Introduction to Women Writing in India (Vol I) - Susie Tharu & K Lalitha Summary

Radhika Santhwanam appeasing Radhika, was a book written by 18th century Telugu
poet Muddupalani. Bangalore Nagartnamma reprinted the classic in 1910. Muddupalani is a
local scholar well versed in the literature of Telugu and Sanskrit.
The reason for reprinting the book, according to Nagaratnamma is that it was ‘brimming
with rasa and that it was a book written by a woman born in our community (of courtisans)’.
Radhika Santhwanam achieved a rare balance of rasa filled to the brim but not filling
over. Nagaratnamma found the book as adorable as lord Krishna. The edition of her was badly
printed and it had not included the prologue which traced the literary lineage of Muddupalani. It
tells about her and her family’s scholarly background.
A precursor for the volume of women’s writing can be located in Teri Gadda (an
anthology of lyrics composed by the Buddhist Teris (nuns of the 16th century Buddhism). A
figure which anticipates the critical initiatives of the authors of women’s writings is
Nagaratnamma.
The publication of the book created hue and cry. The criticism goes like this: “She is
(Muddupalani) an adulterous. Many parts of the book cannot be read by women. She used
sringara rasa as an excuse to describe sex. The poem is pernicious (exceedingly harmful).
However Nagaratnamma defended the book. The British government who were ruling India that
time, were convinced that the book would endanger the moral health of their Indian subjects
(citizens). After this the police seized all copies of the book and the book was banned.
The ban order was withdrawn in 1947 when T Prakasam (1872-1957) became the chief
minister of Andhra Pradesh. Prakasam said: “It had been a great battle for the pears of great
battle to be replaced in the necklace of Telugu literature”. Thus permission to republish the work
for her edition was granted.
Susie Tharu could not get a copy of the book Nagaratnamma republished in the 80’s. She
says that the “critics assured us that the book was obscene and not worth reading though many of
them had never seen the text”. The students of Telugu literature even those who were
sympathetic to women said that the book was no longer banned but it has been decreed out of
existence ideologically. In other words the book was not available in the market even after the
lifting of the ban. Muddupalani’s work was a work that was appreciated in her own time and
works of this sort was not new in the Tanjavur era. However Radhika Santhwanam was different.
 There is a remarkable subversion in Muddupalani’s work. Traditionally in such literature
man is the lover and woman is the loved; Krishna woos Radha and the narrative is his pleasure.
But in Radhika Santhwanam woman’s sensuality is central. She takes the initiative. Muddupalani
celebrates a young woman’s coming of age and describes her first experience of sex. In another
section Radha instructs her neice Iladevi in the art of joy and love. Radha encourages her to
express her pleasure. What makes the work so radical today is the easy confidence with which it
contests the asymmetries of sexual satisfaction that is commonly accepted today and its claims to
pleasure.
By the time Queen Victoria came to rule Tanjavur court lost its revenue. It went to
British coffers. Artists and artisans became poor. The ideological changes presented by poets like
Muddupalani is in a very questionable manner. The accepted figures of royal courts came to be
regarded as debauched and they are corrupting.
Bureaucrats, missionaries and journalists presented Indian culture and people as irrational
deceitful and sexually perverse. The Europeans wanted to substantiate and the Indian scenario
required a European cultural intervention. India was white man’s burden and their government
was essential for the salvation of India. For them Indian literature did not contain for the moral
and mental condition anything. Only teaching English literature could be trusted with the
mission. And it is a fact that English literature was first taught in India several years before it
was taught in Britain. Readers critically trained to appreciate such characters of English
found Radhika Santhwanam and the culture reprehensible and dangerous. As the new powers got
control not only individual works but the whole tradition of literature was delegitimized and
marginalized. Conlonial powers had worked to undermine Indian literature and they presented a
restructured version of classical Sanskrit and Persian text. Scholars like Max Muller popularized
and idealistic Aryan community governed by a priestly community. After the golden variegated
Hindu culture had declined in an endeavor to glorify high flown literature, recent literature that
emerged from secular context was marginalized.
When books like Radhika Santhwanam (1887) were published they were trimmed and
recast. They excised sexually explicit and obscene life and they also removed the peedika
(colophon) in which the woman placed her female lineage and spoke about her female artists.
There are other angles to the situation. The cultural history of the 19th century India is commonly
presented as a battle between modernizers and traditionalists.
 The figures like Nagaratnamma and the cultural forces she represented were neither
moral nor secular. The presence of heterogeneous (multiple) forces at work in the simple
dichotomy between the progressive and reactionary causes also answers the question why the
book which was reprinted in 1952 was not available even after the lifting of the ban in the 80’s.
The ban lifting is in a way a diplomatic act of the beneficiary government who want to tell that
they are not against societal progression. However by not making the book available for the
public they catered to the interest of the traditionalistic society. This suggests us that the interest
of the nation and the empire are not always in contradiction.
The lifting of the ban imposed by the British was a nationalist act. The story of
Muddupalani’s life, her writing and the misadventures of Radhika Santhwanam could well be
read as an allegory of enterprise of women writing and the scope of feminist criticism in India. It
raises many of the critical questions that frames women’s writing.