 Let me begin by saying that Maitali Sivaramal was a much loved, well-known, well-regarded, well-respective activist for people's rights in Tamil Nadu. She was a full-time worker of the Communist Party of India, Marxist, who had played a very important role in both trade union movements, worker struggles and women's movements in the state of Tamil Nadu and nationally as well. Maitali led four decades, about 40 years, of a politically active life in public life from 1968 to about 2007-2008. In the course of these four decades, she consistently raised a powerful, clear, cogent voice against capitalism, against patriarchy and against caste oppression. So I want to, this is just by way of a very brief introduction, I also want to add the rider that whatever I say today, whatever I end up saying, I cannot possibly do justice. I cannot compress or condense the range or the breadth of her work for Maitali was an activist, an intellectual, a writer and thinker, and an organiser, a grassroots organiser. Such was the range of her work. I want to also reflect on this moment that has brought us together. I see this truly as an extraordinary moment, her passing has triggered a collective grief. I have, what I mean by that, I have for instance personally received hundreds of messages from friends, from comrades, from those who have worked with her, who have known her, who have read her writings, many of whom, in fact almost all of whom have told me that they see it as a personal loss, they feel her passing as pain, the way I feel her passing as pain. So I'm not the only one who is sleepless or haunted or feeling bereft at this moment. I recognize that this is a collective outpouring of grief and that makes it a truly extraordinary moment that I do want to reflect on for a minute here. It has also been, I'm happy, very happy to note, a renewed interest in her work, her writings, her words, in her books, in her videos, in videos of her interviews, in her voice. Something I have been observing and friends have pointed out to me over the last few days is how Twitter constantly has this hashtag, comrade Maitili, C-O-M, not the full comrade, C-O-M, Maitili spelt at the end with an I for some reason because she always spelt her name with a Y. Twitter also has Maitili Sivaraman as another hashtag. So, but you know, this doesn't surprise me because I always knew that Maitili was a blazing, radiant star. Strangely though, she never quite knew it herself. So having said that, I want to, in the course of this, the 40 minutes that I will take talking to you, what I will do is to introduce you to, so who was Maitili and how did she come to be who she became? What attracted her? What drew her to people's movements and activism? You know, all of us have a journey to find a meaning in our lives, right? What was her journey and where did it take her? I want to also say this to you like a story, like a narrative. I want to show you the turning points that made her who she became, right? So I think I will end up focusing really on her on the first 10 to 15 years of her activist life. And I'm sure Konrad Sudha will take us through many other important landmark moments and thoughts and influences of Maitili. So I think my focus will be from say perhaps 1968 to about 1978-80 during that period. I also think it's important because as young people in the SFI unit and other young people who may be listening to us, you're also looking for meaning, right? In life, you're looking for purpose. You're looking for a passion. So maybe something I say about Maitili may strike a chord and inspire you in some way. And I will also say something about her personal life and her family life because I can I was witness to it being her daughter. So let me begin by saying that Maitili came from a middle class Brahmin family. She was born into this family in 1939. So that's about seven years before independence. And she was the last of five children. Her father was a mechanical engineer in Chennai Corporation who rose in the ranks from being a workshop superintendent. He came from a lower middle class, quite a poor family, economically poor family. But because of his stable job, Sivaraman, so her last name, her surname is Maitili Sivaraman. She she that's her father's name. As she told somebody when she got married, who asked her, why don't you change your name? She said, because I see no reason to. Right? So, Sivaraman, therefore, he came from a lower middle class family. But because of his stable job in Chennai Corporation, he provided for his children when Maitili's mother had only had six years in school, right? From the age of 10 to 16 years when she was withdrawn from school. So just about six years to be married off. She had to quit even before she could complete class nine. And Maitili's grandmother, so her mother's mother, her maternal grandmother never went to school, right? She had no schooling to speak of. But both women, both Maitili's mother and Maitili's grandmother were voracious readers. So they were self taught. They had a passionate desire for knowledge and to cultivate a life of the mind, something that is forbidden to women that was forbidden to women from traditional Orthodox Brahmin families of that age of that era in history. As a young girl, Maitili reacted always to the social world around her. So something that was a characteristic of Maitili was to react always to the social circumstances around her. Poverty, the poverty that she saw, not in her family, like I said, but around her in society impacted Maitili deeply as a child. It disturbed her. She had said in an interview, if she saw a woman begging with a child, she would be unable to bear it, would make her both angry and immensely sad. If a classmate could not pay her fee in school, she would bring her home and force her own mother to fork out the money for her. Equally, Maitili as a young girl did have questions about the status of women and girls in society. And that came and I think it does for many, many young women. So Maitili was perhaps not unusual in that respect from watching the division of labor in our own families. As one of five children, the brothers, the kind of responsibilities