Rajam Krishnan

and Indian Feminist

Hermeneutics
Rajam Krishnan
and Indian Feminist
Hermeneutics
Translated and Edited by

Sarada Thallam
Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics

Translated and Edited by Sarada Thallam

This book first published 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2017 by Sarada Thallam

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-2995-1

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2995-3
Rajam Krishnan
n (1925-20114)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................................... ix
Rajam Krishnan

A Voice Registered..................................................................................... xi
C S Lakshmi

Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition ........ xvii

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... xli

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

Primordial Mother

Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 5

The Cult of Hospitality

Chapter Three .............................................................................................. 9

The Decline of Motherhood

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 13

Panchali

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 17

The Saga of Sita

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 21

Commodification of Indian Women

Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 25
Widowhood and Asceticism

Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 31

Poetic Voices
viii Table of Contents

Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 37
In Praise of the Lord

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 47

Reformatory Indian Womanhood

Chapter Eleven .......................................................................................... 53

Revolutionary Indian Womanhood

Chapter Twelve ......................................................................................... 75

The Human Society

Notes.......................................................................................................... 79

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 103

Index ........................................................................................................ 107

 FOREWORD

RAJAM KRISHNAN

…..it is not an exaggeration to state that the sociology of women has been
inadequately documented, since sociology is almost synonymous with
masculinity. Religious texts and other major works have never been
enunciated from a woman-centered perspective, since women are hardly
accorded a human status and continue to be devalued as mere objects of
pleasure and as child bearers. Even as we proceed into the twenty first
century (these essays were penned in 1995) women still continue to battle
for lives from their fetal stages to their graves. Why is it so? Both men and
women remain indispensable and reciprocal in this world. Why is it then
that a woman hardly receives human rights and dignity? Akin to gold and
soil, women are also perceived as objects of acquisition, childbearing and
labor. Although it is proven that women are in no way inferior to men,
they are still ruined and chattelised, which has almost become a “dharma”
as exemplified in numerous stories, puranas epics, etc. These essays seek
to interrogate the facts behind such biased views.
The human race had not evolved without a mother, since motherhood
remains a primal power. Contemporary genetic mappings of biological
anthropologists trace the evolution of the first human being to a primitive
tribe of Central Africa. The male sperm lacks “cells”. Women’s ovarian
eggs multiply for impregnation. Research proves the wonder of women’s
menstruation, which is actually a self-cleansing process that in fact
disinfects the ovary. Matriarchal cultures opine that nature has thus
endowed women with such miraculous powers that accord her a primal
status so much so that she is transformed into a cosmic Sakti that moves
the multitudes of the universe. But in the passage of time, men enslaved
women by placing their "selves" in a position of centrality as illustrated
through numerous stories, puranas and itihasas. In fact, patriarchal
imagination has generated myths wherein a male god divided himself into
a male and a female principle and created the first woman. According to
such bigoted norms, the God of creation was himself created from the
navel of a male god sans the necessity of a female ovary. The story of the
birth of progeny from the third eye of the god is also no different. Such
x Foreword

tales stand testimony to the male dominance in imaginative and cultural

lore. Patriarchal bias has deeply percolated into the human psyche to such
an extent that women hate their own female off springs and aid in
smothering them. Ironically, this is perceived to be a naturalized process
of human behavior. Under these circumstances, it is necessary for us to re-
visit and interrogate our puranas, kavyas and stories as they indirectly
reinforce such patriarchal value systems. These writings are not aimed at
causing pain to anyone’s feelings; rather they are directed at interrogating
our “sanctioned lives” from a revisionist perspective.. . . . .
 A VOICE REGISTERED

C S LAKSHMI

In 1953, when Rajam Krishnan won the Kalaimagal award for her
novel Penn Kural I was not yet nine. Kalaimagal with its scholarly editor
Ki. Va. Jagannathan, referred to as Ki Va. Ja by everyone, was considered
a literary magazine and it made its appearance in our house every month
without fail for my mother was an avid reader of Tamil fiction. Penn
Kural was about non-communication in a traditional arranged marriage,
and about how a woman caught in the politics of the family tries to find
love in a marriage. Even though I was a young child, I read the novel as it
was serialized in Kalaimagal and although the novel was a very subtly
written psychological exploration of a marital situation, I could feel the
resonance within myself although I could not understand what I was
responding to. I re-read the novel later in my teens and understood what an
extraordinary analysis of life in a family it was. Its title Penn Kural was
also unusual, for it meant a woman’s voice and the novel was about a
woman trying to find her own voice in a marriage. This aspect of a woman
needing to voice her opinion was what appealed to me most when I re-read
the novel.
In later years I found that many girls of my age had been touched by
the writings of Rajam Krishnan. In 2002, when Rajam Krishnan came out
with Uthara Kaandam after a series of crises in her own life like the death
of her husband and her having to shift many residences, we admired her
not only for her never-say-die spirit but also for not giving up her pursuit
of understanding women’s history and locating it within the history of
nation. I would like to dwell on this novel for a while before talking about
the essays written in 1995 which form the content of this book. The reason
why I would like to do it is because the novel shows Rajam Krishnan’s
relentless pursuit to give centre space to women and their voices.
Writing about Uthara Kaandam in my column Different Registers in
The Hindu, I wrote:
xii A Voice Reegistered

