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dissertation entitled

Made In India?

Nationalized Genders and Colonized Sexualties

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Dimple Suparna Bhaskaran

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MADE IN INDIA?
NATION ALIZED GENDERS AND COLONIZED SEXUALITIES

By

Dimple Suparna Bhaskaran

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Anthropology

1998

ABSTRACT

MADE IN INDIA?
NATION ALIZED GENDERS AND COLONIZED SEXUALITIES

By

Dimple Suparna Bhaskaran

This study explores the construction and reproduction of gender and
sexuality in post/neo colonial India, and its relationship to national identity. It
focuses upon how Indian women serve as designated repositories and preservers of
authentic Indian culture and tradition, and as symbols of national identity. This
dissertation demonstrates this process occurs across particular locations of class,
sexuality, caste, geography, and moments in history.

This study analyzes three high-profile, contentious national events in
contemporary India. All three events are distinct but deeply connected. In all cases I
examine contradictory variations on the discourse of cultural authenticity,
modernity, decolonization and Westernization, which are always catalyzed by
challenges to normative gender and sexual identity. I demonstrate the daily and
institutional management of normative gender and sexual identity, or compulsory
heterosexuality, by entities that include the state, corporations, the media, families,
and individuals, vis—a—vis the discourses of anti-imperialism, decolonization,
economic liberalization and authentic Indian identity. The prescriptions of these
entities regarding gender, sexuality and thus authentic culture, are juxtaposed
against individual stories of complicity, cooptation and resistance. I conclude by

suggesting that the construction and reproduction of normative gender and sexual

identities are deeply tied into the heteropatriarchal institutions of kinship-making,
and embody and inform the ideologies and practices of state-making, nation—
building, and the discourse of authenticity.

The study also critically evaluates specific ethnographic methods and
epistemologies, and through a collage of models I explore ways to pursue
politically-engaged feminist ethnography in a world that is increasingly marked by
unequal global exchange, migration, and diasporas. I understand cultures as
unbound dynamic intersections and this cognizance of culture has, in turn, informed
my understanding of persons or identities (including that of the ethnographer) as
having multiple locations, alliances and audiences. As a result, the boundaries
between the researched, the ethnographer and the various audiences are also
increasingly blurred, intertwined and unbound. I suggest that these blurrings and
interconnections have an important place in contemporary anthropology and

ethnographic projects.

Copyright by
DIMPLE SUPARNA BHASKARAN
1998

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As I write these acknowledgements the entire research and writing process
flashes through my mind, and I am struck by how it would have been impossible
without the many people who have inspired, supported, pushed, and caj oled me
. through it all.

I would like to begin by thanking my dissertation committee, David Dwyer,
Marilyn Frye, Rita Gallin, Anne Ferguson and Maxine Baca Zinn. I owe a special
debt to Marilyn Frye and David Dwyer, co-chairs of my dissertation committee,
who co-chaired a large interdisciplinary committee. They have also by example of
their teaching and work outside the academy shown me ways to bring closer the all
too frequently separated domains of academy, politics and daily life. I would also
like to thank Nicholas B. Dirks for valuable critique of my chapters on colonial
history and law. Furthermore, I would also like to thank Ruth Behar for her
seminar on ”Autobiography and Ethnography" that facilitated much of my thinking
about ethnographic writing.

In addition I would like to thank an army of family, friends and colleagues,
in the United States and India, who have in their own way sustained, enabled and
enriched me intellectually and emotionally. I thank Kristin Long for all of this and
much more. Giti Thadani for her generosity, careful critique and discussions. I also
thank her for facilitating my research at The Sakhi Collective in New Delhi. Amber
Katherine and Kali Majumdar for offering me comments on chapters, and
commiserating with me through the dissertation process. Crista Lebens, Lisa

Knight, Olga Kits, Karen Willis, and Lisa Sayles who graciously endured me and

offered me diversions of life. I am grateful to Lisa Sayles for her technological
wizardry. I would also like to thank Michael Ennis-Mcmillan for offering me
comments on chapters and commiserating with me through the dissertation process.
I am grateful to Geeta Patel and Anabel Dwyer for valuable comments on specific
chapters. Further,I would like to thank Karen Willis who spent hours assisting in
editing and discussing my dissertation, and to Jan Heisey who helped edit the final
draft. And then there are my parents who I would like to thank for their support
through the process.

Last but by no means least, this project has received crucial material support
at Michigan State University, the Department of Anthropology and the Teaching

Assistant Program.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1
Indian Women: Construction and Domination ......................................... 3
Post/Neo Colonial India ............................................................................ 4
Woman as Symbol, National Identity and Eros ........................................ 5
Tradition, Modernity and Authenticity ..................................................... 9
Overview of Chapters ............................................................................... 10

CHAPTER 2

EPISTEMOLOGIES, PRACTICES & IDENTITIES .......................................... 15
The Politics of Intimacy and Distance ...................................................... 15
Epistemologies, Locations, Practices and Audiences ............................... 17
The Crises In Anthropology: A Historical Overview ................................ 18
Deconstructing Ethnographic Authority ................................................... 22
Can There Be A Native and Decolonized Anthropology? ........................ 25
More Parallel and Intersecting Questions ................................................. 33
Can There Be A Feminist Anthropology ................................................... 34
These Natives Can Speak For Themselves ............................................... 38
Anthropological Identity ........................................................................... 43
Resisting the Savage Slot .......................................................................... 45
Alternatives to the Monopoly on Native Discourse .................................. 50
Arrivals and Departures ............................................................................ 52

CHAPTER 3

THE "CHAKKA" WHO WAS NOT "PUKKA" ................................................. 55
The Politics Of Section 377 ...................................................................... 55
Ye Aidus Kya Hota Hai? ........................................................................... 56
No Sex Please, We Are Post-Colonials ..................................................... 60
The "Chakka" ............................................................................................ 63
The AIDS Anti-Discrimination Movement ............................................... 67
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code ....................................................... 69
Contextualizing the Colonial Metropole ................................................... 70
Modern Britain and the Penal Code .......................................................... 74
Codifying the Colonial State ..................................................................... 80
The Pukka Sahib and Memsahib .............................................................. 87
The "Pukka Chakka" the Past/Neo Colonial Way .................................... 93
Conclusion ................................................................................................ 97

vii

CHAPTER 4

FROM MOTHER INDIA TO MS. WORLDLY .................................................. 99
Trafficking In Essences ............................................................................. 99
The Shameful ‘Fieldworker' and Undutiful Daughter .............................. 100
Ruling Through Looking .......................................................................... 105
The Beauty and the Batsman .................................................................... 116
Old Patriarchies and New Patriarchies ..................................................... 117
Extending the Essence .............................................................................. 127
Conclusion ................................................................................................ 1 30

CHAPTER 5

DUTY, TRADITION OR CHOICE? ................................................................... 132
Stories of Cooptation and Resistance ....................................................... 132
Dutiful Fathers and Daughters .................................................................. 134
Be All That You Can Be ............................................................................ 137
Love Marriage Or Arranged? .................................................................... 139
Is this the way things have always been? ................................................. 142
I Have Bought Your Fate Into My Hands ................................................. 146
Punishment and Shame ............................................................................. 148
The Ancestral Astrologer .......................................................................... 150
Conclusion ................................................................................................ 154

CHAPTER 6

INTERPRETING, INVERTING AND INVENTING TRADITION ................... 156
Three Modes of Resistance ....................................................................... 156
Is Sexuality A Luxury in the Third World? ............................................... 159
Shoba De's Strange Obsessions ................................................................ 161
Finding The Language .............................................................................. 171
Three Modes of Resistance ....................................................................... 177
Marriages .................................................................................................. 178
Case 1: The Marriage of Urrnila and Leela .............................................. 179
Comment ................................................................................................... 179
Interview With Urrnila .............................................................................. 180
Interview With Leela ................................................................................. 181
Interview with Mr N arendra Veermani. .................................................... 183
Interview with Mr. R.L. Amravanshi ........................................................ 184
Interview with Mr. B.K. Mukherjee ......................................................... 185
Reflections ................................................................................................ 186
Case 2: The Bold, Beautiful and Damned ................................................ 187
Case 3: Gender Troubles ........................................................................... 188
Case 4: More Gender Disloyalty .............................................................. 190
Reflections ................................................................................................ 190
Suicides ..................................................................................................... 191
Case 1 ........................................................................................................ 191

viii

Case 2 ........................................................................................................ 192

Case 3 ........................................................................................................ 192
Case 4 ........................................................................................................ 193
Case 5 ........................................................................................................ 194
Case 6 ........................................................................................................ 194
Maitri Karat .............................................................................................. 194
Case 1 ........................................................................................................ 194
Conclusion ................................................................................................ 195

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 197

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 204

ix

Chapter One

Introduction

This dissertation explores the construction and reproduction of gender and
sexuality in India, and its relationship to national/ cultural identity. Specifically, I focus
upon the construction and control of Indian women’s identity and sexuality through the
systemic apparatuses, ideologies and daily practices of multiple forms of patriarchy.
In other words, I explore how Indian women are made and unmade. By multiple
forms I mean an amalgamation of indigenous and western systems of patriarchal
practices and meanings. The construction and control of female identity and sexuality
also constitutes the larger-scale political and cultural process of state-making and
national/cultural identity. The relationship between Indian women’s sexuality and
national identity is explored within the institutional webs of post/neo colonial
patriarchy. As the ‘natural’ bearers, producers, reproducers and preservers of
‘authentic’ Indian culture, and as ‘natural’ repositories of tradition, Indian Women
serve as symbols of the nation and culture. The relationship between national identity
and the construction of gender and sexuality, I suggest, also reveal mechanisms by
which women’s identity and sexuality is controlled.

In Nationalism and Sexualities the editors point to the "commerce between
eros and nation" (Parker et al., 1992:1). They maintain that this "love of country" or
"eroticized nationalism" or "national affiliation" has often been discussed by scholars
of national identity and nationalism, "without reference to sexuality." My dissertation
asks how Indian women’s identity and sexuality is constituted by the primary
institutions of patriarchy -- marriage, motherhood and compulsory heterosexuality -

- and how this controlled female sexuality mediates the symbolic order and discursive

1

fields of the nation or national identity. I ask how being constructed and controlled as
an Indian woman is connected to the dominant representations of Indian tradition and
cultural authenticity.

To demonstrate my thesis, I discuss three distinct yet deeply interconnected
national events in modern India that embody contentious discourses on gender
expectations, normative sexuality, national identity, authentic tradition, modernity,
decolonization, domination, and justice. The first event I analyze is the legal battle
over a colonial anti-sodomy code between a local human rights group and the Indian
government. Specifically, I critically evaluate the conceptual apparatus of the code and
its genealogy and political implications. In the second part I look at the relationship
between the meteoric growth and political reception of the Miss Universe and World
contests in India, the booming multinational beauty industry and the rearticulated
identities for the new Indian woman of the 1990s. In the third section I examine the
press coverage and representation of the increasing incidence of double suicides of
women and marriages between women in small towns, and the ramifications of
resisting patriarchal codes.

The thread that connects all three events is the active and implicit management
of normative female sexuality and gender. I say implicit because explicit discussion or
reference to autonomous female sexuality is generally considered taboo and dangerous.
Therefore, vis-a-vis less volatile referents such as tradition, culture, nation, and male
sexuality, women are constructed within patriarchal culture. As the symbol of the
nation, the repositories of tradition and the preservers and representatives of culture,
dominant mythologies of national identity get fixed and naturalized through women’s
bodies.

As an Indian woman, what I find strange is the unrelenting concern among

2

Indians about the marital status of Indian women. Unmarried women are viewed as
striking anomalies and often provoke unseemly attention in daily Indian life. The
institutions and practices that maintain, support and reproduce this concern are what
I refer to as compulsory heterosexuality. The blueprint of this obligatory
heterosexuality, a term used by Gayle Rubin (1975:179), is contained within the three
selected events. I explore how debates about Indian national identity are deeply
gendered, [hetero]sexual, classist and casteist, and demonstrate the uneasy dynamics
of decolonization and modernity. And I explore how Indian women across different
locations serve as the grounds on which these debates occur. The construction of
women as repositories of tradition is initially analyzed through the ideologies and the

structures of multiple forms of Indian patriarchy.

Indian Women: Construction and Domination

The construction of Indian women ideally as wife and mother is a dominant
perception in India, and permeates and saturates institutions and practices. This
dominant perception embodies the key institutions of patriarchy: marriage, motherhood
and compulsory heterosexuality. Marriage is one’s ultimate duty and ‘logical/natural’
destiny as a woman. Motherhood is perhaps the most venerated expression of female
sexuality but is permitted only within the parameters of marriage. The venerable duties
of marriage and subsequent motherhood can only exist via compulsory or obligatory
heterosexuality. My dissertation explores how women’s sexuality and identity is
managed within these webs of venerable duties--daily and institutionally.

Most anthropological research on the lives of Indian women and the
construction of gender and/ or sexuality in India presumes that sexuality = heterosexuality
and that gender identity = heterosexual (see Raheja, 1995; Raheja and Gold, 1996; Roy,

3

1972; Wadley, 1995). Furthermore, the fact that some of these studies focus on gender
(or women’s lives or relations between women and men) does not necessarily mean
that the researchers are critically evaluating patriarchal practices or are feminist
anthropologists. Those anthropological studies that look at women’s subordinate
positions or resistance to domination have done so primarily within studies of caste,
religion and folklore within rural contexts (see Dube, Leacock and Ardner, 1986;
Fruzzetti,1989; Kolenda, 1982; Nicholas,1981; Wadley,1980). What is common to
most anthropological research on India is its heterosexual assumption and lack of
analysis of the workings of heterosexuality in patriarchy. Implicit in these studies is
the notion that issues of sexuality are trivial and elitist and that any focus on such
issues would ‘smell’ of a ‘westernized’ approach insensitive to native categories or
realities.

Furthermore, patriarchal institutions coexist in different forms within much
demographic variability (such as language and class) and cultural contradictions.’
Despite much variation across language, caste, religion, economic class, education
and ethnicity, Indian women as a group are in a subordinate position to Indian men.
Due to the great variations within India, I see multiple forms of indigenous patriarchy
(or patriarchies). In addition to this, new forms of patriarchal ideology (introduced
into local ideological structures by colonial powers such as Britain and from Northern
nations such as the United States) have changed and strengthened some local
patriarchies and have also undermined others. For example, the banning of Sati (widow

burning) in British India undermined certain factions of upper-caste Bengali patriarchs.

 

1For example, much of Hindu mythology valorizes the feminine, female
sexuality and Goddesses as the source of power, but simultaneously domesticates
and controls this source of power.

Furthermore, instituting monogamous marriage within the Kerala Nayar community
(a matrilineal community where women had relatively more decision making powers
over property and relationships) in British India undermined autonomous women but
strengthened the power of many upper-caste and upper-class Nayar patriarchs. The
coexistence of many forms of women’s subordination (indigenous, colonial and

neocolonial) is what I then refer to as multiple forms of paniarchy.

Post/Neo Colonial India: Continuity and Change

Many contemporary feminist studies on Indian women and gender have begun
challenging the rural-urban dichotomy by analyzing colonial discourse (sometimes
referred to as postcolonial approaches to gender) (V aid and Sangari, 1989;
Krishnarnurty, 1989). My analysis of the management of women’s sexuality,
specifically compulsory heterosexuality, is tied into how an ex-colony reirnagines and
remakes itself in the modern world. I use the term postcolonial/neocolonial India to
suggest the coexistence of the discourses of decolonization, increasing global
integration and continued nation-building. Furthermore, the nexus of post and neo
serves as reminders that "colonialism continues to live on in ways that perhaps we have
only begun to recognize" (Dirks, 1992:23), and that Northern powers such as "the
United States have replaced the great earlier empires as the dominant outside force"
(Said, 1989: 15). By analyzing three nationally reported events I argue that national
identity is deeply gendered and sexual. National identity becomes yet another forum
to regulate, change and maintain intersecting categories of sexuality, gender, caste and

economic privilege.

Woman as Symbol, National Identity and Eros

Conceiving an independent India entailed the nationalist idea of an "imagined
community"(Anderson, 1983:15). Anderson’s study and term "imagined community"
have proved for many scholars to be useful conceptual apparati to think about nations
and nationalism. Instead of simply rejecting nationalism as a symptom of false
consciousness, Anderson sees the nation "as a variable cultural artifact that is neither
reactionary nor progressive in itself" (quoted in Parker et al., 1992:5). According to
Anderson, modern nations are characterized by being limited but having elastic
boundaries--"...beyond which lie other nations" (Anderson, 1983:16); nations are
imagined--"because members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their
fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the
image of their communion" (Anderson, 1983:15); and nations are communities--
"because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each,
the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (Anderson,
1983:16). Building this community (or cultural artifact) requires mass reform and
cultural production. Indeed, Richard Fox argues that "national culture is malleable and
mobile. It is the outcome of a constant process of cultural production" (Fox, 1990:2).
Women, real or imagined, are central to the process of cultural production of national
culture and identity.

The conceptual apparatus provided by Anderson or Fox has little to say about
gender and sexuality. Feminist scholars, however, have pointed out that modern nations
have usually been imagined in relationship to a "virile fraternity and passionate
brotherhood. . .accompanied by the ‘respectable’ ideally feminine Mother--who
produces, secures and represents the nation" (Parker et al., 1992:6). My dissertation

centers upon the construction of women’s identity and sexuality within heteropatriarchy

6

where the nation too is constituted within this heteropatriarchy. I draw from M. Jacqui
Alexander who points out:

The nation has always been conceived in heterosexuality, since biology
and reproduction are at the heart of its impulse (Alexander, 1997 :84).

Biology, reproduction, cultural production and loyalty to communities, imagined,
invented and/or biological, such as family, race, empire or nation, are the preserves
of marriage systems, motherhood and compulsory heterosexuality. Alexander also
states that:

Women’s sexual agency, our sexual and erotic autonomy, have always

been troublesome for the state. They pose a challenge to the ideological

anchor of an originary nuclear family, a source of legitimation for the

state, which perpetuates the fiction that the family is the cornerstone of

society. Erotic autonomy signals danger to the heterosexual family and

to the nation. And because loyalty to the nation as citizen is perennially

colonized within reproduction and heterosexuality, erotic autonomy

brings with it the potential of undoing the nation entirely, a possible

charge of irresponsible citizenship or no citizenship (Alexander,

1997:64).
My dissertation looks at the political economy of this loyalty to the heterosexual
family (and by extension to the larger imagined community: the nation and culture)
and how this loyalty constitutes women’s identity, sexuality and agency. I ask how
and why Indian women are constituted as the preservers of tradition and the essence
of Indian identity, where, according to Lata Mani (1989), Indian women became the
grounds on which the indigenous elite and the British disputed Indian sovereignty.
Studying the process by which the nation is constructed through women has helped
me to find the interconnections between the discourses of Indian identity, national
identity and normative sexuality. According to Partha Chatterjee, Indian women
signified the nation. According to Chatterjee:

The new patriarchy advocated by nationalism conferred upon women
the honor of a new social responsibility, and by associating the task of

7

female emancipation with the historical goal of sovereign nationhood,

bound them to a new, and yet entirely legitimate, subordination

(Chatterjee, 1993:130).

Furthermore, Lata Mani points out that the construction of a new nation, in sync with
the ideals of modernity (such as full citizenship, a just nation-state, and democracy),
is posited through its symbol--women.

For the British rescuing women becomes part of its civilizing mission.

For the indigenous elite, protection of their status or its reform becomes

an urgent necessity, in terms of the honour of the collective-religious

or national (Mani, 1989:118).

Respectable women symbolize "Mother India" or the essence of true Indian-ness. The
respectable Indian woman for the newly independent India and nationalists is remade
for a transnational India of the 1990s. The political and economic reforms in the 19903
to "liberalize" India more fully into global capitalism have been accompanied by and
have facilitated the complementary ideology of a new "liberated" Indian woman. The
new "liberated" woman signifying, the new transnational India, is the daughter of the
earlier nationalist "Mother India."

The political and economic reforms in the 19908 have been referred to as part
of a period of Indian reintegration with the global capitalist economy. This period has
been characterized by increased capital inflow and foreign equity, and the emergence
and consolidation of an Indian middle class (D’Costa, 1995:257). The reintegration to
the world economy marks a shift from earlier forms of economic nationalism, state
monopoly and self-reliance. Ideologies of this global reintegration or economic

internationalism are increasingly represented by the "liberated" woman, who can now

"choose" careers outside the home (national and international).

Tradition, Modernity and Authenticity

Any resistance to normative heterosexuality by Indian women has been
interpreted as disloyalty to the institutions informed by the ideologies of patriarchy,
such as the nation, culture, ethnicity and family. Often the response has been
accusatory, where such a woman is thought of as destroying her tradition, rejecting her
Indian identity, becoming too western and/or not being a real woman. In my
dissertation I explore this process where tradition, and therefore its corollary, authentic
Indian identity (or the dominant discourse on national identity), is automatically
questioned when normative sexuality is challenged. I also look at the ways in which
tradition is invented within the cultural and political context of a modern state to meet

different ends.

A Collage of Models

My dissertation critically evaluates specific ethnographic methods and
epistemologies, and through a collage of different models attempts an exploration of
ways to do reflexive and politically engaged-feminist ethnography.

This dissertation does not have an arrival scene, nor does it have or anticipate
a departure scene. Rather, it is akin to a series of journeys exploring the discursive,
cultural and political construction of identities in a decolonizing and transnational
India, by a migratory Indian ethnographer. Alongside this investigation I outline recent
theoretical developments in cultural anthropology, feminist anthropology/theory and
social theory. I see these epistemological and political debates as explorations of the
identity and practices of the Ethnographer and explorations of the current concern
about becoming conscious situated/positioned intellectuals. This two-pronged

endeavour of looking at the politics of identity (in the discipline of cultural

9

anthropology and in post/neo colonial India) has taken root in a historical moment in
cultural and feminist anthropology in which many ethnographers stand at the unsteady
crossroads of being the observer and observed, or the voice of the writing-analyzing
researcher and the "data providing" informant/researched. I suggest that these blurred
boundaries have also become more problematic for a positioned ethnographer who
inhabits two or more cultures (such as India and the United States) and for the
discipline of Anthropology, a field that has keenly begun challenging traditional
understandings of culture, cartography, ethnographic authority, writing and

ethnographic practices. These issues are explored in more detail in Chapter Two.

Overview of Chapters

Chapter Two, Epistemologies, Practices & Identities: The Politics of Intimacy
and Distance, outlines key theoretical debates in Cultural Anthropology that have
challenged elements of the monopoly of the traditional ethnographer (or the "Lone
Ranger," according to Renato Rosaldo) who goes off to distant lands or communities
to collect other people’s stories for an audience that is always assumed to be
completely removed from these other people. I explore debates that question the
political, moral and epistemological significance and ramifications of this endeavour.
These debates have in turn problemetized claims to objectivity, impartiality,
ethnographic authority, fieldwork, and some of the conceptual apparatus of
anthropology. Recent responses in cultural anthropology have called for a more
responsible and consciously positioned ethnographer. I draw from feminist
anthropologists such as, Kath Weston, Kamala Visweswaran and Ruth Behar who
point to the standpoint that researchers from historically marginalized communities

have and why such a standpoint should have a place in contemporary anthropology.

10

Furthermore, the "textual turn" in cultural anthropology has brought attention to the
interconnections between voice, power, representational styles, and writing and the
issue of multiple audiences. I evaluate these debates and situate myself within these
debates.

The subjects under investigation (including myself, other persons, texts and
institutions) represent and embody an ongoing conversation about decolonization and
transnationalism. I began my dissertation with the intention of exploring the
institutional and everyday management of normative gender/sex and sexuality.
Specifically, I wished to focus on the strategies by which "obligatory heterosexuality"
was reproduced and maintained for Indian women. This exploration into
postcolonial/neocolonial heteropatriarchy, through three highly visible national events
(each explored in separate chapters), began to reveal to me another interlocking but
contentious debate: whether or not certain issues, activities, identities, behaviors and
voices were Indian (indigenous) or Western.

The discourse of nativism has brought to the forefront notions about who or
what gets to be considered traditional or authentic. In other words, what must an ex-
colony reject or adapt from its colonizers (or the North). This project of nation-
building was also an enterprise of making national identity and culture. My
dissertation focuses on how this process is deeply gendered, [hetero] sexual, racial and
classist.

Chapter Three, The "Chakka" Who Was Not "Pukka":The Politics of Section
377, examines and deconstructs the language and underlying presuppositions of a
colonial sexual code that is being contested by a human rights group in
postcolonial/neocolonial India. This chapter shows how in this dispute the government

has adopted a colonial sexual code as Indian tradition, and positioned this code against

11

the civil rights of gay men and prisoners, which it characterizes as frivolous Western
mimicry. In this chapter I show how any challenge (symbolic or otherwise) to
normative heterosexuality is resisted by the modern, postcolonial state. Further, much
of the challenge from human rights groups has significant symbolic value for
stigmatized men--such as gay men, especially those from lower economic
backgrounds. The resistance of the State and individuals from varied backgrounds
gives concrete shape to an identity and practice that was formerly taken for granted
and assumed to be natural. And finally, this chapter shows that the language and
cultural meanings of this code conceptually and symbolically exclude female sexuality.

Chapter Four, From Mother India to Ms. Worldly: Trafficking in Essences,
explores how nationalist- and mass-media—produced notions of womanhood are
essentially heterosexual and elitist. The recent national euphoria over Indian women
winning the Miss Universe and Miss World contests is critically examined. I
demonstrate how, through mass-produced fantasies, women become the bases on
which the discourse on and projects of progress, development, freedom, nationalism,
nativism, authenticity, liberalization (privatization) and global integration areadvanced.
Further, I explore how these practices connect state, media and corporate sponsorship
to the everyday life of families, relatives and friendships. I document how the identity
of the "new Indian woman of the 19903" emerges as an ideology to maintain the core
patriarchal institutions of marriage, motherhood and heterosexuality. By reproducing
these institutions via the rhetoric of tradition, the essence and spirit of womanhood is
inscribed.

Chapter Five, Duty, Tradition or Choice? Stories of Co-optation and Resistance,
is a continuation of several of the themes introduced in Chapter Three, namely the

issues of duty and marriage. This chapter includes a collection of stories of women

12

who are acquaintances and friends. These conversations are explorations into women’s
resistance, co-optation and acceptance of dominant ideologies of respectability and
duty, within the hegemony of marriage and normative sexuality. These narratives come
from women who are married, divorced, want to be married, ambivalent about
marriage versus companionship, conflicted by their desire for autonomy and finally
those who are unequivocal marriage-resisters. The chapter uncovers some of the
tensions and resolutions of the "love" versus "arranged" marriage dichotomy in the
lives of Indian women. Although the possibility of "love" marriage is seen by many
heterosexual women as the creation of more choice, it is also recognized by some

women that marriage, "love, arranged" or any permutation of it, is influenced by the
ideology of modernity and is very much normative.

Chapter Six, Interpreting, Inverting and Inventing Tradition, looks at the
invisibility of Sakhis in relation to the New Women of the 1990s, within
heteropatriarchy. The term Sakhi literally means, in Hindi, female friend and
confidant. I have chosen to use the term, after many conversations with Indian women,
to refer to women who have chosen to live their lives together as close friends (maitri,
saheli), lovers (shamakami, khush, lesbians), " soul mates, " and partners in gandharva
marriage. The chapter looks at Sakhi’s exclusion and erasure from the economy of
heterosexuality and raises significant questions about economic privilege, cultural
authenticity and westernization.

In Chapter Seven, the Conclusion, I suggest that the construction and
reproduction of normative gender and sexual identities are deeply woven into
patriarchal institutions of kinship-making and embody the practices of state-making,
nation-building and the postcolonial nation’s language of cultural authenticity.

Specifically, women’s erotic autonomy is the basis for this debate. This debate occurs

13

very tacitly in Chapter Three through the bodies of prisoners and gay men, where,
without any reference to female sexuality, procreative sexuality is explicitly identified
as authentic Indian practice. Furthermore, the championing and packaging of
procreative sexuality as tradition or modernity in turn makes Sakhi realities even more
invisible and marginal.

Finally, I suggest that the understanding of cultures as unbound and dynamic
intersections (such as transnational or post/neo colonial colonial India) has informed
my understanding of persons or identities as having multiple locations, alliances and
communities (including that of the ethnographer). As a result, the boundaries between
the researched, the ethnographer, and the audiences are also increasingly blurred,
intertwined and unbound. I discuss how these blurrings and interconnections have an
important place in contemporary anthropological practice, and in understanding the

cultural politics of marginality.

14

Chapter Two

Epistemologies, Practices & Identities:
The Politics of Intimacy and Distance

This chapter contextualizes and locates my dissertation, methodologically and
theoretically, and provides a selected commentary on some of the current
epistemological and political concerns and debates in cultural anthropology.
Specifically, I explore the dilemmas confronting anthropologists who stand at the
blurred boundaries between the researching/observing ethnographer and the
researched/observed Other. This dilemma directly relates to the issue of ethnographic
authority, the ethnographer’s location and identity, ethnographic practices, and one’s
audience. This chapter demonstrates how these concerns have been addressed by
particular anthropologists and how they have provided me with some models for my
dissertation. The epistemological and political concerns raised and complicated by
these debates situate my dissertation project.

The blurring and questioning of the schism between the ethnographic Self and
the observed Other, alongside a growing awareness of being and becoming situated
intellectuals in and outside of the academy have taken form in different ways within
cultural anthropology. This questioning includes at some fundamental level a
questioning of ethnographic authority and the strategies employed by the
ethnographer to maintain this monopoly. Many strategies of distancing between the
researcher and researched allowed for this long-unquestioned authority and the
construction of the identity of the Ethnographic-Self. The strategies of distancing also
embodied anthropological methods, concepts, and practices.

This chapter will demonstrate how the critical evaluation of ethnographic
authority by ethnographers such as James Clifford has been received by those
ethnographers who have the added dilemmas and responsibilities of occupying
multiple locations, specifically between the place of the researcher and that of the

15

researched. Although I categorize the reception to the critique of ethnographic
authority as different moments, these moments are limited and often overlapping
(since many of these ethnographers would claim multiple identities and politics).
These moments include: challenges and alternatives provided by "native," "third
world, " feminist, hybrid, lesbian/ gay ethnographers and ethnographers of colour.
Many of these challenges are also conversations (often one-sided) with the “textualist
critique” or postmodern critique of anthropology (Clifford, 1988; Clifford and
Marcus, 1986). These conversations have been, for some, troubling, disappointing,
and yet full of possibilities. I conclude by situating myself and my dissertation within
these moments.

The concerns regarding the boundaries between the researched and researcher
also provide an avenue into issues regarding the conceptual apparatus, the
practitioners and practices in anthropology, and the audience. In this chapter I show
how the critical evaluation of ethnographic authority and the ethnographer’s location
by particular anthropologists has identified for me four interconnected areas. They
are: (l) DWWW in anthropology: such as the
categories of culture, home and field, participant-observation, and the Self-Other
relationship; (2) The identity of the ethnographer: such as political location and
experiences of the ethnographer; (3) Practices of ethnographers: such as travelling to
a foreign or an unfamiliar community/culture ("out there"), encountering, describing
and reporting that reality to another community/culture; and (4) W: to
whom the ethnographer is writing and who she expects to read her ethnography.

These four areas significantly overlap and interlock. By complicating taken-
for-granted categories, practices and people involved in the ethnographic process, the
debates that I outline in this chapter provide the framework of my dissertation. I will

first situate my dissertation within these four areas and then provide a select

16

commentary on some of the current epistemological and political concerns and

debates in cultural anthropology.

Epistemologies, Locations, Practices and Audience

Renato Rosaldo has suggested that we begin to understand cultures as
intersections, versus the standard anthropological notion of cultures as homogeneous,
bound, static wholes (Rosaldo, 1989). Drawing from his work, I explore what it
means to be an ethnographer or a cultural self, located at many intersections or
locations: an Indian woman, a ‘native’ and a feminist ethnographer, and as a cultural
critic who inhabits both Indian and U.S worlds. Understanding cultures and persons
in this manner can help to deconstruct some of the myths of anthropology, such as
the myth that one person (usually an ‘outsider’) can objectively and ‘holistically’
represent a culture/community/peoples; or that certain established tropes or
"gatekeeping concepts" (Appadurai, 1986:357) are emblematic of a
culture/ geographic region/peoples. For example, Appadurai notes that the "trope of
caste" (such as focusing on relationships between different caste groups, or looking at
how caste hierarchies are maintained) has dominated anthropological research on
India. Further, the scientific quest for a ‘balanced’ and ‘holistic’ representation tends
to privilege the covering of as many people/ informants or institutions as possible,
which in turn justifies its corollary-covering more people and institutions equals a
more holistic, objective, complete and balanced view. This has been put under
scrutiny, for example, by Ruth Behar, who has shown how one woman’s life story
(Esperanza, a woman from Mexico) and/or her own auto-ethnography (as a Cuban
Jewish immigrant to the US.) can illuminate and connect cultural politics with the
personal (Behar, 1993 and 1996).

With a more dynamic and complicated understanding of culture, communities

17

and peoples (ethnographers included), there can be more room to consider making
the familiar strange. Much of cultural anthropology has sought to make the strange
familiar. Practitioners of the discipline have endeavoured to make, document,
interpret, represent and translate unknown, alien and foreign worlds (foreign
especially to the anthropologist and her/his audience) and render them understandable
and knowable. Contemporary North American anthropology, however, has witnessed
the notion of foreign-ness expand and blur significantly. The project of making the
strange familiar has ranged from going to a different geographical region that in
which one lives and works (such as an American citizen going outside the United
States or a white American going to a Native American reservation) to more recently
going to different locations within the United States (such as a middle-class and
highly educated ethnographer going to a working-class community where generally
the highest degree attained by member’s of the community is a high school certificate
or a bachelor’s degree).

My dissertation also seeks to translate, interpret, document, and represent
lives and realities, but in reverse. In reverse fashion, my dissertation makes the
familiar strange. In other words, I seek to evaluate taken-for-granted practices and

institutions of daily life as member and participant.

The Crises In Anthropology: An Historical Overview
William Roseberry (1996:5-25) has identified three political and

epistemological moments in American anthropology.‘ The first is characterized by

 

‘Although Roseberry, Grimshaw and Hart (discussed later) believe that there are
political, epistemological and economic crises in the discipline, Roseberry believes
that some of it has been manufactured from the 19805 onwards and that certain
"elite" and "mainstream" contingents have not really been affected by it. Grimshaw
and Hart also have suggested that in many ways anthropology as a discipline has
always been in flux due to its flexible, interdisciplinary components.

18

"the emergence of the US as the dominant world power" in the period after World
War 11 (1950-69), when American anthropologists had even more access to study the
Other and their practices in the geographic South (namely, Africa, Asia and
Oceania). This was in addition to the existing access to Latin America and Native
America. The opening up of these world regions to "US. interest and influence"
intersected with paradigmatic shifts, i.e., from an emphasis on "small scale
communities" (say the trading system of the natives of New Guinea) to "complex
societies and peasants" of larger nation-states (such as notions of purity and pollution
amongst Brahmins in Indian villages or land tenure and the Mexican peasantry). In
other words there was a move away from the classical anthropological subject of
small-scale ‘primitive’ societies (or "primitive isolates") and themes of functional
theory (Roseberry, 1996z6).

The second moment (1970-89), Roseberry maintains, was a period that
"attempted to address a number of silences" in anthropological practices such as
complicities with colonialism and androcentrism (Roseberry, 1996:6), and is a period
marked by specific anthologies (Asad, 1973; Hymes, 1969 and Reiter, 1975). Many
North American anthropologists, including Roseberry, suggest that this was a period
when many academics were influenced by and involved in the black civil rights
movements, the women’s movement and anti-Vietnam-War demonstrations.

The final and current moment (19903) Roseberry calls the "rewriting of
anthropology," in which there is greater emphasis on the poetics, practices and
modes of representation in and of ethnography (Roseberry, 1996:17). Roseberry
seems quite skeptical of developments in this period and he questions whether or not
claims about the "crisis of representation" and "crisis of intellectuals" are "exclusivist
and exclusionary claims" of "crisis managers and mongers" in elite universities

(Roseberry, 1996:21). Roseberry is skeptical of the "language of marginality," the

19

"increasing openness--to new, critical perspectives, to more diverse, multicultural
authorships and texts, to a wider range of styles of work, texts, forms of
representations" (Roseberry, 1986:20).

Roseberry questions the sincerity of this discourse by stating that such
language is mostly cosmetic and does not reflect much change within the hierarchies
in the anthropological establishment. Although Roseberry is quite skeptical of what
he calls the "rewriting of anthropology" and the "language of marginality," much of
the current questions explored by feminist, native, third world, lesbian/ gay
anthropologists and anthropologists of colour are in a dialogue with many of the
authors of Writing Culture or what has been called the "textualist critique" of
anthropology.

Anna Grimshaw and Keith Hart also provide a critical overview of the rise
and fall of scientific ethnography and anthropology’s professionalization (Grimshaw
and Hart, 1994:227-262). Their sketch focuses on developments in British
anthropology, a close cousin of American anthropology. Grimshaw and Hart, "locate
the roots of anthropology’s crisis in the collapse of its central paradigm, scientific
ethnography" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1994:228). As a genre, scientific ethnography
facilitated ethnographic authority and expertise through its monopoly of other
people’s lives (primarily the non-west and non—white). " ...Scientific Ethnography
became identified as writing objective reports of locally circumscribed, exotic peoples
after prolonged immersion in their societies" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1994:228). This
monopoly of objective reportage via subjective means (first-hand experience through
fieldwork and participant observation about daily life or experience of institutions)
began to be challenged in the late sixties. Although Grimshaw and Hart say that this
monopoly has been " seriously undermined" I would argue that the basic tenants

espoused by scientific ethnography, whether the ethnography is theoretically and

20

methodologically categorized as "interpretive" or "political economy," still inform
anthropological practice.

Grimshaw and Hart provide an outline to contextualize scientific ethnography,
the paradigm most "identified with Malinowski and his heirs. " The first period,
1890-1945, is identified as the birthing and launching of anthropology, or the period
of professionalization. "At its core lay the development of scientific ethnography, a
modern intellectual practice based on fieldwork" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1996:232).
According to Grimshaw and Hart, the publication of Malinowski’s Argonauts of the
Western Pacific, in 1922, is often marked as a revolutionary moment in
anthropology.

