ELSA Meet: Utopias and Dystopias 25 August 2019

ELSA Meet: Utopias and Dystopias

Utopia, the term coined by Thomas More which is also the title of his famous work, explains what an ideal society is ought to be. This was first literary portrayal of utopia. Plato's Republic which also talks of perfect city with the three classes comprising Rulers, Guardians, and producers. But it has no place for poets. With this preliminary explanation Prof. Nibir Ghosh opened the discussion of the latest ELSA Meet. He further explained the concept of utopia with reference to News from Nowhere by William Morris. Dr. Sanjay Mishra elaborated Thomas More's Utopia to understand the dynamism of this term. He explained with the reference to this work how each utopia is imperfect in itself. 

Dr Srikant Kulshrestha took up the seminal work 1984 by George Orwell. The novel, which depicts Oceania under watch of Big Brother and totalitarian regime is fearsome portrayal which is understood to be most prophetic of dystopian literature. Mr. Surender Sabharwal introduced Rabindranath Tagore's 'Where mind is without fear' as Indian concept of Utopia. He elaborated how each line of the poem is suggestive of perfect land for humanity. Dr Rajan Lal and Dr. Shipra Kulsrestha talked of another Orwellian jewel Animal Farm. Saurabh Agarwal discussed the literary devices used in dystopian literature with examples of The Road by Comarc Mccarthy, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Dr Chanda Singh talked about works of Prem Chand where Utopias and Dystopias gets merged and are cyclical in occurrence.

Among outstation participants (online) “Gilead’s Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale” by Dr. Tanya Mander (RGNLU, Patiala) and “Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana' Dream: Utopia for One and Dystopia for Another” by Dr. Manju (Chandigarh University, Chandigarh) received special appreciation for their enthusiastic participation. Dr. Tanya pointed out how Atwood's narrative has a lot to offer as it imagines the failure of humanism, liberalism, individualism, feminism and even capitalism. Dr. Manju pointed out, citing Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain ‘s Sultana’s Dream, how the story creates feminist Utopia. 

Gilead’s Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Tanya Mander

When we engage with science fiction particularly labeled as feminist we encounter a new term  ‘speculative fiction’ which frames the concerns of feminism and attempts to achieve, through temporal displacement, a view of the fault lines clearly etched in a patriarchal and discriminatory society using scientific know-how to perpetuate the imbalance.  The template for utopian/dystopian fiction is defined by “willful transgression of time”; a temporal displacement; break in the linearity of the narrative; and the interaction between utopian and dystopian elements is achieved by contrasting past events and future circumstances, with each commenting and contradicting the other; offering a dialectical exposition. Feminist dystopian fiction can be described in terms of Ernst Bloch, the “not yet”.

Atwood has often said that, “there is not a single detail in the book that does not have a corresponding reality, either in contemporary conditions or historical fact.” Gilead is a bleak rendition of Christian fundamentalists taking over and realigning the USA after renaming it. Atwood’s Offred (the protagonist) initiates an examination of fragmentation, which is perceptible at multiple levels: geographical; socio-political and cerebral (intellectual and emotional at the same time). Offred narrates different accounts of reality, creating ‘poly-perspectives’. She unravels the means to keep women under tight control: language and violence. Offred splits her recollections titled ‘Day’ and ‘Night’. In her narration she emplaces the duality of past and present; time and space and freedom and oppression. Atwood interrogates how such a society came into being.

The answer lies in society’s discourse. Focault’s idea on discourse underlines the idea of truth as a construction where statements, opinions and interpretations interplay to evolve a truth. “Each society has its general politics of truth” and in case of Gilead all statements abrogating the identity of women lie within this truth; the unspoken, the unacknowledged, and the unofficial truths are part of the discourse too. Ideas governing Gilead found incubation in the discourse before. Offred’s journey is within as she comes to confront that it was the way she lived her life before, that assisted in crystallizing Gilead. Truth pertaining to women are contemplated and constructed by men as the  “ ‘semi silence’ undermines from within all that is said.” Atwood wants the reader to recognize ‘knowledge’ as contested space in a dystopia. Offred seeks knowledge from the Commander after understanding the frivolity of seeking material things. With no ‘knowledge’ of an alternative, Gilead is able to keep Offred within its discourse.

