Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia

Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia

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Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia Edited by Diana Dimitrova

RELIGION IN LITERATURE AND FILM IN SOUTH ASIA

Copyright © Diana Dimitrova, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-62225-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion in literature and film in South Asia / edited by Diana Dimitrova. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-230-62225-8 (hardback) 1. Indic literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures—India. 3. Religion in literature. 4. Myth in literature. 5. Religion in motion pictures. 6. Myth in motion pictures. I. Dimitrova, Diana, 1969– PK5410.R4R45 2010 891.4—dc22 2009041346 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company First edition: February 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

For Katie

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Contents

The Editor

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Contributors

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Note on Transliteration

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On Myth and Mythologizing: An Introduction Diana Dimitrova

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PART I Religion, Myth, and Gender 1

Seeking God: Narratives of the Spiritual in Amrita Bharati’s Work and Hindi Poetry Lucy Rosenstein

2 Who Is Afraid of Mı¯ra¯ba¯¯ı ? Gulzar’s Antidote for Mı¯ra¯’s Poison Heidi Pauwels 3 Religion and Gender in Bollywood Film Diana Dimitrova 4 The Creative Modern and the Myths of the Goddess Mariyamman Perundevi Srinivasan

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PART II Religion, Myth, and Politics 5 Constructed Religious Feelings and Communal Identities in Hama¯ra¯ S´ahar us baras by Gı¯ta¯ñjalı¯ S´rı¯ Alessandra Consolaro

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6 Dharma Reconsidered: The Inappropriate Poetry of Arun Kolatkar in Sarpa Satra Laetitia Zecchini

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7 From Otherland to the Divine Land: Exile, Mysticism, and Secularism in K. B. Vaid’s Dard la¯ dava¯ Anne Castaing

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8 In the Face of Even Lesser Breeds: Reading Nayantara Sahgal with Indian Christians Clara Joseph

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9 Censorship, Social Reform, and Mythological Drama in Colonial India Nandi Bhatia

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10 From Kuruks.etra to Ra¯mara¯jya: A Comparative Analysis of the Star Personas of Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan Sunny Singh Index

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The Editor

Diana Dimitrova obtained her Ph.D. in Modern and Classical Indology at the University of Heidelberg in 2000. She is Assistant Professor of Hinduism and South Asian Religions at Michigan State University. Her research interests are Hindi drama, Bollywood film, bhakti Hinduism, and Hindu reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008) and Western Tradition and Naturalistic Hindi Theatre (New York: Peter Lang, 2004). Her recent articles include “The Treatment of Women and Gender in the Plays Asharh ka ek din and Adhe adhure by Mohan Rakesh (1925–1972),” in ToÞwa-e-dil. Festschrift Helmut Nespital (Reinbek: Wezler, 2001), “Of satis, Sitas, and Miras: Three Female Protagonists in Modern Hindi Drama,” in Heroes and Heritage: The Protagonist in Indian Literature and Film (Leiden, Netherlands: Research School CNWS, Leiden University, 2003); “The Indian Character of Modern Hindi Drama: Neo-Sanskritic, Pro-Western Naturalistic or Nativistic Dramas?” In Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Response (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); “Upendranath Ashk’s Play Tufan se pahle and Hindu-Muslim Cultural Hybridity,” in Voices from South Asia (Zagreb: Bibliotheca Orientalica of the Croatian Philological Society, 2006); and “The Development of Sanatana Dharma in the Twentieth Century: A Radhasoami Perspective.” In The International Journal of Hindu Studies 1, no., 1 (2007) 89–98, “Neo-Sanskritic and Naturalistic Hindi Drama.” Modern Indian Theatre (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Contributors

Nandi Bhatia is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. Her books include Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India (University of Michigan Press and Oxford University Press, 2004), Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Dislocation, and Resettlement (Pearson, 2008, co-ed.), and Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader (Oxford University Press, January 2009). She has also guest-edited a special issue of Feminist Review on “Postcolonial Theatres,” and coedited a special issue of Fashion Theory on “Fashion and Orientalism.” Additionally, her articles on colonial and postcolonial theatre, film, and literature have appeared in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Centennial Review, Feminist Review, South Asia Graduate Research Journal, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Gramma, and book collections. Anne Castaing obtained her Ph.D. at Inalco, Paris. She is a lecturer of Hindi Literature in INALCO, Paris. She edited an anthology of Indian Literature, Ragmala, Anthologie des littératures indiennes traduites en français (Editions L’Asiathèque, 2005), and coedited the book La Modernité Littéraire Indienne en question, which includes critical articles and translations from Indian languages (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming). She is also a translator of Hindi Literature: Intimités, a collection of poetry by Ashok Vajpeyi (Caractères, 2006); Lila, a novel by K. B. Vaid, translated with Annie Montaut (Caractères, 2005); “Musulmans, tous frères,” a story by Agyeya translated in collaboration (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming). Alessandra Consolaro obtained her MA in Sankrit at the University of Milan and in Hindi at the University of Turin, and her Ph.D. in History and International Relationships at the University of Pisa. In 1991 she received a Fulbright scholarship (University of Washington, Seattle). At

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present she teaches Hindi Language and Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Turin. Her research interests include contemporary Hindi fiction: critical study and translation; decolonization in South Asia and its relations with the standardization of modern Hindi language and literature; South Asian history (twentieth century, nationalism, and postcolonial); and colonial and postcolonial theory. Her recent publications (not including four research articles in Italian and translations of literary Hindi texts into Italian) are “Evaluating Contemporary Hindi Narrative in Italy: A Random Approach and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes.” In A. Monti and M. Goglio, eds., Streaming Up Memory InBetween Past and Present: A River of Words; Meeting the Indian Writers Alka Saraogi and Anita Nair (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia Paradoxa/Texts, 2004), 62–71; “Rag-Virag: A Drama of Attachment and Nonattachment.” In A. Monti, M. Goglio, and E. Adami, eds., Feeding the Self, Feeling the Way in Ancient and Contemporary South Asian Cultures (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia Paradoxa/Texts, 2005), 94–113. Clara A. B. Joseph is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary. Her publications include The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and Global Fissures: Postcolonial Fusions (Rodopi, 2006). Her articles have appeared in journals such as World Englishes, Research in African Literatures, World Literature Written in English, and English Studies in Canada. She has been awarded an SSHRCC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Standard Research Grant for her current research on Christian literary works of India. She serves on the editorial boards of ARIEL and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Heidi Pauwels obtained her Ph.D. in Hindi in 1994 at the University of Washington. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her main research interests are Krishna and Rama bhakti, esp. Sita and Radha as role models in Sanskrit and medieval texts and contemporary film and television, and Nagridas alias Savant Singh of Kishangarh. She is the author of In Praise of Holy Men: Hagiographic Poems by and about Harira¯m Vya¯s (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2002) and Kr..sn. a’s Round Dance Reconsidered: Harira¯m Vya¯s’s Hindi Ra¯s-pañca¯dhya¯nı¯ (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1996) Her recent publications include Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics (London; New York: Routledge, 2007), “‘Only You’ The Wedding of Rama and Sita, Past and Present,” in Ramayana Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 165–218;

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“Is Love Still Stronger Than Dharma? What Ever Happened to Sita’s Choice and the Gopis’s Voice?” in Playing for Real: Hindu Role Models, Religion, and Gender (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 117–140, and “Romancing Radha: Nagridas’s Royal Appropriations of Bhakti Themes,” South Asia Research 15 2005: 55–78. Lucy Rosenstein obtained her Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. She is a Senior Lecturer in Hindi at SOAS. Her publications include The Devotional Poetry of Sva¯mı¯ Harida¯s: A Study of Early Braj Bha¯.sa¯ Verse (Groningen, The Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 1997), New Poetry in Hindi: An Anthology (Permanent Black 2003, Anthem 2004), and numerous translations of and articles on contemporary Hindi poetry. She is particularly interested in the theory and practice of translation and in gender issues, and the work of contemporary Hindi women poets has remained the focus of her research for the past seven years. Sunny Singh holds a BA from Brandeis University, Waltham; an MA in English and American Literature; and a master’s degree in Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is completing her Ph.D. from the Universitat de Barcelona. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the London Metropolitan University London, UK and leads the BA in Creative Writing, but also teaches Indian cinema. Her first novel—Nani’s Book of Suicides—was first published by HarperCollins India in 2000. The Spanish translation of the novel won the Mar de Letras prize in Spain. Her second book, a work of nonfiction titled Single in the City: The Independent Woman’s Handbook (2001), explored the lives of single women in contemporary India. Her most recent novel, With Krishna’s Eyes (2006), has been translated so far into four languages and commended for its “profound insights.” She has published creative and academic work in international anthologies, literary magazines, numerous academic journals, and newspapers worldwide. Her research interests include gender, postcoloniality, popular culture, and cinema. Perundevi Srinivasan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human Sciences Program at the George Washington University, United States. Her research focuses on the conceptions of the body and modernity within a framework of the goddess cult in Tamil Nadu, India. Perundevi is a Tamil writer and poet. Her publications include two poetry collections and short stories. She has published a review article on Madeleine Biardeau’s Stories about Posts in the

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Anthropological Quarterly (Summer 2005). Her article titled “Can We Cross the Chasm? Agency and Orientalist Discourse in the Colonial Tamil Context” is included in an anthology titled “Reorienting Orientalism” edited by Chandreyee Niyogi (New Delhi: Sage, 2006). Laetitia Zecchini obtained her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and Inalco, Paris, on the political dimension of contemporary Indian poetry in English and in Hindi in 2007. She is now working as a tenured researcher at the CNRS in Paris. She is coeditor of La modernité littéraire indienne: Perspectives postcoloniales (Rennes: PUR, forthcoming) and has published several articles on Indian poetry and on postcolonial theory. Her recent work has focused on Arun Kolatkar’s poetry. Her research interests include the politics of poetics, the representation of the subaltern in literature, specifically poetry, strangeness in Indian writing, and the literature of the Dalits. She has cotranslated the poet Kedarnath Singh into French (Dans un pays tout plein d’histoires) and is currently translating Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems.

Note on Transliteration

The system of transliteration in this work follows a standard system for Hindi, in which long vowels are marked with a macron, for instance ¯a, and retroflex consonants with a dot beneath the letter, for example .d. Nasalization is indicated by the sign m . , which follows the nasalized vocal, for instance bham var. No special symbol is used for anusva¯ra (superscript dot denoting . homorganic or other nasal consonant) in the transliteration, the appropriate nasal consonant being written to avoid confusion in the pronunciation, for example ran. gmañc. All Hindi words and titles of works are spelled according to the transliteration system for Hindi, for example kavita¯. The titles of films and the names of deities, of characters in fiction and scripture, of languages, and of cities and countries have not been marked with diacritics.

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On Myth and Mythologizing: An Introduction Diana Dimitrova

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his book deals with the representation of myth and religion in South Asian literature and film. The volume brings together several essays that explore the interface between religion, philosophy, mythology, gender, and fundamentalism. It is organized in two parts. Part I has a focus on religion, myth, and gender, and Part II on religion, myth, and politics. The common thread that links the two parts is the appropriation and reinterpretation of myth. All essays explore various aspects of the ongoing process of remythologizing of the present, as revealed in literature and film in South Asia. The essays in this collection respond to one and the same question: how to interpret the resurgence of myth in the present? What is the meaning of ancient and venerated myths today? What are the ideological implications of the interpretation of myths and how do they reflect and influence the power structures of contemporary societies in South Asia? The study of myth has been of central importance to philosophers in antiquity and to scholars of religion and literature from the sixteenth century onward. Scholars of different persuasions and methods have approached myth and studied it from different perspectives. I therefore examine the major theories of myth in the fields of religious studies and literary studies. Next I deal with the importance of myth in South Asia and the ongoing remythologizing of South Asian culture. I look into some major works on myth by scholars of South Asian religions and philosophy, some recent studies of myth in South Asian literatures by scholars who deal with literatures in South Asian languages, and the surprising absence of any studies of myth in theoretical postcolonial criticism, which dominates the academic discourse on South Asia in the West today. In the final section of this chapter, I discuss the chapters in this book, which constitute an important

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contribution to the study of myth and the mythologizing of contemporary South Asian literature and film. The present volume studies the links between myth and ideology with regard to the representation of gender and politics in the works of several major poets, dramatists, novelists, and filmmakers. The Study of Myth Myth has been the subject of study of religious and philosophical thought since antiquity. Classical philosophy was engaged in a rational evaluation of mythology and the connections between knowledge and myth. The Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the neo-Platonists took serious interest in the study of myth.1 Medieval Christian scholars redirected their attention from ancient mythology to the Old and New Testaments, which they interpreted in an allegorical and figurative way. During the Renaissance interest in the mythology of antiquity reemerged, and myths were seen positively as manifestations of poetic and moral allegories or religious, philosophical, and scientific truths. By contrast, in the period of the Enlightenment, myth was interpreted negatively and was seen as the expression of ignorance and delusion. At this time several books were published that influenced present-day theories and approaches to the study of myth in the eighteenth century.2 The Romantic theory of myth finds its highest expression in the work of Schelling and Hegel3 in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Myth is seen as an aesthetic phenomenon and the symbolic prototype of artistic creation. The Romantic views on myth mark the declining of the traditional interpretations of myth as allegory and the rise of the symbolic approach. The second half of the nineteenth century gave birth to the “mythological” and anthropological schools in the study of myth. These two schools had contrasting views on the study of myth. The mythological school, whose main representative was the Indologist Max Mueller,4 was based on comparative and historical linguistics and attempted to reconstruct ancient Indo-European mythology by means of comparison of the etymologies of words in Indo-European languages. By contrast, the anthropological school, whose main representatives were Edward B. Tylor and Andrew Lang,5 was based on comparative ethnography. It studied not Indo-European linguistic data but archaic and civilized societies. It defined mythology as “primitive science” without any poetic component. In the twentieth century the study of myth continued and new theories of myth arose. These are the rationalistic, ritualistic, functional, the French Sociological School, symbolic, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and structural theories.

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The religious or rationalistic or intellectualist theory has as its premise that myths are attempts to explain things. Similar to scientific theories myths can explain the origin of human life or the origin and function of the universe. Myths are considered to offer false explanations. This theory does not explain why whole societies persist in believing what is false. Ritualistic theories of myth assert the primacy of ritual over myth. Rituals are considered the principal source from which emerged myth, religion, and art. The main representatives of the ritualistic school are William Robertson Smith6 and James George Frazer.7 Frazer studies myths that are linked to seasonal cycles and contributes to our understanding of the mytheme of the king. He emphasizes the primacy of magic and the role magic plays in asserting social order and hierarchy in marriage and property relations. He believes that myth is the script for ritual and not an attempt to understand the world. The myth and ritual school was prominent in the 1930s and 1940s and influenced the study of Western literature, art, and culture. Functionalist theories postulate that the meaning of myth is to be found in the functions of myth. Myths function to satisfy the needs of societies and individuals such as the need for meaning, identity, and belonging. The most prominent representative of the functionalist theory is Bronislaw Malinowski.8 Malinowski considers myth an indispensable ingredient in all cultures. He denies the claims of rationalistic theory that myth serves primarily as an explanation satisfying scientific interest. He believes that myth should be understood in terms of its social function within a particular culture. Myths are told to satisfy the need for social submission or practical requirements. Thus, for Malinowski, myth has a purely practical function. Myth codifies thought, sanctions rituals, reinforces social practices, and justifies the social order, that is, myth is a powerful mechanism for maintaining social and economic harmony. The French Sociological School, whose main representatives are Emile Durkheim9 and Lucien Lévy Bruhl,10 base their theories on social psychology and the specifics of the community, which they call “collective representations.” Durkheim holds that religion and myth are associated with the collective representations that express social reality. He finds that society reproduces itself through religion. The antinomy religion/society corresponds to the antinomy sacred/profane. Durkheim studies totemism in Australian aboriginal societies and finds that the mythology of totemism legitimates the social and political organization of the tribe. Totemism sacralizes not specific objects or natural phenomena but the group itself and provides a model of the world. He considers religion and myth products of human consciousness and concludes that metaphors and symbols play a

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very important role in religious and mythical thinking. Meletinsky sees Durkeim’s contribution to the study of myth both in the introduction of the sociological factor in mythology and in Durkeim’s findings that social life is possible because of symbolism (the totemic emblems of the tribe).11 Lévy Bruhl draws on Durkheim’s work and elaborates on the particular characteristics of primitive thought. His findings are of major importance for the development of the theory of myth. He criticizes both Tylor and Frazer for seeing the way primitives respond to experience of the world as primitive error. By contrast, he asserts that the difference is a difference of mentalités, of different modes of thinking. He contends that while European thinking is rational, logical, and scientific, primitive thinking is affective, poetic, and mystical. He refers to primitive thinking as “prelogical” and emphasizes that its main characteristics are “participation” and “communion.” Primitives do not so much perceive the world as feel it. According to Lévy Bruhl mystical elements of myth represent participation that is no longer perceived by the social actors. Similar to Malinowski, Lévy Bruhl sees myth as a means of maintaining the integration of the individual in the social group. Meletinsky points out that “Lévy Bruhl’s greatest contribution is to call attention to the distinctiveness of mythical thought.”12 Symbolic theories of myth hold that myths do not explain anything. Rather they contain symbolic representations. The basic assumption of symbolic theories is that myths have hidden meanings that must be decoded. Ernst Cassirer is the most prominent thinker of this school.13 Meletinsky considers Cassirer’s most important contribution “the analysis of man’s spiritual activity and mythopoesis, the most ancient form of symbolic activity.”14 For Cassirer mythology is an autonomous symbolic form of culture that is characterized by a specific mode of representing emotions and thus similar to art and language. The psychoanalytic theory of myth is closely linked to the symbolic theory as the symbolic representations that myths are considered to contain may refer to repressed material from the individual unconscious, universal archetypes of patterns from the collective unconscious, or social organization and structure. Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Jung’s contributions are considered of colossal importance.15 Freud emphasizes sexual complexes of the individual that have taken place in the subconscious or have been buried there as a consequence of conscious guilt. He studies the Oedipus complex and argues that it is the product of the child’s sexual desires directed toward the opposite-sexed parent. Freudian psychology sees myth as the obvious expression of a psychic complex. The symbolism of the mythological imagination is interpreted as allegory of the erotic complex that the ego represses. Although Freud complements his original theory by

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developing the doctrine of the superego, which takes the social environment into account, his version of psychoanalysis is oriented toward the psychology of the individual. Jung’s contribution involves his theory of the archetypes of collective unconscious, the firmly established symbolic and mythic images that reappear in many cultures and historical periods. According to Jung the human psyche consists of three layers, the conscious mind, the personal unconscious, and the “collective unconscious.” The collective depths of the unconscious are not linked with the individual’s complexes but with a culture’s archetypes. The archetype resembles what is called in myth a motif and collective representations. The motifs studied by Jung include the Divine Child, the Hero, Mother Earth, the number four, and the Buddhist mandala. Jung points out that the participation in the ritualization of a myth can shape and create whole communities. Jung is interested not only in the social function of the archetype but also in the power of the archetype for individual psychic healing, which he calls individuation or “selfrealization.” He holds that art is linked to the process of individuation and the attainment of a synthesis between the subconscious and consciousness, the personal and the social. Jung argues that the archetypes should be defined as a constant core meaning. Archetypes are therefore only the possibility of representation. He identifies the archetypes as structural elements of the unconscious psyche that give rise to myths and acknowledges that the content of the unconscious can have multiple meanings. Meletinsky points out that “Jung’s contribution to understanding archetypes and their mythological parallels is his view of the metaphorical nature of archetypal symbolism.”16 Phenomenological theories of myth claim that myths are manifestation of the sacred and oppose all rationalistic and functional approaches. They hold that the best way to interpret myths is by comparative methods. According to phenomenologists myths themselves will disclose their meanings if one has enough examples to reveal a common pattern. Mircea Eliade is the most prominent representative of the phenomenological school.17 Eliade classifies myths according to their functions in ritual. He thinks that collective memory is ahistorical and does not recognize historical events and figures but only categories and archetypes. Eliade holds that human beings live in fear of history, and the idea of historical progress and the postHegelian historical view of the world cannot confer any meaning on human suffering and abolish humanity’s fear of history. By contrast, Eliade argues that mythology gives meaning to human suffering: cyclical theories of time, mythology, and especially myth connected with recurrent rituals of regeneration, rebirth, and purification help humans transform chaos into order

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and give value to the human existence in terms of its correlation to sacred and mythical time and the archetypal actions of the culture’s mythical figures. Structuralist theories of myth postulate that myths are cognitive structures by which people think. Structuralist theories draw on information theory, Roman Jakobson’s model of verbal communication and analytic distinctions developed by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics (1915). Just as language has a syntax that allows people to form meaningful sentences, so myths have a logical structure that allows people to organize their experiences and their world into a meaningful whole. The most prominent representative of this school is Claude Lévi-Strauss.18 Lévi-Strauss wrote a programmatic article on myth in 195519 and later on published the four-volume-work Mythologiques (1964–71). Lévi-Strauss sees language as a universal vehicle for transmitting information. He holds that language is a model for understanding myth. Myth is interpreted as a linguistic phenomenon that can be analyzed using Saussure’s categories of langue and parole and is translatable.20 In his later work he considers music, which is untranslatable, to be the model for the analysis of myth. According to Lévi-Strauss myth is simultaneously a diachronic narrative that records the historical past and a synchronic means of explaining the present, and even the future.21 The diachronic dimension is the syntagmatic development of the plot, whereas the synchronic dimension reveals its meaning. He considers mythological thought metaphorical and compares various myths on the level of the opposition between metaphor and metonymy, which is in conformity with semiotics and structuralist linguistics. Lévi-Strauss studies the transformation of myths, that is, of the various codes that make appearances in the various thematic narrations. In this way he proves the existence of a particular logic of correlations among myths or their individual motifs. Changes in the messages/codes, which are determined by the transformations of myths, are figurative and metaphorical because every myth is a “metaphor” for another myth.22 Each of these theories of myth provides important insights into the study of myth. Many scholars of myth are eclectic, drawing on elements in different theories to understand the myths they study. Scholars refer to the theories of myth of the twentieth century as modern theories of myth and acknowledge that the study of myth in the twentieth century is as vital, important, and ongoing as has been over the past few centuries. Modern definitions of “myth” tend to emphasize its symbolic, narrative character and its service as a model or paradigm of the natural and human/ social order.23 Myths provide models by which we can envision the world and help us perceive the world as ordered, and as having a meaning and

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purpose. Additionally, myths explain why evil and chaos break out and what we must do to save our world. Myths also shape our sense of self. The lives of mythic figures serve as metaphors and archetypes of human behavior. Thus, myths provide role models of behavior and establish the desirability of social order and societal norms. Although contemporary theories shed light on some important aspects regarding the nature and functions of myth, it would be incorrect to say that all questions have been answered. It is to be expected that myth will continue to captivate the scholarly imagination, and that new theories of myth will continue to emerge in this century as well. Myth, Mythologizing, and Western Literature Evidence of the pervasiveness and inevitability of myth as a form of cultural life today is apparent in the role it plays in modern literature and in popular culture. Up to the medieval period the entire literature was inspired by archaic and classical myths and motifs. Myths were a source of poetic and literary inventiveness. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries new characters were introduced into traditional plots. The eternal figures of Hamlet, Don Quixote, and the Misanthrope became “mythological” for later writings. In the eighteenth century, European culture freed itself from traditional plots and motifs and its mythological content. The links between literature and mythology were reflected in the movements of realism and romanticism. Realist literature attempted conscious demythologizing, away from traditional plots and medieval symbolism in pursuit of a truthful and realistic mirroring of reality. By contrast, romanticism attempted the conscious use of myth in an innovative way.24 The German Romantic authors F. W. J. Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel insisted that to write great literature, modern authors must develop a new mythology. In England, William Blake imbued his poems with mythology that he himself invented.25 The rebirth of myth in contemporary literature is manifested in Wagner’s exaltation of myth and his fusion of myth and music. It is also linked to the profound influence of the psychological theories of Freud and Jung, complemented by the innovative approaches to myth as revealed in the works of Frazer, Malinowski, Lévy Bruhl, Cassirer, and Lévi-Strauss.26 Meletinsky holds that the rebirth of myth in the twentieth century is to be seen as the intellectuals’ response to the feeling of the crisis of Western culture during the first decades of the twentieth century. It also involves disillusionment with the process of demythologizing, characteristic of the worldview of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and of positivism in the nineteenth century. Last but not least, the remythologizing of

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modern literature is to be seen in connection with the universality of the poetic unconscious.27 The mythologizing of contemporary literature is linked to modernism and has replaced nineteenth-century realism. A number of modern writers have asserted that an integrative mythology, whether inherited or invented, which fuses hereditary myths, biblical history, and the author’s own visions, is essential to literature. James Joyce in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land, Eugene O’Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra, W. B. Yeats in the poems “The Second Coming” and “Byzantium,” Faulkner in “The Bear,” Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain and in Joseph and His Brothers, and Kafka in The Trial and The Castle have deliberately woven their modern materials on the pattern of ancient myths or constructed their own mythology. Even the works of authors who consciously abandon myths and traditional plots to create realistic works reveal the profound influence of myth.28 It is therefore not surprising that myth has become a prominent term in literary criticism. There are two major “schools” of myth-criticism,29 archetypal myth-criticism and structural and ideological myth-criticism. Archetypal myth-criticism is influenced by the psychological theories of Freud and Jung and the theories of the English anthropological school, and especially by James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. The most prominent archetypal mythcritics are Francis Fergusson, Maud Bodkin, Richard Chase, and Northrop Frye.30 This school is also called the “myth and ritual school,” as its representatives see myth and ritual as closely intertwined. For Frye the fundamental difference is not between myth and ritual but between myth and archetype. Myth for him is a narration, and archetype is the meaning of a text. Meletinsky points out that, in his Anatomy of Criticism, Frye attempts to develop anthropology of literature by discovering the ethnological models and archetypes that are the basis of literary genres and motifs. He is influenced by both Jung and Frazer, and his goal is to reconcile myth and ritual with psychology.31 The archetypal myth-critics practice literary criticism that is based on myth, ritual, and archetype. Frye freely uses archetypes in his theories but without linking them to the other theoretical elements in Jung. The myth-critics view genres and individual plot patterns as recurrences of basic mythic formulas. According to Frye’s theory, there are four main narrative genres: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony/satire, and these are displaced modes of the four elemental forms of myth that are associated with the seasonal cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.32 Structuralist myth-criticism is influenced by the theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss, structuralist linguistic theory, and semiotics. The most

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representative literary critics are Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp,33 and Mikhail Bakhtin.34 Vladimir Propp presents a structuralist study of folklore and develops a model of the syntagmatic nature of the plot in the fairy tale: the narrative structure is organized as a linear succession of various functions linked to different characters in the tale. He traces the origin of the tale to initiation rites. However, he does not trace particular motifs to particular rituals but reflects on the genre of the fairy tale as whole and analyzes the symbolism of the fairy-tale pilgrimage motif. Mikhail Bakhtin links the burlesque elements of myth and ritual to carnivalesque elements in popular culture. Meletinsky points out that there is a reemergence of the myth and ritual approach in Bakhtin’s work, as he provides insights into the carnivalesque mytho-ritual elements in Shakespeare, in Don Quixote, and in Gogol’s poetics. However, Bakhtin’s methodology, the use of binary logic (oppositions of high/low) and the focus on the semantic core of the carnivalesque model, closely resembles the methodology of semiotic structuralism.35 Roland Barthes’s work is very important as it links structuralist theories of myth to ideology by studying myth in politics and contemporary popular culture.36 Barthes links myth to language and to information, and treats myth as part of semiotics. He states that “mythology is a part of both semiology inasmuch as it is a formal science, and of ideology inasmuch as it is an historical science: it studies ideas-in-form.”37 He holds that in myth there are two semiological systems: a first-order linguistic system, the language, and a second-order semiological system, a metalangue, a second language in which one speaks about the first.38 That which is a sign in the first-order system of language becomes signified in the second-order system of myth. He calls the signifier of the first-order system of language “meaning,” and the sign, “concept.” The signifier of the second-order system of myth (i.e., the third element—the sign—in the first-order system) becomes “form” and the sign “signification.” Barthes holds that myth transforms history into ideology at the level of sign and outlines the basis for a theory that explains the origin of political myths. Meletinsky points out that Barthes argues that myth neither intentionally misleads nor seeks truth. It transcends this opposition by neutralizing ideas and transforming history into nature. Under the disguise of nature, the listener has the impression that there has been no deformation of the truth and the relation between signifier and signified is completely normal. The transformation of meaning into form is accompanied by the substitution of values with facts.39 Barthes believes that modern life privileges mythologizing. Myth is transformed from the expressive instrument of primitive thought into the tool of political demagoguery, the goal of which is to provide a particular

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political ideology with the resemblance of naturalness. “Myth is the most appropriate instrument for the ideological inversion which defines this society . . . What the world supplies to myth is a historical reality . . . and what myth gives in return is a natural image of this reality . . . In passing from history into nature, myth . . . abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences . . . it organizes a world which is without contradictions.”40 No matter what ideological position the critics discussed in this section represent and no matter what genre of literature they study or what specific authors and works they discuss, they all affirm the process of mythologizing of contemporary Western literature and the rebirth of myth in the twentieth century. Myth, Mythologizing, and South Asian Literature Scholars of South Asian religions and philosophy have extensively studied Indian myths and mythology.41 Several important books and articles address the influence of the politics of myth on contemporary religions and societies in India.42 Myth plays an important role in South Asian literatures as well. The poetics of mythologizing, that is, the appropriation and interpretation of myths by South Asian poets, novelists, and dramatists, is characteristic of South Asian literature, film, and culture in the twentieth century. There is no doubt that Western modernism had a considerable influence on South Asian literature and film, but the reasons for this phenomenon are also to be found in the universality of the poetic unconscious imagination and in the continuous and enduring presence of traditional Indian mythology in every aspect of South Asian literature, film, and culture. The interpretation of mythological elements in contemporary South Asian literature and film oscillates between the romantic exaltation of national culture (often defining itself in opposition to Western culture) and a modernist search for archetypes. Often myths and mythical archetypes are linked to ideological critique and are used to express a highly critical stance toward society, political institutions, and conservative tradition and gender relations. In the field of Hindi literature, mythologizing is a potent trend and is manifest in authors such as late-nineteenth-century author Bharatendu Harishchandra, and twentieth-century authors Jayshankar Prasad, Mohan Rakesh, Dharmvir Bharti, Upendranath Ashk, Gitanjali Shree, Arun Kolatkar, and K. B. Vaid. Although there is a potent trend toward mythologizing of South Asian literature, this trend remains largely unnoticed by literary criticism.43 Only in the past few years scholars of South Asia who focus primarily on literatures written in South Asian languages have begun to study various aspects

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of mythologizing in South Asian literature.44 A recent contribution to these studies is Dimitrova’s work on religion and gender in Hindi drama.45 By contrast, most theoretical works on postcolonial studies do not even mention the word “myth,” although the links between colonialism and myth as a form of ideology and political demagoguery have enabled the creating of willing colonized subjects and affirmed the “superiority” of the colonizer and given legitimacy to the “civilizing mission” of the colonizer. The focus is on “hybridity,” “orientalism,” “subaltern knowledge,” history, and power, but not on myth or the mythologizing and remythologizing of South Asian societies, literature, film, and culture.46 In her essay on Dharmvir Bharti’ s drama Andhā Yug (The Blind Age), Jyotsna Singh talks about the construction of “mythic identity of the nation” and is thus one of the few scholars of postcolonialism to touch upon the role of myth in postcolonial literary discourse on South Asia.47 This book attempts to fill in the surprising lack of studies of myth by postcolonial literary criticism that dominates the academic discourse on South Asia in the West. The work is significant for its exploration of the process of mythologizing in different literary genres, poetry, drama, and the novel, as well as in mythological and commercial films. In their essays, Rosenstein, Pauwels, Dimitrova, and Srinivasan focus on the interplay between religion, myth, and gender ideology. The essays of Consolaro, Zecchini, Castaing, Joseph, Bhatia, and Singh explore the issues of religion, myth, and politics and study issues of identity, nationalism, and marginalization. Scholars approach the representation of religion and myth in South Asian literature and film from various perspectives: structuralist, ideological, and archetypal criticism of the myth and ritual school. Rosenstein and Consolaro study the appropriation of myth from the perspective of ideological criticism. Pauwels, Dimitrova, and Singh use an eclectic critical approach, which combines elements from ideological and archetypal criticism. Castaing, Zecchini, Pauwels, and Rosenstein also use elements of structuralist criticism when analyzing language. Joseph, Bhatia, and Singh deal with the issues of myth and mythologizing from the perspectives of ideological criticism. In her essay Srinivasan deals with myth and its ritualcontext. In her analysis she uses elements from the myth and ritual school of literary criticism and ideological criticism. The book is significant for offering an international-oriented and multidisciplinary exploration of the little-studied issues or religion and myth in South Asian literature and film. Lucy Rosenstein studies Amrita Bharati’s use of classical Indian religious myth, thought, and images of the feminine. The author explores Bharati’s spiritual journey by focusing on three of her collections: Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h, “Together on earth” (1976), Sannāt.e mem.

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dūr tak, “Far into the stillness” (1992), and Man ruk gayā vahām., “The mind stopped there” (2000), which represent distinct stages of Bharati’s path. Rosenstein analyzes the numerous references to Vedantic ideas, Tantric images, and Krishna bhakti in Bharati’s poetry. Heidi Pauwels explores myth and gender in film, in an essay that studies the link between gender and Hindu devotion in South Asian popular film. Pauwels focuses on the way the famous medieval devotional woman-saint Mirabai of Rajasthan is represented in the popular 1979 “Bollywood” movie Meera, directed by Gulzar. The analysis shows disparate forces at work simultaneously: there is advocacy of women’s resistance to patriarchal norms as well as reinforcement of a status quo. The author argues that the movie clearly is a site of contestation. In the end, though, Pauwels points out, the message sent to the women audience is one of conformity with patriarchal values, and at the expense of the potentially liberating devotional ideal. Diana Dimitrova studies the representation of myth and images of the feminine in several contemporary Bollywood films. The author examines whether traditional notions of the feminine are endorsed or subverted. Some recent Bollywood films that are discussed are: Ham āpke haim. kaun (“Who am I to You”), Khalnāyak (“Villain”), Dil cāhtā hai (“The Heart Wants”), Devdās (“Devdas”), and Ham Dil De Cuke sanam (“I Have Already Given My Heart Away”). The analysis of the films shows that no matter how “modern” the subject matter is, the notion of the feminine is mostly conservative and traditional. The author explores the reasons for this fascination with traditional archetypes of the feminine. Perundevi Srinivasan discusses myths dealing with the goddess of fertility and smallpox and how they are appropriated in film. In her essay, the author focuses specifically on three popular Tamil films on the goddess, namely, Atiparasakthi (“Primordial Sakthi”), Nattaiyil Muttu (“The Pearl in the Snail”), and Samsaramatu Minsaram (Family is a Live Wire”). Srinivasan examines the reworking of the myths of Mariyamman in films to understand how “modernity” is constituted in Tamil culture. She argues that the films discussed employ the sacred framework associated with poxes for foregrounding the dynamics of relationship between the British and the natives, the upper castes and the lower castes, and a woman and her household, respectively. The author observes that such discourses of poxes in the films draw certain key motifs from the myths of the goddess and poxes, conventionally narrated in the ritual space of temples. Alessandra Consolaro traces the process of construction of communalist identities based on myth and religion in Gītāñjalī Śrī’s Hindi novel Hamāra śahar us baras, through an analysis of the narrative and of the stylistic devices used by the writer. The author argues that Hamāra śahar us baras is

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a literary portrait of the point of view of the academic about nation and the construction of identity in contemporary India. She holds that the interaction of the three main characters of the novel, two university professors and a professional writer, depicts the process through which the old, secular, pluralistic identity is slowly replaced by a new, communalistictinged one. Laetitia Zecchini explores the dissident dimension of Arun Kolatkar’s poetry in English, focusing on Sarpa Satra, which rewrites and subverts one of the founding texts of Hinduism: the Mahābhārata. The author argues that Kolatkar uses the historicity of the English language in India to celebrate the creative transgression of rigid frontiers. Zecchini holds that Kolatkar’s poetry eludes the cultural and religious tendencies of homogenization, petrifaction, and exclusion that characterize not only the Hindu nationalist ideology but also the Brahmanical system, based on the notions of hierarchy and contextualization. Anne Castaing studies how Vaid’s most unreferential narratives draw their metaphysical discourse from indigenous sources and explores the way the author elaborates a new form of “faith.” She holds that the fiction of K. B. Vaid questions the relationship between postmodern literature and religiosity. Castaing argues that Vaid’s novel Dard lā davā (1975), which is a long nonreferential monologue close to Beckettian “absurd,” parallels exile and the mystical quest where the notions of “pain,” “doubt,” “alienation,” and “separation” are equally evoked. Clara Joseph argues that Nayantara Sahgal’s anticolonial narrative shares with colonial and postcolonial worlds the assumption that Christianity is alien to India. She holds that this assumption is a major hurdle to both decolonization and nationalization, much touted goals of the postcolonial narrative. In her essay Joseph deals with theories of representation of the other as developed by Mahatma Gandhi and Emmanuel Levinas to trace instances of the aforementioned assumption in Sahgal’s latest novel, Lesser Breeds (HarperCollins 2003). She points to its links to colonial and imperial rhetoric of redemption (of civilizing the savages and democratizing the terrorists) and Hindutva nationalism, which categorically states there is no place in India for one who is not a “Hindu.” Nandi Bhatia examines the meanings of mythological drama in earlytwentieth-century India in the wake of colonial censorship implemented through the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876, rising anticolonial nationalism, and the intensification of Hindi-Urdu politics. Bhatia points out that while mythology proved as a beneficial cover for escaping the censors, playwrights also deployed it for disseminating Hindu ideas and constructing a Hindu India as the norm. She uses the example of plays by

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Hindi playwrights such as Radheyshyam Kathavachak to address the ideological function of mythological drama at a time when colonial policies and practices complicated dramatic renderings of nationalism. Sunny Singh studies how Indian filmmakers, consciously or unconsciously, refer to, or draw upon, the two major classical epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyan. a, as sources for narrative forms, plots, and characters. The author argues that in postindependence cinema the star personas of the industry’s two biggest stars—Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan—have also relied on these epic narratives and their immediate relevance to the national situation and discourse of the time. Singh draws on films that mark high points in the careers of the two stars as well as crucial turning points in the trajectory of this cinema and explores the ways in which the star-narratives of the two biggest screen legends reflect the ideals and narratives embodied by the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyan. a. To conclude, we should emphasize that mythologizing is not merely a European or Western tradition that developed from the modernist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. This complex phenomenon, which is an expression of the poetic unconscious imagination of humankind, is universal. Through mythologizing, humankind attempts to link the past and present, to explain and order the world, to legitimate social order, or to call to a reawakened ethnic pride, communal identity and national cultural tradition. Authors, artists, and filmmakers achieve this by reworking and reinterpreting archetypes and classical myths in literature and film. This book offers an exciting exploration of the role religion and myth play in the metaphorical description and shaping of modern societies in South Asia. Notes 1. On the study of religion in classical philosophy, see James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 93–98. 2. E. M. Meletinsky refers to Joseph Lafitau’s Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, Bernard de Fontenelle’s On the Origin of Fables, and Giambattista Vico’s The New Science. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 4–7. 3. On Schelling and Hegel, see E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 7–12 and James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 80–90. 4. On Max Mueller, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 29–40. 5. On Edward Tylor, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 41–60; on Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang, see James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 99–108.

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6. On William Robertson Smith, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 61–76. 7. On James George Frazer, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 77–89; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 101–108. 8. On Bronislaw Malinowski, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 247–263; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 113–117. 9. On Emile Durkheim, see Axel Michaels, ed. Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 103–120; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 183–188. 10. On Lucien Lévy Bruhl, see E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 27–29; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 109–113. 11. E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 26–27. 12. Ibid., 29. 13. On Ernst Cassirer, see E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 29–36. 14. E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 30. 15. On Sigmund Freud, see Axel Michaels, ed. Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 90–103; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 143–150; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 39–41. Carl Jung, see Axel Michaels, ed. Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 234–246; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 150–160; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 41–50. 16. E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth. 46. 17. On Mircea Eliade, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 90–103; James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, 143–150; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 39–41. On Carl Jung, see Axel Michaels, ed., Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, 343–353; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 51–53. 18. On Lévi-Strauss see E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 53–72. 19. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” Structural Anthropology. Trans. from the French by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963. 206–231. 20. Ibid., 208–210. 21. Ibid., 209. 22. E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 66–67. 23. See the discussion of myth in René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 190–193. 24. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 259–262. 25. See M. H. Abrahms, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 122. 26. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, xviv. 27. Ibid., x, xx–xxi. 28. Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe is considered an example of thematic innovation and demythologizing. However, Crusoe, who creates a world on a deserted island, is not dissimilar to the mythical cultural heroes, and his activities resemble the structure of traditional creation myths. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 262–263. 29. On myth-criticism, see William Righter, Myth and Literature; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 73–92.

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30. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, 131–242. For critical references to Northrop Frye, see Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, 21–90; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 81–90. 31. E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 81–82. 32. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, 131–242. 33. See V. Y. Propp, Morfologiya skazki (Morphology of the Folktale) On Propp, see E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 97–98. 34. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 110–113. 35. Ibid., 110–112. 36. See Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 109–159. For critical references to Roland Barthes, see Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, 103–109, 125–146; E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 67–69. 37. See Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 112. 38. Ibid., 115. 39. See E. M. Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 68–69. 40. See Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 142–143. 41. There are numerous studies on Vedic mythology, Paurān.ic mythology, and the mythology of different deities in most European languages and in Indian languages. To mention just a few representative works in English, see W. Callewaert, Gods and Temples in South India; W. Doniger, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Śiva; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Other Peoples’ Myths, Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient India and Greece; D. Handelman and D. Shulman, Śiva in the Forest of Pines; H. von Stietencron, Hindu Myth, Hindu History, Religion, Art and Politics; C. Vaudeville, Myths, Saints, and Legends in Medieval India; W. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology: Vedic and Puranic; H. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. There are several outstanding sourcebooks and collections of Indian myths, for instance Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook. Trans. from the Sanskrit and with an introduction by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty; C. Dimmitt and J. A. B. van Buitenen, eds., Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Purān.as. 42. See Sheldon Pollock, “Rāmāyan.a and Political Imagination in India.” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (May 1993); David N Lorenzen, Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action, especially the essays in Part III Political Action; David Ludden, ed., Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community and the Politics of Democracy in India as well as Monika ThielHortsmann, ed., Rāmāyan.a and Rāmāyan.as; Paula Richman, ed. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia, and Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, eds., Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Tradition and National Identity. 43. See Peter Gaeffke, Hindi Literature in the Twentieth Century or R. L. Handa, A History of Hindi Language and Literature. 44. See Nagendra, Mithak aur sāhitya; R. G. Joshi, Myth in Indian Drama; Rupert Snell and I. H. P. Raeside, eds., Classics of Modern South Asian Literature, see

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especially William Radice’s essay on “ Xenophilia and Xenophobia; Michael Madhusudan Datta’s Meghnadbad Kāvya”; Sukrita Kumar, The New Story; Vasudha Dalmia’s essay “Television and Tradition: Some Observations on the Serialization of the Rāmāyan.a” in Monika Thiel-Hortsmann, ed., Rāmāyan.a and Rāmāyan.as; Vasudha Dalmia and Theo Damsteegt, eds., Narrative Strategies, see especially Brigitte Schulze’s essay on “The First Cinematic Paurān.ik kathānak;” Angelika Malinar’s article “The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata TV Serial: Domestic Drama and Dharmic Solutions” in Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, eds., Representing Hinduism; Dharwadker, Theatres of Independence: see especially chapter six on “Myth, Ambivalence and Evil”; Danuta Stasik, “He Who Dwells in the City of the Hearts of All: Notes on the Nature of Rām in Hindi Literature.” Oriental Archive, and Glushkova, I. P. “Bogi zdes’ i seicas: indusskaja mifologija kak instrument sozdanija severoindijskoj identicˆnosti.”Vostok (Oriens), no.1 (2004). 45. Diana Dimitrova, Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama. For a discussion on the remythologizing of tradition and Hindi drama, see especially chapters three and four. 46. See Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present; In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics; Edward Said, Orientalism. 47. See Jyotsna Singh, Colonial Narratives: Cultural Dialogues, 160–161.

Bibliography Abrahms, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Selected and translated from the French by Annette Lavers. Frogmore, St Albans: Paladin, 1972. Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. London and New York: Methuen, 1980. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Callewaert, Winand. Gods and Temples in South India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1995. Childs, Peter, and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory. London: Prentice Hall, 1997. Dalmia, Vasudha, and Heinrich von Stietencron, eds. Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Tradition and National Identity. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. Dalmia, Vasudha, and Theo Damsteegt, eds. Narrative Strategies: Essays on South Asian Literature and Film. Leiden, Netherlands: Research School CNWS, 1998. Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava. Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory and Urban Performance in India since 1947. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005.

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Dimitrova, Diana. Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2008. Dimmitt, Cornelia, and J. A. B. van Buitenen, eds. Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978. Doniger, Wendy. Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1975. ———. Other Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ———. Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ———. The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. Gaeffke, Peter. Hindi Literature in the Twentieth Century. (A History of Indian Literature.) Vol. 8. Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978. Glushkova, I. P. “Bogi zdes’ i seicas: indusskaja mifologija kak instrument sozdanija severoindijskoj identicˆnosti.” Vostok (Oriens) no. 1 (2004): 5–27. Handa, R. L. A History of Hindi Language and Literature. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1978. Handelman, Don, and David Shulman. Siva in the Forest of Pines: An Essay on Sorcery and Self-knowledge. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook. Translated from the Sanskrit by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty. London: Penguin Books, 1975. Joshi, R. G. Myth in Indian Drama. New Delhi: B. R. Pub. Corp., n.d. [1984?] Kumar, Sukrita Paul. The New Story: A Scrutiny of Modernity in Hindi and Urdu Short Fiction. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, in association with Allied Publishers, 1990. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York and London: Basic Books, 1963. Lorenzen, David N. Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Ludden, David, ed. Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community and the Politics of Democracy in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Meletinsky, Eleazar M. The Poetics of Myth. Trans. Guy Lanoue and Alexander Sadetsky. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. Michaels, Axel, ed. Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft. Muenchen: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997. Nagendra. Mithak aur sāhitya. New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1979. O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Patton, Laurie L., and Wendy Doniger, eds. Myth and Method. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1996.

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Pollock, Sheldon. “Rāmāyan.a and Political Imagination in India.” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (May 1993): 261–297. Propp, V. Y. Morfologiya skazki. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1969. Richman, Paula, ed. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Righter, William. Myth and Literature. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Segal, Robert. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Singh, Jyotsna. Colonial Narratives: Cultural Dialogues. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Snell, Rupert, and I. H. P. Raeside, eds. Classics of Modern South Asian Literature. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1998. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. ———. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York and London: Routledge, 1988. Stasik, Danuta. “He Who Dwells in the City of the Hearts of All: Notes on the Nature of Rām in Hindi Literature.” Oriental Archive 75 (2007): 305–325. von Stietencron, Heinrich. Hindu Myth, Hindu History, Religion, Art and Politics. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005. Thiel-Horstmann, Monika, ed. Rāmāyan.a and Rāmāyan.as. Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrasowitz, 1991. Thrower, James. Religion: The Classical Theories. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999. Vaudeville, Charlotte. Myths, Saints and Legends in Medieval India. Compiled and with an introduction by Vasudha Dalmia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Wellek, René, and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. London: Penguin Books, 1993. Wilkins, W. J. Hindu Mythology: Vedic and Puranic. Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1979. Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946.

