Can the grace of the abiding female nature be converged into a work of art? Can the inert portrayal do justice to its life? To explore the matter in question, The South Asia Conference 2017 was held recently at the Women’s Education and Research Centre.
The conference was themed on ‘Cultural Productions from a Gender Perspective’ and was held as a critical assessment of the cultural productions including paintings, literary productions, dramas, folk dramas and films produced in the South Asia region.
The conference was funded by India Sri Lanka Foundation, Sri Lanka.
Here are some inspiring excerpts from the speeches made at the Conference.
Women and the Literature of Protest
Linet Sebastian, Assistant Professor and postgraduate fellow at Research Department of English at St. Joseph’s College in Kerala, India discussed Historical and Political Narratives of the Select North East Indian Women Writers.
“Northeast India is a land historically known for the geopolitical, linguistic and ethnic conflicts, military violence, insurgence groups, and Maoist outbreaks,” said Sebastian. “For the North East Indian women, literature is a weapon to write back at the oppressive institutions of the state, for their life is intrinsically mingled with the centrality of the Government and military forces.”
The prime concerns of the literature from the North East are addressing resistance, the strategy of survival that they experience throughout their lives.
“It is a fact that, women are the victims in every institution. As a result the idea of nation, the formation of nation, its stabilization and maintenance, progress, institutionalization, is actually written upon the bodies of women,” remarked Sebastian. “They used to bear untold sufferings and burdens in the forward journey of a nation.”
The major women writers from this region are Indira Goswami, Anuradha Sahrma Pujari, Mita Bhukan,Tamesula Ao, Mamang Dai, and Anjum Hassan.
Irom Sharmila, through her poetry collection Fragrance of Peace draws it clear that there are different dimensions to the concept of freedom. “She expresses the anxiety of women over the land of Manipur,” said Sebastian. “She speaks the language of confidence through her poems.”
“Wake up, brothers and sisters
The savior of the nation
We have come out all the way
Knowing we all will die
Why the fear is
So shaky in the heart?”
-Irom Sharmila
Indira Goswami, known by her pen name Mamoni Raisom Goswami and popularly as Mamoni Baideo, was an Assamese editor, poet, professor, scholar and writer. The Chenab’s Current (1972), The Pages Stained with Blood (2001), The Man from Chinnamasta (2005) are her famous novels. “Indira Goswami writes about Assam Insurgency. The story tells us about the dilemma of Assamese youth to take up ‘difficult choices,’” stated Sebastian.
Tamesula Ao was a charismatic writer who often formulated the fighting spirit of Nagas and their enormous energy through her poems and short stories. Nagas were the first ethnic group to turn to insurgencies to establish an independent Nagalim.
“For the North East Indian women writers, the more the violence, unrest and confusion in their locality means the more of creative writing,” remarked Sebastian. “It acts as a push factor for them to write. Writing for them is a kind of solution for their issues. The study of the women writers of North East India and their selection of themes make the point clear that these women writers have used writing as their weapon to propagate against violence and terror.”
“It also gives us a glimpse into the very powerful landscape of woman’s writing. More researchers and scholars need to explore this powerful writing that comes from the North East,” she further stated.
Coming of age
Puberty Ritual, Gender Dynamics, and New Connections among the Jaffna Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka were brought into question by Sanmugeswaran Pathmanesan, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka.
“Samaththiya sadangu (the puberty ritual) is a coming of age ceremony, performed by the Jaffna Tamils in Sri Lanka,” said Pathmanesan. “In some villages in Jaffna, people give importance to the day the girl reaches puberty because that particular day determines her future life in terms of wealth, prosperity and fertility inducement.”
Kannda thanni varthal or the Bathing ritual is done immediately after the first sign of puberty is noticed. “And the ‘big ceremony’ can take place on the seventh day, eleventh day or even later,” stated Pathmanesan.
“Older people say the primary purpose of this period is to chase out evils (dangerous powers) or shield the new ‘big girl’ from the evil-eye (kannuru), the evil-mouth (vaaiuuru), and the dangerous evil spirit (theya sakti),” she added. “The most important part of the ritual is arati. This ritual is designed to dispel evil spirits. Such symbolic expression denotes dispelling evil spirits from her body.”
