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Caste and Gender in Kamala Das’s

[Type the document subtitle]

6/13/2012

ABHIJITH T R

Introduction

Indian literature in English is a curious cultural phenomenon. English is

not an Indian language in the same way as it is the language of England, Australia,

Canada, and USA. India has several sophisticated literary languages. The

languages have long standing literary traditions.

English in the main literary language in India because it has been given the

status of ‘National Language’ by the Indian constitution. In reality, Indian- English

literature is the newest and the latest developed branch of Indian literature. For an

Indian writing in English involves a conflict between the mother tongue and

English. The essays brought together in the present volume deal with cultural

contexts of that conflict. Since they were written or a period of fifteen years for

publication and presentation in a variety of forums.

English literature was introduced into the Indian education system during the

nineteenth century. The British rules of India saw it as an intellectual tool to be

used to civilize the natives. When English literature was included in school and

University courses in India already had a long and rich tradition of literature. It is

with well developed forms of poetry, drama and prose. Indian literature at the

juncture of this encounter was being written in more than a dozen living languages.

But since English literature was produced in the country of the rules, and was

praised by them, it immediately acquired a high cultural status in India. It

continued to enjoy that status till the beginning of the Second World War.

Indian English literature may be defined as literature originally in English by

authors Indian by birth, ancestry or Nationality. Historical and political

circumstances combined to give the educated nineteenth century Indian a certain

proficiency in the use of the English language. Isolated instances stand out in the

nineteenth century as literary curiosities. Toru Dutt and Manmohan Ghosh these

writers could not constitute a trend. They were National products of the general,

social and cultural conditions of their time.

Most of the early Indo-Anglean experiments in literature done in verse.

Prose of non-fictional variety existed in abundance. It was motivated mostly by

extra literary impulses like political protest or social reform. The novel as an art

form came to India with the British and it was new in every Indian literature. The

novel as it developed in the western world is particularly with time and space and

their effects on man. In the medieval age, different countries could borrow stories

from each other. The Prototypes of some of the Canterbury tales have been traced

back to the Panchathantra. A novel by an Indian writer demands direct

involvements in values, experiences which are valid in the Indian context.

Bengal was the first region to come in close contact with the British. The

earliest Indian novels came to be written in Bengali. It is interesting to note that the

novel emerged at different times in different regions of India. The full development

of the Indian novel as a whole, historical romance, social realism and

Psychological novels showing an introspective concern with the individual. In

most Indian languages especially in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and

Malayalam, the development occurred in this order.

Social realism was ushered in some time during the ‘twenties ‘by Munshi

Prem channel in Hindi and Sarat Chandra Chatterji in Bengali. They dealt with

everyday problems of the rural community and their immense popularity marks the

next phase of development in the Indian novel. Contemporary public issues

whether social or political began to interest the writers and the National movement

for Independence offered them rich and ready material. Social problems and

politics have always been difficult to separate in India and in Bhagavathi Charan

Varma’s more recent Hindi novel ‘Bhule Bisre Chitra’ (1959).This novel deals

with the thirteen we find a portrait of society chequred by the conflict of political

beliefs and social ideals. Indo-Anglian fiction as a branch of Indian fiction rather

than English fiction.

The Indo-Anglian aspiration in literature faces two large handicaps, first, it

endeavors to create literature in a language which in most cases has been acquired

rather them spoken from birth. Second, it seeks to establish a distinct literature in a

language in which great literature already exists. Indo-Anglian novelists are

controlled by a number of artist’s problems. He has to allow the heterogeneous

nature of his immediate audience. The English language cuts across diverse ethnic,

religious and cultural backgrounds, and although theoretically this given the

novelist a wider audience. Subtle nuances in literature are possible only when the

reader and the writer participate in the same process of living. One way of by

passing the handle of the diverse background and simplifying the linguistic

problem would be to write about Urban and cosmopolitan situation. Some of the

best works in Indo-Anglian fiction deal with non-meta Politian situation.

The awareness of historical forces manifests itself in another preoccupation

of the Indo-Anglian novelists. A large number of their novels tend to concentrate

in the so-called encounter between East and West. Not only at the level of people

but also at the level of ideas. The successful writer can exploit the dramatic as well

as the symbolic potential of the theme holding the two sides in a poised suspension

in international dialects.

The theme that seem to have fascinated many Indian –Anglo novelists in the

place of faith in the social cultural life of India. There were writers tired with a

mission and burdened with a purpose outside the merely aesthetic scope of

literature. They were waiting in order to promote the betterment of their fellow

beings.

The most recurrent technique in the Indo-Anglian fiction has been that of the

first person narrative moreover, a large number of recent novels are

autobiographical in method, if not in substance since the theme of some of the best

works is the quest for self. The technique in often the most suitable and has been

applied in widely diverse situations by Indo-Anglian novelists. It is often said that

the achievements of the Indo-Anglian novelist falls for short of the achievement of

the novelist in some of the regional languages. This may true, especially in view of

the late development and quantitative disadvantage of Indo-Anglian writing.

A dozen or more distinct languages and literature flourish today and the

Indian literary scene. These are mostly distributed on a regional basis. There are

three exceptions-Sanskrit, Urdu and English. Sanskrit is our classic language and

of many of as a sacred language. Urdu has some extent lost its importance after the

creation of Pakistan. For English its vogue is almost uniformly distributed all over

the country. English is spoken in India may be or more 50 million people as their

second language. Thus the books in English published in India account for about

fifty percent of the total for all languages. The English newspapers and Magazines

cumulatively command in a more impressive and influential circulation than those

in any other language. The popular vogue for Hindi is of course much greater at

least in North India. But for administrative purposes and in higher education and

the higher judiciary English still plays an uneasy but indispensable role. It would

thus be not wide off the mark to say that Indo-Anglian literature has a substantial

base today. This base not withstanding periodical scares seems like strengthened

rather than weakened as the years pass.

Many of a creative writer in India has himself translated his work into

English. The writers can’t their reflected light on the history of Indian writing in

English. Such a literary history becomes something more than in a survey of one of

the dozen flourishing contemporary India. One salutary development in that our

writers and academies are being aware of the Indian literary and critical tradition.

