They banned her as she writes and the more we read this piece we realize that we shifting from pro-feminism to anti-feminism. Jahnabi Mitra beautifully deals with the topic…
Almost a hundred years back when Rabindranath portrayed Binodini in Chokher Bali and the way we accepted and adored her personality, it tells how much pro-feminist we were back then. Binodini was the perfect example of calm yet powerful, intellectual and progressive thinking woman. And not only Rabindranath, take a look at even older literary works in India; there are subtle reminders of feminist women throughout history.
But what went wrong over the years? When did we bury these protagonists in the pages of history?
When did Feminism become the second hippest F-word in your dictionary? Before we started speaking out loud that Lolita was actually raped; before ‘Dove’ made us realize that one standard of beauty doesn’t apply to all those billions of women out there; before women entered the league of stand-up comedy; before we started growing our body hair again; before we started the ‘Unfair and Lovely’ movement; before women in America started burning their bras, before we raised voice against MTA’s ad for Thinx with a grapefruit suggestive of a vagina…who were the ones speaking louder than ever about the need for change?
Well, we have few noted fearless women who spoke out on volatile issues- be it the infringement upon intellectual and creative freedom and censorship of scholarship or breaking norms and entering male-dominated fields and how they were retaliated. These figures from the literary and film world are reminders to our generation that there are ways in which some fictional creations can influence the mass for a longer span.
Loose Morals…Whose morals?
Deepa Mehta
When her movie Fire (1996), the first from her elemental trilogy, it was the first movie in India on a homosexual relationship in a patriarchal society with a mass appeal starring Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi. Although the censor board passed the movie with an Adult rating and the public accepted it with houseful shows in almost all the metropolitan cities, but soon there was huge upsurge and riots by Shiv Sena in Mumbai. Her third film of the same trilogy, Water, based on the life of a widower in Varanasi was received with similar audience reviews.
Mira Nair
The same year, 1996, Mira Nair released Kama Sutra- the Tale of Love. There has always been an uncomfortable relationship between filmmakers and public morality. India is the second-most populous country, was certainly not having any less of sex. Yet it has issues talking about it; rather in a healthy way. She produced documentaries like India Cabaret (1984) and Children of Desired Sex (1987), which were internationally acclaimed but didn’t please the censor board or even her own family member, for ‘moral’ issues.
Banned because she wrote
Biblioclasm is the most dramatic method adopted by oppressive regimes to silence ideas within a nation’s culture. Women writers deserve a special mention while discussing censorship for obscenity in India.
Taslima Nasrin, vehemently wrote about human rights, freedom of thought, portrayed liberal feminist protagonists in her writings and criticised all ‘misogynistic’ religious practices, including her own religion -Islam. This former physician and a free thinker, fled Bangladesh in 1994 after being threatened for life by a group of religious fundamentalists- Council of Islamic Soldiers, after the publication of her much-acclaimed book Lajja (Shame, in Bengali) in 1993. She moved to Sweden in 2008 and now continues to voice out her thoughts through fiction, poetry, and editorials. Her writings have been inspired by her personal experiences of sexual abuse in her adolescent years and her time as a practicing gynecologist in Bangladesh. Two of the most notable feminists of all time, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf has influenced her works. Apart from Lajja, her book called French Lover published in 2002 also gained a wide readership.
Ismat Chugtai, an Urdu writer was arrested in 1944 for her portrayal of a lesbian relationship in her story Lihaaf.
Rashid Jehan was the sole woman contributor when Angarey was published. She created a stir with her story about male sexual obsession and its repercussions on the female psyche. The woman in her story fought back- which troubled the moral brigade even more.
Male Chauvinism also reared its ugly head in 2003 in Tamil Nadu, after the publication of Kutti Revathi’spoetry collection, Mulaigal. Very publicly, she and other poets of her generation were charged with obscenity and immodesty. These poets were Malathi Maitri, Salma, and Sukirtharani, and fell afoul of the establishment because they explored the politics of sexuality and a woman’s relationship with her body. They have faced insults and threats to their lives. These women were described as having values opposite to that of ‘Good’ Tamil women; they chose to be fearless, outspoken and questioned the prescribed rules.
Just when you might’ve thought these are happenings from the recent era, we have this rad poetess from 12th century India, Mahadevi Akka. Born in the year 1130, she wrote incessantly on spiritual and sensuous poems, using the female body as a metaphor. She left her home and wandered naked in the search of God, as a mark of her protest against the sexual claims made on her body by the local king. Eight hundred years before American women started burning bras as a part of the Feminist movement, India already had these women worth preaching who explosively broke the norms of feminine beauty.
A note for all the Literary Enthusiasts-
The American Library Association (ALA) organises the Banned Book Week in The US each year, terming it “the national book community’s annual celebration of freedom to read”. Launched in the year 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of books being challenged by book communities. This year it will be held from September 25 – October 1, welcoming all the book lovers to celebrate their ‘unorthodox and unpopular’ ideas.
Ready to fly, for the love of intellect?