that brothers had, that brothers did not have, that sisters had, etc. Always Maitili asked the question, why? Why is it a woman's job to do this? So interestingly then, Maitili sharpened her critique of conventional family life or of what passes for conjugality by observing her own family. So that's where it begins usually. What Maitili learned when she observed her own family was that women could find married life empty and without meaning. She saw this from the example of her mother and her grandmother, where for both of them marriage did not mean companionship. In fact, I must say that Maitili had in particular an unusual grandmother who did not care for family life or who could not find happiness in traditional conventional conjugal life. The life of home, of children, of family, the life that a woman was fated to have. Maitili writes in her book later about her grandmother that she had a grandmother who liked the company of books more than she liked the company of her grandchildren. But therefore, Maitili's grandmother was regarded by those around her as somewhat unhinged, eccentric and perhaps even somewhat slightly off. Much later in life, Maitili in fact wrote a book about her grandmother's life, retrieving the life of a woman, a very ordinary woman, lived mostly in shadows and silences. I hope some of you have seen this book. It's called Fragments of a Life, a Family Archive. This was published by the feminist publisher Zuban in the year 2005. And this book is the outcome of Maitili's quest after Maitili had become a feminist and a voice in the women's movement. Maitili researched her her own family archive and published this book. So this is just to give you a sense of that. So early in life then, Maitili was driven by a certain quest, one might say a certain restlessness. What gives life meaning? No, the question that I think haunts all of us in some ways. But Maitili, I must say, was also academically brilliant. So when she did her BA honours in political science in the Presidency College of Madras, she taught the university that year. She got the Candidth Medal in 1959. The Candidth Medal is given to students who taught the university, Madras University in political science in the Department of Political Science. She gets the Candidth Medal and the Gold Medal. And interestingly, this is 1959, 1960, when she insists that she will not be married. She insists with her family, that is. She leads for Delhi in the year 1960 to the Indian Institute of Public Administration, IIPA, to do a master's diploma in public administration. So that was quite a prestigious diploma program then. A lot of IAS officers, for instance, would also be trained by the IIPA, the Indian Institute of Public Administration. Now we must see this as unusual for the times. Why do I say that? This is 1960. Maitili had an older sister who was six years older than Maitili, six and a half years. And who was married? Maitili's sister was married at the age of 19, even before she could complete her BA. She then completed it the following year after her marriage. But for the younger girl in the family, and this is interesting because you see the divergence, the trajectory within a family in the space of a couple of years. There is no marriage. Maitili completes her BA honours and she has the permission to leave for Delhi to get a master's diploma. Maitili's own personality, her own strong personality is also definitely part of the reason for this. As she consistently tells her family, don't do to me what you did to Aka, Aka as older sister. Meaning, don't get me married now, etc. I must study, I must be allowed to explore my own life. So in the IIPA, Maitili wins the Ashok Chanda Prize. This is once again a prize for academic excellence. And she returns to Madras in a year's time. Her dream is to leave to the US on a fellowship, on a scholarship to study. And she does this in 1963. Maitili goes to Syracuse University in New York State to do a master's program in public administration. Now, once again, I want to point out how unusual this is. The year is 1963. Here is Maitili 23 years of age. She's unmarried. She's single. She's not married and going with her husband. She's going by herself alone as a single woman on a fellowship, to study. Her father only pays for the airfare. The rest of it comes from the fellowship. So we must bear in mind the historical period as well. I remember Maitili telling me about the culture shock that she was exposed to because when she went to the US almost soon after when she joined Syracuse University, she had to also work to supplement her scholarship. So what was the work she did? She was a warden in the girl's hostel in which she was staying. She was made a warden. So she would say what this meant was that she had to often break up young students, meaning the girls and their who would be cuddling their boyfriends around curfew time. So there was a curfew time and there would be these young American couples, you know, necking, kissing, cuddling, and Maitili would have to sort of break them up and say curfew, curfew because she was the warden hostel and sent the girls into the hostel. And Maitili has obviously spoken about what initially the sort of the shock that this was to her system. But more importantly, what did America do to Maitili? It was the political climate of the US in the 1960s. There was the civil rights movement for equal citizenship for black citizens of America, the struggle to desegregate schools, buses, libraries, hotels, all public places. Then later, the Vietnam War and America's intervention in Vietnam War, which was a post by student protests that broke out across campuses in the US. Now these movements, then the anti Vietnam War struggles and the civil rights movement exposed Maitili to the truth of America, what America was to the rest of the world. Right? That phase she saw very vividly through the Vietnam War, through America's intervention in Vietnam, and what America did to its own disenfranchised black citizens. Right? So these years in the US politicised Maitili importantly. She then after her masters, she worked in the UN in the permanent mission of India to the United Nations. Now, what