Literary criticism not being an exact science the responses of different people to a

poem or a novel or a drama.

It stands to reason that what makes Indo-Anglian literature an Indian

literature. The choice of subject in the texture of thought and play of sentiment, in

the organization of material and in the creative use of language. We should expect

Indian writing in English rather than any of the regional literatures to project a total

vision of India. “National identity’ is a spiraling concept ranging from the material

to the spiritual. The ‘Ramayana’ is the epic of India and the ‘Mahabharata’ is the

veritable grammar of Indian National literature. It is not necessary that a novel of

today should in geographical terms try always to cover whole of India. It may be

located in some nook or other of this subcontinent like Mulk Raj Anand’s

‘Untouchable’, Kabir’s ‘Men and Reverse’, Raja Rao’s ‘Kanthapura’, Kushwanth

Singh’s ‘Train to Pakistan’. But novels like Anand’s coolie suggest in their

different ways the moving multiplicity of the life lived in the vast spaces of India.

The last twenty-five years have seen our novelists the great survivals as well

as the enterprising new arrivals. These years have witnessed the emergence of

Nirad Chaudhari and Ved Mehta, both masters of prose. There has also been an

explosion of new poetry (Dom Moraes, Kamala Das, and A K Ramanujan)

including ‘workshop’ poetry. Indian literature presents to us, in addition to

Vedantic, Buddhist, worldview, in poetry or in prose, Marxist, socialist, humanist,

existentialist or other world views through which life is seen. There are also

genuinely Indian prospective because it is the writers experiences that given them

shape and substance.

Thus the Indianness of writing consists in writer’s intense awareness of his

entire culture. This awareness has to be vertical as well as horizontal. Each Nation

has its own tradition in the cultivation of the values and life. Art and the literature

become great of the extent to which they realize the values in terms of living,

artistic or literary expression. And this is how, where, why the Indianness of an

Indian works of art comes in for consideration when we think of national or world

literature.

Indian writing in English, which has received unstinted admiration both at home

and abroad, is now in its full swing. It has carved out a new track, a new vision-a

vision that is replete with an unswerving faith and hope, myths and traditions,

customs and rites, our great country has enshrined in her bosom from the

immemorial. If we dive deep into the works of the Indian stalwarts of English

fiction, it is revealed that their works are not an imitation of English literary pattern

but highly original and intensely Indian in both theme and spirit. They have given a

new shape and colour to English literature in the same way as the Australians and

Americans have evolved their own literature in their respective countries.

The real challenge the writers of today face in the enforced homogenization

and standardization of culture. It is due to globalization and the new easy and

superficial internationalism which tempts Indian English writers to market

themselves abroad. There has been a movement to take Indian writing across the

globe. Fictional writings and even representations of nature and characters in its

best form of writers like Amitabh Ghosh, Vikram Seth, and Salman Rushdie have

taken Indian writing and writers and writers to great heights. These are efforts of

several generations of Indian authors writing in English that they have resulted in

international success, particularly since the publication of Midnight’s children

(1981) by Salman Rushdie. The Indian novel in English has finally been accepted

as an important literary endeavor. It could also be mentioned that Indian women

writers have began to gain recognition, Arundhathy Roy winning the Booker Prize

for The God of Small Things in 1997.

Prior the rise of the novel, many Indian women composed poetry and short

stories in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. Women

were the chief upholders of a rich and oral tradition of story-telling, through myths,

legends, songs and fables. 

But the major movement in post-independence Indian English poetry has

been modernism. Poets like Saojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri

Aurobindo, and later Nissim Ezekiel and even Henry Derozio came up to their own

time in an unbroken sequence. They were the modernists who preferred to think of

themselves as the inventors of new poetics, a new generation without literary

ancestors. The 1950’s and 1960’s saw poets like Dom Moraes, P Lal, P Nandy, A

K Ramanujan, Jayanta Mahapatra, K N Daruwalla, Kamala Das to name a few,

each having a style and craftsmanship of his/her own. Such poets such as Moraes

frequently resorted to a variety of person or masks behind to hide themselves;

others like Jayanta Mahapatra have repeatedly explored both external and internal

poverty and sorrow with remarkable persistence.

Writing about Kamala Das’s poetry is the most moving and tortured. Apart

from writing in English, Das also wrote under the pen name Madhavikutty in

Malayalam before her conversion to Islam ten years ago. She had not only

established herself as an English writer. Her popularity in Kerala was credited

mostly to her short stories and the autobiography My Story, which was translated

into 15 languages, a book where she openly discussed her unsatisfactory sexual life

with Madhav Das, her husband, a senior Reserve Bank of India official who died a

few years ago. While her autobiography My Story gives several descriptions of her

own marriage as unsatisfying and unfulfilling, her poems presented an image of a

marriage which grew lifeless, empty and dull.

Das’s protest against such a system made her turn a ‘rebel’. Her offended

feminine self went on emotional wanderings attempting to explore an identity and

freedom. Nevertheless, her traditional make-up of a conventional woman was a

factor which persistently forbade her from breaking away completely from the role

of a traditional wife. A conflict naturally arose between the passivity and rebellion

against the male oriented universe. And the conflict persisted all through her life. 

It was this conflict that caused shock time and again to the readers and people

who were close to Kamala Das. However, her achievement as a poet was that her

poetry gave a different definition of poetry altogether. Her ‘feminine sensibility’

can be described as her personal self; her feelings as a woman, her physical desires

and her evolution from teenage bride to an adolescent and a ‘mother figure’.

 Das lived alone in her world with feelings of loneliness and yet

maintained her tradition, the security of her home. She always felt that poetry

meant studying life and its objectivity in a very realistic way. Kamala Das died at

the age of 75, leaving three sons behind after fighting a long battle with Diabetes. 

Known for her frank and explicit expression on matters of sexuality,

Kamala Das’s writings focused on love, betrayal and the resultant agony that often

unsettled the orthodox readers. She leaves behind a legacy that is hard to be

fulfilled, a legacy where she could touch human heart with her lucid and charming

style and great economy of words. The world of poetry and prose will miss her for

long. Farewell Kamala Suraiyya Das. 

