin of the place of worship,origin of the deity worshipped,his/her greatness,are given in detail.(6)
4.singing and dancing in temples during festivals and other auspicious moments ,fanning the deity etc.
These were the traditional jobs performed by the ancestors of Madhavi.This does not mean that the job was one done by low caste people.On the contrary ,it was a privilege enjoyed by aristocratic females.Till the time of Raajaraajachola (8th century)we find that even highborn,wealthy women adopted such a life,not because they were in need of money or power but because they felt an urge to serve God in the true sense of the word.Rajarajacholan’s daughter herself was a thevardiyaal(servant of the God),history tells us.
The teachers of Madhavi were renowned scholars.The dance teacher knew both the aka and pura(the margi,desi)traditions and their modifications ,their lakshana,porul or tatwa of the 4 purushaartha,different styles from alliyam to kodukotty,kuravai,vary,abhinaya,mudra and all other subtle aspects of Bharathakala.Kuravai is a group performance.Vary is a solo in which the performer depicts the culture ,the geographic and national prestige of the art form and his/her own efficiency and involvement in it so that the people enjoy the aesthetic in it.Her Guru in music was an adept in veena,mridanga,flute,vocal,margi and desi ,a vaaggeyakaara in his own right,with composing skills ,who knew different languages of the continent ,a composer in various languages without any error,and besides he was enthusiastic and of good character .The kavi who taught literature toMadhavi was a panditha ,well known in the land between Imayam(Himalaya)and Kumary(Cape Comorin)who had crossed the ocean of Muthamil(literature,music and drama)a nannool pulavan(scholar in scriptures).Besides she had a flutist ,mridangist,and a vidwan in veena ,each one efficient in their own respective fields as her accompaniments.
When Kovalan takes the garland given to Madhavi by the emperor of Chola kingdom as a symbol(award)of recognition to her mastery over the arts,Madhavi was only twelve year old.She was as innocent as a new flower.She was waiting for her friend to give him her kalavi and pulavi.These two terms have two different meanings.Gross meaning is the paribhava(false quarrel)and anunaya(appeasing )of a loving couple. But kalavi or kalvi also means vidya or education.Pulavi is poetry of the highest order belonging to learned pandits and aesthetics.With the new arts and knowledge aquired ,and newly recognized the small girl was waiting to show off her talents ,rather than to lure a man.She didn’t even know that the man is a married one.She was educating Kovalan in her arts but being too feminine and of a tender age she fell in love with him and had to bear the consequences of that relationship.
The poet tells us that when Madhavi took the veena in the early morning hours at the seashore,there was a clear sign of her liberation from kaama and entry into an ascetic life.The rising sun was saffron with a white halo of rays ,and looked like a bee which after spending a whole night within the flower enjoying to its heart’s content comes out ,with no more desire ,besmeared with the saffron honey and pollens.
Kalavi and Pulavi inMadhavi’s songs
Kovalan is just another lovelorn ,passionate ,jealous,possessive male and resents her performance in front of others in the court and temple.Therefore when Madhavi gives him the veena and asks him to sing ,he praises Kaveri as the symbol of chastity.Her husband the chola king embraces river Ganga and Kumari.Yet she is tolerant and loves him as before.In his subconscious mind he equates his own chaste wife kannagi to kaaveri and king chola who embraces other rivers(as his empire extends upto them)as kovalan who embrace Madhavi.Madhavi is a madhyamavargaganika,as explained in Koutilya’s arthasaasthra(7)and she knows how to read other people’s thoughts(parachithagnaanam or psychology)and she gives a tit for tat.She sang:
Iam a poor woman ,
The oath in front of Varuna was a lie.
How am I to know it!!
No wonder .Isnt our country
Surrounded by beetles
On either banks…..
…..
Kaveri,hail!
The mother of chola country,
The nourisher of earth,
Your eternal flow is the blessing of sun
The ruler of all oceans,
And the saviour of all souls
I know that secret.
The aesthetics and spiritual undertones of the comparison in this is unmistakable .And it is far superior to the similie of kovalan.The ethics of eternal dharma of the universe is unknown to kovalan whose individual sensibility is at a much lower level than Madhavi.He misunderstands the words and construes that she is in love with the king.Madhavi continues:
In the lovely face
Shining as moon
And red lips soft as flowers
Are the rays of joy
The pearls of smile.
Yet,why Arya,
You come here daily
With your pearls?
Can your pearls match
Priceless pearls of my smile?
Pearls are given by the ocean.
My country is the one
Where men bargain with peral
Beautiful women…..
If women in parathavar homes
Living in vedic style
Have loose bangles and thin body(due to viraha)
What can a weak woman like me do
To prevent it?
If the swan mistook punna flower
For a star
And made punna tree its abode
The swan is ignorant
What can I do for that?
My country is the one
Where bees wander in everyopen blossom
Singing passionate songs.
I didn’t know that.
The art of winning over a bee
With cups of honey
Is painful,and uncurable.
I am only a poor innocent woman
My city is Pukaar
Where sandcastles are broken by waves
And women with tears
Try to fill oceans with sand.
Women build sandcastles on seashore.When it is broken in a wave cry and try to fill the passion waves of their men with broken sandcastles.But Madhavi is different.She has an eternal lover,the ocean god –varuna,the saviour who saves her from the criticisms of society.She is his devotee.He is called the thiraineerin cherpan(God of ocean ,)who is represented a ssun.The passionwave of kovala following her has erased the chariotmarks of her Lord,engraved in her mind.Pretending love,erasing the divine mark of God,harming her,yet hurting her saying that she is the cause of his passion,Yet she does not want to hurt him or to take revenge upon him.Because she is an aristocratic woman.
The ocean(paramaatma)being her real lover ,and the jeeva(wave)with the fishy smell of passion ,desirous of cleaning themselves of it ,kisses the fragrant flowers on the shores ,take away their fragrance,and goes back.The ocean,the ruler of numberless souls(waves)persists forever,eternal.Madhavi recognizes two types of waves.The smiling small ones which never gets into the nets ,dancing in the faroff horizons and the fishy smelling ones which come near just to dirty the shores and the innocent flowers .The latter type pretends themselves to be clean and fragrant and blame the flower.She tells Kovalan that you belong to that category of men and I am in love with God (divine men)who are of the deep ocean wave type which is ever pure and devoid of passions.
Though she criticizes kovalan thus,the male behaviour and the society as a modern feminist does,Madhavi is feminine to the core and loves kovalan and wants to be with him always ,sharing life and caring for him.She is a complete woman with her femininity telling her that her music ,dance and knowledge and education have attracted Kovalan but the very same when it touched a false note (while she was singing Thodi)had roused his ego and repelled him from her.Her own aesthetics and dharma had been the ultimate cause of their separation.Therefore she compares herself to twilight traveling in a boat of sorrow ,traversing an ocean of fire.That ocean of fire is her lord and hence she speaks sweet words of love and pleasure .This is the aesthetic feminine side of her character.When kovalan leaves Madhavi forever the poet does not approve of his act.He along with the seasons ask him to lok at the beloved’s face for once and shed his ego and return to her.He comments that when Madhavi was looking for a bright future for kovalan ,he went out hastily to before that morning’s arrival,to Kannagi,who was waiting for his death through a dreadful predictive dream of hers.Madhavi though the system allowed to take another husband of her choice,remains an ascetic,shaves her head,enters an ascetic order ,asks her mother not to teach dance and music to her daughter Manimekhalai.Because of this ,Manimekhalai ,became an ascetic and a scholar too.
Marginalisation of women,popular culture.
Why did Madhavi and Manimekhalai embrace asceticism?Did it allow them a freedom of movement in society?We wil l comparte an almost similar situation and process in the 19th century Bengal(8).The census of India (Bengal 1872)tells us that the followers of Vaishnavism open their arms to thoise who are rejected by all others-the outcastes,crippled and diseased,and the unfortunate.Contemporary records abound with references to women in villages ,widows,married and unmarried women deserting their homes to join vaishnavites Akhara or monasteries . Here religious norms allowed them a freedom of movement ,an access to all corners of society both high and low and a certain liberty in their relation to men –privileges which were out of reach for rich and middle class Bengali women of the time.The vaishnavites went about singing and dancing.Some who were learned taught in the antharmahal of the bhadralok.there were a few wellknown poets among them.These Neri poets were pictured by rival male poets as vagrant low caste women.Neri literally means shavenheaded vaishnavites.In the 15th century ,vaishnavite chandidas had a female disciple ,a washerwoman Rammoni or Rami.She had tosuffer a lot of false accusations because of her attachment to Chandidas.In the early years of the 19th century Jogeswary ,the woman poet had written songs belonging to the Biraha type ,expressing Radha ‘s woes at her separation from Krishna.The songs express the woman’s dismay at her lover’s infidelity,as that of Madhavi.Sumantha Banerjee tells us how these baishnavites were marginalized by the menfolk of the bhadralok by an intense campaign against women artistes and performers.(8).Jogeswary’s male contender Bhola Maira insulted her during a public poetic duel,calling her a shameless woman who had lost all her proportions.We can see that in the duel between kovala and Madhavi also the same thing occurred,kovalan calling her unchaste ,a killer of men,kodumkaali,yamadharma etc etc.It was to prevent this type of purposeful hurts by society that Madhavi gave up her aesthetic performing arts and her knowledge .But we may ask,was she right in abandoning her rightful pleasures derived from aesthetic tastes just to escape from the lures of a substandard society?The attitude of the material feminists who abandon every aesthetic pleasure vs the modern scholarly performing artists of the present century ,who though feminists in their ideas ,take up aesthetics as their rightful and natural sensibility and pleasure can be studied in this light(10)
Mundanam and the mundane
Mundanam or shaving the head by ascetic women and widows is a theme which draws attention because ,many university educated young feminists are now shaving their heads to shock the males.Madhavi and Manimekhalai had done this in sangam age.The poet says that men were shocked to hear the news of the beautiful Madhavi shaving her hair.Madhavi and kovalan were both worshippers of the God/Goddess of ocean.It was acult among them to shave the hair as a sign of abandoning everything mundane.In Mundaka Upanishad we find a similar notion.The pheonicians ,the historic seafarers of yore had a cult of Goddess Astarte (Manimehaladevi of the vaisya in sangham age)where the same custom prevailed.Whether sensuality is attached to one ‘s hair is questionable from the medical point of view.Yet true to the belief that kaisiki is the lasya and music,from the hair of Vishnu,many puritanistic ascetic orders and religions attach much importance to hair and performing arts and for them abandoning the hair and covering the hair ,either always or during the visits to temples,churches,mosques is indicative of abandonment of mundane passions and acceptance of divine will.
Madhavi represents the feminist and the feminine,aesthetic and the pleasure of aesthetic exerience ,but also the divine will,renunciation and spiritual being .Being a female counterpart of the author of chilappathikaaram,who was called aattukottupaatu cheralaathan (an adept in dance,rhythm and music)and a supreme Sacrificer of mundane pleasures,the study of Madhavi offers an excellent means of entering into the consciousness of the poet/saint Ilanko adikal.
Bibliography.
1.Introduction 8&9.women in colonial India ED .J.Krishnamoorthy.Oxford India paperbacks.(19990
2.Ruining everybody’s fun.Feminist theory and pleasure .Srividya Natarajan &Rekha Pappu .238-255.Subject to change ed Susie Tharu.Orient longman 1998.
3.Small speeches ,subaltern gender :Nationalist ideology and its historiography.Kamala visweswaran.page 87.Subaltern studies 9.writing on south Asian history and society .ed.Shahid Amin an dDipesh chakrabarthy .oxford uty press 1997.
4.whatever happened to the vedic daasi?Uma chakrabarthy.pg 27-79.Recasting woman .Essays in colonial history.Ed kumkum sangary &sudesh vaid .Kali for women .reprint 1997.
5.Natyasaasthram of bharathamuni .commentary by K.P.Narayanapisharody.keralasahityaacademy.
6.Hymns to shiva.Indira parthasarathy paterson
7.Koutilya’s arthasaasthra .keralasahityaacademy
8.Marginalisation of women ‘s popular culture in 19th century Bengal pge 134-137.Recasting women .essays in colonial history ed kumkum sangari and sudesh vaid .kali for women 1997
9.chilappathikaaram.Ilankoadikal.commentary by Nenmara viswanaathan nair.Keralasahitya academy
10.Another stage in the nation’s life.Sadir,bharathanatyam,feminist theory,unpublished thesis .srividya natarajan.central university .Hyderabad.
Rejection of pleasure or assertion of womanhood?
(This paper was presented as invited lecture at Cochin university,Department of foreign languages )
Ilankoadikal,a prince of the erstwhile Chera kingdom and the author of chilappathikaaram was a renowned poet/singer /dancer/saint/monk who lived in the second century AD.His epic tells us many aspects of early Dravidian life and culture and of women in different strata of society of that period.Of the many women characters in the epic ,Madhavi is taken up here as a case study of feminist and feminine thoughts .Understanding the place and role of women in historical past depending upon oral traditions and literary sources is wellknown in the academic circles.(1).According to tradition Madhavi is a devadasi born into a family of prostitutes and is supposed to have lured kovilan away from his chaste wife Kannagi .But ,reading the text one finds that the renowned author/saint does not think like that.In this paper ,the characterization of Madhavi by a male monk is taken up and related to the emerging feminist theory and pleasure.
Feminist theory and pleasure-the twentyfirst century context
Modern university-educated women scholars are engaging with the politics of aesthetic pleasures and addressing the accusation that the feminist criticism is alienating and that it is “ruining everybody’s fun”.(2).Srividya Nataraajan ,a performing Bharathanatyam artist and a scholarly woman wellversed in in feminist theories as well as the traditional concept of rasa in arts is one among them.In a footnote to her essay ,she defines pleasure as follows:”Pleasure covers the sense of mastery or control ,wellbeing or selfaffirmation that arises from different kinds of involvement with the text and the with the social context.The kinds of involvement ranges from aesthetic one attuned to textural and aural effects in the text to a delight in the narrative alone.From a critical and evaluational engagement with the text and to a creative reworking of its creative fantasies.(Fn 2 ref 2).