did she do that? She was part of the Committee for Decolonisation, 66 to 68, 1966 to 68. This was the period committee for decolonisation. We must remember 1960s was the period when many African countries won their independence from colonial overlords. Right? So Maitili would have to do a lot of background research and prepare statements on decolonisation for Indian delegates to the UN to deliver. She would have to do that background research and also make some and also make presentations herself in the UN as part of the permanent mission to the UN. So the influences on Maitili then think of these years, think of the heavy years of activism, of student organising in the US in the 1960s. Maitili was hearing on the one hand the speeches of Martin Luther King and then a little later the speeches, the more militant speeches of Malcolm X, the militant black leader. In fact, she has often told me that even before she returned to India, or by the time she came back to India, it was Malcolm X whose politics had become the more dominant vision within black politics in the US. And of course, Martin Luther King's assassination was another incident that shook up much of America then. Maitili had a group of friends with whom she discussed world politics, economic disparities, social justice and racism. And of course, revolutionary movements in Latin America and the opposition to imperialism think of Che Guevara. So how did Maitili then see America? Because of her experience in the United Nations as part of the Committee for Decolonisation, Maitili saw America as a bully country. Hence her anger, her deep-rooted anger against US imperialism. In fact, her older sister more than once has asked Maitili, why don't you just stay on in the US since you've studied there, you work there and earn there. And Maitili would always say, I have seen the US bully third world countries, arm twist third world countries, humiliate third world countries, even within the forums of the United Nations. The US is a bully country. Why should I stay there? So then Maitili then, it was I suppose almost inevitable then that Maitili should turn to Marxism and its vision of a new world order not founded on exploitation, but offering instead the prospect of emancipation of all humanity. So that was really the context in which Maitili reads Marxism and turns to Marxism and embraces Marxism. Now during this period, there is also something else that happens in Maitili's life and this strengthens her commitment to the socialist cause. So what happens is this, in June 1968, Maitili makes a secret visit to Cuba. The revolution then remember is about, the Cuban revolution is about a weekend old, it's about 10 years old when Maitili goes to visit Cuba in June 1968. Now Cuba is obviously America's enemy country right? So Maitili has to make it a stealthy visit. She goes to Mexico and then from Mexico she goes to Cuba and then back she returns to the US via Mexico. So far as the US is concerned, she has only gone to Mexico and back. That added leg of the journey from Mexico to Cuba is kept a secret from the US immigration authorities. And the way it happens is that when she returns from Cuba to Mexico, she doesn't board the usual flight because then it would be stamped on her passport. What they do, Cuban friends, is they put Maitili in a postal plane, a tiny plane which just carries post bags. So Maitili, postal bags and the pilot in a small postal plane fly back from Cuba to Mexico and then Maitili proceeds back to the US. So in Cuba, she met, Maitili met a wide spectrum of people and spent nearly three weeks traveling the length and breadth of Cuba. And she's written articles, she's written several papers about what moved her about Cuba, the Cuban revolution. One of those things is how everyone must engage in physical labour. Ministers, writers, artists, bureaucrats, whoever they may be, must engage in agricultural labour. This is also part of ramping up agricultural production in Cuba. But this is also, this was also a calculated strategy to break this hierarchy between mental labour and manual labour. And Maitili writes a piece in which he reflects on Cuba and Cuba's example in the context of the Gandhi's Centenary Year of 1968. Gandhi's Centenary Year of 1968 in which Maitili says, in which Maitili is reflecting on how manual labour in a caste society like India is so derogated and look at the the validation of manual labour in socialist Cuba. So Maitili starts to write her pieces then in 1967, 68 and starts to publish them. So she returns to work in India for social change. She's not exactly clear where she would like to work, what she would like to do. She had several options before her. One of them was the first JNU again. Interestingly, JNU is also a part of the story. The first vice-chancellor of JNU, G. Parthasarathi, who knew Maitili well when she was in the US, sends her a very fond affectionate letter inviting her to come to JNU and work in JNU, whatever it is you want to do. The doors of JNU are open to you, he writes in his letter to Maitili. So that's an offer she has to perhaps go to JNU and work there. Another offer is from the London School of Economics to do a PhD. So she gains entrance to the LSE to do a PhD but she doesn't get fellowship that year but she gets the entrance that year. So she has these options before her. So but she and then she has this idea that she must work for social change and she returns to India. So turning points, just notice turning points. The first thing she does is to go to Bihar to Bodh Gaya where she meets the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave, all of you know him, the land to the tiller through Gandhian mode and spends a couple of weeks in with the Vinoba Bhave in the ashram but that's not quite, that doesn't quite appeal to her completely as a permanent resolution to India's challenges or India's problems. It is around this period that in December 1968, when Maitili is attending the wedding of her brother, she hears about the infamous massacre that took place in Kirevandmani village of Tanjavur district in Tamil Nadu. When 44 agricultural labourers, Dalits, most of them women and children were