Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 3, Number 3, 2002

Looking for other stories: women’s writing, Self-Respect
movement and the politics of feminist translations

K. SRILATA

‘So, is your book going to be called Women Writing in India Vol 3?’

1

someone joked, while

interviewing me for the post of lecturer in English at a premier academic institution. He was
referring to my forthcoming translation of women’s writing from the Self-Respect movement,
an anti-caste movement launched by Periyar E.V. Ramasami Naicker in 1926.

2

‘Do you have

only women writers in this collection? Can’t a man write with the same depth of insight about
women’s lives? Just look at Tagore! What is so special about this women’s writing? A man can
be a feminist too!’ his collegue, also on the same panel, chipped in.

The panel’s hostility disguised as humour and their invocation of the male feminist apart,

two other factors struck me as signalling something important. First, there seemed to be an
underlying assumption that ‘women’s writing’ was the domain of ‘those feminists’, not of ‘us
folks from literature departments’. Second, there was a refusal to grant literary value to
women’s writing, even as its political edge was sought to be accomodated, passed off as a joke.
This was an effective way of brushing uncomfortable questions aside, questions that might well
threaten the very fabric of ‘Great Literature’.

For me however, this incident pushed to the foreground the problem of disciplinary barriers

which one assumed had died a quiet death some ten years ago, a problem that nevertheless had
continued to surface through the duration of my project at odd moments, publicly as well as
privately. The desire to ‘slot’, to decide once and for all where a piece of writing belonged or
where it came from was, I discovered, very much a creature of the present. Was a book such
as the one I had been working on — an edited translation of women’s writing from the
Self-Respect movement called The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History
(Srilata forthcoming) — best described as a work of translation, a collection of women’s writing
and, therefore, a literary text in some ways, or, as documents of Self-Respect history —
documents which would simultaneously add to and hopefully, alter, existing histories of the
Self-Respect movement?

3

On the one hand, working within the rubrics of ‘women’s writing’, ‘literature’ and

‘translation’ imposed its own, fairly obvious structural limitations. While the interview panel
had seen me as a literature student who had gone straying into women’s writing instead of
being concerned about ‘real literature’, publishers and grant-making agencies tended to slot my
work as a ‘translation’. The current marketability of translated literatures from regional Indian
languages into English, of ‘Indian writing’ might have had something to do with this. But I
could see how my own particular project was just not going to Žt into the rubric of ‘Indian
Writing’. While of course it was not incorrect to describe me as a translator, I did see the risks
involved in slotting my work as a translation. On one end of the spectrum of course, most
people considered translation as an activity that was a low-level kind of an exercise — a mere
question of substituting one word for another and requiring not much more than a knowledge
of two languages. Even where people were a little more willing to take translation seriously,
as more than just a mechanical act, they still saw the primary responsibility of the translator as
one of producing if not a faithful translation but necessarily an aesthetically pleasurable text
that was palatable to those reading it in the ‘target’ language. In other words, it was

ISSN 1464-9373 Print/ISSN 1469-8447 Online/02/030437–12

Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080 /146493702200003754 3

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K. Srilata

unthinkable that you could translate with a different agenda in mind, translate, for instance, as
a feminist. That would have been sacrilege. For then, aesthetics, as deŽned by the literary
establishment, ew out of the window. I found that I was soon mired in discussions on whether
or not my translation was a faithful one. Some experts even suggested that I publish the
original text side by side with the English version. I imagined scholarly looking gentlemen with
magnifying lenses poring over my translation and marking unacceptable words or phrases in
red ink and I shuddered. My identity as a feminist interested in rediscovering and reinterpret-
ing a body of women’s writing that had been lost to the world was brushed unceremoniously
under the carpet. My mandate was to produce a good translation, word for word (the
assumption was that language was transparent and the original text stable in terms of
meaning). In order that the experts could double-check I had to faithfully submit the originals
as well! I realised that a word like ‘translation’ as it was commonly used, had a nicely neutral,
apolitical edge to it especially for publishers. In her book Siting Translation: History, Post-Struc-
turalism and the Colonial Context, Tejaswini Niranjana (1992) has used Benjamin’s work to argue
that the task of the translator is to reveal the orginal’s instability, the fragmented nature of the
text itself. She questions the overwhelming preoccupation with the issue of Ždelity to the source
versus readability in the target language and points out that most scholars concerned with
translation take it for granted that the concepts of reality, knowledge and representation are
unproblematic.

To return to the anectodotal however, when I insisted that my sense of responsibility to the

original was different, that I wanted to include these texts in the Self-Respect canon, if there was
such a thing, to alter existing Self-Respect histories that were largely Periyar-centric,

4

that I saw

my book as a feminist political intervention in some ways, I was met with blank, uncompre-
hending looks.