The concepts of good and bad are a creation of a dominant group in the society and both reflect their morality, but not that of the opposing group, she added.
The study of ritual in anthropology has a long history and very rich ethnographic details of diverse communities around the world.
“The girls have to pass the ‘intermediate’ stage during the puberty period, which divides two separate ends such as before puberty period and a big girl (ready for marriage and womanhood status).” - Gennup (1960): Emphasis on ‘transition’ in ritual process
Turner (1969) explains the ‘ambiguous position’ during the liminal stage (stage of transition). “The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (“threshold people”) are necessarily ambiguous…”
Pierre Bourdieu (1991) argues that “this theory does not conceal one of the essential effects of rites.” Further, he claims that these rites of passage can be seen as rites of consecration, rites of legitimation, or rites of the institution rather than calling them the rite of passage, Pathmanesan added.
“Samaththiya sadangu is a public culture, but people use symbols for interpretations. Through such a large collection of elaborative interpretations, we have the thick description of samaththiya sadangu to understand the human nature of the ritual,” said Pathmanesan.
Post-war Jaffna Tamils have changed the rite in ways that suggest they take a different view of both gender roles and the dangers that supposedly threaten (or are connected to) young women during their transition to womanhood. “This can be seen, in particular, in the ways, the ceremony is uploaded to cyberspace (Facebook, YouTube and directly through Skype),” Pathmanesan noted.
“It is very clear that it is difficult to see the origin of this ritual tradition in Jaffna, so the history and interpretation become problematic,” she said. “In understating the Jaffna puberty ritual, then high caste ritual plays a significant role in shaping the society and dominating the ritual and culture of the society through power, social and cultural capital in the society.”
Queer identity depicted
Nelani de Costa explored how the Queer Identity was depicted in the Contemporary Sri Lankan Novel. De Costa is an Assistant Lecturer (Temporary) at the Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
“The term ‘queer’ can refer to the ‘non-normatic sexual’ or LGBTQI,” said de Costa. Her research “problematizes the depictions of subversive queer identities in the Sri Lankan novel as they cater to the mainstream hetero-normative perspectives.”
* Punyakante Wijenaike’s Giraya (1971) - Homosexuality and lesbianism in an upper-class Sinhala Buddhist family.
* Punyakante Wijenaike’s Amulet (1994) - Lesbianism in an upper class Sinhala Buddhist family.
* Carl Muller’s The Jam Fruit Tree (1993) - The Sexual behaviour of a Burgher family.
“It was insisted that the theme of homosexuality in the novel [Giraya] has to be taken out in the [television] series,” said de Costa. “The TV serial focused primarily on the machinations of Lucia Hamy (played by Trilicia Gunawardena) and Lal’s ‘problem’ was explained as due to epilepsy he had suffered from birth.”
“But then mother always tried to hide the truth about Lal. She wanted the world to know him as a normal man.” -Punyakante Wijenaike (2012: 149)
“Carl Muller’s The Jam Fruit Tree portrays homosexuality in a very casual and light-hearted manner,” said de Costa. “Gender as a fixed identity leads to coherence between sex gender and desire which enables gender coherence. The idea of gender coherence looks at gender with the lens of heterosexuality, by regarding gender by limiting to the two dimorphic sexes: male and female.”
In Punyakante Wijenaike’s Amulet, the intense psychic connection between Shyamali and Anula is depicted in a way which threatens the heterosexual connection between Shyamali and Senani, remarked de Costa.
“The portrayal of queer identities in the Sri Lankan novel is problematic as it caters to the stereotypical assumptions of the mainstream discourse: as unnatural, deviant and forbidden,” de Costa concluded. Numerous streams connected to one spring. The delicacy, the boldness and the raw life of a woman and the countless attempts to express her being. A subject that runs its branches into infinity and an endeavour such as this that extracts some of its content into the reach of the reader is, indeed, a pleasing sight to the eye.
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