Harf

Winter 2016

McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

EDITORIAL BOARD Zain R. Mian Apurva Ashok Andrew Tower Sarah Sachiye Purdy Sayema Badar Zahra Habib Ruqaiyah Zarook PHOTOGRAPHY Arjun Mehta Rukhshan Arif Mian DESIGN Sajdeep Soomal

Funding for this journal has been generously supplied by the Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill University (AUS) and the Dean of Arts Development Fund (DADF).

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

CONTENTS Introduction: Undergraduate South Asian Studies at McGill University ........... ix The Editors In the Dynasty’s Shadow: Rajiv Gandhi’s Transformations and Failures in Indian Politics .......................................................... 3 Genevieve Riccoboni The Sari: Home and Away ............................................................................................. 23 Megha Harish ImagiNation and Indian Cinema: National Consciousness in Garam Hawa, Amar Akbar Anthony, and Roja ........................ 49 Priya Nair Reservations For Women in India: Democracy and Its Discontents ................... 71 Bridget Walsh Women of Worship: The Multivalent Sexuality of South Indian Jogatis ........... 93 Mélanie Wittes The Idea and its Fragments: The Founder, Reformer, and Missionary in Indian Knowledge Production .............................. 107 Arthur Hamilton Curry Culture: Migrant History and Nostalgic Memory on Brick Lane ............ 129 Megha Harish

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

Introduction: Undergraduate South Asian 
 Studies at McGill University

The Editors

INTRODUCTION The conception and development of this project is a significant step towards the promotion of South Asian scholarship at McGill. As a journal and student group, Harf understands South Asia expansively, to include the territories occupied by present-day Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan. Harf aims to advance the study of South Asia in the McGill and Montreal communities. We recognize, firstly, that the academic representation of South Asia at McGill is not sufficient at present. Though South Asians constitute a politically significant demographic within McGill’s student population, this fact has not historically entailed commensurate measures for the institutionalized study of South Asia at the university. As such, Harf seeks not merely to represent the research on South Asia presently being undertaken at McGill, but to act as an integral locus for the organization of South Asian scholarship in Montreal. Our concerns therefore speak to those of innumerable other student groups on campus and across Canada that currently struggle for the increased representation of religious, ethnic, racial, and linguistic minorities in the academe.

Harf acknowledges the impossibility of political neutrality in scholarship, and consequently stresses intersectional approaches to South Asian Studies. We recognize the inequities of class, gender, race, and other such categories of difference as constitutively significant of any study of South Asian culture and politics. We aim to create platforms for the recognition of marginalized voices and discourses: not to speak for the subaltern, but to provide the conditions necessary for these individuals to speak for themselves. As such, Harf is perpetually willing to discuss new avenues for South Asian discourse and organization at McGill, and invites related queries and critiques to harfjournal@gmail.com.

Harf understands accessibility as integral to the advancement of scholarship. For this reason, we have elected to inculcate non-traditional approaches within the content and design of this journal, so that our work may be intelligible, and interesting, to the non-specialist reader. As wide dissemination remains integral to the success

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THE EDITORS of any organizational project, Harf will also make digital copies of this journal available via its Facebook page: www.facebook.com/HarfJournal.

As suggested above, Harf will campaign towards institutionalized measures for the uninterrupted study of South Asia at McGill. Towards this end, we hope to organize an annual lecture on South Asia beginning next year, and to channel support towards the establishment of a South Asian Studies program at the university. We thus seek support from students and faculty both within the McGill community and outside it. Interested individuals may feel free to contact us via email or through our Facebook page.

The essays in this collection have been selected for their intellectual rigor and for the diverse ways in which they converse with one another. While the overall selection remains strong, the recurrence of particular themes and topics within the submissions received testifies to the limited breadth of South Asia related courses on offer at McGill. Nonetheless, any achievements and successes in this journal are the sole prerogative of the many generous contributors and volunteers that have helped bring this project to its fruition. Harf accepts full responsibility for all faults and shortcomings present herein, and aims to improve its operations throughout the coming year.

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Photograph by Arjun Mehta

In the Dynasty’s Shadow: Rajiv Gandhi’s Transformations and Failures in Indian Politics

Genevieve Riccoboni McGill University

IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW

INTRODUCTION In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was elected as Indian prime minister in a landslide victory – the Congress Party received a majority, not its typical plurality. Gandhi had campaigned on the promise of being a “fresh face” to Indian politics; someone who would lead the nation out of an era of ineffective bureaucratic leadership, economic disarray, and increasing regional and communal conflict. However, in retrospect, many consider his administration to be a failure, with only limited successes towards these transformative ends, particularly when compared to the iconic Nehru and Indira Gandhi administrations, which were marked by significant growth and the development of Indian interests and national character. Contrary to this perception, I suggest that Rajiv Gandhi’s administration implemented crucial changes to Indian politics, and that these changes occurred within a unique period characterized by the continual mediation between ideologies of past and future visions of Indian nationhood. I begin with a history of previous administrations and of Rajiv Gandhi’s pre-political life. I then explore India’s situation at the time of his ascendance and the dynamics of his electoral campaign. Finally, I analyze his administration’s policies in four areas: the economy, foreign affairs, Congress Party machinery, and regionalism/communalism. From this analysis, I make two conclusions.

Firstly, I argue that Gandhi’s administration initiated important transformative changes within India’s economic and foreign policies. These changes may be understood as the result of the gradual development of the Indian political tradition and as part of global shifts towards neoliberalism and interdependence. Secondly, I claim that his inability to alter the political machinery and to alleviate communal tensions to the degree he proposed resulted in the stagnation of Indian politics under the Congress Party leadership.

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI

BEFORE THE PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT Perhaps the most clear transformation of Rajiv Gandhi’s administration was in the man himself: he grew from a politically uninvolved and apathetic civilian – albeit one in a profoundly political family – to the Prime Minister of India. Until 1980, Rajiv Gandhi was visibly the odd one out in his family – he expressed no political interest, and actively avoided any sort of leadership role. Although he admired his mother, Mrs. Gandhi’s, “concept of giving India leadership and stability in government,” he chose to work outside the political sphere. Several reasons have been speculated for this decision, including an ill-suited personality, the influence of his wife, Sonia, and a general disinterest in public life. Instead, Rajiv Gandhi was employed in a variety of jobs, such as a pilot for Indian Airlines, until he became the de facto heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty upon his mother’s assassination in 1984.1 The period from 1967 to the early 1980s was marked by the transformations of Indira Gandhi, a dynamic but contentious leader who implemented a contradictory combination of radical populist, authoritarian, and liberal reforms. These included massive agricultural growth from the adoption of “Green Revolution” techniques, somewhat strained relations with the United States, war with Pakistan, the creation of Bangladesh, and a turn to authoritarianism in a 21-month period known as the Emergency, in which Mrs. Gandhi took complete control over the state apparatus after Congress lost the 1975 election. Growing communal tensions and internal dissent within the Congress Party were severe domestic challenges that both emerged from and fostered an increasingly corrupt political machine. In response, Indira positioned herself as a larger-than-life leader, who dominated Indian politics and often took pragmatic, rather than ideological, 1

Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2007), 394.

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW approaches towards solving internal problems. This led to a paradoxical web of both support and dissent within the country: although many people were incredibly dissatisfied with her policies, many others were swayed by her populist appeal, symbolically identifying her with the state itself as “Mother India.”2 The political climate at her death in 1984 was incredibly polarized, including around the Congress Party itself, which had splintered into factions during her administration.

Indira Gandhi initially groomed her second son, and Rajiv’s younger brother, Sanjay, to be her political successor. In the 1970s, Sanjay was ushered into Indian political life largely through a series of government and cabinet roles.3 Publicly and privately, it was understood that Sanjay would follow in Indira’s political footsteps, especially after he played a large part in her authoritarian turn during the Emergency as the leader of a controversial sterilization program and supervisor of slum clearances.4 Sanjay is even considered to have wielded significant power over his mother, and therefore Indian politics, by the late 1970s.5 However, Sanjay’s ascent in politics was abruptly halted with his sudden death in a plane crash in 1980.6 Only four years later, after the assassination of his mother in 1984, Rajiv was challenged yet again: he became the interim prime minister, and was therefore compelled to also compete in an election scheduled later that year.

Given the extreme tumult of the country in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the 1984 election season was a violent and pivotal one.

2

Guha, India after Gandhi, 467.

Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001).

4 Ibid.

5 Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle (London: J. Cape, 1985).

6 Stuart Corbridge, and John Harriss. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism, and Popular Democracy, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000, 2320. (Kindle Edition) 3

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI

REVOLUTIONIZING INDIAN POLITICAL DYNAMICS: RAJIV GANDHI’S CAMPAIGN Rajiv Gandhi simultaneously campaigned on a platform of radical transformation and continuity with the beloved past – a strategy that emerged from the complex political climate of the 1980s. Although a popular leader among many sectors of the Indian population, Indira Gandhi was also a divisive character that sowed seeds of political and economic discord, and polarized Indian society. Rajiv Gandhi’s platform emerged from this discontinuity and from other growing conflicts in Indian politics. It featured a three-pronged focus on national unity, anti-corruption measures, and economic reform (particularly in the form of trade liberalization and fiscal conservatism).7 His campaign itself was the invention of a modern public relations firm, and introduced tactics that had never been seen before in Indian history.

Corbridge and Harriss claim that during the 1980s regional parties gained strength within the federal system – a process they call the “ruralization” of politics.8 In Punjab and Assam specifically, there were significant pushes for regional autonomy from both political parties and social movements, which led to a large crackdown on mobilizations, particularly Sikh ones, by Indira Gandhi's administration.9 Discontent was also brewing in nearby Sri Lanka along Tamil ethnic lines. These “communal” tensions caused national political anxiety, leading to a variety of debates about the nature of the Indian nation and the seeming paradox of the Indian polity (that is, its simultaneous ethno-religious diversity amidst state claims to ideological unity under the tenets of secularism, socialism, and democracy).10 In the chaos of competing nationalisms and motions for 7 Ashutosh

Varshney, "Contested Meanings: India's National Identity, Hindu Nationalism, and the Politics of Anxiety," Reconstructing States and Nations 122, no. 3 (1993): 227-61, 238 and 244.

8 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2382, 2579.

9 Ibid, 2620.

10 Varshney, "Contested Meanings,” 231.

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW regional autonomy (and away from central Congress authority), Gandhi recognized that he could only be successful in national elections through a campaign emphasizing unity and cooperation with ethnic and regional groups.11 Gandhi’s campaign can therefore be seen as a product of this political moment – a tool to appeal to the anxieties of Indians who wanted to maintain the secular, unified, yet expressively diverse state.

Rajiv Gandhi juxtaposed his focus on unity with critiques of government corruption and inefficiency, which spoke to another source of tension within Indian democracy, namely, the debates regarding the utility of the Congress Party itself. Congress had come under attack in the 1970s by a plethora of opposition movements, largely in the form of Hindu and regional nationalisms manifested in political parties such as the Jan Sangh (later the BJP) and the Janata Party. The corruption of the Congress Party was widely documented and publicized by these political opponents, who challenged it both ideologically (its focus on secularism, socialism, and democracy) and institutionally (decrying nepotism, corruption, and wasteful expenditure).

Rajiv Gandhi aggressively denounced corruption in his campaign, through tactics I will later discuss.

However, the issue was also intrinsically tied to economic stagnation – a reality that portions of the public blamed on inefficient government policy and bureaucratic failure. Although Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi had both initiated steps towards market freedom and trade liberalization, these reforms remained limited.12 Rajiv Gandhi promised to break radically from the Indian socialist tradition through further economic liberalization – a process that Corbridge and Harriss suggest many viewed as necessary to cut the cycle of inefficiency and corruption.13

11

Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2410.

Ibid, 1864.

13 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2471.

12

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI Another key feature of Gandhi’s campaign was his claim to relative “freshness” in Indian politics (despite the paradoxical role of his family name and reputation in gaining him prominence and fame), which he used to garner the support of Indians disenchanted with Congress. Gandhi led one of biggest and most successful campaigns in Indian history, garnering 50.7% of the vote but an astounding 80% of the seats in the Lok Sabha. Ramachandra Guha claims that Gandhi was able to achieve this success because of his relative inexperience in the Congress machine and his calls for drastic reform,14 however, the timing of Gandhi’s campaign was crucial to his success as well: he rose to the position of prime minister at a moment of extreme violence and chaos in the political sphere, in which his proposals were particularly salient.15 Although still running on the Congress ticket, Gandhi was able to cultivate the image of a political outsider – someone who would eradicate corruption and dispel chaos.16 Gandhi hired a sleek and modern marketing company, Rediffusion, to design his campaign and its advertisements. According to Ajit Balakrishnan, Gandhi sought to target swing voters, who were largely literate and avid newspaper readers.17 This meant much of his campaign advertising was done in print, using ads that combined words and vivid pictures to capture the reader’s interest.18 These ads simultaneously shaped Gandhi’s image into that of “Mr. Clean” – an innocent political newcomer – while also playing on fears of communalism, sadness over Indira Gandhi’s death, and desires for political change.19 They used slogans like “the government that works faster”20 (highlighting Gandhi’s attempts to diverge from Congress 14

Guha, India After Gandhi, 414.

Ibid, 412-414.

16 Ibid, 414.

17 Balakrishnan, Ajit. "The Congress Party Ad Campaigns in the Lok Sabha Elections 1984." Ajit Balakrishnan's Blog. Accessed April 7, 2015. http://blogs.rediff.com/ajitb/2009/12/08/the-congress-part-ad-campaign-for-the-1984-lok-sabha-elections/.

18 Crossette, Barbara. "Selling of India: Tough Ads by the Congress Party." The New York Times, November 15, 1989.

19 Balakrishnan, “The Congress Party Ad Campaigns in the Lok Sabha Elections 1984”.

20 Ibid.

15

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW inefficiency), “will the country’s border finally move to your doorstep?” (citing separatism and calling for unity through Congress leadership)21, and “will your grocery list, in the future, include acid bulbs, iron rods, daggers?” (calling for order instead of chaos).22 Some argue that this enduringly “Americanized” Indian politics, making it glamorous, dramatic, and riddled with explosive rhetoric.23

TRANSFORMATIONS AND FAILURES IN POLICY Gandhi’s first campaign promise was liberal economic transformation: a promise that emerged from India’s economic state and as a response to public opinion regarding past governments’ policies. The economic model preceding Rajiv was his mother’s radical populism, which united a generally leftist orientation with emotive appeals and often-authoritarian measures. She nationalized the banking sector, established new redistribution policies, and implemented the Green Revolution, which dramatically transformed Indian farming to make India a self-sufficient food producer and a global agricultural leader.24 However, she also created multiple alliances with businesses and multinational corporations, largely in order to attract investment to India. These policies challenged her record as a socialist leader, and also helped position India within the broader moment of economic liberalization that marked the second half of the 20th century.

Rajiv Gandhi continued along this model, and at the behest of V.P. Singh, his economic advisor, he further liberalized trade and opened India up to global markets.25 Although he admits Rajiv was appreciative of the ideological tenets of socialism, Ramachandra Guha argues that Gandhi considered economic change to be 21

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

24 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 1864.

25 Guha, India after Gandhi, 419.

22 23

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI necessary for the revival of India’s stagnating economy. To quote Gandhi, “…our plans cannot be hard and dogmatic. They must change with the times and move with the development of the country.”26 This fluid approach was reflected in his early policies and budgets, which contained measures to reduce income, corporate, and wealth taxes, cut import duties on capital goods, crack down on labour dissent, and provide tax breaks to exporters.27 Rajiv Gandhi also increased investment in science and technology, and helped India enter the computer age under the claim that “India missed the industrial revolution – it cannot afford to miss the computer revolution.”28 Gandhi focused extensively on obtaining foreign investment in the technology sector, especially with the help of the United States, and also encouraged job training and education in these areas.

Rajiv Gandhi’s economic policies were initially extremely popular because of the public perception that the previous government was ineffective at bureaucratic management, and that this inefficiency had lead to India’s near bankruptcy.29 Liberalization gained popularity among the educated upper and middle classes, who were dissatisfied with perceived past inefficiencies and protectionism. However, liberalization was not without its critics: it was most unpopular among rural peasants and scheduled castes, who viewed fiscal conservatism as a means to exacerbate inequality and impede their personal and economic development.30 Corbridge and Harriss note that a variety of large social movements, generally termed “new social movements,” emerged to protest the government’s adoption of capitalist-style economics.31 Furthermore, though there was sustained growth during Rajiv Gandhi’s administration (1984-1989), this growth was both 26

Ibid, 419.

Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2471.

28 Ranbir Singh and M. Khosla, Rajiv Gandhi: The Man, the Pilot, the Politician, 50.

29 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2464, 2471.

30 Ibid, 2491.

31 Ibid, 2450.

27

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW unstable and unpopular in the long term. Corbridge and Harriss suggest that it skyrocketed unemployment and the fiscal deficit, thereby weakening India structurally, and leaving it vulnerable to global and domestic economic shocks.32 Despite the growing opposition to Gandhi and the economic downturn, these policies continued throughout the 1980s, and were renewed by subsequent prime ministers from across the political spectrum. Therefore, this continuation of liberal policy was likely also influenced by gradually changing global norms and strategies of economic development, which emphasized open markets, increased transportation and communication infrastructure, foreign investment, and global interdependence as ideal for growth.

Rajiv Gandhi’s administration shifted Indian foreign policy away from alliances with the socialist/communist world and towards the United States. Indira Gandhi held tenuous but relatively consistent ties with the USSR, and maintained a more strained but still regular relationship with the U.S. According to Dennis Kux, the United States-India relationship was one of “estranged democracies” – continual misunderstandings that emerged in part from ideological differences between the capitalist America and socialist India. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States maintained a relatively consistent relationship with India regarding technical assistance, food aid, and military negotiations involving China and Pakistan.33 This relationship deteriorated to some extent during the mid-1960s, in part due to the U.S.’s manipulation of policies including those pertaining to food aid in order to spur desired agricultural changes in India, and in the eyes of many Indian politicians, to “punish” India for its criticism of the Vietnam War.34 Mrs. Gandhi was frequently at odds with American leaders such as Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who 32

Ibid, 2450.

Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies: India and the United States, 1941-1991 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994).

Kristin L. Ahlberg, Transplanting the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 106-146.

33 34

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI attempted to force her into supporting their international policy and move away from non-alignment.35 The United States viewed a relationship with itself and with the Soviet Union to be mutually exclusive, and while continually fostering Indian relations for security reasons, often grew frustrated with India’s lack of interest in U.S. democracy.36 This enmity was no longer politically advantageous or necessary during Rajiv Gandhi’s administration: the Soviet Union had declined by the 1980s to the extent it was no longer able to provide significant financial support to India, leading Gandhi to recognize the urgent importance of deepening and rekindling damaged relations with the United States, especially in the areas of defense, trade, and technology.37 Beyond its immediate impacts on foreign relations, this alliance with the United States encouraged the kind of trade liberalization Rajiv Gandhi had already implemented. Both trade and foreign aid from the United States and its international intermediaries, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, grew conditional on shifting away from socialist and protectionist models. India was thus forced to liberalize its economy in order to maintain the investment and assistance of international organizations. Private sector investment in India skyrocketed, as did the (still ongoing) trend of multi-national corporate outsourcing to the country.38 The extent of direct correlation between economic liberalization and India’s relationship with the United States is unclear, but in combination with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it certainly precipitated a series of global shifts that questioned the efficacy of socialism and protectionist development models.

35

"Nixon's Dislike of 'witch' Indira." BBC News. June 29, 2005. Accessed March 12, 2015. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/ 4633263.stm.

36 Kux, Estranged Democracies, 87.

37 Kronstadt and Pinto, “US India Security Relations: Strategic Issues,” 2.

38 Rajiv Kumar, "The Strategic Implications of of Indo-US Private Sector Ties," October 1, 2010, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/ publications/CNAS_StrategicImplications_Kumar.pdf, 5.

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW Despite the success of his modern political campaign, Rajiv Gandhi was unable to reform the corrupt and clientelistic Indian political machinery. Instead, this went largely unchanged, except insofar that it gained a more capitalistic and insidiously wealthy face. According to Corbridge and Harriss, Gandhi was unable to rebuild the party structure, which led him to become implicated in the negative aspects of the political machinery as well. They argue that by 1987, his involvement in multiple corruption and embezzlement scandals, including vote buying and using government funds for personal expenses, was common knowledge.39 In India After Gandhi, Guha claims levels of corruption actually increased under Rajiv Gandhi’s administration, due to the massive influx of foreign wealth to India. “Big money” through foreign investment and ever-growing corporations under the guise of “modernity” led to previously unthinkable concentrations of wealth. “Once known for their austerity and simplicity, they [Indian politicians] now lived in houses that were large… driving flashy cars and dining in five-star hotels, these were… the ‘new maharajas.’”40 In the Rajiv era, Indian politics “reeked of aftershave,” and was characterized by a new political ethic that had never been seen before.41 Increased corruption can be credited in part to broader trends, such as India’s involvement in international markets and Rajiv Gandhi’s individual failure to completely overturn a long-standing power structure. However, it is undoubtedly true that despite these setbacks, his prime ministership was a turning point and in many ways a gateway to “modern India” – an India that diverged from its previous traditions.

Politics in the new country operated on the money of capitalists, the glamour of celebrity, and a full transition away from the visions of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and even Indira Gandhi.

39

Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2438.

Guha, India After Gandhi, 420.