Things were only slightly better when my work was read by people comfortable with the

idea of ‘women’s writing’. Rightly or wrongly, this term still carried with it a strong sense of
the literary. Not all the pieces in my collection were literary in the narrow sense of the term,
if by ‘literary’ we mean ‘that which has a certain aesthetic sensibility’. For instance, a
considerable portion of the Žrst section was devoted to journal articles and speeches —
conventional historical sources, if you like. The rest of the collection was comprised of Žction
and short stories. Imbued as they were with Self-Respect political ideology and Enlightenmen t
notions of progress and liberation, some of the speeches and essays which I translated such as
Jayasekari’s ‘Women in the Socialist World’, Neelavathi’s ‘Rituals’, ‘Is Widowhood a Question
of Fate?’, ‘Will Educated Women Take the Initiative?’, ‘Is the Bliss of Freedom Not For Us?’ and
‘Women Folk and Self-Respect Principles’, Maragathavalli ’s ‘The Progress of Women’, ‘The
Women’s Movement’ and ‘The Sufferings of the Adidravidas ’ lacked the lightness of touch
which characterised the more ‘literary’ pieces — Kamalakshi’s ‘What is in Store For Us?’and
‘The Ritual of Garuda Sevai’, Janaki’s ‘The Skies Won’t Bring Forth Rain’, ‘Half a Coconut’, ‘A
Bundle of Grass’ and ‘Which Grew Bigger — the Ring or the Body’. Consider, for instance, the
following passage from an autobiographical piece titled ‘Thengai Moodi’ (Half a Coconut) by
Janaki:

Subbammal, my neighbour must have been about twenty eight. I was a young bride of
nineteen. I had joined my husband some six months ago. I had no mother-in-law.
Subbammal had kept me constant company in my new home. The two of us would
Žnish our chores and then sit down together to weave baskets for our betel leaves.
Sometimes, we would clean our rice and the pulses together. But there were days when
we would not do very much — just sit around exchanging gossip. On one such day, we
heard the sound of crackers going off at a distance. (Kumaran, July–August 1930, Vol.
9, No. 1)

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439

The informal tone of the piece and the fact that the writer draws on the experiential lends a
certain intimacy to the work. This intimacy gives way to hard-hitting arguments and debate in
Trichi Neelavathi’s ‘Vidhavaigall Avadu Thalaividiya?’ (Is widowhood a question of fate?) as the
extract below shows:

India is notorious for advocating one justice for men and another for women. Our
orthodox fellow men, it appears, are crafty at according differential treatment to the
sexes. Women are deemed lowly at birth. It is not very surprising therefore, that the law
treats them with contempt. Our people are as obsessed with ‘fate’ as they are with gods
and temples. They claim that everything happens in accordance with the dictates of
one’s ‘talaividhi’ or fate, that nothing can happen contrary to this force, that fate will
override whatever we, as intelligent beings might attempt to do. This one word
‘talaividhi’ has ruined many a life. If the Brahmins protest, ‘Religion has been attacked!’
at the slightest hint of trouble, our people invoke ‘fate’ for everything. This thing called
fate has forced us into slavery. As Self-Respecters, we have to Žght this particular
obsession before tackling any other. Our women are labelled widows and forced to sit
in a corner when they lose their husbands. They do not get to eat tasty food. They are
not allowed to wear good clothes. They are not even permitted to enjoy the breeze!
Their lives are completely circumscribed. There is little space for happiness or pleasure
in their lives. Grief and yearning, that is their lot at all times! Their lives have a hellish
quality about them. They are forced to hide their faces from the world. All around them
is gaiety and happiness. But they cannot partake of either. (Neelavathi 1930)

In undertaking a project of this kind, a project which involved the mapping of women’s
political, literary and personal histories in relation to the Self-Respect movement — I had to
deal with essentially ‘disparate’ sources. If journals belonged to the dusty archives so beloved
of historians, novels belonged to my interview panel interrogators. Located as I was in the
discipline of literature, my own personal sense of adventure came from poking about in the
archives. Yet, I understood equally the importance of the literary project for the historical
project — the necessity of reading the literary for producing a feminist history of the
Self-Respect movement.

Despite Marxist, feminist and post-structuralist critiques of the literary canon and of the

notion of literariness itself, I discovered that a ‘translator’ acquired some measure of re-
spectability only if he or she translated what was conventionally understood to be literary.
Translation itself as a Želd is claimed by the discipline of literature. Therefore, it carries the
burden of having to deal with the literary. As one male critic put it, ‘What is the point of
translating anything if it is not beautiful? Some of the pieces in your collection have too many
rough edges.’

5

My loyalty, however, was not so much to the narrowly deŽned disciplinary

boundaries of ‘literature’ but to Self-Respect history and to a feminist shaping of women’s
writing. For me, these texts were some of the missing pieces in the puzzle of Self-Respect
history.

Self-Respect literature had always staked for itself a special territory. First, the bulk of

Self-Respect writing appeared in Self-Respect journals like Kudi Arasu (The Republic), Puratchi
(Revolution) and Kumaran. The genre of the journal is in itself seen as outside the ambit of
respectable literary production. In the case of the non-Brahmin Self-Respect journal, such a
perception is compounded by the notion that it is a ‘party’ or ‘propaganda’ journal. Self-Respect
journals were also signiŽcantly different from other mainstream journals and newspapers of the
time. Unlike upper-caste journals of the time like Sudesamitran, which are marked as ‘main-
stream’ and ‘nationalist’, the Self-Respect journal is marked as ‘separatist’. What we have to
bear in mind is that the differences between the two kinds of journals — mainstream and

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K. Srilata

Self-Respect arise out of a carefully considered and deliberate fashioning of the latter by
Self-Respect leaders like Periyar.

