Thread by @asuph

Warning: A long, rambling🧵.

Back in my teens, I read Sunita Deshpande's (Marathi) book Aahe Manohar Tari

Loosely translated as: it's all pleasant but) from a line of a poem that end with "gamate udaas" (feels sad).

It was an important book in many ways.

1/

Sunita Deshpande was the wife of P. L. Deshpande -- Maharasthra's much loved writer, and a multi-talented person. He was primarily a humorist, but an astute observer of human traits and frailties. The book, an autobiography, generated a lot of controversy (more later).

2/

To introduce Sunita tai as "wife" of someone is an injustice to her, but for many, that's how they know her. She was a firebrand woman, independent thinker, outspoken, and courageous. She joined freedom struggle when she was 17 yo.

[Photo of her from her youth]

3/

Sunita tai was also part of the socialist movement. She left home at that age, because she didn't want stay in her father's home given he was opposed to her activities. Later, Deshpandes lived a middle-class life despite literary success, true to the socialist ideas.

4/

Sunita tai was responsible for overseeing the charity work -- the couple donated to various causes generously -- and much more. The autobiography created some controversy as Sunita tai wrote it in an extremely forthright manner about her life, including their married life.

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While she insisted that she had no complaints, and if her writing came out like that, it would be unjust, if an extremely independent and frank woman were to write about her married life from that era, or even this era, it will be hard never to judge the husband ...

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No matter, if the husband is "Maharashtrache laadke vyaktimatva" (Maharashtra's dearest person). And the reactions were wildly opposite: some judged P. L. Deshpande but most judged her for writing it. And the latter included, ironically, many women. Some I knew.

7/

As someone who had started to strongly identify with women's empowerment and gender equality, it was interesting having to argue with a cousin sister, I (not her!) defending Sunita tai's right to write her story frankly. To me, that shouldn't even be worth a debate,

8/

More so, because, she had written critically about herself -- about the weakest moments of her life when she thought/acted less than ideally, or contradictory to her own moral philosophy. And that brings me to why I started this thread in the first place.

9/

I had read this book about two decades back, and there was one particular passage that has always stayed with me. Sunita tai talks about a time when she was young, and was a guest at the house of a fellow freedom fighter, a Muslim prof. at Jamiya Millia Islamiya campus.

10/

That afternoon, when she was there, with him and another very close Muslim friend (who she called "bhaillya"), a Hindu-Muslim riot broke out in the area, and a group of Hindu men had arrived, planning to attack the campus. She could hear their shouts in the distance.

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The prof. reassured her that nothing will happen, that the crowd was far away, and police force was there to protect them (yeah, this wasn't Gujrat of 2002). But she got very afraid. And for a moment, a thought crossed her mind.

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"These people are here to kill the Muslims, and they will think I'm 'one of them', and will not know that I'm Hindu, and I'll die in vain," was that fleeting thought. And that made her ashamed, because she did not even believe in religion.

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"What did it even mean, 'I am one of them'? I didn't have any friend as close as 'bhaiyaa'. I didn't care about binding like family/relations. That me, who wanted to live for my values, at any cost, in that fleeting moment thought of that mob as 'my people'", she notes.

14/

"If it had come to that, Prof. Ashraf [the host] and others in the house would have given their lives to help me, their guest, that was their 'religion'. In that instance, the Muslims in the house were human beings first, while the Hindu in me was raising her head", she adds
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It, thankfully, didn't come to that. The crowds were dispersed. The danger passed. And she notes that she would have probably even stepped in front of the mob, to show her courage and humanity, if it had come to that, even if just to punish herself.

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None would have been wiser, but in that moment, she had seen a side of her that she was ashamed of. And I don't blame her. However much we try to change our thoughts, there are certain reflexes from the past -- the way we are raised, biases of the people we grew up with ...

17/

... that may triumph when we are staring at imminent danger. "Where are these aspects of our personality ordinarily," she asks. "which erupt like a volcano in such instances". As they say, if you're a white person, you're a racist, and it's a lifelong fight to not be one.
/18

Ditto with upper-castes, or with any other dominant majority/group. Being part of it, one has to be always on the lookout for those latent/hidden biases to raise their ugly head, that make us forget our hard earned humanity. You've to earn it every living moment.

19/

For those who can read Marathi, I'm including the original text snapshot. I've tried to translate the gist of it in the thread, but not word for word.

Thanks for reading. /END