41 Ibid, 420.

40

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI Rajiv Gandhi’s administration was fraught with a number of challenges from regional and ethnic groups, whose concerns he was unable to fully alleviate. As previously discussed, regional parties began to gain strength within the federal system during the 1980s,42 particularly in Punjab and Assam.43 Following Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, there were bloody and violent riots against the Sikh community, resulting in many deaths.44 There were also challenges from Tamils in Southern India, and in 1987, civil war broke out in Sri Lanka. Rajiv Gandhi therefore found himself prime minister in a contentious and complex political climate, one he sought to change through a process of conciliation and reform.45 Upon entering office, he signed an accord with the Sikh leader Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, ended central rule in Punjab, and made moves towards conciliation in Assam through enacting the Assam Accord.46 These policies attempted to forge national unity by targeting factional and separatist groups for rejuvenated incorporation, but also left space to appeal to those Indian Hindus viciously opposed to communalism.47 Gandhi also attempted to engage the large Indian Muslim community by changing laws to better serve their unique interests. In many Indian states, he instituted customary-style law, in the tradition of British indirect rule, which enabled Muslim communities to choose to adhere to sharia and other traditional forms of legislation.48 Many secularists and Hindus, however, criticized these measures, claiming that they went against the country’s secular tradition and the constitutional emphasis on civil law.

42

Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2382, 2579.

Christophe Jaffrelot, "Refining the Moderation Thesis. Two Religious Parties and Indian Democracy: The Jana Sangh and the BJP between Hindutva Radicalism and Coalition Politics," Democratization 20, no. 5 (2013): 876-94, 882-3.

44 Verinder Grover, Indian Political System: Trends and Challenges (New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications, 1997), 366.

45 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2660.

46 Satinder Sharma and Indra Sharma, Rajiv Gandhi: An Annotated Bibliography, 1944-1982 (Delhi, India: Sawan Publication, 1983), 13.

47 Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India, 2765.

48 Ibid, 2778.

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IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW These myriad attempts at facilitating national unity largely failed in their efforts, and to some degree, even exacerbated existing communal tensions. Rajiv Gandhi was now had to struggle to negotiate spaces for discussion and agreement amongst increasingly competitive factions. As time went on, he was forced to deal with the contradiction of attempting to maintain secularism, while nonetheless giving special rights to separatist groups and religious minorities. His attempts to decentralize Muslim legal authority to the communal level resulted in significant controversies, most notably the Shah Bano case, in which an Indian Muslim woman was granted alimony from her husband but was subsequently challenged by the Muslim community, who claimed the judgement contradicted Islamic law.49 This case resulted in the enactment of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act of 1986, which limited the rights of Muslim women to obtain alimony, and overturned the secular Shah Bano decision.50 This policy was not universally applauded by the Indian Muslim community, and was also heavily criticized by external groups as a fundamental challenge to India’s secular traditions and to women’s rights. Rajiv Gandhi’s policies towards Indian Muslims helped inspire a simultaneous rise in Hindu fundamentalism during this period.51 According to Ashutosh Varshney, Hindu nationalists viewed the Indian and the Hindu as synonymous, and therefore employed selective and ominous rhetoric towards the large Indian Muslim community.52 In response to the Shah Bano case, they began to press claims on the Temple Mosque site (the location of a long dispute), and translated religious claims into national ones, citing the myths of India’s origins.53 These developments culminated in the destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu nationalists and a 49

Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ:, Princeton University Press, 2002), 91-92.

50 Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani, The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 216-224.

51 Jaffrelot, "Refining the Moderation Thesis,” 879.

52 Varshney, “Contested Meanings,” 240-241.

53 Ibid, 250.

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GENEVIEVE RICCOBONI violent response from Muslims, which lead to further contestations over religion, geographic space, and national identity. These controversies, in conjunction with rising discontent and economic downturn, partially caused the rapid decline in support for the Congress Party in 1989 and the rise of the BJP, but also indicated a change in the development of Indian identity, and questioned the feasibility of secularism in a religiously diverse India.

CONCLUSION Rajiv Gandhi campaigned on a series of promises: economic transformation, corruption reduction, and national unity, which emerged from the contentious and chaotic political climate of 1980s India. I have suggested his administration be seen as a significant break from the past, primarily in terms of foreign policy and economic strategy, as a time that turned India increasingly away from Nehruvian socialism. Under Rajiv Gandhi, India entered into a new global era, characterized by extensive relations with the United States, increased integration into global markets, and more investment, aid, and cash flows to fuel its growing tech sector. The fall of the Soviet Union solidified many of Rajiv (and even Indira) Gandhi’s liberal economic policies by creating a global order dominated by American power, free trade, and political interdependence.

However, these changes were not without their negative effects, particularly as they increasingly coincided with the growth of regionalism, separatism, and communalism. These trends threatened the very core of Indian democracy. Although Rajiv Gandhi attempted to alleviate this growing domestic discontent, he was 
 unable to do so, and in some ways exacerbated the situation. His own assassination in 1991 at the hands of a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) member, a group he had opposed during the Sri Lankan civil war, proved that Indian politics remained unstable. Perhaps most notably, his failure to reform the Congress Party and diminish levels of corruption (issues that already were prominent at the beginning of his administration) !16

IN THE DYNASTY’S SHADOW led to a drastic decrease in support for the Congress, and in the growth of parties such as the BJP that campaigned on ethno-nationalist, rather than catch-all platforms. India is currently under BJP leadership, and only time will tell how lasting these fundamentalist challenges to the essence of Indian secular socialist democracy will be.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahlberg, Kristin L. Transplanting the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008.

Balakrishnan, Ajit. "The Congress Party Ad Campaigns in the Lok Sabha Elections 1984." Ajit Balakrishnan's Blog. Accessed April 7, 2015. http://blogs.rediff.com/ajitb/2009/12/08/the-congress-part-adcampaign-for-the-1984-lok-sabha-elections/ Benhabib, Seyla. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Corbridge, Stuart, and John Harriss. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism, and Popular Democracy, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000. (Kindle Edition) Crossette, Barbara. "Selling of India: Tough Ads by the Congress Party." The New York Times, November 15, 1989.

Frank, Katherine. Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001.

Grover, Verinder. Indian Political System: Trends and Challenges. New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications, 1997.

Guha, Ramachandra. India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, New York: Ecco, 2007.

Jaffrelot, Christophe. "Refining the Moderation Thesis. Two Religious Parties and Indian Democracy: The Jana Sangh and the BJP between Hindutva Radicalism and Coalition Politics." Democratization 20, no. 5 (2013): 876-94.

Kronstadt, K. Alan, and Sonia Pinto. "US India Security Relations: Strategic Issues." January 24, 2013. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42948.pdf.

Kumar, Rajiv. "The Strategic Implications of of Indo-US Private Sector Ties." October 1, 2010. http:// www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_StrategicImplications_Kumar.pdf.

Kux, Dennis. Estranged Democracies: India and the United States, 1941-1991. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994.

"Nixon's Dislike of 'witch' Indira." BBC News. June 29, 2005. Accessed March 12, 2015. http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4633263.stm.

Noorani, Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed. The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Sharma, Satinder, and Indra Sharma. Rajiv Gandhi: An Annotated Bibliography, 1944-1982. Delhi, India: Sawan Publication, 1983.

Singh, Ranbir, and M. Khosla, Rajiv Gandhi: The Man, the Pilot, the Politician, New Delhi.

Tully, Mark, and Satish Jacob. Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle. London: J. Cape, 1985.

Varshney, Ashutosh. "Contested Meanings: India's National Identity, Hindu Nationalism, and the Politics of Anxiety." Reconstructing States and Nations 122, no. 3 (1993): 227-61. 

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

The Sari: Home and Away

Megha Harish King’s College London

THE SARI

“Other clothing is on you, but it is not with you.”1 The sari is more than just a garment. It is a form of clothing that flows with the body, that becomes part of a woman’s identity, and is distinguished by its social, cultural, and symbolic properties. While it may mark the distinct hierarchies of class and creed across society, it can also cut across boundaries of nation and religion.2 This essay intends to explore the relationship between South Asian women and the sari. It uses the homeland, India, as a point of reference for the Indian diaspora in a non-Western place of dispersal: in this instance, Singapore.3 Beginning with an introduction to the usage of the terms ‘India’ and ‘sari,’ I outline the relevance of clothing and material culture to diasporic identity. The body of this essay then divides into three main themes: the sari as a marker of either regional or national identity in different spaces, as a garment for work in the professional space, and as a possible indicator of modesty or modernity. I will examine these multiple inflections of the sari through the lens of women in India, and in Singapore, where Indians comprise 9.1% of the population.4 In writing this essay, I have benefited from conversations with Rani Moorthy, Dr. Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Dr. Mukulika Banerjee, my grandmother, and friends. My ideas have also been informed by watching the play “Whose Sari Now?” by Rani Moorthy’s RASA Productions. The play presented the experiences of five 1

Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller, The Sari, (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 23.

Vidya Murthy, “Displaying Saris: Fashion Gallery of the National Museum of Singapore,” The Heritage Journal 3 (2008): 22.

3 Though the sari can be worn by people of any and all genders, for ease of pronouns and discussion, this essay will assume that the wearers are South Asian women. Alok-Vaid Menon is an excellent spokesperson for the South Asian queer, femme movement.

4 Ravindra K. Jain, “Anthropology and Diaspora Studies: An Indian Perspective,” Asian Anthropology 10.1 (2011): 47.

2

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MEGHA HARISH women of South Asian origin living in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the UK, and the United States, and their relationship with saris in each of their specific circumstances. Jasbir Kaur, in her review of The Sari by Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller, lauds the book for being a significant addition to scholarship on Indian clothing and identity, saying that far too little has been written in this regard.5 A preliminary review of scholarship on the role of the sari as a socially significant garment yields few results. Much of the research conducted on saris in India omits the experience of diasporic communities, and even when such communities are considered, the United States and the UK form the default points of dispersal. Most writing on the Indian diaspora in Singapore is focused on economic development and does not factor in the experiences of women, let alone the significance of material culture generally and clothing more specifically. The relationship between women and their garments takes on a very different complexity in non-Western places of dispersal, as evident in the case of Tamil populations in Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the U.A.E. (where there is a significant Malayali working community) and in East Africa (which has many North Indian communities settled in Kenya, Somalia, and Mozambique, for example).

The sari is a ‘strip of cloth’ carrying thousands of years of history and culture within its folds.6 It is widely considered to be the national dress of Indian women or, at least, the most acceptable ‘formal’ national dress.7 A recurring theme in the literature is that of expectation and the way in which the sari forces its wearer to be a flag-bearer for the identity and region of South Asia that it represents. In the context of this piece, the term ‘sari’ will generally refer to the conventional six yards of fabric, most often draped in the Nivi style.8 Nivi is 5

Jasbir Kaur, “The Sari by Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller,” Fashion Theory 7.3 (2003): 418.

Rani Moorthy, “The Asian Writer” http://theasianwriter.co.uk/2015/10/rani-moorthy-2/ Accessed 20 Dec 2015.

7 The idea of the sari becoming ubiquitous as the national dress is problematic in itself because of where and how it is worn and what other regional dresses it is marginalizing, this is not what this essay will intend to focus on.

8 See Fig. 1 and 2. With one metre of fabric used to create pleats and the pallu then wound around the body from right to left and pallu falling over the left shoulder.

6

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THE SARI the traditional style of draping which originated in Andhra Pradesh, wherein one end of the sari is tucked into a petticoat. This sari is wrapped around the body once, its pleats are folded and tucked into the front, and the pallu falls over the left shoulder.

The term ‘South Asia’ has increasingly spread across the West to include India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and occasionally, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives.9 ‘South Asian’ as a racial and cultural referent is now commonly used across the world to refer to members of the diaspora from anywhere in South Asia.10 Similarly, the term ‘India’ is not one that is uncontested. ‘India,’ as understood today, is defined by post-partition boundaries of the nation-state. This conception is informed by British influence since the idea of ‘India’ as a nation-state was a construction of colonial rule.11 Historically, the term ‘India’ when referring to pre-1947 spaces includes the modern nation-states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Nepal. In the context of dress, the sari is often considered a Hindu and Indian dress, as opposed to the salwar-kameez (dress and cotton trousers of varying style and fit with a scarf or dupatta) which is perceived more as an Islamic or Pakistani dress.12 These distinctions are traditional. The boundaries have blurred significantly in the past few decades as salwars have become increasingly popular amongst women of all ages, classes, and religious groups in India.

In the case of the South Asian diaspora in Singapore, the migratory movement can be attributed to colonial influences in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most of these migrations were voluntary or professionally motivated, 9http://web.worldbank.org/

http://bit.ly/TH3wjN Bakrathi Mani, “Undressing the diaspora” in Nirmal Puwar and Parvati Raghuram eds., South Asian Women in the Diaspora. (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 118.

11 Vinay Bahl, “Shifting Boundaries of ‘Nativity’ and ‘Modernity’ in South Asian Women’s Clothes,” Dialectical Anthropology 29.1 (2005): 91.

12 Ramachandra Guha, “The Spread of the Salwar,” http://ramachandraguha.in/archives/the-spread-of-the-salwar.html, accessed 29 Dec 2015.

10

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MEGHA HARISH rather than forced or traumatic dispersal. My own grandfather was born in Singapore in the 1930s and was issued a birth certificate that classified him as a ‘British Tamil.’ In Global Diasporas, Robin Cohen creates a standard, using nine criteria, to determine whether or not a group can qualify as a ‘diaspora.’ South Asians in Singapore would probably satisfy five of these nine.13 Cohen’s comment on the “possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in tolerant host countries” is one that is particularly pertinent in Singapore.14 Regardless of whether or not the state-enforced tolerance permeates each level of society, opportunities and infrastructure have been provided for the diasporic community to build homes. This support has meant not just the emergence of ‘Little India,’ an enclave for Indian commerce and food, but also, and more importantly, the spread of Indian schools and institutions of art and culture such as the Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society (SIFA). Migration to Singapore at present is seen as a very desirable option for young Indians as it remains quite close to the homeland and opportunities to return for frequent visits are numerous.

In Singapore, the People’s Action Party (PAP) government has made a significant effort to distance the society from the ‘less desirable’ features of Western culture.15 There is currently a move towards the ‘Asianisation’ of the island, with discourse valorizing Asian values being promoted in schools.16 The Indian government may not have a similar attitude towards Western nations with its ‘Make in India’ project seeking to attract further foreign investment into the country.17 However, the sentiments conveyed by community 13

These criteria, very broadly, includes: dispersal/expansion, collective myth and memory, a return movement/continued connection, ethnic consciousness, relationship with the host society and sense of responsibility with co-ethnic members.

14 Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction. (Seattle: Routledge, 1997), 161.

15 Chua Beng-Huat, “Postcolonial sites, global flows and fashion codes: A case-study of power cheongsams and other clothing styles in modern Singapore,” Postcolonial Studies 3.3 (2000): 281.

16 Ibid.

17 http://www.makeinindia.com/policy/foreign-direct-investment

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THE SARI elders and those recurrent in civics textbooks are very similar to the ones ascendant in Singapore at present, with both promoting their specific brands of patriotism and cultural pride.

In the communal display of pride for ancient civilisations, monuments, cinema culture, and sportspeople, the sari often features as a key marker. A sari makes a woman “the most beautiful she could ever become” and is a symbol of “Indian-ness” itself.18 Clothing thus becomes an effective method of standing out within larger groups in a world dominated by Western norms. Clothes are able to convey cultural and social values and become intersections of tradition and modernity. Chua Beng-Huat states that “clothing constitutes a significant site upon which the cross-cutting effects of globalisation and re-ethnicisation are inscribed.”

Women’s clothes are more distinguishable, visible, and scrutinised than those of men.19 The sari, therefore, signifies belonging, coming of age, family ties, and independence for women. Saris and their stories are essential to their wearers. They become “infused with memories” and “form a link between the past and the present, between the personal and the social.”20 It is important to address the anatomy of the sari before exploring its presence in different societies. The sari is divided into two main sections: the body and the pallu (or pallav). The body of the sari is the main section of fabric, out of which the pleats for the skirt are made. It is generally simpler in its patterning than the pallu.

The pallu is the section that is draped over the left shoulder. This is generally the most embellished portion of the sari as it is visible and left free-flowing.21 The pallu has taken on a particular significance: as the portion used to cover the head, it is often used dramatically to depict a wide range of emotions in theatre, television,

18

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 236.

Beng-Huat, “Power Cheongsams,” 281.

20 Murthy, “Displaying Saris,” 28.

21 See Fig. 1.

19

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MEGHA HARISH and film. For mothers, the pallu acts as a cradle of sorts, a comforting blanket and an all round maternal cloth, with which many childhood memories are associated. Most women today wear the sari along with a blouse and petticoat (a long cotton underskirt). Instead of the loose fitting, one-piece garment the sari once was, it now involves tightly stitched undergarments and layers. Consequently, the sari no longer remains suitable for tropical climates, as this tight fit increases felt heat and discomfort.22 The sari is a coming of age garment, traditionally worn by brides only just before their marriage, and, increasingly today, by young girls aged 17 or 18, at their high school graduation ceremonies.23 The combination of fear and excitement involved in the first donning of the sari is tangible at such events. At my own school graduation, my pleats slipped off as I tripped on my heels and though, thankfully, no one in the audience saw, I was taken backstage by my teachers to re-drape the entire sari. Putting on a sari is a significant performative act, formative in the move to womanhood, which “renders both the body and the fabric dynamic.”24 The wearer is forced to move along with the sari as it demands particular styles of movement and grace in order to remain intact.

As mentioned above, there has been a great deal written about Indian diasporas in the United States and the UK, including research on women, their clothing choices, and the pressures they face as migrants in an unfamiliar host nation. There is comparatively far less scholarship regarding Indian women in Singapore and other non-Western places of dispersal. The cultural context of Singapore is unconventional as a point of dispersal. It is not the usual western, white culture in which one might, by default, imagine the diasporic experience to be taking place. Rather, Singapore is a state wherein the PAP government has been placing 22

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 27.

See Fig. 6.

24 Murthy, “Displaying Saris,”19. See also Fig. 2.

23

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THE SARI great emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism since before ‘global’ became a political buzzword.

Singapore declared itself a “global city” in the early 1970s.25 The population of Singapore is comprised of three primary demographic groups: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. The Chinese majority forms close to 75% of the total population. Proximity to Malaysia and high numbers of Tamil and other South Asian diasporas led to the development of a constitutionally ingrained multi-racialism being decreed in Singapore.26 This has had serious implications for the social and cultural attitudes of the island. The racial tensions that exist (and often go unmentioned) in Singapore are not focused around the “Asians” versus the “white expats,” but instead are centred on the relationship the Chinese majority community has with the more prominent minorities such as the Malay and Tamil. A large proportion of Indians in Singapore are Tamil. Apart from these Tamilians, Punjabis, Sindhis, and Gujaratis also form communities in Singapore and have a significant presence in its commerce and trade.

It is within this context, then, that I will discuss the sari, comparing its dispersal in the Indian diaspora in Singapore against its many significations in the homeland. The ensuing sections are marked separately for convenience of analysis: in fact, these multiple functions of the sari are inter-related and interact with each other significantly.

SPACE AND IDENTITY Firstly, we must consider the relationship between the sari, its wearer, and the space in which it is worn.

Social spaces, as the cultural geographer Doreen Massey defines them, are not just comprised of physical or

25 26

Beng-Huat, “Power Cheongsams,” 280.

Ibid.

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MEGHA HARISH tangible constructions. Spaces are also a function of the less tangible effects that we construct out of social interactions and relationships.27 The sari represents different things when worn in different contexts, and when it is worn by women of varied ages and backgrounds.

In India, the sari may be an indicator of prosperity, religion, marital status, state of origin, or profession. Since the sari is so prevalent in the homeland, it is not made remarkable by its presence alone, but by its specific characteristics in each iteration: the fabric, the drape, the design, the border, whether or not the wearer’s head is covered, and the accompanying accessories. The fabric of a sari is chosen specifically to cater to a particular gathering or occasion: light cottons and chiffons are becoming increasingly popular for daily wear, while heavier handloom textiles, silks, and embellished georgettes are worn on special occasions.28 In the homeland, the variety of messages conveyed by the sari can often be contradictory. The inferences are also variable depending on the observer. To the Indian male gaze, a woman in ‘Western attire’ may be perceived as less accessible, too modern, and ‘over-independent.’ To the Indian female audience, a sari-wearing woman may be labeled as ‘behenji’ or ‘aunty-like’ and considered traditional and narrow-minded.29 It is thus often difficult for women to simultaneously win the favour of both males and females, to please men of the family in a patriarchal home, and to appear fashionably dressed to friends and peers.

South Asian women in the diaspora have the added problem of feeling the need to be accepted by members of other communities. In the case of Singapore, this is not just the one majority community, like a British population in the UK, but also includes other minorities such as Malaysians, Indonesians, and Eurasians,

27

Doreen Massey, Space-Time and the Politics of Location (London:Routledge. 2000), 49.

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 27.

29 Bahl, “Shifting Boundaries,” 87.

28

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THE SARI alongside a Chinese majority.30 Here, the very act of wearing a sari positions the wearer as a member of the South Asian community. In public spaces and in the workplace, the sari can highlight the region of origin of the wearer, may be perceived as modest or traditional and often, in the context of Singapore, might also fulfill the stereotype of being a ‘Hindu’ garment, in a nation where the Muslim population is predominantly Malay.

For women in Singapore, their concerns are not limited to what members of their family or community will think of them, but also include how Chinese and Malay women of similar age and stature are dressing.

Moorthy describes her experience of living in Singapore as bringing a sudden awareness of her ethnicity.

Being from a Sri Lankan Tamil background, she began to look for the particular silks, colours, and drapes of her tribe and used saris as an extension of her identity.31 Unlike traditional Chinese or Malay clothing for women, the sari has survived and made its presence felt in Singapore, both in public and private life. BengHuat writes about the disappearance and re-imagination of the cheong-sam, the Chinese national dress and the Malaysian baju-kurong, but does not think the sari faces the same risk. “The sari has never been discarded or even marginalised by Indian women. Even in everyday life, particularly among those more mature in age, its presence has always been visible.”32 He hypothesises that the sari’s survival may be due to the minority status of the Indian population and their diasporic desire to maintain a closeness to their homeland through clothing, as is expected within the diaspora.33 Indian women in Singapore wear saris especially for religious and social occasions, but also as a garment of work, as will be discussed.34 The persistence of the sari is also a testament to the steadfastness of Indian women both in the homeland and the diaspora. It is indicative of how women in

30

UNHCR, http://www.refworld.org/, http://bit.ly/1RxmQGC, accessed 21 March 2016.

