Mahadevi Varma: Political Essays on Women, Culture, and Nation
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Chapter :  Editor’s Introduction
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Poetry and Prose

In a speech delivered before the Legislative Council of Uttar Pradesh titled “Sahitya, Sanskriti, Aur Shasan” (Literature, Culture, and Government), Mahadevi addresses the failure of the government (with special reference to the government of Uttar Pradesh) to adequately address the issue of education in postindependence India.30 It is here that she begins to work through some of her ideas regarding the relationship between nation and language, culture and literature. She observes at the very outset of her speech that while the Uttar Pradesh government has hatched many “five-year plans”, none of these plans seems to engage the question of education. Mahadevi notes in her speech that the colonising effect of British rule is evident not only in the legislative aspects of society but also in the attitudes of the people. In her words:

There is inactivity in our political parties. Our religion is caught up in conventions and our society is dysfunctional (literally: to faint) due to social discord.
We have to search for a way to traverse this darkness, or else our road to progress will remain circular, like that of a plodding ox that continually moves about in a circle but remains caught within it.31

She goes on to argue for the vital place that literature and art hold during times of social and political upheaval, thus situating her own writing as a political act:

One could then ask me, that when the nation is facing issues of famine and shortage of life’s basic necessities, why am I raising the issue of literature, art, culture, et cetera? What time do we have to pay attention to these things? In response, I will state that progress in life is contingent on all members of society, just like one’s bodily senses are dependent on each other. One cannot say that while one is breathing, one cannot reflect, or that when one is thinking, one cannot see, or that when one is seeing with the eyes, one cannot walk, because it is only when the senses work together—to see, to hear, to think, to reflect—that we have purposeful movement in life.