The divergences between the stream of feminist thoughts include liberal feminism (based on faith in individualism).Psychoanalytic feminism ,interpreting culture in terms of individual psyche and collective socialization :And Marxist feminist theories:feminist theories linked to historical /cultural materialism which allow us to investigate a variety of cultural production and practices like Bharathanatyam ,classical music etc.One of the many agendas these new age women explore include their identity as Indians ,interested in theorizing indigenous cultural experiences and practices and their relation to literature.Investigating a cultural form like dance in Tamil Nadu meant taking to account controversies about caste ,religion,materialism and femininity,questions amenable to materialist feminist analysis,the question of body and body kinetics in performing arts,of tradition,pleasure and aesthetics.They are questioning the feminist argument that pleasure is at best selfindulgent and frivolous and at worst narcissistic and retrogressive and pernicious.The question of women’s pleasure in a patriarchial context is so troubled and guiltridden that females end up projecting their own doubts and censorship on the feminist theory .Pleasure affiliated to aesthetic comes under the purview of philosophy –the field of Kant,Abhinavaguptha,Bharatha,Sankara ,Ilankoadikal and other traditional thinkers /philosophers of east and west.Aesthetics is a privilege in the form of individual taste.To resist this individual self,feminists tend to regard with suspicion all the spaces that are defined by aesthetics.Collective moralism according to Cora Kaplan has developed in the socialist feminist thought which stagmatise sensibility itself.It is in this context of a new approach by twentyfirst century women like Srividya Natarajan ,we have to look at Madhavi ,the woman and the performing artist and her thought processes.
The subaltern question.
To consider the subaltern in the genre,one must distinguish between the figure of women as subaltern and the question of subaltern women(3).Woman as the subaltern is the universal woman in every culture and history and in literature written and interpreted by men.Whereas the subaltern women belong to the different classes ,castes ,races,occupations,nationalities,interpreted and expressed by women of these respective strata themselves .Madhavi is an interesting study material for any student of literature and social history because she is the subaltern universal woman interpreted by a man ,possibly an androgynous male,who knew the iyal,isai,and naatakam(literature,music and drama),the aesthetics of art ,and who renounced his political power,comfortable life style,domestic family life to become an ascetic himself. Hence Madhavi ,in his epic poem represents his alterego,or twin female principle with the very same quaklities,a character with Aathmaansa (part of self)of the author.Madhavi belongs to the daasi cult ,a member of the vedic daasi clan and representative of the golden age of Indian womenhood as Uma Chakrobarthy perceives it ,but she is not the captured subjugated or enslaved woman.(4).Instead she is a learned ,welleducated sensible free individual with a voice of her own and who chose to lead a life of chastity with a single man and the freedom to renounce pleasures and devote her life entirely to the service of God.She was the daughter of a fisherman.It is surprising that this low birth did not prevent her from rising to the highest post of Talakkol and to special rights like the palanquin ,specific functions in the royal court and in the temple.The low birth of her does not prevent the poet himself,a kshathriya upper caste man and an ascetic,to call her Malaipparum chirappin vaanavar magal(daughter of the divine ones,whose greatness is eternal ).The katalooragaathai(the song on the beach)gives the evidence of her fisherman birth.Kovalan tells her that her ancestors entering waves with the curve of their boats killed fish and likewise she enters his soul and kills him with her eyes.She belongs to the Parathavar race of the sangam age,the race also called the Thirai veedar (people who have made the waves their home)and also the descendants of Bharatha,the rishi concerned with the origin of Natyasaasthra,.In either way she is an example of the common woman of India,the subaltern woman.According to Natyasaasthra,(5)when Vishnu danced four vrithys (Bharathy,sathwiki,kaisiki,and Arabhaty)originated from him.Kaisiki is related to long hair of Vishnu and is the feminine laasya.It was born out of saamaveda(music )which is equivalent to Vishnu himself.When the poet says that Madhavi is the daughter of the Gods and is the descendant of the Bharatha race and of Urvasi,he is saying that she is a devadasi of the vaishnavite tradition.We find that her associates who erect a tent for her at the seashore are parathavar(fisherfolk)and aracher(kings),singers and dancers.
EDUCATION FOR THE SUBALTERN-JOBORIENTED.
What type of education did the subaltern get in those days?How did this help her to earn a respectable position and livelihood?Learning and earning from knowledge thus obtained ,being the most important tools of empowering the subaltern this aspect becomes important.It is the knowledge and position in society which gives the subaltern the courage to speak up their thoughts and to express their indignation at what is going on in the society.At the age of five Madhavi starts her education and by twelve she has learnt and is ready to display her talents in front of the August assembly of scholars .She had mastered mathematics(ganitha)writing skills,the five of language(akshara or letter ,vaak or word,artha or meaning,vritha or rhythm,and alamkaara or ornamental language )and the four of music (sruthy or pitch ,swara or notes,raga or melody,and thaala or rhythm).Literature ,music ,drama ,dance and mathematics were the branches of knowledge in which she was well versed.With this she became a Vaarasthree(a woman for temple service)leading a life of vow or vratha in temple doing service to the God.The devadaasi/daasa had a division of labour between them.
1.Thondu (service)which include charya and kriya.Servile tasks like digging the temple tank or well ,collecting the flowers for pooja,lighting the lamps etc are the charya.The performance of actual pooja within the sanctum sanctorum is kriya.
2.Yoga and naana.Yoga is meditation on God.Naana is knowledge of veda and its commentaries ,the Upanishads and other scriptures.
3.Thevaarappaattu.The othuvar(singers)sing songs called thevaaram in which the origin of the place of worship,origin of the deity worshipped,his/her greatness,are given in detail.(6)
4.singing and dancing in temples during festivals and other auspicious moments ,fanning the deity etc.
These were the traditional jobs performed by the ancestors of Madhavi.This does not mean that the job was one done by low caste people.On the contrary ,it was a privilege enjoyed by aristocratic females.Till the time of Raajaraajachola (8th century)we find that even highborn,wealthy women adopted such a life,not because they were in need of money or power but because they felt an urge to serve God in the true sense of the word.Rajarajacholan’s daughter herself was a thevardiyaal(servant of the God),history tells us.
The teachers of Madhavi were renowned scholars.The dance teacher knew both the aka and pura(the margi,desi)traditions and their modifications ,their lakshana,porul or tatwa of the 4 purushaartha,different styles from alliyam to kodukotty,kuravai,vary,abhinaya,mudra and all other subtle aspects of Bharathakala.Kuravai is a group performance.Vary is a solo in which the performer depicts the culture ,the geographic and national prestige of the art form and his/her own efficiency and involvement in it so that the people enjoy the aesthetic in it.Her Guru in music was an adept in veena,mridanga,flute,vocal,margi and desi ,a vaaggeyakaara in his own right,with composing skills ,who knew different languages of the continent ,a composer in various languages without any error,and besides he was enthusiastic and of good character .The kavi who taught literature toMadhavi was a panditha ,well known in the land between Imayam(Himalaya)and Kumary(Cape Comorin)who had crossed the ocean of Muthamil(literature,music and drama)a nannool pulavan(scholar in scriptures).Besides she had a flutist ,mridangist,and a vidwan in veena ,each one efficient in their own respective fields as her accompaniments.
When Kovalan takes the garland given to Madhavi by the emperor of Chola kingdom as a symbol(award)of recognition to her mastery over the arts,Madhavi was only twelve year old.She was as innocent as a new flower.She was waiting for her friend to give him her kalavi and pulavi.These two terms have two different meanings.Gross meaning is the paribhava(false quarrel)and anunaya(appeasing )of a loving couple. But kalavi or kalvi also means vidya or education.Pulavi is poetry of the highest order belonging to learned pandits and aesthetics.With the new arts and knowledge aquired ,and newly recognized the small girl was waiting to show off her talents ,rather than to lure a man.She didn’t even know that the man is a married one.She was educating Kovalan in her arts but being too feminine and of a tender age she fell in love with him and had to bear the consequences of that relationship.
The poet tells us that when Madhavi took the veena in the early morning hours at the seashore,there was a clear sign of her liberation from kaama and entry into an ascetic life.The rising sun was saffron with a white halo of rays ,and looked like a bee which after spending a whole night within the flower enjoying to its heart’s content comes out ,with no more desire ,besmeared with the saffron honey and pollens.
Kalavi and Pulavi inMadhavi’s songs
Kovalan is just another lovelorn ,passionate ,jealous,possessive male and resents her performance in front of others in the court and temple.Therefore when Madhavi gives him the veena and asks him to sing ,he praises Kaveri as the symbol of chastity.Her husband the chola king embraces river Ganga and Kumari.Yet she is tolerant and loves him as before.In his subconscious mind he equates his own chaste wife kannagi to kaaveri and king chola who embraces other rivers(as his empire extends upto them)as kovalan who embrace Madhavi.Madhavi is a madhyamavargaganika,as explained in Koutilya’s arthasaasthra(7)and she knows how to read other people’s thoughts(parachithagnaanam or psychology)and she gives a tit for tat.She sang:
Iam a poor woman ,
The oath in front of Varuna was a lie.
How am I to know it!!
No wonder .Isnt our country
Surrounded by beetles
On either banks…..
…..
Kaveri,hail!
The mother of chola country,
The nourisher of earth,
Your eternal flow is the blessing of sun
The ruler of all oceans,
And the saviour of all souls
I know that secret.
The aesthetics and spiritual undertones of the comparison in this is unmistakable .And it is far superior to the similie of kovalan.The ethics of eternal dharma of the universe is unknown to kovalan whose individual sensibility is at a much lower level than Madhavi.He misunderstands the words and construes that she is in love with the king.Madhavi continues:
In the lovely face
Shining as moon
And red lips soft as flowers
Are the rays of joy
The pearls of smile.
Yet,why Arya,
You come here daily
With your pearls?
Can your pearls match
Priceless pearls of my smile?
Pearls are given by the ocean.
My country is the one
Where men bargain with peral
Beautiful women…..
If women in parathavar homes
Living in vedic style
Have loose bangles and thin body(due to viraha)
What can a weak woman like me do
To prevent it?
If the swan mistook punna flower
For a star
And made punna tree its abode
The swan is ignorant
What can I do for that?
My country is the one
Where bees wander in everyopen blossom
Singing passionate songs.
I didn’t know that.
The art of winning over a bee
With cups of honey
Is painful,and uncurable.
I am only a poor innocent woman
My city is Pukaar
Where sandcastles are broken by waves
And women with tears
Try to fill oceans with sand.
Women build sandcastles on seashore.When it is broken in a wave cry and try to fill the passion waves of their men with broken sandcastles.But Madhavi is different.She has an eternal lover,the ocean god –varuna,the saviour who saves her from the criticisms of society.She is his devotee.He is called the thiraineerin cherpan(God of ocean ,)who is represented a ssun.The passionwave of kovala following her has erased the chariotmarks of her Lord,engraved in her mind.Pretending love,erasing the divine mark of God,harming her,yet hurting her saying that she is the cause of his passion,Yet she does not want to hurt him or to take revenge upon him.Because she is an aristocratic woman.
The ocean(paramaatma)being her real lover ,and the jeeva(wave)with the fishy smell of passion ,desirous of cleaning themselves of it ,kisses the fragrant flowers on the shores ,take away their fragrance,and goes back.The ocean,the ruler of numberless souls(waves)persists forever,eternal.Madhavi recognizes two types of waves.The smiling small ones which never gets into the nets ,dancing in the faroff horizons and the fishy smelling ones which come near just to dirty the shores and the innocent flowers .The latter type pretends themselves to be clean and fragrant and blame the flower.She tells Kovalan that you belong to that category of men and I am in love with God (divine men)who are of the deep ocean wave type which is ever pure and devoid of passions.
Though she criticizes kovalan thus,the male behaviour and the society as a modern feminist does,Madhavi is feminine to the core and loves kovalan and wants to be with him always ,sharing life and caring for him.She is a complete woman with her femininity telling her that her music ,dance and knowledge and education have attracted Kovalan but the very same when it touched a false note (while she was singing Thodi)had roused his ego and repelled him from her.Her own aesthetics and dharma had been the ultimate cause of their separation.Therefore she compares herself to twilight traveling in a boat of sorrow ,traversing an ocean of fire.That ocean of fire is her lord and hence she speaks sweet words of love and pleasure .This is the aesthetic feminine side of her character.When kovalan leaves Madhavi forever the poet does not approve of his act.He along with the seasons ask him to lok at the beloved’s face for once and shed his ego and return to her.He comments that when Madhavi was looking for a bright future for kovalan ,he went out hastily to before that morning’s arrival,to Kannagi,who was waiting for his death through a dreadful predictive dream of hers.Madhavi though the system allowed to take another husband of her choice,remains an ascetic,shaves her head,enters an ascetic order ,asks her mother not to teach dance and music to her daughter Manimekhalai.Because of this ,Manimekhalai ,became an ascetic and a scholar too.
Marginalisation of women,popular culture.