The distinctive object of inquiry was primitive society, conceived of as

isolated, self sufficient peoples found largely in the distant fringes of

empire. . . .This meant that everything was open to investigation by what
constitutes the only valid discovery of the new discipline, its fieldwork

method. (Grimshaw and Hart, 1994:233)

The persona of the fieldworker-theorist is referred to by Grimshaw and Hart as "the
Lone Ranger with the note-book" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1996:233). The narrative of
the unified, homogenous, simple, static, isolated, holistic society contributed to the
construct of the Metropolitan-Western persona (belonging to a complex, mobile,
alienated, unsuperstitious society). ‘Primitive society’ and its natives were the
Western Self’s Other, but were also a part of anthropology’s liberal project of
counteracting existing forms of overt biological racism (such as Victorian racism).
Malinowski and Boas, through scientific ethnography or "the ethos of scientific
democracy" also "extended the conception of rational humanity, simultaneously
questioning Western arrogance and demanding intellectual respect for primitives"
(Grimshaw and Hart, 1996:234). Although scientific ethnography may have
challenged Victorian racial hierarchies, the primitive, or primitive society, was

invented and rearticulated into what Michel-Rolph Trouillot calls, the "savage slot"

21

(1991).2

The second period, 1945 to the present, is identified as the "post war boom"
as well as the "lingering death of scientific ethnography" (Grimshaw and Hart,
1996:245). In the post World War 11 period, Euro-American anthropology increased
in its professional consolidation (specifically, US and British). This development
occurred simultaneously with independence movements and independence in British
colonies, increasing mobilization of civil rights movements in the US. , growing
U.S. hegemony, increasing integration of world markets, increasing migration of
peoples across nations and "a boom in the welfare state." According to Grimshaw
and Hart, the 19603 was a time of unparalleled expansion for academic anthropology.
However, they suggest that the publication of Writing Culture catalyzed an "open
confrontation with the methodological and political consequences of the scientific-
ethnographic paradigm" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1994:251). This "open confrontation"
has often been uncritically cast as the "antithesis of scientific ethnography." It is this
"open confrontation" of ethnographic authority, with a specific focus on James
Clifford’s work, that I will outline in the next section. Furthermore, I shall explore

the contributions and weaknesses of Clifford’s analysis.

Deconstructing Ethnographic Authority

James Clifford outlines the evolution of a fundamental mode of the distancing
mechanism--"ethnographic authority" (Clifford, 1988:21). This mode of distancing
historically set up Us (the metropole, white, academically-trained expert, Self) and
Them (Natives of the colonies, non-white, the studied, Other). Further, this model of

distancing was hierarchal and based on unequal power (such as across the axis of

 

2'I‘rouillot’s notion of the " savage slot" is explored later, in this chapter, in the
section: Resisting the Savage Slot.

22

nationality, race, gender and educational privilege). There was also the geographical
distancing between the Metropole v.3. Colony or Home/Academy v.3. Field. The
"persona of the Fieldworker-Theorist" emerges most forcefully through the work and
efforts of Malinowski (Clifford, 1988:26). The ethnographer as the “best interpreter
of native life” is constructed against the amateurs (those who write travelogues, or
confessional accounts), the biased accounts (of missionaries and colonial
administrators, who had been around longer in the field but had an agenda to
convert or rule the natives) and the armchair theorists (who simply didn’t want to
leave their offices and libraries and get their feet wet in “the field”). According to
Clifford, Malinowski “played a central role in establishing credit” for the
Fieldworker-Theorist, who became an institutionalized persona and a hegemonic rite
of passage and practice with the professionalization of anthropology (1900-19603).
The science of man, through the “assertation of presence” (the ethnographer was
there) and imbued with power inequities, gave the Fieldworker-Theorist
"unquestioned claims to appear as the purveyor of truth (Clifford, 1988:32). Clifford
points out that the authority of the academic fieldworker-theorist was established
between 1920-1950. At the core of going out there was the paradoxical method of
participant-observation. This method established the ‘scientific validity’ of objectively
“I-Witnessing,” collecting, recording, describing and interpreting native customs or
beliefs (the native’s point of view) and of the immersion experience of empathy
(participation--but not to lose objectivity by ‘going native’). Going there was thus
accompanied by an "arrival scene" (Pratt, 1986:47). This ‘first-hand’ research and
experience was also considered to be informed by scientific neutrality, innocence,
and holism (Clifford, 1988:30).

"The collection of data by academically trained natural scientists defining

themselves as anthropologists" provided theories and gave histories to the West under

23

the rubric of human diversity, social evolutionism, development, progress and
modernity (Clifford, 1988:30). Ethnographic authority at once allowed for an
objectification and appropriate "intense personal experience. " Just so long as one
didn’t go native or was not native. This "intense personal experience" distinguished
(and thus gave more authority to) the anthropologist from those who may have been
too abstract (the armchair anthropologist, philosophers, etc.) or ‘too concrete’ (as in
native informants who supposedly couldn’t make the critical connections the
anthropologist made, thus giving the anthropologist more authority).

Clifford’s essay provides a careful critique of the consolidation of
unquestioned ethnographic authority-- as "omnipresent, knowledgeable" and as
‘spokesman’ or voice of others/cultures (Clifford, 1988:43). He concludes by
introducing new forms of ethnographic writing and practice. These strategies include
what he calls experimental, interpretive, dialogical and polyphonic.3 Clifford’s call
for polyphonic and dialogical approaches was also echoed by the co-editor of Writing
Culture, George Marcus. Along with Clifford, Marcus suggests that ethnographers
recognize the difference in power relations set up within the practices of the
"quintessential anthropologist" or "monophonic authority," and collaborative efforts
and "plural authorship" (Clifford, 1988:51).

Anthropologists will increasingly have to share their texts and

sometimes their title pages with those indigenous collaborators for

whom the term informants is no longer adequate, if it ever was.

(Clifford, 1988:51)

As mentioned earlier, Clifford’s work, along with his cohorts,‘ catalyzed an

"open confrontation with the methodological and political consequences of the

 

’Clifford provides a list of "exemplary" experimental, polyphonic, reflexive,
dialogical and interpretive ethnographies, such as Rabinow (1977); Dwyer (1982);
Crapanzano (1980); Dumont (1978); and Shostak (1981).

‘George Marcus, Michael Fischer and contributors to the anthology Writing
Culture.

24

scientific-ethnographic paradigm" (Grimshaw and Hart, 1994:251). The reception has
been mixed and I cannot provide a comprehensive overview of these debates in my
dissertation. Clifford’s limited critique of ethnographic authority and easy dismissal
of many critical ethnographic works (such as those of feminists, native and/or of
people of colour) is, I believe, due to his privileged location. However, what I
provide below is an elaboration of responses to Clifford from particular cultural
anthropologists. These anthropologists have deconstructed various aspects of
ethnographic authority (some before Clifford, such as feminist anthropology’s
deconstruction of androcentric anthropology or third-world anthropologists’s critique
of anthropology’s colonial heritage) and they are sympathetic to Clifford’s
challenging of objective, holistic, scientific neutrality and uncritical authority, but
also critique some of Clifford’s limitations. What unites these responses is the initial
dilemma of standing at the intersection of the researcher and researched. I locate
myself at this intersection, where the boundary between the researcher and the

researched are not clear cut.

Can There Be A Native and Decolonized Anthropology?

I begin with a close reading and critique of Kirin Narayan’s essay "How
Native is a Native Anthropologist?” (Narayan, 1993:671-686). Narayan asks "How
‘foreign’ is an anthropologist from abroad?” These questions have caught
anthropological attention especially since the ex-colonies began talking back; although
characterizing the response from third-world intellectuals as talking back is also a
debatable and contentious issue. In other words, do ‘natives’ talk back if they simply
echo the sentiments and replicate the objectifying practices of the discipline in
foreign/brown/black faces? The first issue that Narayan raises and questions is the

binary logic of the ‘regular’ versus ‘native’ anthropologist; the ‘native’ versus the

25

‘non-native’ anthropologist; and the outsider/insider and observer/observed schisms in
cultural anthropology. The second issue that she finds problematic is the automatic
assumption by regular anthropologists in the metropole that native anthropologists
would have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of their culture, an
insider native’s point of view if you will. She invokes academia’s current favorite
epithet-~the specter of essentialism. She feels that the romantic notion that the native
anthropologist, who supposedly enters the land of fieldwork "from a position of
intimate affinity" is “essentialist.” She writes “as someone who bears the label of
‘native’ anthropologist and yet squirms uncomfortably under this essentializing tag"
(Narayan, 1993:672). It is this uncomfortable squirming and “this essentializing tag”
that I would like to explore. And thirdly, Narayan concludes by calling for the
"enactment of hybridity. " In arguing against the fixed dichotomy of regular and
native she would like to view anthropologists as researchers with “shifting
identifications amid a field of inter-penetrating communities and power relations. ”
Further, she points out, “the enactment of hybridity” will also be reflected within
ethnographic writing where the authors can belong to many worlds--such as being
“minimally bicultural in terms of belonging simultaneously to the world of engaged
scholarship and the world of everyday life" (Narayan, 1993:672).

Narayan’s call for the destabilizing of the dichotomies of the regular versus
the native anthropologist, anti-essentialism and the "enactment of hybridity" comes at
an important moment in anthropology when many monopolies are being questioned.
She notes that the opposition between the native and regular anthropologist can be
historically placed within the heydays of empire when Western anthropologists went
off to distant lands (usually the colonies) and studied the Native-Other. She also
suggests that this opposition was initially more clear cut but eventually grew

complicated when natives, including informants, began being trained by

26

anthropologists and receiving doctorates at universities in the metropole. Almost
always these native anthropologists were sent back to their cultures to study their
own. Narayan quotes Franz Boas, who describes a trained native as having "the
immeasurable advantage of trustworthiness, authentically revealing precisely the
elusive thoughts and sentiments of the native" (Narayan, 1993:672).

Narayan explores her deep unease with the essentializing difference between
insiders and outsiders. According to her, this binary framework needs to be
destabilized due to many changes within anthropology and anthropological identities.
First, anthropology is being practiced by third world anthropologists within, between
and outside of the geographic third world as well as by people of colour in the
United States. In other words, the original savage other/native now observes with a
trained eye, analyzes and represents, and is a full fledged anthropological-self. Also,
Narayan claims that feminists have “destabilized the category of Other and Self” due
to their recognition of differences amongst women (Narayan, 1993:673).
Unfortunately, Narayan does not elaborate upon this statement. Third, the American
anthropological gaze has also turned inwards, back to the Metropole and therefore
the idea of the field is also flexible. So, in other words, the field can be a New
Jersey high school that the anthropologist may have attended, a Greek village, or a
garage in Philadelphia. The inward gaze is in addition to the traditional outward
gaze-so studying Hindu temples in India or peasants in Mexico is still very much a
part of the imaginary of anthropology’s geography. So, the field now includes
original locales like the colonies or ex-colonies, and also the metropole’s backyard.
Arrival scenes are marked by departure scenes for some. And the field has become
home for some.

Narayan finds it objectionable that native anthropologists are seen primarily

by their native-ness rather than their contributions to the field. She makes a specific

27

reference to M.N. Srinivas, an Indian anthropologist trained under Radcliffe-Brown
in Oxford during the 19303 and 19403, whose ‘classic monograph’ was on the
Coorgs of India. Narayan feels that "despite the path breaking professional
contributions,” his “origins remained a perpetual qualifier" (Narayan, 1993:672). She
quotes Radcliffe-Brown, who had written a forward to M.N. Srinivas’s monograph,
as saying that his official training and Indian origins contributed towards “an
understanding of Indian ways of thought which is difficult for a European to attain
over many years" (Narayan, 1993:672). Narayan rightly points out that the native’s
insidemess, based on his race and colonial subjecthood, was used to further the
interests of good data collection by the white metropole "regular" anthropologist.
This native was allowed into the “charmed circle” of Oxbridge anthropologists. This,
Narayan felt, was a form of romanticizing the native or romancing the noble savage.
She writes that it is this native, “the adequately westemized native," who received
full professional initiation into a “disciplinary fellowship of discourse, who became
the bearer of the title ‘native’ anthropologist" (Narayan, 1993:672).

However, Narayan doesn’t take into account the following: (1) native
anthropologists, an identity externally imposed due the subordinate location of the
Other-Native Self, were allowed access into these charmed circles due to their
stigmatized race and colonial locations (in the case of MN. Srinivas) or their
Savage-Othemess within the metropole (such as Native Americans or Black
Americans), and (2) ‘native’ anthropologists had some basis for political alliances
with the White Metropole Anthropologist based on sex/ gender, class, educational
privilege and professional politics. Both Radcliffe-Brown and Srinivas followed
similar criteria for reporting (objective, scientific, holistic reportage) and doing the
Science of Man for similar academic audiences. M.N. Srinivas’s politics and poetics

were not too different from those of his mentor, which in turn made his membership

28

in India and understanding of all Indian realities more authentic and representative.
The theme of identification versus distance is repeatedly invoked by Narayan.
Throughout the essay she points out moments of identification and distance that the
ethnographic-Self encounters. Narayan’s ethnographic-Self experiences shifting
identities. She provides some biographical information, such as being “minimally”
bicultural and biracial (Indian and white German-American parents, growing up
primarily in the United States), educated in an elite U.S. university and being based
in the United States. Narayan did fieldwork in Nasik and Kangra (small towns in
Northern India, the former being her father’s hometown). On the one hand Narayan
felt like she “often share[d] an unspoken emotional understanding with the people"
with whom she worked and on the other she states: “all too aware of traditional
expectations for proper behavior by an unmarried daughter, in both places I
repressed aspects of my cosmopolitan Bombay persona and my American self to
behave with appropriate decorum and deference" (Narayan, 1993:674). She says she
felt “uncomfortable, even ashamed, of the ways in which my class had allowed me
opportunities that were out of reach for this bright and reflective man.” The man she
refers to is Swamiji, a Hindu holy man, whose stories were collected for Narayan’s
book, Saints, Scoundrels and Storytellers.’ Narayan felt that her identity within the
community was “unstable” due to the fact that she was at times accepted as a
granddaughter and at other times distanced as someone doing business with a camera,
tape recorder and notebook. At times she felt bonded by “an unspoken emotional
understanding” (due to historical familiarity with the locale, people, language and
culture) or ridiculed by Swamiji and his followers when he mockingly questioned

why educated people do what they do--directly referring to what Narayan was doing

 

’In this ethnography, Narayan (1989) researched songs and lives of women living
in the Himalayan foothrlls, a place she had visited annually since she was 15 and
where her German-American mother settled down to live.

29

and researching in his town.

Narayan’s moments of identification or stable identity included the following:
common language, familiar people, a history of visitations, a sense of familiar
culture, ancestral bonds, and inclusion into kinship as a daughter, granddaughter and
sister. Narayan’s moments of distancing (which she often associated with "unstable or
shifting identities") included being marked as an academic outsider entering a space
(familiar for the most part) with a camera, notebook and recorder; polite exclusions
from day-to-day activities or personal information; ridicule or questioning of her
project; experiences of differences marked by gender, class, education and
geographical locations (the cosmopolitan Bombayite in semi-urban Nasik or semi-
rural Kangra or the nonresident Indian in India) and the longing for a time of
independent living in California. So Narayan was at times included as an outsider to
the village (Kangra where she “had no deep local roots”), by village women, as
someone from the outside-i.e., from Bombay and/or America who had come all that
way to record their lives and activities. And at times she got excluded as an insider
in Nasik, by Swamiji, who knew her as his friend’s granddaughter and treated her as
kin, but also knew that she was visiting, recording and collecting his stories for a
dissertation in the United States and who sometimes challenged the motives of
educated people. Part of her inclusion into Swamiji’s world also required following
the rituals of local patriarchy by not touching a holy man’s feet while menstruating.

Narayan’s unease in uncritically adopting "a position of intimate affinity" with
rural Indian women as an urban Indian-American woman is quite different from the
position Faye Harrison takes. Faye Harrison, an African-American anthropologist,
travels to Jamaica to research the "Jamaican underclass. " In Decolonizing
Anthropology (Harrison, 1991:88-126 and 1991:1-14), Faye Harrison (along with the

other contributors) calls for “an activist anthropology” from “politically responsible

30

Third World Intellectuals, ” a critique of anthropology as colonial discourse, a
“meaningful dialogue and reconciliation” across multiple locations (nation, race,
class, culture) and ultimately an "anthropology of liberation" (Harrison, 1991:104).
In her research of the Jamaican underclass and U.S.-Jamaican relations, Harrison,
like Narayan feels an affinity with her ‘informants’--specifically black Jamaicans.
Harrison states that:

Although I was a foreigner, in many ways I felt at home in Jamaica.

Intellectually, I knew that I shared with Afro-Americans an African

diaspora, that my enslaved African ancestors had probably passed

through the Caribbean archipelago, and that it was an historic accident

that my pivotal fore parents had settled in the Virginia colon rather

than in Jamaica, Barbados, or Cuba. Beyond this intellectualrzed notion

of kinship and affinity, there were many times when intuitively I felt

familiar with things Jamaican. (Harrison, 1991:102)

Harrison’s sense of this strong identification is coupled with an “organic
responsibility” towards “oppressed peoples, especially to peoples of Africa and of
African descent” (Harrison, 1991:104). She says that after dealing with the
community’s initial bouts of suspicion and tension directed against her (the foreigner,
outsider, American), especially "during a time when the American presence was
considered by many to be ominous," she was given honorary Jamaican citizenship by
Ras John “a self-taught artist” and community member. According to Harrison, Ras
John, accepted her as a sister “from the same ancestral mother-Africa” and, despite
the fact that the African diaspora had separated them, “blood is thicker than the
waters of the sea.”

Edmund Gordon, another contributor to Harrison’s anthology, is an African-
American anthropologist, researches the lives of Afro-Caribbean peoples in
Nicaragua, and demonstrates his identification with the third world (as an
anthropologist and as a black American). He says: “By ‘third world’ I mean the
underdeveloped nations of the world and the people who inhabit them. I include in
this definition the ‘minority’ p0pulations of the United States and other capitalist

31

Western nations. These peoples of color and their communities are internal colonies"
(Gordon, 1991:164).

Narayan’s familial connection with the community and her subsequent sense
of outsidemess while researching the community provides an interesting juxtaposition
with Harrison, who as an American and complete stranger enters new terrain in the
geographic third world which felt like home. It is interesting since, on the one hand,
Narayan’s style of anthropology is not necessarily about liberation or a sense of
"organic responsibility" (but she questions some of her outsider and privileged
locations) and, on the other, Harrison demands "an activist anthropology" (but does
not seem to address how her fieldwork and "organic responsibility" to the Jamaicans
or Jamaican underclass are connected).

Narayan’s essay opens the door to questioning limited categories,
"gatekeeping concepts," (Appadurai, 1986:357) and uncritical politics regarding
authentic or inauthentic ethnographers and geographical space. However, I found
Narayan’s call for the “enactment of hybridity” (where identities and locations are
“multiplex” and constantly in flux and where native origins should not be an
important factor in determining respectable ethnographies) and her charge of
essentialism problematic and disempowering. It is disempowering to those
anthropologists who have some connection and identification with a community (such
as sharing similarities in economic class and/or visions and strategies of political
justice). Those with marginalized histories/experiences do have a certain kind of
epistemic privilege or privileged access. It is also problematic to ignore differences
(in politics and/or privilege) or to ignore connections (in political visions and/or
similar experiences of prejudice/discrimination).

The current vogue of calling acts of identification, connection or similarity

essentialist ignores systematic, historical and structural dimensions of inequality,

32

domination and exclusion. It is often assumed that connection and/ or identification
ignores differences between, within and across communities/identities. Some of that
happens. Kirin Narayan doesn’t consider the possibility of people connecting due to
their differences or plurality of shared experiences or across differences. The
enthusiasm to denaturalize or reject biological determinism often forgets the
physicality of structural domination. The geopolitical difference between the United
States and India or Mexico, skin colour, economic privilege, or the privilege of the

voice to speak, observe and represent, still matters.

More Parallel and Intersecting Questions

Parallel questions about insidemess and outsidemess have been asked by
feminist anthropologists and social scientists (such as: "Can there be a feminist
ethnography?" (Abu-Lughod, 1990 and Stacy, 1988)). Furthermore, with growing
numbers of ethnographies that deal with lesbian and gay realities in the US and
cross-cultural sexualities and genders, some gay and lesbian ethnographers in the
U.S. now claim that despite historical and structural heterosexism, “These Natives
can speak for themselves. "" The parallels and intersections of these questions,
statements and claims are simultaneously connected to the continuing legacy of what
Renato Rosaldo has referred to as the Lone Ethnographer, multiple systems of
historical, resilient and restructured domination, and the many reinventions, crises,
(real or imagined) and recapturings in and of anthropology. The next section outlines
the questioning of ethnographic authority by feminist anthropologists and their

reaction to issues raised by Clifford in Writing Culture.

 

"This is the logo printed on the shirts sold by the Society of Lesbian and Gay
Anthropologists (SOLGA). The politics of this logo is explored in the next section.

33

Can There Be A Feminist Ethnography?

In Anthropology it is always the other woman, the native woman

somewhere else, the woman who doesn’t write, the !Kung woman, the

Balinese woman, the National Geographic woman....exposed, pictured,

brought home, and put into books. (Behar, 1996:1)

Feminist Anthropologists expressed their dissatisfaction with the androcentrism
in the discipline and daily life with the publication of Woman, Culture and Society
(Rosaldo and Iamphere, 1974) and Towards An Anthropology of Women, (Reiter,
1975). Both anthologies were greatly influenced by the US. women’s movement.
"This book has its roots in the women’s movement," wrote Rayna Reiter ( 1975 :11)
in her introduction. In Woman, Culture and Society, the authors hoped to correct the
masculinist tradition in anthropology, in which women’s lives, activities and interests
had been largely ignored. This gap and invisibility was to be rectified by "the
anthropological study of women " and through theoretical exploration of how "women
are universally ‘the second sex’" (Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974:1). The analysis of
the universality of women’s subordination was to be assessed through the varieties of
"sexual asymmetry" in different cultures. The "Nature-Culture" debates also grew
out of these anthologies in which it was pointed out that "sexual asymmetry" was a
cultural fact, rather than the "nature of human societies" or a fact of nature, and that
this asymmetry can be altered through human intervention (Ortner, 1974:67-88).

In Towards An Anthropology of Women, the authors sought to understand "the
origins and development of sexism" and trace those origins in their many
permutations and transformations. This meant challenging the "double male bias" in
anthropology. In other words, this involved dealing with masculinist ideology in the
discipline (such as what questions are asked, what issues are considered important,
and how one collects and writes information) as well as "the potential male

dominance in the field." For example, a feminist anthropologist’s assumption that as

34

a group women are often subject to similar (but not the same) forms of male
dominance, may lead the feminist anthropologist to ask how patriarchy (the system of
male dominance) is experienced by a woman, whereas an anthropologist may not see
it as an important issue. The project of challenging the trivialization, exclusion and
misinterpretation of women’s lives results in essays on a reinterpretation of the
literature in physical anthropology, cultural evolution and kinship; the exploration of
the origins of women’s subordination through feminist (Simone de Beauvoir) and
nonfeminist (Marx, Engels, Levi-Strauss and Freud) theories; and a revisioned focus
on ‘studying women’ in the third world and Europe.

The call for the anthropology of women in the 19703 mushroomed into the
anthropology of gender, or gender relations in comparative perspective (Moore,
1988:188). Women studying women was rearticulated in the 19803 as studying
gender. Since the late 19803, the limitations and dissatisfaction with the
anthropological study of gender relations began being articulated by some feminist
ethnographers. This discontent was primarily a dialogue (and in some cases a
troubled dialogue) with the book Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus, 1986).
Writing Culture contains essays that seek to highlight the link between "the poetics
and politics" of cultural anthropology and the maintenance of ethnographic authority.
Although the collection acknowledges that the colonial encounter was a key factor in
the creation of the authoritative-expert ethnographer, the book’s key contributor,
James Clifford, ended up disappointing and frustrating some feminist ethnographers.
According to Deborah Gordon, experimental ethnography "relied too heavily on
assumptions from Western critical theories," which was in turn used as the grounds
for rejecting feminist works (Gordon, 1988:21). Writing Culture highlighted for
anthropology the workings of power not only in the realm of fieldwork but also in

the theoretical and political assumptions and strategies of writing. For example, the

35

relationship between the ethnographizing subject and the ethnographed subject in the
final products of anthropological experience--texts/ethnographies was under scrutiny.
Lila Abu-Lughod called for "writing against culture" since she felt that
Writing Culture excluded not only feminists but also "halfies" (persons with mixed
cultural, biological and educational backgrounds) (Abu-Lughod, 1991:138).
According to Abu-Lughod, the boundaries and fundamental hierarchical distinction
between Self and Other are still very much intact for the authors of Writing Culture,
despite calls for textual innovations such as "letting others speak" through
"dialogical" or "polyphonic" strategies. Abu-Lughod is critical of feminist
anthropologists like Marilyn Strathem who is influenced by Clifford’s work but
misses why there is an "awkward relationship" between feminism and anthropology.
According to Strathem, there is an " awkward relationship" between anthropology and
feminism despite an "interest in differences" (Strathem, 1987:12). In the case of
feminism, becoming conscious that woman is man’s Other is fundamental for
feminist self-discovery. Centering the conscious feminist Self in opposition to its
Other (Man or Patriarchy) is an act of distancing the feminist Self from an
oppressive Other. "..The goal is to restore to subjectivity a self dominated by the
Other, there can be no shared experience with persons who stand for the Other"
(Strathem, 1987:288). On the other hand, in the case of anthropology, Strathem feels
that anthropology deliberately maintains "distance and foreignness" with "affinity"
(participant-observation) and "the Other is not under attack. On the contrary, the
effort is to create a relationship with the Other." The ethnographer "must first
translate another’s experience through his or her own and then render experience in
the written word" (Strathem, 1987:288). In other words, the Anthropological Self
"can be used as a vehicle for representing the Other" and is in collaboration with

rather than in opposition to its Other.

36

Abu-Lughod points out that Strathem seems to completely underplay the
historical and current inequities in the Self-Other relationship in anthropology. Abu—
Lughod claims Strathem can’t quite grasp the awkwardness or tension between the
Feminist Self and Anthropological Self, and it is probably hard for Strathem to
explore more deeply because both Selves have been Western and/or white. The
Feminist! Anthropological Self as a potential oppressor (across nationality, race, class
or sexuality) seems to have been missed by Strathem and many other feminist
anthropologists (Abu-Lughod, 1991:140).

In the introduction to Women Writing Culture, Ruth Behar explores this
awkwardness further when she says that "this book was born of a double crisis--the
crisis in anthropology and the crisis in feminism" (Behar, 1995:3). According to
Behar, the first crisis is marked by the "postmodern or textualist critique” of
anthropology, "best exemplified by" Writing Culture. This challenge to the
anthropological establishment came from within the academy ("fell squarely within
academic territory") and was "the product of a limited-seating ‘advanced seminar’"
(Behar, 1995:3). The second crisis is marked by the critique of white, middle-class,
heterosexual feminism by the authors of This Bridge Called My Back (Anzaldua and
Moraga, 1983). This "emerged from outside the academy and yet entered the
women’s studies mainstream" and was a "challenge to the closed borders of that
territory" (Behar, 1995:3).

Behar (like Deborah Gordon) acknowledges the important contributions made
by Writing Culture, such as pointing out that anthropologists "write books and teach
books" and have created a Western canon by "planting real people and places"
(usually the non-West) in their books (Behar, 1995: 10). Writing Culture has also
questioned the processes and tropes of planting people by questioning objective and

holistic accounts of homogeneous and static culture. However, Behar questions the

37

dismissal of women’s accounts (on the grounds that they were not feminist enough or
textually innovative) and the appropriation of the strategy of "personal voice" by
women (once thought of as too subjective, but now rearticulated and valorized as
reflexive and experimental when used by male ethnographers).

The feminist response to Writing Culture, Behar maintains, is accompanied by
questions (raised in This Bridge) concerning " the distancing and alienating forms of
self-expression that academic elitism encouraged. " "If Writing Culture ’s effect on
feminist anthropology was to inspire an empowering rage, the effect of This Bridge,
on the other hand, was to humble us, to stop us in our tracks" (Behar, l995:6). The
authors of This Bridge Called My Back challenged the feminist othering of women.
According to Behar, the initial one-sided concern of the feminist
ethnographer/observer to find the origins of sexual inequality (in the ‘field’) to
"explain and liberate Western women" is no longer adequate and continues to
perpetuate the exclusion and erasure of the voices of "the objects of [the]
ethnographic gaze." Behar concludes by stating that Women Writing Culture is
written in multiple voices (as ethnographer, writer and community member),
challenges the personal and public schism in anthropology, and attempts a "rebellious

undoing of the classical boundary between observer and observed" (Behar, 1995z8).

These Natives Can Speak For Themselves

The first time I noticed someone wearing a shirt saying “These Natives Can
Speak For Themselves” was at an anthropology meeting in 1994. The slogan
immediately caught my eye and very soon I learned that the shirt was Sold by The
Society of lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (SOLGA). My very mixed reactions to
this slogan lead me to explore why SOLGA had decided to sell these shirts in the

first place. I discovered that the shirts were produced specifically in reaction to a

38

confrontation between some members of SOLGA and a panel of anthropologists
considered to be ‘stars’ in the establishment. On discovering, in the preliminary
program of the 1992 AAA meetings, that there was a panel (by invitation only) on
“AIDS and the Social Imaginary” organized by Paul Rabinow and Nancy Scheper-
Hughes, many members of SOLGA “became concerned.” This initial concern led to
a series of conversations between SOLGA members, the panelists and the organizers
that ended with much distrust, tension, and anger (especially for SOLGA members).
In the report published in the SOLGA newsletter, SOLGA Co-Chairs, Ralph
Bolton and Mildred Dickerman state that the initial concern stemmed from the
exclusion of participants who had done work on AIDS or who had been affected by
AIDS. In other words, they (Bolton and Dickerman) asked: “where were the voices
of the ‘natives’ in this session?” A brief conversation between Nancy Scheper-
Hughes and Dickerman occurred where Scheper-Hughes maintained that this session
was an informal discussion/dialogue between “outsiders” and “non-specialists.” After
this initial conversation, Scheper-Hughes sent Dickerman a copy of a syllabus of a
course on AIDS, her talk and a letter cowritten with Paul Rabinow (a response to
SOLGAs concerns). Subsequently, Dickerman requested that they include a
commentator (someone with “long [term] involvement in AIDS research, and with
knowledge of homophobia. . ”), specifically Bolton. Bolton “reluctantly agreed,
concerned that he would be seen only as a token gay AIDS researcher.” Scheper-
Hughes and the other organizers agreed to “recognize him [Bolton] as the first
audience from the floor. "7

This initial polite exchange was followed by a tense and packed session.

 

7This information is from the SOLGA (Society of Lesbian and Gay
Anthropologists) newsletter, under the special feature "The 1992 AAA Panel From
Hell—-AIDS and the Social Imaginary," February, 1993.

39

According to Bolton and Dickerman, Scheper-Hughes “charged that we wished to
‘silence’ the panel or the occurrence of the session” and stated in her opening
remarks her problem with the idea "that only AIDS-affected people could conduct
AIDS research and only gays could study gays." SOLGA members, like Bolton and
Dickerman, were angered by other developments in the session, such as the
participants reading formal papers (versus the initial claim that this was an informal
dialogue) and homophobic (“deeply offensive and condescending”) remarks by other
participants (Bolton and Dickerman cite Rabinow’s opening comment: “my friend
Michel Foucault died of AIDS.”).8

The exchange between some of the members of SOLGA and the ‘all star’
panel, as reported in the newsletter, in some ways parallels and intersects with the
concerns of feminist anthropology in the 19703. Lesbian and gay ethnographers have
to deal with societal and institutional (including the discipline of anthropology) forms
of exclusion, invisibility and pathologizing9 as an Ethnographic-Self and in their
research projects (Weston, 1993:340). According to Kath Weston, there were a few
ethnographies that were written in the late 19603, however, “by the 19903

ethnographic analyses of homosexual behavior and identity, “gender blending,”

 

“This information is from the letter sent by Dickerman and Bolton (SOLGA Co-
Chairs) to the AAA President (Annette Weiner) and Executive Director (John
Comman), January 19, 1993. This piece was printed in the SOLGA newsletter,
under a special feature on “The
1992 AAA Panel From Hell-~AIDS and the Social Imaginary,” February, 1993.

’Kath Weston refers to the epistemological roots of anthropology (and other
related and coterminous disciplines such as sexology and psychology) within an
existing Anglo-European culture that perpetuated and reproduced “stigmatized
categories”of homosexual behaviors,
identities and practices. Weston notes that earlier versions of ‘expert’ knowledge that
perceived homosexuality as a “matter of individual pathology” (such as the medical
and the psychological models) began to be challenged by scholars of “the social
constructivist school in the 19703.” Furthermore, Weston notes that the few
anthropological works on homosexuality in the late 19603 arose within the context of
a burgeoning lesbian and gay movement in the United States.

40

lesbian and gay male communities, transgressive sexual practices, and homosociality
were flourishing" (Weston, 1993:339). Weston identifies some trends within this
moment. (These patterns are situated within a matrix defined by the tension between
the politics [explicit or tacit] of “breaking the silence” and the ongoing “legacy of
silencing” within anthropology.) The glaring absence of same-sex relations,
sexualities and gender ambiguity in anthropology has been met with the initial thrust
of compensatory scholarship, empirical data gathering and documentation of that
which was ignored, erased and rendered invisible. “...Lesbian/ gay studies in
anthropology has not been immune to the documentary impulse that brushes aside
theory in the rush for ‘facts’" (Weston, 1993:340). Thus, it has also meant the
readopting and rearticulating of the “the salvage motif.” This move has often resulted
in what Weston refers to as “a form of ethnocartography” or “looking for evidence
of same-sex sexuality and gendered ambiguity in ‘other’ societies" (Weston,
1993:341). This move parallels the feminist anthropologist’s need to see “ourselves
undressed” elsewhere. Michelle Rosaldo cautions against feminist practices in
anthropology where,

we want to claim our sisters’ triumphs as a proof of our worth, but at the

same time their oppression can be artfully dissociated from our own, because

we live with choice, while they are victims of biology. Women elsewhere are,

it seems, the image of ourselves undressed, and the historical specificity of
their lives and our own becomes obscured (Rosaldo, 1980:393).

”‘° was (and still is) very much intact even before the

The “savage slot
anthropological study of same-sex sexuality and gender ambiguity was allowed
legitimate status in the discipline (i.e., past the medical and psychological models of
thinking about same-sex sexuality as culturally constructed/patterned). However, in

the 19903, Weston notes “lesbian/ gay studies in anthropology is currently going

 

10See the section entitled Resisting the Savage Slot, discussed below in this
chapter.

41

through a transition reminiscent of the shift from the anthropology of women to the
anthropology of gender" (Weston, 1993:345) and “breaking the silence about
homosexuality becomes equally problematic after scholars begin asking what counts
as homosexuality in a transcultural context" (Weston, 1993:346). I would add that
lesbian/ gay studies in anthropology in the 19903 is also confronting the contemporary
concerns of the blurred boundaries between the Self and Other. Most of this has
emerged within the context of returning ‘home,’ where the borders between ‘field’
and ‘home’ or ‘field’ and ‘academy’ are also blurred and very often intersecting.
These issues can be seen in Kath Weston’s 1991 ethnography, Families We Choose:
Lesbians, Gays, Kinship.

In many ways Kath Weston’s descriptive ethnography, with numerous
interviews and life stories, stylistically resembles the traditional ethnographic genre.
However, her project of looking at the contemporary American discourse of what
constitutes a family and who gets to be part of ‘legitimate’ kinship, challenges many
practices and ideologies in anthropology. Weston’s endeavour of sketching a much-
contested terrain of what ‘family’ means to gays and lesbians (specifically in the San
Francisco Bay Area) and the invented schisms between "families of choice" versus
"biological families" (based on the heterosexual institutions of: marriage and
procreation, and therefore of ‘blood’) provides a powerful cultural commentary on
heterosexism in and outside of the academy and American culture."

Weston’s ethnography creates a space fraught with ambivalence for the

 

1‘Weston explores hegemonic understandings of what kinship/ family has meant in
mainstream culture, the ongoing exiling of lesbians and gay men from this particular
understanding of kinship and how lesbian and gay men create and therefore ‘choose’
their own families and kinship networks. Weston also challenges the standards and
theories used in kinship studies in anthropology. Weston’s ethnography covers
interconnected topics that include issues such as how lesbians and gay men form or
‘choose’ their families or come out to ‘blood’ relatives/family, parenting in
lesbian/ gay families, xenophobic policies and attitudes in the US. regarding lesbian
and gay men.

 

42

researcher. She is a positioned subject and the lines between her academic writing
and work, professional and personal lives, and audience often dissolve. She notes:

Everything around me seemed fair game for notes: one day I was
living a social reality, the next day I was supposed to document it.
Unlike anthropologists who have returned from the field to write
ethnographies that contain accounts of reaching ‘their’ island or
village, I saw no possibility of framing an arrival scene to represent
the inauguration of my fieldwork, except perhaps by drawing on the
novelty of the first friend who asked (with a sidelong glance),Are "Are
you taking notes on this?" (Weston, 1991: 14)

and

For me, doing fieldwork among gay and lesbian San Franciscans did

not entail uncovering some "exotic" corner of my native culture but
rather discovering the stuff of everyday life. (Weston, 1991:14)

Anthropological Identity
The gap between engaging others where they are and
representing them where they aren’t, always immense
but not much noticed, has suddenly become extremely
visible.What once seemed only technically difficult,
getting “their” lives into “our” works, has turned
morally, politically, even epistemologically, delicate.
The suffisance of Levi-Strauss, the assuredness of
Evans-Pritchard, the brashness of Malinowski, and the
imperturbability of Benedict now seem very far away.
(Geertz, 1988:130)

The late 19603 and 19703 in American anthropology was marked by some
movement to recognize a variety of things that the politics of colonialism facilitated:
the ‘study’ of the Other, travel to distant places (mainly the colonies, many of whom
were becoming ex-colonies by the 19603), and travel grants and funding from private
and state sponsors of a "global super-power, " and recognized that there were (and
still are) power inequalities between these Others and the anthropologist-Self.

Renato Rosaldo’s caricature of the Lone Ethnographer is a myth-history of the
evolution and insertion of the concept of culture, its collectors and performers within

the imaginary of the classic monographs. Rosaldo writes:

43

Once upon a time, the Lone Ethnographer rode off into the sunset in

search of “his native.” After undergoing a series of trials, he

encounters the object of his quest in a distant land. There, he

underwent his rite of passage by enduring the ultimate ordeal of

“fieldwork.” After collecting “the data,” the Lone Ethnographer

returned home and wrote a “true” account of “the culture. (Rosaldo,

1989:30)

The story of the Lone Ethnographer (or the Lone Ranger) and his/her various
reincamations and permutations is also about the making of the identity of the
anthropological-Self or the privileged-I/Eye--an identity often unconsciously made in
relation to the primitive-Self or Other-native/Self. The privileged-I was and is also
made in relation to specific activities, conceptual frameworks and categories, and
specific modes of self-fashioning in culture-writing and collecting. For example, the
notion of culture as hermetically-sealed, time- and space-bound, and self-contained
allowed for parallel constructions of home and field and the analyzing and
representing ethnographer versus the performer of culture -- the native (informants
included) who unconsciously (or consciously) provided raw data.

Though it may no longer be savvy to quote Malinowski, anthropology’s
‘founding father’ of fieldwork methods and anti-hero (especially since his diaries
were released), I will do so---since I repeatedly encounter his legacy.

