Abstract
Feminist historians like Kumari Jayawardena have argued that Third World feminism, taking shape as it did from the broader nationalist struggle, has always been rather inclusive and does not target the male sex as its enemy, and that therein lies its big difference from Western feminism. In the book under discussion Dipannita Datta conforms to this view and at the same time tries to understand the complexities of the process of women’s progress by focusing on the life and writing career of Ashapurna Devi (1909–95), one of the foremost writers of modern Bengali literature. Ashapurna, who never went to school, was married off at the age of fifteen and spent her life ‘within the four walls’, wrote mostly about the conservative middle-class family milieu she was familiar with and particularly about its women, who even though oppressed by patriarchy, tried to survive and struggle through a combined process of reconciliation and resistance. Ashapurna herself did just that in her own life, always giving priority to her family, attending to the daily domestic grind and yet producing more than 240 novels, 2000 short stories and 62 children’s books through sheer dedication and diligence. In her case, her writing was her resistance, and she claimed that it was rather an ‘inner struggle’ for her and not so much an external one. She was grateful for whatever privileges she had received in her life. Her mother had helped her prepare as a writer by inculcating a love for reading in her young mind and her husband and in-laws were supportive of her writing too, though they would not like her to neglect her family or to ‘do anything that would make others talk’. Of course, constrained by lack of time, she had to stay awake at night to wage her ‘inner struggle’. In her writings too, she wanted women to possess ‘a special kind of self-sufficiency’ that can come only with the awakening of their own consciousness. In her view, a woman should use whatever opportunities she has got in her life without crying over what she has not; her self should be free from the narrow confines of self-interest and work towards advancement of society as a whole. And she also believed that equal rights could be ensured only when men and women attained the same level of consciousness. Datta perceptively comments that hers was a ‘balanced practical feminism, where human values ruled supreme’.
Datta has to be applauded for her attempt to read Ashapurna in the context of international feminist consciousness and also post-colonial scholarship. Indeed, Ashapurna was born and brought up in a society where colonialism was reorganising patriarchy and nationalism was upholding indigenous tradition and making women responsible for preserving it in the ‘inner spiritual domain of the nation’. Ashapurna’s frequent invocation of tradition that stressed the supreme importance of domesticity, motherhood, religiosity, etc., for women can be thus explained. The affinity between Gandhi’s ideology of patient non-violent resistance and that of Ashapurna’s kind of feminism is unmistakable too. But I would humbly argue that perhaps Datta has overstressed the role of colonialism as well as nationalist resistance in shaping Ashapurna. The ‘two-domain’ (spiritual/material) theory that she cites somewhat tends to accept the rhetoric of nationalism on its own terms and thus privileges the politics of anti-imperialism over gender. Also, as Datta knows very well, the awakening of feminist consciousness in colonial India was a complex and dynamic process. The theory that nationalism resolved the ‘women’s question’ by the end of the nineteenth century and henceforth negotiated it within the domain of home has been contested by a number of scholars. Perhaps rousing of the feminist consciousness and assertion of female agency is more a matter of ‘mother–daughter continuum towards progress’ than driven by any external factor like the national movement, as Datta herself has recognised. Indeed, the famous trilogy of Ashapurna stresses this continuum above everything else. Also, while it is true that in her long life which extended well into the post-Independence period, Ashapurna witnessed and responded to the vast transformations in social and family life, the repeated use of the terms ‘colonial’, ‘post-colonial’ and ‘post post colonial’ is perhaps not very helpful in understanding either these transformations or Ashapurna’s response. Even the prevalent theories of feminism may not help us much in understanding Ashapurna. Feminism itself is a diffuse and evolving ideology. Ashapurna was certainly not a feminist in today’s sense(s) of the term. Indeed she explicitly denied being a feminist.
Rather than depending too much on borrowed theories, reading Ashapurna and her writings sensitively is perhaps what is required. And Datta does have this sensitivity. Moreover, her book provides us with some valuable materials (five essays of Ashapurna on women’s issues, select correspondence, transcribed interviews taken by different people at different times and also a short chronological biography) that can help us in this exercise. Another requirement is considering Ashapurna’s entire oeuvre and not just her much-discussed trilogy, and furthermore, this oeuvre has to be understood in evolutionary terms, that is, considering the gradual maturation of Ashapurna as a person and a writer. We will then have a better understanding of what Datta calls Ashapurna’s ‘balanced practical feminism’. Though Datta’s book is rather silent on Ashapurna’s creative writings other than the trilogy and also on her evolution over the years, we can nevertheless infer from it three levels of her practicality. First, as a fiction writer, without being judgemental, Ashapurna explores social situations overlain with unequal power relations and makes insightful socio-psychological studies that make her fictional works appear highly realistic to readers. The practicality of her women characters ranges from deep conservatism and self-effacing domesticity to covert protests and sometimes even open rebellions which are largely grounded in the rebellious tradition set by some exceptional foremothers (as opposed to the prevalent patriarchal tradition). Second, from her essays, however, Ashapurna appears quite conservative, always stressing the dignity of traditional patriarchal ethos and saying things like ‘a woman is a figure of well-being, service and motherhood’ and liberty should not get in the way of her family life, ‘girls will be girls’, etc. Third, in her own life she never revolted, but quite realistically kept pace with the transition that was taking place in society. That she had been deprived of school education was a matter of regret to her, yet she let her only daughter get married before the latter could finish school (this, despite the fact that being an ideal mother was very important to her). Much later, however, in a changed situation, she encouraged her daughter-in-law to finish her college and university. She was evidently hegemonised by and submissive to patriarchy. And yet she had a strong urge for transcendence, which she sought, above all, in her creative writings.
On the whole, I agree with Datta that ‘Ashapurna articulates the tensions or the question of “becoming” in her writings, in the interplay of consent and coercion that constitutes the hegemonic process’. And in addition I feel that Ashapurna was aware of her limitations too. She confessed that she could not adequately understand the new-generation women, their aspirations and problems—‘How much of the problems of modern women can I see sitting at home?’ Also, ‘This generation is quite slippery. I have tried to portray the era in the trilogy but it is impossible to do so now’. It seems she had a strong suspicion of the way the ‘caged birds’ were winging their way to the sky, her considered opinion was that this should not happen at the cost of the ‘desirable image of the eternal woman’. And yet she somehow felt that the younger women’s sense of desirability was very different from hers.
Ashapurna aspired for a better future for women realizable in terms of the past tradition and the present mores. But the future overtook the present before her eyes and she could not catch up with it. Still, despite all her confusions and dilemmas—and here I agree with Datta once again—her aspiration for a better future for women (as well as men) is unmistakable and she also believed in a collective effort of building the road and moving forward to achieve it. She can definitely be considered a foremother whom today’s feminists can be proud of and thus richly deserves the tribute paid to her by Datta.