1. There are not manny writers wh ho would takke up a themee and do

thorough ressearch on thatt and then turrn it into fictioon. Turning fiield work
into fiction has been atteempted by verry few writerrs. This is beccause this
involves trav
avel, preparingg field notes anda then weavving a story around
a it.
But there is one writer whho has done th his for many, many years and a she is
Rajam Krishhnan. I have had h differencees with her inn terms of the story she
has woven around the fiield notes shee has collecteed. But I hav ve always
admired herr for her enerrgy and guts to venture innto different areas a and
experiences and making them come alive a in her ffiction. She can
c go to
Thanjavur aand write abouut the life of farmers
fa who sttand in the slu
ush of the
fields and ddo agriculturaal work; she can c be in Gooa and write about a the
independencce of Goa. Shee can write ab bout the womeen in the salt fields
f and
she can alsoo write about women in politics who hhave been forg gotten by
history. Shee can write abbout the life of o fisher folk aand she can also
a write
about peoplle who live in the mounttains. Behindd all these no ovels are
authentic andd well-researchhed field notess, which can m make any anthrropologist
proud….
Uthara K Kaandam is a kind of a culmination of aall her though hts on the
nation and iits politics. It is a novel wovven with compplex images off politics,
leaders, freeedom fighterss and their livves. More thann anything elsse, it is a
novel which exposes degrraded human lives l and forsaaken Gandhia an values.
In the intrroduction shee says that the t novel is about everyyone and
everything tthat she has known
k in theese 78 years. Rajam Krishnan feels
that the pollitics of Tamiil Nadu has degraded
d to a level wheree women,
despite beinng referred to t as "thai" and " thaikkulam" are the t worst
sufferers. Thhe powerless and economiccally inferior women get viictimized,
whereas thoose in powerfuul positions in n the society bbecome easily a part of
the cutthroaat politics whhose aim is quick money, y, limitless po ower and
personal gaains. The novvel is a colla age of imagess of people who w have
staked their personal livees to hold on to the values w which they bellieved the
freedom struuggle taught them, contrassted with imagges of a geneeration of
leaders andd hangers-on who have absolutelya no concern abo out these
values for thhey don't exisst in their vocabulary or aggenda. At the centre of
the novel iss Thayamma, who is 80 years old, loooking back at her past
while experiiencing the haard realities of o her presentt life. Brought up by a
Gandhian ccouple, she haas to face thee indignity off begetting a son who
turns politiccs into a vulgaar game of po ower-grabbingg at whateverr cost. He
has scant reespect for wom men, but occasionally he coomes to ask his mother
to live with him for her staying
s alone at that age m may encouragee adverse
comments frrom his politiccal rivals.
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xiii

The most touching characters in the novel are Ramunni, Sayabu,

Subbiah, Sambu Athai and the Gandhian couple. Romania and Sayabu die
early in the novel, but their voices and tears seem to haunt the novel.
Ramunni escapes being hanged for his Marxist views in his young age
when the Communist Party was underground. He dies a powerless, poor
man and when Thayamma visits him after a while, he begins to weep
bitterly. "The hangman's rope would have been better for me. Our dream
of a "Bharata Samudayam", where there is equality, democracy and non-
violence is now shattered," he says. The term "Bharata Samudayam" is
one the poet Bharati used to hail the nation. And Ramunni's weeping
becomes the metaphor of his generation.
The novel ends in a highly dramatic way when Thayamma decides to
leave her house along with a much-exploited young working girl and go to
the village where the Gandhian couple had initially raised her. The village
has just experienced caste riots after a young girl and a boy from different
castes run away from home to marry and they are found out and killed.
But in the village, is also a sub-inspector who knows about the history of
the Gandhian couple and there is also an old ally whose children have
settled down in the U.S. and elsewhere who has come to settle down in the
village. And, in a typical Rajam Krishnan style of hope emerging out of
nowhere, there is also a group of youngsters from various parts of India,
one of them from the family of the bold Gandhian woman who had initially
given succor to Thayamma, who swear that they will try to bring values
back into the life and politics of the nation. Thayamma's life has come one
full circle and she is there where it all started and hope is born again
within her, like a new life. The inspector returns her bag with her white
sari safely. There is not a spot on the sari and it is white with no stains.
The white sari becomes the symbol of all that is held sacred by her and its
return brings hope, which she had almost lost.
The unstained white sari is also Rajam Krishnan's message of not
giving into oppression and injustice of any kind as a person and as a
writer.
It is important to understand the passion and commitment with which
Uthara Kaandam was written in order to know the spirit behind the essays
in this book. Rajam Krishnan was a prolific writer (even at the age of
almost 90 she talked in a feeble voice about her works with the same
passion, although occasionally she forgot whether she had already written
them or was still to write them. “So much more to write… ” is what she
murmured every time I saw her) and wrote fiction based on field research
on a variety of subjects which have now become crucial for discussion.
She wrote about dams before activists like Medha Patkar took up the issue
xiv A Voice Registered

of big dams and life around dams. After many novels and short stories,
around the nineties she felt that it was important to deal with the position
of women in Indian culture and critically view how the degradation of
women is not a later phenomenon but something that has been part of its
mythology and inherent in epic texts. It was necessary to do this for after
Periyar’s book Penn En Adimai Aanaal? (Why did Women Get
Enslaved?), for there was no book in Tamil for popular readership which
dealt with such issues. She did this in a series of essays which were very
well received.
The essays, one after another, break the myths surrounding women and
her central role of reproduction, and her body which is in constant
ownership to be bound and redeemed by men like in the case of Ahalya
turned into a stone by her husband and redeemed by Rama, another man.
Rajam Krishnan begins with origin myths and then writes extensively
about mythologies and epic texts, including Silappadhikaram and
questions the veneration accorded to Kannagi for an exaggerated act of
revenge. She also praises women poets of the Sangam age like Avvai but
while writing about the women Bhakti poets she admires Akkamahadevi
and her ways of devotion to Shiva, but is not enamoured by Karaikkal
Ammaiyar who turns into a ghoul merely because her husband cannot look
upon her as a wife anymore since she has become a glorified devotee of
Shiva who can perform miracles. Karaikkal Ammaiyar is an icon in Tamil
culture when they talk about the power of a woman who is acclaimed for
her spiritual pursuits. Rajam Krishnan mercilessly tears apart this exalted
image accorded to Karaikkal Ammaiyar.
Rajam Krishnan also writes about prejudices within religious practices
including Buddhism. She writes in great detail about the attitude towards
widows and the pain of widowhood. She deals with the process of
commodification of women and follows it with a critical analysis of
national idols like Vivekananda and Gandhiji. She speaks about
Vivekananda’s obsession with Indian womanhood and women like Sita
and similarly criticize Gandhi for imposing his views on Kasturba and sees
Kasturba as the woman who struggles within marriage for a place for
herself.
Rajam Krishnan’s inability to accept some of the major failings of
Indira Gandhi and her view of Indira Gandhi as a woman who struggled
against the odds to give a place for India in the international map, may
seem to some, as the only discordant note in this book of essays. Although
she criticizes the imposition of Emergency and her indulgence of her
younger son’s excesses, perceives Indira Gandhi a determined administrator
at a crucial phase in the history of the nation and as a pioneering modern
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xv