Rani Moorthy, Northern Soul.

Beng-Huat, “Power Cheongsams,” 291.

33 Beng-Huat, “Power Cheongsams,” 291.

34 Murthy, “Displaying Saris,”19.

31 32

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MEGHA HARISH the diaspora appear less likely to assimilate western dress when compared to their male counterparts. Biswas writes, “it must go to the credit of the Indian women that allure, prestige and influence of the European dress could not tempt them to forsake their sartorial heritage.”35

MODESTY AND MODERNITY Another question that arises in relation to saris is the dichotomy they often imply between modesty and modernity. Within Indian communities, both at home and in the diaspora, it is important to wear saris to present a traditional, grounded, and modest image. However, in popular culture and high fashion, the sari has been sexualized: blouses are deeper and smaller and the pallu, which normally exists to cover the breasts, has been repurposed as a thin scarf-like line of fabric, running between the breasts to accentuate them, rather than to “protect the woman’s modesty.”36 Saris in starched cottons and thick silks are losing favour to chiffons, georgettes and finer silks and synthetics, which hug the body and are often more translucent.37 Younger girls in India, for their formative high-school graduation ceremonies, are beginning to have changing aspirations, following the style dictated by Bollywood and high fashion. These views are most often at odds with the views of their parents, who have been conditioned to the ideas of modesty that the British Raj applied to the sari. Initially, the blouse and petticoat were undergarments enforced by Christian missionaries so as to not unsettle European men, so that in case the pallu slipped off the shoulder or the pleats fell out of the skirt, they would still see a bodice top with a skirt tied at the waist. The importance of a sleeved-blouse and petticoat being worn under the sari has become so ingrained within Indian society that women of the older generation

35

Ibid, 38.

See Fig. 3.

37 See Fig. 3.

36

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THE SARI will not stand in their own homes in only blouses and petticoats, for this would be tantamount to nakedness.38 A significant generational gap thus exists in perceptions of the sari.

The move towards sartorial modernity in India over the past few decades is apparent not only in Bollywoodesque saris, but also in the rising popularity of the salwar-kameez as an outfit for the youth, as a uniform in schools and colleges, as home-wear, and as a convenient form of dress for young professionals and teachers.

While some cities in India and around the subcontinent may be more accepting of what they see as “modern” fashion (essentially: women in jeans, trousers, short skirts or suits), smaller towns do not adopt this view as quickly. Rather, in the towns and villages of South India, the North Indian salwar-kameez is a sign of progressiveness and youth. Other regional dresses, on the other hand, are seen as “backward.”39 The traditional mundu and veshti or pavadai skirt and half-sari for younger girls in South India now appear archaic, while the salwar and its various forms have become the norm for “progressive” and “fashionable” girls. This transformation is ironically taking place in an age when there is a growing focus on local identity and authenticity.40 The salwar-kameez and its variants, such as the kurti, now occupy the mid-ground of perceived progressiveness in India between traditional saris and Western clothes.

In Singapore, however, from the mid-20th century onwards the change in sari culture is represented by two trends: changing fabrics for the older generation, and the fusion of Indian and Western clothing for younger generations. The synthetic sari, or nylex, was a result of mass production and was usually imported to Singapore from Japan. The rise of the synthetic sari, made from nylon, chiffon, georgette, or polyester (or a

38

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 81.

Bahl, “Shifting Boundaries,” 88.

40 Ibid.

39

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MEGHA HARISH combination of these) marked the decline in handloom woven saris with artisanal patterns of embellishment.41 Unlike the traditional sari, which is patterned on the pallu and has a border around the length of the fabric, the nylex saris had printed motifs (usually floral or abstract geometric patterns) all across the body of the sari, with the border and pallu undifferentiated.42 These saris were also significantly cheaper than hand-loomed textiles, costing between 15-30 Singapore dollars in the 1960s. The synthetic fabrics were supplied in rolls or bales and would then be cut and sold into six-yard sari pieces, often by the Sindhi merchants on the high streets. The increasing economy of saris made them far more accessible to women across a range of economic backgrounds in Singapore. Furthermore, nylex saris had bright designs and were less likely to fade. They were very durable, and did not require starching and ironing each time they were worn. For these reasons, many women could choose between a range of saris for work. Consequently, nylex saris became especially popular with teachers in Singapore.43 For young women in the diaspora, however, the change has been represented by the reclamation of traditional accessories, such as the bindi (coloured dot on the forehead), dupattas (scarves), and jewellery. Ravindra Jain writes that, within the diaspora, it is now impossible to distinguish between the “ethnic” and “global” since there is such a large area of overlap between the two.44 Young Indians in the diaspora are less likely to adopt traditional clothing, whether saris or salwars, for daily wear. Instead, fusion clothing with ethnic prints, patterns, colours, and fabrics, worn in the form of Western skirts, tops, or waistcoats are becoming more popular. For the young in the diaspora, saris are reserved for formal occasions and family gatherings.

41

Murthy, “Displaying Saris,” 23-24.

Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Jain, “An Indian Perspective,” 55.

42

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THE SARI

WORK In contrast to its use by the young, the sari plays a much less circumscribed role for older women in the diaspora. It is not just a garment of the home, nor is its use restricted to familial celebrations. Throughout the 20th century, as women began to enter the public workspace, the sari took on a new avatar as a staple for the working professional woman in India. Teaching is the most frequently cited example in the literature available, since education in South and South East Asia continues to be dominated by female teachers.

In both Singapore and India, teachers and their everyday interactions with the sari have become an important locus of scholarly attention. In some schools, the dress code for teachers only allows for saris, not even permitting the salwar-kameez. A teacher of Indian origin in Singapore points out the relationship between professionalism and modesty: in order to gain respect from students of all ethnicities, one has to be “proper” by not revealing the stomach or waist. When worn correctly, the sari hides “unwanted fat” and looks artistic.

The teacher in question would also bond with her colleagues when they asked to borrow her saris on Diwali or Racial Harmony Days in Singapore.45 In India, the purview of the sari continues to expand as it takes on the role of a professional uniform for careers in the service sector, becoming daily wear for airline crew, hotel staff, nurses, and policewomen.46 Vinay Bahl believes that the use of the sari as a uniform takes the beauty and authenticity out of the garment, while Banerjee and Miller argue that this use makes a statement about “neatness, efficiency and the new working woman” and also represents “India’s distinctive embrace of both tradition and modernity.”47

45

Murthy, “Displaying Saris,” 21.

See Fig. 5.

47 Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 119-123.

46

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MEGHA HARISH The sari in India, therefore, has taken on a professional face, both in the service sector and in high-powered roles. A preliminary search of businesswomen in India yields results of thousands of dynamic women in saris of different varieties. The sari has a significant presence amongst the upper-middle class and upper echelons of the corporate world: women like Chanda Kochhar, CEO of Citibank, and Chitra Ramkrishna, CEO of the National Stock Exchange, both regularly wear the garment.48 Banerjee, an Indian academic in the UK, gives us a striking example of the “power sari.” The idea of the “power sari” refers to women in the workplace who use the sari to assert their femininity and culture in professional spaces usually dominated by men that in contrast wear formal suits of darker colours. Banerjee writes that “the best evidence in favour of the “power sari” was the number of men who complained that, in the politics of the office, they were at a distinct disadvantage because they could not compete with the power (and virtue) the women conveyed through their saris.”49 Beyond the corporate world lies the political sphere, where some of the most publicly scrutinised women work. Women in the Indian Administrative Services are expected to wear saris to work on a daily basis and their handbook prescribes “sober colours” and “narrow borders” for their saris.50 This simplicity within the bureaucracy is seldom mirrored in the realm of active politics. Here, the many messages conveyed through the saris of political women, and their reflection of their political party’s messages and ideologies, is a topic much discussed by the public, but one that is generally ignored by media houses and political analysts.51

48

See Fig. 4.

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 127.

50 Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 128.

51 Ibid.

49

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THE SARI Though controversial, Indira Gandhi, India’s only female Prime Minister to date, also comes to mind. As the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi “was in some ways the epitome of the elite politician, and her unfailing exquisite saris conveyed an almost regal sense of her own divine right to rule”’52 In the present day, an image of Sushma Swaraj, Minister for External Affairs, along with Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, shows the multifaceted nature of the “power sari” and the way it transcends national borders within the subcontinent. More importantly, the significance of the sari lies in how it acts as a garment of authority that transcends religious divisions: something evinced by how Sushma Swaraj, representing an openly Hindu-leaning BJP government, stands alongside Sheikh Hasina, leader of an 86.6% Islamic nation, with the pallu covering her head.53, 54 This power of the sari to transcend religious difference is evident not only in the case of Bangladesh, but also in that of Pakistan. Fatima Jinnah and Nusrat Bhutto, both prominent in public political life of late 20th century Pakistan, frequently wore saris, as is evident in many photographs of them from Independence onwards.55 In Singapore, however, the sari is seldom worn in the workplace outside of schools and Little India. The younger generation of the diaspora, who have grown up in Singapore, most often choose to wear Western attire to work. Overall, there is a trend of Indian women in the diaspora being forced or feeling obliged to wear Western attire in the workspace and return to more traditional dressing at home, for fear of judgement or exclusion. “Indian-ness,” which manifests in the wearing of the sari, is often a prerequisite to receiving support and assistance from immigrant Indian communities. Members of the South Asian diaspora, just like those of other immigrant communities, maintain a strong connection with fellow members in the host country.

52

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 128. See also Fig. 4.

See Fig. 4.

54 Government of Bangladesh, http://bit.ly/1IxjUZ7, accessed on 2 Jan 2016.

55 Guha, “The Spread of the Salwar.”

53

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MEGHA HARISH However, being perceived as too “modern” or “assimilated” discourages this feeling of kinship.56 Any style of dressing, therefore, is not inherently “traditional” or “modern,” but rather these ideas are products of spatialized historical and cultural processes that assign labels and meanings to dress. What immigrant Indian women wear, therefore, is often “the site of unresolved cultural conflict.”57 Despite the physical disconnect, the homeland continues to exert its influence over the diaspora. There is an ambiguity in the relationship between diasporic communities and their homelands, as the diasporic space is defined simultaneously by its separation from, and continued association with, the homeland. “A homeland is, as it were, something a people in diaspora are stuck with even as they are unstuck from it.”58 Indians overseas, particularly in the case of Singapore, have been able to maintain strong ties with the homeland’s traditions, festivals, rituals, and cultural norms. The repeated affirmation of these ties through arranged marriages, investment in property, religious affiliation, and the exchange of gifts in the form of food and clothes, consistently proves the centrality of material culture in the relation of the diaspora to its homeland.59 There are significant similarities between women of the older generation in both Singapore and India, owing to innovations in the textile industry, the liberalization of international trade, and the rise of the nylex sari.

However, differences seem more pronounced in the younger generation. The second and third generation women of the diaspora resemble the urban, cosmopolitan Indian youth, but have very little in common with the vast majority of young women in smaller towns and rural areas of India.

56

Bahl, “Shifting Boundaries,” 115.

Ibid.

Mark-Anthony Falzon “Bombay, Our Cultural Heart: Rethinking the relation between homeland and diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26.4 (2003): 664.

59 Falzon, “Bombay,” 679.

57 58

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THE SARI We have seen through this exposition that the context of the host country shapes the habits and practices of the diaspora. Within the South Asian diaspora in Singapore, and indeed, within the various sub-sections and age brackets, there is a distinct sense of culture and kinship. As a host country in East Asia that places emphasis on multicultural values, Singapore provides diasporic communities with an added sense of comfort relative to more Western contexts. Within such spaces, these communities feel more comfortable in expressing their traditions and social practices. Indians are not exclusively relegated to Little India, but engage with the rest of the population in ways that are at times difficult within Western contexts.

The sari lends itself in very different ways to the shaping of a woman’s identity: in the homeland, it signifies prosperity, modernity, and various subsections of identity such as religion, caste, age, etc. In the diaspora, it stands out as a sign of both dispersal and belonging to a diasporic community. There is a dynamism involved in the wearing of the sari, as women shuttle between their roles in the workplace, at home, and within the diasporic community writ large. Professional women show their conformity by wearing saris appropriately and modestly, while the “power sari” of the businesswoman and politician is a manifestation of seniority and leadership. This tension between “static and dynamic” is one that usually seems to define the sari, whether it is worn at home or in the workplace, or innocuously in the homeland and consciously in the diaspora.60

60

Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 131.

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FIGURE 1 The Sari: a roadmap.

 

From Banerjee and Miller, The Sari, 24.

FIGURE 2 How to drape a conventional Nivi sari.

Sareez.com at http://bit.ly/1RpsrT4, accessed 30 Dec 2015.

FIGURE 3 ‘Modern’ saris in Bollywood.

Utsavepedia http://bit.ly/1Uu1oFA and Fashionlady.com http://bit.ly/1OKkb0Z, accessed 30 Dec 2015.

FIGURE 4 ‘Power saris’ in the corporate sector and politics.

L to R: Chanda Kochhar of Citibank, Sushma Swaraj of the BJP and Sheikh Hasina, PM of Bangladesh, and Indira Gandhi with Queen Elizabeth.

Topnews.in http://bit.ly/1OKjXaj,Vervemagazine.in http://bit.ly/1O3DnDr and Getty Images http://bit.ly/1OxCJzL, accessed 30 Dec 2015.

FIGURE 5 Working saris as uniforms in the service sector.

L to R: A model showing the British Airways sari, and the Taj hotels sari.

Pinterest.com at http://bit.ly/1VMEGcP, 
 Tata Group at http://bit.ly/1OReaJI, accessed 30 Dec 2015.

FIGURE 6 A high-school graduation in Bangalore. Teachers and female students in saris.

National Public School, Koramangala, Bangalore 
 at http://www.npskrm.com/images/graduation_day.jpg, accessed on 4 Jan 2016.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Bahl, Vinay. “Shifting Boundaries of ‘Nativity’ and ‘Modernity’ in South Asian Women’s Clothes.”

Dialectical Anthropology 29.1 (2005): 85–127.

Banerjee, Mukulika. “Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India by Emma Tarlo.” Fashion Theory 3.2 (1999): 273-276.

Banerjee, Mukulika and Daniel Miller. The Sari. Oxford: Berg, 2003.

Beng-Huat, Chua. “Postcolonial sites, global flows and fashion codes: A case-study of power cheongsams and other clothing styles in modern Singapore.” Postcolonial Studies 3.3 (2000): 279-292.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: Routledge, 1997.

Falzon, Mark-Anthony. “Bombay, Our Cultural Heart: Rethinking the relation between homeland and diaspora.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26.4 (2003): 662-683.

Jain, Ravindra K. “Anthropology and Diaspora Studies: An Indian Perspective.” Asian Anthropology 10.1 (2011).

Jha, Pankaj Kumar. “Indian Diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore: Changing Perception and Rising Expectations.” Diaspora Studies 2.1 (2009): 75-92.

Jones, Dorothy. “The Eloquent Sari.” Textile 2.1 (2004): 52-63.

Kaur, Jasbir. “The Sari by Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller.” Fashion Theory 7.3 (2003): 415-431.

Kershen, Anne J. “The Construction of Home in a Spitalfields Landscape.” Landscape Research 29 (2004): 261-275.

Massey, Doreen. “Space-Time and the Politics of Location.” Architecturally Speaking: Practices of Art, Architecture and the Everyday. Ed. Alan Read. London: Routledge, 2000. 49-62.

The Asian Writer by Rani Moorthy. Accessed 20 Dec 2015. http://theasianwriter.co.uk/2015/10/ranimoorthy-2.

Northern Soul by Rani Moorthy, “The Taming of the Sari.” Accessed 20 Dec 2015. http://northernsoul.me.uk/ sari-rani-moorthy.

Murthy, Vidya. “Displaying Saris: Fashion Gallery of the National Museum of Singapore.” The Heritage Journal 3 (2008): 16-40.

Pillai, Shanthini and Sharenee Philomena Paramasivam. “From the fringes of the diasporic garment: creative pageants of Indian Christian identity from Malaysia and Singapore.” South Asian Diaspora 3.1 (2011): 71-88.

Puwar, Nirmal and Parvati Raghuram. South Asian Women in the Diaspora. Oxford: Berg, 2003.

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

ImagiNation and Indian Cinema: National Consciousness in Garam Hawa, Amar Akbar Anthony, and Roja

Priya Nair McGill University

IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA

INTRODUCTION Many regional identities undergird the more expansive Indian identity: no singular national identity permeates the consciousness of every Indian. An examination of the Indian film industry allows us to examine the various forms national consciousness may take, given how film acts as a medium for it, promotes a certain version of it, and reflects demands from it. This paper will examine how Garam Hawa (1974), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), and Roja (1992)1 evoke national consciousness. Each film is set within a different context, and as such, promotes a different conception of national identity. Garam Hawa is a Muslim minoritarian film that draws on memories of Partition, and which shows the plight of a Muslim family to promote national integration. Amar Akbar Anthony is a Nehruvian secularist film that promotes an interreligious brotherhood, while simultaneously elevating Hinduism through its normalization. Roja, in contrast, depicts a strong Pan-Indian nationalism while concurrently preserving regional identities, but does so through the other-ing of Muslims and by India’s construction vis-à-vis Pakistan. Collectively, Garam Hawa, Amar Akbar Anthony, and Roja portray the complexities of negotiating religious identity within a larger Indian national identity, and as such, problematize the possibility of a secular Nehruvian nationalism. In inevitably attempting to construct the Indian nation through the conciliation of its various religions, and not by their ignorance, the films necessarily reassert the significance of religion in forming the nation.

The concept of an ‘Indian’ nationalism and national consciousness did not exist in pre-colonial times. Though there were concepts such as Bharatavarsha in the 17th century, there was no word in any Indian language to

1

The original Tamil version of this film with English subtitles will be referenced throughout this paper.

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PRIYA NAIR express nationhood or nationality until the advent of British colonialism. 2 This was primarily because there was no conception of the boundedness of the Indian sub-continent. With the advent of colonialism– the mapping and territorialization of India, and constructions of railways and communications systems that linked the country– the idea of a nation began to materialize.3 There were two main layers in this emerging national consciousness– a regional one and a pan-Indian one. Since around 1905, the rise of two separate movements, one Hindu and the other Islamic, began to threaten a unified Pan-Indian national consciousness.4 By 1940, the antagonism produced by these movements had birthed the idea of a separate Muslim state.

During the post-Partition period from 1947 onwards, the question of consolidating an Indian national identity became even more pressing. Given the massive size of India, its various languages, many regional subnationalisms, and numerous caste stratifications, the creation of an Indian identity that encompassed everyone proved difficult. Furthermore, the existence of a Pakistani nationalism defined largely by Islam across the border made the role of religion in Indian nationalism particularly contentious. The Indian nationalism that the Congress tried to establish post-Partition was one defined by secularism and unity through diversity. The notion of unity through diversity promotes the unification of all Indians under the Bharat Mata,5 while acknowledging the diversity of the various states, classes, and religions across India. This paper will refer to this state nationalism as Nehruvian secularist nationalism. Scholars such as Suvir Kaul, Kavita Daiya, Jisha Menon, and Priya Kumar contend that Partition was the “originary trauma” in the national memory. 6 As such, 2

Bharatavarsha refers to the region extending form the Himalayas to the Seas, populated by descendants of Bharata.

Amalendu Guha, 1982, “The Indian National Question: A Conceptual Frame,” Economic and Political Weekly 17 (31), Economic and Political Weekly: PE2–PE12, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371179, 3 3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., 4 5 Literally means ‘Mother India’ – it is the personification of India as the mother goddess.

6 Deepti Misri, 2014, Beyond partition: gender, violence, and representation in postcolonial India. http://public.eblib.com/choice/ publicfullrecord.aspx?p=3414405, 8

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA they argue that Indian cultural and literary production bears the mark of Partition’s violent legacy.7 Among such cultural productions, the film industry in particular is highly effective in portraying and evoking a national sentiment.

FILM INDUSTRY AS A MEDIUM OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS Several scholars, such as Sumita Chakravarty, Jyotika Virdi, and Priya Kumar point particularly to the role of the Indian film industry in cultivating a national identity. The industry began pre-Partition, and the first sound film was produced in 1931.8 Since then, it gained popularity and increased viewership: between 1931 and 1987, 6,597 movies were produced, and 5,074 of these were produced in the post-Partition period (1947-1987).9 The film industry takes up major space in Indian society, and cinematic productions often involve the mediation of national consciousness. Given cinema’s status as an audio-visual medium, it alerts the audience to recognizable national and cultural symbols such as landscape, historical period, dress, sloganeering, and style of life.10 The activity of viewing a film in the cinema allows separate individuals to shed their differences and share a common fictional realm.11 Films tend to transcend social class, and are accessible even to the illiterate, unlike literary texts. As such, they become a significant medium for the dissemination of nationalist thought.

7

Ibid.

Sumita S. Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 9.

Ibid.

10 Ibid., 13-14.

11 Priya Kumar, Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=334230, 178.

8 9

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PRIYA NAIR India is a multilingual nation, and its film industry reflects this diversity, while simultaneously unifying the population in terms of ideology. There are regionally-specific film industries, such as Bollywood (for the Hindi-speaking audience), Kollywood (for the Tamil-speaking audience), and Sandalwood (for the Kannadaspeaking audience).12 Oftentimes, popular movies made in one regional industry will be remade in another, becoming more accessible to Indians speaking other languages. Roja, originally accessible only to a Tamilspeaking audience, was remade in Hindi, and Amar Akbar Anthony, originally only accessible to Hindispeakers, was remade in Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil. 13 This process allows for the national sentiment imbued in each of these movies to permeate throughout Indian society and be linguistically accessible to more than one region. However, viewership is not necessarily constricted by the lack of linguistic accessibility– subtitles are available, and the “film language,”14 which consists of camera placement, editing, camera angle, and mise-en-scéne, is universally accessible. Looking at Hindi cinema specially, as it is one of the most popular and successful industries within India, one may note how the language used embodies a Nehruvian nationalism, promoting unity through diversity. The language of this cinema is generally referred to as Hindustani– a term popularized by Gandhi in the 1940s and 50s.15 Hindustani is “a syncretic language in which the matrix of language was Hindi but the lexicon would be derived from all the major languages of India.”16 Thus, Hindustani, as a language, embodies the nationalist sentiment of “Unity through Diversity.”