Dr. Tanya Mander is Assistant Professor of English at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab. She has been associated with teaching English Literature and Language to law students for over 15 years. Her areas of interest are Contemporary British Theatre, Dystopian Literature, Gender Studies and Literary Theory. She contributes to newspapers: The Tribune, The Hindu (Blog) The Thread. She is guiding research on changing contours of feminist consciousness and dystopian literature.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s  Sultana' Dream: Utopia for One and Dystopia for Another

Manju

Power has always been a major cause of inequality which itself is the source of various other evils. Jean Jacques Rousseau who is known for his love for equality and liberty also says that “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” due to dependence which is the product of inequality. Society comprises men and women, the authors of its being, who are complements to each other and their union is the foundation of the universe but their journey is the tale of endless clashes due to numerous inequalities therefore they are often treated as rivals. Women have been subjugated and suppressed by the patriarchy for the last many centuries. This oppression is discussed in many literary works as literature is the imitation of life. There are some women writers like Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain who feel this agony and articulate the pain in their works. Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain ‘s Sultana’s Dream is also one of the stories which creates feminist Utopia. The protagonist of the novella Sara shows Sultana who enters this feminist utopia from an ordinary world where women are subjugated and oppressed by the men folk, how “Ladyland” is free from this repression. The women are ruling the world. Male dominance has been replaced with female dominance. Man is compared to the beast and is enchained within the four walls of “Janana." The women establish great universities. They use solar power and make enormous scientific progress. They create a world which is free from feminine oppression but at the same time create another inequality through male dependence. Thus the writer creates utopia for femininity and dystopia for masculinity as men folk are described as "Women's brains are more quicker than men's. ". Thus the story leads to emancipation of femininity but subjugation of masculinity.  With such feminist ideas which emphasize on feminine dominance, are we not moving towards another origin of inequality?  If a man is known for his valour, a woman is known for her compassion. One maintains his hold on the society physically while the other affects emotionally. Thus they both are equal and this equation leads to peaceful societies. Despite being the wisest creature either men or women spoil this equilibrium and try to dominate each other.

                          Dr Manju is Associate Professor UILAH, Chandigarh University

 Thomas More’s Utopia: Highlights and Reflections

Anjali Singh

1.     Utopia a fictional work by Thomas More. As the term suggests, it refers to a fictional world ruled by ideal socio-political, religious and political customs.

2.     Published in 1515 (Latin) and in English (1551)

3.     Firstly, let me talk of the meaning of the word Utopia.

4.     Derived from a greek word, ‘ou’ means ‘not’ and ‘topos’ means ‘place’.

5.     Originally written in latin, the title when translated means “Of a republic’s best state and of the new island Utopia”.

6.     Next, it is a frame narrative. The characters share their opinions and views. During one such exchange, the character Raphael Hythloday talks about the egalitarian society of Utopia.

7.     Furthermore, it has 2 books.

8.     Book 1 introduces the characters. They discuss on the contemporary socio-political environment. In a way, here we get a glimpse in the grievances of the common man in England.

9.     Book 2 is largely about Hythloday’s account of Utopia.

10.  Some unique features of the island nation are:

·       No locks on houses.

·       Houses rotated between citizen’s every ten years.

·       Every citizen to contribute 2 years to farming. Agriculture the most important occupation.

·       All citizen’s wear same type of simple clothes. No fine dresses or dressmakers

·       Working hours per day not to exceed 6 hours.

·       Gold is part of community wealth.

·       Jewels worn by children who give them up when mature.