 

Chapter I

Cast and Gender in Post-Colonial Kerala: My Story as a History

Autobiographies are produced and circulated in plenty. Nowadays, a

phenomenon not so prominent early in history. In almost all the discussions of the

marketed stories of the self in Kerala the reference to Kamala Das and her books

‘My Story’ appear and still people keep turning on to her to know the secret of the

‘creation’ of such books.

‘The author’, the unique genius who writes has not yet been replaced as a

concept and the thought that more unconscious discourses. The writer is oblivious;

shape the material and the possibilities of what can be said in a particular text is

rather ignored. The ‘independent’ author concept is still ruling the minds of the

readers who actually become part of the ‘margins’ of a book. The unconscious of

the society of the readers/producers, its ideology – which constructs a text which

may be ‘other’ to the actual writer, is largely ignored.

By the late nineteenth century, the caste system of Kerala had evolved to be

the most complex to be found anywhere in India. The exploitation of it had become

considerable. Caste system was not prevalent in Kerala during initial of history. 

Sri.Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai had recorded that in olden times when people lived in

the Western Ghats, categorization on the basis of work done by them was in

practice.  There were seven such categories. Thudiyan (one who beats ‘thudi’, a

musical instrument) Parayan (one who beats para, a kind of drum) Panar

(singer)Kadambar(Agriculturist)Valayar(fisherman)Vanikar(traders)and

Uzhavar(workers)are these seven categories. Though Brahmin migration to Kerala

took place during three or four centuries B.C, they became powerful only during

eighth century. Cast system began in Kerala only after this period. Sabdatharavali

(1923) names the caste as Brahmins eight Newna Vargas (minorities) two

Antharala jathy (temple dwellers) twelve, Sudras eighteen shilpi six. Pathithar

(untouchables) ten.Thnajathy (lower caste) eight and 64 numbers of sub- castes.

There was no caste system in Kerala till the end of Buddhist

renaissance period.  People were known by their profession like Panan, Parayan,

Villavan, Ushavan, Paravathan, Ayer etc.  Brahmins also migrated to this area and

there was no caste among them.  By about the second half of the 8thcentury,

Brahmins become more influential and powerful in the society.  This marked the

beginning of the caste system.  Kerala society divided into two. Those who

recognized Brahmin supremacy stood on the one side and others who opposed

them.  The first was within the fold of Hinduism and latter was out of it.  Those

who embraced Hinduism were grouped into several races.  Rulers or Kings

became Kshatriyas.  The trader group known Vaisyas was not there. All others

who followed Brahmanical faith later came to be known as Sudras. They were

Nairs.

There is considerable controversy regarding the actual place of Nairs in the

caste system. It is understandably, a very touchy subject. One of the main reasons

is that the caste system in Kerala is very different from the caste system elsewhere

in India. According to the caste system followed in the rest of India, only the

lowest class, the Sudras, was considered to be "untouchables". However, in the

case of Kerala, anyone who was not a Namboodiri was treated by the

Namboodiries as an untouchable. The Namboodiries had different rules regarding

the degrees of pollution for the different classes. A Namboodiri could only be

"polluted" by the touch of a Nair, whereas the other classes had different distances

after which they could be considered polluting. For example, if an Ezhava got

within 24 feet of a Namboodiri, the Namboodiri was considered to be polluted. In

this regard, it would seem that the Nairs were like the Sudras in the rest of India.

However, the Sudras in the rest of India were never a martial class, since

warfare was the profession of the Kshatriyas. According to this interpretation,

Nairs would seem to be more like Kshatriyas since they were a martial class as

well. Similar to Kshatriyas, they were second to the Brahmins (Namboodiries).

Furthermore, many Nair families were aristocratic. They owned large feudal

estates and in some cases, even took part in the ruling of Kerala. An example is the

Paliam family of Kochi. The oldest male of the family, the Paliath Achan, served

as the Prime Minister to the Raja of Kochi.

It is believed that there were 64 classifications in Nair society.  

Sri.K.P.Padmanabha Menon who wrote Kerala Charithram (History of Kerala) has

recorded that Nairs who were grouped as Sudras were turned into three main

groups called Illam, Swaroopam and Padamangalam.  According to him, the first

group were servants of Brahmin houses, second were servants in Kshatriya homes

and the third were servants of temples.  Besides, there were a number of sub castes

among Nairs like Idachery Nairs, Maranmar, Athikurichikal, Chembukottikal,

Odat Nair, Chalia Nairs, Kalamkotti Nair, Pallichal Nairs, Veluthedathu Nairs, and

Vilakkithala Nairs etc.

The Nairs may be considered as constituting the soul of the (Travancore –

Cochin) population. They are split into various classes. The Velloyma hold the first

rank, seen in the more northern parts. Illakure and the three succeeding ranks

predominate throughout Travancore; the term denotes one belonging to the house

of the Namboori. There are different communities of Nairs like Shroobacurre

(vassals of chiefs), Shacoular (oil mongers), Vellakathura (washer men who only

do the job for Brahmins and Nairs), and Yedacherry (cowherds), Oodatu Nair

(boatmen) Attychorchy (who perform the necessary offices of the dead). The

higher order of the Nairs is known under the collective term of Madamby, or

Prubhookanmar. Designations are comprised various others. Based on profession

and status in society, Nairs were classified into 18 castes. The caste system had its

legitimacy in the positive responses to many of its institutions by the non-

Brahmins.

The opposition to caste system took various forms. While some castes refused

the position of their community or refused to accept higher position of other

community. In other cases, many individuals completely disagreed with caste

divisions. Ayyankali, Chattampi Swamikal and Sri Narayana Guru were some of

the social reformers who fought against the inhuman and disgraceful practices that

their respective communities were subjected to. Kerala Varma, a Raja from

the Kochi royal family, voiced against the caste system incurring the wrath of his

Generals (Kurups).