Apart from linguistic diversity, religious diversity is a key component to consider when looking at schisms in a Pan-Indian nationalism and identity. This struggle between religious inclusivity and exclusivity is mirrored 12

Ibid, 179.

Pankaj Jain, 2010, "From Kil-Arni to Anthony: The Portrayal of Christians in Indian Films". Visual Anthropology. 23 (1): 17.

Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987, 13 15 Francis M. Hult and Kendall A. King, Educational linguistics in practice applying the local globally and the global locally (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2011) http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=717997, 28.

16 Ibid.

13 14

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA within the film industry. Officially, India is a secular nation and it was this brand of nationalism that the government promoted post-Partition.17 However, a Hindu nationalism existed at the same time. 1989 was the major dividing line, when a Hindu nationalist ideology, Hindutva, began to rise. 18 Filmic portrayal of Hindus and Muslims, in particular, is inextricable from the socio-political context, especially as some movies ‘other’ Muslims from the Indian identity altogether, some embrace them in a secular Indian brotherhood, while others minoritize within the national consciousness. In the 1930s-40s, since the industry was dominated by Hindu actors, many Muslim actors were given Hindu names. Muhammad Yusuf Khan became Dilip Kumar, Mumtaz Jahan Begum became Madhubala, and Mehjabeen Ara Kamal became Meena Kumari.19 Given the prominence of such celebrities in society, the politics of naming plays an important role in the public’s conceptualization of a national consciousness. The renaming of these actors is indicative of the social marginalization of Muslims, and reveals the dominant role of Hinduism in the establishment of an Indian national identity. However, since then, the politics of naming has transformed, and today we see the film industry dominated by the Khans.20 While religion remains at the root of Indian nationalist debates today, the film industry has become comparatively more secular in attempts to promote greater religious inclusivity.

GARAM HAWA (1974) After partition in 1947, Muslims in India faced increasing ghettoization and minoritization within the new polity. Released in 1974, Garam Hawa was one of the first films to confront this issue.21 Priya Kumar terms

17

Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987, 27.

Ibid., 28.

19Rahman, Tariq. 2013. “Personal names of Pakistani Muslims: an essay on onomastics.” Pakistani Perspectives 18 (1): 51.

20 Khan is a Muslim name 21 Kumar, Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film, 186 18

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PRIYA NAIR the film a “secular nationalist account of Partition.”22 Though it was initially banned by the censor board who feared it would instigate communal dissension, it was later allowed release and acclaimed for its contribution to national integration.23 The fact of Garam Hawa’s initially ban indicates the potential films have to mould mass sentiment in postcolonial India. It testifies to the urgency of this analysis and, more broadly, to the need for understanding the nuanced ways in which such films portray relations between different faith groups: both individually, and as collectives.

Set in the Agra of post-Partition India, the film follows the life of Salim Mirza and his family. Salim’s family is Muslim and as other Muslim members of their community begin to leave for Pakistan seeking better economic prospects, those who remain face immense hardship given the cemented minority status of Muslims in post-Partition India. Salim’s son, Sikander, cannot find work while his daughter, Amina, is unable to get married though her marriage is arranged twice, once to Shamshad and another time to Kazim. Salim almost loses hope and departs for Pakistan himself, but changes his mind at the last minute, choosing to face the hardships and stay in what he considers his homeland. This film revolves around the aftermath of Partition and the notion of home. It promoted a specific brand of national consciousness among Indian Muslims by reaffirming their place in Indian society, and by acknowledging their grievances through the realistic portrayal of their plight. It also played on the sympathies of the Hindu audience by humanizing the Muslim’s everyday life and by reminding both religious groups of their shared history and identity.

Any national identity needs a firm foundation memory, a “originary trauma memory”24 as Deepti Misri puts it. In Garam Hawa, Partition is the originary trauma memory, and this film is effective in portraying a shared Kumar, Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film, 187.

Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987, 248.

24 Misri, Beyond Partition, 8.

22 23

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA memory and history to promote national consciousness. The film begins by announcing, “India’s independence 1947,”25 establishing this as the pivotal moment in national memory. The first image depicts the map of India– a symbol of the various states’ shared territoriality. It shows images of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Mountbatten– all important figures in this shared national history. These images are interspersed with those of arms and of the destruction resulting from the violent struggle for independence. Gandhi is the first person pictured and his image is often brought up: his death is portrayed emphatically, with the sound of a bullet, his expressions failing and the image rotating. He is theatrically established as the central figure in this national memory, and his death becomes a sort of martyrdom. The narration at the very start of the movie emphasizes the collective nature of the trauma experienced: “storms rage in every heart, it’s the same here or there,” “funeral pyres in every home,” “every city is deserted; it’s the same here or there.”26 The dialogue establishes, through its repetitive use of “here or there,” that Partition is a collective trauma experienced by the entire nation. Furthermore, the film transcends religious barriers by stating that no one listened to the Gita, nor the Quran.27 Thus, unity amongst Indian citizens is suggested from the onset of the movie, through the depiction of Partition as a collective trauma memory.

Within this context, the protagonist Salim is portrayed as the authentic Indian: a patriot who stands by his country despite all difficulties, a man of great moral fibre, honesty, resilience, and tradition. He is a quasiGandhian figure with great sympathy and a patient, anti-violent demeanour.28 Despite all numerous times he is turned down for loans and the minoritization he faces, Salim maintains a respectful, sympathetic attitude to the men turning him down, never once raising his voice in anger. His brother, Halim Mirza, acts as a foil, 25Garam

Hawa, Directed by M.S. Sathyu (1974; Mumbai; Film Finance Corporation (FFC)) DVD. Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987, 168.

26

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PRIYA NAIR however, and often gets angry at the lack of economic opportunities in post-Partition India, eventually leaving for Pakistan. While the contrast between these characters to some degree furthers this notion of an Indian nationalism constructed vis-à-vis a Pakistani “other,” the film asks us to identify more with Salim, who functions as our ideal, and not his brother.29 Tellingly, Salim’s manner towards Hindus does not change postPartition despite the difficulties he faces. This fact suggests the possibility of positive Hindu-Muslim relations in a way that is not dictated nor affected by the changing political landscape.

This film goes a long way in promoting Hindu-Muslim national integration through its use of architecture, the even portrayal of Hindu and Muslim self-serving acts, and the realistic portrayal of the family’s plight. Many scenes in the film depict beautiful Mughal architecture, such as Salim Chishti’s tomb and the Taj Mahal.

These monuments stand as cultural symbols of the nation and recount a shared history of Hindus and Muslims. Salim Chisti was a Sufi saint from Akbar’s era– a Mughal emperor often remembered for his religious tolerance. 30 As such, his tomb functions as a symbol of the bygone unity of Hindu and Muslims in pre-colonial India. Its placement within the film is integral as it projects Hindu-Muslim unity not as a simple possibility, but as a historical reality which we certainly can (and not just “may”) achieve.

Apart from its intelligent use of architecture, Garam Hawa also draws equivalences between religious communities by portraying both Hindus and Muslims as equally self-serving and exploitative. Both Shamshad’s and Kazim’s parents disregard their sons’ love for Amina to procure more economically advantageous matches in Pakistan. Similarly, many Hindu bankers refuse to give Salim a loan because of the precarious economic status of most Muslims at this point in time. The one Muslim who is financially 29 30

Kumar, Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film, 187.

Percy Brown, Indian architecture (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala, 1965), 63.

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA successful in this climate refuses Sikander's job application because it might be perceived as favoritism and risk his standing in the community. As both Hindus and Muslims act out of self-interest or religious discrimination in the film, Garam Hawa essentially delinks negative qualities such as avarice and cruelty from the Muslim other. In so doing, it avoids the pitfall of Hindu superiority that many nationalist films take or moral Muslim superiority that may pervade Muslim minoritarian films. These qualities are at root only human, Garam Hawa tells us, and consequently it is important we recognize the intrinsic connectedness between members of different religious groups. This intrinsic connectedness applies not only to one’s internal moral state, but to the inclusions of these various religious groups within the larger Indian national identity.

The greatest factor spurring this integration, however, is the direct sympathy that Salim and Amina’s plight evokes. Both these characters are innocent, ordinary, and relatable. Their trials and ordeals are portrayed realistically without theatrical hype. Amina is abandoned in love. She suffers from a form despair that is, again, essentially human, and which transcends religious divides. Similarly, Salim, despite his immense work ethic and honesty, faces constant barriers that are of no fault of his own. The overall disintegration of familial ties, the reduction in the number of plates set at each dinner, and the omnipresence of heavy dismay throughout most of the film, collectively elicit immense affective responses from its audience. Chakravarty points out that Salim’s character was played by a Hindu, arguing that this would make both Hindus and Muslims feel more secure with the portrayal and foster greater feelings of identification.31 As such, the nationalism of Garam Hawa, by presenting past Hindu-Muslim unity as an achievable reality and through its elicitation of affective responses, acknowledges the humanity of both Hindu and Muslims, and as well their equal claim to the nation. It provides a realistic portrayal of the Muslims’ plight post-Partition to foster a more sympathetic and understanding dialogue between Hindus and Muslims.

31

Chakravarty, National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987, 251.

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PRIYA NAIR

AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY (1977) While Garam Hawa resembles realist Muslim minoritarian films, Amar Akbar Anthony is a dramatic and commercial Nehruvian secularist film. The film depicts national harmony by underscoring the brotherhood of all religions within secular India. Amar Akbar Anthony tells the story of three brothers, separated in childhood and raised by a Hindu police officer, a Muslim tailor, and a Christian priest respectively. As the movie progresses, Amar, Akbar, and Anthony become friends despite remaining unaware of their shared familial ties. They encounter their father, Kishanal, and their mother, Bharati, without realizing this biological kinship.

Together, the three brothers defeat a villain: Robert. It was a commercial blockbuster that influenced and continues to influence wide national audiences.

The notion of a secular nationalist brotherhood is evident in various layers of the film. That the three brothers are separated on Independence Day under a Gandhi statue is significant insofar that the film continually allegorizes how India may regain what it lost at Independence: its harmonious, secular identity. In contrast, Robert causes the separation of Kishanlal’s family, and he represents disunity and separation as the greater metaphorical enemy of the nation. The song “Anhoni ko Honi karde” (“make the impossible possible”) near the end of the film captures the essence of the film and its message, that the power of all three brothers combined– of all the various religions united– will be victorious.

The movie allegorizes national kinship through its use of blood. In the opening scene, when the three men are donating blood to their mother (unknown to them at the time), the spatialization is very deliberate and telling.

The three brothers are lying parallel to each other, on an equal plane, with their mother lying at the other end of the room, all connected by the blood transfusion, which creates the image of a family tree. The camera clearly follows the blood transfusion line between each brother to the mother. During this scene, behind each

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA man, there is an image of the place of prayer of his adopted religion. 32 This is a very clear emphasis on unity and blood ties. The blood imagery combines with the development of fictive kinship, and as such, reinforces the bonds of national brotherhood. Fictive kinship refers to the relationships developed between Amar, Akbar, Anthony, and Bharati while they were still unaware of their biological relationship. Bharati calls Amar, Akbar, and Anthony bete (son), without knowing they are actually her sons, just as the three men refer to her as maa or mai (mother), without knowing she is actually their mother. These fictive kinships are as real as the biological kinships: a fact highlighted in the relationship between Robert’s daughter Jenny and Kishanlal, who share a fictive father-daughter kinship that is, in fact, more real than the relationship she has with her villainous biological father. If one takes Bharati as an embodiment of Bharat (the nation), the scene wherein Anthony says to Bharati, “He’s your son, I’m your son—according to that logic we should be brothers…” embodies how all the offspring of the nation are tied in brotherhood. 33 The emphasis on the strength of fictive kinships throughout this film is emblematic of national brotherhood.

Despite its grand portrayal of a harmonious national brotherhood, Amar Akbar Anthony subtly reinscribes religious hierarchy with the Hindu self at its metaphoric apex. Amar, the Hindu, is the oldest brother, the one guaranteeing the safety of the others as a police officer. Furthermore, among all the brothers, Amar’s portrayal is the most normative. The middle brother is the Muslim Qawwali singer and the youngest brother, the Christian, is a slightly wayward drunk. Compared to Amar, Akbar and Anthony’s cultural and religious practices are slightly exaggerated. Akbar’s Muslim-ness is highlighted not only through his name, but also through his dress and occupation. When Akbar is shown saving his love interest, a mosque is clearly

32

Ulka Anjaria, 2012, "‘Relationships which have no name’: Family and sexuality in 1970s popular film," South Asian Popular Culture. 10 (1): 27.

33 Ibid., 28.

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PRIYA NAIR silhouetted in the background. Anthony is shown going to church regularly and performing the sign of the cross.

Amar’s Hindu-ness, on the other hand, is never explicitly portrayed– he is never shown praying or going to the temple. Amar’s religious identity is never overtly visible and is consequently normalized. Vasudevan extrapolates this normativity to all of Bombay cinema saying that they have always “tended to reserve a notion of normalcy for the Hindu hero, the apex figure in the composite nationalism of its fictions.

Exaggeration in cultural behavior is attributed to other social groups, especially Muslims, Christians, and Parsis.”34 The dominance of Hinduism is also implicit in the scene where Bharati gains her sight. Bharati, a symbol of the nation, is shown bowing down to Sai Baba, a spiritual figure who is worshipped largely in Hinduism. In so doing, she miraculously regains her sight. Thought it subtly glorifies and legitimizes Hindu belief, that Sai Baba is also revered by many Muslims is used to position this event as an almost secular miracle indicative of success achieved through religious harmony. As such, though Amar Akbar Anthony is widely cited as a Nehruvian secularist film, it is pertinent to note the pernicious religious hierarchies that permeate its portrayal of ostensibly harmonious brotherhood.

ROJA (1992) Roja, the third film featured in this analysis, was released post-1989, in a very different context from Amar Akbar Anthony and Garam Hawa. Roja is a story about a newly married couple, Roja and Rishi, who travel to Kashmir for an assignment Rishi has undertaken with the army, working as a cryptologist. It is during the course of this assignment that Rishi is abducted by Kashmiri separatists, and Roja runs from military

34

Kumar, Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film, 197

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA personnel to politicians, desperately trying to secure the safe return of her husband. The Kashmiri holding Rishi captive, Liaqat, ultimately lets Rishi go and he is reunited with Roja. At the time of its release, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was gaining political ground and Hindutva ideology was on the rise. When looking at the film’s promotion of national consciousness, it is important to look at the socio-political climate in which it was released, as well as how it was received. This movie was released not long after Rajiv Gandhi, former president of the Indian National Congress, was assassinated by Sri Lankan Tamil terrorists.35 Bearing this in mind, the release of a movie where a Tamil hero is ready to sacrifice himself for India makes a strong political statement about Tamil’s engagement with a Pan-Indian nationalism. This moment was also not too long after the destruction of the Babri Masjid– a mosque that was build on ground that Hindu nationalists claimed was Ram’s birthplace.36 According to Tejaswini Niranjana’s account, when Roja was released in a theatre in Hyderabad, it was sold out and met with cheering and slogans such as “Jai Sri Ram [Hail Lord Ram!], Pakistan Murdabad [Death to Pakistan!], Bharat Mata ki Jai [Victory to Mother India!].”37 Whether this Hindu nationalist sentiment was derived predominantly from the political situation at the time or the type of nationalism Roja portrayed is debatable. Scholars differ on their interpretations of the sort of nationalist sentiment Roja promotes: Niranjana argues that it falls in line with the Hindutva ideology, whereas Sonia Benjamin argues that it presents the ideal of a Nehruvian India. This section looks closely at how Roja incorporates both a regional and Pan-Indian nationalism and argues that Roja ‘others’ Muslims in its nationalism.

Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘The home and the nation: consuming culture and politics in Roja’, in Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (eds), Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 161–162.

36 Ibid, 165.

37 Tejaswini Niranjana, 1994, “Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in 'Roja'”. Economic and Political Weekly 29 (3).

Economic and Political Weekly: 79–82, http://www.jstor.org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/stable/4400654, 79.

35

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PRIYA NAIR The film successfully navigates India’s diversity by presenting a Pan-Indian and regional nationalism that work side by side. Rishi, as a modern, educated man with a traditional Hindu wife, is presented as an archetype Indian male. A clear fervent Indian patriotism is shown when Rishi throws himself on the Indian national flag or repeatedly screams “Jai Hind” [Victory to India] as he is beaten. The use of slogans such as “Jai Hind” are particularly effective because they work as rallying cries that evoke feelings of identification.

At the same time, however, a Tamilian sub-nationalism– a nationalism occurring at the regional level– is present in the film. This sub-nationalism is evident both in the scene where Roja and Rishi’s boss speak reminisce passionately about home, their native language and food, and in the film’s depiction of Tamil Nadu’s beautiful scenic landscapes. The song at the end of the movie, Tamizha Tamizha (O Tamil!), epitomizes the movie’s integration of these two nationalisms: Oh Tamil! The nation is also ours Community may vary but virtue is the same Place may vary but the country is the same Is there not Indian blood in you?

Then will not United India/Bharat protect you?

Modern India is common to all Hard toil created it Diversity was the fertiliser used to create it Separation cannot be permitted in this land!38

Hindi equivalent: The song’s Hindi equivalent begins with ‘Bharat humko jaan se pyara hai’ (‘Bharat/India is dearer to us than life’) Sonia Benjamin, 2006, "A rose by any other name: exploring the politics of Mani Ratnam's Roja," Contemporary South Asia, 15 (4): 431 38

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA The lyrics speak not of disparate communities, but of a united nation– a firm Tamil identity existing within the greater Indian identity, within the Indian mother her blood. The Hindi translation of this song decreases the emphasis on the Tamil nationalism, focusing more on Indian nationalism by renaming the song “India is dearer to us than life.” The integration of a Pan-Indian and regional nationalism in the original Tamil version of the film embodies the notion of unity in diversity.

However, despite this rhetoric of unity in diversity in Tamizha Tamizha, this unity is limited insofar that there is an othering of Muslims and the definition of India vis-à-vis Pakistan. This relational definition is most evident in the fact that the conflict over Kashmir is reduced to a problem of Islamic militarism. 39 The word Jihaad, holy war, resonates throughout the film: “Yeh jihaad hai, Kashmir ki aazaadi ke liye,”– this is jihaad, for Kashmir’s freedom. In another instance, the Kashmiri separatist states, “Jihaad– holy war hai– Hindustan ke saath”: Jihaad is holy war, holy war against India.40 Kashmiri separatists are labelled as “terrorists”– a term that inherently connotes danger to the nation and encourages national unity against an outside, ‘evil’ force. Liaqat is quoted as saying “you have reformed a terrorist,”41 suggesting that these Kashmiris selfidentify as terrorists, completely ignoring the complex history and political calculations behind their actions.

The only Kashmiris shown are Muslims, nearly all of whom are militant; indeed, there is only one civilian Kashmiri shown throughout the film. The film draws a correlation between Kashmiri separatists and Islam as they are shown performing namaaz,42 wearing Muslim ethnic wear, and sounding the aazaan43 as military confrontations occur.44 This militant Islam is set in stark contrast to the peaceful Hinduism that Roja is shown Kashmir is a disputed territory – both India and Pakistan lay claim to it.

Niranjana, “Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in ‘Roja,'” 81.

Roja, Directed by Mani Ratnam (1992; Chennai; Madras Talkies) DVD. 42 Muslim prayer 43 Muslim call to prayer 44Ananya Jahanara Kabir, 2010, "The Kashmiri as Muslim in Bollywood's ‘New Kashmir films’". Contemporary South Asia. 18 (4): 377 39 40 41

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PRIYA NAIR practicing.45 Pakistan is portrayed as the ‘other’– the land beyond the border where militants get trained, where some get killed, and to whom India could lose its beautiful Kashmir.46 Indian dominance over this ‘other’ is further established by the film’s complete erasure of the Indian army’s human rights abuses in Kashmir.47 In the world of Roja, India does no wrong. Its nationalism needs an ‘other’ in order to reinforce it definition of who the Indian is, and external threats usually help foster national cohesion. Consequently, even as Roja generates strong nationalist sentiments, it does so at the cost of India’s Muslim community, which becomes demonized and virtually disenfranchised from the nation. Roja propagates the Hindutva ideology insofar as it excludes Muslims from Indian nationalism. However, simultaneously, it promotes the ideal of a Nehruvian India by encouraging unity amongst India’s diverse regional communities.

CONCLUSION Each of these films portray a nationalism that differentially engages with the question of religion. There is an inability to ignore religion in the formation of a larger Indian national identity. Garam Hawa, Amar Akbar Anthony, and Roja each situate religion differently within the national identity, with Garam Hawa being the most inclusive of Muslims and Roja being the least inclusive. Garam Hawa, shown from a minority’s point of view, encourages the most even-handed and inclusive nationalism where Muslims are given equal claim to India. Amar Akbar Anthony depicts the ideal brotherhood of all religions in secular India, but despite its supposed inclusivity, it favors Hinduism. Roja can be seen as the most divergent from the original Nehruvian secularist nationalism that was envisioned right after Partition– it embodies unity through diversity insofar as Ibid.

Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Territory of desire representing the Valley of Kashmir (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=433184, 47.