burnt alive inside a small hut, which are to death. Maitili hears about it on the radio and decides that she must go there immediately. She's shocked, she's outraged, she decides she must go there immediately to understand what it is that has exactly happened. So within a week of the massacre, she reaches Kirevandmani. The Gandhian activist, the very respected Gandhian activist Krishna Marjananathan accompanies Maitili on her first visit to Kirevandmani less than a week after the massacre and then Maitili begins to study and understand what happened there and write about it. She writes in the mainstream, in the seminar, in the times of India, in pioneer, in the economic and political weekly and Maitili attacks the, in these pieces Maitili attacks the free press for its outright bias because the press, the so-called free press, seems to project the Kirevandmani incident as two groups of Kisans fighting with each other and the landlord sort of receiving into the background. Unfortunately, it's just Kisans fighting each other. There is no landlord really in the story but Maitili is debunking this popular construction of Kirevandmani massacre in the free media as she keeps sarcastically writing. She also interviews landlords who are part of the Pali Producers Association which is opposed to the red flag union of the workers and the landlords as she captures in her writing very clearly say that fellow who folded his hands before us now carries a flag. He wants to plant his flag in a public, in the public place, in the village. So therefore Maitili and they also say it's not so much the wage and therefore Maitili repeatedly makes this point that if we see, if we reduce Kirevandmani massacre to a wage dispute, we don't understand what is at stake because what is at stake is the independent political assertion of landless labor. They fight to march wearing the red flag to live without fear and to reclaim a politics of dignity. So it is the autonomous political organization of caste oppressed landless agricultural labor which is at stake in Kirevandmani and we know this because of Maitili's many writings that explore the context, the stories that place Kirevandmani and what happened and Maitili also shows us that this is not an isolated episode. What she does through her popular pieces for the press is that she links Kirevandmani and what happened there to the changing agrarian structure of Tanjavur district and to the changes fraught by the Green Revolution. So she also places it with respect to a political economic context showing us what those links are. The title of one of her papers is a one of her very powerfully written papers is called the rumblings of class struggle in Tanjavur and you can actually hear the rumblings of class struggle echo through her words when you read that piece which I hope you will do. So then Maitili contacts after the Kirevandmani incident she contacts the agricultural workers union of the CPIM who give her contacts very valuable local contacts to meet an interview in many villages in Tanjavur district. So she goes also to make a number of other villages apart from Kirevandmani and many of these writings are once again captured in her articles in which she is trying to understand agrarian unrest boiling over into anger. And this is a question that Maitili often asks in every village that she visits where she meets with the Kisan's who are revolting very often they are unable to fly the red flag because of a climate of terror induced by the landlords both political terror and economic tyranny because they are dependent on the landlords for their livelihoods. But Maitili keeps asking when will the red flag fly again in this village when will the red flag fly again. And one of their responses that she captures is we cannot from a Kisan we cannot do anything right now but deep in our hearts every one of us long to see the red flag in our street again how can we let it go. So my visual images of reading these pieces of Maitili are of this young woman who was finding her way politically and doing it by going into territory that was entirely unknown to her and seeking to make a connection seeking to tell a story and seeking to build an alliance with those who were revolting right. So there's one more thing I also want to point out here the biting anger when you read Maitili and I hope all of you will do this is the biting anger and sarcasm that comes through in Maitili's voice. She has a piece which is called gentleman killers of trade and money why does she write that because the Madras High Court in one of its judgment it acquits those who are held responsible the landlords so it doesn't convict them it acquits them right it acquits them and what it says we cannot believe that the landlords would have directly committed this crime they are wealthy men with owning vast tracts of land who own cars some of them to which Maitili writes well honourable justices of the high court you must know that gentleman farmers can also be gentleman killers and that's why that piece is called gentleman killers of trade and money it is hailed it was hailed then and continues to be as a classic in political writing but what does Maitili then coming back to our story of the turning points in Maitili's life so don't miss that what does Maitili learn from her visit to Kirven Mani and the other villages in Punjab that if the social change that she dreams of must happen there must be a fundamental change in the underlying political structures and economic structures there can be no social change without this underlying fundamental political and economic transformation this is what has been this was Maitili's important lesson she also meets VP Chintan a visionary Marxist leader who draws Maitili into the CPIM and Maitili during this period then you must we must know that Maitili also becomes in 1969 the editor of a journal called The Radical Review there's a group of left-minded young people in Ram of the Hindus one of them who start to meet in Madras I wasn't say Chennai now the older word was Madras who start to meet in Madras city who are bound together by a common politics by a shared vision and they produce a journal called