One of the most signiŽcant thrusts of the South Indian Dravidian movement, especially in

its Self-Respect phase, was the creation of a speciŽcally Tamil Dravidian press as a counter to
the upper-caste nationalist ‘mainstream’ press to which newspapers such as Sudesamitran and
The Hindu belonged. The creation of a non-Brahmin press was part of a much larger political
process by which a non-Brahmin ‘Tamil’ identity was fashioned. This new identity rested not
merely on language but also on culture, religion and indigenous medicine. With the launch of
a number of Self-Respect journals, Kudi Arasu (1925) and Puratchi (1933) being among the most
prominent, the Self-Respect movement created a non-Brahmin public sphere for the Žrst time.
This was indexed by the signiŽcantly large numbers of non-Brahmin and often, speciŽcally
Self-Respect journals which were published at the time. Periyar lauched the Tamil weekly Kudi
Arasu on 2 May 1925, at Erode. This weekly was speciŽcally directed at those non-Brahmin
groups which had not been reached by the Justice party’s Dravidan. Even though Kudi Arasu
was primarily a journal of the Self-Respect movement, it also gave prominence to the Justice
Party’s news. SigniŽcantly, the release of this weekly coincided with the birth of the Self-Re-
spect movement. By 1925, the Self-Respect leader Periyar had begun to feel the need for a
journal which would reect the interests of the non-Brahmin peoples. He writes:

Despite the fact that our land has so many great and intelligent people, they remain
unknown to the public. This is because Tamilians lack a journal that is effective and
truthful. Even Mahatma Gandhi has to ask a Brahmin or read a Brahmin journal if he
wants to learn about the greatness of Tamilians. … What can we say about a situation
in which the majority community of non-Brahmins has no means by which to communi-
cate its news and ideas? (Periyar 1925)

Recognizing the lack of a non-Brahmin journal which would effectively voice the interests of
non-Brahmins, Periyar sought to transform the Tamil journal scene by wresting some of the
control away from the upper-castes who controlled the major portion of the press in the early
part of the twentieth century. Systematically then, he nurtured the Self-Respect, non-Brahmin
journals, positioning them vis a` vis ‘Brahmin’ journals which he constructed as either misrepre-
senting or otherwise inadequate to the needs of the Dravidian people. This deliberate creation
of a space for non-Brahmin literature, this insistence that non-Brahmin literature had to reect
the concerns of the non-Brahmin communities, necessitated the use of different genres of
writing such as the essay and the autobiography. Often, the new writing that emerged was
totally contrary to the conventional literary aesthetic. If this process was inevitable as far as
journal literature is concerned, it is almost equally apparent in a text like Moovalur Ramarathi-
nammal’s (1936) Dasigal Mosavalai — a novel where Self-Respect propaganda is interwoven
with the Žctive.

6

If, as feminists, we wish to understand Self-Respect history differently, to view it through

the eyes of women who were closely identiŽed with the politics of the movement, conventional
histories and the substantial body of work by Periyar will simply not sufŽce. These narratives
will never quite capture the ‘structures of feeling’ which characterise the lives of women
self-respecters during those exciting, turbulent years.

7

This anthology grew out of my gradual

recognition that we completely lack the material basis as it were for a project that is simply
begging to be done: the writing of a women’s history of the Self-Respect movement. By
‘women’s history’, I mean a history which provides a fuller and more meaningful account of
the participation of women in the Self-Respect movement, enabling in the process, a richer and
perhaps altogether different understanding of its gender politics. These translations then were
motivated by a desire to map the critical voices of women Self-Respecters, voices that have
remained unheard within the context of political as well as scholarly spaces over which the

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Žgure of Periyar has loomed so large. Such a mapping is crucial, I believe, if we wish to
understand the complexities of women’s agency in the movement. Equally crucial, however, is
a critique of the ways in which Self-Respect histories have been written (mostly with an
exclusive focus on Periyar’s thought, work and vision), of the manner in which Periyar himself
is read and represented.

While translation and archival work, I believe, is central to the feminist enterprise of

retrieving women’s work, translating as a feminist has also meant translating with an eye to the
texts’ quirks and to its layered sub-texts. This has often yielded unexpected results so that often
a text that I had picked because it was a Self-Respect text turned out to have other agendas. It
is one such text that I would like to examine here.

