Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
from her husband. She has to undergo terrible psychological crisis while taking the right decision
and following the path of her husband. These life experiences and urge for expression made her
autobiography interesting. At another hand Baby Kamble was born and grown up as a Mahar
girl. She has witnessed and suffered to be a Mahar. Her life experiences are interesting because
they are the sagas of sufferings and revolution when the untouchables changed the religion for
emancipation. Her autobiography claims to be probably the first autobiography by a Dalit
woman not only in Marathi but in any Indian language.
These two autobiographies have difference in their intensions, inner arguments, and
grounds for complexities. The aim of this paper is to compare these two totally different
autobiographies. Let’s see the difference in more elaborate way. These two women
autobiographies from Maharashtra belong to the same century but the authors have completely
different perspectives for their lives. The major difference is that the author of the former
belongs to upper caste Brahmin family converted to Christianity whereas the author of the later
belongs to Mahar caste family converted to Buddhism.
Laxmibai Tilak has followed her husband in his every adversity. She got married at age
12 th with Rv. Tilak. He was intelligent as well as whimsical by nature. Her social condition was
quiet problematic when she was treated in a different way by relatives after Rv. Tilak’s
conversion to Christianity. It is an interesting journey in her life up to the time when she herself
realized the humanistic approach of Christian religion and got converted. But in this case the
moral obligation of a Hindu wife i.e. to follow the husband has much in force. So after the death
of her husband when she started to feel lonely, her son Devdatta asked her to write the biography
of Rv. Tilak to memories the past. She composed those memories and they become the
testimonials of her autobiography i.e. I Follow After. Baby Kamble is an activist of Ambedkar
Movement. She is aware of the oppressions under which the Dalit community people have to
suffer. She is proud of to be a Mahar community woman. She asserts herself as a real inhabitant
of the land which is named after their caste i.e. land for Mahar is Maharashtra. But as true
activist she is upset by the social condition of her community people, she wants to orient them,
she wants to introduce the new generation with the life of Dalit during the last fifty years. This is
her intension behind the autobiography so it is the history of her community people rather than
the routine description of the author’s family matters.
“In one sense it is more of a socio-biography rather than an autobiography.”
We can say that Laxmibai Tilak has different intension to memories the past in the silent
days of life for the sake of time pass. But on the contrary Baby Kamble, as an honest activist in
the caste struggle wants the next generation should forget the legacy of sufferings through which
their generations passed.
Another difference which stands for an aspect of orthodox society is that Devdatta
himself gives open access to Laxmibai Tilak and encourages her to write though writing was a
challenge for her. But Baby Kamble has to hide her composition for twenty years up to the time
when it was published accidently in Stree.
The next point of difference about I Follow After is that it is composed under the
masculine influence. As it has been mentioned above that it was an effort of Laxmibai Tilak to
write the biography of Rv. Tilak, so that she composed his memories. But those memories were
none other than her entanglement with her husband to the extent that it becomes her
autobiography. If Devdatta would have asked her to write of her autobiography then there would
have been no different material than she had produced under the title I Follow After. She is
always presented as meek, substitute and a true Hindu wife in each and every memorable
Vol. II. Issue. III 260 September 2011