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    Rebati Essays

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    Rashmi Mehra

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    SAMALOCHANA “Sur” ( Translated from Odia by Animesh Mohapatra and Umasankar Patra) Translators’ Foreword The translated text is a pseudonymous review published in Utkala Sahitya, the literary periodical which had published “Rebati” and serialized Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novels like Chha Mana Atha Guntha and Lachama, “Rebati” was published in the October 1898 issue of the periodical, and its “Samalochana” came out three months later, in January 1899. A similar dialogue discussing Chha Mana Atha Guntha (serialised in 1897-98) was published in the 1 October 1898 issue of Utkal Dipika which attempted to identify Senapati as the man behind the mask of Dhurjati. “Samalochana’ has been attributed to Fakir Mohan Senapati himself by some scholars and denied by some others. There are enough justifications on both sides either to claim or deny this authorship. The autobiographical allusions and the style make a case for Senapati writing this review whereas ‘Shri, the pseudonym used here, was rampantly used by many authors at that time. Hence, no conclusive argument could be made either for or against the case. The review is in the form ofa fictional dialogue between two readers the short story. One of them, Mohan, tries to defend Shankar attempis to be critical. One may @ interlocutors, Mohan and Stiankar, could be d the renown? jon sometiin® who are discussing the author while the other, here that the names of the ossible references to Fakir Mohan Senapati himself an Utkal Dipika, Gourishankar Ray. The conversati t nonsense. Some of the references @ . eli text. The reader is forced to read betwee? th editor of ni veers towards apparen a ace in con! difficult to pl SAMALOCHANA | 191 recover Subtexts and topical allusions, nn 10 : i i f the reception of Senapati during his ti P pan , Herodotus and Fakir. The cruci text provides us 8 me—him being Valmiki, al Positioning of himself at the be of atradition takes a new turn if we attribute the text to Seana He seems to be suggesting that this short story is an attempt to reach out to the masses. As “Rebati” was the first short Story in Odia Language, discussions steer towards the generic identity, realism and the characters’ fate, The dialogue asks important questions about the nature of storytelling and the aesthetics of the short st ‘ory. Moreover, it is a playful conversation filled with irony, humour and Tepartee. Both the characters engage in rhetorical exchange, mostly ending up in wordplay. While Shankar is desperate to elicit answers, Mohan defending the art of the author, continues to be evasive. Such evasiveness seems to be echoing the touter narrator of Chha Mana Atha Guntha, Many 20th century critics have read the story as a proto-feminist plea for women’s education. Many others think of it as a story in which agirl child is caught between traditional superstition and modernity. This difference in critical perception seems to mirror Senapati’s ambivalent views—one expressed in his discursive prose that pleads for woman's education; and the other, a point-of-view represented by the narrators in his short stories like “Sabhya Zamidar” in which educated women are given a negative portrayal. As is clearly spelt out in the ‘last word’ of the ‘author of “Samalochana’, the narrator wants the reader to figure out for herself the ‘authorial’ intention in the story The original text published in Utkala Sahitya is in such a damaged state that it is impossible to decipher some of the letters and words. Our ‘ranslation is based partly on the version reprinted in the Fakir Mohananka Duspraypya Rachanaabali edited by Kailash Patnayak (Cuttack: Friends’ Publishers, 1998), a glimpse We would like to thank J. P. Das, Sudarshan Acharya, Sumanyu 5 5 Shaswat P. Satpathy, Jatindra Kumar Nayak, Bigyan Ranjan Das and Shaswat Panda without whose help the numerous footnotes, topical allusions and ve been possibile. “omprehensive analysis of the text would not have been possible Ny Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar; Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: SAMALOCHANA Have you seen Rebati? Rebati, who? Rebati is a two-three month old infant. Whose daughter is she? Saria’s! sister. Whose daughter? Chha Mana Atha Guntha (Six Acres and a Third) is one of her brothers. Tam asking whose daughter is she. Why are you telling me about Chha Mana Atha Guntha? Rebati’s father is often on tours. Who is he? Where does he go on tours? He has travelled throughout Odisha. He is also about to tour the South?. Who is he? He is Valmiki?, This is so typical of you. You never talk straight. He is the Odia Valmiki, Please tell me whose daughter is Rebati? Shyamabandhu Mohanty’s daughter. Who is Shyamabandhu Mohanty? He is from Patapur. He is a gumasta* to the Z minds Which Patapur? Our Alasua? Patapur? Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Samatociana | 193 No, it’s the Patapur village in Harih, arapur. Alasua Pat in Baleshwar. apur is Isn't this Patapur also in Baleshwar? Yes. Rebati’s father too is from Baleshwar. His house is towards the south of Gopalpur, near Gudipokhari. He DOF GOI Is on very good terms with Guvindababu®, "hon What rubbish are you talking? Do you want to see Rebati? Have you directly lifted the infant from the Antudishala?’ Let me show you. Ate AB Yes, I saw’. So how is it? Quite an impressive work. Dhurjati!” is a fine writer. Anything else? But, why is it so short? How much longer did you want it to be? I wish Rebati had been like Scott’s Rebecca or Dwitiyachandra’s!! Durgeshnandini. It got over in a moment. The writer is very clever. He has thorough knowledge of desha kala-patra'*. He could not enter every household when he emerged as Valmiki. His reach was limited only to the Bhagabata ghara"; in his incarnation as Herodotus, his circulation was confined to school children and later were left to rot in warehouses!*. Asa result, he kept quiet for a while and travelled to different parts of Odisha as a fakir'. In a newly built house, Dhurjati gleaning knowledge from his travels fathered “Rebati”. A favourable reception of Rebi!® would encourage him to travel more and bring out her brothers and sisters. Why did he have to kill everyone? He is very cruel; he could have at least saved one character by treating him with the medicine prescribed by his younger brother, Madhu doctor!’. 194 | Faxix Monan SENAPATI Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Shankar: Mohan: Author: ovani Biswal’s family also died 4 : rs of Bh All seven membe bs jarrhoea. single day of diarr! / single e they the same? Ok, why did the innocent . Rel as innocent? ba But how ar have to die? Basudeba too w: Right. Jiban Babu, teacher at the academy; Harikrushng ta , the deputy; Ragunath Bhuyan of Damodarpur et al, they ~ also equally good? The writer is old-fashioned. He is not liberal-minded, Wajib!®, His hair has started greying and so has his Pen. He has also become a widower. Isn’t his worldview narrow? Isn't he opposed to the idea of modern education for women? I too sought an explanation from the author under the section 250 demanding why shouldn't he be held guilty under the section 512 and 513 of IPC!®. Even before receiving his explanation, out of generosity, I myself wrote an explanation, Once when I ran into him at the pilgrimage of Harihara we compared our explanations and the possible answers he would offer to probable questions of another person. His and my explanations turned out to be similar and the other was washed down the river Falgu2?, Could you elaborate? Mallinatha . . , 2! You want to know what happened—Well, let me analyse his apology and mine. Dhurjati says, . . 2? “from the Sathia Company”, would I become Chaturbhuja if some ears and noses are not straight?” Ok, I understood.