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THERE is nothing novel about a group of grown men strip-ping and/or molesting a woman in public, while the saidpublic looked on. Mythology tells us about (self?) righteouskings and warriors who also happened to be husbands al-lowing something like this happen a long time ago. In contem-porary times, one hears of women being similarly humiliated inmany parts of India. But then that is mainland India, right? Wealways do love saying that in the Northeast, we women are treat-ed with greater dignity. Apparently, thats a myth as well. Thepublic humiliation of a teenage girl in Guwahati captured on cam-era recently has everybody talking the media, the activists, theonline forums, the person on the street, you name it. With eveninternational TV channels picking up the video that went viral, ithas very nearly become the event of the year. Axamiya society is aghast! And yet, not just Assam, but the entire Northeast should have

been hanging its collective head (if there be one) in shame for a

long time now for the double standards we hold, if not for any-thing else. According to the National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB), Assam and Tripura have been recording among the high-est rates of crime against women in all the Indian states. According to another estimate, nearly one rape has occurred every threedays in Mizoram in the first four months of the current year. So what happened to the respect we have for our women? This lat-est incident of humiliating one particular woman on the streetsof Guwahati is only a symptom of a larger malaise.

Junu Bora discusses some pertinent problems women havebeen traditionally facing in her book which we review in this is-sue of NELit review . In one of her chapters, she aptly quotes Bi sh-nu Prasad Rabha, freedom fighter turned insurgent-against-the-State turned Axamiya icon, as stating: Women cannot do whatthey want to. They cant go out, cant study, cant write. They canteat, wear, live, deliver speeches, hold political meetings, sing,dance, act according to their wishes. Today, women are impris-oned in their homes.

Chandraprabha Saikiani, though, was a trailblazing woman whoeven in early 20th century Assam, led an active public life whilebeing a single unwed mother. As Aparna Mahanta points out inher discussion of Saikiani as a fiction writer, Saikianis femalecharacters boldly spoke out against the repressive practices in Axamiya society long before Indira Goswamis more well-knowncharacters did. Her views on womens emancipation were, of course, ridiculed by Dandinath Kalita, the father of her child. An- jali Sarma whose biography of Saikiani we review digs into theletters sent her by the more well-known (because male?) writerto find that he tried to control her life in various ways despite be-ing unable to go against societal norms and marry her.

It is a clich that behind every successful man, there is a woman.From my experience of knowing and reading bold and inde-pendent women and (at the risk of sounding pompous) being one, I have found that behind most successful women are usu-ally one or more abusive, dominating and/or deranged men. In Mon Gongaar Teerot, veteran journalist Sabita Goswami re-counted her professional achievements set against a personallife lived with a violent, overbearing husband and two trauma-tised daughters. Having been in an abusive marriage myself, itstruck an empathetic chord in me and I requested her publish-er to provide NELit review with a preview of the forthcoming translation of her memoir.

This issue, therefore, is dedicated to a few bold women of As-sam who took on the double standards of patriarchal society and what is more, triumphed. They created a niche for themselves intraditional male bastions, despite the many hurdles placed intheir paths both by society at large and by the men they were closeto. It is perhaps these men who strip us women of our dignity more, much more than the ones in uniform whom we have beentaught to fear in the Northeast. After all, for the Indian occupa-tional forces or for the terrorists of the region who repeatedly revile us, it is not personal. T

P O ST scriptJ U L Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 2

SEVENSISTERS

NE Lit review

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FIFTH WALLUDDIPANA GOSWAMI

Literary Editor

Barenaked ladies

A HOUSEHOLD name inpre-independence As-sam, ChandraprabhaSaikiani (1901-1971) wasa forgotten figure at the time of her death. There was hardly a rip-ple of interest when, while literal-ly on her deathbed, she wasawarded the Padma Shri. Theresurgence of the womens move-ment in the last quarter of the 20thcentury revived interest in the pi-oneering women of the pre-inde-pendence period. Thanks to theefforts of women like Puspalata

Das and Nirupama Borgohain,one of the figures who emergedfrom oblivion was Chandraprab-ha Saikiani. Her contribution asfreedom fighter and social work-er, as a force behind the MahilaSamiti movement, as feminist andas rebel in her private life is now being documented, but that she was also a bold and original writeris hardly known. Apart from thereprint of her only novel, Pitri Bhitha (1937), and inclusion of ashort story, Daibagya-duhita, ina collection of womens writings,her works are yet to be collectedor reprinted.