Unfortunately, the native can neither get outside his tribal atmospheres

and see it objectively, nor if he could, would he have intellectual and

linguistic means sufficient to express it. And so the Ethnographer has

to collect objective data, such as maps, plans, genealogies, lists of

possessions, accounts of inheritance, census of village communities. He

has to study the behavior of the native, to talk with him under all sorts

of conditions, and write down his words. (Malinowski, 1961:454)

Whether or not one rejects Malinowski’s blueprint, there have been occasions
when anthropologists have uncritically adopted authentic native informants. This issue
is raised by Narayan when she points out that natives trained in anthropology are
sometimes viewed as the providers of a more authentic account. I would add that this

is more likely to occur if native anthropologists followed the same tropes of classical

44

monographs. The Privileged-I evolved within a larger and earlier historical context of
what Michel-Rolph Trouillot has called the "savage slot" (Trouillot, 1991). Trouillot
notes:

Anthropology did not create the savage. Rather, the savage was the

raison d’etre of anthropology. (Trouillot, 1991:40)

Resisting the Savage Slot

But anthropology is also rooted in an unequal power encounter

between the West and the Third World which goes back to the

emergence of bourgeois Europe, an encounter in which colonialism is

merely one historical moment. (Asad, 1973:16)

I believe it is a mistake to view social anthropology in the colonial era

as primarily an aid to colonial administration, or as the simple

reflection of colonial ideology. I say this not because I subscribe to the

anthropological establishment’s comfortable view of itself, but because

bourgeois consciousness, of which social anthropology is merely one
fragment, has always contained within itself profound contradictions

and ambiguities-—and therefore the potentialities for transcending itself.

(Asad, 1973:18)

In 1973, Talal Asad noted that it is no longer "a matter of dispute" that
anthropology emerged as discipline during European colonial expansion and
burgeoned as a profession towards the decline of European expansion, or that during
this period "its efforts were devoted to a description and analysis--carried out by
Europeans, for a European audience-of non-European societies dominated by
European power" (Asad, 1973:15). However, despite this recognition, Asad
maintains that the close relationship between anthropology and colonialism, and its
historical and structural power imbalance between observer and observed (manifested
in the practices of fieldwork), is often "trivialized or dismissed" or "not consider[ed]

seriously." ’2 Asad points out that this power imbalance and domination facilitate

 

12Asad (1973: 16) makes a specific reference to Victor Turner in his introduction
to Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960, where Turner says that "thus yesterday’s
‘socialist’ has become today’s reactionary," and that "there is no point in special
pleading or contentious argument; there are ‘objective,’ ‘common sense’ and

45

relatively easy access to the cultural and historical worlds of the colonized
(anthropology’s original Other) through a one-way, outsider-imposed intimate
physical proximity--participant-observation.

Asad notes that:

The colonial power structure made the object of anthropological study

accessible and safe-because of its sustained physical proximity

between the observing European and the living non-European became a

practical possibility. It made possible the kind of human intimacy on

which anthropological fieldwork is based, but ensured that intimacy

should be one-sided and provisional. (Asad, 1973:17)

Asad provides a powerful critique of romanticized notions of the
ethnographer’s quest for experience of other people’s lives and reality, and his own
claims to political neutrality. The claim to political neutrality is fundamentally tied to
what and whose theories are used and what topics are considered worthwhile
studying, and "the mode of perceiving and objectifying alien societies." These
romanticized notions of fieldwork also valorize subjective experiences (of the
anthropologist in the ‘field’ and his/her rendition of the experiences of the
community observed) and one can trace their genealogies to anti-armchair
anthropology-—most explicitly and systematically propounded by ‘the father of
fieldwork methods’ in the 19203, Malinowski. The claims to political neutrality (or
objectivity), Asad observes, also set up the ‘bad guys’ (the colonial administrators,
missionaries, business people, travellers, amateurs, and traders) versus the ‘good
guys’ (the professional anthropologists), where the anthropologists were "accusingly
called ‘a Red,’ ‘a Socialist,’ or an ‘anarchist’ by administrators and settlers."
Further,

If he was sometimes accusingly called ‘a Red,’ ‘a Socialist,’ or ‘an

anarchist’ by administrators and settlers, did this not merely reveal one

facet of the hysterically intolerant character of colonialism as a system,
with which he chose nevertheless to live professionally at peace?

 

‘professional standards’ in anthropology."
46

(Asad, 1973:18)

Asad’s critique of this "bourgeois consciousness" in anthropology, whereby the
anthropologist is at once (with "contradictions and ambiguities") complicit with
colonial structural and individual privilege, and sometimes an uncritical
caretaker/protector of alien cultures (or an underdog) also provides the space or
"potentialities for transcending itself" (Asad, 1973:19).

In a parallel essay, almost twenty years later, Michel-Rolph Trouillot
addresses the possibility of the "potentialities of transcendence" for anthropology in
the 19903 (Trouillot, 1991). According to Trouillot, the multiple challenges to
anthropology in the late twentieth century and the subsequent mixed response to the
textualist/postmodem critique of anthropology, "require an archaeology of the
discipline and a careful re-examination of its implicit premises" (Trouillot, 1991:17).
Trouillot notes that the postmodern/textualist response has been "the most vocal and
direct response to these challenges. " Furthermore, Trouillot points out that the
"discursive fields" (or " symbolic fields") that once made and now houses
anthropology need to be excavated and critically interpreted. Trouillot places
anthropology and its roots in a context that goes beyond and historically deeper than
European colonial expansion. In other words, Trouillot maintains that one needs to
connect the politics, ideologies and conditions that made Europe (or invented
Christian Europe from Christendom), that created the Renaissance and
Enlightenment, and that created the contemporary West. A fundamental requirement
in the invention of Europe and the West is the creation of the Other. The Other
evolves in this symbiotic equation as the Savage, to be discovered, understood,
eliminated, assimilated, domesticated or represented. The savage slot thus existed
prior to the emergence of the modern discipline of anthropology, however, the

historical inequalities between the West and the rest has facilitated the evolution and

47

professionalization of modern anthropology as a primary ‘caretaker’ and representor
of the savage slot.

Anthropology came to fill the savage slot in the trilogy order-utopia-

savagery, a trilogy which preceded anthropology’s institutionalization

and gave it continuing coherence in spite of intradisciplinary shifts.

This trilogy is now in jeopardy. (Trouillot, 1991:40)

The trilogy that Trouillot mentions refers to a contradictory relationship,

" symbolic and material, " where European/Western economic and political expansion
and ideological warfare informed, justified and perpetrated one another’s projects. It
justified the colonial administration’s "management of the subjugated peoples,"
traveller’s accounts, colonial surveys, ethnographic reports, "fictional utopias" in
literature, European notions "of an alleged state of nature," 19th century armchair
anthropology, 20th century participant-observation, and the discourse of 18th century
Philosophy. This trilogy did not always present a homogeneous picture of
European/Western hegemony. This was so because, on the one hand, the savage’s
world was either seen as utopic, Edenic, pristine and untouched by capitalism and
western alienation (represented and justified by the trOpe of "salvage anthropology")
or barbaric, chaos/disorder to be rescued or eliminated from or assimilated into the
moral order of the West.

This "trilogy which is now in jeopardy" provides an opening "to attack
frontally" the imaginary and political practices of sustaining the savage slot, "to
uncover its ethical roots and its consequences, and to find a better anchor for an
anthropology of the present, an anthropology of the changing world and its
irreducible histories." Trouillot calls for breaking the silence in anthropology to
"destroy the savage slot. " He points out that postmodernist anthropology came close
to reading "the internal tropes of the savage slot, no doubt a useful exercise in spite

of its potential for self-indulgence," (Trouillot, 1991:40) but failed to recognize,

address or destroy the processes ("discursive fields") that allow for the making of the

48

slot. In this way, Trouillot suggests, postmodern anthropology ends up "morosely"
perpetuating "the empty slot."

To be sure, one could reinvent the savage, or create new savages

within the West itself--solutions of this kind are increasingly appealing.

(Trouillot, 1993:35)

Objective or even subjective reportage (via paradigms such as: functionalist,
political economy, interpretive, reflexive and various permutations) still tends to split
an ethnographic-Self (who goes somewhere, usually outside of her/his day-to-day
life, who always writes about some other community’s day to day life) and a
personal-Self (the day-to-day life issues, joys or struggles inside or outside of their
profession). The ethnographic-Self as problematized by Narayan has become a more
plural or hybrid Self. She or he occupies and is aware of her/his multiple locations:
sometimes between and across race and citizenship; and across different writing
genres (doing analytical essays or telling personal narratives); across lives "touched
by life-experiences and swayed by professional concerns." This is an important shift
or recognition in anthropological practice and theory-building. The plural and hybrid
ethnographic-Self potentially rejects the earlier ethnographer-Self, the dominant,
authoritative, unified Self of the Lone Ranger with the Privileged-I. The privileged-I
embodies a Self that is individualistic, nonrelational and founded upon hierarchical
oppositions. It is remarkable that the Lone Ethnographer contradictorily claims both
universality and particularity; universality with the Metropole-Self as the standard and
claims of neutrality and authority and particularity through examples of the personal
day-to-day lives of their ‘objects of study.’ Claims of neutrality and authority (by the
Lone Ethnographer and his loyalists) were and are based on politics and projects that
dis-locate and distance. For instance, the ethnographer’s personal and political lives
are sometimes completely separate. Take, for example, a reflexive classic
monograph, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, where Paul Rabinow’s self-

49

making in the ethnography is marked by the tropes of western man’s alienation
(Rabinow, 1977). Rabinow’s confessions/reflections give some body (and visibility)
to him as a beneficiary of US. postcolonial/neocolonial hegemony. However, this
body is alienated/dis—embodied from an engagement with ongoing U.S. progressive
anti-colonial and anti-racist activism/politics occurring at the time he was completing

his research and writing.

Alternatives to the Monopoly on Native Discourse

The legacy of the privileged-I/Eye, through silence and the preservation of the
savage slot, continues in new ways. A point of entry into challenging the savage slot,
Trouillot suggests, is "an epistemological reassessment of the historical subject"
(Trouillot, 1991:40). This would possibly entail giving up the "monopoly on native
discourse," becoming and recognizing oneself as a situated intellectual and creating a
space for stigmatized voices speaking in the first person (Trouillot, 1991:40).

The historically built-in theory and practice that splits privileged-I from the
‘objects of study’ makes the possibility of resisting the savage slot and/or activist-
anthropology an uphill task. The ethnographic-Self is still the standard where writing,
reading and debating is housed (often narrowly within the walls of the
academic/metropole establishment). So although anthropologists recognize or
minimally embrace hybridity, and supposedly the "savage has vanished," the savage
slot still remains.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes, "anthropologists to this day keep telling both
undergraduates and lay readers that their practice is useful to better understand
‘ourselves,’ but without ever spelling out exactly the specifics of this understanding,
the utopias behind this curiosity turned profession" (Trouillot, 1991:28). Trouillot

notes that the curiosity and motivation to "capture human diversity," understand the

50

Self through the detour of the Other, and make the strange familiar is not all that
innocent.

It is then easier to see and feel Narayan’s discomfort at being labeled Native
when she ‘studies’ people with whom she generally doesn’t keep company. A point
that Narayan doesn’t consider is that the totalizing authority to represent all of a
particular culture, community or peoples, that was once presumed by the regular
anthropologist, was uncritically passed on to the native anthropologist. This authority
was often presumed since anthropologists were describing ‘simple’ societies. James
Clifford’s work has systematically described this phenomenon and has demystified
this authority.

In Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, Kamala Visweswaran points out that
"Self writing about like selves has thus far not been on the agenda of experimental
ethnography. To accept ‘native’ authority is to give up the game" (V isweswaran,
1994:32). Although James Clifford’s essay has cast some doubt on the ethnographic
authority of the academic fieldworker-theorist and his/ her "intense personal
experience and scientific analysis" of participant-observation an uncritical anti-
essentialist stance would suspect all authority of experience. An uncritical and
unspecific anti-essentialist position ignores the fact that political identities have
physical dimensions and consequences, where one’s writing, politics, identities and
projects can be about empowerment and counter-hegemony. It is a place where
my/our voice is in the first person or perhaps autobiographical, and committed to
fighting injustices: injustices that are personal and collective and injustices that affect
me/us as individuals, alliances and coalitions. It is a place where ethnographic
writing can be both for and about communities (one lives in) and is constantly
creating. As I write about experiences of patriarchy, I hope to be accountable to

people beyond the academy. This includes myself and those who are actively creating

51

plural communities of resistance.

Arrivals and Departures

"You couldn’t be researching something like that! Who would research
something like that? There must be a mistake," said Mr. Ghosh, a legal and office
assistant to Barrister Sanyal. Yes, a mistake had been made. After researching in
Mr. Sanyal’s law library, a library that was handed down to him from generations of
lawyers in his family, I had found some literature on cases that dealt with Section
377 (the anti-sodomy statute set up in British India). The procedure at this law office
(like many other offices, libraries and archives in Calcutta) was that when I found
something that I wanted to copy, I would note down the page numbers and take the
material to be copied to Mr. Ghosh. Mr. Ghosh would be in charge of copying the
material, which would then be available for pick up and payment the next day. When
I came back the next day to pickup my copying, I realized that Mr. Ghosh had
copied cases pertaining to Section 376 (statutes regarding rape). Mr. Ghosh seemed a
little concerned that I was researching such an ‘unpleasant topic’ like rape, but when
I tried to tell him that I was really interested in Section 377 cases he was even more
resistant. "Are you sure?" Mr. Ghosh continued. Finally, I told him that ideally I
would like to do a comparison of the two sections (376 and 377) for my research.
"Yes, that might be interesting; Section 377 is very controversial. Now where did
you say you are studying?" he queried skeptically. The next day Mr. Ghosh had
copies of Section 377 ready for me to pick up.

In many ways my dissertation topic and research questions are taboo subjects.
Section 377 provided me a small opening into the even more taboo topic of female
sexuality. The normative naturalness of heteropatriarchy was so deeply imbedded in

people’s psyches, that simply publicly naming or identifying it seemed like a difficult

52

project. As an Indian woman in India it was also taboo for me to ask questions about
sexuality.

In attempting to make the familiar seem strange, I began my dissertation by
articulating a notion of experience that was not legitimate, but has gradually been
articulated in different ways since the 19703. The kind of experience I had in mind
would connect the academic process of writing, one’s life (public and personal), and
the communities one lives and works in (temporarily or semi-permanently), studies,
or represents. In other words, I wondered where participant-observation would fit in
when I wanted to talk about how my peers and I had learned to become Indian
women? And why is this kind of experiencing less legitimate? Why is this kind of
experience not recognized as the subtext of ethnographies? After all, the
ethnographer’s personal and professional experiences and identities influence her/his
research. Ruth Behar has noted that:

As a student I was taught to maintain the same strict boundary

Malinowski had kept between his ethnograph and his autobiography.

But I’d reached a point where these forms 0 knowing were no longer

so easily separated. (Behar, 1996:19)

Further, Behar has described the genre of the essay as:

An amorphous, open-ended, even rebellious genre that desegregates the
boundariesbetween self and other...(Behar, 1996:20)

Behar’s notion of the essay as a genre that can be used to "desegregate the
boundaries between the self and other" is a useful model for my dissertation research
in which I can connect autobiography and ethnography, home and the field, and the
politics of (my)self and social issues. The three events that I examine in my
dissertation follow the format of the essay as a genre where the ethnographic Self
and observed Other meet at several points to critically examine the events. Further,
I see my dissertation contributing to anthropology as a way of doing ethnographic

work that is not detached, where like Weston and Behar one can critically connect

S3

one’s professional and personal lives.

In addition to the issue of what kind of experience, participation and/or
subjective knowledge counts, the issue of deconstructing patriarchy and compulsory
heterosexuality is also still a taboo topic in many arenas in India, the United States
and in academic anthropology. By describing and analyzing highly visible national
events (Chapters 3, 4 and 6) I have sought to make interconnections between taboo
topics (at home, the field and work), issues of social inequality and injustice, the
stuff of daily life (and academic life) and anthropological methods/ theories, and to
interpret experiences (including my own) in a more complex way.

Further, by participating in a dissertation and writing process that is not
politically detached I hope to join other anthropologists who are building bridges,
coalitions and alliances beyond academia, with multiple communities, to address
issues of social inequalities, exclusion, marginalization and social justice. Most of all,

I hope to be accountable to more than one community.

54

Chapter Three

The "Chakka" Who Was Not "Pukka"
The Politics of Section 37 7

In this chapter I examine and deconstruct the language, meanings and
underlying presuppositions of a colonial sexual code, Section 377 of the Indian
Penal Code,1 that is being contested by a human rights group2 in post/neo
colonial India. I do this in order to demonstrate how supporters of the code
defend a colonial sexual code as Indian tradition, and in turn position the civil
rights of gay men and prisoners as frivolous Western mimicry. The resistance of
the State to removing the anti-sodomy statue and allowing distribution of
condoms in prisons represents its investment in maintaining and imposing
normative sexuality. This maintenance represents the modern postcolonial state’s
commitment to tenets espoused by the colonial state (in its construction of
empire and imperial identity) and to modernity (in the construction of the nation
and national identity). And finally, I demonstrate in my dissertation how the
modern state’s explicit management and reproduction of normative sexuality via
gay men represents the implicit control of female identity and sexuality.

I first look at the code’s conceptual apparatus in relation to religious,

cultural, legal and political developments in Britain and British India. The re-

 

‘ Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code: Of Unnatural Offences reads:
"Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any
man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with

imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years,
and shall also be liable to fine" (Ranchhodda and Thakore, 1992:431).

”The human rights group is the AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA)
or the AIDS Anti-Discrimination Movement.

55

mapping of Victorian sexual-political agendas and the consolidation of empire in
colonial India is then investigated in relation to the construction of colonial
masculinity (through the category of the Pukka Sahibs), femininity (through the
category of the Memsahibs) and thus respectable/normative sexuality. I suggest
that what is being preserved by the modern postcolonial state, and by certain
individuals, in the name of authenticity, tradition and nature is a contradictory
continuation of imperial-nationalist policies. Furthermore, the conceptual
apparatus of Section 377 and the state’s resistance to changing a colonial artifact
of sexual/cultural domination represents to me the state’s (colonial and
postcolonial) investment in normative sexuality. Compulsory heterosexuality as
tradition provides a critical avenue for the post/neo colonial state to claim
modernity by not losing its national identity and cultural tradition. As Nicholas
Dirks notes:

Colonialism continues to live on in ways that perhaps we have only

begun to recognize....Despite decolonization, certain destinies and

identities seem fixed, while others seem chaotic, disorderly,

unfixed. Colonialism is coming back to haunt "new nations," where

shifting identities and precarious polities are anchored against the

modern by the reinvention of forms of tradition that too often
clearly betray the traces of a colonial past. (Dirks, 1992:23)

Ye Aidus Kya Hota Hai?

For years India has been assigned the dubious reputation of being
explosive, or, specifically, population explosive. Since 1990 India has been
considered to be a time bomb, an epicenter, in relation to the AIDS/HIV
pandemic. With a population of 900 million (second only to China), India is in

the spotlight in a continent that includes seventy percent of the world’s

56

population. The discourse of AIDS/HIV has implicitly and explicitly drawn in
and intertwined discussions of morality, sexuality, gender expectations, culture,
tradition and responsibility. The discourse embodies the ideologies of institutions
of surveillance and punishment, namely the police, the jails and the legal system.
The discourse of the AIDS/HIV explosion has targeted certain groups that
includes: women, prostitutes, economically disprivileged persons, self-identified
gay men, men who have sex with men,3 and I.V. drug users.

One day while I was walking down Park Street (in Calcutta), I overheard
a man ask a bystander about a mini-bus advertisement "Ye aidus kya hota hai?"
or "what does this aidus mean?" He was curious about the advertisement on the
bus about AIDS, which he pronounced as "aidus." Condom advertisements in the
19903 are not just about the population explosion, such as "After Two Declare"
(the advertiser using cricket terminology to promote the two-children-should-be-
enough-policy) but also about the dangers of "aidus." The recent Kama Sutra
condom advertisements with Pooja Bedi4 in seductive poses inscribe new
meanings onto a contemporary cultural climate of ‘no sex please, we are
postcolonials.’ The state-sponsored ideology is on the one hand, sexually
repressive and conservative (i.e., sex only after marriage) and generally avoids

any talk of sex. It is, on the other hand, utilitarian (i.e.,dominated by

 

3Men having sex with men (MSM) is used by activists to distinguish
between homosexual behaviors versus identity. For example, there are man
heterosexual men (married and unmarried) who engage in "homosexual activity"
but do not self-identify as gay. For many MSM’s homosexual activity is
sometimes viewed as play or dealing with excess discharge.

4Actress and model.
57

development ideology to control population growth, supposedly for the good of
the world and India) and there is explicit talk about having sex and using
condoms. The new advertisements add mass-produced glamour and desire to this
conservative/development ideology.

Section 377 first came to my attention when a human rights group in
India, the ABVA (The AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan or the AIDS Anti-
Discrimination Movement), challenged Section 377 vis-a—vis the government’s
policy on condom distribution in jails. The discovery and rise of AIDS/HIV in
India’s largest prison, Tihar Jail, triggered heated debates among prison
personnel, policy makers and activists of all persuasions. A survey coordinated
by Indian Medical Association President Dr. K.K. Aggarwal, documented that
two thirds of Tihar prisoners have participated in ‘homosexual activity.’ This
finding resulted in the demand (by some medical doctors and activists) that
condoms be distributed to all prisoners as part of a basic HIV prevention policy.
Resistance by many agents of the state to condom distribution was justified on
the grounds that it would encourage a bigger ‘crime,’ known only in the West
(read: homosexual sexual activity), this reaction further catalyzed the debates
concerning India’s colonial anti-sodomy statute.

Tihar Jail was built to house 2,000 prisoners but currently houses 8,000
individuals. Kiran Bedi, a popular, well-known Inspector General of prisons in
Delhi, claimed that she could find better ways to deal with AIDS in prisons than
by distributing condoms among prisoners. Official refusal to allow condom
distribution in Tihar on the grounds that it would be equivalent to legalizing

homosexual activity was followed by a petition filed by lawyer and President of

58

the Family Conciliation Service Center, Janak Raj Jai, supportive of the official
position. This ultimately sparked off the legal battle against Section 377 of the
Indian Penal Code.’ Janak Raj Jai, a socialist who was jailed during Indira
Gandhi’s Emergency,6 claimed that Mahatma Gandhi would have been upset if
homosexuality were to be de-criminalized. He also stated that during Gandhiji’s
(Mahatma Gandhi’s) lifetime AIDS wasn’t around and "male white fluid" was
not wasted.7

Inspector General Bedi claimed that "the number of homosexuals in jail is
very small and the jail is too crowded for their acts to go unnoticed...we just
sort out the gays by giving them medical and psychiatric help" (Trikone,
199529). Her solution, if forced by the courts to provide condoms in jails, would
be to separate homosexuals and heterosexuals. "We will greet all new arrivals at
a special reception desk with the query: ‘would you prefer a gay room or an
ordinary cell, please?” (T rikone, 1995: 10). Bedi’s solution was echoed by Janak
Raj Jai’s demand "that suspected homosexual prisoners should be segregated and

neon lights be used in the wards during night hours..."

 

’The Indian Penal Code was established in the 18603 by the British Raj.

"A state of emergency was declared by the Indira Gandhi government in
June 1975. The Emergency spanned 21 months, and during this time press
censorship was imposed and leaders of opposition parties were jailed. The
Emergency ended in 1977 with the electoral defeat of Indira Gandhi.

7From conversations with activist Anuja Gupta. Anuja reported on the
Section 377 trial at the 1996 United Nations Tribunal in New York.

59

No Sex Please, We’re Postcolonials

I was taking a walk with a friend through Nehru Park. We were
talking when two policemen came, took me aside and asked me to
give them my watch and gold chain. They said they would take us
to the police station and punish us. I was very scared. My only
thought was that they can take anything they want so long as they
leave me alone. If they had taken me to the police station they
would have raped me. They kept repeating that they will beat me
up and sodomize me. I got really scared and gave them what I had
in my pocket - Rs. 200 and my watch. Then they asked me to come
back next month with more money. I knew my friend was also
scared - which is why he just kept quite.

(From a conversation with Manohar, a resident of New Delhi)

One evening around 8 o ’clock I was waiting outside Nehru Park
when I noticed a bunch of boys who came running out shouting
that the cops were here and that they had caught somebody.
Although I was hesitant, since I could run the risk of being
molested, raped or beaten up by our police, I decided to go ahead
and find out what was going on. I saw two uniformed cops armed
with sten-guns [sub-machine guns] where one of them had grabbed
a young boy by the scrufir of his neck and was violently shaking
him. Both the cops smelled strongly of liquor and neither was
wearing his ID badge. I casually asked the cops what was going
on...they were really surprised to see me walk up to them
....especially a woman...and furthermore inquire about their
actions. One of the cops said that he had been chasing the boy who
was doing something dirty and unnatural and was arresting him
under Section 377. It ’s quite common, as you know, how these cops
misuse the law, so I asked them fimher about what exactly the boy
had done. The police, hesitantly, said "vo sucking kar raha tha "

( "he was sucking ").

I told the policeman that "sucking " was not a crime under 377 and
even if the boy was sucking where was the guy he was sucking. It
was pretty clear that the cops had made up the charges to
potentially sexually harass and blaclonail the boy. The police were
amazed that I continued to question them and visibly became more
uncomfortable. The last thing he said to me was, "but Madam, you
can ’t do such dirty things here, this is a public place. And no
wonder AIDs is spreading. "After getting shoved around some more
with some verbal abuses the boy was let go.

(From a conversation with Anuja Gupta, activist.)

60

Most urban public spaces in cities such as Calcutta and Delhi are
symbolically and literally occupied by men. Stores, government offices and
businesses are owned and ‘manned’ by them; taxis, cars, cycles and scooters are
driven by them; if the traffic is not that hectic, some urinate in public;" and if
they are unemployed they sit around in packs near a pan shop or a dhaba
smoking cigarettes or bidis.° This is not to suggest that women aren’t around in
public spaces. But women occupy a disproportionately smaller percentage of
public space in cities even though we comprise approximately fifty percent of
the population. Generally, if women are in public spaces, they are usually with a
man or in a group (with other women and/or men).

The events narrated in the above conversations are not unusual incidents
in urban India. The first incident involved a lower middle-class, English-
speaking man and a police officer. In the second incident, it is important to note
that the woman confronting the police was middle-class, English-educated and
urban. These and other events were narrated to me and sometimes to audiences
by activists (women, men, homosexual, heterosexual and lesbian) at seminars
and meetings. Both of the events related above represent an encroachment in
male public space affecting those of a lower economic class and stigmatized

sexual identity.

 

8Public bathrooms are generally hard to find however it is uncommon to see
middle-to upper-class men urinating in public.

’Paan shops are stores that sell paan (betel leaves with assorted fillings).
Paan is often eaten after meals as a breath freshener or digestive. Many people
are addicted to chewing paan as well. Dhabas are small cafes found all over
India. Bidis are indigenous cigarettes: tobacco rolled inside special leaves and
smoked without filters.

61

Male mobility and access to public space is also a prerogative of gay men
and MSMs. Often parks are the preferred spots or ‘major cruising zones’ for gay
men who usually do not have private space in their homes. Such ‘cruising spots’
are popular sites for lower middle class heterosexual couples as well.

However, along with this ‘access’ to public space comes arbitrary police
harassment, extortion and blackmail. For example, in 1992 there was a planned
initiative by the Delhi police to arrest homosexuals or potentially gay men under
a "clean up" the parks campaign (from a conversation with Ravi Malhotra,
activist in New Delhi). Plainclothes policemen would hang out at parks
(especially at the popular cruising spots like Nehru Park, Buddha Gardens,
Palika Bazaar, J antar Mantar or South Extension)’0 and approach men and invite
them for coffee and a walk. If they accepted these solicitations, they were
arrested and taken to a nearby police vehicle. Eighteen men were arrested in
three days, and at a press conference the police released their names and work
addresses.

The police did not use Section 377 to justify these arrests, rather, they
invoked Sections 92 and 93 of the Delhi Police Act for public nuisance.
According to activists Anuja Gupta and Debanuj Dasgupta, Section 377 has
generally not been used by the police. But with the publicity that the court case
to repeal Section 377 has received, the police misuse it as yet another weapon of
harassment. Also, prior to learning about Section 377, the police regularly used
their existing arsenals of harassment, including: illegal arrests, rape, extortion,

and blackmail. In many ways challenging Section 377 has provided much more

 

l"Different neighborhoods in New Delhi.
62

symbolic value to gay men and their allies.

The "Chakka"
Street level perception, though, lumps homosexuality with all other
types of alternate sexuality. Therefore the eunuch, transvestite,
transsexual and homosexual are chakkas. This term can and is

often used in threatening situations by homophobic persons and
hustlers. (Bombay Dost, 1990:20)

It was Wednesday morning in Calcutta at the Naz Trust office. I decided to
explore the symbolic value of the challenge to Section 377 with two gay men
who are activists in the arena of sexual health and psychology (specifically for
gay men in Calcutta). Both are in charge of coordinating a non governmental
organization (the Naz Trust). One of the issues I ask Vivek and Sayeed about is
how the term "Chakka" is used to verbally assault gay men.
Vivek: "In today ’3 culture there is a lot of antagonism

directed against hijras and this is transferred onto

gay men. A lot of abusive terms are borrowed from

the hijra community’ ’ and changed into derogatory

words for hijra and gay men. "
Supama: "I guess if they encounter anything that appears (to them) as
ambiguous or if they see any deviation from looking like a girl or boy it’s hard
to handle it without verbal assaults."

Vivek: "Yes, also in Hindu numerology the triangle pointing

 

1‘The "hijras are a religious communit of men who dress and act like
women" and "undergo an operation in Wthll their genitals are removed." Serena
Nanda, Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hiiras of India, pp. xv, Wadsworth
Publishing Company, 1990.

63

up symbolizes the male and the number 3. The

triangle pointing down or with its apex pointing

downward is female and also the number 3. When the

two are superimposed or joined you get number 6 and

gender ambiguity. "
Suparna: "Is this what some numerologists or Hindu scholars refer to as the
joining of prakriti (nature) and sanskriti (culture) or prakriti (nature/woman) and
purush (reality/man)?"
Vivek: "Yes, that ’s another way of looking at it. You also get

a state of androgyny at number 6, or chukka, which

may be how hijras see the category as symbolic. This

word is now used derogatorily against gays, who are

ofien understood as hijras. . ..especially gay men or

men engaging in homosexual behaviors who like to be

penetrated. . . . it ’s equated with being castrated ....like

a hijra ....like a woman... "
Suparna: "The numerology theory sounds great but do you think that
homophobes are that smart or creative enough to come up with that?"
Vivek: "Ofi‘en men who penetrate are considered still okay.

They are still the purush or manly. ..it’s the people

who get penetrated - men, boys, hijras and women--

who are weaker and not real men. "
Suparna: "So that’s why the cops carry on raping boys and men (of course they

never have a problem when they rape a woman or girl) in the cruising areas? I

64

mean, they feel okay about their actions, even though they’ve just had sex with a
male, but make a big show about ‘unnatural’ and ‘dirty’ acts of the one being
penetrated"

Sayeed: "Why just the police ?....Indian men in general! They all are married
but they like to penetrate men and boys too on the side. This still maintains their
mardangi. . . masculinity. . . "

Suparna: "Yes, you mean like the popular male saying» ‘...with the wife it’s
duty time and with the boys it’s fun time’..."

Sayeed: "The cops here in Cal, when they do the rounds of the parks or the usual
cmising grounds, they don ’t use 377 to arrest. The guys who are familiar with it
are usually the gay guys who get generally nervous or apprehensive around the
police. "

Suparna: "Well most people look a little uncomfortable and nervous when the
police decide to give them trouble."

Sayeed: "So the cops use public nuisance or indecency as the grounds to harass
or charge people with. So if a couple (gay or heterosexual) is sitting too close or
in a dimly lit area in the evening, the cops will give them trouble. We just seem
to have a problem with sexuality in general. Heterosexuality is so normative
that it is unseen, invisible and neutral. Marriage allows for this invisibility. In
this way marriage becomes an identity, being the way things are, or duty. The
cover of marriage shields any talk of a heterosexual identity or activity, so one
can only imagine the problems lesbian or gay identities pose for cops and/or the
majority culture.

Suparna: "Yes, the overt articulation of a heterosexual identity is still a novelty

65

in India. So imagining a modern gay or lesbian identity is unimaginable. When I
meet friends from high school and I ask them: what they are doing? they
answer: ‘I’m married.’ They say this even if they are in school or have a job
somewhere. Or when they ask me the same question and I say I am working on
my dissertation, they reiterate: ‘NO, what are you doing?’ Meaning are you
married. . .or the holder of the seemingly implicit normative sexual identity?
One probably does not encounter this as much with men."

Sayeed: "As men, we too have this pressure--but we can get away with it a little
more. But once they realize I am gay, most heterosexuals tell me that penetration
fi'om the back is unclean and unnatural. Penetration from the front is the way it
should be and has always been. . . .but then what about the fact that fluids and
substances also come out of the woman ’s vagina ? "

Suparna: "Well, women have not been made to feel too comfortable or safe
about their bodies. Our bodies are considered unclean and sometimes dangerous.
But it sounds to me like anal penetration is viewed with much fear and disgust,
because substances that come out of the anus are considered unclean and
polluted. Interestingly enough, substances coming out of the vagina have also
been considered unclean, dangerous and polluting. I was reprimanded as a
teenager by an aunt when she discovered that I had been in a temple when I had
my period. Another aunt, who is a medical doctor, was asked to sleep on the
floor by her husband (who is a gynecologist!) when she had her period. But
what is constructed as dirty and dangerous needs to be controlled, domesticated
and subjugated..."

The conversation with Vivek and Sayeed reflects the value placed on

66

heterosexual procreation and the phallus in defining normative sexuality (which
is often seen as invisible and natural). However, the issue that many activists and
gay men don’t address is the unconscious and conscious importance placed on
the phallus and the implications of this emphasis for female sexuality. On the
one hand, the only place women have is within procreation (as mothers and
wives) and in relation to the phallus. On the other hand, what is seen as not-
procreative (and thus unnatural behaviour and identity) is seen in terms of purely
as sexual or desire-based activity, such as homosexual sex engaged in by gay
men or MSMs. The latter activity too is seen in relation to the phallus. Despite
the fact that there is no reference to female sexuality, Section 377 has been used
against women who have wished to live as long-term lovers or fi'iends (maitri
karar) in their adult lives. It has also been used against those same women who
have tried to apply for marriage licenses in civil courts. These specific cases are
discussed in Chapter 6. The different forms of domination of female sexuality

through this invisibility are explored in Chapters 4 and 6.

The AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) or the AIDS Anti-
Discrimination Movement

The ABVA is a non governmental organization (NGO) working on issues
related to human rights of people with HIV/AIDS. Their activities include
protests against discriminatory policies of the Indian government and
adrrrinistration, the medical establishment and international bodies such as the
World Bank and W.H.O.The ABVA has campaigned and demonstrated against

discrimination faced by target groups in India such as women in the prostitution

67

industry, professional blood donors, gay men, I.V. drug users, immigrants and
travelers.

In the midst of the controversy over condom distribution in Tihar, the
existing anti homosexual sentiment via Section 377, antipathy towards HIV -
positive persons and police harassment of lower income women and men, the
ABVA filed a case against the Indian Government.12 Extortion, blackmail, sexual
violence and harassment by the police in public places directed against women
and men, especially those belonging to working class and lower middle class
backgrounds, in public places has a long history in India. The current context
surrounding Section 377 also has a tradition of police and military surveillance
and harassment directed against prostitutes, women who are assumed to be
‘sexually immoral, men who have sex with men, and gay men. Moreover, the
battle over condom distribution and the spread of HIV/AIDS has provided a
forum for the discussion of homosexuality. These discussions of homosexuality
have focused primarily (if not solely) on the practices of gay men or men who
have sex with men in India. Sakhis (discussed in Chapter 6) and/or lesbian
identity/sexuality is completely overlooked and invisible in this discourse.

On 14 April, 1994, the ABVA filed a petition against the High Court of
Delhi,13 directed towards the following bodies: the Union of India, the Delhi

 

17This petition and campaign has received support from several Asian human
rights groups including, Action for AIDS (Singapore), Arambh (Delhi, India),
F.A.C.T.(Thailand), GAPA (International), KKLGN (Indonesia), The Library
Fund (Philippines), The Naz Project (U .K.), Pink Triangle (Malaysia), Sakhi
(Delhi, India), Pravartak (Calcutta, India), Shakti (U .K.) and Trikone (U .S.).

13The petition reads: "A writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the
Constitution of India challenging the constitutional validity of Section 377 of the
Indian Penal Code of 1908 and for the issuance of a writ in the nature of

68

Administration, the Inspector General of Prisons, the National AIDS Control
Organization (NACO), the Superintendent of Tihar Jail and the District and
Sessions Judge." The ABVA requested the following: that Section 377 be
deemed unconstitutional, illegal and void and thus be repealed; that steps be
taken to prevent the segregation and isolation of prisoners identified as
homosexual and/or suffering from the AIDS/HIV virus or "..suspected to have
participated in consensual anal intercourse;" that condoms be made available,
accessible and free of cost to Tihar prisoners at their dispensary without the
threat or fear of persecution for requesting condoms; that disposable syringes be
used at the Tihar dispensary; and, finally, that jail officials regularly consult with
the National AIDS Commission (NACO).

Because of numerous delays caused by changes of the overseeing judge,
this case is still being pursued in the courts by the ABVA. In the next section, I
explore some of the underlying meanings and historical contexts of Section 377

of the Indian Penal Code.

 

mandamus certiorari, prohibition or any writ direction or order directing the
respondents to take appropriate measures in order to prevent the spread of the
disease known as AIDS and the targeting/segregation of certain groups or
individuals." ABVA v.3. Union of India etc., pg. 2, 1994.

1"Petition of the ABVA, pg. 2, 1994.
69

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code: Of Unnatural Offences
Section 377: Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse
against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal,
shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with
imprisonment of either description for a term which may
extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation.-Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal
intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.

Comment.-This section is intended to punish the offense of
sodomy, buggery and bestiality. The offense consists in a carnal
knowledge committed against the order of nature by a person with

a man, or in the same unnatural manner with a woman, or by a
man or woman in any manner wrth an animal.

(Ranchhodda and Thakore, 19922431)

On my first reading of Section 377, I was particularly struck by the
language, and dissonances it produced in me. The classification "Unnatural
Offences" can quite obviously and quickly lead one to believe that this must be
about taboo sexuality, namely permutations of sexuality that was non marital and
non heterosexual. In a global and local climate that institutionalizes and enforces
marriage and patriarchal heterosexuality, this deduction would not be terribly
hard to reach. But what do such terms as " carnal knowledge," "carnal
intercourse," "against the order of nature," " nature," "buggery," "sodomy,"
"voluntary" and "bestiality" mean in post/neo colonial India? Why is it assumed
that homosexuality is unnatural and homosexual acts are criminal offences in
postcolonial India? What is the significance of this statute to women? And why
is non consensual vaginal sex (rape) considered a ‘natural’ criminal act? (Section
376: Sexual Offences). Furthermore, could there be any possible connection

between India’s supposedly favorite pastime-procreation which has led to the

70

population explosion and unnatural sexuality which has supposedly led to the

AIDS explosion? These are some of the questions I explore in the next chapter.

Contextualizing the Colonial Metropole

The colonial quest for uniformity, codification and control must also be
understood in relation to the influence of canon law, and the processes of the
secularization of English civil and criminal legal politics and culture. This
section briefly outlines some of the political events and the intellectual climate
in the metropole, which bore significance in the English consolidation of power
over a colony of primarily non-Christians.

According to historian John Boswell (1980),” aside from the Bible, there
were three overlapping moral traditions that had major impacts on Christian
attitudes. These were (1) the J udeo-Platonist schools of Alexandria, (2) the
Dualist aversion to the body and its pleasures, and (3) the Stoics, and their
concepts of natural sexuality (Boswell, 1980:128).