‘ If all of them died then who performed 7 funeral rites? Who lit the pyre of Rebati and her grandmothe The Lat CounciP’ performed their rites, The grandmothers lighting Rebati’s pyre, immediately lit herself with the fire oft chullha. ; Beware reader Sir! Read the last lines [of the story / “ dialogue?) attentively. Notes 10. Saria is a character from Fakir Mohan Senapati’s novel Ch) Guntha (Six Ares and A Third) hha Mana Atha The reference here is tthe Madras. Pre session of the Indian N, 2931 December 1898. This article was published in Ja 1899 and twas in all nuary probability written before Senapati left for Madras. Fakir Mohan Senapati is addressed as Valmiki. fo Ramayana. He started translating the epic in 1879, Aandas between 1880 and 1885. In his autobiograp| undertook the translation of the immediately after the this translation of The and published its different hy Senapati writes that he epic in order to assuage the grief of his wife death of the couple's six-month old son. Initially he read out to her the sixteenth-century translation of the epic by Balaram Das, Since she found it difficult to follow the existing version, Senapati started rendering the text in a more accessible idiom, A gumasta or gomastha is an accountant in charge of a zamindari, ‘Bailiff’ is a close equivalent in English. Alasua in Odia means lazy thus its use in the name of a region adds humour to the dialogue. Refers to Senapati’s friend and colleague Gobinda Chandra Pattanaik. The description of the place is a reference to Senapati’s residence. Antudishala can be loosely translated as lying-in-room. This refers to the maternity corner in a traditional household with a hearth for the delivery and post-natal care of the mother and the infant. These asterisks are meant to suggest the passage of time during which Shankar reads the text. In a playful vein, Shankar retorts to Mohan by using ‘seeing’ the infant Rebati rather than ‘reading’ the recently published “Rebati’. Dhurjati was the pseudonym under which Senapati wrote “Rebati” and several other works. Literally it means someone who carries a heavy jata (the matted iva, who along with his jata locks mainly seen atop Indian sadhus); or Lord ‘ has to carry the burden of the three /okas (i.e. heaven, earth and the underworld). os Bankim Chandra can be literally translated as crescent moon in’ dia. Ye new moon is a Dwitiyachandra or moon on the second night following the nm Playful reference to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay . id people. A person Desha-kala-patra can be translated literally as place, time and people. & p three is supposed to be worldly wise or with an awareness of the above ages, where sacred books were kep Bhagabata ghara or tungi is a place in village ro alee Be ; equivale and read out by the priest to the villagers. An ea 196 | Faxik MOHAN SENAPATI 14, 16. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25, ‘naamghar’. The name of ‘Herodotus’ is used in the original Odia text and k . . 2 the here is to Senapati as a historian. Senapati’s Bharatabarshay, releren., ‘a Itihas textbook for several years and was withdrawn from the syllab Sa Schoo) ‘ — . Us ji following the objection raised by Radhanath Ray and Baikunthanath 1884 De, BEd from d ailment F ; F F Prom to give the child away to the saints. After his recovery however, she coulg vd Not published in two volumes in 1869 and 1870 and was Prescribed a, Way In his autobiography, Senapati recounts how his name was chan, Brajamohan to Fakir Mohan. When he was 7-8 years old, a childhoo, was cured by two Muslim saints (pirs). His grandmother had earlier bring herself to hand her grandson over to the pirs completely. Instead the child Brajamohan would symbolically be given to the pirs for eight days each year at the time of Muharram, when he would be dressed as a fakir (o, mendicant) and go begging for alms for the benefit of his saviours, ‘Rebi’ is an affectionate diminutive of ‘Rebati’ and is used throughout the story. The writer taking advantage of the eponymous text conflates the text and the character and plays on it. Though it is almost impossible to fathom who Madhu doctor was, one may speculatively identify him as Madhusudan Rao, the poet. Rao wrote a defensive preface to Radhanath Ray’s Mahayatra (or The Great Rite of Passage, 1897), an unfinished epic written in blank verse. Pre-empting the criticism the use of a new verse form might cause in Odia literary circles Madhusudan Rao had written the preface. Perhaps it is suggested that “Rebati’, being the earliest short story, deserved a similar apologia. Senapati has a knack for using Perso-Arabic expressions in his texts. The writer here, if it is not him, is certainly trying to imitate Senapati’s style. The Indian Penal Code has altogether 511 sections and thus the reference to Sections 512 and 513 is intended to set the unsuspecting reader on a wild goose chase. In an apparently serious note he offers a riddle. It seems as if he deems the question of Shankar to be irrelevant and offers him in the veil of a complicated narration, a nonsense. A couple of letters in this sentence are smudged making it undecipherable. Mallinatha in all probability is a reference to the famous Sanskrit scholar and commentator. Another couple of letters missing. A reference to a contemporary photo studio. A desperate attempt to end the conversation. The Privy Council of England (which during the colonial period hear, from the decision of Indian High Courts). (Purnchandra Bhashako soi 5 ha 7349) MOHAN SENAPATI AND THE EMERGENCE tHE MODERN Obta SHort Story* * Vidya Das Fax Modern prose writing in i. began, as in other Indian languages, in the second half of the nineteenth century. In most parts of India, the complex interaction poweey two factors contributed to the emergence and shape of the new writing—colonial modernism via European thought and literature anda growing nationalist consciousness as evidenced in the concerns of identity and socio-political change. In Odia literature, however, the former had little immediate influence, distanced as Odisha was from centres of power, and ignored by the British except for its natural resources. The reasons for this and the circumstances that led to the emergence of the literature, with its distinctive quality of rootedness, is often forgotten. Despite Odisha’s ancient artistic and cultural heritage and the fact that Odia is almost a 1000 year old language with an established literary tradition, modern Odia writing arose from an urgent need to preserve the language and prevent the submersion of an Odia identity. That the language and the culture have shown such resilience is significant given the specific history of the state. Long past the Kalinga and Utkal periods, Odisha was invaded in turn by the Mughals, the Afghans and the Marathas. i had no stable central power and was split into semi-independent principalities. This led ‘0 the gradual political amputation of Odisha into separate parts that Were annexed to neighbouring states. When the British occupied Odisha : stories ed. Vidya Das. Eeerpted from the “Introduction” to the volume Oriya Stories ed. Vidya Delhi: sl . vin hat were “Orissa” and “Oriya” tl nged in this volume on . he original “Introduction” used the spellings passed a oi rate a ee at the time of its publication. These ha’ by we and “Odisha’, following the Constitution le C ve been cha ‘ a3") Amendment Bill Jovernment of India in 2011. 