ABSTRACT
Gudipati Venkatachelam (1894–1979), popularly known as Chalam, is considered to be the first feminist in Telugu literature. He critiqued the social and cultural institutions that are highly sexist. Particularly, his views about women and the man–woman relationship were path-breaking. Chalam was the first voice in Telugu who spoke about female sexuality, not as an object but as the active desire of the woman. This chapter is one of the few essays that Chalam has written in English while he was extensively publishing in Telugu. However, this marks a phase in the Telugu context when the radical ideas about man–woman relationship were being articulated and were also being articulated in English. Its being written in English becomes crucial also because there was an undeclared ban against reading Chalam’s work especially for women as the society believed that Chalam’s writings could morally corrupt women. Chalam analyses that the whole atmosphere of the relations of the sexes is vitiated with male egoism and female submission, women’s slavery and men’s chivalry. He says that if a woman ever tries to be independent and self-reliant, the entire world will gear up to press her down on her knees. He concludes the essay by emphasising the gender equality, men and women as natural companions, replacement of all laws that distinguish between men and women except that help the woman during her pregnancy and self-reliance for women.