47 Benjamin, "A rose by any other name: exploring the politics of Mani Ratnam's Roja," 425.

45 46

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IMAGINATION AND INDIAN CINEMA it harmonizes regional identities with a greater Indian identity, but by other-ing Muslims, it undermines India’s secular identity. Though these portrayals of religion and nationalism are not always overt, they are still effective in constructing national consciousness. This is pertinent not only when understanding what the idea of India meant in the period immediately following Partition, but also in doing the same for the current moment, where Hindu-Muslim tensions are on the rise both within India itself and in its relations with Pakistan.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Amar Akbar Anthony. Directed by Manmohan Desai. Mumbai, India: Hirawat Jain and Company, M.K.D Films, Manmohan Films, 1977. DVD. Anjaria, Ulka. 2012. "‘Relationships which have no name’: Family and sexuality in 1970s popular film". South Asian Popular Culture. 10 (1): 23-35.

Benjamin, Sonia. 2006. "A rose by any other name: exploring the politics of Mani Ratnam’s Roja". Contemporary South Asia. 15 (4): 423-435.

Brown, Percy. 1965. Indian architecture. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala.

Chakravarty, Sumita S. 1993. National identity in Indian popular cinema, 1947-1987. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Dwyer, Rachel, and Christopher Pinney. 2001. Pleasure and the nation: the history, politics, and consumption of public culture in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Garam Hawa. Directed by M.S. Sathyu. Performed by Balraj Sahni and Farooq Shaikh. Mumbai, India: Film Finance Corporation (FFC), 1974. DVD. Guha, Amalendu. 1982. “The Indian National Question: A Conceptual Frame”. Economic and Political Weekly 17 (31). Economic and Political Weekly: PE2–PE12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371179.

Hult, Francis M., and Kendall A. King. 2011. Educational linguistics in practice applying the local globally and the global locally. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx? p=717997.

Jain, Pankaj. 2010. "From Kil-Arni to Anthony: The Portrayal of Christians in Indian Films". Visual Anthropology. 23 (1): 13-19.

Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. 2010. "The Kashmiri as Muslim in Bollywood's ‘New Kashmir films’". Contemporary South Asia. 18 (4): 373-385.

Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. 2009. Territory of desire representing the Valley of Kashmir.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=433184.

Kumar, Priya. 2008. Limiting secularism the ethics of coexistence in Indian literature and film.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=334230.

Misri, Deepti. 2014. Beyond partition: gender, violence, and representation in postcolonial India. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=3414405.

Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1994. “Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in 'Roja'”. Economic and Political Weekly 29 (3). Economic and Political Weekly: 79–82. http://www.jstor.org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/stable/4400654.

Rahman, Tariq. 2013. “Personal names of Pakistani Muslims: an essay on onomastics.”

Pakistani Perspectives 18 (1): 33-57.

Roja. Directed by Mani Ratnam. Chennai, India: Madras Talkies, 1992. DVD.

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

Reservations For Women in India: 
 Democracy and Its Discontents

Bridget Walsh McGill University

RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA In order to gain an understanding of the Indian women’s movement today, it is imperative we take an intersectional approach informed by the retrospective gaze of history. In her article “Gender and Development in India 1970s-1990s,” Mary E. John challenges scholars to reimagine context not as a “background” to critique but rather as constitutive of the debate centering women’s reservations.1 Crucially, John highlights how women’s issues “are invariably tied, both explicitly and more often implicitly, to other issues”2, which is how contexts become operative. Women’s issues are not “coopted” or “appropriated” by other discourses, but rather play a constitutive role in their development. John goes on to assert that it is not the women’s movement that changes per se, but rather the way a new historical moment is understood within the political culture.3 Demonstrative of this process is the development of the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB), which is often mistakenly viewed solely through the lens of women’s rights. Proposed in 1996 as part of the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill, the WRB sought the reservation of thirty three percent of parliamentary seats for women.4 As of February 2014, the lower house of India’s Bicameral-Parliament had yet to vote on the bill.

Though it is easy to understand opposition to the WRB as the sum of patriarchal and misogynistic tendencies within the government, contextualizing the bill and its critical reception unveils a significantly more complex picture. The intersection between caste and class concerns as well as changing economic circumstances are crucial to understanding what is at stake in the pursuit of equality both for and between Indian women.

This paper tracks the development of women’s reservations in parliament beginning in the early twentieth century up till the 1990s. Although the question of formal quotas for women has gained widespread acceptance in public discourse in recent years, it has not been formalized at the national level. The strongest

1

Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996), 3071.

Ibid, 3072.

3 Ibid, 3071 4 Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008).

2

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BRIDGET WALSH opposition to the WRB comes from Dalit parties, who charge that blanket reservations for women are in fact an upper-caste ploy to quell “the rising tide of lower castes in politics”.5 Studies in the Gujarat and Karnataka provinces have confirmed that women’s reservations effectively reinforce existing unequal power dynamics between castes.6 The proposed alternative does not categorically reject reservations for women but rather advocates for “quotas-within-quotas” to ensure that minority7 women are represented. Such a policy avoids mobilizing the undifferentiated category of women as a means of glossing over socioeconomic difference and deep-seated inequality. However, “quotas-within-quotas” has not enjoyed the same widespread acceptance.

The question thus becomes: why is the category of ‘women’ writ large acceptable, while those of scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) women are not?

Society requires discourse (the mapping, description, and articulation of situations and processes), which by definition has the effect of delegitimizing certain views and positions while including others.8 The undifferentiated understanding of gender integral to the WRB exhibits this quality of discourse as it silences and delegitimizes specifically minority concerns in its supposition of the monolithic category of the woman.

The tide of economic liberalization interacts with gender and caste such that caste becomes subsumed within the “broadening feminist conceptions of the economy itself.”9 Gender relations relevant to development involve complex relations of power between and within the categories of women and men. This paper seeks to demonstrate that economic liberalization, acting as a carrier of the neoliberal ideology, restructures Indian

5

Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008) 29.

6 P. N. Nair, Export promotion in India. (New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 1997).

7 For the purposes of this paper, “minority” will act as a catch all term for STs, SCs and OBCs. This is not ideal but necessary for the purpose of clarity. “Minority” will be differentiated when discussing specific social movements that pertain to a specific social group.

8 Lisbet van Zoonen, Feminist media studies. (London: Sage, 1994) 40.

9 Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996), 3077.

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA society to produce political apathy in the middle class with reference to lower class concerns. As such, advocating for reservations for women without considering the intersectionality of caste, class, and gender effectively works to re-inscribe the status quo.

The question of reserved seats for women harkens back to the early twentieth century as the nationalist movement began to gain momentum. In her book My Experience as a Legislator, Muthulakshmi Reddy cites a lack of economic independence and inheritance rights, unfair marriage laws, and the devadasi10 system as major barriers to equality.11,12 In the interest of working towards social change, Reddy advocated for women’s reservations to ensure that they are adequately represented in the upper levels of government. Simultaneously, many prominent women including the Indian independence activist and poet, Sarojini Naidu, remained dismissive of the idea of privileging women within a democratic polity. As the President of the All India Woman’s Council (AIWC), Naidu was the dominant voice of the women’s movement in 1930.13 In a Presidential Address to the Council, Naidu emphasized solidarity between men and women as a more effective means of realizing equality.14 The concepts of universality and indivisibility must be read against the British policy of “divide and rule.” Juxtaposed as such, reserved seats for minority religions and special provisions for the depressed classes under the “Communal Award” of 1932 were perceived as forces that would fracture social cohesion and, by extension, the nationalist movement. Gandhi led a fast that same year opposing the Communal Award, which heavily influenced Naidu and other women’s rights activists.

10

In South India, a devadasi (Sanskrit: servant of deva (god) or devi (goddess) ) is a girl "dedicated" to worship and service of a deity or a temple for the rest of her life.

11 Muthulakshmi S. Reddy, My Experience as a Legislator. (Madras: Current Thought, 1930).

12Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele (Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011) 174.

13 Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele (Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011).

14 Ibid

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BRIDGET WALSH However, the Indian national movement’s struggle for freedom was not solely an oppositional movement against British imperialism, but must be seen as the “positive projection of a worldview that understood “freedom” as a commitment to political, economic, and social freedom for all sections of the people.”15 Consequently, when the issue was raised in 1946 in the Constituent Assembly, female representatives felt that “the working of democracy in the normal course would ensure the representation of all sections of Indian society.”16 Such a position reflects an idealistic conceptualization of democracy, one informed by the Indian nationalist movement. Prior to independence, it was believed that the virtues of democracy would ensure state accountability to its citizens. The dominant idea in Indian society, which became an institutionalized norm by way of law and public discourse, was equality for all Indian citizens. Preferential treatment in the legal framework, including reserved seats for women, was seen as contradictory to the principles on which the new Indian state would be realized. However, British India’s relationship to its citizens was characterized and defined by its domination as a colonial state. A democratic system of self-rule, while certainly more broadly representative, has its own challenges to attend to when it comes to representing the most marginalized sectors of society.

Quotas for women emerged within the context of the nationalist movement that solidified the identity of the Indian woman as “the bearer, not just of Indian culture, but of a new universal citizen.”17 Sarojini Naidu acted as an emblem, representing the new Indian woman as both portrait and proxy. By positing a universality of experience and the conditions of possibility without recognizing difference, Sarojini Naidu disavows her 15

Maitreye Chaudhuri, “Gender and advertisements: the rhetoric of globalization”, (Delhi: Women’s studies international forum, 2001) 373.

16 Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008) 29.

17 Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele (Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011) 177.

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA complicity in systems of domination. The professed unity of women had to be maintained in the face of explicit denial of political rights to representation of OBCs. Unfortunately, vehement opposition to reservations in the early twentieth century strengthened the very discourses the women’s movement sought to undermine. Political nationalism and the image of the glorified new Indian woman became the premise for delegitimizing demands for special representation.

The category of “women” is not neutral but rather occupies a place between the “formation of a descriptive class and the non-formation of a transformative class.”18 Insofar as women fail to produce a feeling of community, they do not form a transformative class. In other words, Sarojini Naidu cannot act as a representative for all Indian women: it is only the upper caste who can feel “casteless” and therefore “equal.”

The struggle against the oppression of women must be tempered by the recognition of one’s position within an institutional framework. Just as gender is a relational category, so too is caste. Professing that one’s representative claims speak for all Indian women is not democratic but rather authoritative and effaces the immense heterogeneity of India.

Muthulakshmi Reddy was conscious of some of the differences between women in terms of “modernity” and “conservatism.” While Reddy initially advocated for reservations for women, she also stalled the general acceptance of reservations for different reasons. Reddy took up a firmly feminist position but she questioned the relevance of reservations if they only served to usher conservative women “not conversant with the moving world”19 into parliament. Reddy expressed a concern that conservative religious women would not represent liberal women’s interests, for instance the push for reforms that would grant women equal 18

Gayatari Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Carly Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg.

(Chicago: University of Illinois Press) 276.

19 Muthulakshmi S. Reddi, My Experience as a Legislator. (Madras: Current Thought, 1930).

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BRIDGET WALSH inheritance rights.20 Subsequently, by 1935 Reddy added her voice to the demand for “equality and no privilege.”21 Yet, “liberal women’s interests” in the early twentieth century can itself be disaggregated. If reservations for women resulted in more “modern” women in the legislature it remains unclear what effect greater representation during the initial phases of the women’s movement would have had on women from OBCs and those of lower social status. Issues dominating the debates, such as those of female inheritance, property laws, and the fight against the institution of purdah, were noble causes in theory; however, they were not issues that reflected the oppression faced by the majority of Indian women.22,23 In the early twentieth century, seventy three percent of the population was engaged in agriculture and over fifty three percent worked as landless labourers deprived of property rights.24 Similarly, over eighty percent of India’s population remained illiterate until 1931.25 Despite these staggering figures, neither adult franchise nor access to education was a potent concern for a large number of Indians. From this perspective, rights were not part of the “women’s question” but rather part of the “Indian question.” Gender’s legitimation as the most salient identity marker depends on the social stratum one to which one belonged.

20

Ibid Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele (Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011) 175.

22 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, "Future of Indian women's movement." Our causes: a symposium by Indian women ed. Shyam Kumari Nehru. (Allahabad: 1952) 388.

23 Leela Kasturi and Vina Mazumdar "Women and Indian Nationalism" (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1994) 25.

24 Ibid, 378.

25 Ibid, 25.

21

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA In 1974, the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) again rejected the promulgation of gender quotas as these were seen “to underestimate the strength of women to compete as equals.”26 The Committee criticized the failure of various governmental institutions to “understand the implications of gender equality guaranteed by the Constitution including the education system’s failure to promote egalitarian values among India’s youth.27 Critically, the Committee’s focus remained on equality rather than equity, as the CSWI continued to experience the hangover of post-independence optimism. In the mid-to-late 1970s, the abstract notion of citizenship was understood as a basis of equality, however, this zeitgeist underwent transformation throughout the 1980s. At this time, the “second wave” of the women’s movement was emerging with greater force and visibility. Vina Mazumdar, the former Member Secretary of the CSWI, found her and her colleagues’ understanding of nation-building changing radically by the late 1980s. Mazumdar articulates how changing significations facilitates oppression. Simultaneously, an agitation of upper-caste concerns by the backward castes was resurfacing with renewed vigour.28 These two distinct movements colluded to produce a general acceptance of women’s reservations, but did so via different machinations.

By the mid-1980s, women were demanding that issues pertaining to dowry, rape, and violence against women be placed at the forefront of the public agenda.29 The insistence on greater media coverage of violent incidents against women generated public outcry, which was instrumental to redressing acts of violence. The rape of Maya Tyagi in June 1980 illustrates the need for greater representation of women in Parliament.

Tremendous pressure from women’s and civil rights organizations pushed the court to convict the accused; 26

Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008) 25.

27 Ibid, 27.

28 Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008) 29.

29 Nivedita Gandhi and Nandita Shah, The Issues at Stakes (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1992).

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BRIDGET WALSH yet it took eight years for Tyagi’s rapists to be sentenced.30 Along with greater visibility in the political sphere, it was increasingly clear that the absence of women in decision-making bodies had to be redressed.

The state’s inability to effectively contain and condemn sexual violence against women gestured towards a lack of political will informed by a predominantly male legislature.

Another significant development in Indian politics in the late 1980s was “the influx of lower orders into the field of democratic contestation” making it “respectable to talk of caste in the public-political domain.”31 Caste-based movements similarly drew on the rhetoric of social justice as a “rubric to talk about caste equity and political representation.”32 As a result, upper-caste anxiety was on the rise. OBC and Dalit parties were able to force their way into electoral politics by forming “non-Brahmin” alliances in specific regions, such as Uttar Pradesh.33 However the males in these groups, just like in upper-caste parties, dominated the public debates. The push for gender equality did not address the increasing ‘brahmanisation’ of society. The emergence of “women” in the public sphere was consolidated through definitive processes of exclusion as the unique voices of OBC or minority women were silenced.

By 1996 it was clear that democracy could not remedy deep-seated social inequalities. The first draft of the WRB was presented in 1996 and was subsequently examined by a Joint Committee on the Constitution (81st Amendment) Bill.34 Many of the Committee’s recommendations have been incorporated in the current form of the bill, yet, recommendations on reservations for OBCs have not. It is on this basis that prominent BJP 30

Ibid Ibid 32 Ibid 33 Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele. Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011.

34 PRS Legislative Research, “Legislative Brief: The Constitution (One Hundred and Eight Amendment) bill” (New Delhi: 2008). PDF accessed via Web. 31

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA leader Uma Bharati opposed the WRB in 1998. Bharati prioritized caste identity, advocating for “quotaswithin-quotas” that would ensure the representation of OBC women. Stressing the significance of caste should not come at the expense of gendered considerations, but rather should reveal that the category of gender cannot be exclusively deployed to the exclusion of other identity markers such as class and caste.

Bharati argued from a feminist perspective informed by her own caste identity. She asserts that women from ‘backward’ castes face double oppression both from patriarchy and Hindutva ideology, and thus should be given a place in the quota.35 Notably, Bharati’s stance on the issue opposed the official position of the BJP. In contrast, Sushma Swaraj, also a female BJP leader and member of the Brahmin upper caste, was a vocal supporter of the WRB. Within the BJP, and within the category of women, there is great heterogeneity. The intersections of their many simultaneous identities inform Bharati’s and Swaraj’s divergent political positions.

Their case itself proves that to pose opposition to the WRB as solely patriarchal is deeply misleading. Given the saliency of OBC and Dalit anxiety surrounding the WRB, circumnavigating the upper-caste project while still working towards gender justice requires an alternative position.

Although there is widespread acceptance for reservations for women, the proposition of quotas-within-quotas has not enjoyed the same support. As noted by Gandhi and Shah, the majority of potential rape victims were economically and socially disadvantaged women.36 Given that ending violence against women, sexual or otherwise, was one of the rallying points for reservations for women, it seems reasonable for the women most at risk to have a guaranteed voice in Parliament. Arguments that rest on the presumed equality of all women are utopian at best, and a means for maintaining the subjugation of OBC women at worst.

35 36

Uma Bharati, “Not a woman’s world. Case for OBC reservation,” (Delhi: Times of India: July 17, 1998) 12.

Nivedita Gandhi and Nandita Shah, The Issues at Stakes (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1992).

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BRIDGET WALSH The acceptance of gender quotas (at least in theory) cannot solely be explained by local context. The influence of international trends and their accompanying discourses on local politicians must also be taken into consideration. Beginning in the mid-1980s, a series of economic reforms labelled under the banner of “liberalization” brought the movement toward a new, externally oriented, consumption led path toward national prosperity.37 A change in discursive strategies not only enabled international bodies, such as the World Bank, to valorize the “freedom” of market liberalization, but also to pose this ideology against that of the state, which came to be understood as an oppressive force. Market liberalization is a key feature defining the stage of development of “civil society;” ergo, those who are weak, unorganized, or those who reject the prevailing system, are excluded from civil society. While discussing Indian advertisements, Maitrayee Chaudhuri elaborates on how processes of liberalization mark a break with the Indian state’s ostensible sympathy with the notion of equitable growth on which there was agreement that such goals were desirable in themselves.38 Development is “increasingly being referred to as a social issue rather than an economic or political one.”39 Reserved seats for women have been lauded by government agencies as a step towards their empowerment.40 Yet, this rhetoric is only deployed insofar as the “empowerment of women” enables a greater contribution to national economic growth.41,42 Political scientist Dr. Manoranjan Mohanty contends that international discourses seek the empowerment of women not as an end unto itself but rather as the prerequisite means to

37

William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

Maitreye Chaudhuri, (2001) “Gender and advertisements: the rhetoric of globalization”, (Delhi: Women’s studies international forum 2001) 373.

39 Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996) 3074.

40 Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008).

41 John, Ibid 42 Menon and Nigam, Ibid 38

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA productive investment.43 “Empowerment” no longer responds to the struggles that have marked Indian politics but rather becomes reconstituted within the new discourse of liberalization: it is defined only insofar as it serves to further the project of mass capitalism.

Notably, this stress on “empowerment” obscures the protracted evolution of issues pertaining to women’s reservations. This ideological shift in discourse renders the minority woman’s concern for equality all but invisible. The entrenchment of the language of the rights of individuals in Indian public discourse discourages engagement with collective bargaining techniques. Mohanty calls for greater efforts to redistribute productive assets, otherwise “the power structure dominated by upper classes, high castes, patriarchal and ethnic in character – will continue to hold state power.”44 Mohanty concludes, “the agenda of globalization promotes democracy for those who can participate in the bargaining process.”45 Reservations are a way to enmesh women in the public sphere where men have tended to economically and politically dominate. However, it may be more productive to focus on disadvantaged groups – disadvantaged by poverty, caste, or minority status – rather than dichotomize gender into unitary categories. In the context of World Bank led reforms in the 1990s, Mary John identifies a discernible movement towards “agency discourses”46 that alter the signification of poor women’s work in the informal sector. The World Bank in this context underwrites the “development literature on women in India.”47 Rather than emphasize lower wage earnings and deteriorating conditions of impoverished women, international bodies have highlighted the tenacity and creativity of poor women to survive despite the material conditions of their existence. By 43

Manoranjan Mohanty, “On the Concept of 'Empowerment'”. (Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1995) 1436.

Manoranjan Mohanty, “On the Concept of 'Empowerment'”. (Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1995) 1436.

Ibid, 1434.

46 Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996) 3074.

47 John, Ibid 3074.

44 45

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BRIDGET WALSH pointing to the efficiency of the poor women working in the informal sector, such as their greater contributions to household income, agencies such as the World Bank are advocate for more market deregulation under the banner of humanitarianism. During the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, “empowerment” figured as a major objective. The resulting declaration and Programme for Action linked empowerment with economic globalization. The signatories “recognize that empowering people particularly women to strengthen their capacities is a main objective of development and its principal resource.”48 However, “strengthening their capacities” was to be achieved by the retreat of the state. Protectionist policies were seen as structural constraints that would create market distortions. Conceived in this way, empowerment seems a resource benevolently granted to poor women by the upper classes rather than one fought for by people from below– a construction that implicitly discourages mass movements geared towards the redistribution of power.

Within contemporary developmental discourse, women in poverty are represented and reimagined as efficient managers rather than a disenfranchised group. This logic distorts the way in which we think about structural exploitation; it places the burden of development on poor women while denying them the “conditions that obtain in the formal sector.”49 The neoliberal perspective holds that state is inefficient, corrupt and bureaucratic; therefore, civil society (i.e. poor women) should take over the task of development.50 “The message,” Mary John writes, “is that if poverty cannot be eradicated in… the medium-to-long term, it can perhaps be endured through more efficient management.”51

48

PRS Legislative Research, “Legislative Brief: The Constitution (One Hundred and Eight Amendent) bill” (New Delhi: 2008).

Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996) 3074.

50 Manoranjan Mohanty, “On the Concept of 'Empowerment'”. (Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1995) 1434–1436.

51 Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996) 3074.

