AMRITA PRITAM

A Brief Study of Gender Politics

Shoma Chakrawarty
M06A1334
3RD PyEE

TEXT 1

Conspiracy Of Silence (Translated by Pritish Nandi)

The night is dozing…

from a human being’s chest
someone is trying to steal
scarier than any theft
is the theft of dreams.

Signs of thieves-
sit on each road of
each city of each country
but no eye sees
nor does it get startled.
Like only a dog
tied with a chain
at times, it barks
a poem of someone.

TEXT 2

A Story (Translated by Keshav Rao Jadhav and Vasantha Kannabiran)

Like pure milk is my love

Like old rice of many years.
Scrubbed and washed the earthen pot of my heart.

The world is firewood,

Everything dim with smoke.
The night is like a brass bowl,
The moon’s silver coating worn,
Imagination’s faded,
Dreams gone rancid,
And sleep turned bitter.

On the finger of life

Memories tighten like a troublesome ring.
As if from the goldsmith of time
Grains of sand have slipped between.

Love’s body is shrinking

How do I sew a shirt of song?
The thread of my thoughts is all tangled,
The needle of my pen broken,
The whole story--lost.
TEXT 3

The Virgin (Translated by Kartar Singh Duggal)

When I moved into your bed

I was not alone--- there were
two of us
A married woman and a virgin
To sleep with you
I had to offer the virgin in
me
I did so
This slaughter is permissible
in law
Not the indignity of it
And I bore the onslaught of
the insult
The next morning
I looked at my blood stained
hands
I washed my hands
But the moment I stood
before the mirror
I found her standing there
The one whom I thought I
had slaughtered last night
Oh God!
Was it too dark in your bed
I had to kill one and I killed
the other?
Recipient of the Bharatiya Jnanapith Award, Amrita Pritam is a symbol
of women’s liberation amongst contemporary Indian poets. Her
crusade against societal norms which thwart a woman’s desire to
“dare to live the life she imagines” is seen in her intensely personal
poetry. Severely criticized for bringing in bold descriptions of her own
life events in her works, she managed to convey faith in her
convictions and vindicated a poet’s right to speak her mind. Following
is an analysis of three of her poems to show how gender politics
suppress the individuality of a woman at various levels.

Text 1 brings out the conflict between the individuality of the woman
and the larger society. Being able to dream comes with freedom of the
mind. The narrator feels the silent dark night steal her dreams from
her. The night could symbolize the bleaker realities of life which silence
her dreams. The larger society puts men on a pedestal and the
patriarchs leave no space for women to explore. The men, then,
become the thieves of their dreams, of their free minds and ultimately,
of their individuality. In the second stanza, she seems to say that these
thieves are everywhere and yet nobody is disturbed by their presence
with the exception of a dog which “barks” out what could perhaps be
the narrator’s dissent despite being chained by the same men. Women
watch their dreams disappear beneath refusals and restrictions and
their stories are not just written on paper, but also as Amrita Pritam
says “…written on the bodies and minds of women.”

Text 2 deals with the curbs on individuality that a marriage imposes on

a woman. Since her own marriage left much to be desired, Amrita
Pritam wrote extensively on the theme of loneliness of married women.
The images of the earthern pot, firewood, the ring on a finger and the
shirt that she wishes to sew, to name a few, can clearly be related to a
housewife. However, the home has not provided fulfillment as her
heart’s desires have been “scrubbed”, her dreams have soured and
her nights are as empty as worn brass bowls. Just like the love in the
marriage, the thoughts of the individual in her have withered away.
However, some thoughts have survived time and this fragmentation of
her psyche has left her incapable of truly loving her husband. In
another poem called “Ann Data” (Breadwinner) she portrays a husband
as nothing beyond a man who provides bread to his wife and seeks his
love in return but she can only give him her body because, like in this
poem, “Love’s body is shrinking.”

TEXT 3 is a part of a collection of poems nominated for the Jnanapith.

This poem is one of her many explicitly feminist pieces, where she
questions why sexuality, which is an integral part of one’s identity, is
forced to be suppressed in women. Open to many interpretations, the
poem portrays the narrator as a protagonist of change. However,
society and marriage choose to define her merely as a virgin and not
as a married woman who is aware of her own sexuality. In this tussle,
the married woman in her succumbs without ever finding ways to
express her desires. The ignorance and rigidity in the mind of her
husband is such that it darkens their bed and the narrator’s identity as
a married woman with her own sexuality is lost in this darkness.

The development of identity of the narrator(s) has been stalled or

reversed in each poem. The night described in all three poems is more
a night in the psyche of the narrator than anything else. Losing her
dreams, hopes and desires to forces beyond her control circumscribes
her identity to that of a virginal unhappy housewife. Thus, the very
institutions that should provide completion to a woman, in actuality,
serve to retard the process of identity formation in her. Gender politics
ultimately negate the individuality of the woman.
The combination of romantic longings with progressive beliefs seems
like an assertion of the narrator’s identity i.e. the narrator is not only
aware of her mind but also that she actively seeks to obtain her goals
and wishes. When the politics of gender work against her doing so, she
engages in subversion within the patriarchal order by writing bitingly
about man’s disaffection to the woman in a conventional man-woman
relationship, criticizing society for her persecution and mocking the
manner in which taking a virgin is nearly a legalized right of men.

Just as vital as the thematic content is the tone and style employed.
The tone gives a sense of conviction and experience. The images
range from being abstract (the night is dozing) to raw (I looked at my
blood stained hands) and this range aptly fits in with the intensity of
thought and emotion of the narrator. The metaphors like “slaughter”
for the first sexual encounter, similes like “memories tighten like a
troublesome ring” and personification like “The night is dozing”
constantly draw attention to the underlying thought they reflect.

The double standards that women face are many. Society and
patriarchs claim to want the women to be independent and
progressive. Perhaps this independence is intended to be at a physical
and thus, superficial level for what independence do we seek to attain
when our identities are tampered with by the men in our lives and
societal expectations? Breaking these barriers is not easy and Amrita
Pritam, for one, succeeded in doing so-literally and figuratively.

Bibliography

i. Women Writing in India by Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha

ii. History of Indian Literature by Sisir Kumar Das

iii. A History of Punjabi Literature by Sant Singh Sekhon
and
Kartar Singh Duggal