Throughout its long history and well into the twentieth century, one could

see regional and material variations in family forms and matrilineal could exist in

both polygamy and polyandry versions. But attempts have been made to flatten out

the diversity representing particular forms of family as normative and others as

deviant. Creating systems of gradations and hierarchies of the types of family with

the patriarchal, matrilineal, upper-caste family at the top being regarded as the

norm.

The structure thus came into being shaped the ideology of the upper castes,

and continues to underpin beliefs and practices extant today. This occurs here not

simply as a natural process, but due to the presence of the colonial institutions.

Speaking from within the regimen of colonialism, the colonialists called the native

practices barbaric. A possible starting point for an exploration of the historical

evidence on the crucial place of control over matrilineal within the larger structure.

In which brahmanical patriarchy was located could be the practices and beliefs

prevalent among the natives. The Nair men living in polygamy and Nair women in

polyandry was not a practice in the upper caste Namboodiries. The matrilineal

Namboodiri men practiced polygamy whereas matrilineal Nair women practiced

polyandry.

With Christianity, the patriarchal religion, the new motive of avoidance of

sin enters in. The moral standard becomes in theory the same for men as for

women. In practice the difficulty of enforcing it upon men has always led to a

greater toleration of their failings than of those of women. The bulk of colonial

writing thus focused on demonstrating the peculiarities of Hindu civilization and

the practices pertaining to women. The Anglican writers, especially Christian

missionaries, were methodically building up an indictment, also in print, about the

hideous state of Indian society.

Western anthropological scholarship on Malabar also shows that the sexuality

of women, more than that of men, is a subject of social concern. The best known

among the colonial writing is James Mill’s account of India and her past; its reach

and impact were tremendous because it was the first comprehensive history of

India. Mill deemed the Hindu civilization as crude from its very beginnings and as

plunged in the lowest depths of immorality and crime.

This was the general context in which the women’s ‘essential nature’

came to be identified with their sexuality. The natives of Malabar, as part of their

attempts to absorb the mainstream national culture. They were active recipients of

this perception of the past prepared by the western intervention. The women are

not in control of men and the modern books where the male wielded power over

‘the others’. Ravi Varma’s painting and Chandu Menon’s novel etc. of this period

thus made a clarion call for the end of matrilineal. Chandu Menon’s novel, though

titled Indulekha, was actually about the emergence of the modern Malayali Man.

The young professional middle class Nair men became part of the colonial

notions of morality. They raised the demand for marriage reform to gain control

over the sexuality and fertility of women. With their engagement with the colonial

state the men in matrilineal Nair families. They were the agents of change

dismantled the last vestiges of ‘barbarism’. Hindu laws and patriarchal descent had

thus become factual parts of Nair life.

It has taken historians and anthropologists a very long time to accept the

multiplicity of cultural practices that exist in India, instead of treating the region as

a homogenized space. But the colonial rule took only two centuries to level down

the diversity and flatten the culture into a monolithic one.

The abolition of matrilineal Kinship by the (post)colonial Kerala legislature

in 1976 was a predictable consequence. It was of two centuries of legal

interventions of the colonial rule. Between the 1930s and the 1970s most landed

Theravadas all over the state were in a process of disintegration and a new

integration of individuals. The extension of the Hindu code in the 1950s to govern

Nairs made Indulekha - a Hindulekha and Man - a Madhavan. It is again a

historical coincidence that Mr. V.M. Nair married Balamani Amma in the year

1933 and My Story, the autobiography of Kamala Das was published in 1976. The

former, an act of integration & the latter, disintegration. Kamala was born in 1934

and the life she led for four decades could be accounted as a life against the grain.

But the reading public subverted her attempts by reading the book with a

patriarchal/pornographic eye and My Story thus becomes the history of the modern

Malayali men.

Kamala Das resoundingly rejects the central figure of Malayali social

reformism, the ‘manly reformer’. She reveals that the housewife may have a

domain beyond the domestic, a ‘private’ in which the body’s pleasures are not

forbidden: the aesthetic woman bound to the domestic longs to be free, to reorder

the space of the home on her terms. In My Story, she portrayed herself as an

‘ordinary woman. In this sense My Story can be read as a rewriting of Indulekha.

Indulekha, the protagonist of the novel is a rebel, equipped with classical

education, as well as English, independent, witty, open-minded, and strong which

transforms her into a thinking, feeling subject capable of choosing her own lover.

This reconstitution of female self confined her to the domestic space of the

patriarchal nuclear family. My Story revisits the same site of Indulekha to discover

that nuclear family is corrupt, oppressive institution. Where both the male and

female become alienated and can only become themselves through various kinds of

transgression.

This should alert one to the significance of the self-assertion of men and

market in our society. In narration, the story teller, Kamala Das represents

conditions both for her own benefit. It also for the benefit of those reading but the

narrator may be held by the imaginary position in a series of misrecognitions as in

the case of her readers/critics, most of them male. Reading public is also already

positioned by ideological beliefs. So that they read the text in a way which accords

with their own ideological assumptions.

Chapter II

Cast and Gender in Kamala Das’s My Story

I‘ve spent long years trying to locate my mind

Beneath skin, beneath flesh and underneath

The bones. I‘ve stretched my two-dimensional

Nudity on sheets of weeklies, monthlies,

Quarterlies, a sad sacrifice. I‘ve put

My private voice away, adopted the

Typewriter‘s click as my only speech; I

Click-click, click-click tiresomely into your

Ears, stranger, though you may have no need of

Me, I go on and on.

- Kamala Das, My Story (1976)

Throughout My Story, Das identifies and resists so-called morality as an

oppressive source of gendered ideology .It functions through the exploitation of

women‘s bodies, sexuality and emotions in Kerala. Das argues that the repression

of women‘s intellectual and cultural productions in Kerala (frequently cited as a

women-centered culture) exposes the inherent hypocrisy of a Phallocentric society.

According to Das, the voices of women from Kerala their standpoints, their

awareness, their worldview are not only unheard but, at times, condemned in the

name of morality. My Story studies the underlying power structure at play that has

kept a significant section of the population in Kerala. It oppressed in the name of

various social institutions based on conceptual categories such as gender, caste,

class and color. Here I’m going to discuss mainly about the caste and gender the

author explored in My Story.