Indian woman leader in the male dominated political turf. Rajam

Krishnan’s admiration for Indira Gandhi is shared by many of not only her
generation but also the later generation. The image projected of Indira
Gandhi was that of a strong woman who was capable of dealing with the
power bestowed on her. In Tamil Nadu whose Dravidian politics many,
including Rajam Krishnan, were vary of, maybe she felt the need to
project the image of Indira Gandhi as someone who rose above regional
politics to view the nation as a whole.
The final essay reveals her concerns about the human condition which
have always been central to all her writing. The essays in this book were
read by many who had no access to feminist theoretical concepts and
analysis of women’s issues in the context of feminism, in Tamil.
Translating them into English may not give a new perspective to current
feminist discussions, but it will certainly reveal the historical importance
of these Tamil essays which became, along with her other essays, an
important text in Women’s Studies and as such they provided an important
historical link in intellectual history.
Having written these essays Rajam Krishnan must have still felt that
she had not said everything that had to be said about women, culture and
nation. So in 2002 she publishes Uthara Kaandam which in a way
completes these essays at the fictional level where the strong and powerful
woman is Thayamma, brought up by a Gandhian couple who returns to the
same village where she was brought up to work with a group of young
people from various parts of India to bring values back into the politics
and life of the nation. Thayamma is not just the begetter of sons, although
her name doubly emphasizes (Thai and Amma) the mother; she is
someone in the image of Rajam Krishnan herself; of her generation and
temperament. She is the mother turned feral to safeguard things other than
children. She is the new woman who thinks beyond her own.

***
RAJAM KRISHNAN AND THE INDIAN FEMINIST
HERMENEUTICAL TRADITION

The recent demise of Rajam Krishnan on the 20th.October 2014, at the

ripe age of 90 has genuinely created a literary void in the domain of Indian
literature. A mammoth writer whose hardly received the limelight that she
ought to have had, she undoubtedly poses a challenge to many writers in
the decades to come owing to her extensive output in multiple genres. A
novelist, essayist, translator, biographer, playwright and a creative social
anthropologist, it is indeed breathtaking to survey the multiple roles
donned by her in an age when women were forced to live within
constrictive domains. Her literary oeuvre clearly evinces her ceaseless
diatribe against the predominant phallogocentric mode of creativity.
Although her fictional works have received a certain amount of attention
by critics and academic researchers in the Tamil language in which she
originally penned her works, her insightful essays which establishes her
credibility as a literary critic and theorist has hardly received much
attention. Often mentioned in the passing along with her novels, it is
indeed a serious literary and academic lacuna if one were to read her
creative works alone without grounding themselves in her critical works,
especially her literary essays which forthrightly express her attitude
towards Indian women, nature and culture succinctly. What strikes the
most about her works is her hermeneutical approach that re-visits and re-
interprets time-tested customs, beliefs and thought processes that have
continually undermined the status of the Indian women. Through her
essays, Rajam Krishnan has successfully engaged in acts of consciousness-
raising against such outmoded systems which have continuously
demeaned the status of women.
A hermeneutical legacy is an intrinsic aspect of Indian thought and
knowledge systems. Hermeneutics is basically a process of decoding,
whereby the essence of cultural and religious texts is unveiled, analyzed
and deciphered thus simultaneously benefiting linguists, philosophers,
social scientists and literary artists each from their particular vantage
points. In India, in the field of grammar, the Vartikas of Katyayana and the
bhasya of Patanjali remain landmark interpretations. The Vedantins'
explication of the Prasthana Traya-the Upanisads, Brahmasutras and the
xviii Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

Gita, Adi Sankara’s interpretations of the same, and later Abinavagupta’s

Abinavabharati (an exposition of the Natyasastra) are just a few instances
of the Indian hermeneutical tradition. The western hermeneutical tradition
has its origins in Aristotles’ De Interpretations, the slightly later Talmudical
hermeneutics, followed by Biblical expositions. The later significant
interpretations lay in the Apostolic age, the medieval interpretations of the
Bible and its modern elucidations by Martin Luther, John Calvin and the
like. A more contemporary twentieth century existential philosophical
interpretation of Heidegger and his disciple Paul Ricoeur are significant
contributions to this epistemic process. A cursory glance at the Indian and
Western hermeneutical traditions, illustrates the fact that all religious,
aesthetic and cultural texts have been interpreted from a male perspective
since all knowledge was synonymous with male prerogative and male
privilege. A deeper perception reflects the marginality accorded to female
existence, their place in schools of knowledge and their liminal positions
in interpreting these texts. Such writings are transformed into sites of
epistemic generation, perpetuating cultural codes through direct and indirect
means which influence human thought for generations. Since knowledge
was a male bastion, its interpreters were also male who unfortunately
misrepresented androcentric norms as being universal. Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s The Man-Made World: or Our Androcentric Culture (1911)
explodes the myth of the societal fixation on masculinity. In fact, a female-
centered perception was earlier construed as a “deviance”- that is seriously
challenged by contemporary feminist philosophers across the globe.
Whether oriental or the occidental, it was a long-felt need that women
needed their own perspectives on epistemology, to break open the glass
ceiling that had oft confined their thought. In the Indian scenario, any
analysis of cultural codes, sacred texts, mythological figures, etc. need to
be analyzed from the vantage point of our indigenous customary practices
and ethos. The need for an Indian perspective has been long felt. True, that
women remain an oppressed lot globally and that the dominant Anglo
American and Eurocentric models of feminist discourses remain partially
applicable to the Indian scenario also. But a perceptive interpretation of
Indian religious texts and cultural codes needs to be posited against the
grain of Indian culture which makes the emergence of an Indian feminist
theoretical perspective rather imperative.

