Shashi Deshpande On Why We Need An Award For Women Writers And More

Author Shashi Deshpande with her first collection of stories published in the 1980s was perhaps the first few writers who started to make the mark in the Indian literature scene by writing in the English language. From getting her work published in women's magazines to reaching the masses with her books, the author has shaped many minds with her deep insights.

The author of path-breaking books such as The Dark Holds No Terror, Small Remedies, That Long Silence, and many others has been able to paint organic pictures of women in Indian societies. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards such as India's fourth-highest civilian honour Padma Shri for her contribution to literature. She was also given the Sahitya Akademi award in 1990 but she returned it on October 9, 2015, to protest against the Akademi's inaction on the murder of Indian scholar M.M. Kalburgi.

Being a woman who has written books, she has been vocal about the difficulties faced by women writers in terms of recognition. She is the Chief Mentor of SheThePeople's maiden Women Writer's Prize 2021. She spoke to us about her books, being her father's daughter and women writers.

You are the mentor for SheThePeople Women Writer's Prize. Why do you think we need an exclusive prize for women? 

I personally have always been against the idea of bringing gender into literature, of dividing it into male and female writing. Writing is writing. Each person’s writing depends on who she/he is,  where she/he comes from, their experiences, their ideas about the world and so on. These differ with each person and gender is but one of the factors that make a difference.  But I was disillusioned by my own experiences as a writer. To the world, male writing was the norm, women’s writing was a subsidiary of that. It was taken for granted that women’s writing was about less important matters and therefore less significant.

The Team Behind India's Women Writer's Prize

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This both angered and puzzled me. It was reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own that made me see things more clearly. I learnt that the idea of the inferiority of women’s writing was directly connected to the patriarchal idea of women’s innate inferiority. This comes, Woolf spelt out in her book, from the prevalence of male values according to which, football and  sport are, for example,  important, clothes and fashions are not.

The world has so imbibed patriarchal values, that all female ideas and activities are given the lethal stamp of `less important’. We need to understand that it is never the writing that is at fault, but the perception of it.

It seems ridiculous to consider women’s writing inferior when there have been great writers from Jane Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot to Virginia Woolf herself. And today, there are writers like Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison and so many more. Yet academic studies showed that women’s books are never considered  for major awards or prizes. The fact of an all-male list for the Booker Prize one year made some women institute a prize only for women’s books.

Though this prize brought to light many wonderful books by women, it never achieved the stature of the Booker. This year, another all-women’s prize has been instituted for women’s fiction from Canada and the USA. The founders of the prize hoped that this prize, one of the largest in the world today, would draw attention favourably to women’s writing.

Melinda Gates, the donor for the Prize based out of Canada said, `Throughout history, women have been writing profound, ground-breaking books. Yet they earn less, are reviewed less and often overlooked when it comes to prizes’. This, in a nutshell, is why prizes exclusively for women are needed.

In India, too, we have the same picture of a decided bias against women’s writing. Therefore a prize exclusively for women, the Women Writer's Prize is most welcome.

Many of your literary works have won awards and widespread recognition but what is your best work according to you and why?

I am quite clear about it, I have no problem singling out Small Remedies (2000) as being what I consider my best book. This book came closest to the idea I had of it before I began. Everything came together in wonderful harmony and the people in the book had become real and dear to me. Most satisfying.

You have talked about how your work often got neglected because you wrote about women but you never stopped doing that. What kept you going?

Rather than saying that I never stopped writing about women, I would say that I never stopped writing what I wanted to write. Despite the slighting of my work as 'women's writing’, despite the consistent failure of reviewers to see my novels as not novels and insisting on seeing them as `women’s novels', I never thought of changing my writing to suit a trend.

If I could not write what I wanted to, why was I writing? And to write about something else, or in some other way,  merely to get publishers and more readers, would be dishonest to me and my writing. In fact, the thought never entered my mind. Nor do I think my persistence was any great achievement. I could not have done anything else.

As the daughter of Adya Rangacharya before becoming the author you must have felt like a lot of responsibility. How difficult did it feel to establish your own identity?

