– Gogu Shyamala and A Suneetha

Was there a discussion about Telangana idiom when the book was first released?

The book was published in 1985. It must be said that all the criticism was about the limitations in perspectives and understanding of the editors. The debate centered largely on the limitations of understanding oral history of women as ‘history’, about the problems faced in making them worthy of publication, and about the overall failure of Stree Shakti Sanghatana’s effort. We may examine typical criticisms that came up in the dailies and a few monthlies like Arunatara.

Balagopal dismissed the effort in Arunatara as follows: “I don’t think that many people will understand all these interviews. This is not a problem of language (Telangana language or women’s language). If spoken words are transcribed as they are, even those spoken by a person versed in writing will not be understood—even less would the speech of people like Palakurti Ailamma, and Dudala Salamma”. He thought that there was no question of readers understanding the oral histories which are there in the book. He considered some of the linguistic issues as technical ones, “the editors baulked at submitting the women’s spoken word to the sentence structure of masculine written prose and left it as it is. Because of this, a situation arose in which even those who are familiar with Telangana language and the idiom of women, could not understand the interviews.”

There was some definite praise for the book and its language use—this was not absent. Vakati Panduranga Rao (Newstime, 11 January, 1987) while discussing Palakurti Ailamma’s life story had this to say, “There is the smell of fresh earth in the language of this book… it is the living everyday language of people, a language that is not handcuffed to grammar, a language that is free of unnecessary ornament; this language fresh from green fields intoxicates”. However, what we see here is his romanticism. Chekuri Rama Rao commented thus about the language, “Bringing out the role of women, who hold up half the horizon of our desires, in their own words is a priceless gift to language researchers”. He didn’t say anything more.

Volga’s comment was close to our understanding (Eenadu, “Silent Music” Column), “We read women’s words as they are. We powerfully experience their thoughts, their mode of thinking, their method of understanding and articulating issues, their identity that is reflected in that method.

It becomes clear when we examine these comments that there was no context or environment for a discussion of the issues of language that were raised in the book.

You have launched a radical critique of left movements on the basis of women’s experiences in the book. How far did the voice of the women you interviewed contribute to that critique, and what was the role played by language in that voice?

Many of us came from the background of left movements. We had extensive discussions on women in revolutionary movements; on the role of women in history from Paris Commune to the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, and on the feminist movements in the West. We had a context where innumerable women took upon themselves a variety of responsibilities and duties in the historic Telangana Armed Struggle. Our main objective was to write, with the help of our acquaintances who saw the Armed Struggle at first hand, ‘our women’s history’ which was not recognized in any recorded history hitherto. It was not our primary objective to launch a radical critique of the left movement. Some of these things become clear when we examine a few of the oral histories of women and their voices. We need to examine what Dudala Salamma had to say about the knowledge, strengths and capabilities that she acquired from the struggle, “I wonder how wisdom came to me from all this…. You are lettered. I have lived tending to buffaloes. All these details are at the tip of my tongue“(We Were Making History, p 261). At the same time, it is important to mention Priyamvada’s criticism of the party, “They (women) felt that if they came to the Party where men and women worked together freely, their lives would change for the better. They could not say all this very clearly, but they felt that they could experience another life, live as they chose to. But the party could not support them as it did not have a clear idea of how to tackle the problem of women who left their husbands and came away. They were also not sure whether it was the correct thing to take such women away from their husbands” (ibid. p 263). We must see Kamalamma’s suffering and maternal grief as she became pregnant and bore children while underground. “I was pregnant, but I traveled with them. It was time for the child to be born—we had no protection there. No hope of getting a midwife. The Party leaders threatened me, ‘you have to decide to give him away or live somewhere else with him… If you return your body will be slashed with knives and they will stuff chilli powder in the cuts. You will be raped and killed. It is your decision – think about it.’” When she asked that her husband be called and the baby shown to him, she was told “This is not the correct proletarian consciousness, my dear”. Kamalamma says, “My head spun. Did I deserve to be told all this? I didn’t come into the struggle to make a living. My body wasn’t in my control. My mind wasn’t in my control. And my tears flowed in an unending stream.” (p 265-266 – translation modified).

