Chapter-IV Writing Differences: J. B. Kripalani and Sucheta Kripalani Jiwantram Bhagwandas Kripalani (1888-1982), popularly called Acharya Kripa1ani, was a professor at Banaras Hindu University. However he left the university in 1920 to join the Non-cooperation Movement. He served as Principal of Gujarat Vidyapeeth until 1927 and was thus called Acharya Kripalani. He was the General Secretary of Congress from 1934 to 1945. Kripalani was arrested in 1942 for his part in Quit India Movement and released in 1945. The following year he was elected President of the Indian National Congress. He finished his autobiography My Times: An Autobiography (1982) two months before his death. He began writi.ng it when he was past eighty-four and worked on it off and on for nearly ten years. The autobiography runs into 946 pages excluding the two Appendices, the Afterword and the Index. Sucheta, his wife, was among the people who helped Kripalani in the preparation of the book. She died before it was published. Kripalani devotes the dozen pages of the Appendix- II exclusively to her. Sucheta Kripalani was an Indian freedom fighter and the first woman to be elected Chief Minister of a state in India. She was one of the few women who were elected to the Constituent Assembly and authored the Indian Constitution. She married Acharya Kripalani in 1936. Khushwant Singh persuaded Sucheta to write her memoirs for the Illustrated Weekly of India. This is how she began to work on her autobiography. Sucheta: An Unfinished Autobiography ( 1978), published by the
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Chapter-IV
Writing Differences: J. B. Kripalani
and Sucheta Kripalani
Jiwantram Bhagwandas Kripalani (1888-1982), popularly called Acharya
Kripa1ani, was a professor at Banaras Hindu University. However he left the
university in 1920 to join the Non-cooperation Movement. He served as Principal of
Gujarat Vidyapeeth until 1927 and was thus called Acharya Kripalani. He was the
General Secretary of Congress from 1934 to 1945. Kripalani was arrested in 1942 for
his part in Quit India Movement and released in 1945. The following year he was
elected President of the Indian National Congress. He finished his autobiography My
Times: An Autobiography (1982) two months before his death. He began writi.ng it
when he was past eighty-four and worked on it off and on for nearly ten years. The
autobiography runs into 946 pages excluding the two Appendices, the Afterword and
the Index. Sucheta, his wife, was among the people who helped Kripalani in the
preparation of the book. She died before it was published. Kripalani devotes the dozen
pages of the Appendix- II exclusively to her.
Sucheta Kripalani was an Indian freedom fighter and the first woman to be
elected Chief Minister of a state in India. She was one of the few women who were
elected to the Constituent Assembly and authored the Indian Constitution. She
married Acharya Kripalani in 1936. Khushwant Singh persuaded Sucheta to write her
memoirs for the Illustrated Weekly of India. This is how she began to work on her
autobiography. Sucheta: An Unfinished Autobiography ( 1978), published by the
Navjivan Publishing House in 1978, is a volume of 250 pages without the index.
However, the first sixty pages comprise the actual text of Sucheta's "unfinished
autobiography." The rest of the text is a collection of her speeches, talks, articles, and
letters along with a record of her political activities and obituary messages on her
death by different contributors.
The pattern of this chapter is the same as the earlier chapter. The writing
differences in male/female autobiography are highlighted through the eight subtitles:
association, dissociation; personal, public; self-conscious, self-confident and
fragmented, structured. The first of the pairs again stand for male traits while the latter
for the female.
Association
Unlike her husband, Sucheta seeks individuation in association with others in
An Unfinished Autobiography. Like Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Sucheta associates with
parents, friends, fellow workers, Acharya Kripalani and even with the refugees who
came from Pakistan to India after the partition of the country. For Sucheta
individuation lies in association while for Acharya Kripalani it lies in dissociation.
As a child, Sucheta associates with her mother, father and sister. She
elaborately discusses her childhood. Her childhood days were happy and carefree. Her
father, Surendra Nath Mazumdar, came from an old Brahmo family. They were a
large family of nine brothers and sisters. Sucheta admits that while her father was
indulgent to his children, her mother was strict. The mother was herself very hard
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working and she made the children also work. This description of her childhood gives
us an impression of a very strong emotional bonding among the family and of how
Sucheta seeks individuation through association with her family:
In the evenings, mother gathered her children round her for a hymn
and a short prayer, suited for the children. In this we followed the true
Brahmo tradition. I am sorry that by the time we reached college,
somehow or the other, the evening prayer had been discontinued.
Mother was a good singer with a rich, melodious voice. In the
evenings, when my parents had no outside engagements, we would all
sing together, mother playing the organ. Even when still in my teens, I
would take mother's place when she was not there. I was fond of music
and singing. My youngest sister had the sweetest voice in the family.