198 | Vinva Das 1 the extremely weakened Marathas, this Vivise-,. in 1803, taking over from ’ sy " i are and attachment of Odj, n was consolidated with the separation dia Seg regions to the Madras, Bengal and Central provinces for Teaso egions i Ns ministrative expedience. Other parts were gover, of commercial and ad we ‘ were ned, f udatory states, unconnected to these administrative districts, is feudatory states, : Thus, by the middle of the nineteenth century, though boung together both linguistically and through abiding community, Social ang religious practices (the most visible cultural marker being the Cult of Jagannath, with its seat Puri providing a sense of cohesion), the Odia people themselves were dispersed and dispossessed. The disintegration of Odisha had of course begun much before British rule and it had suffered greatly under the petty rulers and the terror tactics of the Marathas who came after the Mughals. But the livelihood of the people had continued much as before. The systematic destruction and upheaval that took place within a short time of British occupation was unprecedented. The trade policies virtually wiped out the cottage industries of handloom, leatherwork, filigree and other handicrafts that were the traditional livelihood of the Odias: And monopoly over the sale and manufacture of common salt took away the economic mainstay of the people of coastal Odisha. The revenue policies and the notorious Sunset Law that accompanied it ensured that the rich too were deprived of their lands and uprooted. Many in desperation got their lands settled in the name of temple authorities, relying on the British policy of not interfering with religious institutions and also, somewhat naively, on the honesty of the priests. Resistance of any kind, such as the famous Paika rebellion, only led to further deprivation and displacement. By the second half of the century, the people depended almost entirely on agriculture for their living. These Odia areas, however, were largely treated as the backwaters of the provinces they were attached to, with no railway lines orin migation systems being set up by the administrators to develop the eat a oe gen Poin ee ap ~ x. igins i the voice of the masses without ati ‘ feu courte However anskritised stage under the patronage co atob? felt that political dig, vaaleny inte ie a ish and when ade EEsa could lead to the erasure of Odia ee "iti Ministrative homogenisation threatened to becomea lin EMPRGENCE OF THE Mopppyy ODA Sor Story | 199 and cultural one as wall ie most be emphasised that administrative indiffer ar ue ase of British rule meant that Odia spe. ven nn the aking regions had few ; et ry states had ne spall, Education was the privilege of the rich, and the Iterture of a Of this period tended to be localised, developing without contact with liter: writing in other Odia areas. The only official recognition of Odia “ Indian language made by the British administration had been an nee English glossary published in 1807 to assist British officers, ° The Christian missionaries who entered Odisha in 1822, however, contributed singularly in laying the foundations for the literary revival a Odisha, recognising in their efforts to spread Christianity that the only access to the people was through their language. The first Odia Bible had already been published outside Odisha in 1811. But later they started schools and did much to spread literacy generally, brought out Odia newsletters and periodicals that published both religious and literary pieces, as well as set up the first Odia printing press in 1836. early ph F inode" schools and no universities. The feudato In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, a growing attempt to officially displace and de-recognise the Odia language could be discerned. Caught up in the regional overtones that some aspects of the emergent nationalist movement took, Indian functionaries of the East India Company belonging to the Bengal province to which the entire coastal belt of Odisha was attached, tried to prove that Odia was merely a derivative or dialect form of Bangla and that Odia areas belonged to Bengal. In 1868, it was proposed at a meeting of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta that Bangla should be compulsorily imposed in Odia schools. This led to heated protest and resistance, and a unification of the people who had begun to organise themselves to fight for common causes after the famine of 1866 that killed one-third of the population. Itis in this struggle not for survival but for recognition t — of modern Odia writing has to be contextualised. The challenge wae up by several radical intellectuals of the time such as Gourishankar O. Fakir Mohan Senapati, Radhanath Ray and Madhusudan Rao, — Many others, who vehemently opposed the move and we ap aign. Utkal Sabha, an organisation formed in 1362, to strengthen their camp? : poke of the Odia What is significant about this movement is that If SP° hat the birth 200 | Viva Das people as a collective. Previous revolts against the Administ ; primarily attempts to re-establish the hierarchies ofa traditional a Wey social order. The language struggle, however, was to bea lon, on ali as in 1895, it was the Central Province administration that a late the replacement of Odia by Hindi in schools belonging to dig policy that was reversed only in 1905 after Protracted Tesistance eas, By then the movement spearheaded by the intellectual strengthened and expanded. The fight to prevent the linguistic subm, of Odia had become part of the larger campaign for S0cio-econg reform, which included the restoration of the livelihood of attisans fy revival of the salt industry, the mechanisation of agri oi ‘culture, the buildin of railway lines and the development of the use of, natural resources, Their main demand was for a separate Odisha province. The Risley Citculap issued in 1904 indicated for the first time that the Government was will to act on these issues and was favourable to the idea of the Unification of Odia areas. However, the Odisha province came into being only jn 1936, just eleven years before Independence. The major figures in this struggle were simultaneously involved in the nationalist movement. The first Odia newspaper Utkal Dipika was begun in 1866 by Gourishankar Ray, and several other newspapers and journals quickly followed with the specific purpose of Providing a platform for the €xpression of the people’s Srievances and anger. Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Sambad Bahika was started in 1868 to deal directly with the Tanguage policy and to restore the Position and stature of Odia literature. It is through these publications that Odia prose and literature entered anew Phase, and the impetus and shape of Odisha’s literary awakening came from this political Tesistance to cultural colonisation. lad eEsion te Acknowledged as the Pioneer of modern Odia prose, Fakir Mohan Senapati’s writi ing began as an interventionist response to these historical circumstances, One of the most revered writers of Odisha, Senapati had litle formal education himselt ang Was largely self-taught. But he wet! on to become a schoolteacher, administrator, journalist, nationalist leader, social reformer as well as a scholar and a writer. He emphasised the pe EMERGENCE OF tt Money Opia Sor Story | 201 , of education TP the struggle for social reform and in the aed ; . 7 fn 2et0 the engulfment of the Odia language. In this he stan . ; m8 had managed re janet the support of John Beams, the District Magistrate of Balasore x pavareubs . ‘ qalinguist who in a subsequent session of the Asiatic Society argued . ¢ substitution of Odia and later, of T. E. Ravenshaw, the commissioner of the Odisha Division. It is through them that the “age struggle came to a successful conclusion. against th janguage SUBS senapati’ literary career cannot be separated from his reformist one. He began by writing much needed school textbooks on mathematics, geography and history in modern Odia. He set up the second Odia printing press in 1868, the first Odia to do so. He brought out an Odia journal, a news bulletin, and translated ancient epics into modern Odia, in addition to his literary writing. His twenty short stories are a small output in comparison to his total literary achievement. But the publication of his Rebari in 1898 marks the beginning of this genre in Odia. Set in a cholera epidemic, Rebatiis a tragic story pushed to its absolute limits not to examine the workings of fate but of social attitudes. With it, the Odia short story set out on sure- footed first steps. Senapati’s concerns are primarily with social reform and often specifically with the empowerment of women and the underprivileged. If there seems little heroism in Rebati, the subject is handled very differently in Patent Medicine, a vastly popular comic story that has over this century Virtually achieved folk status. The story itself has been set to music and the title has acquired the resonance of a common idiomatic phrase. Senapati’s stories have a folksy oral style of narration and his usage of _ the colloquialisms and colourful exuberance of ordinary spoken Odia is @conscious move to return the literature to its people. y REBATI’S SISTERS: SEARCH FOR IDentyry THROUGH EDUCATION Sachidananda Mohanty The blindness to gender in Odia literary history seems to follow the classic insight of the French feminist Luce Irigaray in her Speculum de LAutre Femme. According to Irigaray, “The uniquely metaphysical logic of dichotomous oppositions” has always dominated “philosophical thought: for instance Presence/Absence, Being/Nothingness, Truth/Error, Some) Other, Identity/Difference, etc.”