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PART I

Religion, Myth, and Gender

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CHAPTER 1

Seeking God: Narratives of the Spiritual in Amrita Bharati’s Work and Hindi Poetry Lucy Rosenstein

A

s Aliki Barnstone reminds us in her introduction to Voices of Light, “[t]he act of writing poetry is itself visionary and spiritual for it requires an ecstatic state, a moment elsewhere, a recreation of the self, and a quest of words to unite with the reader, whether that reader is the Creator or you.”1 However, Amrita Bharati goes one step further—her poetry becomes a witness to a spiritual journey that takes the lyrical heroine to her new “home,” a land of love, truth, and freedom where “the mind stops.” This chapter will attempt to outline the spiritual trajectory charted in Amrita Bharati’s poetry by focusing on three of her collections Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h (Together on earth, 1976), Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak (Far into the stillness, 1992), and Man ruk gayā vahām. (The mind stopped there, 2000). I have chosen them because they map different stages of that journey: from the poetic “I’s” early experiences of kun. d.alinī yoga, to her self-realization and finding “herself in His blue solitude.”2 I will investigate the complex pattern of intertextuality in Amrita Bharati’s poetry: the threads of her religious heritage, particularly Vedānta3 and bhakti, woven together by her rare artistic skill into a contemporary, often outspokenly feminist fabric. Before I turn to Amrita Bharati’s poetry, I shall briefly sketch the parameters of the spiritual space in some of her predecessors and contemporaries as a basis of comparison, which would assist us in assessing both the common ground and the uniqueness of Amrita Bharati’s treatment of this topic. I shall start my overview of Amrita Bharati’s poetic inheritance with the period of religious devotion, bhakti, which was the focus of poetry in North

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India from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. This is not a chance choice—as we shall later see, bhakti signposts Amrita Bharati’s spiritual path. I shall specifically focus on the legendary Mira Bai,4 not only because she shares gender with Amrita Bharati, but also because there are some important similarities in their approaches to the divine. Hagiography tells us that the famous sixteenth-century Rajasthani princess Mira fell in love with Krishna, the “Govardhan lifter,” and in her single-minded devotion to him, ignored the decorum required of a married woman. The pādas attributed to her sing of her love for him, mainly experienced in viyoga, separation, where she is the virahin.ī, the pining woman whose lover is away. This is a very common pattern of the Krishna bhakti lovemyth, where viraha is a major mode of experiencing love in its full intensity. Mira’s unusual weave of that myth is represented by her songs, in which she pictures Krishna as an ascetic, a yogi, and herself as a yoginī wandering at his side. As Hawley points out, “in doing so she concocts an unorthodox mixture of home and homelessness that has precedent only in a few extreme Tantric groups and in the mythology of Parvati and Shiva.”5 I am not staying here, not staying where the land’s grown strange without you, my dear, But coming home, coming to where your place is take me, guard me with your guardian mercy, please. I’ll take up your yogic garb— And search through the world as a yogi does with you—yogi and yogini, side by side.6

Moreover, in some verses, Mira depicts her marriage to Krishna, thus challenging not only the orthodox view that yogic life is not for women but also the axiom that yogis do not marry. To quote Hawley again: “On more than one occasion she says that she wears the forehead mark and necklace of a yogī as if they were bangles—the essential jewellery of a married woman—and by doing so suggests that the love of Krishna is a force strong enough to fuse even logical opposites such as these.”7 We shall see when discussing Amrita Bharati’s poetry that particularly her early work (represented here by Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h) depicts both protagonists of her love-myth as ascetics and introduces the idea of marriage between them. Moreover, in many ways, Mira Bai is an early precursor of Amrita Bharati’s feminism: the former’s radical divergence from the orthodox views on strīdharma and asceticism, in terms of both her poetry and her life echoes in the latter’s refusal to accept wifehood and motherhood

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ascribed to women by the Man. usmr.ti, and in her choice of the path of female asceticism, frowned upon by tradition,8 spending much of her life in Sri Aurobindo’s ashram in Pondicherry. Moreover, Amrita Bharati shares Mira Bai’s resistance to the straitjacket of sagun. a or nirgun. a9 labels. Even though many of Mira Bai’s songs are dedicated to the incarnate Krishna, the god within is not just sagun. a but also nirgun. a—“the paramātmā with whom the ātmā longs to merge,10 or in Mira’s words: “My beloved lives in my heart and neither comes nor goes.”11 As Kishwar and Vanita point out, “[w]hile she experiences the pain of separation and longs for union with god she also repeatedly says, in the common paradox of bhakti, that god is within her. Finding the beloved is indistinguishable from finding that which is within, the self or the ātmā.”12 As we shall later see, this mix of Vedāntic ideas with bhakti is very typical of Amrita Bharati’s approach to the divine. Let us jump a few centuries now13 and turn to Amrita Bharati’s more immediate poetic predecessors—Chāyāvād, the Hindi incarnation of Romanticism, which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Chāyāvād was the first truly modern movement in Hindi poetry: it focused onto the individual experience and personal emotion, and expressed them in exquisite and refined language. The individual, perceived to possess the grandeur and awesomeness of God, became the center of Chāyāvād ’s universe, the template for description of any phenomenon: thus the two main subjects of Chāyāvād—nature and cultural tradition—were approached from a humanist perspective. Again we shall focus on one of the major figures of Chāyāvād—Mahadevi Verma—often referred to as “the modern Mira,” whose poetry shares topoi with that of Amrita Bharati. The general tenor of Mahadevi Verma’s poetry is symbolized by its most common image—the lamp—which burns with patient love, utterly consuming itself in the process. Mahadevi’s poetic persona, the virahin. ī, awaits the return of her beloved with humble self-surrender. Burn softly, my lamp. Every day, every hour, every moment, forever, Cast your light on my beloved’s way.14

This subject matter has led critics like Vishvambhar Manav to read her as a rahasyavādī, a religious mystic who writes “songs of the soul” depicting the relationship between the ātman and paramātman of Indian philosophy.15 Karen Schomer argues against such reductionist readings, asserting that “[t]hrough the writing of poems addressed to the imaginary lover,” Mahadevi Verma experienced “the emotional richness of a love relationship in spite of the solitary circumstances of her outer life.”16 The social structures of the

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times made romantic love between men and women practically impossible, even more so in the case of a woman; the relationship with the lover had to take place in the realm of the imagination, and thus to border on mystic experience. Mahadevi Verma’s poetry is cut off from her life; it is a product of her imagination rather than a reflection of her experiences. Her poetic “I” is a stylized, idealized image of the eternal woman in love. We shall see how Amrita Bharati uses the topos of the burning lamp and the motif of viraha. Most importantly, we shall examine how her “confessional I” allows for a flesh-and-blood woman to inhabit the traditional treatment of mystical love. Let us turn now to Amrita Bharati’s contemporaries. In the 1940s a new poetic movement enters the scene of Hindi literature—Nayī Kavitā (New Poetry). The “Hero” of the previous stages exits the scene and the poet focuses not on constructing but discovering man.17 The “little man” (laghu mānav) comes into the limelight. Poetry endeavors to witness the “continuing complexification of experience,”18 the struggle of the ordinary man to comprehend his world of modernity in which “all that is solid melts into air.”19 Religion is not an exception: modernity brings the loss of faith in every collective ideology; man has to wrestle with God, to strive for his/her own meaning of the divine. Nayī Kavitā documents man’s struggle to create a personal narrative of the spiritual. The poets often draw on their religious heritage, but reinterpret and even subvert it.20 Let us look at concrete examples how this is achieved in modern Hindi poetry. I shall explore the spiritual space in contemporary Hindi women poets as a starting point for my discussion on Amrita Bharati’s work, but first I shall briefly examine the dimensions of the spiritual in the poetry of the arguably most prominent representative of Nayī Kavitā and its chief theoretician, Agyeya, so that our exploration of approaches to the divine is not completely gender-biased. Most of Agyeya’s lyrics are meditations on Nature, the Divine, and Man, reflections of eternity in the moment, reminiscent of Rolland’s “oceanic feeling of something limitless, unbounded.”21 Influenced by Zen Buddhism, some of his best lyrics are mystic experiences of “pure” moments. “Quietly”22 is one such poem—a meditation on the divine—the expanse—that is inside us. quietly may life’s unspoken mystery deepen in our still eyes, may we, ecstatic, be immersed in the expanse quiet . . . ly . . .

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This poem masterfully brings together opposites: silence and sound, stillness and movement, man and nature. Even though sound and movement are present, the general mood is that of meditativeness, of peace. Agyeya is a genius at sculpting silence—which he considers to be the essence of poetry—out of words. We can clearly see the influence of Zen and Japanese haiku on this poem: each stanza is reminiscent of Basho’s exquisite pictures of “pure” moments. On the other hand, the interweaving of man, nature, and the divine, which culminates in the realization of their oneness, is sealed by Vedāntic thought. The beautifully controlled structure, the brevity of the poem, the refrain of “quietly” that encloses the poem in a ring composition, the final rhyme, simply built through the use of subjunctive verbs, all underline the restraint, the detachment, the stillness with which Agyeya approaches the divine. Informed by Agyeya’s enormous erudition, by the brilliance of his intellect, his poems zoom on the individual’s self but rarely give voice to the emotions of the subjective “I.” Like Agyeya, Amrita Bharati is inspired by classical Indian religion, particularly Veda¯nta, and Sanskrit culture of which she has intimate knowledge.24 Like Agyeya, her search for the divine is not just a passing fancy but a lifelong journey. But whereas Agyeya’s approach to the divine both in his life and in his poetry is somewhat aloof, emotionally detached, Amrita Bharati’s is painfully engaged and personal. We shall see that her poetic voice is intensely subjective, to the extent of being confessional; her work is testimony to her own spiritual quest. Yet, her poetry, like Agyeya’s, has a universal ring. Even though Amrita Bharati is arguably the only contemporary Hindi poet who is so single-mindedly dedicated to seeking the divine, and has subsequently devoted three out of her five collections to record this process, she shares some important narratives of religion and the spiritual with other contemporary Hindi women poets. I shall first outline the common ground and then move on to chart Amrita Bharati’s unique treatment of the subject. Contemporary women poets in Hindi have articulated two distinct responses to the religious discourse: rejection of orthodox religion, informed by feminist thought, and search for a spiritual space—a space of openness and creativity—where they have the freedom for self-definition and self-expression. I have elsewhere25 written about the Hindi incarnation of what Alicia Ostriker (1986) calls “revisionist mythmaking”—the appropriation of folk tales, legends, scriptures, figures, and stories current in a culture to redefine women and rewrite the culture. Katyayani devotes poem after poem to subverting classical religious texts, like the R. g Veda, the Br.had- āran. yaka Upanis.ad, the Man. usmr.ti, by replacing their misogynist messages with feminist critique of

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patriarchy. Shubha Verma,26 Archana Verma,27 Jyotsna Milan,28 and Gagan Gill29 have all written powerful poems of revisionist mythmaking. Amrita Bharati is not an exception to this. Her Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak (Far into the stillness) is a powerful critique of patriarchy that turns its unforgiving sarcasm also to patriarchal religion: one of the most poignant poems here, “Purus.a sūkta: Andhere kī r.cā” (“Man’s mantra: a hymn of darkness”), uses the reference to sūkta, the sacred verse of the R. g Veda, to depict men belonging to the “sampradāy” of patriarchy in scathingly satirical tones: They are still alive Extorting everybody’s future in their present, their boats adorned with the tortured light of oozing blood.

Selfish, exploitative, cowardly, parasitic, pathetic, boastful, cruel, man is “mountain of lies,”30 adorned with a demon’s tail.31 Having rejected patriarchal religion, Hindi women poets turn their creative energy to carving a spiritual space for themselves, a “home” where free from patriarchal stereotypes they can uncover and express their own identity. They do so by “deterritorialization”—uncovering the true nature of “home” as a site of patriarchal oppression and “reterritorialization”32—finding an alternative space of openness, creativity, and freedom. Whereas some poets, like Kanta33 or Shubha Verma,34 focus on the first stage—furnishing a powerful critique of the enclosure of domesticity—others, like Jyotsna Milan,35 Susham Bedi,36 and Amrita Bharati, seek an alternative “home,” often imagined as a natural landscape.37 A sense of mystical communion with nature permeates much contemporary Hindi poetry written by women (while being by no means completely absent from that of their male colleagues). Let us turn now to Amrita Bharati and investigate her use of the topos of “home” to denote stages in the spiritual journey of her poetic “I.” Amrita Bharati’s “Tīsrā ghar” (“The third home”) opens with a powerful description of the patriarchal “home” whose towering walls allow no space for life, beauty, or desires, for being. Rising high walls, not even a niche anywhere to put a flower, or some desire of mine, or my entire world, gathered —This was my first home38

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Amrita Bharati’s lyrical heroine escapes from the sealed space of this patriarchal prison and embarks on a quest for her true home. At first her search is misguided—she spends years seeking it in other places and people: How much time has passed So much time Always out searching in different dwellings different faces for my home39

Finally her quest takes a spiritual dimension: she turns her heart to “Him.” In her early collection Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h, she depicts this new home as the marital abode of the poetic “I” and her divine lover. There are echoes of Mira’s song quoted earlier—both protagonists are imagined as ascetics (Amrita Bharati talks of them as fakirs in her preface to the collection), whose unorthodox marriage leads the poetic “I” to her new home, where there are no “doors or walls / roofs or floors / directions or countries / time’s frame / darkness or light.” In Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak, a collection that focuses on the poetic “I’s” journey of self-discovery, this new home is still a space of uncompromised openness, but articulated in terms of self-expression of the poetic “I”: There were no walls there, nor a door Only I Everywhere In and out40

Whereas in Amrita Bharati’s last collection, Man ruk gayā vahām., home becomes synonymous with god: The mind stopped inside Him where home was.41

Amrita Bharati follows the general pattern of religious discourse in contemporary Hindi poetry written by women: she engages in feminist revisionist mythmaking and in creating a spiritual space as an alternative to patriarchal narratives of “home.” However, whereas other women poets find that space in a mystical communion with nature, Amrita Bharati narrates it in purely religious terms: home is God. One could argue that she has gone a full circle: that having rejected patriarchal religion she returns to it—after all her “He” is clearly defined by his gender and articulated through classical

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religious notions, popularized by Vedānta (and bhakti). However, neither should all religious ideas and beliefs developing in a patriarchal society be rejected as promoting gender inequalities42 nor should Amrita Bharati’s poetry be read purely as a feminist statement. Even though Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak carries a powerful feminist message, the all-pervasive impetus of her poetry is not feminism but her longing for the divine. Amrita Bharati’s overarching “myth,” her “soul’s destiny,”43 the driving force and destination of her spiritual quest is that of love. Love—as an impetus and a goal, as fate, as the autobiographical “I’s” entire existence, as weakness and strength, as the present and the future—is a recurring image in Amrita Bharati’s autobiographical essay “Apne tahat” (“Self and I”)44 and a constant presence in her poetry. I open in my future—in my next moment—a ‘love’ waits me. In it there is completeness, there is single-minded devotion, which I’ll never have to leave, there is constancy which will never be transformed . . . This love will liberate me in a second from the illusion of this world—like a handkerchief fallen from a hand where will this world remain?45

There are two protagonists in Amrita Bharati’s love-myth: maim., “ I/self,” and vah, “he/He.” The poet’s “I” and the poetic “I” in her verses are so close that her poetic “I” appears autobiographical to the limit of being “confessional.”46 Amrita Bharati herself makes this point again and again: “[T]he distance between me and my poetry is so small or non-existent that to speak about my poetry is to speak about myself ”; “poetry has no separate truth—my truth is my poetry’s truth.”47 In true Vedāntic fashion, Amrita Bharati does not demarcate between human and divine in the way she constructs her protagonists.48 As she writes in “Self and I”: “Inside eternity there is a throbbing of thousand pulses, a lotus mind of thousands petals. This ‘divine’ has become incarnate. I cannot comprehend if He is more human in its divineness or more divine in His humaneness . . .”49 Similarly, in her preface to the new edition of Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h, she describes “Him” as a beloved, a guru, and God at the same time. In this collection “He” is portrayed mainly in sagun. a terms. Sensual and exquisite, the description of “His” beauty echoes the magnificent Song of Songs (see below, “I saw him . . .”). In Man ruk gayā vahām. “He” is depicted much more sparsely, almost exclusively in nirgun. a terms: he is “eternal” (nitya), “constant” (nirantar), dynamic (gatiśīl ), supreme (advitīya), complete (sampūrn. ). Amrita Bharati’s work resist the construction of a linear love-myth, but we can try to trace some kind of narrative, which develops in Sannāt.e mem. dūr

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tak and Man ruk gayā vahām.—whereas the former prepares the ground by focusing on finding the self, the latter concentrates on the relationship between self and Self. The unusual sensitivity, compassion, and emotionality of Amrita Bharati’s poetic “I” would lead her to forming connections, “building bridges” with people who have “neither mortar nor the stairway to dreams.”50 She would get hurt and turn into a “heap of clay.”51 Many of the poems of Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak are imbued with the anguish of this hurt. But this sensitivity is also the poetic “I’s” “biggest strength,” as it opens her to divine: My love is my entire existence. In order to live in its completeness I want to separate myself fully—from my attachments and connections, from my yearning for affection, from my relationships. I want to separate myself also from my biggest tie—my compassion. All of me belongs to the “single Supreme.”52

To achieve “the truth of her future”,53 to open herself to that love which awaits her, she undertakes a journey of self-knowledge, revisiting the past and diving into the deep recesses of her unconscious.54 This journey is charted again and again in Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak. The poetic “I” has to shed her girlish naivety and the internalized patriarchal conditioning, to free herself from the bondages imposed on her by man to find her self and “Him.” Amrita Bharati employs striking images to suggest the shackles of the past. In “Samay kā aglā caran.” (“The next step of time”) the past is “wilderness,” bigger than herself, tied to her: Like indelible destiny I was given wilderness:

Amrita Bharati’s masterful hand manages to weave the fairy-tale imagery of the thick forest, the lost path, the demon’s abode, with the surreal image of the shroud of the past. For years I kept weaving oblivion . . . present it to the pit.

Further on she adds to this complex canvas of images “shared” religious symbols to depict the dramatic battle of the poetic “I” with the past: Despite fear a battered weariness threw me into the naos of the primordial mother—

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There are obvious Vedāntic references here. The image of the sword of knowledge occurs in Shankara’s Viveka Chudamani56 and later in Kabir’s writing.57 In fact the whole tenor of this poem that pictures the path to God as “an arduous process requiring self-knowledge” and “courage,”58 rather than “an easy path of surrender,” echoes Kabir’s ideal of bhakti. Accordingly, the depiction of God too is rather nirgun. a, than sagun. a: God is qualified only as “He who is not the past.” On the other hand, the image of the primordial mother suggests Aurobindian influence. Mythical, surreal, and “shared” religious images come together in this poem, to create a modern retelling of the Vedāntic vision of self-realization as leading to God, informed by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, particularly the Jungian fascination with the archetypal. Similarly, another poem of this collection “Abyss of Dejection, MomentBridge” depicts the poetic “I’s” self-realization through a modern rendering of the stock metaphor of the ocean of existence, often employed in bhakti poetry.59 I was on the ship when I began to sink. into the nether sea dark, unconscious, unarticulated. ... And I—alone in every drop

As in the previous poem, self-knowledge, facing the “abyss of dejection,” is only the first step to discovering one’s true self. Breaking the shell of isolation, the poetic “I” finds herself inside a mystical moment that replaces the “dark, unconscious, unarticulated nether sea” with the boundless ocean of self-realization: Still a moment was left between me and that great deluge ... The axe rose from my core and fell on it and shattering the drop60

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This poem presents again a fascinating mix of tradition and modernity. Amrita Bharati uses the stock image of the ocean of existence, but enriches it with modern imagery: the psychoanalytical metaphor of the “nether sea” of the unconscious, the symbol of the mirror of illusion (a topos in her poetry), the image of the paper boat (replacing the traditional “raft of the Name”), which stresses the fragility and impermanence of human life. The poetic “I’s” existential loneliness so powerfully suggested by the multiplicity of the ocean drops and the cult of the moment (which we encountered in Agyeya’s poetry) are both markers of its modernity. Amrita Bharati’s innovative use of tradition is evident not only in the content of her poems but also in her idiom: she uses tatsama vocabulary with mastery and sensitivity, with awareness of words’ etymology, evolution, and hidden meanings, undoubtedly helped by her studies of Sanskrit in general and Bhavabhuti, in particular. Just a cursory look at any of the poems from this collection will demonstrate her intimacy with Sanskrit: Bhāvitavyatā, vismaran. , apārdarśī, āvaran. , viśāl, śav-vastr, sarvān˙ga, gartt, sarvasvahārā, vistr.t, and vyāpt are but a few of the tatsama lexis of “Samay kā aglā caran.,” for example. Yet, Amrita Bharati’s use of Sanskrit is never overpowering, obtrusive, or obscuring the meaning. In fact she remarks in another poem from this collection “Vyapti” (“Pervasiveness”): “[W]ords will have to become smaller / and meanings bigger,” and she proceeds to do that in her last collection Man ruk gayā vahām.. A comparison between Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak and Man ruk gayā vaham. will first reveal a striking transformation in poetic form. The lengthier poems of the former (and the earlier collections), marked by elaborate, often surreal images, and Sanskrit loanwords, give way to the short, more controlled and condensed, beautifully simple verses of Man ruk gayā vaham..61 This shift in form reflects the change in the emotional landscape of the poetic “I”: her anger and anguish, her desperate need to free herself from a painful past are replaced by reflectiveness, growing detachment, and serenity. This detachment is reflected in the absence of any reference to the outside world; unlike the other two collections under discussion, here the lyrical “I” and “He” are totally alone in the cosmic landscape, others are not present even as extras or addressees. Moreover, “I” and “He” are portrayed in very sparse terms: nirgun.a depiction prevails. Another striking characteristic of this collection is the overwhelming presence of binary oppositions: darkness-light, white-dark, inside-outside, far-near, earth-sky, day-night, clothed-naked, morning-evening, desiredetachment, steady-unsteady, alone-crowd, tied-open, past-future, empty-full, visible-invisible, and so on. Both such duality and the fact that a significant number of poems are imbued with the pangs of viraha are somewhat

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unexpected, considering the strong Vedāntic tenor of the text. Yet, this contradiction is only apparent as Man ruk gayā vahām. describes not the final destination but a stage of the poetic “I’s” spiritual quest, marked by a striving for revelation, through renunciation and detachment; by the angst of separateness alternating with distilled moments of nonduality.62 Often the two are sketched in a narrative, which develops within the same poem. A case in point is “My lamp,” which uses the Vedāntic metaphor of the fire and the spark to depict a moment of realization when the poetic “I” merges into “Him,” having “extinguished” all her previous attachments. To stress the metaphorical use of lamp, Amrita Bharati has placed it in inverted commas. “He stood me in the light of my “lamp” time and again. And my lamp . . . was blown out in the blazing brilliance of His lamp.63

Amrita Bharati often employs paradox in this collection as a means of approaching the personal mystical experience, which resists description: here the darkness of her lamp stand (symbolizing the body) turns into a new flame/attachment. The pun on lau, which means both “f lame” and “attachment,” “desire” adds a brilliant touch to this paradox, unfortunately lost in my translation. Particularly interesting is the use of the word anirvāp, which is semantically related to anirvān. , “unextinguished,” and thus reminiscent of the Buddhist imagery of “nirvana.” Here, though, it is turned on its head: instead of signifying the “blowing out” of the individual ego, it suggests the eternity, the “unblowingness” of God’s flame. Another Vedāntic image often64 employed in Amrita Bharati’s poetry in general, and this collection in particular, is that of the “dream,” traditionally used to symbolize the unreal nature of worldly life: for example, in Viveka Chudamani, Shankara talks of the “dreamlike forest of birth, old age and death” and the “sleep of ignorance” and asserts that “worldliness [is] a dream without reality.”65 On the other hand, dream is also employed to describe the state of the jīvanmukti (the one who lives in the bliss of knowledge of the ātman)—“though awake he appears to be dreaming.”66 Amrita Bharati seems to often distinguish between nind (sleep), which is equated with the

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state of merging with the divine, and svapna (dream), which stands for the illusionary quality of worldliness: He . . . placed me inside sleep. On waking my eyes opened on His palm, seeing the world like a dream.67

She uses the stock symbol of dream, but she does so in an uncompromisingly modern way: here through the metonymy of the “eyes” and the surreal image of the eyes opened on “His” palm. Whereas “My lamp” and “On his palm” describe moments of mystic union, “Bar.e ho rahe andhkār mem . ” (“In the deepening darkness”), imbued with the anguish of separateness, is on the other end of the emotional spectrum of this collection: I hear that today He isn’t here— ... I wait for Him in the ever deepening darkness.68

Even though this poem shares subject matter with the bhakti songs of viyoga and Mahadevi Verma’s lyrics, Amrita Bharati’s poetic “I” has little in common with the traditional virahin.ī. She is not depicted with the stock tropes used in the portrayal of the love-struck woman, separated from her lover: the bangles falling off her emaciated arms, the dishevelled hair. Yet, despite the lack of physicality in her portrayal, she is not the stylized, idealized, self-sacrificing virahin.ī of Mahadevi Verma’s poetry either. Without indulging in direct description of the poetic “I’s” suffering, Amrita Bharati skillfully conveys it through the stark images of the “empty night” and the “ever-deepening darkness”—life without “Him” is devoid of meaning and hope. The irreconcilable opposition between “inside” and “outside” intensifies the sense of despair—the poetic “I” is painfully excluded from “time” (and togetherness), locked in a never-ending night. The choice of the present (continuous) tense, rather than the past (perfective) Amrita Bharati

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usually employs in this collection, also deepens the anguish—it is happening here and now, rather than being a memory safely belonging to the past. This poem again exhibits Amrita Bharati’s masterful use of tradition: she employs a common motif, but gives it a modern, personal reading. This poem is interesting also with its treatment of time, which is both imagined as a locale and personified as “His” companion. Time is given such significance in Amrita Bharati’s poetry that it becomes another protagonist. It is present in the titles of a number of poems in Man ruk gayā vahām.: “Jab koi ks.an. tūt.t.ā”;69 “Avyatīt pal”;70 “Palak-ks.an.”;71 Yug-ks.an.;72 “Kshan. kī eknis.t.hā mem.”;73 “Mr.tyu-ks.an.”;74 et cetera. What is immediately obvious from these titles is the importance of the moment for Amrita Bharati. As we mentioned before, she shares this cult of the moment with Ageya and her other modernist fellow poets. Not surprisingly, whereas samay (time) is used to refer to ordinary, worldly time and typically creates an obstacle between “I” and “He,” ks.an. “moment” facilitates their union: “in a moment free from the custody of time I met Him.”75 While samay is described as harsh and unforgiving76 or treacherous,77 the moment is “soft”78 and “brilliant.”79. Like time, space—represented by nature—is a character on its own right in Amrita Bharati’s poetry. Sky and earth, mountains and rocks, thorny jungles and forests, riverbanks, lakes and oceans, sun and fire, darkness and light are recurring images in her work. Nature both symbolizes the poetic “I’s” experience (we encountered, for example, the metaphor of the wilderness of the past or the ocean of worldliness and the sea of unconscious) and envelops the poetic “I’s” spiritual journey. Some of the nature images Amrita Bharati employs are stock symbols: thousand-headed serpents and swans, the wish-granting tree (kalpataru), and the tree of enlightenment (bodhivr.ks.). Others are part of Amrita Bharati’s personal poetic code—the tree of dreams (svapnvr.ks.), for example.80 In the blurb to Man ruk gayā vahām., Nirmal Verma qualifies Amrita Bharati’s poetic style as “spiritual surrealism” as in her work nature comes alive; it has magical qualities. In her poetic world the flower stalks are filled with worms,81 the stones’ wings open and fly in the air,82 the white jungles have eyes,83 on every snake’s forehead there is a sun.84 On the one hand surrealism is used to “break the bounds of rational cognition and truly reveal consciousness.”85 On the other hand, it seems to be a contemporary incarnation of Kabir’s ulat.bām.sī 86 and the Nāth-panthī’s sandhyābhās.ā— mystical experiences resist (common) language. The most surrealist of Amrita Bharati’s three collections under discussion is Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sat.h,87 which bombards the reader with a breathless onslaught of wondrous images. It is a long narrative poem that follows the

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metamorphoses of the two protagonists and their dynamic, often violent, interaction. It comprises loosely connected unnamed parts, which are not conceived as autonomous units, as they are separated only by space on the page. Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h reflects Amrita Bharati’s early experiences of kun. d.alinī yoga.88 Much of the violent interaction, which takes place between the two protagonists, is symbolic of the practice of deadening the senses as path to the divine: He made me blind, deaf He severed my tongue Erased all fragrance from me My skin couldn’t touch anything89

Even though Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h shares subject matter and protagonists with the other two collections, it also diverges from them. It is a poem about sam.yog, rather than viyog, and “He” is often depicted here in sagun. a terms: sometimes he is “blue-throated” dancing Shiva, sometimes Krishna of dark complexion. For example, the following poem, situated toward the beginning of Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h, presents an interesting mix of sagun. a bhakti and Veda¯nta: I saw him in the light of his smile: In his eyes the sign of a future meeting. In the next moment he was coming down the doorway steps. For an instant recognition awoke in me He crossed my doorway And broke his begging vow He asked for me in his cupped palms He gathered my inwardness in his blue. Now outside myself I was a mere shadow A body, blackening the black reflection.90

This poem carries the most sensual description of the male protagonist. The references to (dark) blue91 and the peacock feathers tap into the mythology

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of Krishna, but instead of using the stock-images, traditionally employed in the portrayal of Krishna’s beauty, Amrita Bharati relies on nature-imagery echoing the conventional depiction of nāyikās. Here “He” is presented as a beggar, who carries the typical paraphernalia of a bhikhs.u, a mendicant monk: a begging bowl ( part), a water-pot (kamandalu), and a begging bag ( jholi), but that image too is subverted by the unusual compound tarkaś-pātr—quiver-bowl. Similarly, Amrita Bharati creates and subverts our reading of the poetic “I.” She runs after “Him,” like a love-stricken gopī, but paradoxically it is the marker of Krishna’s identity, the blue peacock feather, which stops her in her tracks. In the spirit of Vedānta, the poem is based on the paradox of identity: the apparent duality of “He” and the female “I” is revealed as nonduality—she recognizes herself in the blue of his peacock feathers, “His” blue, and merges in it. Outside of her self/Self is a mere body, an outward form, a shadow. From the yogic sādhana and surrealism of Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h to the anguish and self-searching of Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak, and the simplicity and stillness of Man ruk gayā vahām.; from Mira Bai’s union of yogīs, to Mahadevi Verma’s softly burning “lamp,” and Agyeya’s pure moments of silence; from Hindi women poets’ rewriting of patriarchal religion and rejection of the confinement of domesticity to their “reterritorialization” in the “garden” of freedom, self-expression, and spirituality, I have attempted to paint the intricate patterns of the spiritual in Amrita Bharati’s work against the background of Hindi poetry. Amrita Bharati describes her young self as a “naïve girl obsessed with revolution”.92 In her desire to “clear the undergrowth of custom and forge her own path,”93 she chooses the path of female asceticism, rather than domesticity, and writes poetry explosive with the anger of oppressed womanhood. Yet, her rejection of patriarchal custom does not mean a complete shunning of tradition. Quite the opposite, the strong formative influence of Arya Samaj beliefs and Sanskrit culture were later supplemented by Aurobindo’s vision of integral yoga. Even so, for Amrita Bharati tradition is not a master to be served but soil in which to plant the seeds of modernity. Her poetry is imbued with Vedāntic and bhakti mysticism, but of a new kind—her quest for love marked by completeness, devotion, eternity, and freedom is an expression of the existential search for meaning in the disjointed world of modernity. Notes 1. Barnstone 1999: xxiv. 2. Bharati 2000: 11.

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3. I use Vedānta here to signify both the philosophical speculations of the Upanishads, particularly their most significant equation, which asserts that the individual soul ātman and the universal soul brahman are the same, and later philosophical schools, which base their tenets on the authority of the Upanishads, particularly Shankara’s advaita (nondualism). 4. One should not forget that questions of authorship are extremely problematic in the case of most bhakti poets, therefore, when I speak of Mira’s songs I am really talking of tradition rather than the work of a single poet. 5. Hawley 2005: 123. 6. Ibid.: 124. 7. Ibid.: 127. 8. Meena Khandelwal (2004: 197) suggests that “a woman taking sannyasa is a transgressive act that highlights women’s agency.” 9. Sāgun.a “with attributes” usually denotes an incarnate deity whereas nirgun.a “without attributes” refers to a more abstract, monistic concept of the divine. 10. Kishwar and Vanita 1989: 90. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. This brief sketch is not intended to be comprehensive. My aim is to outline Amrita Bharati’s poetic predecessors with whom she shares vision of the divine, rather than to draw a complete picture of the spiritual space in the historical canvas of Hindi verse. This is why I am omitting riti poetry (seventeenth–nineteenth centuries), which shifts the focus to courtly heroes and heroines; the Dvivedi period (earlytwentieth century), which endeavors to demythologize the gods, to “bring [them] down to earth by reinterpreting them as merely human” (Schomer 1983: 56) and Pragativād (Progressivism, 1930s), which, informed by Marxism, denounces religion. 14. Schomer 1983: 279. 15. Schomer 1983: 284. 16. Ibid.: 287. 17. cf. Agyeya 1959: 94. 18. Satchidanandan 2000: xxv. 19. Marx, quoted in Berman, 1993, 15. 20. For example, Kunwar Narain uses the Upanishadic story of Nachiketa in his poem Atmajayi—a modern meditation on death; Dharmavir Bharati brings a new perspective to the traditional narrative of the love between god Krishna and the milkmaid Radha in his long poem Kanupriya by giving voice to the female character who questions the importance of patriarchal history over personal happiness. 21. Storr 1988: 37. 22. Cup-cap, Agyeya 1987: 80. 23. Here and elsewhere, all translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 24. Amrita Bharati was brought up in an Arya Samaj family. She did an MA and a PhD in Sanskrit at Benares Hindu University. Interested in Sanskrit poetics,

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25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

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she wrote her thesis on the eighth-century Sanskrit playwright and poet Bhavabhuti. After graduation she taught Sanskrit in Lucknow, Bombay, and Delhi for several years. See Rosenstein 2004(a). For example, “Boon” (“Vardan,” Kalpana, January 1965: 19). For a discussion of it, see Rosenstein 2001 (b): 72–73. See, for example, “God” (“Parameshvar,” Varma 1994: 61). See “Woman 1” (“Aurat 1,” Milan 1989: 30). For a discussion of it, see Rosenstein 2001 (b): 62–63. Even though Gagan Gill’s critique of patriarchal religion is not so outspoken, the female protagonist of her collection of poems Yah akanksha samay nahin (Inopportune desire) questions its values, which doom her love for a Buddhist monk. See Rosenstein 2001 (a). Bharati 1992: 30. Ibid.: 27. These are terms used by Caren Kaplan in her essay “Deterritorializations: The Rewriting of Home and Exile in Western Feminist Discourse”; see Kaplan 1987. See, for example, “Divaron par divaren” (“Walls upon walls,” Kanta 1960: 46) and my discussion of it in Rosenstein 2005: 110. See, for example, Upkar (“The favour,” Kalpana, January 1965: 18–19) and my discussion of it in Rosenstein 2001 (b): 69. See, for example, “Larki 4” (“Girl 4,” Milan 1989: 26) and my discussion of it in Rosenstein 2005: 116. See, for example, “Home and Garden,” Bedi (unpaginated MS) and my discussion of it in Rosenstein 2005: 117–18. This is reminiscent of Cliff ’s terrain of reterritorialization, which is imagined as a garden; see Kaplan 1987: 97. Bharati 1992: 96. Ibid. 2000: 44. Ibid. 1992: 97. Ibid. 2000: 1. Indeed the Veda¯ ntic pure nonduality does not seem to discriminate between men and women, asserting that all carry the divine spark; similarly bhakti makes God accessible to everybody (man or woman, brahmin or shudra) who loves Him/Her. Bharati 1995: 226. This is Suresh Sharma’s translation of the title; see Bhalla, Yatra, 1996. Ibid.: 222. I owe Rashmi Chopra this reference to Graham and Sontag’s anthology of essays on autobiographical poetry, which asserts that “autobiographical” poetry has a wider resonance than “confessional poetry.” Bharati 1992: unpaginated foreword.

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48. This is also true of much bhakti poetry, where the lover and the beloved could be interpreted as both divine and human. 49. Bharati 1995: 222. 50. Ibid.: 232. 51. Ibid.: 227. 52. Ibid.: 241. 53. Ibid. 54. It is not by chance that Amrita Bharati’s autobiographical essay is entitled “Apne Tahat” (“Underneath myself ”). 55. Bharati 1992: 47–49. 56. Worthingthon 1982: 96. 57. Sharma 1987: 165. 58. Ibid. 59. See, for example, Surdas’ “Abke nath mohi udhari”: “Lord, save me at this time; / I am sunk in a sea of worldliness, o Murari, ocean of pity! / The waters of illusion are very deep, and ripple with waves of greed; / Ananga the crocodile seizes me and takes me down into the fathomless water” (Snell 1991: 85). 60. Bharati 1992: 106–8. 61. This is not to say that Man ruk gaya¯ vaha¯m . does not have any Sanskrit loanwords; considering its subject matter, heavily influenced by Veda¯ntic ideas this would be impossible (and inappropriate). Its idiom, though, is simpler, lacking the ornateness of the earlier collections. 62. Moreover, this constant strive to reconcile inherent oppositions in a universe of uncertainty is a feature of the modern condition. 63. Bharati 2000: 136–37. 64. Sleep/dream imagery often occurs in the very titles of Amrita Bharati’s poems: “Svapna” (“Dream,” Bharati 2000: 4), “Svapna-sr. s.t.i” (“Dreamcreation,” ibid.: 20), “Svapna ka¯ akela¯ vr.ks.” (“The lonely dream-tree,” ibid.: 33), “Uskı¯ nı¯nd mem . ” (“In his sleep,” ibid.: 49), “Vah so raha¯ hai,” (“He is sleeping,” ibid.: 52), and “Svapna¯ropan.” (“Planting a dream,” Bharati 1992: 116–17). 65. cf. Worthington 1982: 95, 97. 66. Ibid. 67. Bharati 2000: 22. 68. Ibid.: 29. 69. “When a moment breaks,” ibid.: 5. 70. “Continuing moment,” ibid.: 12. 71. “Blinking moment,” ibid.: 26. “Blinking moment” is better translated as “In a blink,” perhaps. My literal translation aims to ensure that “moment” is not missing from the English as it is significant in the Hindi text. 72. “Age-moment,” ibid.: 28. 73. “In the single-minded devotion of the moment,” ibid.: 61. 74. “Moment of death,” ibid.: 84.

42 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89. 90. 91.

92. 93.

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Ibid.: 43. “The rock of time became harder and harder,” ibid.: 93. “My home was on the broken twig of time,” ibid.: 122. Ibid.: 12. Ibid.: 94. In the thorny forest / the lonely dream-tree / was His sign / inside me (see ibid.: 33). Ibid. 1976: 43. Ibid.: 62. Ibid.: 64. Ibid.: 35. I owe this reference to J. H. Matthews’ work on Andre Breton to Rashmi Chopra. For more information on Kabir’s ulat.ba¯m.sı¯/sandhya¯bha¯.sa¯; see Vaudeville 1993: 102. However, in its last part, Amrita Bharati moves to “spiritual realism”: the poetic “I” witnesses the “extinguished stoves and swollen belly of the world” (Bharati 1976: 77). Indeed, only in Man ruk gaya¯ vaha¯m . , Amrita Bharati’s spiritual quest is totally separated from the concerns of this world. In the preface to the new edition of Mit..t¯ı par sa¯.th sa¯.th, Amrita Bharati talks about her experiences of kun.d.alinı¯ yoga at the ashram in Ganeshpuri where she wrote the book. Not surprisingly, Mit..t¯ı par sa¯.th sa¯.th abounds in stock religious symbols like lamps (signifying the senses), burning grounds, ashes, and other tantric imagery, Shiva’s trident and his cosmic dance, the Christian thorns, and so on. Bharati 1976: 71. Ibid.: 13–14. The word for “blue” Amrita Bharati chooses is nil (the blue of the sky) rather than shyam, traditionally associated with Krishna; the sky is an important symbol of liberation in her poetry. Bharati 1995: 224. Ibid.

Bibliography Agyeya (Sachchidananda Vatsyayan). Cunī huī kavitāem.. Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1987. ———. “Hindi Literature.” In Contemporary Indian Literature: A Symposium, 78–99. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1959. Barnstone, A. Voices of Light: Spiritual and Visionary Poems by Women from around the World from Ancient Sumeria to Now. Boston: Shambala, 1999. Bedi, S. S´abdom . . Unpaginated Manuscript. . kı¯ khir.kiya¯m Berman, M. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London and New York: Verso, 1993.

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Bhalla, A., ed. Yatra: Writings from the Indian Subcontinent. Delhi: Harper Collins, 1996. Bharati, Amrita. “Apne tahat.” In Prasan˙gatah., 215–47. Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanpith, 1995. ———. Man ruk gayā vahām.. Pondicherry: Shatabdi Prakashan, 2000. ———. Mit.t.ī par sāt.h sāt.h. Delhi: Pashyanti, 1976. ———. Sannāt.e mem. dūr tak, Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanpith, 1992. Gill, G. Yah akan˙ks.ā samay nahīm.. Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 1998. Graham, D., and K. Sontag, eds. After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2001. Hawley, J. S. Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir in Their Times and Ours. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Kanta. Jo kuch bhı¯ dekhtı¯ hum.. Hyderabad: Navhid Publications, 1960. Kaplan, C. “Deterritorializations: The Rewriting of Home and Exile in Western Feminist Discourse.” Cultural Critique no. 6 (1987): 187–98. Khandelwal, M. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Kishwar, M., and R. Vanita. “Poison to Nectar: The Life and Work of Mirabai.” Special triple issue on women bhakta poets, Manushi, no. 50–52 (1989): 74–93. Matthews, J. H. Andre Breton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. Milan, J. Ghar nahīm.. Delhi: Gyan Bharati, 1989. Ostriker, A. “The Thieves of Language. Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking.” In The New Feminist Criticism, edited by E. Showalter, 314–38. London: Virago Press, 1986. Rosenstein, L. “The Dance of Desire: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Gagan Gill’s Yah ¯aka¯m . .” Hindi: Language, Discourse, Writing, 2 (2001a, 2): . ks.¯a samay nahı¯m 119–37. ———. “Myths, Tales, Scriptures: Feminist Re-reading of Received Narratives in Katyayani’s poetry.” In Cracow Indological Studies 4 (5), edited by Renata Czekalska, Halina Marlewicz, 449–65. Kracow, Poland: Jagiellonian University, 2004a. ———. Nayi Kavita “New poetry” in Hindi: An Anthology. London: Anthem Press, 2004b; Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. ———. ‘‘Not a ‘Home’: Hindi Women Poets Narrating ‘Home.’’’ Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 40 (2005, 2): 105–21. ———. “Shakespeare’s Sister in India: In Search of Hindi Women Poets.” Hindi: Language, Discourse, Writing, 1 (2001b, 3–4): 47–87. Satchidanandan, K. (rd.) Signatures: One Hundred Indian Poets. Delhi: National Book Trust, 2000. Schomer, Karen. Mahadevi Verma and the Chayavad Age of Modern Hindi Poetry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Sharma, K. Bhakti and the Bhakti Movement: A New Perspective. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1987.

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Snell, R. The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhasha Reader. London: SOAS, 1991. Storr, A. Solitude: A Return to the Self. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Varma, Archana. Kuch dūr tak. 2nd ed. Delhi: Akshar Prakashan Private Ltd., 1994. Vaudeville, C. A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses, with a Detailed Biographical and Historical Introduction. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. Worthington, V. A History of Yoga. London: Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd., 1982.

CHAPTER 2

Who Is Afraid of Mı-ra-ba--ı ? Gulzar’s Antidote for Mı-ra-’s Poison Heidi Pauwels

Introduction

T

his chapter1 focuses on a devotional film to study the interface between Hindu devotion and gender in South Asian popular culture. Hindu devotion, or bhakti, foregrounds a personal relation with God, who is equally accessible to all, including women. Thus, in theory, bhakti would make an excellent vehicle for democratic, modernizing forces in popular culture, in particular with regard to women. A film on the story of the woman saint Mīrābāī could be a potential conveyor of progressive messages. Mīrā, a sixteenth-century Rājasthānī princess of Merta, is by far the most famous female bhakti saint of North India. Her ecstatic songs in praise of the God Krishna are immensely popular, and so is the legend of her life. A young bride, married into the prestigious royal house of Chittor, she was persecuted by her in-laws for her uncompromising devotion and forced to drink a poison cup. However, she survived miraculously and somehow succeeded in leaving the palace to go on pilgrimage. Eventually she settled in a major Krishna pilgrimage center, Dvārkā, in Gujarat, where she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It is said she merged with her beloved Krishna. Mīrā’s story makes for a good focus to study the interface of bhakti and gender. For one, she is hailed as the paradigmatic Hindu woman saint. Second, this story of a devotee’s triumph over God’s enemies can also be read as a woman’s victory over patriarchy. Her independent attitude in the face of opposition of her in-laws can be interpreted as rebellion against a

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male patriarchal society.2 One would expect “modern” readings to stress this aspect and exemplify the modernity of bhakti. Though at the surface there is a lot of praise of Mīrā in modern popular culture, there is also an undercurrent of unease with the example Mīrā sets for women. This is exemplified by an anecdote related by one of the Indian participants at an academic conference (“Celebrating Mīrābāī, Hindu Saint for a Global World,” held at UCLA in October 2002). Dr. Y. S. Shastri from the University of Gujarat sketched the reaction of one of his friends when he heard Shastri was going to speak on Mīrābāī. His friend warned him along these lines: “Watch out in speaking about Mīrā. Our women have become way too keen on leaving the home because of singing all those Mīrā-bhajanas.”3 One wonders, are some afraid of Mīrābāī? This comment typifies an ambiguous attitude toward Mīrābāī. While she is hailed for her exemplary bhakti, there seems to be a need to explain, to bring in apologetics, to specify that Mīrā’s behavior is not to be emulated. There is a tendency to stress that Mīrā is unique, no other woman can be like her or should follow in her footsteps.4 One could say that, while modern popular culture gasps in horror at how Mīrā was persecuted and poisoned, at the same time it is actively at work to get the poison of her example out of women’s mind. It is busy brewing antidotes for Mīrā’s poison. This is not a recent development: many tellings of Mīrā’s life exist and nearly all try to domesticate this headstrong woman in one way or another. Only the earliest tellings from the bhakti milieu seem to present her as uncompromisingly fierce.5 Arguably from the eighteenth century,6 but certainly from the early-nineteenth century onwards, we see apologetics at work. To single out only the best-documented cases: there are sentimentalized romantic tellings by the colonial agent Tod,7 Hindu nationalist Rajput reconstructions,8 Gandhi’s satyāgrahī interpretation,9 and the postcolonial comic strip version of Amar Chitra Kathā.10 What is surprising is that this attitude of “domestication” seems to persist in the face of a changing society where feminist discourse is prominent in the public sphere. In this chapter, I am concerned with one instance of contemporary popular culture. I will analyze an influential Bollywood movie of her life: Meera (1979) directed by Gulzar (Sampooran Singh, b. 1936), produced by Premjī, and starring the actress Hemā Mālinī.11 The movie is indicative of a popular view of Mīrā as prevalent in the late seventies. Notwithstanding the fact that it was not a success at the time of its release,12 it continues to be influential because it is still shown in connection with religious functions and is regularly broadcast on television.13 The movie is directed largely toward women, and whenever it is shown, it draws a larger woman audience, even

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more than a typical devotional movie, because it is about a female saint. Thus, it makes for a good focus to study how bhakti and gender intersect. Gulzar’s movie has been derated by many academics: it has been called vulgarizing,14 and is regarded as middle class, which carries the stigma of “bourgeois”.15 Whenever it is mentioned in academic studies about Mīrā, it is dismissed quickly. However, this movie is interesting in its own right and deserves serious study. It is not simply a facile, superficial interpretation of an oversentimentalized romantic Mīrā, as is sometimes implied. Rather, it is a complex movie that represents a multivocal creative adaptation of the Mīrā story. One could expect an interesting angle on the saint from Gulzar, the director who had just before writing Meera brought out a daring movie about man-woman relationships. Mausam (1975) dealt with the relationship between a young prostitute (Sharmila Tagore) and the man responsible for her mother’s downfall (Sanjeev Kumar). Gulzar sympathetically portrayed the flawed hero and heroine, allowing the prostitute to angrily voice her view of men’s exploitation in strong language. In short, Gulzar’s portrayal of the saint Mīrā might be expected to touch upon some contemporary women’s issues. My approach to the movie is intertextual and consists of a close reading of the film against the background of the hagiographic narrative and sung traditions about Mīrā.16 I will analyze the way the movie retells the Mīrā story by unraveling allusions to traditional hagiographic stories. I will draw out the most salient features of differences with the tradition, which tells us a great deal about the modern interpretations of gender and bhakti. As we shall see, there are apparently disparate forces at work simultaneously: the saint is eulogized as well as undermined, there is advocacy of women’s resistance to patriarchal norms, as well as reinforcement of a status quo. Throughout the chapter I speak of the director as author. I am aware of the danger inherent in such an approach. Of course, the director is not the “romantic genius” but is mediating the multiple interplay between the forces of the medium and the audience. Yet, if popular movies can be seen as sites of contestation, the role of the director is important. He is at the heart of the contestation, juggling all the conflicting pressures from audience and industry. He is intermediating between multiple living traditions, the perceived audience demands, and the standardized formula of Bollywood cinema. In addition, he certainly has personal agendas, which become apparent in comparison with his other work. My approach is particularly valid for the movie Meera, where the director is also the writer of the screenplay.17 Moreover, the screenplay of the movie has been published with an introduction that provides insight into the way the movie was made, including reflections on the director’s dilemmas.18 Gulzar has done his homework well. He is very knowledgeable about the hagiographic traditions about Mīrā as well as scholarly writing about

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her life.19 He is aware that his interpretation is not “the truth” but a creative adaptation of the story as passed on to him.20 The movie thus knowingly takes its liberties with the traditional scenarios and the scholarly versions of the Mīrā story. There is, for instance, an interesting interpretation of Indian history running through the movie, with a political message that is in conformity with the nationalism permeating Bollywood.21 Even Mīrā’s Krishna in this movie is postcolonial, more in sinc with Gāndhī’s nonviolent Gītā interpretation rather than the erotic God of medieval mysticism. Interesting as these issues may be, for the purpose of this analysis I will concentrate on how the movie portrays issues of relevance to women. 1. Updating Mı-ra- : Juggling Demands of the Genre and the Audience Gulzar creatively reinterprets the hagiographic stories of the tradition for the medium of the movie. He acknowledges that he does take liberties with the story but points out that his goal is to make it look real, and that thus he has to make decisions to fill out the blanks.22 There is much to be liked in Gulzar’s recreation, especially from an artistic point of view. Throughout the movie he makes much use of symbolism of light, and this is brought to a beautiful apotheosis in the final scenes with special effects of Mīrā against the backdrop of shadow and light. Gulzar also makes wonderful use of dramatic irony and foreshadowing of events to come in the early scenes of the movie, where the characters joke lightheartedly about the future, which turns out unexpectedly in a dramatic way to be exactly as predicted. What is of interest here is that Gulzar also succeeds remarkably in “updating” the story, and he does so especially by relating Mīrā’s life to women’s issues. He consciously resists the temptation to follow simple Bollywood conventions by introducing villains and vamps, in which roles he could have easily cast Mīrā’s persecutors.23 Gulzar strives instead to show that while the enmity toward Mīrā seems outrageous in retrospect, it becomes understandable when it is taken into account that no one could suspect her greatness at that time. He points out that Mīrā’s enemies’ reactions to her behavior are the same that many modern viewers would have, had she been their bahū (daughter-in-law). He manages to draw in the modern viewer by relating the problems Mīrā faced at her in-laws’ to the problems of a contemporary woman. This is where the demands of the genre of the Bollywood movie come into play. It is worthwhile looking at this in some detail. First of all, Gulzar brings in the issue of tension between arranged marriage and love marriage, a staple of the Bollywood movie. Mīrā has given her heart to Krishna. He is her true love, and she has considered him her

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bridegroom from when she was little.24 However, when she comes of age, her marriage to the neighboring Sisodiyā prince Bhoj is arranged for political reasons (and in tragic circumstances, as we will see in more detail below). Mīrā’s wedding is part of a rapprochement between her family, which is Rāt.haur., and that of her groom, which is Sisodiyā. The two clans are portrayed as engaged in an age-old vendetta, but willing to forget the past in view of the Mughal threat to Rājput independence. Thus, Mīrā’s marriage is arranged by her elders without regard for her personal wishes. Though she does not protest, the viewers are witness to her feelings, we see her torn between her exclusive devotion to Krishna and her forced worldly marriage. During the wedding ceremony, when she cannot stand it any longer, she gets up and runs away, but her sari catches fire and she faints.25 There is a hint here of the much-publicized tragedies of dowry death, where young women die victim to unwanted or oppressive marriages. The contrast between the love marriage and arranged marriage is continued in the wedding night scene. Bhoj is portrayed as a sensitive and concerned groom (Vinod Khannā).26 He gently inquires how she is doing after the accident. Mīrā is aware of her duties as wife, but bluntly tells him she will not be able to make him happy. She promises him that she will keep her end of the contract to set a political example but will not be able to have a personal relationship with him. Bhoj thinks this is due to the ingrained hatred of Rāt.haur.s against Sisodiyās, but Mīrā answers: “That is not the reason . . . the reason is, my own belief, my love.” Bhoj misunderstands: You love someone else?

