"My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us."Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary ...
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"My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us."Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary duties, for years Dalits were believed to be racially inferior and polluted by nature and were therefore forced to live in isolated communities.Pawar grew up on the rugged Konkan coast, near Mumbai, where the Mahar Dalits were housed in the center of the village so the upper castes could summon them at any time. As Pawar writes, "the community grew up with a sense of perpetual insecurity, fearing that they could be attacked from all four sides in times of conflict. That is why there has always been a tendency in our people to shrink within ourselves like a tortoise and proceed at a snail's pace." Pawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi, she has found fame in all of India. In this frank and intimate memoir, Pawar not only shares her tireless effort to surmount hideous personal tragedy but also conveys the excitement of an awakening consciousness during a time of profound political and social change.
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Urmillia Pawar has written a detailed autobiography of her life. Her account not only tells of her experience growing up and living as a Dalit (born into the Mahar "untouchable" caste), but growing up and living as a woman in India, where women are held to be inferior to men and are supposed to obey men. Ms. Pawar writes about her mother, who wove bamboo baskets as a living as well as having taken on various housecleaning and casual labor jobs to support her family. The title refers to her mother's weaving, using it as a metaphor to account for the experiences woven into the lives of the author and the communities around her. With her mother's help and support, young Urmilla was able to acquire an education in spite of the obstacles put into the paths of Dalit children and girl children.
Despite some criticism, mostly from men, Ms. Pawar participated in political organizing not only around Dalit issues but around women's issues such as the sharing of household tasks, roles in marriage, and other women's issues.