Given its stereotypical portrayal of the devadasis as ‘fallen’ and ‘evil’ women, Moovalur

Ramamrithammal ’s Dasigal Mosavalai or The Dasis’s Wicked Snares published in 1936 is most
often read as a straight-forward Self-Respect text with a clear political agenda. Much of the
impetus for the novel comes from Moovalur’s own stance in favour of the abolition of the
devadasi system. Before we proceed, therefore, it might be instructive to look at the history of
the devadasi abolition bill. In 1913, the colonial government had proposed a bill to abolish the
devadasi system. This bill, however, was rejected on the grounds that no clear guidelines had
been provided to rehabilitate former devadasis. In 1922, Hari Singh Gour resurrected this
pre-war debate on changing the penal code to punish people who employed minor girls
as prostitutes under the guise of religious practice. The Central Legislative Assembly then
passed the Government of India Act 18 of 1924. This act, which mainly affected Madras and
Bombay, protected girls under the age of 18 from employment as prostitutes in temples if
it were ascertained that they were not religious dancers. Another bill which sought to raise the
age of temple-dedication (pottukattu ceremony) for girls from the devadasi community was
introduced in the Central Legislature. This bill became law in 1925. In November 1927,
Muthulakshmi Reddi recommended in the Madras Legislature that the custom of serving the
temples be abolished outright. Her bill pertained only to those devadasis who held inams —
gifts of land by former kings either in the form of outright ownership with rights to revenues,
or as alienated land revenues. In return for these inams, devadasis were required to perform
certain services to the temples which employed them. Reddi’s bill freed these inam-holding
devadasis of the stipulation of temple service while permitting them access to land revenues.
Reddi found however that such a bill, in pertaining only to inam-holding devadasis, did not
cover those devadasi communities which no longer served temples and merely practised
prostitution. While this bill was passed as the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act V
in 1929, Reddi also introduced another bill in the same year that sought to completely
abolish pottukattu (the ceremony by which girls were ritually dedicated to God and which,
Reddi believed, only lured girls to prostitution). The Bill to Prevent the Dedication of Women
to Hindu Temples in the Presidency of Madras was opposed by many orthodox Brahmins
and senior Congressmen such as S. Satyamurthy. The Justicites did not back it wholeheartedly
either. Those who opposed it argued that the bill went against the spirit of the Sastras.
Periyar defended the bill and pointed out that the Sastras had already been dishonoured when
the law raising the age of temple dedication was passed. According to the sastras, pottukattu
was anyway not permitted for women who had attained puberty. The Self-Respecters con-
demned the devadasi system on two grounds: one, that the dasis were forced to lead degrading
lives of sexual slavery and that the system encouraged immoral behaviour on the part of
many people and, two, that the system was a result of an upper-caste, Brahminical patriarchy
which condemned a particular non-Brahmin caste to prostitution. While Periyar himself was
not prescriptive about female morality and chastity (in fact, he argued against social dictates
which emphasised the importance of chastity in women while excusing any amount of
immorality in men), many others who were in favour of abolishing the devadasi system
(Moovalur Ramamrithammal was one among them) expressed their horror at the licentiousness

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K. Srilata

of the dasi’s life and of those who surrounded her. On the whole, the Self-Respecters
passionately opposed the devadasi system and welcomed Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi’s bill.
Seeking to explain the vehemence with which the Self-Respecters supported the Devadasi
Abolition Bill, V. Geetha and S.V. Rajadurai argue:

The denial of rights to an entire mass of people at birth, the systematic erosion of
the non-Brahmins’ self-respect, achieved often with his consent, seemed particularly
unfair and galling to the Self-Respecters because of the role assigned to the so-called
shudra mother. Characterizing the shudra woman as a ‘dasi’, Brahminical scripture
had pronounced her sexually unfree. In these modern times, she may not be forced
into sexual slavery as Self-Respecters believed she was in the past, but a caste of
non-Brahmin women, the devadasis, still eked out an existence by selling their sexual
labour — in temples and to the rich and the famous. In the Self-Respecters’ semantic
universe, the word ‘dasi’ often carried connotations of and slipped into the semantic
space marked out by the Tamil word, ‘vesi’ or prostitute. The devadasi thus came to be
viewed as a reminder of an original shame and bondage, as the carrier of a memory of
an original dishonour. This memory had all but been lost to non-Brahmin conscious-
ness, as Periyar so often remarked, since no non-Brahmin sought to enquire into the
origins of the word, ‘shudra’. However, this memory of the non-Brahmin woman as a
sexual slave had been preserved elsewhere, in the dharmashastra s and had since served
to ‘Žx’ the shudra in his lowness. (Geetha and Rajadurai 1998: 376)

Not all devadasis welcomed the Devadasi Abolition Bill, however. Some refused their charac-
terization as ‘prostitutes’, arguing that they were artists, women of learning and reŽnement.
Muthulakshmi Reddi’s bill was not enacted till 1947. Despite this delay the devadasi system
had ground to a halt in 1929 itself with the passing of the Madras Hindu Religious Endow-
ments Act.

Moovalur was repeatedly praised by her contemporaries for her commitment and loyalty to

the Self-Respect cause of dismantling the devadasi system. To look at a few instances: In a
foreword to the novel, S. Vellaithuraicchi Nacchiyar deplores a system which prostitutes
women in the name of God and creates an entire community to further this prostitution. That
such a thing should occur in a country where women are deiŽed and their praises sung, he
contends, is ironic. Moovalur Ramamrithammal , he argues, was so repulsed by the devadasi
profession which she had practiced for a while, that she liberated herself from its shackles,
realizing fully the ‘wicked’ and ‘conspiratorial’ ways of the dasis and the ‘seductive webs’ they
wove around people. Nacchiyar concludes by praising Moovalur for her devotion to the cause
of abolishing the devadasi system and declares that her novel, which is clearly a reection of
her own experiences and innermost feelings, will go a long away in reforming the devadasi
community.