! Women must constantly define themselves in terms of one half of the repressed categories as the Other, Absence, Silence, Error, Nothingness and the Insane. In the case of Orissa, feminist historiography of the kind Elaine Showalter had in mind is compounded by the problem of covering wide gaps even in newly retrieved areas of Odia literary/cultural history. We must routinely make inexplicable leaps from a sparsely populated female landscape, from isolated instances of early women writers like Madhavi Dasi, Vrindavati Dasi, Tribhuvan Mahadevi, and Nih Shanka Devi to a more fecund region membered by those who wrote during the twenties and thirties of this century: Kokila Devi, Reba Ray, Narmada Kar, Pratibha Devi, Kuntala Kumari Sabat and others. I suggest that one of the ways by which this fractured literary cultural history can be bridged is by subjecting key literary texts of the late nineteenth century, including those of the sympathetic male writers toa closer study. More specifically, I shall be arguing in this paper that a novelist Fakir Mohan Senapati’s (1843-1918) early, acclaimed and ae pape eaed tale “Rebati”? (1898) could act as a valuable missing 7 : tracing the continuity of the female literary tradition in Oriss® on from the concern with the issue of woman's education that is ce bore out by the content of this first short story written and 2°" Reware’s Sisters | 203 in Odia literature, I contend that Ser senapati’s larger historic. ing the ger historical and socio -nlonialis a unique cc ‘i colonialism and ethnicity in Orissa is vital i Sreuealia s 10 underst: realistic interest in dramat question. anding the woman's It’s not that “Rebati” is a startlin . n sci adequate attention. Indeed 18 New discovery or has not received , it’s hy bo ard to come across a tale in Odia In i ine mandatory and authoritative citations IC) ism. However, equally unfailingly, has the literature that can equal “Rel in the genre of fiction and the inauguration of an alternative tradition of women’s writing has remained concealed as an interesting cultural subtext. Indeed, it is amazing to see how “ could have been glossed over for so long, given the compelling factors and circumstances surrounding the creation of this tale and the life and times of the writer. The facts themselves are revealing. Fakir Mohan spent a considerable part of his career in teaching, writing and in journalism. He played a pivotal and pioneering role in the “save Odia” movement for the preservation of Odia language and culture. In his autobiography, he movingly chronicles the travails of physically carting the first printing press to Balasore in Orissa from Calcutta.’ His insight into colonialism and its collusion with the native zamindari system that led to the illiantly recorded in his Chhamana Great Famine of 1866 In Orissa! lace remchand dealt with pauperisation of the peasantry (bri Athaquntha) and his account of the his writings with a deep political ¢ similar themes in Hindi literature after ot famili ill to a certal onsciousness. E about two decades. In Bengali ar before the twenties, and li jal realism was erature, social realism a extent romantic in contemporary Telugu fiction was st character. i NTY 204 | SACHIDANANDA Moa’ It is not hard to see the nexus between Fakir Mohan's life anq 7 t 1s $ ; a hiswriting career al the incredibly late age of fifty three, Betvee, and at Barabati and The Mission School Of Balasore ht 1862 and 1871, he taug} a He married twice, the first time to Lilavati, when he was thirteen, The ing marriage turned out [0 be a particularly unhappy one. “The de er e more pain than my prolonged childhoog ines” he recalls in his autobiography. TI he first wife died early leaving hehind a daughter At the bidding of @ female relative, he allowed himsel to get married in 1871 to @ girl named Krishna Kumari Dei who was a mere eleven at the time of the marriage. This time around, the marrige s. The second wife, however, died in 1894 at the behind a son and a daughter. Fakir Mohan’s autobiography provides a sketchy account of his personal life. It is worth noting that the genre of autobiography as understood today did not exist in Odia literature before Fakir Mohan. In a middle-class feudal society, there would predictably be great reluctance to chronicle the intimate details of one’s conjugal life. By the time Fakir Mohan published his autobiography in 1917, one year before his death, he had become a distinguished public figure and eminent man of letters. ‘education and cultural gap between literary Fakir Moh and his child brides remains at present an area of darkness and enij ut the fact of the gap is certain to have shaped the novelist’s thinking on the obvious issue of women’s education and their place in society, Furthermore, it was only the Christian girls who went to The Missionary School in Balasore.6 The difference between the relatively advanced members of the Christian community and the more orthodox Hindu parents who confined their daughters at home, was bound to be a matter of interest and concern for an educationist/novelist like Fakir Mohan. Education, therefore, especially female education, occupies a pivotal place in Fakir Mohan’’s life and art. ity occasioned in m\ apparently was a succes age of thirty-six leaving Nineteen years after the British came to Orissa, the first Missionary oe se up in Cuttack in 1822. This was despite the fact that the responsibly vn taken up education as a part of their administra" Within the Note fer the East India Company's Act of 1813, Section 43. e-and-a-half years after 1822, the missionaries took UP ay i Renarr’s Sisrens | 205 the management of fifteen native schools in Orissa, including The English Charity School set up in 1823 in Cuttack, later taken over b the East India company in 1841. Realising the near-total absence of alas in a administrative setup and its obviously harmful consequences, Orissa’s then Commissioner, Henry Rickets, had sent a proposal to ie Sadar Board of Revenue. Rickets argued that the apathy of the Odias and their lack of stake in the administration was chiefly due to their educational backwardness. Similarly, the proclamation of Lord Harding holding out English education as a carrot for job opportunities in government services also acted as a catalytic agent. In his poem “Utkala Bhramana’, for instance, Fakir Mohan wrote: All are foreigners—the babus and the lawyers Even the post office clerk is not one of us!” (Loose translation by the author) The educational situation was even bleaker. For the supervision of a handful of schools in the whole of Orissa, there was just one Deputy Inspector of Schools. Fakir Mohan strove hard to spread education, particularly in the rural areas. With the help of the King of Balasore, Baikuntha Nath De, a school was set up in Remuna. As Dewan in the many Princely states of Orissa, Fakir Mohan assisted in the spread of education in Nilgiri, Keonjhar, Anandpur and Dompara.* While public education in Orissa was pathetically dismal, education for women was more or less absent. Whatever education was traditionally given to women was private and confined to the home. Even this was restricted, as the editor of Utkal Deepika astutely observed, to female members of the royalty and the upper class/caste literati.’ For the rest, formal education for girls was confined to a few members of the Christian community. For the first time in 1871, a school for Hindu girls was set up at Cuttack in the house of Abinash Chandra Chattopadhyaya. A school with a mere thirteen to fourteen students!!° Even by 1881, the school had registered practically no growth, nor could it catch the public imagination. The number of girls merely increased to twenty five.'' This and the astonishing fact that even after the school ran for ten years at Cuttack city, only four Hindu girls were enrolled, was much regretted by the then editor of Utkal Deepika who drew the attention of parents and Monanty 296 | SActIIDANANDA to send their girls to the school in larger Dumber. 12 em Ss ' in . ba shan’s growing interest in the shifting of the site g sakir Mohan’ vind Fakir less useful domestic/private arena to the more urge 8 f Wo, sducation froma! meee = Prod ed lic sphere is well manifest in his varied portraya of Pedagogy a pu DHE S en ain he ie of the female teacher in his literary works. In his acclaimed n, role o' i A fi 7 : nl Mamu, for instance, the character Chandamani receives instr Mamu, s en Uctiy, el Uction in ding, painting and sewing, traditionally regarded as marks of cu reading, pa female breeding, from a private tutor who was somewhat Similar ty , Christian governess.'? The examples were drawn from the Christen Missionary school in Balasore. Similarly, in Prayaschitta, Indumatj along with the other girls of her age, is shown to receive education at home. The rationale for this education was made clear: women from middle-class cultivated families were perceived as the custOdians and transmitters of cultural legacy. For, as the character in Prayaschitta remarks, “they realise that by being literate, women at home can keep accounts and can read out Bhagavata and Purana to fellow women at home.!4 Thus, while the education of Mamu’s Chandamani and Saraswati Dei and Prayaschitta’s Indumati was confined to the home, in “Rebati” Fakir Mohan makes a clean break from such a practice. The issue at the heart of “Rebati” is the desire of the adolescent girl to step out of the home and seek education in the public domain. Clearly more than literacy isat stake here. What is at issue is the very questioning of institutions, the stranglehold of feudalism and Patriarchy and a whole gamut of responses through which the trapped female voice is articulated, Thus Rebati’s act is ultimately an act of defiance against the dominant patriarchy and the feudal ethos of the village community of Patapur, most of whose members are indifferent and unsympathetic to Rebati and her parents. The cruel hand of Fate that acts as a nemesis for Rebati serves only as “ lansparent facade, a narrative device with its ironical tour de force central to Fakir Mohan’s ideological vision, Through the use of the narrative irony and many paralle| voices, the tale offers a counter politics to the ¢s of late nineteenth century Orissa. tivateg dominant attitud “Rebati” is written in and tot 4 colloquial, earth Se of words, literary” Practics y language with an informal tone in short, a style distinctly uncommon € of his times. Village Patapur in the 40 economical he prevalent «| Rewar’s Sisters | 207 Hariharpur subdivision of Cuttack shyamabandhu Mohanty unfurls, The as the caste affiliation of Shyamab district is where choice of both the andhu are is where the major cultural and Politic establishment of new schools for girls, the drama of setting as well significant Cuttack district al Movements, including the — rl esas Similarly, Shyamabandhu ~ Narans” or the “Kayasthas” of Orissa as record-keepers ; ce ionally, d. 8 and accountant at ; ; Pp s. Traditional they also served in the field of education as teachers, a moot a Sa pt point in a story related to the question of women’s education. The family f Shyamabandhu, we are further told, comprises four me: . a Shyamabandhu and his wife, his mother and his daughter ebeti = ten years. Shyamabandhu is a God-fearing, kind-hearted man. Indeed, his name is a synonym for Krishna, the compassionate God. He is, for instance, never known to show over-zealousness in collecting taxes for the oppressive zamindar.'* Right at the outset we are told that both Shyamabandhu and his daughter Rebati are fond of singing bhajans or devotional songs. The narrative even presents an extract from a devotional song that Rebati regularly sings before Shyamabandhu. Fakir Mohan carefully cites this fact early enough in the tale possibly as a contrastive argument to distinguish later, Rebati’s real desire for education. For unlike the female characters in Mamu and Prayaschitta, Rebati clearly seeks education for reasons other than learning to sing bhajans. The metaphor of learning, suggested early, is taken up again with reference to the visit of the Deputy Inspector of Schools, two years ago to the village (p.2). Patapur, we are informed, has an Upper Primary School which was opened at the request of the villagers. The villagers are thus not against education as such; they only harbour some reservation about educating the females. The school at Patapur now hasa teacher aged twenty years,a product of the “normal school” of Cuttack (p.2). He is significantly named Vasudeva, another name for Krishna, in consonance with the name of Rebati’s father Shyamabandhu. Like the latter, he too is a on Presence, Like Krishna, Vasudeva the teacher represents hope. Hera 8° . i and spiritual deliverance for Rebati. symbolises possibilities of psychological and spiritua tints Therefore, the advent of Vasudeva oF Vasu into Patapur an an Shyamabandhu’s household is shown as @ particularly auspicious event is significantly “Karan” worked for zamindars 5 JOHANTY 298 | Saciupananna M It is from Vasu that Shyamabandhu learns about a irls? Scho, Cuttack, His natural desire that Rebati should study in schoo " in instant support from the young teacher (p.3). While the father jg wt the mother willing and Rebati jubiliant in her refrain, “I shajj Tead! ey, read!” (p.3.) as she dances around the house, the response grandmother is cool and on expected orthodox lines. “What d female need to read for? Is it not better for her to learn to cook, delicacies, floral designs and churn butter milk!” she asks (p.3), The grandmother’s reservations spill over to the dinner at the eng of the day. It is clear that she, as the matriarch and not Shyamabandhu’s Wife (significantly the wife bears no name in the story), is the dominant female figure and is shown to supervise many things, including the serving of food to Shyamabandhu at the time of his dinner, traditionally a time when major family decisions are made (p.3). Shyamabandhu attempts to mollify his mother. To his mother’s insistent question—“Why must a girl child read?”—his answer is to placate tradition and suggest that teading poses no real threat to the establishment. Rebati can learn devotional songs, can she not, by going to school! After all, Jhankad Patnaik’s daughters too know how to sing the devotional songs of Upendra Bhanja, he explains to his sceptical mother (p.3). Fakir Mohan does not present a naive account of the joy that a restricted girl child feels in suddenly encountering the world of reading. He shows the powerful effect images produce upon the learner. “Some feel happy to ride an elephant or a horse, our Rebi delights in seeing pictures’ the narrator tells us (p.4). For Rebati, images as icons are important. For they help her to escape from her entrapment and mediate with the outside world. That Way, reality and fantasy get blurred. Education becomes the primary means for snPowerment, Rebati learns her alphabet on the day o! G odessa aly observed as a day dedicated to Saraswati ari colle eae, ‘ compromise is struck between Shyamab i A broached and pe i of marriage between Vasu and Re - | Shyamabandhu as el sree unis is used as an argument bY sit to their home, and - € narrator to legitimise Vasu’s recurrent V! 0 Rebati. in reality, it — ™Portantly, for the lessons he imparts »"'S 2 compromise that Shyamabandhu strikes ¥!" Usha a 0S the Prepare Renart’s Sisters | 209 orthodoxy, represented by the village community, ‘The intervention of cholera as an