Why did Madhavi and Manimekhalai embrace asceticism?Did it allow them a freedom of movement in society?We wil l comparte an almost similar situation and process in the 19th century Bengal(8).The census of India (Bengal 1872)tells us that the followers of Vaishnavism open their arms to thoise who are rejected by all others-the outcastes,crippled and diseased,and the unfortunate.Contemporary records abound with references to women in villages ,widows,married and unmarried women deserting their homes to join vaishnavites Akhara or monasteries . Here religious norms allowed them a freedom of movement ,an access to all corners of society both high and low and a certain liberty in their relation to men –privileges which were out of reach for rich and middle class Bengali women of the time.The vaishnavites went about singing and dancing.Some who were learned taught in the antharmahal of the bhadralok.there were a few wellknown poets among them.These Neri poets were pictured by rival male poets as vagrant low caste women.Neri literally means shavenheaded vaishnavites.In the 15th century ,vaishnavite chandidas had a female disciple ,a washerwoman Rammoni or Rami.She had tosuffer a lot of false accusations because of her attachment to Chandidas.In the early years of the 19th century Jogeswary ,the woman poet had written songs belonging to the Biraha type ,expressing Radha ‘s woes at her separation from Krishna.The songs express the woman’s dismay at her lover’s infidelity,as that of Madhavi.Sumantha Banerjee tells us how these baishnavites were marginalized by the menfolk of the bhadralok by an intense campaign against women artistes and performers.(8).Jogeswary’s male contender Bhola Maira insulted her during a public poetic duel,calling her a shameless woman who had lost all her proportions.We can see that in the duel between kovala and Madhavi also the same thing occurred,kovalan calling her unchaste ,a killer of men,kodumkaali,yamadharma etc etc.It was to prevent this type of purposeful hurts by society that Madhavi gave up her aesthetic performing arts and her knowledge .But we may ask,was she right in abandoning her rightful pleasures derived from aesthetic tastes just to escape from the lures of a substandard society?The attitude of the material feminists who abandon every aesthetic pleasure vs the modern scholarly performing artists of the present century ,who though feminists in their ideas ,take up aesthetics as their rightful and natural sensibility and pleasure can be studied in this light(10)
Mundanam and the mundane
Mundanam or shaving the head by ascetic women and widows is a theme which draws attention because ,many university educated young feminists are now shaving their heads to shock the males.Madhavi and Manimekhalai had done this in sangam age.The poet says that men were shocked to hear the news of the beautiful Madhavi shaving her hair.Madhavi and kovalan were both worshippers of the God/Goddess of ocean.It was acult among them to shave the hair as a sign of abandoning everything mundane.In Mundaka Upanishad we find a similar notion.The pheonicians ,the historic seafarers of yore had a cult of Goddess Astarte (Manimehaladevi of the vaisya in sangham age)where the same custom prevailed.Whether sensuality is attached to one ‘s hair is questionable from the medical point of view.Yet true to the belief that kaisiki is the lasya and music,from the hair of Vishnu,many puritanistic ascetic orders and religions attach much importance to hair and performing arts and for them abandoning the hair and covering the hair ,either always or during the visits to temples,churches,mosques is indicative of abandonment of mundane passions and acceptance of divine will.
Madhavi represents the feminist and the feminine,aesthetic and the pleasure of aesthetic exerience ,but also the divine will,renunciation and spiritual being .Being a female counterpart of the author of chilappathikaaram,who was called aattukottupaatu cheralaathan (an adept in dance,rhythm and music)and a supreme Sacrificer of mundane pleasures,the study of Madhavi offers an excellent means of entering into the consciousness of the poet/saint Ilanko adikal.
Bibliography.
1.Introduction 8&9.women in colonial India ED .J.Krishnamoorthy.Oxford India paperbacks.(19990
2.Ruining everybody’s fun.Feminist theory and pleasure .Srividya Natarajan &Rekha Pappu .238-255.Subject to change ed Susie Tharu.Orient longman 1998.
3.Small speeches ,subaltern gender :Nationalist ideology and its historiography.Kamala visweswaran.page 87.Subaltern studies 9.writing on south Asian history and society .ed.Shahid Amin an dDipesh chakrabarthy .oxford uty press 1997.
4.whatever happened to the vedic daasi?Uma chakrabarthy.pg 27-79.Recasting woman .Essays in colonial history.Ed kumkum sangary &sudesh vaid .Kali for women .reprint 1997.
5.Natyasaasthram of bharathamuni .commentary by K.P.Narayanapisharody.keralasahityaacademy.
6.Hymns to shiva.Indira parthasarathy paterson
7.Koutilya’s arthasaasthra .keralasahityaacademy
8.Marginalisation of women ‘s popular culture in 19th century Bengal pge 134-137.Recasting women .essays in colonial history ed kumkum sangari and sudesh vaid .kali for women 1997
9.chilappathikaaram.Ilankoadikal.commentary by Nenmara viswanaathan nair.Keralasahitya academy
10.Another stage in the nation’s life.Sadir,bharathanatyam,feminist theory,unpublished thesis .srividya natarajan.central university .Hyderabad.
portrayal of women in literature
PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN THE LITERATURE OF WESTERN REGIONAL INDIAN LANGUAGES-
Dr suvarna nalapat
www.nalapat.com
INTRODUCTION:
One of my colleagues once asked:”Suvarna,How old are you? I said,may be 6000 years or may be older.When I think and involve in the intellectual pursuits of research into the human history,I am ageless,timeless.When I give a lecture or a speech , I am 60 years (chronological age)and when I play with infants and children I am their age,and when I enjoy music I am seventeen”.In short , I do “live in the present”.Because of this ,my language with different people appears different.But yet I am a total ,complete human being with my own visions,experiences,missions in life and cognitive ,emotive functions wellbalanced.If I talk as a pathologist/astronomer/philosopher to this gathering or to my grandchild my language becomes unintelligible to the audience.This makes a gap or a distancing due to lack of communications
.Who is the woman in literature?The Poet/novelist/shortstorywriter/activist turned autobiographist/prose writer/social critic/university research scholars who produce a high quantity of serious writing ??And which are the western regional languages of India?Should not we include kannada and Tamil and Punjabi ,Malayalam and Hindi as well since these are also spoken in the western coastal belt and the konkan coast?And finally have I got any contact with the literature of the last two decades in Gujrati,konkani,marathi and sindhi,the four languages selected for the seminar?When I asked these questions to myself,I had a surprising answer.Among all these insufficiencies there is a thread of unity ,flowing from the rich traditions of India,of which I am a part and parcel and it is with this feeling that I stand before you to deliver the presidential address..
:”A culture’s selfawareness in terms of its law,medicine and grammer is an important precondition for awareness of its aesthetics.The knowledge of medicine ,a system of management of pain ,of anaesthetics,of births and deaths ,is interrelated to poetry ,a system of management of pleasure ,of aesthetics and of creation”(1)Thus wrote G.N.Devy in AFTER AMNESIA.
As a medical professional and an advocate of music as the panacea for all human ailments and for holistic development of an integrated personality,in an aesthetically anaesthetic medium of alleviation of pain and suffering of humanity, I can vouchsafe that life becomes beautiful and artistic with literature and music ,but communicating this new idea to the already prejudiced society was not that easy or artistic..In 1991 when yamuna,a student of mine , and me planned the calicut medical college magazine,we had planned it with a humanistic and a womanoriented approach,( we elected universal ideas,valuebased education,management of medicine and of human life,the Gandhian ideals ,women in Malayalam literature and in science subjects especially in medicine)and the magazine began with the quote from Koran,”I was as a germ concealed,Me Thy burning ray revealed”,and ended with the famous nationalistic quote of Tagore,praying for awakening of our country into the heaven of freedom (2).Every human being has a dream.When we think of our dreams,and communicate them to the outside world,the dreams come true .To think and communicate is to create.The modern Indian women are thinking,creating,and are actively participating in every field where their male counterparts are active ,yet they remain the marginalized.How does this happen ?The reason probably is that we are separated by our concepts of different classes,races,languages,cults and religions etc.Of these ,the language is one of the barriers that keeps the Indians apart..As Herodotus(3) said,the determinant of Greek identity is the Greek language,and he calls the foreigners barbaroi(the babble of foreign speech)The Arab dictionary also speaks of the nonarab speaking foreigners ae-je-ma(barbarian).The polish people laugh at chechs saying that they speak polish as spoken by a 5 year old boy or as if there is a potato in the mouth.Multilingualism of Mithradates and Cleopatra(they knew 25 languages)is awed,respected and at the same time feared by the foreign invaders like Romans.India being a land of many languages ,a trilingual pattern with the regional language,Hindi and English as the communication languages and Sanskrith and Tamil as the oldest languages for study of culture and heritage would be of use for meaningful communication . Women’s world ,a global free speech network of women writers formed in 1994,has a 10 language research project with Asmita the purpose of which is to identify how genderfaced censorship in a range of social and cultural mechanism that invalidate women’s experience and exclude them from political discourse ,is far more pervasive and far more difficult to control than official suppression.The silencing of women ,the use of systematic force to ensure silence ,is probably for maintaining patriarchal power ,according to the five women who lead the research(4)
Krishna /devi cults (sociopolitical/spiritual implications)
Uma chakravarthy (Ref :5 pge 45)has conflicting opinions when she says that the real fall of Indian women came with the growth of the Krishna cult and yet narrates the contributions of saraladebi in Bengal and of Pandita Ramabhai of Maharashtra ,to the contemporary society(the former called Kaali since she was a challenge to males and the latter saraswathy because of her scholarship ),both were highly religious and spiritually inclined.The bhakthy traditions bring out the inner woman in Vaishnav traditions as we will illustrate with Mirabai and Bahinabai.The 5 types of yogins (Prathamakalpika,madhubhoomika,pragnajyothy,athikranthabhavaneeya and chithavimukthy)and the different stages of right cognition (yathamaana,vyathiraka,ekendriya,vaseekara,aparavairagya and paravairagya)are comparable according to yoga philosophy(6 .chap 4. )and Meera practicing layayoga through musical/lyrical creativity and naadalayayoga in onepointed ekagratha of dhyaana was an advaithin,a yogin par excellance.Therefore,the status of Meera did not fall,but arose with Krishna cult.This is true of many a woman in India practicing vaishnav raagaanuga bakthy.
The Amma or Matha cult is very popular in India.Even during the nationalist times there are several instances of the divine hand intervening in the nationalist projects.The Devi movement in 1922 in Gujrat and the ADIVASI upsurge following it is one example.The adivasis listened to the devi(salahbai),even went into a trance,and followed each of the devi’s commands.The main commands were abstain from meat and alcohol,take bath daily,clean with water after defecating,release goats and chicken kept for sacrificial killing,boycott liquor dealers and landlords.The devi asked them to take the vows in Gandhi’s name ,to wear khadi cloths and to attend schools.The collector of Surat district A.M.Macmillan noted that the impact of the Devi continued and because they stopped the alcoholism there was marked improvement in their economical status and the epidemic was controlled..He could close 13 liquor shops in Mandvi Taluka and one in Bardoli and one in Valod Mahal.The Devi movement in South Gujrat had many features in common with the other parts of India during late 19th and 20th century.If we take up the social,economic,and political background of such movements the meaning and significance of the reform programme and the educational importance of it In 1922 the Mangala koli fisherfolk had a smallpox epidemic and women of the tribe used to get possessed by the Goddess with healing properties.These women possessed of the devi were called salah(advice)bhai(women of God).Knowing this,the political worker,the lady who was a Gandhian freedom worker ,and nationalist either acted as a medium who raised the collective grievances of an ethnic community ,enriching the consciousness of the individual and the group as Richard Lannoy remarked and it was not a mere chaotic hysteria.(7).Or it may be that she didn’t act but the ethnic custom of the adivasis naturally took her to be a salahbai.Almost similar feelings of the people are being used by religious sects and business oriented people at present (even in Kerala),and the value of it has to be judged very carefully ,weighing the pros and cons of such movements ,the sociopolitical and economic implications and the intellectual background etc.Are these movements expressions of group solidarity and social cohesion and have acted as unifying forces for groups under conditions of social disorganization?Are they representing a serious attempt to establish a new moral order where the old one is destroyed or is unsatisfactory?Have they acted as mediators between the greater and little traditions of India as catalysts? Are they advocating unity and advaitha of people through love and mutual understanding through a peaceful,universal language or inculcating separatism and dwaitha and making enmity between people,quarrels and wars? Are they functioning for monetary purposes or for spiritual and sociopolitical and intellectual awakening of the people?
Is it a resistive revitalization where synthesis of dominant and subordinate cultures is poorly worked out,there are serious barriers against integration,and movement develop into a state of violent resistance?or is it an emulative revitalization where the synthesis is better worked out,barriers to integraton are weak,or nonexistent,and the movements are peaceful?Devi movement of Gujrat in 1922 was of the emulative type. Any Godman/Godwoman cult of India/or the world has to be studied in this way,by the intelle tuals and sociopolitical activists.A serious and analytical study of such movements in this light,is good so that both the movement(if the movement is good and worthy and emulative )and the society will gain in the end.,by such impersonal ,intellectual studies.Creativity is not restricted to literature alone,but to life,society,building of a great nation,preservation of worldpeace and culture etc.As a woman concerned with such thoughts ,I stand before you and speak.
Role of Academi in creativity and communication
K.R.Srinivasa iyengar wrote:It is not academis nor trusts nor charters that can ensure the creation of great literature.An authentic work of literature is a man speaking to other men.It is an exchange of pulses ,an unfreezing of our petrified selves so that soul may commune with soul and diverse minds can flow together.The quality of literature must thus ultimately depend on the quality of the individual writer.The more men have the courage to be lonely in their minds ,the more writers cultivate the strength to withstand the pressures of politics,patronage and propaganda or the lure of novelty and the gymnastics of mere techniques ,the more are they likely to succeed in transmuting their ambroisial visions into abiding art.”(8)I believe that when a writer creates a work(which is a great thought )the academis should be able to understand the merit of the work and to communicate it to other national languages so that national and international integration should happen.Translation into English/other regional languages will promote such communication and academi can thus recreate the great work for communication .Communication is a means of promotion of tolerance .Tolerance comes as a natural byproduct of communication.Tolerant citizens with unrestricted flow of thoughts are the foundations of a stable ,adaptable,robust and interesting society according to Malini .S.Bhattacharya.(9)I would add “to a mentally,intellectually and spiritually healthy society”
The works of saratchandrachatterjjee,Bankim chandra ,V.s Khandekar and of Ashapoornadevi are well known to the readers of Malayalam through translations.I must especially speak of the three novels of Ashapoornadevi(prathamaprathisruthy,suvarnalatha and the story of Bakul)which represents the precolonial,colonial and postcolonial status and aspirations of women in India.