This misunderstanding, that Mīrā is in love with another mortal man, is continued for the delight of the audience in a humorous question-andanswer setting: “Is he Rāt.haur.?” “No.” “Sisaudiyā?” “No.” “So who is it?” “The one who was my playmate in childhood, whom I grew up with, that’s the one I love, him only . . .” “So why didn’t your parents marry you to him? “I did get married.” “To him? Who is it?” “Krishna.”

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“Krishna who?” “That one, whose mūrti I’ve brought with me.”

Bhoj bursts out laughing, but Mīrā remains serious. Bhoj puts the mangalsūtra around her neck: That is a wedding of your soul, and this . . . Give me your word, as long as you live, you won’t take it off your body.27

The scene serves more than one purpose. There is the voyeuristic aspect of the wedding night, but there is also comic relief for the audience. In both respects, the scene conforms to Bollywood industry formulae. In fact, there is a close parallel in a scene from the movie Guddi (directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1971), for which Gulzar wrote the script. Here, the scene takes place before the marriage. The heroine tells the hero that she cannot marry him because she loves someone else. He presses her to reveal his identity, much like Bhoj does in Meera, but in this case the girl’s first beloved is a movie star (Dharmendra). The parallel is reinforced earlier in the movie by an explicit comparison of the heroine’s infatuation for the actor with Mīrā’s for Krishna.28 Thus, Mīrā’s love for Krishna is explicitly linked to “love marriage.” Her plight simultaneously conforms to the formula and is a real concern of many girls in the audience. Another way in which Gulzar makes the story more real, more relevant to modern women, is in the portrayal of the conflict with Mīrā’s in-laws. Interestingly, the female agent of opposition against Mīrā is different from the hagiographies, where the mother- and father-in-law were portrayed as enmical toward Mīrā.29 In contrast, the movie director has followed the Bollywood convention of not blaming the elders of the hero. There is no sās or sasur at all in the Mīrā movie. The focus of the film is rather on the enmity of the jealous sister-in-law (nanad), Ūdā, who is only briefly mentioned in the hagiographies.30 This succeeds in making young women relate to Mīrā’s problems, while at the same time avoiding any attack on in-law authority. The nature of the conflict is also portrayed in a different light. The hagiographies stress the religious conflict between Mīrā and her in-laws as an issue of Krishna-versus-goddess-worship.31 In the movie, the focus is totally on vegetarianism. Mīrā is asked to cook meat from a goat-sacrifice to the goddess. She refuses. Her sister-in-law chides her: But that is the way of this house, bhābhī. Great, learned men have been invited from all four directions. Will you feed them grass and leaves? That has never happened in this house. In our house, you will have to do as we please.

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Mīrā stands by her principles: The responsibility of this house has been given to me, jījī. This is my turn to cook, and what I’ll cook will be according to my preference.

Ūdā sums the problem up in one question: Is this your house, or ours?

But Mīrā is not deterred: I was told this is my house. Whether it is yours or not, go and ask your brother!32

Mīrā stands her ground. She is a strong character and has become here something of a heroine for bahūs, setting the example to stand up for their rights at their in-laws’. Note that the whole religious conflict has been boiled down to the issue of diet. How to maintain one’s own dietary integrity in the face of pressure to prepare meat for one’s in-laws is a very real issue that many Hindu girls face when they are married into a family with different dietary restrictions than the family in which they were raised. In this scene, as in several others, Gulzar’s story has definitely something for women activists to like. At several other points, Gulzar seems to poignantly question established patriarchal values. For instance, when he relates the circumstances of Mīrā’s leaving her in-laws’ home. The hagiographies are unclear about the reasons, leaving open the possibility of her going on a respectable pilgrimage. In the movie, Mīrā is sent away from her in-laws (sasurāl ) as a punishment for her transgressions of decorum, and when she returns to her paternal home (māykā), she is not welcomed back there either. Her “cousin brother” Jaimal coldly tells her that she no longer belongs to her paternal home: So why did you come to your father’s house for penitence? Your sin and virtue is in your husband’s, not your father’s house. Did mother not give you this instruction before you left?33

Again, this vulnerability of the woman who is turned away from both sasurāl and māykā is a standard of Bollywood movies and is a real issue for the women in the audience. It shows the vulnerability of women who do not manage to “adjust” in their husband’s home. Returning to their father’s house is often not an option, especially not if their brother is unsympathetic

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to their plight. While Mīrā does not speak out against this treatment, the viewer’s sympathy is definitely with her, not with her brother. Another wonderful example of “updating” is the innovative scene where Mīrā is undertaking a hunger strike to protest the closure of her favorite temple. The filmmaker is working here with the traditional hagiographic motif of God’s miraculous intervention in favor of the saint who is barred from his darśana, who is not allowed to behold him. However, to make the scene “real,” Gulzar has Mīrā’s fast coincide with the widely popular vrata, or fast, of karvā chauth, when women fast for their husband’s welfare and don’t partake in food and drink till they see the moon rise. Mīrā’s fast for her divine husband is contrasted with the one that ordinary women keep for their worldly husbands: she will fast until she sees Krishna’s moon face. The efficacy of both vratas is confirmed, by means of what could be termed “a natural miracle”: in a thunderstorm the temple doors catch fire and burn, and Mīrā finally gets the darśana she desired.34 Even the vrata for the human husband comes true: when Mīrā swoons after this miracle, her husband romantically comes to the rescue on his horse and carries her back home.35 Here, Gulzar has fused the hagiographical topos with the scenario of vrata folktale. Basically, vrata tales are promotional, in that they recommend the efficacy of the fasts that are associated with them. Such intertextuality between the devotional domestic milieu and the movies is far from new. Just the year before Gulzar completed the screenplay of Meera (1976),36 the hit movie Jai Santoshi Maa (1975, directed by Vijay Sharma) was basically a creative adaptation of one such a vrata tale.37 In the final part of the movie, Gulzar has made another decision that situates Mīrā in modernity: she is put on trial. This again is a case of “updating” the story. The court scene evokes other “woman on trial” scenes. For instance, in the classic Andaaz (1949, directed by Mehboob Khan), the heroine is famously put on trial as a woman who has lost her traditional bearings, who has crossed barriers of decency (maryādā) and finds herself an outcaste as a result—though ostensibly the trial is for murder. By reference to such scenes, the trial of Mīrā too becomes a trial of the modern woman, and indeed, as we shall see, the accusations evolve around her failure to carry out her traditional strīdharma, or woman’s duty—though again ostensibly, the trial is about treason and conspiring with the enemy of the state. Mīrā gets to speak many good lines in her defense, and at the surface, this seems to strengthen the case of the movie being prowoman. Gulzar adds a further dimension by turning the medieval trial into a showcase for the ideal Hindu indigenous justice system. Since the movie is set in precolonial India, there are none of the trappings of the English-imported

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courtroom as in Andaaz. Rather than wigged judges, a figure of religious authority is presiding. The accusations don’t focus on the letter of the British-inspired law but on the eternal principle of dharma. There is room for forgiveness, and when Mīrā refuses to relent, she is still offered a way out. The judge declares Mīrā mad, stating, “You have gone mad, Mīrā, and our laws do not punish the mad, but offer them treatment.”38 Even though Mīrā effectively undermines this move (she says: “What illness is love, that you will treat it?”), still there is a hint of nationalist pride in the traditional court system that is conjured up here. The device of the trial also makes great dramatic sense in that it allows the director to systematically and effectively have Mīrā’s enemies make “the case against Mīrā,” show the mixed feelings of her supporters, and Mīrā’s own reactions to the accusations.39 This builds up well to a final climax, where Mīrā drinks, as expected, the poison cup. The director respects the traditional miracle stories: he shows her unharmed, walking out of the confines of the palace into the open, into the desert, with a large crowd of admirers following her. She enters the Krishna temple and disappears, while all that remains is her musical instrument, the iktārā, and the book in which she has recorded her songs. It allows for her triumph in defeat in a subtle way, one that leaves the viewer questioning what this means and what Mīrā stands for. The movie is open-ended: it leaves possibilities open rather than closing them by overdetermination: the sure hallmark of a good movie. 2. Upstaging Mīrā: The Heroine Subverted Thus, there are many aspects in the movie that sympathetically raise women’s issues. At the same time as the director addresses such issues by “updating” Mīrā, there is also an undercurrent of unease with what Mīrā’s example might mean to women. Contrary to expectation, the movie is not an unmitigated tribute to Mīrā. At the end, the viewer is left with mixed feelings about Mīrā. Gulzar’s reworking of the Mīrā story also presents a subtle critique of Mīrā and the dangerous example she sets for ordinary women. I will discuss how the director accomplishes this relativization of Mīrā by analyzing the two most striking additions to the Mīrā story. a. Upstaged by Her Alter Ego, KrishnaThe major innovation in the movie is the addition of the character of Mīrā’s “cousin-sister” (cacerī bahin), Krishnā. This story is inspired by that of Krishnamūrti of Mewar, which the filmmaker reports having heard when viewing a portrait of a court lady at the Jaipur City Palace Museum.40 The director

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turns Krishnā’s story into a model of ideal Rajput womanhood. Krishnā, as the name may indicate, functions as the dark alter ego of Mīrā. In the movie’s central symbolism of light and dark, dark Krishnā is in contrast to bright Mīrā. Mīrā is frequently shown to be blinding, hurtful to the eyes. Krishnā represents the more realistic, down-to-earth ideal for women as opposed to the unattainable devotee ideal of Mīrā. To some extent, Krishnā’s story hijacks Mīrā’s to subvert it. Gulzar’s innovation serves as an antidote to Mīrā’s story. It promotes the opposing Rajput ideal of how women should behave. It is significant that the viewer is introduced to the sympathetic character of Krishnā even before Mīrā comes into the picture. Women viewers are invited to identify with her, as she is portrayed in the manner of a typical Bollywood movie heroine in her natal family setting. She is the young, carefree girl, coming of age. There is talk about her marriage, but nothing has been decided yet. An exciting time of expectation, when happy anticipation still overcomes the looming fear of the jump into the unknown. In the first scene she appears in, Krishnā is welcoming her brother home and charmingly girlishly asks him about what he has brought for her. He has indeed brought presents (for her as well as for Mīrā), which she excitedly accepts. He further promises a special present (hazārī hār) for her wedding. The whole scene is one of idyllic family relations: “Brother, and my hazārī hār? I nearly forgot.” “And you also forgot that I told you that I will give it in your dowry . . .”

Father joins the banter: Now don’t ask: ‘When will I get my dowry?’”

Krishnā retorts: “That, I know!” “When will you get it?” “When I marry.” “And when will you marry?” “When you find a groom.”

Now mother joins in: It is just the case that finding one for you is difficult.41

Imbedded in this happy family is the idealized brother-sister relation that is also the topic of women folk songs. This situation is instantly recognizable to many Hindu women and invites them to identify with Krishnā, at

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the expense of Mīrā. Whereas Krishnā is pleased to wear the jewelry her brother brought her, as most girls would, Mīrā puts the ring she receives on the finger of the Krishna image. The contrast is explicit; it is announced by Krishnā, who chides her brother that a ring is wasted on Mīrā, who will just put it on her image. This works to estrange Mīrā from the ordinary female viewer, who presumably loves presents and jewelry. Mīrā has grown up with her cousin, and the two are shown as very close. Mīrā involves Krishnā in her trips to her favorite Krishna temple at the other side of the lake, which happens to be on inimical Sisodiyā territory. On one of these trips the girls are confronted by Sisodiyā soldiers, who arrest their boatman, but Krishnā, like a true Rajputani is prepared to heroically defend him (or rather her honor) with the sword. At that point the Sisodiyā prince Bhoj arrives (this is the first meeting of Mīrā and her future husband). He chides them and warns the girls not to come back, but notwithstanding his threats, he is clearly impressed with Krishnā’s heroism. There is a hint of a blossoming romance between Krishnā and Bhoj, which becomes more and more explicit in the next few scenes, including an encounter of the two during Holī. Thus, initially, it is Krishnā to whom Bhoj is drawn. Due to political circumstances, Krishnā is promised in marriage to Bhoj. The director manages to subtly hint that both Krishnā and Bhoj are secretly pleased with the match. However, in conformity with societal norms, neither of them admits this preference, even to their confidantes, let alone their elders. Both quietly accept their elders’ verdict without letting on what their personal feelings are. Krishnā’s sympathetic and enlightened father actually wonders what his daughter’s feelings are, but the mother, in conformity with patriarchal norms, firmly puts this question to rest as irrelevant: Rajput girls think exactly the same as their parents.

Her husband confirms rather gloomily (foreshadowing the tragedy to come): If they can die satı¯, then they can also live like satī.42

Elsewhere he explicitly says that he is willing to sacrifice his daughter for the political cause “to offer a piece of his own life (maim. apnī jān ke t.ukar.e kī kurbānī de dūm.)” as he puts it.43 Unfortunately, Krishnā’s brother, Jaimal, also unaware of Krishnā’s feelings, vehemently opposes the match. He cannot suffer this “gesture of reconciliation” toward the enemy. By coincidence, on the same day the match between Krishnā and Bhoj was settled, Jaimal had made another marriage

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arrangement for Krishnā with a family of allies. He now refuses to cancel this engagement. Jaimal does not openly rebel against his father, but he disappears. Tension rises as the wedding processions of the two inimical states arrive, both with the intent of gaining Krishnā as their bride. What Krishnā’s father had intended to be a marriage of reconciliation threatens to become a cause for new conflict. He sees no way out of this quandary. Instead of uniting all Rajputs against the Mughals, the marriage will cause another inter-Rajput fight. Finally, he visits his daughter who is already dressed up in bridal finery. He speaks to her about the impending debacle: I have no way to save these thousands of Rajputs from being hacked to pieces by each other. No way . . . Only you can save them, daughter.44

Then he gives his daughter a ring, which turns out to have poison. Krishnā just watches her father leave, with a smile of faith and pride. Then she lifts the ring to her lips . . . Next we see her father prepare, he is putting on his turban, significantly, the seat of a Rajput’s pride. Then he goes on his way: he walks slowly. The tension heightens and then we hear a woman cry out. Krishnā has taken the poison. Her father stops, looks at his empty finger, where a ring used to be, and two tears drop down. Then he runs to announce the news in the inimical camps so that the war will be avoided. By committing suicide Krishnā has saved the situation. A woman’s sacrifice has simultaneously saved the men’s world of politics and avoided a direct father-son conflict. In case there are any doubts, this action is fully endorsed by Krishnā’s mother: “I am proud of my husband, who, for the sake of the country can feed his daughter poison with his own hand. And even more than that, I am proud of my daughter, who, for her father’s cause, without asking a single question, gave her life.”45

This leads to an implicit criticism of Mīrā. To save the situation, her aunt (again acting as a woman in the service of the patriarchal world) proposes that the alliance with the Sisodiyās would be saved if Mīrā were married to Bhoj. In justifying her proposal to her husband, she sets up a comparison between Mīrā and Krishnā: You yourself said that day: ‘if Rajput girls can die satī, they can live as satīs.’ If you need a daughter of mine for your cause, then if not Krishnā, take Mīrā. Marry her off.46

In other words, Krishnā is held up as the example for Mīrā. Mīrā is supposed to hold up her end of the deal by living out the satī ideal. However, as the rest of the movie shows us, Mīrā will miserably fail in this task.

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What can we conclude? The interpolation of the subplot of Krishnā’s sacrifice undermines the Mīrā story, even if it remains implicit. The drinking of poison is maybe the most central part of the Mīrā legend. Here, Mīrā’s feat is subverted. She is quite literally upstaged by Krishnā: Krishnā consumes poison long before Mīrā does. Interestingly, in Krishnā’s case, there is no deus ex machina, no miraculous escape from death thanks to Krishna’s protection. However, her sacrifice is hailed as that of a satī.47 The bhakta-ideal for women thus is subjugated by that of the satī. Though it is not said in so many words, viewers go home with the lingering feeling that the true exemplary heroine for women was Krishnā, not Mīrā. b. Upstaged by Her Husband Bhoj The second addition of the movie that undermines Mīrā is the focus on her romantic relationship with her husband Bhoj. Such a focus is of course to no small extent dictated by conventions of the popular movie industry. While the movie is a “devotional,” still, the romantic angle of the “social” intrudes. In her poetry, Mīrā confronts and challenges a king, or “Rān.ā,” who is sometimes taken to be her husband,48 though the hagiographies identify him mostly as her father-in-law,49 or older brother-in-law.50 Gulzar blames neither the husband nor any of Mīrā’s male in-laws. In conformity with the laws of popular movies, there is no father-in-law. In Gulzar’s movie Mīrā’s older brother-in-law is mostly sympathetic to the young bahū, and her husband actually champions her case. Bhoj is portrayed very sympathetically; he is constantly trying to keep her out of the trouble her excessive devotion gets her into. In the movie, Mīrā’s main detractors are the family guru or mahant, who is a Devī-worshipper, and her sister-in-law, Ūdā. However, the director is careful to take a distance from their criticism and is unsympathetic to either of these characters’ accusations of Mīrā. They are both shown to have their axe to grind: the mahant has an old vendetta with Mīrā’s family, and Ūdā is of course the proverbial jealous nanad, who sees the new bahū as a threat to her family and wants to save her brothers from the stranger’s carelessness regarding their welfare. Yet, Gulzar skillfully manages to voice a subtle strand of criticism of Mīrā. He uses the device of having credible characters lovingly, yet critically react to Mīrā’s extreme devotion. This works to undermine the Mīrā ideal by having these sympathetic characters convincingly criticize Mīrā’s actions. After she is married, Mīrā’s bhakti causes domestic problems. We have already seen that the director actively works to relate Mīrā’s problems to those of contemporary women in their sasurāl. Mīrā’s way of dealing with those problems is sympathetically portrayed when she is pitted against her

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adversaries, the mahant and the nanad, especially in her reaction to the issue of cooking meat (discussed above). However, in other cases, the audience is left with a feeling of disapproval. This is clearest when this criticism is voiced by the confidante Lalitā and Mīrā’s sympathetic husband Bhoj. Bhoj has already been established to be an unusually considerate and understanding husband, to the point that when his sister complains about Mīrā’s ways, he defends Mīrā, pleading that she is still in shock after the dramatic death of Krishnā.51 Thus, it is all the more striking when even this loving and reasonable Bhoj is driven to act due to Mīrā’s excesses. A good example is the scene where he discovers that Mīrā has left the palace without his permission, that she danced in a public temple, and moreover associated with an untouchable (Sant Raidās). Bhoj confronts her with her behavior: Mīrā, stop being a headache for me day and night! All your ways of going about seem rather unconventional.

Mīrā talks back and challenges him: What’s so unconventional about what I have done? Isn’t there a tradition of religious singing in this house?

Bhoj voices something that the public can readily identify with: The tradition of this house is that our daughters and daughters-in-law don’t leave the house without permission.

Mīrā gets tears in her eyes, but not because she sees his point and repents. Rather, she challenges him yet further: You said that I am not a prisoner in this house.

Before he retreats, Bhoj retorts, I did not say that you are independent either.52

Clearly Bhoj has the moral high ground here. All sympathy is with him. He does not punish Mīrā, even though she makes it difficult for him with her unconventional behavior. Later on, we will see he even has a temple for Mīrā’s mūrti built on the palace grounds, so that she would be able to worship without having to leave the palace. Bhoj clearly looks for compromise, and Mīrā comes over as unreasonably intent on devotional excess.

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In the next scene, Mīrā is shown in the company of Lalitā. She is removing all signs of marital auspiciousness and donning the simple garb of the ascetic. These ornaments, these jewels . . . I don’t like them, Lalitā. My heart’s desire is to fly away and leave this house and role of housewife.

Lalitā protests: “No Mīrā, now you have no other place to go.” When Mīrā retorts she can seek refuge with Tulsīdās or Raidās, Lalitā gravely answers: Mīrā! Your mind is straying (from the right path), steady it! Turn your attention (dhyān) toward the duty you have toward your lord (svāmī i.e., husband).

Here Mīrā breaks down in criticism of Krishna himself: The one I’ve considered my Lord, why doesn’t he come and take my hand? Why does he trick me? He is cheating on me.

Lalitā chides her gently: “Mīrā!” But she continues in her challenging way: I’m not Rādhā that I would sit in Vrindāban and wait for him . . . I’ll get out, one way or another, he will give me the signal of his flute.53

Again, the public’s sympathy is not with Mīrā, who seems to overreact and to be thinking only about herself, forgetting her dharma. This is not likely to meet with audience approval. Elsewhere, Mīrā’s actions are portrayed in a way that the audience is sure not to sympathize with. This is strongest in the scene where Bhoj is leaving for the battlefield. Mīrā brings his sword, but she is ambiguous about the war: The sword cannot bring resolution, only love can bring resolution. And for love, you do not need military strength (śakti), but bhakti is what is needed.

Bhoj takes the criticism smilingly: You have started to speak like the saints, Mīrā. If I could write and sing like you, I would take the iktārā (musical instrument) to the battle. But I can’t wield that weapon!

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Then, in a touching moment, he asks her for a sign of her love (niśānī) and takes her tulsī-mālā, which he calls the equivalent of a man˙galsūtra: I give you my word, as long as I’m alive, just like your man˙galsūtra, this (sign of your love) will not be separated from my body.”54

Bhoj in effect swears an oath of total devotion to Mīrā. He is the dream husband, the one who totally returns the woman’s love and is exclusively devoted to her, until death will part them. This is a role reversal in more than one sense. Obviously, it is normally the woman’s role of being exclusively devoted to her man, and Mīrā has failed, by having her devotion to Krishna come between them. Still, Bhoj unilaterally proclaims his love. The man˙galsūtra is a highly charged symbol for women, but in the previous scene, Mīrā was shown to care more about her tulsī-mālā than any other jewelry. Yet, Bhoj accepts her tulsī-mālā as a sign of romantic love—the love she so poignantly withholds from him. His promise to wear it as a man˙galsūtra is a very unconventional thing for a man to do. In thus emphasizing Bhoj’s absolute devotion to Mīrā, Gulzar ensures that Bhoj comes over as the real devotee, or bhakta. Not only is Mīrā shown to fall short in her duty of devotion to the husband (pativratā-dharma), she also is outdone by her very husband in bhakti. The rest of the scene puts her in an even less positive light. She goes inside to collect the material to put the auspicious tilaka (forehead mark) on Bhoj’s forehead, the blessing of the Rajput wife when her husband leaves for battle. Bhoj waits for her return. She finds her image (mūrti) missing and returns, pale and upset, without the tilaka material. His first reflex is not to chide her but to be concerned about her welfare: What happened, why do you look so pale?

She answers his loving concern with accusations: My Gopāl, where is my Krishna? Who has taken him away? You? Have you thrown him out?55

Her husband is about to leave for a battle from which he may not return and all Mīrā can think of is again her Gopāl. All sympathy is now with Bhoj, who, visibly upset, leads her to the bottom of the stairs of the new temple he had constructed for her mūrti. Then he says: Go up and meet him! I had this new temple constructed for you, so that you would not need to leave the house for your devotional singing. So that the name and honor of this house would be spared from your shamelessness.56

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And Mīrā goes up to her smiling Gopāl—who still wears her ring on his finger, an allusion to the symbolism of the man˙galsūtra. Bhoj leaves for the battle without his wife’s blessings. Again, Bhoj is portrayed as the reasonable one, willing to compromise, trying to reconcile his family’s interests with his marital ones. He has acted with only his wife’s happiness in mind, whereas she spoils even their last moment together with her suspicions. We do not hear the old accusation, that Mīrā is a kula-nāśinī, a family-destroyer. But in her actions, she has been shown to fail in a Rajput woman’s sacred duty to protect her husband. We are led to surmise that an angry and disappointed Bhoj will battle recklessly with the desire to die rather than to have to return to his marital problems. That it is Mīrā who hurts her husband deepest is made explicit at several points toward the end of the movie. When Bhoj returns badly wounded from the battlefield to attend Mīrā’s trial, Mīrā asks: “Have you returned from the battle (yuddha)?” “Yes, I have returned from the battle, for the Great Battle (mahāyuddha).”

She touches the tulsī-mālā that he is still wearing: “Has the battle caused you bad wounds?” “The wound you caused me is the deepest, Mīrā.”57

Notwithstanding everything that happened, he is still shown to care for her. Her unwillingness to defend herself eats at him. He fears that the verdict will be capital punishment and tries all he can to avoid it. When all fails, he asks his brother to let him go and die fighting. His brother calls him a coward and compels him to stay. When Bhoj says he won’t live if Mīrā cannot, his brother replies he will not let him go down in history as having died any other way than on the battlefield: I will have your corpse thrown on the battlefield, so that history will close its eyes, saying that Bhoj was killed even before seeing Mīrā’s verdict.58

Gulzar’s verdict is clear: Mīrā turns out to be a husband-killer, after all. Conclusion We find that Gulzar works very much within the hagiographic tradition, yet he “updates” the stories in a profoundly modern way. Most obvious is that he frames Mīrā’s story within a narrative of the nation that conforms to modern academic reconstructions, and within the conventions of popular Indian cinema. More interesting for our purpose is that he raises a whole

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host of contemporary women’s issues. To some extent Mīrā can be seen as setting an inspiring example for young bahūs to stand up for their beliefs and not let their in-laws dictate rules that go counter to their convictions, in particular with regard to diet. On the other hand, more subtly, the message is that Mīrā’s radical choice for devotion has not brought her personal happiness. She is blessed with an exceptionally understanding and loving husband, yet in her obsessive devotion, she misses out on marital bliss. Moreover, in the juxtaposition with her cousin Krishnā’s selfless sacrifice for the nation, Mīrā’s devotion comes over as selfish. Krishnā becomes the true national heroine by drinking poison to avoid bloodshed and facilitate an alliance of Hindu forces against Muslim hegemony. By transferring the poison-drinking from Mīrā to Krishnā, by foregrounding not the spiritual but the national cause, the film director transforms the message of Mīrā’s story. It could be said that he is taking the sting out of her “poisonous” example for women. Shall we conclude that poison is to be drunk for the nation’s sake, not for God’s? We set out to study the interface between bhakti and gender. Initially, one might have expected bhakti to have transformative potential for women’s lives toward greater independence. The Mīrā story without doubt has inspired defiance against restrictive gender roles. One example of such a defiant Mīrāinspired stance can be found in a recently translated autobiography of a rich baniyā housewife-turned-saint, named Banāsā Lāt.h (née Rūm.gtā, b. 1896, d. 1957).59 Banāsā’s story of her struggles to carve out a niche for herself bears witness to a living tradition of Mīrā’s songs among provincial Rājasthānī women in the 1920s and shows its empowering influence. Banāsā used Mīrā’s songs and example to legitimize her own way of navigating her life away from traditionally defined roles for women and in defiance of her in-laws. If Mīrā could inspire such readings in the mofussils in the 1920s, how much more would we expect that to be the case in the 1970s, in a popular movie by a cosmopolitan Indian director? The modernity of the medium might be expected to inspire more modern attitudes toward women than traditional religion. However, the particular retelling of the story and recasting of Mīrā’s songs reveal a profound ambiguity about the female bhakti saint and the inspiration she might be for ordinary women. To some extent we may attribute this to the formula of the popular movie and the perceived audience expectation that the patriarchal status quo be maintained. To some extent, Gulzar may betray a personal assessment of the dangers of romanticized love for leading young girls astray.60 While Gulzar’s movie is a tribute to Mīrā’s great devotion, there is also an undercurrent of criticism. The viewer is left with mixed feelings about the devotee that the movie is in praise of. There is a clear signal that Mīrā is not

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to be imitated; her impact on the female viewer’s real life is to be limited to the devotional atmosphere. Further, Mīrā’s commitment to God is shown as excessive and not to be followed in its extreme. Where it conflicts with patriarchal values, the latter should prevail. The movie is convincing because its stress is not on external punishment. Rather, this excessive devotion is shown to undercut Mīrā’s real-life happiness. I think this element in the movie is paradigmatic for current attitudes toward Mīrā in particular and the gender issue in bhakti in general. Devotion is fine, within certain limits. Excessive devotion that runs counter to the interests of the family is no good for women. It does not bring them personal happiness. Women should shy away from devotion that does not respect the boundaries of dharma. For their own good. Notes 1. I wish to thank the students of my advanced Hindi class in 2000 and 2002, with whom I read through the Meera movie script. Their reactions to the story worked as a catalyzer for the ideas for this paper. I also wish to thank Vasudha Dalmia for her response to the paper when presented at the 18th Annual South Asia Conference in Berkeley in February 2003. 2. It has been called inspiring for feminists (Kishwar and Vanita 1989a, 90–92), though feminists have also critiqued it (see especially Sangari 1990). Still, there is no doubt that her story remains a source of inspiration for ordinary women to negotiate alternative lives for themselves (for a contemporary ethnographic account, see Martin 1995). 3. Shastri in Martin (forthcoming). 4. This attitude is also prevalent among high-status Rājput women (Harlan 1992). 5. This is well exemplified by the often-cited Nābhādās’s Bhaktmāl 115 (ca. 1600): loka lāja kula śr.n˙khalā taji: “giving up the chains of worldly censor and family,” niran˙kuśa ati nid.ara: “without restraint, utterly fearless,” and bhakti nisāna bhajāyakai kāhū te nāhina lajī: “not ashamed before anyone to beat devotion’s drum” (Bhagvānprasād1977, 712–713). Note though that even here, the term niran˙kuśa, “without restraint,” may carry negative implications. 6. The 1712 commentary by Priyādās on Nābhādās’s text is interpreted by some as providing a domestication, “a construction of Mira which is more in keeping with a mercantilist mentality” (Mukta 1994, 22). 7. Mukta 1994, 173–74. 8. Ibid. 2000, 166–71. 9. Ibid. 1994, 182–200. 10. Hawley 1995. The comic strip is actually based on a narrative from the thirties (Martin 2000, 173–174). 11. Hemā Mālinī seems to have been the driving force behind the movie, she reportedly claims to have been inspired by her family guru from Poona (Pune), Mīrādāsī (Gulzar 1979, 32).

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12. Gulzar ascribes the movie’s failure to his personal psychological interpretation of the story and the fact that he made it into a historical rather than a mythological movie (1983, 200–201). 13. There have been several other Bollywood movies on Mīrā’s life. The most famous precursor of Gulzar’s movie is the 1947 movie Meera with M. S. Subbulakshmi in the title role, which was produced by Chandraprabha Cine and directed by E. S. Tunda. More recently, the theme is explicitly taken up in the title of the 1993 social Meera ka Girdhar (directed by Vijay Deep) and 1992 romantic Meera ka Mohan (directed by K. Ravi Shankar). Philip Lutgendorf has identified recurrent references to Mīrā, which he calls a “Mīrā trope” in other Bollywood movies (forthcoming). 14. Kishwar and Vanita, “Modern Versions of Mira,” 100. 15. Mukta 1994, 205. 16. In a sister paper, published in my edited volume Indian Literature and Popular Cinema, I address how Gulzar represents the text of Mīrā’s songs in his movie (Pauwels 2007). 17. The movie (and more generally Gulzar’s movies) thus may be seen as an exception to the typically heterogeneous mode of production of Hindi cinema (Prasad 1998, 42–57). Gulzar himself comments on his intense involvement in all aspects of moviemaking, including the picturizing of the songs (Gulzar 1983: 197, 199). 18. Gulzar 1979. 19. Ibid., 33–59. 20. Ibid., 16–17. 21. Appadurai and Breckenridge 1995, 9. The movie’s stress on the historical context is in stark contrast to the hagiographies, which typically are vague about history, but follows the preoccupation of academic studies on Mīrā. Notable is the contrast between two views of the nation, a secular one articulated by Akbar (he says, “Dharma is not the nation. Religion is religion, and the nation (qaum) is the nation. Religion is not the nation.” Gulzar 1979, 132), and that of a Hindu nation to be defended against the Muslim aggressor as articulated by Mīrā’s relatives. This is ingeniously done in juxtaposed scenes of preparation for war where both parties explain their rationale to their courtiers. Whereas Akbar argues that he simply wishes to unite the whole of India without any religious prejudice, Mīrā’s brother-in-law, Vikramjīt, makes the point that Akbar was not elected to do that task (uskā cunāv Hindustān ne nahīm. kiyā, ibid.). One wonders whether this hints at the political situation at the time, notably Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. Overall, Akbar is portrayed quite sympathetically, but the actor playing this part is arch-villain Amjad Khan. 22. Gulzar 1979, 13. 23. Ibid., 15. 24. Ibid., 70. 25. Ibid., 97. 26. Apparently, it was not easy to find an actor prepared to take the role. Gulzar says tongue-in-cheek: “We had as much difficulty in finding a husband for Mīrā, as Hemā had in her own life” (Gulzar 1979, 22). Originally, Amitabh Bachchan was to play this role, but he withdrew (ibid., 25–26).

Gulzar’s Antidote for Mīrā’s Poison 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

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Gulzar 1979, 99–100. See Lutgendorf (forthcoming), for an analysis of this scene. See Priyādās 473, Bhagvānprasād 1977, 716. Ibid., 475; Bhagvānprasād 1977, 717–18. Priyādās 473. Gulzar 1979, 103. Ibid., 118. Contrary to what Kishwar and Vanita (1989, 101) claim, the movie does not shroud Mīrā in miracles and mysteries. Rather than mystifying, Gulzar treats the miracles in a sophisticated way. In the publication of the script, he reflects on the role of miracles, saying that his audience wants to believe in them, and searches for scientific explanations. However, such explanations often destroy the feeling (bhāv) of the miraculous (1979, 14). Certainly, Gulzar himself succeeds felicitously in combining both the scientific explanation and keeping the wonder (adbhuta) of the miracle for the viewer. Ibid., 131. Gulzar 1979, 22, apparently the writing was done between Mausam and Kinārā, ibid., 32. See Lutgendorf 2002. Ibid., 152. Gulzar 1979, 16. Ibid., 55–56. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 90–91. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 95. Kishwar and Vanita, “Poison to Nectar: The Life and Work of Mirabai.” 78. For example, Priyādās 473. For example, Nāgrīdās Pada-prasan˙ga-mālā 14, Gupta 1975, 2:363) Gulzar 1979, 98. Ibid., 112. Ibid., 113. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 134. Ibid., 150. Ibid., 156. See Horstmann 2003. One may read this also as typical for the seventies, in reference to Prasad’s thesis that contemporary movies represent a defense of the sexual economy of the middle-class–upper-caste extended family (1998, 170–175).

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Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun, and Carol A. Breckenridge. “Public Modernity in India.” In Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, Carol A. Breckenridge, ed. 1–20. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Bhagvānprasād, Sītārām Śaran. “Rūpkalā,” ed. Gosvāmi Nābhājī kr.t Śrī Bhaktamāl: Śrī Priyādāsjī pran.īt t.ikā-kavitta, Śrī Sītārāmśaran. Bhagvānprasād Rūpkalā viracit Bhaktisudhāsvād tilak sahit. (1903–9). Reprint. Lucknow: Tejkumār Book Depot, 1977. Gulzar. “Interview, January 1982.” In Indian Cinema Superbazaar, edited by Arun Vasudev and Philippe Lenglet, 193–204. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1983. ———. Mīrā: Kathā, mom.tāj (montage), anusandhān aur pat.kathā. New Delhi: Rādhākr.s.ña Prakās.an, 1979. Gupta, Kiśorīlāl. Nāgrīdās. Ākar Granthmālā 8. Vol. 2. Benares: Nāgrīpracārin.ī Sabhā, 1975. Harlan, Lindsey. “Abandoning Shame: Mīrā and the Margins of Marriage.” In From the Margins of Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture, edited by Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright, 204–227. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hawley, John Stratton. “The Saints Subdued: Domestic Virtue and National Integration in Amar Chitra Katha.” In Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, edited by Lawrence Babb and Susan Wadley, 107–134. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Horstmann, Monika. Banasa: A Spiritual Autobiography. Khoj 7. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2003. Kishwar, Madhu, and Ruth Vanita. “Modern Versions of Mira.” In Manushi, 50–52. January–June, 100–101, 1989. ———. “Poison to Nectar: The Life and Work of Mirabai.” In Manushi, 50–52. January–June, 75–93, 1989. Lutgendorf, Philip. “Jai Santoshi Maa and Caste Hierarchy in Indian Films” and “A ‘Made to Satisfaction Goddess’: Jai Santoshi Maa Revisited.” In Manushi, 131. July–August 2002. ———. “The Mīrā-trope.” In Celebrating Mīrābāī, Hindu Saint for a Global World, edited by Nancy Martin. Forthcoming. Martin, Nancy M. “Mīrābāī in the Academy and the Politics of Identity.” In Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India, edited by Mandakranta Bose, 162–182. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. “Mīrābāī: Inscribed in text, embodied in life.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Fall 1995: 5–44. Mukta, Parita. Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai. Gender Studies. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pauwels, Heidi. “Bhakti Songs Recast: Gulzar’s Meera Movie.” In Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics, edited by Heidi Pauwels. London: Routledge, 2007.

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Prasad, M. Madhava. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Reconstruction. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Sangari, Kumkum. “Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti.” In The Economic and Political Weekly, July 7, 1990, 1464–1475 and July 14, 1537–1552. Shastri, Y. S., “Gujarātī Mīrā” In Celebrating Mīrābāī, Hindu Saint for a Global World, edited by Nancy Martin. Forthcoming.

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CHAPTER 3

Religion and Gender in Bollywood Film Diana Dimitrova

Introduction

T

his chapter explores the intersections of religion and film and discusses the interpretation of gender and Hinduism in Indian film from the perspective of mythological and ideological criticism.1 The Bollywood films that I deal with are Ham āpke haim. kaun (Who Am I to You), Kuch kuch hotā hai (There Is Something), Khalnāyak (Villain), Dil cāhtā hai (The Heart Wants), Devdās (Devdas), and Ham dil de cuke sanam (I Have Already Given My Heart Away). It is characteristic of these films that no matter how modern the subject matter is—for example, arranged marriage versus love marriage, the ideal of woman living according to strīdharma (“traditional norms, duties, rules, roles of womanhood”) versus the ideal of woman aspiring for human happiness—the notion of the feminine is mostly conservative and traditional. How can we explain this fascination for traditional archetypes of the feminine? In this chapter, I deal with Hindu images of the feminine and myth-models for women and explore how Bollywood films have represented gender and translated Hindu myth-models into social role models for women. Next, I examine the ideological implications of the representation of gender and the ensuing conservative remythologizing of contemporary Indian culture by the media. Images of the Feminine in Hindu Traditions In my discussion of images of the feminine in the Hindu tradition, I draw on four major sources. I refer to the roles and duties prescribed for women

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in the Dharmaśāstras, the representation of women and gender in the two epics of Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyan. a, and images of the feminine in Hinduism, as revealed in the tradition of women bhakti saints and the mythology of the Goddess.2 The ideology of women’s religiosity as service and devotion to the husband and the notion of strīdharma as the ideal female behavior originated in the period of classical Hinduism (200 BCE–1100 CE). These ideas are found in the Dharmaśāstra texts (“category of scripture in Sanskrit consisting of works on ethic”), and the Man. usmr.ti (The Laws of Manu) is perhaps the work most frequently referred to. The Dharmaśāstras contain precepts for right conduct of men and women, and for order in Hindu society, as viewed by male Brahmins, and present restricted and conservative notion of the feminine.3 The epics and their narratives abound with active women: Draupadī in the Mahābhārata, and Sītā in the Rāmāyan. a are not passive.4 However, even though there are active heroines in the epics, their agency is very limited, and it would be difficult to overlook that the way to power for women in the classical period is based on the concept of the feminine power of the meek and submissive wife. Mostly, it is through their self-effacing virtue, service, and self-sacrifice to the husband that women become empowered. No woman is portrayed as acting for her own sake. Thus, not only in the Dharmaśāstras but also in the epics, women’s religiosity is focused on the husband. Service to the husband is the purpose of woman’s life on earth. In the time of bhakti (devotional) Hinduism, a movement that originated in South India from the sixth century onward and became popular in North India from the eleventh century onward, women’s religiosity and self-definition changed. Tradition has it that women Vais.n.ava and Śaiva bhakti poetess-saints approached the deity directly seeking liberation (for themselves, not for their husbands) in the union with God.5 Some chose never to marry, and devoted their lives to a spiritual union with their divine beloved. Others walked out of their earthly marriages to give full vent to their bhakti (loving devotion) to God. Thus, we can refer to women bhakti poets (women writing Hindu devotional poetry) as images of independent women in the Hindu tradition. The mythic figure of Mīrābāī seems to have exercised the greatest influence on the Hindu imagination, and it is no coincidence that the legend of Mīrābāī’s life has been reworked in several mythological films.6 In the Purān. as (fourth-century CE–eighteenth-century CE), we find yet another instance of alternative Hindu images of the feminine. The nature of the divine feminine is revealed not only in the image of the submissive Spouse Goddess7 but also in the image of the Goddess, the independent and powerful Devī,8 who is aware of her śakti (“inherent female power”).9

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In Śāktism, it is believed that every woman is the embodiment of the Goddess and is to be worshipped accordingly.10 In local religious practice, many female religious practitioners are empowered by their self-identification with the Goddess.11 Additionally, Hindu religious thought considers married woman whose husband is alive auspicious: she brings saubhāgya, good fortune, happiness, and prosperity to her family.12 In her article “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World,” Frédérique Marglin reexamines stereotypical notions of female sexuality as negative and points out that although sexual intercourse and menstruation are considered impure, they are auspicious.13 She argues that female sexuality is inherently auspicious and is the source of the powers women have to give and nurture life. Marglin holds that danger comes not from female sexuality but from celibacy. Although the character of the single goddess is ambivalent because her śakti can both destroy and renew, the dangerous power is not inherent in the goddess as a female but derives from her celibacy.14 In a marital relationship, female śakti is always auspicious. Thus, Marglin reevaluates the understanding that the picture of femininity is inherently dangerous and that the śakti of the goddess, emanating from her femininity, is a dangerous power that must be tamed, dominated, and thus controlled by the male. She shows that the ensuing interpretation, which implies hierarchical aspect of male-female relationship and requires wifely submission, needs to be reevaluated to also include the more complex notion of the danger that is inherent in asceticism and celibacy (both male and female).15 Thus, we may state that goddesses are malevolent if they are not in a conjugal relationship not because their sexuality needs to be tamed and they need to be under the control of a male but because of the danger that lies in a single celibate status. Similarly, goddesses in a conjugal relationship are benevolent not because their sexuality is controlled by a male but because the marital status of the goddesses can secure the regeneration and nurture of life. It follows that the Hindu images of the feminine and role models for women based on mythical figures are complex and multifaceted. The feminine in the Hindu world does not have negative valuation, and it is questionable whether the myths argue for a hierarchical male-woman relationship, whether they convey the message of women’s inferiority, and whether they assert wifely submission as a model for women. We may wonder how the world of myth and religion relates to the world of real women, that is, what is the connection between symbolic reality and social reality, and most relevant to this study, what is the role that the media play in connecting these realities. The question arises about the links that exist between myth-models and social role models for women and the importance of commercial mainstream Bollywood film in this process. In what way has

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Bollywood film reworked the myth-models and projected them as desirable or undesirable social models for women to emulate or reject? In her article “Women Spoken For: Images of Displaced Desire,” Irena Makarushka argues that social role models for women in the Western/ Christian tradition are equated with the myth-models of Eve and Mary. Whereas women are discouraged from emulating Eve, most women find it very difficult to live up to the desirable ideal of the Virgin Mary. Makarushka proceeds to analyze the ideology of the construction of the feminine in Hollywood film with regard to these two myth-models for women in the Western tradition.16 I argue that commercial mainstream Bollywood film has had great success in its attempt to equate conservative Hindu myth-models for women with conservative social role models for women. In the media and specifically in Bollywood film, the figures of Mīra¯ and Devī are successfully contravened by another myth-model, another female figure that has exercised great influence on women’s lives in the past four centuries, the figure of Sītā in Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century work Rāmcaritmānas. Tulsidas renders his heroine different from the Sītā of the Rāmāyan. a epic: sixteenth-century Sītā is portrayed as the embodiment of the Vais.n.ava bhakti religious ideal, that is, full of bhakti (devotion, service, and surrender) to Rāma. Taken out of the religious context, the interpretation of the female character is easily translated into social terms, as devotion, service, and surrender to the husband. This is how this female figure has been appropriated and received in popular Indian culture today. Sītā has come to represent the perfect pativratā; loyal, obedient, and subservient. The media, represented especially by Ramanand Sagar’s Rāmāyan. a TV serial, has contributed to this distorted mythological symbol of Tulsidas’s Sītā. Bollywood film has played an important role in the remythologizing of the present,17 and therefore, the representation of gender and religion in film deserves special consideration. The Representation of Gender in Bollywood Film: Women as Perfect Sītās Hindi popular cinema reinforces the Sītā-image and underlines this image as one that is good, ideal, and desirable for all women to emulate and follow. Shoma Chatterji argues that even though New Cinema emphasized the Devī-and-“Mother India”-element with regard to the representation of the feminine, women in these films are losers or experience tragedies.18 Most often, Hindi popular films represent an orthodox male point of view, and the notion of the feminine is conservative and traditional. Sītā, not Devī or Mīrā, is the embodiment of the ideal of the feminine. Discussing reviews

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of Hindi films, Katherine Young remarks that “ultimately, conservative values on the model of Tulsidas’ Sita are affirmed for women.” The recently released Bollywood films that are discussed in this chapter reaffirm traditional values for women under the disguise of “modernity.” These films present sophisticated versions of educated women who nevertheless have traditional lifestyles and live up to the ideal of the Sītā-image. Although these women are presented as educated, and sometimes even have a profession, they are portrayed as desirable role models for other women only if their characters can conform to the mythical figure of Sītā. Women who are presented as educated and have a profession but who do not follow the Sītā-model fail. Through the “failure” of these heroines who do not conform to the Sītā-ideal, Bollywood film reinstates the status quo and reaffirms the necessity and desirability of the Sītā-model in our times. Thus, it is no coincidence that upon her marriage, Pooja in the film Ham āpke haim. kaun is given the Rāmāyan. a as a model to abide by and to guide her through her marriage. Another example of the use of the Rāmāyan. a, and of constructing the female character in conformity with the ideal of Sītā is the film Khalnāyak.19 Policewoman Ganga does her duty and chases the villain (khalna¯ yak) Ballu but is accused of associating with him. In court, Ballu is moved and transformed by this injustice and talks of Ganga and himself as the pure Sītā and the demon Rāvan.. It is no coincidence that the male policeman, who seems not only professionally but also romantically involved with Ganga, is named Ram (the god Rāma and Sītā’s husband who defeats the demon Rāvan. to save his kidnapped wife Sītā). It is interesting to note that Ganga is a policewoman, an unmarried young workingwoman who is identified with Sītā, and not with Mīrā and Devī. This emphasizes her innocence, chastity, and purity, which even a villain cannot vilify. The viewers are not encouraged to reflect on her skills as a policewoman who is involved in a criminal investigation. Thus, the identification of young Ganga with Sītā, and not with Mīrā or Devī, domesticates the young policewoman and renders Ganga’s character in harmony with traditional ideals of womanhood and as a woman who lives up to the expectations of a male-dominated society. There are conflicting views about women’s education in Bollywood film. Some of the most successful films of the 1990s, such as Ham āpke haim. kaun (Who Am I to You),1994, and Kuch kuch hotā hai (There Is Something), 1998, promote a sophisticated modern Indian equivalent of the Victorian ideal of the domestic angel. The female protagonists in these films are educated housewives. Education is welcome but it is implied that women should make use of it in the private, not in the public sphere, to entertain their husbands and to bring up (and educate) their children. The female