Theologians of the Judeo-Platonist tradition saw nature as a "semi-
divine" force, and thus, in following divine laws of nature, the only "natural" use

of sexuality was to procreate. Therefore ‘unnatural’ meant the non-procreative.

 

l’Boswell maps out intellectual traditions and attitudes in Europe towards
"minority groups," in specific homosexual men, between the beginning of the
Christian era and the end of the Middle Ages (4th-14th century). Persons
included in these groups were heretics, gay persons, witches, women, Jews,
lepers, the insane and the poor. He traces profound transformations in popular
attitudes and coexisting contradictory sentiments. Further, he suggests that
attitudes until the 12th century were significantly more tolerant than those
between the 12th-14th centuries. He also discusses the canonization of certain
Church texts (such as the Bible in 1546) which were influential in the
codification and institutionalization of ecclesiastical and secular legal codes of
Europe.

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"[A]ny use of human sexuality, potential or actual, which did not produce
legitimate offspring violated ‘nature’: all moral issues were subordinate to the
primary duty of males to procreate. Celibacy was as ‘unnatural’ as
homosexuality, failure to divorce a barren wife as ‘unnatural’ as masturbation"
(Boswell, 1981:148).

The philosophical tradition of Dualism proposed that there are good and
evil forces warring for control over "man’s soul. " Sexual activity, sexual
pleasure, the body, the flesh or " the carnal" were considered weapons of the evil
forces against the good, the spiritual and the soul. Antipathy toward anything
bodily seemed to be integral to the Dualist tradition. Furthermore, matter was
viewed as evil and relegated to the realm of the feminine. Also, Dualists seemed
contradictorily opposed to most activities involving bodies and considered the
production of children via heterosexual intercourse to be the entrapment of souls.
This contradiction suggests the Dualist ambivalence towards any sexual activity
(including both non procreative and procreative).

The Stoics espoused the notion of a ‘natural sexuality’ which to them
meant a sexuality that was procreative and, therefore, moral and ethical. Co-
existing intellectual thought would sometimes exalt animals as models for
untainted behavior, but Stoics often did not entertain such notions. " Pleasure is
a vulgar thing, petty and unworthy of respect, common to dumb animals--
something to which the smallest and most contemptible of them fly" (Boswell,
1980: 154).

Within these threads of thought evolved contradictory and slippery

notions of what nature, procreation, morality, the body, sexual activity and

72

gender expectations supposedly should be. Take for instance the category of
‘nature’ or ‘the natural.’ The semantic arena for the term ‘nature’ included:
characteristic of something (as in the nature of gas) or as in innate characteristics
of something, typical or familiar about certain things or individuals, native to
someone or somewhere. Nature was sometimes given the same status as reason
and sometimes understood in opposition to reason. For example, nature was
understood as ‘ideal nature’ that transformed the ideal into real, an immortal
universal law, the ‘ideal nature’ of ‘man’ (or reason) and as ‘the order of
creation.’ Or nature was simultaneously understood as untouched by reason or
‘man.’ In the latter case, nature was untutored, wild and not subjected to
civilization. Also, animals are viewed as free and untutored (by reason or
civilization) and wild, unclean, sexual aberrations. Women are often equated
with animals due to their supposed commonalities, such as being too bodily
(carnal) unclean and not possessing reason (T uana, 1993:60).

The 12th and 13th centuries also saw the emergence of a closely related
concept of the Goddess N atura as " . .the champion of heterosexual fecundity"
(Boswell, 1980:125). Increasingly, these coexisting meanings were being used to
signify non procreative activity such as homosexuality. According to Boswell,
homosexual acts were increasingly viewed as "sins against nature," they
"offended grace, reason and nature," "impediments to the reproduction and

rejuvenation of the race and nation," and the "unnatur emission of the seed
outside the ‘appropriate vessel’" (Boswell, 1980:154).
Boswell has pointed out that semantic shifts occurred in another related

concept, sodomy, in the intellectual milieu of Europe. At various historical

73

moments sodomy, "..thatutterly confused category..,"has had broadly multiple
interpretations (Foucault, 1980: 101). The interpretation of sodomy covered a
large constellation of acts and sins: rape (as in when the men of the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah had intercourse with the visiting angels); inhospitality (of
the people of Sodom and Gomorrah toward the visiting angels); gluttony;
prostitution; heterosexual intercourse in an ‘atypical position;’ oral and anal sex
amongst and between humans, animals or beasts; adultery; any sexual relations
outside of marriage; and the acts or beliefs of heretics, traitors and pagans. In
fact, Boswell points out that male homosexuality is "given no greater attention
than other sins" and often thought of as "less grave than such common activities
as hunting" (Boswell, 1980:180).

Sodomy also came to refer to any emission of semen not directed
exclusively towards procreation of a legitimate child within the confines of
marriage. St. Boniface, an English missionary of the 8th century, referred to the
"sodomitical lust" of German pagans as "despising lawful marriage and
preferring incest, promiscuity, adultery and impious union with religious and
cloistered women" moswell, 1980:203). The growing animosity towards
homosexual acts and the increasing institutionalization and codification of
European nation-states was coupled with a general intolerance for difference.
The hostility towards sodomy was also a device through which an anti-Semitic,
anti-pagan, anti-Muslim nationalism was being justified (vis-a-vis the Crusades,
Christendom and the Inquisition). By the 13th and 14th century sodomy was
equated with homosexual acts/homosexuality, which was automatically equated

with anal sex, which was unnatural, violent and horrific and on a par with

74

bestiality, cannibalism and repugnant anti socialness. By the 13th century, the
church regarded sodomy as "carnal sin" and "between 1250-1300 A.D.
homosexual activity passed from being completely legal in most of Europe to
incurring the death penalty. " (Boswell, 1980:293).

Modern Britain and the Penal Code

In 1533, Henry VH1 and the British Parliament instituted and passed the
first civil injunction against sodomy in British history. Henry VIII’s Parliament
made the "detestable and abominable vice of buggery committed with mankind
or beast" a felony. According to Ed Cohen (1993:174), the "transformation of
sodomy from an ecclesiastical to a secular crime must be seen as a part of a
large scale renegotiation in the boundaries between the Catholic Church and the
British State."

Henry VIII was encountering problems divorcing his wife, Catherine of
Aragon (who was unsuccessful in producing a male heir) so he could marry the
next Queen of England, Anne Boleyn. The Catholic church’s hegemony
regarding marriage alliances and property clearly did not suit Henry who
nonetheless found new ways to get rid of troublesome wives and defy the
church. Henry’s responses included beheading wives and instituting new legal
codes in conjunction with a new church, namely the Church of England. Henry’s
recodification of acceptable sexual behavior was intrinsically connected with
access to property and power over the bodies and souls of his Christian subjects.

The statute against sodomy, later referred to as ‘buggery,’ suggested a

rearticulation of multiple spheres of power. This included a shift from the

75

canonical laws of the Catholic Church to the secular laws of the British state,
monarchy, church and legal imaginary. Sodomy which had been immersed solely
within ecclesiastical meanings also came to embody the rhetoric of criminality--
buggery. Sodomy shifted from just being understood as a sin and religious
blasphemy against God and procreative sexual practices, to a sin-crime. In other
words, the exclusively religious sin/offense of sodomy was now fused with a
legal injunction that made non procreative sexual practices a crime against the
StatC.

According to Cohen, the shift from the category sodomy to buggery can
be viewed as the rearticulation from simply a sinful act to a sinful-criminal act,
and as the growing power of a British monarchy and state, and its intent to
move away from total Papal control. The term buggery therefore encodes such
shifts in politics, culture and economics." According to Boswell the term
"bougre" was a common French word for heretics, specifically a heretic of
Eastern (Bulgarian) origin, and that ultimately referred to persons who engaged
in sodomy. The French "bougrerie" also referred to the crime of usury. By the
16th century buggery was being used in English law to mean homosexual acts.
The influence of the French on English Law suggests that the French too had

early statutes that were hostile to buggery.

 

"The Buggery Act was changed and reenacted several times during the 16th
century under various monarchs of different persuasions. Under Henry VIII it
was re-enacted in 1536, 1539 and 1541. Under Edward VI it was repealed, but
re-enacted in 1548 with amendments so that it no longer fortified the felon’s
property to the crown. Under Queen Mary the act was repealed in 1553 and
under her sister, Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to establish her claim as the
true heir to her father Henry VIII, it was re-enacted with the same severity as in
1533.

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Much English popular folklore encouraged the association of sodomy,
buggery, and usury with Italians from Lombardy in a context that fostered the
popular sentiment that the Roman Church was not only oppressive but also a
"hotbed of sodomy." The Papacy was often equated with "the second Sodom,"
the "New Sodom," "Sodom Fair," and "a cistern full of sodomy" (Boswell,

1981 :293). The terminological change from sodomy to buggery reflected a
change in the balance of cultural, political and economic power between the
Roman Catholic Church and the English State.

The Buggery Act was piloted through Parliament with the help of
Thomas Cromwell,l7 Henry’s chief minister, in an effort to support Henry VIII’s
plan to reduce the legal authority of the ecclesiastical courts to try certain
offenses and to seize Church properties. The Buggery Act now allowed the state
and monarchy to issue death sentences against those convicted and to appropriate
their property. People from poor socioeconomic backgrounds would not provide
much in terms of property appropriations, which suggests to me that the
Buggery Act represented a clash between powerful men.

The British legal system under the stewardship of Sir Edward Coke
reorganized and renamed the ‘unnameable vices’ as a civil code and a crime
against the nation-state. Within 300 years after the 1533 Buggery Statute was
passed, jurist Edward Coke in his legal treatise Third Part of the Institutes of the

Laws of England, provided the "systematization of English Penal Code" where

 

”Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) was the King’s chief advisor and minister.
He presided over Henry’s divorce to Catherine of Aragon in 1533; Henry’s
break with the Roman Catholic Church and a series of administrative measures
(facilitated by Cromwell) strengthened the power of the Crown.

77

canon law collapsed into secular English Law.18 According to Coke, buggery
was "a detestable and abominable sin among Christians not to be named,
committed by carnal knowledge against the ordinance of the creator and order of
nature by mankind with mankind, or with brute beast, or by womankind with
beast" (Cohen, 1993:175). Here the civil and legal, ecclesiastical and canonical
are intertwined and imbricated. Legal authority is constructed by positioning
sodomy/buggery as essentially foreign (un-British, Greek or, Roman) and against
British nature. Sexual transgression is mapped onto religious and national
xenophobia, thereby fueling the ideology of the naturally superior British
civilization and nation-state. What made the British empire respectable and
powerful continues to live on in the garb of the postcolonial nation, where
sodomy is essentially foreign (i.e., un-Indian).

After setting the legal, political, cultural and religious climate for the
crime, Coke goes on to consider the criteria for determining ‘legal culpability.’
According to Coke, "carnal knowledge" was acquired or inflicted only if the
body "bore the marks of penetratio. " With understandings of buggery wedged
between the categories of crime-sin, there emerged new forms of moral
management. The "vices of sodomy" in a society that was now increasingly
being influenced by the Protestant ethic, instead of solely Roman Catholicism,
were now being deployed as "an index for a variety of excessive behaviors"
(Cohen, 1993:173). The contemporary moral idioms employed included excess,

extravagance, irresponsibility, confusion, weakness, disorder and despair. The

 

l""If any person shall commit buggery with man or beast by the authority of
parliament this offense is adjudged a felony." Cohen (1993: 174) quoting Sir
Edward Coke.

78

Church of England, which defined itself as juxtaposed against the Roman
Catholic Church’s reputation of excessive religious and political oppression and
extravagance, had fewer established means of monitoring and controlling
individual behavior (such as the confessional in Catholic Churches). This need
for such surveillance was quite compatible with the continued talk of moral
degradation and surveillance, and it was with this purpose that the Society for
the Reformation of Manners emerged in Britain in the 16903.

The Society was initially formed by skilled craft workers and merchants.
The organized crusades of the Society for the Reformation of Manners "actively
encouraged individuals to watch for and report violations among their neighbors"
(Cohen, 19932181). This crusade began initially in the lower hamlets of
London’s East End but eventually spread throughout and beyond London.

The targets of the society were "mollyhouses" which included public
houses, ale houses or taverns where homosexual men rendezvoused. Often the
geographic locations of mollyhouses, which mushroomed during the late 16003
and early 17003, coincided with other stigmatized but much used and frequented
"subcultures" such as brothels. The societies thus negotiated "between the
church, the law and the public sphere, " and were valuable because they provided
a grass roots mode of surveillance for "moral enforcement" desired by an
increasingly bureaucratic nation-state (Norton, 1992:23).

By 1826 the Offenses Against the Person Act passed, whereby sodomy
was recrinrinalized into a capital offense and was recodified and when the two

simultaneous proofs for conviction were dropped. Only proof of penetration was

required. The earlier emphasis on procreation only was now rearticulated into a

79

certain moral standard for individual behavior. This moral standard for personal
behavior was in line with the creation of the new British masculinity and
middle-classhood of the 19th century. The semantic appeal towards eliminating
relations and acts of ‘gross indecency’ via sets of amendments" was significant
for its effect on several other forms of non procreative sexual acts. Homosexual
relations, acts, and soliciting were often attempted to be cured by doctors by
channeling homosexual men toward another well established industry of the non
procreative heterosexual kind-prostitution. Opposition to brothels, primarily
frequented by married men, and the movement to raise the age of sexual consent
for girls from thirteen to sixteen years, coexisted with, defined and reenforced
the political discourse on ‘gross indecency.’ Parallel developments occurred in
colonial India (which I shall refer to in the next section).

By the end of the 19th century, medicine was joining in and rearticulating
the sin-crime framework of sodomy/buggery via new categories of madness,
moral insanity, sickness and disease to form a reinvigorated nexus of sin-crime-
disease. Also, by the 18803 the family as the procreative-heterosexual-
monogamous marital unit was the paradigm defining a stable society. What
authors like Boswell do not address, however, is that "lust," as in non
procreation and nonconformity to the normative family, was still defined in

relationship to the phallus. The conspicuous absence and lack of any direct

 

1”Such as the Labouchere Amendment of 1885, The Vagrancy Act of 1898,
and The Contagion Diseases Act of the 18603. For example, The Contagion
Diseases Act was promoted as the curtailment of middle class men’s access to
women (especially working class women) outside of marriage. This act was
intended to curtail prostitution and was directed towards the "protection of
women and girls."

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reference to women represented the fact that female erotic autonomy directly

threatened economic-political alliances within and outside empires.

Codifying the Colonial State

The colonial dominance of India developed within a context in which the
British were often in conflict with one another over their interests in India.”
Initially, British commercial interests were consolidated in India with the
creation of the British East India Company in 1600. The British East India
Company, which was comprised of merchants from London, politicians and
British royalty, was established by a charter from Queen Elizabeth I that gave
the company full trading rights in Asia and Africa. The company’s initial charter
was created for fifteen years with the provision that the company could be
closed down by the British Parliament and the Crown within two years if it was
not profitable but, if it was profitable, the company’s contract could be extended
for another fifteen years (Puri, 1992:111). The company was given certain
judicial powers with which to form its own constitution, to regulate its affairs in
India and to set up factories in India. Between 1612-1690 factories were set up
in the towns of Surat, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta by acquiring land rights or

zamindari21 from local Mughals, Hindu rajas (kings) and earlier European traders

 

2"These tensions within the empire were sometimes between businessmen
(East India Company), politicians (Parliament) and royalty (the Crown), and
later between those British who had different administrative and cultural policies
in India.

21Zamindari were the rights enjoyed by landowners during the local Mughal

administration, such as collecting revenues and maintaining civil and criminal
law and order.

81

such as the Portuguese.

By the 17003, the earlier quest for trade and profit was supplemented by
increasing interest in territorial acquisition and management for which the
interlocking network of judicial, economic, political and cultural power co-
evolved. By 1668, the East India Company shifted from being simply a trading
association to being a dominant territorial sovereign, and the company was
authorized to declare war and make peace for the Crown. In 1726, overall
control over Presidency towns22 was given to an appointed Governor. In a
charter issued by George I in 1726, a uniform judicial system was created for
the three Presidency towns of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Such a charter
aided in the increased insertion of English law and uniformity into India and
avoided the "confusion and arbitrary" decisions of those who were untrained in
English Law. Each Presidency had a Mayor’s Court, and the rules and
regulations in these towns were formulated and enforced by Englishmen
(following the principles of English law) on both Indians and Europeans.

The next one hundred years (1726-1826) saw the heightening of British
imperial power through the East India Company. The company gained increasing
access to property and land revenue and initiated several treaties with local
rulers. These treaties usually granted significant powers to the British for which
the local leader would receive a proportionate commission and the protection of
the British. Further, provinces and districts that were newly acquired by the

British were reorganized with new divisions. Often the administration of civil

 

22Areas remapped by the British in British India into zones of political
control were referred to as Presidencies.

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law followed the principles laid down by the local princes. Although the highest
authority was the British courts (especially in Presidency towns), the Governor
and his British servants worked together with local qazis, muftis, maulvis and
pundits” in civil and some criminal procedures.

The company increased its political authority by 1757, after winning more
wars and diwani rights“ (such as the Battle of Plassey and Buxer and the diwani
rights of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa). However, in 1772 the company claimed
bankruptcy and asked the British Parliament for loans. This resulted in the
Regulatory Act of 1773 whereby the British Parliament gained significantly
more control over company affairs. Parliamentary control was further increased
by establishing a Governor-General and his Council, with both civil and military
powers, who answered to Parliament and the Crown. In 1774, the first Supreme
Court with a Chief Justice (Elijah Impey) was set up in Calcutta, followed by
Supreme Courts in Madras and Bombay. Beginning with the first Governor-
General, Warren Hastings, the First Plan of Reform, that is, to unify, standardize
and translate Anglo-Indian law, was initiated. Although some native judges were
allowed in some of the lower ranks of the judicial system, they were left to

handle civil cases (such as matters of inheritance or succession among Muslims

 

23Qazis or kazis are judges who are entrusted with upholding the holy laws
of Islam and carrying out numerous civil functions. A mufti is a Muslim jurist
who issues public decisions on legal matters. Ulemas are men who have been
trained in and have studied the Sharia or the holy laws of Islam. Pundits are
Hindu priest\scholars knowledgeable in Sanskrit and in the scriptures (which
included Hindu law such as the Laws of Manu). Maulvis are Hindus who are
learned in Hindu laws.

2"A diwan was\is a fiscal or revenue officer within the Mughal
administration. The rights of revenue collecting were acquired by the British
from local mughal rulers and were often rearranged to suit company needs.

83

or Hindus) or what was referred to as personal law. It was officially recognized
that separate personal laws of native Muslims and Hindus existed, that applied
principally to marriage, inheritance, succession and "other religious matters"
(Puri, 1992:91).

Under Warren Hastings’ governorship, one of the earliest English
translations and codifications of Hindu law was brought about (Halhed,

1776: 121). Pundits selected by Hastings and his collector translated works from
Sanskrit to Persian (since there were no Europeans in Calcutta who knew
Sanskrit) and the Persian-to-English translation was taken over by British civil
servant H.B. Halhed. Bernard Cohn points out that this legal treatise set
precedent for something that was significant and enduring, namely the
establishment of Indological Studies in Europe, "where the work was read in
English and in translations in French and German, for information about the
‘mysterious Hindus’" (Cohn, 1985:303).

Another barrister from England, who like Hastings believed that hidden in
18th century India was an "ancient constitution," was Sir William Jones. Jones
wanted to unlock ancient Indian texts and the minds of pundits and maulvis,
eliminate corrupt interpretations by native scholars and capture the true and
untainted essence of India’s ancient jurisprudence. Jones, and his successor H.T.
Colebrook, began the ambitious project of assembling The Digest of Hindu Law
on Contracts and Successions in Calcutta, which was completed by 1798. Sir
William Jones received support from then Govemor-General Lord Cornwallis.

Heterogeneous Islamic communities also underwent colonial

homogenization as ‘Muhammedans’ (Muslims) whose Muslim law seemed to

84

prevail in precolonial courts. The British assumed that the Muslims had more of
a ‘fully developed’ court system that accommodated some Hindu law (especially
in the arena of personal customary law). Initially, for the British, this ‘fully
developed’ court system needed to be systematically understood for the purpose
of revenue collecting. Legal Orientalist scholarship had to negotiate Arabic and
Persian translations into English in order to maintain effective political and
cultural control with minimal militaristic interventions. Criminal courts, until
1860, followed Muslim law when it was replaced by British law. Also, by 1864
court maulvis and the Persian language were replaced altogether in the criminal
courts by jurors trained in English Law and the English language. This change
reflected the shift in power from the Muslim rulers to the British. Also, the
Hastings Plan facilitated the creation of hierarchies amongst the civil and
criminal courts. Therefore, only civil courts were to deal with personal laws
(marriage, inheritance, caste. etc.) of Hindus and Muslims. What is also
significant is that although the British were instrumental in translating most of
Hindu and Muslim law (including what constituted as personal) it was the one
arena set aside for the elite patriarchs of Hindu and Muslim law to control. This
control of the personal or family law by local elite men (such as the brahmans in
the case of Hindu law) set up another colonized layer of indigenous patriarchal
laws and practices.

A charter established in 1833 made it possible for all provinces under the
East India Company to come under a relatively uniform legal code. This charter
instituted a series of law commissions which met from 1833 onwards to meet the

following goals: codification of penal law; outlining of laws applicable to British

85

servants; codification of civil and criminal procedures; uniform substantive civil
law for the whole of India (whereby personal law of Hindus and Muslims would
be established by the British who would "carefully" consult scriptures and\or
scriptural experts like pundits\brahmans, maulvis, quazis, etc.); and that English
law should be made the basis for codifying the law in India. The Law
Commission was chaired by Lord Macaulay, Governor-General of British India,
and included members who were "acquainted with English and Indian Law. "

The 18503 saw significant gains in political authority by the British. In
1857, the "Sepoy Mutiny," or the first major war of independence, was waged
against British imperialism by Indians. In 1858, Queen Victoria assumed direct
control and administration of India and proclaimed herself Empress of India.
This resulted in the end of the so called indirect rule by the East India Company
as the Crown took over the dual roles of economic expansion and state making.
In 1860, the Indian Penal Code was passed and in 1861 the Code of Criminal
Procedure was passed. In describing the task of codifying all law (criminal and
civil) for the whole of British India, Macaulay claimed:

I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of

law as India and I believe also that there never was a country in

which the want might be so easily supplied. Our principle is

simply this--uniformity when you can have it; diversity when you

must have it; but, in all cases, certainty (Macaulay, 1897:56).

Preparations for the Indian Penal Code drew from the following sources:

English law, Hindu law, Muslim law, Livingston’s Louisiana Code and the Code

Napoleon.” Macaulay felt that since the Muslims were ‘governed’ by the Koran

 

2’From conversations with ex-Chief Justice, Padma Khastagir in Calcutta.

86

and the Hindus by the institutes of Manu, qazis and pundits were to be consulted
if unavoidable. The Indian Penal Code, which was passed after revisions in
October, 1860 was to deal with substantive law“ and the Code of Criminal
Procedure, which was passed in 1861, was to deal with "adjective law.”7

The colonial enterprise, whether it advocated policies of coercive
integration (Warren Hastings) or policies of coercive isolationism (Lord
Cornwallis) with the native populations, rearticulated, dismantled, destroyed,
collaborated with and froze existing modes of socio-political-economic relations
in India. Since the 18603, the Indian Penal Code, which is still the law of the
land, may very well have fulfilled William Jones’s prophetic analogy of the
"British as Romans" (Cohn, 1985:295). Jones liked to compare himself to
Tribonian, the compiler of the Justinian Codes, but "in a scientific mode," and,
by association, Govemor-General Cornwallis would be like "the Justinian of
India." 2” Hastings’s and Jones’s quest for the "Ancient Indian Constitution" was

rearticulated as "English law as the law of India" (Cohn, 1985:295).

 

2"Substantive has been described as that part of law which creates, defines
and regulates the rights and duties of parties.

27Adjective law has been described as that part of law which provides a
method and prescribes practice, procedure or legal machinery by which
substantive law is enforced or made effective. V.D. Kulshreshta’s Landmarks in
Indian Legal and Constitutional History, pp. 52, Eastern Book Company, 1992.

2"William Jones quoted in "The Command of Language and the Language of
Command," B.S. Cohn, pg. 295 in Subaltem Studies IV: Writings on South
Asian History and Society, edited by Ranajit Guha, Oxford University Press,
Delhi, 1985. The analogy of the British conquerors in India to the Classical
Romans conquerors of the Greeks, notes Cohn, was also expressed via "visual
reminders" in the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, where there are statues of Jones
and Hastings in the garb of Roman senators.

87

The Pukka Sahib and Memsahib

The colonial policies of coercive integration and isolationism embodied
concerns about sexuality, gender expectations, racial purity or impurity and
economic power. Ronald Hyam (1990) in Empire and Sexuality suggests that the
success of the "imperial race" through the expansion of the British empire meant
following state-directed policies of sexual-political restraint and relaxation which
framed modes of relations and interaction between rulers and the ruled. Further,
he argues, the sexual politics at the home base (Britain) were driven by
"fanatical Purity Campaigns," which were intrinsically linked to those
individuals located at bases set up in the colonies. In other words, "sexual
opportunity" was also part of economic opportunity and rule. "The expansion of
Europe was not only a matter of ‘Christianity and commerce’ it was also a
matter of copulation and concubinage" (Hyam, 1990:2).

Under the policies of integration in the late 18th century, the keeping of
Indian mistresses (or bibis) became a well-established practice, justified as
increasing the knowledge of "native affairs. " Native mistresses included both
Indian and Anglo-Indian women and "...a deliberate policy of intermarriage was
encouraged by the company, in the interests of building up the army" (Hyam,
1990:116). Around the 18903, however, these policies were reversed. The
reversal was influenced by factors that included the 1857 Indian Revolt and
shifts in political attitudes towards native governance. This shift lead the country
towards an isolationist and indifferent bureaucratic imperial state where sexual,
social and racial purity was imperative.

Isolationist policies focused on the health and size of the imperial army

88

and race. As more Indians and Anglo-Indians were discharged from civilian and
military posts, annual "cargo[s] of young damsels" or the "fishing fleet" were
organized for British men in India. White British women exported to British
India were to serve the political and economic projects of racial and sexual
purity and normativity for imperial dominance. Further, Ann Stoler has pointed
out that the presence of white European women in many colonies maintained
racial separation between whites and nonwhites (Stoler, 1989).

The category of the memsahib or respectable femininity/womanhood
emerged to conceptually complement the sahib or pukka sahib--the "aristocratic
middle-class," hyper-patriotic, Christian, white, respectably married and
heterosexual (later on elite and middle-class native men adopted this ideology to
assimilate better). In Hindi and Bengali, the word pakka means fully-cooked,
mature, solid, done or ripe (versus cutcha which is raw or uncooked). Pukka also
meant and means proper, having character, conforming to prestige and upholding
the image of the proper (read: British) colonial gentleman.

The memsahib was intended to eliminate any lingering interest in
acquiring native mistresses. The pukka sahib was the distanced married man who
would protect his mem from native men who were dangerously [hetero]sexual
and protect native women from religiously fanatical and/or effeminate native
men. While the pukka sahibs were to symbolize homogeneous and impermeable
imperial dominance, civilization and power, his mem maintained him and his
projects. She was the guardian of imperial social etiquette, racial purity, social
distance and imperial standards of womanhood. She was to also signify, embody,

caretake and reproduce white honour and prestige through high-class domestic

89

service. While the mems where "custodians of respectability" their poorer and
single sisters held other menial jobs.” Single women were held in great disdain.
Due to their relative lack of economic and political opportunities (via marriage
and memsahib-dom) they were suspected of falling prey to immoral local
customs such as prostitution. The Pukka Code or the invented image of the
imperial race—family-colony was not buttressed by white single women (Ingram,
1986:117). Their single-ness and independence challenged prevailing ideas of
natural and respectable womanhood (married, dependent on a husband and
heterosexual). The distanced heterosexual and imperial sahibs and memsahibs
exemplified another version (versus policies of integration) of the intersections
of colonial racial purity politics and patriarchal heterosexuality.

The Pukka Code of middle class aristocracy was also maintained by "the
illusion of an essentially elite European community" of "civil servants, army
officers, planters and businessmen" (Arnold, 1983:23). David Arnold points out
that in 19th century British India, almost half of the white population was
composed of poor whites. They included people who were laid off from army
and navy and civilian semi skilled jobs as well as people who came from Britain
in search of colonial opportunities. The Raj’s obsession with maintaining its
imperial-pukka image often manifested itself in attempts to make white poverty
and destitution invisible and criminal. Poor whites (and sometime Anglo-
Indians) were contained and tucked away into orphanages and asylums (in hill

stations--towns on hills far away from hot, busy cities, which often served as

 

2”For both British men and women, getting to the colonies was considered a
great economic and political opportunity.

90

getaways for the British) or placed in workhouses (which were like labour
camps in prison). This isolation was based on two concerns: (1) that poor and/or
destitute whites would be shameful ‘loafers’ and threaten the invention of white
prestige and morality in India, and (2) poor whites needed to be isolated from
the oriental vices found in heathen and hot environments and trained in servitude
to the colonial state.30 White European boys were trained for the colonial army
and navy as serrriskilled workers, and as a link between upper class whites and
"low-grade Indian subordinates." If the boys couldn’t be trained they would be
placed in jails or asylums or deported to Britain. White European girls were
trained to do lower-class domestic work: maids for middle-class white families,
as wives for English army personnel who may not have demanded too much
dowry, lower grade school teachers, midwives, nurses, typists and telephone
operators.

Special economic and social measures were taken for non—civilians, i.e.,
army men. Increasing cases of ‘the clap’ were a major threat to the well being of
the imperial army. Bringing in memsahibs to encourage respectable
heterosexuality in the army proved to be expensive since the costs of marriage
quarters and allowances would increase the colonial army’s budget. There were
concerns that not having wives would encourage the imperial army to turn
"...intoreplicas of Sodom and Gomorrah" (Hyam, 1990:123). The fiscal solution

was to turn unofficial, unregulated and brothels into officially regulated ones for

 

3oVagrancy was singularly associated with white destitutes in the colonies.
The Vagrancy Act of 1869, in British India, criminalized vagrancy, and poor
whites could be arrested for begging on the streets. If the poor whites could
declare themselves as vagrant then they could avoid arrest and be placed in
workhouses to perform manual labour for room and board (Arnold, 1979:118).

91

the army. This resulted in the passing of the Anti-Contagious Diseases Act in
India. The mid-18503 saw the establishment of state-regulated brothels where
native women had to register and undergo regular medical exams. One woman
on average served forty-four men. The regulated brothels or Lal Bazaars (or
quite literally the Red Market) were primarily for white use, although "...Indians
could use them while whites were on morning parade" (Ballhatchet, 1980:91).

In 1894, Viceroy Elgin claimed "...noprostitutes meant even more
deplorable evils...thereis already an increase in unnatural crimes," such as
homosexual activity (Ballhatchet, 1980: 101). Sending men (both Indian and
British, civilian and army) to women prostitutes who might be deviating from
normative sexuality or pukka-ness was regarded as a popular cure. For example,
in October 1893 in Sanjibani, a Bengali weekly edited by Keshab Chandra Sen
and Krishna Kumar Mitra, an advice column offers a cure for Indian school boys
engaged in "unnatural and immoral habits"--that of visiting prostitutes." 3'

The debates in Britain regarding the Anti-Contagious Diseases Act
travelled to India as well. In the 18803, Lal Bazaars began facing criticism and
were officially suspended in 1888. The Purity Campaigns in the metropole,
which included the Anti-Contagious Diseases Act”, the Age of Consent Act”,

 

31Report on Native Newspapers, India Gazette File, 1893. I am grateful to
Debanuj Dasgupta for pointing this out to me.

32Ending state-regulated brothels.

33In 1875 the age of consent for girls was raised from 12 to 13, and
eventually to 16.

92

anti-homosexuality movement“, and anti-Soliciting laws” travelled to British
India. These campaigns exported categories of manliness and womanliness where
the pukka sahib and mem sahib were to maintain a fiscal imperial polity and
economy free of common” and ‘special Oriental vices’37 and costs.

The fictions of the Pukka Sahib and his heterosexual complement, the
mem sahib, were part of the empire’s elaborate fantasy of the "super-race. " "The
seductive vision of British India as an empire almost exclusively for Europeans
of power, wealth and respectability was one which its rulers strove hard to
maintain in reality" (Arnold, 1983:124). The creation, maintenance and
organization of the family, normative heterosexuality, gender expectations, race,
class, rank, prestige, nation, and empire need to be viewed through the
inventions of the imperial nexus of dominations. Colonial rule and sexual

management was racist, classist and heterosexist in its logic.

The "Pukka Chakka"- the Post/Neo Colonial Way

Dilip: They know who not to mess around with. They know who can
speak in English. My specs [spectacles] and gaalis [swear words]
in English will stop him from going any further. Gaalis [swear

words, insults] like "shut up," "idiot," "fool," generally are enough

 

3‘Anti-homosexuality laws were exemplified by the Labouchere Amendment,
which made all male sexual activity, regardless of consent or age, illegal.

3’The initiative to clean up the streets, i.e.,of sex-traffic.
36Such as getting the clap.
37Specifically homosexual activity.

93

to send the message to the police that I am an English speaker,
which automatically accords more respect.

Suparna: "So they’ll let you off even if they suspect? "

Dilip: You know the practice of men having sex with men and women
outside of marriage is so common and has been around historically.
But men having sex with men is an open secret. This point was
raised by a married guy in one of our consciousness-raising groups.
The men know what is going on -- it’s like breathing. It happens at
all class levels. You know, I almost wish that someone famous dies
of AIDS - then the issue of sexuality may come to the forefront.

Suparna: "That is if the families release the cause of death to be due to AIDS?"

Dilip: Oh yes, that’s the other factor. I’ve been following a lot of famous
deaths--and a lot seem to be reported as pneumonia...which in
itself is interesting. So many rich people getting pneumonia. The
families know what is happening but pretend it’s not going on; the
open secret. It’s inside the house and outside with the police and
law. The police will simply assume men are having sex with men
in public spaces like the park--whether it’s happening or not - but
most importantly they will assume that the other guy, who doesn’t
seem middle class and an English-speaker, is the perpetrator. The
cops harass him. Before Section 377 was publically challenged
they didn’t have the law or legal language to tout--now with the
publicity given to the case and to AIDS, the cops have added

ammunition. Once I was wandering around Chittaranjan Park. I

94

came across a water fountain and stopped to get a drink. As I was
drinking the water I felt like someone had creeped up behind me.
When I turned around to look--it was a cop. He had the tone of a
concerned elder brother. "What are you doing here at this time of
the night?" he inquired. When I told him I was simply getting a
drink of water and talking a walk through the park, he replied,
‘Don’t you know the type of people who wander around here after
8:30 pm? You should be home at this time with your family. It’s
because of these dirty people we have AIDS in Calcutta.’ These
arrests are about appearances, class appearances and sexual open
secrets. "
Suparna: "Such attitudes, daily and institutional, are then directly connected to
problems faced by advocacy groups related to sexuality and AIDS funding in
India? "
Dilip: Well, advocacy groups are generally marginalized despite the fact
that AIDS/NGOs are now a money-maker in South Asia.” There is

a lot of money available, international that is, regarding the AIDS

 

3"There are a growing number of programmes in India, including those of
NGOs, that are responding to the HIV pandemic in India. Providing an overview
of these initiatives is be ond the scope and focus of this chapter and dissertation.
However, Broadening t e Front: NGO responses to HIV and AIDS in India, by
Jaya Shreedhar and Anthony Colaco, is a useful reference and beginning.
Shreedhar and Colaco explore the response of 7 NGOs in different cities and
towns in India to the AIDs epidemic. However, it was pointed out to me that
there were only 4 advocacy groups in India that specifically addressed and
included concerns that connected sexual health, men having sex with men,
advocacy around Section 377 issues, sexual identities and lesbian and gay civil
rights. These groups were identified as NAZ-Calcutta, NAZ-Delhi, Humsafar
Trust-Mumbai, and CAN-Madras.

95

crisis in India. And there are lots of people here who are making a
lot of money claiming to establish local services and education.
The international spotlight on AIDS and India has also placed
much of the responsibility on women, and it is assumed that
women are the carrier of the virus. Like Section 377, we. too have
to piggy-back on the AIDS bandwagon to get any funding. Getting
rid of 377 may be of some help--especially in terms of the police
using it to legitimize their usual harassment - but they did it before
they knew that Section 377 existed in the law books. Also, once
you get into the courts, such cases, especially volatile ones like
Section 377, get stuck in litigation-«nothing happens. Look at
Section 377. The daily shame, harassment and fear one deals with

one’s family, relatives and friends remains the same.

1998: Section 377 is still at a standstill--in litigation. The political and symbolic

significance of such a case seems to diminish for many hopefuls. It is after all

just something in the law books - how does that change day-to-day reality many

question. On the one hand, the publicity of this case has raised the issue of

sexual identity, normal and ‘perverted sexuality’ (read: homosexuality) as a civil

right. On the other, it has provided "law enforcement" units further ammunition

to harass the same communities and individuals——men and women. These include

prisoners, sex workers, the working class and poor people, men who have sex

with men, self-identified gay men, to some extent self-identified

shamakamis/lesbians, and women who get married to one another under Hindu

96

rites. The distribution of condoms in prisons and in the streets still remains a
contentious issue and an illegal act. The AIDS pandemic, via the rubric of
sexual health, then provides the potential avenue in a culture where under most
circumstances we don’t talk about sexuality--let alone homosexuality. Claiming a
self (especially for women) is seen by many as alien (read:Western), selfish,
abnormal and individualistic. Selfhood seems to be only understood as
individualistic, rather than a Self that is plural, interdependent and social.
Personal identity is subsumed in kinship structures defined by marriage and
procreation or in other words, normative heterosexuality. So claiming a
heterosexual identity is often just as much an anomaly as claiming an identity or
civil rights based on nonheterosexual realities. (This issue is explored in Chapter
Four, where heterosexual identity is discussed as an emerging feature of Indian
reality through the national metaphor of the liberated/liberalized woman of the
19903.)
Conclusion

By sketching a collage that moves in and out of metropole and colony,
and of colonial and post/neo colonial India, I have attempted to demonstrate the
contradictions in the adoption of a colonial sexual code by the post/neo colonial
nation-state. The colonial sexual code which was set up in the building of a
strong empire constituted within imperial hetero-patriarchy, is equally useful for
a post/neo colonial nation in building a strong, modern nation. By managing
nonprocreative sexuality (female prostitutes in the Lal Bazaar, or homosexual
sexual activity in the colonial army or postcolonial prisons) and by valorizing

heterosexual procreation, the modern state is tacitly controlling and defining so-

97

called possibilities for its citizens. The fact that Section 377 has no direct
reference to female sexuality but in an indirect and negative way affects and has
been used against women is significant. Women’s sexual identity can only be
understood in relation to the phallus. The natural and inevitable identity as
procreator--married mother and wife. But women are also subsumed within the
so-called unnatural relationship to the phallus--with homosexual men.Without
any reference to female sexuality, the explicit state-sponsored policy of
compulsory heterosexuality, via Section 377, maintains the marriage-
motherhood-heterosexuality economy for women. Furthermore, attempts by
women to live adult lives with one another (through marriage or friendship
contracts) have sometimes been thwarted and Section 377 has been used against
them. Section 377 has been used mainly by the fathers of the women who have
wanted to live their adult lives with one another. (Chapter Six discusses these
cases.) The next set of chapters explores how women’s identity and sexuality are
more explicitly constructed in relation to national/cultural identity and

authenticity.