Gujrati is spoken in Gujrat,sourashtra and Kutch.Derived from Sanskrit,it has intermediary stages of souraseni prakrith and apabramsa.Kutch or Bhrigukutch of ancient Bharath is connected to the bhriguvansa to which Parasurama belongs and Viswamithra related..And it is the land of Krishna,(the archetypal personality embedded in the human psyche,) where he built the Dwarakapuri.If we use the research method of Bharatha ,with the triad of sruthy-thanthrayukthy,and anubhoothy and replace the constrictive Hegelian dialectics thesis –antithesis –and use the protovedic bharatheeya continuity theory ,(10)we will find that the Chera kings belonging to the Karthaveerya dynasty are the 49th generation from the dwaraka kings (as in the Pathittupathu). The 15th century Bhakthi poet Mirabai ,singing the krishnageethis and padams thus is a part of us too.Why was Meera delineated from her husband’s household while they themselves were Krishna devotees and were well into the Krishna tradition which is thousands of years old in India?It was her inlaws who first compiled ashtapadi as Rasikapriya which means they didn’t have any objection to Krishna and his devotion which is in the Indian archetypal psyche. But The sociopolitical reasons were many.The attitude of Meera ,questioning the traditional widow customs and refusing to act as a widow,the acceptance of Raidas,the leather worker,an untouchable as her Guru,and the relation with the Mughal emperor and his court singer Tansen,are all sociopolitical reasons which we can clearly understand.The fact that she refused to call srivallabha acharya as her Guru and as an avathar of Vishnu was the reason for the Vallabha sect to denounce her as a vaishnavi,three times in a row..That was religious patriarchy.And the fact that she told the Goswamins that there is only one purush ,and that is Krishna ,also was intolerable to the other men(though goswamy could understand her)and all these factors have made Meera powerful,and popular and a legend,and that is why the observation of Uma chakravarthy ,that women of India had downfall with Krishna cult is not acceptable.Moreover Meera refused to behave as a young Rajput widow is supposed to behave,claiming that her husband is not Bhoja but the everpresent evergreen hero,Krishna.The revolt of Meera was sweet and nonaggressive,emulative like the Devi movement of Gujrat during the Gandhi era,and hence peaceful and good for the society.There are still Meerabais inIndia(,10 ,11)and their life and work is studied and appreciated by the foreign writers like steven Rosen and selina Theilman.(western scholars).Indian Academies can do their share to do research on such women who are different from the mainstream political activists of feminist movement and have a discourse of their own.and their effect on the society in which they live and communicate.
Kavisammelans and Mushairas are fairly popular in Gujrati literature.The poems are written in the style of urdu ghazhals and recited at mushairas.Ghazhal means talking to the beloved.The theme is love,either spiritual or erotic.The rekthy or raagabhaava to titillate the males in the kothas,was a later development .Mushaira being an integral part of the ghazal universe is an interactive space where orality and texuality are interspersed with musicality.The padams of Meerabhai have a feminine idiom of spiritual love while the Umrao Jan by Mirza Ruswa (first published in 1905)is that of the Tawaif of the Lucknow courtesan’s erotic love .Amina Yaquin (the beloved re-presented.16th European conference on modern south Asian studies dept of sociology.Edinburg uty.)observes that 90 years later women poets continue to be haunted by the success of Umrao Jan brought closer to public memory by Bollywood’s cinematic adaptation.The visibility of women writers exploded with the progressive writer’s movement and prose queens rose to the top she observes.(13).The aesthetics versus political feminism ,art vs science/logic is finding it difficult to come to terms with such conflicts .
In the same conference Lalita du perron’s paper on Thumri observes the equal devotional and erotic component in the Thumri Thumri also is a courtesan’s music .It uses the Braj bhasha,the dialect spoken by Krishna and the gopis in the vrajbhoomi,and hence has the ubiquitous presence of Krishna ,the lover,employment of themes and imagery are familiar from early Bhakthy poetry and the devotional element persists and survives to the modern age.In it I can find a combination of chaayavada and pragathivaada in equal doses.(Indian romanticism with aesthetics and Indian progressive thought with concern for the socially oppressed.Chayavada is a cross between early romanticism and vedanthic synthesis.Pragahyvaada between late romanticism and Marxian dialectics)
The whore-virgin stereotypes as Lucy Rosenstein speaks of the conflict between the erotic/devotional emotions ,questions even the idealized form of the naayikaabhava (shringar)tradition,because hard core feminists cant accept that .The romanticized view of woman in a man’s home and heart in the poetic canon does not appeal to the hardcore political activist.Yet,the shringar has the most aesthetic quality and one who is wellversed in aesthetics would definitely apprecite the value of it in literature and music.Ghazhal and romantic music is a very private emotion in a universalized style and all devotional literature and music is divine in this universalized sense.They cam e from the countryside folk traditions(subaltern)and became urbanized during the Mughal period ,found a place in the Guru hymns of the Sikhs and sufi colonial postcolonial poetry in Punjab and is very popular during the modern period of globalisation.The association of the bhakthy musical/lyrical traditions with subnational ethnicity,nationalism ,and global awakening gives it a special place in literature in modern times. The socalled”Literature of knowledge” in Gujarati,is very valuable.The gujrat vidyasabha,Maharaja sayajirao uty ,chunilal Gandhi research institute,bharatiyavidyabhavan ,Forbes gujrati sabha have brought out authoritative texts of old manuscripts. The new modern humanistic movements of search of personality found in the journal Pratika(allahabad 1946)and the parimala group of writers brought out the prayogavaada or experimentalism. (14)And in the modern times university educated scholarly women are definitely experimenting with life and society and finding out answers to their individual and collective problems and to the problems of society and the world.
The marathi literature is rich in the saint poet traditions.Gnaneswar,Namdeo,eknath,Tukaram,Ramdas,Muktheswa r came in a row enriching the tradition.The common man sought the heroic ballads and the erotic lavani (like the puram and akam in Tamil)17TH century vaishnavite Bahinabhai lead an ordinary life of a housewife,involved with her household duties,and Mary Gee(15) calls it the ordinary life of an exceptional woman ,or the exceptional life of an ordinary woman,both terms appear to be apt for many of us.As far as I am concerned,a simple ordinary life and the exceptional intellectual,mental(cognitive,emotional)pursuits and the spiritual awakening makes us valuable citizens of the world.Only such people can save the world from disaster,in the present condition.Bahinabhai did not discard her clothes like the Virsaiva saint Akka Mahadevi.She did not merge with God as Aandaal (Tamil )or Meera(Gujarat)She did not announce that Giridhar is her true husband unlike Meerabhai.Not renouncing marriage or motherhood,not discarding the duties (karma)of the ordinary life,she composed autobiographical/devotional hymns revealing her anguish and uncertainty regarding her duties as a wife,and her devotion to her Guru and to God.The abhangaas in her early period of life are showing this dilemma very clearly.Thus Mary finds out that the most honoured woman saint of Maharashtra was a victim of domestic violence in her early life.How she dealt with such conflicts and how her spirituality and theological imagination allowed her to survive ,Mary looks into the religious ,sociopolitical context of Bahinabai’s life.Her dream vision of Tukaram at the age of eleven and the recognition of her as a saint by Jayaram goswami and the insults she had to suffer for it from her husband etc are described in the Book vaishnavi,edited by Steven Rosen(11).Sudra saint Tukharam as sadguru,vitthal as God,her compositions have strong advaithic streaks For her ,sadguru and God is one and vitthal as Hari is her brother,sahodara.While her husband had a very structured patriarchal upbringing,she was influenced both from the teachings of Marathy bhakthy literature and the teachings of advaitha and this lead to the different responses to the domestic crisis in their life.
I think ,the life of Bahinabhai teaches us that worldly life and spiritual life can go together ,without conflict.Indifference to worldly life does not mean withdrawal from it,but a honest ,good,exemplary living within the world.Drawing strength from one’s spiritual knowledge is different from escaping into religion ,which implies weakness.Woman is sakthi,and she need not become weak and immerse in religion,but can draw her strength from cognitive,emotive functions dormant in her spiritiual life ,and that was done by Gargi,Maithreyi and ubhayabharathy.But where are these great women’s works ?Did they ever produce any great work?or even if they produced ,did those oral traditions not preserved,or got suppressed due to the fact that they didn’t have any good disciples/or because they were women?We don’t have answers. And my work on Prasthaanathraya is the view of a woman,a working woman,leading a very ordinary domestic life and a with a highly aesthetic flavour for a richly musical premabhakthy traditions of India ,and gurubhakthy,vishnubhakthy and upanishada combined (given in my spiritual autobiography-patheya). The sufi literature of Punjab is rich in jelal(power or sakthy),jemal(beauty or soundarya)and kemal (wisdom or shivam)The village life,the rustic language of love and wisdom flowing from the sufi is rich in sidhabhasha or sandhyabhasha of the sidhayogins of the vraj and is comparable to the premabhakthy of Indian musical traditions.
•The silent strong asserive and accomodative aesthetic musical language of Meerabai and Bahinabhai,of andaal and of the other vaishnavi women has to be viewed in this new light,applicable to the 21st century women who have developed both cognitive and emotive functions equally,and who have a university education and means of livelihood of their own and a freedom to choose what she wants.,and what she can contribute to the society and to the world.Education need not always be equated with culture since all educated people are not cultured..Modern Woman is not a traditional passive sufferer who needs sympathy,but a cognitive,emotive human being,who can give love and compassion and wisdom and knowledge and save the society and the world from disaster..
•According to Bertrand Russel three passions that make human life meaningful are, overwhelmingly strong longing for everlasting love,search for absolute wisdom,compassion for the suffering world”-(premabhakthy,gnaana and karuna)All these are combined in Indian cultural heritage,and the scientific /intellectual acumen of a Gargi,the Nonattachment and thirst for knowledge of a Maithreyi and Manimekhala,the virakthy and love for Guru and God of the different saints,are all to be viewed by the academics of the modern universities in a different light,instead of repeating the same old pallavi that it is brahmanical and conservative.The fact is ,it is not at all brahmanical or conservative,but very practical and for the common man,and for everyone who wants to live a fruitful happy life in society.,serving their fellow beings.
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In later Marathi literature Even the puritans/nationalists leaned on the romantic for gratification and allegory.Ravikiran mandal .a group of poets allowed love to bloom into a domestic virtue Ramabhai Ranade’s autobiography provides a portrait of her husband M.G Ranade Mrs Malathy Bedekar (intimate truths of the woes of the awakened woman)Mrs Geeta Sane ,ms mukthabai dixit,kamalabai tilak (stories of middleclass homes)kusumavathi deshpande (poetic and critically balanced sketches)are other women who came out with autobiographies.
Konkani literature
Konkana,the name of Renuka ,wife of jmadagni and mother of parasurama is given to the konkan coast and to the language spoken by a few and the written traditions of konkani is still very young though the oral tradition is as old as the western coast and the Bhaarath itself.
Renuka was a princess married to a very angry ,saintly husband and had a suppressed emotional life because of which she was attracted to the erotic emotive plays of the royal yaadava prince kaarthaveerya and for which she was killed by her husband and a dutiful son.Though she was given a second life,and given the status of the mother of the entire Bhrigu/naaga dynasty ,the fact remains that she was a victim of domestic assault .The story is a eyeopener to us that behind every devi figure and cult is a woman who has suffered a lot in life.since Renuka belonged to the Goudadesha and her husband Jamadagni to the saraswathidesha the konkan coast is also the Goudasaraswathadesa.The coastal region of the Bhaarathdesa.It is as old as the oral traditions of India.
And for sindhi,I have to make a comment about the captions of my major works-sudhasindhu ,brahmasindhu and padmasindhu.Sindhu is ocean .Bhaarath was called sindhuhimachaladesa or sindhudesa by foreigners and Heradotus calls the soft linen from sind as sindhon.It was Sindhu which became Hindu (sindhia-India)by the peculiar pronounciation of the foreign traders of the west.The great traditions and dravida civilizations that existed in Harappa,Mohenjodaro and Lothal are the relics of the cultural heritage of the whole of India.
We need better communications for better understanding of each other for better international and national integration and if the academies can take up translations of worthy works (which will promote culture and goodwill,national and international integration)it would be welcome to all.And I thank the sahityaacademi and the Kochin university for giving me this opportunity to raise my thought processes in front of an august gathering of fellow women writers.
References
1.G.N.Devy:AFTER AMNESIA .Orient longman,1995,pg 64-65.
2.Calicut medical college magazine 1991
3. Globalisation and gender.Development perspectives and intervention :prepared for women in development and gender equity division ,policy branch of Canadian International development agency byAngela keller –Herzog.discussion paper 3 by Thomas Harrison (UTY College London .Herodotus conception of foreign languages)
4.Women’s world –A global free speech network of women writers (1994)The gender and censorship project in India .A ten-language research project with ASMITHA
5.uma chakrobarthy :Whatever happened to the vedic dasi?orientalism,nationalism and a script for the past. Pge 45 .-Recasting women .Essays in colonial history.ed Kumkum sanghari and sudesh vaid.
6.cultural heritage of India.Sriramakrishna math publication.
7.Adivasi assertion in South Gujrath:the Devi movement of 1922-23,David Hardiman:subaltern studies 3 .writings on south Asian History and society(3).ed Ranajit Guha.oxford India paperbacks.
8.Indian writing in English.Sreenivasa Iyengar Contemporary Indian literature,a symposium .Sahitya academy New Delhi1957.
9.Freedom of speech in cyberspace in India:Malini S.Bhattacharya:http://cseser.eng.scu.edu/student/webpages.
10Protovedic .Bharatheeya continuity theory of languages,S.Kalyanaraman & Mayuresh Kelkar.Thursday.Nov 3.2005.http://protovedic.blogspot.com/2005/10/protovedic continuity.
11 Vaishnavi:women and the worship of Krishna,ed by steven j.rosen.Motilal Banarasi das publishers.
12.The spirituality of music,Selina Theilman.A.P.H.Publishing corporation.2001.