If we have to say how understand the role language played in their voice, we need to look at Priyamvada’s comment: “After the parliamentary elections and the Police Action, our dreams were smashed. Crushed like an egg. What a blow it was. After the elections, do you know where we were? Like the proverbial rug… lying exactly where it was thrown.” (p 272-273). Let us look at how Kondapalli Koteshwaramma described the difficulties of understanding politics, “It seemed as if Avakaya (a hot mustardy mango pickle) was given to a child first being introduced to solid food. They would expound arcane political concepts. They were like iron pellets – indigestible”.

You have reproduced the language of someone like Ailamma directly. However, there are many differences between her social context and yours (caste, class and education). Not only this, intellectually it seems as if you have applied Western feminism which has nothing to do with the realities of Indian society. How did you resolve these various differences? What kinds of discussion took place in your group regarding these issues?

There are many parts to this question. If this question is to be answered, in is important to understand the reasons behind this initiative. To explore our history as a feminist group was the first one. To work with women who had participated in the Telangana armed struggle was the second. After the sexual assault on Rameeza Bee, we had an opportunity to work with some of them (women of the armed struggle) and the idea of understand their past experiences arose in that context. If in our group some of us came from families which took part in movements, others had studied struggles of women in other countries. For example, the book Sandino’s Daughters, about the women in the Nicaraguan Revolution came out in 1981. At about the same time in 1983, the Hyderabad Book Trust brought the life story of a Latin American woman, Domitila Barrios de Chungara, called Maa Katha (Let Me Speak). It is a story of Bolivian women in struggle. We read the English version in the group. We read many books on women’s history in that context. We understood that across the world there were new attempts to reproduce women’s life stories as they were told. This understanding inspired us to undertake this project. We got the idea to record women’s stories in their own language and idiom. Different voices may be heard to echo in this book on oral history. In these echoes, you can hear middle class women, rural women, literate and illiterate women, women who spoke in the Telangana idiom, women who spoke a pure Brahminical language. Our attempt in this book is to present before the reader these all of women’s emotions, language, passion, suffering and political knowledge!

As far as I remember we didn’t give place to considerations such as which is a great language, which a common language, which should be corrected and which should be omitted. Our first interview was with Ailamma. We met her in her house in Palakurti village and spoke to her. As we recorded her words we felt the weave of her poetry and the melody of her speech. However to write it was a herculean effort. Stubbornly putting down on paper her exact words as she spoke them through repeated hearing, repeated editing—that was our objective.

Our primary aim was to present their voices to the readers. We only gave second place to the Telangana language and the politics behind it. Even though we recognized the issue, it did not assume priority. For example, it is possible to look at what we have said about Telangana language at the end of the book: “At one time, it was difficult even to write in Telangana language. However, it too gradually acquired status as a regional language. We want to bring the language spoken by one subsection of this region to light—women’s language and issues.” (p 284—translation modified).

To say that we drew on “Feminism” intellectually implies that we were influenced by the West, which is incorrect. What influenced our group in this effort were the two books on Latin American women’s struggles alone. However, the medium in which these books became accessible to us was the English language. When looked at thus, the bridge between two underdeveloped nations is English.

Whether it was an unfamiliar idiom or an odd pronunciation, everybody—the members of the group, those who read the draft and the composers in the printing press tried to correct it. It took all our talents and more to bring each of the life stories into shape and to preserve their integrity. We were told that we did not write the letters and words correctly or properly, or that the sentence structure was wrong, and that our editing was wrong. What exactly is standard language? Is it the Telugu of the Guntur-Krishna districts—how was this principle arrived at?

