Umila Pawars’s Aaydan, is translated by Maya Pandit into English as The weave of My Life, denotes the as testimony and weaves of complex relationship between official forgetting, memory and identity. ‘Aayadan’ is generic term used for all things made from bamboo. The other meanings of aayadan are ‘utensil’ and ‘weapon’. Outside the Konkan, the job of weaving bamboo baskets has traditionally been assigned to nomadic tribes like the Burud. In the Konkan region, it was the Mahar caste which undertook this task. Her book is forgetting a right to speak both for and beyond the gendered individual. It is contesting clearly the official forgetting of histories of caste oppressions, struggle and resistance. At the same time, this book is a self-consciously dalit feminist testimonial which is against the brahmanical and neo-liberal practices of the state, The weave of My Life violates both bourgeois individualism and communitarian notion of the singular dalit community( dalit panther).
Urmila ( Manjula) challenges views that see caste as a social institution frozen in time. She restates the intellectual contributions and agency of dalit women. She brings together private lived experience and the public practices of anti-caste struggle. The Weave of My Life in the classroom is empowering for subaltern students. It also allows the dominant to interrogate their complicity in deep-rooted privileges without freezing in guilt.
Urmila (Manjula) father died when she was in the third standard, in 1954. He was just fifty-eight. After her husband’s death, mother involved herself in weaving baskets. Urmila’s baba took on a lot more work. He was prone to jaundice. But he told Urmila’s Aaye ‘ Educate the children’. Urmila had great interest to school. She was youngest child in the family. The next day was a Saturday. She had morning school. She said, I don’t know but I packed my school bag and asked Aaye, ‘Shall I go to school today?’ (pp.31).). Uremila’s bhai got a job at the age of eleven at Lucknow in the railways. That time she was enrolled in the pre -primary school. Urmila’s Aaye used to live in very dilapidated state like torn saree, unkept hair and cracked feet. Urmila always maintained some distance with her so that when her classmate of her, Shyamala Chavan asked her, Who is that women in your house who looks like this? She replied,’ ‘Oh that women? She is our maidservant! (pp.43). Urmila liked her mother to wear clean saree but it was not possible due to poverty and that was the reason she had to feel emrrassment in front of her friends..
When she grew up as adolescent. Aaye began to urge her Bhai in letter to look for a good boy for Urmila. Her tai wanted her husband to be a lawyer who would later climb to the position of a judge. Aye used to say about Urmila, “This daughter of mine will count even the feathers of a flying bird.”(pp. 139). Later she enrolled herself in a college. At the same time she did a few temporary jobs. She got married with Harishchandra, a working person. The name Urmila was given by her husband. Both shifted to Mumbai because it fascinated them. And also they believed that what Ambedakar had said: ‘Leave the village, the village will never help you progress. Go to the City’. (pp.158). She joined job and grew her interest in writing stories. She would keep pen and paper near the pillow and write whatever came to her mind. Thus she continued her progressive literary career. She was first invited in Sahitya Sammelana at Vikroli.She had completed B.A. and ,M.A. with second class. Then she joined Maitrini-female friends-in dadar. After joining, she started looking from dalit feminist perspectives. She usually began her speeches with a few quotes from Krantiba Phule besides citing babasaheb ambedakar’s Hindu Code Bill. She said that “ the manusmriti has imposed many restrictions on women and built the caste system. That is why Ambedakar said that women is the gateway of the caste system.(pp. 263).
Memories of food, culinary skills and meals times draw a picture of the moral economy of dalit families in the Konkan region. Being born in low family and caste she had to face many times public humiliation. Once she went to attend a wedding at her sister-law’s place, along with two of her nieces. When they stout girls sat down to eat and began asking for rice again and again, the cook got angry. ‘Whose daughters are these anyway?’ he burst out. ‘They are eating like monsters.’ (pp. 116).