·       Several religions – pagan and tolerant.

·       Widowed women could also become priests.

·       No privacy, everything public. No places for private gatherings.

Interesting Facts about Utopia

1.     The first edition contained a woodcut map of the island if Utopia.

2.     Published under Erasmus’s editorship.

3.     The English translation published 16 years after the death of More.

4.     Similar works or works with a similar theme that appeared prior to this are

·       Candide by Voltaire

·       New Atlantis by Francis Bacon

5.     The socialism mentioned in the book was the first instance of Socialism concept.

6.     Some ideas expressed were polar opposites of those of Thomas More. For ex.

·       Priests – married and female. In stark contrast to the contemporary socio-political environment, this was a reality in Utopia.

·       Divorce, easily granted and a reality in Utopia.

·       Lawyers were criticized.

Political Hypocrisy & Animal Farm

Rajan Lal

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, the statement made by Lord Acton, a British historian of the late 19^th & early 20^th centuries, in my view, is fully applicable to “Animal Farm” where Seven Commandments, basically discipline criteria among the animals on the farm, the philosophy of Animalism drawn by Old Major, the senior-most pig on the animal farm, is abridged to a single sentence as  per  his own manner and morality  by Napoleon, the dictator, in a dinner party for pigs and local farmers as under: “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.” The proclamation underscores the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but craftily provide power and privilege to a small elite.

Animal Farm, an allegorical novella, is a political satire on imperfect masters and corrupt leaders of the Russian revolution or the communist regime of Russia. The system on the farm represents the communist system. The whole action of the Animal Farm is classed into ten books. It begins with a revolution in which animals decide to get rid of their human master. Mr. Jones is a drunkard master and remains careless to animals even in providing them food timely. The animals revolt against drunken and careless Mr. Jones and consequently he is overthrown from the farm, which they call “Animal Farm”. To run the Animal Farm properly they, (especially Old major) constitute Seven Commandments of Animalism. Napoleon provokes his dogs to chase Snowball away. Taking advantage of Snowball’s absence, he adopts nearly all of Mr. Jones’ despotic principles and cruel and inhuman treatment of all animals. He turns into a perverse dictator. Power corrupts him so he starts abusing his powers and makes life harder for other animals. It proves that indeed, communism is not equality, but just another form of inequality. The pigs and dogs adopt most of the power for themselves. They think that they are the best administrators of government. At last, the power corrupts them, and they begin to get rid of those animals that may prove their competitors. They justify their unjust actions through propaganda and bloodshed. Stalin also gets murdered many of his own people in order to maintain his dictatorship of Russia. It is nothing but political hypocrisy as whosoever comes in power but later on turns into a despot. Thus, in my view, the Animal Farm is a dystopian novel because the whole of the communist system of the farm is perverted to the oppressive and suppressive dictatorial political system.  The term ‘dystopia’ (bad place) has come to be applied to works of fiction that represent a very unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and technological order are projected into a disastrous future culminations.

Dr. Rajan Lal is Lecturer in English at Govt. Inter College, Agra.   