agent of destruction is introduced in the tale at this stage. The use of this device serves both a realistic as well asa symbolic purpose. Popular superstition has traditionally attributed supernatural reasons for the outbreak of cholera, In the hands of Fakir Mohan, this dreaded epidemic that used to be a real scourge in the early part of this century, becomes a formidable symbol for retribution. This becomes apparent as the narrator gives the account from the standpoint of the grandmother: The old woman is no longer able to see. She has become practically mad. Nowadays, there is less of crying and more of abusing Rebati. She has now come to the firm conclusion that Rebati is the root cause of all sorrows and all misery. Because Rebati read, therefore, the son died, the workers left them, cattle had to be sold and the zamindar’s men took away the cows. Rebati is definitely inauspicious. Her habits are evil. She drives away Lakshmi. If the old woman is unable to see, Rebati’s education must be the cause of it all. (p-6) The old woman considers Vasu equally responsible for this tragedy. “After all Rebati had not studied all this while. Its only Vasu who came and taught her” (p.7). She is sensible enough not to drive away Vasu. For in the absence of any other menfolk, only Vasu is capable of giving an account to the zamindar’s men. Every other day “the zamindar’s man asks for this or that account, if Vasu was not there, then who would check the records and answer him?” (p.7). There is thus a progressive awareness of the value of education as seen through the eyes of the old woman. While earlier, Vasu was a saviour for Rebati, now he gets virtually metamorphosed into the figure of Krishna, the supreme saviour for the old woman. As the narrator strikingly observes: Only when Vasu comes home does she sit up from the floor. With her big eyes, she keeps staring at Vasu. When Vasu turns to her, she exhales a sigh and gazes downwards. As long as Vasu remains she keeps staring at him. There is no other thought at that time. Only Vasudeva in her eyes, Vasudeva in her thought and Vasudeva in the whole self. (p.7) Vasu’s departure from Shyamabandhu's house is again linked up with the 1Y 210 | Sacupananpa MOHAN ation. He goes away, even if fo, recurrent ise cheat of Schools happens to visit the ae ty becaust “ eat the school, we are told, by talking gh tre worl re Police Station. A perfectly legitimate way of avoid en at the uw the village. However, Vasu’s death, caused by the aa 7 case vvrcholera isattributed by the grandmother to the evil of, educa” “\hat a pity’, said the old woman. “You come from Outside, an, a were the cause of your own undoing!” As the narrative voice drives hom. } the point: “He died out of foolishness, because he taught Rebati, O, the he would have never died then!” (p.8). , The tale thus leads to a progressive destruction of the whole famil The sense of psychic and physical isolation acts as an apt backdrop a the refrain of the old woman: “What is the remedy for self-created evil?” (p.9). And the narrator adds: “You fell ill because you dared to acquire education. Surely it is no fault of mine!” (p.9). The end of the tale shows every one dead. The message is clear: Rebati was the cause of it all. She invited a wholesale calamity because of her forbidden desire for edu. cation. Symbolically, though a seemingly simple narrative, Fakir Mohan reveals to us the supreme power of learning and the complex trade-off int modernity has to make with tradition for the sake of female individuation. ae tie at questions still persist, Why; does Fakir Mohan not , ly to the school? Is he being realistic in telling us of the magnitude of opposition to female education shared by the villagers a : oe mance what would have happened to the narrative had this point of view: the Gore en recorded the consequences? From does not make can only tet tohiside fae ae fhetion t ie a ‘ological predilection, his alleged ambivalence to we stern educ : sexuality, ation and his anxiety regarding female Rebati’s Plea for educatio, ; , . | carlier murmurings j Was not a cry in the wilderness, It had much Rewarr’s Sisters | 201 saing the simple Bengali alphabet. In a milieu where . . educat male preserve, even handling the simple ton was a alphi i jitical act And so it was with a furtive eo oe n F manages 10 steal a page from a primer left behind by her on in the jichen. She conceals it within the fold of her saree and thus be ins her grduous and heroic attempt to learn the alphabet. As she a her experience poignantly: Let alone voicing my inner most feelings, my heart used to quiver at the thought of anyone guessing how I felt: so much so that if I saw a sheet of paper which had been written on I used to look away. This was in case anyone accused me of wanting to study. But within my mind I kept praying to Parameswar, teach me how to read and write.!® As if in answer to Rasundari’s prayer, several developments took place. By 1854, Wood's Education Despatch had stressed the importance of female education and pointed out that “the educational and moral tone ofthe people” would be distinctly improved by undertaking the education of girls and women rather than only of men. Bamasundari and Kailashbasini were among the first in Bengal to stress the advantage of educating women. Bamasundari’s long essay “Which are the superstitions that have to disappear for this country to prosper?” published in 1861 as abooklet and Kailashbasini Debi’s Hindu Mahilaganer Hinbastha (Lowly Position of Hindu Women, 1864) were significant landmarks. Many such writings were to see the light of day only in the next century. For instance, Kailashbasini’s Janaika Grihabadhur’s Diary (A Certain Householder’s Diary) was serialised in the Bengali monthly, Basumati for the first time in 1953.7 Like Fakir Mohan in Orissa, many enlightened male writers in Bengal too aided Bengali women like Bamasundari and Kailashbasini. For instance, Loknath Maitra who recommended Bamasundari to the newspaper Som Prakash declared that “it is my humble request to the People at large that after seeing this great achievement, they will become More alert about educating hundreds of such girls in all their homes.” Anoble exhortation indeed that would find echoes elsewhere. Chandu whoo Indulekha the first novel written in Malayalam in 1889 presents re a the female protagonist opposing orthodoxy. The point made that Indulekha’s exposure to English education turned her into a 212 | SACHIDANANDA Mo#anTY | heroine.'® However, in Orissa at least, it took Quite a w il, rebe men writers could find their voice. Rebati displays _ fore oabtibe learning and thereby invites the furies. But her Story algo mn the beginning of a new tradition and inaugurates a new breed of Wong, who learned to write and create a literature of their own: Kunt, ala Kup Sabat, Sita Devi Khadanga, Sarala Dery Basanta Kumarj Patnaiy Bidyutprabha and others. In recording their moments of joy, sotto, doubts and dilemmas in poetry, prose, fiction and drama, they repli, Rebati’s agonizing search for identity through education, In effect, they become Rebati’s sisters. ar Notes 1. Quoted by Shoshana Felman, “Women and Madness: The Critical Phalags Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn’. Wath and Drane Price Herndl, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1971, p7. 2. “Rebati” was first published in Utkal Sahitya, Vol. 2, No. 7, 1898. Most cial accounts of the work tend to be merely eulogistic and lack a theoretical rigou, 3. See “Balasore’s First Press”, My Times and I, Fakir Mohan Senapati, translated by John Bolton, Orissa Sahitya Akademi, Bhubaneswar, 1985, pp.32-36. 4. Ibid., pp.27-31. 5 Ibid, p43. The account of his marriages, as provided in his autobiography, 's incredibly sketchy, barely one-and-a-half pages! 6. See “Working at Balasore Mission School (1864-71), My Times and I, op.it, pp.21-26. 7. From “Utkal Bhramana’, Fakir Mohan’s Collected Works, Part 1, p.202. 8. Prafulla Chandra Mohanty, The Picture of Contemporary Orissa in Fakir Mohan’s Literature, Friends Publishers, Cuttack, 1985, pp.192-93. ° Utkal Deepika, Vol. 16, No, 44, 5 November, 1881. 