In another foreword, S. Somasundara Bharathi, Tamil Professor, Annamalai University,

writes that despite the fact that there are long Self-Respect discourses in the course of the novel,
this does not really pose a problem, written as they are with the welfare of Tamil society in
mind.

Thirumathi Guruswamy Kunjitam, the Principal of the Cuddalore Women’s school, writes:

Our friend Ramamrithamma l is among those who believe that one should contribute to
the welfare of society. She works for the welfare of the common people. She is among
the few women in Tamilnadu who have addressed audiences from public platforms.
The Tamil people, who have recognized her abilities as a speaker, now have an
opportunity to see her writing skills. (Kunjitam 1936: i)

According to Kunjitam, Dasigal Mosavalai effectively critiques the time and money wasted by
people on blind beliefs such as palmistry, mantras, gods and the whole concept of moksham or

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liberation from the cycle of birth and death. She speculates that the novel would prove to be
a source of great support to Muthulakshmi Reddi in her efforts towards liberating women from
barbaric customs such as pottukattu (the practice within the devadasi community of ‘marrying’
off young girls to god).

Indeed, the transparent Self-Respect rhetoric that Moovalur sometimes employs in the novel

supports this theory that there is a straight-forward link between the narrative and the author’s
political convictions and her passionate pro-abolitionist stance. This theory of course, is not
entirely incorrect. The language that some of the chapters in the novel employ does read like
transparent Self-Respect rationalist rhetoric. The chapter ‘Darkness and Light’, for instance,
consists of a conversation between Natarajan — a wealthy myner (a word that translates
roughly as ‘playboy’) and Gunabhushini, a reformed devadasi turned respectable married
woman who has thrown herself heart and soul into Self-Respect work. Reecting on the
unequal nature of conventional marriages, Gunabhushini tells Natarajan:

If Brahma the creator considered all beings as equals, wouldn’t he ensure that marriages
were contracted only between two equals? How can a sixty-year-old man wed a
six-year-old girl? Indeed, if Brahma can permit such a marriage, he should also allow
a sixty-year-old woman to marry a six-year-old boy! Can marriages ordained by Brahma
fail? Would a man whose marriage was arranged by Brahma himself visit a dasi? Did
Brahma ordain that dasis could have any number of lovers? Did he ordain that that
Panchali

8

should wed Žve men? If it is true that Brahma himself arranges marriages,

how is it that widowed women end up conceiving? Is it possible then that they actually
desire other men? Have you ever observed couples in an inter-caste, reformist marriage?
Self-Respecters have popularised such marriages as well. Tell me, did Brahma ordain
these weddings? In certain temples even eunuchs can get married! Who presides over
their weddings? If what you claim about the sanctity of a traditional marriage is true,
would the thali tied in the presence of the gods and the godly Brahmin ever be severed?
Would a woman be widowed? Would every trace of material and worldly happiness be
snatched away from her? Would she be treated thus? What is so special about a
wedding performed in the presence of these gods? ‘Lift your queenly foot! Pour some
water into this pot! Perform an arathi!

9

’ Besides giving such instructions and lining their

pockets with money, what is so wonderful about this work that the Brahmins do? Can’t
our womenfolk manage all this work by themselves? The Brahmin’s work is artiŽcial.
It has been created with a view to securing his living. Tell me, are animals matched
together by others before they mate? When we are hungry, do we ask the Brahmin to
set a speciŽc time when we can begin to eat? The only thing that really matters is the
natural bonding between a man and a woman. As for all the other extraneous customs,
you can be sure that someone or the other is making quick money by enforcing them.
You abused your wife even as you sang the praises of dasi Ganavathi. Do I conclude
from this that your wedding was not ofŽciated over and blessed by Brahma. (Ramam-
rithammal 1936: 46–47)

Of the devadasis, she says:

Dasis lack both morality as well as human compassion. If they possessed these qualities,
if they had even an iota of human feeling, would they willingly sacriŽce their daughters
to strange men or encourage them to practice such a lowly profession? They turn a blind
eye to the horrible diseases visited upon their daughters — natural consequences of a
profession such as theirs! (Ramamrithamma l 1936: 55)

However, the conventions of Žction apply equally to Moovalur’s writing which is why we also
have a fairly strong narrative element running through the text of Dasigal Mosavalai.

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K. Srilata

A novel like Dasigal Mosavalai, set as it is in the aftermath of the loss of aristocratic patronage

for the devadasi community, pictures for us a mercenary new world where the devadasi suffers
a dramatic loss of respect.