49

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA Throughout Indian history, particular constructions of the Indian nation have shaped the forms of state engagement with major social institutions. The developmental discourse of national self-sufficiency that informed official policy in India at independence underwent a pivotal shift towards individual self-sufficiency in the early 1980s. At this point, the state was reconstituted as an institution that stifles both productivity and the individual’s creative energies. As a result of these shifts, the new Indian middle class became less likely to dissent politically, but rather commodified their discontent by navigating the market economy. Consequently, where the state was the producer of a social service such as health care, a middle class individual with the means to do so would, more often than not, patronize a private facility rather than engage in the collective public outcry over the lack of welfare standards.52 As is evident, this shift towards privatization comes at the cost of recognizing the systematic cause of one’s grievances. This perceptual change has profound effects for acting in solidarity with the dispossessed.

Privatized strategies of “getting ahead” present a greater obstacle for lower caste individuals who lack the resources to engage in these strategies. While class cannot be conflated with caste, it is true that in the 1990s the social groups most vulnerable to poverty were scheduled caste and scheduled tribe households.53 Thus, caste-based resources are implicated in nuanced ways in the “processes through which segments of the middle class gain access to or are impeded from membership in the emerging liberalizing middle class.”54 These distinctions are compounded by the fact that liberalization restructures the social markers associated with upwardly mobile forms of employment. Previously, civil service jobs were highly coveted positions 52

Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).

53 K. Sundaram and Suresh D. Tendulkar, “Poverty among Social and Economic Groups in India in 1990s”. (New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 2003) 5263–5276.

54 Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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BRIDGET WALSH reserved for the upper-caste, upper-class members of society.55 However, employment in fields such as business and information technology has replaced civil service employment as a social marker. Even affirmative action policies enacted by the state does little to redistribute social capital.

Without support and mobilization from the middle-class there is little incentive to reform state institutions. In the case of health care, the middle-class tends to turn to privatized healthcare to gain individual benefits, rather than place political pressure on the state for improved services for the entire population, such as more efficient hospitals.56 In the interviews Leela Fernandes conducted in Mumbai, while numerous middle-class individuals voiced their frustrations surrounding access to quality healthcare, these individuals continued to pursue individualized responses rather than systemic efforts to attain acceptable standards of care.57 Henrike Donner finds that this practice creates a double standard in public discourse where healthcare practices are deplored in general yet “individual households cultivate personal links with specific doctors who are seen as reliable and whose advice… goes unchallenged.”58 Lower class individuals often have less access to these types of social networks, and consequently, suffer more profoundly from the existing lack of state accountability.

This situation creates a bifurcated healthcare system where private and public institutions become divided for the detriment of the latter. Additionally, this dual system results in the drain of effective personnel and resources from the public sector to the private. The movement of female personnel, in particular, has a

55

Ibid Ibid 57 Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).

58 Henrike Donner, Reproductive Agency, Medicine and the State: Cultural Transformations in Childbearing. Ed. Maya Unnithan-Kumar.

(New York: Berhahn, 2006) 122.

56

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA significant effect on female patients. While the movement from public to private benefits individual middleclass women in search of higher wages, their migration creates systematic inequalities in the provision of quality reproductive healthcare. In nuanced ways, then, liberalization disproportionately negatively affects OBC and minority women. The state as an institution of power, “may respond… to the claims made upon it by the women’s movement, whose spokespersons are invariably middle-class and upper caste, and who are also familiar with its structures.”59 However, due to a shift towards privatization– as an ideology and way of navigating the world– the women’s movement makes no claims on the state that are relevant to disadvantaged women. Middle-class women, whether employed at or patients of private hospitals, benefit from the stratification of healthcare. The benefits of such stratified systems to middle-class women allows them to ignore the disadvantaged perspectives of the lower class.

There is a need for SC, ST, and OBC women to be represented in politics so that they may voice the specific concerns that affect them. The case of healthcare highlights how middle class women may not be cognizant of the issues economically depressed women face. Neither can it be said that ST, SC, or OBC men will be aware of the specific concerns of women of their backgrounds face, as the issue of reproductive healthcare illustrates. While liberalization has the capacity to improve employment rates, resources, and infrastructure, it may also widen existing inequalities, producing lower-quality basic health services at a higher cost.60 Reservations for women will not serve to further development or the empowerment of women unless a heterogeneous cohort of women is mandated within the quota.

59

Mary E. John, “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele (Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011).

60 Barnali Choudhury, Public Services and International Trade Liberalization: Human Rights and Gender Implications. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 56.

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BRIDGET WALSH Research demonstrates that the expansion of the service sector and private sector employment has produced greater economic opportunities for middle class women in metropolitan areas.61 In absolute terms, it is true that many women presently participate in the labor force due to India’s general industrial expansion and the increased availability of jobs. However, upper-caste Hindus have captured “around twice as many jobs as their share in population might justify”62 leaving less job opportunities for lower castes. Of the jobs left, women from lower-castes have then to contend with patriarchal attitudes concerning the appropriate place for women within the new economy. Research by Leela Fernandez suggests, “female workers…must meet increasing demands on productivity and skill requirements without corresponding forms of income and occupational mobility.”63 The new economy channels women into secretarial positions (which come equipped with lower pay and status) while these women are frequently given managerial level tasks. A liberalized economy produces not only contradictory gendered effects, but also re-inscribes structural inequality for OBCs and minority women.

The privatization of industries traditionally under state control intersects with social issues that disproportionally affect women and minority groups. For instance, the privatization of water impacts female access to education. For young women, deficiencies in basic water and sanitation services can result in the loss of opportunities for education because of the added temporal expense of collecting water from far off sources. In areas where access to clean water increased, researchers saw a nine percent increase in female school attendance.64 However, this issue again impacts different classes in different ways. In 1999, a study 61

Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).

62 Ibid 63 Ibid.

64 Barnali Choudhury, Public Services and International Trade Liberalization: Human Rights and Gender Implications. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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RESERVATIONS FOR WOMEN IN INDIA found that there was a two-point-five percent difference in the enrolment of male and female children from the richest households, with a thirty-four percentage point difference between male and female children from poor households.65 These “poor households” were predominantly located in rural areas and were also disproportionately ST, SC and OBC households.66 In some cases, it may be that private water companies, following the logic of neoliberalism, will not find it profitable to provide access to water in remote areas.

However, because private companies do not have direct access to community needs, unlike the state, there may also be genuine information asymmetries.

Acknowledgment of the specific ways in which liberalization has unequal effects on Indians is the first step towards ensuring that all sectors of the population are included in India’s rising prosperity. Historically, greater integration into the world economy is strongly associated with poverty alleviation. The share of exports and imports together increased India’s GDP from seventeen percent in 1990 to twenty-nine percent in 2001.67 This trend is negatively correlated to the incidence of poverty, which fell from fifty-one-point-three percent in 1977-78 to twenty-six-point-one percent in 1990-2000.68 However, when opportunities arise with greater liberalization, individuals and groups that are already advantaged benefit more than others. The challenge remains for India is to strengthen societal infrastructure to ensure the reversal of increased disparity.

As of 2006, India’s total adult literacy rate was sixty-three percent.69 This means that for approximately thirty-seven percent of the population, some of the largest growing sectors of the Indian economy will remain 65

Ibid Ibid 67 World Bank, Sustaining India’s Services Revolution: access to markets, domestic reform and international negotiations. (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004) 68 World Bank, Sustaining India’s Services Revolution: access to markets, domestic reform and international negotiations. (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004).

69 According to the World Bank, data for current literacy rates is not available beyond 2006, making it difficult to speculate the current literacy of the Indian population.

66

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BRIDGET WALSH largely closed off in terms of employment opportunity. However, the government’s increased access to capital (made available by increases in GDP) has the potential to benefit the poor indirectly, if it chooses to increase investment in social programs– such as publicly funded reproductive health care and water sanitation.

The question of reservations for women provides a pertinent vantage point for examining gender and its intersections with broader societal and international trends. While discussions on gender justice in India defy unilinear narratives, the ideology of neoliberalism continually strives to homogenize consumers.

Consumerism obscures history by changing the significations of terms and ideas to foreground and justify “progressive” economic policies. The dominant ideology of liberalization becomes invisible because it is translated into common sense, appearing as the natural apolitical state of things.70 Critical scholars should resist teleological explanations of liberalization, which deaden the capacity to think through alternative systems of thought. An inability to recognize the stratified nuances of context distorts current issues and debates surrounding the WRB. As has become evident within the course of this essay, the opposition to the WRB cannot be understood through the monolithic categories of patriarchy and misogyny, but at root typifies the key problems of intersectional organization and inter-class co-operation. In terms of future development, an intelligent discussion of the WRB has the potential to ingrain considerations of difference into law. It may thus help to dismantle the illusion of a normative Indian citizen, which functions to silence and erase the concerns of marginally oppressed individuals and communities across India.

70

Maitreye Chaudhuri,“Gender and advertisements: the rhetoric of globalization”, (Delhi: Women’s studies international forum, 2001).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnali Choudhury, Public Services and International Trade Liberalization: Human Rights and Gender Implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Lisbet van Zoonen, Feminist media studies. London: Sage, 1994.

Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. London: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Maitreye Chaudhuri, “Gender and advertisements: the rhetoric of globalization”. Delhi: Women’s studies international forum 2001.

Manoranjan Mohanty, “On the Concept of 'Empowerment'”. 1434–1436. Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1995. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/stable/4402876!

Mary E. John, “Gender and development in India, 1970s-1990s”. New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 1996.

----- “Reframing globalization: perspectives from the women’s movement” New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 2010.

----- “The politics of quotas and the women’s reservation bill in India” Gender equality in Asia: policies and political participation. Ed. By Miyoko Tsujimura and Jackie F. Steele. Sedai: Tohoku University Press, 2011.

Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and contestation: India since 1989. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2008.

Nivedita Gandhi and Nandita Shah, The Issues at Stakes New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1992.

P. N. Nair, Export promotion in India. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 1997.

PRS Legislative Research, “Legislative Brief: The Constitution (One Hundred and Eight Amendent) bill” New Delhi: 2008. PDF accessed via Web.

K. Sundaram and Suresh D. Tendulkar, “Poverty among Social and Economic Groups in India in 1990s”. 5263–5276. New Delhi: Economic and Political Weekly, 2003. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4414401 Uma Bharati, “Not a woman’s world. Case for OBC reservation,” 12. Delhi: Times of India: July 17, 1998.

World Bank, Sustaining India’s Services Revolution: access to markets, domestic reform and international negotiations. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004.

Photograph by Rukhshan Arif Mian

Women of Worship: The Multivalent Sexuality of South Indian Jogatis

Mélanie Wittes McGill University

WOMEN OF WORSHIP Lucinda Ramberg’s ethnography Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion touches upon many seemingly unrelated topics: religion, sexuality, secularism, reform, and the general political climate in India. One of the main concepts proposed by Ramberg, which bridges the gap between these many topics, is the “sexuality of religion,” not only in the South Indian jogati1 context, but more broadly in all religious contexts. This essay will argue that religion has a sexuality and that, as a result, secularism has a sexuality and a religiosity. I will begin by establishing how, in the jogati context, sexuality is both a producer of, and produced by, religion, and by the goddess Yellamma specifically. I will then turn to how secularism functions in a similar way to religion in its production of sexuality, and how it also produces religion, focusing on the notion of the ‘abstract individual.’ I will look at religious embodiments, such as the jade worn by jogati women, and at sex work practiced by jogatis, exploring the concepts of ‘real’ religion and ‘superstition’ in the secular state.

Jogatis are South Indian women (though not necessarily female-bodied people) who are married to the goddess Yellamma. Through their marriage, jogatis act as the caretakers of Yellamma and must perform dedications to her. These dedications may take shape within the performing arts, or through social and sexual interactions that lead to various ritual acts.2 Although Yellamma is a female goddess who has a husband, she also is the husband of the jogatis, who, in turn, are her wives.3 Yellamma’s status as a goddess is in many ways founded on her sexuality. For instance, there is a story about how Yellamma the devi (goddess) is born from the body of a woman named Renuka. Renuka is an ‘impure’ woman who does not remain chaste, for 1

I use the term ‘jogati’ throughout rather than the term ‘devadasi’ as recent scholarship regarding female matrilineal and matrifocal performing arts communities in South India has demonstrated that devadasi and jogati communties possess only superficial similarities.

See Davesh Soneji’s Unfinished Gestures, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

2 Lucinda Ramberg, Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014) 3, 9.

3 Ramberg, Given to the Goddess, 4.

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MÉLANIE WITTES which she is punished by being beheaded. Other versions of this story state that Renuka’s son, angry that she was unchaste, chases her and manages to cut off both her head and the head of an outcaste woman. While attempting to reattach his mother’s head to her body, the son accidentally attaches her head to the body of the lower caste woman. It is from this incident that the goddess Yellamma is born. Yellamma thus inverts orders of caste and gains power by being dangerously untamed in her sexuality.4 Yellamma was born from, and produced by, her errant sexuality, which endowed her with great religious power.

Once she became a goddess, Yellamma, married to the sage Jamadagni, was very pure, which allowed her to perform miracles. Every day she would bring water to Jamadagni in a pot that she herself had created, carrying a cobra in this pot as well. One day she became distracted by ‘otherworldly beings’ engaging in erotic activities in the river, which caused the pot to dissolve and the cobra to slither free. As soon as Yellamma arrived home, Jamadagni knew that his wife had let her sexual desire overcome her and he demanded that his sons cut off her head. His two eldest sons disobeyed him, but his youngest son successfully completed the task. Because of his loyalty to his father, Jamadagni agreed to grant his son’s wish of restoring Yellamma.5 Yellamma’s status as a goddess is heavily influenced by her sexuality, as a goddess who embodies the supposed binaries of pure and impure sexuality. This dual nature is an aspect of jogatis that is central to how they are perceived by the state. Yellamma is therefore produced by her sexuality.

Yellamma is also a producer of sexuality and gendered relations, both in her own life and in the lives of her wives. Yellamma produces the gender of her wives through her marriage to them – anyone married to Yellamma is a woman. This does not mean that all of Yellamma’s wives are female-bodied, however. Certain 4 5

Ibid., 5-6.

Ibid., 10-11.

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WOMEN OF WORSHIP male-bodied people, called jogappas, marry Yellamma and become women through this kinship alliance.6 Yellamma thus produces the gender of her wives through her relationship with them. She also produces their sexuality. Jogappas, for instance, do not have sex with women because they say that “all women are our mothers,” as Yellamma is not only the husband of jogatis and jogappas, but is also their mother.7 Still, some jogappas do have sex with men.8 Jogappa and jogati marriage to Yellamma are both forms of same-gender marriage, which Ramberg argues affects opposite-gender relations because, once married to Yellamma, jogatis often engage in sex work.9 Through their same-gender marriage with Yellamma, jogatis occupy certain kin roles. Jogatis are often given to the goddess in order to occupy the role of ‘son’ of their families, as these families often do not have any sons. As sons, jogatis are the economic actors of their families, securing wealth by their earnings through sex work. Their role as sons also gives them the right to inherit land, as female-sexed women are not given the customary right to land unless they are considered sons.10 Although jogatis are women, regardless of their biological sex, and play the role of wife to Yellamma, they are also sons. They occupy both a kinship role and a gendered embodiment that typically do not align in traditional kinship theory. Ramberg explains that jogatis not only indexically fill a cultural kin position, but ontologically speaking, they “world the world”11 as sons in kin relations while simultaneously being recognized as women in social relations.12 Thus, jogatis are not only mothers to their children, but also fathers. This is the case because jogatis provide for their children as would

6

Ibid., 182.

Ibid., 182.

8 Ibid., 205.

9 Ibid, 192.

10 Ibid., 186.

11 “World the world” means that jogatis enact a way of life that exists outside of a singular secular ontology (Ramberg 5).

12 Ramberg, Given to the Goddess, 198.

7

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MÉLANIE WITTES a father (given that jogatis do not marry the men with whom they have sexual relations, because they are already married to Yellamma), while also fulfilling all obligations of a mother.13 Kinship created by jogatis’ marriage to Yellamma is very complex and subverts common understandings of the default gender associated with certain kin roles. To recapitulate, Yellamma is both a husband and a mother to the jogatis to whom she is married; she is also a wife to her god husband. Jogatis can be male- or female-sexed, but socio-culturally and ontologically they are women who fulfill the kin role of ‘son’ in their families. They are also mothers and fathers to their children, which affects how their offspring can create their own kin relations.14 Through marriage, Yellamma produces the gendered embodiments, sexuality, and kin relations of her wives, which are not isolated only to the jogatis themselves but also spread through their own human families. As writes Ramberg, “[A]ll rites and religions have sexuality; they mobilize and organize sexual economies, distributions of fertility, the limits and possibilities of public pleasures, and the shape of our desires. Forms of secularity and religiosity both invest themselves in bodies and pleasure; they shape the possibilities we are given over, or give ourselves, to.”15 Religion is thus not only tied to sexuality, but actually produces sexuality.

Secularism is another means by which not only sexuality, but also religion, is produced and organized. Joan Wallach Scott explains that secularism understands itself as being a means through which human emancipation (particularly that of women) can be achieved, as it creates a clear distinction between Church and State.16 However, Scott defines secularism differently, explaining that secularism is characterized by a series of oppositions such as the public and the private, the political and the religious, and reason and sex.17 13

Ibid., 198.

Ibid., 197.

15 Ibid., 222.

16 Joan Scott, “Secularism and Gender Equality,” in Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference, ed. Cady Linell and Tracy Fessenden (New York: Columbia University Press), 25.

17 Scott, “Secularism and Gender Equality,” 27.

14

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WOMEN OF WORSHIP Saba Mahmood builds on Scott’s definition of secularism, explaining that religion is not so much eliminated from the public sphere as it is reformed and regulated by the public sphere, producing a normative religiosity.18 The public must always engage with and infringe on matters deemed private, such as sex and religion, in order to ensure their normativity, argues Mayanthi L. Fernando.19 Historically, secularism was understood as being a way by which the ‘abstract individual’ could be produced. The abstract individual was an individual who was not rooted in his20 “physical and social embodiment;” this permitted abstract individuals to think rationally without being constrained by their physical or social contexts. By virtue of their reproductive capabilities, women were not capable of being abstracted from their physical and social embodiments, and could thus not be abstract individuals.21 Because women could not be abstracted from their physicality or sociality, they were excluded from rationality, and thus from politics and the realm of the public. Women became associated with sex, religion, and the private, while men became associated with rationality, politics, and the public, from the seventeenth century onwards.22 I posit that the abstract individual is still a category to which the secular state holds. By attaching itself so strongly to binary oppositions, secularism produces the sexing and gendering of ‘modern’23 subjects, as will be further explained below.

Rationality is one of the pillars on which secularism stands. Those aspects of society that are not considered ‘rational’ must be excluded from the public space, according to the doctrine of secularism. Because passion is

18

Saba Mahmood, “Sexuality and Secularism,” in Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference, ed. Cady Linell and Tracy Fessenden (New York: Columbia University Press), 48.

19 Mayanthi Fernando, “Intimacy Surveilled: Religion, Sex, and Secular Cunning,” Signs 39.3 (2014): 687.

20 I use the masculine “his” here as this definition of the “abstract individual” was really only applicable to men.

21 Scott, “Secularism and Gender Equality,” 28.

22 Ibid., 40.

23 The definition of modernity to which I hold is one proposed by Ramberg, namely that it is “an uneven and incomplete project that understands itself to be rationalizing, secularizing, civilizing, and progressive” (Ramberg 13)

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MÉLANIE WITTES assigned to sex, and because passion is considered irrational, sex becomes a private concern.24 Similarly, only certain forms of religion are considered neutral enough to be tolerated by the public. As soon as religion falls outside of the norms of religiosity, it is perceived as being superstition. Once an expression of religion falls outside of the normative, it becomes a matter of politics, rather than a matter of ‘real’ religion, which is used as justification for state intervention into certain religious practices.25 I argue that the religious expressions that are not accepted by the secular state tend to be those that are embodied or worn on the body. Religious embodiments are by nature not constrained to the private – they follow their wearer into public spaces. In the case studies analyzed by Ramberg, Scott, and Fernando, the religious embodiments that most often tend to be of public concern are those worn by women, such as the Muslim veil or the jade worn by jogatis. I posit that these embodiments are subject to so much state regulation because they symbolize non-normative religious expressions that are expressed on the bodies of women. Scott writes: “When reason becomes the defining attribute of the citizen and when abstraction enables the interchangeability of one individual citizen for another, passion gets assigned not just to the marital bed […] but to the sexualized body of the woman.”26 Because women could not be ‘abstract individuals,’ passion (or irrationality) was not only assigned to sex, but was ascribed to and mapped onto women’s bodies – women’s bodies were constructed as being inherently sexual. Thus, religious embodiments worn by women are strictly regulated by secularism because they cross the public/private boundary in two respects: through religion, as non-normative religious expressions, and through sex, as non-normative sexual embodiments.

24

Scott, “Secularism and Gender Equality,” 27.

Fernando, “Intimacy Surveilled,” 690.

26 Scott, “Secularism and Gender Equality,” 27.

25

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WOMEN OF WORSHIP In order to regulate religion, the secular state must determine what is ‘real’ religion and what is fundamentalism or superstition. This is determined according to which practices obey the public/private division and which do not. Similarly, proper religion and sexuality are both defined according to what they are not. In other words, proper religion is not sexual and proper sexuality is not religious.27 ‘Real’ religious practices, then, are those that obey the religion/sex division. Those who subscribe to secular beliefs view the Muslim veil, for instance, as being an attempt to hide a woman’s femininity. It follows that, in this attempt at concealment, the veiled woman’s gender is constantly being noticed.28 Religious garb marks gender in a way that is non-normative in secularism. Being marked means to not be abstracted from one’s physical and social embodiments, which means that one does not fit into the model of secularism or modernity. In Western secularism, there is only a very small window of what constitutes ‘unmarked’ for women. A woman must be uncovered enough so that her sexual liberty and equality with men is not put into question, but she must also not be so uncovered that she is understood as bringing her private sex and sexuality into the public realm.