(i) Basically, the theories of Indian womanhood need emanate from its
native soil so as to aptly articulate its specific socio-cultural
experiences, unique systems of bondage and its specific milieu.
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xix

(ii) These theories often compliment the dominant models of feminist

discourse while also acting as a counter-discourse to them. They
complement the prevailing theories in adding another paradigmatic
model to the larger corpus while also acting as a counter-discourse,
since the western models often indulge in acts of epistemic
hegemony that negate the existence of non-white, non-Eurpoean,
non-English speaking third-world women's discourses. Under these
oppressive circumstances, these nativistic voices authentically
articulate the hitherto oppressed women's voices in their own
regional tongues.
(iii) Thirdly, such theories often provide the needed critical tools for
the vast corpus of contemporary research in the Indian women's
writings. To interpret a literature with non-native theoretical
models may not be dispensed as an erroneous fallacy, but the fact
remains that there prevails an oft-felt, the unarticulated need for our
own native theories and interpretations which may imbue a greater
definiteness to the process of elucidation of our culture, ethos,
epistemes and practices.
(iv) Nativistic women's theoretical discourse does at times spawn a
postcolonial feminist school of thought in which the perpetrators of
the theories often remain beneficiaries of colonial English
education. Akin to their male counterparts like Aurobindo, Tagore,
Gandhi and Nehru who dexterously mastered the colonizers’
tongue effectively only to overthrow them,women theoreticians
like Mahadevi Verma in Hindi and Rajam Krishnan in Tamil have
articulated their gendered situatedness in their vernacular tongues,
to effectively strike back at the dominant patriarchal culture.

The Indian feminist hermeneutical theories in the contemporary sense

of the term were born precisely at this point of time when the male folks
were questioning the colonizers’ hegemonistic rule in our country. Women
intellectuals, while inquiring the imperialistic powers also interrogated the
power structures like patriarchy and our religious-cultural textual codes
that so sought to demean their womanhood. A feminist hermeneutical
perspective leads to a re-reading of the scriptures, moral codes and social-
cultural customs from a feminist perspective. These interpretations do not
merely infer upon gender-specific biological experiences like childbirth
and the like; rather its focus is on primary women's experiences like
devaluation of their personhood under patriarchal domination and their
instinctive right to a life of dignity. In this context, mythological episodes
and stories of women's experiences serve as critical paradigms for
xx Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

critiquing sexist ideologies and also for the production of novel images of
womanhood that are affirming of women's autonomy. The modes of a
feminist hermeneutics approach are manifold. Basically, a Radical or
Rejectionist approach may deny the authority of the divine texts. A Neo-
Orthodox or Critical approach may accept the prophetic nature of these
texts and consider these works as taking the side of the oppressed women.
Seen from this perspective, Draupadi's disrobement scene are a classical
instance of how a distressed woman is rescued by a benevolent man. A
Historico-Critical approach may ensure a historical understanding of the
original intention of the author. The interpreter is presented with a
fundamental and a literal reading of the texts. A feminist hermeneutical
interpretation of this approach may easily comply with the socially
sanctioned cultural norms and hence view the incidents delineated in the
texts as historico-cultural compulsions. A Revisionist approach asserts
that these "sanctioned" texts are not by themselves misogynist, but remain
patriarchalized by interpreters who project their androcentric cultural bias
on the "sanctioned" texts. Hence the feminist hermeneutical school of
thinkers attempts to liberate these texts from the fetters of patriarchal
interpretation to advance women's freedom. Finally, a Reformist or
liberationist approach entails within itself a deep consciousness of
patriarchal chauvinism in the religio-cultural texts and interprets the same
to emancipate women as well as all marginalized sections. Despite their
superficial differences, the underlying aim of all these approaches is to re-
write and re-interrogate "sanctioned" texts, cultural codes and signifiers
from a woman-centered perspective and to reveal its innate androcentric
bias.
A pioneering figure in this larger domain is undoubtedly Irawati
Karve. Her seminal works include Kinship Organization in India (1953),
Hindu Society: An Interpretation (1961) and Yuganta: The End of an
Epoch (1967). The third among these is her most influential work, where
she depicts a gallery of characters from the mammoth Indian epic-the
Mahabharata, at a human level, susceptible to normative errors, passions
and the like. The characters are analyzed from secular, scientific and
socio-anthropological perspectives, who respond to human situations in
times of antiquity. As the eminent critic Norman Brown, W. mentions:
"Like the noble figures in Greek epics and tragedies and in Shakespeare's
chronicle plays, they exhibit a wide range of human feelings and passions-
love, devotion, bravery, chivalry and also hatred, envy, rage, violence,
deceit, cowardice, unchivalry, injustice, censurable conduct even by the
prevailing standards." (Foreword to Yuganta). Karve's earlier books entitled
Kinship Organization in India and Hindu Society: An Interpretation, analyze
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xxi

