A Reading of Ashapurna Debi's Pratham Pratisruti Indira Chowdhury How did women writing in the decades that followed the process of social reorganisation of the 1950s took back at their past? How did they problematise their particular present? The theme of maternity, it is argued here, is an important way in which to comprehend the complex negotiations involved in interrogating the role envisaged for women in independent India. Ashapurna Debits trilogy, the first of which was written in this period, telling the story of three generations of women, sees the 19th century as the originary moment for the for/nation of women as subjects of their own discourses. However, it is precisely Ashapurna Debi's location in the 20th century and in the post-independent Indian state that compels her to frame the problem in ways that challenge colonial, reformist and nationalist notions of maternity.
