Why kamala das converted to islam

The poet, who died on 31 May in Pune after a prolonged illness at the age of 75, was larger than her writing, which is often not such a good thing.

But in her case, it also meant breaking many barriers as an Indian woman. She was one of the first Indian writers to explore sexuality in her work, and her autobiography, My Story, was a candid recollection of her own sexual coming of age that was translated into 15 languages. She represented the voice of oppressed women all over the country. There is no respect for women anywhere. She worked at a publishing house that brought out a collection by Das called The Old Playhouse and Other Poems, and she got an autographed copy as a gift for my mother.

It became the only poetry collection we were not allowed to touch on the bookshelf, along with the purple prose of Harold Robbins. I finally managed to read the poems when I was in class IX, and Das has stayed with me ever since. At that time she sounded like the aunts and cousins I met during summer vacations in Kerala. I imagined her sitting with her maids in the afternoon, oiling her hair with coconut oil warmed over an oven of burning wood and husk.

I met her only once. My wife was on an assignment in Kerala, and we halted for the night in Kochi to interview Das. But once she settled down in character, she was everything that I had hoped for. So yes, I am very happy it was Manju and no other actress playing Kamala Das.

Follow htshowbiz for more. Aami, the biopic on controversial Malayalam writer Kamala Das, is set for release. Share Via. Kamala Das converted to Islam towards the last part of her life. He feels the protests against creative art will grow in the coming times. Get our Daily News Capsule Subscribe.

Thank you for subscribing to our Daily News Capsule newsletter. Whatsapp Twitter Facebook Linkedin. Sign Up. Edit Profile. Although the book was a success, it invited the wrath of several family members and led to strained relationships within the family.

There was even pressure from influential relatives on the editor of Malayalanadu to stop publishing Ms Das' work, but neither he, nor she caved. In , Ente Katha as translated into English, while borrowing from the memoir she had started writing in English, but had later converted to Malayalam and used as the raw material for her column.

The English version of Ms Das' autobiography, My Story, too was a considered a literary sensation and remains one of the most popular and controversial autobiographies by an Indian author. Despite the books' success, in subsequent years, Kamala Das admitted that they contained many fictional elements and plots and were not entirely autobiographical in nature.

Even as Ms Das' popularity and list of awards grew - she has won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award, Asian World Prize, Kent Award, Asian Poetry Prize, Ezhuthachan Puraskaram, and many others - so did her tryst with controversies and contradictions. In , at the age of 65, Kamala Das converted to Islam and assumed the name Kamala Surayya, which is why "love jihad" is currently being debated as a relevant part of Ms Das' narrative.

Love jihad, for the uninitiated, is the term given to a supposed form of religious propaganda and indoctrination carried out with the help of Muslim men feigning love to Hindu women to lure them away from their faith and convert them to Islam.

However, in an interview with Islamic Bulletin soon after her conversion, Kamala Das, or Surayya, was quoted as saying, "I had discussed my strong feelings about Islam with my husband. He advised me not to treat the issue lightly. He felt religion could not be changed as easily as we change our clothes. He advised me to study it deeply and only then take a decision I thought about it a lot. I have been nurturing the idea in my mind for the last 27 years.

I had been thinking about conversion for the last seven years, but put off my decision for one reason or another. While her decision to convert to Islam angered many within Kerala's Hindu literary circle, earning her death threats from radical Hindu right wing organisations, Ms Das continued to defend it as an exercise in exerting one's will and her right to make a choice best-suited for her.