Urmila Pawar

Urmila Pawar (born 1945) is a female Indian writer, who writes in the Marathi language an Indian language . According to Dharmarajan her work as a writer reflects her experiences of the difficulties of being a woman and a Dalit, according to her Pawar's "frank and direct" style has made her controversial.[1]

Biography

Pawar was born in the Konkan region of the Indian state of Maharashtra, she was born in a Hindu Mahar family, belonging to a community that traditionally weaved bamboo baskets. She has a Master of Arts in Marathi literature. She retired as an employee of the Public Works Department of the state of Maharashtra. She won the Laxmibai Tilak award for the best published autobiography given by the Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, for Aaidan.[2] Like other members of her community she converted to Buddhism following Ambedkar's conversion in 1956.[3]

Mahad satyagraha and inter-dining

She mentions in her autobiography Aaidan that her father neither participated in the Mahad satyagraha organised by Ambedkar nor inter-dining arranged by Savarkar, though her elder sister Shantiakka she recalls often missed school to attend the inter-dining lured by sweet delicacies served there.[2]

Aaidan (The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs)

Aaidan her autobiography written in Marathi has been translated into English and titled as The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs. In her foreword to the English translation, Wandana Sonalkar writes that the title of the book The Weave is a metaphor of the writing technique employed by Pawar, "the lives of different members of her family, her husband's family, her neighbours and classmates, are woven together in a narrative that gradually reveals different aspects of the everyday life of Dalits, the manifold ways in which caste asserts itself and grinds them down"[3]

References

  1. ↑ Geeta Dharmarajan (2004). Separate journeys: short stories by contemporary Indian women. Univ of South Carolina Press. p. 126. ISBN 978-1-57003-551-7. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
  2. 1 2 Sharmila Rege (2 July 2006). Writing caste, writing gender: reading Dalit women's testimonios. Zubaan. pp. 256–265. ISBN 978-81-89013-01-1. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
  3. 1 2 Urmilā Pavāra (June 2009). The weave of my life: a Dalit woman's memoirs. Columbia University Press. pp. xv–xviii. ISBN 978-0-231-14900-6. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
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