As mentioned in our foreword, public histories are written in a standard language and idiom that has universal consent. It is a rule bound authoritative language and sentence structure. We faced so many obstacles in writing about women whose lives and experiences were hidden behind the borders of mainstream history and written language. We had heated discussions even within our group. When we wanted to understand oppression under feudal landlordism, we heard instead of man-woman relationships, lives of women underground, their responsibilities and their mental agony. It was a problem to transcribe the tapes exactly. While there were two or three people who knew Telangana Telugu, those who had the patience to write were scarce indeed. Uma Maheshwari worked hard to reproduce Telangana Telugu precisely in writing. We faced the danger of relapsing into standard language time and again.

It must be said that we did not represent women’s life stories in this book. We wanted to make heard women’s experiences in their voice. The main issue was not their answers to our questions. The important thing was that they spoke; we listened and wrote down exactly what we heard. This was not as easy as we thought it would be. As difficult as it was to say things that remained unarticulated in any language, and to present the depths of those women’s experiences which had not been plumbed by anybody until then, it was equally difficult to find a language suited to that task. It was not only a matter of finding a language but of stretching it to its limits. This is the ‘language of silence’ mentioned by oral historians. However, it is necessary to cite the comment of an intellectual who did not understand this, “These oral histories demonstrate the wrong understanding of Stree Shakti Sanghatana about women’s movements and women’s history. The end result of the book—We Were Making History—is their unscientific perspective which names some words as ‘language of silence’ and reads non-existent meanings into them, without comprehending the real truth” (Sudhir, Prajashakti 14th December 1986).

In hindsight, could you say some more about the differences between Ailamma’s language and the language of the public discourse of those times—intellectual, journalistic, and in books?

We Were Making History was printed in Telugu in 1985. We could say that in the 1980s, the writings in Telangana language were few indeed. In 1985-6, Namini Subramaniam Nayudu was writing Tattoo as my witness (Pacchha Naku Sakshiga) in Rayalaseema idiom. Pasham Yadagiri and Devulapalli Amar were writing in Telangana idiom. Telidevara Bhanumurti also wrote a column with the title “Chalne do Balkishan” in Udayam newspaper (Telugu). After 1990, Mallepalli Lakshmayya wrote about the oral narratives based on everyday lives of ordinary people in a column titled “A hand writing for the spoken word”. However, while these came on the edit or literary pages, there was and is no instance of an entire newspaper being written in Telangana idiom then or now. Even in a daily like Namaste Telangana, the Telangana idiom is used in some columns only. The reason for this may be that the language must be accessible to everybody.

We need not even discuss textbooks. There is no question of their being in Telangana idiom. It is not that there were no books written in this idiom. Vattikota Alwarswamy’s writings came out in the 1940s followed by writings of Dasarathi Rangacharya and Kaloji. Yashoda Reddy and Mudigonda Sujata Reddy were women writers from that period. After the 1980s, Kalava Mallayya and Allam Rajayya were important writers of short stories and novels in Telangana idiom. Readers would be familiar with the wonderful shorts stories and novellas of Gogu Shyamala, Joopaka Subhadra, Jajula Gowri and Jwalita. It is my opinion that despite all this writing, it is only in the context of the success of the Telangana movement that such literary works were owned and taken to new heights. These works assumed importance in the effort of the new Telangana movement to counter the humiliation and insult suffered by the Telangana region in relation to language.

We may say that We Were Making History is one of the important books that articulated the Telangana idiom. How would you look at the importance of the book in the context of the recent Telangana movement?

This question deals only with language. The answer to this question is evident in all the issues discussed so far. Language is one of the many issues raised by We Were Making History. We can see written language, spoken language, language of literates, language of illiterates, women’s language, caste based language, hegemonic Telugu language (Krishna-Guntur) in this book. This book has foregrounded many issues related to language. Not only this, it is possible to see many issues raised by this book as relevant to the character of the new Telangana state. Among these, issues related to women, especially to women who played various roles in different movements are important. We need not reiterate the fact that thousands of women played major roles in several articulations of the Telangana movement over the last decade. However, where are such women in today’s political world? What are the reasons for their absence in legislatures, leadership and government structures? Is history repeating itself? It is time to ask ourselves these questions again.

 

Translated by A Suneetha and R Srivatsan
K Lalita works at Yuganthar and is a feminist, writer and thinker.