The first generation Malayali feminists. Yes. They were real.
[This is an account given by a cashew worker who worked in the Indian Nut Company, Kollam, about a strike they organized in the 1930. Theyi was born in the Kurava community in 1922. She was an eight-year-old at the time of this strike and remembers with great clarity, a strike led by women workers. As retold to Anna Lindberg in Experience and Identity, Lund: Lund University Press, 2001, This strike was probably in 1937.]
Continue reading “A Strike in the Indian Nut Company: Theyi”
Translated by J Devika
A popular singer in communist meetings since the 1940s, P K Medini (1933-) represents the generation of working-class women who entered public life through left mobilization. She was born in Cheeranchira in the Alappuzha district in 1933 as the daughter of Kankaali. Her mother Paappy was a good singer. Her family was active in left union work She had to stop studies in Class 4, and then she became a coir worker at the age of 12 but was nurtured as an artiste by the cultural group formed by the union. Eighty-seven year-old Medini has been much-interviewed and documentaries have been made of her life. She continued her political career and was a panchayath president both at the village and block levels in the 1990s and after. Continue reading “Remembering K Meenakshy: P K Medini”
[This is an essay by the legendary communist singer P K Medini (1933- ) who was a participant in and witness to the massive worker and peasant mobilization in the Alappuzha district in the middle of the twentieth century. Translated by Jacob Cherian, the original appeared in the Mathrubhumi Weekly of 2012. The translation appeared on kafila.online in 2012]
Read the article here.
Translated by J Devika
[From the style it seems that this was probably written by K Saraswathi Amma, and ‘Kumari Saraswathi’ was probably one of her pseudonyms. In this amazing essay, the authors offers a feminist analysis of women’s mass organizations of political parties. It is impossible to disagree with the opening parts of the argument, just as it probably impossible to agree with the last, concluding argument. The latter marks the difference between the first generation of feminists and the present one.] Continue reading “An Organization of Our Own: Kumari Saraswathi on Women Organizing”
Translated by J Devika
[These translated chapters and the excerpt from a third chapter are from the autobiography of the veteran Congress woman Annie Thayyil (Annie Joseph) (1920-1994) (Edangaziyile Kurisu, Kottayam: DC Books, 1990), who was a prominent presence in politics in the Cochin state and among the first women to contest and win the elections in pre-Independence Cochin state. She was a member of the Cochin Legislative Council between 1945 and 1951, but struggled to stay in heavily male-dominated politics, supporting herself through her writing, and often at the brink of penury. She however ran a press, edited a paper and a magazine (Prajamitram and Vanitha) , earned a law degree in between, and served on Central Social Welfare Board, Catholic Congress, and later, on the National Minorities Commission. As a translator of classic literature to Malayalam and a writer, she was also on the executive council of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. Her life was a remarkable quest for lightness and independence, as is evident from these chapters.
But equally interesting — and disturbing — is the dynamics of her relationship with her household help — the subaltern — Velama. The critical history of the power dynamics between women in unfolding Malayali modernity needs to be traced through accounts such as these.] Continue reading “Swimming Hard, Staying Light: Annie Thayyil on Facing the Challenge of Staying Alive”
[This snippet of memory is from Devaki Nilayangode’s essay ‘Moonnu Talamurakal’ in which she remembers the woman pioneer of reformism among the Malayala brahmins, Arya Pallom (Yathra — Kaattilum Naattilum, Mathrubhumi Books, Kozhikode. 2006). Nilayangode was active in the Nambutiri Yogakshema Sabha in the 1940s at a time when many of its prominent activists were leaning more and more towards the left in politics.] Continue reading “Remembering Arya Pallom: Devaki Nilayangode”
[These are excerpts from my translation of her story included in the volume On the Far Side of Memory, New Delhi, OUP, 2018. Lalitambika’s distrust of the repression of the body despite her great admiration for Gandhi was palpable, and this story illustrates it well.] Continue reading “Come Back! : Lalitambika Antharjanam”
[This is an excerpt from my translation of her story included in the volume On the Far Side of Memory, New Delhi, OUP, 2018. ‘Moodupadathil’ is one of her masterful indictments of the unending agonies of Malayala brahmin women subjected to the most restrictive seclusion in the brahmin home, the illam. All these stories, however, desist from portraying these women as passive victims. Each of the tragic female protagonists in these stories show clear signs of agency: the tragedy, for Lalitambika, is not that they are devoid of agency.] Continue reading “The Veiled: Lalitambika Antharjanam”
[This is an excerpt from my translation of her story included in the volume On the Far Side of Memory, New Delhi, OUP, 2018. It is a sharp critique of the reformism among Malayala brahmins, and of Reformer-Man who saw women as mere passive objects of his reformism] Continue reading “Prasadam: Lalitambika Antharjanam”
[This is an early version of my translation of this story included in the volume titled On the Far Side of Memory, New Delhi: OUP, 2018]
[This brilliant take-down of the hypocrisies of men who advanced progressive realism in Malayalam literature of the 1940s, brought Lalitambika many enemies and the equivalent of ‘trolling’ those days, in a ‘reaction-story’ by none other than Takazhi Sivasankara Pillai, who accused her of sexual frigidity] Continue reading “Realism: Lalitambika Antharjanam”
Swatantryavaadini 