India’s Modern Meera

Often seen in her khadi sarees, writing in Khadi Boli was one of the four pillars of the Chhayavaadi era in Hindi literature. With bouts of anguish along with harsh realities, her poem was softly written exposing everything a woman felt throughout her life. A feminist writer who was dismissed too often with an uncompromising attitude towards her creative abilities Mahadevi Verma.

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“Don’t worry about men, just carry-on writing…never become a legend, because then they will never read you,”

Years ago, Govind Prasad Varma seemed to make a wish from the bottom of his heart saying he wanted a girl child and on 26th March 1907, the birth of Mahadevi Varma made his wish come true. What her progressive family didn’t know was that they were now raising up a girl who was growing up to become a riveting bullet in the face of a male-dominated Indian literary world. They sowed the right seeds given that they were liberal but did trample on a mistake later.

Varma’s father was a sceptic and western-educated school teacher who prioritized his daughter’s education and wanted her to excel in Urdu and Farsi. Her mother on the other hand was a traditionalist who sparked up the interest of Sanskrit and Hindi in her as Varma grew up listening to the tales of Panchtantra. Their one mistake however was to get Varma married at the age of nine.

Mahadevi Varma earlier studied from home but later changed to Crosthwaite Girls College in Allahabad. Crosthwaite became the place where she met the famous Subhadra Kumari Chauhan who later on ended up being her lifelong friend. She graduated from there in 1929.

Post her graduation, Varma became repellent of the idea of her marriage and thus ended up rejecting her marriage obligations by never wanting to live with her husband.

For her master's, she chose to study Buddhist Pali and Prakrit texts as a part of her degree. Pioneering the feminism movement in India, Varma had always stuck to following things related to writing, teaching, or editing. She would often pair up with Subhadra Chauhan and they would get their early written works published in weekly magazines. Mahadevi Varma published her first collection of poems named Nihar in 1930.

Subsequently, there were her other works like Rashmi, Neerja, and Sandhyageet. In 1937, Mahadevi Varma established a house in Ramgarh, Uttarakhand, 25 km from Nainital, and named it Meera temple. She worked here to help the people of the village with their education and make women self-sufficient. All her helping and breaking of stereotypes along with the endless determination to empower women, made many call her a social reformist as well. This house was later renamed as Mahadevi Sahitya Museum.

Varma was the editor for Chand magazine which was known for talking about social issues and considered a progressive magazine. In addition to that, she was also the principal of Prayag Mahila Vidyapeeth (girls school).

Mahadevi Varma's invincible will to bring about a change in the lives of women was something that made her an unmissable personality. She was merely dismissed by criticisms that termed her feelings within the poetry to be too extra and emotional to be taken seriously. However, as strong as she was and as ignorant as she was towards what society had to say about her, she spotted misogyny very cautiously. Even when it had to be among the higher-ups.

"In fact, the center of Mahadevi's experience and creation is fire, not tears. What is visible is not the ultimate truth, what is invisible is the original or inspiring truth. These tears are not the tears of easy simple anguish, but how much fire goes behind them, the thunderstorm, the electric roar of the cloud, and the rebellion is hidden."— Prabhakar Shrotiya

In Hindu Stree Ka Patnitva, Varma draws a parallel between marriage and slavery and says women are downgraded to becomes wives and mothers. In her poem Cha, she talks in detail about female sexuality and various related themes.

In 1955, Varma also established the Literary Parliament in Allahabad along with Ilachandra Joshi and helped in editing its various publications.

Varma has been awarded for her great works with Padma Bhushan in 1956, a fellowship at Sahita Akademi as the first woman to hold such a position, Jnanpith award, and Padma Vibhushan in 1988. Spending most of her time at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, Varma breathed her last on 11th September 1987.

Writing about concrete issues related to the society and treatment of women, Mahadevi Varma had been a feminist long before people could think of it. It is thus too shameful that people ignored her feministic writing over her poetic persona. Breaking the monopolised male industry by writing things that attacked the prevailing injustice against women, she is no less a heroine of today's India.