I don’t think being my father’s daughter meant any kind of responsibility. As a writer, it was clear that  I was on my own, and responsible for my writing. Of course, finding one’s own identity when one has a famous parent is difficult. My father was not only a very well known writer, but he also had a very strong personality. It could have been hard for a daughter to grow in the shade of this huge tree. But I never had problems being overshadowed by my father as a writer. Firstly we wrote in different languages – English and Kannada.

The works of literature of these languages were two different worlds. I don’t think that many in the English literary world knew who my father was. (The Kannada world knew me of course as his daughter). Besides, he was a dramatist and I a novelist. And,  I started writing pretty late, after my marriage and after having two children. My own experiences had taken me way beyond being just his daughter. And, finally, my father, intellectual giant though he was, never imposed his views on anyone, not even his children. I was free to grow up with my own ideas, and from very early years was always free to think for myself. This I now realize is the greatest gift that I, as a writer, could have had.

Where did you find the inspiration to write the characters for your books with such depth? Were they real-life people you met? 

Characters are almost never taken from real life. I don’t know why but somehow to take a character from real life is to end up with a wooden character. A puppet. Characters come to you as line sketches and slowly the outline begins to get filled in. You get to know them well, you can hear their voices, visualise their activities and so on. Also, the history and background of the character has to be perfectly known to you before you begin writing. It is a kind of spontaneous growth of a person in your mind. As you write, the picture becomes clearer. But you never can impose your own ideas of how the person should be on them. They are their own selves. At least, all the major characters are.

In, The Dark Holds No Terror, Saru feels neglected as a child as her parents wanted a boy instead. Her husband starts to resent her after she gains higher social status than him. Do you think modern women in our society bear the brunt of their success similarly? 

I don’t think all women would have the same problem. In The Dark … I have written of two people, Saru and her husband and of their relationship. It is because he is the kind of man he is that the relationship suffers. A man with greater self-confidence would have had fewer problems coping with his wife’s success. And the world doesn’t make it easier for a man by making him feel less of a man if his wife is more successful. As a matter of fact, coping with success is hard for any person, but women, in the interests of a marriage, often underplay their own achievements and minimize their `success’. But like I said, much depends on how the man can accept his wife’s `success’.

Considering the rising intolerance in the country and artists being targeted, what is your advice for young writers and journalists?

In the matter of advice on how to deal with the situation as it is in the country now, when a writer, especially a journalist can get into trouble for writing about `taboo’ subjects, or for exposing something that is meant to remain hidden, what can I say? How do I advise anyone? Each writer/journalist has to make her/his own decision. Whether they write history, fiction, or politics, young people have to know how much they are prepared to risk. No one can advise them.

At the same time, I have to add that one can get by very easily without having to confront such moral dilemmas by moving away from `difficult’ subjects and dealing with innocuous matters. Journalists are more on the firing line than creative writers. As are historians, especially when ideology begins to creep into history.  But like I said, I wouldn’t want to advise anyone. Except to say that if you write something risky, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. The rule according to me is - you have to take full responsibility for your words. One needs to understand this before writing.

Women Writers Prize 2021:

SheThePeople inaugurated its maiden Women Writers Prize in 2021. The entries were invited from publishing houses all over the country. The female writers who had published their books between August 1, 2020 and October 1, 2021 could submit their books for nominations.

It is our endeavour to create a platform for women writers from varied fields to come together and raise their voices on issues that are important to modern Indian women through their writing. This annual prize for women writers, starting 2021-22, comes after seven years of organising the Women Writers Fest, which has put the spotlight firmly on women writers and only women writers.

The Jury includes G Sampath, a writer and journalist based in Delhi and also the social affairs editor at The Hindu; Lakshmi, co-founder of Atta Galatta which is a Bengaluru-based book store that focuses on Indian and vernacular writings; and Preeti Gill, who is an independent literary agent and edited books like The Peripheral Centre: Voice from India's Northeast amongst other established writings. Know more here.