The male-dominated Assameseliterary establishment has not tak-en notice of ChandraprabhaSaikiani as a writer, even thoughmany lesser male writers find aplace in the literary canon. It istrue that Saikianis literary outputis not large, but it is not negligibleeither. Gender constraints ham-pered Saikiani as a writer. L ikeother women at that time, shecould not find any publisher forher writings. Nor did she havemoney for self-publishing. Out of the many novels she wrote, shecould publish only one by paying half the cost. Other manuscriptsremained unpublished. As the fe-male literacy rate in Assam wasthen less than one per cent, there were few women readers, not tospeak of women critics. The malereaders and critics who madedecisions on a works meritscould hardly grasp or appreci-ate the women-centric and of-ten fiery feminist content of her writings. As a result, her writingsremained unread, unnoticed andliterally disappeared from sight.Nirupama Borgohain was prov-idently able to rescue what musthave been the last surviving copy of Pitri Bhitha . Puspalata Dascould save a few fragments of the manuscript of the novel A-

parajita (printed in her Agnis-nata Chandraprabha ). When most women writers only

ventured into poetry, Saikiani wrote boldly in prose: short sto-ries, narratives, reports, traveloguesand novels, besides poems. Herfirst piece Devi, possibly the firstshort story published by an As-samese woman, appeared in Ban-hi in 1921 under her maiden nameof Kumari Chandraprabha Das. Asher fathers name was Ratiram Ma- jumdar, the identification of Saikiani as Chandraprabha Das

had probably not been made, butboth she and her sister, Raja-niprabha (the first Assamese woman MBBS doctor), had adopt-ed the surname Das as students of Nowgong Mission School. Eventhen, a single reading of the story leaves no doubt that only Saikianicould have written it. The theme,the struggle of a child widow, and,more importantly, its presentationfrom a feminist perspective bearher unique stamp. Born and bredin a village, Saikiani knew first-hand the suffering of women in atradition-bound and backward so-ciety. At the same time her accessto education, rare then for girls likeher, and particularly her two-yearsojourn as a Normal student inNowgong Mission Girls School,established by American Baptist women missionaries, introducedher to the modern womens move-ment and the concept of womensrights. Mahatma Gandhis non-cooperation movement thensweeping over the country, in-cluding Tezpur where Saikiani was working as a schoolmistress, wasanother factor in the choice of theme and attitudes expressed inher first piece of writing. Gandhihad made the plight of child wid-ows part of the nationalist politi-cal discourse, but Saikianis ownapproach was thoroughly mod-ern, progressive and feminist. At a time when women charac-

ters in Assamese literature by male writers were figures of male fan-tasy, serving as romantic interestto the hero or sometimes as theidealisation of the nation likeJoymati Kunwari Saikianis women characters are flesh-and-blood representations placed in afamiliar milieu, torn by very hu-man impulses and desires. Almost60 years before Mamoni RaisomGoswami wrote about Giribala inDotal Hatir Uye Khowa Howda ,Saikianis eponymous heroine

Devi, a child widow who too wasthe daughter of a Brahmin satrad-hikar of a satra in Kamrup, is de-scribed as publicly demanding tobe served with meat at a ritual feastof Brahmins. When her mothergives in to her desire in secret, Devitakes her meat-laden plate to sitby her father in the line of Brah-mins, thus causing a scandal. When she is older and becomesaware of her situation she refus-es to submit to her fate, violently rejecting her shanti-biya , the post-puberty rite when symbolic mar-riage to a wooden post confirms widowhood. She vehemently re-proaches her father for enforcing such inhuman customs unwor-thy of a learned man and a fol-lower of the liberal SrimantaSankardev. Her passionate argu-ments for remarriage of child wid-ows finally prevail on her ortho-dox father to arrange her remar-riage with a liberal England-edu-

cated civilian.In the later more mature Daibag-

yar duhita (1947), Saikiani againtakes up issues of female desireand agency in a contemporary context against the backdrop of the freedom struggle. The hero-ine, Menoka, a child-bride, is an-other victim who stands up andfights against those who betray and exploit her. Married off to anold man for ga-dhan (bride-price)by her father, an indigent villagepriest, she refuses to consummatethe marriage on reaching puber-ty. When her husband dies shesees no reason for mourning orassuming eternal widowhood.Succumbing to the cravings of youth, she falls in love with a vil-lage youth of the same caste andgets pregnant. When the com-munity mel , called to try Menoka,orders her to get a prayachitta(penance) naturally after abort-ing the child or face social os-

