| |
 |
THE RIVER CHURNING:
A PARTITION NOVEL
Jyotirmoyee Devi
Translated by Enakshi Chatterjee
Rs 150 Pb 2005
81-88965-24-3
|
|
Noakhali,
1946. In the wake of the first of the pre-Partition
communal riots, a young Hindu girl is given shelter
by her Muslim neighbours for several months. Her
father has been killed, her mother drowns herself
in the tank at the back of their house and her
sister disappeared. Young Sutara is eventually
re-united with her brothers in Calcutta, only
to find herself spurned by them and by the taboos
of orthodox Brahminism, by whose codes she is
forever ‘polluted’.
Written in 1947, Jyotirmoyee Devi’s novel
is a searing commentary on Partition itself, and
on history’s erasure of women from its annals.
It is also a powerful denunciation of patriarchy’s
hypocritical obsession with women’s sexual
purity. Sutara’s story is the Story of Woman
or the Stree Parva (The Woman Chapter) that the
author believes has never been written, because
all history is recorded by men.
|
|
JYOTIRMOYEE
DEVI
(b. 1894),
a tireless crusador for women’s rights,
rediscovered the world through her pen. Married
at 10, widowed at 26, with six young children,
she wrote throughout about marginal and oppressed
women. She is the author of several collections
of stories, essays and autobiographical writings.
|
 |
ENAKSHI
CHATTERJEE
is
a writer, translator and media critic. She
has translated a wide range of Bengali novels,
short stories and a book of poems. She has
written over 30 books. Her book Paramanu Jignasa
written jointly with her husband, Dr. Santimay,
won the 1974 Rabindra Puraskar from the Government
of West Bengal. |
|
|