My Story appeared in 1976, it went through six impressions, and thirty six

thousand copies, in eleven months. My Story is translated from ‘Ente Katha’.It

was first published in a serialized form in Malayalanadu, a sensationalist weekly

magazine in Kerala. My Story examines the life and times of its female author

through the lens of an autobiographical (often cited as confessional) mode of

narration. The story deals with the themes of childhood, ageing and death. My

Story also becomes a venue for Kamala Das to display her deep insight into human

relationships, her confident yet delicate handling of sexuality, her eye for the

minutest detail.

My Story is undeniably Kamala Das‘s signal achievement as a novelist. In

terms of both magnitude of meaning and the superb artistry through which she

challenges oppression regulated in the name of morality. Kamala Das began

writing My Story in 1971.From her family, especially her father, tried to shelve the

publication of the text. Das did not yield to the pressure and continued to engage

her readers with her life-story. The forthrightness with which Kamala Das

discusses exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, homosexuality, violence

associated with gender, caste and shocked Kerala‘s dominant patriarchy. Who in

turn, branded the text and its author as immoral. After the publication of My Story

Das confesses that she received no warmth in her home state and says that “the

book has cost me many things I held dear” (Preface My Story).

As part of the agenda in exposing Kerala‘s oppressive rules to the world,

Ente Katha was rewritten in English by the author herself under the title My Story.

It is to date the best selling women‘s autobiography in post-independent India.

The English version, though following the autobiographical mode of narration,

differs from the Malayalam text in its presentation and also in its content. Even on

a cursory glance of both the texts, it is easy to spot the dexterity .In which Kamala

Das slips in and out of the linguistic, cultural and social contexts of Malayalam and

English. In her poem ‘An Introduction’ Kamala Das writes of the predicament of

the multilingual writer “I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three

languages, write in two, and dream in one”.

Kamala Das‘s views on translation, expressed in her poem ‘An Introduction’

fairly representative of the general attitude towards language of many Indo-English

writers. Also, My Story provides ample scope for Kamala Das to transform the

sense of distance found (if any) while writing in another language into an aesthetic

product. This is especially evident when she pauses to clarify cultural connotations

that could pose an impediment to understanding for the non-Malayalam reader.

For example, the concept of Nalappattu, her ancestral house in Kerala connotes the

contemporary matrilineal hypocrisy where women are merely the named players.

In actuality are subservient to the maternal uncle that rules the joint family.

Kamala Das attempts to detail the historical nuances of Nair Kerala in her

English version. This could possibly explain why My Story, with its fifty chapters,

is almost double the size of Ente Katha. Before embarking on a close reading of

My Story, it is worth looking briefly at the social context of Nair Kerala to which

Das‘s writing refers.

The state of Kerala, with a population of thirty odd million people has been

hailed as the epitome of women‘s educational and cultural development. In a

country that that does not fare too well in terms of women‘s development.

Kerala‘s performance over the last two decades, in terms of social and health-

related indicators, is well-documented. The comparative egalitarian development is

oft upheld by economists and sociologists as the Kerala Model of Development.

Health indicators in the state of Kerala are equally impressive, with its high

level of life expectancy for women, which is the case in all the so-called developed

countries of the world. It is often claimed that part of the credit for Kerala to differ

from other states in India. It is perhaps due to the unusual importance given to its

long history of the matrilineal society of Nairs that reside in the state. Indeed it is,

if one goes by the conventional indicators and tools of measurements and adopts a

comparative perspective with other Indian states.

When detailing Nair women’s autonomy in Kerala explains that, though the

system was not matriarchal, women didn’t govern the household. It accorded them

greater freedom, choice and respect than they would found elsewhere in the world

until the twentieth century. Nairs are not matriarchal group; it is the eldest maternal

uncle who resided in the joint family known as the ‘tharavadu’ that controlled

family affairs. Traditionally, the Nair women lived in their own ‘tharavadu ‘and

husbands visited often. Das’s ancestral home that gets featured in My Story is the

400 years old tharavadu of Nalappattu. Which she claims was the house gifted to

her ancestors, the fifteen year old Kunji. My Story demonstrates that the

pervasiveness of the ideology of the Nair women as a historical model of self

assertion has little or no direct connection to its living counterpart. This is not to

deny the existence of some domestic agency, which often gives a few women

considerable control over family members and family affairs, despite complete

dependence on males in financial and civil society. Still, even such agency is not

always forthcoming varying considerably across the spectrum that it becomes

imperative to showcase women such as Kamala Das.

The manner in which Kerala‘s Nair caste system endorses its collective

norms highlight a concrete set of ideas of what is morally acceptable,

distinguishing between being a good Nair and an evil one. The morality endorsed

by castism can be seen to constitute the subjectivity of the feminine Nair subject in

Kerala. The regulated cast rules allow the Nair patriarchy to construct an ethical

project. It recognizes and controls sexual behavior and practices as a vital aspect of

maintaining a moral society. As a result, Nair women are often coerced into

submission for upholding caste values. For instance, Nair women occupy an

oppressed space in the domestic society of marriage where the norm up to the last

decade was that of Marumakkathayam. That is the early arranged marriage of

young girls to a much older relative, sometimes as old as or older than their own

fathers. As in the case of Das‘s family, men regularly controlled women of their

family by using the practice of Marumakkathayam.

The Nair patriarchs of the Nalappattu family too find their daughters’

sexuality valuable assets, a commodity that they exchange with whomever they

deem fit. Most often with a much older male relative in order to safeguard the

family property. Das herself was not exempt from this as she was asked to marry

her cousin. Marriage meant nothing more than a show of wealth to families like

ours. It was enough to proclaim to the friends that the father had spent half a lakh

on its preparations. The bride was unimportant and her happiness a minor issue.

Das reveals that most of the Nalappattu women, right from her great

grandmother Kunji up to Das herself, were sold into marriage under the pretense of

maintaining a good caste unit. Nair men, however, were free to marry anyone they

pleased, irrespective of caste or class differences. Das claims that women are

forced into assimilating into the customs and codes of gendered behavior in

patriarchal Nair Kerala.

