Kondappalli Koteswaramma who passed away in 2018 at the age of 98 was perhaps known more as the wife of Kondappalli Sitaramayya, the founder of the well-known radical left People's War Group, which fought the Indian government as an underground communist group for many decades. However, she herself was a freedom fighter and a communist party worker, and it was this relatively unknown life that came to light in her autobiography in Telugu which was published in 2012, titled Nirjana vaaradhi. The book under review is a translation of this work, competently undertaken by Sowmya VB. The original was an instant success, and not because of her husband's fame. As Gita Ramaswamy writes in her Introduction, the sheer pathos of the narrative and the incredible resilience that the author clearly reveals swept her readers; the book was reissued in a week and a second edition appeared in two months. Koteswaramma decisively transformed the public's impression of her through this memoir.
She was born at a time of great political ferment in India, and the region of her birth, the delta of the Krishna River in Andhra, was a prosperous region, part of the Madras Presidency. Unlike eastern Telangana, which was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad, the coastal districts of Andhra witnessed the spread of modern education and considerable interest and effort towards social reform, and a thriving public sphere in the Telugu language. The Indian national movement too had a strong presence here, and many were moving towards socialism and communism in the 1930s. Koteswaramma's life was deeply shaped by these currents. She recounts her early childhood as a child-widow in a reform-oriented family—which treated her with much kindness—and the social tightrope-walking her family had to do, surrounded by disapproving conservatives all around. The complexities she recounts are manifold. Marriage alone continued to be thought of as the sole salvation of a child widow; her parents had to find her a bridegroom from the same or near caste as theirs; and in any case, the stigma of being a widow never disappeared, since her marriage could never be a normal one, but only a ‘widow remarriage’. After their wedding, in her life with her in-laws, she was incessantly blamed for all of her husband's overstepping of conservative social boundaries and his radical politics. In other words, Koteswaramma's emergence from childhood did not mean liberation.
Her ‘liberation’, however limited, came later, through her work as an activist in the Communist Party's women's wing and cultural front after 1939 when she married Sitaramayya. The 1940s and early 1950s were extremely tumultuous times, with state repression against the communists strengthening. She went underground with other comrades in 1946–51. This was the time of the revolutionary peasant struggle known as the Telangana Movement, in which peasants of the Nizam's dominions revolted against him in 1946, and the anti-feudal revolts spread to more than four thousand villages. Hyderabad joined the Indian Union in 1948. The armed struggle was ended by the Communist Party in 1952, and full-time party workers were asked to return to their ‘normal’ pursuits.
Koteswaramma recounts her life in the backdrop of these events both as insider and outsider to the revolutionary movement. Though engrossed in the party's activities, her affective judgements remained independent—as is evident in her evident unease with the manner in which a social reformer and communist sympathiser Dr Acchamamba, who disagreed with a party decision, faced a social boycott by other comrades (p. 27). Perhaps the best illustration of the deep intertwining of her private and public lives is her account of the split in the Communist Party, which coincided with her own growing distance from Sitaramayya, who eventually left her for another woman. This reveals perhaps the hollowness of ‘social reform’ marriages in which the man, eager to don the garb and wield the power of the reformer, marries to ‘save’ a socially-victimised woman, only to lose interest in her later. Koteswaramma was also a victim of Sitaramayya's political choices—and her account is searing testimony to the fact that men and women tide over post-revolutionary impasses quite differently. Yet it is evident that her life was as intensely public as her husband's. Koteswaramma's narration of her anguish at the split in the Communist Party and her personal troubles is seamless: ‘The party's split was imminent now, following our family's. I grieved and cried for the party … Which side should I take when I respected both of them? … This, along with my financial troubles, stressed me out completely’ (pp. 74–5). After the split, neither faction invited her to join them. But Koteswaramma proved to be highly resilient. At the age of 32, after her husband left her, she enrolled herself in the Andhra Mahila Sabha hostel, where coaching was offered to destitute women to help them pass the matriculation exam. She supported herself through writing, and braved further troubles ahead—her separation from both her children and their untimely deaths. A life well-fought, indeed.
Koteswaramma's memoir is a valuable addition to twentieth-century life-writing by women in radical politics in India, in particular because it is the first unmediated voice among leftist women activists from the Andhra-Telangana region. Earlier work, such as Stree Shakti Sanghatana's remarkable We were making history (Kali for Women, 1986) were mediated by feminists. This work confirms and extends those narratives of courage, sacrifice, and pain.
My only quibble with the translation is that the original title, ‘A bridge abandoned’, should have been retained. This text is suffused with the pain of abandonment and loneliness. True, the instrument that produced the memoir, Koteswaramma's memory, is a sharp knife. But the title of the translation should have reflected what it unearthed—a life of pain. Indeed, the lesson of her life is precisely that pain, in the long run, makes the self stronger.
