: मालती विश्राम बेडेकर) Vibhavari Shirurkar ( (Devanagari

Devanagari

Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

: विभावरी शिरूरकर). (March 18, 1905 – May 7, 2001) was a Marathi

Marathi people

The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...

 writer from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. She was the first prominent feminist writer in Marathi literature

Marathi literature

Marathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, a Sanskrit-derived language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari script.-Early Marathi Literature :...

.

Biography

Balutai Khare (बाळुताई खरे) was Bedekar's maiden name. She was the daughter of Anantrao and Indirabai Khare.

Anantrao was a progressive thinker and educator, and Indirabai was a capable woman who successfully managed a dairy business for 25 years. Balutai later wrote a semi-biographical novel Kharemaster (खरेमास्तर) after her father.

In her teens, Balutai's parents sent her to stay in the hostel of the school for girls which Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve

Dhondo Keshav Karve

Maharshi Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve was a social reformer in India in the field of women's welfare. In honour of Karve, Queen's Road in Mumbai was renamed to Maharishi Karve Road...

 had started a few years earlier in Hingane, then in the outskirts of Pune

Pune

Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...

. After finishing her education in that school, she graduated before her age 20 from the women's college which Karve had also started. At both of those institutions, progressive ideas of Karve and his teaching colleagues like Vaman Malhar Joshi

Vaman Malhar Joshi

Vaman Malhar Joshi was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India.Joshi was born on January 21, 1882 in the town of Tale in the Konkan region of Maharashtra...

 highly influenced her thinking.

After college education, Balutai joined the teaching staff of Pune's Kanya Shala, which again was a girl's school being run under Karve's guidance. In 1936, she left that high school in the position of its headmistress to take up a government job as an administrator of a “settlement” for certain tribes identified as “criminal” tribes by the British government ruling over India at that time.

She met and married Vishram Bedekar

Vishram Bedekar

Vishwanath Chintamani Bedekar , who professionally used the name Vishram Bedekar , was a Marathi writer and movie director from Maharashtra, India....

 (विश्राम बेडेकर) in 1938, and took the name Malati Vishram Bedekar.

She left the government job in 1940 to take up writing, voluntary social services, and participation in socialist political activities.

She chaired a “parallel” Sahitya Sammelan (साहित्य सम्मेलन) which was held around 1980 in protest against excessive government meddling in the main Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan is a conference for literary discussions by Marathi writers. Though the conference has sometimes been held in a town outside the Indian state of Maharashtra, it is typically held annually in one of the towns in Maharashtra where Marathi is the mother tongue...

(मराठी साहित्य सम्मेलन).

Literary work

Bedekar wrote Kalyanche Nishwas (कळ्यांचे निःश्वास) --a collection of short stories-- and Hindolyawar (हिंदोळ्यावर) --a novel-- both in 1933 under the pen name Vibhavari Shirurkar (विभावरी शिरूरकर). In the two works, she discussed issues such as extramarital cohabitation, a woman's right to set up her own household alone, and dowry. The works were far too bold for the Indian society of the 1930s, and after their publication, there was a storm of outrage about them, they having been written by an unknown author under a pen name. (A few years later, before her marriage, Bedekar had revealed in a public speech that " 'Vibhavari Shirurkar' was me --Balutai Khare.")

In 1950, Bedekar wrote her effective novel Bali (बळी) (The Victim) as based on her observations for three years about the extremely harsh daily lives of the so-called “criminal “ tribes confined to the “settlement” area behind barbed wires by the British government in pre-independence India. (By the time Bali got published, the government of independent India had abolished the same year, 1950, the concept of “settlement” area behind barbed wires for “criminal' tribes.)

While her novel Wiralele Swapna (विरलेले स्वप्न) contained a compilation of pages from the imaginary diaries of two lovers, her novel Shabari (शबरी) was the story of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage.

Works

• Kalyanche Nishwas (कळ्यांचे निःश्वास) (1933)
• Hindolyawar (हिंदोळ्यावर) (1933)
• Bali (बळी) (1950)
• Wiralele Swapna (विरलेले स्वप्न)
• Kharemaster (खरेमास्तर) (1953).
• Shabari (शबरी) (1956)
• Paradh (पारध) (A play)
• Wahin Ali (वहिनी आली) (A play)
• Gharala Muklelya Striya (घराला मुकलेल्या स्त्रिया)
• Alankar Manjusha (अलंकार-मंजूषा)
• Hindu Wyawahar Dharma Shastra (हिंदुव्यवहार धर्मशास्त्र) (coauthored with K. N. Kelkar)
• Script of movie Sakharpuda (साखरपुडा)

A translation of Kharemaster (खरेमास्तर) was later published in English.