                                                    Dystopia in  Animal  Farm

Shipra Kulsrestha

 The most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, Animal Farm, was written by George Orwell in 1945. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be changed and manipulated by individuals and how revolutionaries can turn into tyrannies. It also depicts the progress of liberation movement towards a totalitarian dictatorship. The events and characters in Animal Farm are inspired by the early history of Soviet Union and the persons from real world. Mr. Jones is the Russian Czar. Old Major stands for either Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, and the pig named Snowball represents the intellectual revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Napoleon stands for Stalin, while the dogs are his secret police. Animals of Mr Jones play the role of Bolshevik revolutionaries. George Orwell showed through Squealer how politicians used language. Squealer convinces animals to believe and follow Napoleon. He changes and manipulates the commandments, twists and abuses language to excuse every Napoleon's actions, he complicates and confuses debate convincing the animals that life in the farm is getting better and better. Squealer represents Ministry of Information in Russian Revolution which worked for Stalin to support his image and used anything that support Stalin. The flag of Animal Farm consists of a green field (represent the fields of England) with a hoof and horn (an analogy for hammer and sickle, also bears resemblance to the Communist Russia flag). The horse Boxer stands in for the proletariat, or working class. Benjamin, wise, old donkey, is also dedicated to Boxer, and he is very upset when Boxer is taken away. He has known all the time that the pigs are not  right and do wrong things. He represents both the cynics and the role of Jews in society. Mr. Whymper is a  human solicitor whom Napoleon hires to represent Animal Farm in human society. His entry into the Animal Farm community initiates contact between Animal Farm and human society, alarming the common animals. Mr. Frederick is the tough, shrewd operator of Pinchfield, a neighbouring farm. Based on Adolf Hitler, the ruler of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Frederick proves an untrustworthy neighbour. Mr.Pilkington is the easygoing gentleman farmer who runs Foxwood, a neighboring farm. Mr. Frederick's bitter enemy, Mr. Pilkington represents the capitalist governments of England and the United States.

The setting of Animal Farm is a dystopia, which is an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state. Other dystopian novels include Aldous Huxley's  Brave New World , Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Orwell's own 1984.

The most famous line from the book is “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” This line is emblematic of the changes that George Orwell believed that followed the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. Rather than eliminating the capitalist class system it was intended to overthrow, the revolution merely replaced it with another hierarchy. The line is also typical of Orwell's belief that those in power usually manipulate language to their own benefit.

George Orwell's message is very effectively communicated in the novel. He takes real life people from the Russian Revolution and converts them into animals, showing the same problems and the same situations. He also gives a dreary impression of what the future may have been if things continued the way they were going.

Dr. Shipra Kulsrestha teaches English in Govt. School Agra.

ELSA MEET July 7, 2019 Hotel Pushp Villa, Agra Seminar & Book Launch

Seminar on

“Women’s Voices in Indian Literature”

&

Launch of

Silence & Beyond: Shashi Deshpande’s Fiction

 Authored by Dr. Santosh Kumar Singh,

with a Foreword by Professor Nibir K. Ghosh

                                       

ELSA: Celebrating 4th-Year Milestone

                                                       

Saurabh Agarwal

“There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.”  – Pablo Neruda

It gives me great pleasure to highlight the activities of English Literary Society of Agra known as ELSA which has become a synonym for literary activity in the city of Agra. What ELSA has been trying to do is bringing together the people who are connected to literature in one way or the other, thus becoming a unique platform for the meeting of academicians who have spent their considerable time imparting knowledge of literature and readers in general. ELSA serves as immensely fertile place for the minds willing to grow in each other’s company.  

This journey of the discovery of the pleasure associated with the written work began on 12th of March 2016 at Youth Hostel, Agra. ELSA’s first meet was on the “Contemporary relevance of Rudyard Kipling” whose 150th Birth Anniversary was celebrated under the banner of English Literary Society of Agra.  Since then every month this group of literary enthusiasts has gathered under the banner of ELSA and discussed the subjects of contemporary importance. Such discussions have provided ample motivation for delving into the depths of literature and explore multifarious terrains of experience. The meetings have also covered something specific like “Women Empowerment,” “Literature and the Marginalised,” “Literature and Literary Festivals: Issues and Concerns,” and as broad as “Literature and Journalism.” ELSA members have discussed the revolutionary texts when we took up “The Power of the Written Word."  We have also explored the hilarious side of literature with subject of Satire, Wit and Humour. It is when we discussed “Literature as Resistance and Protest” we realised how all great Literature is a means to challenge the status quo.

  

The discussions held here are packed with quality for members give sufficient time and come prepared so make a meaningful and diverse contribution. All this happens in a round-table format with the no hierarchies of any kind.