10

The opening chapter, for instance, describes the dasi sisters Kantha

and Ganavathi’s journey to Chennai to perform at the Ganasabha, a concert hall and their
obvious attempts to seduce their train companion — Natarajan. The dasis’ mother Bogachinta-
mani has instructed them to pretend that they make a living from music so that everyone
believes them to be respectable. The implication is that the devadasi uses her skill in music as
a cover for what is really an unsavoury vocation and that she has no real attachment towards
musical traditions. Many of those who advocated the abolition of the devadasi system, like
Moovalur Ramamrithamma l herself, emphatically believed that dasis were not artists and that
their claims to the contrary were to be dismissed. At best, they posed as artists to secure a
dishonourable living, and lacked both honour as well as self-respect. They were cunning,
miserable ‘wretches’ who seduced innocent men and lived off their wealth. Once the devadasi
stopped being perceived as an artist, she automatically lost her immunity from moral judge-
ments, an immunity that she had enjoyed so far thanks to her status as dancer, musician and
learned woman. Once the ‘artist’ is recast as ‘prostitute’, admiration and respect are at once
replaced by moral horror.

The Žnal chapter of the novel titled ‘The Conference Commences’ describes the proceedings

at a Self-Respect conference and includes formal speeches made by some of the central
characters in the novel. It would appear that such a narrative move is meant to actually
highlight the absence of boundaries between the Žctive universe of Dasigal Mosavalai and the
activist Self-Respect world outside. When Gunabhushini exhorts the devadasis present in the
audience to give up their despicable profession and to ‘adapt to the times’, it appears as though
Moovalur has chosen to speak through her in the penultimate scene as it were.

What would you prefer: notoriety or praise? If it is praise you want, I would advise you
to leave this prostitution at once. If you would rather be humiliated, go ahead, keep a
lover in each town. What do you gain from courting abuse? Apart from falling prey to
disease, what other happiness do you Žnd? Look at the plight of those whose income
once ran into lakhs of rupees! Don’t other women lead perfectly contented lives even
though they only have one partner? Don’t worry about what else you can do! You will
be assured of a life free of care when you let go of your wicked, greedy schemes and
remain faithful to one man alone. Both admiration and praise will come seeking you.
The world is changing rapidly. Your old tricks are bound to fail in a climate like this.
So do not harbour any illusions. Adapt to the times. (Ramamrithamma l 1936: 282)

While Self-Respect activism and the drive to dismantle the Devadasi system is thus a strong
thematic in the novel, a feminist reading reveals another, less overt textual centre — the vibrant
energies of the two young devadasi sisters — Kantha and Ganavathi — whose attitudes to life
and living are startlingly and unashamedly at odds with the moral codes that in a sense drove
the activists arguing for the abolition of the devadasi system (despite Periyar’s own reservations
about foregrounding the question of morality). What the novel offers us really are two different
narrative centres and, consequently, two different registers of language which are a little at
variance with each other. It seems to me that even as Moovalur describes the outside world of
Self-Respect activism — the world of Self-Respect conferences, reformists, even an entire
province that is run like a Self-Respect utopia — she also offers us a fascinating perspective on
the inner world of the devadasis, their dilemmas, conicts and joys in a manner that is not
always rigid or judgemental. In a sense, this depiction of the ‘inner world’ of the dasis — a
world that charms and seduces us as modern readers — enables the author to conform to the
conventions of Žction. Indeed, it is this aspect of Dasigal Mosavalai that makes it a novel — not
just another political tract or a speech. By highlighting the liveliness and the wit of the two

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young devadasi sisters — Kantha and Ganavathi, by describing their lives and their environ-
ment in great sensual detail, Moovalur, if briey and unwittingly, takes our attention off her
own abolitionist agenda. Kantha and Ganavathi’s ready wit and intelligence contrast sharply
with the laughable idiocy of the upper-caste playboy Natarajan as well as with the naivete of
Somasekaran, a young man from a royal family. In the very Žrst chapter, Moovalur describes
the encounter between the two dasi sisters and Natarajan in a Žrst-class compartment of a train
bound for Chennai. Having come to the conclusion that Natarajan is quite a fool, Kantha and
Ganavathi employ various strategies to get him to part with his watch. At the end of this
episode though, we have little sympathy for this man who is so full of himself that he is
constantly boasting about how much money he has just spent on another dasi. Kantha and
Ganavathi, on the other hand, impress us with their quick thinking and presence of mind.

Ganavathi: Your hairstyle and your ladies’ watch makes you look like a Malayali
woman. If you say you are a man, why then, you must be one! But why can’t a wealthy
man like you string your watch from a gold chain? That way, your watch can hang from
your pocket. If you had done that, would I have teased you so? It is because you are
wearing the watch on your wrist in a lady-like fashion that I jested with you.

The myner suddenly felt embarassed. He wished he could somehow take back his

stupid words. ‘Why Ganavathi!,’ he exclaimed, ‘You say that women wear watches on
their wrists. Then why is it that you haven’t worn one yourself?’ ‘I am an unmarried
young girl. I can hope to wear a watch only if people like you buy me one. Do I have
a husband or what?’ retorted Ganavathi smartly.

The myner thought happily, ‘This one is only as long as a bean. Yet see how

intelligent she is! She talks so affectionately! Whenever she opens her mouth to speak,
my heart skips a beat. Her speech is marked by brilliance. When our women speak,
their voice sounds harsh and grating. It is as though some sounds have been boiled and
poured into one’s ears. In a Žt of generosity, he offered, ‘Ganavathi, it seems as though
you desire this watch. Here, take it.’