the Indian kinship structure in a diachronic manner while also probing into
the different facets of Hinduism. An influence of Karve is undoubtedly
evident in Rajam Krishnan's present work that has been taken up for
translation. Although Karve analyzes the epic figures of the Mahabharata
from a human perspective, she does not render any specific feminist
perspective into her characters. Rajam Krishnan fills this void by
analyzing the epic figures in the Mahabharata, the Vedas, women from
Tamil epics and Cankam Tamil poetry, from a gendered perspective. She
clearly analyzes the patriarchal bias in Indian thought that derogates Indian
womanhood. Her essays begin with a genealogical analysis of the
evolution of human society and the gradual evolution of patriarchy in the
Indian socio-cultural ethos. It is a penetrating probe into the psyche of
Indian patriarchy that has systematically sought to inferiorize women. The
author recourses to a methodical study of patriarchal value systems which
remain deeply embedded in Indian thought through her analysis of
wedding rituals, our speech habits, socio-cultural habit formations, our
mythological figures and thus transmutes her thought into a critique of
overarching grand discourse of patriarchy against which all her essays
launch a powerful tirade. Rajam Krishnan's essays are of paramount
importance in the current world of hermeneutical inquiry since she adapts
multi-dimensional approaches like social, cultural, anthropological and
literary perspectives with a powerful simultaneity that often disturbs the
readers’ smugness. One clearly evinces a logical structure in her thought.
The first three essays in this volume analyze the primal place accorded to
motherhood in Indian culture and the gradual commodification and
debasement of the same under the garb of hospitality.
To Rajam Krishnan, women's greatest liberation is from their ovarian
destinies. Sita and Draupadi are the two epic characters who receive a
special treatment in her essays. It is rather a significant co-incidence that
Rajam Krishnan's delineation of Draupadi in these essays and the eminent
Oriya writer Pratibha Ray's Yajnaseni (a novel based on a feminist re
visioning of the inner trauma of Draupadi) were published in 1995 and
1996 respectively. On the lines of Karve, Rajam Krishnan also analyzes
Sita and Draupadi from a socio-anthropological perspective to describe the
injustices meted out to the mythico-historical Indian women who remain
the arch figures of Indian womanhood. But she differs from Karve in
imbuing a strong woman-centered perspective to her analysis. A probe
into the literary imagination of Indian women poets, especially the Bhakti
women poets like Mahadevi Akka, Karaikkal Ammai and Antal deserves a
special mention. While the author is all praise for Antal's creative
imagination, she also unfailingly presents a novel dimension by refuting
xxii Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

the fact that such gynocentric verse which delineates the viraha (erotic
yearnings) Bhakti in her Nacciar Tirumoli could not have been composed
by a 12 year old child reared in an ambience of brahminical orthodoxy.
Rather, she considers Antal as having been reared in a sect that has
mastered the fine arts. However, the author is not free from moments of
divergent judgement also. Her opinion regarding the Bhakti of Karaikkal
Ammai as being inferior to that of Akkamaha Davy is personally
unacceptable to me given the fact that Karaikkal Ammai remains the lone
female saint in the Tamil Saiva historical canon who had deliberately
renounced her beauteous form to willingly embrace a ghoulish demeanor
in order to attain the Lord's holy feet. I firmly contend that through her
transformation, she has transcended her second sex status. Recent
scholarship on Ammai like Elaine Craddock’s Siva’s Demon Devotee
(2010) and Karen Pechillis Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry of Karaikkal
Ammai (2012) does greater justice to the sublime compositions of the
unique scent and enhance our understanding of her poetry from a lofty
perspective which it rightly deserves.
From an innate appreciation of the poetic genius of religio-literary
figures, Rajam Krishnan suddenly leaps forward by a few centuries when
she deftly analyses the personality of Indira Gandhi and her ascension in
the Indian political arena which was hitherto a male turf. Some may doubt
if Indira Gandhi is a cultural figure to be interpreted in a hermeneutical
analysis. But a serious thought would enlighten us with the fact that this
iron woman of India was not merely a political figure, but one who had re-
defined Indian notions of womanhood in the post-independence era.
Despite our agreement/disagreement with her political policies, one cannot
differ over the fact that she transformed Indian notions of womanhood.
One would definitely stand amazed at the patriarchal preference for a male
child, which had dominated Nehru's family! Indira Gandhi then, had to
wage a stiff war against patriarchal bias since her birth. Although the
author appreciates this first modern Indian woman leader for her political
sagacity and acumen, she is also not blind to the inherent faults in Indira
which indeed remained serious blemishes in her personality. Regardless of
her imperfections, her ascension in the Indian political scenario is indeed
remarkable to the author. The essays form a circular pattern when the
author reviews the position of women in the larger process of social
evolution in her concluding essay. From the pre-historical era of the first
essay to the current state of affairs in the culminating essay, the author has
made an effective analysis of the Indian feminist hermeneutical tradition
that is rather illuminating.
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xxiii

In discussing the Indian feminist hermeneutical tradition, I am

reminded of a Kannada folktale entitled Flowering Tree which has been
narrated by A.K. Ramanujan in The Flowering Tree and Other Oral tales
from India (New Delhi: OUP: 2004). A brief summary of the story runs as
follows. There was once an old woman with two daughters. The youngest
among them had the power to transform herself into a tree, offer flowers
that were unique and sweet-smelling, and then re-transform herself into a
human being if she was kept in a clean environ and offered two pitchers of
water. Most importantly, she requests that she be handled with extreme
care. She does these things in secrecy to supplement her mother’s meager
income first. Slowly, the prince of the land discovers the truth and he
marries her. Every night she is transformed into a tree at her husband’s
behest, offers him sweet smelling flowers for conjugal bliss and then re-
transforms herself into a woman. Slowly, her sister-in-law discovers the
truth and she commands her to be transformed into a tree. But the greedy
woman mishandles her to such an extent that she is deformed and becomes
a mere “thing”. The prince searches for her in far-off lands until he finally
discovers her by accident. She requests him to pour some water on her so
that she could be transformed into a tree. After she does become one, she
instructs the prince to mend every part of her after which water is poured
and she is once again re-converted into a perfect human form.
Seemingly naive as the story may appear to many, this Indian folktale
embeds within itself the essential conception of the Indian woman as a
female principle of creativity, re-production, generation, a Jani and a
creator by herself. The Rigvedic praise for Aditi the Primordial mother is
based on her powers of generation of a new life. Slowly women’s original
position degenerated until we hear of women being gang-raped in buses,
mutilated and murdered. Going back to the Kannada folktale, the only
condition laid by the young girl to people who who desire her flowers, is
that they handle her gently. But when the damage is done, it is rather
difficult for her to re-gain her normalcy. Like the maimed tree, the Indian
woman is also deformed within sanctioned norms. Puranic lore, epics and
all religious texts have steadily reinforced her mutilation. When entire
generations of human beings remain fed with such biased epistemes,
physical and psychological violence is an inevitable consequence. She
who once held an ascendant position in the early Rig Vedic times has now
been relegated to an object to be mutilated and consumed by greedy
patriarchal powers.
One needs to study not merely sociology and anthropology but probe
into our own knowledge systems, to analyze the steady, schematized
downfall of the Indian woman. Only such methodical studies could lead to
xxiv Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