tracism, Menoka refuses to acceptsuch an unjust and one-sided rul-ing where all blame and punish-ment falls solely on the woman.She leaves the village, determinedto keep her unborn child. At a time when extra-marital or illicit sex,abortion, illegitimacy and unwedmotherhood or prostitution wereunmentionable topics eventhough widespread, Saikiani bold-ly engages with them from the womens point of view. She sub-verts the classification of fallen woman given to women who failto conform to the norm. At storysend, Menoka is a freedom fighterin jail, the last transformation of a journey that has taken her froma village, an outcast, a fallen wid-ow, an unwed mother, a prosti-tute in a Dubi brothel, to the goalof freedom she had been search-ing all the while.

Pitri Bhitha is about womensproperty rights, again challenging societal stereotypes of womensrole and duties. The heroine, Mad-habi, is torn between love and duty following her resolve as her deadfathers inheritress to repay hisdebts and redeem the ancestralhomestead. Like Saikianis otherheroines, Madhabi believes in a womans right and duty to makeher own decisions based on ra-tional consideration of her owncircumstances, notwithstanding the diktats of society, and standby them, whether they lead to hap-piness or in Madhabis case,tragedy, a message as relevant to-day as it was daring then, andproving again how much Saikiani was ahead of her time. T

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THE male readers and critics who made decisionson a works merits could hardly grasp or appreciatethe women-centric and often fiery feminist contentof Chandraprabha Saikianis writings. As a result,her writings remained unread, unnoticed, andliterally disappeared from sight

Chandraprabha Saikiani:fiery feminist

Aparna Mahanta delves into the oeuvre of a writer who

was way ahead of her time inchampioning womens rights

FRONTIS PIECE

TILOTTOMA MISRA

I N her Preface to the biography of Chandraprabha Saikiani, An- jali Sarma mentions that at thetime when she took up the work,there were already in existence atleast three available published bi-ographies of Chandraprabha, be-sides several articles of a bio-graphical nature. Significantly, thisextraordinary womans eventfullife has also been fictionally rep-resented in several Asamiya nov-els which include Chandraprab-has own Pitri Bhitha , DandinathKalitas Sadhana , Lakhidhar Sar-mas Bidrohini and Nirupama Bor-gohains Abhijatri . Sarma has,therefore, knowingly set herself thedifficult task of breaking new ground on a subject which hasbeen worked upon by several oth-ers before her.

Making a brief survey of the threeearlier biographies, Sarma pointsout that though there is no dearthof material on Chandraprabhaslife and work, no serious attempthas so far been made to sift throughall the available biographical dataand write a reasonably reliable bi-ography of this multi-dimension-al personality. In fact, as pointedout by the author at several placesin the book, avoidable factual er-rors (for example the date on whichthe Tezpur session of the Assam Association was held) have oc-curred in earlier biographies of

Chandraprabha which have gone

undetected probably because of aprevailing tendency to obliteratethe boundary between fact and fic-tion when it comes to depicting the extraordinary life of a woman who stood apart from all her con-temporaries with her radical viewsand practices.

Sarma states in the preface thather objective in this biography hasbeen to maintain authenticity asfar as possible. In this age of epis-temological relativism, the very idea of accepting any knowledgeas foundational and therefore re-liable is being viewed with scepti-cism; but, in the field of biograph-ical studies the authenticity of facts which have been documented ina verifiable manner, must be re-lied upon. Sarmas biography of Chandraprabha Saikiani is un-doubtedly a commendable en-gagement with facts gleaned froma variety of sources.

Sarmas earlier research on Asamiya biographical writings hasadequately equipped her to at-tempt the present work which may be considered as one of the few critical biographies in Asamiya lit-erature. It has not only sought tomaintain a scientific objectivity inpresenting the details about thelife of Chandraprabha with metic-ulous care, but also the availablebiographies, biographical notes,articles and other documents thatreflect on the life, works and thepolitical events of the time in which

