Learn Curve for Girls

Could you talk about your career journey?

My career began when I started my masters in Cultural Studies. I did English Literature in my bachelors. Studying English literature was a launch into the questions of selfhood. When I was younger, I had read Hindu Philosophy. English Literature felt like it could be a way of enquiring into ourselves. There is a joy in studying the social sciences and humanities and focussing on culture.

The kinds of questions cultural studies answered didn’t satisfy me.

As I was doing my PhD, it occurred to me that cultural studies answered the how question (how things are done?) rather than the why question (why they occur in the first place?) I wanted the why question answered. Knowledge quests are in a very fundamental way asking about the why question. I started getting answer to the Why question through Hindu studies. I was studying Akka Mahadevi. I was studying an array of religious studies.

I read over 200 books in feminism. I do identify as a feminist. I have read a lot from the discipline of religious studies. In the United States, I did a lot of religious studies research. It is an interesting engagement. I love some scholars and don’t love some of them.

Could you talk about your reading?

The academic reading is read in order understand ideas, draw comparisons, etc. Culture Studies reading helps gain a different impression of history and culture. It is a different experience. Reading fiction is an altogether different experience. It allows to experience in images, in full colour and sensory details. I have read 200 odd novels. It has been a joyous experience. I have read English literature, Kannada and regional books in translation. Amit Chowdary is one of my favourite writers and ‘Strange and Sublime Address’ is one of my favourite books. I love the way he writes. Shashi Deshpande and Arundhati Roy are two of my favourite writers. The impulse to write a novel or a poem next follows me.

Could you talk about history writing from India?

Until 1970s, history writing in India was conducted bias free. Since the 1970s, very left leaning ideologies have taken over history writing in India. There are two very different things – one looks white and one looks black.

Could you talk about women’s history writing in India?

Women’s history in India can’t be understood unless we understand StreeDharma. In a Jain scripture we get glimpses of women performing rituals and yagnas. The Upanishads are known for the Brahmavadinis – independent women who are independent scholars. In the Upanishads we get small glimpses of how women lived. Who were the foreigners who altered us? Hindu warrior code was clear that you should not fight a woman. The warrior code of the other side seems barbaric now and they did fight women. Streedharma, which looks very regressive, was set up in these circumstances. Women are restricted to their home. Uma Bharati, Andal – the stories of these women give us a glimpse of lives of women in ancient India.

There are two tasks that hindered the history writing process in India – extreme tolerance for the project and extreme hatred for the project.

Hindu Dharma did offer women compensations. If women due to family commitments could not participate in spirituality – equalities and substitutes were offered. Hindu dharma did offer that. That is kind of feminist.

What about the unique place of Goddesses in Indian history?

Celebrating Goddesses in a country where women can’t still be what they want to be in society fully, is showing futility. Women in India should be like Goddesses in real life. We retain the ancient goddess tradition in India. We once had women who were brahmavadinis – that is the goal.

Could you talk about the Dus Mahavidyas in this context?

If you tap into these energies – you will never be disappointed. For me however, this is an academic endeavour and an active research process that gives the answers.

Could you talk about your research topic and Bhakti in particular?

Bhakti opened a way for women out of StreeDharma. To pursue knowledge is a bhakti search in medieval India. Wherever there were hostile external circumstances some women became bhaktas – living within and living detached. They lived in society but in a detached manner. Times can be very difficult in an unsafe society and society still feels unsafe. That needs to change.

Akka Mahadevi is addressing a deep quest within. As far as time immemorial in India there has been a quest for the self, a philosophical quest. She is a part of this ancient tradition. It has been there for men and women. The quest for the self within remains in India. The interesting this about Akka Mahadevi is that she does not deny StreeDharma and recommends it for women in general. Akka Mahadevi was a part of the Veerashaivaite movement. Her Ista devta was Shiva as Mallikarjuna. Veerashaivism had a tantric understanding of Shiva and Shakti. Here we can clearly see the connection between tantra and bhakti. Scholarship tends to look at literary aspects of bhakti writing without understanding their experiences.