Review of "The Telegraph

STAGING DREAMS OF CHANGE - Strands of history that remain incomplete
by Githa Hariharan

The writing of history need not be a solitary exercise conducted among dusty books in a library. Nor need it be an exclusive business monopolized by scholars. History — or some of its strands —can be portrayed onstage and debated in full public view. These were among the cheering thoughts that came to mind when I recently witnessed the performance of a “feminist docudrama” that maps afresh a little chunk of history.
The docudrama, called Kalakkanavu or “A Dream of Time”, is unusual not only for its content and form, but also for its overall objective. As far as content is concerned, it retells almost a hundred years of history from a feminist perspective. The form is equally ambitious: the drama pieces together select extracts from Tamil women’s writings, speeches, songs and stage performances from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. The central objective is a debate on women and change; but this is not just a scripted debate to be presented onstage. It’s open to the questions and comments of the “actors” and the “audience”. To this extent, the script, written by V. Geetha, is in a state of becoming, open to further dialogue. In fact, the idea of dialogue seems central to the enterprise — a dialogue with the past to explore some historical moments that precipitated the beginnings of social change; and a dialogue between those historical moments and present-day debates to enrich our understanding of what we are living through.

The dialogue hangs on the framework of five historical moments that made change less of a dream. During each of these landmark moments, women were enabled, in some way or the other, to imagine their lives travelling beyond the domestic sphere of marriage, motherhood or household work. Each of these individual journeys also left a legacy for other women — by giving them models through which they could rethink the nature of personal and social relationships. The models are not always “successful” — some of these women paid a terrible price for venturing off the safe and familiar path. But the models said it could be done. Change was possible; at any rate, re-thinking the familiar sanctioned world could pave the way to change.

The first of these historical moments is a period of nationalism when the “new Indian woman” was a recurring motif in what nationalists and reformers had to say. In Tamil Nadu too, the great nationalist poet, Subramania Bharati, is credited with having imagined the new woman into existence through verse and song. Bharati’s new woman was fearless in her commitment to the national cause; she was an equal partner in the grand adventure of nationalism. (There was, however, “the muse and mascot element” — part of this new woman’s role was to inspire men to be courageous and self-sacrificing.)

Thus the play begins with an examination of the truism that Bharati’s new woman is an important ancestor of today’s feminist. Several female contemporaries of Bharati respond onstage through words from newspapers and magazines, diaries and letters. Together they suggest that we need to look beyond Bharati and ask a couple of new questions. What did the age of science mean to women, for instance? And did the emerging rationalist and anti-caste ideologies influence women?

Having considered the “new woman”, the play moves back in time to focus on the relationship between conversion to Christianity and status. What did the new religion mean to women? Which class or caste of women was drawn to it and why? Several stories emerge as these questions are tackled. There’s the story of Grace Samuel who spoke of marriage in terms of companionship. She felt her faith gave her the means to redefine her marriage as a relationship between equals and friends. There’s the story of Clarinda, a Marathi Brahmin widow, who dared to “live in sin” with an East India Company soldier. She was one of the first upper caste converts to Christianity. There’s the story of the Nadar women, who struggled, with missionary support, to gain the right to wear the breast cloth denied to them by the upper castes. There are also the stories of the numerous lower-caste women converts who worked with Amy Carmichael, an Englishwoman involved in rescuing girls dedicated to temples against their wishes.

Having arrived at the devadasi issue, the play allows us to hear two different female voices in tandem. Ramamrithammal and Muthulakshmi were two remarkable women from the devadasi community. Ramamrithammal was a community activist and a vocal member of the self-respect movement led by E.V. Ramasami (“Periyar”). She publicly denounced the priests, landlords and institutions responsible for the maintenance of the devadasi system. Muthulakshmi drew upon a discourse of rights and morality to argue against the devadasi system. But in their protest against the injustice of this system, both women had to adopt a “moral public voice” — either by castigating the immorality of the caste order and denouncing dasis who would not abandon their vocation as Ramamrithammal did; or by working to legislate the system out of existence as Muthulakshmi did.

But what was “moral” and why? The play examines this vexed question through the life of a stage actress and singer, K.B. Sundarambal. Her troubled marriage and love life as well as her stage career attracted gossip despite a measure of legitimacy that came with her involvement with the Gandhian movement. The point is that women in public life were essentially vulnerable; and the tool that reduced them to this vulnerability was the construct called “morality”.

Who set the rules and standards of this morality? The play examines this dilemma through the public and political choices made by the women who became followers of Gandhi, the women active in the Tamil language purity movement, the women who participated in communist struggles. There’s a range of forgotten voices that are narrated back into memory through song and verse — from that of the intrepid Manalur Maniamma, who organized Dalit agricultural workers in east Tamil Nadu and who died in suspicious circumstances, to that of the Sufi thinker and novelist, Sidi Juaniada Begum.

The play ends with numerous women who were active and articulate in Periyar’s self-respect movement. Jeyasekari, Neelavathi, Kunjitham, Janaki — these are only a few of the women we discover as we hear their views on socialism, female labour, abortion, contraception, motherhood — in short, issues and debates we live through today. Critical voices are not muffled. With Periyar’s emphasis on self-criticism providing the context, we hear some sharp and acerbic comments on male activists in the self-respect movement who were unfailing radical — till they entered their own homes.

Finally, attempts like Kalakkanavu examine the concept and practice of feminism in a public setting. Could feminism be more than an idea, or a feeling? Is it a political choice that influences the personal and the political in equal measure? Answers are not always possible; and when they do come, they are rarely simple or unmixed with new questions. But what this debate of a play manages to do is acknowledge certain strands of history that remain incomplete. Then it asks questions, the first step in any significant project to understand ourselves.