ELSA took a big leap when invitation of presentation was extended to chosen people who are not resident of the city. Several literary enthusiasts have made their contribution. Recently all the activities along with the papers of the outstation participants are available on the ELSA blog.

ELSA can take the credit of infusing the desire in members to take up creative writing encouraging them to share their writings on this platform. Consequently, members have written short stories and poems.

Shashi Deshpande: Articulating Silence

Sanjay Kumar Misra

Shashi Deshpande is undoubtedly one of the most important names in Indian English Writing. Although she resents being called a woman novelist, the fact remains that she is one of the most eminent women writers from India who have produced fiction in the contemporary times. Daughter of an illustrious father, who was a writer, scholar and academic of Sanskrit and Kannada, and spouse of a medical doctor, Deshpande took to writing when she became “restless with being just a housewife and mother”. Fluent and proficient in several languages like Sanskrit, Marathi and Kannada, she however, chose to write in English.

Unlike most of the modern Indian English writers, she lives and writes in India and her writing is not addressed to the audience in the west. She is somewhat similar to R.K. Narayan in the simplicity and austerity in her choice of subjects, portrayal of characters and narrative style. Her narratives are woven around mundane life, daily human relations and most common social and cultural structures women find themselves in. Her stories are stories of middle and upper middle class well-educated women dueling with orthodoxy and modernity in the urban ambience.

Let me here mention Deshpande’s two books of non-fiction to lay focus on some of her thoughts which have obviously shaped and coloured her fictional writing: 1. Writing from the Margin, published in 2003, contained her essays and articles on various subjects; and 2. Listen to Me, published in 2018, is her autobiography in which she has candidly written about her identity as a woman writer and the challenges of being a woman writer. The title of her autobiography (‘Listen to me’) is significant because it overtly suggests that she has probably failed to convey in her novels and stories what she attempted to convey; hence, she is now writing in this non-fictional mode and she wants everybody’s attention.

Deshpande has never been comfortable with the tag of ‘women’s writer’. She writes in her autobiography: “As with women, so with their writing. I consider it one of the strange ironies of my writing life that, when I began writing, I wrote what was in me, I wrote what came to me. And I did not think that I was writing about women, that my writing came out of the lives of women. In time, however, I became conscious that my writing was looked at in the same way that the women, about whom I was writing, were. They, and their lives, were less important because they were women. So, too, was my writing less important because of my gender, and because of the gender of my main characters. I was not just a writer, I was a woman writer, a woman writer who wrote about women.”

Like a hardcore feminist, Deshpande recounts her experience of and motivation for writing the story of Amba, Princess Kashi, which she modified and elaborated in her own way under the influence of sociologist Irawati Karve’s interpretation of the characters in The Mahabharata in her book Yuganta. Deshpande writes: “ I remember my father often said there were only two heroes in the Mahabharata: one, an old man, Bhishma, the patriarch of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and the other a boy, Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s young son. But Irawati Karve read Bhishma’s character otherwise. To her, he was no hero, he was a man who had been callous towards women. Not deliberately cruel, but worse – indifferent to his own cruelty, almost unaware of it. Irawati lists the women whose lives he ruined: Gandhari, Kunti, Madri and the princesses of Kashi – Amba, Ambika and Ambalika.

After reading Irawati Karve’s version of Bhishma, I wrote a story about Amba. A spirited girl, Amba was in love with a prince, Salva, when she, with her two sisters, was abducted by Bhishma to marry his sickly younger brother, King Vichitravirya. When she told Bhishma about her love for Salva, he let her go. But Salva refused to accept her. He had fought Bhishma after the abduction and had been defeated by him. Amba, he said to her, now belonged to Bhishma. Hearing of her love for Salva, Vichitravirya refused to marry her. In desperation, she asked Bhishma to marry her. He refused, saying he had taken a vow of celibacy. Three very honourable men indeed, but what about Amba? For her, there was nothing left but disgrace. And so she killed herself.