13 The beloved(Re)visited:16th European conference on modern south Asian studies.Dept of sociology.Edinburgh uty.Amina Yaquin.
14.Prayogavaada.http://languages.iloveindia.com/hindi/html.;also ref no:8,pge 87(Hindi literature,S.H.Vatsyayanan)
15.Bahinabai,the ordinary life of an exceptional woman or,the exceptional life of an ordinary woman of Columbia uty and the director of the Hinduja Indic research center..,Mary Mc Gee (Ref no.11)
Dr suvarna nalapat
www.nalapat.com
INTRODUCTION:
One of my colleagues once asked:”Suvarna,How old are you? I said,may be 6000 years or may be older.When I think and involve in the intellectual pursuits of research into the human history,I am ageless,timeless.When I give a lecture or a speech , I am 60 years (chronological age)and when I play with infants and children I am their age,and when I enjoy music I am seventeen”.In short , I do “live in the present”.Because of this ,my language with different people appears different.But yet I am a total ,complete human being with my own visions,experiences,missions in life and cognitive ,emotive functions wellbalanced.If I talk as a pathologist/astronomer/philosopher to this gathering or to my grandchild my language becomes unintelligible to the audience.This makes a gap or a distancing due to lack of communications
.Who is the woman in literature?The Poet/novelist/shortstorywriter/activist turned autobiographist/prose writer/social critic/university research scholars who produce a high quantity of serious writing ??And which are the western regional languages of India?Should not we include kannada and Tamil and Punjabi ,Malayalam and Hindi as well since these are also spoken in the western coastal belt and the konkan coast?And finally have I got any contact with the literature of the last two decades in Gujrati,konkani,marathi and sindhi,the four languages selected for the seminar?When I asked these questions to myself,I had a surprising answer.Among all these insufficiencies there is a thread of unity ,flowing from the rich traditions of India,of which I am a part and parcel and it is with this feeling that I stand before you to deliver the presidential address..
:”A culture’s selfawareness in terms of its law,medicine and grammer is an important precondition for awareness of its aesthetics.The knowledge of medicine ,a system of management of pain ,of anaesthetics,of births and deaths ,is interrelated to poetry ,a system of management of pleasure ,of aesthetics and of creation”(1)Thus wrote G.N.Devy in AFTER AMNESIA.
As a medical professional and an advocate of music as the panacea for all human ailments and for holistic development of an integrated personality,in an aesthetically anaesthetic medium of alleviation of pain and suffering of humanity, I can vouchsafe that life becomes beautiful and artistic with literature and music ,but communicating this new idea to the already prejudiced society was not that easy or artistic..In 1991 when yamuna,a student of mine , and me planned the calicut medical college magazine,we had planned it with a humanistic and a womanoriented approach,( we elected universal ideas,valuebased education,management of medicine and of human life,the Gandhian ideals ,women in Malayalam literature and in science subjects especially in medicine)and the magazine began with the quote from Koran,”I was as a germ concealed,Me Thy burning ray revealed”,and ended with the famous nationalistic quote of Tagore,praying for awakening of our country into the heaven of freedom (2).Every human being has a dream.When we think of our dreams,and communicate them to the outside world,the dreams come true .To think and communicate is to create.The modern Indian women are thinking,creating,and are actively participating in every field where their male counterparts are active ,yet they remain the marginalized.How does this happen ?The reason probably is that we are separated by our concepts of different classes,races,languages,cults and religions etc.Of these ,the language is one of the barriers that keeps the Indians apart..As Herodotus(3) said,the determinant of Greek identity is the Greek language,and he calls the foreigners barbaroi(the babble of foreign speech)The Arab dictionary also speaks of the nonarab speaking foreigners ae-je-ma(barbarian).The polish people laugh at chechs saying that they speak polish as spoken by a 5 year old boy or as if there is a potato in the mouth.Multilingualism of Mithradates and Cleopatra(they knew 25 languages)is awed,respected and at the same time feared by the foreign invaders like Romans.India being a land of many languages ,a trilingual pattern with the regional language,Hindi and English as the communication languages and Sanskrith and Tamil as the oldest languages for study of culture and heritage would be of use for meaningful communication . Women’s world ,a global free speech network of women writers formed in 1994,has a 10 language research project with Asmita the purpose of which is to identify how genderfaced censorship in a range of social and cultural mechanism that invalidate women’s experience and exclude them from political discourse ,is far more pervasive and far more difficult to control than official suppression.The silencing of women ,the use of systematic force to ensure silence ,is probably for maintaining patriarchal power ,according to the five women who lead the research(4)
Krishna /devi cults (sociopolitical/spiritual implications)
Uma chakravarthy (Ref :5 pge 45)has conflicting opinions when she says that the real fall of Indian women came with the growth of the Krishna cult and yet narrates the contributions of saraladebi in Bengal and of Pandita Ramabhai of Maharashtra ,to the contemporary society(the former called Kaali since she was a challenge to males and the latter saraswathy because of her scholarship ),both were highly religious and spiritually inclined.The bhakthy traditions bring out the inner woman in Vaishnav traditions as we will illustrate with Mirabai and Bahinabai.The 5 types of yogins (Prathamakalpika,madhubhoomika,pragnajyothy,athikranthabhavaneeya and chithavimukthy)and the different stages of right cognition (yathamaana,vyathiraka,ekendriya,vaseekara,aparavairagya and paravairagya)are comparable according to yoga philosophy(6 .chap 4. )and Meera practicing layayoga through musical/lyrical creativity and naadalayayoga in onepointed ekagratha of dhyaana was an advaithin,a yogin par excellance.Therefore,the status of Meera did not fall,but arose with Krishna cult.This is true of many a woman in India practicing vaishnav raagaanuga bakthy.
The Amma or Matha cult is very popular in India.Even during the nationalist times there are several instances of the divine hand intervening in the nationalist projects.The Devi movement in 1922 in Gujrat and the ADIVASI upsurge following it is one example.The adivasis listened to the devi(salahbai),even went into a trance,and followed each of the devi’s commands.The main commands were abstain from meat and alcohol,take bath daily,clean with water after defecating,release goats and chicken kept for sacrificial killing,boycott liquor dealers and landlords.The devi asked them to take the vows in Gandhi’s name ,to wear khadi cloths and to attend schools.The collector of Surat district A.M.Macmillan noted that the impact of the Devi continued and because they stopped the alcoholism there was marked improvement in their economical status and the epidemic was controlled..He could close 13 liquor shops in Mandvi Taluka and one in Bardoli and one in Valod Mahal.The Devi movement in South Gujrat had many features in common with the other parts of India during late 19th and 20th century.If we take up the social,economic,and political background of such movements the meaning and significance of the reform programme and the educational importance of it In 1922 the Mangala koli fisherfolk had a smallpox epidemic and women of the tribe used to get possessed by the Goddess with healing properties.These women possessed of the devi were called salah(advice)bhai(women of God).Knowing this,the political worker,the lady who was a Gandhian freedom worker ,and nationalist either acted as a medium who raised the collective grievances of an ethnic community ,enriching the consciousness of the individual and the group as Richard Lannoy remarked and it was not a mere chaotic hysteria.(7).Or it may be that she didn’t act but the ethnic custom of the adivasis naturally took her to be a salahbai.Almost similar feelings of the people are being used by religious sects and business oriented people at present (even in Kerala),and the value of it has to be judged very carefully ,weighing the pros and cons of such movements ,the sociopolitical and economic implications and the intellectual background etc.Are these movements expressions of group solidarity and social cohesion and have acted as unifying forces for groups under conditions of social disorganization?Are they representing a serious attempt to establish a new moral order where the old one is destroyed or is unsatisfactory?Have they acted as mediators between the greater and little traditions of India as catalysts? Are they advocating unity and advaitha of people through love and mutual understanding through a peaceful,universal language or inculcating separatism and dwaitha and making enmity between people,quarrels and wars? Are they functioning for monetary purposes or for spiritual and sociopolitical and intellectual awakening of the people?
Is it a resistive revitalization where synthesis of dominant and subordinate cultures is poorly worked out,there are serious barriers against integration,and movement develop into a state of violent resistance?or is it an emulative revitalization where the synthesis is better worked out,barriers to integraton are weak,or nonexistent,and the movements are peaceful?Devi movement of Gujrat in 1922 was of the emulative type. Any Godman/Godwoman cult of India/or the world has to be studied in this way,by the intelle tuals and sociopolitical activists.A serious and analytical study of such movements in this light,is good so that both the movement(if the movement is good and worthy and emulative )and the society will gain in the end.,by such impersonal ,intellectual studies.Creativity is not restricted to literature alone,but to life,society,building of a great nation,preservation of worldpeace and culture etc.As a woman concerned with such thoughts ,I stand before you and speak.
Role of Academi in creativity and communication
K.R.Srinivasa iyengar wrote:It is not academis nor trusts nor charters that can ensure the creation of great literature.An authentic work of literature is a man speaking to other men.It is an exchange of pulses ,an unfreezing of our petrified selves so that soul may commune with soul and diverse minds can flow together.The quality of literature must thus ultimately depend on the quality of the individual writer.The more men have the courage to be lonely in their minds ,the more writers cultivate the strength to withstand the pressures of politics,patronage and propaganda or the lure of novelty and the gymnastics of mere techniques ,the more are they likely to succeed in transmuting their ambroisial visions into abiding art.”(8)I believe that when a writer creates a work(which is a great thought )the academis should be able to understand the merit of the work and to communicate it to other national languages so that national and international integration should happen.Translation into English/other regional languages will promote such communication and academi can thus recreate the great work for communication .Communication is a means of promotion of tolerance .Tolerance comes as a natural byproduct of communication.Tolerant citizens with unrestricted flow of thoughts are the foundations of a stable ,adaptable,robust and interesting society according to Malini .S.Bhattacharya.(9)I would add “to a mentally,intellectually and spiritually healthy society”
The works of saratchandrachatterjjee,Bankim chandra ,V.s Khandekar and of Ashapoornadevi are well known to the readers of Malayalam through translations.I must especially speak of the three novels of Ashapoornadevi(prathamaprathisruthy,suvarnalatha and the story of Bakul)which represents the precolonial,colonial and postcolonial status and aspirations of women in India.
Gujrati is spoken in Gujrat,sourashtra and Kutch.Derived from Sanskrit,it has intermediary stages of souraseni prakrith and apabramsa.Kutch or Bhrigukutch of ancient Bharath is connected to the bhriguvansa to which Parasurama belongs and Viswamithra related..And it is the land of Krishna,(the archetypal personality embedded in the human psyche,) where he built the Dwarakapuri.If we use the research method of Bharatha ,with the triad of sruthy-thanthrayukthy,and anubhoothy and replace the constrictive Hegelian dialectics thesis –antithesis –and use the protovedic bharatheeya continuity theory ,(10)we will find that the Chera kings belonging to the Karthaveerya dynasty are the 49th generation from the dwaraka kings (as in the Pathittupathu). The 15th century Bhakthi poet Mirabai ,singing the krishnageethis and padams thus is a part of us too.Why was Meera delineated from her husband’s household while they themselves were Krishna devotees and were well into the Krishna tradition which is thousands of years old in India?It was her inlaws who first compiled ashtapadi as Rasikapriya which means they didn’t have any objection to Krishna and his devotion which is in the Indian archetypal psyche. But The sociopolitical reasons were many.The attitude of Meera ,questioning the traditional widow customs and refusing to act as a widow,the acceptance of Raidas,the leather worker,an untouchable as her Guru,and the relation with the Mughal emperor and his court singer Tansen,are all sociopolitical reasons which we can clearly understand.The fact that she refused to call srivallabha acharya as her Guru and as an avathar of Vishnu was the reason for the Vallabha sect to denounce her as a vaishnavi,three times in a row..That was religious patriarchy.And the fact that she told the Goswamins that there is only one purush ,and that is Krishna ,also was intolerable to the other men(though goswamy could understand her)and all these factors have made Meera powerful,and popular and a legend,and that is why the observation of Uma chakravarthy ,that women of India had downfall with Krishna cult is not acceptable.Moreover Meera refused to behave as a young Rajput widow is supposed to behave,claiming that her husband is not Bhoja but the everpresent evergreen hero,Krishna.The revolt of Meera was sweet and nonaggressive,emulative like the Devi movement of Gujrat during the Gandhi era,and hence peaceful and good for the society.There are still Meerabais inIndia(,10 ,11)and their life and work is studied and appreciated by the foreign writers like steven Rosen and selina Theilman.(western scholars).Indian Academies can do their share to do research on such women who are different from the mainstream political activists of feminist movement and have a discourse of their own.and their effect on the society in which they live and communicate.
Kavisammelans and Mushairas are fairly popular in Gujrati literature.The poems are written in the style of urdu ghazhals and recited at mushairas.Ghazhal means talking to the beloved.The theme is love,either spiritual or erotic.The rekthy or raagabhaava to titillate the males in the kothas,was a later development .Mushaira being an integral part of the ghazal universe is an interactive space where orality and texuality are interspersed with musicality.The padams of Meerabhai have a feminine idiom of spiritual love while the Umrao Jan by Mirza Ruswa (first published in 1905)is that of the Tawaif of the Lucknow courtesan’s erotic love .Amina Yaquin (the beloved re-presented.16th European conference on modern south Asian studies dept of sociology.Edinburg uty.)observes that 90 years later women poets continue to be haunted by the success of Umrao Jan brought closer to public memory by Bollywood’s cinematic adaptation.The visibility of women writers exploded with the progressive writer’s movement and prose queens rose to the top she observes.(13).The aesthetics versus political feminism ,art vs science/logic is finding it difficult to come to terms with such conflicts .