98

Chapter Four
FROM MOTHER INDIA TO MS. WORLDLY
Trafficking In Essences

This chapter explores how Indian women are made and unmade. I explore
how Indian women become the grounds on which the discourse and projects of
progress, development, freedom, nationalism, nativism, authenticity, and
liberalization. Further, I explore how these practices are connected to the
sponsorship of what has been a media, state and corporate sponsored mass
fantasy-- ‘the new Indian Woman of the 19903.’ Underlying this mass fantasy
are rearticulated notions of what mainstream and nationalist discourse on Indian
Women refer to as the essence and spirit of a woman. I explore what this
essence is and how it is related to India’s dutiful passion-«marriage. Talk of
marriage is so pervasive, common and natural among Indians that it also
naturalizes another aspect of patriarchy--compulsory heterosexuality. This
pervasiveness is demonstrated through conversations in women’s households,
including mine, in this chapter and Chapter Five.

This chapter also explores the different ways in which women’s sexuality
is controlled through different reincamations of heterosexual discourse. These
reincamations of heterosexuality are encoded in the discourses of nationalism,
economic policies, the beauty industry, everyday talk, and different state and
media-sponsored events. The economic, cultural and political sponsorship of
marriage and normative sexuality, 1 demonstrate, is also about the construction
of postcolonial nationhood and cultural identity. I demonstrate how this process

is related to a class-specific notion of the respectable Indian woman who

99

symbolizes the nation.
The Shameful ‘Fieldworker’ and UnDutiful Daughter
I wasn ’t ashamed this time. I say this time because the last time I was home was
in 1993. I had returned afier a three-year absence to do anthropological
fieldwork. Now it was December of 1995. I wasn ’t ashamed this time, especially
since I was dealing with someone, one-on-one, over the phone. After five years, I
immediately recognized Mira Auntie ’s voice. "So is there any good news? " she
probed in a loud, perfunctory and inquisitive manner. "Good news? ", I replied
playing dumb but very conscious not to perpetuate the usual assumptions and
meaning systems. "Yes, any good news? How come you ’re suddenly here? ", she
persisted. You mean I need a reason or good news to come back to India I
thought to myself defensively. "Well, isn ’t the good news that I am here
enough? " I played on. "No, I mean are you getting married or something ? Have
you brought along a nice American or Indian boy? " Mira Auntie persisted, either
missing or ignoring my meanderings. Ah, finally the translation of "do you have
any good news. " "Oh no! I ’m NOT getting married nor do I have any plans to
do so! " I replied emphatically with the confidence of an anonymous phone caller.
"God you are just like Gita ..all she does is work in the hospital. .I should bang
both of you nutcases ’3 heads together.. "Gita is Mira Auntie ’s unmarried
daughter. "Good for her! ", I replied.

A combination of anger, irritation, shame and guilt accompanies me when
acquaintances, strangers, peers from high school, family friends and relatives
feel that they have complete moral authority to arrogantly question or pity me

and other unmarried women about why we are not married and why we should

100

be. They are usually people who have had very little interaction with you or
don’t know much about you, other than the glaring fact of your marital status.

Ever since I turned twenty years old, this constant questioning is
something I encounter at least once a day. Recently when I called up an old
friend, Vineet, from high school the first thing she said was "So how much more
are you going to study?! Isn’t it now simply a waste of time? Your poor
parents!" "What do you mean my poor parents? " I asked angrily. "Well, don’t
you think you should stop torturing them now and start thinking about them?
They have done so much for you, the least you can do is to settle down and get
married! "

Vineet and I went to Loretto House, an all-girls Catholic private school.
Vineet came from a middle-class Sikh Punjabi household. She was the perfect
combination of what is being referred to as the ‘new Indian woman of the
19903’ and her predecessor. She was not ‘good’ at maths and sciences, or studies
in general, which placed her at the margins of popular groups in school. Vineet
was not good in sports either so that also removed the possibility of being in
another "in" group. However, she was good at Cookery Class and we used to
wait in long lines after her cookery class to sample her experiments. In our high
school, there was a definite hierarchy of "in" groups. These hierarchies were
often combinations of the following: how good a student one was or your
smarts, the subjects one was smart in, your class background, ethnic/linguistic
background, and your looks and personality. I was most conscious about these
markers of hierarchical difference. Generally speaking, the girls who excelled in

Mathematics and Natural Sciences were at the top, followed by those who were

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good in Economics and Accounting and finally, English and History. At the very
bottom of the hierarchy were cookery and sports.

Vineet was a blending of the ‘the new Indian woman’ and her fore-
mother. She was like her mother because she was not too interested in going to
college to simply get a bachelor’s degree (however, Vineet did end up getting an
appropriate professional degree); she did not go out of her way to mix with boys
or acquire a boyfriend (she only hung around her friends’ brothers or their
boyfriends); she always planned social events with her married aunts instead of
simply socializing with girlfriends; and, most importantly, at the right age (by
the time she turned twenty-five) she agreed to an arranged marriage with a man
of similar class, religious and ethnolinguistic background whose family did not
believe in the dowry system. By the time I called her up she also had given birth
to two daughters and had a career in interior design.

Later on in the day, I passed on Mira Auntie’s message to my mother.
"Poor Gita, she’s having knee surgery done in Delhi. She’s fat and does not
exercise or diet properly. She’s now in her early thirties and she used to say that
she was not interested in marriage. But now she regrets that-she is so lonely and
dissatisfied. It’s easy to say such things when you are in your twenties....but
when you get older you will feel lonely. You are not having any knee problems
are you?" my mother adds. "No, not as yet," I reply, feeling some shame creep
up my neck. "You know how these Americans are...theyare obsessed with how
they look and how much people weigh ..... you must watch out for
yourself ..... you won’t get any jobs otherwise," my mother added.

I was ambivalent about what my mother had said, especially about her

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theory on Americans, but I did not want her to realize this. What she had to say
about Americans could easily be applied to Indians, especially those in the
middle- and upper-class. The worlds that I grew up in were and are transnational
and hybrid. Like many peers, I grew up in many languages: Malayalam, Hindi,
Bengali and English (and in many accents). We grew up in urban India where
we got contradictory messages about swadeshi and videshi.1 The constant
dialogue and monologues between the realities of swadeshi and videshi is still
very much a feature of post/neo colonial Indian lives.

In high school I had trouble learning both Hindi and English. Hindi, the
second language at our Catholic school, was the imposed" national language.
Like English, it was the other (second only to English) language that promised
mobility. At home no one knew how to read or write Hindi, much less speak it.
My parents are Malayalis.2 The world of Hindi presented many contradictions to
me. It was the language of national identity, marking most of the songs of
Independence and Republic Day .3 It was at once revered for its purity (Shudh
Hindi, or Pure Hindi) and national authenticity by our instructors and politicians,

and ridiculed by some of us because Hindi instructors had funny accents when

 

1Swa means own and deshi means nation or native. So Swadeshi means self-
rule, or a nation that was independent and uncolonized and capable of being
governed by indigenous leaders. Videshi meant the opposite, external rule,
colonization and foreign dominance. So for example, the Indian nationalists
advocated swadeshi and the elimination of videshi culture and dominance.

2Malayalis are an ethnic community from the state of Kerala. The language
that we speak is also referred to as Malayali.

3India gained its independence from the British empire in 1947.
Independence Day is on August 15th, marking India’s freedom from British
colonialism. On January 26th, 1948, India became an independent republic, thus
Republic Day.

103

they spoke in English.

For many non-Hindi speakers Bollywood‘ offered us exciting tutorials.
Here the Hindi was impure, racy and street-wise. This impure Hindi took some
of us to worlds where we learnt what a good ‘desi’ (native) versus ‘firangi’
(foreign) ‘mems’ (women) were supposedly about; what ‘sanskriti’ (culture and
tradition) was about. Some of these ‘filmi” depictions of women and men
reflected and refracted our realities. But for the most part I was told Malayalis
were far more advanced in terms of the treatment of women than of "those
North Indians."

English, the first language at school and the promise of upward mobility,
was intimidating to me due to the pedagogical practices of the English teacher, a
nun from Ireland, Sister Aluigi. Sister Aluigi had us learn by heart numerous
Shakespeare plays and poems by English and Indian nationalists. This was why,
many would argue, Indian education was tough and superior. In our last years at
school, we began to get a taste of America. America, specifically the United
States, seemed mysterious, untouchable, dangerously exciting and powerful--
more so than Britain or Germany. When the opportunity arose, my fiiends and I
would carefully study pieces of American artifacts. This included Levi’s jeans,
Archie comics, bootlegged music, Time magazine, and satellite TV shows
("Three’s Company") via Bangladesh and Singapore. It is within these worlds

that my peers and I learned about becoming ethnic or postethnic and national or

 

‘The film industry based in Bombay (now Mumbai). This film industry
produces three times more films than Hollywood.

sFilrni is the result of cross pollenization of Hindi and English, or Hinglish,
and slang for Bollywood representations.

104

postnational. It is within these complex webs that we learned about the duty of
becoming women.
Ruling Through Looking
India cannot be free until its women are free and women cannot be
free until India is free (Liddle and Joshi, 1986:39, quoting Sarojini
Naidu, a nationalist and leader of the Indian Congress Party).
The problem is that they are currently being told how ugly they are
and how difficult it is to find a husband for them. They’ll come
out one day in droves--from the wheatfields of Punjab and the
backwaters of Kerala, from the hills of Coorg to the salt lakes of
Calcutta. And some day, these beauties will rule the world (Bidapa,
1995:10).
Earlier, only girls from Anglo-Indian, Christian or Parsi families
felt comfortable entering such contests. Now, values have changed
and even girls from conservative Hindu and Muslim families don’t
feel that there is anything wrong in taking part (Patil, 1995:3).
The usual national and local (specifically, in urban centers like Calcutta)
euphoria that accompanies a cricket match won against Pakistan is nowadays
comparable to another game of postindependence nation-building. Billboards,
TV headlines, newspapers and magazines proclaim "India, we did it again!,"
"We have conquered the world" and "Double whammy for India." Time and
space still may be referred to as Kaliyug" in some circles but the urban
information industry now refers to the 19903 as the Sen-Rai Era.

In 1994, Sushmita Sen became the first-ever Indian woman to win the

Miss Universe title and later on her rival (for the Miss India Crown), Aishwarya

 

”Yug" means time or age and "Kali" either means the Goddess Kali or
dark/black. So literally it would mean the Age of Kali or dark times. One
interpretation of the Hindu calendar says that the age we live in is Kaliyug,
which is marked by chaos and despair and where unnatural rights are being
claimed by women. Another interpretation says that we live in a time positively
influenced by the Goddess Kali and that in itself is auspicious.

105

Rai, won the Miss World title. It was as if a simmering volcano, one that had
been slowly bubbling for a while, had erupted and completely changed the
landscape and climate. The eruption and meteoric rise of the beauty-fashion-
advertising-media industry, some argue, is symptomatic of India’s economic
liberalization policies under the prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, since 1991.
The nineties have seen swift increases in foreign investments and collaborations
by Multinational Corporations (MN C3) in the crores/billions.7 It is a time when
the nation-state of India is advertising itself anew, shedding its pseudo-socialist
pro—Soviet orientation in an attempt to seriously and aggressively take on the
world capitalist system. It is quite the marketing coup then to claim the world’s
and universe’s best ambassadors, i.e.,Sushmita and Aishwarya, as 100% Indian.

Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai have become role models for
many of the college girls. Why just college girls--even any smart
girl from a good family. These girls are good in studies and can
easily become doctors, computer scientists or businesswomen. But
now they are choosing this career. There is a lot of money in it and
it is respectable. Now there are modelling schools cropping up
everywhere, especially in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore. Calcutta
there aren ’t that many--but you know how Calcutta is. Totally
backward-moving. People are leaving this place if they can.

Did you know Jyoti Basu ’s8 niece entered a beauty contest here! ? I
think she was runner-up or something. The Communists will shout
objectification of women when it ’s other people ’s women-~but when
it ’s their own daughters it’s a different story. But basically your
family has to at least put in a big investment for a modelling
course, say 7,000-10,000n¢pees. Then you must keep up with your
facials and make-up, keep thin, so regularly exercise at home or in

 

7 One crore equals 100 lakhs and 1 lakh equals 100,000 Indian rupees.
Approximately, thirty-six Indian rupees (Rs. 36) equals one US. dollar ($1).

’Jyoti Basu is the Chief Minister of West Bengal. The ruling party, in the
state of West Bengal, that he heads is the Communist Party of India (Marxists)
or CPI(M). The CPI(M) headed by Jyoti Basu has been continuously in power
since 1977.

106

a gym, have a good tailor -but if you are really rich you can buy
directly from these designers-all this is easily another 2,000
mpees/month. Easily 1 or 2 lakhs per year. It’s a gamble-if it pays
ofir you ’ve got it made--or else you could go empty handed.

(M conversation with Sunita Pancholi, a younger sister of a high school friend.
Sumta is a college student in Loretto House-Calcutta.)

Hopeful women begin their entry from the regional rounds. These
preliminary rounds are held in Bombay, Bangalore, Madras and Calcutta. Each
of these contests are sponsored by one business house-usually MNCs. The

preliminary contests are as follows:

Preliminary Contests Business Sponsor(s)
1. Miss Photogenic Phillips-Powervision
2. Miss Beautiful Eyes Bausch & Lomb

3. Miss Ten Phillips-Satinelle

4. Miss Catwalk VIP Strolley

5. Miss Beautiful Skin Lakme

6. Miss Talent ITC-Sundrop

7. Miss Beautiful Hair Sunsilk

8. Miss Congeniality East-West Airlines
9. Miss Beautiful Smile Close Up

What was initially backed by indigenous corporate patronage (Femina,
Lakme and Bollywood) has boomed into a full-fledged multinational enterprise.
State sponsorship has significantly increased alongside aggressive corporate
investment and media coverage. The increase in the number and variety of
multinational capital has diversified state, corporate and media interest and
involvement. So, for example, along with Doordarshan coverage there is Star or

Zee channel.’

 

9Doordarshan is the state-sponsored national TV station. Doordarshan was
started in the early 19703 and until recently had a complete monopoly. Star and
Zee Channels are private TV stations that started Operations in the early 19903.
Star Channel is owned by the US. media baron Rupert Murdoch, the owner of

107

Regional contest winners then make it to the national round--Femina Miss
India--which is held in Bombay. Femina Miss India is the stepping stone to the
international circuit (such as the international titles like Miss Universe and Miss
World and international modelling agencies in the U.K. and US); domestic
modelling and designing careers; and/or the film industry. At the Femina Miss
India contest, there are three kinds of winners set up in a hierarchy. (1) Miss
Femina India-I: the woman who comes in first and is the chosen Indian
candidate for the Miss Universe contest. Up front she wins 1 lakh in cash, a
colour TV, an air conditioner, a designer wardrobe and other prizes. The Miss
Universe contest is a US. based company--the most prestigious of all contests.
(2) Miss Femina India-II: who comes in second but is the chosen Indian
candidate for Miss World. Miss World is a company based in the U.K. (3) Miss
Femina India-III: the woman who comes in third is the chosen Indian candidate
for the Miss Asia-Pacific contest. This category is less prestigious and lucrative.
The winner in this category receives almost the same prizes but the cash amount
is halved (Honawar, 1995:16). Businesses involved at the national level include
Proctor & Gamble, Ford, L’oreal, Revlon, Yardley, Benckiser, Pepsi Foods
Limited, Coke, Kawasaki, Godrej, Cinthol, Garden, Kelvinator, Colgate-
Palmolive, Prestige and various airline companies.

The official reception ceremony held for Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya
Rai was attended by the Indian President, the Prime Minister and the powerful

wife (Sonia Gandhi) of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. This is a

 

the Fox Channel in the US. and several TV stations in Asia, Australia and the
U.K. Zee Channel is owned by Indian entrepreneurs based in Mumbai.

108

remarkable consequence of explicit state sponsorship and aggressive Indian
capital. A powerful nexus of image-producers of the new India and new Indians
(specifically Indian women hailed as India’s latest ambassadors), big business
and MNCs dominate the ideological, economic and political imaginary of middle
to upper-class urban India. Alliances between corporate patrons, state-controlled
investments and the media provide a strong interlinked infrastructure. This nexus
has allowed for the unusual transformation of a once small-time, primarily local
(although lucrative) business to a major national passion and postnational
enterprise. Indian feminist, Madhu Kishwar, points out that "up until the 19703,
beauty contests used to be peripheral affairs, only covered by specialized
women’s magazines such as Femina and Eve’s Weekly" (Kishwar, 1995:9).
Beauty contests now are "topic[s] of animated discussion in middle class homes"
and have "acquired a prominence in our social life totally out of proportion to
their significance" (Kishwar, 1995:9). Corporate and governmental sponsorship
have simultaneously influenced high media coverage (TV and front page
coverage in high status national newspapers and magazines). Further, Kishwar
notes that this national passion has "proliferated in thousands of women’s
colleges and in hundreds of local clubs and hotels" (Kishwar, 1995:10). This
increased interest, she points out, is also engulfing non-elite women’s
institutions. As an activist and Marxist in the 19603 and 19703 in Miranda
House,lo Kishwar says that beauty contests were pet projects of elite women.
Kishwar actively opposed beauty contests and, as the President of the Student

Union, managed to ban them. At the time, Kishwar felt this ban was a victory

 

l°A women’s college in New Delhi.

109

against the pro—elite, western, and English-speaking (with the right accent)
bourgeois culture.

The victory was short-lived and seemed hollow when there was a "shift in
power from the English Department to the non-elite departments like Hindi and
Sanskrit" and the new college principal brought in a repressive and religiously
chauvinistic culture that "advocated oppressive norms for women in the name of
protecting Indian culture (Bhartiya Sanskriti). " This change in power, Kishwar
notes, has led her to rethink her politics of "fornring campaigns against beauty-
contests" --since opposing the "pro-western and elite" faction has allowed for the
possibility of another unacceptable outcome--"a repressive Victorianism in an
Indian garb" (Kishwar, 1995:15).

Although Madhu Kishwar raises important points regarding the
objectification and commodification of women’s physical attributes and reveals
her caution regarding outright campaigning against these events, she does not
make enough connections between the two forms of hetero-patriarchies. Why
does one group of loyalists feel it is progressive and liberating for women? And
why does another feel it is shameful and evil? Or why do some feel it is

"1’ have

objectifying and demeaning? Kishwar also points out that now "bhenjis
beauty contests.
Making it to the top three of the Miss Femina India opens the door to

transnational funds, celebrity, media coverage and diasporic commodification.

 

"Bhenji literally means sister, but is sometimes used derogatorily to mean an
unsophisticated urban woman who does not have the right English accent or who
went to a school where the first language was not Hindi. Another term used in
the same way as bhenji is "vemac"--meaning one who primarily speaks
vernacular languages.

110

For example, Miss Universe Sushmita Sen, was the star spokesperson for the
New York Independence Day Parade. With a breathless voice and tears
streaming down her face, Sushmita Sen proclaimed "I love you!" to the New
York crowd full of her non resident brothers and sisters whose hearts are always
with India. Sushmita Sen was even accompanied by the Indian Ambassador to
the United States.

Crucial players on stage are politicians, the cricket industry and of course
Bollywood. For example, Sushmita Sen was the special guest and Mistress of
Ceremonies at the 1995 World Cup Cricket Match held at Eden Gardens,
Calcutta. Also, after winning the Miss Universe/World titles, Sushmita Sen
became the spokesperson for Coke, and Aishwarya Rai became the spokesperson
for Pepsi, following only in the footsteps of cricket stars like Sachin Tendulkar,
Kambli and Kapil Dev. Arjun Appadurai has traced the decolonization and
spectacularization of Indian cricket and its stars (Appadurai, 1996:89-113).
According to Appadurai, the initial " Victorian moral integument" intended for
the "moral disciplining of the Orientals" has through a series of indigenous
sponsors (native princes, corporate and state patronage, vernacular print, and the
media) become both a masculinist nationalist and postnationalist (nationalism
after independence) enterprise (Appadurai, 1996:107). I find the bond between
the beauty and cricket industries compelling, especially since this relationship
exists at a time when the Indian market is becoming saturated by the "aggressive
mood of Indian capitalists." In the 19903, both projects (the cricket and beauty
industry) are recruiting from communities relatively diverse across class, ethnic

and linguistic lines- marking itself as a project of equal opportunity.

111

Just as cricket is "quintessentially [a] masculine activity encoding virile
nationalism, sportsmanship and unquestioned loyalty" (Appadurai, 1996:108),
our beauty queens are postnationalist India’s ambassadors who embody the
essence of the contemporary Indian woman. Says Sushmita Sen, "the origin of
the child is the mother, and is a woman. A woman is one who shows a man
what love and sharing and caring is all about. That is the essence of a woman."12
The beauty industry produces the new Indian woman who is marked by a
sex/ gender hierarchy and who is loyal to her nation, community service and
essence. However, the main purpose of being a "metacommodity" like her
cricket male counterpart, is that she is available to promote hetero-patriarchal
ideology, economy, and infrastructure through herself and her ancillary
industries (such as Coke, Tips and Toes nail polish, Fair and Lovely Bleach,
India, and so on). Finally, just as Bombay "was the birthplace of cricket for
Indians and still retains a preeminent place in Indian cricket culture" so does its
counterpart--Miss Femina India. One can’t help but notice the underlying perfect
heterosexual match--the "virulent nationalist" and the "postnationalist beauty
ambassador" -who await transnational bliss.

Some business watchers in India have suggested that the expansion of the
Indian advertising industry in order to keep up with neighbouring Asian
countries and to attract MNCs has led to the media-publicity escalation. The
efforts to present India as a profitable third world launch pad for international

capital is fundamentally connected to its symbol--Indian women.

 

l2Sushmita Sen’s answer to the question asked during the final round of the
Miss Universe Contest. The question was, what does it mean to be a
contemporary Indian woman?

112

Under the political and cultural discourse of economic liberalization lies a
discourse of essences--the essence of a postnational India represented by Indian
womanhood--of the urban middle- to upper-class kind. She now symbolizes
liberation, awakening and worldly sophistication. Just as Indian raw materials,
know-how and labour are cheap and efficient for Microsoft or K-Mart, the
modelling-advertising crews are crucial in pushing products, images and
categories for companies inside and outside India, in the South and especially
among the diasporic communities in Europe and North America.

The Indian women (models) pride themselves on having that international
look. Increasingly, women with the much coveted international look (adaptable
to populations in Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Asia) are discovered in
pageants held in third World and/or nonwestern locations. The international look
is part of the shifting terrain that is increasingly defining dominant
representations of gender and sexuality. The average height for Indian women
(according to the national census) is around 4’ 10" to 5’ 4". Models who signal
the coming of the new Indian woman usually start at 5’ 8". In terms of height
and weight, she is to match her comrades in the United States or Europe. The
weight loss industry has also become big business in contemporary India.
Exclusive fat-farms (more marketable if all natural) with long waiting lists cater
to the upper- and middle-class, despite the fact that there have been lawsuits
against them. For the mid- to lower-middle classes there are some affordable
options: body wraps, the ever affordable fasts, weight loss clinics, gyms with
body vibrators from the 19503, and the yoga industry. Her body is hair-free

(specifically, legs, arms and face) and she is expected to have long hair with

113

minimal curl. Should there be unacceptable curls she can always fall back on the
growing hair-straightening industry. Dark Dravidian or adivasi looking" women
need not apply either. The fairer you are the better-~which is why there is Fair
and Lovely a natural lotion to bleach your skin in case one gets burnt with
"unnatural" salon bleaches. Increasingly, representations in popular culture (e. g.,
television, movies, advertisements, etc.) employ internalized racist-imperialist
imaginary to construct the fair, enlightened and worldly self (dominator) and the
dark, parochial, and tribal other (subjugated).

For those serious about modelling careers as well as back-up career
prospects in multinational India, multinational capital has found the answer for
the upper-class. Barbizon-India. Barbizon is the U.S.-based chain of modelling
schools that has branches world-wide in about 200 countries. The New Delhi
branch boasts of its political correctness and equal opportunity policies. Barbizon
"accepts students regardless of height, weight, bone structure-and age." In fact
the youngest successful applicant is five years old. Barbizon prepares young
women not just to be models but to combine their training in looking and acting
like the new woman in back-up careers after marriage such as being interior
designers, boutique-owners, sculptors and beauticians. The men too supposedly
get trained in back-up careers of being bank executives and sales managers. The
Vice-President of Barbizon, Jyotika Jhalani (an ex-model) claims: "everyone has
the right to look like a model, if not actually be one. If a 4’ 2" girl walked in, I

wouldn’t turn her down" (Sen, 1995:3).

 

13‘Dravidians and Adivasis are usually equated with the indigenous and tribal
peoples of India. It is a33umed by many that Dravidians and Adivasis are much
darker than the average Indian.

114

There are two reasons Barbizon claims that an applicant would be turned
down. First, if she cannot meet the costs. The 72-hour "Female Modelling
Course" costs approximately Rs. 27,000 (approximately $800) and 45-hour
"Male Modelling Course" costs about Rs. 15,000 (approximately $450). The
second reason an applicant gets rejected is if she/he can’t speak English. "How
do you translate ‘tuxedo’ into Hindi?" explains a successful applicant. The
owners of Barbizon not only want their students to be linguistically comfortable
but to get rid of their supposedly outdated notions of gender activities. "Sissy
stuff" like manicures, hand care and "sashay walking" are to be learned and
valued. In a review of Barbizon, the reviewer notes that even though Barbizon
has pink and purple balloons and streamers at its inauguration party - the
"official colours of the gay and lesbian movement in America" --"nobody seems
to worry too much about sending out the wrong message. There’s a certain
innocence about that" (Sen, 1995:3). Read: India and Indians are essentially
heterosexual and know their genders despite exposures to the really horrendous
Western practices and movements-—namely, the colours associated with gay and
lesbian struggles in the United States. The reviewer of Barbizon informs
Business Standard readers that the 19903 is "the post Sen-Rai era" and "the Age
of Anorexia’ where " the key to feeling good about yourself is to work from the
outside in" and most importantly, "the Indian psyche is open to the great
American dream" (Sen, 1995:4).

Pageants that were exclusively held in New York or London with a
metropole audience in mind are now being produced in Manila (Philippines) and

Sun City (South Africa) which get broadcast to most ”democratic-third world

115

nations" (India Today, 1995:1). Loyalists of the mainstream Indian media
industry claim that increasingly the top-ten finalists are nonwhite and/or non-
western and belong to countries that are liberalized, thereby suggesting that only
liberalized countries could produce liberated women, and that beauty queens are

liberated women.

The Beauty and the Batsman

I was intimidated by Vinni. Especially Vinni and Malini combined. When they
joined their forces it was usually for one reason. Boys. Older boys. Vinni was a
‘prefect ’ in class twelve and my neighbour. She had long and straight hair, only
to be washed by Sunsilk or Flex Shampoo from abroad. Her dream was to be a
model. She probably could have been one because she had a really thin body. I
first met Vinni and Malini when I was 10 years old.

Vinni was also called Rainbow by the boys at LaMartiniere.” The local story
was that every day of the week Vinni would find and dump a new boy. Vinni and
Malini were two girls that I knew who were extremely confident around boys.
Although they were two years older than me I was always self conscious around
them. Perhaps it was because they insisted that they shocked me with all the
things they did with the boys. Their stories really did not have much shock value
because I knew girls who were getting abortions, and girls who liked girls.

Almost every day I would get to meet Vinni and Malini ’s boyfiiends. This was
when they came over to play badminton in the evenings. Afier carqitl research
and measuring, our garden was marked with chalk to make a badminton court.
My father had also installed some lights so that we could play badminton into
the evening. The garden was oflen used as a cricket pitch, depending on the
cricket season. I loved badminton and cricket. It was my dream to play for a
national team. I could beat any boy at badminton; at cricket I was average.
Every month, on a weekend (usually Saturday and Sunday) Sanjay the oldest boy
and his side kicks would organize either a cricket match or Badminton match. It
would be girls versus the boys. If it was badminton the match was close. Girls
usually lost in cricket. Vinni would enjoy getting bowled out usually on the first
ball. But Malini would put up a good fight. Meera, another girl in the
neighbourhood, was our best player. She was a great batter and bowler. Vinni
and Malini didn ’t particularly care for Meera--namely for two reasons. One,
Meera knew lots of interesting boys who weren ’t friends with Vinni and Malini.
And two, according to them, Meera had "big hips and fat thighs. "Just knowing

 

1"A Calcutta high school.
1 l6

this would freeze me up during a cricket match. It meant I had to move more
cautiously with my body. Vinni and Malini liked me and so they would often say
"you have such a pretty face. . . . ijyou lost only 5 kgs more you would be
stunning. " When I froze during fielding, I knew the cricket captains were
rethinking their decision of selecting me.

Once a month we had yet another grand contest. This contest was organized by
Vinni and Malini. Vinni and Malini would round up all the girls and boys from
Class 6 to Class 10. This was the grand beauty contest. The boys were in charge
of music and lights. The girls would have to dress in saris, skirts, shorts and
sometimes in swimming costumes. They would get on stage and walk in a
peculiar way--the way Vinni instructed them. At first I was forced to wear a sari-
but I protested and whined so much that they let me handle the lights. There
was something about wearing a sari that frightened me. You know I thought
about this later on in life and I think this was because wearing a sari meant
losing control or power even if it meant gaining the kind of power that Vinni and
Malini had over boys.
It was 5:30 p. m. already. Vinni was getting ready for the finale, her favourite
American song "Popcorn " was selected for the turntable. There was a knock at
the front door. It was my cousin. Luckily, I was summoned for my daily
badminton game.

(Conversation with Vilasini, a friend from high school.)

Old Patriarchies and New Patriarchies

What is the connection between liberalized India and liberated Indian Women?
What do liberalized and liberated mean in contemporary India? How do the
practices of nation-making interlock with the making and remaking of Indian
women? I began exploring some of these questions through a reading of one of
Partha Chatterjee’s essays. In it, Chatterjee suggests that the framework of
Indian nationalist thought was such that it resolved the issue of what was
referred to as the " woman question" in "complete accordance with its preferred
goals" (Chatterjee, 1989:237).

Nationalist cultural politics of the early- to mid-18003, such as the Bengal

117

Renaissance, was characterized by the impulse of social reform. Social reform
included the practice of either identifying or inventing what was Indian tradition,
and what about this invented past was glorious or embarrassing. The reforming
of unenlightened practices (which were practices usually oppressive to women,
stigmatized castes and the economically marginalized) also meant for nationalists
and social reformers the following: (1) the colonial civilizing mission should no
longer run their affairs, especially their women; and (2) an independent and self-
sufficient nation needs to take care of its women since strong (physically and
mentally) women/mothers produce strong sons and mothers for the new nation.
The premise and claim of British colonial rule in India, and its corollary that
Indian Swaraj (self-rule) was unimaginable and impossible, was that they (the
British) were a " force of liberation in India, especially for [Indian] women."
(Liddle and Joshi, 1986:24) The colonial position that they were the true
knowers, facilitators and architects of the fruits of the Enlightenment tradition in
India was contradictory on many fronts. Other than the obvious fact that the
British ruled over Indian subjects and reaped economic, political and cultural
capital, the inconsistent (although far from unanimous) policy of the protection
of "brown women from brown men" has been pointed out by Rama Joshi and
Joanna Liddle. While, on the one hand, the British claimed that they wanted to
ban the practice of Sati (widow burning), on the other hand they eroded certain
matrilineal traditions among the Nayars of Kerala. In 1896, sambandhams
(relationships) between women and men that involved sexual relations and
children were required to be defined as a monogamous marriage, where the wife

and children became properties of the husband. Fathers and husbands among the

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Nayars now gained rights to inherit the Nayar women’s properties.

At this juncture in Indian history too "...the fate of the woman and the
fate of the nation become inextricably intertwined" (Mani, 1989:113). In her
analysis of the indigenous and colonialist (both progressive and conservative)
discourses on Sati, Lata Mani points out that "women are neither subjects or
objects, but rather the ground of the discourse on Sati" (Mani, 1989:113).
Furthermore, she maintains, for the parties involved in the 19th century debates,
women represented either "embarrassment or potential," or "both shame and
promise." Such discursive constructions of womanhood were litmus tests to
prove who could really take care of and protect India.

The woman question evolved within this context for nationalists and
social reformers in the early to middle period of the 18003. Social reform issues
particular to Indian women included: sati, legalizing widow remarriage,
abolishing Kulin” polygamy, women’s education, reforming marriage laws, and
raising the age of consent for girls. Although some women, especially middle- to
upper—class and upper-caste women, may have benefitted to a certain extent by
these reforms, by the end of the 1800s it was assumed by the nationalists that
the woman question had been resolved. As far as the nationalists were
concerned, it had been resolved as a social issue and now it was time to
concentrate solely on hard-core political issues. This dichotomization, Chatterjee
suggests, was a fundamental characteristic of Indian nationalist thinking, in
which cultural reality was organized into two distinct spheres of the material and

spiritual.

 

lsPolygamy practiced by Brahmans in West Bengal.
1 l9

The material domain is dominated by the claims of western civilization,
science, technology, rationality, forms of economic and political organization
and modern methods of statecraft. The spiritual domain housed the true identity
or essence of people. This was where the East was morally superior and
developed in relation to the ethically-depleted West, but had to selectively
master Western material dominance. This dualism parallels anti feminist thought
that dichotomizes the political-economic from the social-cultural or the public
from the private or, for that matter, the personal from the political. The material-
spiritual dichotomy, Chatterjee suggests, is quite analogous to other dualisms
such as the outer and inner and the world and home. The outer employed the
imaginary of being outside, on the surface and being influenced by external
phenomena, whereas the inner was inside, true and virtually unaffected by
external influences. The world (bahir) was the cut-throat, treacherous,
competitive realm of men and the home (ghar) was represented by, built by and
maintained by women.

Therefore, superior material reality (Western) had colonized and
subjugated the inferior material reality (Indian). Within the nationalist logic,
social reforms had only strengthened the already distinctive Indian essence and
inner self. This essence was to be protected against imperialist annihilation--it
was the source of superior spiritual strength and cultural tradition defined within
the logic of nationalist discourse. The inner sanctum was to be protected from
western contamination and the outer sphere, or the battleground of direct
confrontation, was to selectively imitate and learn from the West. When

nationalists and social reformers introduced the woman question national women

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gradually began entering certain arenas of the debates and activism. Kumari
Jayawardana (1986:90) has noted that of the many "women activists and
pioneers in the 19th century and early 20th century, the majority [were] linked
by birth or marriage to social reformers and nationalists."

Nationalist women’s activities included addressing issues pertaining to
women’s education and medical training.“ Social work activity, such as sewing
and first aid classes, also provided avenues for mobility outside the home.
Women activists and nationalists were involved in addressing issues pertaining to
widow remarriage and helping political prisoners and trade unionists-- all of
which were tied in a complex web of anti-colonialist and social reform activities.
By the early 19003, women were not only members in anti-imperialist
organizations but also in bodies that were solely under their control. For
example: the All India Conference for Educational Reform17 (1927) concentrated
on reforming women’s access to education and marriage laws, making education
compulsory for women, abolishing child marriage and raising the legal minimum
age of marriage for women to fourteen.

For some Indian women mobility away from the family was facilitated by
activism in nationalist struggles, social reform projects and growing access to
education and universities. Nationalist women, perceived by nationalist men as

too threatening to local patriarchal practices/institutions, were often subjected to

 

1"For example, Pandita Ramabai (1858~1922) started the Mahila Samaj
(women’s groups) to address these issues. However, her critique of Hinduism
and Hindu scriptures did not make her too popular with the nationalists.

17In 1928, the name changed to All India Women’s Conference. Other
national women’s groups included Women’s India Association (1917) and the
Ladies Congress (1908).

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ridicule and accusations of being loyal to the imperialist agenda. These women
often ended up living in exile (and conducted their anti-imperialist activities
from other countries) or sometimes, like Pandita Ramabai, converted to
Christianity and traveled around the world with their activism.

Nationalist and pioneer women were often lauded for being good
satyagrahis (nonviolent and noncooperative activists following the path of truth)
but were also recruited for violent and ‘militant’ forms of nationalist projects.
Radha Kumar (1993:45) notes that in Bengal, nationalist women got increasingly
involved in "revivalist and extremist elements" of nationalism. Revolutionary
terrorism tapped into two overlapping forms of gendered nationalism: a militant
mother-centered and a goddess-centered nationalism. Mother India (Bharat Mata)
and Mother Goddesses (such as Kali, Durga and Chandi) became intertwined in
meanings, political rhetoric and revolutionary violence. "Kali, who was till then
the goddess of marginal groups such as dacoits, thieves, thugs and, significantly,
prostitutes (themselves symbolic of vagina dentata, or devouring sexuality), was
fore-fronted as a goddess" (Kumar, 1993:45). Revolutionary means and rhetoric
included death (self-inflicted or otherwise) and the "immortalization of death"
for the goal of national liberation.

The idea of Mother India encompassed all forms (violent, nonviolent,
reformist, or extremist) of nationalist imaginary. This was where the fate of the
nation repeatedly interlocked with the fate of Indian women. Mother India
concurrently represented all of the following: a victim/passive object (of the
British to be saved and freed); a fierce warrior-goddess/active subjects and

agents of reform (like Goddess Kali); and a nurturing mother and supportive

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wife. Mahatma Gandhi would refer to Indian women as " [a] repository of
spiritual and moral values, as preceptor for men" (Kumar, 1993:45). And
Sarojini Naidu would put it as -" . .the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"
(Kumar, 1995:46). Sarojini Naidu’s version of Mother India as the inner-
spiritual power of woman-ness and motherhood was supplemented by another
version which claimed that healthy strong mothers produced a healthy race or
nation. The later position also strongly supported the objective of women’s
education which was to produce emotionally and intellectually strong home—
makers, wives, appropriate socializers of children/future capital for the nation.
This was a fundamental avenue for women who were national devotees or
worshippers to contribute to mother-Goddess India. Although respectable
middle-class and elite women were more easily identified with Mother India,
working-class women were given the responsibility to produce healthy workers
for plantations, factories and armies of nation-building men.

According to Radha Kumar (1993:79), under the umbrella of Mother
India, nationalist women glorified and self-represented what was claimed to be
the essence of Indian woman-ness: the self sacrificing Hindu woman (Annie
Besant); the self-sacrificing Indian mother (Sarojini Naidu); the self-sacrificing
peasant woman (Kamaladevi) and the representative of the Hindu race and the
Muslim people (Margaret Cousins).