an orderly counter action that may set-right the imbalance among the
genders. Probing into our “knowledge” systems like the epics, Puranas,
oral narratives, etc. is one such move to unearth the bigoted visions that so
tend to subdue women. The need is greater given the fact that women
continue to live in what Gilman would label as a Man-made world.
Women’s life is itself perceived only in relation to men, as is their
personal, social, economic and psychological development. Gilman
succinctly states that “mankind meant mankind” (Gilman 33). A gender-
sensitized and gender-tolerant ambience thus needs to be created whereby
all the genders work towards a holistic natural order that may bestow
greater tolerance amongst them. Individuals then need to be educated with
unbiased knowledge systems to re-write the existing epistemes which seek
to belittle women.
The hermeneutical tradition scarcely witnesses textual interpretations
executed from a feminist perspective and hence it is crucial to possess that
vision which actually investigates and empowers thought. The feminist
hermeneutical method seeks to interpret scriptures, religious texts, cultural
works, epics, and practices, the written and oral forms of communication
from a woman-centric perspective, thereby highlighting the serious lapses,
gaps and misrepresentations of women that are circulated as cultural
norms/codes that demean her status. It further questions patriarchal
sanctions, interrogates religio-cultural texts, analyses the deeply-embedded
value systems and gender bias in both the written and unwritten texts
while also re-visiting the sanctioned knowledge domains. It decenters
androcentric/universal knowledge systems and ushers a reformatory
thought, whereby a more gender-friendly and integrationist approach is
greatly appreciated. Women remained triply marginalized from the
society, from the process of epistemic creation and the episteme itself. The
above mentioned tripartite discrepancy needs to be eradicated so that
posterity is bestowed with a bigotry-free knowledge that seeks to level all
gaps. The process is however assiduous since the method seeks to create a
total upheaval of deeply-ingrained and “time-tested” normative codes that
are often misquoted as possessing “divine sanctity”.
When Subramanian Bharathi created his masterpiece Panchali
Sabatham (Paanchali’s Vow), he was interrogating the divine status
accorded to the Mahabharata, which like many other Indian Puranas,
myths and legends also subjugated women. When Bharathi’s Panchali
enters the hall, she is not the shy, demure Draupadi of Vyasa who silently
endures the multiple injuries inflicted on her body/psyche. A powerful
Shakti and an embodiment of India, even the heavens remain shocked
when she is pawned. Refraining from abject negation, she is:
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xxv

Youthful Uma, Kali herself, so strong

The original Shakti with the terrible bow,
The Mahamaya that destroys illusion,
(Nandakumar 167)

Even as the charioteer conveys to her the news of her being summoned
to Duryodhana’s court, she flares up thus:

Whose words do you speak? Is it tradition

for women of the warrior clan
to enter the Hall of Gamesters?
(Nandakumar 167)

She further chastizes him thus:

After losing himself, the king

had no right to wager me
Having been enslaved by the game,
by which law could he play again?
He’s reduced to a slave, while I’m still
Daughter of Drupada
Once he dwindled into a slave
What right had he to a wife?
(Nandakumar 169)

Such powerful re-visionist accounts by seers like Bharati undoubtedly

laid the foundations for contemporary Indian feminist hermeneutical thought
which is actively widespread in a plethora of Indian vernacular writings
today both in its critical works and the creative domain. Such writings aim
at waging a stiff resistance to phallogocentric thought and seek to reinstate
a strong woman centric perspective which has hitherto been absent in
human thought as reflected in the epistemes generated down the ages.
In the west, a feminist hermeneutical stance is prominently asserted in
their critical texts like Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex (1975)
which analyses the religious power structures of the Catholic Church.
More recently, systematic works on a feminist philosophy of religion aim
at decoding the gender bias in the religio-cultural traditions of the west.
Pioneering works in this sphere include the Oxford philosopher Pamela
Anderson’s A Feminist Philosophy of Religion:The Rationality and Myths
of Religious Belief (1998) and Grace Jantzen’s Becoming Divine: Towards
a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (1999). These critics examine the
traditional religio-social and cultural structures of the western world from
a psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, postmetaphysical and epistemological
xxvi Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