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protagonists in both films live up to the ideal of the submissive wife of conservative Hinduism. They are portrayed as ready to submit to tradition and marry the widowed husbands of their deceased sisters. Only a happy intervention of fate saves them from this tragedy. The bridegroom-to-be, who has realized that the surrogate bride-to-be loves another man, cancels the marriage. Thus, women are not encouraged to act independently or to fight for individual happiness but to submit to male authority and tradition. If they are lucky (and in the unreal world of film they are!), this representative of male authority takes their happiness into consideration. In films of the 2000s, heroines are often given a “choice” between following tradition and following their heart. This “choice” often turns out to be illusory and nonexistent. In the film Devdās (2002)20 both Parvati and Chandramukhi are in fact victimized by orthodox tradition: as a courtesan, Chandramukhi is expected to give only physical love, whereas as a respectably married woman and the young wife of a much older man who does not love her, Parvati is denied intimacy and sexual love. Both women are expected to submit to tradition and to give up their happiness and dreams to live up to the ideal of the feminine as embodied in the mythical figure of Sītā. When Parvati attempts to leave the home of her older husband and to go to her beloved Devda¯s, who is lying just outside of her mansion, the doors of her rich home close before her, separating her for ever from her beloved. Similarly, in the film Ham dil de cuke sanam, young Nandini becomes disillusioned and disappointed in her love for Sameer and realizes that her husband, Vanraj, whom she was forced to marry at the order of her father, is the best choice. The film conveys the message that orthodoxy and parents are right in choosing a Hindu man of the appropriate caste as a husband for their daughter, and not Sameer who is a foreigner, lives in Italy, and is Christian. Vanraj turns out to be a noble man and takes Nandini to Sameer. He gives her the “choice” to choose. Against the background of chants of Sanskrit mantras that are traditionally uttered at the sacred Hindu marriage ceremony, Nandini chooses to stay with her husband. Thus the film communicates a strong affirmation of arranged marriage, the “indissolubility” of Hindu marriage, of the old order, of the dependence of woman on male authority, and of the preservation of caste purity over love marriage and modernity. It is innovative that this conservative message is conveyed in a very sophisticated way: it is Nandini herself who ultimately decides, of free will, to abide by tradition. By contrast, Tara in Dil cāhtā hai (2001) is one heroine who is portrayed as modern, Westernized, and capable of making independent decisions. She is educated and has a profession: she is a very successful interior designer and is financially independent. Characteristically, she is divorced, lonely,

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and unhappy. Her former husband has managed to deprive her of her right to see her daughter. We learn that she drinks and has liver problems. Her relationship with ten years younger Siddharth cannot change her life, and she dies in the end. The film conveys the message that she has not followed the Sītā idiom, therefore she is lonely, isolated, and her marriage has failed. Thus, the construction of Tara’s character in Dil cāhtā hai reveals that women are not encouraged to emulate Tara’s lifestyle. Tara is not projected as a role model. Conclusion: Myth-Models and the Construction of Gender The recently released Bollywood films discussed in this chapter imply that women should adhere to traditional Hindu images of the feminine, and that the desirable Indian role model for women is associated with Tulsidas’s Sītā, with the submissive woman, and not with Devī, with the empowered one. How can we explain this phenomenon? In his article “Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercial Hindi Films,” Steve Derné points out that because of financial pressures and market forces, “religious themes introduced in ‘social films’ tend to draw on a repertoire of mythological images that have been proven to offend neither conservative Hindus nor government census.”21 This also applies to the interpretation of gender. As Madhu Kishwar argues in her article “Yes to Sītā, No to Rām: The Continuing Hold of Sītā on Popular Imagination in India,”22 most Indian men and women approve of Sītā’s behavior and loyalty to her husband but disapprove of Rām’s arrogance and cruelty to her. The Sītā-model is not objectionable to the mainstream general audience, and the construction of female characters in harmony with the Sītā-ideal is not offensive to anyone but admired by all. Tara, the only female character who cannot be equated with the mythical figure of Sītā in the films discussed, is not presented as a social role model for women. The construction of her character involves divorce, separation from her child, alcoholism, and even death in the end. Although Tara’s husband is alive, she is divorced and does not live with him. Even though she is a mother and has a daughter, she does not have custody of her and does not raise her It would therefore be difficult to see the divorced and childless Tara as a symbol of saubhāgya and auspiciousness. If we draw on Frédérique Marglin’s study on female sexuality in the Hindu world,23 we may argue that it is the heroine’s celibate status that makes her “malevolent,” “inauspicious,” and threatening. That divorce has historically not had a place in Hindu tradition is an important issue to consider.24 If Tara’s character as a divorced woman were rendered in a positive light, this would

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be objectionable to conservative Hindus. Were Tara to adhere to tradition, she would accept a co-wife (we learn that her husband has married for a second time) and would continue to be a mother and a wife whose husband is alive. In this way she would continue to be “auspicious,” and her inherent female power, śakti, would be a source of saubhāgya. Tara did not follow tradition and her divorce is not in harmony with the values of Hindu marriage traditions. The antimodernist stance of the film criticizes the modern practice of divorce and reaffirms the sanctity of the Hindu marriage, which is indissoluble. Thus, a positive interpretation of Tara’s character as an independent and empowered woman, as Śakti (the Goddess Shakti), in the wake of the Mīrā-Devī-tradition is not possible. Tara is not to be seen as a perfect Śakti but as an imperfect Sītā who has failed. Notes 1. On the three types of proposed criticism for the study of religion and film, namely, theological, mythological, and ideological criticism, see J. Martin and C. Ostwalt, Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film (Boulder, CA: Westview, 1995), 1–12. 2. See T. Pintchman, The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1994), 201–214; A. Hiltebeitel and K. M. Erndl, eds., Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (New York: New York University Press, 2000); R. Gross, “Hindu Female Deities as a Resource for the Contemporary Rediscovery of the Goddess,” in The Book of the Goddess Past and Present, ed. C. Olson (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 217–230; N. Falk and R. Gross, ed., Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 277. 3. See my discussion of the Man.usmr.ti with regard to women in the Hindu tradition in D. Dimitrova, Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 16–17. 4. See S. J. Sutherland Goldman, “The Voice of Sītā in Valmiki’s Sundarakān.d.a,” in Questioning Rāmāyan.as: A South Asian Tradition, ed. P. Richman, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 223–238. 5. See my discussion of images of the feminine and women bhakti poets in D. Dimitrova, Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2008) 18–19. 6. A. Ramanujan, “On Women Saints,” in The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India, ed. J. Hawley and D. Wulff (Berkeley: Religious Studies Series; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982) 316–324; S. Gupta, “Women in the Shaiva/Shakta Ethos,” in Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. J. Leslie (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1991), 193–209; U. Chakravarti, “The World of Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions—The Body and Beyond,” in Women in Early Indian Societies, ed. Kumkum Roy (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 299–321; A. Srinivasan, “Reform or Conformity? Temple ‘Prostitution’ and the Community

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8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

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in the Madras Presidency,” in Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia, ed. Bina Agarwal (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988), 175–198; L. Teskey Denton, “Varieties of Hindu Female Asceticism,” in Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. J. Leslie (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1991), 211–233. On the distinction between Devī:, “the control-free, non-Sanskritic version of the female principle in India” and the Spouse Goddess, “the control-defined Sanskritic version of the female principle,” see Lynn E. Gatwood, Devī and the Spouse Goddess (Riverdale, MD: Riverdale Company, 1985), 1–7. See also D. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); C. Olson, ed., The Book of the Goddess Past and Present (New York: Crossroad, 1989); J. S. Hawley and D. M. Wulff, ed. Devī: Goddesses of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff ed. The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India (Berkeley: Religious Studies Series; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982). In this chapter, I use the Indian term Devī, and mean by it the Great Goddess (singular), as opposed to its plural meaning, goddesses of India (Spouse Goddess, i.e., female consorts of male Hindu gods, and village goddesses). The concept of śakti is complex and deserves further clarification. It is understood as the creative energy that generates and continues to activate the universe. It is conceived as female and often personified as the consort of a male deity (the Spouse Goddess) or as the independent Goddess (Devī). See my discussion of images of the Goddess in D. Dimitrova, Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama, 19. See K. Erndl, “The Goddess and Women’s Power: A Hindu Case Study,” in Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today, ed. K. King (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 17–38; M. Hancock, “The Dilemmas of Domesticity: Possession and Devotional Experience among Urban Smārta Women,” in From the Margins of Hindu Marriage, ed. L. Harlan and P. Courtright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 60–91; M. Khanna, “The Goddess-Women Equation in Shakta Tantras,” in Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval and Modern India, ed. M. Bose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 109–123. Cf. M. McGee, “In Quest of Saubhāgya: The Roles and Goals of Women as Depicted in Marathi Stories of Votive Devotions,” in Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion, ed. Anne Feldhaus (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1996) 147–170; H. Reynolds, “The Auspicious Married Woman,” The Powers of Tamil Women, ed. S. Wadley (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980), 35–60. F. A. Marglin, “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World,” in Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, ed. Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles (Boston: Beacon, 1985), 40. Ibid., 56. Ibid., 39–59.

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16. See I. Makarushka, “Women Spoken For: Images of Displaced Desire,” in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film, ed. J. Martin and C. Ostwalt (Boulder, CA: Westview, 1995), 142–151. 17. See K. Knott, Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 40–49; K. Young, “Upholding Norms of Hindu Womanhood: An Analysis Based on Reviews of Hindi Cinema,” in Gender, Genre and Religion, eds M. Joy and E. K. Neumaier-Dargyay (Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1995), 171–198. 18. See S. Chatterji, The Indian Woman in Perspective (Delhi: Ajanta, 1993), 204. 19. For a discussion on Ayodhya and the politics of Rāma in the film Khalna¯yak, see V. Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 224–227. 20. This is a remake of the original film of 1935. 21. Steve Derné, “Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercial Hindi Films,” in Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, ed. Lawrence Babb and Susan S. Wadley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 191. 22. Madhu Kishwar interviews many men and women in India and finds that whereas people are critical of Rām, who does not live up to the ideal of the “perfect man,” the ideal of Sītā as the “perfect woman” enjoys universal approval and admiration. Most women wish for a husband like the god Śiva, who is devoted to his wife Pārvatī, not like Rām, who makes his wife go through a fire ordeal. See Madhu Kishwar, “Yes to Sītā, No to Rām: The Continuing Hold of Sītā on Popular Imagination in India,” in Many Rāmāyan.as: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 285–309. 23. Marglin, Frédérique Apffel, “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World,” in Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, ed. Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles (Boston: Beacon, 1985), 37–59. 24. On divorce in secular India and issues related to divorce and Hinduism, see Paras Diwan, “The Hindu Marriage Act 1955,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 6, no. 2 (April 1957): 263–272.

Bibliography Primary Sources Devdās. 2002. Direction: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 117 minutes. Dil cāhtā hai. 2001. Direction: Farhan Akhtar, 183 minutes. Ham āpke haim. kaun. 1994. Direction: Sooraj R. Barjatya, 206 minutes. Ham dil de cuke sanam. 1999. Direction: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 188 minutes. Kuch kuch hota¯ hai. 1998. Direction: Karan Johar, 177 minutes. Khalnāyak. 1993. Direction: Subhas Ghai, 190 minutes.

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Secondary Sources Agarwal, Bina, ed. Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia. Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988. Babb, Lawrence, and Susan S. Wadley. Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Chakravarti, Uma. “The World of Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions—The Body and Beyond,” In Women in Early Indian Societies, ed. Kumkum Roy. Delhi: Manohar, 1999. 299–321. Chatterji, Shoma. The Indian Woman in Perspective. Delhi: Ajanta, 1993. Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing about Film. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. Denton, L. Teskey. “Varieties of Hindu Female Asceticism.” In Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. J. Leslie. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1991. 211–233. Derné, Steve. “Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercial Hindi Films,” In Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, ed. Lawrence Babb and Susan S. Wadley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. 191–216. Dimitrova, Diana. Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama. Montreal; London; and Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Diwan, Paras. “The Hindu Marriage Act 1955.” In The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 6, no. 2 (April 1957): 263–272. Erndl, Kathleen. “The Goddess and Women’s Power: A Hindu Case Study.” In Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today, ed. K. King. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997. 17–38. ———. “Is Shakti Empowering for Women? Reflections on Feminism and the Hindu Goddess.” In Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses, ed. A. Hiltebeitel and K. M. Erndl. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Falk, Nancy, and Rita Gross, eds. Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001. Feldhaus, Anne, ed. Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion. Albany: SUNY, 1996. Gatwood, Lynn E. Devī and the Spouse Goddess. Riverdale, MD: Riverdale Company, 1985. Gross, Rita. “Hindu Female Deities as a Resource for the Contemporary Rediscovery of the Goddess.” The Book of the Goddess Past and Present, ed. Carl Olson. New York: Crossroad, 1983. 217–230. Gupta, S. “Women in the Shaiva/Shakta Ethos.” In Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. J. Leslie. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1991. 193–209. Hancock, M. “The Dilemmas of Domesticity: Possession and Devotional Experience among Urban Smārta Women.” In From the Margins of Hindu Marriage, ed. Lindsey Harlan and Paul Courtright. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 60–91. Harlan, Lindsey, and Paul Courtright, eds. From the Margins of Hindu Marriage, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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Hawley, John S., and Donna M. Wulff, eds. Devī: Goddesses of India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ———. The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India. Berkeley: Religious Studies Series; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982. Hess, Linda. “Rejecting Sita: Indian Responses to the Ideal Man’s Cruel Treatment of His Wife.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 1 (1999): 1–32. Hiltebeitel, Alf, and Kathleen M. Erndl, eds. Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Hoover, Stewart M., and Knut Lundby. Rethinking Media, Religion and Culture. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1997. Joy, Morny, and Eva K. Neumaier-Dargyay, eds. Gender, Genre and Religion. Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1995. Khanna, M. “The Goddess-Women Equation in Śākta Tantras,” In Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval and Modern India, ed. M. Bose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 109–123. Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Kishwar, Madhu. “Yes to Sītā, No to Rām: The Continuing Hold of Sītā on Popular Imagination in India.” In Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 285–309. Knott, Kim. Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Leslie, Julia, ed. Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1991. Makarushka, Irena. “Women Spoken For: Images of Displaced Desire.” In Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film, ed. Joel Martin and Conrad Ostwalt. Boulder, CA: Westview, 1995. 142–151. Marglin, Frédérique Apffel. “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World.” In Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, ed. Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles. Boston: Beacon, 1985. 37–59. Martin, Joel W., and Conrad E. Ostwalt, eds. Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology In Popular American Film. Boulder, CA: Westview, 1995. McGee, Mary. “In Quest of Saubhāgya: The Roles and Goals of Women as Depicted in Marathi Stories of Votive Devotions.” In Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion, ed. Anne Feldhaus. Albany: SUNY, 1996. 147–170. Mishra, Vijay. Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Olson, Carl, ed. The Book of the Goddess Past and Present. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Pintchman, Tracy. The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition. Albany: SUNY, 1994. Ramanujan, A. “On Women Saints,” In The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, ed. John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff. Berkeley: Religious Studies Series; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982. 316–324.

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Reynolds, H. “The Auspicious Married Woman.” In The Powers of Tamil Women, ed. Susan Wadley. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980. 35–60. Richman, Paula, ed. Many Rāmāyan˙as: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Roy, Kumkum. Women in Early Indian Societies. Delhi: Manohar, 1999. Sharma, Arvind, ed. Women in World Religions. Albany, NY: SUNY 1987. Sharma, Arvind, and Katherine Young, eds. Feminism and World Religions. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1999. Srinivasan, A. “Reform or Conformity? Temple ‘Prostitution’ and the Community in the Madras Presidency.” In Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia, ed. Bina Agarwal. Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988. 175–198. Sutherland Goldman, Sally, “The Voice of Sītā in Valmiki’s Sundarakān.d.a.” In Questioning Rāmāyan.as: A South Asian Tradition, ed. Bina Agarwal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 223–238. Wadley, Susan, ed. The Powers of Tamil Women. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980. Young, Katherine. “Hinduism.” In Women in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1987. ——. “Upholding Norms of Hindu Womanhood: An Analysis Based on Reviews of Hindi Cinema.” In Gender, Genre and Religion, ed. Morny Joy and Eva K. Neumaier-Dargyay. Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1995. 171–198.

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CHAPTER 4

The Creative Modern and the Myths of the Goddess Mariyamman Perundevi Srinivasan

I

n the second half of the twentieth century, Tamilnadu (Tamil Nadu) in South India witnessed a proliferating growth in the production of feature films on the goddess Mariyamman. At least twelve Tamil films, produced between 1970 and 2003, contain the name of the goddess Mariyamman, the goddess of rain, fertility, and ammai (poxes and measles) in their title, and the narratives of these films are woven around the figure of the goddess. In addition, some other films have employed the affliction of ammai as an effective narrative device for articulating the social concerns that one encounters in a “modern” era. For instance, I would like to draw attention to the following four films of the early 1970s and 1980s: Athi Parasakthi (“Primordial Sakthi”) (1971), Nattaiyil Muttu (“The Pearl in the Snail”) (1973), Vazhaiyadi Vazhai (“Generations”) (1972), and Samsaram atu Minsaram (“Family is a Live Wire”) (1986). When we bear in mind that a smallpox eradication campaign was advanced vigorously in the late sixties and early seventies, before India became smallpox-free in 1975,1 narrations of ammai in these films are worth investigating, because these films could provide an idea of the articulation of the “modern” in the cultural realm against the background of a “modern scientific project” in the form of smallpox vaccination, promoted by the Indian state and government. One comes across “two senses of modernity,” elaborated by John Jervis. One is modernity as “project,” which entails “planning” and “purposive rationality.” Another is modernity as responsive, contemporary “experience” of a transforming world that is exposed to the “project.” As Jervis remarks, “we do not experience the world as project, even though the world we experience is

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fundamentally marked by project”.2 At the outset, I can say that the above films deploy the affliction of ammai and the sacred framework of such an affliction for foregrounding the changing dynamics of relationship between the British and the natives, or between the “upper” castes and the “lower” castes, or between woman and her in-laws in the public and private spheres of nation and home. This encourages me to situate the discourses of the goddess and ammai in the context of modernity as represented in these films. This chapter pays special attention to the reworking of the myths of Mariyamman and ammai in these four films to understand how modernity, defined in terms of the “experience” of a subject in a transforming world, is constituted in Tamil culture. As for the relationship between the goddess Mariyamman and the disease of ammai, Tamils believe that the goddess Mariyamman is the one who is present in the body as ammai, who distributes ammai, and who cures them. Ammai, which is the Tamil term for poxes and measles, also means mother / the goddess. Convention decrees that a person afflicted with poxes be regarded with due respect and treated as the goddess herself. Normally, one does not resort to a physician seeking a cure for ammai; the family often takes a debt-vow (nerttikkadan) to the goddess so that the pearls of the goddess “descend” from the body soon.3 When an imminent cure is not in sight, a “traditional” healer/priest is sought for; he visits the house regularly, daily or on alternate days, and sings songs on the goddess, especially a lullaby to the goddess (Mariyamman Talattu), to please her and to enable her to cure the patient. After this introduction, let us look at a few origin myths of ammai that were narrated to me by priests and devotees during my ethnographic field research in Tamilnadu.4 The goddess Mariyamman is very much present in these narratives as a key character. The first myth, from Tiruverkadu near Chennai in north Tamilnadu, tells about Renuka, the wife of the sage Jamadagni. Renuka is a chaste woman—so chaste that she can make a pot out of wet sand on the banks of a river to bring water for her husband to perform his daily religious chores. One day, as Renuka is trying to take water from the river as usual, it so happens that a gandharva (one of those heavenly beings who are known for their proficiency in music) with thousand arms and thousand feet is flying in the sky, together with his wives. Renuka, upon seeing his reflection in the water, gets distracted for a moment and remarks, “What a handsome man!” Immediately she loses the power of chastity and the pot breaks. Her husband, who sees this in his mental vision, gets furious. He asks their sons to behead their mother for her impropriety. The first four sons refuse his command. He curses them and they turn into stones and trees. The fifth and last son

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Parasurama obeys his command and goes to kill his mother.5 Renuka runs and takes refuge with a cobbler woman, and hugs her in fear. In a fit of rage, Parasurama beheads them both. He returns to his father’s abode and receives two boons, one to revive his brothers to life and the second to bring his mother back to life. Jamadagni gives him magic water and a magic stick for the purpose. As Parasurama attempts to revive his mother with these things, he inadvertently joins the head of the cobbler woman with his mother’s body, and the head of his mother with the cobbler woman’s body. Meanwhile, the sage gets killed in his abode by a king because of an earlier enmity. Renuka, on the other hand, gets her life back and goes along with her son to their hut only to find that her husband is dead. She laments immensely and kindles a fire to kill herself. Lord Shiva decides to stop her from entering the pit of death and advises Renuka that she has no right to enter the fire as her body is different from her head.6 He indicates that her sanctity has already been violated because of the cobbler woman’s body attached to her head. Renuka asks Shiva for means to sustain her in this world, for her husband is no more. Shiva calls her with a new name “Udalmari,” meaning “the one with the changed body,” and grants her the pearls of ammai, which she could give to the people of this world and obtain pleasure, because people who suffer from ammai would give offerings to her. As soon as Renuka-Mari gets the pearls, she wants to test them and throws them on Shiva. Shiva at once undergoes unbearable suffering with these pearls of ammai and requests Udalmari to remove them. When Udalmari asks Shiva to teach her the way to remove them, he instructs her to give an offering of margosa leaves, flour, and porridge for the pearls to descend from the body. Renuka acts accordingly, and Shiva requests her to give only one by fourteen thousandth strength of the pox that he had suffered to the people of the world. In the second myth, from Tazhutazhai (near Perambalur) in central Tamilnadu, Mariyamman is born as the seventh child of Athi and Bhagavan, who are none other than Saraswati and Brahma, born into this world out of a curse.7 To get back to their heavenly abode quickly, they leave their children as soon as the children are born. As they leave their seventh and last child Mari on the bank of a pond, a washerman picks up the child and brings her up. As a small girl, she descends into the river Kollidam, a distributary of the river Kaveri, makes a lingam out of the sand, and starts performing worship. On seeing this, the washerman gets panicky and advises the child that she should do only those things that are destined for her caste. Accordingly, she should only wash clothes. She retaliates that she will perform only Shiva worship, and if her father wants her, let him keep her, if not, let him throw her into the river. When she is nine years old, Mari offers to help her father in decorating shamianas with clothes for weddings in the

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village. This is a task of the washerman community. There are several weddings planned at that time in the village, and Mari’s father is overburdened with the workload. On hearing her offer to help, Mari’s father first doubts her skill to perform the task, which men alone have been doing hitherto. However, Mari reassures him. She stands in the river, prays to Shiva, assumes several forms, and finishes the task. Everyone looks at her splendid work with awe. Mari comes home and tells her father about the words of appreciation of the villagers. But she adds that she cannot stay with him any more as he doubted her capability and did not believe her initially. She takes leave of him, goes to the Kamba river near Kanchipuram, erects a long post of sixty feet, made of brass and diamond, stands on it, and performs tapas (meditative penance) to Lord Shiva by standing on her toe. Shiva appears after some time and grants her a boon. She asks for a boon of pearls of various types of ammai. First he refuses to give them, telling her that she cannot manage the pearls, but later he yields and grants her the boon. Because of this boon, she gets her name Muttumari, or the Mari with pearls. Shiva cautions her not to throw them at will upon people, but to take them in her palm, clasp her hand, and throw only those pearls that fall between her fingers. He also adds that out of one thousand pearls of ammai that she throws, only one should be the strongest one that resembles a nail. As soon as she gets the boon, she says that she would test whether these pearls work, and throws the first pearl upon Shiva. Shiva suffers, falls at her feet, and implores her to remove it, which she does. I will briefly narrate two other myths that inform us of the origin of ammai. In one of these myths, which I gathered from Pudukkottai in central Tamilnadu, Mariyamman as a young woman performs penance to Shiva. Shiva does not want to grant her a boon, and to spoil her penance he throws a garland upon her. By this act he violates her status as a virgin because throwing the garland amounts to his taking her as his wife. Mari gets furious as the garland falls upon her. After some time, she tells him: “I have worn this garland for half an hour and you too can wear it for half an hour.” As she puts the garland back on his neck, he gets big pearls of ammai all over his body. He asks forgiveness and requests her to remove the pearls. In the other myth from Coimbatore in western Tamilnadu, Mari is rendered as an abandoned “upper-caste” (kavundar) child, who is brought up by a man of the dalit community. When she attains puberty, he wants to marry her and eventually manages to do so. Before their nuptial night, Mari wants to test her husband, and she asks him to buy and bring something that would fill the whole house. The man brings a cart full of hay and fills the house with it. Mari challenges him that he does not know a thing. She in turn goes, buys and brings a small lamp that illuminates the entire house. In a fit of

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rage, she pours the oil in the lamp upon his head and burns him. The burns he suffers are the first pearls of ammai. The dalit man in the story is often associated with Shiva in his guise of a wanderer in the burial grounds. I would like to point out certain key motifs in these myths of ammai. The one who is afflicted with the first pearl of pox in these myths is someone who is in a position to exercise authority and power over the other person, someone who has the power of granting a boon to the other person, or someone who has authority over his daughter to the extent of even marrying her. He is a male god who is in a position to grant sustenance to or bestow grace upon his female devotee, or a father-husband who is the guardian of his daughter-turned-wife. Inasmuch as they suffer the disease, which is caused by women who have been under their mercy or their custody, the earlier relationship of power between them gets ruptured or even completely reversed. The one who was granted the boon of ammai is now the one who grants the cure of ammai suffered by the boon-giver. The one who was subjected to the unrestrained desire of her father turns into the one who kills him for not fulfilling her desire. Let us now shift our attention to the films on Mariyamman, and begin with an episode from the Tamil film Athi Parasakthi (“The First Great Sakthi” / “The Primordial Sakthi”), which was first screened in 1971. The film is about the glory of the great goddess, narrated in the form of a chain of stories about her. The story we are going to look at is about a British officer. The scene that introduces this British officer shows him riding his horse with his retinue, accompanied by a native translator. He hears the peal of the Mariyamman temple bell en route and makes fun of the number of temples in India, saying that they are more numerous than India’s population. He enters the temple with his boots on and ridicules the various forms of vows carried out at the temple. An old lady warns him that whatever fun he makes of the goddess Mariyamman, she would be able to bear it; on the contrary, if she were to laugh and play with him, it would be impossible for him to bear. The officer gets near the shrine with his boots on and remarks, “How many goddesses do you people have? There is Minakshi in Madurai, Kamakshi in Kanchi and Mariyamman in Tanjore.” The priest replies that not only are there so many goddesses in the country, but the custom of the country is to worship every woman at the household as the goddess herself. The officer sees the beads of water on the deity’s face and inquires about them. The priest explains them as the beads of sweat that occur naturally on the deity’s face. The officer cannot believe this and asks the priest to wipe these pearls from the deity’s face. When the priest refuses to do so, the officer reminds him that he is a government officer and that the priest should obey his words. As the priest hesitantly wipes off the beads on the deity’s face, the

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officer gets pearls on his face, and he loses his sight too. At once he realizes his folly and asks for the deity’s forgiveness. The goddess Mariyamman appears to him with a bunch of margosa leaves in one hand and a firepot in the other and sings a song, and the pearls disappear. The song includes an interesting line of commentary about the British officer: “This child is from the West and he is an ignorant boy.” The goddess introduces herself to him as Minakshi, the ruler of Madurai, Visalakshi, the ruler of northern Kasi, and Mariyamman in Tanjore, who fights against cruel rule.8 This introduction of the goddess as a ruler of northern and southern parts of India and as someone who fights cruel rule, here indirectly referring to the rule of the British, takes the trope of ammai and provides it with another set of meanings that foreground the colonial power and its subversion: in the film, the British officer is depicted as someone who is not only ignorant about the customs of the country ruled by him, for he wears his “impure” boots inside the temple, but is also unaware of the real ruler of the country, who is none other than the goddess. His violation of the sacred space of the temple amounts to violating the national space as a colonizer. The body of the British officer afflicted with ammai becomes not only a trope to depict the erupted freedom struggles in the subcontinent on the body of the British empire, but here the sacred body afflicted with ammai is organized as a ploy for the superior, powerful colonizing other to surrender to the colonized—a ploy whereby the strategy of resistance to the colonial power is located on the body of the colonizer. The subversion here does not take place at the level of a one-to-one relationship of power between individual characters, as we saw earlier in the myths of the goddess; rather the device of ammai is employed in the filmic narrative for consolidating the positions of the national self and the outside other. In the second movie of our interest, Nattaiyil Muttu (“The Pearl in the Snail”), the pearls of ammai invade the body of an “upper-caste” Brahmin young man who has left his house to live with his dalit lover in her hut in a slum. The film foregrounds the tension that accompanies the love affair between the two, who belong to the caste groups that are kept at two extreme poles in the social hierarchy; later, the narrative defuses this tension within the framework of bhakti (devotion) of the dalit woman to the goddess: the man gets sick, with his body ravaged by ammai, and his lover undertakes and performs debt-vows at a nearby Mariyamman temple. The goddess answers her prayers and the man gets cured. On witnessing his recovery, the man’s parents, who were full of false pride about their caste and social status, bow down in front of their son’s dalit lover, because she has spared no effort to get their son cured, and her efforts have been recognized by the supreme goddess. They willingly accept the girl as their daughter-in-law and realize

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that in choosing a bride, one should look for a kind, caring heart rather than caste. In this film, it is the privileged powerful “upper-caste” man who gets afflicted with ammai, and he is taken care of by his “low-caste” dalit lover. This motif is similar to what we saw in the myths of the goddess before, but the trope of ammai serves here to interrogate the orthodox assumption of caste hierarchy and upholds the modern value of equality under the aegis of the grace of the goddess. We will briefly look at the films Samsaram atu Minsaaram (“Family is a Live Wire”) and Vazhaiyadi Vazhai (“Generations”), in which the trope of ammai is employed to control the sexuality of woman for the benefit of the family.9 In Samsaram, a newly married woman is deprived of sexual pleasure due to a lack of private space, as her brother-in-law preparing for the public exam occupies their bedroom during nights. She sulks about this state of affairs at their home. Even though her husband does not care about her feelings initially, he takes her later, upon the advice of his brother’s wife, for a short holiday outside home. As soon as they arrive at the hotel, the wife gets afflicted with ammai. The husband immediately gets margosa leaves, makes her lie down on the bed of the leaves, sings the Mariyamman Talattu, and takes care of his wife. However, they cannot and do not indulge in sex now, as sexual intimacy is conventionally prohibited during the affliction of ammai, as it would earn the wrath of the goddess. On receiving his affectionate services, the woman comes to realize that the marital bond is all about care and concern rather than about sex. In the other film, Vazhaiyadi Vazhai, a newly married, fashionable young woman does not let her husband touch her as she thinks that sex with her husband might result in a baby, and that this in turn might spoil her beauty and, eventually, make her husband uninterested in her. Soon, ammai strikes her and leaves its marks all over her body and face, and her beauty is gone. This makes her realize that giving birth to the next generation is more important than paying attention to or trying to preserve the beauty of her body. In both these films, longing for sexual pleasure or neverending marital love on the part of the woman is interpreted as selfishness or arrogance or lack of restraint that needs to be corrected. Ammai figures in the film as a disciplinary device and makes these women realize that marital love and sexual pleasure should not be an end in themselves but should be subjected to a larger picture of family welfare—either in terms of the well-being of every member of the family or in terms of giving birth to an heir—so that the family institution extends into posterity. Let us see what sort of cues the above deployment of the device of ammai renders to us concerning the question of modernity. It is pertinent to note here that three out of the four films that we discussed appeared in the 1970s, the period in which a vaccination campaign against ammai, and

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especially a smallpox eradication campaign, was at its peak in India. We can say that on the one hand “rational purposive control” over the epidemic of ammai was being attempted at the state and the government level; on the other hand, the cultural visual media was trying to pitch the “experience” of ammai at a different plane, foregrounding the changing or the justchanged dynamics in the realm of society and family, and the country. This trend in visual media seems to have continued even in the 1980s, as attested by Samsaram. The key motif of the powerful, the dominant, and the one who lacks sexual restraint being the sufferer of ammai, which forms an inherent part in the myths of the goddess Mariyamman, is deployed by the film medium to criticize colonial ambitions, caste hierarchy, and self-centered interests located in the modern family. It is remarkable that the response to the “novelty of situations” or the transforming world here does not entail an “ontological affirmation” of an essential self, a central assumption of modernity in the West.10 The device of the disease of ammai, used as a ploy of colonial resistance, of caste subversion, and of sexual discipline of the individual in the films renders the modern self not as a singular isolated self but as the subject that strategically wears the marks of nationality, casteless equality, and familial loyalty as the context of modernity demands. Interestingly, in forging this subject, the conventional myths of the goddess are creatively employed to meet new challenges issued by the changing world. Notes 1. Hopkins 1983, 158. 2. As Jervis succinctly puts it, “There is modernity as experience, as well as modernity as project” (1998, 9). 3. The vows include a range of acts, which include rod-piercing, hook-swinging, holding a firepot, wearing sandals of thorns, lighting the lamp of rice-flour, washing the temple floor twice a day with water, arranging to perform the ritual bath (abhishekam) of the deity’s icon, and ritual-begging inside the temple’s premises. The devotees may undertake one or several of these vows to the goddess to gain her sympathy and favor. 4. Mr. Gnanaraj, Mr. Velmurugan, a woman healer near Mukkanamalaippatti near Pudukkottai, who wished to be anonymous, and Unnamalai ammal were very helpful in sharing the myths of the goddess cited in this paper with me. My thanks to them. 5. The number of sons that Jamadagni and Renuka have differ from one narrator to another. According to some storytellers, they have only four sons, Parasurama being the last of all. According to others, he is the fifth and last son of the couple. The myth has numerous versions with the same pattern of events. For

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instance, in some versions, Renuka adores the gandharva with motherly affection and not with lust. Also, in some versions, it is not gandharva but a king who travels in the air in a plane-like vehicle. I choose, however, to look into one version that I often heard from my conversationalists. The Tamil terms used by the narrators to refer to her body are “binnappatta udambu” (“the fragmented body”) or “nica udambu” (“the ‘low’ body”) or “cuttamillaata udambu” (“the body which is not pure”). These terms require a detailed analysis in their own right, but considering the scope of this paper, I refrain from providing it here. The names of the parents of the Tamil classical poet Tiruvalluvar are Athi and Bhagavan, as believed by Tamil scholars. It is interesting to note that in this myth, one of Mari’s siblings is named Tiruvalluvar. Later in the film, the British officer narrates this incident to his wife and remarks that Mari is none but Mary. This amounts to his coming to terms with the cultural practices of the colonized, since he now “recognizes” the power and supremacy of a divine figure of the colonized as being on a par with a divine figure from his own religion. The literal translation of Vazhaiyadi Vazhai is “Plantain Tree from the Base of a Plantain Tree.” On the basis of the content of the film, however, I prefer to translate the phrase as “Generations.” According to Rex Ambler, the response to the “novelty of situations” entails an “ontological affirmation” of self (1983, 136).

Bibliography Tamil Films Cited Athi Parasakthi. Direction: K. S. Gopalakrishnan. Production: Ashoka Pictures. 1971. Nattaiyil Muttu. Direction: K. S. Gopalakrishnan. Production: Chitra Productions. 1973. Vazhaiyadi Vazhai. Direction: K. S. Gopalakrishnan. Production: Chitra Productions. 1972 Samsaram atu Minsaram. Direction: Visu. Production: A. V. M. Productions. 1986.

Works Cited Ambler, Rex. “The Self and Postmodernity.” Postmodernity, Sociology and Religion. Ed., Kieran Flanagan and Peter C. Jupp. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996, 134–51. Jervis, John. Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilization. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

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PART II

Religion, Myth, and Politics

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CHAPTER 5

Constructed Religious Feelings and Communal Identities in Hama¯ra¯ S´ ahar us baras by G¯ıta¯ñjal¯ı S´r¯ı* Alessandra Consolaro 1. Our Town That Year Gītāñjalī Śrī’s Hindi novel Hamārā śahar us baras (Our Town That Year, published in 1998) presents a story placed in a town that could be anywhere and everywhere in north India, and in a time that could be any time since the 1980s, up to the demolition of the Bābrī masjid1 in Ayodhya in 1992 and its bloody aftermath. Characters in the novel voice doubts and questions that worry the intelligentsia. The novel can be described as a literary portrayal of the point of view of the academic about the nation and the construction of identity in contemporary India, because all the issues raised in it are connected to the problem of defining one’s own identity in relation to the collective identity of the nation, with special reference to religious communities. In fact, whether one likes it or not, in India one is born into a religion. Even for people who are atheist, or agnostic, it is very difficult to be simply a citizen of India. Notwithstanding the secular definition of the Indian State, one has to be defined as Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, Jain, or tribal, et cetera; if one is none of the above, then s/he is labeled as Hindu. Hindu is a wide label covering many different communities: not only Vais.n.avas and Śaivas, who are indeed Hindus, but also dalits, and even Buddhists and Jains are sometimes included in this definition, particularly for political aims. Therefore, in India citizenship is entwined with religion, and it is difficult for an individual to find legal spaces outside

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the fold of religion allowing him/her to exercise certain rights merely as an Indian, rather than as a Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian—or whatever religious label—Indian. Hamārā śahar us baras asks the following basic question: how does it happen that during an insurgence of communalistic violence, even people who refuse the opposition between “us” and “them” end up nolens volens applying it? It does so focusing on a particular environment: the academia. Universities and research institutes in India have for a long time been considered a nest for secular and progressive thinking, and a very common assumption has for long been that if people connected to such institutions are not atheist, or agnostic, they do in any case consider religion a private affair. But during the past decades, under the saffron cultural regime, intellectuals, too, have changed a lot. Free thinking and discussion became progressively out-fashioned, and the central government managed to diminish the autonomy of academics—for example, through the direct choice of Vice Chancellors—and to put loyal people into key positions in the prominent research and cultural institutions.2 It could incidentally be emphasized that secularism was not defined in the Indian Constitution, and no official explanation of the term existed before 1978. The Western notion of secularism insists on a total separation between state and religion, opposing laity to clergy. On the contrary, in the South Asian area, “secular” is antonym for “communal,” implying tolerance of other religious communities, expressed by the ideas of dharmanirapeks. atā (religious neutrality) and sarvadharmasambhāv (equality of all religions before the State). This implies that the state does not keep aloof from matters pertaining to religion but is rather meant to act as an impartial broker between the different religious communities. Yet, the history of postindependence India bears evidence to the fact that “fair” involvement of the state in a multireligious context as opposed to complete abstention from religious matters has been detrimental to the process of secularization, both in society and in politics. Hamārā śahar us baras is set within this historical framework, referring in particular to the sanguinary events connected to the Babri mosque demolition, and depicting the process through which the “old” secular, pluralistic identity is slowly substituted by a “new,” communalistic-tinged one. In this chapter, I will present a brief analysis of the character system and of the narrative structure, freely using some tools borrowed from narratology.3 2. Three Reliable Friends, a Jolly Old Man, and a Witness The main characters in the novel are three friends living in the same house: two intellectuals, who are both university professors, and a professional

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writer. Hanīf and Śruti are a married couple; they have been renting for years an apartment on the first floor of Śarad’s father’s house. Śruti, who had been a student of Hanīf ’s, eventually married him and is a renowned writer. Her trouble in “that year” is that she cannot write any longer. Here I am reminded of some lines of the poem An die Nachgeborenen by Bertold Brecht, “Was sind das für Zeiten, wo / Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist / Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!”4 In deeply troubled times there is a need for committed literature, and it seems impossible to pursue art for art’s sake: Śruti feels that writing love tales in such times is odd [52],5 she thinks that it is necessary to write about what is happening, as writing about anything else is wrong [35]. The writer, though, is stuck: the pen just does not want to move, because it is very difficult to express contradictory feelings and emotions related to contemporary events. The Brechtian echo gets even stronger when one thinks that she loves talking about trees and birds, and that one of the activities she enjoys in the domestic environment is bird-watching. Nomen omen: the mixed couple is also the union of two revealed truths. Śruti, (Sanskrit, lit., what is heard), denotes the revealed truth heard by the saint seers of the Vedic time. Hanīf (Arab: hānif ) means “true believer,” and the term is also used to define the monotheists that were present in Arabia before the coming of Islam, the followers of Ibrāh ¯ īm who did not identify themselves with any of the revealed religions of that time: they were not among the idol-worshipers, neither Jew nor Christian (Qur‘an 3:67). This name, though not very common in the Arabic area, is a very common name of persons in South Asia, where the ascetics thus called were considered a sort of Muslim equivalent of a sam.nyāsin or sādhu (Hindu ascetic who has renounced the world). Interestingly, Hanīf ’s “true belief ” is secularism, but he is a secular intellectual who succumbs to the progressive “denominationalization” of the society when he is boycotted and condemned to isolation, as explained below. Śruti cannot express herself either, as if the world were leaving no space to the “real truth” while everybody is shouting this or that “false truth.” The story shows the couple as very close: they are the protagonists of 58 “fragments”—the whole text is organized through a sequence of fragments, which are “recorded” by the narrator and are used both as stylistic devices and as a metaphor, as I will show below—mainly located at home, and they share a close intimacy; Śruti even wishes to have a baby, but Hanīf clearly states that this is the wrong time for having children [200]. Nevertheless they are often shown taking care together of the madhumaltī (Quisqualis indica or Rangoon creeper), which they planted with much devotion [31], and treat it as a person: they even named the creeper Guñjalkā [83–84]. Unfortunately, even this botanical substitute of a baby is bound to

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die, as if no new life can thrive in “that year,” when friendship and love are suffocated by hatred. Symbolically, the world being as it is, revealed truth can still exist, but it is threatened and cannot generate new life. Hanīf is a well-known sociologist, who is always on the students’ side and likes telling jokes. His open and frank nature makes him a very popular teacher. Some colleagues of Hanīf’s think he is quite arrogant and criticize his love for seminars and visits abroad, and interpret the mobbing he is subject to as a victimizing strategy to get fame and become a hero. Śarad (“ ‘the season of ripening, i.e. Autumn”: here the name seems to suggest a time of “fall”) has been Hanīf’s best friend since childhood; he too is a well-known scholar. I will deal with these characters more extensively in the coming sections. Śarad’s father, Daddū, is an icon of the mixed Hindu-Muslim culture that the communal divide wants to deny and destroy. He is a poet and a connoisseur of Urdu poetry, and lives isolated from the world from which he gets news through the TV, the press, and, above all, the discussions he directs from his divān. This is a big wooden couch, where Daddū sits like a king in the house, chairman of the assembly of people who come to enjoy the pleasure of his company. Daddū’s divān maintains here the whole semantic range of the Turkish original term, being at the same time the council of nobles, the sofa on which the counselors sit—and we often find Daddū and Śruti sitting side-by-side—and Daddū’s collection of poetry, which is not a written text but the enormous amount of verses he knows by heart and continuously cites. But sitting with Daddū also has the fea. tures of the Hindu satsan g:6 in a quiet, mild, and moderate environment, his diffused, natural, soft, and dignified energy is perceived, making people calmer, experiencing nothing but an inner peace [203]. Daddū’s house is, in fact, a sort of cultural center, where people meet, discuss, and enjoy the intellectual and literary interchange, but they also come for mere friendship, just to say hello. Daddū is a cynical critic of the world and makes fun of anything, even death, for example, when he reacts to the news of a murder with a joke about solving population density problems [25]. He teases intellectuals because he finds that all their debates are just an empty exercise [68]. Intellectuals have lost the taste for beauty, and, in his opinion, literature should not mix with real problems too much. He denies reality to the empirical world to defend an ideal world, and pretends that nothing is changing even when shouting of insults starts on the phone [151] or threatening letters are found in the letter box [295]. His concealment of these facts from the three young friends may be interpreted as a desire to protect them, to keep fear away. Of course, he is perfectly conscious of reality, but his attitude is to emphasize the good side of life by removing ugliness from it, and claiming that everything is devoid of reality. But his self-assurance

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breaks down when he falls victim to a gang of communal youngsters. When Daddū falls, his face on the ground, words are no longer possible: reality is overwhelming, even for those who claim it is ultimately false! Besides these important characters, we should also mention the role of the narrator.7 Though the narrator hardly acts as a character within the events, she is the voice that brings together the scattered events and thoughts, providing somehow a rationale for the sequence of fragments that brings about the narration of the novel. Actually, she is a sort of off-voice, an observing actor who is not perceived by the others, and she has a wider perspective than other characters: they seem to act mainly in a private environment, while she reports also external events [e.g., 49, 73, 77, 124] or rumors spreading in the city [e.g., 26, 182–183]. But she clearly states she is not omnipresent [12], nor omniscient [21]. She is no camera eye, because she is definitely a personalized actor, with a minimal yet definite narrative relevance. She is a character-bound narrator who is present throughout the narrated events: she lives in that city, she shares hopes and fears of the other characters, and she speaks of herself as belonging to the group, using the pronoun “we” [25, 30]: like anybody else, she gets involved in the game of naming everything Hindu or Muslim [194], and she comments about the change of mentality in the world she lives in: “We all have become either Hindu or Muslim” [181]. When the curfew is declared, the narrator is worried about getting her ink provision to keep on writing [53], and when she goes shopping for ink and paper, she does not like the young, arrogant shopkeeper who stares at her with an ambiguous smile [248–249, 263, 270, 304, 306–307].8 The narrator has physical reactions [e.g., 43: she pants because of the hurry to record everything]. She shares emotions and feelings, and reacts to the events she is recording. She speaks of others’ and her own relief [17], tension [100], fear [213], loneliness [343]; she makes comments about her style of writing, which is not fluent but rather moves jerkily, possibly because of the fountain pen she uses, or because of the ink, or else because the events themselves are happening in jerks [331]. She dreams [25–26] and she even has nightmares [280]. Notwithstanding her little weight as a character, the narrator has a major role in the novel. She claims for herself the prominent role of witnessing, through her writing, something that nobody is able to do, not even the characters who are supposedly more entitled to do it. This is very clear, for example, if we consider the first and the last fragments in the novel. After setting the events in “that town,” there is in the first fragment a retroversion to “that year,” contrasting the streets full of water because of the heavy rain with the corresponding image of the past, when water had been allowed to flow from the tanks because of fear of poisoning. The issue of writing comes up immediately: the three main characters are introduced in the very first sentences as

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“. . . the three of them, who were to find out crimes and criminals, wounded and dead, everything. Śarad, Śruti, and Hanīf, who had resolved they would write. This time it is impossible to remain silent. We have to open up everything and show it” [7]. But, no matter how much they tried, they could not write. Therefore the character-bound narrator intervenes, stating that “it seemed to me that it would be necessary to do something. However it may be, I’ll have to write. Whether they understand or not. If they do not write— they who are a professional writer and two intellectuals—I would do it, I who could only be a recorder [lit.: a copy-maker]” [7]. While disqualifying her writing activity as mere recording, the narrator emphasizes at the same time the importance of having a recording, a testimony made of collected fragments. This does not guarantee truth, but it is the best we can do to get close to the object we are investigating. Of course, reality can be experienced in many different ways according to the point of view of the observing individual: sometimes there is a deliberate manipulation of data to cover the truth [51], and sometimes people reconstruct things just to have them fit into an ideological frame that makes sense to them [83]. The narrator, therefore, does not make an assertion of truthfulness; she warns the reader that she is involved, that she does not understand, and possibly the frequent use of the general present tense in the novel is meant to underline the perception by the narrator/focalizer with a minimum of cognitive analysis.9 On the other hand, the continuous present tense too is frequently used by the narrator, and this may indicate “some sort of special involvement” on her side.10 There is also an aesthetic reason why the writing is said to be of little value. In the first fragment the narrator claims that anything that is reconstructed is ugly and cannot be like the original living model. As a metaphor, this idea is applied to many aspects of the narrative. In this fragment, it comes as an anticipation of the climax, the event in the novel after which everything definitely changes, also in the personal relations of the main characters. The narrator is describing a house as it appears at the time of narrating, when Śarad and Śruti are meeting some time after “that year” and it is clear that there is tension between them. The house is desolated, and the narrator notices that the yard is full of wild grass. Here she introduces a comment about the fact that she constantly connects the colors pink and white with two visions: madhumaltī flowers—which are characteristically white when they blossom and turn pink to red afterwards, so that there are white and pink flowers on the plant at the same time—and Daddū’s dentures, with white teeth and pink gums. Oddly enough, she says, it is a one-way connection: she feels sick when seeing flowers, but she does not think of flowers when seeing Daddū’s dentures. His denture on the

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ground has nothing to do with his laugh [8], it is just a disgusting vision. The difference between the real object and the constructed one is crucial to understand why a constructed identity cannot be a positive one. Identity is something alive and organic: if the parts are separated and then the fragments are put together, one does not get the individual, but a “ ‘sikur.an kā kat.āut.” (a cutout of contractions) [9]. In fact, this is what remains of Daddū after “that year”: a bundle of contracted limbs, his whole personality having shrunk into silence and having lost all the glamour. As the writing the narrator has produced is itself a cutout of the world, it cannot but be a summarized, partial, and disordered representation of reality, whose aesthetic value is infinitely lower than the one of the original. The narrator is not only a focalizer, but she fulfils the goal other characters do not (cannot?), thus playing a very relevant role, as revealed in the long, first fragment of the novel. It contains all the main themes of the narrative, it anticipates the main elements of the story, and it ends with the narrator starting again to record. The fragment ends with the image of the divān, the rosewood couch, where Daddū used to sit. This very image is to be found again at the very end of the novel, a short fragment that brings the reader to the time of narrating, with Śarad and Śruti silently sitting in front of the silent divān. For 340 pages the reader has been brought back to the events of “that year”: there are only two quick flashes into the present time of the narrative [102, 113] and the whole narration lasts for a very short time, “a couple of instants” when the narrator browses through her scattered notes [113]. Meanwhile, a sense of embarrassment and uneasiness remains, and silence. This silence, though, is just apparent: Do not raise objection to my silence. It is not easy to tell how much panic, noise, recording without taking breath is contained in it. Therefore I am silent, but actually I just seem silent. Like the two of them, who look silent. Like these pages, that I have disorderly scattered around [102].

Silence is full of meaning, and sometimes it is necessary, when words have become nonsense, because their meaning is constantly manipulated: Hanīf is the character that embodies this idea in the novel. Daddū, too, clearly states that stories are not made of words, because essence, life, and the ultimate being are beyond words [146]. The novel ends with Daddū’s laugh rising again from the couch to the sky, and with the direct speech of the narrator, claiming the importance of her role: As I have witnessed so much—even a recording is witness!—let me witness just this much more for the present! I am now giving witness that on the

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divān also a laugh rose, it had risen slowly above, and there, in the inky sky, it became a kite, which has a string, has it?, it must have one, somewhere right here . . . here . . . where? . . . [352].

