Kamala Das (born March 31, 1934, Thrissur, Malabar Coast [now in Kerala], British India—
died May 31, 2009, Pune, India) was an Indian author who wrote openly and frankly about
female sexual desire and the experience of being an Indian woman. Das was part of a
generation of Indian writers whose work centred on personal rather than colonial experiences,
and her short stories, poetry, memoirs, and essays brought her respect and notoriety in equal
measures. Das wrote both in English (mostly poetry) and, under the pen name Madhavikutty,
in the Malayalam language of southern India.
Das was born into a high-status family. Her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma, was a well-
known poet, and her father, V.M. Nair, was an automobile company executive and a journalist.
She grew up in what is now Kerala and in Calcutta (now Kolkata), where her father worked.
She began writing poetry when she was a child. When she was 15 years old, she married
Madhava Das, a banking executive many years her senior, and they moved to Bombay
(now Mumbai). Das had three sons and did her writing at night.
Das’s poetry collections included Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967),
and The Old Playhouse, and Other Poems (1973). Subsequent English-language works
included the novel Alphabet of Lust (1976) and the short stories “A Doll for the Child
Prostitute” (1977) and “Padmavati the Harlot” (1992). Notable among her many Malayalam
works were the short-story collection Thanuppu (1967; “Cold”) and
the memoir Balyakalasmaranakal (1987; “Memories of Childhood”). Perhaps her best-known
work was an autobiography, which first appeared as a series of columns in the
weekly Malayalanadu, then in Malayalam as Ente Katha (1973), and finally in English as My
Story (1976). A shockingly intimate work, it came to be regarded as a classic. In later life Das
said that parts of the book were fictional.
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In 1999 she controversially converted to Islam, renaming herself Kamala Surayya. She
received many literary awards, including the Asian World Prize for Literature in 1985.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated
by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Indian literature, writings of the Indian subcontinent, produced there in a variety
of vernacular languages,
including Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam,
Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Lahnda, Siraiki, and Sindhi, among others, as
well as in English. The term Indian literature is used here to refer to literature produced across
the Indian subcontinent prior to the creation of the Republic of India in 1947 and within the
Republic of India after 1947.
A brief treatment of Indian literature follows. For a fuller treatment, see South Asian arts:
Literature. See also Islamic arts: Islamic literatures, India: The arts, Pakistan: The arts,
and Bangladesh: The arts.
The earliest Indian literature took the form of the canonical Hindu sacred writings, known as
the Veda, which were written in Sanskrit. To the Veda were added prose commentaries such
as the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. The production of Sanskrit literature extended from
about 1500 bce to about 1000 ce and reached its height of development in the 1st to 7th
centuries ce. In addition to sacred and philosophical writings, such genres as erotic and
devotional lyrics, court poetry, plays, and narrative folktales emerged.
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Because Sanskrit was identified with the Brahminical religion of the Vedas, Buddhism
and Jainism adopted other literary languages (Pali and Ardhamagadhi, respectively). From
these and other related languages emerged the modern languages of northern India. The
literature of those languages depended largely on the ancient Indian background, which
includes two Sanskrit epic poems, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as
the Bhagavata-purana and the other Puranas. In addition, the Sanskrit philosophies were the
source of philosophical writing in the later literatures, and the Sanskrit schools
of rhetoric were of great importance for the development of court poetry in many of the
modern literatures. The South Indian language of Tamil is an exception to this pattern of
Sanskrit influence because it had a classical tradition of its own. Urdu and Sindhi are other
exceptions.
Beginning in the 19th century, particularly during the height of British control over the
subcontinent, Western literary models had an impact on Indian literature, the most striking
result being the introduction of the use of vernacular prose on a major scale. Such forms as
the novel and short story began to be adopted by Indian writers, as did realism and an
interest in social questions and psychological description. A tradition of literature in English
was also established in the subcontinent.
Articles on individual literatures of the Indian subcontinent not specified above include Pali
literature, Bengali literature, Gujarati literature, Hindi literature, Kannada literature, Punjabi
literature, Tamil literature, Telugu literature, Urdu literature, and Sindhi literature.
This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.
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