[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! ]
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The Position of Women: Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma
[This is an article by Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma (known by her married name, Mrs C Kuttan Nair) appended to her well-known travelogue, A Peep at Europe (Njaan Kanda Europe in Malayalam), written after her tour of Europe in 1935 along with a group of Indian women under the leadership of Mrs Alexandrena Datta, a Scotswoman married to the Indian nationalist Dr s K Datta. It reveals her extraordinary perception of ‘Women’ as a global category and the necessity of establishing a position of equality between women of colonised and coloniser countries in addressing the question of patriarchal oppression. Interestingly, nowhere else in her writing did she evoke the fall-from-golden age narrative of Indian women’s past, or that of the freedoms enjoyed by Nair women! Clearly, these are merely props used to create a speaking position of equality with women of Europe. ‘A Peep at Europe’ is a truly remarkable work, especially for its deep awareness of the structural base of cultural difference, and the ‘politics of friendship’ that it performs. It is now available online, thanks to the Panjab Digital Library. It may be found here. ]
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