Also in the previous paragraphs of the novel—the fragments immediately following the long passage narrating how Daddū and Śruti were attacked by militant Hindus—the narrator emphasizes her role of one and only witness [351]. I think it is very relevant to appreciate the connection between this claim and the discussions entertained by intellectuals and academics but also by other characters in the novel, regarding both the importance of sociohistorical research and the role of the intelligentsia facing communalist riots and trying to explain them. At a meta-level it reinforces and amplifies their discourses, as if the literary discourse were the only mode to move beyond the impasse where “high,” “scientific” discourses are stuck. A parallel to this can also be found in what is generally defined as “partition literature.”11 3. Academics and Intellectuals: A World Apart? The protagonists of the novel, as I said, are educated men and women facing the communalist threat in a riot-stricken town in “unnatural” times: their fears and anxieties reveal how communalist language and discourse creep into the academic environment, which defines itself as “secular.” Actually, in the novel, the actors belonging to the academic world are not always examples of high intellectuality: most of them are intellectuals integrated into the academic system, who aim at maintaining the power and do not want to alter the status quo. Hanīf and Śarad tease them, exposing the pettiness of the academic environment and trying to push them to be more committed: they mockingly denounce the low quality of some university professors, especially in research [114]. This draws a line between Hanīf and Śarad and the other d.ipārt.ment.vālās (the people working in the department): the two are different because they are committed intellectuals. The Chairperson of the Department, Professor Nandan (55 fragments), is also the “father” of the department. He is strongly committed to the institution, which he runs as a feudal domain: the department is renowned and gets a huge grant from the University Grant Commission, and this is for Nandan a reason for personal pride [59]. But he does not appear committed to research as well. As long as his domain is secure, he somewhat maintains a neutral position toward his subordinates, but when Hanīf wins an international prize that he had wished for himself, jealousy prevails [46–47] and retaliation begins, turning into mobbing when a rule for rotation

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is passed and Hanīf is supposed to take Nandan’s place as Head of the Department. When Nandan starts thwarting Hanīf, he does not come to the forefront, but rather lets the other d.ipārt.ment.vālās express their complaints, and acts accordingly in the name of rules and democracy, thus escaping any risk of criticism for his behavior [74]. For example, when Hanīf gets an invitation to Europe, he refuses to give him leave because the application has been submitted too late: he righteously claims that it is necessary to respect the rules, because he cannot do favors to anybody. Hanīf is puzzled, because such rules have always been there, but have never been enforced. When he tries to discuss, Nandan reiterates the idea that he is too often on leave and this causes jealousy among other colleagues, who have already complained: therefore he has to act according to the rules to stop envy and suspicion of favoritism [65]. One of the first open confrontations happens when Nandan proposes the introduction of an attendance register for administrative staff, professors, and students [61]. His argumentation stresses the fact that the department is a center of excellence with an unusual freedom for research, but that it is necessary to maintain order and discipline to keep the standard. Hanīf and Śarad oppose it because they fear that this may be the first step toward a repressive policy, which they consider negative for everybody. Other characters intervene, defending Nandan’s proposal: they are jealous of Hanīf ’s invitations abroad, of his attendance at seminars and study tours, as if these were not dependent on the quality of his research work but rather excuses to skip department work, and with a mixture of personal and political motivations, they therefore think that the attendance register could be a good means of control both for students and for “absconding” professors. Nandan is often the target of mocking remarks by Śarad and Hanīf, as well as by Daddū and Śruti, because of his love for sycophancy: Śarad compares him to a buffalo rising out of muddy water with herons and mynas pecking the worms around his feet and on his back [74]. Among the colleagues belonging to Nandan’s entourage Chot.e Joś and Urmilā can be described as Nandan’s main allies: in fact, there is only one instance of Nandan having to express his opinion directly, when they both happen to be absent from the Department [190]. Chot.e Joś is an example of a selfish and hypocritical man, perfectly fitting in an academic environment where flattery and subservience are more appreciated than scientific capability. He is Hanīf ’s opposite. His nickname comes from his physical structure, but it fits very well also with his being a small thing as a human being: his “little passion” (this is the literal translation of his name!) for theory mirrors his lack of intellectual curiosity and his love for order, control, and power [72–73]. In one episode Chot.e Joś and Hanīf are symmetrically opposed in

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their behavior with a student who has not attended class for some days because of her father’s illness [141–143]. Chot.e Joś has no empathy with the student; he shouts at her in the middle of the corridor in a menacing attitude (which the narrator ironically compares to a chameleon with a swollen red chin), threatening to have her expelled from the college. Hanīf on the contrary is very supportive. He inquires whether she can get notes from other students, refuses to add any further reading because of her nonattendance, and invites her to come to him for tutorials in case she has questions. He tears into pieces a letter with an official request for justification, discarding it as a useless bureaucratic complication. Hanīf does not value teaching any less than research work; on the contrary, he tries to develop a good relation with students, to the point that he often invites them home, to the divān. Yet, this is another matter of jealousy, and his friendly informality is considered as dangerous, like any infringement of rules [214]. His behavior is constantly misrepresented to create an image of him as arrogant and selfish: rumors spread that Hanīf has torn into pieces the student’s request to her face, having her to pick up the pieces and throw them in the waste basket, and this is the version of the event that even Śarad gets to know [152]. Of course, the rumor is not divulged by Nandan but by Urmilā, who was present at the scene. Urmilā is, in fact, Nandan’s second major ally. She appears to be a simple woman, and there is no mention of any research work of hers: she is more a teacher than a researcher. Her lack of understanding of the sociological implications of changes in everyday life can be inferred, for example, by a short passage showing her enthusiastic participation in some popular events organized by a mat.h, which is a major actor in the narration. This old religious establishment expands from a nonshowy āśram to a prominent institution with political affiliations. This is no architectural restyling, but it corresponds to a change in religious policy (and politics). The monastery and temple, devoted to the devī, is located next to the university campus, across a maidān (open area) that used to be a playing ground for children and a praying area for Muslims [27]. After an incident the bushes behind which t.he mat.h stood are cut, and it manifests itself: here the use of the expression “avatārit huā” [27] is particularly meaningful, because the coming to sight of the monastery brings about the stopping of namāz—the prayers each Muslim must recite five times a day—in the open space and the appropriation of the public space by the Hindu religious institution. The mahant of the monastery is the leader of a “Hindu resurgence”: processions and religious meetings in honor of the devī start being regularly held, but together with them a continuous fair takes place: the mat.h becomes not only a spiritual center but rather “a sporting center for the city dwellers” [133]. Failing to perceive the populist character

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of the metamorphosis, something a sociologist should certainly do, Urmilā is excited at the opportunity to participate in the programs organized by the mat.h. She is eager to watch old movies like Jogan, featuring stars like Nargis and Dilīp Kumār [130]. This film is not only a classic in the history of Hindi cinema, but it contains an icon of Hindu nationalism: in fact, for the Indian audience Nargis is nothing less than Mother India,12 and in this film she plays the role of Mīrā, another very important female symbol appropriated by the Hindu nationalistic revival. Urmilā, though, shows no sign of understanding the ideological agenda of the mat.hvālās, but is quite happy with the entertainment she is offered. When we analyze the discussions that take place among these academics and intellectuals, we can see that the debate on communalism and identity is present from the very beginning. Hanīf appears to be the only Muslim-born person in the staff, and he raises the question: “Do I belong here less than you do?” [30]. Nobody denies his belonging, but in the ongoing discussions more and more people stress the fact that separate identities do exist and that they are communalist identities. Chot.e Joś, for instance, writes an inspired article denouncing anti-Muslim biases [72–73], but he himself seems to be imbibed by stereotypes: for example, when Śarad speaks in agreement with Hanīf, he rebukes him, “You grow a beard, so you are an advocate of Muslims” [62]. A serious reason of friction between Śarad and Hanīf on one side, and the d.ipārt.ment.vālās on the other is a report on communalism. This is a project born on Nandan’s suggestion, which states that the present situation of the country requires that all good citizens do something, and intellectuals and educated people have to do what is in their power, according to their abilities [41]. Hanīf immediately thinks of a report, but discards it as a time-consuming and dangerous enterprise. Chot.e Joś’s proposal of a minor report, though, is accepted with great enthusiasm: they should produce something like a first-aid handbook against communalism, with fieldwork on selected topics, and this should be edited and distributed to the administration and the newspapers. Once the report is written, it gets approval from Trivedī, the District Judge, and this is a reason of satisfaction for everybody [119]. But when Bābū Pent. ar, a newspaper editor, is ready to publish it, official pressure is exerted not to publish it [137], and the d.ipārt.ment.vālās refuse to put the name of the department on it [144]. Therefore, Hanīf, Śruti, and Śarad decide to write an article about the report’s findings, to be published in their name on the central page of Bābū Pent.ar’s newspaper [142]. This causes strong reactions and much debate [148], and the colleagues react condemning the publication as an act of arrogance, motivated by desire to acquire fame [144]. This single opportunity for the audience to hear a voice

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different from the one coming from the loudspeakers of communalist activists aims at spreading consciousness about what is happening. Some readers do indeed start checking statistics [163], but this is the very reason why authorities would rather not have the results published [175]: Trivedī even warns Prof. Nandan, summoning him, not to let external affairs enter into the university [155–156]. Here another important theme is stressed: though intellectuals and academics claim they do not live in an ivory tower, they do represent a world apart, and an interference in the “real world” is perceived by the establishment as a destabilizing, therefore potentially dangerous, factor. Some passages explicitly emphasize the desire to keep the outer world aside, and the uneasiness at discovering that this is no more possible [158–162]. In a hot debate, a student reveals that on campus everything is an academic masquerade, but outside everything is naked, and that is the real world [136]. The separation of the academic and intellectual field from the “real world” is also marked in the novel by the physical gap between the university and the city. One of the leitmotifs is, in fact, the opposition between “here and there” and between “us and them,” symbolizing the distance between educated people and common people. In the novel there are many examples of boundaries between two opposed locations. The front door of the house where Hanīf, Śruti, Śarad, and Daddū live is a crucial barrier between outside and inside: in the story, it is first attacked when crackers are put into the letter box [314] and later when there is an explosion in front of the entrance door [343]. Finally, some youngsters penetrate the house, they physically pollute it spitting pān (chewed betel leaf ) in front of it, and this marks the definite collapse of the private “secularist” world. Another opposition is found between the colony and the mohallā (ward), and it again marks the supposed opposition of educated and common people. In the ideological construction of intellectuals as secularists, and illiterate people as ignorant fanatics, this physical divide is very important. In one of the first passages showing the three friends “going out” in the city lanes [26], ˙ Darzī states overtly the fact that everybody was an actor named Babbū Khām conscious of divisions and frictions even earlier, but now everybody is “ready” and lives on guard. The main problem for common people is to live in this state of uncertainty, also because this brings about the difficulty in continuing everyday activity in times of trouble. Also, subaltern people related to the house—a female domestic servant, a male domestic servant called Nankaū, the greengrocer, a dhobī (washer)—lament their problems: they come from afar and they find it more and more difficult to reach the colony every day, because of the curfew [19–20, 184]. Actually, some of these subaltern actors, like Dagdū, the department peon, express the biases of common people

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toward Muslims [259–260], but his ideas are often echoed by other staff members, who are supposedly more intellectual, and no doubt educated, thus showing that biases are not exclusive to the lower class. The novel shows that a “new” invented identity is being advertised by the propaganda of communalist activists, both Hindu and Muslim. The reactions and responses of academics and intellectuals to it lead to a redefinition of their own identity as opposed to the “Other.” The loss of security, as the escalation of violence lays bare the fact that the campus is not distant from the dynamics of religious politics, leaves these intellectuals confused, helpless, and scared. They grieve in a dilemma, in fearful confusion, perceiving the need to explain something they cannot understand, because “things that one had studied as referring to other times and other places have started happening all together and right in this place!” [84]. Suddenly, secularism becomes an unclear notion, and it is unresolved, even suspect, in secularists’ eyes as much as in the eyes of nonsecularists. Trying to explain why secularist experiments have failed and how such a brazen growth of fundamentalism has been possible is not an easy task. Intellectuals know that they are going to be criticized both in case they speak out and in case they remain silent [216]. Nevertheless, they must try to understand and explain, or else they are just going to be overwhelmed by events. Hanīf ’s question about belonging poses the challenge of what is a secularist identity, and at the beginning, the general answer to it is in perfect unison: “the point is different, you are different, we and you are different” [30]. But as external events touch the university, more and more often the issue of secularism is overshadowed by the need to choose between two options, namely, the constructed identities of being Hindu or Muslim: tertium non datur. Everybody starts defining everything as either Muslim or Hindu, even when they do not believe in this opposition [169–170]. Urmilā is the one who voices the necessity to take one side when the antagonism between the d.ipārt.ment.vālās and the students on one side, and Hanīf on the other, has become definite [302]. Hanīf is in fact incapable of remaining part of an institution that defines itself as secularist but has accepted communalist identities, and in the end he makes a choice: when the leader of the anjuman-e islām (Muslim society) contacts him, he agrees to an interview [297–298], thus accepting his role as a symbol that everybody is attaching to him. In fact, his position in the Department gets very uneasy when a rule is enforced requiring rotation, so that the Chairman is forced to leave his dominant position to the oldest member of the faculty, who happens to be Hanīf himself. Nandan’s hostility becomes palpable, because he would prefer a more submissive successor. Hanif declares from the very beginning that he is not available to be a

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puppet, someone who has to put his signature under words he disagrees with [160]; he also claims that he would not accept the appointment even if this were motivated by his good scholarly reputation [161], because he knows that Nandan wants to maintain control. When Nandan angrily replies that everything has always been decided according to majority, he stresses that what puts him in a no-win situation is exactly the fact of being a minority. It is important to stress that he thinks of himself as a minority not as a Muslim, but as a secularist [167]. But for everybody else his identity is only the communal one: the reported version of his reply to Nandan that circulates afterwards is that he declared that he would accept the headship only if he “could become such a Head that could decide by himself, according to his own will, ruling like his ancestors ruled” [168]. Similarly, Hanīf ’s critical stand about Śarad’s conciliatory behavior—Śarad is going to become Head of the Department if Hanīf does not, but Hanīf warns him that Nandan will use Śarad as a scapegoat [93–94]—is interpreted as another act of arrogance. Hanīf ’s reaction to mobbing, and even more when he is threatened and his name gets into a hit list [296, 304], is silence and isolation, but even this adds to suspicion, because it is interpreted as a wish to be considered a tragic hero [284, 301–302]. Śarad himself thinks Hanīf is wearing his solitude as a martyr’s mark [294]. Hanīf becomes the target: when in Bābū Pent.ar’s newspaper a letter to the editor is published with many signatures under it, including Śarad’s and Urmilā’s—but significantly not Nandan’s and Chot.e Joś’s—denouncing the restriction to free debate and the interference of Hindu clerics into the university life, anonymous letters are distributed requesting only Hanīf to apologize. His crisis precipitates dramatically when he loses the students’ support. Thanks also to the propaganda of groups like the Akhil Bhārtīya Vīr Dal students’ wing, [223] the students’ union passes a resolution to dismiss Hanīf from the university [272]. Of course, this has no official value, and the Vice Chancellor takes immediate position defending Hanīf [274], and many people express solidarity to him, but no voice is raised from the d.ipārt.ment.vālās [284]. In the end, 14 BA students skip Hanīf ’s class in favor of Nandan’s and Urmilā’s [307]: this is the epochal event that causes Hanīf to break down. He is shown crying for the first and only time, unable to bear what is for him the worst forsaking: no external menace is as threatening as the loss of personal ties and trust. Incapable of remaining a teacher boycotted by his own students, he goes on sabbatical, but this is once again interpreted by the d.ipārt.ment.vālās as irresponsibility, as a runaway in difficult times [343–344]. Devoid of support from all the people he is related to, Hanīf remains a secularist, but takes the only side everyone expects him to take, and he ends up teaching in a Muslim university.

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Oppositions are constructions, which trap us if we naturalize them. In the narrative the trap is the illusion about the opposition between “here” and “there,” between “we” and “them,” and between “inside” and “outside.” But the ideological construction it implies (educated vs. uneducated, secularism vs. fanaticism) is substituted by another more powerful and pervasive construction, the opposition between Hindu and Muslim, which becomes the only possible one. We might interpret this as a suggestion to confront the oppositions we perceive and to notice the ones we hold ourselves, in order to become aware of them and to emancipate from their tyranny, using differences as a hermeneutical tool. In fact, as the story unfolds, we find that the “there” has come “here,” that “we” have become “them,” that “our discussions, our words” are the same as “their words.” As I said, from the point of view of space at the beginning of the narrative, the campus appears clearly separated from the city. The bridge on the river is both a physical and a mental divide, because madness and frenzy are definitely located beyond the bridge. People like the three main characters, who live on this side of the bridge, where there are the university, the colony, and the mat.h, feel secure because riots and street fights, looting, and fires are always on the other side of the bridge, far from “here.” But it does not take long before this feeling changes into one of insecurity. Hanīf and Śruti say: “We are a third community” [167]. In fact, they are a mixed couple, he being born Muslim and she Hindu, even if—at least at the beginning of the fabula—neither would define himself/herself using these religious labels. There is a small secular “third community,” a noncommunalist community, to which not only Hindus and Muslims but also many others belong, all of them educated people. The discourse on intellectuals forming a third community is based upon the assumption that intellectuals share a secular idea of state and society. This allows them to move through different communities without being part of any of them, and this should allow them to be just “Indian.” But in the midst of the rising communal violence, this shifting becomes harder and harder: there is a strong pressure to adhere to standard models only and to maintain one’s own identity because a mixed cultural being creates only more and more confusion. There is a brief and effective scene representing this very well. Śruti is shown visiting a Muslim mohallā, and while entering a house she [. . . ] shakes hands with one saying namaste, to another she joins hand in namaste posture saying hello, and to a third one she says ādāb keeping her hands close to her body. I feel like laughing, but she looks like crying, maybe just because of this confusion in what to do with one’s hands and what to say. [168]

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Intellectuals and academics, therefore, do not live in a world apart, being an enlightened élite. When irrational and emotional thoughts prevail over rational and logic reasoning, prejudices become universal truth. Any supposed distinction between the world of cultured people and the world of common people is totally erased. Even intellectuals who pretended to be revolutionaries must admit that they lost the most-wished-for thing: their private space. In the turmoil of “that year,” nothing can remain private, because any single thing turns political. People living an anonymous and common life are pushed out of their houses; people living in protected and privileged environments are asked to identify themselves, to declare their name, to lower their trousers. Everything must be either Hindu or Muslim. The only given choice is between these definitions, and it is impossible to be both at the same time. Throughout the novel there is a continuous effort to underline the fact that intellectuals and academics are common people, and to erase the aura of superiority that is often connected with them. One stylistic tool is the continuous stress on bodily needs and references to bodies:13 for instance, Daddū is often shown going to the bathroom, and from the doctor’s visits and the many references to his health, we can infer he suffers from prostatitis [87, 134–135; 318]. Also Hanīf and Śruti are shown in their preparations for the night: washing, going to the bathroom, and drinking milk before going to sleep. The description of permanent physical characteristics is minimal, at least with regard to the main characters, not to mention the narrator. But we find many descriptions of temporary physical traits, such as facial expression, tone of voice, gesture, posture, manner, physical condition, and the narrative itself is thereby grounded in the body, even if what is more relevant is not traditional description but the lived experience of embodiment. If we extend embodiment to include all bodily manifestations, we find passages where the characters have exteroceptive sensations, that is, they are aware of and experience external stimuli via the surface organs of the body: think of the narrator’s insistence on colors, when she operates as our default body within the world of the text, providing eyes, ears, sensations of perception and of motion, and so forth [e.g., 76, 79–80, 116, 224, 265, 313, 326]. From the beginning, bodily sensations are invested with psychological reactions and emotions. For example, a cold feeling is often perceived by some actors in difficult or embarrassing situations, having nothing to do with the weather: Hanīf feels cold when the colleagues start mobbing him, and Śarad’s coughing gets worse as his feelings toward Hanīf become more ambiguous. The accurate description of the reactions of the nervous system to external stimuli can be seen as a strategy to stress the antiheroic condition of the characters.14 Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” is useful to understand how these aspects of embodiment are commandeered by culture to produce embodied practices

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that enact class hierarchies, gender roles, et cetera, whose power derives from the fact that these practices remain largely “invisible” due to their habitual, automatic nature.15 For example, in the novel, eating and drinking when performed by the main characters are a marker of socialization more than the mere satisfaction of bodily needs, but they acquire a totally different connotation when referring to refugees in the camps. Habitus can be said to operate beneath the level of ideology; in fact, not simply ideology, but practice is to be taken into account when examining the modes of human agency. “Spontaneous” behaviors become suspect when characters are confronted with new, unexpected situations: a joke, a smile, a dress, a gesture represent the habitus that has been formed in tandem with a definite set of circumstances. But sometimes there occurs a disjunction between habitus and environment, when historical and social forces contrive to provide unforeseen situations, obstacles, and opportunities. We can find an example of how this is introduced in the novel in a passage showing Śarad and Beverly sitting on the veranda. Hanīf—unaware of their presence—arrives with a bucket of water for the madhumaltī creeper [194–196]. On seeing the couple, Hanīf is embarrassed: he wonders whether his sudden arrival might seem inappropriate. Śarad, ill at ease because of Hanīf ’s embarrassed greeting, tries to reply with a casual comment about Hanīf ’s pat.hān suit. This is supposed to be the most spontaneous and casual small talk, but it immediately acquires a communalist overtone. Hanīf remarks that this is his usual evening dress, but Śarad insists that he never saw it before. Beverly is the silent witness of this cross talk. Exit Hanīf. Follows a dialogue between Śarad and Beverly, emphasizing a totally different interpretation of the previous scene by each of them. Śarad projects on Hanīf his own intention of giving meanings to anything, while Beverly does not notice anything abnormal. Śarad explains this as her inability to judge things properly as she is a foreigner. In the end he declares that in any case that kind of suit does not look well on Hanīf: if he himself would wear such a suit, he would seem a Pakistani. This is said in a playful tone, but the series of analogies it opens leads him suddenly to an epiphany of his own biases. Śarad’s behavior in this passage can be seen as an example of how the habitus works: unspoken social requirements and injunctions guide our existence, before awareness, reflection, and representation, and we spontaneously apply to the order of things mental structures that are generated by that very order. 4. Relations among the Characters Confusion and the shaping of new identities have a strong impact on human relations, and this is shown very well in the characters of the novel.

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Even if they are strongly individualized characters, they generally come in groups, and Śruti, Hanīf, and Śarad are often shown doing things together (58 fragments): the three friends share a house, they entertain intellectual discussions, go together to the campus. But slowly a division creeps in: when Śruti and Śarad visit Hindu places where bombing happened, to interview some witnesses, Hanīf stays at home, because without his presence people would be “more open” [130–131]. This marks the beginning of Hanīf ’s isolation: later on, when they visit a Muslim camp, he refuses to go [264–265], because he does not accept the communal label. The process of separation, of individualization, and the breaking of a consolidated group is shown also in connection with Daddū and his divān. Forty-two fragments are related to the “family group”: Daddū, Śruti, Hanīf, and Śarad are almost all the time together, having fun, having dinner and drinks, joking, and laughing. The discussion may be very hot, particularly between Hanīf and Śarad, but it generally ends with a joke, a witty notation by Daddū, and a general reconciliation. Nevertheless, toward the end of the novel, some fragments show a totally different relationship in the same location, with the characters separated from each other [304, 320–321]. I have already dealt with the process of isolation as far as Hanīf is concerned. As for Śarad, he seems a winner, at least from an academic point of view: he gets the position of Head of the Department [333], and he does not have to move or to find a new job. Yet, he too feels more and more confused and alone: in the public sphere, he keeps on acting as a secularist, but this separates him from the other d.ipārt.ment.vālās, who are happy with the new order [335–336]. And in the private sphere, his biases and contradictions are exposed. In one passage, Śarad is alone outside, observing Hanīf and Śruti in Daddū’s company, and he expresses jealousy, love, and hate toward Hanīf, as if the latter were an intruder in his own house, stealing his affections and emotions [304]. Friendship slowly dissolves into a formal relationship [316], and a progressive isolation takes place also in the relation between father and son: they are very seldom alone, because the family is composed of the whole group, but in the last part of the novel [297, 300, 302, 310–311, 322], Śarad’s isolation is marked by the fact that he is always showing his back, while Daddū is silently observing Śarad’s back. In the 43 fragments where the pair Hanīf and Śarad is protagonist, they are almost exclusively connected to their professional environment. Their relation is very dialectic, but they are perceived by outsiders as “brothers” [32], and they act in harmony: for example, when driving to the campus, they either travel together on one scooter or each drives his own scooter proceeding in parallel. When the break has taken place, though, they are

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shown leaving the house separately, one immediately after the other, with Daddū as focalizer watching their back [300]. Also, Śruti is seldom shown alone, even if her profession as an independent writer might let us think of an activity to be performed in solitude. On the contrary, she is most often in the company of Daddū (44 fragments), being his favorite interlocutor: together they discuss poetry and writing, they cook, laugh, and are the victims of a violent attack by youngsters. They are the most domestic characters in the novel. Daddū appears 144 times, and is shown outdoors only twice, and in both passages this happens in order to drive away the interference of communalism. In the first passage he observes a procession of Hindus from the mat.h shouting anti-Muslim slogans, and harshly drives two activists out of the front door, summoning the three friends to come inside, lest they get accustomed to the noise of loudspeakers [22]. In fact, he keeps on playing classical music on his old gramophone, in an unsuccessful effort to keep out the shouts that drown the notes of sāran˙gī Daddū’s second appearance outside the domestic sphere is in the final dramatic episode leading to the conclusion of the narrative: here a definite break of the spatial division between private and public sphere, between “here” and “there,” takes place, and the secularist identity is definitely reduced to silence, overwhelmed by a triumphant and haughty communalism. With the assertion of this ideology, any other kind of bond has to be broken, and those who do not accept rigidly communal categories are bound to remain isolated and lonely individuals: they might not merge in the communalistic sense of collectivity they do not believe in, but they are deprived of the possibility to maintain multiple ties and a pluralistic sense of belonging. 5. Constructing a Communalistic Identity The construction of a communalistic identity through the adoption of a discourse requiring the creation of a new language and the redefinition of concepts that have always been there is a process taking place both in the public arena and in the inner world of the individual. As for the public sphere, the novel is replete with references to the propaganda of Hindu activists and to the media. Circulation of manipulated information and news is necessary in order to mould the audience. This affects, first of all, freedom of speech and information. In the novel we can see a growing pressure and control in the media world. Newspaper editors, who at the beginning of the story are eager for original and independent reports [30], grow progressively cautious, or replace words like “Indian,” “secularist,” and “pluralist,” which have become devoid of meaning, with the words everyone wants to hear: “Hindu” and “Muslim” [142]. For example, the actor named Bābū Pent.ar—who appears in 16 fragments—is a

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publisher who tries in the beginning of the narrative to help the three friends by publishing their articles, but as the story proceeds, he is also a victim of the censorship imposed on, or self-imposed by, the press. In the public arena there is a vast circulation of propaganda material aiming to spread new categories that are to be the foundations of a new communalist identity. In the novel it is possible to find excerpts from different sources (cassettes, pamphlets, slogans, speeches) that are not only fictional but echo real documents. Let me just quote an example. In the communalist discourse, names are very important because they are the labels through which reality is understood. Therefore, there is a reinterpretation of place-names to make them fit the new identity that is being promoted. “Throw your cowardice away, or else drown it in the Indian Ocean (Hind Mahāsāgar) . . . Don’t say “Hind,” [. . .] say “Hindū Mahāsāgar.” That is the Hindū Ocean! [. . .] For others there are thousands of countries, but for us there is only Hindustān.” “Say ‘Hindusthān’!” [22]

This is a typical process of equating language, religion, and ethnic identity. Hindū is a Persian word denoting someone who lives around or beyond the Indus River (Skt. Sindhu, which also means ocean and any large body of water), and in fact meant any inhabitant of the Indian subcontinent. I would like to emphasize the shift from the Persian denomination “Hindustān”—which is the correct geographical term—to Sanskritic “Hindusthān,” intended to mean that this is the land of the Hindu religious community. This way, the speaker, who is promoting the Hindu communalistic identity, denies any non-Hindu alternative. A religious meaning is imposed in the name of linguistic purity, which in the end is nothing but a politically oriented identity. This is the reason why Hanīf, whose full name is Hanīf Jaidī, is shown correcting a colleague who abruptly starts pronouncing his name as Zaidī [48]. Zaidī is in fact a Muslim name, which can be traced back to some descendants of the Prophet Muhammed, denoting a tribe settled in many parts of the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent. But Hanīf remarks that it has to be pronounced according to the regional and local influences, thus losing the sound “z” in favor of the pronunciation “j”: the assumption that it be necessarily linked to the pure Urdu élite, therefore maintaining the pronunciation “z,” is erroneous. But when everything becomes either Muslim or Hindu, any pronunciation or name has to be marked, there is no default value: a publishing house whose owner has a Muslim name cannot retain the name Sarasvatī, and a hotel named Mugal Mahal whose owner is a Hindu must find a new name in a Hindu dictionary [173].

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As I have already observed, Hanīf suffers from mobbing and psychological abuse: this character shows the inner effects of communalist ideology, the way it influences the perception of an individual’s identity, and it ends up construing a new identity in his/her inner world. His reactions to the communalist pressure are the ones generally described in trauma literature: he gradually stops talking; he cannot concentrate on his job; he changes habits, cannot sleep, gets irritable, and retreats into his inner world. Contrary to Śarad, who reacts by expressing his anger and getting loud, Hanīf slowly loses the impetus to discuss and explain. He finds himself interpreted as a symbol, his “Islamity” being forced on him [233]. He tries to resist, but in the end he accepts the new state of the world, and he ends up working in a Muslim institution. Of course, this changes his attitudes toward other people: the narrative does not describe him after the separation from Śarad and after moving to his new house, but we can easily infer that his good nature and love for wits and jokes is gone. Interestingly enough, overt violence never touches Hanīf in the story. Other characters—“Hindu” characters—suffer from physical abuse, representing the paradoxical effect of communalist violence. First of all, Śarad. At what is described as “the last public debate of that year” [236–240], Śarad is hurt by a stone thrown by a Hindu fanatic, who accuses him of being a “non-Hindu.” It seems that the real enemy of the activist is not only the now well-defined “Other,” but, even more than that, those people who do not have a clear-cut defined and definable identity, people who refuse to accept rigid categories of thought. Śarad’s character depicts the condition of a “secular Hindu,” who accepts the cultural tradition of Hinduism, recognizing its connection to religion, but also its other roots. In the novel there is a strategy of the doublet that aims at emphasizing complexity, as we can see through the pair Śarad and Kāpr.iyā. Kāpr.iyā, a character appearing in 32 fragments, is a policeman, a former classmate of Śarad’s, who has been appointed in the town because of the riots. He is a controversial character, because he introduces himself as Hindutva-oriented: he is shown bragging about Hindus being strong and masculine; we are also informed that he had wished to marry a Muslim girl, but was forced by the girl’s family to stop the relation [97]. This makes the reader prone to suppose that Kāpr.iyā might well nourish revenge feelings toward the Muslim community. Nevertheless, he reveals himself as an honest policeman, because in the end he admits that the police has to stop the Hindus, otherwise no Muslim would be left alive [281–283]. Moreover, when violence is spreading in the city, he warns both Hanīf and Śarad about the struggle for power in the mat.h, giving a friendly advice to both [325]. If Śarad’s trajectory is from feeling secularist to identifying himself as Hindu, Kāpr.iyā

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represents the very opposite, because he identifies himself as Hindu but acts as a secularist. They mirror each other in the common difficulty and uneasiness in finding a language for a noncommunalist “Hinduness.” Śarad somehow also tends to simplify things to make them more acceptable: he keeps on thinking that violence is aimed at abstract categories, but that in individual relationships friendship, harmony, respect, and mutual acceptance are still there. He finds a justification for people voicing stereotypes, stating that they repeat meaningless words without thinking; but this sometimes happens to himself, and it puzzles him [123], because he cannot understand what is going on inside himself and how relationships are changing even inside the house where he lives, where a partition is slowly created between the upper and the lower floor [184]. And he finds himself helpless and confused, unable even to have a sincere love story with his foreign girlfriend Beverly (see section 6): at the very instant he realizes that he is close to her as he has never been to anyone, and the idea of marrying her flashes in his mind, he also feels totally aloof from her and starts repeating rhetorical statements about what is happening around them [251–252]. When he finally gets the position of Head of Department, he must face the truth that nothing is like it used to be, even if people and places are the same. Śarad wonders: “Did we make such discussions here before? Or is this something that was already here and just became open?” [335]. This raises the question of what was there before, that is, of the biases that everyone carries within. He has to face his own prejudices, for example, when he realizes with horror that he hopes that a rumor about raped women is not about Hindu women [127, 193]. In another passage, he gets confused when he instinctively labels the overpowering smell of garlic in the camp as a Muslim smell, “as if it were the smell of a whole community” [197]. In fact, the novel is not a paean to a supposedly happy India before the clash: throughout the narrative it is emphasized that cohabitation has never been easy, and that communalist clashes have always happened. The major change brought about by the radicalization of the conflict seems to be that now the hostility is overt. Nobody is immune to this metamorphosis: the archetypal savage is inside the illiterate as well as inside the educated. In the novel we can see this process very well in the character of Śarad, who is shown as gradually feeling the rise of hatred inside himself: in the end he knifes the madhumaltī creeper, with a transfer of violence, his eye glimmering with savage madness [338–340]. The violent assault of Hindu fanatics also strikes Śarad’s father. Daddū’s character is particularly relevant from a literary point of view, as he represents the mixed culture that the intelligentsia pretends to defend. But this paternal and optimistic figure, too, will progressively retreat into silence,

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and in the end he will lose his most human traits: enraged, he reacts to the violence of his assailants by shouting obscene words [349], and when Śruti visits Śarad after some time, Daddū is completely reduced to an inert object: “On the bed lies a bundle with the back turned this side. Something like a couple of thin sticks comes out of the blanket” [8]. Beating Daddū is like beating the very tradition of peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. In the novel there are many passages dealing with the history of the earlier, particularly Hindu-Muslim, relations that try to clarify what this tradition was. The version of Indian history circulating through communalist publications stresses only conflict and opposition [50–51]. In an effective passage Hanīf declares: “We know that there were conflicts as well as warm friendship, even if we may not know the details of them. Then why not put in front the issues of friendship?” [190]. This statement comes in response to Śarad’s doubt about the possibility that even the secularist version of history may be a construction, just like the fundamentalists’ one. Hanīf continues: We always make choices. We put some things in the foreground. But this does not mean that what remains in the background is falsified. If there were conflicts, we will acknowledge them, but why should we make them bigger? Why don’t we put an end to them? If there was love, and still can be, why don’t we celebrate it, why don’t we acknowledge quarrel as destructive?

But this option is discarded as nonfeasible.16 The question about past and present is a fil rouge in the whole novel. It is discussed in both the academic and the private sphere. The process of trying to understand how the divide is being carved does not take place in a high-brow series of scholarly debates: the characters are mainly located in a familiar setting, and they are shown expressing their thoughts and fears in a very intelligible and direct way, even if sometimes they may sound rhetorical. Daddū is very relevant as he acts as a catalyst: he attracts people, encourages discussion and debate, but always succeeds in breaking tension when it gets too strong and finding a happy ending note. There is a parallel between what happens in the world and what happens in Daddū’s house. The initial friendly atmosphere is progressively substituted by quarrels and rancor between Hanīf and Śarad; students and friends do not visit, people do not gather any longer, fear prevails, and each character remains isolated and lonely. For some time Daddū’s presence has a balancing power between the quarrelsome friends [203–204], but his presence is more and more marginalized, and in the end he becomes a silent observer of the fight that is going on, helpless and worried. Daddū’s function, though, is never of teaching or preaching [203]. Even if he constantly makes learned quotations,

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he never wants to show off: his scholarship is not pedantic, but rather has become part of him, a very natural and simple mode of expression. He always quotes by heart, and, significantly, he also happens to make mistakes. For example, when quoting Galib’s gazal 17, he substitutes some words. The original text reads as follows: bas kih duśvār hai har kām kā āsām ˙ honā ˙ ādmī ko bhī muyassar nahīm  insām ˙ honā.

In the novel we read: bas ki muśkil hai har ik bāt kā āsām ˙ honā ˙ ādmī ko bhī mayassar nahīm. insām  honā.

In Daddū’s version there is a substitution of the Persian duśvār, which is not used in standard Hindi, with the term muśkil, a word of Arab origin, which has entered the Hindi standard usage. “Har kām kā” becomes “har ik bāt kā,” which has the same meaning but is a free recollection, recreating the metric of the verse with another colloquial Hindi-Urdu expression. The Arab adjective muyassar becomes mayassar, with a regional spelling. The meaning of this śer is more or less: “It is difficult for anything to be easy. For a man it does not come easy even to be human.” We may say that this mistake of Daddū’s is in itself a demonstration of the complexity of life and an exhortation to avoid the tendency to oversimplify and reduce unfamiliar foreign terms to clear-cut concepts. The strong prevalence of dialogues confers the novel a dramatic flavor. They are generally related with direct quotation, without inquit, so that the reader is made to forget that we are dealing with embedded texts. As I said, the location of the narrative is mainly domestic: more than half the fragments (315) take place at home or in the surrounding colony, with a particular relevance given to the ink-seller shop where the narrator regularly goes, and to the greengrocer’s stall where Śruti and Hanīf go shopping for food. The second main location is the university, particularly the department where Śarad and Hanīf work [120], but here again there is a prevalence of dialogic mode, and discussions are predominantly informal; also, when excerpts of lessons are presented, they maintain a very colloquial style, never getting a professorial or pedantic tone. 6. Gender and Communalism A female character in the novel shows the capacity of transcending dichotomy and being open-minded: Śarad’s girlfriend Beverly is a foreign woman,

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interested in folk art, witnessing the city’s events with an external eye. She enters the story as an absolute outsider: she does not speak the local language, she does not know the culture, and she is not interested in sociopolitical problems but rather in aesthetic issues, because she is researching women’s home paintings. But her relationship with Śarad is troubled. He imposes on her the role of a tabula rasa, which she is not: she has her own history, her own ideas, but he treats her as if she were pure and innocent just because she is not Indian. When she tells fragments of her own story of repeated surgeries, he does not even listen to her, being too absorbed in himself and his own thoughts [250–252]. Beverly functions as a sort of inner mirror for Śarad: she is different, but she is not the absolute “Other.” She represents the “other” to which there is no opposition: facing it does not open fight, but rather starts a positive process leading to self-knowledge. This allows her to act as a catalyst; her spontaneous behavior reveals how constructed everybody else’s behavior is [266]. She shows that it is possible to relate to a different entity without necessarily coming into conflict with it, on the contrary, receiving an illuminating new point of view on reality. At the same time, her relationship with Śarad does not develop into a full-fledged love story: they are very close, but the communication between them is somehow restrained. This represents the impossibility of true relationships in a world where absolute categories are applied: a fundamentalist ideology reduces anything to stereotypes, and communalism is this very process. In the novel, female characters often stand out with a sort of mediating and linking function. As I said, the novel begins with Śruti visiting Śarad, some time after “that year.” The friends have drifted apart, the house where the three of them used to live together looks abandoned: the yard full of weeds, no more blossoming creeper on the wall. Daddū is reduced to silence by his humiliation. Between Śruti and Śarad, communication is not easy, tension is thick. Still she keeps contacts, refusing the logic of separation. There are not many fragments (18) showing the pair Śruti and Śarad. When the categories Hindu/Muslim begin to be applied, they even seem to acknowledge a common “Hinduness” in order to be able to get a better response from interviewed people [130–131]. With the progressive isolation of Hanīf from the family group, when he refuses to go downstairs and to speak, Śruti does not accept to severe her relations with Śarad, but she keeps on visiting downstairs, almost secretly [300], even if the dialogue with Śarad has become impossible and no open communication is left [334–335]. Also, the almost invisible undefined narrator is a woman, recording words, thoughts, feelings, and actions of the other characters and sharing with them the trauma of that “town that year,” thus linking in her narration apparently disjointed fragments of events and opinions.

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Female characters in the novel try to resist the polarizing trend more than male characters. We should not think, however, that communalism and gender always relate in this way. In a brief scene, for instance, we can see a female character, a saffron clad sādhvī who shouts sermons from inside the mat.h van. Her voice is heard cracking from the loudspeaker, she is shouting into the microphone and the message she conveys is a violent one. The woman is talking in order to whip up mass frenzy: there is a climax when the van stops and finally the mahant gets out of it, followed by the woman, in the middle of an ocean of people shouting slogans. It is interesting that the hero of the scene is the mahant, but the voice exhorting the crowd is a feminine one. This scene illustrates very well the role of a woman according to Hindutva. As many scholars have clearly explained, the ideology of Hindutva appears quite tolerant of a new, seemingly empowered feminine model.17 A woman can have all the power she wants, but only as long as she does not question patriarchy and accepts her place inside the home and the family. If she breaks out of the four walls of the house and makes a play for power, then different rules apply: she must renounce the world, be a sādhvī—a celibate ascetic, whose sexuality is under control. This fictional character of the sādhvī has a historical correspondent in a few women politicians who happen to be the iconic female figures of the Hindu nationalist movement. In 1992, when Ayodhya was “the city” and Bābar’s mosque was “the mosque,” it was a woman’s voice that gave the impetus to the destruction. That was Sadhvi Rithambara’s voice, a most prominent voice of Hindutva in India: hers was also the voice playing from the popular cassettes circulating in the months preceding the demolition of the masjid in Ayodhya, containing a series of very violent speeches presaging the act of destroying the sixth-century mosque, to which there are many references in the novel. News reports then had quoted the sam.nyāsin exhorting Hindu volunteers: “Ek dhakkā aur do, bābrī masjid tor. do” (Give one more push, bring down the Babri mosque), using the idiom dhakkā denā, which has an overtly sexual overtone. This has a particular significance for Hindus who commonly see the Muslim as sexually aggressive, and themselves as “effeminate” and “emasculated.”18 It is also a case of tactical redeployment of women as vehicles for masculine agency: for men who participated in the demolition of Babri mosque, these words pronounced by a woman were likely to elicit a response of this kind: “If a woman is capable of this, then shame on me if I can’t do the same.” 7. Fragments and Identity The whole novel insists on the idea of fragmented identities being the result (or possibly even the cause?) of communalism, and the story develops

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through a fragmented style. Therefore I have tried to analyze some aspects of the relation between the narrative technique and the issue of identity. The narration is brought about through a total of 611 fragments, of which 44 are a one-line fragment. The narrative technique thus reinforces the idea of a split identity. I have tried to see whether there is a pattern in the fragmentation or whether it is a random effect. First of all, it is evident that the one-line fragments are almost all allotted to the narrator: they are comments, or descriptive notations, or else reports of external events. Most fragments are very short: 8 percent of the total consist of 3 lines, 8 percent consist of 2 lines, 8 percent consist of 4 lines, and 7% consist of 1 line, which makes about one-third of the total number of fragments.19 Most fragments in the text have a length varying from 5 to 20 lines, representing 49 percent of the total number. The remaining 15 percent comprises fragments with a length ranging from 20 to 80 lines. Long passages (99 lines to 341) are very rare: there are only six fragments in this category—that is, less than 1 percent, but they are very relevant from the narrative point of view because they focus on the main events in the plot. Let us analyze them briefly, in the order they are inserted in the narration. The first long passage is the very first one in the novel: I have already discussed the role of the narrator in this “fragment,” and its function of introducing the main narrative lines, actors, and characters. It expresses the impossibility of getting the whole by putting together some fragments [8]. The second and longest passage—341 lines—[102–112] shows the whole “family” with some students while having a discussion sitting on the divān. The narrator gives a scene description, together with a sort of formal introduction to the main characters of the novel. In this passage, different opinions are contrasted, and the friends are surprised listening to their own students bringing forth strongly biased arguments, like the one claiming a supposed propensity of Muslims to blood and knifing, because of the custom of halāl, as opposed to a tendency to nonviolence supposedly linked to vegetarianism [110]. The third passage is 125 lines long [158–162], and it is set at the university, during a staff meeting where rotation is discussed, together with the change of policy in the department, according to which elements that were valued earlier—for example, a friendly and open relation between student and professors, freedom of thought and of word—are now condemned as indiscipline. Both passages emphasize that students are a very important actor in the novel: we have 32 passages (“fragments”) where they appear, which are mostly located in the university, but sometimes they are also shown in Daddū’s house: some of them are regular visitors at Śarad and Hanīf ’s. With the passing of time, though, they gradually stop visiting

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the house: among the students’ associations, too, communalist groups gradually take over [223]. This leads first to attacks on Hanīf and Śarad for their secularist position, then to the request of Hanīf ’s dismissal from the college—even if some of them express solidarity with Hanīf, who is being mobbed at the university. The next long fragment, 115 lines long, narrates the last public meeting at the community hall where Śarad is victim of an assault by a Hindu fanatic [236–240]. Śruti, Śarad, and Hanīf are the protagonists of the passage: Śarad and Hanīf have a public role as speakers, while Śruti sits in the audience. The episode is particularly relevant, because the setting is a totally Hindu audience and the violent opposition is between “secular” Hindus and “communalist” ones. A stone cast by a young Hindu hits Śarad, and the comment at the end of the passage is that the city is not half-Muslim, halfHindu, but rather half-non-Hindu, half-non-Muslim. Identity is defined in negative and exclusive terms. The next long segment is a 99-line fragment [274–277], introducing Śruti and Hanīf at home while bird-watching. The passage is positioned at a crucial point in the fabula, because Hanīf has started being attacked by students, and this development marks his definite breakdown. From this moment he will accept (albeit unwillingly) the breaking of old bonds and the necessity to define himself as Muslim. It is interesting that this label has already been applied to him, even by Śruti herself [169–170]. Nevertheless, in this private setting, Hanīf maintains his sense of humor, he tells funny stories, and he tries to ease the tension. It is the last tentative attempt to maintain the distinction between private and public, but it is clear that the situation is deteriorating, and that pretending that nothing has happened is no longer possible: even the relation between husband and wife will be affected by the outer events, and they will become more and more nervous, with dialogues becoming discussions, and a growth of tension in their relationship. The list of relevant “long fragments” ends with a 167-line segment [344–350]. It narrates the final breaking of illusion; the destruction of the private sphere; the end of the world of poetry, fantasy, and refined mixed culture. Śruti and Daddū are engaged in one of their witty discussions, when the outer world breaks in, represented by some youngsters who not only do not show respect toward a woman and an old man but also take pride in violently oppressing them. The first section of the fragment is located in the house hall, where Śruti and Daddū are talking about what is real and what is unreal, about the importance of fantasy and imagination. The atmosphere is very relaxed and serene. Suddenly, the dramatic catastrophe takes place, and reality breaks in: the violent insults of the young

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Hindu activists force Daddū to react, so that even his language and behavior change, and the narrator wonders whether this is the same person she used to know. Symbolically, this marks the collapse of the last bulwark of the “old” world believing in a pacific cohabitation: it is absolutely no longer possible to maintain unconcern and serenity, to keep off the outer communalist ideology, and even if this is refused, opposing it leads to a violent reaction to violence. Daddū’s denture falling in the dust represents the loss of power of his values, the helplessness of those believing in the ideal of a mixed culture. I think it is possible to draw a pattern from the sequence of the six longest fragments in the novel. We start in a private setting after the events happened during “that year,” where no spontaneous relation is any longer possible: this is the result of the past events that are presented, through a chronological deviation, in the following text. The events of “that year” are structured with a climax that is clear in the subsequent long fragments: they are, in fact, a series of discussions with a growing sense of confrontation and violence. From the domestic setting we are first taken to the professional field, then to the wider social sphere, and each time we perceive the deteriorating conditions of free speech and human relations. The first discussion, during a session on the divān, is a turmoil of different voices, but people try to listen to each other: disturbing opinions are confronted, and a feeling of uneasiness is perceived, but different interlocutors show mutual respect. There is an exchange between the private sphere and the outer world, even if the protagonists seem to realize for the first time that communalism is not alien to their environment. The discussion at the Department meeting confirms this idea, and it also introduces the problem of repression of free thought in the name of order. The meeting at the community hall shows the end of any polite confrontation and exchange of opinions: no debate and discussion, there is open violence instead. In the novel, violence is at first shown as psychological pressure, then it explodes in physical attack, hitting the symbols of secularism and of mixed culture: it is the progressive destruction of any mediating power, leaving no other choice than compliance to the new order or marginalization. In the private sphere, spontaneous relations can survive, but there too we find tension and anxiety, as is shown in the fifth long fragment: it will eventually be affected by the outer world. The sequence of long fragments, therefore, shows the progressive destruction of the separateness between public and private spheres—finalized in the last long fragment—and is a map of the escalation of violence and of its spreading like a wildfire, with a trajectory from private to collective and back. We can see that there is a clear correspondence between the insistence on splitting bonds and identities in the narration, and the stylistic choice of fragmenting the novel into minimal unities. The rapid pace of the dialogues

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reinforces this idea, and many dialogues insist on this concept. Here is an example: “Hanīf!” she suddenly calls out. From the bathroom comes an answering “Yes.” “Am I a Hindu?” No answer. “Whether I like it or not, am I a Hindu?” “Maybe,” a voice comes out of the bathroom. “Śarad too?” “Yes.” “What about you?” “No.” “Are you a Muslim?” “Yes.” “But I’m not?” “Śruti!” in the bathroom voice there is a laugh. “I am more like Śarad, less like you?” “There must be some more or less similar fibre” the bathroom says. “And that fibre is not in you?” The bathroom is silent. “I am a woman.” “I don’t know.” “What?” Śruti asks louder. “We were talking Hindu fibres, not women’s,” the bathroom spurts abruptly. “My father was Pañjabi?” The bathroom is silent. “Was he or not?” “He was, darling,” comes forward from behind the splashing sound of water. “Mother was from Banaras?” “Yes.” “Then how many fibres are there, that are in me and in Śarad but not in me and you?” [. . .] Why should I separate fibre by fibre, nerve by nerve, from this whole and complete identity? What I am is clearly definite in my consciousness, why should I wake it up, choose some parts of it and leave out others? If I do so, my self would shrink. My self-pride would be impaired. Its essential beauty, its real shape would be spoilt. Dimming it, thickening it, pushing this out and pulling that in . . . we ourselves are breaking into pieces our form and figure, but we are just becoming ugly. [206–207]

Fragmented identities in a collapsing world are literarily conveyed through a fragmented narrative. We may note that this allows the narrator, who is the main focalizer, to multiply the focalization through indirect or

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character-bound focalizations, also through the direct dialogues. The use of fragments in postmodern literature has been connected to the chaos theory, and we may well think that in this novel, it is a technique allowing to present multiple points of view and reinforcing the idea of complexity as well as of fragmented identity. Conclusion Hamārā śahar us baras is a novel about the crisis of secular reasoning and the problems of a rigidly polarized ideology. The Indian intelligentsia represented in it is shown facing the crisis of secular tolerance in the demolition of the secular state, being incapable of giving alternative answers. Anguishing in confusion, they fall helplessly prisoner of the “us vs. them” logic, with a negative effect both from a private and from a collective point of view. The stories of the main characters show how the outer turmoil has a strong reflection in their inner life also. But academic life is stricken too: in the anarchy of communalist disorders, it seems that research and intellectual quality are bound to succumb. Rather than solving the existing problems of Indian universities, communal ideology seems to emphasize the tendency to sycophancy and subservience characterizing a great deal of Indian public life. This attitude, though—as the story suggests—can hardly lead to a flourishing intellectual life. Whatever the new chosen identity, modern India is historically composite, resulting from the confluence of heterogeneous streams. Eclectic, mixed India may be an illegitimate offspring, but it is fascinating, suggesting that identity is pluralistic, open, and intercultural, rather than a rigid, close, and bounded entity. In an interview, Gītāñjalī Śrī elaborated on the notion of mixed culture, which she defines as “hybrid,”20 and this novel no doubt is a strong accusation against the sinister effects of ideas of purity in contemporary India. Gītāñjalī Śrī suggests that the only possible solution is the acceptance of heterogeneity versus homogenizing pressures, because only this can allow freedom and cultural development. Hamārā śahar us baras stresses how absurd this world has become, individuals being left with a feeling of alienation and helplessness, and society being shaken by violence and fanaticism. In the novel there is a strong criticism of the instrumental use of security, discipline, and law and order in the name of education and morality, in the context of a politically tinged religious discourse aimed at the creation of communalistic identities. The novel deals with historical facts dating back to the last decades of the twentieth century, but the issues it addresses are still very urgent: for example, as I write, India’s renowned 92-year-old painter M. F. Husain is being subjected

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to a round of moral policing, targeted by communal groups for his supposed irreverence to the Hindu religion. Even more connected to the subject of Hamārā śahar us baras is the attack on freedom of expression launched at the reputed Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda on 9 May 2007, when a group of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists led by a local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and accompanied by a section of the media stormed into the campus of the Faculty of Fine Arts during the annual display of the works by final year students, abusing and attacking a student with the claim that his works were obscene and offensive to religious sentiments. It is pertinent to emphasize that the works were being shown as part of an internal academic assessment exercise being conducted by the faculty, therefore they were not on public display, and in no way were they intended to be exhibited for public viewing. Not only was Chandramohan arrested without a proper warrant and without consulting the Faculty of Fine Arts, but the acting Dean—Dr. Shivaji Panikkar, one of the leading art historians of India—was suspended. This event is just an episode of the sustained campaign led by extremists that has been going on for decades, aimed at bowdlerizing the cultural life and denying people their right to freedom of expression. It is a proof of their worrying attempt to gain a stranglehold over educational institutions through various tactics of intimidation, but also of the connivance between academic authorities and political power. In fact, the BJP-supporting Vice Chancellor refused to initiate any action against the trespassers or to apply for bail for the victimized, seizing the opportunity to launch an attack on a portion of the campus that had always held strong secularist positions both inside and outside the University political arena. In the rise of intolerance, India risks to become an illiberal democracy, guided by competing populism. This raises serious questions also about the State’s ability, or even desire, to protect the cultural freedom of individuals. Of course, a literary work is not requested to give answers to this all: this novel amplifies very well doubts and questions, challenging the reader to reflect upon them. Notes * The first avatār of this paper was presented at the International Conference on “The Past and Present of South Asia: Unity in Diversity?” Pavia, September 2004. A revised version was presented at the eighteenth ECMSAS Conference in Leiden, 27–30 June 2006. I would like to acknowledge the comments of the participants at those conferences. I am especially indebted to Theo Damsteegt, University of Leiden, for his thoughtful remarks and for the time he devoted to the revision of the text. I warmly thank Gītāñjalī Śrī, who so readily answered my questions. I remain, however, solely to blame for whatever inadequacies remain.