The iconography of Mother India has also been fodder for other interest
groups. The category of Mother India was and has been utilized by ideologically
varied persons and communities. These communities included nationalist men

and women, social reformers, religious revivalists and imperialist women and

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men. For example, Mrinalini Sinha (1994) has explored the controversy and
polarization generated by Katherine Mayo’s book, Mother India, in 1927. Mayo,
an American writer, utilized the Mother India symbolic to present to the West
the thesis that the complete victimizations of Indian women (by their men) was
adequate proof, basis and justification to reject any Indian nationalist claims for
cultural-economic-political autonomy and "that Britain and America shared a
common imperial responsibility for the people under their dominion" (Sinha,
199429). Responses to Mayo’s book came from both nationalist women and
men in India. Rebuttals usually were parallel attacks on Western ‘sexual
perversions’ or a positive rendering of Indian tradition. But once again Indian
women emerged as the core symbol representing a nation’s potential for freedom
and native self-govemance. Nationalist women like Sarojini Naidu, who seemed
to embody the nationalist ideal of the new woman (or in other words, the carrier
of tradition and an anti-colonial activist) and articulated challenges to Katherine
Mayo’s version of Mother India, were perceived by some nationalist men, as "..
the best unofficial ambassador for India in the US " Although there were some
anti-colonial Indian women (like Uma Nehru) who challenged both Mayo’s
racist-imperialism and indigenous patriarchal practices and the "hypocrisy of
male nationalists who prescribed the ideals of Sita-Sati-Savitri," Mrinalini Sinha
(1994: 13) points out that the polarization caused by the Mother India debates
"served to legitimate the dominant nationalist ideology." Challenging indigenous
patriarchy was often equated with being disloyal to one’s own civilization,
culture, race or nation. By the 19503, Bollywood took on the project of

resurrecting Mother India to new heights by producing the film Mother India in

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1957. Mother India, as personified by actress Nargis, was a projection of
Nehruvian socialism. The failure of Nehru’s postindependence policies and the
promise of postnational global capitalism is embodied and symbolized by
Mother India’s successors--Miss World and Miss Universe.

Scholars of colonial Indian cultural history have described the evolution
of new forms of Indian middle- and upper-class notions of respectable
masculinity and femininity. For example, in Bengal the discourse of the Bengali
babu or bhadralok (the respectable middle-class man) and the bhadramahila
(respectable middle-class woman) was a prescription for the new indigenous
elites and at the same time was ridiculed for imitating English ways of being.
The bhadramahilas could be put in their place by criticisms of being too
leisurely and self-indulgent like the memsahibs or western women. Although the
bhadramahila was allowed some outer activity, she was not to be like her
Western counterpart who valued luxuries and leisure. Rather she was a woman
who staunchly valued her home life. The essence of the bhadramahila or the new
Indian woman during the early part of the 20th century, would not be tainted by
certain outside activities like getting an education as long as she was trained for
a domestic life where she would know modern methods of hygienic and efficient
housekeeping and childrearing. She was still homely, chaste, self-sacrificial,
devoted and loyal to her husband and kin, but she was no longer a victim of
unenlightened patriarchy, like her mother and grandmother. She liked freedom,
as defined by the new forms of patriarchy. In this case freedom meant being
aligned with the ideals of patriarchal—nationalism. The new woman was also

distinguished from single, working class women and sexually aggressive women

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who were often characterized as "coarse, vulgar, loud, quarrelsome, devoid of
moral sense" (Chatterjee, 1989:244). The bhadramahila is marked by appropriate
behaviours, mannerisms, dress-codes, traits and intonations, for example, her
degree of religiosity and/or demeanour around men. These qualities, traits and
conduct marked her essential femininity and spiritual commitments to her kin
and home. With this intact she could step outside the household and attend
school, travel in public and sometimes get employed. "Formal education became
not only acceptable but in fact a requirement for new bhadramahila" (Chatterjee,
1989:246).

Nationalist practice that produced the discourse of the new Indian woman,
of the respectable kind, explicitly distinguished the new Indian woman from less
respectable women such as the following: 1) the earlier generation of native
women, such as her mother and grandmother, who were victims of an
unenlightened patriarchy, 2) lower class or poor native women who were
considered unrefined, coarse, loud, and unladylike, 3) sexually aggressive native
women, and prostitutes, who were morally, emotionally and intellectually
‘debased’ and took freedom too far, and 4) the Western woman, or the ‘grasping
suffragettes’ who represented and loved luxury, leisure and laziness, and who

simply consumed while their men exploited and produced.

Extending the Essence
On the cover of Gentleman, a magazine for the urban middle to upper
class heterosexual man, it says "Are you ready for the New Woman? She is

Single. She earns more than you. She swears. She doesn ’t care for silicon. She

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demands satisfaction. And she doesn ’t give a damn " (Thayil, 1995223). These
claims are explored further with photographs and interviews with the new
women of the liberalized India. The phrase the " new Indian woman" enters the
national vocabulary once again at a time when the nation is undergoing
economic, political and cultural changes.

According to writer Jeet Thayil (1995:23), the new Indian woman, is
nothing like her mother or a sister a man may have grown up with (one would
think the sister too would be like a new woman). She " may or may not be a
feminist but she has no penis envy at all." The new Indian woman is
independent more than ever--" economically, sexually and psychologically" and
even knows it. Most importantly, Thayil maintains, the new Indian woman is
sexually (read heterosexually) aggressive. She does not have to be forced into
arranged marriages any more, she can find men who don’t ask for dowries. She
can smoke and drink in public places and maybe drink in front of her parents.
"She uses four-letter words. She likes frank talk about sex. She is aggressive,
ribald and cocky" (Thayil, 1995:24). In other words, Thayil says, the new
woman of the 19903 is in control of her body, mind, thoughts, desires and, her
career and her sexual activities.

Thayil attempts to prove his point through interviews. There is Chandini
Sehgal, MTV’s new CEO, who declares, "women have a great scene going in
this country. The status of women in India is far higher than most other
countries with similar socioeconomic conditions" (Thayil, 1995:26).However,
Sehgal claims, the rural women of India are "far more liberated. They don’t

have any conditioning." Kamal Siddhu, a V-Jay (Video Jockey) for television,

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hosts the "1995 Gladrags Manhunt Contest" and says "a good man is hard to
find, but a hard man is ...good." Magazines like Gladrags, Savvy, Society and
Femina cater to the cosmopolitan woman, and these magazines sponsor the
nation’s major beauty contests. For example, Miss Femina-India launches
national and international careers for the new women. Before going to interview
Farzana Versey, a self-identified feminist, Thayil wonders whether this "proud
feminist" who may very well "hate all men," would be a "leather-clad
dominatrix deriving pleasure from pain, self-inflicted or otherwise." Or a "bitch-
goddess, siren, witch" or a "coquette, femme fatale, muse." Or, he wonders, was
she a stereotypical feminist type--all "scruffy and hostile." But he was relieved
to find that Versey "was extremely well turned out, perfectly dressed and
coiffed" (Thayil, 1995:32). Versey "enjoyed looking feminine...andbeing a
woman." In fact she claimed that she did not fit into the stereotypical Indian
feminist look of having "dirty finger nails" and "coarse saris," a stereotype I
hadn’t heard of before. Not only did she enjoy looking like a real woman but
she got a "thrill" and lots of "pleasure" when she menstruated. Menstruating was,
after all, "an assertion of my womanhood." There’s more. Versey defines her
feminism. She is quoted as saying that women’s "public postures" need not
coincide with their "private practices." In other words, women should have the
"choice" of being publicly feminist, i.e.,challenging male chauvinism or "Male
Chauvinist Pigs (MCPs)," but should be able to change their minds privately. So,
on one day a woman can challenge MCP behavior and on another she should be
entitled to the joys of a man opening doors for her. Another woman, Rehmat

Jamal Muthana, who is married and has children, says, "marriage stinks!" and

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that "it is not your duty to have orgasms." Muthana is all for love marriages
where men and women are friends and partners and "nonmonogamous"(Thayil,
1995:41).

Thayil’s article proceeds with more interviews with more women between
the ages of 21 to 35 who are fashion designers and models, both unmarried and
married. For all, especially if married, "work comes before everything except
family and God." Some women would prefer living with a man before marriage
but would prefer it if their man made just a little more money than they did,
since "Indian MCPs are so insecure." Ritu Beri says that she wouldn’t respect
her man if he was insecure about such things because she is "willingly looking
for a submissive role" (Thayil, 1995:41).

Although it was not his intention, Thayil’s article pointed out to me the
various levels of co—optation, resistance and complicity in which some women
engage. Thayil’s article is, one the one hand, reactionary and misogynist and, on
the other hand, reveals the assimilation of women with significant class
privilege. Most are upper-class women, all are from major urban centers (like
Delhi or Bombay) and all are espousing some form of normative heterosexual
freedom. By some form I mean that either they were married or had boyfi'iends
or believe that having a husband or boyfriend was a key goal in life
(monogamous or otherwise). The forms of normative heterosexual identity
included only wanting a love marriage or only wanting an arranged marriage.

Thayil’s misogyny is quite explicit in his inventions and fantasies of the
dominatrix feminist or the sexually aggressive single woman--as well as in the

kinds of women he chooses to interview. Having competitive and well-paying

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jobs in the corporate sector may very well be progress and upward mobility for
women in a male-dominated capitalist system. Other gains that certain segments
of women may have won include having a choice to work outside the home as
well; the possibility of smoking and drinking in public or in front of parents and
relatives; openly challenging MCP behaviour (but not too far); challenging
sexual duties to husbands and openly valourizing the pleasures of (hetero)sexual
practices. These segments of women include middle- and upper-class, upper-
caste, formally educated and urban women. Women publicly talking about their
sexual practices and preferences (with friends, lovers or in the media), who they
want to marry or why "marriage stinks" are in themselves a definite shift from
the repressive urban upper— and middle-class culture that existed twenty years
ago. But this discourse is still dominated by the hegemony of natural duty--‘this
(marriage) is way things have always been,’ ‘what’s wrong with it (marriage)?,’
‘the whole world and all of India does it,’ ‘this is your duty as a daughter,
Indian, woman and human being,’ - towards marriage and compulsory
heterosexuality. And this hegemony extends and carries with it the earlier
version of dominant nationalist respectable womanhood and cultural identity. In
this case one could say the new woman of the 1990s or the "new New woman"

is the same old "new woman" (of early part of the 20th century).

Conclusion
In this chapter I have sought to describe the multiple modes in which the
language of essences is deployed historically, structurally and through lived

experiences. Public debate over what it means to be essentially an Indian, a new

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Indian woman, decolonized or liberalized, occurs on the bodies and psyches of
women. Women are the grounds on which such meanings are contested.
Although Indian women can access more spaces (such as spaces that are no
longer sex-segregated by patriarchy), many of the sex-integrated spaces are
possibilities only through her loyalty to compulsory heterosexuality. Normative
heterosexuality and compulsory marriage are fixed features in the discourse of
shifting essences. The daily oppressive reminders of marriage that an unmarried
woman is subjected to, along with the rituals of gendering (such as weight
maintenance), racialization (applying skin bleaches) and class-ing (such as lower
class women are ‘trashy’ and do not practice respectable sexuality), deeply
intersect with the high-visibility theater of the beauty contests and popular
misogynist writings. These different spaces inform one another and inscribe
women’s lives. However, through multiple modes of resistance, cooptation and

complicity, women make and unmake their realities.

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Chapter Five

DUTY, TRADITION OR CHOICE?
Stories of Cooptation and Resistance

This chapter includes a collection of life stories. These stories are
described through conversations with women who are my acquaintances and
fiiends. These stories embody the themes discussed in the previous chapter. The
dialogues are explorations into women’s resistance, cooptation and acceptance of
dominant ideologies of respectability and duty within the hegemony of marriage
and respectable sexuality. These narratives come from women who are married,
divorced, want to be married, who are ambivalent about marriage and their
unmarried status, conflicted about their desires for autonomy, and finally those
who are unequivocal marriage-resisters. The 19803 and 19903 have allowed
some segments of the population of women relatively more possibilities to work
within the grid of the marriage economy. The older dichotomy of arranged
versus love marriage, which presupposed stricter sex segregation, is now more
blurred. Love, arranged or some permutation comfortably co-exist and are very
much fashionably normative. Love marriage in some circles is considered more
fashionable and modern. Nevertheless the possibility of love marriage is seen by
many heterosexual women as the flowering of more choice for Indian women.

The narratives of duty resonate strongly in my life and in the lives of
many of my peers. Not only is it one’s moral duty and obligation to get married,
but being unmarried proves to be an obstacle in the paths of other people’s duty.

And if another person’s duty is being obstructed, yet another connected person’s

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(usually other blood kin) duty doing is also blocked--a chain reaction of sorts. A
domino effect of duty, if you will. For example, when I did not fulfill my duty
to get married, I was told by a very hurt and worried father that he was also not
properly fulfilling his duty as a conscientious father. As a man who has done
most of his duties as a Hindu man (as a child, son, brother, husband and
householder) he had failed as a father. Furthermore, he revealed that he was
being criticized by other kin, such as my grandmother, for being a bad father.
He had failed in his duty of raising me correctly. His unmarried daughter was
living proof.

As a woman, one is expected to fulfil, above all, one’s duty in life: to be
a good daughter, wife and mother. This is the usual (dominant) understanding of
the essence of a woman or being a woman. Being a good daughter means
fulfilling your parents’ wishes--one acts, behaves, looks and does as they wish or
inscribe for you. Fundamental to this grooming and training is the ultimate goal
in life: settling down or marriage. Even unmarried beauty queens have similar
expectations placed upon them. However, after marriage they usually lose the
iconic status they once enjoyed. The dominant understanding is that it is your
duty to marry and it is the rite of passage from official childhood to official
womanhood. It’s when a girl (ladki, penne, mai) can be called a lady/woman
(aurat, mahila, stree). It is when alliances (political, economic or cultural) can be
made between and across families, class and caste. It is the primary identity a
woman can have (e. g., from daughter to wife, and ultimately mother). With the
new woman who has ‘more sexual choice’--the discourse explicitly may be not

of one’s duty, but it is still the dominant normal thing to do. The discourse

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today justifies marriage as: everybody needs companionship so we need to get
married. This minimal shift on the emphasis from duty to need internalizes the
practice of marriage even further within women’s psyches. Although the slight
shift signifies real change (a modernizing effect) in legitimations and

punishments, this shift is far from absolute.

A. Dutiful Fathers and Dutiful Daughters

Ujjwalla; Deeember 1993

I was over at Ujjwalla’s parent’s place for dinner. In high school I had felt
special for being included in a group of girls who were two grades older than
me. The group comprised of Ujjwalla, Dipali, Linda, Esther, Roshni (all senior
to me) and myself. Ujjwalla is also a family friend. She comes from an upper-
middle class Konkan an ethnic and linguistic group from southern Indian family.
When I told her that I was doing some dissertation research, she felt
uncomfortable. She said that "if any of our conversations have been helpful, use
it responsibly, but I don’t want to answer any specific questions related to what
you are researching. All that stuff sounds scary; ask Sonia or Malini, they will
be willing to talk about all this stuff about Indian women. They are always
running around being interviewed by people about their lives. Besides I haven’t
seen you in years--can you stop analyzing my life as an Indian woman and talk
about what you have been up to?" A year later, Ujjwalla and her husband,
Ramesh, appeared on the cover of Business India- as representatives of the new
Indian middle-class. Inside there were photographs and interviews about their

life as a middle-class Indian married couple.

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Ujjwala:

"I’ve always defied my father-~usually unintentionally. Nanda, my elder sister
has always been Papa ’s pet. She always did what he told her to and, when she
didn ’t, she never got caught! She always got decent marks in school, went into
science, didn ’t smoke or drink, at least in front of him. She only drank some
brandy that he may have given her for a cold. I know she used to drink at school
parties and also have boyfriends. Papa let Nanda have boyfriends though. But
when the time came to settle down, Nanda said OK to an arranged marriage.
She was not with a boy then and that was the time to get married. Papa found
someone from a similar background, but. who was progressive. They both want to
study medicine. Sumangala, my younger sister, always got away with everything.
We (Nanda and I) fought for everything and Papa was trained, or maybe he had
given up, by that time. I was stuck in the middle. I was always a tom-boy, didn ’t
go for the sciences and did average in studies. Usually if a girl does not do well
in her studies, she is expected to marry soon. I’m not sure what Papa thought. I
wasn ’t the typical Kannada [ethnic and linguistic group] girl. I was tomboyish,
never wore saris or skirts, never dressed up, never acted coy around boys or
men. I think he was generally worried about me and expected the worst. Well, I
finally ended up falling madly in love and marrying. Papa is fine about this. I ’ve
finally done something that Papa is comfortable with. I mean he was concerned
about Ramesh and his family, but now he has seen us both together and met his
family and is more at ease. The fact that we both have jobs in the same company
(United Breweries) and have settled down in the same city has made him very
happy. I was worried about not changing my name when Ramesh and I got

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married. In my gut I wanted to have the same name. ..itseemed strange that I
had to take another name afier being married...itfelt alien...but I [mow Papa
would be unhappy about this. . .also,some friends who feel that they are feminists
were challenging me about this. They felt that I was succumbing to male
chauvinistic practices if I took my husband ’s last name. Maybe I should have got
a hyphenated last name. Ramesh is very understanding about all this. He doesn ’t
mind either way. Ultimately I changed it to Ramesh ’s name. I don ’t like labels
like "feminist" and so on. Why should I? We are all humans and I think we all
should be treated and treat others equally with respect. But I think there are
some compromises everyone should make and some duties we should fulfil in life.
It ’s fitnny how things worked out for the three of us. Nanda, Papa ’s

favourite, decided to go for the arranged marriage with Ashok. She went for
medicine--and so did Ashok. Papa wanted all these things for her--but never
forced her. With me, he never expected me to achieve what Nanda has done! He
expected the worst, and all he wanted from me was to not smoke. But I ended up
getting a job at Apple and marrying the man I fell in love with. Papa and
Ramesh really get along. Gala is the only one who had so many boyfiiends! And
she doesn ’t hide much with Papa at all! She is the baby of the family and the
spoiled one! Gala too will go into medicine--that Papa is really happy about.
Now I just have to worry about not getting fat! "

“Do people ask about when you will have children? ” I ask.

"Oh, not you too. Ramesh and I are not ready for it. Besides I don ’t feel

any urge to have them. It ’s OK if you or Sonia aren ’t married. Although I ’m

sure your parents are worried about what will happen when they die. In a way I

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feel like I helped Papa with completing his duties as a father...I am
settled. . .witha job and a husband. He can live his life a little more peacefully.
He only now has Sumangala to worry about. . .but she has a boyfriend so he

won ’t have to arrange a marriage for her. "

B. Be All That You Can Be

Resebed, Degmber 1993

Rosebud and I were having breakfast at Tripthi’s, a South Indian restaurant in
South Calcutta. We had met after almost ten years. One of the first things we
tried to find out is if the other is married. The usual question by most married
women acquaintances or old friends is something like: "So what are you doing
nowadays? " and when I answer by informing them about my dissertation, the
question is re-asked, "no, what are you doing now?" I’ve learned that I am really
being asked "are you married?" or "do you have a husband and children?" When
I decided to double check, I thought I would ask them, "what have you been
doing?" It was confirmed. " Well, I am married and all..." whether or not they
work for pay outside the home or are in universities or are getting some
technical training. It seems to me that a woman’s central point of reference,
explicitly or otherwise, is whether or not she is married. Rosebud informed me
that she was studying educational psychology and was pleasantly surprised to
hear that I was studying cultural anthropology since I was one of those maths--
science types in high school. Three years after our meeting I heard from a

common high school friend that Rosebud had “settled down ‘in Bombay.’

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Rosebud:

"I think I am spiritual, not necessarily religious. Religion has contributed in my
life to see the good in people--but I am not a practicing Jew. I pray once in a
while. Our family was more egalitarian compared to other traditional Indian
families. We did not [mow many Jews. My father would cook, which was very
unusual in a middle-class family. They encouraged me to be independent. By the
time I was 22 years old my parents told me to start thinking of marriage. My
parents sent me a letter with a proposal when I was away at college in Bombay.
They didn ’t push like most parents. They insisted that I should get to know the
boy and only marry after I got a BA. When I turned 23, they urged me a little
more. But then I said I needed to finish my M.A. But you know it’s good to be
thinking about marriage. And you need to be sure about yourself and ready for
marriage. You need to also know what you are about and what you want to do in
life. Marriage is like a negotiation, an intense relationship with you and your
partner within the oldest societal system. I know I want marriage and especially
children--but education has given me security, goals and more of an identity.
Education has given me maturity, a personhood. I feel less confitsed like a
teenager. At the same time I feel guilty about giving my parents worry-J worry
about giving my parents anxiety. When you are unmarried you always have your
parents, emotionally and financially, they will always be there for you. Afier they
are gone who will be there? My friends will have their families and they will
have the companionship and support that I won ’t have. I blame myself for taking
so long to decide. As I get older I realize that this would be what would give my

parents security. It is also one of my goals in life, just like getting an education

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(a BA. or M.A.) and being independent, like I was encouraged to by my parents.
As a Jew I dreaded going to Catholic schools. But Sister Aluigi at Loretta
was the greatest influence in my life. She really encouraged me in my writing.
But Loretto was also the place that enforced a lot of information about
values....mainly Catholic values. How to be ladies. The whole training was how
to be ladylike. I remember sportsday or maybe it was Independence Day
practice--when Sister Monica suggested that I wax my legs so that I could look
more like a lady! I was so ashamed. But I started waxing my legs and now I
shave them. My mother never really encouraged it but now it ’s more like a
hygiene thing-J hate seeing all that hair on my legs and arms.
My parents encouraged me to be anything that I wanted to be, but in school I
was always told science is not for you, which meant I was not a good student. It
was such a stigma not to be in science and maths. All the girls who were in
upper Science and Maths were always pampered. They were the superior ones,
and those who did English and History were going to be housewives anyway and
those who did Economics and Commerce were going to be like baniyas [business
people, or of the merchant caste]. Our educational system is so strange. . .still

stuck with the colonial heritage. "

C. Love Marriage Or Arranged?
Sangeeta, Februm 1994:

Sangeeta is 33 years old and was born in Maharashtra, but has also lived in
other Indian cities and in the United States. Sangeeta lived with her husband in

the United States for six years. During this period she got a Ph.D. in Social

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Work. I met Sangeeta through a friend in Bangalore. In many ways Sangeeta
resembles my friend Vineet in the previous chapter. Although Vineet never left
India and insisted on a career with marriage. Both Sangeeta and Vineet come
from middle- to upper-middle-class and upper-caste urban backgrounds.
Sangeeta talks about getting a sense of identity when she was away from her
biological family and when she got a Ph.D. This and the fact that she didn’t
have children immediately after marriage separates her from her mother’s
generation of perfect Maharashtrian women." The fact that she had ‘choices’
makes her part of the continuum of the new Indian woman. She had the choice
to reject the husband selected for her by her parents, she had the choice to marry
into a anti-dowry family, get a Ph.D. instead of producing children immediately
and the choice to be a housewife.

Sangeeta:

"In many ways I see myself as unconventional. By the time I got to class 8 & 9
you were considered grown up and you should start wearing sarees. But I also
wore salwars and pants--even though you were expected to wear saris at
ceremonies and marriages. But during the Emergency,’ it was a college rule to
wear sarees or else you would be reprimanded by the college ofiicials.

1 was always told that I was talking too much, too loud and too fast. That was
the only thing that got me into trouble! My mother trusted me with boys. Even
though I did not have any boyfriends. My parents expected me to be married by
the time I turned 23--which I did. I had many marketable qualities! I came from

 

1The Emergency was declared by Indira Gandhi and her government in June
1975. During this period the press was censored and opposition leaders were
jailed. The Emergency ended in 1977 with the electoral defeat of Indira Gandhi.

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a good family, I was a good student and, as long as our horoscopes matched,
things would proceed smoothly. My father did not believe in a dowry system and
wanted a family that felt the same. In many ways I came from a liberal family.
For instance, my mother didn ’t pray when she used to menstruate, but she let me
pray during my periods. There was a part of her that didn ’t believe it but was
concerned not to offend my grandmother. Did you pray when you were ‘down ’
[i. e. , having your period]? Well, I did, although I got mixed messages. My
mother didn ’t object, but my aunt did. Whenever she found out she would
complain to my mother. But since my mother was the eldest sister and didn ’t
mind, she (my mother) would just tell me to avoid praying when my aunt was
around.

My parents luckily found the right husband for me. My husband and I
don ’t have a normal husband and wife relationship. For one thing I liked to
giggle a lot--and I was told not to giggle too much the first few months of
marriage-~or else people would think that we had a love marriage and that you
were happy to leave your parents home. The main thing is that we think of one
another as companions. I have my own identity. We don ’t have children and we
support this decision in each other. We get a lot of pressure from strangers and
relatives about this. If you cross five years or more the pressure will be
constantly on having children. But I should not be complaining-J have
everything I dreamed about as a child--I am married, I have a Ph.D. and I have
a home. Now I have the choice of being a housewife of a successfitl executive.
Although I was not allowed any makeup by my father--my mother loved to dress
me up. She loved to dress up and I think I picked that up from her. When I first

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got married I used to wear a deep red bindi [dot worn on forehead] and thick
sindoor [red powder worn by married women], always wore silk sarees and wore
all the jewelry that my mother gave me--I loved to flaunt my married status! I
loved wearing lots of bangles, anklets and matching sarees and bindis. My
mother also got me into Anne F renching! 2 After staying in the United States for
four years I’ve stopped dressing up so much--well I didn ’t have the time and I
would really stand out. Moving away from home and my education has given me
a sense of identity. I realized I am not the perfect Maharashtrian woman like my
mother, although we love sharing our Women ’s Era recipes! Oh no, don ’t
misunderstand me, I hate the magazines but I love their recipes, just like Good
Housekeeping. She is a perfect hostess and looks good all the time. I’ve stopped
looking good now. "

D. Is this the way things have always been ?

Anita, Deeember 1993:

Anita is 32 years old. She is a computer professional I met through common
friends. She was born in Kerala (Kayamkullam) and lived in Kerala until she
was 18 years old. She is ethnically a Malayali. At the age of eighteen, she left
her parents’ home to go to school in the United States.

Anita:

"I think I live on the strength of my mother ’s and grandmother ’s prayers. The
church really did not play such a big role--mainly my mum and my grandmother.

 

2Anne French is a British hair-removal product sold in India. The product is
targeted towards Indian women.

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I ofien fall back on their stories but organized religion I don ’t care for?

I knew I was different. I did not want to play the woman and man game.
But I liked boys stuff-pants and shirts although for work I wear skirts. I feel
more comfortable wearing pants. Things that give me freedom to move. Saris are
so colourfitl and festive--especially kanjeevaram sarees. Once in a while I tried
to fit in. I think it made me look better. But my mother is resigned to the fact
that I wear less jewelry and generally don ’t dress up. She did not like me
wearing pants--she preferred skirts or saris. My mom liked to make us, girls,
chubby and always eat more. Eating was an important thing in my family. But I
liked being thin--it meant more freedom and health.

I did not want to be dependent on a man like a woman, which is why I
first moved out of the house and started working when I was 20 or 21 years old.
But the pressure to marry was so great that I began having doubts about myself.
I thought maybe I was being selfish and self-indulgent. I thought how bad can it
be? Other people have done it. So I decided on going for the arranged marriage.
This way I would not bring pain, sadness and disappointment to my father. This
way I would stop fighting with my brother. And my mother would feel secure. I
got married in I 987--and four months later I got a divorce. As I said, it was
arranged--the guy was religious, very insecure and constantly needed his ego
boosted, but at the same time he needed the good wife. I avoided having sex with
him for the four months -telling him that I was shy and scared and that I was not
ready. Although he let me get away with this-J am not sure how much longer I
could have pushed it. I ’m sure he also liked it in a way--that is, he would be my

 

3Anita is a Syrian Christian.

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first ever. Even afier the divorce he would call me and ask me for my opinion.

I could not live with myself. I tried it out and I could not take it. Besides I
was emotionally and physically interested in women. I always had girlfriends in
school and eventually they would be forced into marriage by their family. I
understand it. I tried marriage myself But I could not imagine doing this all my
life. I was not happy. I told by brother about this. He said, ‘what do you want to
do--kill your mother? ’ He closed his ears and said, ‘I don ’t want to hear about it
again. ’ We don ’t talk about this anymore.

You know all those stories you told me about the women in Kerala --
committing suicides together-J could really see myself in that position. Not of
killing myself-but feeling this love for women. It’s very prevalent in schools and
colleges here. I felt such love, passion and commitment to my girlfriend, but this
is something we can never talk about to our parents or relatives. I had so many
girlfiiends before I came to the United States! One day I will return to Kerala
and visit them. We all promised each other that we would meet again. We knew
we could get married to one another.

My father died three years ago--before he died he told me that he still
loved me--but he wished that I was married--but he said that he wanted me to be
happy--that was good to hear from him. He felt that in his life on earth he had to
follow certain steps. And he could only die in peace once his daughters were
settled, that is, married.

My parents came from a middle-class family and now I have built for
myself a middle-class life in the United States. Generally speaking I was not

afraid of my parents. I was always allowed to be mischievous. Education and

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grades were important for them and I always got that. I always hung around
with friends who were thought of as troublemakers. Although we were good in
studies, we would get into trouble for stealing mangoes or sneaking out of school
early. We also played lots of sports like track and basketball. I used to try and
be the class clown. I always wanted to be independent, self-sufficient and go to
college. I have managed to do that. I am not sure whether I would like to have
children. Will I be able to raise open-minded children? I do want to contribute
to the fitture. Being a woman has made me more compassionate and caring
towards women, respecting cultural differences and one ’s teachers and elders. I
resent that men have more importance in the family. I ofien try and prove that it
doesn ’t have to be that way. Given the chances we can be better. We are taught
to be women right from the start. It is ingrained--you have to be submissive in
very subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Get an education and all that--but you
should be married no matter what. My father has travelled a lot and was much
more open. My relatives are very conservative. My grandmother was a strong
and dominant figure in my life and in my family ’s life. People would fear her.
But these were very conflicting images and messages. I was very much
emotionally like my mother, although I wanted to be more independent. She
generally discouraged me from having boyfiiends or any friends who were boys.
I was curious about them but I did not mind it that much. I was very competitive
with boys when I played sports, etc. But the majority of my school life was all
girls. I knew I did not like men that much--they always looked at you weirdly on
the streets.

I think lesbians are women who have a deep emotional bond with women.

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Bisexual people are plenty in India--they seem confused but very liberal. In
Malayalam I think of women, especially lesbians, as koota kari or female friend
and when you are involved in a committed or maybe not-so-committed
relationship with a woman it is a sneh bandham or love bond or sneh
sambandham love relationship or love kinship. I think marriage can be good.
Being in committed relationships is desirable by all. I have been through many
things. I have however tried to live my life the way I am. Not compromising
myself-although sometimes I do. I have been forced into the institution of
marriage and as a lesbian I am always still compromising myself at work. The
church obviously does not accept me. I am also stereotyped a lot in this country
because I am a foreigner and woman and I often cannot communicate properly
with Americans because of my Indian background. I make a good research
project, huh? Society may have pressured me in many ways--but I think I can
change it. I am always learning to shift my priorities. My goal was to work for a
Fortune 500 company but my priorities have directed me towards appreciating
people more. I may not understand many people ’s struggles, but now I will try
more. I know my voice, time and money is there to make changes for me and

them. "

E. I Have Bought Your Fate Into My Hands
h n 19 4°

Shagufta was born in 1964 in Calcutta. She comes from a lower-middle-class
background and was raised in Calcutta, Delhi and Kota (Rajasthan). Shagufta is

an Anthropology student at Delhi University. She has spent some time in the

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United States as well.
Shagufta:
"I touch my mother and father ’s feet everyday. He would bless me and give me
good wishes. I felt proud to touch his feet, not humiliated. It is very Bengali.
Although I do not believe in institutionalized religion, I like some of the rituals. I
would fast on Fridays for 10 years--it was not religious, it was a challenge, a
way to encourage discipline. Living an ascetic life was positive.

I wanted to either become an architect or professor by the time I was in
my thirties. I would like job security and travel. I had very strict parents. I
believe I am a feminist and a humanist, I believe women and men should have
equal rights and that is not what the case is--so I need to fight. I do not believe
in the institution of marriage. I am not sure if I can make a life-long commitment
to someone. I do not want to be somebody ’s wife. I do not want to ofi'er a man
my services-J can ’t fall into that routine. T 00 much ownership. Ideally I would
like to live by myself-even if I had a boyfriend or lover--but you know how that
would be viewed in India. My parents would not be shocked. My mother has
always encouraged and supported my decisions. I have been influenced by her
philosophy of life. She is emotionally and spiritually strong. She was so strong
and she never gave up her friendships afier getting married to my father. Once
when I was in Class 4 my aunt accused her of being a lesbian. As a daughter I
should be an emotional and financial support for my parents.

I’m not sure if I want to get married. I would like the companionship of a
man though. My mother has never nagged me about getting married. I guess I

am quite unusual as far as Indians go! She would like me to have a companion

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though. I would like that too without getting into the institution of marriage. I
think if I participate in an institution that oppresses women, I am contributing in
the oppression. Yes, I [mow women also benefit a lot. Especially someone like my
elder sister! I feel sorry for my brother-in-law. How do you explain that? Is
marriage oppressive to some men as well? The rituals involved in a Bengali
marriage are very eery--the sindoor [red powder women apply on forehead] is
symbolic of the man conquering the wife and her blood. It implies that he has
bought her fate in his hands. The Naoh [the iron bangle worn by married
women], used to be utilized to catch and shackle slaves/dasis. It still means
shackle. People say ‘Tumharjouneh dase antey jabo, ’ we ’re going to get you a
slave (wife/dasi) with the Naoh. Nowadays the Noah is gold-plated. Give me
income, food, roof and nonsuflocating companions and fiiends any day!

F. Punishment and Shame

Usha Aunty, Janeag 1994:

Usha Aunty is a 45 year old Marwari (an ethnic and linguistic community)
woman who lives in Calcutta. When I was in the fifth grade, she would give me
extra tuition in Maths and Science. She gave me tuition for about two years.
After that we have always kept in contact. After her husband left her, she began
her own embroidery and linen business. She also teaches in elementary schools.
Conversation with Usha and Suparna:

Usha: "It’s not a good idea to be a single woman in this country - you should
stay in the U.S.,no?"

Suparna: "Yes, maybe in some ways."

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Usha: "But it is difficult to be on your own. I’ve been getting phone calls from
this man all night long. I usually keep my line free for my sister to call me but I
keep getting harassing calls from him. He knows that I live alone and he follows
me around. I ask my friends to pick up the phone sometimes and he stops
calling for a little."

Suparna: "Would calling the police help at all?"

Usha: " What would be the point of calling the police? You know what the
police are like. It’s not like America. They don’t care. They will not help a
single woman, leave alone any woman but, if she has a husband or grown-up
son or older brother, maybe they might pretend to listen. You have your parents
now--but what after that? At least you will have their house to live in--single
women have the worst time finding flats. The landlords think she is a prostitute
if she wants to rent on her own. So a woman can either have her parents or
father, or her husband. And even when they live alone, all these men find out
about it and they want to make your life miserable for not being married. Maybe
I am being punished for disobeying my father and going ahead with a love
marriage. My younger sister was obedient and went for the arranged marriage.
But both my brothers had love marriages, that too with foreigners-but that didn’t
seem to worry my father too much. He has poisoned the rest of the family
against me. My sister sometimes calls me on the sly. Now Mohan [her husband]
has left me and father has completely disowned me. The only person I have in
my life is my betu [son] Aditya. I hope he grows up to be an open-minded
person.

I think it’s easier for your generation to accept divorces and single

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mothers. But for my generation--especially our parents it’s about shame and
failure. I have no problem with it; if you are in a bad marriage, get out! Make
sure that you can work or have some skills. I’m glad that on the sly I learnt how
to get into the linen and embroidery business. I would talk to a lot of tailors and
retailers about cloth and customers. I’ve also learnt how to network with all
these rich ladies who like to spend their money. Plus in a place like Calcutta
there is such a big demand for decent bedcovers, bedsheets and pillowcases. The
thing is your generation has been taught from the start to have a back-up if their
marriages don’t work. It’s good to be independent. But every now and then I

wonder what people think of me and my son."

G. The Ancestral Astrologer

Nflini, May 1924;

Nalini comes from a working-class background and lives with her mother.
During the week she works as a secretary for a local company, and during the
weekends she too, like Usha Aunty, has an embroidery and linen business.
Nalini and I met in 1993 at a weekend Yoga class in Calcutta.

Conversation between Nalini and Suparna:

Nalini:"I should have started my fast in ’87 itself," exclaimed Nalini. "My
mother kept telling me to do it!" Nalini and I were sitting in a cab headed
towards Salt Lake. There was some work that Nalini had to take care of and I
joined her in her mission. We were also in pursuit of lunch at Calcutta’s
Chinatown, known as Tangra, for Chinese chimney soup and soft shell crabs at

Nalini’s favourite Chinese dhaba (small roadside restaurant).

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"Well, you see, I went to my ancestral astrologer in Gujerat and he
said that something was blocking me--especially the stars on Thursday [guru]
and Saturday [Shani]--and, if I fasted on Thursday and Saturday for at least a
year or so, that block would be gone. I didn’t believe in all that. Then again I
saw another reliable astrologer and he also told me the same thing. So now I’ve
decided to start. I’ve done this for seven months. I generally have fruits and all
that."
Suparna: "But why are you doing this? What block?"
Nalini:"You see it’s a block...thatmy mother also thinks I have..." said Nalini
looking a little sheepish.
Suparna: " Block? "
Nalini: " Well this way I can find a good companion. I don’t want to marry for
the sake of marrying. People do this kind of thing all the time here and they are
so unhappy. But everybody does it."
Suparna: "Yes, it seems like they are blindly following a prescription."
Nalini: "Yes. But, you see, I feel that after a period of time we all need to settle
down. Your parents or mother will always be there for you as long as they are
alive. . .afterthat there is nobody. Your brothers, sisters, friends...theywill be
there if they have time from their families...but that’s not enough, not secure...so
I understand what my mother is saying; I know she is worried about me...what
will happen when she dies. Who will take care of me. . .who can I confide
in...trust?
I don’t want to marry some chap who wants me to be a maid...cookand clean

for him. I can’t just be sitting in the house doing all this stuff-if he wants me to

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have a job that’s also OK. This is why my mother thinks I have a block. I am
too choosy. Too choosy! So, anyway, lets see what happens with this fast. At
least one good will come of it-—I’ll also lose weight and my skin will become
clearer. You should try it sometime--but your skin is nicer than mine.

It’s very difficult for ladies in Calcutta. If you look mod they’ll harass
you...you know eve—tease.‘ So I pack my trousers in a bag and change when I
get to work. If you wear a saree or salwar kameez, it will be OK."

Suparna: "They’ll eve tease you anyway, right? Maybe you are a little more

acceptable with a saree or salwar."

 

"Term used to describe public sexual harassment and humiliation of women
by men. The so—called teasing is frequent, extremely humiliating and inflicted
upon women (across different class locations) by men (across class locations, but
often middle-class to lower-middle-class men). It is something almost all Indian
women, including myself, have experienced at least once in their lifetime. It
includes: purposeful brushing up or pressing up against women in crowded
buses, crowded streets, cinema theaters; using sexually abusive/taunting language
or movie songs when a woman walks past men (or a man), or grabbing a
woman’s breast (from the street, through the car window) when her cab stops at
a traffic jam in broad daylight. It is called eve teasing to refer to acts of
relatively ‘less’ violent nature (versus a more public act, like stripping a woman
of all her clothes in a public place).