frame work thereby underlining the need for a revisionist perspective. It would
not be an exaggeration to state that the Indian feminist hermeneutical position
emerged almost simultaneously with the western feminist hermeneutical
school, for Indian women were also openly interrogating our cultural
codes, hegemonic value systems, our epistemic centers like the Puranas,
Vedas and lore that attempted to subdue and enslave them. The thought
attained a higher impetus in the post-independence era owing the greater
participation of women in the multiple domains of Indian life. One needs
to only think of the eminent Hindi litterateur Mahadevi Varma whose
essays like “The Curse of Womanhood”. “The Modern Woman” and “The
Hindu Woman’s Wifehood” have had a powerful sway on its readers.
Rajam Krishnan‘s creative genius is simultaneously inspired by both
western literary masters like Shakespeare, Dickens, Pearl S.Buck and
others like Kalidasa, Subramania Bharathi, Pudumaipittan and others among
the Indian writers. Her feminist hermeneutic stance is intense in its style
since she effectively critiques the time-tested Indian knowledge systems,
evolutionary myths, Vedas, Puranas and the unwritten lore of Indian
thought. Most importantly, she questions two arch-texts of Indian thought:
The Rig Veda and the Mahabharata and critically evaluates them for their
deep patriarchal bias. Born in 1925 in Musiri of Trichy dt., T. Nadu, she is
a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist, travel writer and critic.
Her first short story was published in the year 1942. Since then she has
created a large corpus of literary works which number to 36 short fiction
and fiction, 300 stories, 20 plays, 2 biographies, travelogues and numerous
other literary essays. Her first full-length fiction entitled Sudandira Jothi
(The Torch of Liberty) appeared in parts in 1948. But it was unfortunately
banned and hence the fiction did not see the light of print in its entirety.
This unfinished fiction hardly finds any mention in the list of the author's
works. Hence, her first fiction is generally considered to be Penn Kural
(Women's Voice) (1963) which was published by the Kalaimagal Press,
Chennai.
As a creative writer too Rajam Krishnan is imbued with an immense
sense of social consciousness. She reposes enormous faith in the potency
of the pen to reform humanity. Refusing to yield to the pressures of print
capitalism, she self-published her later works. As a revolutionary thinker
and researcher, her fiction is not merely the imagination's creative child
since she pens them after undertaking deep and painstaking research in the
respective field. Rightly did Malan the Tamil writer comment on her death
that she was far from indulging in a facile "armchair imagination." In
many ways a trendsetter, she was a pioneering Indian woman socio-
anthropological creative writer since her fiction focused on the hitherto
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xxvii

undepicted sections of the society like the Badugas, the salt pan workers,
the slum dwellers, jungle dacoits and small-time criminals. Her Dickensonian
eye for detail combined with a strong social commitment is evident in all
her large corpus of works.In an interview she once stated:

I do not fully subscribe to the view that works of fiction

Are all products of the imagination. I, at least internalize real
life“visions”, let them play on my heartstrings and
bring them out as literary compositions . . .I keep going
on in search of new areas and new experiences.
(The Hindu, Jan 4, 2004)

These lines express the writer’s capacity to “drink life to the lees” and
to move into the unending horizons of thought. Her close association of
life with literature and the deep reformatory zeal that she has inherited
from Bharathi offer a fresh perspective into her fiction and also her non-
fictional works As a polyglot, she strove for the translation of regional
literatures into other Indian languages. She has translated Bihari folk songs
for the Sahitya Akademi. Apart from translating numerous Malayalam
short stories in Tamil, she has also translated the Malayalam classic,
Kalignakalam of Kesava Menon in Tamil. She has also represented India
in numerous delegations abroad on creative writing.
Rajam Krishnan's creative oeuvre was an instinctive response to her
times. Though born in the colonial times in the year 1925, nearly all her
writings could be located in a post-colonial India at a time when the Tamil
literary scenario was in a transitional state of attaining modernity.
Literature for/by women was fast evolving. Writers of both sexes created
literary pieces that were concerned with the upliftment of women. For
instance, Pratapa Mudaliyar Charitram (1879) of Vedanayakam Pillai has
as its protagonist Gyanambal who is educated, intelligent and confident.
The trend continued in his other works like Suguna Sundari Charitram
and also in B. R.Rajamayyar's Kamalambal Charitram (1893). Both Pillai
and Iyer were concerned with women's reformation and progress. A
strident promoter of women's rights, his Padmavathi Charitram (1898)
and Muthu Meenakshi (1903) advocated for women's privileges and
education. Numerous journals also flourished. A significant, but short-
lived group of writers who were concerned with women's progress and
education in Tamil Nadu was the Manikodi group. It comprised of writers
like Thi.Ja.Ra. Si. Su. Chellappa, Ka.Na.Su.La.Sa.Ra., Pudumai Pittan and
the like. These reformatory writers penned extensively on themes like
widowhood, women's education and the like. Ku.Pa. Ra. is a significant
writer, who pioneered in depicting the sexual freedom of modern Indian
xxviii Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

women. His unfinished novella Verottam (1969), presents a heroine who

realizes the need for ovarian independence of women, a theme that runs
through many of Rajam Krishnan's creative and critical writings. The
general tendency of the age was to romanticize women. Leading journals
of the times like Kalaimagal and Ananda Vikatan had columns for
women, which often contained prescriptive norms for them by leading
male writers like V. V. S. Iyer and Kalki. C. S. Lakshmi's Face Behind the
Mask: Women in Tamil Literature (1984) refers to notions like "clinging-
creeper", "educated, yet unassertive wife", "uneducated and tongue-wagging
queen of the house", "sweet wife", "loving mother" as the predominant
images of women which were in circulation in the writings of those times
(46). Later there emerged entire magazines brought out for women by men.
The most notable among them are Penmadhi Bodhini and Chakravartini
which prescribed standards like karpu (chastity) and education for women.
A significant landmark in the annals of Tamil women's writings lies in
the emergence of journals for women by women. The most notable among
them include Hitakarini (1909) started by Pandit Visalakshi Ammal, Revu
Thayaramma's Penn Kalvi (1912), Vai. Mu. Kodhai Nayaki Ammal’s Jagan
Mohini. She later started the Jagan Press which brought out writings by
women. Subsequently, Maragatavalli Ammal's Maadhar Marumanam,
Gugaipriyay's Mangai and Pudumai Penn were some of the other journals
that advocated the cause of women, though they still circulated a
traditional, romanticized image of women. They were "modern" in the
sense of advocating women's political participation and women's
enfranchisement. An attempt at creating a non-traditional image of women
was undertaken by male writers like T. Janakiraman, Sundara Ramaswamy
and Indira Parthasarathy. These were serious attempts at creating non-
traditional and realistic images of women.
A host of women writers emerged in the Tamil literary scenario at this
precise moment. The most notable among them was Lakshmi. Often
compared to Jane Austen, Lakshmi's domain was also largely the home
and domestic life. A woman doctor in a largely male dominated
profession, she has somehow scantily focused on the professional
struggles of the women of a new generation. Therefore her fiction, which
was primarily concerned with domesticity and marriage was divorced
from her own experience of struggling in a largely male territory. The
other lesser known but committed writers include Tamarai Kanni, Saroja
Ramamoorthy and Vasumati Ramaswamy, who primarily catered to
women's experiences in their works. After the 1950's the most prominent
woman writer was undoubtedly Rajam Krishnan.
 Rajam Krishnan and Indian Feminist Hermeneutics xxix