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1. Built in the sixteenth century by the first Mughal emperor, Bābar, it was razed to the ground in December 1992 by Hindus claiming that it had been built on that spot after desecrating and destroying a temple standing on the birthplace of Lord Rām. 2. Let us just mention the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Council for the Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Nehru Museum and Memorial Library, the National Museum, the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, the All India Council for Technical Education, the University Grants Commission (UGC), and the Hindī Sam . sthān. 3. Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (second edition) (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1997). 4. What times are these, when / to speak of trees is almost a crime / because it passes in silence over such infamy! 5. The edition I quote is Gītāñjalī Śrī, Hamārā śahar us baras. New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 1998. All subsequent page references in square brackets are from this edition of the text. 6. Lit: “the company of the good ones”: in its common usage the term denotes any assembly of persons (be they two or a large group of people) who meet to pray, sing, listen to the recitation of sacred texts or sacred tales, discuss and comment on them, and assimilate the truth. 7. This narrator could be type “g” of the categorization proposed by Bal, pp. 25–28. 8. Śruti, too, has a problem with ink: when she finally starts writing, she realizes that her fountain pen is dry [24]. This private obsession acquires in the end also a collective connotation, when people start writing with ink on their houses “this is a Hindu house” and the whole sky turns inky [237–352]. 9. Theo Damsteegt, The Present Tense in Modern Hindi Fiction (Groningen, Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 2004), p. 102. 10. Ibid., p. 108. Actually, in both passages, Damsteegt deals only with IFA, but maybe they can be taken as valid also with reference to this kind of narration. 11. There is an immense bibliography on “Partition Literature.” I shall only suggest a few titles, that can be useful in distinguishing between the discourse of historiography and the one of literature: Ravikant and Tarun K. Saint, Translating Partition (Delhi: Katha, 2001); Mushirul Hasan, India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1995); Gyan Pandey, “The Prose of Otherness” in David Arnold and David Hardman, eds., Subaltern Studies VIII (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 188–221. 12. Mehboob Khan’s masterpiece (1957), the first Indian film that got a nomination for an Oscar. 13. Genie Babb, “Where the Bodies Are Buried: Cartesian Dispositions in Narrative Theories of Character,” Narrative 10, no. 3 (October 2002): 195–221.

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14. This is a narrative technique typical of the nayī kahānī: Konrad Meisig, Erzähltechniken der Nayī Kahānī (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1996), pp. 75–79. 15. Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les editions de minuit, 1979); Pierre Bourdieu, Le regole dell’arte. Genesi e struttura del campo letterario (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2005). 16. The debate about the interpretation of ancient and premodern India, especially regarding the question of the origins, as well as the relationship between Hindus and Muslims, has been one of the major themes in South Asian historiography in the past decades: Romila Thapar, From the Origins to AD 1300 (Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002); Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, and Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 2004, second ed.); Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, second ed. 2006). 17. Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays, (New Delhi, India: Kali for Women, 1995); Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, Women and Right-Wing Movements Indian Experiences (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995); P. Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation RSS Women as Ideologues (New Delhi: Feminist Fine Print for Women Unlimited, 2004); Amrita Basu, Two Faces of Protest Contrasting Modes of Women’s Activism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, Appropriating Gender Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia (New York: Routledge, 1998). 18. Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave, 2002); see also Gayatri Reddy, “ ‘Men’ Who Would be Kings: Celibacy, Emasculation, and the Re-Production of Hijras in Contemporary Indian Politics—Gender Identity, Social Stigma, and Political Corruption,” Social Research, Spring 2003. 19. Percentages have been rounded off. 20. A. Consolaro, “Meeting the Hindi writer Geetanjali Shree” in Roads to Knowledge: Hermeneutical and Lexical Probes, DOST Critical Studies I, ed. A. Monti and S. Bianchi (Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2007), pp. 123–141. We need not discuss here how successful the concept of hybridity has been in postcolonial Indian literature, where it usually refers to the “mixing” of one’s own culture and that of the colonizers: see, for example, B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 118; on hybridity as a metonymy of presence: Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 115.

Bibliography Babb, Genie. “Where the Bodies Are Buried: Cartesian Dispositions in Narrative Theories of Character.” Narrative 10, no. 3 (October 2002): 195–221. Bacchetta, P. Gender in the Hindu Nation RSS Women as Ideologues. New Delhi: Feminist Fine Print for Women Unlimited, 2004.

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Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (second edition). Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Basu, Amrita. Two Faces of Protest Contrasting Modes of Women’s Activism in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Bourdieu, Pierre. Il corpo tra natura e cultura. Milano: F. Angeli, 1987. Damsteegt, Theo. The Present Tense in Modern Hindi Fiction. Groningen, Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 2004. Dubois, Jacques. “Pierre Bourdieu and Literature.” SubStance 93 (2000): 84–102. Gupta, Charu. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Jeffery, Patricia, and Amrita Basu, eds. Appropriating Gender Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. New York: Routledge, 1998. Meisig, Konrad. Erzähltechniken der Nayī Kahānī. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1996. Reddy, Gayatri. “ ‘Men’ Who Would Be Kings: Celibacy, Emasculation, and the Re-Production of Hijras in Contemporary Indian Politics—Gender Identity, Social Stigma, and Political Corruption.” Social Research, Spring 2003. Sarkar, Tanika, and Urvashi Butalia, eds., Kali for Women. Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995. Sarkar, Tanika, and Urvashi Butalia. Women and Right-Wing Movements Indian Experiences. London; New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995. Śrī, Gītāñjalī. Hamārā śahar us baras. New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 1998.

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CHAPTER 6

Dharma Reconsidered: The Inappropriate Poetry of Arun Kolatkar in Sarpa Satra Laetitia Zecchini

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ontemporary Indian English poetry is rooted in multiple cultural and literary filiations, and this inscription often amounts to a reinvention of tradition. It is inspired by the huge oral and folkloric “non-literate sub-continent,” which the poet and critic A. K. Ramanujan refers to,1 by the immediate heritage of Western modernity and of Indian modernism, and by the most classical and sacred Indian texts and myths. Following A. K. Ramanujan, it thus seems that contemporary Indian literature recovers the kind of “reflexivity” that is one of the distinctive features of Indian culture. Texts do not come in historical stages but constantly mirror, alter, comment, or counter each other. Their traditions, ideologies, and social arrangements enter into dialogic interrelations and negotiations. The frontiers are blurred between the written and the oral, between a socalled great pan-Indian tradition or path (“mārga”), said to be carried by Sanskrit, authorized by classical texts, by a Brahmin orthodoxy, and a little tradition (“deśī”), oral, local, plural, and “carried” by the illiterate. “Past and present, what’s pan-Indian and what’s local, what’s shared and what’s unique in regions, communities and individuals, the written and the oral—all are engaged in a dialogue reworking and redefining of relevant others. Texts then are also contexts and pretexts for other texts.”2 The poetry of Arun Kolatkar (1932–2004) is emblematic of this plural inspiration, and of the refusal to give a rigid and monolithic outline or meaning to the past, to identity, to language, and to the sacred. The postcolonial alienation, which is often automatically diagnosed and considered

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to be the distinctive sign of Indian writing in English, is not at the heart of this poetry: it is the relationship to otherness, to diversity, and to complexity, the creative utilization, interweaving, and transformation of values and cultures that define his poems and that can take the form of intertextuality. This article will explore, through a close reading of Kolatkar’s collection, Sarpa Satra (literally “snake sacrifice”), published in 2004,3 with frequent references to Jejuri (1976) and to The Boatride & Other Poems (published posthumously in 2009), the way this poetry conveys new meaning to evolving traditions and values. The long poem Sarpa Satra is precisely an intertextual text that is inspired by the formidable repertoire of a collective memory fashioned by the Mahābhārata (Mbh) corpus. This epic, in India, is never read “for the first time.” Like the Rāmāyan.a, it is indeed an integral part of Indian consciousness and, in a sense, always “already there.”4 These two great epics, which operate like a language in themselves, both pan-Indian and plural, are thus rewritten, translated, and transmuted in countless popular and regional versions and in the many different languages and dialects of India. Additionally, they still provide the mythic, narrative, and symbolic material of popular culture, mass media, and contemporary literature. Sarpa Satra in fact proposes a rereading of the opening myth of the Mbh, which, like a lot of epics, is embedded in a kind of frame narrative. This opening myth is an apocalyptic rite, a snake sacrifice—the sacrifice (yajñya) being the central notion and rite of Vedic religion. Kolatkar’s rereading is both a decisively political and transgressive modern version of the Mbh, but is also inspired by the heterodox bhakti5 and folkloric traditions. These traditions have always reflected, subverted, and contested the sacred texts. They embody, humanize, and domesticate them, by offering translations that are more personal and contextualized, even organic and physiological.6 They also serve as mediums of self-expression and self-assertion, by which subaltern or minority communities appropriate a story or a voice and create a space for themselves. Women grind-mill songs, for example, use the Rāmāyan.a figure of Sita as an idiom and as a symbolic medium to project and articulate their own experience.7 These alternative adaptations finally often propose iconoclastic, irreverent, or carnival-like versions of the standard traditions, which inverse established models and hierarchies. Hence, in many dalit popular histories, antiheroes of the Mbh and the Rāmāyan.a become rebellious heroic figures. The standard Sanskrit Mbh is narrated by Vaishampaya, a Brahmin disciple of Vyasa (the alleged author), from whose lips he first heard the story, and who proceeds to recount it again to the king Janamejaya, a descendant of the protagonists of the epic. This retelling takes place during the snake

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sacrifice, orchestrated by Janamejaya, to obtain the extermination of snakes—one of which had killed his father, Parikshit, grandson of Arjuna and sole survivor of the Pandavas. The Mbh is thus told in flashback and introduced by a meta-textual reflexive story that explains why and how the epic is narrated. Arun Kolatkar’s poem Sarpa Satra is itself composed of three parts: the very brief monologue of the king Janamejaya, the long speech of Jaratkaru, a snake woman and victim of the sacrifice who speaks to her son Aastika and enjoins him to save his people from complete holocaust, and the last short narrative of the ritual purifying bath that brings the sacrifice to a close. The sacrificial rite is also a mise en abyme of the cosmic antagonism that is the central drama of the epic, and that replicates the numerous conflicts and fratricidal struggles of the narrative: between gods and demons (rāks.asa), Kauravas and Pandavas, Ks.atriyas and Brahmins, but also in the Hindu conscience and in the battlefield of the heart itself, between dharma as the divine law and order and adharma referring to chaos, injustice, and disorder. Janamejaya tries to eradicate the snakes (“exterminate an entire species / systematically”), just like Arjuna and Krishna want to precipitate all the animals of the Kandhava forest in a huge furnace—an episode of the Mbh that is narrated in Sarpa Satra: “[T]hey were certainly determined to make sure / that nothing got out / of that conflagration alive” (p. 45), but also like his own father before him with his people and palace burnt “in one grand funeral pyre” (p. 20). These senseless sacrifices all mirror each other and in turn echo the massacres and celebrations of hatred listed in the last lines of the poem (pp. 83–84): Though, sooner or later, these celebrations of hatred too come to an end like everything else, the fire—the fire lit for the purpose— can never be put out. The fire that Aurva got up, for example, to avenge the massacre of the Bhrugus, still burns at the bottom of the sea, where he threw it . . . And the fire that Parashara produced for the destruction of rakshasas

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Laetitia Zecchini still rages, they say, . . . and there, to this day, they say, it continues to consume rakshasas rocks trees

No final full stop ends the poem. There can be no outcome or final solution to this plural story, which will continue to be told, retold, adapted, and to foster new stories, but there can also be no conclusion to the cyclic violence in the world. The circular ending of these litany-like last lines also recalls the long plastic S, which wraps itself around the collection, sinks, and emerges again and again in spite of the remissions of hatred and of history. This S also seems to graphically imitate the falling twirled silhouettes of the snakes that are swallowed up in the furnace “like a squirming Om sign” (p. 70), their bodies deformed and disarticulated by the heat: “Clinging to each other, / they look like a swan, a suicidal swan” (p. 71). The Mbh is actually a narrative full of echoes and ramifications. Kolatkar continuously plays on these repetitions that also exist in the dialogic structure of the epic and in the huge intertextual repertoire that this epic has nurtured. Between the innumerable versions of this story, the so-called original or authorized narrative of Vyasa seems the most elitist since it was told from the point of view of the traditional heroes of the Mbh, high castes, Ks.atriyas and Brahmins. Vyasa is the one who “quietly set out / to put down the whole wretched chronicle / in black and white / and in polished verse / for the eternal shame of posterity” (p. 36). But Kolatkar proposes an alternative version: the heterodox, minor, and subaltern voice of a victim and woman comes forward. The emotional and painful voice of Jaratkaru, which concentrates on the immediate and concrete human consequences of a slaughter disguised in a ceremony, contrasts with the ritual, theoretical, or selfish and mercantile considerations that have presided over the organization of the sacrifice. In the name of a murder that was committed years ago, the idea, born from a desire for revenge, to expurgate the earth of all snakes is represented in a burlesque manner, by Jaratkaru, as a monstrous abstraction: “You’d naturally assume first / that the man was joking. / And after you realize he’s not, / that he’s completely serious / you may look at him closely, perhaps, . . . / Or tell him about your own plan / to cleanse the earth of all ants / because one bit your mum” (p. 28). Jaratkaru thus spells out in a sorrowful litany the names of the victims, her family and people. Her personal and

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personified voice contrasts with the neutralized abstraction of an anonymous ritual in which those who are sacrificed seem interchangeable victims, superfluous specimens (pp. 70–73): They disappeared . . . to plunge into the same fire of revenge that had swallowed Hiranyavaha, Pradyot, Chakra, Purna, Prahas, Paila, Mandalaka, Kaladanta, and countless others before them;. . . Was that Manas you think? I think it was. Manas and his wife. Pingalakshi—was that her name?— and their two little children . . . . Who next? Well, it’s anybody’s guess, but I hope it’s me and not Vasuki. Of all my brothers it’s he who has always meant the most to me; and I just couldn’t bear to see him suffer . . . . You were his favorite nephew, his pet. I think he loved you more than his own children—Kakshak and Chakra. Remember how he used to carry you piggyback and take you for a ride around the world—

If men, women, and children, identities and singularities, specific sufferings and histories are always subsumed or concealed behind the systematic endeavors of totalitarianisms that breed mass murders, Jaratkaru anchors the victims in a distinctive biography. She particularizes and singularizes pain.8 This sacrifice, in the eyes of Kolatkar, is indeed a symbol of other genocides, both past and contemporary, and also a perversion of the dharma, in Hindu terms. What’s more, to the Vedic theoretical sacrifice, which intends to preserve the order of the world, Jaratkaru substitutes the personal

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self-sacrifice for love: “I hope it’s me and not Vasuki.” In a sense, she is the personification of bhakti. Her retelling, in colloquial speech and modern tone, of an Mbh episode has indeed, once again, more to do with the heterodox and folkloric versions of the epic than with the standard classic Vyasa narrative.9 This voice is also extraordinarily expressive, labile, and mobile. It wavers, stops, moves forward then back, and digresses. It never ceases to derail and go off track and never stabilizes. The plasticity of this winding syncopated voice is graphically represented by the zigzagging form of the snakes themselves. Jaratkaru’s speech is constantly traversed by lateral emotive movements of language (interjections, apostrophes, exclamations, asides). It is also characterized by discursive discontinuity and by a kind of dialogism. This dialogism is reflected in the ambivalence of the pronoun “you,” which sometimes seems to designate Aastika the child, and is at times the sign of an interior polyphony. It is as if an oblique deviant voice was constantly interrupting the narrative and orthodox voice, the straight course of meaning. The blurring of the frontiers between the “I” and the “you” also thwarts all kinds of appropriation of the voice, of identity, and of truth. Jaratkaru’s mono-dialogue is thus haunted by uncertainty. When she refers to the burning of the Kandhava forest, Jaratkaru can only ask questions and speculate over the motivations of Arjuna and Krishna, who orchestrated the slaughter: “But why did they do it? Who knows! Just for kicks, maybe. / Maybe just the fact / that they had all these fantastic weapons” (p. 45). Everything is questioned and questionable. There is no such thing as one truth, one version of history, one monolithic identity. And if Jaratkaru wants to bear witness to what she thinks really happened (“but to tell you the truth”), and refuses to be deceived by the polished versions of the sacrifice, it is this faculty that is challenged in Kolatkar’s poetry and in the young woman’s narrative itself: “All these things that are happening / have no doubt affected / my ability to think straight” (p. 67). Nothing, precisely, is ever straight in Kolatkar’s poetry, which celebrates a world that thrives on deformations, digressions, and conversions. If truth, god, and wonder may manifest themselves, then it can only be outside or beyond straight lines and immutable frontiers, rigid frames and systems, absolutes or universals. Arun Kolatkar’s whole work questions the petrified segmentation of the world and of language. The orderliness of reality is flawed. Like the devotional bhakti movement for which “every pigeonhole of caste, ritual, gender, appropriate clothing and custom, stage of life, the whole system of Homo Hierarchicus (“everything in its place”) is the target of the irony,”10 his poetry defies all kinds of contextualization. Ramanujan associates this term

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with the Brahmin vision of the world by which “each jāti or class defines a context, a structure of relevance, a rule of permissible combinations.”11 This contextualized system, exemplified by the division into varn. as and castes, is also associated with the concepts of pollution and purity, hierarchy, and dharma. This last key notion of the Hindu system, which is the closest we have to an Indian equivalent for the word “religion,” must be understood as the natural order or harmony that regulates the universe and as the duty that defines the behavior of each caste. Dharma also rests on the distinctive difference of each element or “part” of the world, which is hierarchically subordinated to a harmonious whole. Yet there seems to be a real inversion of such harmony and dharma in Kolatkar’s work. His poetry constantly questions the immutable hierarchy of reality and the ideal of purity, which Brahmanism expresses by the everpresent threat of the organic world,12 and by a systematic attitude of repulsion toward all kinds of leftovers that are thought to be the main channel for impurity. Yet these leftovers, wastes, remains, and discarded items are the substance of Kolatkar’s poetry. The poet privileges the marginal, the peripheral, and the intractable dimension of reality: everything that seems insignificant, that cannot be reduced or assimilated, that stays outside or in excess, that doesn’t belong, and that transgresses the rules and frontiers of appropriateness. This work gives graphic importance to margins (since the text is always laid out in the corner or at the bottom of the page), and favors marginal or humble perspectives as well by giving voice to a woman and a victim. In Sarpa Satra it is also the young unassuming child, Aastika, who will save his people and make sure that the apocalypse is not complete, just like the last and minute tear is able to redeem the worst genocides in the Marathi poem “The Last Tear,” from the Bhijkī Vahī collection.13 This inversion has other consequences as well. Kolatkar’s poetry doesn’t conform to the orderliness of the world or to the orderliness of language, to its instrumental transparent function. It refuses the camouflage of a standard, official, and hygienist linguistic code. Words, in his poetry, are held responsible for the world, are directly connected to reality, to life and death. In Sarpa Satra, the power of language, for one, is obvious; speech grows in the interludes of the sacrifice. Words and death are interwoven: “Vaishampayana reciting / the Mahabharata / . . . / as snake after snake goes to his doom in the sacrificial fire / and is burnt alive” (p. 55). The performative and ritual Vedic language also does what it says, since the snakes are drawn into the furnace as soon as their names are uttered. Language also relays memory and fuels hatred. Sarpa Satra hence opens on Janamejaya’s desire for revenge, which is triggered by the story he heard: “It was a scheming snake, I’m told / that killed my father” (p. 19). But it can also save,

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regenerate, and recreate the world, since Jaratkaru’s words to her son will ensure that the last vestige of humanity does not go up in smoke. Jaratkaru refuses the position of powerless spectator or even passive compassion. Her pragmatic and efficient speech is exactly the opposite of Vyasa’s purified and neutralized language (p. 36): But what did you expect of an old man who saw it as no part of his business to interfere, let alone try and stop the madness of his grandchildren from getting completely out of hand; who let it run its full course to the inevitable tragic ending; saw them all kill each other off; just stood by as a whole nation destroyed itself and, instead of being ashamed of the whole saga and his own role in it, or trying to forget it all, quietly set out to put down the whole wretched chronicle in black and white and in polished verse to the eternal shame of posterity.

If Kolatkar’s poetry refuses to conform to a hygienist ideal of correctness, it is because purifying reality through a sanitized language means overlooking an intractable reality, and both concealing and perpetrating violence. Jaratkaru’s direct and colloquial language, which privileges the sensitive and physiological experience of a moving, moved, and incarnate conscience, voice, and body contrasts with the kind of “polishing” and dignifying strategies that aim at giving a religious, moral, and political sanction to the holocaust. It also contrasts with the ritualized abstraction (“the fire

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for the purpose”) and ideology (“a mighty blow . . . in the name of justice”) that represses the physical reality of the sacrifice and slaughter (pp. 56–57): A nice yajnya, this. Not a single sacrificial post in sight. No ropes, no knives . . . . no need to carve up the parts . . . and cook them separately; or to roast the victim’s still-bleeding heart on a spit. Oh no. Nothing of the sort. Nothing crude. It’s all sorcery: mantras do it all

Jaratkaru’s speech doesn’t subsume reality under a formula or an abstraction. She never looks from above, so to speak, but gives a close, concrete, and direct ground-level vision of the world. Hence when she describes the burning of the Kandhava forest to her son Aastika, she makes us look inside the inferno, and conjures up the immediate physical consequences of the conflagration on each animal (a gazelle, a dead crab, a bear . . .) and the unbearable cruelty of this extermination. The panic of these animals is translated by a physical action (rush, trample, strip, sprain, burst, fall . . .) that helps to anchor and visualize horror. Animals are literally cut down by the catastrophe, brutally wrenched away from their dwelling place. A peaceful world is suddenly wrecked by chaos, havoc, and bloodshed (p. 46): Trumpeting elephants rushing toward water for safety trample on half-cooked turtles as they crawl out of the boiling lakes. A gazelle trips over a dead crab at the water’s edge and sprains an ankle. The taste of honey still on its tongue, a bear bursts into flames,

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Laetitia Zecchini falls from a tree with a burning branch between its legs to roll in the flaming grass below.

Jaratkaru thus refuses to assuage the insufferable crudity and violence of the ritual or legitimized slaughter (the butchered, “bludgeoned,” and mutilated body in the case of the snake sacrifice, the terrorized agonizing animals in the case of the Kandhava forest) under euphemisms. Yet these euphemisms precisely characterize the Vedic ritual. The Sanskrit scholar Charles Malamoud, for instance, reveals that Brahmin Vedic ritualists insist on the fact that the sacrificial violence is not really a violence, that those who inflict it are not really murderers. The execution is never formulated in a way that would imply the idea of killing.14 The sanitization, contextualization, and orderliness of the world and of language are only a precarious surface under which chaos, violence, and totalitarian impulses thrive. If the sacrifice is the most essential cult of Brahmanism and corresponds to a ritual of purification that must restore and generate cosmic harmony, it has thus become a huge masquerade in Sarpa Satra. Its performance does not restore order but precipitates the world into destruction and inverses common values: “The sickening smell of burning flesh has by now become so pervasive, / so much a part of the air we breathe / that soon we’ll start thinking of fresh air / as something un-Indian, alien / and antinational” (p. 61). The figures of authority and of institution, but also of legality, righteousness, and dharma, like the priests, are the instruments of desecration and terror: “Chief actors in this theatre / of the macabre” and “intellectual superstars of the show.” The ritual ceremony is indeed transformed into a venal and monstrous pantomime, a religious, political, commercial, and popular performance with spectacular settings and entertainments, bright accessories, and lights: “The full blessings of Vedic event managers / complete with song and dance, fun and games, / gambling and chariot races.” Thus the “dirty job of a common assassin, butcher or mass murderer” is sacralized and dignified “with the high-sounding name / of sacrifice.” We actually find the same kind of farcical commodification of the sacred in another collection of the poet, Jejuri, which presents itself like the narrated pilgrimage of a rational and skeptical urban intellectual. The Indian traditional cultural ethos seems to have been uprooted and perverted by outrageous commercialization and greed, and by the carnal and venal desires of local populations. This ethos has also been dismembered as it were, or parcelled out in easily digestible goods made to satisfy predating tourists and their appetite for folklore. The names of Gods and

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legends today ornate shops and stores, and the tourist-pilgrim departs from this derelict, sterile, and decadent holy place, “with a coconut in [his] hand, / a priest’s visiting card in [his] pocket” (p. 43), after having been submitted to the bankable cabaret act and religious masquerade of a “keyless” concert performed by local devotional musicians (“The Blue Horse,” pp. 40–41). In Sarpa Satra, if the world is so deregulated, it is also because the exterminations portrayed in this collection, and notably the burning of the Kandhava forest by Arjuna and Krishna, represent an inversion of what a “perfect sacrifice” would be, a perversion of righteousness and dharma. The Bhagavad-Gītā, an episode of the Mbh narrated just before the central fratricidal battle on the Kurukshetra, and in which Krishna urges Arjuna to fight and conform to his dharma, is supposed, in turn, to illustrate righteousness and true devotion. Conforming to one’s dharma is appropriate only if the act (karman) is done without reference to oneself, without egotism, without desire (nīrahan.kāra), with a total detachment for the fruits of the act. Yet here, in Sarpa Satra, the sacrifice is performed by Janamejaya for revenge and self-interest: “[He] invent[s] a yajnya / —a complete innovation— / called the Snake Sacrifice / just for his convenience” (p. 31). It is performed by the priests for personal gain and greed, “bearing wealth beyond measure . . . bands of Brahmins strip the place of everything” (pp. 79–80), and by Arjuna and Krishna for supremacy, arrogance, and ownership: “they just couldn’t wait / to test their awesome powers . . . / they just wanted / a clear title to the land, / unchallenged / by so much as a tigermoth” (p. 45). Dharma is subverted; dharma in the strict sense of some of Vedic hymns that refer to the sacerdotal duties and rules associated with sacrifice; dharma as the normative divine, human, and cosmological law and order; dharma in its ethical aspect of righteousness. In the Gītā, Krishna defines the man true to his dharma as the one who is stripped of ego, violence, pride, desire, anger, and envy; someone who does not have anything he may call his own. In Sarpa Satra, only the child Aastika seems to embody such a decentered conscience. And Jaratkaru indeed seems to repeat the words of the Gītā itself when she talks about her son as the embodiment of righteousness: “Not clouded by rage, power, ego, pride, or any of the other / common diseases of the eye” (p. 65). Nothing is thus in its place in Kolaktar’s world. The Vedic notion of truth as adequacy, conformity, and propriety (aucitya) is constantly challenged. The snake sacrifice is a parodic reversal of the perfect sacrifice, which should be defined by the concept of .rta: the exact kind of pattern, adjustment, or appropriateness that also represents the cosmic and moral

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order.15 In Vedic traditions what challenges .rta and dharma and generates disorder, nirr. ti, and adharma is not only “the failure in conforming to obligations, but also that one humane or cosmic domain encroaches on the neighbouring domain, that elements, men or kings exceed their limits.”16 Yet this blurring of the frontiers and of petrified hierarchies, this contaminating inappropriateness of the world, is exactly what Kolatkar’s transgressive poetry constantly reveals and thrives on.17 Sarpa Satra indeed exposes the contrast between, on the one hand, the wonderful plurality of the world, the flexible, complex, and changing fabric of the human soul and of nature and, on the other hand, the monolithic discourse of orthodoxies, systems, or ideologies, which try to contain and encompass reality. Jaratkaru, for example, insists on the extraordinary plurality of the Kandhava forest, a kind of miniature cosmos, which has been destroyed by Arjuna and Krishna (pp. 42–43): And when they were done, not one green leaf, not a single blade of grass was left behind. Just miles of ash that kept smoldering for months afterwards. Surging with sap and bursting with gums and resins, that forest had been, God’s own laboratory on earth where life had been allowed to express itself with complete abandon. It contained five thousand different kinds of butterflies alone and a golden squirrel found nowhere else. Some of the trees in that place were, oh, hundreds and hundreds of years, easily; and it contained a wealth of medicinal plants that were not found anywhere else. But nothing was left, not a trace of that great sanctuary so dear to Indra and protected by the gods themselves.

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The world of nature appears to be the true mirror of the sacred, not transcendent or ritualistic but all immanent, impermanent, and unrestrained. Unlike the beauty of creation, which abandons and displays itself freely, the Vedic sacrifice is instrumental: “The fire lit for the purpose.” The brahmanical dharma embodied by Arjuna and Krishna, who want to possess the world (“a clear title to the land”), would stand for a system where everything is in its appropriate place and must conform to a univocal aim or origin. The Kandhava forest, on the other hand, is not confined by a theoretical or speculative purpose, but expresses itself in the exultation of its forms, nuances, singularities, and evolution. A plural, transient, and mobile reality cannot hold in a rigid mould that would subsume the complexity of the world under an abstraction or a generalization and would enclose the sacred in the limits circumscribed by orthodoxy, by moribund or perverted rituals. Aastika’s strength resides precisely in the fact that he is deprived of the different historical or perceptual blinkers, prisms, and conditionings that obscure our way of looking at reality. He is free from all kinds of pregiven representations. His vision is total and inclusive, also naïve in the etymological meaning of the word: like someone who is new to the world (p. 65): You’re too young —true. Still wet behind the ears, some may say. But that actually may be your greatest strength. It means your eyesight is good, your vision clear. Not spoilt by reading too many books yet, or ruined by the smoke of too many sacrifices, Or clouded by rage, power, ego, pride or any of the other common diseases of the eye . . . . It means you do not view the world through the dark prism of a wound infected by the dirty bandage of history.

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That is also why the child embodies a new kind of faith. Doesn’t Aastika, in Sanskrit, mean “devout,” “believing,” or religious? Holiness is a way of looking at the world, not to analyze, to capture or to harness, but to embrace the world in its interrelatedness, in its multiplicity, and also in the extraordinary immediacy of a mobile reality that is not idealized, crossed over, or taken as a substitute for another world beyond appearances. Hence, if nothing is in its place in Kolatkar’s poetic world, if the sacred, the divine, and the true faith seem to have deserted the world, it is because they are not to be found where they are expected. “The miracle of life itself becomes a divine thing. The tumbled bricks and broken slabs are not what make the spot holy, but wherever a bitch gives birth is probably a holy place.”18 Kolatkar’s poetry transfigures our surrounding reality. It reveals the extraordinary and the miraculous from the commonplace. The sacred resides in the most humble, peripheral, and insignificant spaces, in what many may consider too familiar or irreverent. Therefore, “what is god / and what is stone / the dividing line / if it exists / is very thin / at jejuri / and every other stone / is god or his cousin” (Jejuri, “A Scratch”, p. 22). These labile frontiers between immanence and transcendence, between gods and men, and between the sacred and the profane are in fact characteristic of popular devotion and faith that are representative of a “horizontal cosmology.” The popular deity belongs to the immediate present: “[It is] directly accessible to his followers, exists on earth “here and now,” and is not preponderantly located in a distant Paurāņic heaven.”19 Kolatkar’s poetry thus seems to inscribe itself in such a popular devotional perspective. His poems portray a world where the divine never manifests itself in allotted spaces with barbed wires or in the theoretical and complex regulations of rituals. Gods are part of pragmatic and physical everyday life. They naturally belong where men and women work, live, interact, sleep, or cook, and in Kolatkar’s poetry, they are addressed with the same casual familiarity that we find in a lot of bhakti poetry.20 This conversational tone and slangy idiom is in turn the one Kolatkar adopted to translate some of the bhakti poets like Tukaram and Janabai: “God my darling / do me a favor and kill my mother-in-law / I will feel lonely when she is gone / but you will be a good god won’t you / and kill my father-inlaw / . . . / let them drop dead says jani / then we will be left alone / just you and me” (from The Boatride, “God My Darling,” p. 161). In Jejuri the sacred is revealed in the most unconventional places as well. The plasticity of the written word, for one, sometimes seems to subvert an orderly, arithmetic, and hierarchical segmentation of the world, where everything would be in its adequate and appropriate place. In one sequence of the collection, the irregular layout of the verse on the page thus ironically

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contradicts the signified of the text, which refers to the compact and orderly grid of the Hindu spatial and social and religious organization (p. 43): You leave the little temple town with its sixty-three priests inside their sixty-three houses huddled at the foot of the hill with its three hundred pillars, five hundred steps and eighteen arches.

This accordion writing in turn anticipates the ecstatic choreography of the cocks and hens in the following poem: “A kind of harvest dance. / The craziest you’ve ever seen” (p. 44). The letters “up & down” literally dance on the page to imitate the volatiles, breaking free from all barriers and rational shackles.

Epiphanies bloom from the impermanent, immanent, and chaotic present. The sacred resides in such impermanence and not in the “gold gods in tidy rows” (italics mine) “beyond the strips / of stock exchange quotations,” also portrayed in one sequence of Jejuri (“The Cupboard,” p. 37). And it is in this irresistible movement and disturbing anarchy, in the mingling and interlacing of a world that is literally unhinged and constantly celebrated by Kolatkar’s poetry, that lies creativity and beauty. A poem from The Boatride, “Pictures from a Marathi Alphabet Chart,” particularly expresses the illusion of wanting to regulate and systematize reality and language. The poem, which was originally written in Marathi and then transcreated into English by the poet, revolves around an alphabetical list of words (and the corresponding illustrations of these words on the chart) that all start by a letter of the alphabet. The surrealist logic of the five first stanzas juxtaposes these words without any semantic, grammatical, or syntactic connection. “Pineapple. Mother. Pants. Lemon. / Mortar. Sugarcane. Ram” (p. 104). The full stops between each word indicate the extreme fixity of this dharmic

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artificial organization in which things and realities each belong to their special niche and petrified refuge, tidy delineated space, and identity. Nothing connects and nothing relates. Nothing moves and nothing evolves. Sameness dissolves into sameness and adequacy. All five stanzas end by the assertion of a timeless and unchanging hierarchy: “Each ensconced in its own separate square”; “they all know exactly where they belong”; “each one of them seems to have found / its own special niche, a sinecure”; “their appointment is for life”; “no trouble in this peaceable kingdom.”21 Yet the last three stanzas in the poem ironically subvert such orderliness and appropriateness. This compact system is in fact under the permanent and obsessive threat of contaminating impurity. The maintenance of the hierarchy is extremely precarious and conditioned, since it is artificially constructed and does not correspond to a natural order: the mother will not pound the baby with a pestle, the Brahmin will not fry the duck in garlic (a highly polluting act, since both meat and garlic are considered impure and are forbidden to orthodox Brahmins) only if and as long as. “If the ostrich won’t eat the child’s frock, / the archer won’t shoot an arrow in Ganapati’s stomach. / And as long as the ram resists the impulse, / of butting him from behind / what possible reason / could the Man-Touching-his-Toes have / to smash the cup / on the tombstone?” (p. 105). This poem thus seems to parody the hierarchy and dharma on which the Hindu system is based. For if everything is strictly distinct and separate from everything else, the system also rests on interdependence. When the balance of one element is slightly altered, then the whole system falls apart like a house of cards, and this collapse is brought about and celebrated by Kolatkar’s poetry. The Sarpa Satra collection finally reveals that there is no such thing as one intangible version, reading, or vision of memory, history, and religion, no such thing as an intangible, ahistorical, and unadulterated truth that could be restored, no abstraction or discourse that could ever express or encompass the irreducible complexity of the world. This poetic celebration of diversity, this refusal of a hierarchical segmentation of the world and of a monolithic vision of history or of the sacred, is acutely relevant today because it is linked to a specific context: the aggressive nationalist Hinduization of the cultural and political landscape in India. Sarpa Satra thus undeniably echoes the communalist tensions that have torn the Indian subcontinent apart, either during the Babri Masjid riots in 1992 or the Gujarat pogroms in 2002. Hindu nationalism tries to restore an Indian or Hindu essence, by Hinduizing, “cleansing,” or purifying Indian identity, but also language, of all its heterodox and socalled foreign and minor elements (predominantly Muslim, but also Christian, British, etc.) that have been brought by history,22 as if there was

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such a thing as an innate “Indianhood” entrenched in the “natural” frontiers of Bharat. If the so-called adulteration of national identity is held responsible for the problems of India; nationalist India must come back to itself. In so doing it invents new frontiers and fabricates imaginary communities, such as the politically instrumental antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. Homogenizing the nation enables to unite against the ideological “Other” (which is also a construct, viewed as homogenous), and to conceal internal dissensions. And it is the Muslim, which the Sarpa Satra snake victims could effectively represent, who is designated as the common scapegoat—the Muslim menace being backed by the dread of Pakistan, the bitter memory of Muslim invasions, of Mughal domination, and of the atrocities that accompanied the Partition (pp. 27–29): What would your reaction be if someone were to come up to you and say, My father died of snakebite. When? Oh, I was too young then. I don’t even remember, but I’m going to avenge his death by killing every single snake that lives; yes, by wiping out the whole species from the face of the earth . . . . And, if the person voicing out such sentiments should happen to be the king of a sizeable country, it should be cause for concern indeed for the future of the country in question

This rereading of the opening myth of the Mbh is thus acutely contemporary. Arun Kolatkar’s poetry teaches us to challenge the historic, memorial, ideological, or religious grids that function like univocal and essentialist interpretations of the world: “The dark prism of a wound / infected by the dirty bandage of history.” His poetry blurs the radical frontiers between

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what is pure and impure; sacred and profane; self and other; between memories, traditions, and truths. His work, which celebrates complexity and ambivalence and shows the danger of a ritualized faith, language, or system that would absolve or isolate from the world, also challenges the purification endeavors that breed terror and that are here represented by the purifying rite of the sacrifice, with its genocidal tendencies. Victims and their executioners are always interchangeable. There can be no such a thing as an exclusive appropriation of “victimhood” or of suffering.23 Kolatkar’s work shows that one cannot excise history, nor otherness and foreignness. One cannot make a tabula rasa of the past, either literally by demolishing mosques, for example, or culturally and linguistically, since there is no such thing as a pure or a sullied language and culture. One cannot, of course, use a petrified and exclusive interpretation of history or religion to legitimize the hatreds of today. Kolatkar’s poetry forges foreignness and refuses uniformity, celebrates a living and poetic space shared by all languages and dialects, ecological spaces and livelihoods, tribes and beliefs, knowledge and cultures. The hauntingly beautiful passage from the burning of the Khandava forest episode reveals that his poetry is one of resistance; resistance to the terrifying reduction of the world’s heterogeneity, to the contemporary destruction of its countless particularities and singularities (p. 44): It was all gone, everything. Not just the trees, birds, insects and animals (herds upon herds of elephants, gazelles, antelopes), but people, Aastika, people as well. Simple folk, children of the forest who had lived there happily for generations, since time began. They’ve gone without a trace. With their language that sounded like the burbling of a brook, their songs that sounded like the twittering of birds, and the secrets of their shamans who could cure any sickness

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by casting spells with their special flutes made from the hollow wingbones of red-crested cranes.

Notes 1. “In a largely non-literate culture such as India, everyone . . . has inside him or her a non-literate sub-continent,” A. K. Ramanujan, “Tell It to the Walls: On Folktales in Indian Culture,” in V. Dharwadker, ed., The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, New York and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 463. 2. A. K. Ramanujan “Who Needs Folklore?” in The Collected Essays, p. 535. 3. Sarpa Satra is actually a transcreation from Marathi to English of one of the long poems of his Marathi Bhijkī Vahī (literally “sodden notebook”) collection, also published in 2004. The book revolves around the archetypal motif of the weeping woman. The poems give voice to the three biblical Marys, to Isis after the death of Osiris, to Kannagi, the heroine of a classic Tamil epic grieving the death of her husband, to Nadedja, Ossim Mandelstam’s wife, to Laïla grieving for Majnun, to Kim, the little Vietnamese girl fleeing her village after a napalm attack, et cetera. 4. A. K. Ramanujan, “Three Hundred Rāmāyan.as: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” in The Collected Essays, p. 158. 5. North India Bhakti is a powerful movement of popular devotion, which developed from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Bhakti poets included women and low castes, untouchables, and dissident Brahmins. They expressed themselves in the regional dialects, and not in Sanskrit, in an oral, popular, and sometimes rough language. Their poetry has been interpreted as subaltern and subversive, since it also represented a compelling movement of resistance against Brahmin orthodoxy. 6. “The gods of mythology do not sweat, smell or sneeze, and the goddesses do not menstruate. But in folklore they do. They are embodied,” A. K. Ramanujan, “When Mirrors are Windows,” in The Collected Essays, p. 31. 7. See Guy Poitevin’s books, for instance The Voice and the Will, Subaltern Agency: Forms and Motives, Delhi: Manohar, CSH, 2002. 8. That’s why Jaratkaru’s voice is compassionate, if we follow the distinction made by Hannah Arendt between pity and compassion. If compassion is a feeling that is directed at each and every particular individual and not at an entity or a “mass,” the object of pity is not a specific suffering but an aggregate or a generality. Pity is linked to Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, which makes plural human beings disappear or fade away under the abstract entity of “Humankind.” 9. “The standard Rāmāyan. as celebrate the birth of their heir and hero, Rāma. But Telugu women’s songs focus on the way his mother suffered labor pangs before the hero was born. The sufferings of his wife, Sītā, are also

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highlighted,” A. K. Ramanujan, “Tell It to the Walls,” The Collected Essays, p. 135. A. K. Ramanujan,“Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?” The Collected Essays, p. 48. Ibid., p. 47. See Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, Essai sur le système des castes, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, and Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree, A Study of Indian Culture and Society, Delhi: OUP, 2006 [1971]. “When all this filth flows out / Out of your eyes / Then only a pure drop of tear / Just one / Will remain in the end / Save it in the eye / It will be the useful one / To create afresh / The Universe / O / Cosmic Mother,” trans. Dilip Chitre in New Quest, 157–158, July–December 2004, pp. 9–10. Charles Malamoud, Féminité de la parole, Etudes sur l’Inde ancienne, Paris: Albin Michel, 2005. See Charles Malamoud, Cuire le monde, rite et pensée dans l’Inde ancienne, Paris: La Découverte, 1989. Ibid., p. 73. See Laetitia Zecchini, “Moving Lines / The Celebration of Impropriety and the Renewal of the World in Arun Kolatkar’s Poetry,” in Burning Books: Addressing Fundamentalism in Literature and Popular Culture (working title), New York: AMS, forthcoming. In the interview of Gowri Ramnarayan with Arun Kolatkar, “No Easy Answers,” The Hindu Literary Review, Sunday, September 05, 2004. Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer, King of Hunters, Warriors, and Shepherds, Essays on Kandhoba. Ed., Ann Feldhaus, Aditya Malik, and Heidrun Bruckner, New Delhi: Manohar, 1997, p. 87. See, for examples, the poems from Kolatkar’s Marathi collection Chirimiri (literally “small bribe”), some of which have been reproduced in English in The Boatride & Other Poems: “Ambu Invites Vithoba for a Round of Phugadi,” or “A Prostitute on a Pilgrimage to Pandharpur,” “The Left Half,” et cetera. The “Peacable Kingdom” is actually a translation for the word adhalapad in the Marathi version. This term refers to “the seat, situation or resting-place that is fixed, permanent immovable, beyond all change.” “In usage that goes back continuously to the first major Marathi poet, Jnanesvar, in the late thirteenth century, adhalapad refers to the exceptional fixity of things like the polestar, and to find one’s adhalapad is to attain moksha, final release from birth and rebirth and the necessity of action,” Vinay Dharwadker, in “Twenty-Nine Modern Indian Poems,” TriQuarterly, 77, Winter 1989–90, pp. 217–218. Hindu nationalism is a huge conglomeration of different organizations. The three most important are the RSS, or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (the ideological pole); the VHP, or Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the militant branch); and the BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party (the political pole). Hindu nationalists consider that India’s vitality rests on its capacity to come back to itself (which is not characterized by the integration to a nation-state, but by belonging to a

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homogenous and millennial civilization, which has been sullied and distorted by successive foreign invasions). It also means restoring a cultural essence, notably through a kind of linguistic purity, by retracing one’s roots to the prestigious ancestor that is Sanskrit: a Vedic language that also corresponds to what the nationalists identify as the “Golden Age” (Aryan)—thus pre-Muslim, pre-British—of India. This communalist rereading of history fostered outbreaks of insufferable violence, for example during the Bombay riots of 1992–1993, and in Gujarat in 2002, where thousands of Muslims were killed. See, for example, Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism, Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000, and Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Delhi: Penguin India, 1996. 23. That is what the Bhijkī Vahī collection reveals, especially the ultimate poem, “The Last Tear”: “Concentration camps of here mass-graves corpse-crops gas chambers / Massacres of here Sarpasatras final solutions ethnic cleansing riots / Genocides / De-kshatriyaizing the Earth twenty-one times or De-Judaizing, De-kaananizing, De-Huttuizing, De-Tuttsiing, / De-Buddhaizing, DeIdolatorizing / De-Incaizing, De-Aztecizing, De-Red / Indianizing, De-Hinduizi ng, De-Muslimizing it . . . . ”

Bibliography Dharwadker, Vinay. “Twenty-Nine Modern Indian Poems,” TriQuarterly, no. 77, Winter 1989–1990, pp. 119–228. Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus, Essai sur le système des castes, Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Jaffrelot, Christophe. The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Delhi: Penguin India, 1996. Kolatkar, Arun. Jejuri, New York: New York Review Books, 2005 [1974]. ———. Bhijkī Vahī, Mumbai: Pras Prakashan, 1993. ———. Kala Ghoda Poems, Mumbai: Pras Prakashan, 2004. ———. Sarpa Satra, Mumbai: Pras Prakashan, 2004. ———. The Boatride & Other Poems, Mumbai: Pras Prakashan, 2009. ———. “No Easy Answers,” The Hindu Literary Review, Sunday, September 5, 2004. Arun Kolatkar’s interview with Gowri Ramnarayan can be retrieved at http://www .hindu.com/lr/2004/09/05/stories/2004090500110100.htm. Lannoy, Richard. The Speaking Tree, A Study of Indian Culture and Society, Delhi: OUP, 2006 [1971]. Malamoud, Charles. Féminité de la parole, Etudes sur l’Inde ancienne, Paris: Albin Michel, 2005. Malamoud, Charles. Cuire le monde, rite et pensée dans l’Inde ancienne, Paris: La Découverte, 1989. New Quest, 157–158. “Poems by Arun Kolatkar,” trans. Dilip Chitre, July–December 2004, pp. 7–10.