This is what constitutes secular sexual normativity, or an ‘unmarked’ body.29 India, in its quest toward post-colonial nationalism, has similarly tasked itself with determining what constitutes ‘real’ religion and what constitutes superstition. ‘Superstition,’ in the secular mind, is viewed as a means of exploiting those who are marginalized.30 It is for this reason that eradicating superstition is a question of public secular concern, because exploitation and marginalization do not fit into the model of secular equality. Jade are matted locks of hair that appear on the heads of jogatis as a manifestation of

27

Fernando, “Intimacy Surveilled,” 701.

Ibid., 698.

29 Ibid., 700.

30 Ramberg, Given to the Goddess, 88.

28

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MÉLANIE WITTES Yellamma in the world. Indeed, jade is a symbol of the presence of Yellamma in a devadasi’s body.31 As a measure of reform, the government has taken it upon itself to cut the jade of jogatis. Their reasoning is that jade is not a manifestation of Yellamma, but is rather simply a result of dirt and disease that has accumulated in the hair. Under the Indian secular definition, jade is not ‘true’ religion; it is merely superstition.32 Ramberg draws upon the work of various medical anthropologists to explain how hair is understood as a symbol of sexuality. She also uses these theories to understand that dirt is “matter out of place,” which implies that there is a “set of ordered relations” which jade transgresses by virtue of being dirty.33 Jade is a representation of jogatis’ refusal to live according to normative social and sexual life. By cutting jade, Indian reformers are taming the jogatis’ unruly sexuality, turning these women into “subjects of reason and middle-class femininity.”34 In so doing, the reformers physically remove what is deemed the cause of devadasis’ ‘superstitious’ religiosity and non-normative sexuality, thus rendering them abstract individuals that can be absorbed into the national body.35 Through this jade-cutting process, which intrinsically ties ‘true’ religion with the “status of the body”36 jogatis become legitimate and unmarked citizens of the secular state. Being unmarked is established by the body, which must remain within the confines of normative sexuality and religion in order to remain unmarked. Being unmarked is therefore a primary criterion for being legible by and absorbable into secularism, and it is predominantly women who are assigned the task of ensuring that their bodies remain unmarked, as these bodies are sites of sexuality within secularism.

31

Ibid., 94.

Ibid., 96-7.

33 Ibid., 98-9.

34 Ibid., 99.

35 Ibid., 101.

36 Ibid., 102.

32

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WOMEN OF WORSHIP Because jogatis’ religiosity and sexuality are non-normative, they have been characterized according to their ‘illicit sexuality.’ Generally, giving a child to the goddess is not seen as a religious act, but as superstition that leads to sex work and exploitation.37 The solicitation of sex work is illegal in India, but sex workers themselves are not criminalized. Yet, jogatis, all of whom do not practice sex work necessarily, are subjected to intense reform efforts. Ramberg suggests that this is because they inhibit the realms of both sexual and religious non-normativity, and are therefore targeted or erased by the state: “[Jogati] dedication finds no such translation into modern conceptions of religious and sexual rights.”38 The jogati tradition tends to be disregarded as ‘superstitious’ because those who engage in sex work have transgressed the boundary of religion/sex as well as the boundary of public/private. The sex work in which certain jogatis engage is not separate from their religious and kinship ties to Yellamma – these are all part of how jogatis “world their world.” Although religion and sex are both meant to exist in the private sphere within secular ideology, they are not meant to co-exist. Instead, they are meant to exist as one another’s binary oppositions, simply as tools for demarcating one another.

In addition, because jogatis’ religion exists with their sexual lives (thus breaking the religion/sex binary), when they practice sex work, they are bringing both into the public realm, thus transgressing the public/ private boundary for both sex and religion. Sex work tends to be understood in opposition to sex within marriage. Indeed, Ramberg notes that the legality and morality of sex is based on whether the exchange has been a gift (to produce a wife) or a sale (to produce a ‘prostitute’39).40 Ramberg writes, “The Brahmanical form of marriage and its attendant specification of patrilineal descent became the legal norm for all alliances 37

Ibid., 3.

Ibid., 25.

39 I use the term “prostitute” sparingly, but I use it in this context to emphasize the moral judgment placed on sex workers.

40 Ramberg, Given to the Goddess, 155.

38

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MÉLANIE WITTES between men and women.”41 She further explains that the wife/prostitute dichotomy became fortified in India’s quest for post-colonial national sexual respectability.42 Ramberg hints at another reason why jogatis’ sexual and religious practices are so strictly surveyed and regulated: because jogatis form kin ties outside of heteronormative marriage, and because they form alliances with men through sex but outside of marriage, they transgress expectations of heterosexuality and “incorporate the status of both the wife and the nonwife”,43 transgressing yet another dichotomy. The secular state attempts to control sexuality and religion, which produces normative models of both sex and religion. Jogatis, however, reject these normative moulds.

Sexuality and religion for jogatis are intrinsically tied and mutually constituted, which Ramberg argues is a characteristic of all religions.

The “sexuality of religion” refers to the ways in which religion is both produced by, and is a producer of, sexuality. This is particularly the case among the jogatis of South India, but is also applicable to religion generally. Secularism functions in a similar way to religion in that it produces normative forms of sexuality, however, it differs in that it also produces normative religiosity founded on binary oppositions. Normative sexuality and religiosity are expressed through the body, and particularly through bodies of women. Thus, certain embodiments of religion become non-normative in the secular state, both in their religiosity and in their sexuality. This also evinces why sex work, especially among jogatis, is so tightly regulated. It is perhaps relevant to consider secularism as a ‘religious’ social structure. As per Émile Durkheim’s definition of religion,44 the public space is meant to be a space of sacredness for the secular state. It must be properly protected from those elements of society that are considered ‘profane’ by the secular state, such as religion 41

Ibid., 159.

Ibid., 159.

43 Ibid., 160.

44 Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1995).

42

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WOMEN OF WORSHIP and non-normative sexuality. Normative sexuality, meaning sex that happens within the confines of heterosexual marriage, might also be categorized as a ‘sacred’ aspect of secular religiosity. Indeed, this would explain why sex work is viewed so negatively, even in a highly capitalistic society. Intuitively, it would follow that sex within capitalism would be more valued as a sale than as a gift, as selling sex requires the production and exchange of capital. Yet, this is decidedly not the case. As this essay has elucidated, the wife (who is produced out of a gift exchange) is viewed as being more moral and as having more value than the ‘prostitute’ (who is produced out of a sale). It would appear, then, that within secularism, religion is profane while sex is sacred. Sex outside of heterosexual marriage, however, becomes profane, and must be properly controlled by the state in order to prevent it from tainting the sanctity of secularism. As such, secularism perhaps performs as a ‘religious’ social structure that holds to similar categories of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane.’

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. 1912, edited by Karen E. Fields. New York: The Free Press, 1995.

Fernando, Mayanthi. “Intimacy Surveilled: Religion, Sex, and Secular Cunning.” Signs 39.3 (2014): 685-708.

Mahmood, Saba. “Sexuality and Secularism.” Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference, edited by Cady Linell and Tracy Fessenden, 47–57. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Ramberg, Lucinda. Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

Scott, Joan. “Secularism and Gender Equality.” Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference, edited by Cady Linell and Tracy Fessenden, 23-45. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

The Idea and its Fragments: The Founder, Reformer, and Missionary in 
 Indian Knowledge Production

Arthur Hamilton McGill University

THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS

INTRODUCTION There is by now a broad academic consensus that the major exponents of 19th century Hindu thought were influenced by colonial and European ideas in their interpretations and codifications of Hinduism.1 Acknowledging such external influences, however, opens many new avenues for debate, the nuanced understanding of which may significantly impact how the history of modern Hinduism is understood. This essay problematizes some ostensibly simple though widely recurrent categories that inform present formulations of modern Hinduism: namely, those of “founder,” “reformer,” and “missionary.” Towards this end, I scrutinize the discourse surrounding three individuals: Rammohan Roy (the “founder” of modern Hinduism), Karsandas Mulji (a modern Hindu “reformer”), and Swami Vivekananda (a modern Hindu “missionary”). By examining these influential religious teachers, all of whom may broadly be considered “Hindu,” I reveal the common features shared by founders, reformers, and missionaries in Indian history.

Using these shared traits, I problematize these three categories insofar as they reify and partition aspects of the production of ideas that are, in fact, inseparable.

The present analysis draws significantly from conceptual critiques raised by scholars regarding the categorization of such intellectuals. Brian A. Hatcher, for instance, has disputed the validity of the notion of religious “founders,” arguing that all individuals styled as such have in fact reformed previous ideas.2 In a similar vein, J. Barton Scott argues that the typological category of “reformer,” though not devoid of value,

1

Brian K. Smith, “Questioning Authority: Constructions and Deconstructions of Hinduism,” in Defining Hinduism: A Reader, ed. J. E. Llewellyn (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2004), 112.

2 Brian A. Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan: An Essay on the (Re-)emergence of Modern Hinduism,” History of Religions 46:1 (2006): 52. !107

ARTHUR HAMILTON requires considerable reassessment.3 Furthermore, Gwilym Beckerlegge differentiates the monolithic category of the “missionary” to reveal various types of missionary movements, identifying global, local, “glocal,” and “imported localism” within his typology.4 Indeed, though the categories of “founder,” “reformer,” and “missionary” have analytical value to the extent that their referents are not generally identical, we must nonetheless excavate and stress the overlapping qualities effaced by such categorizations, in order to understand the attendant limitations that characterize them.

These reconsiderations will shed light on the complex processes by which ideas are constantly created, recombined, and then transplanted into new sequences of creation and recombination. Founders inaugurate new ideas on religion, but at the same time they invariably incorporate other ideas already in existence into their own teachings, which means that they are simultaneously reformers. The source of the pre-existing ideas regularly lies outside the nation (at least within the colonial context), meaning that in some sense the reformers effectively conduct missionary work for the regions from which their ideas derive. Similarly, missionaries inevitably transform the ideas the ideas they import by adapting them to their new locale, and, in so doing, become founders of newly synthesized religious communities.

THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDER AS REFORMER We will first problematize the category of the religious founder. Max Weber accorded the title of “founder” to unique persons active at the start of every religious movement, while he considered other charismatic 3

J. Barton Scott, “Luther in the Tropics: Karsandas Mulji and the Colonial ‘Reformation’ of Hinduism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83:1 (2015): 182-183.

4 Gwilym Beckerlegge, “The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies: An Example of ‘Imported Localism’” Numen 51 (2004): 306, 314. !108

THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS religious teachers as separate and sub-divided them into “renewers,” and “reformers.”5 Weber’s taxonomy provides a reasonable historiographical starting point for our critique, particularly as the Bengali intellectual Rammohan Roy typifies the individual considered as “founder.” Roy is credited with the establishment of the religious community called the Brahmo Samaj and, furthermore, with being the first contributor to, and thus founder of, the vast system of ideas that presently falls within the ambit of “modern Hinduism.”6 There are clear and reasonable justifications for according Roy the status of “founder,” not least of which include the fact that he did indeed set up his own religious society, called the Brahmo Samaj, in 1828. That the members of this new society did not identify with other religions, but referred to themselves simply as “Brahmos” corroborates Roy’s status as a “founder”– the progenitor of something that seems entirely new and independent of all that comes before it.7 Given their insistence on theological difference, the Brahmo Samaj’s emergence took on the image of something “founded,” as it seemed to break very explicitly with Roy’s native religion, Hinduism.

We must recognize at the same time, however, that the Brahmos still drew upon Hindu śastras (scriptures) and saw themselves as restoring the true teachings of Hinduism itself. This aim remained central to their beliefs, though they chose to differentiate themselves from that body of beliefs and practices which had come to be associated with the term “Hinduism” at this time. Nonetheless, Roy’s designation as a founder, at least of the Brahmo Samaj, would appear fairly uncontroversial, and the influence of his organization on the

5

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 50, 76.

Noel A. Salmond, “Rammohun Roy,” in Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohan Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against Idolatry (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004), 43.

7 Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 59.

6

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ARTHUR HAMILTON broader emerging Bengali British-educated elite, or bhadralok, could potentially justify his identification as the initiator of Hinduism’s modern history.

The division between founders on the one hand and reformers on the other has been criticized by Brian A. Hatcher, who notes that how a particular leader is fitted under these categories frequently changes in the eyes of their movement’s adherents over time.8 Hatcher raises the contention, virtually indisputable, that founders’ views always incorporate related ideas that had already been in circulation, which blurs the line between new, founding movements, and those that simply reform what has come before them. Certainly, it is nearly impossible for intellectuals to exist in complete isolation from one another: it is only through the exchange of numerous ideas that new theories are woven together, and thus the author of any new theory is indebted to those who spun the threads from which he has patterned his new design.

Such recombination of old ideas is evident in the education and writings of Rammohan Roy, the latter of which underwent considerable change over time. Roy received education on Islam in the Indian city of Patna, learned Hindu teachings in Benares, became well acquainted with Christianity through discussion with missionaries operating in the country, and for a time attended Unitarian religious services. His first composition, Tuhfat al-Muwahhidin, was published around 1803 and was written in Persian, which suggests that Roy had a Mughal, and Muslim, audience in mind.9 After this first publication, Roy frequently changed the language in which he wrote, and, as well, the streams of thought he most reflected: deist ideas appear more strongly in his English-language writing from this period, while Vedantic thought permeates his Bengali texts.10 Tellingly, it was only after twenty-five years of such writings, in 1828, that Roy founded the Brahmo 8

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 51.

Salmond, “Rammohun Roy,” 45.

10 Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 57-58.

9

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THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS Samaj and thereby began to differentiate himself explicitly from the paradigms whose influences he once drew upon.11 That he wrote for so long without creating a new category in which to place himself leaves no doubt that although he eventually formed his own doctrine, he also incorporated the insights of preceding ones.

Hatcher supports such a reading of Roy and his work. He notes how the notion of a clean intellectual division separating a new movement from the ideas contributing to it is inaccurate and, in fact, is usually added to history retrospectively by adherents of the movement.12 In Roy’s case, this interpolation occurred a decade after his death in 1833, in the period from 1843 to 1844, when an association holding much in common with his Brahmo Samaj, the Tattvabodhini Sabha, agreed to merge with it and dedicate itself to his legacy.13 Prior to this decision, both his name and his organization had in fact been in steep decline.14 Even the Tattvabodhini Sabha, although it had absorbed many of his ideas, did not afford him significant recognition: Roy is conspicuously absent, for instance, from a collection of philosophical discourses published by the organization from 1839-40.15 It would have been quite possible, then, for Roy to have been remembered not as the “founder” he is now, but simply as one of many intellectual links connecting those before and after him in a long progression.

History, however, seems not to have played out in this manner: the Sabha’s followers reconstituted Roy as a defining figure of the movement. Since then, he has further been honoured as “the Father and Patriarch of

11

Salmond, “Rammohun Roy,” 47.

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 51.

13 Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 70-72.

14 Salmond, “Rammohun Roy,” 63.

15 Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 69.

12

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ARTHUR HAMILTON Modern India,” credited with having begun a discrete temporal period characterized by the phenomenon of “modern Hinduism.” This designation has rarely been contested, and continues to pervade academia at present.16 Nonetheless, Hatcher takes this case as sufficient reason to dispute the objectivity of not only Roy’s status as founder of modern Hinduism, but of the category of the “founder” in general. He argues that which figures are regarded as having founded movements varies over time as the attitudes of the followers of those movements change. Furthermore, because this category consistently masks the history of precursor ideas to historical movements, Thatcher finds that it should be retained only as an emic category.

The corollary is that, in etic terms, “founders” should be subsumed into the broader group composed of “reformers.”17 However, as I will now show, the category of the reformer is itself unstable, which means that it cannot reasonably be privileged over that of the founder. Instead, these categories may be retained together so as long as the limitations of their usefulness are acknowledged. The different emphases of these categories must be recognized with the proviso that these different emphases do not entail a categorical opposition between them. This theorization highlights the fact that ideas are not simply created and later modified, but rather, that all acts of creation are themselves forms of ideational modification and recombination.

THE COLONIAL-ERA REFORMER AS MISSIONARY While all founders are thus also reformers, a proper conceptual analysis reveals that reformers are also in some sense members of a third category: that of the missionary. A reformer has essentially been constructed as a figure that breaks the dominance of certain hegemonic doctrines that have hindered progress in religion, 16 17

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 52.

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 76. !112

THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS thinking, and society. An example of a figure construed as such is Karsandas Mulji, a mid-nineteenth-century intellectual. Mulji was educated in Britain and championed several changes to then-dominant social norms, which he did against the strength of a powerful Hindu clergy that was committed to those norms’ preservation. In particular, these reforms concerned the place of women in society, such as their right to remarry if widowed.18 Mulji gained most attention in the controversial Maharaj Libel Case, in which one of the maharajs, the hereditary leaders of the Pushtimarg Vaishnava sect, sought to sue him and one other writer for defamation on the basis of polemical newspaper articles they had published.19 The focus of Mulji’s criticism of the maharaj was the practice in which young girls had intercourse with him in what was described as a religious practice.20 We must note here that there were numerous other Hindu reformers active in Mulji’s region and elsewhere in India, and that he is referenced simply as a significant and illustrative case study. The category Mulji embodies, that of the “reformer,” is clearly based on the template of Europe’s historical experience of the Protestant Reformation and its leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin.21 Their struggle against the Catholic Church’s clerical authority, or at least the ways in which this struggle was represented in Britain during the Indian colonial period, became emblematic of what the British administrators and the Hindu “reformers” sought to accomplish.22 Mulji commented on the importance of these reformers, for instance 18 Amrita

Shodhan, “Women in the Maharaj Libel Case: A Re-Examination,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 4:2 (1997): 127.

19 Shodhan, “Maharaj Libel,” 125-126.

20 Shodhan, “Maharaj Libel,” 124.

21 For a succinct treatment of the Protestant Reformation, see The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Reformation,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, updated October 30, 2014, accessed March 27, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/event/Reformation.

22 Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 183. !113

ARTHUR HAMILTON saying that the wax statues of them in a British museum had “only their spirits yet to be put in” because they were so lifelike, not long after some of his admirers likened him to Luther on account of his struggle against the Maharaj.23 The pervasiveness of the Protestant Reformation as a lens for viewing Indian religious change is evident in that the title of “India’s Luther” has been unofficially bestowed upon a variety of other religious figures, including the founders of both Buddhism and Sikhism, the poet Kabir, and Rammohan Roy.24 In general, however, the scope of Hindu “reform” movements extended beyond philosophy and an opposition to the clergy, to reforms in the social sphere, such as those Mulji promoted. This shift mirrored the expanded scope that the notion of “reform” had taken on in Britain by this time.25 The general imposition of the category of the “reformer,” drawn from Europe’s particular historical experience and imposed upon the Indian political arena, falls within a more general Orientalist trend of representing non-Abrahamic religions such that these religions are always understood through the categories typical of Christianity. Another example of this trend is the immense interest Orientalists showed in the sacred texts of Indian religions, which directly contradicts the multifarious ways these religions were practised by the vast majority of their followers.

The influence of colonial policy is also more directly discernible within this category of the reformer. As the British justified their colonial domination of India as a means of bringing civilization, they actively encouraged “reformers” to enact such transfusions.26 They regarded the victory of Mulji over the maharaj in

23

Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 182.

Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 188.

25 Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 190.

26 Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 186.

24

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THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS the libel case, for instance, as evidence of the progress British education had brought to Indian society.27 This situation of the concepts of reform and reformers within post-Reformation European discourse is not to suggest they are devoid of value, but simply to allow for a discussion of the limitations inherent in these concepts. It allows us to understand the full implications of these concepts so that we may be able to propose alternate models in their place.

The discussion on “founders” above established that new movements necessarily draw on extant ideas, and it becomes pertinent here that in the colonial period those ideas were usually transnational. Naturally, given India’s cultural self-sufficiency, a great amount of intellectual discourse emerged without external involvement. This essay argues, however, that the rapid emergence of new movements and ideologies was the product of enlarged circuits of knowledge flows. Certainly this proves the case for the three religious teachers we discuss, though not to the exclusion of powerful local influences.

A clear example of the adoption of outside ideas can be seen in Mulji’s views on women. Mulji sought to purge India of abuses such as the sexual exploitation (as he saw it) of young upper-class women by the maharajs, but was markedly less concerned with the abuse of older women and widows.28 Furthermore, the women he wished to free from priestly exploitation were then to be restricted to domesticity. Mulji was clearly influenced by Victorian norms and values at a time when England’s conceptions of “purity” and “modernity” bore great prestige.

When colonial reformers brought ideas from Britain and other western countries (such as Germany), they were in some sense “missionaries” for these ideas. Having been “converted” to the belief in normative female 27 28

Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 186.

Shodhan, “Maharaj Libel,” 135-136.

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ARTHUR HAMILTON domesticity, for instance, Mulji then returned to “preach” this Victorian doctrine in India where it was ultimately imposed through force of law.29 While using these terms seems counter-intuitive as missions are normally undertaken between two different religions, Max Müller notes, with some justice, that the greatest effect of missionary work would not be actual conversion, but rather reform within the religions already followed.30 Accepting this broadened notion of the missionary, it follows that since reforms are drawn from pre-existing ideas, and since in colonial India these were almost always derived at least partially transnationally, that just as founders are also reformers, reformers are also missionaries.

Furthermore, the teachings of Hindu reformers in the colonial period did not appear European in origin because they were expressed in local, indigenous forms. For instance, Mulji regarded himself as a Hindu and in no way a Christian, and defended the changes he introduced as always having been present in Hinduism, which had become corrupted and required restoration. His stance should not be regarded as necessarily disingenuous: the British ideals of womanhood he promoted had considerable confluence with orthodox Brahminical notions of female confinement. Rammohan Roy, although he preferred the identifier “Brahmo” to “Hindu” for the members of his movement, continued to cite from Hindu śastras (scriptures). Monotheism was not justified from the Bible, or indeed from the Quran, which Roy also studied, but from the Upanishads.

The key method for maintaining reference to local textual authority while adapting religious teachings to foreign standards was choosing śastras for citation very selectively so as to support the desired message. The malleability of this selectivity was inevitable regardless of transnational influences, given the sheer mass of śastras that could be considered.

29

Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 186.

Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 110.