The Radical Review and Maitili is the editor of the journal many of the pieces are authored by her so the Radical Review discusses what does it discuss it discusses left and student movements across the world it writes about its pieces are about the concerns of both industrial workers and agricultural workers both in Tamil Nadu as well as in other parts of the world it reports on anti-imperialist struggles in many parts of the world and this journal is produced from 1969 to April 1973 so just to give you a sense of what of the kind of writing that Maitili did for this one piece of hers is on the first BMK government right she's trying to understand the first BMK ministry government from a Marxist class perspective she's asking she's looking at what is its economic policy and she's unpacking it what is its industrial policy and she's looking at that she's looking at the election manifestos of the first BMK government and she's trying to show us very interestingly of how the BMK once it is in power is trying to remake itself as a law abiding middle class party at the same time it wants to project itself as a party of the common man uh but it's really not a working class party as Maitili shows right and she shows that by looking at how the BMK government handled and managed disputes between industrial workers and management that were then on the boil in Tamil Nadu how repressive its own union could be of workers struggles right so it's a very valuable then class um analysis of the class characteristics of a new party with promise right um that's one example for you another example is her writing for instance when she writes of the plantation industry in the Anumalai hills of Coimbatore she takes a wide sweeping view of the history of the industry from colonial times of labor capital relations from colonial times and traces it to the moment the present moment the present then being may 1972 to understand the dispute or let's say the the strike that breaks out um Maitili's writing both in English and Tamil was powerful she has a paper called Valparayan Birak Kaviyam in Tamil in English that means the heroic saga of Valparayan the saga of the workers that has also been hailed as a classic many now ask me can can I somehow find the copy of that I'm sure I have it I must look for it and I must give it to the to those who want to read it again and to republish it so remember words can move one to action right um so Maitili then had a command of those words that could move one to action um I must also say that Maitili's writings on caste during this period were absolutely important um on the one hand was her writing of the Cleveland money the massacre the agrarian unrest etc which is an explosion an explosion a caste class killing right an extreme violence in a caste class society that was one kind of writing but another kind of writing also interestingly that Maitili did was to look at the everyday life of normal caste society of village life right what was the normal what constituted the normal and Maitili shows for instance the divisions the the the varieties of labour of degraded menial labour that was expected of Dalits to perform she shows how caste operates in everyday life under the veneer of the everyday of normal and she shows how you understand very little of rural life if you take away caste hierarchies but you do not understand caste fully either if you do not see the structural denial of the right to own land the right to ownership of land that comes through very powerfully in her writings for instance in a piece on cartoon village um she produces a very moving petition written by landless Dalits right to the administration making a claim for over 15 years for Parambokh land or the village common land that has been denied to them in these writings she also captures the the more militant rising and anger among younger Dalits in the village who are somewhat impatient with older modes of struggling and are um eager and anxious to break out into newer modes of political organizing so she captures those dynamics of society in change of power and of the resistance to power so and I think that's many of her writings are in this collection haunted by fire this was published by the left word in the year 2013 or 2014 if you can all see the cover clearly I hope you can this is my plea this is her first visit to clear and money this was just a few days after the mass occur of December 1968 and here the air is Krishnamal Jagannathan the veteran Gandhian activist and leader who accompanied my plea event with her on that first visit to clear and me the book is available both these books fragments of a life if you would like to know more about her both these books are available you can buy them as ebooks etc so when I read my police collections and along with the historian and writer V. Eta many of you may know her Geeta and I had put together this collection of my police writings in this book haunted by fire something that struck both Geeta and me was the painstaking research that have gone into these articles into every one of them and now being an academic working in a university teaching students I can just see how much effort research requires and research of the very careful kind that might be undertook what astonishes me is that when my plea was carrying out this research she was also simultaneously an organizer and a rising trade union leader within the CITU right so she did not really have a university space from which like I don't know any research I do is from a comfortable university space I'm protected by that space I have the resources of that space but Mike Lee did not Mike Lee was a organizer and activist who was simultaneously documenting and writing about the movements that she was participating in and more importantly that she was leaving from the front okay so what do I mean by that in the early 1970s Madras city saw big labor strikes that shook up the city many of them turning violent okay in company after company like the MRF, Simpsons, Ashok Leyland, TBS, Metalbox there were massive strikes workers on the street protesting working conditions wages etc Mike Lee was often the president or the vice president of