She mentions in this book, memories of labor, camaraderie’s and tension between women who used to climb hills daily to take their wares to the market. Their pains and labor within the homes presents an archive of complex relations between sexual and caste-based division of labor. Memories of humiliation and resistance to reproduction of caste ware as a form of modern inequality both in the village and the city. For example, people would first purify the aaydan, the basket woven by dalits by sprinkling water on it. Even in Mumbai, children of Urmila experienced caste inequality through their interaction with friends invited home to eat the cake on the birthdays. When the children who were invited would describe the figures of the Buddha and Dr. Ambedakar they had seen to their mothers. The latter would be quick to take action. They warned the dalit families that even if their children did visit them they were not to be given any eatables.
She had been discriminated in her school life. At school, teachers would pick on dalit girls to clean the dung on the school verandah when it was the turn of their class to undertake the clean. Urmila was very bold girl since childhood. “One day Gurruji asked Urmila to clean the mess. It was not even the turn of our class. Still he told her to clean because she was late. It so humiliating that she refused even to budge. Guru ji ordered her again. But she did not move her place. Guruji came close and slapped her hard. Then he told her to get out. Howling she ran home when she told to her aaye she was enraged. She said,” Let’s go to your school.’ I will see him’. Her she quoted a proverb! When it is the widow’s son turn to receive alms, the giver gets a boil on his palms!’.(pp.68). Aaye’s complaint against Guru ji became problem for Urmila. Guru ji shouted and announced her name as ,Fail’ ! Guru ji told her that “Show that progress card to your mother !” (pp. 70).
She mentions that when she was in the fifth standard, she had a Brahmin teacher called Biwalkar madam. She used to make all students stand in a line and closely examine their nails, figures, teeth, eyes and ears and nose. Clean students received a pat on their backs whereas dirty students got scolded by her. Another issues, children began to refuse, risking beating and swoolen cheeks. When schoolmates planned meals, dalit children would be asked to contribute money instead of food stuffs and were not allowed to touch the food that was being cooked.
After marriage, she joined nad became acquainted with dalit literature, dalit movement and participated in Maître Sangadana. She would give speech and encourage women’s to join them. She also made awareness among women about women’s issues and rights. She used go lecture in slums so that woman can get self-awareness. Many people of society belonging to non-dalit tried to creat hurdle in her way but she faced boldy. She has achecved several awards like, Priyadarshani Award(2004), Padmashre Vikhepatil Puruskar(2004), Maharastra Foundation Award (2004).
The process through which dalit women agitated into the Ambedkarite publics of the 1970s and 1980s are archived in memories of Hira Bansode, Urmila Pawar’s friend and well-known poet, who came up with the idea of a dalit women’s literary conference. In may 2004, in a letter to the Maharastra sahitya Parishad (Marathi Literary Conference) shows her political stand in refusing the Laxmibai Tilak award for the best published’autobiography’. She refused it taking because ceremony was to be happened by Saraswati Worshing which is ritual of Hindu religion.
We find that this book draws upon dominant disciplinary understanding of caste an ideological system based on a conflicting binary of the principles of purity and pollution as against testimony like The Weave of My life. It reflects with rich experiential documentation of power and material exclusions of the structures. Similarly, the practice of caste and patriarchy reduce these supposedly objective models of what they are: brahminical views from ‘top to down’ (Chakravarti 2003).
Conclusion
The Weave of My Life is a self-consciously dalit feminist testimonial which is against the brahmanical and neo-liberal practices of the state. This book as a Dalit memoirs presents to the readers a records of meanings and values of dalit modernity as it is figured in the interweaving of nostalgia and critical memories of the three generations of dait men, women and children. She has been greatly influenced by her Aaye’s weaving of basket. Her family (aaye, tai, and brother) always encouraged her to educate. Urmila herself never felt disappointed before humiliation and discrimination of caste during school days. Her political journey with ambedakarite philosophy gave her own stand in the society. As she believed what Ambedakar had said: ‘Leave the village, the village will never help you progress. Go to the City. It is in true sense, changed her life. Had she been in city, she would never been able to get such opportunity to grow and stand herself. Therefore, Urmila Pawar’s memoir represents the struggle of dalit women who has travelled on a long journey from a small town to huge metropolis and became one of its leading intellectuals and writes. And who tried successfully to make values like justice, equality, freedom, rationality, citizenship, progress and democracy from her dalit feminist imagination.
REFERENCES
Chakravarti Uma .2003, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens. Street: Kolkata.
