The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Inheritance from the past

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Thursday, Mar 08, 2007
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Karnataka - Bangalore

Inheritance from the past

Bageshree S.

BANGALORE: "Every time you look at me, who do you take me for?" This is a question thrown at an invasive male gaze by 12th Century mystic poet Akkamahadevi in one of her Vachanas. "I'm no woman, brother, no whore," she declares in the same Vachana.

The departures made by Akka, as she was called, from the norms of her time — the search for an identity beyond the biological and social straightjackets a woman is fitted into — are among the many questions raised by the feminist movement to this day.

The legend goes that Akka rejected her worldly husband and wandered (abandoning all possession, including her clothes) in search of her spiritual husband Chennamallikarjuna. Akka finally reached Kalyana in the present-day Bidar district, which was the centre of the Veerashaiva movement spearheaded by Basaveshwara that shook the system by questioning the hierarchies strongly entrenched in the social and religious systems. Vachana, which literally means "saying", is the body of work from this period which is revolutionary in its literary merit and social critique. It was at Anubhava Mantapa at Kalyana, a space for free debate on spiritual and social issues, that Akka held extended arguments with Allama Prabhu, another brilliant Vachanakara of the period, and proved herself to be his equal. Some of these arguments are in the form of Vachanas that are at once powerful and lyrical.

The Vachanas left behind by Akka and other women of the period question womanhood as defined by a traditional society and mark their efforts at transgressing them. Feminist critics such as M.S. Ashadevi argue that the Vachanakartis go a step ahead of the other medieval women Bhakti writers of India by articulating their spiritual quest as a form of protest. The question of social justice, she says, is inherent in the voices of women in this movement.

Though Akka is the most heard woman's voice of the period, equally important are the other Vachanakartis who add dimensions of caste and class to the question of gender. For instance, the movement also had a writer called Sule Sankavva, a prostitute. One cannot miss the irony of her pen name: Nirlajjeshwara ("Lord who is without shame"). Kalavve, a Dalit woman, offered scathing critiques of several Brahminical practices in her Vachanas. The more recent sociological studies have also argued that the modern day feminist aspirations cannot be imposed wholesale on the Vachana movement. Sudha Sitaraman, in her doctoral thesis, looks at several Vachanas by women (including many by Akkamahadevi) which are far from radical in their aspirations.

In a larger historical framework, the 900-year-old body of work by Vachanakartis is recognised by society, women in particular, as a constant source of moral strength and inspiration. This is, without doubt, an inheritance to own up with pride.

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