In the same conference Lalita du perron’s paper on Thumri observes the equal devotional and erotic component in the Thumri Thumri also is a courtesan’s music .It uses the Braj bhasha,the dialect spoken by Krishna and the gopis in the vrajbhoomi,and hence has the ubiquitous presence of Krishna ,the lover,employment of themes and imagery are familiar from early Bhakthy poetry and the devotional element persists and survives to the modern age.In it I can find a combination of chaayavada and pragathivaada in equal doses.(Indian romanticism with aesthetics and Indian progressive thought with concern for the socially oppressed.Chayavada is a cross between early romanticism and vedanthic synthesis.Pragahyvaada between late romanticism and Marxian dialectics)
The whore-virgin stereotypes as Lucy Rosenstein speaks of the conflict between the erotic/devotional emotions ,questions even the idealized form of the naayikaabhava (shringar)tradition,because hard core feminists cant accept that .The romanticized view of woman in a man’s home and heart in the poetic canon does not appeal to the hardcore political activist.Yet,the shringar has the most aesthetic quality and one who is wellversed in aesthetics would definitely apprecite the value of it in literature and music.Ghazhal and romantic music is a very private emotion in a universalized style and all devotional literature and music is divine in this universalized sense.They cam e from the countryside folk traditions(subaltern)and became urbanized during the Mughal period ,found a place in the Guru hymns of the Sikhs and sufi colonial postcolonial poetry in Punjab and is very popular during the modern period of globalisation.The association of the bhakthy musical/lyrical traditions with subnational ethnicity,nationalism ,and global awakening gives it a special place in literature in modern times. The socalled”Literature of knowledge” in Gujarati,is very valuable.The gujrat vidyasabha,Maharaja sayajirao uty ,chunilal Gandhi research institute,bharatiyavidyabhavan ,Forbes gujrati sabha have brought out authoritative texts of old manuscripts. The new modern humanistic movements of search of personality found in the journal Pratika(allahabad 1946)and the parimala group of writers brought out the prayogavaada or experimentalism. (14)And in the modern times university educated scholarly women are definitely experimenting with life and society and finding out answers to their individual and collective problems and to the problems of society and the world.
The marathi literature is rich in the saint poet traditions.Gnaneswar,Namdeo,eknath,Tukaram,Ramdas,Muktheswa r came in a row enriching the tradition.The common man sought the heroic ballads and the erotic lavani (like the puram and akam in Tamil)17TH century vaishnavite Bahinabhai lead an ordinary life of a housewife,involved with her household duties,and Mary Gee(15) calls it the ordinary life of an exceptional woman ,or the exceptional life of an ordinary woman,both terms appear to be apt for many of us.As far as I am concerned,a simple ordinary life and the exceptional intellectual,mental(cognitive,emotional)pursuits and the spiritual awakening makes us valuable citizens of the world.Only such people can save the world from disaster,in the present condition.Bahinabhai did not discard her clothes like the Virsaiva saint Akka Mahadevi.She did not merge with God as Aandaal (Tamil )or Meera(Gujarat)She did not announce that Giridhar is her true husband unlike Meerabhai.Not renouncing marriage or motherhood,not discarding the duties (karma)of the ordinary life,she composed autobiographical/devotional hymns revealing her anguish and uncertainty regarding her duties as a wife,and her devotion to her Guru and to God.The abhangaas in her early period of life are showing this dilemma very clearly.Thus Mary finds out that the most honoured woman saint of Maharashtra was a victim of domestic violence in her early life.How she dealt with such conflicts and how her spirituality and theological imagination allowed her to survive ,Mary looks into the religious ,sociopolitical context of Bahinabai’s life.Her dream vision of Tukaram at the age of eleven and the recognition of her as a saint by Jayaram goswami and the insults she had to suffer for it from her husband etc are described in the Book vaishnavi,edited by Steven Rosen(11).Sudra saint Tukharam as sadguru,vitthal as God,her compositions have strong advaithic streaks For her ,sadguru and God is one and vitthal as Hari is her brother,sahodara.While her husband had a very structured patriarchal upbringing,she was influenced both from the teachings of Marathy bhakthy literature and the teachings of advaitha and this lead to the different responses to the domestic crisis in their life.
I think ,the life of Bahinabhai teaches us that worldly life and spiritual life can go together ,without conflict.Indifference to worldly life does not mean withdrawal from it,but a honest ,good,exemplary living within the world.Drawing strength from one’s spiritual knowledge is different from escaping into religion ,which implies weakness.Woman is sakthi,and she need not become weak and immerse in religion,but can draw her strength from cognitive,emotive functions dormant in her spiritiual life ,and that was done by Gargi,Maithreyi and ubhayabharathy.But where are these great women’s works ?Did they ever produce any great work?or even if they produced ,did those oral traditions not preserved,or got suppressed due to the fact that they didn’t have any good disciples/or because they were women?We don’t have answers. And my work on Prasthaanathraya is the view of a woman,a working woman,leading a very ordinary domestic life and a with a highly aesthetic flavour for a richly musical premabhakthy traditions of India ,and gurubhakthy,vishnubhakthy and upanishada combined (given in my spiritual autobiography-patheya). The sufi literature of Punjab is rich in jelal(power or sakthy),jemal(beauty or soundarya)and kemal (wisdom or shivam)The village life,the rustic language of love and wisdom flowing from the sufi is rich in sidhabhasha or sandhyabhasha of the sidhayogins of the vraj and is comparable to the premabhakthy of Indian musical traditions.
•The silent strong asserive and accomodative aesthetic musical language of Meerabai and Bahinabhai,of andaal and of the other vaishnavi women has to be viewed in this new light,applicable to the 21st century women who have developed both cognitive and emotive functions equally,and who have a university education and means of livelihood of their own and a freedom to choose what she wants.,and what she can contribute to the society and to the world.Education need not always be equated with culture since all educated people are not cultured..Modern Woman is not a traditional passive sufferer who needs sympathy,but a cognitive,emotive human being,who can give love and compassion and wisdom and knowledge and save the society and the world from disaster..
•According to Bertrand Russel three passions that make human life meaningful are, overwhelmingly strong longing for everlasting love,search for absolute wisdom,compassion for the suffering world”-(premabhakthy,gnaana and karuna)All these are combined in Indian cultural heritage,and the scientific /intellectual acumen of a Gargi,the Nonattachment and thirst for knowledge of a Maithreyi and Manimekhala,the virakthy and love for Guru and God of the different saints,are all to be viewed by the academics of the modern universities in a different light,instead of repeating the same old pallavi that it is brahmanical and conservative.The fact is ,it is not at all brahmanical or conservative,but very practical and for the common man,and for everyone who wants to live a fruitful happy life in society.,serving their fellow beings.
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In later Marathi literature Even the puritans/nationalists leaned on the romantic for gratification and allegory.Ravikiran mandal .a group of poets allowed love to bloom into a domestic virtue Ramabhai Ranade’s autobiography provides a portrait of her husband M.G Ranade Mrs Malathy Bedekar (intimate truths of the woes of the awakened woman)Mrs Geeta Sane ,ms mukthabai dixit,kamalabai tilak (stories of middleclass homes)kusumavathi deshpande (poetic and critically balanced sketches)are other women who came out with autobiographies.
Konkani literature
Konkana,the name of Renuka ,wife of jmadagni and mother of parasurama is given to the konkan coast and to the language spoken by a few and the written traditions of konkani is still very young though the oral tradition is as old as the western coast and the Bhaarath itself.
Renuka was a princess married to a very angry ,saintly husband and had a suppressed emotional life because of which she was attracted to the erotic emotive plays of the royal yaadava prince kaarthaveerya and for which she was killed by her husband and a dutiful son.Though she was given a second life,and given the status of the mother of the entire Bhrigu/naaga dynasty ,the fact remains that she was a victim of domestic assault .The story is a eyeopener to us that behind every devi figure and cult is a woman who has suffered a lot in life.since Renuka belonged to the Goudadesha and her husband Jamadagni to the saraswathidesha the konkan coast is also the Goudasaraswathadesa.The coastal region of the Bhaarathdesa.It is as old as the oral traditions of India.
And for sindhi,I have to make a comment about the captions of my major works-sudhasindhu ,brahmasindhu and padmasindhu.Sindhu is ocean .Bhaarath was called sindhuhimachaladesa or sindhudesa by foreigners and Heradotus calls the soft linen from sind as sindhon.It was Sindhu which became Hindu (sindhia-India)by the peculiar pronounciation of the foreign traders of the west.The great traditions and dravida civilizations that existed in Harappa,Mohenjodaro and Lothal are the relics of the cultural heritage of the whole of India.
We need better communications for better understanding of each other for better international and national integration and if the academies can take up translations of worthy works (which will promote culture and goodwill,national and international integration)it would be welcome to all.And I thank the sahityaacademi and the Kochin university for giving me this opportunity to raise my thought processes in front of an august gathering of fellow women writers.
References
1.G.N.Devy:AFTER AMNESIA .Orient longman,1995,pg 64-65.
2.Calicut medical college magazine 1991
3. Globalisation and gender.Development perspectives and intervention :prepared for women in development and gender equity division ,policy branch of Canadian International development agency byAngela keller –Herzog.discussion paper 3 by Thomas Harrison (UTY College London .Herodotus conception of foreign languages)
4.Women’s world –A global free speech network of women writers (1994)The gender and censorship project in India .A ten-language research project with ASMITHA
5.uma chakrobarthy :Whatever happened to the vedic dasi?orientalism,nationalism and a script for the past. Pge 45 .-Recasting women .Essays in colonial history.ed Kumkum sanghari and sudesh vaid.
6.cultural heritage of India.Sriramakrishna math publication.
7.Adivasi assertion in South Gujrath:the Devi movement of 1922-23,David Hardiman:subaltern studies 3 .writings on south Asian History and society(3).ed Ranajit Guha.oxford India paperbacks.
8.Indian writing in English.Sreenivasa Iyengar Contemporary Indian literature,a symposium .Sahitya academy New Delhi1957.
9.Freedom of speech in cyberspace in India:Malini S.Bhattacharya:http://cseser.eng.scu.edu/student/webpages.
10Protovedic .Bharatheeya continuity theory of languages,S.Kalyanaraman & Mayuresh Kelkar.Thursday.Nov 3.2005.http://protovedic.blogspot.com/2005/10/protovedic continuity.
11 Vaishnavi:women and the worship of Krishna,ed by steven j.rosen.Motilal Banarasi das publishers.
12.The spirituality of music,Selina Theilman.A.P.H.Publishing corporation.2001.
13 The beloved(Re)visited:16th European conference on modern south Asian studies.Dept of sociology.Edinburgh uty.Amina Yaquin.
14.Prayogavaada.http://languages.iloveindia.com/hindi/html.;also ref no:8,pge 87(Hindi literature,S.H.Vatsyayanan)
15.Bahinabai,the ordinary life of an exceptional woman or,the exceptional life of an ordinary woman of Columbia uty and the director of the Hinduja Indic research center..,Mary Mc Gee (Ref no.11)
women in sciences
WOMEN IN SCIENCES
In the history of mankind ,women were always underrated and have been denied access to proper education and exposure to the scientific world .They did not get equal opportunities,like men ,to work in the research activities.But the situation is changed now.Many women have proved that they are at par in intelligence wioth men .and they shine in research projects and sometimes outwits them.Opening out with the problems the women in sciences face in their fields of activity and stressing the unexplored talents of women in sciences,the present discussions would definitely help to encourage women professionals to actively involve in research activities by shedding the fear and uncertainty ,which in turn will help us to better our status in society as scientists and thinkers.
As a continuation of the subject studied as women in medical sciences I had sent a questionnaire to a few eminent women scientists and a few of them are given below .
The discussions focus on four vital questions and their answers .
*1.The future of women in sciences.Research challenges and opportunities.
*2.Shortage of qualified female academicians
*3.changing the status of women in sciences.
*4.some of your personal experiences in your field of work.
Participants are Dr Sathiavathy ,the director of ICMR ,Dr Ayisha Guharaj ,the DME,Dr Sara Vargheese ,pathologist and educationist,and Dr (Mrs )M.Lalithambika.The questinnaire was prepared and sent by Dr Suvarna Nalapat.
1.The future of women in sciences –research challenges and opportunities.
Dr Sathiavathy:
During the last two decades the number ,range and scope of women scientists in India have shown a definite upward swing .In most science fields ,women have been exposed to enough opportunities and challenges particularly after reaching a certain level/status in their chosen field,depending on their own drive/ambition and ability to exploit opportunities.
A. In the field of general science particularly related to teaching ,however there still seems to be some kind of discrimination against women (in science as well as other areas)mainly because of the traditional distrust towards women’s ability as well as a lack of selfconfidence among women themselves.I do not believe however that there is overall shortage of qualified academicians.In my personal view ,whenever such a shortage has occurred it is mainly at the higher executive level and not at the lower or middle levels.It is mainly because women in India ,are still saddled with the dual responsibilities of handling efficiently their career as well as homes.An efficient woman executive(scientist or otherwise)is expected to run her home as efficiently ,whereas this is not expected of a man(efficient or otherwise)!!!
Many women therefore curb their ambitions and even sacrifice their careers to allow the husband to reach the top of his career(by not opting for promotions,refusing transfers ,or even resigning the job if circumstances so demand.)
B.Women scientists in general and biomedical scientists in particular have come to occupy important status and also play significant role in the mainstream of S&T activities in the last two decades.At present ,there are quite a few women professors and heads of departments and a few heads of organizations /agencies and even women vice chancellors in India.While individual experiences of women scientists may marginally differ from one situation to another and from one field to another ,in general,however ,women has been recognized as a force to reckon within the scientific field.In the field of medical sciences ,from the outset,among the clinical disciplines ,two areas were traditionally identified as eminently suitable for women viz.,obstretics and gynecology ,and paediatrics(which basically deal with women and children as patients).It is only in the last two decades that women medical scientists have dared to venture into the hitherto maledominated clinical disciplines ,such as general surgery,cardiothoracic surgery ,E.NT,Radiology etc.In the field of basic medical sciences such as physiology ,Anatomy,pharmacology,pathology ,microbiology,biochemistry etc however ,there has been no discrimination between the sexes.There is no forum /body dealing with the problems of women medical scientists in India,although there are a few bodies exclusively for women scientists ,in general.