In My Story, Das‘s dissatisfaction with patriarchy becomes explicit with her

concerns about the customary nature of contemporary Nair castist norms.

The men of Das‘s family were typical in that they set forth rules for the women

folk to obey. This form of hegemonic control even extends to appropriating the

personal freedom to the extent of choosing what the women wear .According to

Das‘s father stipulated firmly that” her mother was not to wear anything but

Khaddar and preferably white or off white” (Das 5).

Yet another example of patriarchal and castist oppression in My Story can

be found in Das‘s valiyamma (grand-aunt) .She was worried about public opinion,

“had not stepped out of the Nalappattu House for over thirty years except to go to

the privy that was a furlong away and to the pond for her baths” (Das 35). This

quote suggests that Das‘s valiyamma was concerned of public opinion that might

cast her as not being a good Nair woman. Similarly, in the Malayalam version of

her text, Das claims that as a young girl she was made to conform to Nair rules and

regulations and was admonished for self-expression (i.e. if she danced or expressed

her love for a servant girl by hugging her) by patriarchy and given a sermon about

the need to uphold the family name which was ascribed primarily to the women

folk (Das 46). Das states that she realized early in her life how the very fact of

their gender constitutes for women in the Nair world in which she grew up an

almost insuperable limiting factor to their life-chances.

Nair women are thus constructed as possible victims for acquiring a bad

reputation that could harm the harmony of the Nair kinship. Interestingly, but not

surprisingly, no evidence of a desire from Nair men for good reputation can be

found in Das‘s text. However, Das by exposing this hypocrisy occupies a position

of resistance as she discusses her awareness of the predicament of her gendered-

self .It is along with the fellow oppressed subaltern women trapped in the ethical

project of patriarchy within the Nair caste system.

Nair women of Kerala because of the matrilineal system of inheritance and

existence have been falsely hailed as a group. They enjoy considerable amounts of

freedom from patriarchy compared to other women in the country. However, this

is false conception because, in reality, the maternal uncle (the Karnavaar) simply

replaces the role of the authoritarian father as in any non-Nair the family unit.

Nonetheless, what differentiates the Nair patriarchy from the rest is that in their

desire to maintain the upper caste/class Nair values. And they deliberately

construct their women as potential victims that may pollute castist purity through

sex with non-Nair members. Such an inter-caste sexual relationship could lead to

dispersal of family property into non-Nair societies. This is one of the reasons why

Nair patriarchy constructs their women as naïve, child-like beings devoid of any

agency that can contribute towards building/ maintaining let alone resisting social

norms. In fact, most Nair women are even named with the common suffix of

Kutty that can be roughly translated to mean female child. Actually das too was

named as Madhavikutty, literally remaining child of Madhav (coincidently

Madhav her husband’s name) till her death. Thus, the promotion of

Marumakkathayam, the arranged marriage of women to older men within the Nair

caste, along with literally naming women as Kutty (child) .It suggests the

hegemonic role adopted by Nair patriarchy to produce a gendered Nair woman.

For instance, my grandmother was given the name Kunjukutty (transl. small child).

She was known as Kunjukutty till she died at age eighty one.

Nair women in Kerala by always associating them to the helpless victim.

They are devoid of any agency to perform reactive action (and thus any act for the

self) to oppression (the woman lives, labors and dies for patriarchy). While it‘s

true that Nair women or man binary in terms of a parent or child relationship. The

women are made to believe that they need to constant supervision lest they

inadvertently violate their own caste codes. For instance, in a chapter entitled

“Calcutta‘s Cocktail Season” Das‘s husband is seen to assume the paternal role in

their marriage “You are always a child in my eyes, Amy, he said, you may play

around with love but be choosy about your playmates. I do not want you ever to

get hurt in your life” (Das 151).

The patriarchal conception of the nature and role of women in a Nair

society is a conception that governs attitudes and social practices. That imposes on

its women an immense burden of fear that limits expression, a turning away from

oneself, which in turn is misread as being good. For example, Das‘s conception of

a relationship and marriage greatly differed from other Nair women in her family

who often suffered Das wonders how life would be if she was to follow the

normative rules set forth by her caste

“I would be a middle-class house wife, and walk along the vegetable shop

carrying a string bag and wring faded chappals on my feet. I would beat my

children and then make my thin children and make them scream out for mercy. I

would wash my husband‘s cheap underwear and hang it out to dry in the balcony

like some kind of national flag, with wifely pride…” (Das 96).

Most of her female relatives lived their lives in the fashion described above,

Das would rebel against these prescriptive behavior patterns that ideology dictated

her to follow. For her mother and grandmother “timidity helped to create an

illusion of domestic harmony which satisfied the relatives and friends” (Das 5).

For Das‘s mother, such timidity, was the response to fear of the hegemonic

patriarchal norms that plotted her destiny She was afraid of her father and afraid of

her uncle, the two men who plotted and conspired to bring her a husband who was

to provide her with children .Das‘s mother did not fall in love with her father

rather, she simply obeyed him to keep up the façade of a good marriage. After the

wedding he made her remove all the gold ornaments from her person, all except

the managlsutra. To her it must have seemed like taking to widow‘s weeds, but

she did not protest. This lack of protest (due to fear) coupled with the historical

(false) conception of the Nair women to have agency leads to oppression of the

female subject in Das‘s text and connotes the general condition of Nair women in

Kerala. The commitment to be a good Nair woman required Das‘s mother to hold

up such a dissimilar and horribly mismated marriage which expresses a lack of

resistance to Nair patriarchy‘s ethical project. Most Nair women accept/imitate

this patriarchal law/custom and lived the rest of their lives in misery. A questioning

child, Das too is oft told by her immediate family to follow the norms of society to

be a good Nair woman. However, Das‘s claim that she “was drunk with power”

and “spoke her mind” strikes an opposition exactly to the submission of that of her

mother‘s or as figuratively represented in her mute great grand aunt Ammalu .It

was not seemly for a Nair child to call an aged relative by name but I called her

Ammalu. She could not protest anyway.