the CITU union of these companies of the workers okay so she was really leaving from the front during the years that she was writing her massive pieces for all these journals including the radical review so I want us to keep that in mind one of these struggles is not worthy the struggle of young women workers in a company called Tablets India a pharma company okay Mike Lee has talked about this struggle very movingly in an interview in which she says the daily wage used to be 2 rupees okay we fought that is Mike Lee and the CITU union fought for a 75 paisa increase to go from 2 rupees to 2 rupees 75 paisa they won it Mike Lee said we won it we made the workers permanent all through the years of those struggle they were all young girls most of the pharma company the Tablets India employees were all female it was a heavily feminized workforce so they were all young girls in a Pavada Chokka Pavada Chokka is a skirt and blouse right wearing a skirt and blouse and Mike Lee said through the struggle the girls grew and so did I right so Mike Lee also talks about coming of age through the through her participation in political movements another very important movement during this period was the struggle of quarry workers workers in the stone quarries in a place called Pallavaram in Chennai this was important Mike Lee says once again in this interview that those were the years of the emergency emergency when no strike was permitted anywhere no one struck work and yet quarry workers the most oppressed of the oppressed struck work for 40 days right I just want to add something last year February 2020 before corona before lockdown in that other world we used to know and have right that period I met the workers there was a small commemorative function and in honour of the workers of Pallavaram who had struck work during the emergency I went to meet them and many of them were in their 70s and even their 80s Mike Lee's age right and all of them remembered Mike Lee not a single one of them not a single one of the quarry workers of Pallavaram whom I met last year February 2020 had forgotten Mike Lee's name and they carried her memory enshrined in their hearts and that was a very moving experience for me um Mike Lee then went on to spend about 12 years from the early 1970s working very active with industrial trade unions one important dimension of her work was that she was instrumental in encouraging in strengthening what was called what came to be called the working women's coordination committee so what was this working women's coordination committee so this is the idea then was that women of all trade unions okay whatever trade union they belong to must come together as women because they shared common problems in the workplace as women right so whether it was postal department railways banks insurance etc the working women's coordination committee became an important focal point platform for uniting and mobilizing women workers in these companies around the most basic demands and rights as both workers and as women and Mike Lee was was was really a household name among the working women's coordination committee during this period um it was really towards the end of 1973 around September or so that the democratic women's association was set up in Tamil Nadu uh what you now know as the aid bar all indian democratic women's association was there it was being set up in different states right so it was called the Jananayagamada Sangam or the democratic women's association when it was set up around September of 1973 and uh along with Dwayne's like K.P. Janaki Ammal and Papa Omanat for both fierce and well known um uh leading lights in the left movement in Tamil Nadu Mike Lee was also one of the founding members of the democratic women's association right which as I said later then becomes the all india democratic women's association um now the thing about Mike Lee interestingly when I was growing up as a teenager is that people would often be confused about my mother's identity like some of them knew her as a writer because she consistently wrote in english and in Tamil uh she would write in the hindu uh in the indian express in the mainstream in front line in the mainstream newspapers she would write in a series of Tamil papers magazines periodicals she was constantly chronically whatever she was active in whichever movement whichever issue she engaged in she would chronicle it she would write it because write about it it's politics it's it's it's complexity right uh because that was her she was both the writer the thinker and the activist always no uh so many people did not know that she was a communist party full-time uh they didn't know she had an identity as a communist leader many people would ask me so your mother is Maitreya Sivaraman the writer you would say yeah correct and uh many people knew her as a women's movement leader because then she went on to build the aid bar also in Tamil Nadu uh and uh so they didn't know she was a trade union leader or she had been active with industrial unions right and that confusion I think was only natural no one was to be blamed because Maitreya was all of these things right she was the industrial organizer she was a women's movement organizer and the leader she was a writer many people thought she was a journalist she was a public figure and a public speaker um so one thing I would like to say about her work with the aid bar then in the 1980s and the 1990s the all India Democratic Women's Association was that Maitreya was instrumental in bringing together a coalition of women's organizations on the issue of violence against women so whenever there was an incident of violence against women Maitreya would play a lead role along with the aid bar in bringing together a number of other women's organizations many of them were in fact much far more middle class organizations many of them had a social work orientation they did not have a class mobilization orientation they had a social work orientation but what Maitreya did because of the force of her personality was to reach out to these organizations to the women's organizations and convince them persuade them work together with them convince them