Ganavathi: What kind of wickedness is this! You are a passenger just like me. Once we
alight, you will be bound in one direction, and I in the other. Why jest with me? Don’t
you know of the Žckleness of train friendships? I do not want your watch. I wear only
what is mine. Wearing a watch that has come to you for free isn’t something to be proud
of. Passengers on a train always indulge in loose talk in order to pass the time. I don’t
want your watch. Don’t bother me with such offers.

The unfortunate myner was now caught in a game of his own making. ‘I boasted to

her that I once spent a lakh within three months. If I do not give them this 300 rupee
watch, they will surely think ill of me. I had better gift it to her’, he thought to himself.
Aloud, he said, ‘Ganavathi! Here. I am gifting you this watch in appreciation of your
cleverness. Treat it as your own. Show me your hand. Let me tie the watch around your
wrist.’

Ganavathi: Are you aware of what you are saying? Is it right to touch the hand of an
unmarried woman? Don’t ever suggest such a thing again. Do you know what my
plight will be if my mother were to hear of this?

Myner: My intentions are not bad, believe me. The fact is that I happen to be deeply
inuenced by western culture. That is the reason I spoke in this manner. Don’t be angry.

Ganavathi: Does western culture require you to foolishly part with a watch worth three
hundred rupees? Is this the way foreigners behave?

(Ramamrithamma l 1936: 16–18)

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K. Srilata

Moovalur’s attempt may have been to alert us to the wiles of the dasi sisters. However, like
Natarajan, we end up being charmed by the young women who give the novel its Žctive
energy, its life. In a sense then, the vibrance of these two characters takes the edge off
Moovalur’s anti-devadasi campaign atleast for readers of our age. Despite the author, the dasis
win our hearts in a way that none of the other characters in the novel do. The dasis, it would
appear, are larger than mere authorial intentions and have spun out of control!

Dasigal Mosavalai is located at the intersection between the old and the new. It is a chronicle

of a way of life that has been forced to the brink of extinction by the new wave of Self-Respect
and middle-class reformist initiatives. This is perhaps why we are able to read so many layers
in the text. It would appear as though the other narrative, the narrative that deals with the
structures of feeling that characterise a devadasi’s life, often run contrary to the ‘public face’ of
the novel — that of a straight-forward Self-Respect, reformist text. This, despite the fact that
both Kantha and Ganavathi have clearly been recast as ‘prostitutes’, despite the fact that their
public announcement at the Self-Respect conference that they will give up practising their
profession is meant to represent the narrative closure. It is in the cracks and crevices of the
narrative that we have to look for women’s stories. Translation can help open up texts in
altogether new ways, in ways that will assist in the writing of new feminist histories.

Notes

1. A reference to the two volumes of Women Writing in India edited by Susie Tharu and K.Lalita (1991,

1993) which offered a selection of writing by Indian women in over thirteen languages spanning a
broad period from 600 BCE to the present.

2. The suyamariathai Iyakkam or the Self-Respect movement was launched by E.V. Ramasami Naicker,

otherwise known as Periyar, in 1926 following his differences with the Congress. Arguably one of the
most important and fascinating phases of the non-Brahmin or ‘Dravidian’ movement which took place
in Madras presidency during the Žrst half of the twentieth century, the Self-Respect movement
questioned the ways in which the lower castes (or the ‘dravidians’) were systematically excluded from
the Indian nation and constructed as the others of the Brahmins or the ‘Aryans’. Periyar’s vehemently
anti-congress, anti-Brahmin and anti-Sanskrit position posed a challenge to all that the upper-castes
had constructed as ‘sacred’ — the nation, the varnashrama dharma and the inequities which were
routinely practised in the name of religion and God. Periyar widely used the print media to air his
radically different views. In fact, the launching of the Self-Respect journal Kudi Arasu in 1925 is often
taken to signal his break with the Congress and perceived as an early precursor of the Self-Respect
movement itself. The Self-Respect phase is often assumed to have come to a close in the early 1940s
with Periyar’s formal entry into politics and the formation of the Dravida Kazhagam under his
leadership.

3. Forthcoming from Kali for Women, New Delhi.
4. While admirably defending the radical thrust of the Self-Respect movement and of Periyar’s work and

legacy, scholars such as MSS Pandian, A.R. Venkatachalapath y and S. Anandhi, have tended to explain
away the entire movement solely in terms of Periyar’s leadership and vision. Ironically then, while the
Self-Respect movement is characterized by the presence of a number of women activists, one is forced
to read the movement in terms of Periyar’s agency. See my introduction to The Other Half of the Coconut:
Women Writing Self-Respect History for an elaboration of my position. (Srilata forthcoming).