In The Mahabharata she was reborn as Shikhandi, the man/woman who was destined to fatally injure Bhishma, because Bhishma would never fight with a woman, not even a “half-woman”. This had no place in my story. In my story, Amba’s act of killing herself was her final attempt to have some control over her own life. It was with this story that I began to think of how words could mean entirely different things to different people, how language had been shaped by men to their needs, their ideas. It was a man’s idea of honour that made Bhishma reject Amba when she asked him to marry her, and a man’s idea of honour that made Salva reject her because he had been defeated by Bhishma.

When I look back, I see that it has always been this concept of “honour” that led to tragedies.

A man’s idea of honour made King Dasharath give in to his wife Kaikeyi’s demand that Rama be exiled, a man’s idea of honour that made Rama accept his father’s diktat, a man’s idea of honour that made Yudhishtira agree to gambling with Shakuni, which led to his losing himself, his brothers and his wife Draupadi in the course of the game. The splendid resistance by Draupadi, which we girls had so admired in school, was futile. A man had a right to do whatever he wanted with his wife.”

Deshpande also vents out her anger and absolute disregard for men’s biased and bigoted criticism of women writers and their writing. She expresses her frustration and annoyance in Listen to Me as follows: “I must have been naïve, indeed, not to have expected this, not to understand that, since women were less important, so was their writing, so was writing about them. From Dr Johnson, who compared a woman’s preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs, to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who spoke derisively of “a damned mob of scribbling women,” to Walter Scott, who spoke slightingly, condescendingly, of the “calculating prudence” of Austen’s heroines, and the Nobel Prize winner, Sir Vidia Naipaul, who spoke of women’s sentimentality and narrow view of the world, there never has been a shortage of males criticizing women’s writing.

And, of course, there was the Donald Trump of American literature, Norman Mailer, who said, “I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale.” (The implied comment, that the only story written by women which he would find exciting was a story written about women who provide men with sex, is very revealing!) He also said, “A good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls,” which a woman critic called a “testicular definition of talent”! Enough women writers in the USA took him on, but did it make any difference to the thinking, the attitudes, I wonder. No, I am sure it didn’t.”

Almost all her novels have been bold in choice of themes, situations and characterization of women. Deshpande has given an interesting reason for her choosing to write in English. She writes in one of the articles in Writing from the Margin, “If there are problems about writing in English, there are plus points as well. For women writers, specifically, writing in English gives an element of freedom from taboos and conventions that bind women in their mother tongue.”

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Misra is Associate Professor in the Department of English at RBS College, Agra

Women’s Voices in Indian Literature

Rajeev Khandelwal

From time immemorial India has predominantly been a patriarchal society where a woman was considered good for nothing when it came to doing something intellectual or artistic. No woman was found worthy of education, thus going to school or reading and writing were not something she was considered capable of. Her only work was to bring forth children, rear them up and look after household work in silence and with surrender. Operating with such background, it was inconceivable that women were able to think, study or able to make decisions and thereby could express themselves in the form of speech, poetry, story-telling, art etc.

In Modern India, reformers supported female education, believing that social evils could be eliminated through the education of the women. Literacy spread rapidly and women began to utilize the power of the pen. It was important for the experiences of women under the patriarchal influence to come out to the forefront and expose the undue cruelty held on them by men. Indian women writers then gave a new dimension to Indian literature, in that they vented their deep-seated feelings by way of art and literature.

Now, coming to the topic in hand “Women’s Voices in Indian Literature” – We must realize that the women had to break through years of male dominance, taboos and beliefs that had heavily impregnated the society.  I can list at least 2 women writers who broke their silence and wrote on subjects that were either considered bold or taboo for their times. I’ll briefly refer to some prominent women writers in this category.