of the necessity to come to the streets of necessity you know there is even today this notion that if you were part of a more respectable organization of a more middle-class organization you won't be protesting on the streets no right but what Maitreya did was to break that to a large degree by drawing women and organizations that were more middle-class more social work in their orientation into street struggles as well by saying that this is an issue for which we need to march on the streets we need to gather in front of the collector's office district collector's office it is not enough to issue a statement it's not enough to hold a hall meeting and I remember a many years later I met through some of the contact the member of an organization called Monday charity club so women would come together largely brought together by charity work this is a quote from her if we got an invite to a meeting or a protest from Maitreya we could never say no okay my internet is unstable it says I hope it is stable now okay I hope my internet is stable in case I go offline let me know so what did she say she said if we got an invite from Maitreya we would never say no right because and see this was important I remember Bambri Devi's rape the rape and sexual assault of women of vachati tribal women of vachati then Maitreya's role in bringing together a number of other women's organization was instrumental was pivotal and see Maitreya then had the job of convincing the women that whoever is the wrongdoer you must confront it may not only be the husband of a woman it may be the state that is the wrongdoer it may be the police that is the wrongdoer it may be the forest department that is the perpetrator right whoever is the perpetrator meaning however powerful you must confront okay and I think she was able to do it through what I would call the force of her personality something that I would call soul force when someone speaks to you with all their heart and you see that it is genuine right and you see the beauty of their soul you are moved to action because it brings out the best in you right so that's at least how I understand it to this day um another important dimension of Maitreya's leadership and activism during this period in the 1990s was what happened in Madrasi then was the RSS began to organize these processions Vinayag Chaturthi Vinayag Chaturthi I think you understand what I mean Vinayag Chaturthi processions um taking the Vinayag I will through names specific deliberately through neighborhoods with a heavy Muslim population like say the streets of Triple K in order to form a communal unrest now we know this is RSS strategy tried and tested in many parts of the country so when this began what Maitreya would do would be to leverage these existing contacts with these middle class other women's organizations draw them into opposing this and in fact something she has often said at meetings and I've heard her say it at home as well is it is absolutely important that all women's organizations must oppose the RSS and communal politics especially those women who identify as Hindus right so do not let your faith be hijacked if you identify as a believing Hindu you must be outraged by what the RSS is trying to do in your name and you must say no to this so this was also a very important dimension to Maitreya's leadership of the aid bar and women's organizations in the 1990s and I'm sure there is much much more but Suda will lay that before you but before I wind up here I do want to say a little bit about Maitreya's family who did she meet who did she marry um through the radical review she met Karuna Karan an engineer in a private working in a private company now who was this Karuna Karan my father clearly so Karuna Karan had gone to the UK he was trained as an engineer he had gone to the UK he was sent by the company for a period of work and study right in the UK like Maitreya was in the US for a six year period between 1963 and 1968 Karuna Karan was in the UK for a two to three year period and in the UK he became a Marxist right and so see this is the interesting thing in the 60s and 70s when young people went to the UK and the US they were exposed to left politics and they became Marxists so when now they go to the UK and the US I don't know what they become right maybe they don't come back so come back to India I mean but it was very interesting that Karuna Karan this little bit of this trajectory where he also goes as a completely clueless young man to the UK on a period of work come study gets exposed to left politics and becomes a Marxist and then comes back to India he's still working with his private company but he wants to actively do something in social change and he's trying to reach out to the communist parties to the communist party CPI to the CPI M but not very successfully because then it used to be quite difficult to establish contact and win the trust of communist parties right so but he was still making his moves trying to sort of tentatively approach them he become a member could he contribute in one way or the other so this is happening in his life meanwhile his parents are trying to find him a suitable bride to get him married when one day he walks into a shop to buy I don't know something uh bananas or something and he sees the radical review he just sees a copy of the radical review in a small shop so then he looks at the radical review he's done he doesn't know that a magazine and I the radical review it was the first issue it had just started to come out remember this was the review that might be the the the journal that might be was editing so he sees the radical review he's amazed to find it and then he goes to the home he looks at the address he goes to the home of the editor and he meets his future wife so there's a movie on Maitili that the historian Uma Chakravatti has made in which Uma Chakravatti I'm sure all of you know her um Uma Chakravatti asks Karuna Karan right my father she says so Karuna Karan how did you meet Maitili and he says well I went looking for her because he didn't go looking for her he went looking for the address of the editor of the radical review because he was so desperately he was