Das advocates the exhibition of the autonomy to act in ways that suggests that

gendered and castist norms. Such as the need to uphold the family name should be

transgressed if they challenge individual freedom. Thus while lack of protest and

timidity are fully imbricates with Nair societal and patriarchal values. The sense of

pleasure that Kamala Das is able to grasp in her relationships echoes the subject‘s

desire for and an investment in behavior that the self has deemed necessary for

resistance. Defining and delineating an ethos that is structured around constructs

and performances of sexually-saturated and oppressive notions such as loyalty and

fidelity to a marriage that she was forced into. Das claims that such notions

composes not an investment in the self but rather supports the hegemonic social

constructs.

In My Story, Das‘s resistance to societal norms becomes an alternative ethics

to the construction of good and evil, and it involves a commitment to the self as

opposed to compliance for societal approval. Dealing with the flop marriage in the

conventional sense between Das and her elderly husband. My Story examines the

crumbling fabric of their marriage and Das‘s resistance to fit into the slot of the

silent victim that Nair caste ideology proposes for its women. After two years of

being married, Das harbors few illusions about her relationship with her husband.

In chapter 22, Das narrates the brutal shock she receives from her husband during

their wedding night when she claims “again and again he hurt me and all the while

the Kathakali drums throbbed dully” (Das 79). Das becomes pregnant almost

immediately and she delivers a boy by the time she was eighteen.

Das confesses that initially she had no power to resist the parent/child

register that she and her husband find themselves, because she was indeed a child

(fifteen) when she got married. Of her arranged marriage, Das tells her reader that

“My life had been planned and its course charted by my parents and relatives. I

was to be the victim” (Das 85). In fact, at first, the fifteen year old Das wanted to

reproduce a father figure in her husband, and in the process rebukes him for not

assuming the socially produced codes of behavior. Das writes of their first

encounter during their engagement

“My cousin asked me why I was cold and frigid. I did not know what

sexual desire meant, not having experienced it even once. Don‘t you feel any

passion for me, he asked me. I don‘t know, I said simply and honestly” (Das 95).

During this stage, Das first defines her relationship with her husband as one of lack

“I felt that his love was never to be mine” (Das104) and “I felt lost and unwanted”

(Das126).

At the same time, Das promotes her husband/father-figure to the level of

regal supremacy, underlining his paternal connection “My husband came from a

joint family and had several young cousins who liked to flock around him

admiringly (Das 90). And later, this regal sentiment is captured in the image Das

portrays when she claims “Whenever I lay clutching my husband‘s feet at night, I

felt that his love was never to be mine” (Das 104). Nonetheless, the moment her

husband exhibits a lack of authority, when taking her into his confidence for the

first time tells her how his new superior was unreasonably brutal with him. Das is

able to express a disobedience to the Oedipalization she initially finds herself in,

and the emotional response she is able to muster up is that of sympathy “I felt very

sorry for him all of a sudden” (Das 194). Later, she is able to reach a point of

assertion to resist the parent-child relationship with her husband as unnecessary

“All commandments engraved on the columns of my mind gradually faded, the

fierce winds rising out of the Ganges devoured their words and I changed into a

disobedient daughter”(Das 153).

Das learns that for her husband, holding on to his job at the Reserve Bank

was what was most valuable, more than anything else. It was and this had become

the very essence of the conflicts between them. In My Story Das succeeds in

eliciting the traditional gender family roles ascribed to Nair subjects, undermining

the structures that we used to support the creation and maintenance of Nair

Patriarchal hegemony. A major step in pursuing this sense of self by Das is

attained while challenging the parent or child and man or women binary that Das

and her husband initially enters by virtue of their managed marriage. Typical

feminist readings would dispense with a villainous role to the husband character in

My Story that represents patriarchies oppressive aspects.

Das is keen on being deliberately slippery in her representation of the role she

assigns to her husband in My Story. Das’s portrayal of her husband in My Story is

an ambiguous on the one hand Das’s husband stands for patriarchy, he is her older

Nair cousin, marries her when she is fifteen, treats her as a child and is also

sexually aggressive with her. This lack of attention to marital fidelity, one of the

most crucial elements of the Nair civil marriage places as and her husband at odds

with Nair patriarchal conventions. Also we are told by Das that she discusses her

desire for other women, particularly the medical doctor who takes care of her at the

hospital with her husband “I kept telling my husband that I was love with the

doctor and he said, it is all right she is a women, and she will not exploit you”(Das

152).Later on in the text we learn of the sexual scenario where Das and her

husband enjoy sexual pleasure. However, this time Das also acknowledges the

need to recognize gender as one that does not pre-exist discourse.

In My Story, Das illustrates the performative nature of gender when she

describes the sexual pleasure she is able to enjoy when wearing men’s clothing

“During my nervous breakdown there developed between myself and my

husband an intimacy which was purely physical but during my illness I shed my

shyness and for the first time is my life learned to surrender totally in bed with my

pride intact and blazing…” (Das 126).

In Das’s attempt to present subversive performance of gender. Das also

succeeds challenge our reading o the husband figure as we begin to negotiate our

understanding of the stability of gender practices. Thus in her performances Das is

able to make visible gender norms prescribed by the Nair patriarchy by revealing

how she gets constructed into a gendered discourse.

Das’s freedom doesn’t merely encompass sexual freedom, but also engages

all of the freedom to create the self in resistance to socially constructed

interpellation.She unpacks the ways in which marriage, romance and sexuality

become processes for hegemonic constructions, blinding the self processes of

immaturity and acceptance of social norms. Thus if Nair patriarchy has been made

to see itself, or more accurately to see itself others see it. It has now reached a

moment where it cannot portray itself as either benign or normal and thus

patriarchy must now reckon with its own history of aggression and hegemony. By

rendering Nair patriarchy in Kerala’s social space visible, Das challenges both its

invisibility and its outspoken claims to an essential superiority. Therefore, by

making the privileged nature of Nair patriarchy that continues to plague Kerala

visible. She succeeds in exposing the performitivity of gender as she subverts its

naturalization.

