bybyInternational Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
To commemorate this important day UDAYAN celebrated the history, the achievements, and the lives of the women of India through dance, music and poetry.
Women in Indian Classical dance
For centuries, Indian women have been writing about intimate experiences of love, marriage, sexuality and family relationships. Poetry-writing became a weapon in the hands of Indian women writers to fight against oppression. Women are confessional, disclosing their feelings, emotions and intimate experiences quite boldly and candidly. They value not only love, beauty, relationships, emotion, devotion and tender feelings but want to cross the patriarchal threshold in order to define themselves. Apart from the expression of a uniquely and powerfully realized feminine sensibility and quest for self and identity, what distinguishes most women writers from the contemporary male poets is their realistic attitude to life, sex and lust, and their frank autobiographical, vivid, candid and bold expression of such issues.
Mamata Bandyopadhyay celebrated the theme of 'Grassroots and Glass Ceilings' by presenting a few poems written by Indian women. She chose poems which are not necessarily the best-known in India but, according to her, their words spoke to her and demonstrated the many ways in which women write about their experiences, thoughts and lives. These is only a very small sample of the vast number of women poets and their work. She chose mostly contemporary writers - there are many older women who have written powerful poems - but there was no time to do justice to them all. Most of the poets chosen are or have been academics and they have all also published works of fiction, essays, auto/biographies. Some of these were written in English and some in different Indian languages and later translated either by the authors themselves or by someone else.
Read more about poets from India and their work.