The future of women scientists in India ,therefore,has to be shaped by the women concerned themselves.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The general consensus is that women cannot do much in science and research.Research is the sheet anchor in the scientist’s career.The academic pursuit is maintained only by posing research questions.A woman’s identity as a scientist is the least outspoken in the contemporary society.She is well earmarked for many other jobs,which needs the soft touch and tender care –the nursing,receptionist,confidential assistant and such jobs.Th etraditional role of women is to reproduce and to be the nodal unit of the family .In addition to this,the working women has to concentrate on her official duties also.Neither in the home nor in the office she is free to have a relaxed and academically searching mind to develop herself as a scientist.Added to this is the patriarchal relations of the society which suppress the needs and freedom of women.In the midst of these familial and social life the scientist woman has to develop her career.Thanks God!Still there is a long list before us of those: a few examples are Madam curie,Sheila Sherlock,cicely Williams,Barbare Machuthode etc.Though the list is very long ,on scrutiny we see that a few of them are unmarried or at least have an extraordinarily understanding husband.]Because women in general have more concentrating power and perseverance,women scientists make better achievements than their opposite sex inpar.Because they know the family problems better,their approach to scientific queries is more humane and their social commitment ,deeprooted.This results in covetable academic achievements ,because they are the least politicized ,their research findings are the least biased.Research about women in science should critically analyse the patriarchic dominance of man in society.May be in medicine,psychology,engineering,and agriculture.In all these fields ,patriarchal influence should be questioned.
The scope for further research is unlimited.Special problems faced by women scientists –limitations,familial lives,social lives,negligence and discriminations and the basis of gender ,special advantages in doing scientific work all should be studied in depth.
Dr (Mrs )M.Lalithambika:I feel the future of women in scientific research is definitely bright.The best brains both men and women choose mostly science as their field of interest-medical,engineering or basic sciences like mathematics,physics,chemistry,life sciences etc.But 95% of them ,once a career is chosen,as ateacher or an employee in a factory or an industry loose interest and opportunity for a research career.Only those who are employed in Research organizations pursue research seriously.In many research organizations like Indian Institute of science ,Bangalore,IITs,NCL,Poona,VSSC Trivandrum the percentage of women scientists is steadily increasing.(These are some organizations I am familiar with.).
Dr Sarah Vargheese:Future of women in sciences especially in research is very promising.
1.The policy of government of India is encouraging women in various walks of life is conducive for research.It is very suitable for the Indian women since it could combine their dual responsibilities of home and the job especially if some degree of flexibility is given and if the goal is achieving objectives and not work place or time.However help and support from th eorganisation so that the family unit is not affected should gain priority in such jobs.The long term effect of granting this support wil be beneficial especially with the small family unit.
2.The mental makeup of the Indian woman for hard work ,discipline and dedication certainly suits job related to research
3.The highly qualified women could be encouraged to take up assignments ,and projects in research so that it may not affect the dual responsibility of the home and job.
4.Educated women are increasing in number especially in the metropolitan cities an dtheir talents are not being tapped by the maledominated society.
5.opportunities are many especially when research an ddevelopment in various fields like industries an dother academic activities are manifold and it is for the woman to find out about these areas and accept it as a challenge ,and on the part of government organizations to plan out such activities for women.
2.SHORTAGE OF QUALIFIED FEMALE ACADEMICIANS
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The general feeling in our society is that certain professions are for women an dcertain are for men.A few examples of those earmarked for women are nurses,air-hostess,teacher,receptionist,stenographer etc.Among these ,the university teachers are the ones to become academicians .Many of the female academicians have proved themselves to be the best academicians.The academicians like U.R.Ananthamoorthy are quiting from the administrative positions whereas the females retain such posts showing better patience an d tolerance.
Even in the same profession –as for example the medical profession,there is a feeling that Forensic medicine ,surgery and orthopaedics are specialities where females are poor performers .But nowadays females have proved to be excellent in these professions also.Many have written standard textbooks also.Some institutions are in shortage of sincere and honest academicians and the departmental work becomes a sheer mess.The weakness of men academicians serves the department sto the bottom,.Some of them are alcoholics.Some are “too social”that they are never seen in the department.Some are too busy politicians that they seldom get time to do their professional job.At least few of them are too much politicized to become equally controversial also.These weaknesses which create a lot of chaos in the department seldom affects the female academicians and the only way to save our academic departments is to bring them to the top,.
Dr Lalithambika:Since our society gives a lot of importance for marriage ,the girl’s first preference is to get married.For a proper alliance a permanent job (which should be transferable in certain cases and nontransferable in others)is preferred.Once married,they are confronted with lot of family problems.They are not able to continue the pursuit for excellance.this is true for ladies in every field,and particularly in the academic activity,where pursuit for excellance is essential for a successful career.
Dr Sarah Joseph:There is certainly shortage of qualified women academicians because:
1.The whole system is maledominated.
2.The social academic credibility for women is in a way full of pitfalls.
3.The family responsibility and the drop in joint family has lead to the small family units so that the dual responsibility of the women lead to problems so that many women are not able to realize and achieve their goals with their talents.
3.CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN IN SCIENCES.
Dr Lalithambika:Women’s status in science is improving.In fact it is worth mentioning that in the Kerala science congress held in February 1990,at Trivandrum ,more than 50% of the technical presentations were by ladies.
In the In dian science congress held held recently among the four honoured scientists ,one was a woman.
Dr Sarah Vargheese:Yes.There is certainly a change in the status of women in sciences but still the maledominated society do not give adequate social standing for women scientists.Moreover the women too,shy away from such academic fields due to family responsibility and poor support from their spouses and from the society.The social set up in India is still way behind and only very few women utilize their education and talents.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The status of women in society was of a provider ,protector and caretaker in the family.In the primitive tribal society women were center of all worship.In the matrilineal society the women was the center of property inheritance.The feudalist class considered women as a material wealth-the beautiful ladies as chauffeurs of the upper class lords and the working class women as the oppressed group to work and procreate a neverending capital.The industrialist society also tries to exploit women by considering her as biologically and socially submissive.Even in the present day transitional society ,stories of torturing womanhood is a very common reality around us.The woman’s oppression is justified by the supposed biological inferiority.
Th emajor civilizations have fallen down and the universe is under the influence of western culture and modern science and technology .The global threat of nuclear catastrophe exists.The problem of overpopulation,the gap between the haves and have-nots ,the healthy and the unhealthy,and the exploiters and the exploited,are becoming more and more wide.Overpopulation,industrial technology,and overexploitation of nature have contributed in various ways to degeneration.Thank God,a woman only wrote the book “the silent spring”which discusses a part of this reality.
The feudalist way of oppressing the women is still seen in certain parts of the society.It is said that what is called Masculine and Feminine psychology is not so much rooted in biological difference between man and woman but are essentially consequences of the social order prevailing under patriarchy.
Thanks to the feminists,though not to the extant of extreme fetichism ,it has certainly explored a few social evils to the light.The story of Rip Van Vincle was brought to light by the feminist group only.Other factors contributing to th eupliftment of status of women are universal education ,trade union movements and reservations for women in the public sector.
4.SOME OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN YOUR FIELD OF WORK
Dr sathiavathy: As stated earlier,the personal experiences of women scientists depend upon the specific environments and situations/circumstances in which a particular woman scientist worked during the formative years of her career.I did most of my postgraduate and postdoctoral work at the Banarus Hindu University,Varanasi,(which is rather a backward place in common with other parts of eastern U.P)where women do face considerable difficulties due to male chauvanism.I did encounter harassment firstly because ,at that time,I was not married(which was considered strange by UP.Wallas)and secondly my earlier research on Gum guggul was considered to constitute a “breakthrough”in scientific evaluation of Ayurvedic concepts /remedies and therefore aroused considerable jealousy ,rivalry etc.It was mainly a sense of commitment ,strengthened by a determination to succeed against all odds that made me go through this difficult period.This experience ,however,endowed me with adequate toughness and prepared me for the future challenges in my scientific career and to know what a successful career woman need to expect throughout her career.
After getting into the mainstream of biomedical research as a career ,in India,while I myself have not faced any specific instance of discrimination as awoman (particularly in promotional avenues ,opportunities etc)there have been occasions when I am left with a distant feeling that a woman scientist is not always given due credit for her own merits/abilities,but is subjected to a sort of supercilious reaction from male colleagues that“ because one happens to be a woman ,success has perhaps been easier “.Thus even when a woman scientist has reached the top by her individual merit,there are instances where her colleagues (male as well as females)pass it off as due to the use of feminine “guiles”,”influence””luck”or other factors not related to one’s individual merit.I am afraid however that partly this is due to the behaviour and attitude of some of the woman scientists themselves.
To one like me ,who was born in a family of several children (mainly male siblings)sex differentiation was never encountered as a problem at home or even in education to the undergraduate level.It is only after reaching a particular level/status that I became conscious of being a ‘WOMAN SCIENTIST”AND HENCE TREATED DIFFERENTLY.
Strangely ,however,in India,men do not normally express surprise when they meet successful women scientists occupying a top position.In my dealings with male foreign scientists ,however,I was always been amazed (and often annoyed)by their expression of surprise ,disbelief and even shock when they realize that they did not expect to meet a woman in that position!On such occasions ,when I asked why the gentleman was so surprised,the incredible answer was that,”but in all your letters,you sounded so efficient ,confident and professional.like a man!”
More often than not,however ,in the course of my routine work,I am not conscious of the fact that I am a woman scientist.It is only instances of male chauvanism and female rivalry that remind me of the fact that I am a woman scientist!
(I,Dr Suvarna Nalapat share exactly the same views as Dr Sathiavathy in these matters.)
Dr Sarah Vargheese:On an overall basis ,I would consider my personal experiences as fairly fruitful.In my early academic life,there was certainly preferential treatment towards men so that there was delay in my academic career.However ,gradually though there was considerable family responsibilities and male dominance in the activities ,I was able to partially express myb talents in my professional life.In the administrative set up though there were some problems initially ,gradually there was considerable cooperation and I would say confidently that there was absolutely no discrimination towards me.In fact I would put it as “better co-operation due to psychological reasons from men towards women”.
This does not mean that there have not been problems especially in the family front which occasionally has given me a sense of guilt because I am working.However,this might have occurred even if I would not have been working.These learning experiences of a working woman with dual responsibilities certainly calls for greater talents ,abilities,and hard work and with support from the family ,political setup and the organizations more women could contribute to the progress of science.
Dr Lalithambika:I started my research career at IIT Kanpur,accepted a job as scientist in National chemical laboratory,Pune (one of the laboratories under the council of scientific and industrial research).Nearly 10 years back,I took a transfer to regional research laboratory .Trivandrum .In all these places ,I got all opportunities a man could get.Never di dI experience any discrimination.As per the charter of the laboratory presently I am working in the utilization of the local resources (clay and other ceramic raw materials).Since my group can transfer our funding to industries the industries appreciate our work .This gives job satisfaction.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The most memorable occasion in my community health practice was an event of health education to the train travelers.I repeatedly contacted them ,and advised them to stop tobacco chewing and smoking .Just because of my counseling they stopped smoking and changed their lifestyle.Some of them are still in contact with me .I think changing the lifestyle by at least one person by the influence of me is a great achievement in my life.
Similarly I had the experience of sharing the suffering of the people ,when a gastroenteritis epidemic exploded in the area.I was alone and the only medical person available there.Within a short time ,I trained the local persons and even without any facilities I could organize to start intravenous fluid for the needy. Thus I could prevent mortality and further morbidity.The exposure to such extreme poor in their time of suffering was an exciting experience in my life.I still remember how the anxious and deadly faces became normal and lively after rehydration.
The next noteworthy experience in my life was that of winning the confidence and respect of my colleagues in Medical college ,calicut.When I took charge as principal,the institution was full of different groups of people (students as well as staff)with opposing ideas and diverging relations.I spite of this vivid circumstances ,I could develop confidence in my associates and delegate much of my responsibilities to them so that I could lead the institution to much work and prosperity.The most referable instance of this was a survey done by the medical students.The medical students and even a part of the regular staff were motivated to do the survey.They were popular in the campus as the most mischievous group.They have successfully done the survey.This work gave insight to the fact that even the most mischievous student if engaged in some good work can be changed to a good student.
In the history of mankind ,women were always underrated and have been denied access to proper education and exposure to the scientific world .They did not get equal opportunities,like men ,to work in the research activities.But the situation is changed now.Many women have proved that they are at par in intelligence wioth men .and they shine in research projects and sometimes outwits them.Opening out with the problems the women in sciences face in their fields of activity and stressing the unexplored talents of women in sciences,the present discussions would definitely help to encourage women professionals to actively involve in research activities by shedding the fear and uncertainty ,which in turn will help us to better our status in society as scientists and thinkers.
As a continuation of the subject studied as women in medical sciences I had sent a questionnaire to a few eminent women scientists and a few of them are given below .
The discussions focus on four vital questions and their answers .
*1.The future of women in sciences.Research challenges and opportunities.
*2.Shortage of qualified female academicians
*3.changing the status of women in sciences.
*4.some of your personal experiences in your field of work.
Participants are Dr Sathiavathy ,the director of ICMR ,Dr Ayisha Guharaj ,the DME,Dr Sara Vargheese ,pathologist and educationist,and Dr (Mrs )M.Lalithambika.The questinnaire was prepared and sent by Dr Suvarna Nalapat.
1.The future of women in sciences –research challenges and opportunities.
Dr Sathiavathy:
During the last two decades the number ,range and scope of women scientists in India have shown a definite upward swing .In most science fields ,women have been exposed to enough opportunities and challenges particularly after reaching a certain level/status in their chosen field,depending on their own drive/ambition and ability to exploit opportunities.
