Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.
– Helene Cixous, 347
The essay “The Story of My Sanskrit” is an extract from Kumud Pawde’s
autobiography Antasphot (1981). Born in 1938, in Nagpur, at a time when India
was on the threshold of total independence, into a family belonging to the Mahar community, the lowest of the castes, Kumud Pawde exemplifies rare courage and perseverance in the pursuit of her dream of academic excellence. The discrimination that was meted out to the people of this section of society is a well-documented fact. These were people who were not allowed to even draw water from the wells that were used by the upper castes. They had to carry pots for their spittle and brooms to wipe out their footsteps on the road to prevent defilement of the other castes. Living on the fringes of society, in abject poverty, totally dependent on the charity of the upper castes, they did soul-destroying menial jobs like disposal of human waste and the dead bodies of the villagers. They had to bear untold social and economic repression and atrocities. Burdened further were the women who had to bear severe sexual exploitation. To underline their subjugation, they were not allowed to dress or wear jewelry like the women of the upper caste. Pawde’s autobiography, probably for the first time, details the struggles of the life of an untouchable woman who had the courage to enter the public sphere. The essay underlines how the field of education, a true leveler of individuals, also becomes prey to discrimination and suppression. It forms a continuity with those, as Omvedt (1994) says, alternate traditions, established by stalwarts like Pandita Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, Ambedkar, Periyar and the Dalit Panthers, which questioned the hegemony of Hinduism in Indian society and sought to alter it.
|