She went to Santiniketan to get trained in music. (Kripalani, Sucheta:
5)
Sucheta also associates with her elder sister Sulekha. Sulekha was only a year
and a half older to her and was a bright student in her class. Sucheta acknowledges
that her sister tried to give her whatever protection she could. She further states that
they were close friends, however, that did not stop them from having occasional bouts
of fight. Both the sisters appeared for their matriculation examination in the same
year. They were both very fond of books. Sucheta relates an embarrassing incident
regarding the visit of the Prince of Wales to Delhi after the Jallianwalabag massacre.
The girls from their school were taken to stand near the Kudsia Garden to honour the
Prince of Wales. She and her sister were outraged at the idea of going out to honour
him but could not pick up sufficient courage to refuse to do so:
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In our three years' stay in Queen Mary's, an incident occurred of
which I was ashamed for a long time. Towards the end of 1920, the
Prince of Wales was visiting Delhi. The girls from our school were
taken to stand near the Kudsia Garden on the Alipur Road in his
honour. Since the Jallianwalabagh massacre, my family had become
extra-patriotic, though father did not give up his service. We took a
good deal of interest in the political movement. Sulekha and myself
were, therefore, outraged at the idea of going out to honour the Prince
of Wales but we did'not pick up sufficient courage to refuse to do so.
After reaching the garden, in the confusion we two made ourselves
scarce and sat behind a bush till the whole thing was over and then
joined the girls to walk back to the school. But this did not absolve our
conscience of a feeling of shame. We both felt very small because of
our own cowardice. (Kripalani, Sucheta: 7)
Sulekha, however, died of rheumatic fever and heart trouble at a very young
age. This was the first death in the family and they all deeply grieved her death.
Sucheta associates herself also with her teachers like Ms. Jarwood, Ms. Fenn,
and Mrs. Roy. Ms. Jarwood gave her a sound education, an awareness of the society
and the country, and her duties towards them. These teachers inculcated in her a
strong sense of social responsibility. Sucheta acknowledges her sense of gratitude
towards Mrs. Roy:
Mrs. Roy was a friend of the family and she offered to teach me. Till
then I had been considered as dull and slow-witted. But this lady seems
to have found in me an intelligent but a shy and timid child. She
praised and encouraged me. I soon came to like my studies and worked
hard at them. Then onwards, I steadily improved. After a few months,
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when I was sent to a boarding school in Allahabad, I was counted
among the top students of the class. (Kripalani, Sucheta: 6)
In a sharp contrast to Acharya Kripalani who constantly dissociates himself
from the others, including his spouse, Sucheta acknowledges the development of self
through 3;n intense association with others. She associates with Kripalani. She
appreciates the sharp intellect and rich scholarship of her husband. Kripalani advised
Sucheta not to degrade herself in whatever work she undertook, including politics.
She humbly admits that Kripalani had an indelible influence upon her:
1 was keen to start political work. I used to feel small before the
veteran jail-goers, as I had not graduated through jail life. Kripalani
was not too keen for me to enter politics. He wanted me to do any
work of my choice, not necessarily politics. Early in our life his advice
to me was that in whatever I did I should not degrade myself. In Hindi,
he said, "Apna daman saf Rakhna." I have remembered it over all these
years. He was not only my husband but also my political guide. Living
close to him, I imbibed, often unconsciously, his way of thinking, of
assessing situations, and even of public speaking. In the course of
years, I have developed my own style of speaking, writing, and
functioning, but his early influence has left an indelible impression on
me. (Kripalani, Sucheta: 24)
Among early women autobiographers looking upon the father/ husband as on
almighty God, Guru or mentor is very common. Maharani Sunity Devi of Cooch
Behar, Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, Maharani Vijayaraje Scindia ofGwalior- all
these royal women share this trait. So do other autobiographers like Lak.shmibai Tilak
who ca11s her autobiography I Follow After and thus gives out the relationship right in
the title; or Ramabai Ranade whose autobiography turns into an excellent document
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on man's contribution of empowennent of Indian woman through education. The
book gives a vivid description of Justice Ranade's highly focused attempt to empower
his young, illiterate bride Ramabai through literacy. The girl-bride's education begins
on the first night of their wedding while this unusual happening is being spied over by
eleven old widows of the family. A white teacher is employed to teach Ramabai
English. The classes are conducted outside the house and the bride is compelled to
take cold water bath fetching water from the well in the compound in Justice
Ranade's absence. The young bride suffers all this as she is scared of her husband and
looks upon him as a mentor; finally, attaining excellent command over English and
public speaking. She joins public activities, meets Ramabai Saraswati despite severe
opposition from the old women of the family- all this because her idealist, Gandhian
husband wants her to do this. Ramabai's success story closes with husband's death!