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Poitevin, Guy. The Voice and the Will, Subaltern Agency: Forms and Motives, Delhi: Manohar, 2002. Rai, Alok. Hindi Nationalism, Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000. Ramanujan, A. K. The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, ed. V. Dharwadker, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Sontheimer, Gunther-Dietz. King of Hunters, Warriors, and Shepherds, Essays on Kandhoba, ed., Ann Feldhaus, Aditya Malik, and Heidrun Bruckner, New Delhi: Manohar, 1997. Zecchini, Laetitia. “Moving Lines / The Celebration of Impropriety and the Renewal of the World in Arun Kolatkar’s Poetry.” Burning Books: Addressing Fundamentalism in Literature and Popular Culture (working title). Ed. Catherine Miquel, New York: AMS, forthcoming.

CHAPTER 7

From Otherland to the Divine Land: Exile, Mysticism, and Secularism in K. B. Vaid’s Dard la- davaAnne Castaing

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n Javāb nahīm. (“No answer”), a collection of critical essays published in 2002, the Hindi novelist Krishna Baldev Vaid questions the relationship between literature, the individual, and its social, historical, and cultural context. This collection answers almost explicitly to the virulent attack of the Indian critic Jaidev, who, in his essay A Culture of Pastiche (published in 1993) literally denounces literature, which is for him uncommitted to Indian social reality. He also scorns it as supplanted by Western esthetical values and considers K. B. Vaid, Nirmal Verma, and Mridula Garg its eulogistic minstrels. Vaid retorts that any superficial approach prevents from measuring his work’s real referential roots, and condemns it to be a chain of clichés that are finally hardly able to talk about the “reality” expounded by Jaidev. This idea is finely discussed by Verma in his critical essays, as in Bhārat aur Yurop (“India and Europe”): literature, nonsubservient to the question of “use” and “function,” cannot be cut from reality, from the world, insofar as it conveys the expression of a self, arising from an indigenous collective imagination, its images, its myths, and its objects; any abrupt break between tradition and modernity not being viable in the Indian context. The purpose of this essay is first to put into light the way Vaid’s most unreferential narratives are close to Beckettian poetics and yet draw their metaphysical discourse from indigenous sources. Subsequently, from this metaphysical and mystical discourse, I will investigate the way the author elaborates a new form of “faith,” nonsubmissive to the cleavages often conveyed by the orthodox religious discourses. What the author calls “mystical

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agnosticism” is not only a matter of reappropriation of an indigenous discourse but also a matter of a hybridization of sources. The Novel Dard lā davā (“Pain with no cure,” 1975), a long soliloquy of a hunchbacked narrator, suffering from indescribable and unlocatable pains (dard ), lost on a desolate road (bayāban sar.ak) on which he can only groan (karāhna), is undoubtedly an extreme novel. A world characterized by its vacuity, a “nothing at all” (kuch bhī nahīm.), occupied by no inhabitant or, even worse, by supposed, evoked, fantasized, and highly hypothetical residents, is progressively filled up with a vacuous discourse, with a formulated and reformulated “nothing,” where each assertion, each word, and each assumption is immediately submitted to doubt or refutation. Thus, the narrative itself stands on nothing no more: the narrator’s as well as the reader’s perpetual expectations of something certain, fixed, existing (character, animal, voice, space, occurrence) finds no resolution, no outlet; just as the novel is exhausted, terminated because it has to be, but in no case completed. The strangeness and painfulness of this novel indeed result from the absence of any landmark, which the narrator makes its leitmotiv: recurrence of interrogative structures, expression of uncertainty and ignorance (“I don’t know,” nahīm. mālūm, as the narrator incessantly repeats), perpetual refutations (“no, this is wrong,” nahīm., yah galat hai), or alternatives (“or,” yā), and absence of any action. In about one hundred pages structured in 38 paragraphs, the novel elaborates the long and absurd monologue of a completely passive character, “standing like a common unfinished tree (ām adhūre per.) alongside a desolate road,” then on the side of an “agitated lake” (tālāb kītilmilāhat.), and finally in the surroundings of an undefinable “limit” (intahā), beyond which disappears the difference between “everything” (sab-kuch) and “nothing” (kuchnahīm.), beyond which nothing can be seen (nazar) or felt (mahsūs), where a possible ending (sambhāvit samāpti) can be expected. In this apparent desert, apart from recurrent and indescribable pains (dard ), nothing is certain, nothing is “assertable” any more: neither is the presence or the existence of “others” (dūsre) or even of “someone else” (aur koī) in this world, nor the existence of the narrator himself, who is unable to see or even identify himself. However, at the thirty-second paragraph, another voice breaks in the novel, which calls itself “Hamdard,” “The one who shares the pain,” “the empathetic,” pretending to have come to inquire after the narrator’s “condition” (hāl) and to allow him to “free himself ” (mukt ho jānā). But the

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presence of this “other” implies the existence of a third party, the “sender” (bhejne vālā), whom the Hamdard cannot yet identify. Unable to answer the narrator’s questions, the Hamdard suddenly disappears, leaving him in a deep silence (maun), which, again, is only supposed (agar yah maun ho to). At the end of the novel, lonely again, facing doubt and anguish again, the narrator, who has reached what he supposed to be his last moments, seems to lose his faith in language as well: the words henceforth lie, all discourses are henceforth wrong, especially his, uncontrollable, unable to describe his condition, all his expression being composed of a large “verbal void” (śabdom. kā śūnyakaks.): I have the feeling that words are not my enemies that word is not my enemy that word itself is not my real enemy that what I will say that whatever I will say that what I can say that whatever I can say that I cannot say anything at all, no, this is wrong, this is completely wrong, no, this is also wrong, no . . . (the end).1

From Physical Exile to Mystical Wandering At first sight, this minimalist novel, focused on disorientation that reaches the narrative discourse itself, falls within the scope of a “Beckettian” writing, which the critic Jaidev does not fail to underline, describing Vaid’s novel as a “pastiche.”2 Yes, Vaid and Beckett are indeed comparable in many respects; Vaid has besides translated Beckett into Hindi and remains an enthusiastic reader of his work.3 Thus, the first lines of Dard lā davā display the links existing between both novelists: I am standing like a common unfinished tree alongside a desolate road. I do not know where it begins and where it ends. Nor do I want to know. I do not know why or since when I have been standing here. Nor do I want to know. I do not know whether I am standing by choice or by compulsion. I want to know. I know that before I came to stand alongside this road I had been standing alongside another road and before that, beside yet another road, and before that . . .4

Besides, this is the way Beckett’s novel Molloy starts: I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there. Perhaps in some kind of ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I’d never have got there alone. There’s this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work

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a little now, a little like I used to, except that I don’t know how to work anymore. That doesn’t matter apparently. What I’d like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, finish dying. [. . .] I do not work for money. For what then? I do not know. Frankly, I do not know much.

Similarly to Beckett, Vaid stages here the absurdity of the narrator’s reaction, faced with an extreme and still absurd situation, and characterized by alienation (the circle in Molloy, the road in Dard lā davā). The focus is on his inability to find a solution through his acts as through his discourse. In Dard lā davā, the juxtaposition of a string of incompatible and hypothetical elements draws an incoherent or highly improbable situation. Indeed, the “absurd” characterizes in the first place the situation itself, which immediately underlines the discrepancy between the hunchbacked narrator’s position and his passivity: thrown into an unknown world, he tries in no case to extirpate himself. Besides, this world itself is absurd: a desolate road, a tree, a lake, and finally an uncharacterized “limit,” “border.” But even more absurd is the way the narrator imagines it: this world would be “visited by tourists,” as well as “inhabited by natives,” most probably hunchbacked in the image of the narrator, or even blind because unaware of the narrator’s presence. This obsessive “Other,” which inhabits the narrator’s discourse, promptly appears to be also absurd, even more improbable when he/she is to be defined or named: hunchbacked, blind, tourist, but also “savior” (karīm), “murderer” (qātil ), “leprous” (kor.hī), “giant” (qaddāvar), or “sane and cooked woman” (tandrust tandūrī aurat). The meaning brought out by these series of uncontrollable and harrowing aberrations can refer to an experience of alienation also shared by both Beckett and Vaid. Indeed, just as Beckett, Vaid is “exiled,” as he comments in both his essays and interviews:5 in August 1947, in army trucks he left Western Punjab, where he could not ever come back again; consequently, his writing speaks about this wandering, which is so often discussed with regard to Beckett;6 above all, his writing speaks about rootlessness and unrootability, of “pain with no cure.” Thus, just as Beckett’s characters, excluded and limping like Pozzo, Lucky, Clov, or Molloy, Vaid’s characters are wandering, incessantly deprived of landmarks, incessantly homesick, incessantly banished out from themselves, of their individual homeland, in an inner exile. According to Philippe Vialas, this is besides what the constant presence of death, night, and ending proceeds from in Beckett’s work, referring in this regard to an impossible mourning, to an incapability to settle anywhere, to the rejection of permanence. Thus, dislocation becomes a process, just like in Vaid’s novel, where “here” is undeterminable, inhospitable, uninhabitable, where elsewhere is the

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same, where the road is omnipresent but the movement impossible, where anguish is permanent. Exile, this evanescent and inextinguishable “pain” (dard ) that the author evokes in his critical essays (Javāb nahīm., 2002, and Śikast kī āvāz, 2006) as well as in his interviews, is furthermore intensified by an even more concrete political border, which exacerbates his anguish: being impassable, incessantly renegotiable, it materializes the abrupt fracture between, on the one hand, the world and the ground of today, and on the other hand, the world and the ground of yesterday; it reveals the fragility of identity, of belonging, of definition, of its existence itself. Exile typifies this diffuse and constantly reactivated feeling of “nonbelonging” that the author describes,7 facing an undividable immensity, as henceforth condemned to a double sentence: fragmentation, on the one side, when one is standing neither there nor here yet (“nothing is fixing them there anymore and nothing is fixing them here yet,” writes Julia Kristeva regarding the “foreigners”8); strangeness, this feeling of belonging to an indefinable “here.” If the “exilic feeling,” as named by Vaid,9 is exacerbated by an impossible “homecoming” for mainly political reasons, it is above all reactivated when the author immigrates to the United States, and comes back to India 17 years later. Then, a feeling is discovered, which cannot be exclusively associated with territorial expatriation but is above all linked to cultural, and notably linguistic, rupture, which sets up the feeling of strangeness, of being a stranger, an “outsider” according to the author’s words:10 he does not belong to this land, but he can understand this new language, this new culture, these new habits. Thus, this strangeness gives birth to a wider and insurmountable strangeness: stranger in this land where he has been sent (where he sent himself ), he does not belong to any land anymore, as haunted by a feeling of “not belonging,” by a feeling of rootlessness associated with a perpetual quest for roots.11 So, just as Beckett, Vaid is an exiled, and his writing expresses rootlessness and unrootability, “pain with no cure.” Through his “poetics of wandering” notably defined by the inability to root, to fix anything, within space, time, or even language (language, words, have no more any defined meaning), Vaid adopts Beckettian language that above all tends to crystallize an evanescent anguish. Nevertheless, in this novel more than anywhere else, Vaid defines a context that is not Beckett’s anymore, where exile, pain, language, and strangeness find other underground echoes, other meanings. Starting with the title where one can notice the Arabic connotations with the particle lā, not so common in standard Hindi, the novel appropriates another form of wandering, leads to another path: the very one followed by the dervish, the qalandar, the

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vagrant Sufi ascetic progressing on the way of his union with the divine spirit, abundantly described by Persian poetry, one of whose great themes, writes Denis Matringe, is “the pain of exile experienced by the soul separated from its divine homeland.”12 As a matter of fact, besides prominent Arabic and Persian terms, the novel exploits at a large scale some of the “classical” images used in the poetical expression of this mystical way: the narrator calls himself sufiyānā, engaged on a road, a path; he defines the place where he stands as a muqam, the term that describes the different stages along the Sufi path; he belongs to a chain, (silsilā), the term that also refers, in Sufi terminology, to the spiritual genealogy of master-disciple links; he talks about his “condition” by repeating the term hāl, which authorizes it to be compared with the states (hāl, pl. ahwāl) of the Sufi spiritual life as formulated by the mystic Sarrādj (923–988)—attention, proximity, love, fear, hope, longing, intimacy, peace, contemplation, and certainty, which he defines as “what settles in the hearts and where the hearts settle as invocation in complete peace.”13 But even more explicit is the emphasis given, starting with the title, to the pain (dard, Persian term), unique certainty for the narrator who makes it his leitmotiv: dard ho rahā hai kahām. kahām. dard ho rahā hai (“Do you feel pain, where do you feel pain?”), asks the only other and brief voice in the novel, who by the way calls himself Hamdard, the one who shares the pain. Indeed, for the Sufis, “pain” constitutes one of the main stages on the way to perfection, and therefore to God, as described by the mystical poets Hallāj (858–922) and Farid al-Dīn ‘Attār (1142–1221),14 as well as in South Asia, with the poet “Mir Dard” (1721–1785), who adopted “pain” itself in his nom de plume. Moreover, the loneliness of the Sufi aspirant is vividly evoked in the novel by the narrator’s long soliloquy, focused on two objects: “pain” on the one side, and on the other side, “Other” (aur koī) or “others” (dūsre). This “Other,” when named, is often called the God of Islam, using the Arabic term (allāh), the Persian term (khudā), or with one of the “divine names” (khāliq, “the Creator,” mālik, “the Master”). He might as well be a “he” (vah) or a “you,” in the dialogue with the Hamdard (tum kaun ho? “Who are you?”), figure of God intensively convoked and whose “otherness” reminds Rumi’s verse: “I am wind and you are fire.”15 Nevertheless, even more characteristically, God can also allude to the “I” in the formula repeatedly claimed by the narrator: “maim. allāh hūm.,” “maim. khudā hūm.” (I am God), which reminds the heretic formula professed by the mystic Al-Hallāj that condemned him to death penalty: anāal-Haq, “I am the absolute truth,” that is to say, God.16 The accumulation of references explicates the sources of this a priori absurd soliloquy. If the Beckettian pastiche is no longer to be postulated, certain elements nevertheless reveal the nonexclusive character of these sources, starting with this permanent oscillation between commonplaces of

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the Beckettian discourse and Sufi poetry. Indeed, a close reading puts into light the entanglement of sources and discourses, which jointly echo this poetics of exile. Beckett to Ma¯ya¯: The Absurd and the Great Illusion As a matter of fact, if the “road” (sar. ak) allows the novel to be read as a palimpsest of Sufi literature, as representing a common metaphor of the ascetic path, this absurd situation implies other possible interpretations, and can refer to other traditions, which do not contradict themselves but, on the opposite, complement each other. Indeed, the accumulation of “absurdities” and “aberrations” questions in the first place the “significance” and then the coherence of the discourse elaborated in the novel. If in the novel’s first pages, where a road starting and ending nowhere is presented, where no direction can be defined, the coherence of space is thus questioned, time is also made incoherent, irrelevant, and relative. The novel is entirely elaborated in the present tense, “oblivion” and “indetermination” thus characterizing the past (associated to “the world of ordinary tears,” ām ām.suom. kī duniyā), whereas “hypothesis” and “doubt,” the future. Moreover, any definition of “time” seems impossible (“I wonder what is the time now,” the narrator straightaway declares), or even absurd: day and night, morning and evening, are now indistinct, are lasting “years” (sālom. se, p. 161), or “since always” (hameśā se, p. 161); the narrator is standing there “from now, which means from a century” (ab se, matlab ek sadī se, p. 145). This inability to define time is furthermore associated with an inability to distinguish what is general, ordinary, and usual from what is particular and immediate, “always” from “now,” and “duration” from “frequency.” From the first pages, both modes of the present tense are confusing, which is made particularly obvious when it concerns the narrator’s leitmotiv, “I look/am looking straight ahead” (maim. sāmne dekhtā hūm./dekh rahā hūm.). The change from general present (“I look”) to progressive present (“I am looking”) for exactly the same predicate does not imply the occurrence of an event or an action; it implies a doubt concerning the value of events or actions in the novel, when “immediate” and “usual” are similarly used. The duration of the narration itself seems to be the only certainty of time. But the absurdity of time is above all crystallized in the feeling that the novel “does not move forward,” or even more “goes round in circles.” The novel indeed seems to dramatize a circular and inexorable alienation, in fact far more disconcerting than the referential “void,” from where the feeling of discomfort brought about by the novel originates. This acknowledgment explains the novel’s temporal vagueness: it is possible that the novel has been “going round” for an indefinite period, the

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narrator describing his existence as “circular” (cakkar, p. 160), his groans as “incessant” (anavarat, p.143). Indeed, from the first lines, the constant repetitions (of words but above all of full propositions or sentences) condemn the narrative to stagnate. So do the narrator’s incessant comments concerning his situation, his actions, but also his speech itself, constantly questioned, denied, or refuted. More than a negation of time, the novel thus elaborates its questioning, underlining its absurdity as well as its irrevocable presence: “I am still gripped by time” (mujhpar samay kā sāmrājya abhī tak hai, p. 161), thus declares the narrator. The movement is certainly not linear but circular, and the resolution as planned by the narrator is to escape from this infernal spiral. But the end of the novel does not lead to such resolution, to such liberation. On the contrary, it carries on formulating repetition, negation, and refutation. The novel does not allow the representation of liberation but the representation of anguish and alienation by drawing a character lost in an intermediate world and stuck between the “material” world and the spiritual world, which becomes the object of his painful quest. In this universe, the world, discharged from its referential objects, from its adornments, can be perceived in the symbolic form of its essence according to Vedantic conception: Samsāra, the infinite cycle of transmigration of souls, whose usual metaphor is the wheel,17 to this same cakrā the narrator compares his existence. The constant renewal figured in the novel refers to the cycle of rebirths conditioned by Karman as the result of one’s actions, which establish, according to their quality, the destiny of man in this life as well as in the next one.18 Here stands the penitence (prāyścit) that the narrator evokes: to suffer means to pay for his past actions, considered as “evil” when the cause is not visible in this world and in this life. Frustration is then triple: frustration when the location of the sin (pāp) is unknown or is forgotten (“I don’t clearly remember,” mujhe sāf yād nahīm., the narrator says); frustration of not being doubly liberated: “free,” on the one hand (āzād), to act without thinking of the actions’ fruits; “delivered” (in the Moks.a), on the other hand, of this infernal cycle; frustration, at last, of not being able to “act,” when scared of acting badly and being condemned again. All leads to an association of the world, in its absurd, senseless, insane form, to a Great Illusion, imbuing word as well as constituting the essence of the narrative, also considered as “completely wrong” (yah bhī ˙galat hai). It is indeed with this skeptical statement, accompanied with its refutation, (“no,” nahīm.), that the novel is closed: nothing is certain, nothing is real, nothing is apparently visible. Appearance plays indeed a preponderant part in the novel: if the hunchbacked narrator is only surrounded by void, and is thus released from the world’s illusions, the appearance against which he rises up is the one conveyed

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by the word itself, seen as the last artifice before he can reach the liberation promised by the narrative. The “intermediate world” where he stands is the one symbolically located between the physical and the illusory world, Māyā, and the cosmic fusion situated beyond the phenomenal existence, Moks.a. This liberation acts in the first place on the perception of the world, and, consequently, on the definition of reality, Māyā being a “collective hallucination veiling transcendental Reality”:19 witness of the world’s absurdities but surrounded by anguish, the narrator is in phase of liberation, and suffers to be; he is conscious of the vanity of Time as an eternal spiral, and feels the necessity to escape by becoming a jivanmuktā, one “liberated as alive,” delivered from his “historical situation,” having abolished the “profane Time.”20 The “significance” questioned in the novel through the elaboration of the absurd can thus be associated with the question of the perception of the world brought about by any fictional writing but also intimately linked, in the Indian context, to the Hindu speculations concerning Māyā, Samsāra, Moks.a, and the relationship between man and reality. This question of “illusion,” rooted in philosophical as well as mystical indigenous traditions, thus relates life in the physical world to a vain wandering. But it also implies the existence of a path as a resolution, this rāstā that occupies the novel but never goes beyond the “limit” (intahā), still unknown and unvisited. From Incommunicability to the “Pure Word”: A Path of Liberation? If the absurd is here justified by questioning the significance of Reality, from a novelistic as well as from a philosophical point of view, it could also coincide with the discourse of incommunicability elaborated in Ionesco’s (language is dissolute at the end of “The Bald Singer”) or in Beckett’s plays. This incommunicability invested by humor in both writers’ work is besides emphasized in Dard lā davā by the rareness and, above all, the inefficiency of real dialogues: the conversation with the Hamdard literally fails, as no question can be resolved. If parallels can obviously be carried out between Dard lā davā and the Theatre of the Absurd, these do not however justify reducing the novel to a “pure imitation,” as Jaidev states. This incommunicability palpable in Dard lā davā certainly inserts a “Beckettian” discourse on a world where communication is not relevant anymore, but it can clearly be distinguished by the process it instigates: words aim to rebuild in Vaid’s work, while they intend to formulate a general chaos in the Theatre of the Absurd. What really distinguishes Dard lā davā from Ionesco’s, and more specifically Beckett’s, texts is the way Dard lā davā concurrently displays skepticism toward language and faith toward word, which possesses a redemptive value,

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as it proceeds to transcendence. The deconstruction of language in Vaid’s work, starting with repetition, negation, associations, et cetera, thus aims to empty language of its significance in order to extract the “pure word,” pure insofar as its material consists of signifiant and musicality. The narrator refers to his “talking”21 (bolnā) and his “groaning” (karāhnā). In this manner, incommunicability opens onto a reinvestment of language as an instrument of liberation, and then a reinvestment of the absurd discourse in accordance with the characteristics of an “Indian imagination” of the Word. Yet, once again, this imagination is mixed, nourished with various traditions, which notably meet within the definition of the transcendental value of the word as a signifiant. Vedic thought, in the first place, attaches power of foundation to the Word, vāc, deified under a feminine form. As a matter of fact, at the origin of the world stands the Word, as described in the Rig Veda’s cosmogony.22 Furthermore, the syllable om, “summary of the whole Cosmos,” “essence of the Veda,” of the Absolute,23 has a value of signifiant only: composed of two phonematic units, o and m, it is through sound and texture that the word officiates, om not having been revealed visually but under its voiced form.24 The Mantra is thus made effective by action and gesture; indissociable from word, Mantra was reinvested at the medieval time by the devotional sects of Bhakti, which use repetition of the divine name as the means to union with the Absolute. The object of this repetition is certainly emphasis but also deconstruction of the “signifié,” as in the Sufi practice of Zikr, literally “remembrance,” collective or individual practice where the sufiyana invokes the presence of God by the formulation of His name or by the first segment of the kalma, the Muslim profession of faith, lā illāha, literally “There is no God,” here substituted by lā davā. The unflagging repetition in a more and more intense rhythm, along with techniques of body and breath control, leads to a concentration of attention, as described by the poet Ghazali (1058–1111): “Concentrate your attention by focusing on God the Highest. You will carry on until your tongue has no more role to play. You will see your soul and your heart invaded by this Zikr without any movement of your tongue. You will carry on assiduously until remains in your heart the sole signification of the word.25” The purpose of Zikr is mast, “rapture,” “intoxication,” which the narrator also calls for in his chain of repetitions: Rather than thinking, I should be talking [. . .] I am feeling enraptured (mast) by my own rhythm (lay) but this rapture (mastī) is just a try to fool my pain (dard) or perhaps to make it tolerable or to extract its essence or to seal my naivety to consider my groans as music, perhaps my rhythm in fact no rhythm my rapture in fact no rapture my pains in fact pains whether they are mine or not.

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The performative incantation, om, Mantra, or Zikr, referring to a learned or a popular Hindu or Muslim tradition, belongs to an Indian imagination of word where it is strongly enough rooted to imply the transcendental function of verb and its repetition. The discourse regarding absurdity of language elaborated in Dard lā davā thus refers not only to a form of skepticism toward communication, but also, and above all, to an attempt of transcendence; deconstruction then questions the relationship between man and the other, but also between man and the Absolute; the “Void” refers to a form of skepticism (toward fixed significance of the words and forms) but also to a form of faith. It is indeed in silence, the only real “void” evacuated from the novel, that the quest finds its resolution. If the suspension points at the closing of the novel infer an infinite extension of the narrator’s speech and its refutation (“no, this is also wrong,” nahīm., yah bhī g˙alat hai), they also evokes the pause following the last paragraph’s incoherent flow. Similarly, maun, silence, was following the Hamdard’s departure, as redemptive alternative to insanity and absurdity. Besides, this maun evoked by the hunchbacked narrator etymologically refers to the condition of the muni, the “wise man,” whose quietness indicates, as Charles Malamoud points out, “his spiritual richness.”26 “Silence” as a form of “chastity” of speech leads to the “frequentness of Brahman,” brahmācārya, which designates sexual continence in general27 and composes one of the steps of the Hindu man’s path to the Absolute. Just as the word reduced to a verbal form, silence, hoped and cherished in Dard lā davā, and more generally in Vaid’s work,28 proceeds from a kind of quest for the Absolute. Hybridization, Profaneness, and Skepticism: Another Discourse on Exile? If a careful reading of the novel invalidates the postulate of “pastiche,” it also underlines the diversity as well as the spontaneous superimposition of sources and thus interpretations. This discourse of “hybridity” finds its roots in a fertile background, the religious syncretism29 firmly established in a popular culture that proves its capacity for mixing, for crossbreeding. The contact of differences relative to the “composite” character of India as instituted by the Constitution of 195030 certainly favors tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities but also favors recompositions and intersections. Fragmentations, meltings, associations, and syncretisms proceeding within both communities deny as a result all fantasies of “purity” and of “homogeneity.” This is what illustrates popular religious practices (and notably in Punjab, Vaid’s homeland), obviously less “orthodox” than their

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“learnt” equivalent and particularly disposed to syncretism and to reappropriation, as it has been confirmed in many recent studies, by Denis Matringe (1992) and Asim Roy (1983), but more specifically Dominique-Sila Khan, who writes: “Accustomed to perceiving Hinduism and Islam as fixed, monolithic and distinct categories, one often forgets that a long and complex historical process precedes the comparatively recent emergence of the two main religious blocs in South Asia.”31 Inexhaustible are the examples of this popular syncretism: Baba Bulleh Shah’s songs, which reappropriate Hindu images, Kabir’s heretical texts, the Baul sect in Bengal, et cetera. Yet, these examples concern marginality, contestation; so does the reference to the vagrant Sufi in the novel and his association to a qalandar, one of these enraptured mystics who flaunt their disregard for orthodoxies and denounce a corrupted, hypocrite, and unfair society. By representing the marginality of a lonely character, unbound to social constraints, Dard lā davā confirms a will to assert a form of “contestation” where mystical way becomes the place for transcending the fetters of society. Thus, it proceeds from a double contestation: contestation of the hierarchical religious institutions on the one hand; contestation of the dogmatic purity that reproduces the mystical “order” as a group, on the other hand. Moreover, blasphemy, as an offensive discourse, is besides the peculiarity of the qalandar, a Sufi ascetic, who thus claims rejecting the Law and its institutions. It is also what Dard lā davā proceeds to in its title itself, where the sacred consistency of the text is both asserted and invalidated, where the paradoxical game of the confrontation between what is spiritual, sacred, and what is organic and profane is initiated. This juxtaposition does not concern the pain, which oppositely partakes of the mystical discourse, but the hump, physical abnormality that the narrator ascribes to God, yet “perfect” and above all “nonrepresentable” according to the Koran. Moreover, the explicitly religious and sacred lexicon flirts with a common, colloquial, and sometimes indeed anatomical lexicon. This desanctification of the terms and notions is carried out through the narrator’s determination to propose atypical or aberrant combinations, by composition, paronomasia, or synonymy, playing on both difference (of meaning, of register) and proximity (of meaning, of sound). First of all, the profaning and blasphemous composition is exemplified in the expressions kubr.ā allāh, “hunchbacked God,” and ām khudā (“ordinary God,” p. 177), when the God of Islam is essentially extraordinary. Nevertheless, some compositions are hardly offensive when the presence of a prosaic term proceeds to desanctify a term with strong religious connotations: the blasphemous extendability certainly depends on the context but also on the type of reading and the religious value one can grant to the terms

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dard, samādhān (“solution” or “meditation”), muqām (“place” or “step”), et cetera. Thus, the narrator evokes the “rapture” (mast) provoked by his “biological troubles” (jism ke janjāl, p. 225); he brings together khud (“myself ”) and khudā (“Dieu,” p. 165), as well as “synonyms” like nijāt, moks. a, mukti, āzādī, and chut.kārā, which all mean “liberation” but bear different connotations: if indeed, nijāt, moks. a, and mukti refer to a spiritual liberation, āzādī and chut.kārā can bear political or at least legal connotations. If the novel imposes two reading levels, it plays above all with the ambiguity of a confrontation of two traditionally opposed fields, a sacred field and a profane, biological, materialistic field, which the narrator refuses to polarize. Thus, the parody of the mystical path proceeds to desanctify but also, as a result, to sanctify what is profane. As the narrator seems to suggest, it is possible to imagine a hunchbacked God and to deify a hump. Nevertheless, the deconstruction of the principle of “divinity” itself does not exclusively proceed from the revocation of a duality that isolates man from an inaccessible God, as the mystical way followed by the narrator could suggest, and above all, as the combination of the terms khud and khudā could suggest. Indeed, if the narrator permanently oscillates between faith (hope) and absence of faith (desperation), he denies on several occasions the existence of God (khudā nahīm.), who is represented in the novel by his absence: always called, God never appears. Nor in the title itself, which, even more explicitly, indicates His absence: his name is indeed replaced by the term Dard, and what remains from the profession of faith is the particle of negation lā, which refers to the kalma’s segment saying that “there is not God,” considered as diabolical when not followed by its contradiction, “but God,” illah allah. The negation of God thus characterizes the mystical discourse in a novel that strives to exhaust the sacred by means of the profane, the divine by means of the human and by standing neither completely in one field nor completely in the other. To evacuate the divine presence implies to evacuate religion characterized by devotion (love), which is absent in the novel, despite its prominence in Sufism. The novel Dard lā davā underlines in the first place the continuity existing between a discourse on the “existential” pain and a discourse on the mystical pain. It gives prominence to a physical pain characterized by a deformity, the hump, just as it signals a deep break imputable to an incurable exile. Pain stands in three levels, which are no more contradictory, no more conflicting: the mystical pain attributed to a separation that the path will soften; the exilic pain, an incurable existential anxiety; the physical pain, which locates the discourse within the anatomic. “Pain” is thus what polarizes and indicates the similarity between three, and especially two, discourses: a mystical discourse and a melancholic discourse.

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The Sufi aspirant’s suffering is exilic pain, as the author underlines; exile suffering is informed by pain due to separation and due to the acknowledgment of the inaccessibility of its resolution. By appropriating mystical traditions of pain, of significance, of alienation, and of quest for liberation, and by locating this anguish in a culture characterized by diversity and syncretism, the author deconstructs the categories that oppose objects that are finally not so “opposable”: tradition versus modernity, when the author underlines the modernity of Hallāj’s discourse and the universal character of the exiled ’s melancholy; mysticism versus existential discourse on alienation, so to say East versus West, when the author puts forward the correspondences between these “quests,” which can finally be qualified as “mystical existentialism” and “existential mysticism.” By placing exile, melancholy, and mysticism on the same level, Vaid implicitly reminds Jaidev that the country’s recent ruptures argue against locating the individual questioning in Western discourse exclusively. Notes 1. All translations from Hindi into English are my own, except where otherwise mentioned. 2. The following method seems to be at work behind Vaid’s style. He abstracts some of the most characteristic features of Beckett’s prose (. . .) None of these characteristics touches even remotely the sensitive lyricism of Beckett. Vaid imitates only the obvious in Beckett. The range of his imitation is illustrated very well in Dard La- Dava-. (Jaidev [1993], p. 163) 3. As shown by the explicit references to Beckett in Vaid’s essays, like Baikit. bairāgī (“Recluse Beckett”), in Śikast kī āvāz (“The voice of defeat,” 2006), pp. 84–90. 4. Dard lā davā, p. 139, trans. Jaidev (1993), p. 164. 5. Notably in Bhalla (2006) and in Daiya (1999). 6. See Vialas (1990). 7. Vaid (2002), p. 32. 8. Julia Kristeva, Etrangers à nous-mêmes, 21. 9. Vaid (2004), pp. 294–295. 10. Vaid (2004), p. 297. 11. See notably the text “Rootlessness in search of roots,” in Montaut (2004). 12. Matringe (1996), p. 173. 13. Gril (1996), p. 101. 14. Annemarie Schimmel (2004, p. 67) underlines that a statistical study shows that the more frequent rhymes in Attar’s poetry are the association of mard (“man”) and dard (“pain”). The man’s spiritual path is therefore undissociable from pain, from burning desire associated with an absence relatively irremediable, as the direct access to God is possible.

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15. As quoted by Annemarie Schimmel in the title of her biographical essay (1994). 16. See Annemarie Schimmel (2004), pp. 35–36. 17. Lannoy (1971), p. 290. 18. Ibid. (1971), pp. 283–285. 19. Ibid. (1971), p. 287. 20. Mircea Eliade quoted by Lannoy (1971), p. 292 21. “Instead of thinking, I would better be speaking,” says the narrator. 22. “At the beginning this [universe] was only water [. . .] At the term of the year, a male appeared, it was Prajāpati.[. . .] At the term of the year, [Prajāpati] wished to speak. He said bhūh, and the Earth appeared; he said bhuvar, and the Space appeared; ha said suvar, and the Sky appeared”: śatapathabrāhman.a, XI.I, 6, I–II, quoted by Louis Renou in Renou (1947). 23. Malamoud (2005), p. 67 24. Ibid., p. 68 25. Quoted by Chevalier (1984), p. 102. 26. Malamoud (2005), p. 95. 27. Ibid., pp. 94–95. 28. “Words—śabd—are not a necessity of silence—khāmośī—silence is a necessity of words. This is why silence is acknowledged as being more valuable, more complex, deeper than words; it is less popular, more powerful, more frightening, more generous” (Vaid 2006, p. 203). 29. In accordance with Michael Pye’s definition, as quoted by Dominique-Sila Khan: “Syncretism is the coherent but sometimes uneasy coexistence of elements issued from different religious contexts” (1997, p. 123). 30. As Granville Austin comments: “The rights lay down that the state is to deny no one equality before the law. All citizens are to have the right to freedom of religion, assembly, association, and movement. No one is to be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, except in accordance with the law. Minorities are allowed to protect and conserve their language, script, and culture” (1966, p. 51). 31. Khan (2001), p. 1.

Bibliography Primary Sources and Translations Beckett, Samuel. Ākhirī khel [End game]. Trans. K. B. Vaid. Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1971. ———. Gād.o ke intazār mem. [Waiting for Godot]. Trans. K. B. Vaid. Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1970. Vaid, Krishna Baldev. Dard lā davā (Pain with no cure). Bikaner: Vagdevi Prakashan, [1980] 1998. ———. Javāb nahīm. (No answer). Delhi: National Publishing House, 2002.

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———. “Partition, Exile, Fragmentation,” texts compiled and presented by Annie Montaut. Littérature et poétiques pluriculturelles en Asie du Sud, Purushartha 24 (2004): 285–315. ———. ŚIkast kī āvāz (The voice of defeat). Delhi: Rajpal, 2006.

Secondary Sources Austin, Granville. The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1966. Beckett, Samuel. Molloy. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1951. Bhalla, Alok, ed. “Self Reflections in a Broken Mirror,” an interview with K. B. Vaid, Partition Dialogues. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2006: 165–191. Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, Emeri Van Donzel, Bernard Lewis, and Charles Pellat. Encyclopédie de l’islam. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986 (10 volumes). Chevalier, Jean. Le Soufisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. Le Coran. Introduction, translation, and notes by Denise Masson. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. Daiya, Piyush. «Kr.s. n.a Baldev Vaid se ek Praśnottar,» an interview with K. B. Vaid, Madhumati, October 1999: 14–32. During, Jean. “Musique et rites: ‘le samā.’ ” In Les Voies d’Allah, Les Ordres mystiques dans l’islam des origines à aujourd’hui, ed. Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein. Paris: Fayard, 1996: 157–172. Gril, Denis. “La Voie.” In Les Voies d’Allah. Les Ordres mystiques dans l’islam des origines à aujourd’hui, ed. Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein. Paris: Fayard, 1996: 87–103. Jaidev. The Culture of Pastiche: Existential Aestheticism in the Contemporary Hindi Novel. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, 1993. Khan, Dominique-Sila. Crossing the Threshold; Understanding Religious Identities in South Asia. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004. ———. “La Tradition de Namdev Pir au Rajasthan. Acculturation et syncrétisme.” In Altérité et identité, islam et christianisme en Inde, Purushartha 19 (1997): 121–140. Kristeva, Julia. Etrangers à nous-mêmes. Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Lannoy, Richard. The Speaking Tree. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1971. Malamoud, Charles. Cuire le monde. Rite et pensée dans l’Inde ancienne. Paris: La Découverte, 1989. ———. Féminité de la parole. Etudes sur l’Inde ancienne. Paris : Albin Michel, 2005. Matringe, Denis. “Kr.s.n.aite and Nāth Elements in the Poetry of the Eighteen-Century Panjabi Sūfī Bullhe Śāh.” In Devotional Literature in South Asia, ed. Ronald Stuart McGregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 190–206. ———. “La Littérature soufie.” In Les Voies d’Allah. Les Ordres mystiques dans l’islam des origines à aujourd’hui, ed. Alexandre Popovic et Gilles Veinstein. Paris: Fayard, 1996: 173–184.

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Renou, Louis. Anthologie sanskrite. Paris: Payot, 1947. Roy, Asim. The Islamic Syncretic Tradition in Bengal. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1983. Schimmel, Annemarie. I am Wind, You Are Fire; The Life and Work of Rumi. Boston: Shambala, 1994. Schimmel, Annemarie. Introduction au monde du soufisme. Saint-Jean-de-Braye: Dangles, [2000] 2004. Sourdel, Dominique and Sourdel Janine. Dictionnaire historique de l’islam. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996. Verma, Nirmal. Bhārat aur yurop. Delhi, Rajkamal Prakashan, 1991. Vialas, Philippe. “Figures de l’errance.” In Beckett, Critique no. 519–520 (1990): 719–724.

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CHAPTER 8

In the Face of Even Lesser Breeds: Reading Nayantara Sahgal with Indian Christians Clara Joseph

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ayantara Sahgal’s anticolonial narrative shares with colonial and postcolonial worlds the assumption that Christianity is alien to India. This assumption is a major hurdle to both decolonization and nationalization, much touted goals of the postcolonial narrative. I trace instances of the aforementioned assumption in Sahgal’s latest novel, Lesser Breeds (HarperCollins 2003), pointing to its complicity with colonial and imperial rhetoric of redemption (of civilizing the savages and democratizing the terrorists) and Hindutva nationalism, which categorically states there is no place in India for one who is not a “Hindu.” In the context of ongoing persecution of minority populations in India, this chapter hopes to prompt the reader to understand how and why his or her own assumptions regarding the relationship between colonialism and Christianity contribute to colonial/imperial and antinational sentiments that abet the continued oppression of persons belonging to a minority faith. How does the reader engage with postcolonial literature that shares the religious assumptions of colonialism or imperialism and religious extremism? For me, this is a question that repeatedly crops up when reading creative and theoretical works by writers who continue to write against colonization, the so-called postcolonial writers, such as Homi K. Bhabha, Gauri Viswanathan, and Nayantara Sahgal. These are writers whose high sense of ethics, combined with sophisticated critical skills, presents to readers rare insights into the workings of power and the processes of oppression. If Bhabha has “erred” by convoluting usages and mystifying theorems,

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Sahgal’s narratives have always found their intended mark with no apparent trouble. Sahgal’s stories, straddling as they do the private and the public, communicate to readers the myriad levels of social and national events, all—to use one reviewer’s phrase—“penned with passion” (Bhaskaran). Gautaman Bhaskaran is here referring to Sahgal’s most recent novel, Lesser Breeds, the title of which points, in its multiple allusions, to the problem I wish to highlight. The novel is about lived history and desired fantasy. It journalistically tabulates the numerous colonial events and atrocities in India and then moves on to suggest the presence of similar repressive ideologies in the age of trade and globalization. Colonialism, it cautions, is not a thing of the past. Through the perspective of a sometimes dim-witted history teacher, Nurulla, and his smart-aleck student, Shan, the novel unwinds details of political and social oppression, in the form of colonialism, and that too a Christian colonialism. “Lesser breeds,” as the first epigraph of the novel makes clear, is culled from Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional”: If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law. (867)

By taking this loaded title, in the context of colonialism and a globalization that many suspect is only the other side of imperialism, the novel instantly shares several of the assumptions about Christianity and colonialism that are often held by those who seek an alibi for colonialism and imperialism. In the postcolonial era, these assumptions are also part of certain extremist forms of religious nationalism, particularly Hindutva—fundamentalist religious nationalism based on the view that the Indian nation is only for Hindus, that is, people whose holy land and native land is India. Kipling’s poem, modeled on the Anglican recessional hymn, is a tribute to Queen Victoria, on her diamond jubilee. In the novel this poem, thus, becomes a metonym for colonialism that is Christianity and Christianity that is colonialism. The notoriety of the phrase worsens as those of the non-Christian–non-West are rated not only on the basis of their appearance but also of their very soul: lesser breeds without the capital “Law.” In a novel that strives at decolonization and nationalization, what is defended is this non-Christian–non-West, Kipling’s “lesser breeds.” But in the case of India, about which the novel after all is, there is a Christian non-West, communities of Christians who trace their faith to

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precolonial days and whose ancestors fought as Christians against colonizing Europeans who were also Christians. Documents of the Synod of Diamper (1599), a gathering initiated by local Portuguese clergy to bring the precolonial St. Thomas Christians of India, then known disparagingly as Syrian Christians on account of their affiliation with the Chaldean church of the Middle East, to the Latin rite, and Varthamanappusthakam (1785), the first travelogue written in any Indian language, testify the extensive and sometimes suicidal clash of the Indian Christians with their fellow European believers who were bent on oppressing them, reforming their language, liturgy, and culture—all unique to the particular Indian church. The Indian church fought tooth and nail against the purification sought through Latinization and, later, the Reformation wrought through further Europeanization. In some ways the clash was between the law of Paul and the law of Thomas, the latter derived from a tradition in India of the arrival of the apostle in 52 CE and resulting conversions. The Indian church historian Mathias Mundadan writes as follows about what he terms the “Rite” of the St. Thomas Christians of India: “A heritage made up of liturgy, theology, spirituality and discipline . . . differentiated by the culture and the circumstances of the history of peoples . . . expressed by each Church sui juris (autonomous) in its own manner of living the faith.”1 This was the rite that the Portuguese attempted to revise. Mundadan goes on to point out that the Law of Thomas encountered two other laws: the Hindu dharma and the Portuguese Law of Peter (49–50). The result did not exclude some assimilation. But Indian Christianity remained. In the search for a non-European Christianity, and an instance of colonial invasion of already Christian territories, Nurulla in the course of instructing Shan, in Lesser Breeds, instead alludes to Haile Selassie: They made Haile Selassie’s message to the League of Nations an occasion for solemn mourning. “Apart from the Kingdom of God,” it ended, “there is not on this earth any nation that is higher than any other.” Shan sat up and scowled accusingly at Nurullah. “You never told me Haile Selassie was a Christian! ” she flung at him. “Don’t Europeans only occupy heathen countries?” (123)

According to Anna Guttman, in “Secularism as Syncretism in Nayantara Sahgal’s Lesser Breeds”: “In Lesser Breeds, Nurullah’s willingness to belong to any, or all, of the religious and political categories offered him, while insisting unequivocally on his national identity, exemplifies the syncretic quality of Sahgal’s Indianness” (54). This “syncretism” is, as Guttman’s title notes, “secularism” and the bulwark of Indian “multiculturalism” (53). But I would argue that, in spite of having a narrator-character—Nurullah—as someone

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influenced by Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity (the last because a missionary had taught him as a child the merits of “soap” [47]), the narrative of Lesser Breeds, overall, ignores the historical reality of Indian Christianity in conflating Christianity and colonialism, inadvertently, creating a tertiary category of the Indian who is a Christian as even a lesser breed—the least of breeds. As the character, Sonali, in Sahgal’s award-winning novel Rich Like Us, too says: “A thought of our own” would have to be outside “the Bible and Marx.” According to this character, Indian Christianity is colonial: “What it had become after it left Galilee and fell into Western hands” (101). The colonial Indian Christian, those converted to Christianity during colonialism and after, are similarly marginalized and othered in a narrative that sees not much difference between Christianity and colonialism. All Christians, whether belonging to precolonial or colonial traditions, are declared complicit in colonization when narratives of decolonization and nationalization refuse to acknowledge Christianity as an Indian religion. The inability to see Christianity outside colonialism has prevailed as an ideology, a term Louis Althusser defines as “the expression of the relation between men and their ‘world,’ that is the (overdetermined) unity of the real relation and the imaginary relation between them and their real conditions of existence” (233), so that it is not just a matter of ideas or knowledge out there somewhere but life itself. The ideology of “Christianity is colonialism and vice versa” is very much behind Gauri Viswanathan’s assumptions in her award-winning scholarly work Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (1998) too. In this book Viswanathan proceeds from the premise that India, unlike Britain, has always had a monolithic culture (Brahmanism, it is implied), and conversions—something alien to India’s past—are to blame for all the later social and political upheavals.2 That Christianity is colonialism or vice versa dominates also Bhabha’s narrative of “one of the earliest Indian catechists,” where the “earliest” Bhabha can trace is to 1817 (102), a period that facilitates the slippery slide to the Bible as “the English book” (105). In the Lesser Breeds, juxtaposition of imagery—such as Ammaji’s “Mahabharatha” and Shan’s “convent homework” (17) or “the Pope” and “Churchill” (341), sometimes even risking the flow of the narration as in the second case, reinforces the ideology while demonstrating its subtle and not-too-subtle functioning. On the other hand, the unfortunate conflation by these writers is partly justified. The purported agenda of colonial governments to “serve,” to civilize with Christian Law, to redeem through their colonial mission, to bring light to the dark nations, et cetera, even when it was only too apparent that the colonized lands were teeming with traders and soldiers, rather than pastors and missionaries, has played its part in suggesting this identification

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of Christianity with colonization. Further, the presence of some, even newly evangelized, members on the board of the East India Company, Charles Grant, for example, and the fact that pastors and missionaries were imported to serve members of the East India Company and its associates, would all have also given way to the impression of even the East India Company and later the government that took over its functions as at bottom Christian, that is, enterprises run according to the Christian doctrine to achieve Christian goals. Yet, those familiar with the trade agenda of the Company knew only too well that during most of its history, the Company was hostile to missionaries. In its relation to the propagation of Christianity the East India Company reflected the opinion and the action of England itself. So long as it was a purely trading organisation, it was careful to give instructions for the moral good of its own officials and was indifferent to that of the natives. It was tolerant of, it even helped missionaries like Schwartz and Kiernander up to the time of Clive. But as it grew to be a territorial and political power its servants practically encouraged the native faiths, and kept out Christian missionaries under the rules passed to protect the monopoly of trade against interlopers.)3

Writing in the late nineteenth century, George Smith goes on to say that although the Company went so far as to build a marble statue of Christian Friedrich Schwartz in Madras (Chennai), it became even more opposed to missions in the nineteenth century, the century of the Vellore Mutiny (Rebellion), and later the Sepoy Mutiny (the Indian Rebellion) of 1857, the latter referenced in Lesser Breeds in the name “Mangal Pandey,” (48) who, before the full-scale rebellion set in, was executed at age 29 for attacking a couple of his British officers. In Lesser Breeds, allusions to Mangal Pandey and, by association, to the rebellion, serve to strengthen the conflation of colonialism and Christianity, since one of the reasons assumed for the “mutiny” was fear of conversion through contact with the swine or bovine fat supposedly used as grease on bullets. It is significant that Nurulla interrupts Shan’s “convent homework” (47) with the narrative of Mangal Pandey. And as the narrative of Lesser Breeds much later goes on to clarify: “He had only freed her from her convent textbooks and pointed her to a new way of seeing” (365). In fact, in the privileging of Mangal Pandey in the context of the “convent,” the narrative all but dismisses the political cause, the Company’s policy of annexing kingdoms whose rulers they concluded were corrupt, and the inevitable consequence of rebellion. The opposition—between Christianity and Indians—is well sustained in Lesser Breeds.