10. Utkal Deepika, Vol. 6, No. 38, 30 September, 1871. ; : tha Deepika, Vol. 16, No. 44, 5 November, 1881. 13. From “Mamu”, Fakir Mohan’s Callected Works, Part HI, p.119. A 4 ita” Eae;, Up. nn Prayaschitta”, Fakir Mohan’s Collected Works, Part II, p.373. : © narrator takes pains to underscore Shyamabandhu's basically hon‘ ‘ature. See “Rebati” in The Stories of Fakir Mohan Senapati, Prachi Publishers fe js edition HI subsequent references to “Rebati” pertain to this edit ices from P24. Quoted in Malavika Karlekar’s Voices f i i 551 nal Narratives °f Bengali Women, Oxford University Pr 17. 18. Repari’s Sisters | 213 ‘4 good account of the history of women’s education is provided by J.C. Bagal’s Women’s Education in Eastern India: The First Phase, The World Press, Calcutta, 1950. The opposition is between Madhavan and Indulekha, the hero and heroine influenced by modern education vis-a-vis Panchu Menon and Suri Nambudiri, representing tradition. See P.K. Parameswaran Nair, History of Malayalam Literature, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1971, pp.119-120. 2 2. ‘ReBATI’: EMPOWERMENT HAKIRMOHUN Ss ’ P p FEMINISM IpENTITY AN subhakanta Behera Phakirmohun Senapati (1843-1918), the father of modern Odia prose fiction has been perhaps one of the most discussed Odia writers and so also the most misunderstood prose writer of his time. Yet, there is no doubt that he was a social realist par excellence and imbibed the best traditions of realism as a writer. Not guided by any theoretical paradigm, Phakirmohun’s realism flowed from his sympathy and sensitivity to changes of the Odia society, brought about in the wake of colonialism- imperialism. Besides, his varied experiences from boyhood through different professions he adopted at various stages of his life coupled with the necessary imagination and insight to produce a genre of prose narrative that was remarkably realistic. But perhaps, the most important dimension of his narrative was the centrality of Orissa and Odia life. This paper intends to explore different layers of dialogue with the Odia society of his time that Phakirmohun provided in his most important, but yet controversial short story, ‘Rebati’, The importance of ‘Rebati’ is , But after carefully examining the forms of ‘short story’ and ‘tale’, I have already suggested elsewhere that ‘Rebati’ cannot claim to be purely a short story, it is at best, the first successful Odia fiction, combining the elements of both ‘short story’ and ‘tale’ It is therefore felt unnecessary to discuss here agai ihe aspect of the story. Rather, the content of ‘Rebati’, which is still 9° understood in all its ramifications, has been ce in this paper from an analytical perspective to show its many-layered meanings and arg? * The ; . name 's spelt Phakirmohun instead of Fakir Mohan in the original «5%! dh “RewaTr: EMPOWERMENT, IpeNnrry AND Peminism | 215 _point to the social history of Orissa of the time. The _ an entry-P' al analysis'lies 4 i iP for such a textual analysis lies in the claim as mentioned js pat heralded the modern Odia prose fiction and hence, it a an objectives analytical understanding. calls i miatline of ‘Rebati’ is as follows. GRIEHENillage Patapuraninathe sedistrict! there lived the family of Shyamabandhu Mohanty who ~ ated by the local landlord to collect revenue from villagers. was ssrparhe's old mother was also staying with them. They had a > — comfortable living. Shyamabandhu had only one child, the 10- Se old daughter Rebati who was very fond of learning. Without any formal education, she had managed to learn many/Odialbhajansjand had memorised lines from the holysBhagavata, With the helpofjherfather) fhe village hadone upper primary school where Basudey, a graduate of the Cuttack Normal school, was the only teacher. In the course of time, pasudev came closer to Shyamabandhu’s family. One day when Shvamabandhu came to know about a girls’ school in Cuttack, he fqjuested Basudey to teach “his ‘daughter. Basudev was really very eater that Rebati should be educated. So he readily agreed to Shyamabandhu’s pfoposal and Rebati’s lessons began) Within Wo, years, she managed. to learn the Odia alphabet and reading and writing. But soon followed the misfortune of Shyamabandhv’s family. Shyamabandhu and his wife died of cholera one after another. The landlord took away the land given to them for cultivation and their two bullocks were sold. The economy of thefamily collapsed, whatever belongings were left in the house were sold one after another. But Basudey, “— ; who by that time had been close to the amily'and had develo j ped an j ward to hel them in their dj : iol their distress. ve it, one day Basudev also s com nly, leaving Rebati nary aly alone and without any support apove (M8 ted — i es had already convinced oa r that all this happened because of Rebati’s education came reactio SUK Rebar nary and started abusing Rebati. After the death of food = = 7 mentallyiSo-broken that ultimateljSHenfelimll, gave Unbe, ted. Her grandmother too soon succumb 7 able shocks 5 ed tothe hyamabandhu’s family was thus completely, wiped Main.) ni . PIOt of the Story seemingly revolves around Rebati’s 216 | SUBHAMA Ne education, which was informal, involving home tuition Olly. Crit tried to rediscover it as the main driving force of the developmeny. ave story. Gfaiipurely superticial reading, they have promoted hs OF the ‘Rebati’ is all about female education and more Pointed 4 thay : — 5 : > GbE superstitions-concerning It prevalent in the then Odia society, Ratan Samantaray is one of the earliest exponents of this idea. In his Consider Phakirmohun wrote ‘Rebati’ on the basis of the grandmothers bing Sliperstitious apathy to femalé education. Subsequent crities and scholars have followed this line of approach almost dogmatically. But Contrary tg this approach, we find very fewpronouncements against female (Rebatis) education in the story and incidentally, these were by the grandmother who as a character, is very marginal to the main plot of the Sthry, Moreover, she has only reacted to Rebati’s education, nowhere has she opposedit.She has raised thelage-oldiquestion: What does it mean for a woman to be educated? Then towards the end of the story after experiencing the agony of the deaths of her son, daughter-in-law and Basudev, she considers Rebati’s education as responsible for all the misfortunes. Perhaps, had there not been such misfortunes, she would not have held Rebati’s education a culprit. So the argument for a blind, superstitious attitude towards female education as central to the story, cannot. belitaken far. Nor is Phakirmohun messianic of releasing womanhood from the bondage of ignorance and illiteracy. Had the author supported Rebati’s education, he would not have surrendered so silently to her misfortunes by allowing readers to conclude that these wert the consequences of her education @mthe other handjPhakinmohun 's silent on both Rebati’s education and reactions of the grandmother to her education. For ‘Rebati, the pro- and anti-female education debate i peripheral because the question of Rebati’s education is never central (0 eee Cakiomohun has spoken of her informal education as oe and empower Igger question of the time. This is about female x vel a oie while writing this storys wi or the British rule, — ees: of female education in Orissa vn aditio™ of women’s educati ir no doubt that he knew the historical tf The early Odi feomreanaaed ol "8 modern poet Banamali Das had given an accoun is really “Rewat’: Emp EMPoweRMenr, Ineiiry anp Feminisa | 217 the curriculum of woman education in his Chata Echchavati and how Echchavati mastered shastras, smritis, puranas and music. Another princess Parimala was also ee peed writing and ‘kavyas. We also know of anoble lady called Sivarani during the Ganga period (1078-1435) who is described as the ‘Kaliyuga Saraswat’ or the goddess of learning in the age of Kali. Though these are stray examples from history of Odia women excelling us education, we have strong evidence of efforts for female education in Orissa in the later part of the 19th