Salma

Rakkiaiah (alternatively Rokkiah, born Rajathi Samsudeen in 1968 ) is an Indian Tamil writer, activist, and politician known by the pen name Salma and the nickname Rajathi, and often referred to as Rajathi Salma. Her works have received international acclaim and she is renowned as a sensation in contemporary Tamil literature. of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and involved in women's and transgender rights activism. Between 2007 and 2011, she served as the chairperson of the State Social Welfare Board of Tamil Nadu. Salma is also the founder of a non-government women's rights organisation named "Your Hope is Remaining". At the age of 22, Salma wrote her first poem, Oppandham, as an outlet for her frustration and anger with her situation. She was subjected to abuse by her husband because of her desire to write and he would often destroy her work if he found it. Her mother eventually helped her by smuggling out poems from her home and getting them published in a Tamil weekly. She was able to eventually leverage her position and become independent as she began serving as an elected official, chairing meetings and educating women in her community. In 2002, she was invited to an international women's rights conference held in Sri Lanka.

Salma states that she was impressed by the chief minister Karunanidhi, whom she calls the "poet of progress" for having instituted the 50% reservation quota for women in local body elections and for paying attention to women's issues, which ultimately led her to join the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in 2004. After joining the party, she was appointed as the deputy secretary of the party's women's wing. During the campaigning, her opponent had circulated sexually explicit material from her writings in an attempt to swing some voters in his favor. She was also instrumental in launching an awareness campaign for the Domestic Violence Act and holding training programmes among police personnel, counselors, judges and women. In 2010, Salma founded the Chennai-based non-government organisation "Your Hope is Remaining", and began working as a social worker among rural women in an effort to promote gender equality.

In the meantime, her anthology of short stories Saabam was published in 2009, which was translated by N Kalyan Raman into English as The Curse: Stories. In 2016, she published her second novel Manaamiyangal, In a review by the Hindustan Times, the novel was described as having captured Hélène Cixous's "feminine practice of writing". She states that women are expected to get married and become homemakers, whereas looking after the family should be the joint responsibility of both partners,

On asked whether she considers herself a feminist, Salma states that she does not identify herself as a feminist but is not opposed to being called one. According to her, religious fundamentalist leaders have attempted to appropriate culture as a whole and in the process resorted to intimidation of writers such as Taslima Nasrin, M. F. Husain and Salman Rushdie. Salma has attributed the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party as the reason for increase in caste based violence in Tamil Nadu, Salma received the fourth edition of the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2019. Pachchai Devathai, (Green Angel, 2003)

Novels Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai, (The Hours Past Midnight, 2004) Manaamiyangal (Dreams, 2016)

Collections Sabaam (Curses, 2009 & 2012)