The same with Vijayaraje Scindia and Gayatri Devi who look upon their husbands as
their lords with whose deaths their lives lose meaning! While the fact is that all these
women achieve greater success after their husbands' passing away. The most
memorable and amusing example of this generation woman's reverence and
dedication to Pati/ Pita can be traced in Shudha Mazumdar's autobiography A Pattern
of Life ( 1977) wherein she is taught a mantra by her traditional mother to appease
Gods before doing anything that was not pennitted for girls in Hinduism at the
father's insistence. If the father wanted his girl to eat meat, which according to the
traditional Hindu belief was not to be done by a girl, the mother advised the child
Shudha not to displease the father by refusing the meat she could just recite a 'mantra'
in Sanskrit which meant "father is God, father is heaven, he is the almighty/ by
pleasing father one pleases gods and heaven." The girl Shudha learnt her mother's
traditional wisdom well and used the 'mantra' all her life to venture every single
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adventure not pennitted to woman by the patriarchy by replacing 'pita' by 'pati' after
her marriage.
Such instances of male supremacy as discussed in above paragraphs can be
interpreted as the by-products of the 'feminine' culture of these women in
Showalterian tenns. Showalter, the known gynocentric critic of the contemporary
academia defines three distinct phases ofwomen's development, namely 'feminine',
'feminist', and 'female' (1981 ). The feminine phase in her tenninology is a phase in
which woman accepts all the patriarchal values and imitates them in order to be
accepted. This is imitative, muted phase of the marginals' growth in the post-colonial
theory.
Sucheta further associates herself with Mahatma Gandhi and with women's
organizations in India and abroad. She points out that Indian women were more
fortunate than their counterparts in the West as they did not have to go through a bitter
struggle to secure their political rights. The Brahmo Samaj (in Bengal) and the Arya
Samaj (in Punjab) contributed greatly to the emancipation of women in India. Sunity
Devi who was the daughter of the Brahmo leader Keshab Chandra Sen, and Kamla
Devi Chattopadyay also discuss in their autobiographies at length how the Brahmo
Samaj and the Arya Samaj empowered Indian women. Mahatma Gandhi was a
staunch supporter of women's rights. In 1917 a deputation of women met Mr. Edwin
Montagu, the then Secretary of State for India, with a demand that women should be
allowed the same opportunities for representation in public life as men. By 1929,
women in India secured the right to vote in the pre-partition India. Sucheta also
explains that women in India demanded equality with men but not favour:
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Thus, a little thirty years after the first agitation for suffrage, women in
India secured equality of rights, an equality which women in the West
took a much longer time to secure. Throughout this movement for
emancipation, responsible women's organisations and women leaders
never tried to secure for themselves any special rights as distinguished
from, or opposed to, those of men. A distinctive feature of their
movement was emphasis on equality. They wanted freedom of
opportunity to work and asked for fair field and no favour. (Kripalani,
Sucheta: 183)
In An Unfinished Autobiography, Sucheta thus, seeks individuation through an
intense association with others. She associates with parents, friends, fellow workers,
and even with the refugees who came from Pakistan to India after the partition of the
subcontinent.
Dissociation
Kripalani's My Times: An Autobiography reiterates the male tradition of
autobiographical writing in the author's constant dissociation of himself from the
others. He considers himself a self-sustained entity and at the centre of the living
space. This dissociation is evident from his school days and college years. J. B.
Kripalani dissociates from his family and community:
After passing my M.A. examination, there was the question of my
future. I could not possibly remain in Sind. Given my radical political
views, I found it difficult to adapt myself to my community and family.
The difficulty was soon resolved. H. L. Chablani had applied for a
professor's post in the Greer Bhumihar Brahman College at
Muzatfarpur. Given his qualifications he was immediately appointed
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professor of economics. Soon after taking it up, he wrote to me that
there was a vacancy in his college in the history department, and that if
I applied for it, I might get it. (Kripalani, J. B: 35)
Kripalani was the first political worker to come in contact with the Mahatma
after the latter's return from South Africa (Introduction). Gandhi exercised a great
influence on the masses as well as the stalwarts of the Congress organization. In
political and personal matters, people sought his guidance. Kripalani, however,
dissociates himself from the Mahatma and states clearly that he never consulted
Gandhi on personal matters. In the years, preceding the independence of India from
the British rule, Gandhi was like an uncrowned king. His ideas and wishes were
respected almost unquestionably. People, great or small, emulated his behaviour in
public and private life - from the wearing of 'khaddar' to the observing of
purificatory fasts. Kripalani disassociates himself from the Mahatma as regards to the
observation of fasts in order to reform people or to improve the affairs of the nation.
He decided not to undertake fasts on medical grounds:
Those days I suffered from piles, the fast aggravating the condition.
After that experience, I decided never to undertake a fast for any cause
except between meals or when food was denied to me! I have always
felt that fasting for the sins of others or, to reform them, or to improve
the affairs of the nation should be better left to the Mahatma. Ordinary
mortals discharging the duties of citizens need not indulge in this
virtue! (Kripalani, J. B: 112)
In My Times: An Autobiography, Kripalani gives numerous instances of his
disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi and other eminent political leaders like