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Grindmill Songs  203

                An Authoritative Reference


                The initial and essential motivation of the project had hardly anything
                to do with academic archiving and scientific processing as such. We
                were prompted to focus on that particular women’s tradition when, in
                the course of exercises of self-introspection undertaken by women ani-
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                mators of the Village Community Development Association (VCDA)
                on their own condition, we were amazed at the way those illiterate
                participants were drawing upon that tradition of songs as an authori-
                tative reference to ascertain their statements and the authenticity of
                their testimonies. The peasant women were social actors confronted
                in their family and villages with a number of challenges raised against
                their commitment to intervene on their own initiative in the affairs of
                the village outside the boundaries of the domestic sphere. Once re-
                quested to collectively undertake a reflexive self-learning exercise to
                face these challenges better and rebuff objections, the songs of the
                millstone appropriately and effectively stood for the study-group not
                only as a precious means of communication and milieu of knowledge,
                but also as an oral text establishing with authority the relevance and
                credibility of their statements in a way comparable to the quotation
                of Vedic texts, the Bible or the Koran by their legitimate interpreters.
                This came as a surprise and a determinant discovery. An age-long spon-
                taneous capacity of collective cultural creation of a socially repressed
                female population within a rural patriarchal society proved to be an
                asset and a firm ground for a critical analysis of gender issues articu-
                lated in modern terms and concepts of women’s liberation (Poitevin
                and Rairkar 1996). The tradition was availed of by its direct heirs with
                a double effect of authorization and empowerment.
                  Since that initial experience, various activities of social action and
                research based on the grindmill songs made us realize that the practical
                relevance of such attempts and the ethical legitimacy of such investi-
                gation undertaken with and motivated by objectives of cultural action
                rest upon the continuity that prevails between an inherited collective
                self-memory and a modern critical self-assessment. On account of
                this homogeneity, more than preservation or glorification, let alone
                dubious concern for the exotic, the feminine tradition of grindmill
                songs lends itself to processes of reflexive reappropriation through
                analytical reassessment by the same peasant women. An indigenous
                capacity of heritage of one’s own stands as an autonomous source
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