Malati Bedekar (1905 – 2001) was among the most prominent of feminist writers of her time in Marathi, who also wrote under the pen name of Vibhavari Shirurkar. Her collection of short stories (Kalyanche Nishwas) and a novel (Hindolyawar) written in the early 1930s dealt with themes too bold for society of those times and created a huge storm over the identity of the unknown author.

Ismat Chughtai (1915 – 1991) was an Urdu writer who wrote both short stories and novels opting for literary realism. She started writing in the 1930s, and her themes included middle-class morality, female sexuality with a feminist perspective. Her short story “Lihaaf” (“The Quilt”) was a pioneer in the theme of touching upon sexuality, till then a tabooed subject in modern Indian literature. The story ventured into the subject of female homosexuality, which attracted a court trial. The author had to make an appearance and defend herself against charges of “obscenity.” Ismat was a recipient of both literary and national awards and her works were turned into well-known films too.

M.K. Indira (1917 – 1994) was a distinguished Kannada writer whose education did not go beyond the primary level. In her literary career of twenty-two years, she wrote forty-eight novels, fifteen collections of short stories, one biography, a film appreciation book, and an unfinished autobiography.

Amrita Pritam (1919 – 2005) was the first eminent Punjabi writer, novelist and poet of twentieth-century India. As a novelist, her most noted work was Pinjar (The Skeleton) (1950), in which she created her memorable character, Puro, an epitome of violence against women.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that the best English fiction in the World is being written by the Indian women writers or those of Indian origin”(1992:21-22).

Kamala Das (1934 – 2009) was a leading Malayalam author as also an Indian English poet. She openly introduced a generation to a subject that was taboo those days—she spoke on topics like coming of age and sexual yearnings of a woman. Kamala’s writings open a window into the intricacies of the female mind, thought process, her tussles with the patriarchal setup to which she was bound, her quest for love, and her acknowledgement of the body’s carnal desires.

Mahasweta Devi (1926 – 2016) wrote in Bengali and became a voice of the downtrodden, dispossessed and ignored population of India. Her seminal work, Hajar Churashir Maa, became an acclaimed film, as did many of her other works.

I would like to state that Contemporary women writers like, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Gita Mehta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamla Markandaya, Krishna Udayasankar, Manju Kapur, Nayantara Sehgal, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Shashi Deshpande, Shobha De, etc. have challenged the society via their writings for metamorphosis of women’s status. They have made a distinct mark on the World literary scene with their rich cultural heritage and skilled language control and, as Anthony Spaeth has pointed out, they are making conscious efforts to redefine English prose “with myths, humour or themes as vast as the subcontinent.” Their work is marked by an impressive feel for language and completely authentic presentation of contemporary India.

In the contemporary Indian Literary scenario, Indian women writers have reflected the truth of Indian reality with a high level of self-consciousness, and have written about the social, philosophical and cultural issues of rape and sexual harassment of innocent women in the contemporary Indian society. They have expressed the role and position of woman through their writings and have enlightened literature with its quality and vividness. They have excelled in the global literary standards set by the post-colonial and postmodern writers and have drawn global attention and have “come to stay as part of world literature.” All their major works have enjoyed immense academic attention across the globe.

I Congratulate ELSA for organizing this event to showcase women’s voices in the Indian context. I also convey my heartiest felicitations to Dr. Santosh Kumar Singh for his book, Silence and Beyond, that deals with the fiction of Shashi Deshpande. I understand that in most of her novels she has document the unspeakable horrors of women and how they are struggling to liberate themselves from the fetters of patriarchy. She has depicted the anxiety, loneliness and helplessness of women, the misery and distress of the traditional Indian woman whose lot is mainly to suffer in silence while coming to terms with domestic conflict, law and order situation, crime, violence and plight of a successful educated woman and problems of being a woman. She has portrayed in depth the meaning of being a woman in modern India. She speaks of silence and surrender of women and would prefer women to break their long silence.

Shri Rajeev Khandelwal is an entrepreneur and a noted Indian English poet with four major poetry collections to his credit.