Women’s Writing in Kannada: An Analysis of Select Writings of Sarah Aboobackar

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse one of the finest women writers of the Kannada literary world – Sarah Aboobackar. She belongs to the Beary community, a Muslim ethnic minority community, identified with the coastal regions of Karnataka and northern parts of Kerala. Sarah emerged on the Kannada literary scene in the 1980s. She is a gifted writer and has won much acclaim. Sarah is recognized as one of the major literary figures of the Bandaya period (Navyothara or post-modern in Kannada) and is considered one of the powerful voices in contemporary Kannada literature. She is important to the Kannada literary scene because she is the first Muslim writer to emerge in Kannada. The new vigour and energy that she brought into the Kannada context got her wide acclaim and she has been adorned with some of the very prestigious awards. Sarah’s writings are a door opened into the lives of people not only of Beary community, but that of coastal Karnataka. When she focuses on Beary community, she portrays the problems caused by practices like dowry, polygamy and instant divorce (talaq). Though the community lives in close proximity, many of the problems faced by the community were not known to the wider public. Sarah’s portrayal of her society gives a rare insight into the culture of an ethnic group, thereby providing an exceptional glimpse of the lived-in realities of a people living amidst us, more the reason to take up her writings for analysis. At a time when community relations are under duress in the Indian context, it becomes an issue of equivalent importance that Sarah be read and contextualised. The current research has research method inputs from Textual Analysis, Autobiography, Ethnographic Method, Quantitative Method, and Interviewing. Therefore, this research is a mix of qualitative and quantitative studies. The study merges both descriptive and exploratory approaches in order to provide a better understanding of literature and culture of the people of a region. Since the study is about the writings of a woman from an ethnic community, and since Sarah is an important female voice from Kannada literature, who is assertive on questions ofgender and identity, it becomes appropriate to consider the questions of feminist critical theory, and gender studies, apart from questions of Comparative Literature. Sarah's belongingness and indebtedness to the Kannada tradition is discussed. For a brief comparative study of Sarah Aboobackar, significant Muslim women writers like Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat Chugtai and Banu Musthaq, are selected who are known to be the outstanding voices emerging from the margins. In addition, since the researcher is working on Sarah Aboobackar from Kannada literature, it becomes essential to look at Translation studies and its relevance to Comparative studies. The qualitative part of the study attempts to analyze the writings of Sarah, apart from trying to understand the lived-in realities and culture of Beary community, represented through the literature of a region. It is believed that a text speaks of the lived-in experiences of the author and gives us a picture of his or her world. We look into her autobiographical writings and identify her distinction between the religious text and the interpretation of that text; we look at her fictional writings and look for patterns of representation and identify Sarah's contribution in crafting out a New Womanhood in her fiction. The quantitative study is exploratory in nature and is more limited than the qualitative part. The data collected using sections of Sarah’s readership is analyzed and interpreted, and the results obtained, not very surprisingly, shows that girls agree more with Sarah as a writer than boys do. This descriptive and exploratory research, it is expected, will throw up new questions in future, with a possibility of opening up new research areas.