Interview With Indumati Patankar
This interview transcript was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-20, 1984)
These are excerpts from a taperecorded interview in Hindi with Indumati Patankar, a freedom fighter from Maharashtra. She lives in Kasegaon, and is one of the few women who continue to be politically active even at this age. Indumati’s early life was integrally intertwined with the freedom struggle as it filtered down to the villages of western Maharashtra. Here she tells the story of how she got involved in the movement and how her own life as a woman changed radically as a result of that involvement. She comes from the maratha community which is the dominant peasant community of Maharashtra. The maratha peasantry have been among the chief beneficiaries of the prosperity that has come to this region of Maharashtra as a result of what is commonly referred to as the ‘green revolution.’ Yet this community is one of the major citadels of social conservatism, especially as regards women’s situation and their role in family and society. Coming from such a background, Indumati stands as a challenge to that whole culture of women’s oppression and confinement. In this interview, she tells the story of her own life through the years of the freedom movement and after. It is also an account of what the movement looked like when viewed from below—from the village level upwards. In translating her account, I have tried to stay as close as possible to her words and the spirit behind them.