Rajam Krishnan's gamut of creativity is unique in the domain of Tamil

writing. Her literary lineage could be traced to that of A. Madhavaiah who
had launched a strong tirade against superstitions and stiflement of Indian
women. He had vociferously argued for women's rights. Hence, it is of
little surprise that Rajam Krishnan's writings also bear the indelible stamp
of women's liberty. Her personal circumstances only added to her zeal.
Married to Muthukrishnan, an engineer when she was barely fourteen, and
her existence as one of the daughters-in-law of a large joint family, the
hurdles to her intellectual progress were many. Hardly having passed the
high school, her penchant for creativity stood unabated:

Forced into family life at the young age of fourteen, I remained barred
from progress in multiple domains like education, intellectual progress and
music. My writings were born out of a struggle for self-recognition. I had
no support system initially and hence I wrote with immense apprehension.
My initial writings . . . [were] in the kitchen of the large family. (Nalini
Devi 10)

She later shifted to Ooty. She acknowledges the encouragement she

received from her husband in her literary forays. The isolation and heavy
coldness of the place made her engage in creative activities since she
wrote between 6-9 in the evenings.
Her literary oeuvre, born out of an intense struggle, was actually spurred
by her chance reading of the Indian Women Auxilary Cops Journal
immediately after the II world war. On being propelled to contribute to
that journal, she penned an English short story entitled Bonus in the year
1946 under the pen name Lohini. The other pen names adopted by her
include Kaveri and K.. Mitra. She later created numerous essays and short
stories in Hindustan Times until she was triggered by the zeal to create
literary works in her mother tongue. The overarching themes in all these
works are the rightful place of women in contemporary Indian society and
social reform. Rajam Krishnan's reformatory fervor is evident in her early
Tamil works also. In 1946, she wrote her first short story in a journal
edited by SA. Viswanathan (Savi), and she later created her fiction
Sudandira Jothi which appeared in parts in the same magazine.Her first
work of renown is Penn Kural which focused on the stifled voice of the
Indian woman in the large family system.
Rajam Krishnan also owes the distinction of having expressed her
creativity in multiple genres. Apart from fiction and essays (which we
would discuss slightly later in this essay), she is also a creator of novellas,
short stories, plays and fables. She has penned 15 novellas, the significant
ones, including Pavitra, Thanga Mull, Manidhanum Jyothiyum, Irudhiyum
xxx Rajam Krishnan and the Indian Feminist Hermeneutical Tradition

Thodakkamum, Oru Devanin Kathai, Alaigal and the like. She has also
penned more than 200 short stories. Between 1952-1953, some of her
stories were broadcast on the radio. Rajam Krishnan has also created
fables to parody the inherent human evils. For instance, in the fable called
Kaakkaan she uses the metaphor of crows to depict the debased human
nature in the contemporary society. Her biography on Dr. Rangachari is a
seminal work in the genre of Tamil biographies owing to her painstaking
research. An inherent theme in all her works includes her attempt at
reformation of the human society and the particular predicament of
women. Her writings often remain openly didactic, more so in her fiction
where her characters act as mouthpieces of the author's penchant for
restructuring human society.
Her fiction and short stories are a product of her assiduous research.
She writes after having spent at least 6 months in the respective
field.When one surveys her fiction, one clearly perceives the evolution of
her style. From being a writer of domestic fiction in her earlier works she
is the first Tamil writer to have created well-researched social fiction. Her
fiction is born out of a deep social consciousness where creativity is no
mere embellishment or entertainment, but a powerful weapon of social
change. Novels dealing with regional themes have existed in Indian
vernacular writings. For instance, the Marathi novel Bangarvadi (1954) by
Vyankatesh Madgulkar and the Malayalam novel Chemmeen (1956) by
Thagazhi Sivasankara Pillai reflect the lives of the region. The writer's
first-hand knowledge of the anthropology, topography, demography,
history and geography of the chosen region bear an indelible mark of
authenticity to her works. Her first work on regional themes (which is a
product of her profound research), is Kurinji Then which analyses the lives
of the Baduga tribes in the Nilagiris where she had stayed with her
husband. Commenting on the rigorousness of the task involved, she
mentions thus:

It was an extremely difficult task to depict the changes involved in the

lives of the ancient tribes of the Nilgiris. It involved a lot of field work and
research. In fact, the tribal members were apprehensive of cooperating with
us owing to fear. I still continued to create Kurinji Then, owing to
persistent efforts. (cited in Govindaraj 11)

Valaikkaram (1969) is based on the lives of Goan fishermen and their

struggles. A novel that has won the Soviet award, it is a mammoth work of
728 pages that depicts the liberation of Goa from Portugese colonialism.
The novelist has arduously conducted first hand interviews with
participants in the struggle for liberation, their experiences in Angola, the