Women writers have been marginalised in Hindi literature for far too long

Conservative male perspectives have dominated Hindi literary criticism and historiography

Although renowned Sanskritist Michael Witzel questions the widely accepted belief that there were nearly 30 women rishis (seers) who composed Rigvedic hymns, he has to come to terms with the possible existence of five such women poets, besides two prominent Upanishadic women — Maitreyi and Gargi. He says, “This does not mean, of course, that women did not compose poems (of whatever nature) during the (Rig)Vedic period, but it was not regarded important enough to be preserved…” The first women poets we encounter are the Buddhist nuns whose poems are collected in Therigatha, the world’s first anthology of women poets. Some of these poems, written in the Pali language, were composed during the lifetime of the Buddha and some as late as the third century BCE. Here too, one cannot but notice that the poems written by the Theris (senior nuns) were considered important enough by only the Therivada. Other Buddhist schools simply ignored them. Tamil literature of the Sangam period (300 BCE to 300 CE) too had at least 26 women poets while the works of so many others perished and their names remain unknown.