[This is a short piece from my translation of Amma’s autobiography Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum (translated as Wayfarer-Woman and the Wayside Lamps, forthcoming from Zubaan, Delhi). Amma was a feminist from the 1930s who, quite removed from her contemporaries, understood women’s emancipation as radical equality — and was punished for it. This piece is especially interesting because in it she responds to a humorist, Sanjayan, who made a sneering remark about her very-popular travelogue, based on her travels in Europe in 1935, titled Njaan Kanda Europe (The Europe I Saw), which was also published in English as A Peep at Europe. He suggested that it needed but one change — of the title, from Njaan Kanda Europe (The Europe I Saw), to Europe Kanda Njaan (I Who Saw Europe)!! The insecurity of modern-educated and reformist Malayali men about confident and individuated women was conspicuous in the remark. The following is Kalyani Amma’s reflections on this incident, written in the 80s, in the late 1980s. The difficulties with recall are obvious, but it is a remarkable work — a tremendous effort at self-assertion in a world that had punished her very severely for the life of ‘lived’ cosmopolitanism that she chose. The English version of the book that aroused so much envy in highly-educated male intellectuals is available online, thanks to the Punjab Digital Library. Here is the link. Please read it! ]
51.
‘The Europe I Saw’ or ‘I Who Saw Europe?’ – This was Sanjayan’s comment about my book[1]. I should have met him personally. But we merely corresponded. He wrote to me first. This was to request me to preside over the Sahitya Parishat – the Malayalam literary conference – that was going to happen soon. I replied to him saying that I would not do it even if he put a gun on my head and threated to shoot. In the place of the signature, I wrote, ‘I who saw Europe!’ The next letter from him was a response to this.
But before I write more about Sanjayan, I must mention the literary conference – the Sahitya Parishath at Thalaserry that was held just before I left for my European tour. This conference was considered ‘old-fashioned’ and the ‘progressives’ who believed so formed their own literary conference in opposition, calling it the literary conference of the Youth – the Yuvajana Sahitya Parishath. Though it was to die an early death, the inaugural meetings were organized with much pomp and noise. The first day of this Yuvajana Sahitya Parishath was presided over by the Headmistress of our school when I had been a student, Draupadi Amma; the President of the second day’s proceedings was the poet Vallathol Narayana Menon. As for the ‘old-hat’ Parishath, the second day’s proceedings were chaired by the poet Ulloor Parameswara Iyer[2], and the first day was presided over by me, solely because of the insistence of the poet G Sankara Kurup[3].
There was one thing common to Draupadi Amma and me: our total ignorance to the intricacies of Malayalam literature. In order to cover up this failing of mine, I resorted to speaking about ‘Social Reform through Literature’. This I did on the strength of the courage that I mustered from the fact that G Sankara Kurup, and also the Congress Leader who had visited us by chance, both read the draft of the speech that I had put together and passed it, saying ‘not bad’.
After my speech, someone read out to that teeming audience, a really obscene and insulting postcard against one of the chief organizers, Moorkoth Kumaran[4], sent to his address. Though it was unsigned it was not hard to guess where it came from.
The Sanskrit scholar Punnasherri Nilakanta Sharma[5] delivered a stinging reply to this postcard in the next day’s session. On top of this, some young people who had been present at the Yuvajana ‘progressive’ Sahitya Parishath appeared at the noon session of the second day’s proceedings of the ‘old-hat’ conference and made some sharp criticisms of some elements of the Yuvajana conference. They remarked that it would have been quite fitting if the presidential addresses of the first day of the two conferences had been switched!
But it was I who suffered because of Nilakanta Sharma’s sharp riposte and the criticisms against the Yuvajana Sahitya Parishath. Is not true combat, the combat between equals? I who was nearly a big zero in the field of Malayalam literature was attacked by a grandee of literature associated with the Yuvajana Sahitya Parishath, without any provocation from my side. One of the statements in my speech was unacceptable to his sense of morality – my claim that “We do not need ‘Sheelavathi’[6] stories that may destroy women’s individuality.” I did not feel that G Sankara Kurup and Kelappan who had read my speech, and those who were present at this conference, had any objection to it. It was a famous writer associated with the Yuvajana Sahitya Parishath who used this as a weapon against me. He found my reference to Sheelavathi obscene; I am sure that he too must have watched the disrobing of Draupadi as a Kathakali performance, just like other people, including me. This gentleman who could not even bear what I said about the story of Sheelavathi, how could he watch the disrobing on the Kathakali stage, how would he enjoy it?
But his criticism was met with sharp opposition from the men themselves. Among these critics, the foremost voice was that of Seetharaman, who was closely associated with Sri Kesari Balakrishna Pillai’s[7] publication. I did not know him personally; only that I had occasionally sent a short story or two to Kesari.
I received Sanjayan when the memory of this Parishath was still fresh in my mind. From my reply to him it had been evident that I did not grant it much importance. The second letter from him was capable of lifting the irritation that I had felt at his lampooning of my book by twisting its title to ‘I Who Saw Europe’. I had not given him a befitting reply back then. But at that time, not only was I free of ire towards him, I even enjoyed it with some friends. But perhaps Ramana Maharshi[8] or Jiddu Krishnamurti may have granted this ‘I’ an importance that I or maybe he himself, was unable to fathom then.
Anyway, was not the untimely death of this highly-talented person a great loss to our land?
[1] ‘Sanjayan’ was the pseudonym of M Ramunni Nair (1903-43), a well-known journalist and satirist in Malayalam of the 1930s. His writings betrayed male fears about young Malayali women demanding higher education and equal voice and space in public life. In a sneering comment about Kalyanikkutty Amma’s account of her European tour Njaan Kanda Europe (‘The Europe I Saw’), he remarked that all the book needed was a change in its title – it should be Europe Kanda Njaan (‘I Who Saw Europe).
[2] Ulloor S Parameswara Iyer (1877-1949) is regarded as one of the three leading lights of early twentieth-century Malayalam poetry, along with Vallathol Narayana Menon and N Kumaran Asan. He was a reputed scholar, administrator, and literary historian.
[3] G Sankara Kurup (1901-1978) was a leading poet and essayist and the first recipient of the highest literary award in independent India, the Jnanapith, in 1965, besides winning many other literary prizes.
[4] Moorkoth Kumaran (1874-1941) was a renowned anti-caste social reformer, humourist, short story writer, novelist, and editor from North Malabar who played a key role in popularizing the critique of caste propagated by Sreenarayana Guru in Malabar.
[5] Punnasherri Nambi Nilakanta Sharma (1858-1934) was a famous Sanskrit scholar and teacher who contributed much to Sanskrit education in early twentieth century Malayali society, producing a generation of brilliant scholars who were his students.
[6] The reference is to a Hindu mythological character who was pointed to as a model of wifely devotion for all women, as a wife willing to debase herself to an extreme extent in order to perform her wifely duty towards her husband.
[7] Kesari A. Balakrishna Pillai (1889-1960) was a literary critic, scholar, journalist, political commentator, and historian who revolutionized Malayalam literature by bringing it into contact with Continental literature and chalking out a political programme for modern Malayalam literature. He was a champion of artificial birth-control and supported the cause of women’s rights quite ardently.
[8] Ramana Maharshi (1979-1950) was a well-known spiritual figure, an ascetic who lived in Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu and later, at Arunachalam.
Swatantryavaadini 