A. In the field of general science particularly related to teaching ,however there still seems to be some kind of discrimination against women (in science as well as other areas)mainly because of the traditional distrust towards women’s ability as well as a lack of selfconfidence among women themselves.I do not believe however that there is overall shortage of qualified academicians.In my personal view ,whenever such a shortage has occurred it is mainly at the higher executive level and not at the lower or middle levels.It is mainly because women in India ,are still saddled with the dual responsibilities of handling efficiently their career as well as homes.An efficient woman executive(scientist or otherwise)is expected to run her home as efficiently ,whereas this is not expected of a man(efficient or otherwise)!!!
Many women therefore curb their ambitions and even sacrifice their careers to allow the husband to reach the top of his career(by not opting for promotions,refusing transfers ,or even resigning the job if circumstances so demand.)
B.Women scientists in general and biomedical scientists in particular have come to occupy important status and also play significant role in the mainstream of S&T activities in the last two decades.At present ,there are quite a few women professors and heads of departments and a few heads of organizations /agencies and even women vice chancellors in India.While individual experiences of women scientists may marginally differ from one situation to another and from one field to another ,in general,however ,women has been recognized as a force to reckon within the scientific field.In the field of medical sciences ,from the outset,among the clinical disciplines ,two areas were traditionally identified as eminently suitable for women viz.,obstretics and gynecology ,and paediatrics(which basically deal with women and children as patients).It is only in the last two decades that women medical scientists have dared to venture into the hitherto maledominated clinical disciplines ,such as general surgery,cardiothoracic surgery ,E.NT,Radiology etc.In the field of basic medical sciences such as physiology ,Anatomy,pharmacology,pathology ,microbiology,biochemistry etc however ,there has been no discrimination between the sexes.There is no forum /body dealing with the problems of women medical scientists in India,although there are a few bodies exclusively for women scientists ,in general.
The future of women scientists in India ,therefore,has to be shaped by the women concerned themselves.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The general consensus is that women cannot do much in science and research.Research is the sheet anchor in the scientist’s career.The academic pursuit is maintained only by posing research questions.A woman’s identity as a scientist is the least outspoken in the contemporary society.She is well earmarked for many other jobs,which needs the soft touch and tender care –the nursing,receptionist,confidential assistant and such jobs.Th etraditional role of women is to reproduce and to be the nodal unit of the family .In addition to this,the working women has to concentrate on her official duties also.Neither in the home nor in the office she is free to have a relaxed and academically searching mind to develop herself as a scientist.Added to this is the patriarchal relations of the society which suppress the needs and freedom of women.In the midst of these familial and social life the scientist woman has to develop her career.Thanks God!Still there is a long list before us of those: a few examples are Madam curie,Sheila Sherlock,cicely Williams,Barbare Machuthode etc.Though the list is very long ,on scrutiny we see that a few of them are unmarried or at least have an extraordinarily understanding husband.]Because women in general have more concentrating power and perseverance,women scientists make better achievements than their opposite sex inpar.Because they know the family problems better,their approach to scientific queries is more humane and their social commitment ,deeprooted.This results in covetable academic achievements ,because they are the least politicized ,their research findings are the least biased.Research about women in science should critically analyse the patriarchic dominance of man in society.May be in medicine,psychology,engineering,and agriculture.In all these fields ,patriarchal influence should be questioned.
The scope for further research is unlimited.Special problems faced by women scientists –limitations,familial lives,social lives,negligence and discriminations and the basis of gender ,special advantages in doing scientific work all should be studied in depth.
Dr (Mrs )M.Lalithambika:I feel the future of women in scientific research is definitely bright.The best brains both men and women choose mostly science as their field of interest-medical,engineering or basic sciences like mathematics,physics,chemistry,life sciences etc.But 95% of them ,once a career is chosen,as ateacher or an employee in a factory or an industry loose interest and opportunity for a research career.Only those who are employed in Research organizations pursue research seriously.In many research organizations like Indian Institute of science ,Bangalore,IITs,NCL,Poona,VSSC Trivandrum the percentage of women scientists is steadily increasing.(These are some organizations I am familiar with.).
Dr Sarah Vargheese:Future of women in sciences especially in research is very promising.
1.The policy of government of India is encouraging women in various walks of life is conducive for research.It is very suitable for the Indian women since it could combine their dual responsibilities of home and the job especially if some degree of flexibility is given and if the goal is achieving objectives and not work place or time.However help and support from th eorganisation so that the family unit is not affected should gain priority in such jobs.The long term effect of granting this support wil be beneficial especially with the small family unit.
2.The mental makeup of the Indian woman for hard work ,discipline and dedication certainly suits job related to research
3.The highly qualified women could be encouraged to take up assignments ,and projects in research so that it may not affect the dual responsibility of the home and job.
4.Educated women are increasing in number especially in the metropolitan cities an dtheir talents are not being tapped by the maledominated society.
5.opportunities are many especially when research an ddevelopment in various fields like industries an dother academic activities are manifold and it is for the woman to find out about these areas and accept it as a challenge ,and on the part of government organizations to plan out such activities for women.
2.SHORTAGE OF QUALIFIED FEMALE ACADEMICIANS
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The general feeling in our society is that certain professions are for women an dcertain are for men.A few examples of those earmarked for women are nurses,air-hostess,teacher,receptionist,stenographer etc.Among these ,the university teachers are the ones to become academicians .Many of the female academicians have proved themselves to be the best academicians.The academicians like U.R.Ananthamoorthy are quiting from the administrative positions whereas the females retain such posts showing better patience an d tolerance.
Even in the same profession –as for example the medical profession,there is a feeling that Forensic medicine ,surgery and orthopaedics are specialities where females are poor performers .But nowadays females have proved to be excellent in these professions also.Many have written standard textbooks also.Some institutions are in shortage of sincere and honest academicians and the departmental work becomes a sheer mess.The weakness of men academicians serves the department sto the bottom,.Some of them are alcoholics.Some are “too social”that they are never seen in the department.Some are too busy politicians that they seldom get time to do their professional job.At least few of them are too much politicized to become equally controversial also.These weaknesses which create a lot of chaos in the department seldom affects the female academicians and the only way to save our academic departments is to bring them to the top,.
Dr Lalithambika:Since our society gives a lot of importance for marriage ,the girl’s first preference is to get married.For a proper alliance a permanent job (which should be transferable in certain cases and nontransferable in others)is preferred.Once married,they are confronted with lot of family problems.They are not able to continue the pursuit for excellance.this is true for ladies in every field,and particularly in the academic activity,where pursuit for excellance is essential for a successful career.
Dr Sarah Joseph:There is certainly shortage of qualified women academicians because:
1.The whole system is maledominated.
2.The social academic credibility for women is in a way full of pitfalls.
3.The family responsibility and the drop in joint family has lead to the small family units so that the dual responsibility of the women lead to problems so that many women are not able to realize and achieve their goals with their talents.
3.CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN IN SCIENCES.
Dr Lalithambika:Women’s status in science is improving.In fact it is worth mentioning that in the Kerala science congress held in February 1990,at Trivandrum ,more than 50% of the technical presentations were by ladies.
In the In dian science congress held held recently among the four honoured scientists ,one was a woman.
Dr Sarah Vargheese:Yes.There is certainly a change in the status of women in sciences but still the maledominated society do not give adequate social standing for women scientists.Moreover the women too,shy away from such academic fields due to family responsibility and poor support from their spouses and from the society.The social set up in India is still way behind and only very few women utilize their education and talents.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The status of women in society was of a provider ,protector and caretaker in the family.In the primitive tribal society women were center of all worship.In the matrilineal society the women was the center of property inheritance.The feudalist class considered women as a material wealth-the beautiful ladies as chauffeurs of the upper class lords and the working class women as the oppressed group to work and procreate a neverending capital.The industrialist society also tries to exploit women by considering her as biologically and socially submissive.Even in the present day transitional society ,stories of torturing womanhood is a very common reality around us.The woman’s oppression is justified by the supposed biological inferiority.
Th emajor civilizations have fallen down and the universe is under the influence of western culture and modern science and technology .The global threat of nuclear catastrophe exists.The problem of overpopulation,the gap between the haves and have-nots ,the healthy and the unhealthy,and the exploiters and the exploited,are becoming more and more wide.Overpopulation,industrial technology,and overexploitation of nature have contributed in various ways to degeneration.Thank God,a woman only wrote the book “the silent spring”which discusses a part of this reality.
The feudalist way of oppressing the women is still seen in certain parts of the society.It is said that what is called Masculine and Feminine psychology is not so much rooted in biological difference between man and woman but are essentially consequences of the social order prevailing under patriarchy.
Thanks to the feminists,though not to the extant of extreme fetichism ,it has certainly explored a few social evils to the light.The story of Rip Van Vincle was brought to light by the feminist group only.Other factors contributing to th eupliftment of status of women are universal education ,trade union movements and reservations for women in the public sector.
4.SOME OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN YOUR FIELD OF WORK
Dr sathiavathy: As stated earlier,the personal experiences of women scientists depend upon the specific environments and situations/circumstances in which a particular woman scientist worked during the formative years of her career.I did most of my postgraduate and postdoctoral work at the Banarus Hindu University,Varanasi,(which is rather a backward place in common with other parts of eastern U.P)where women do face considerable difficulties due to male chauvanism.I did encounter harassment firstly because ,at that time,I was not married(which was considered strange by UP.Wallas)and secondly my earlier research on Gum guggul was considered to constitute a “breakthrough”in scientific evaluation of Ayurvedic concepts /remedies and therefore aroused considerable jealousy ,rivalry etc.It was mainly a sense of commitment ,strengthened by a determination to succeed against all odds that made me go through this difficult period.This experience ,however,endowed me with adequate toughness and prepared me for the future challenges in my scientific career and to know what a successful career woman need to expect throughout her career.
After getting into the mainstream of biomedical research as a career ,in India,while I myself have not faced any specific instance of discrimination as awoman (particularly in promotional avenues ,opportunities etc)there have been occasions when I am left with a distant feeling that a woman scientist is not always given due credit for her own merits/abilities,but is subjected to a sort of supercilious reaction from male colleagues that“ because one happens to be a woman ,success has perhaps been easier “.Thus even when a woman scientist has reached the top by her individual merit,there are instances where her colleagues (male as well as females)pass it off as due to the use of feminine “guiles”,”influence””luck”or other factors not related to one’s individual merit.I am afraid however that partly this is due to the behaviour and attitude of some of the woman scientists themselves.
To one like me ,who was born in a family of several children (mainly male siblings)sex differentiation was never encountered as a problem at home or even in education to the undergraduate level.It is only after reaching a particular level/status that I became conscious of being a ‘WOMAN SCIENTIST”AND HENCE TREATED DIFFERENTLY.
Strangely ,however,in India,men do not normally express surprise when they meet successful women scientists occupying a top position.In my dealings with male foreign scientists ,however,I was always been amazed (and often annoyed)by their expression of surprise ,disbelief and even shock when they realize that they did not expect to meet a woman in that position!On such occasions ,when I asked why the gentleman was so surprised,the incredible answer was that,”but in all your letters,you sounded so efficient ,confident and professional.like a man!”
More often than not,however ,in the course of my routine work,I am not conscious of the fact that I am a woman scientist.It is only instances of male chauvanism and female rivalry that remind me of the fact that I am a woman scientist!
(I,Dr Suvarna Nalapat share exactly the same views as Dr Sathiavathy in these matters.)
Dr Sarah Vargheese:On an overall basis ,I would consider my personal experiences as fairly fruitful.In my early academic life,there was certainly preferential treatment towards men so that there was delay in my academic career.However ,gradually though there was considerable family responsibilities and male dominance in the activities ,I was able to partially express myb talents in my professional life.In the administrative set up though there were some problems initially ,gradually there was considerable cooperation and I would say confidently that there was absolutely no discrimination towards me.In fact I would put it as “better co-operation due to psychological reasons from men towards women”.
This does not mean that there have not been problems especially in the family front which occasionally has given me a sense of guilt because I am working.However,this might have occurred even if I would not have been working.These learning experiences of a working woman with dual responsibilities certainly calls for greater talents ,abilities,and hard work and with support from the family ,political setup and the organizations more women could contribute to the progress of science.
Dr Lalithambika:I started my research career at IIT Kanpur,accepted a job as scientist in National chemical laboratory,Pune (one of the laboratories under the council of scientific and industrial research).Nearly 10 years back,I took a transfer to regional research laboratory .Trivandrum .In all these places ,I got all opportunities a man could get.Never di dI experience any discrimination.As per the charter of the laboratory presently I am working in the utilization of the local resources (clay and other ceramic raw materials).Since my group can transfer our funding to industries the industries appreciate our work .This gives job satisfaction.
Dr Ayisha Guharaj:The most memorable occasion in my community health practice was an event of health education to the train travelers.I repeatedly contacted them ,and advised them to stop tobacco chewing and smoking .Just because of my counseling they stopped smoking and changed their lifestyle.Some of them are still in contact with me .I think changing the lifestyle by at least one person by the influence of me is a great achievement in my life.
Similarly I had the experience of sharing the suffering of the people ,when a gastroenteritis epidemic exploded in the area.I was alone and the only medical person available there.Within a short time ,I trained the local persons and even without any facilities I could organize to start intravenous fluid for the needy. Thus I could prevent mortality and further morbidity.The exposure to such extreme poor in their time of suffering was an exciting experience in my life.I still remember how the anxious and deadly faces became normal and lively after rehydration.
The next noteworthy experience in my life was that of winning the confidence and respect of my colleagues in Medical college ,calicut.When I took charge as principal,the institution was full of different groups of people (students as well as staff)with opposing ideas and diverging relations.I spite of this vivid circumstances ,I could develop confidence in my associates and delegate much of my responsibilities to them so that I could lead the institution to much work and prosperity.The most referable instance of this was a survey done by the medical students.The medical students and even a part of the regular staff were motivated to do the survey.They were popular in the campus as the most mischievous group.They have successfully done the survey.This work gave insight to the fact that even the most mischievous student if engaged in some good work can be changed to a good student.
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