Women often deal with such behavior by including sharp objects (a ruler, pen,
protractor from a geometry box) as part of their/our daily arsenal. Women’s
elbows also come in handy in crowded buses. Also, women carry books or bulky
bags in front of their chest to avoid being touched from the front. I often walk
around Calcutta streets with a tightly rolled poster or newspaper to give a
frontal-sword like effect. There are also some brave women who react in
physical ways such as: a swift kick or box, shaking the man by the collar or
loudly questioning his sexual repression (and generally, a crowd of men from
around will gather around the eve-teaser and beat him up for assaulting a sister).

Also, I have often heard some of my uncles talk about their tactics and successes
in public places to touch the forbidden--women especially since women and men
still are quite segregated from one another in much of India. The frequency and
general reception of eve-teasing in many regions in India is as expected and
frequent as encountering a tea stall.

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Nalini: "Yes, but not so much. This kind of stuff will not happen in more
developed cities like Delhi, Bombay or even Ahmedabad. There is more
unemployment here and these boys and men hang around in bunches and call
ladies names. Once I nearly complained to the police. I told one chap, who
thought I might have been a young girl from the back, ‘Mamma ka ghar
jayega?’ ["You want to go to Mamma’s house?"] So he got scared and went
away. Such a young boy and he is doing all this. Maybe he has learnt this from
Hindi movies or other men in the para [neighborhood]. "

Suparna: "Who is Mamma? Uncle? Whose uncle?"

Nalini: "Oh Mamma is just a code word for police. You see now they have laws
for eve teasing. "

Suparna: "In Cal? They actually do something about eve teasing?"

Nalini: "Well, no. Actually, you just make a complaint to the police...theywrite
it down and do nothing. Police in Calcutta are the most corrupt in this country.
They will not do anything for civilians who really need help. I found this out in
other ways when gundas’ were harassing us to vacate our flat. After my father
died, I had to deal with all this alone. The police will do nothing...you see, they
have ties with the gundas. You want something so you go to the dadas.‘5 Every
area has a dada...you do too, don’t you? Usually women don’t have to deal with
them directly...but sometimes you have to. So I went to the dada of the
opposition and my problem was immediately solved. Now if I have any problem

I go to them. Why should I go to the police?

 

’Local gang members.
"Another term for local gang members, sometimes a gang leader.

153

Everywhere we go my mother will try and get fiiendly with people who
are strangers--I know immediately what she is up to. Sometimes we will be
travelling in a train or we may go to a friend’s house. Her interest is in finding
out whether they have a son or know someone for me. Sometimes it is funny.
And I understand what she is feeling, after all she is your mother and she has
your interests at heart. She says ‘What will happen to you when I die? Who will
look after you? Now I have you to look after me in my old age, when your turn
comes, then what?’ This really made me wonder about the value of friendship.
In school and college we had such intensely close friendships. I couldn’t imagine
being without my best friend at any point in my life. It was almost a sacred
bond. There were films and stories about friends (especially in adult life) giving
up their lives for their best friends. But now friends fit a certain purpose. When
you finish school you settle down. Friends come much later. But you are never
their first or second priority like before.

My mother tells me that she can only die in peace after I am married.
What can I do? I have had to reject some of these proposals. Everything nearly
went through but he did not want my mother with us when we got married. I
will not leave my mother for him. She is part of me and my family. I know
there was something wrong--if he cannot accept my mother, god knows what
else he will do after marriage...andwhat kind of person would make you choose
between him or your mother? If he asks me to give up my job—-OK I will do
that. After all we all have to adjust a little sometime in our life. But I know I
would go mad sitting at home--doing housework only. Mind you, housework is

very difficult and I have always had to work inside and outside the house--but I

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have always had my mother’s help at home. She always cooks for us. But I have
always worked and been independent."
Conclusion

The themes of duty, tradition and/or shame inform all of these narratives.
These issues are directly tied into the identity of being and becoming an Indian
woman. The deep internalization of the ritual of marriage is striking. Marriage is
at once a rite of passage and the ticket to an adult identity. Deviating from this
norm is unimaginable, and considered going against ‘the way things are,’ and
considered a loss of one’s primary identity. One cannot remain a girl all of one’s
life (i.e.,be unmarried). This underdevelopment (i.e., lack of adulthood and
noncompletion of duty) in a woman’s life reflects the failure of one’s parents (in
the case of arranged marriage) or failure of one’s parents and self (in the case of
love marriage).

The issue of shame is also particularly striking, even when some women
know that this (obligatory marriage) is something they do not want to do. Some
of the women are the sole providers in their families and have sacrificed their
happiness (like getting married) to take care of their families. The sacrifice has
left them ambivalent about arranged or love marriage, versus being economically
and emotionally independent. Through these stories, I have attempted to
demonstrate how the discourse of marriage saturates women’s consciousness

through notions of duty, shame, failure, natural rite of passage and sacrifice.

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Chapter Six
Interpreting, Inverting and Inventing Tradition
Three Modes of Resistance

The ideology and structural relations that facilitate the maintenance of the
idea of the new Indian woman of the 1990s simultaneously and contradictorily
juggles what is understood as traditional and Westemized or authentic and foreign.
In the previous chapters, I examined how the notions of the new Indian woman of
the 1990s pushed the boundaries of spaces that were previously considered Western
or Westemized. I suggest that labelling certain behavior in Indian women as
Western is a way of attributing disloyalty. Indian women were being disloyal to
their nation, tradition, culture or civilization. Furthermore, at each successive
historical moment in patriarchal ideology, what counts as being an Indian woman
exists and is constituted by a coexisting disloyal and thus stigmatized identity. This
chapter explores this identity.

Drawing from several conversations with Indian women, I have chosen the
term ‘sakhi’ to refer to women who have chosen to live their lives (especially their
adult lives) together as close friends (maitri, saheli), lovers (shamakami, lesbians,
khush,), ‘soul mates,’ and partners in ‘marriage.’ By doing so, I run the risk of
homogenizing complexities, and so I use it cautiously. But with the term sakhi, I
hope to bring to the forefront resistance to the heterosexual-patriarchal imaginary.
As a field of meaning, this space is examined in the following ways: (1) I look at

particular representations (specifically the print medium‘) that reproduce and impose

 

1I focus primarily on print accounts in local newspapers (many translated into
English from Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali and Malayalam by local activists) and I look
at a popular novel by Shobha De which has had excerpts printed in local
magazines.

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heteropatriarchal reality. These representations embody the inability of patriarchal
thinking to imagine bonds (sambandham) between women that defy heterosexual
logic. They also illustrate how sakhis are at once erased, excluded and stigmatized
Others of patriarchal culture and its ideologies of the new Indian woman.(2) Within
the system of meanings that the news remakes and perpetuates I present stories and
conversations with three women/activists. All three women self-identify as lesbian
and feminist. All three women live in urban centers and come from middle-class
families. Together we/they reflect upon their life stories and the news accounts of
shamakamis, maitris and sakhis.

Marilyn Frye demonstrates the many ways in which institutions and
conceptual schemes of dominant reality, namely within hetero-patriarchy,
maintains, sustains and reproduces itself in "complex and paradoxical" ways (Frye,
1983). According to Frye, institutions "are humanly designed patterns of access--
access to persons and their services" as well as "artifacts of definitions" (Frye,
19832107). The nexus of institutionalized access and its conceptual apparatus that
defines citizenship and membership in heteropatriarchy deals with women and
lesbians in different ways. Frye notes that:

the predicament of women apropos the dominant reality is complex and

paradoxical, as is revealed in women’s mundane experience of the seesaw of

demand and neglect, of being romanced and assaulted, of being courted and

being ignored (Frye, 19832163).

we are on the other hand regularly and systematically invited, seduced,

cajoled, coerced and even paid to be in intimate and constant association
with men and their projects (Frye, 19832166).

and

The "seesaw of demand and neglect" ensures that women’s exclusion from
patriarchal culture is not "simple and absolute." This paradoxical situation can be

seen within the tensions of what counts as an authentic or traditional Indian woman,

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a Westernized woman and the new woman of the 19905. This tension frames what
women can access (for example, have a ‘choice’ to have love marriages or arranged
marriages), invest their/our energies into (for example, "choosing " to be beauty
queens or join the women’s caucus of the party opposing beauty contests in India)
and be committed to. Furthermore, Frye maintains that the situation for lesbians "is
radically different." Lesbians are excluded and erased from this scheme and are
exiles.

Lesbians are not invited to join--the family, the party, the project, the

procession, the war effort. There is a place for a woman in every

game. Wife, secretary, servant, prostitute, daughter, assistant,

babysitter, mistress, seamstress, proof-reader, nurse, confidant,

masseuse, indexer, typist, mother. Any of these is a place for a

woman, and women are much encouraged to fill them. None of these

is a place for a lesbian (Frye, 19832166).

Both realities of print and everyday life show the variety of ways in which
women/sakhis make lives without husbands, and more specifically with other
women. This chapter documents the consequences of attempting this dangerous
practice and the inability of many people (including the liberal media) to imagine
why women do this or whether or not some of these women are really women.
Once again the issue of tradition, nature, authenticity, womanhood and Indian-ness
become contentious issues when sakhi’s resist normative sexuality. Important to the
self-sustenance of the new Indian women of the 1990s is an Other. In this case, the
Other is a sakhi. An Other that is paradoxically and simultaneously unnatural,
uncivilized, uneducated, hyperwestemized, elitist and overeducated. I shall explore

this paradox in the next section.

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Is Sexuality A Luxury in the Third World?

"India lives at the level of discharge. When things get too hot, there is more
discharge. Do you ever wonder why we have the world ’s largest movie industry?
This country has managed to invent and mythologize the procreative logic and at
the same time hide behind sexuality. Who we are and what we douusually
brainwashed as duty, religion or marriage-4s to procreate. If there was any sexual
identity it is simply based on procreation. How come sexuality is such a taboo—and
I mean any sexual identity like heterosexuality or lesbian sexuality-in a culture that
has such a long tradition of recognizing different forms of eros and ecstacy ? Take
heterosexuality for instance-how many Indians even would recognize they have a
sexuality? People just learn how to become male or female in order to get married
and procreate. Wives provide the real capital--children, boy children preferably.
Boy children are rural and urban capital for the farmer, the chemical engineer or
CEO. So women, especially lesbians, who get out or want to get out of this loop are
in danger and are dangerous threats. What good is a girl who is not available for
this major economic and political transaction? This may sound crude to many but
all this occurs in respectable garb. Women ’s sexuality is a fitndamental economic
issue. You have all these fancy NGOs who want to help women get more empowered
in India and control their fertility. What’s the point of distributing more condoms?
They run into husbands, brothers and fathers and in-laws who want to fidfil their
economic and religious duties--procreate and have more boy children. They say
education will empower women. VWzat kind of education ? Okay, say women get
more skills as agriculturalists, which most rural and economically disprivileged
women know already, aren ’t they still ingrained to become a wife and caretaker for

their husband, children and parents ? It is not a shared responsibility, as it should

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be. But this just will double or triple their workload. If women want a life
autonomous of the procreative logic, as unmarried women or as fiiends or lovers,
they are in an economically Catch-22 situation. If you don ’t participate in
heterosexuality, you lose the privileges of being a wife or mother, or if you leave
your family of origin, you lose the advantages of other male protection -from your
father or brother. But if you stay with your family of origin or participate in
heterosexuality as wife and mother, you are trained to be economically and
culturally dependent on male protection. This is felt most by middle-class women
when they lose a husband or divorce. Women become women by being trained to
depend upon and serve men. It ’s a Catch-22. "

(Conversation with Giti Thadani, independent scholar and activist)

Membership has its privileges. That is membership in marriage and
heterosexuality. Even though this membership is invisible and taken for granted as a
fact of life.

As most people see it, being heterosexual is just being. It is not

interpreted. It is not understood as a consequence of anything. It is

not viewed as possibly a solution to some problem, or as a way of

acting and feeling which one worked out or was pushed by

circumstances. On this sort of view all women are heterosexual, and

some women somehow come to act otherwise. On this view, no one

is, in the same sense, a lesbian (Frye, 19832159).

And any resistance to this invisible sexuality or sexual practice/identity by lesbians
or sakhis in modern India is viewed with much horror. The dismissal,
demonization, pathologizing, exclusion and erasure of sakhis occurs in different
ways. One way is the economic argument. Many middle-class people in India of

many political persuasions often remark that lesbianism is representative of the elite

class’s Western impersonations. So therefore what is Western automatically is

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assumed to be decadent and superfluous. Often feminists, lesbians and/or
autonomous women in India are silenced by statements like: feminism and most
importantly lesbianism are western and bourgeois products. There is no indigenous
concept or language for autonomous female sexuality, desire or being. I use the
term autonomous to include those women who resist being women of the
heteropatriarchal culture and economy. Or statements such as paying any attention
to matters of female sexuality and male supremacy is a luxury

and that the real issues in a Third World nation are poverty, the environment,
development, education and population control,--all of which are supposedly not
within a political economy of sex and sexuality. In the next section, I demonstrate
these commonplace sentiments, along with connected mythologies, through Shobha

De’s popular novel.

Shobha De’s Strange Obsessions

Cultural artifacts embody, represent, manage and maintain reality at various
historical junctures. Cultural artifacts are part of popular, mainstream, dominant,
oppositional, and day-to-day aspects of lived culture. A product that embodies and
represents the tensions of post/neo colonial heteropatriachy is Shobha De’s pulp
novel Strange Obsession. This pulp novel provides me an avenue with which to
explore the connections specific cultural artifacts and their meanings have with the
political reality in which they are produced. Strange Obsession has as its central
character the new Indian Woman (of the 1990s) sometimes in conflict with her
earlier reincamations and often combining present and past forms. Most
importantly, Strange Obsession elaborately imagines and creates for us Indian

women’s Other--the nonwoman, the unnatural, the un—Indian, hyperurban,

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ultraWesternized, upper-class, man hating, man aping, asexual and hypersexual,
national anomaly--the lesbian. For the protagonist, Amrita Aggarwal, who
champions the essence of the new Indian woman of the 19905, the antihero--the
lesbian--is her raison d’etre. Just as the savage was anthropology’s raison d’etre, so
the lesbian allows for the possibility of the discourse on cultural authenticity and
respectable womanhood. And she (Amrita) needs to be saved from this homicidal,
psychotic, obsessive, unnatural, repulsive aberration.

Shobha De’s novel, Strange Obsession, was published in 1992 by Penguin
Books, a booming multinational publishing house in India. Shobha De was born in
India and educated in psychology at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay. Since 1988,
she has written the following novels: Socialite Evenings, Starry Nights and Sisters.
She also is the founder, editor and contributor to several women’s magazines in
India.

Amrita Aggarwal is an aspiring model from a middle-class Punjabi family in
Delhi. She looks and acts like the new woman of a liberalized India. Most
importantly, she is beautiful and pleasing to the eye.

Perhaps it was the golden glints dancing in her tawny eyes or the

radiance and freshness, she exuded each time she turned her head to

face someone. Or, perhaps, it was the litheness of her magnificently

structured body, with its long, toast brown legs, narrow waist, and

breasts that stood out--proud, high and firm. . .However, it was when

Amrita laughed, throwing back her head and allowing her rich mane

of hair to flow around her face like the sea, that she was irresistible.

Amrita knew the effect it had on people... and that always made her

laugh some more (De, 199223).

Considering that some of the most accessible jobs in urban India for women are
modelling, secretarial, or receptionist work at hotels, banks and travel agencies--to
be pleasing to the eye is important capital.

Amrita is the ‘new New woman’; she works for pay outside the home. She

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is also leaving her parents’ home for a job in Mumbai (Bombay). Usually, the
primary reason a girl/woman leaves her parents’ home is to get married and make a
home with her husband. The new New woman is one who can express her
[hetero]sexual identity. She no longer has to settle for arranged marriages, she can
‘choose’ to go for love marriages, have boyfriends in the open, and discuss sexual
problems with her peers. She can have more than one man in her lifetime. She can
actually have sex, openly, before marriage. She does not have to go through the
pain and trauma of getting pemrission from her family to go out with boys. These
are the perks of modernity, Westernization, liberalization and middle-to upper
middle-class privilege. And, as a model, she is also a new kind of representative
and embodiment of India.

After Amrita’s first day of work, Minx was waiting for her outside across
the street in her jeep. Meenakshi Iyengar or Minx introduced herself as the Bombay
Police Inspector General’s daughter. Minx was also the queen of the Bombay
underground with several dada (hooligans, leaders of gangs) and corrupt police
friends. Minx was ethnically a Tamilian (from Southern India) but was a native of
Mumbai. Amrita was delighted that her new friend in Bombay was there to give her
a ride home.

Minx’s courtship of Amrita had begun. The next day Amrita received a
bouquet with a note that said, "to your eyes." Minx was once again present all
through the next day’s shoot and waited afterwards to bring Amrita home. The third
day Amrita finds one pair of her panties are missing, but realizes with amusement
that her new fiiend Minx is up to some pranks, since Minx had also left behind a
telltale musk-scented handkerchief. However, on the fourth day Amrita’s

amusement vanishes when she finds a crystal vase with a black stemmed rose with

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a diamond ring inside the rose petals in her bedroom. On the fifth day she finds
another present from Minx in her freezer. The gift is a chopped off, but very fresh,
calf’s heart tied with a red satin bow.

Minx rapidly permeates and invades every possible moment of Amrita’s life.
Minx begins to keep tabs on Amrita’s whereabouts and religiously stalks her. No
one in Mumbai dared to confront Minx, who incited fear and repulsion. However,
Amrita finally decides to confront Minx, especially after receiving yet another gift-
-a pair of silk underwear with the message "wear them and think of me."

That is it!," Amrita snarled, "I don’t want to be your friend. Why

can’t you accept that? We can never be friends. You are weird.

Abnormal. I knew girls like you at school. (De, 1992222)

To which Minx responded:

Abnormal? What are you talking about? You think I’m a bloody

lesbian, don’t you? Well, guess what? You are wrong. And so are all

of them who’ve been telling you that. I’m not a dyke. I am not kinky.

And I’m certainly not crazy. Don’t ask me to explain it to you - but I

am in love with you. I love you. I adore you. It is not sexual. I don’t

want to go to bed with you. All I want is to be around you. That’s

all. You’ll have to accept my presence in your life. You see Amrita,

you have become a part of me. You live right here in my body. I can

feel your presence inside me all the time. Today it’s a helpless dumb

animal’s heart in your fiidge. Who knows, tomorrow it could be

mine. Don’t play with my life Amrita. You’ll regret it. (1992222)

Amrita’s fears were put temporarily on hold and things looked up socially
for her when she is "savagely kissed" by the "ultra-macho" "boytoy" model Rover
the Rogue. Rover the Rogue was "maddeningly handsome" and "it was his utter
lack of interest in anybody other than himself that she [Amrita] found disturbing
and fascinating at the same time." Nevertheless Amrita falls in love with Rover the

Rogue, despite the fact that he was a "narcissistic bore," and especially since they

had painful yet pleasurable sex, and he wore crotch-hugging pants and had "Richard

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Gere eyes." After Rover the Rogue decided to break off the relationship, Minx had
him brutally beaten up and left to rot in his excrement and blood in a prison cell.
Minx refrained from "chopping off Rover the Rogue’s balls" or even the death by
"bamboo up their ass" treatment (De, 1992240). Minx also protected Amrita from
other women (especially models) who may have taken away modeling assignments
from Amrita. For example, Minx threw acid on Lola’s (an aspiring model) face and
minced up Lola’s insides with a switch-blade shoved up her vagina (De, 1992268).

Minx’s stalking of Amrita enters a new phase when she pledges herself to
Amrita at an old church, by slitting her (Minx’s) wrist and placing her blood on her
(Amrita’s) "mang" (forehead). The practice of putting red powder or sindoor on a
woman’s forehead is a North Indian ritual which symbolizes the woman’s marital
and thereby reproductive status. Also, Minx’s control over Amrita increases in
intensity after being raped by Minx in her (Amrita’s) parents home. After their first
sexual encounter, a jubilant Minx goes to the local Kali temple, sacrifices a goat
and dances around the goddess with bloody hands, and also purchases a ring for
Amrita.

The experience of actually having sex with Minx made Amrita feel
completely trapped whereby "her future was inextricably linked with" Minx. In
Mumbai, Amrita moves into Minx’s apartment and ‘let’ Minx manage Amrita’s
earning, career, and retirement plans. Amrita was isolated from others and was
given a monthly shopping allowance. If Minx suspected Amrita was disobedient,
she would fly into a rage and beat up Amrita, have violent sex, get Amrita drunk
and videotape her in the nude. This was then followed by apologies and unusual
and expensive gifts from Minx. Minx also warned Amrita to stay away from men

or else they would become hijras. (Hijras are a community of castrated men in

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India; the English concept that would be closest to the notion of hijras would be
eunuchs or intersexed peoples.)

Shobha De’s text reads like a standard pulp novel colonized within a
postcolonial master code. It’s two main characters-Amrita and Minx--bring to light
the tensions of being disloyal to the heterosexual contract. Amrita being the upper—
middle-class, urban, explicitly heterosexual (for Indian standards), ‘Westernized,’
model, who very much embodies the liberated/liberalized Indian woman of the
1990s. The character of Minx is perhaps the first-ever explicitly lesbian character
imagined in a novel produced for consumption in mainstream popular culture. She
is the antihero, self-hating, upper-middle class, urban and Westernized very much
like Amrita. But what really makes Minx pathological and yet undecipherable to
human perception is her lesbian-ness imagined and invented by Shobha De. Minx
drives a jeep, has a sardonic laugh, smokes imported cigarettes, does not wear a
bra, wears basic black clothes, hates her large breasts and hangs out with dadas and
cops. She stalks, hunts, rapes, batters and makes nude videos of women, especially
aspiring models. She also mutilates and tortures men who stand in her way. The
only time she seems feminine or not ugly is when she remembers being raped and
beaten at the age of thirteen by her father.

Amrita, on the other hand, had all the qualities of a woman who would be
given a place within patriarchal reality but obviously could not escape predators.
She has long hair (her mane), she’s thin, she falls in love with men (remember
Rover the Rogue) and most of all she is a "gorgeous young super-model." She is
well packaged for her slot. She is "modern" in some ways, which could be a plus or
minus depending on the men. She is in a profession that is very suitable and

appealing to patriarchy. But her paradoxical existence in patriarchy depends on the

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othering of lesbians as pathological or invisible. Due to the contradictory nature of
patriarchy, if one is too modem a woman (that is, you would leave your parents’
home unmarried and with a job) you would be subjected to all kinds of predators
on the prowl (like men or Minx), or you would be corrupted and a predator (a she-
man like Minx).

Another dynamic in this equation is the North Indian Amrita v.s. the South
Indian Minx. Although this theme may not be all that overt in De’s novel--North
Indian hegemony (thus the North Indian Amrita and South Indian Minx) is part and
parcel of Indian life. Additionally, the novel demonstrates Shobha De’s strange
obsession with the metropole and interpretation of Western ways of social-sexual
behavior. Characters smoked imported cigarettes and horded imported chocolates.
Amrita is asked by one of her male lovers to go get some sun on her legs. That is
an unusual statement to make in India. Usually in India one is told to get out of the
hot sun since that would make one’s complexion darker, since fairer skin is more
valued. The valuing of fairer skin represents internalized racism and "getting some
sun on her legs" represents the paradoxical adoption of a white Euro-American
practice--both having a history with the metrople. Finally, the valorizing of
northern-vedic-brahmanical ideology is once again seen when Minx dances around
Goddess Kali. Kali and her different forms (via other goddesses) are usually
strongly popular in eastern and southern India.

While Amrita may have aroused admiration, Minx provoked repulsion. Minx
was a deficient woman and an incomplete man. As an incomplete man, she dealt
with this handicap with excessive man-like behavior (namely pursuing and sexually
wanting women) by being hyperviolent and over-sexual. Minx’s behavior makes it

hard to imagine her as a real woman. Minx’s sameness to a man was symbolized in

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the following ways: she drove a jeep, and it is not all that common to see women in
India driving any vehicle; she smoked imported cigarettes, and one does not see too
many women who smoke openly in public; she primarily wore jeans, jackets and
boots, western garb usually reserved for Indian men; she did not have a "mane" like
Amrita and short hair is often symbolic of the loss of womanhood; she did not wear
a bra, in fact she hated her breasts and often wanted to tie them down; she had
sexual feelings usually for heterosexual women, especially models; she was never
sexually attracted to any men; she was aggressive with men, in fact hung out with
cops and dadas; she stalked, battered, raped and controlled just like a predator/or
dysfunctional man; and she was possessive and territorial of her woman, whom she
pursued relentlessly and managed. In all of these ways Minx was also not a woman.
But the only time during which Minx appeared feminine (to Amrita) was when she
was a victim of rape and battery, or when she was nurturing, i.e., finding out
Amrita’s favorite recipes from her mother. Minx’s rape was possibly a heterosexist
explanation of why she ‘became’ a lesbian or it’s corollary--why she hated men.
While Amrita is trapped playing housewife to Minx, Amrita’s mother
actively seeks a suitable boy for Amrita, despite discouragement from her husband
and sons, who feel that a modern girl like Amrita who has lived in Mumbai, has
probably chosen a man all on her own and would not go for an arranged marriage.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Aggarwal finds the perfect boy, quite accidentally during one of
her husband’s business dinners--Rakesh Bhatia, a successful businessman and NR1
(N on-Resident Indian or Greencard holder) from New York. NRIs are probably
some of the hottest commodities to barter with the transaction of arranged
marriages or love marriages. The political economy of this transnational transaction

is strong and thriving amongst Indians all over the globe, and is considered a very

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lucrative and traditional practice. A practice that embodies all properties of dutiful
essential Indian-ness. "..[M]y girl, she’s a good child. She’ll marry the man Papa
and I find for her," declares Mrs. Aggarwal to the rest of her family (De,
19922136). Rakesh was easily convinced to fly out to Bombay and check out his
future bride.

Although Amrita was opposed to the marriage since Minx would either end
up killing or castrating men interested in Amrita, she heard the magic word--New
York. The US was Amrita’s ticket out of Minx’s clutches. When Amrita sneaks
out to meet ‘the boy,’ Minx catches them and ends their lunch date at gunpoint and
sexually violent punishment for Amrita. When Amrita wakes up in a hospital the
next day she is greeted by Rakesh, who had figured it all out and rescued her.

After a smooth marriage ceremony in Delhi (and a brief fire, set by Minx, in
the room adjacent to Amrita and Rakesh’s honeymoon suite at the Oberoi Hotel),
Amrita and Rakesh go on their honeymoon to Nainital, a hill station in India. The
honeymoon is interrupted when Rakesh is kidnapped and held hostage by Minx.
After torturing Rakesh and sexually assaulting Amrita, who shows up a little later,
in a "psychotic trance" Minx begins wildly dancing and sets the whole shack on
fire. The police, specifically Minx’s father, arrive and rescue all three, but Minx is
hurt the most and needs to be hospitalized.

Amrita, still the concerned fiiend, confronts Minx’s father for physically and
sexually abusing his daughter. Mr. Iyengar’s (Minx’s father) sadness over his
daughter’s terrible lies made Amrita understand how "deranged and pathetic" Minx
really was. The novel ends with a pregnant Amrita and Rakesh who retum to Delhi
from New York after a two-year period for a holiday. Amrita catches the day’s
headlines in The Hindustan Times--"Meenakshi Iyengar passed away on 7th of

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August in Bombay under tragic conditions. No condolences please." After reading
the headline De concludes: "Amrita was free at last" (De, 19922208).

Shobha De’s bestselling novel represents post/neo-colonial India’s multiple
and paradoxical forms of patriarchal culture. De’s novel reveals and represents a
modern form of heterosexism that is quite Westernized and elitist. In many ways
Shobha De’s life, as an ex-model from Mumbai, resembles Amrita. All of her
writings (novels and articles in newspapers and magazines, and television
interviews) suggest an affinity with the upper class and strange obsession with
Hollywood/Bollywood culture.

De’s novel is directed primarily at upper-class and middle-class, urban and
heterosexual women. In a paradoxical way, De implies that lesbianism is an
aberration and by product of too much Western style freedom, power, money and
mimicry. Further, De introduces and titillates her readers with her hybridized
(Indian-Western) forms of lesbophobia. This form of assimilationist hybridized
(Indian-Western) thinking assumes the Indian evolution towards western forms of
modern heterosexuality as progress, more freedom and enlightenment. De’s
classism and affinity with this assimilationist Westem-style heterosexism cannot
imagine that sakhis exist in India. The classist assumption is that sexual identity is
immaterial to women, especially rural and working-class women (since they only
have to worry about basics, supposedly disconnected from sexual and gender
politics, like food and water), but that it is possible for the modern Indian upper-
class woman (who has more time to explore her freedom and enlightened ways of
being). I explore such assumptions ahead by analyzing and describing several media
accounts that have emerged since the late 19805 in India-- that have been

documented and archived at Sakhi, a feminist, lesbian resource center in New

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Delhi. But prior to addressing the news accounts, I would like to introduce a

conversation with one of Sakhi’s activists.

Finding The Language

Today I (Supama) was going to meet Geetanjali for the first time in almost
11 years. Geetanjali was a year my senior at school. One thing that I, and most
probably many of her and my peers, remember about her is the ‘running away’
incident. There were other things that I remember about Geetanjali--she seemed not
to follow the rules--at least the ones defined for her sex/ gender. She was unlike
most girls-—never tongue-tied or nervous around boys nor was she giggly and
flirtatious. I think she liked to think of herself as a hero or a filmi hero2 around
girls. She was very popular among the very popular girls and boys. And it didn’t
hurt that she came from an upper-class family.

The running away incident happened when we were in La Martiniere, in
1983. I was in Class 11 and Geetanjali was in Class 12. It was 6200 p.m. on an
August evening--my father had just retumed home after work. He, my mother and I
were sitting around the dining table drinking hot tea and fighting over a bowl of
channa choor (snacks). Suddenly, Meera burst into the room exclaiming, ”have you
heard what happened?! 1!” Meera was our neighbor and was in the same year in
school as Geetanjali. Apparently Geetanjali and Kavita (a classmate and close
fiiend) had run away from home together after cutting a half day at school. “But
why? Where did they go? For how long?” I asked, somewhat excited and scared.
“What a thing to do to your parents! They come from good families, why would

 

7The word filmi is an Indian English term that describes something or someone
as from the world of movies, or the way identities get stereotyped in films.

171

they so such a thing?” my mother pursued. “Yes it is very perplexing and
irresponsible” my father added. “Well, I think it’s just too disgusting!” Meera
declared angrily.

“Disgusting!” what an interesting word to describe this event, I thought. That
wasn’t the word that would have immediately popped into my mind. The whole
thing intrigued me, even scared me, but it did not seem disgusting. Perhaps I should
begin to feel disgusted as well, I thought.

It was almost a month--Geetanjali and Kavita were still missing. Their
families would place ads in the papers--especially in the Statesman’- saying “Please
come home--we’ll work things out....we’ll forgive you...we won’t be angry and we
will not punish you....we are worried ....please come home daughter.” Every other
day in school I would hear reconstructions from peers. “When they ran away they
took all their clothes and some money. They hawked some of the clothes--
especially their U.S. made jeans, in Free School Street.” U.S.-made jeans and
clothes were rare and “hot” commodities on some Calcutta streets." I think they
were spotted near the docks. . .maybe they hid on a ship to Singapore or Hong
Kong” “Where could they be for so long?” “What are they doing? Why?” I would
often wonder-how do they manage? Do they have money? Do they know someone
who they can stay with? Was running away fun, freeing or dangerous? Are they
alive?

One day (almost a month later) there was news that Geetanjali and Kavita
were found...more like caught. Once again I began to hear stories through the

grapevine. . . ”while they were on the run, they were nearly attacked at the Calcutta

 

3The Statesman is a Calcutta newspaper.
172

docks but Geetanjali (the more tomboyish one) beat up their attackers!" " . . .the

” 66

police arrested them at a shopping center in Bangalore, ...they contacted a cousin
in order to find a place to stay and the cousin notified the parents and the police."

Many of my fiiends, including myself, were in awe of this whole event.
Two schoolgirls, defying parents and school teachers, running away together was
unheard of. Also, these two were very popular students, from good families--and
this incident seemed to add to their popularity among their peers. There also
seemed to be this aura of secrecy that hung around--seemingly untouched. No one
really talked about it, but it almost seemed like we knew something was there, it
was almost as if ‘it’ was alright with us in school but it was taboo talking about it.
It was taboo talking about anything sexual anyway. But not everyone felt okay
about the sexual aura that clung to the running away incident. It was obvious to me
why Meera had said that it was “disgusting.” My first thought was she was too
anglicized or western in her attitudes and behavior. At first, I didn’t really know
why that was what I thought, and felt as a 15-year-old high school student. But on
reflecting later, I realized that both young women and men in India, who are
segregated most of their lives, have very passionate relationships. But increasingly,
the more westernized kids ridiculed that closeness. Also, many of us at school
recognized that such close, same-sex, deep friendships were often quite erotic and
very prevalent. Occasionally, some of us openly discussed these relationships with
great pride, amusement and secrecy, but with no shame. Sometimes ambivalence
and shame came in when we used an English concept (like homosexuality) to
describe these relationships.

What they had done was courageous and almost romantic, some of us

thought. But on the other hand, some of us also secretly wondered about this new

173

English category “the homosexual”--wasn’t that supposed to be abnormal and sick?
Does it still hold true for people who we like and look up to? For the time being
some of us ignored the other evidence pertaining to sickness and abnormalcy.

Years later, after I finished high school and undergraduate college, I was
reminded of Geetanjali and Kavita once again. In May 1993, at a film series in Ann
Arbor, I saw Geetanjali on screen! She was in a film called Khush directed by
Pratibha Parmar, a feminist film maker from Britain. The word khush in Hindi can
be interpreted as happy and therefore ‘gay.’ The film was about transnational Indian
gay and lesbian lives and struggles.

In Calcutta, while doing my research I saw her again. One of the first things
I asked Geetanjali was about the running away incident. The following section
describes our conversation:

Geetanjali: “We were in love and our close friends knew about this. They would
always find ways to help us meet and hang out. Kavita’s parents were very strict.
One day her father discovered what was going on and barred us from ever seeing
each other. There was also talk about him finding mental help for Kavita. We went
about not seeing each other (outside of school) and one day on the spur of the
moment we decided to run away together. We were sick and tired of running
around scared. So we did it. We just ran away. Eventually we got caught and the
same rules of not seeing one another were put upon us by Kavita’s parents and my
parents. My father was quite tolerant. I don’t think he approved of what we did, but
he knew about me...”

Suparna: "Knew what? That you were into girls not boys ?"

Geetanjali: “Well yes, in a way. I knew I was different when I was 3 or so. I

always found women and girls more beautiful-J had crushes on actresses in the

174

movies and girls around me. I also had a relationship with a female cousin. When I
was around 10 or 11, I wanted to have a sex-change operation. I told my father
about it. My father and I were very close and I told him everything. I wasn’t close
to my mother. He seemed really calm and handled this request very well. He said,
why don’t you wait until you are 21 and then let’s think about the operation. But,
by the time I turned 21, I realized that I could be a woman and love women. I
didn’t have to have a man’s body to do that. Although all around me only boys
were encouraged to be involved sexually-~usually through marriage -with a
woman.”

Suparna: "You and Kavita were banned from seeing one another? "

Geetanjali: ” “Oh yes, but we eventually began meeting in Malini’s house or
Ujjwala’s house. Ujjwala was really sweet--she would arrange outings and help us
spend time with one another.”

Suparna: "So where is Kavita now? "

Geetanjali: “Well, I ended up going to college in the United States. And Kavita
went to college in Bombay. After college she got married to this guy in Bombay.
Her parents made her go see a psychiatrist--to cure her of this mental disorder. I’m
not sure if she really was cured. She ended up doing what her parents and society
wants-~she got married and got a husband. You know I met her just before she got
married. I think we will still have a special place for one another in our hearts.
She’s told her fiance about us and he seems okay about it. It’s somewhat funny
when I think about it now, but it was really painful and sad for us while we were
being separated by one thing or the other.”

Suparna: "Geetanjali, have you heard about these incidents of “lesbian marriages ”

all over India ? Especially in villages and small towns ? "

175

Geetanjali: “Yes, some of them. I think relationships between women and women
are really prevalent in India. After all we are still quite segregated! Although it may
be a problem to use the term lesbian?"

Suparna: "My ?"

Geetanjali: “Well I found out about it and saw lesbians in the West! The lesbian
movement in the United States is strong compared to here--they face different
problems. In the West it’s very difficult for similar genders to be affectionate with
one another--there is so much antagonism between women. Especially since they
are all fighting to get men’s attention! But with the American lesbians, they try so
hard not to be straight women that they make what lesbian means very narrow. The
term lesbian is so rigid in some ways--not fluid. Here it seems too easy to flirt with
women. But here there aren’t appropriate words to describe what is going on--I am
often considered the boy or referred to in masculine verbs in a particular
relationship. Women talk about jodis [pairs/couples] or marriages because that’s the
only available framework for relationships that include something sexual. So we
have to work within that framework sometimes.”

Suparna: "So would you say you became a lesbian because you went to the West? "
And you were something else before then?

Geetanjali: “Well, I just find the word not too helpful in the Indian context.
Women are involved with women everywhere here. This is not to say that I don’t
identify as a lesbian--so it’s a matter of finding the language. We need names,
words...pretty much the language to describe and capture our feelings, desires and

emotions. Women desiring women is an old Indian tradition."

176

Three Modes of Resistance

The following section describes and analyzes the representations of sakhis by
the mainstream news media. Within these representations, I find subtexts of
resistance, which I broadly characterize as three different (but interconnected)
modes of resistance by sakhis to hetero-patriarchy.‘ I do not want to suggest that all
three modes of resistance imply that all of the women were involved sexually or
that they identified as lesbians. What I do think is that in all cases two women
wanted to live their lives together in a culture that could not imagine women
without husbands. All of these incidents have occurred in working-class families
and in small towns. Furthermore, only some of the women were fluent in English
(in addition to their native tongue). Also, all the reports suggest that the women
were in relationships that included an erotic element.

The first mode has been to get married at temples or marriage registries. In
some cases, immediate family and friends have been supportive, but then the couple
run into problems with government officials. In other cases, a family member (in
this case a woman’s father) has cited Section 377 to prevent the two women from
being with one another. Also, the media attention from urban centers has often
resulted in outright denial of any lesbian element in the relationship (by the partners
or family members) and/or has resulted in a separation to avoid local punishment
and ridicule. A second mode of resistance has been suicide. In many cases, this has
involved high school or college students who have, at the end of their studies,

realized impending separation due to heterosexual marriage. Often they have left

 

"All of these cases are from newspaper clippings from several national and local
newspapers (in English and the vernacular languages such as Hindi, Malayalam,
Gujarati and Bengali). Many of these clippings were from collections at the Sakhi
Archives.

177

behind love letters indicating their love for each other. The third mode of resistance
has been to form a maitri karar (or a friendship contract) with the state to allow for
the possibility of two unrelated adult women to live together and build lives
together. Unrelated unmarried women often run into difficulty when they want to
live together (either as lovers or fiiends). This is so because it is assumed by many
that they are prostitutes since they are not with a husband or living with their
family of origin.

A. Mgrieges

This section describes and interprets four cases of what I characterize as press
reports of marriages. All four were found at the Sakhi Archives in New Delhi. The
first case (U mrilla and Leela) was documented the most by newspapers. In each
instance, I directly transcribe and sometimes quote from the news report, and at the
end of the section provide analysis and interpretation. Despite the heterosexism of
the reports, in all three modes (Marriages, Suicides, and Friendship Contracts), I
read the subtext of a kinship that breaks with heterosexual kinship (based on blood
and marriage), where women value a commitment (emotional, intellectual and/or
erotic) to one another, and where adult identity is not fundamentally dependent on,
and defined primarily by, heterosexual marriage.