century. As a result of Wood’s Despatch of 1854, Lord Harding's instruction for opening vernacular schools and Campbell’s education policy of 1873, modern education spread in the Orissa division. Separate girls’ schools were established in Cuttack, which received ‘grant’ from the government. So by the time Phakirmohun wrote and published ‘Rebati’ (1898), the educated middle class of Orissa, to which he himself belonged, had already been sensitised to woman’s education. ‘in plot 0 endow Rebati with an identity. But any question of identity of an individual or community immediately brings forth the tension of empowerment because identity per se implies a dichotomy of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and the division becomes meaningless unless ‘self’ is empowered to assert itself at an interactional level. Only an empowered ‘self’ can ‘think itself into difference. Otherwise, a weak, passive, emasculated ‘self’ will be either absorbed in or taken away by the more powerful ‘other. In the late 19th century colonial Orissa, the question of women’s identity was definitely a problematic issue because it involved not only socio-cultural but also economic considerations. But this is also the period when the question of Odia identity as a regional entity unfolded having political ramifications. The rise the great famine of 1866 and the was accompanied by a remarkable ly came to be manifested more a literature and the Jagannath gradually mostly in cultural terms, of an educated middle class, after language controversy of 1866-70, ‘Odia consciousness’ which ultimate! categorically in the form of identity in Odi cult. Yet, identity talk about Odia women was almost absent in any discourse. Women were still discriminated against as they fell victim to gender-related inequalities. In contemporary literature, their projection 218 | SUBHAKANTA BEHERA was that of sufferers and ultimate losers, succumbing to some fo divine determinism. Take for example, Phakirmohun’s ilu contemporary, Radhanath Roy (1848-1908) all of whose famous 2 such as ‘Kedara Gauri, “Chandrabhaga, ‘Parvati’ and ‘Nandikeswagi a tragic ending with the leading female character’s death, pethaps lad divinely-ordained. Even Phakirmohun’s other fiction like his sy Chhamana Athaguntha, Prayaschita, and short-stories like ‘Sab, Zamindar’ treat the female characters rather under the shadow of gen a disadvantages. In = view, it is es ali ‘wth an identity of her own, : Phakirmohun has first trie And what else could be a mi am using here the term power (which comes from woes Wa in the definition used by the famous specialist on women studies, Vina Mazumdar. Power is not a mode of domination over others but a sense of internal strength god confidence to face life, the right to determine own choices in life, the ability to influence the social processes that affect own life, and an influence on the direction of social change. This definition of power, when pened Le feminist perception could be ideally applied to the understan i ‘t her empowerment in the direction of gainingsidenti ad bee 10-year old girl of the Patapura village had her tuition Eater an years without any opposition. Even her grandmother marrying him he that she accepted the proposal of cos Basudev, After th ‘k Proposal infused a feeling of love in Rebat! “ used to be obse : ath cine parents, whenever she met Basudevs a other words, in he with him; thoughts of Basudev filled her heart. : strength an d a distress, her love, Basudev—the lover gave her a according to sy nce to face life. She could determine her choice- oo 'y reading of ‘Rebati’ is a result of Rebati’s wideniné ° tal horizon, which could be possible because of her education. srhough 00 exposed to western learning, the traditional Odia learning— jeces of Odia literature, Odia scriptures, etc—was potent enough mastelP e the world around her. So education for Rebati . This men io helP her to appreciat ilgrimage to understand and command her own life y be further illustrated by Shyamabandhu’s interest in his ducation. He initially took the pains to teach Rebati Odia ptures. Then when he learnt of a girls’ school in Cuttack, he became so inspired that he requested Basudev to teach Rebati regularly. hat do% it syrbKolise ia conspKvative>Xral tradition Sound sooxty? It symbolises his awareness and understanding of the fast-changing world to which one should adapt. Shyamabandhu, both as a father and a supporter of modern values, was eager that his daughter should have education. But at the same time, he was cautious in maintaining the unal-oral traditi Shyamabandhu represents that us emergent middle class of the late 19th century that holder of the traditional values and supporter of point ma gaughter’s e ‘phajans” and scrij comm| ion. In a sense, oup of conscio was both the up modernity, At the’ outset of the article, I have indicated the many-layered ings of ‘Rebati’ to readers. The most visible layer is, of course, that mRebati. But on deeper analysis, one finds that the sufferings areagaim gender-related Rebati had to face them because she was a girl. Her jsolation resulting in loneliness, poverty and hunger and even the abuse by the grandmother, all were ‘due’ to her because of ali social orden Since her gender-status in a highly conservative, commun: Rebati was a girl, she had to be co! walls of her house, she had to suffer in loneliness and she had no right to education: That is why when the misfortunes fell on the family one after another, the grandmother immediately tried 10 link them with Rebati’s education which had really started two years back. Ag a result, Rebati became inauspicious and fallen in of the grandmother, the custodian oF a conservative social syste™- Rebati had no th tevennet0 reachstouthe blame thrown-on-her. More | was the use of words by the , the grandmother to address Rebati ‘Towar the words ‘fire replace’ for Re ati, standmother repeal implying that she was the source of all destruction. Like fire in a fireplace, meant of sufferings inflict€d 0 220 | SUBHAKANTA DEHERA she burnt down the Shyamabandhu’s family to ashes, Rebaff victim of such psychological souure and abuses because she inh inequalities and discrimination, being born as a girl in tt conservative Odia society. nal, The tragic consequences of Rebati’s life are symbolic oppressive, conservative and nina social order, predominantly male-dominated society where women hi many a gender-related disadvantage. Rebati was a victim of this trusty hence in my opinion her initial empowerment could not Withstang the @unitervailing force ofpher disadvantageous gender-related POSition i, society. It ultimately prevented her to have an identity” of her Own, ‘The concern for identity in “Rebati” brings forth the question of feminism and in D& opidfon, this is one of the first modern discourses in Odia on feminism though in a disguised form. First by trying to locate the cause of the precarious condition of Rebati in the given social conditions, Phakirmohun suggests changes in the existing social arrangements. If one subjects ‘Rebati’ to a critical appraisal within the contemporary socio-cultural context, it becomes clear that Phakirmohun is concerned with the identity of Rebati and by extension, of Odia womanhood, and that in the dismal social milieu of Orissa, it was almost impossible for them to have a separate identity. Only by getting their ‘due’ identity, according to a feminist Perspective, their social status could improve because once aware of their rights and potentials, they could manipulate surrounding social variables to their advantage. For example, in a hypothetical scenario in the story, had Rebati been allowed formal education and finally united with her lover Basudev who was really a source of comfort and solace to her in distress, Rebati could have managed to influence the social change to her advantages. Why did Phakirmohun not allow thig? As a social realist, knowing whan Pa ci ethos very well, he did not dare to endow Rebati mass Eames ‘va, racy uh aoe later halfot the th 2 Very restricted and not. . nal

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