30

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THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS

There is a prominent and well-supported thesis in the study of “Eastern” religions that they underwent “Protestantization” on a deep conceptual level under colonialism through changes that outwardly were simply the restoration of orthodoxy.31 The Protestant ideals that composed such a transformation included an emphasis on printed scriptures, on personal reading, on text-based orthodoxy, and on the disempowerment of the clergy, among other things. The Hindu reformers who brought all these things to India could easily, then, be classified as Protestant missionaries in a partial way. However, Orientalist conceptions of religion also helped disguise this inter-religious influence by constructing an “ideal type” of religion around Christian categories and suggesting that all religions followed it.32 Because of this construction, it was assumed that every religion was centered on a divinity, a founder teaching the way to the divinity, a body of texts attributed to the founder, and orthodox doctrines contained in the texts which were to be believed by the faithful. When other religions came to be organized in this way, it was not then taken as a sign of Western influence, but simply as the natural form in which spiritual beliefs would universally be negotiated. This reformulation was entirely theoretical and its practical ramifications, though profound, were subtle and certainly not visibly related to Protestantism. Thus, the reformers’ role as missionaries transplanting Orientalist models of religion may well not have been evident to them either.

The following theoretical model by Beckerlegge helps relate this conceptualization of the mission to more conventional forms of missionary activity. He divides religious movements according to the local-global relationships they contain as fitting within one of localism, globalism, “glocalism,” and “imported localism.”

He borrows the term “glocalism” from marketing to describe movements that adapt a global form to local

31 32

Scott, “Luther in the Tropics,” 181.

Smith, “Questioning Authority,” 112.

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ARTHUR HAMILTON cultural particularities, while also inventing the term “imported localism” to describe movements that bring not only their universal model but also cultural particularities from their place of origin.33 Under this taxonomy, the teachings of reformers, such as Mulji, could be classified as the locally adapted Indian form of the “glocal” Protestant-Orientalist-Victorian “ideal type” of religion. Again, such a categorization is deeply counter-intuitive, but only because it defies the conventional categorization of religions into Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and, as well, the common notion that missionary work is limited to winning converts along those lines. Different classificatory systems have analytical value too, in this case with missionaries of “reformed,” “Protestantized,” textually transmitted religion spreading their teachings to the followers of “localized,” “traditional,” orally transmitted religion. What this alternate schema essentially underscores is the way in which reformers of a local religion, in Mulji’s case, Hinduism, can become the vehicles, the missionaries, by which global ideas, such as Orientalist presuppositions about religion, subtly spread and are adopted.

THE TRANSNATIONAL MISSIONARY AS FOUNDER A founder is a type of reformer, and the reformer is a type of missionary, but this missionary is also a type of founder. This last relation is the final link in a cycle of production in which ideas are steadily remoulded, transplanted, and then born anew. Although the basic premise of missionary enterprise is to bring religious ideas already in existence and introduce them to new environments, there is always change and novelty when beliefs and practices are brought into contact with a new, complex social environment.

33

Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 308, 314. !118

THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS An example of a well-known Hindu missionary of the colonial era is Swami Vivekananda, a discipline of the guru Sri Ramakrishna, who travelled to the United States and Britain and established a network of centers to administer his spiritual movement.34 His case is different from those of Roy and Mulji, who brought Western ideas to Indian settings, because he instead brought Indian ideas to Western settings. This reversal does not interfere with the theories this essay examines, however, and serves as a reminder of the complex circuits of knowledge flows that characterized colonial societies. To a certain extent, “glocal” movement paradigm discussed with reference to reformers reappears in the present example. There are several ways in which beliefs imported by missionaries acquire new forms, ultimately culminating in new, differentiated movements, of which the missionaries are therefore the founders.

First of all, customs and terminology may be adapted to suit the needs or preferences of local movements. In Vivekananda’s case, he presented a simplified form of his Advaita Vedanta philosophy without “jaw-breaking Sanskrit terms and technicalities” to make the teaching accessible.35 He also allowed people to associate with the movement without departing from their membership to other religious organizations and without fully committing to its principles. In bringing a movement that has been largely attached to a particular region to a new locale, the missionary inevitably needs to adapt, and in effect recreate, this movement in terms of its theology, identity, and organization. Vivekananda was bold in this regard and distanced his teaching from Hinduism: by his own admission, he taught a universal religion of which Hinduism, in particular Vedanta, was the most evolved form, but which also encompassed all other religions.36

34

Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 296.

Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 309-310.

36 Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 308.

35

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ARTHUR HAMILTON Another way a movement changes upon being transplanted to a new location is that its symbols, even if unchanged, often acquire radically different types of significance. For instance, members of the Ramakrishna movement in India, including Vivekananda himself, adopted new names upon entering the order.37 Several Western disciples did so too, but they still chose Indian names, signifying a radical departure from national and cultural identity that had never been a part of the movement in India.38 By contrast, when Vivekananda taught in India, he contributed significantly to nationalist discourse and the development of an Indian consciousness.39 We may also draw a parallel with the Theosophical Society, which appealed to the Indian elite and contributed strongly to Indian nationalism, but whose followers remained marginalized in America.40 Although Vivekananda claimed to be bringing the wisdom of Ramakrishna to the Western world, in doing so he created a new language, as well as introduced different forms of membership, universality, and symbolism within a novel setting. Effectively, then, he was not simply a missionary, but also the founder of a new, distinct branch of the Ramakrishna movement.

Despite underlying conceptual convergence between “missionaries” and “founders,” they maintain their distinct appearances by differences in emphasis and presentation that reify the perceived dichotomy between local and transnational movements. Missionaries see themselves as linked back to a founder-figure: they and those who join them participate in the communal construction of what Danièle Hervieu-Léger calls a “chain

37

Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, “The Missionary Sannyasi and the Burden of the Colonized: The Reluctant Alliance between Religion and Nation in the Writings of Swami Vivekananda,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 28:2 (2008): 311.

38 Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 310-311.

39 Bhattacharya Mehta, “Missionary Sannyasi,” 316.

40 Mark Bevir, “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 7:1-3 (2003): 103. !120

THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS of memory” that gives the sense of historical belonging.41 This process can be seen in the names Vivekananda chose for the centers he established in India and the West: even though he designed the entirety of the institutional apparatus under which they were created and contributed immensely to the elaboration of the movement’s philosophy, they are nonetheless called Ramakrishna Math and Mission centres.42 James A. Beckford delineates a similar concept that develops over space instead of time, in which people’s consciousness and identity as religious followers becomes internalized and they become aware of their place in a global network.43 Taken to their furthest possible extent, these perceptions of complete historical continuity following a decisive moment of “founding” and complete global homogeneity thereafter are of course illusory. They represent a type of false consciousness by which missionary movements imagine large regions of belonging extending through both space and time. These perceptions are reinforced by imported localism, in which cultural elements from the country of origin are used to give the movement’s international identity a basis in material culture.

Vivekananda brought certain Hindu artifacts and rituals to the West that he had not employed in India, and even took disciples back with him to be “Indianized” or even remain in India.44 The motivation for these actions seems to have been twofold: on the one hand the desire among his Western followers to depart from the normative culture of their countries, and on the other hand the formidable national pride Vivekananda carried in spite of his outward repudiation of politics of any type.45 Thus, different interests coalesce behind the common construction of the transnationally-held beliefs spread by missionaries, which span across history 41

Hatcher, “Remembering Rammohan,” 55.

Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 296.

43 Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 297.

44 Beckerlegge, “Vedanta Societies,” 311, 314.

45 Bhattacharya Mehta, “Missionary Sannyasi,” 314, 316.

42

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ARTHUR HAMILTON back to the figure of the founder, and that together efface the many historical and geographical idiosyncrasies a more detailed analysis would make obvious. This erasure by categorization obfuscates the missionary’s role as founder of a new altered community, just as discourses of authenticity obscure the colonial-era reformer’s role as missionary for the norms underlying Protestant modernity.

CONCLUSION This essay finds that “founders,” “reformers,” and “missionaries” are all subjective groupings that flow into one another and reflect different phases in the production and spread of ideas. No human thought arises in isolation: even the “founders” of ostensibly new movements are culpable of weaving together and reforming pre-existing ideas. Furthermore, that 19th century Indian reformers employed significantly employed European thought in their work makes them missionaries of modernity, in a manner of speaking.

Missionaries, by contrast, though they emphasize the foreign origins of their ideas, downplay how these origins have been reshaped to meet the needs of new populations and environments: consequently, their place as founders of the resultant unique movements is often concealed. Though founders are reformers, who are missionaries, who are themselves founders, these categories appear to us completely separated, often as the result of emic constructions like the “chain of memory.” Other conditions that produce the same effect include: the influence of Orientalism in hiding the changes brought by reformers, the justification for reform provided by colonialism, and the desire for authentically local movements in the service of nationalism.

A proper understanding of the transnational cycles through which ideas are produced may thus be the first step toward a more nuanced comprehension of the types of religious teachers who have shaped India and the world. Furthermore, these conceptualizations are significant particularly for the political goals in service of

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THE IDEA AND ITS FRAGMENTS which they are deployed in history. Probably the most important contemporary ideological legacy of colonialera Hindu movements is Hindutva, which literally means “Hindu-ness” but is often glossed as “Hindu nationalism” or “Hindu fundamentalism.” It inspires religio-national pride by promising to revive the glory of Indic civilization, while attacking supposedly external Islamic and British influences as corruptive.46 Since India’s neoliberalization in the early 1990s, Hindutva’s prominence has risen considerably, reaching a new peak with the landslide victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 general election, the largest election in history.47 The current movement presents itself as serving the ideology formulated by its founder Vinayak Savarkar in the early twentieth century.48 In this instance, a more nuanced understanding of the overlaps Savarkar shared with other reformers, and missionaries, would serve to mellow Hindu nationalist chauvinism, while arguably developing more favourable conditions for the presence of religious minorities in India.

An appreciation of the fact that founders reform pre-existing ideas would precipitate investigation into and active interest in Savarkar’s influences and their influences in turn, which likely included Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians. The realization that missionaries (indeed, all carriers of outside ideas) inevitably fuse their message with their new environment, ultimately reforming rather than supplanting local ideas, may create a new openness to positive external influences or, more powerfully, may do away with this question of

46

“Vinayak Damodar Savarkar,” in Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, ed. Christophe Jaffrelot (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 85.

47 Dean Nelson, “Narendra Modi wins India election with landslide victory,” The Telegraph, May 16, 2014, accessed March 27, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10835229/Narendra-Modiwins-India-election-with-landslide-victory.html.

48 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, n.d., accessed March 27, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/topic/Rashtriya-Swayamsevak-Sangh. !123

ARTHUR HAMILTON externality once and for all. Lastly, the recognition of the missionaries’ role as founders of new syncretic movements would reveal that while Hinduism may have won few outright converts in the West, it has nonetheless been very influential in its exertion of soft power, for instance through yoga or philosophy. Given the global interconnectedness that emerges upon the examination of our categories of discourse, we may reasonably posit, indeed hope, that this recognition of the interdependence of knowledge production systems worldwide may in turn promote a wholesome recognition of the cultural and ideological interdependence of the world— both as it exists at present, and across our history.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckerlegge, Gwilym. “The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies: An Example of ‘Imported Localism.’” Numen 51 (2004): 296-320.

Bevir, Mark. “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 7, no. 1-3 (2003): 99-115.

Bhattacharya Mehta, Rini. “The Missionary Sannyasi and the Burden of the Colonized: The Reluctant Alliance between Religion and Nation in the Writings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902).” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28, no. 2 (2008): 310-325.

Hatcher, Brian A. “Remembering Rammohan: An Essay on the (Re-)emergence of Modern Hinduism.”

History of Religions 46, no. 1 (2006): 50-80.

Nelson, Dean. “Narendra Modi wins India election with landslide victory.” The Telegraph, May 16, 2014.

Accessed March 27, 2016. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10835229/Narendra-Modiwins-India-election-with-landslide-victory.html.

Salmond, Noel A. “Rammohan Roy.” In Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against Idolatry, 43-61. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2004.

Scott, J. Barton. “Luther in the Tropics: Karsandas Mulji and the Colonial ‘Reformation’ of Hinduism.”

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83, no. 1 (2015): 181-209.

Shodhan, Amrita. “Women in the Maharaj Libel Case: A Re-Examination.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 4, no. 2 (1997): 123-139.

Smith, Brian K. “Questioning Authority: Constructions and Deconstructions of Hinduism.” In Defining Hinduism: A Reader. Ed. J. E. Llewellyn, 102-122. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2005.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. N.d. Accessed March 27, 2016. http://www.britannica.com/topic/Rashtriya-Swayamsevak-Sangh.

– “Reformation.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Updated October 30, 2014. Accessed March 27, 2016. http://www.britannica.com/event/Reformation.

Van der Veer, Peter. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

“Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.” In Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, 85-96. Ed. Christophe Jaffelot. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.

Photograph by Arjun Mehta

Curry Culture: Migrant History and 
 Nostalgic Memory on Brick Lane

Megha Harish King’s College London

CURRY CULTURE The Brick Lane (E.1.) plaque is probably the only street sign in London characterised more by the Bengali letters bক #লন underneath it than by the actual English words. Brick Lane, a now iconic street known for its curry houses, lies in the center of one of the most densely populated immigrant areas in London, and has come to be called “Banglatown.” This name reflects the fact that almost 60% of Brick Lane’s residents identify as either Bangladeshi or of Bangladeshi descent.1 The immigration of the Sylheti Bengalis into Tower Hamlets has a history preceded by multiple waves of immigration and assimilation. This essay will explore food and eating habits as forms of memory and identity, and nostalgia for the homeland as an integral part of the migrant experience.

The journey of the building, which now stands as the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, began with the arrival of the Huguenot French in the 18th century. We see a pattern emerging wherein the balance of constancy and change is reflected in the journey of the building, which can further be linked to the dominant food habits of the area.

The edifice that stands today as the Jamme Masjid, which lies on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street, started off as La Neuve Eglise, a Protestant chapel for the French (1742). It then metamorphosed into the Jews’ Chapel (1809), and later into the Methodist Chapel (1819). Towards the end of the 1800s, the Methodist Chapel was converted into the Spitalfields Great Synagogue, reflecting the huge shift in demographics from Christians to Jews. It remained in this avatar for close to eighty years, until 1976, when it took its current form as the Jamme Masjid. The sundial on the building which reads “Umbra Sumus,” or “We are shadows,” was initially meant to reflect the Protestant idea of the ephemerality of life, but now appears a striking foretokening of the communities that were to come and go, leaving behind their distinct shadows.

1

“Office of National Statistics,” accessed 13 February 2015 http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/.

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MEGHA HARISH Despite the various religious groups occupying the building through the course of time, its core purpose as a place of community and worship has remained unchanged since its construction.

Similarly, with food and eating habits, while the styles of cooking, the flavours and odours have changed, cuisine has continued to serve its purpose as a reminder of “home,” a mode of belonging in London and in Britain. The Huguenots were known for their regular preparation of oxtail stew. While this may have been an olfactory reminder of home, it could also have been a by-product of root vegetables and herbs that were cheaply and easily available. In a similar vein, the smells of fried fish and chicken soup of the Jews through the 19th century was what permeated the area, and distinguished it as “foreign.”2 Like religion, food is often a factor that sets migrant communities apart from the indigenous. The evolving curry culture of the 1960s and 70s, then begins to incorporate a new dynamic, as Asian eateries begin to multiply. They become features in nearly every British neighbourhood, with white clientele increasingly taking to the taste of South Asian cuisine.3 This opening of curry houses to a wider clientele indicated a shift that impacted authenticity and the perception of food as a form of identity. Benedict Anderson may be right in claiming that ideas of nationhood and gender are “imagined communities,” but he also concedes that nationhood in particular is a “largely incurable” concept.4 No matter how hard migrant communities worked in Britain, however well they adopted schooling and social norms, there would still be something that distinguished them from the host community, and still does. Is this their incurable nationality? Kay J. Anderson attributes this sense of alienation to 2 Anne

J. Kershen, “The Construction of Home in a Spitalfields Landscape,” Landscape Research 29 (2004): 267.

Elizabeth Buettner, “Going for an Indian: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain,” The Journal of Modern History 80 (2008): 889.

4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 5-6.

3

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CURRY CULTURE differences between ethnic groups rather than nationalities. Contrary to Imagined Communities, she says it is not necessarily about the finite, geographical boundaries of nation, but more about kinship with one’s own ethnic group. These are “created socially by rules of exclusion and inclusion around idioms of actual or perceived common descent such as language or religion.”5 According to Anne J. Kershen, language and food are the pillars on which migrant communities construct their notions of home.6 This desire to recreate fond memories of home through culinary practices is not an individual reflective experience. Rather, it is a mode that results in the creation of associations between a nation, community and food. Anita Mannur uses the term “culinary citizenship” to refer to this form of belonging which “grants subjects the ability to claim and inhabit certain positions via their relationship to food.”7 Often these memories and reconstructions of tastes are based on fragmented memories of childhood or partial nostalgia passed down through generations.8 The generalisations made about “Chinese” or “Indian” cuisines, as though the dominant Schezuan or Punjabi staples could encompass vast nations of diverse traditions, are not often opposed by the migrant communities.

Instead, the generic nature of names and styles of dishes become selling points for migrant communities to cater to indigenous customers. These supposedly authentic “Indian” restaurants on Brick Lane claim to represent the entire subcontinent, even though they are run primarily by Bangladeshi males. This is quite the opposite from the case in Bangladesh where the “women, in the quarters reserved for the female members of

5

Kay J. Anderson, “The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in the Making of a Racial Category,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77.4 (1987): 584.

6 Kershen, “The Construction of Home,” 266.

7 Anita Mannur, “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora,” MELUS 32 (2007): 13.

8 Mannur, “Culinary Nostalgia”, 14.

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MEGHA HARISH the household, prepare and serve the food.”9 The quest in food culture, then, becomes less about authenticity and more about satisfying market demand. Culturally defined patterns and choices thus come to be seen as characteristic of a country: these interpretations are based on how food is presented, not with reference to how authentic it actually is. “Thus, the roast beef of old England is being replaced by chicken tikka masala,” which is a British creation in itself, supposedly having Glaswegian roots of origin.10 A national cuisine develops from absorbing and exchanging with other cultures, and tikka masalas and baltis, though not present in the Indian subcontinent, become British favourites. Similarly, migrant cuisines may adapt significantly to their new contexts, depending on available ingredients, markets, and tastes of the land in which they now find themselves.

Standing out amongst the crowd of curry houses, the bagel shops on Brick Lane reflect a similar pattern of having had their food co-opted, reinvented and almost “re-imported” as the bagel came to epitomize Jewish culture in the United States.11 The two shops on numbers 155 and 159 are now in competition with one another: they are known as the “oldest” and the “best” stores that serve freshly baked bagels for twenty-five pence, twenty-four hours a day. Thus, the shadows of previous communities persist even in the restaurant culture of Brick Lane, not only in what is sold, produced, and consumed, but also in terms of ownership, since a large majority of the of freeholds for the restaurants are not held by the restaurateurs, but remain in the hands of earlier groups.12

9

Kershen, “The Construction of Home,” 266.

Igor Cusack, “African Cuisines: Recipes for Nation-Building,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13 (2000): 209.

11 Warren D. Hoffman, "Bagels with a Shmear of Culture." Judaism 50.2 (2001): 249.

12 Nicola Frost, “Green Curry: Politics and Place-Making on Brick Lane,” Food, Culture and Society 14 (2011): 228.

10

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CURRY CULTURE Restaurateur Mahmoud Rauf said that his curry chefs are best suited to producing curry for the enjoyment of the British public.13 While innocuous on first reading, this sentiment has a greater significance insofar as it reveals the desire to cater to a wider audience. Having sampled the curries at both Aladin and Sheba, two of the most highly recommended restaurants on Brick Lane (numbers 132 and 136), which describe themselves as the “Curry King of Brick Lane” and the “Queen of Brick Lane Curries” respectively, I observed significant differences. At Aladin, the décor adheres to what is stereotypically “Indian” with paintings depicting tropical scenery, more reminiscent of Goa than Bangladesh, and features women in traditional flowing attire.

However, the food overall was quite mild, sweet, and creamy. The menu appeared to greatly generalize varieties of curries, simply replacing the meat in each of the sauces. These choices appeared to make the experience easier for the uninitiated. Sheba, on the other hand, had a minimal and modern look, like any other restaurant, with a running theme of red and white in the seating, paneling, and table setting. A greater variety and specificity was visible on the menu, and the food itself was flavoursome, authentic and, to the Indian national’s tongue, tasted just like home.

Brick Lane is now a place where food plays multiple roles. Here, food provides the primary mode of assimilation for immigrants. Food employs the community, distinguishes the street from any other, provides a distinct sense of identity to “curry” as cuisine, entertains the British consumer, comforts customers from the subcontinent, and allows the Bangladeshi restaurateurs to make a living by selling their memories of home.

13

Frost, “Green Curry,” 230.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Claire. “Making Bengali Brick Lane: claiming and contesting space in East London.” The British Journal of Sociology 62 (2011): 201-220.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Anderson, Kay J. “The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in the Making of a Racial Category.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (1987): 58-598.

Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988): 3-24.

Buettner, Elizabeth. “Going for an Indian: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain.” The Journal of Modern History 80 (2008): 865- 901.

Cusack, Igor. “African Cuisines: Recipes for Nation-Building.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13 (2000): 207-225.

Frost, Nicola. “Green Curry: Politics and Place-Making on Brick Lane.” Food, Culture and Society 14 (2011): 225-242.

Hoffman, Warren D. “Bagels with a Shmear of Culture.” Judaism 50.2 (2001): 249-252.

Kershen, Anne J. “The Construction of Home in a Spitalfields Landscape.” Landscape Research 29 (2004): 261-275.

Mannur, Anita. “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” MELUS 32 (2007): 11-31.

Ziegler, Garret. “Brick Lane, Capitalism, and the Global Metropolis.” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 1 (2007): 145-167.