E-Kantipur

Social scientist Dr. Prabha Kaini’s debut novel Anaabrit is perhaps the first Nepali prose to dwell solely on the rampant gender inequality in our society. It is a big departure in Nepal’s literary history too in terms of the boldness exuded by the main character of the novel, Pabitra. She likes to speak her heart out and is a strong voice against unequal treatment of women.

As a well recognised social scientist, Kaini has instilled the social insights gathered during her career as teacher and social activist in the literary work. For this reason, her novel qualifies more as a working paper on gender equality than a mere fiction. She obviously has chosen the fiction mode to narrate her findings in a non-technical way. But revelations herein are no less exciting.

The novel’s backdrop is the socio-cultural atmosphere of the near-western hills of Nepal. The old values, traditions, rituals and hypocrisies engulfing a typical Brahmin family, and the suffering of the women in that context, are vividly sketched. But the pathetic situation of women portrayed in the plot reflects the realities that existed some three to four decades ago.

The story, told in first person through the novel’s protagonist Pabitra, is painfully realistic. It is representative of the turning points in the life of any Nepali woman. But the difference is the protagonist who acts on her conscience and chooses to protest against the archaic, male-chauvinistic and custom-laden humiliations meted out to women.

Although Pabitra agrees to marry the boy chosen by her parents, she later boldly confesses to her husband that she had a beloved who still loves her. Undoubtedly, the novel has throughout advocated the cause of gender equality and social justice for women, but has done so in a highly-dignified tone without using platitude and sloganeering like ‘revolt against male domination,’ ‘fight for equality’ or ‘women’s rights’ and the likes.

The author’s comprehensive observations are revealing, though also grotesque. The following statement highlights the pervasiveness of humiliations handed down to Nepali women through generations. ‘Ask your mother, grandmother, aunt, niece or any other elderly women of your own house, they are at some or other point of time must have been labelled as witches..... With very few exceptions, all women are alleged as witch, infidel or exhibitionist by non other than their own fathers, husbands and even sons.’(page 22-23)

One of the most interesting features of this novel is its departure from melodrama. Pabitra, even while living separately from her husband, openly refuses to reunite with her ex-lover Umesh through wedlock. She sees the same male character traits in a different body—dominating, possessive and keen to subsume the existence of woman within his existence. The struggles of Pabitra and her refusals to succumb to unreasonable social pressures and expectations that force only women but not their male counterparts to sacrifice in the interest of family or social prestige help bring diverse issues that the present gender equality movement needs to address to the fore.

But, interestingly, for all these ills, the novelist has not held any single male character responsible. She instead blames the entire process of Nepal’s cultural evolution which, over a period of time, consolidated the social bigotry that both males and females started to observe as inviolable rules of our day-to-day life.

The novel has two glaring gaps. The first: it has failed to present the currently emerging perspective that, with greater access to education and communication, the sense of gender parity particularly among males is growing fast. The fact that women deserve no less respect and role is largely recognised both socially and legally. There are surely millions of benevolent male souls who sincerely want an equally respectable position for woman in the society and are also working towards that end.

Second, it is her real humility that the novelist desists from advocating for a ‘revolution’ or ‘revolt’ to change the situation for women for the better, but she has also failed to present an ideal model to award equal status to women in our society. This indeed is the failure of Kaini not only as a novelist but also a social scientist.

Two forewords written by Dr. Govinda Bhattarai and Dr. Gyanu Pande hardly add any value to the book. The polemics of Bhattarai are trite and he must have used them for dozens of books with little modification. Pande’s implicit claim that she is selective about writing such forewords but has ‘generously’ done it for this book hardly matches her literary height.

Despite choosing a bold and relatively fresh subject, Kaini apparently has not put in adequate efforts to avoid insipidity of the language. The reader is compelled to be content with the theme sans the aesthetic pleasure that is normally expected from any literary or art work.  However, the choice of title, which means ‘uncovered’, is suitable as the novel has intelligibly and successfully unveiled the ignored aspects of gender-based injustice and inequality.

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