Conclusion

Kamala Das wrote her autobiography ‘My Story’ in 1976. Das locates the

origin of her autobiography in the confessional impulse attending the deathbed.

Das’s intention of “emptying of all the secrets” (Das, Preface) reminds one of the

definitions of autobiography. Her wish for a “Scrubbed-out conscience” (Das,

Preface) prepares the reader for representations of sinful or immoral subjects.

In My Story, Das tells her personal in and outside marriage and her living.

Nair matriarchal rural South India after inheriting her ancestral home. Chapters in

My Story are short. Each of them is about three or four pages. It is fragmented and

not in chronological orders like most women’s autobiographies. It is typically all

about Das’s domestic life, her relations with her parents and her close relatives, her

husband and her lovers. Das talks about the domestic details of food, familial

relations, marriage, sexual liaisons and the internal and external struggles of

women in a repressive world. She also talks about her struggles in public life as a

poet. Das tries to remain a centre of her story.

Das’s autobiography as a document expressing the writer’s own ambiguity

as a woman asserting subjective power in a traditional Nair patriarchal society. Her

female subjects make an effort to change the notions of what is female or feminine

is Kerala tradition. Das’s writing and life show the anger, rage, rebellion of a

women struggling in a Castle- dominated men’s world. Kerala women suffer

because of inequalities and social oppression. The families arrange the marriages

of Kerala women very young. They thus many men they have not met before. They

then move to their husband’s, parent’s home, where they are essentially servant.

Traditionally the Nair women lived in their own Tharavadu and the husbands

visited often. But after the colonization the tradition changed and patriarchal

system brought to Kerala. In My Story Das describes her ancestral home in

Malabar which in called the Nalappattu house and the women who are living in

that house. And the Nair caste ideology, which regulates the lives of women in

Kerala. Generally in autobiographies that are written by women, the central theme

is the relationship between the author and her mother. However, Das doesn’t prefer

to talk about her relation with her mother. Das focuses her relation with men to the

centre of her story. Only in first chapter there is some information about her

relation with her father and mother. She describes her father as a man always busy

with his work. He is not very affectionate to his family. Das also married at the age

of fifteen. It is an arranged marriage by her parents. Das’s only expectation from

her husband is conversation, companionship and warmth. But all she gets in her

marriage is brutality and rudeness. Here it is seen that Das criticizes the

oppression.

Das’s autobiography can be read as a critique of the victimization of the

women in a Nair patriarchal society. Das realize the powerlessness of the female

body and she believes that for the victimized women in a patriarchal society. She

wants to get a divorce but at the same time she knows it is impossible.

“I could not admit to all that my marriage had flopped. I could not return to

home to the Nalappattu house, a divorce, for these had been goodwill between our

two families for three generations which I didn’t want to ruin. My parents and

other relatives were observed with public opinion and bothered excessively with

our societies reaction to any action of an individual’s broken marriage was

distasteful, as horrifying as an attack of leprosy.” (Das 102)

When Das wishes to begin writing, her husband supports her decision to

increase the family’s income. Actually writing is not acceptable for a woman by

the society. Women were expected to confine themselves to the realm of the

kitchen and a woman had to prove herself to be a good wife, a good mother, before

she could become anything else. Because of these, Das could not use the morning-

till- night schedule. She had to wait until nightfall after her family had gone to

sleep and would write until morning.

Das becomes an active agent in searching for the desire. The sexuality that

Das explores outside marriage is defined in a patriarchal society to the advantage

of men. Her stories about her extra marital affairs are also talks about her extra

marital affairs are also talks about male abuse. Thus in the narrative of her most

intense affair, she questions the hurting nature of relationship.

“Years after all of it had ended, I asked myself why. I took him as my lover,

fully aware of his incapacity to love. I needed security perhaps it was necessary for

my body to defile itself in many ways. So that the soul turned humble for a

change” (Das 184).

On the other hand, Das able to stand outside the tradition in the women

centered matriarchy of Nalappattu house. She can question the abused patriarchal

that she has not read “the prestigious report of the rural credit survey committee”

she answers, “But I let you make love to me every night, isn’t that enough?”(Das

128). The relationship between the male and female often an economic exchange.

Women lets husband make love with her, the man provides a shelter and material

security (Das 114).

The past Nair women enjoyed a small degree of power and autonomy within

the tharavadu. The decision making was always centered on the ‘karnavar’. She

shows evidence of the concept of the Karnavar as king “My grand uncle Narayana

Menon was a famous poet, philosopher he looked every inch a king” (Das 15). My

Story demonstrates that the pervasiveness of the ideology of the Nair women as a

historical model. The model of self assertion has little or no direct connection to its

living counterpart.

Das’s relation against the Nair cast ideology which regulates the lives of

sexuality valuable assets. A commodity that exchange with whomever they deem

fit, most often with much older male relative in order to safeguard the family

properly.

“Marriage meant nothing more than a show of wealth to families like

ours. It was enough proclaim to the friends that the father had spent half a lakh on

its preparation. The bride was unimportant and her happiness a minor issue”

(Das 87).

Das shares everything with her readers, good and bad. She chooses to

confess everything by writing rather than going to priest. She shares everything

about her life with all the secrets that should not be openly expressed in her

society. She writes her autobiography to take control of her life and yet power in a

cast dominated patriarchal society. Despite the fact that she criticized by many

people for doing an exceptional thing for a women. She becomes very successful.

Das becomes a mirror for the other silenced women. She manages to speak the

unspeakable instead of them.

Bibliography

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in Kerala, Malabar.New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1940.

Das. Kamala. My Story. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1988.

Dinesen. V.Imagining Nuclear Family, Kerala Experience, Payyannur: Malabar,

1995.

Iyyengar Srinivasa K. R, Indian Writing in English: New Delhi Sterling Publishers

Private Ltd, 1985.

Madhavikutty, Nalappattu. Ente Katha. Kottayam: DC Books, 2007.

Namboothiripad E.M.S. Kerala: Society and Politics. New Delhi: National Book

Centre, 1984.

Satchidanandhan K, Transcending the Body ,Only The Soul Knows How to Sing.