Chandraprabha lived, have been

critically analysed. The notes, ref-erences, bibliography, the ex-haustive timeline and the appen-dices bear evidence of all thepainstaking research that has goneinto the work. This well-researchedbook has traced the eventful life of Chandraprabha from her birth andearly childhood at Daisingari vil-lage of Kamrup district to her emer-gence as a freedom fighter and

leading light of the womens move-

ment in Assam. The author hasspecially focused upon the uniqueleadership qualities of her subject which became evident even be-fore she came into contact with thenationalist leaders. Her courageand conviction in the nationalistcause and in womens issues madeChandraprabha the first Assamese woman who spoke from a publicplatform and captured the atten-tion of the audience with her ora-torical prowess. From a very young age Chandraprabha devoted her-self actively to organisational work amongst women and during thecrucial years of the Quit IndiaMovement, she was arrested and jailed for her organisational activ-ities amongst the villagers in theBajali region of Kamrup. Anjali Sarma has presented the

story of Chandraprabhas activepolitical life convincingly with thehelp of available resources. Chan-draprabhas personal life, whichincludes her relationship with Dan-dinath Kalita, had led to a lot of un-kind gossip and speculations dur-ing her lifetime. Sarma has criti-cally examined this aspect of herlife from the available correspon-dence between Dandinath andChandraprabha. Some of these let-ters which find a place in the Ap-pendix reveal the opposing view-points of the two on social issues.From her analysis of the contentsof the letters Sarma points out thatthough Dandinath refused to ac-

cept Chandraprabha, the mother

of his son, as his legally wedded wife because of his inability to takea bold stand against convention-al moral codes, yet, through his let-ters, he tried to control her life andridicule her views on womensemancipation (p43, 55). A valuable section of this critical

biography is devoted to the analy-sis of the writings, both fictionaland non-fictional, of Chan-draprabha Saikiani. The fictional writings reflect the pain and frus-tration suffered by Chandraprab-ha because of the hypocrisy of theorthodox patriarchal society in

which she lived and worked. She

was an unwed mother and her de-cision to give birth to the child con-ceived through her relationship with the illustrious writer, Dandi-nath Kalita, was an act of supremedefiance of social taboos that vic-timise the woman. In her short sto-ries and novels, as shown by Sar-ma, she has voiced her protestagainst a system that upholds twoseparate moral standards for menand women. When men commitmoral transgressions society isready to forgive and forget. But theconcept of justice changes whenapplied to a woman. Most of the women in Chandraprabhas fic-tional works are victims of suchunfair notions of social justice. Inher non-fictional writings, on theother hand, Chandraprabha ap-pears as the mature woman whohas been able to successfully achieve sublimation from her pri-vate grief and channelise all herenergy into the public sphere where women hardly had any vis-ibility in her own time. Her writ-ings reveal her determined effortto universalise her own suffering by taking up the cause of all thesuffering women of the world. But,Chandraprabha had no romanticillusions about the nationalistagenda of the leaders of the free-dom struggle. From her own ex-

perience of life she knew that the

resolution of the womans ques-tion was impossible without con-scious activism on the part of the women themselves and she hadrealised early in life that the bur-den of giving leadership to such amovement lay on her own shoul-ders. Anjali Sarmas Chan-draprabha successfully draws ourattention to such significant issues which are relevant for the study of the nationalist discourse and the womans question in Assam.

In the last chapter entitled Pitrib-hita Darshan, the author adoptsthe technique of modern subal-tern historians who try to recreatehistorical events and personalitiesfrom the oral accounts of commonfolk. A hundred years ago, whenChandraprabha tried to inspire thevillagers of Bajali with the messageof freedom from colonial rule and womens emancipation throughmodern education, her image wasthat of a fallen woman who wearssandals and rides a bicycle . Hun-dred years since then, the imagehas changed completely. She wasa good woman, said villagers when interviewed by Sarma dur-ing her visit. The author returnsfrom her emotional journey back in time, confirmed in her belief thatthe brave stand taken by a womanin her lonely battle for the rights of women, stands vindicated at last.The personal reflections with which the book ends do not seemout of place in an otherwise ob- jective presentation of historicalfacts. As the author has stated inthe Preface, she took up this task of writing a critical biography of Chandraprabha not merely as anacademic exercise, but as a tributeto an extraordinarily gifted woman whose life and work continue toinspire every Assamese woman who is sensitive towards womensissues. It is justifiable that a sensi-tive writer would sometimes reactemotionally when she is over- whelmed by shared memories of

an oppressive past. T

Emotive and academic: tributeto an extraordinary woman

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CHANDRAPRABHA

successfully draws our attention to significant

issues which are crucialto the study of thenationalist discourseand the womansquestion in AssamCHANDRAPRABHA

Anjali SarmaBanalata, 2011` 70, 168 pagesHardcover/ Non-fiction

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