so relieved that there was a group of young left-thinking people in Madras they did exist and maybe he could get in touch with them um so uh they had they were married uh they had an intercast marriage um no ritual just an exchange of garlands uh with a very very few uh uh invitees uh with Maitili in her trademark cotton saree and no jewelry um and before they had married what they decided was that they would have this neat division of labor Karuna Karan would manage the family would have a job Maitili would be a full-time political worker and an actress and that division of labor was something they respected for all their working and adult lives now I want to say one thing here I have seen many families on the left where both the husband and the wife are comrades right and both are often leaders in public life with both respecting each other but it is very rare to see a man who is in the back seat my father was never a public figure or a celebrity he always had some job in a private company okay so the man so I'm now thinking talking of a situation where the man is in the back seat and the woman is the leader and he spends his life looking up to her adoring her and enabling her to be the blazing radiant star that she always was with no male ego to speak of I think that's pretty unusual okay in my view um my recollections of my home as a child growing up has been of my father welcoming young friends and comrades of my mother into our home often picking them up and dropping them off bus bus stand railway stations because people would be arriving and departing at all or hours of the day and night for meetings for conferences so he was always called down to go and escort somebody pick up somebody drop somebody which he would do um so I just want to end this therefore I've taken up a lot of time but I want to end this by on this personal note by saying what did it mean to me to have a feminist and communist mother I had a mother who was a feminist I had a mother who was a communist what did this mean it meant what were the images of my mother that I saw when I was growing up I saw her typing always my earliest recollection you know as a child what as a baby what is the sound you hear what is the first association of your mother that you have right for me my earliest memory of my mother was my mother's typewriter she would always be typing and then there was no computer right so it would make that clickity clack clickity clack kind of sound no so it's the sight of the typewriter and the sound of the typewriter that I associate with my mother my image of my mother is who is a mother a mother is one who speaks at public meetings she writes books okay she's always reading the newspaper and she's cutting out she's got a pair of scissors in her hand she would never read the newspaper without that scissors she would always be cutting out extracts and filing them for her many speeches and talks right preparing meticulously always for meetings and talks my idea of a family is one where comrades and friends drop in day and night I would often wake up in the morning sleepy going to the hall living room and find a young comrades sleeping who arrived sometime in the night maybe the middle of the night my idea of a mother is a woman who is in animated conversation who is the center of attraction surrounded by friends and comrades while listening to her even as she is debating with them right so those are my images of a mother that that is who a mother can be that's who my mother was I also saw an equally democratic relationship between my father and my mother that was filled with mutual respect and affection and I must say that this has shaped me today as much as the books I read or the politics that was discussed around me when I was growing up now the last thing absolute last thing I want to say you know we've you all heard this phrase no the accident of birth what does it mean the accident of birth is you don't get to choose into which family you are born right it's an accident obviously no and often people use the accident of birth to speak of inherited privileges right so for example during the period of corona age of corona it is the accident of birth that determined that decided who was standing on balconies and banging tallies and clapping who could do that who was watching Netflix within the comfort of their home that was accident of birth and who was walking miles and miles and dying of hunger and thirst the migrants that was also accident of birth it was the sheer accident of birth that determined these things didn't it right now the accident of birth for me has meant that I have had the great privilege the great blessing of being the daughter of being born the daughter of comrade mightily how this accident happened I can't explain but it has happened and I am immensely grateful for it I haven't been able to say very much about mightily as a mother in case you are interested those of you listening to me a piece I wrote a few years ago was carried by the news click okay so if you are interested you could look at the news click it's called my mother comrade mightily in which I explained this accident of birth and what it meant to me to a greater extent than I have been able to do today I want to end this with a quotation which I shared on Facebook just about two days ago so here is the quotation these are the lines by the writer Ursula K. Lagin and these lines struck me forcefully Ursula Lagin is writing about what is the revolution okay I read these lines for the first time several years ago now here is where the court begins she writes on the revolution you cannot take what you have not given and you must give yourself you cannot take what you have not given and you must give yourself you cannot buy the revolution you cannot make the revolution you can only be the revolution you can only be the revolution it is in your spirit or it is nowhere these are powerful lines no just listening to them in and of themselves but later I realized that these lines spoke to me so powerfully because they reminded me of my mother mightily was the revolution pure and simple she embodied its finest and fiercest spirit long live comrade mightily