5. Incidentally, one major charge levelled against dalit literature has been that it often lacks aesthetic

detachment and reŽnement. This debate about aesthetic detachment versus social involvement found
its echo even within debates internal to dalit literature. Some dalit critics like, for instance, the Marathi
writer R.G. Jadhav, began to argue that the autonomy of a work of literature should not be disturbed.
The primary function of all literature including dalit literature, Jadhav writes, was to provide pleasure
not just reect a grim reality as it is:

In a literary discussion, Žrst and foremost, the autonomy of a work of literature as a work of
literature has to be granted. Even social awareness assumes signiŽcance when it is expressed
in the proper literary form. In literary criticism, though the content-oriented and form-oriented
positions seem to be separate, in actual criticism, they go hand in hand, or at least they should.
The social and formal aspects are blended in a work of literature. The blending is organic;
where it is not so, both the purposes are defeated. (Jadhav 1992: 298–299)

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More than any other kind of literature, dalit literature has been systematically excluded from curricula
so that we have a situation wherein while Gandhi’s autobiography is taught as part of an undergrad-
uate course in literature, Ambedkar and many other dalit thinkers and writers are not. As a teacher
operating in a fairly rigid system, I Žnd that dalit writing can be taught only if it is camouaged or
packaged as part of some comprehension analysis exercise! I have also found that doing dalit
autobiographies in class often elicited the strangest of responses from a class that is largely upper-caste.
First, there was the shock of having to face autobiographical truth, which then lead to denial. Some
students even commented that dalit literature could not be literature for it lacked distance, perspective
and subtlety.

6. Moovalur Ramamrithammal was a leading Self-Respect activist who fought for the abolition of the

devadasi system.

7. Raymond Williams deŽnes ‘structures of feeling’ as ‘social experiences in solution, as distinct from

other social, semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and immedi-
ately available’ (Williams 1977: 133–134). Williams explains that the term ‘feeling’ is chosen to stress
a distinction from the more formal concepts of ‘world-view’ or ‘ideology’ and reects a concern with
meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt:

We are talking about characteristic elements of impulse, restraint, and tone; speciŽcally
affective elements of consciousness and relationships: not feeling against thought, but thought
as felt and feeling as though: practical consciousness of a present kind, in a living and
inter-relating continuity. We are then deŽning these elements as a ‘structure’: as a set, with
speciŽc internal relations, at once interlocking and in tension. Yet we are also deŽning a social
experience which is still in process … . (Williams 1977: 132)

8. Draupadi, the wife of the Žve Pandavas in the Mahabharata. Draupadi ends up having to marry the Žve

brothers despite the fact that it is only one of them, Arjuna, who has won her hand in marriage. The
Pandavas walk home with Draupadi. Yudhishtira, the eldest of the Žve brothers, calls out to his mother
Kunti to see what they have aquired. Kunti, without looking, asks her sons to share whatever they
have got equally. Thus Draupadi Žnds herself married to all the Žve Pandava brothers.

9. Lighted camphor in a plate that is waved before the image of god.

10. See Saskia Kersenboom (1987) and Srividya Natarajan (1997) for a more detailed explanation of the

high esteem in which the devadasis (regarded as artistes) were once held.

References

Geetha, V. and Rajadurai, S.V. (1998) Towards a Non-Brahmin Millenium, Calcutta: Samya.
Jadhav, R.G. (1992) ‘Dalit feelings and aesthetic detachment’ in Arjun Dangle (ed.) Poisoned Bread:

Translations From Modern Dalit Literature, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 298–299.

Janaki (1930) ‘Half a coconut’ (Thengai moodi), Kumaran, 9(1).
Kersenboom, Saskia (1987) Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
Kunjitam, Thirumathi Guruswamy (1936) ‘Praise’ (Pughazurai), in Moovalur Ramamrithammal (ed.) The

Dasi’s Wicked Snares (Dasigal mosavalai), Madras: Pearl Press, i.

Nacchiyar, Vellaithuraicch i S. (1936) ‘Foreword’ in Moovalur Ramamrithammal (ed.) The Dasi’s Wicked

Snares (Dasigal mosavalai), Madras: Pearl Press.

Natarajan, Srividya (1997) ‘Another stage in the life of the nation: Sadir, Bharatanatyam, feminist theory’,

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hyderabad.

Neelavathi (1930) ‘Is widowhood a question of fate?’ (Vidhavaigall avadu thalaividiya), Kumaran 9(2).
Niranjana, Tejaswini (1992) Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Periyar (1925) ‘The work of some Brahmin journals’ (Sila Brahmana pattrikaiyin thozhil), Kudi Arasu, 2

August.

Ramamrithammal, Moovalur (1936) The Dasi’s Wicked Snares (Dasigal Mosavalai), Madras: Pearl Press.
Srilata, K. (forthcoming) The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History. New Delhi: Kali

for Women.

Tharu, Susie and Lalita, K. (eds) (1991) Women Writing in India Volume I: 600 B.C. to the Early 20th Century.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tharu, Susie and Lalita, K. (eds) (1993) Women Writing in India Volume II: The 20th Century. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Williams, Raymond (1977) ‘Structures of feeling’, in Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

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K. Srilata

Author’s Biography

K. Srilata teaches English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. Forthcoming
from Kali for women is an anthology of women’s writing from the Self-Respect movement titled The Other
Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History. She has an anthology of poems titled Seablue Child
published by the Brown Critique, Calcutta in 2002.