Elabehn died a few days ago. The obituaries were stiff with rigor mortis of recommendation certificates. She still feels alive. She was one of an earlier generation of activists and feminists who brought warmth into the world. Call it dignity, call it rights -- Ela gave life to ideas by the way she fought for them and lived them out.
I first met her when she was already an icon and an idol; I was teaching at the Ambani Institute. She was upset with the 2002 riots. She was feeling alone and wanted to talk. She asked me to visit her once in a few weeks to talk, to discuss things. I learned so much though she asked all the questions. There was a grace to her, to her hospitality, her ritual of pouring tea, the happy way she spoke about her grandson, a school champion in skating. She was a storyteller, and I was a beneficiary of her memory, her innumerable friendships.
I loved her sense of Gandhi and her sense of colour. She could talk cloth like a philosopher-poet, weaving worlds before you. I was always puzzled that she did not get the Nobel for her idea. She gave women a sense of dignity. It was more than employment.
It was a reinvention of citizenship which she translated for women into a graceful open everydayness.
She loved concepts but wanted them to dance, in an everyday sense. I remember once when she asked me to choreograph the word ‘rights’ which was getting too indexical. Rights, we felt, ranged across life, livelihood, lifestyles, and life cycle. It needed a symbiotic relation with each word above. That is why the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was different. It created a sense of belonging. Women virtually became a commons of competence and conviviality.
I could understand why a Mandela, a Carter or a Hillary Clinton respected her. She was a housewife with an extraordinary sense of leadership. Between leadership and friendship, she sought to create a
convivial world.
Shiv Visvanathan | The sadness of the university today
Even when critical, there was a gentleness to it. When corporates sprouted words like sustainability, she would smile wryly. As she said once, sustainability wore bow ties when it would have been easier with Khadi as an idiom.
There was a sense of scholarship about her. She vernacularised politics so that ordinary people could reinvent it. She was chancellor of the Vidyapeeth but her colleges were mandis (markets) and little shops where women eked out a living. She cared and tamed caring into a convivial politics. She sensed the music of persuasion. Even when she differed, there was wry laughter, an invitation to further conversation. Her sense of vernacular wove into the cosmopolitan. She was at ease in a world conference of leaders and at home in addas (discussion groups). I remember a friend of mine once telling me, “Her life is like a beautiful weave, ordered and aesthetic, full of classic colour.”
There was an imp in her, mixed with a sense of sadness as she saw the BJP come to power. She hinted that they were the new viceroys. Lutyens was no longer only in Delhi. She could read and smell the corruption of power but sensed its limits. She felt the BJP was outdated but still very powerful and that one day, it would be obsolete. Lord Acton would have approved.
Her last book was a classic, not just a major feminist tract. Her Grihani theory of politics was a brilliant combination of Swadeshi and Swaraj. It created a politics of everydayness which could last for eternity. Her favourite archetype in history was the housewife. Now the housewife turned the earth into a household. There was none of the pompousness of globalisation here. Women in a household were a dance of ideas. The household became the global commons as caring and empathy took over sovereignty. Governance was reworked around the conviviality of a household. Few in their lives and work have used Gandhi so creatively.
Swadeshi and Swaraj combined to create a new internationalism at a time when international relations were running dry, rife with triteness. Grihani captured the housewife as the new custodian of work and peace. I remember when she was working on politics and war, she would advocate the trusteeship of peace on women. Give women work, a livelihood is born. Caring follows like newborn civics. Ela was an acute watcher of people.
Her sympathy and her sense of friendship with Hillary Clinton was mutual. Each sensed the strength, pain, and patience in the other. Hillary was one of the great admirers of SEWA and each treated it like a perpetual hypothesis, a world to be reinvented every day.
The Grihani was the caring inventor, not illiterate about obsolescence. Caring was a Linus blanket that Ela wanted to wrap around the world. She gave Gandhi and feminism a new dimension by creatively re-reading both. Her confidence in her colleagues was amazing. Whether it was Reema or Renala, she felt at ease in their presence. She was grateful to them for it. She wanted to do new things. At sixty, she learned music, practicing Riyaz for hours.
Shiv Visvanathan | The living myth of Amitabh Bachchan
The lasting impression I have of her is waiting on the ‘swing’. A swing is a dance of postures, a dream world no claim can claim. I can still see her swing back and forth on the jhoola, welcoming the world. A great woman. More so, a quiet friend. One still remembers her as a presence, a storyteller, creating a commons of activism around her. Feminism was more than rights, it was a way of embracing the world and caring for it. One is grateful to her for it.
This column is a quiet thank you to the few years we gossiped about the world. Bye Elabehn. I will miss your laugh and the grace of tea. You gave a new meaning to SEWA.
Shiv Visvanathan is a Social scientist associated with THE COMPOST HEAP, a group researching alternative imaginations. He can be reached at svcsds@gmail.com.