Malati Bedekar
| Malati Vishram Bedekar | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Marathi: मालती विश्राम बेडेकर |
| Born | 1 October 1905 |
| Died | 7 May 2001 |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Other names | Vibhavari Shirurkar, Balutai Khare |
| Spouse(s) | Vishram Bedekar |
| Children | Shrikant Bedekar |
Malati Vishram Bedekar (Devanagari: मालती विश्राम बेडेकर) (1 October 1905 – 7 May 2001) was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India. She was the first prominent feminist writer in Marathi literature. She also used pseudonym Vibhavari Shirurkar ( (Devanagari: विभावरी शिरूरकर).
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 had started a few years earlier in Hingane, then in the outskirts of Pune. 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 highly influenced her thinking.
After college education, Balutai joined the teaching staff of Pune's Kanya Shala, which again was a girls' 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 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 (मराठी साहित्य सम्मेलन).
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