Case 1: The Marriage of Urmilla and Leela

The wedding of 2 women constables early this week has caused considerable
embarrassment to the Madhya Pradesh Police. Mrs. Leela Namdeo (28 years) and
Mrs. Urmilla Shrivastava (28 years), two police constables of the Twenty Third
Battalion, in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, got married in December 1987. Leela the
bride was a widow of a constable with 3 children. Her difficult life prompted her to
join the police force. Umrilla, the groom is a resident of a village near Jabalpur and
is a child-bride. She was married off when she was 3 years old and when she came
of age she refused to accept her husband. She too joined the police force as "a way

out of a tense situation" with her family and community.

On joining the police force both women were harassed and subjected to

178

discriminatory treatment-especially since they were unmarried women--one a widow
and the other a child-bride who had deserted her husband. The two women had
become close over a period of 18 months and suddenly hit up on the idea of
marriage. They took a week’s leave and during this period the lesbian marriage was
solemnized as per Hindu rites with god as witness at Sagar last week, in the
presence of the couple’s fiiends. Their parents gave their consent to the marriage
and were also present at the marriage ceremony.

On returning to the barracks, they declared themselves as ‘man and wife’ and their
shocked colleagues irmnediately informed their superiors. The embarrassed
authorities could not talk to them directly but asked guards to keep a strict watch
over them. Urmilla, the husband, was dressed in well-cut male attire of Jeans and a
T-shirt and Leela, the bride, was dressed in the traditional bridal dress and jewelry
with lots of sindoor in her hair and a big red bindi on her forehead.

(The Indian Express, 7 May, 1988)

Comment:

Leela and Urmilla affirmed their fiiendship and commitment to each other by
getting married at a Hindu temple. At the temple, they exchanged garlands at a
gandharva ceremony. According to Giti Thadani, there have been many different
traditions of marriage. One form was the gandharva tradition, one that was not
contractual. "Gandharvas were celestial musicians and linked to divine erotic
traditions. The gandharv form of marriage was based on erotic union with the sex
of the partners being unspecified" (conversation with Giti Thadani). Both their
parents supported their decision and were present at the temple. At the barracks, the
news of their marriage resulted in immediate questioning, isolation (without food
for forty-eight hours) and discharge. Leela and Urmilla were also "coerced into
signing papers they had not read" (Anu and Thadani, 1993283). After their
dismissal, Leela and Urmilla were dropped off at the railway station at 2:00 am.
The news of Leela and Umrilla’s discharge without notice or any real cause

catalyzed much urban media attention. The following interviews are excerpts from

The Illustrated Weekly of India (May, 1988).

179

Interview With Urmilla:

Q. Is it true that you were abandoned at the railway station at 12:30 in the
night?

A. Quite late in the evening four or five of them came, took us to a photo studio to
be photographed, and left us at the station at about two o’clock in the morning.
Q. Tell me about your marriage to Leela.

A. There was no marriage at all. We never got married to each other.

Q. Then how did the news about your marriage in Sagar originate?

A. It is all totally false. We were so many girls living together and all of us were
having fun this way-pretending that she is my wife etc. Like this, Leela too became
my wife. Only for fun, there was nothing serious about it.

Q. For how many days did you go on leave?

A. Around five or six days only.

Q. Was there any particular reason?

A. I was not well. I even sent them a medical certificate.

Q. What was wrong with you?

A. The usual, nothing very serious.

Q. Isn’t it strange that both of you went on leave at the same time, for the
same reason?

A. No, even Leela was not well. Moreover, her uncle had died .....

Q. Do you hate men?

A. No, I don’t.

Q. Are you attracted towards women?

A. No.

180

Q. Do you know what the word "lesbian" means?

A. No.

Q. You got married when you were a child. What has happened to the
marriage now?

A. The man is not employed. He wanted me to work. But after all this gadbad
[trouble and commotion] they wrote calling off the whole thing.

Q. When did you start dressing like a man?

A. I have been like this right from my childhood.

Q. But other girls in your company say you started dressing like a man only
after your training. After you met Leela.

A. It is not true. You can even ask my neighbors.

Q. Have you asked for reinstatement?

A. No, I have not.

Q. Why don’t you want to go back?

A. I do not know of this reinstatement.

Q. Do you plan to sue the police for your discharge?

A. Yes, I want to, but I don’t know how to go about it.

Interview with Leela:

Q.Tell me about your marriage to Urmilla.

A. It is all false. There was no marriage, we never got marriage. We are just good
friends, nothing more.

Q. You mean your relationship is not physical?

A. How can two women have a physical relationship? It is just not possible.

181

Q. Then why are you staying here and not with your parents?

A. I am not staying here permanently. I will be going back today or tomorrow.
Also, I keep going to my parents’ house to see my children.

Q. Did you have a happy married life?

A. You drink I would have otherwise had three children?

Q. It is said that homosexuality is very common among the girls in your
company. Is that true?

A. What you mean has never happened in the barracks. We were so many women
staying together, and it was natural that some were more friendly with you than the

"5 When you men

other girls. Then we used to tease them saying "joda bana liya.
are working together don’t you get close to anybody?

Q. How did you get friendly with Urmilla?

A. It happened during our training. Both of us were feeling quite lonely, and we
needed a friend. We just got along well.

Q. You two are supposed to have gone on a honeymoon together when you
were on leave. Where did you go?

A. What are you saying? How can two girls go on a honeymoon? During our leave

we came to Mandi Bamora and from there went to Damoh to meet my parents.

 

’T hey are now a couple.

182

Interview with: Mr. Narendra Veermani"
This interview was conducted after Urmilla and Leela were discharged without a
departmental inquiry.
Q. Was their ‘marriage’ the reason for their discharge?
A. There was no marriage as such. No solemnization, no formalization, no
settlement, no church or mosque. They, of their own accord, while they were
undergoing training had this varmala’ done. While they were here they got
themselves photographed in male and female clothes respectively. Both girls have
said in their statements to us that they got into the relationship for permanent
security. That was the intention.
Q. The relationship was not physical in any way?
A. Not at all. That kind of physical relationship that could be between a man and a
woman, or even in a person with homosexual tendencies, that was absent here.
There was not even touching, kissing, nothing.
Q. Have there been such cases before?
A. No, this is the first time that such a thing is happening.
Q. Maybe it is the first time that such a thing came to light?
A. No, this has never happened before. In this case, if it had been two men instead
of women, even then we would have discharged them. We make no distinction

here. We go by our norms of professionalism and discipline.

 

6The Inspector General of Police, in charge of the Madhya Pradesh Special
Armed Forces under which comes the 23rd Battalion.

7Exchange of garlands at the temple.
183

Q. Wouldn’t it have been easier to have transferred them elsewhere?

This was a policy decision. Even assuming that we had transferred them elsewhere,
to different places, they would have insisted on being sent together. All this cannot
be conductive to the maintenance of discipline. Such an act has implications that
are not realized by civilians. Because we are an armed force we have our own rules
and regulations, and high standards to be met. These two women were discharged
because we had to set a precedent so that other women are not encouraged to do

similar things, and also because such women don’t make good officers.

Interview with Mr. R.L. Amravanshi8

Q. Why did you discharge them?

A. Can you imagine what effect the behavior of these two ladies would have had
on the other women members of my company? Let us just say that it is not
permissible to let something like this affect the discipline of the entire force.
Moreover, the law does not permit two females, or for that matter two males, to
marry each other. They have earned a bad name for themselves, but they cannot be
allowed to earn a bad name for the entire company.

Q. Is it true that such pairing off is very common in the barracks? Joda bana
liya is what it is called?

A. N o, the women in the barracks may certainly be fiiendly towards each other, but
nobody garlands other girls, applies vermillion, dresses up as a male and then gets
photographed in this manner. All this violates the force’s discipline.

 

8Commandant of the 23rd battalion.
184

Q. But isn’t homosexuality becoming common everywhere?

A. It is not. But even if such a marriage is common, it is a manifestation of an act
that has already been committed. We cannot tolerate this in the force.

Q. Have there been instances of men misbehaving with the women?

A. No, no, we are quite strict about this.

Q. How are the women treated in the barracks?

A. I took over the battalion only recently, in February this year. I don’t know what
it was like before. Under me, I can say that all is fine.

Q. Can I go to the barracks where all the women live?

 

A. No we have decided not to let outsiders go to the barracks.

Q. If the couple were to apply for reinstatement, will they be taken back?
A. There is no saying with certainty. Their appeal will be considered favorably.
Q. Assuming they are taken back, what happens to their relationship? You
don’t expect them to break off, surely?

A. No, but this sort of behavior will not be tolerated by us.

Interview with Mr. B.K.Mukherjee9

Q. Don’t you think the entire controversy has shown your police force in a
very bad light?

A. You see, in this case actually there has been nothing as alleged, no lesbianism,
no sex, no such thing. There was no such thing between them, they got so close to
each other during the course of the training that they decided to live together.

That’s all. Both are quite respectable persons. One is the mother of three children, a

 

9Director General of Police in Madhya Pradesh.
1 85

 

widow, the other was married but was not accepted by her in-laws.

Q. Then why were they discharged?

A. Though both have good character, they were discharged primarily because we
did not want any controversy. We did not want anything to affect our discipline.
Q. Then what happens to their “marriage”?

A. There was no marriage, they only had some sort of tie, that is all. This is all
totally false.

Q. Is it true that they started displaying lesbian tendencies?

A. No, this again is absolutely false. We got them checked medically and found
nothing.

Reflections on the interviews:

The reporters’ questions (especially those directed at Urmilla and Leela) and
the responses of the three superior officers represent their inability to imagine
women outside of heterosexual marriage or as not-heterosexual. Legal, medical,
professional and disciplinary reasons are cited to justify this stance. There is a
curious tension between denial and acknowledgement that something physical
happened. On the one hand, Veermani says that such behavior will encourage and
promote other ‘ladies’ and, on the other, he claims that Urmilla and Leela did this
(via an informal varmala) for "permanent security." The victimization of the women
for choosing to be together is completely ignored, but Urmilla and Leela can only
be accepted as victims (widow, child-bride) resorting to desperate action (such as
wanting permanent security with a friend, joining the police force).

The gender confusion and thereby heterosexist explanation for the reporter
can be seen in his perception of Urmilla, who "dressed like a man." He asks her if

186

she hated men and then goes on to inquire if it is her attraction to women or Leela
that made her dress like a man, fully convinced that only a man (or one that wanted
to be one or looked like one) could desire and be with a woman. Furthermore,
Umiilla and Leela have complicated the notion of marriage in multiple ways.
Although the institution of marriage is a fundamental institution of heterosexuality,
for some reporters/ observers they appear to have challenged its opposite- gender
monopoly. Although they deny, to the reporters, that they got married (to the
reporters) the reporters paradoxically cannot imagine any relationship, (especially
between two women) without the framework of marriage. Further, they (Urmilla
and Leela) temporarily challenged the hegemony of a colonial notion of what
constitutes a sacred-legal contract with God and/or the state in a postcolonial India
where communities have traditionally recognized different forms of relationships,
marriages or unions. The next three cases received very little coverage in

comparison to the previous case, but present similar themes.

Case 2: "The Bold, Beautiful, and the Damned"

Shishir Joshi in a report titled "The Bold, Beautiful, and the Damned," gives
an account of an unusual incident in Chandrapur, a small town 160km from
Nagpur:

Vinoda Adkewar (18) and Rekha Chaudhary (21), who grew up in the neighbouring
villages of Patri and Dadgaon, met 4 years ago at a family gathering. According to
J oshi, Vinoda, "who defined herself as the wife" said that they had decided to elope
to Chandrapur (about 60 km away from their villages) when they realized that they
would be ostracized. "We decided to rent a room and stay after marriage," said
Vinoda. The " shock " registrar read their application and asked them to come back
in ten days "to buy some time." The registrar then notified the "shocked" parents
and local police. "Judicial officers and police personnel went into urgent
deliberations. " While this was occurring, "hundreds" gathered around the court
premises for the decision by Hemant Karkare.

However, it "took all efforts" by the Registrar of Marriage, Arjun Kadse, and the
Police Superintendent, Hemant Karkare, " to dissuade the lesbian couple" reports

187

J oshi. Although Vinoda was convinced, "the husband" Rekha was "enraged not at
the law, but the manner in which she had been ditched by her beloved." She,
Rekha, then " flung the red sari away. . .tears rolled down her eyes as she walked
away, making a feeble attempt to smile. " "Rebuked by parents and ridiculed by
society, the couple, surely the first such instance in the region, have left to sulk in
silence." "The girls, having been denied their bold dream," are now back in their
respective villages.

Another account of the same incident in The Telegraph reports ( "lesbians
Fail To Get Married, 17 April, 1993):

Two girls from Sadi Taluka ran into problems with the Registrar of Marriage and
police when they went to get married. Despite the fact that the parents supported
the union, the police and registrar tried to dissuade them. Vinoda Adkewar (18
years old) the younger and "more educated one" who had studied till class eight,
finally decided against the marriage and went home to her parents. The elder one,
Rekha Chaudhary (21 years old), who was "illiterate," was not convinced and "in a
rage threw away the saree purchased for the wedding."

(The Telegraph, 17 April 1993, Calcutta and The Indian Express, 18 April 1993,
New Delhi)

Case 3: Gender Troubles
The India Today reports in a piece entitled "Gender Jam: Case of A Curious
Marriage " 2

Tarunlata (33) underwent a sex-change in 1987 to become a man--Tarunkumar--to
marry Lila Chavda (23) in December, 1989. Tarunlata and Lila met in 1985 when
Tarunlata’s sister, a candidate for the Congress(l) ticket, would while on tour stay
over at Muljibhai’s (Lila’s "schoolteacher father") place. Lila lived in Paldi and
Tarunlata in Dasade, two nearby villages. Tarunlata’s sister began getting suspicious
of Lila and Tarunlata’s close friendship and revealed her suspicions to Muljibhai.
From then on Lila would be regularly beaten up by Muljibhai. Three months later
Lila and Tarunlata eloped from the village to get married. On finding out about the
marriage Muljibhai decided to go to the Gujarat High Court stating that since "it is
a lesbian relationship" action needed to be undertaken on grounds of Section 377 to
annul the marriage. The "writ petition" states "Tarunkumar possesses neither the
male organ nor any natural mechanism of cohabitation, sexual intercourse and
procreation of children. Adoption of any unnatural mechanism does not create
manhood and as such Tarunkumar is not a male." Muljibhai’s lawyer claimed "even
an impotent Hindu male can marry because irnpotency is no bar to his marriage. In
this case Tarunkumar was not a Hindu male at the time of birth."

The India Today reporter quotes Tarunkumar, "as a child I would don male clothes

and play volleyball, football and even judo and karate with other boys. If I had the
money I would have got myself operated during my teenage days." Tarunkumar and

188

Lila declared that even if their marriage was to be found null and void by the
Gujarat High Court, "we shall continue to live together because we are emotionally
attached to one another." Muljibhai won the case. The couple now live in
Tarunkumar’s parent’s home and they assert that the real reason Muljibhai objects
to their marriage is that he will not get "dowry" from the groom (customary in their
communities).

(India Today, 15 April 1990)

Case 4: More Gender Disloyalty
The Bombay Dost reports in an article "Woman Weds Woman" (1993):

On July 9 a wedding took place in a temple in NH-3 area10 in the presence of
family and friends. The wedding was between two women -- Neeru Sharma and
Meenu Sharma. The "husband" Neeru alias Dinesh is self-employed and supplies
electronic spare parts for TV sets and earns approximately Rs. 3000 a month.
Meenu is employed with the ISD/STD phone company on a salary of
Rs.1'000/month and she earns Rs. 3000/month by singing bhajans in jagratas." She
is the eldest in the family and the only breadwinner.

Meenu met Neeru in a panchayati jagrata12 in the neighbouring NH-3 area. "It was
love at first sight and after that we started meeting regularly. I told Meenu all about
myself. But initially she did not believe that I too was a girl," said Neeru. Neeru
who prefers to be called Dinesh [a male name] stated that she has been wearing
boy’s clothes since childhood "I have never worn a salwar kameez." Dinesh (Neeru)
is reported to speak in "masculine fashion" as well. Dinesh (Neeru) was married off
4 months ago to J ogesh Vaid in Faridabad but retumed to her parents’ home after
one month. "I hated playing second fiddle to a male" she asserted. "That was a
marriage against my wishes."

After the marriage to Meenu they rented a home but could only live there for five
days due to water logging. They then moved back to their respective parents
homes-but plan on living together once they find housing.

In another version of the report in the Indian Express, New Delhi, “Parents
Deny Marriage Between Girls,” by Sonia Wadhwa, Ms. Wadhwa states:

The parents deny that it was any “real ceremony.” The photographer who clicked

 

10A local neighborhood.
llSinging songs at local festivals.
12Village function.

189

them duped them into splashing it in various newspapers, the parents added.
Further, the “girls were young and vain and they agreed...,”said Kaushalya Sharma
(mother of Meeru “the bride”). Neeru’ 5 mother “nodded her head in agreement to
Kaushalya Sharma’ 5 statement.” She said, “They regret acting so foolishly. Both are
staying in their respective houses. This news of a marriage is a farce.” “I’ve

become a laughing stock for my friends,” said Neeru’ s brother. According to the
reporter the person who “is perhaps having to face the worst consequences of the
marriage” is Seema, Meenu’s younger sister. Seema, a standard X [tenth grade]
student, “has to bear the brunt of her classmates jokes about hailing from a queer
family.” “Didi’s foolishness has made things so tough for me. I hate going to
school these days. Moreover, though it is the year of my board exams, I am so
worried by what has happened that I can barely concentrate on my studies.” Seema
“prays to God every night so that people will leave her and the family alone,” notes
the reporter.

The marriage which has “generated immense curiosity in the neighborhood and
the city’s media circle” drew comments from other locals as well. The city’s
newspaper circle however, feel “let down” since the Police and

Administration have not done enough to discipline the girls. A shopkeeper
commented, “ Neeru would smoke and drink and court Meenu all day. And Meenu
would always manage to find excuses to visit the market whenever Neeru was
around.” Senior citizens “expressed their horror” at the “ghastly and unnatural acts”
and “an octogenarian” Ram Singh said, “if this is not undone, Faridabad [the town]
will be cursed by the Gods.”

(The Indian Express, May 1989, New Delhi and Bombay Dost, October 1989,
Mumbai)

Reflections on the Marriage Cases 2, 3 & 4:

In all three reported cases, it is automatically assumed that one woman
(usually the ‘masculine looking one’) desires women like a man, and wants to be a
man. The possibility that she may not want to be a woman or a man in the
heterosexual gender scheme is not considered. Nor is the possibility considered a
conscious move made by two women (who want to be together in a committed
relationship) to be more accepted in towns, by playing out normative gender
performances (such as opposite gender/sex behaviors, marriages or dress codes) of

heterosexuality. Another issue that stands out is the condescending tone of the

190

reporters who mark such behaviors as "uneducated," "illiterate" and therefore
belonging to lower class, noncosmopolitan locals.
The next section looks at reports of suicides. specifically of younger, semi-

urban women and high school girls.

13%

This section documents six media reports of double suicides. The description
of each case includes a combination of direct quotations and summary from the
media reports, which reflect the sentiments of the reporters. All six cases were
found at the Sakhi Archives in New Delhi. The sense of impending separation (by
parents, families, local men in their communities and/or heterosexual marriage) lead
the women involved to their only ‘choice’--death. In some cases, biological kin
provided support, but hostility from local men (threatening sexual violence) or
police far outweighed these supportive gestures. The death of these sakhis
represents the repressive cultural climate of compulsory heterosexuality and the
ultimate erasure and invisibility of sakhi kinship. Thus, for the dominant imaginary,
passionate or erotic kinship between sakhis can only be sustained through death,
and, for some individuals, this becomes a lived reality.

Case 1

In the town of Meghraj (N. Gujarat, 10,000 pop), Gita Darji and her“ spinster
friend” Kishori Shah hung themselves from ceiling fans in their hospital quarters.
Gita(24) and Kishori(24) were nurses in a local hospital. Gita was married to Manoj
just a few months ago and “abhorred” this relationship. A few month’s ago Manoj
had complained to Gita’s brother about Gita and Kishori’s relationship and had
convinced him to pressure Gita to apply for a transfer out of Meghraj. This was the
third “lesbian” suicide in Gujarat this year. Seven months ago, two police
constables in Meghraj killed themselves “declaring undying love to one another. ”
Four months ago, in Vadodara village, two school teachers committed double

suicide.

(India Today, April 1989)

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Case2

Two young women (22 and 23) in the Narkeldanga police station area [outside of
Calcutta] were “physically, mentally and emotionally tortured” for being
unavailable single women who also happened to be involved with each other. The
abusive situation “drove one woman to suicide in front of train tracks. "

The police who have been more supportive than normal-—have tried to shield the
women from violent acts and threats from neighbors, including local goondas."
These neighborly threats included “pouring hot water on the women, flinging bricks
and screaming Obscenities at them.” The woman who is still alive said, “one of the
goondas wanted to marry me. Because I refused, he could not tolerate my being
with my friend. He and his friends abused and insulted us whenever they met either
of us.” Other “youths” of the area had informed the women’s mothers that someday
they would rape their daughters.The neighborhood is “not ready for this immoral
act” and says Mohammed Riazuddin and Yasmin Begum, “this is unnatural, we
don’t want all our women to follow the example and turn bad. ”

Their mothers, Noorjehan Begum and Salma Begum, had finally decided to respect
their daughters decisions (after initial beatings and starvations--which to their
surprise did not seem to work). Noorjehan said that her daughter, “was born
healthier than an average girl child. That’s why her father and I decided to bring
her up like a son. She used to wear men’s clothes, talk and walk like a man.
Despite being a woman, she is running a business successfully. That’s what’s really
bothering the neighborhood.” Salma then added,” if they want to love each other
and want to live together and the police say there is nothing illegal in it, I can’t
stop her anymore.”

(The Telegraph, Calcutta, 16 April 1995).

Case 3

Trichur, Kerala: “A girl student and her teacher who consumed poison together in a
suicide pact, died here yesterday.” Gita (22) “of Aroor Chirapurath House” and
Saijamol (16) “daughter of MP. Neelambaam of Aleppy” were found in “a critical
state when discovered inside a state transport bus parked in the bus stand at Trichur
and subsequently admitted to the district hospital. They were lying unconscious
inside a Ponnani-Emakularn bus when discovered by the passengers who sensed the
strong smell of insecticide emanating from the bus.” By the evening both had
“recovered considerably and did even speak to their relatives who had come having
received the news from the Town Police.” “Their condition suddenly deteriorated
on Friday morning. Saija breathed her last at 8:30 am. and Gita died by 11 am.
Saijamol was a first-year pre-degree student at Aquinas College at Edakochi.
“Saijamol was a brilliant student and she has passed the SSLC examination last
year with very high scores.” Gita was a teacher at a tutorial college at Kuthiyathodu

 

l3Another word for dadas or gang members.

192

and was Saija’s tuition teacher for over five years. “Their relationship had gone
beyond the limits. Police recovered a large number of love letters they had written
to each other from the bags they were carrying. According to the police the girls
decided to elope as they couldn’t bear separation and finally had to commit
suicide.” “The dead bodies were taken back to their native places after
postmortem.”

("Driven to Death," translated from the Malayalam Daily, Mathrubhumi, by T.
Murali, for Bombay Dost, 421, January 14, 1996.)

Case4

Kilimannor, Kerala: Dhanya (l4) and Sandhya (14) were two students studying in
10th standard at a government high school in Mithrumala. On the pretext that she
(Dhanya) had forgotten her pen at home, Dhanya asked her friend Sandhya to
accompany her home in order to get the pen. On reaching home, Dhanya confessed
to Sandhya that she was in love with her and that since they couldn’t be together
she had decided that they should die together.

Dhanya attempted to kill Sandhya first by putting a noose around her neck from the
ceiling and when this hurt Sandhya (who was resisting death) Dhanya decided to
cut Sandhya’s wrists with a knife. "Sandhya somehow managed to get out of her
clutches and ran outside. However, outside Dhanya pushed Sandhya into a well in
the compound. Once Dhanya was certain of Sandhya’s death, she went indoors and
hung herself. Sandhya managed a miraculous escape." She hung on to the wall of
the well and cried out for help. Local people managed to get Sandhya out. Sandhya
lived, but Dhanya was already dead. Pangod Police have registered the case.

("Till Death Unites," translated from the Malayalam Daily, Mathrubhumi, by T.
Murali, for Bombay Dost, 422, 1995)

Cases

Konchiravenketta, near Vempayam, Kerala: The “fire force fished out their bodies
from a well more than 17 feet deep.” “After postmortem the bodies were removed
to Medical College mortuary.” These were the bodies of Gita Kumari (22) and Sati
Kumari (25). Sati was a volunteer teacher at The Complete Literacy Program. Gita
was a travel agent at Kanyakulangara. Sati had gotten married a week ago and had
returned from Karipur to see Gita--”The fact that they could not bear the thought of
getting separated again is the reason for the suicide says a note written jointly by
the two.”

("Love Unto Death," translated from the Malayalam Daily, Mathrubhumi Daily, by
T. Murali, for Bombay Dost, January-June, 1993).

193

Case6

Mallika (20) and Lalitambika (20), pre-degree students at Keralvarrna College, tied
themselves together and jumped off a ferry into the turbulent Cochin Channel. A
sailor and fisherman however spotted them and got them out of the stormy waters.
Mallika and Lalitambika were in love with each other and on discovering that one
had passed and one had failed their final exams and realizing that this would lead to

their separation, decided to commit suicide together.

The police charged them with attempted suicide and found among other things a
love letter and a suicide letter to parents. Mallika wrote: "Lali after all everybody
knows about our love, so here is a thousand kisses for you in public...."In the
suicide letter Lalitambika wrote: "I cannot part with Mallika...now we are destined
to go in different directions. I am not persuaded by Mallika to do this. Bury Us
Together." It is reported that the relatives of the girls are still unable to grasp this.”
Mallika’s brother says that the girls have agreed to “try and forget each other."
(Connexions: An International Women ’s Quarterly, January 1982, "Bury Us

Together. " Compiled from The World of Homosexuals by Shakuntala Devi, Bell
Press, 1978).

2 M ' i Karar riendshi n

The third mode of resistance is a case (and the only one I could find) of
maitri karar or commitments that were made between women friends to care for
one another. These commitments did not exclude a sexual relationship-however,
they symbolized the primacy of bonds between women along with other
commitments as mothers, daughters, wives and sisters. Maitri Karars have a long
tradition in Gujarat and in modern India, and now are being viewed as highly
suspect, especially in English-speaking, upper-class and urban centers. Maitri Karars
are quite unique in how two women seek out the courts to legalize adult friendship
and commitment.
Case 1
Two panchayati school teachers, Asaruna Gohil (31) and Sudha Amarsinh (29), in
Vadadhali village, Naswadi Taluka, " created a sensation of sorts on Friday when
they entered into a contract marriage by signing a statement before the notary

republic and decided to live together." They had been living together for the past
ten years and "since they did not want to get married and continue living together

194

they decided to enter into this friendship contract called ‘maitri karar’ in Gujarati."
Asaruna and Sudha declared that they have known each other since 1978 from
teacher training school and work together at different places in Baroda. This is the
second publicly recorded maitri karar in Gujarat this year.

(The Indian Express, "Marriage of Two Women," 7 May, 1988)

Interpretation & Conclusion

The dominant tendency amongst urban, English-speaking and economically
privileged Indians is to imagine small town and rural India in particular ways.
Despite diversity of political persuasions, the prevalent mode of seeing the village
as more pristine, and therefore more real and indigenous, is common. These gate-
keeping concepts are alive and well amongst many Indian and non-Indian
academics, including those who are housed in the North. I am not suggesting,
however, that this view is entirely false. There are regions/towns in India that are
much busier points of departures from and entries into India. Mumbai, Calcutta,
Delhi, Madras and Bangalore are very different from J abalpur, Chandrapur, Paldi,
Dasade, Kilirnannor and Meghraj.“ However, there is much traffic and exchange
between villages, small towns and big cities. For example, many men and women
from villages and small towns come to cities looking for employment. And many
politicians, companies and Bollywood movies do business in villages and small
towns. Although, in general urban centers are relatively more privy to decision-
making processes and political power, many urban politicians and businesses are
financed by rural elites. Imagining the urban and rural as static, homogeneous and

herrnetically-sealed entities relates to what Renato Rosaldo found problematic in

 

1"The villages and small towns where the marriages, suicide and maitri karars
occurred. Many of these villages and small towns are unknown to most urban
Indians.

195

dominant understandings of culture."

Imagining the rural world as pristine is deeply connected to what is
envisioned in the nationalist discourse as tradition, untouched by anything Western
and authentically Indian. Tradition is understood within a constellation of meanings
such as: unchanging, old, authentic, ‘the way things have been, are and will be,’
original, cultural, customary, formalized, ritualized, institutionalized and ultimately
natural. And there are practices that are old, however, when people (and in this case
sakhis) are erased and excluded from history and reality, invoking tradition is an act
of power (over communities and persons) and domination. Nationalist discourse
was about imagining an independent future via invented pasts. Inventing traditions
is therefore not necessarily an unproductive and useless project. All traditions are
invented and do not equate to untruths.

Sakhis from small towns and villages, with the support of their families, are
practicing the women-centered traditions of maitri karar and gandharva ceremonies.
And sakhis and lesbians at urban centers who may have been more exposed to the
English language and the North are actively living lives resisting obligatory

heterosexuality and its institutions.

 

1"Addressed in Chapter Two.

196

Chapter Seven

Conclusion

The construction and reproduction of normative gender and sexual identities
are deeply tied into the patriarchal institutions of kinship-making, and embody and
inform the practices of state-making, nation-building and the rhetoric of
authenticity. In all three events discussed in the previous chapters (Chapters Three,
Four, Five and Six), 1 identify contradictory variations on the discourse of cultural
tradition (authentic, indigenous, pure or uncolonized) and Westemization
(modernity, progress, corrupted or colonized). These discourses are always
catalyzed by challenges to normative gender and sexual identity, which in turn are
perceived to have an essential Indian core. This essential Indian core designates
women as the repositories and preservers of patriarchal values and institutions.
Despite economic, historical and political shifts, the explicit and tactic management
of this essential core of what it means to be an Indian woman or an Indian is
demonstrated in individual stories and in the practices of the public sphere. This
tension, between traditional and Western or local and foreign, has also informed the
conceptual apparatus of anthropology.

This dissertation draws from anthropologists who have sought to write
politically engaged ethnographies in which often the boundaries between the
Ethnographic Self and the Observed Other are blurred or "desegregated" (Behar,
1996219). Writing the dissertation has been an especially challenging process since
much of this literature has been only recently emerging in anthropology, and only

some ethnographers see the bridging of schisms between the Ethnographic Self and

197

the Observed Other as a legitimate goal. By inserting and situating myself in the
dissertation, I suggest that the Ethnographic Self as a member participant, the
observed and the critical observer of communities studied is pushed to be
accountable in multiple ways. .

Furthermore,l show that critical reflections on lived experiences can connect
and remake notions of home and the field, self and other, personal and political
lives, the academy and social issues, in valuable ways. For instance, when the
connections between the Ethnographic Self and the Observed Other is
"desegregated" one’s accountability to multiple audiences and selves is highlighted
and at the forefront of one’s consciousness. Or when the categories of home and the
field blur, the culture associated with home and the field are no longer static,
hermetically-sealed entities. The experience of being bicultural informs the
subjectivities of Ethnographic Selves and Others. And finally, as feminists have
repeatedly pointed out, the dichotomy of the public versus private is also
challenged.

By examining the construction of gender and sexuality and its relationship to
national/cultural identity, I have shown that these discursive practices are about the
daily and systemic workings of power and dominant systems of meanings and entail
audiences/communities of multinational reception. The initial project of evaluating
the familiar, the daily and the institutional workings of normative sexuality and
patriarchy on Indian women, led me to discover an interconnected nexus and
relationship to what it means to be Indian. In other words, women’s identities and
sexualities are the grounds upon which Indian-ness was and is measured.
Furthermore, sakhis, discussed in Chapter Six, demonstrate the challenging of

tradition as invented by the modern Indian state (such as compulsory

198

heterosexuality) and the resilience of local traditions of anti-heteropatriarchal
kinship-building.

In examining and deconstructing the language, meanings and underlying
presuppositions of a colonial sexual code (Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code), I
was initially interested in the transplanting of a code drawn from a Christian-legal
tradition in Europe to a colony. The Indian state’s resistance to the challenge
posited by human rights groups suggested many things to me. First, it indicates the
post/neocolonial state’s adoption of a modern state apparatus modeled after Britain.
Second, the overt expression of heterosexual identity of a nation and its assumption
that normative heterosexuality is natural, invisible, modern (i.e. , keeping up with
the West) and traditional (not losing its spirit to the West). Third, the state’s claim
that anything outside of normative heterosexuality is not traditional (therefore a sign
of Westemization). Fourth, the modern state’s easy adoption of ‘Western’
heterosexism and the simultaneous claim that disloyalty to normative
heterosexuality is adopting western values. And finally, I suggest that, in an indirect
and negative fashion, the Section 377 issue represents the conceptual and symbolic
exclusion of women and women’s sexuality. Furthermore,l demonstrate that it is
easier within patriarchal reality to construct procreative sexuality and identity
(heterosexuality) in opposition to a nonprocreative sexuality and identity
(homosexuality = gay male sexuality) if it involves the phallus. In other words,
Indian women can only be imagined within different reincamations of
heterosexuality and compulsory marriage (as demonstrated in Chapters Four and
Five), and cannot be conceived within the dominant imaginary outside of
compulsory marriage and heterosexuality (as demonstrated in Chapter Six).

The contradictory and convenient adoption of what is good from the West

199

and bad from the West by the modern ex-colony is also another thread that weaves
through my study. The ambiguous and often arbitrary use of the term ‘Westernized’
is a recurrent theme in the discourse explored in all the cases. The contradictions
represent the tensions inherent in the processes of nationalization, decolonization,
and globalization. On the one hand, the Indian state and its reformers need to keep
up with its colonizer’s political, intellectual, economic, technological and scientific
systems (modernity); and, on the other hand, on a psychological and spiritual level,
the ex-colony rejects all things Western (measured by women’s loyalties) and
adopts newly invented traditions (important for decolonization) which resist new
forms of global hegemony and homogenization (neocolonialism).

The contradictory identity of the ‘new New Indian woman,’ discussed in
Chapter Four, rests upon the essence of her being loyal to new forms of hetero-
patriarchy. Should she step out of bounds, her authenticity as an Indian and as a
woman would be under question. Failing to do her duty and get married at the right
time is shameful, selfish and individualistic and thus westernized behavior.
Therefore, unmarried women are subject to losing much of the privilege of the
heterosexual economy.

However, women who are most disengaged from institutions of patriarchy--
such as from marriage and compulsory heterosexuality--sakhis--are invisible and
marginalized from a discourse such as that of Section 377 or the ‘new New Indian
woman.’ I show that separating from heterosexual kinship forces sakhis to
encounter much hostility, denial, shame, fear and in some cases outright death. I
also demonstrate that the discourse on what is tradition is often contradictory and
complex. Often the Indian state would invent tradition by adopting artifacts of the

colonial state or by being loyal to patriarchy. On the other hand the long-standing

200

tradition of maitri karars or gandharva marriages by sakhis were not enthusiastically
accepted as Indian tradition by agents of the state or individuals. Through the
course of my research I have found it particularly striking that only one feminist
has seriously analyzed some of the realities encountered by sakhis (T hadani, 1996).1
This is tied to the presumption by anthropologists studying gender and/or sexuality
and Indian women’s lives, that sexuality=heterosexual, gender
identity=heterosexual,gender and sexual identities are simple manifestations of
caste hierarchies and religious tradition, and gender and sexual identity are simply
natural.

In my analysis of multiple forms of patriarchy (colonial, post/neo colonial,
British, nationalist, etc.) I have also found that political developments in Britain and
India inform one another. That is, policies implemented by the colony are shaped
by policies in the metropole and vice versa. My dissertation has focused on the
influence of the metropole’s political and economic cultures and imagination on the
colony through the colonial encounter. Furthermore, the confrontations between the
British and Indians involved intraconfrontations. That is, the British (like the Indian
elites and nationalists) were often divided and heterogeneous in their intentions,
alliances and policies. But despite this seeming lack of homogeneity, there was
British domination of India alongside much resistance and cooptation. The dynamic

of domination with resistance and cooptation worked particularly well in the daily

 

1Thadani’s primary focus, however, is on ancient India, Sanskrit/Vedic texts
within Hindu philosophy and the reinterpretation of these texts. I have included
personal conversations/interviews with Thadani in my dissertation. Also, some
feminists (such as Mrinalini Sinha) have made a reference to the Urmila and Leela
coverage. No anthropological research thus far has paid any attention to any
coverage on sakhis.

201

functioning of obligatory heterosexuality. This is demonstrated specifically in
Chapter Five.

The dynamic of power and domination catalyzed by the dialectic of
resistance and cooptation can also been seen in the ways visibility can either be a
source of hope or elicit explicitly hostile violence. For example, the visibility that
Section 377 and homosexuality received gave the police new ammunition to
persecute people in public spaces. On the other hand, identifying homosexuality (as
a civil right or a legitimate identity) was of the most symbolic significance to
politically active self-identified gay men. In some ways, the seemingly invisible and
virile nature of compulsory heterosexuality in India was highlighted. The political
economy of duty and the need for marriage (arranged or otherwise) was made more
explicit. Making compulsory heterosexuality more explicit gave the modern Indian
nation-state an instant connection to progress and development. That is, in making
compulsory heterosexuality and heterosexual identity more overt, as in the West,
India and Indians were finally catching up to Western notions of freedom and
choice (unlike arranged marriages and segregation amongst the sexes). This idea is
explored in the chapter From Mother India to Ms. Worldly. The ‘new New Indian
woman’ signifies the shift from an amorphous to a more elaborate and explicit
sexual identity of an essential, modern and naturalized heterosexuality.

As a final remark, my analysis of the construction of gender and sexuality in
India and its relationship to national/cultural identity has sought to complicate
gatekeeping concepts that have guarded particular anthropologies of India (such as
looking solely at caste-related issues or in rural contexts) and dichotomies such as
field and home, and the Ethnographic Self and the Observed Other. I have sought

to move beyond these dichotomies by drawing from the works of feminists who

202

have pointed out the importance of epistemic privilege and standpoint epistemology.
Or in other words, where traditional anthropological ‘subjects’ or ‘objects of study’
are ‘taking back’ and beginning to disrupt the borders between home and the field
and the object (Native) and subject (Ethnographer).

203

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Contemporary Law Journals

All India Reporter
Criminal Law Journal

Contemporary Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals
India:

The Asian Age
Bombay Dost

The Business Standard
Eve’s Weekly

Femina

Gentleman

The Illustrated Weekly of India
India Today

The Indian Express
Mathrubhumi

Outlook

Pravartak

The Telegraph

The Statesman

Sunday

Women’s Era

United States:

Anamika
Trikone

United Kingdom:

Naz Ki Pukaar
Shakti Khabar

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