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That many British and Indian historiographers are keen to privilege the religious, rather than social and political, cause of the rebellion points, ironically, to their shared ideology. The baselessness of the rebellion, something the British East India Company was keen to impress upon those back home so as to be able to continue in India, could best—in an increasingly industrialized, capitalized, and secularized Europe—be suggested by pointing to overwrought Hindu and Islamic religious sentiments as the basic cause. These religions and their presumably unreasonable followers were not to be tampered with, a policy the Company had insisted on for most of its 250-year tenure amid efforts to secure trade monopoly. Such a reason effectively served to deflect from the long-term social and political oppression that the Company engaged in in their attempts to amass plain wealth. Not surprisingly, the primary cause of the Vellore Rebellion of 1806 was also cited as religious: the Indian soldiers had religious issues with their dress code. Smoothly ignored or sidelined were the political intentions of the “rebels” to oust the English and reestablish the leadership of the family of Tippu Sultan, or the social unrest arising from inflation and famine, direct results of Company policies. Time and again, pointing to what would appear to the Western world as bizarre religious rites that were alien to the life of the Company, the Company hoped to preserve itself and its reputation in India as secular and therefore fair. When the British government took over the assets of India from the Company following the rebellion of 1857, Queen Victoria’s noninterference act, the proclamation that insisted that the colonizer not interfere in the internal affairs of another country, where religion was considered internal, continued the refrain of Western-secularism-cum-fairness. Interestingly, Lesser Breeds refers to “the proclamation” as “proclaiming martial law in the city” (8) only, thus avoiding the complication arising from separating colonialism and Christianity in India: that Queen Victoria’s noninterference act served to drown the logic in the cacophony of social and political unrest resulting from colonial invasion of land and lives. In India, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s interpretation of the rebellion of 1857 as a national revolt, a thesis he published in 1909 under the title, The Indian War of Independence—1857, took on predictable religious emphasis. Although Savarkar initially acknowledged the national contributions of both Muslims and Hindus, he was later to withdraw Muslims from the benefit of that virtue. As the author also of Hindutva: Who is a Hindu (1928), Savarkar’s choice of the revolt of 1857, one already stamped repeatedly as a revolt against colonialism-that-is-Christianity, found its way later into the works of contemporary Hindutva writers such as Arun Shouri, who further developed the propaganda of Hindusthan-for-Hindus-only. In this

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context, the revolt of 1857 is also a key event to establish the “antinational proclivities” of non-Hindus; after all it was a Muslim who made every effort to stop Mangal Pandey from attacking the British officers. This Muslim had even been awarded immediate promotion to havaldār (sergeant), further proof of the antinational and procolonial attitude of the non-Hindus. The historical importance of the revolt of 1857, especially for the takeover of the Company property by the British government and the establishment of the formal British Empire in India, cannot be denied. But its reference as the starting point of the struggle for independence, to the exclusion of earlier struggles such as those led by the Muslim Kunjali Marakkar against the Portuguese (an event in which the Hindu King—the Zamorin of Calicut—betrayed the Marakkar to the colonizers) in Southern India— considering this was after all the beginning of European colonialism in India, the numerous peasant rebellions throughout the colonial period,4 the Vellore Rebellion, et cetera, suggests partaking of the colonial ideology of divide and conquer in the agenda to promote communalism as an instrument of nationalization. The large-scale slaughter of Muslims in 1992–1993 following the destruction of the Babri Masjid, alleged site of a temple, in Ayodhya, has a dominant narrative shared by colonial and Hindutva powers—of the destruction of a temple in the region during the Mughal rule. If the British used this narrative to rationalize their presence in India in their offer of protection from Mughal rule, Hindutva groups and their associates today use it to justify their right to avenge themselves upon Muslim populations. If in the period leading up to the incident the largest number of Muslims killed was in Uttar Pradesh, the second place went to Gujarat,5 a state that later silently witnessed an extensive pogrom against Muslims in 2002 under the leadership of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (Hindutva) chief minister. In his review of Romila Thapar’s Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, A. J. Noorani reflects as follows in the national magazine Frontline: On Ayodhya, British officials gave currency to the falsehood of the demolition of the temple citing no proof but that “it is locally affirmed” in the 19th century. In that century also, British historians led by James Mill [father of the utilitarian John Stuart Mill] periodized Indian history on communal lines (“the Muslim era,” “the Hindu era”) and depicted Mahmud’s raid as having created a trauma among Hindus, whose effects lasted over eight centuries. The motive for fabricating the myth was to show that the British had liberated India from Muslim “oppression.”

Others are convinced that the Congress party, members of which Jawaharlal Nehru once said are communalist under their cloaks, was responsible for

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encouraging Hindutva and the eventual destruction of the Babri Masjid.6 Ashis Nandy et al., in Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self, note that Hinduism had become an ideology rather than a faith in the attempt “to use Hinduism as an instrument of political mobilization à la European-style national ideology” (59). In his foreword to Rafiq Zakaria’s Communal Rage in Secular India, the Nobel Prize laureate and Bharat Ratna award winner Amartya Sen writes in a similar vein: “There has been a monotonic increase in the barrier between the two communities [Muslim and Hindu], decade by decade, and what had begun as a by-product of the British rule has now become a fixed and extensive feature of the politics of contemporary India.” He continues, “The process has been fed by communal Hindu politics, fostering divisiveness [‘Indirectly aping Jinnah,’ as Zakaria sees it], combined with plentiful use of religious misinterpretations and historical distortions to alienate Hindus from their Muslim fellow citizens” (ix). Interestingly, in all of the abovementioned works on communalism, the authors, like the narrator of Lesser Breeds, have taken for granted the colonial position that Christianity in India is colonial; according to Zakaria, the colonial religion of Christianity “had a detrimental effect on relations between Hindus and Muslims” (111): Christianity and not colonialism was to blame for antinational sentiments. However, and as Nandy et al. point out in citing Suresh Sharma’s unpublished paper, presented in the seminar on “Hinduism: Religion or Civilization?” at Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, 2–3 December 1991, “Suresh Sharma draws attention to the paradox that the ultimate protagonist of Hindu nationalism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, had little to say about the content of Hindu religious tradition, whereas Gandhi, whom Savarkar considered a danger to Hinduism, spent his life exploring and redeploying these traditions in politics.” In a footnote to this, the authors continue: “A similar paradoxical situation obtains in the case of Muhammed Ali Jinah (1875–1948), the best-known spokesman for subcontinental Muslims who had little to say about their faith and culture, and Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), who lost out as a leader of the subcontinent’s Muslims but showed a lifelong concern with Islamic theology and culture” (60). In other words, no religion is inherently evil although its manipulation by vested interests can be, a point no doubt the narrative of Lesser Breeds recognizes in its aforementioned reference to the Christianity of Galilee versus a European Christianity. Yet, while such acknowledgment in the literary narrative is indirect and rare with reference to Christianity in general, it is nonexistent regarding Indian Christianity. Lesser Breeds repeatedly reduces Hinduism and Christianity to the Mahābhārata and the convent or the Bible, and juxtaposes these as

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follows—“She [Ammaji] kept her unwieldy Mahabharata on its stand beside her open to one of its blinding blue and orange illustrations of Krishna Bhagvan’s heroic exploits. . . . The child, Shan, brooded menacingly over her convent homework” (17). Significantly, the narrative alludes directly only to Book VI of the Mahābhārata—the Bhagavād Gītā, a book central to both anticolonial and Hindutva national movements— He [Nurullah] had to resort to the Bhagvad Gita to describe his own, not the prisoner’s plight: “My limbs give way, my mouth has become parched, my body shivers . . .” It was Arjuna’s incomparable cry on the battle field before the vision of the Supreme Being, the one we fall back on when the furthest reaches of our being cry out for expression. But don’t count that jailer or that judge for whom, in the language of your Bible, “glory shone around.” (113–114)

In its attempts to present the Gītā and the Bible as contradictory, one as Indian and the other as colonial or European, unthinkable is the parallel of Arjuna’s “cry” to the words of Psalm 22: 14–15, a psalm repeated by Jesus on the Cross, beginning with “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me. My strength is dried up like potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws.

Instead, the appearance of Lord Krishna to Arjuna is contrasted with, not compared to, the announcement of the birth of Christ to the shepherds, “And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them [the shepherds], and the glory of the Lord suddenly shone around them,” and importantly, the following verse that the narrative of Lesser Breeds omits, a verse that would otherwise trigger the undesirable comparison, “and they were terribly frightened” (Luke 2: 8–9). The contrast is even more heavily emphasized when the supposedly unjust “jailer” or “judge” replaces the innocent shepherds. The thread of religious anticolonialism and nationalism that unwittingly runs through Lesser Breeds is cause for concern in this new millennium that has, in India, already seen the destruction of lives and property of communities belonging to minority faiths. Traditionally, the Gītā has been interpreted mainly in two contrasting and mutually incompatible ways, as a scripture dictating violence and as a scripture of nonviolence. The first

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interpretation has been embraced by anticolonial freedom fighters such as Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghose (the early works), and Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The second chiefly by Sankara, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. The former accepts the Gītā as historical and therefore as the basis for violent action on the battlefield of the metaphoric Kuruks.etra, India, against the enemies, that is, the non-Hindus. During the colonial times these enemies were identified chiefly as the European colonizers although non-Hindu Indians were intermittently added to the list. The Srimad Bhagavadgita-Rahasya, a book Tilak wrote while in a British jail, reminds readers to obey Lord Krishna, whose invocation to Arjuna was to kill even kith and kin if duty calls, as one’s dharma. The colonial infrastructure prevented to a great degree the execution of the violence conceived in this book. Yet, the book confirmed Tilak’s thesis that nationalism and religion could not be separated. According to P. M. Thomas, there was “a remarkable sense of history in Tilak’s interpretation of the Gita” that made Tilak an “activist” or “extremist.”7 Aurobindo Ghose noted: “To shrink from bloodshed and violence under such circumstances is a weakness deserving as severe a rebuke as Sri Krishna addressed to Arjuna when he shrank from the colossal civil slaughter on the field of Kurukshetra.”8 Thus nationalism under this first interpretation was not only religious but inherently exclusive and violent. Mahatma Gandhi’s interpretation of the Gītā refrained from historicizing the scripture. In The Teaching of the Gita, he argues, “By ascribing to the chief actors superhuman or subhuman origins, the great Vyasa made short work of the history of Kings and their peoples. The persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Maha-bha-rata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme.”9 Again, in his “Introduction: The Message of the Gita,” Gandhi writes: Even in 1888–89, when I first became acquainted with the Gita, I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring. This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita.10

In opting for the title “Hind Swarāj” as against “Hind Swarājjya” for the English translation of his Indian Home Rule or Hind Swaraj, Gandhi was influenced by his literary reading of the Gītā, for the translation communicated self-control and love. It underscored the difference between the concept of home rule as nationalist jingoism and home rule as that nationalism which is a by-product of love and truth in the

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concept of “self-rule,” the rule of the self, rather than only by the self. The difference between “rājya” and “rāj” was the difference between geographical space or place and practice and Gandhi’s work sought to define the latter even as it acknowledged the former, emphasizing duty over rights. The transition from place to practice is also a consequence of the ahistoricized and allegorical reading of the Bhagavād Gītā.11

Within the practice that Gandhi was deriving from his reading of the Gītā, there was space for all, including the British, if they wished to stay on, albeit not as colonizers. The narrative of Lesser Breeds, in its passionate denouncement of what is perceived as colonial-cum-Christian, tends to take the character Hilary at her word on “Europe’s imperial mission”: “The imperial fabric rested on the Christian moral code. Christianity was the keystone of the imperial arch and the bedrock of imperial power” (271). Not the irony but the sarcasm in the narrative of Lesser Breeds is unmistakable. In opposing the Gita against the Bible, the narrative steps away from Gandhi’s ahistorical reading and moves closer to the historical reading of those such as Savarkar. To instruct Sahgal with Gandhi is to carry coal to Newcastle. Sahgal is one of the most well known of Gandhian literary writers and journalists.12 Both in her personal life, when assailed by an unjust divorce settlement, and in her public life—as the niece of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a member of a family that dedicated itself to following Gandhi through the Congress party, and a daughter of the indefatigable Congress activist and first woman president of the United Nations Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Sahgal studied the Gandhian way and staunchly resisted anti-Gandhian policies of even the Congress party. All this however neither explains away nor justifies the implications in her literary works, namely, of considering colonialism as a Christian endeavor, of ignoring the presence of Indian Christians as Indians rather than colonial products, although it was in the time of Nehru’s tenure as Prime Minister that the government of India produced the postal stamps celebrating in 1952 the one thousandth anniversary of the arrival of St. Thomas in India, and of perceiving Christianity as alien to India. In the climate of Hindutva revival, the aforementioned assumptions are antinational and downright dangerous. In Frontline of 2000, Parvathi Menon reported as follows: Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government assumed power at the Centre, there has been a low-intensity war against Christians in India, especially nuns and priests, by groups and organizations loyal to the Sangh Parivar. A wave of attacks against Christian evangelists and places of worship through 1998 culminated in the murder of

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the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons on January 23, 1999. Dara Singh, a Hindutva fanatic with links to the Sangh Parivar, has been arrested in that connection. A second wave of terror against Christian missionaries, that extends now to the States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, has culminated this June in a series of bomb blasts in churches in Karnataka, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.

It must be noted that the “Christian missionaries” targeted are human beings, some Western, mostly Indian. But in putting the spotlight on “missionaries,” “nuns,” and “priests,” what is also elided is the fact that the so-called laity have been targeted in the hundreds and thousands in this decade already, most recently in Assam and Orissa. In Orissa, several thousand displaced persons continue to live in the forests or in refugee shelters after attacks on them by Hindutva groups following the assassination of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati and four of his disciples by unknown assailants in the same state on August 24, 2008. The blame for the killings was squarely placed on Christians, although there was no evidence whatsoever leading to this conclusion. According to Prafulla Das’ more recent report, of February 2009, “Lakshmanananda Saraswati of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was killed by suspected Maoists. The Crime Branch has now confirmed that one of the seven people charge-sheeted for the murder is a Maoist, while the others are Maoist sympathisers who belong to the local population. Ten men have been charge-sheeted in the rape case [this was the mob rape of an Indian nun; the sole such instance brought to the books], and efforts are on to arrest 20 other suspects.” In the Frontline issue of March 28–April 10, 2009, the Marxist historian K. N. Panikkar reports: Large-scale displacement of populations has been a common consequence in almost all communal incidents in recent times. In Gujarat, more than 100,000 people belonging to the Muslim community fled their homes and lived for months in camps. It is estimated that about 80 per cent of them have not been able to return to their homes. In Orissa too, thousands of Christians have taken shelter in the forest to escape from the attacks of the members of Hindu communal organizations. A condition for their return is reconversion to Hinduism. Both these States controlled by the BJP have not discharged even the basic duty of protecting the lives and property of citizens.

Das also notes that “the police in Kandhamal have registered a total of 780 cases in police stations across the district on the basis of complaints filed by riot victims. More than 11,000 people have been named as accused. Only 700, though, have been arrested so far. Many of the tribal people who

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attacked the Dalit Panas are on the run to avoid police action.” Further, as stated in the same report, about 25,000 people were displaced as a result of the attacks on them; in February 2009, the number of persons in refugee camps was “down to 6,500.” But the following is recorded on http://christianpersecutionindia.blogspot.com/, dated March 19, 2009: Sr. Sujith of the Missionaries of Charity recounts the other difficulties and forms of marginalization suffered by the faithful: “In many places, people are being given the first phase of compensation and told to leave the relief camps. Once the people leave, their names are struck from the rolls of the relief camps, and they cannot return. But our people are not allowed to enter the village as Christian, they have to become Hindu, so they have no alternative but to live under tarpaulin tents in groups in the outskirts of the villages, or live in shanties in the marketplaces, or become a displaced people, leaving the district or even state.”

The trouble in Orissa is chiefly concentrated in the district of Kandhamal, a region of hills and forests in the heartland where, of a population of around 7 million, the majority are tribals (Scheduled Tribals [STs, 52 percent] followed by dalits [Scheduled Castes, SCs, 17 percent]),13 a fact of census that has determined the politics and extent of social security of the region, considering that 78 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The government of India’s affirmative action or positive discrimination of tribals and dalits in an attempt to help these people who have been subjected to several centuries of injustice has itself sown the seeds of strife among these groups. The facts that dalits belonging to the Pana community, who are converts to Christianity, are denied the stipulated government benefits otherwise set apart for scheduled classes, that those tribals who are converts to Hinduism (under the Hindutva reconversion plan) are, however, eligible for the same benefits, and, further, that dalits by virtue of the Kui language they share with the Kondh tribals demand ST (rather than SC) status, so as not to be discriminated against on the basis of their Christian religion, have all contributed to the persecution of Christian dalits. Hatred, fear, and greed all play their part in the motivation to persecute the Christians: the hatred instilled in the tribals by Hindutva groups in regarding Christian dalits as trespassers, fear of the tribals of having to share their frugal resources with dalits who were newly claiming ST status, and greed of the Hindutva and tribal groups in desiring to take over the property of evacuated dalits. According to Das, “the violence . . . saw attacks on Christians who belonged to the Scheduled Castes and on people who claimed tribal status

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on the grounds that they spoke the Kui language of the Kondh tribal people. The Kui Samaj, which unites members of the native Kondh tribe in Kandhamal, was found to be very much on the side of the VHP [a Hindutva political party] and the ruling alliance.” According to Panikkar, the recent attacks are the worst in the history of Orissa. He writes in his report titled “Second Link in the Chain”: It is not a riot but a unilateral assault on the life and property of minorities by the members of Hindu communal organizations. Nor was it sudden or spontaneous. Behind it is an effective organization and careful planning with a view to demarcating and isolating religious minorities from the national mainstream. It is also part of a larger political scheme of imparting a Hindu identity to the nation. There is a long preparation behind it, dating back to the 1940s when Hindu communal organizations struck root in the State. Since then communalism found its public articulation through expression of hatred towards minorities in manifold ways and through incidents of localized violence. . . . Although riots had occurred in the past against Muslims in Rourkela and Bhadrak, the communalization of Orissa was primarily based on an anti-Christian project. All activities of Christian organizations and institutions were represented as steps towards evangelization. Although the Christian population has not marked any increase in the past two decades, Christian missionaries were depicted as a threat to the future strength of the Hindu community.

While the attacks are religion- as well as caste/class-based, playing the religious card would get greater support for the ruling Hindutva party—the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a lesson picked up from the success of the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who was voted back into power with majority support in the elections following the massacre of Muslims in that state. And the trump card remains declaring Christianity (and Islam) a non-Indian religion, representing Christians (and Muslims) of India as totally other. The politics of othering has been much theorized among others by G. W. F. Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and, famously in his Orientalism, by Edward Said. Said bases his readings of evidence of “Orientalism” or Anglo-Euro-American construction of the Orient, on “exteriority,” that is, “on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West. He [the Orientalist] is never concerned with the Orient except as the first cause of what he says. What he says and writes, by virtue of the fact that it is said or written, is meant to indicate that the Orientalist is outside the Orient, both as an existential and as a moral fact” (20–21). What is of key relevance for representations

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of Indian Christians is that, as Said theorizes it, the resulting subjugation of the Orientalized other, the Orient, who is spoken for and comprehended in terms of difference from the speaking or writing self who is the authority,14 the Orientalist representation draws not from the Orient but from conventions and cultural codes of the Orientalists (22). The Orient, thus othered, is game for colonization. Representations of the Indian Christian are similar, with equally dire consequences, so far as the social and political codes are those shared with fanatic religious nationalism or colonialism. An alibi to the problem is seen in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, both of whom took issue with the use of unjust means and oppression in the name of Christianity. Gandhi criticized the use of force in conversions in all religions, including Christianity, and engaging in such illegitimate activity as follows: Propagating religion in a spirit of intolerance defeats its own purpose. The religion so propagated cannot endure for long. It is for dharma to counteract any trend which may do even the smallest harm to the people. I have never seen any good coming out of intolerance. Propagation of religion in such spirit is only an imitation of missionaries and takes the same form as their activities, with the result that propagation comes to be the be-all and end-all of dharma. This idea of propagation obtains among Muslims and Christians and intolerance has entered the Arya Samaj because it has adopted the same method.15

Levinas lamented the Christianity that took the crucified Christ to the crusades.16 Both Gandhi and Levinas also theorize what to do in the face of the other. For Gandhi, the face of the other is in his famous “talisman”: I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.17

This face is of the absolutely other, not of one who has been shaped to my desires and conventions. This is the face of the Pana dalit person and the Kondh tribal person, the Indian whether Christian, Animist, Hindu, Atheist, Muslim, Sikh, Jew, Ishmaili, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, or Jain. This is the face of the Indian person not despite but because of her or his relationship to a religious tradition.

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Levinas challenges with a philosophy of ethics—the ethics of the face of the other. He argues: The challenge to self is precisely reception of the absolutely other. The epiphany of the absolutely other is face where the Other hails me and signifies to me, by its nakedness, by its destitution, an order. Its presence is this summons to respond. The Ego does not only become conscious of this necessity to respond as if it were a demand or a particular duty it must decide on. The Ego is through and through, in its very position, responsibility or diacony, as in chapter 53 of Isaiah.18

Levinas explains that the “order” is simply the order not to kill: “The face is that possibility of murder, that powerlessness of being and that authority that commands me: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”19 This is a piteous order, yet one most fundamental. This order, that arises from the nudity and poverty of the Other, asks also “not to leave it alone,”20 demands obedience, messianic obedience in fact, through suffering in the self, if needed, but must never culminate in the representation of the Other as even a lesser breed. This is the all-important lesson to apply to Sahgal’s novel and in particular to its narrative of Christianity as intrinsically and historically foreign to India. Lesser Breeds exposes with realistic imagination and tons of historical allusions the great grief of India because of having been colonized. Its purpose in doing so is all too clear: to promote healthy nationalism, through continued, systematic, and systemic decolonization. But this lofty goal itself is jeopardized, most pathetically, when it becomes an unwitting partner to communalism through its repeated rejection of Indian Christianity and its consistent conflation of Christianity with colonialism. In these times, it is also the most important lesson to take to postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Viswanathan, and to my readers. Notes 1. Mundadan 1995, 16. 2. See Joseph, “The S(p)ecular Convert: A Response to Gauri Viswanathan’s Outside the Fold.” 3. Smith 1893, 88. 4. See Panikkar 1989; see also Guha. 5. Nandy et al. 1977, 41–42. 6. Achin Vanaik 1997, 302–303. 7. Thomas 1987, 71. 8. Ghose 1952, 29. 9. Gandhi 1971, 19.

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Bakker 1993, 29. Joseph 2006, 140. See Bhatnagar, Jha, Joseph, and Sharma. See “Kandhamal District,” http://kandhamal.nic.in/km-intr/profile.pdf. See Said 1979, 19–20, on “authority.” CWMG 19: 314. See Robbins 2001, 260. CWMG 96: 311. Levinas 2006, 33. Ibid. 1999, 104. Robbins 2001, 127.

Bibliography Bakker, Hans J. I. Gandhi and the Gita. Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 1993. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Bhaskaran, Gautaman. “Penned with Passion.” The Hindu. April 6, 2003, April 16, 2003. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/lr/2003/04/06/stories/ 2003040600320400.htm. Bhatnagar, M. K. The Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal. New Delhi: Creative, 1996. ———. Political Consciousness in Indian English Writing: A Study of Manoher Malgonkar, Nayantara Sahgal and Bhabani Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Bahri, 1991. “Christian Persecution India.” March 23, 2009, March 24, 2009. http:// christianpersecutionindia.blogspot.com/. CWMG (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi). Gandhi, Mohandas K. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 100 volumes. New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1958–1991. Das, Prafulla. “Chilling Memories.” Frontline 26.4 (Feb. 14–27, 2009), February 17, 2009. http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2604/stories/ 20090227260403500.htm. ———. “Project Orissa.” Frontline. 25.19 (Sept. 13–26, 2008), September 14, 2008. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2519/stories/20080926251900400.htm. Gandhi, M. K. The Teaching of the Gita. Ed. Anand T. Hingorani. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1971. Ghose, Aurobindo. Speeches. Pondicherry: Sir Aurobindo Ashram, 1952. Guha, Ranajit, ed. Subaltern Studies I–VI. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982–1989. Guttman, Anna. “Secularism and Syncretism in Nayantara Sahgal’s Lesser Breeds.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40.3 (Sept. 2005): 47–62. Jha, Rama. Gandhian Thought and Indo-Anglian Novelists. Delhi: Chanakya, 1983. Joseph, Clara A. B. “Dialogue in Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule or the Reader as Truth-Seeker.” Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 119–147.

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———. The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008. “Kandhamal District.” March 23, 2009. http://kandhamal.nic.in/km-intr/profile.pdf. Kipling, Rudyard. “The Recessional.” The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. Ed. A. T. Quiller-Couch. Oxford: Clarendon, 1919, 867. Levinas, Emmanuel. “Signification and Sense.” Humanism of the Other. Trans. Nidra Poller. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006, 9–44. ———. Alterity and Transcendence. Trans. Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Menon, Parvathi. “An Assault on Christians.” Frontline 17.13 (June 24–July 7, 2000), September 8, 2000. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1713/17130210.htm. Mundadan, Mathias. The Syro-Malabar Church: An Overview. Kerala, India. The Department of Communications, Sacred Heart Provincial House and Dan Thottakara, 1995. Nandy, Ashis et al. Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Nedungatt, George, ed. The Synod of Diamper Revisited. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientalem, 2001. Noorani, A. J. “Hindutva and History.” Frontline 21.6 (March 13–March 26, 2004), March 15, 2004. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2106/stories/ 20040326000807900.htm. Paremmakkal, Cathanar Thomman. Varthamanappusthakam: An account of the history of the Malabar Church between the years 1773 and 1786 with special emphasis on the events connected with the journey from Malabar to Rome via Lisbon and back undertaken by Malpan Mar Joseph Cariattil and Cathanar Thomman Paremmakkal. Roma: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1971 [1785]. Panikkar, K. N. “Ways of Hindutva.” Frontline 26.7 (March 28–April 10, 2009), March 24, 2009. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20090410260702600 .htm. ———. “Second Link in the Chain.” September 25, 2008. March 24, 2009 http:// www.pragoti.org/node/2085. ———. Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar (1836–1921). Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. Robbins, Jill, ed. Is it Righteous to Be: Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas. California: Stanford University Press, 2001. Sahgal, Nayantara. Lesser Breeds (a novel). New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2003. ———. Rich Like Us. New York: New Directions, 1985. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1979. Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? 6th ed., Delhi: Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1989 [1928]. Sen, Amartya. “Foreword.” In Communal Rage in Secular India. Rafiq Zakaria. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2002, vii–xii. Shourie, Arun. Harvesting Our Souls: Missionaries, Their Design, Their Claims. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2000.

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Smith, George. The Conversion of India: From Pantaenus to the Present Time A.D. 193–1893. London: John Murray, 1893. Thapar, Romila. Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History. New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 2004. Tilak, Bal Gandadhar. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, His Writings and Speeches (Appreciation by Babu Aurobindo Ghose), 3rd ed. Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1922. Thomas, P. M. 20th Century Indian Interpretations of Bhagavadgita: Tilak, Gandhi and Aurobindo. Delhi: ISPCK, 1987. Vanaik, Achin. Communalism Contested: Religion, Modernity and Secularization. New Delhi: Vistaar, 1997. Viswanathan, Gauri. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Zakaria, Rafiq. Communal Rage in Secular India. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2002.

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CHAPTER 9

Censorship, Social Reform, and Mythological Drama in Colonial India Nandi Bhatia

Introduction

I

n 1876, the British India government passed the Dramatic Performances Act to “prohibit dramatic performances” that were “seditious or obscene, or otherwise prejudicial to the public interests,” “likely to excite feelings of disaffection to the Government established by law in British India” or “likely to deprave and corrupt persons present at the performance.” According to the Act, which applied to all of British India, the director, actors, and theatre owner and even those in attendance at a play that authorities viewed as subversive were liable to punishment through fine or imprisonment or both. A “public place” constituted any building or space to which the public was “admitted to witness a performance on payment of money.”1 If the censorship records are any indication, the censors carefully policed performances by recording summaries of the plays, names of playwright/director, venues of performance, and whether the play deserved to be censored, producing, in the process, a detailed record that makes the story of censorship and its implementation in India both tangible and insidious.2 Despite such attempts at silencing its colonized populace, ongoing theatrical activity that flourished in the late-nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth century, as anticolonial nationalist activity intensified, shows that the suppression of theatre was a battle that the colonial government never fully won.3 In spite of regular surveillance, playwrights found ways to sidestep the censors through changes in dialogue, a

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difference enabled by the orality of theatre. Thus a text that may have been submitted in written form for review by censoring authorities was sometimes changed at the last minute on stage. This difference between the written form and the oral text afforded by the technologies of theatre and performance enabled the communication of nationalistic messages to those in attendance. The factors contributing to this need for close surveillance of theatre were several. In Bengal, plays such as Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nīldarpan (The Indigo Mirror, 1860), Gāyakvār. Darpan (The Mirror of Baroda, 1875), and Dakshina Charan Chattopadhyay’s Cākar-Darpan (The Tea Planters’ Mirror, 1875), for example, had specific anticolonial content.4 Seen as capable of mobilizing action against colonial rule, these plays had attracted the attention of the colonial government and were subjected to proscription and banning. The continuation of theatrical activity during subsequent periods of nationalist agitations, such as the Swadeshi movement, campaigns for Home rule, the noncooperation movement, and the British Quit India movement of 1942, which were accompanied by countrywide outburst of popular unrest, and responses from the intelligentsia that flooded the pamphlets, magazines, and pages of newspapers with reports about anticolonial activities and attacks on the colonial government, further alarmed authorities. In such a climate, stories from Hindu mythology enabled playwrights to provide commentaries on problems of colonization, class and caste, and gender inequities, and to promote ideas about the need for religious harmony to form a united front against the rulers. This chapter considers the ways in which mythological drama showed a capacity for anticolonial resistance in early twentieth century India in the wake of dramatic censorship. Drawing on a selection of Radheyshyam Kathavachak’s mythological plays, I argue that while mythological themes enabled playwrights to camouflage anticolonial messages, themes of national unity and social uplift through stories from Hindu mythology serviced the interests of social reformers and accommodated the demands of middle-class nationalism at a time when religious dissensions had sharpened, and the Hindi-Urdu debate came to be tied to communal identities. Amongst plays that were targeted by the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876, mythological drama occupies an interesting place. As a cultural form that had wide popular appeal, it flourished in the late nineteenth century. In Calcutta, for example, Girish Chandra Ghosh, who believed that “all high class books of each nation have been based upon mythology” (Quoted in Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage, 114), brought together a number of well-known theatre artists and began to build a reputation for the theatre through mythological plays. Ghosh’s plays Rāvan. -Badh (The Destruction of Ravana, 30 July 1881) and Sītār Banabāś (The Exile of Sita, 17 September

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1881) met with great success and unabated enthusiasm.5 With the success of such plays, theatres in Bengal such as the Star Theatre, City Theatre, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre, and the Unique Theatre, staged a number of other mythological dramas before enthusiastic audiences.6 Mythological plays in Hindi-Urdu were popularized and disseminated throughout South Asia in the late nineteenth7 and early twentieth centuries by Parsi theatre companies. For example, the Victoria Theatrical Company performed the Rāmlīlā8 and Satya Harīśacandra to “attract the Hindu spectatorship” (Gupt 79) and an earlier Gujarati version of Satya Harīśacandra by Udayram Ranchhodbhai, written for the Uttejak Theatrical Company, achieved “great popularity” (Gupt 79).9 Parsi theatre companies such as the New Alfred Theatrical Company continued to perform mythological plays in the earlytwentieth century and took on the services of some of the most prominent Hindi-Urdu playwrights: Pandit Narayan Prasad Betab (1872–1945), Pandit Radheyshyam Kathavachak (1890–1963), and Agha Mohammad Shah Hashra Kashmiri (1879–1935), all of whom came from Uttar Pradesh and worked variously as playwrights, directors, partners, or owners of these companies.10 Betab’s play Rāmāyan. a was performed on 16 August 1916 in Lahore by Kavasji Kahatau’s Parsi Alfred Theatrical Company, and he wrote Ganeś Janm (The Birth of Ganesh) for Madan Theatres (Joshi 40, Gupt 83–84). The commercial, performance-oriented, and secular interests of Parsi theatre companies introduced theatrical elements for increased popular appeal, paying particular attention to stage sets, including songs, and building on stories of Gods and figures from mythology who performed miracles and spoke in Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and other languages. The plays these companies performed were often commissioned, and they even kept playwrights in their employ. To this end, one may argue that Parsi theatres capitalized on the popularity of mythological dramas for optimizing their commercial interests and maximizing profits. A significant amount of scholarship has been devoted to discussions of the meanings and implications of retellings of the Rāmāyan. a at changing political moments. Drawing on Habermas’ ideas about the formation of a bourgeois public sphere through “the world of letters,” print, pamphlets, publications, art, and criticism that shaped “the formation and expression of a [anti-authoritarian] ‘public opinion’” (Freitag 69), Freitag argues that the public enactments and retellings of the Rāmāyan. a through Rāmlīlā in British India were “expressions of the polity” and “constituted an important element in the emerging ‘public’ of colonial north India’” (77). The retellings of the story of Ram in 1911, for example, carried the messages of “[n]ationalist ideology, class protest, integrative patronage by a kingly figure” (Freitag 66). According to Freitag, “The public expression of local

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concerns and events . . . could be incorporated into enactments that linked the local world with the organizing rubrics of society. Ram’s story was well endowed to perform this function: as one of the two premier epics of South Asia it could rely heavily on both familiarity and authority; its complex story line and vast crowd of characters permitted all its interpreters to change the emphasis significantly through significant retelling; while its reshaping through powerful vernacular narratives had rendered it continuously accessible by providing place for contemporary concerns and values” (Freitag 66). Interestingly, points out Freitag, even though the presence of such cultural activities at local and regional levels “constituted a fundamental expression of ‘the public’” (87), they were often treated as private affairs and delinked from any political possibility or activism.11 Therefore, because the “British viewed ‘political’ activities as discrete from ‘religious’ or cultural ones” (Freitag 5), mythological drama seemed somewhat less susceptible to strict censorship measures. As one official noted regarding religious performances, “[T]he danger lies in our interfering with religious performances and those [ . . . ] of a quasi-religious character, and these we have no means of knowing, much less preventing these being held” (Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage 138). This is not to say that the genre was completely protected from censorship. Several mythological dramas performed by the jātrā (popular folk theatre form of Bengal) parties had aroused the suspicions of authorities. Reporting in an official correspondence with authorities, R. T. Dundas, the Commissioner of Police in Calcutta, discussed the measures taken by him for the “prohibition of objectionable plays,” based on “evidence . . . that a good deal of sedition has been preached on the stage of these ‘Jatra’ parties . . . the mythological plots of the wars between the Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons) . . . having been largely resorted to . . . as a means for portraying the state of India, the Devas representing the Indians being trampled upon by the Asuras, the foreign conquerors” (Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage, 157–58). Yet the private jātrās escaped such measures, largely because of the loophole in the Censorship Act about “public” places. Subversive activity continued in private theatrical clubs in Calcutta and elsewhere, and no admission fee was charged at jātrā performances in the mofussil (a suburb of a town). Since these places did not come under “public” places as defined by the Dramatic Performances Act, the government could exercise little power to forbid the staging of these plays.12 By contrast, since the Dramatic Performances Act regulated performances in “public places” (where people paid money to see plays), many plays performed by theatre companies in urban centers were carefully scrutinized. The sale of tickets for these performances also meant that these

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companies catered to relatively affluent or middle-class spectators who could pay money to attend performances. The viewers thus included those who were contributing to the making of a public sphere of opinion through vernacular publications, literature, magazines et cetera, as evident in the comments/reviews that Kathavachak’s plays received in literary magazines and societies and the interest that his plays drew from important literary figures—Premchand and Narayan Prasad Betab, for example—and from political figures such as Motilal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu.13 As well, social reformers condemned theatrical forms as morally harmful, especially for women, and emphasized the function of theatre as a tool for mobilizing nationalist activism and the moral uplift of society. For example, a 1932 article entitled “Bhāratīya Filmem., Hindī Ran˙gamañc kī Āvaśyaktā, Hindī Talkie” (Indian Films, The Requirement of Hindi Stage, Hindi Talkie) expressed disapproval of mythological films of the 1930s on the ground that “women who act in them are often prostitutes, and in imitation of European style, they come to the stage in a half-nude state” (304, translation mine).14 The writer blamed this on the “bad influence of Parsi theatre” and berated Parsi theatre for producing a poor and immoral theatre. He also made a case for giving a space to Hindi theatre on the Parsi stage.15 And in another 1932 article, “Hindī Ran.gamañc kā Sudhār” (The Improvement of Hindi Stage), the author, Kripanath Mishra, recommended the destruction of “plays which are marked by kissing and indecency” and urged actors to participate in plays that focus on “characters and situational conflict” (309, translation mine).16 In the imagination of colonizers, nationalists (men and women), literary writers, and guardians of social reform, theatre, morality, politics, and activism were reconciled. Radheyshyam Kathavachak and His Plays In the early twentieth century, Radheyshyam Kathavachak wrote and produced a number of plays for Parsi theatre companies. His chief association was with the New Alfred Theatrical Company, which began as an independent branch of the Alfred Theatrical Company around 1891, and shut down in 1937. He also worked for Madan Theatres and the Vyakul Theatre Company, among others, and is said to have given a new direction to Hindi and Parsi theatres, especially through his sustained involvement with the New Alfred. He wrote several full-length and one-act plays during his lifetime, many of which dealt with mythological themes with titles that referred to the main character. The full-length plays, which were in three acts, include the following: Vīr Abhimanyu (Heroic Abhimanyu), Param Bhakt Prahlād (Supreme Devotee Prahlad), Īśvar Bhakti (Devotion to God),

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Śrikr..sn. a Avtār (Sri Krishna Incarnate), Draupadī Svayam.var (The SelfChosen Marriage Ceremony of Draupadi), Parivartan (Transformation), Ushā Aniruddha, Rukman. ī-Kr..sn. a, Śravan. Kumār, Mahār..si Vālmikī, Satī Pārvatī (Virtuous Parvati), and Devr.s.i Nārad (Sage Deity Narad). His oneact plays include Bhārat-Mātā (Mother India), Kr..sn. a-Sudāmā, Śakti ke Dūt (Messengers of Strength), and Bhagvān Kr..sn. a (Lord Krishna). Kathavachak’s plays were performed throughout India, including Lahore, Bombay, Delhi, and Calcutta, and enjoyed tremendous popularity in places such as Bareilly, to which he belonged and where he first made his contact with the New Alfred when it toured the region to perform there.17 With the growth of the film industry and its interest in mythological themes, Kathavachak wrote songs for Śakuntalā and Sohrab Modi’s Jhānsī kī Rānī (The Queen of Jhansi) before he retired from theatre. For his contribution to Hindi theatre and literature, Calcutta’s Hindī Nāt.ya Pariśad (Hindi Theatre Council) and Bajaran˙g Pariśad (Bajarang Council) honored him, on 2 and 4 January 1927, respectively, in different celebrations, and the latter was attended by important Hindi writers, such as Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Pandit Ishwari Prasad Sharma, and Madhav Shukla (Rai 41). Kathavachak’s own sensibility was secular. In a climate of rising Hindu nationalism, he chose to perform plays for Parsi theatres, which faced the disapproval of Hindu-minded and literary playwrights, and became the first Hindu director of the New Alfred Theatrical Company. Upon assuming directorship of this company, he also faced the ire of certain Muslim sections (particularly for his play Parivartan, in which a character named Ramjaani keeps saying “Bus ab Allah hi Allah hai”) who suggested that the New Alfred was turning into a Hindu company. As director, he consciously gave the parts of Hindu characters to Muslim actors,18 and to avoid dissension within the company, he made Ibrahim Bhai, a Muslim, the Assistant Director for Urdu plays and Narmadashankar, a Hindu, for Hindi plays. He successfully directed his plays Parivartan, Māśrikī Hūr, Śrikr..sn. a Avtār, Īśvar Bhakti, and Draupadī Svayam.var, which represented stories from both Hindu and Muslim social contexts. However, the milieu in which Kathavachak was writing was marked by the rise of a militant form of Hinduism that “acquired a more aggressive form by the 1920s” (Gupta 21), especially with the escalation of Arya Samaj activity in response to the “growth of Muslim revivalism in north India” (22). In Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh, where Kathavachak’s plays were performed regularly, the Arya Samaj, founded by Dayanand Saraswati (1824–1853), had a long-lasting impact. Even as he criticized social practices such as idolatory, polytheism, child marriage, and taboos on widow remarriage, Swami Dayanand asserted the superiority of a “purified

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Hinduism based on Vedic infallibility over other faiths including Christianity, Sikhism, and Islam” (Sarkar, Modern India 74). Such revivalism, in the 1890s, had arisen in the ideas of Swami Vivekanand, founder of the Ramakrishna Mission. At the Congress of Religions held in Chicago in 1897, Vivekanand evoked the “glories of the Aryan tradition and Hinduism” before Western audiences with bitter attacks on religious and spiritual degeneration (Sarkar, Modern India 72). Additionally, a scramble for “educational opportunities, government jobs and positions on municipal boards” (Gupta 22) developed into rivalries between middle-class Muslims and Hindus. These changes—social, economic, and educational—developed into “a rhetoric of opposition against Muslims” among the “Upper and the lower caste Hindus” (Gupta 22). Such divisions, asserts Sarkar, resulted in communal riots in the years following 1880.19 Overall, communal tensions resulted in the adoption of “the language of Hindu masculinity and claims to kshatriyahood”20 and led to “an increasing participation of the lower castes in the public arena and riots, aiding the expression of Hinduism as a martial religion” (Gupta 23). The public sphere of print and literature contributed to these rivalries through the growth of publishing houses. In Uttar Pradesh, members of the Arya Samaj controlled most of the publishing houses and “carried massive campaigns against Muslims and Islam in print, extensively using gendered imagery” (Gupta 27). These included gender icons, especially of the mother figure, which were used to appeal to “orthodox, traditionalist, and reformist Hindus and lower castes” (Gupta 25). Other instances, according to Gupta, that shaped the growth of a Hindu against a Muslim identity included cow protection movements and advocacy of standardized Hindi in preference to Urdu. Simultaneously, the period saw an increase “in the spread of education among women, new ideals of companionate and monogamous marriages,” and “a remarkable increase in Hindu women’s (both urban and rural) participation in ‘public’ activities on the streets” (Gupta 23), leading to a rising awareness of women’s roles and rights. As India’s ancient glory was revived to counter colonization, women, it was posited, “could assert a civilized national identity in the present . . . and provided one of the glues—as well as a source of tension—for claims of a wider Hindu unity and in promoting an internal solidarity in heterogeneous urban surroundings” (Gupta 27–28). Hence, despite caste and class fragmentation, a united front could be achieved on the issue of women, making them “crucial in forging a modern Hindu identity and replenishing patriarchy” (28). Such developments shaped the literary-cultural milieu in which Kathavachak was writing and performing his plays and resulted in the production of a vast body of “didactic literature, instruction manuals,

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semi-fictional and morally edifying tracts, popular pamphlets, books, magazines and newspapers in Hindi,” which served as important “cultural resources” for social reformers, caste associations, and neo-Hindu ideologues for fashioning a new collective Hindu identity (Gupta 10). Popular literature focused on “mythological and chaste wives; figures like Savitri, Sita, Sukanya, Gandhari and Damyanti occupied prized places within a whole genre of conduct books which aided the new moral literature” (Gupta 65–66). Similarly, “[r]eligious reformism developed in tandem with political nationalism and the strengthening of separate identities” (Gupta 21), and affected, in the process, the construction and representation of a specific discourse about women. In addition to print culture, theatre, which had by that time attracted the attention of the colonial government, anticolonial activists, and social reformers, became a vital forum for the dissemination of such ideas, and resorted to a revival of mythological themes that offered entertainment and increased its spectatorship by introducing modern agendas into ancient mythology. In Maharashtra, the evocation of a lost Hindu and Maratha glory found increasing support in the Ganpati Utsav (Ganesh festivals) (organized by the Hindu nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak), which were openly inflammatory and urged the Hindus to boycott the Muslim festival Muharram. At a time when revivalist Hinduism recuperated mythological characters such as Krishna, Abhimanyu, Yuddhishthir, Prahlad, and others as the ideal men and nation-builders, the appeal for mythological drama increased. Kathavachak’s background and early training in Kīrtan (singing of hymns) and recitation of Kathās in Bareilly, the place where he grew up and that offered a huge appetite for Rāmāyan. a Kathās (stories from the Ramayana—one of the two great epics of India), Rāmlīlās (enactments of stories and events from the Rāmāyan. a), Swang (popular dance-drama), and theatre further facilitated his interest in mythological drama (Merā Nāt.ak Kāl, 2). Given the popularity of such themes, touring Parsi theatre companies saw their commercial potential and commissioned Kathavachak to write plays for their companies. By the 1920s, mythological drama became a prominent part of theatrical fare in most of North India, and Parsi theatre companies regularly performed plays across the subcontinent. Most dramas picked up specific incidents from Hindu mythology, which they interwove with the lives of ordinary people to make an indirect comment on the growing inequities under the Raj. To make them stylistically interesting for a theatre-going public, the plays incorporated the poetry, music, and dance-drama conventions of Rāmlīlā and Rāslīlā. In Maharashtra, for example, Khadilkar’s Kicakvadh (1907) presented a story about the Pandavas taken from the

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Mahābhārata to attack the colonial government. According to Rakesh Solomon, the molestation of Draupadi at the hands of Kichak, who is eventually killed by Bhim (one of Draupadi’s five Pandava husbands), became a metaphor for the policies of the Raj. Kichak represented Lord Curzon, Draupadi represented India, Yuddhishthir, the eldest brother of the Pandava brothers, represented the moderate nationalist, and Bhim represented an extreme nationalist (Solomon 32–57). Kathavachak’s plays also presented themes centered on uncompromising resistance to the enemy. These were interspersed with commentaries and contained elements of melodrama: pointed sentimentality, theatrical utterances, songs, comic scenes, and gods performing miracles. Theatrical devices such as scenes showing the gods in heaven watching over their subjects on the earth and showering blessings upon them enhanced the plays’ melodramatic mode. Kathavachak’s plays became exemplary of the ways in which theatre companies carried out anticolonial protest and simultaneously contributed to nation-building and social reform through the evocation of a golden Hindu age. Vīr Abhimanyu, first performed on 4 February 1916, is a story taken from the Mahābhārata. The play’s chief protagonist, Abhimanyu, along with the other Pandavas, refuses to compromise with their enemies, the Kauravas, and vows to avenge them at all costs, emphasizing through the actions of the Pandavas the ideals of social justice, duty, courage, and heroism, especially at a time when the nationalist agitation against colonial rule had intensified. Similarly, in Param Bhakt Prahlād (Prime Devotee Prahlad, first performed by the New Alfred in 1921), the playwright’s focus on Prahlad’s opposition to the tyrannical rule of his father, Hiranyakashyipu, is suggestive of the ongoing oppositional energy of the age. As Rai surmises, “At the time this play was being written, Gandhi’s independence movement had become central to people’s [anticolonial] sentiments. The public was getting tired of foreign rule. Foreign items were also being rejected. These healthy implementations were the backbone of the agitation . . . The atrocities committed by Angrezes were no less than those committed by the cruel Hiranyakashyipu. [In Param Bhakt Prahlād] the playwright has in many places created a satire through the medium of Hiranyakashyipu. Just as Hiranyakashyipu was ruining his subjects, in the same way the British government was violating the principles of governance and justice” (Rai 70, translation mine). Even at the risk of losing their husbands or sons, the women in these plays exhibit tremendous nationalist zeal. Abhimanyu’s mother, Subhadra, and his wife, Uttara, send him to the battlefield with their blessings. As Subhadra urges him to go to the battlefield, she tells him: “Now the battlefield is your mother; [she] will help you” (54, translation mine).

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Uttara promises Abhimanyu that if he is sacrificed in the battle, then she too, like a heroic wife and a Sati woman, will give up her body and visit him in heaven. As she tells him: “I will show the world, see if you have eyes / what kind of Kshatriya women are in Bharat” (52, translation mine). In a scene that showcases a conflicted conversation between a good-for-nothing, corrupt Raja Raibahadur and his wife Sundari, the latter berates him for his passivity regarding the war (between the Pandavas and the Kauravas), pulls his sword from him, and declares: “From today women will do men’s work / You stay at home and women will take part in the war” (67, translation mine). Replete with the themes of honor and duty to the motherland, the plays are liberally interspersed with phrases that are meant to inspire women toward mobilizing for the cause of independence. Hence, such utterances as “Show me how to use the sword . . . I will go to the battle and show my valor” by Uttara’s girlfriend in Vīr Abhīmanyu are commonly voiced sentiments in the play and represent women as willing participants in a war that will safeguard the nation. Recast through new and imaginative modes, the familiar stories created excitement among viewers, who, according to Kathavachak, when they wanted a scene or a song to be repeated, drowned the theatres with cries of “Once More!” Allusions to the battlefield, the urge for fulfilling one’s duty to the country, and the need for sacrificing one’s life for the nation became themes that sharpened the question of freedom. Thus, in Vīr Abhīmanyu, even though Abhimanyu gives up his life for the sake of the kingdom of the Pandavas, his legacy continues through his son Parikshit, who assumes the leadership of Hastinapur. The last scene of the play shows the crowning of Parikshit with divine blessings showered upon him from heaven. The play portrays an enemy that is evil but also possesses formidable strength and, in so doing, reminds viewers that defeating the enemy was no easy task and required unfailing commitment. Fear of censorship also resulted in transformations in dialogue and references to mythological allusions that bore covert anticolonial nationalistic messages. In Īśvar Bhakti, Kathavachak added the following monologue to the performance: Respected sages and holy men, what is this bundle of bones? Is this a disgrace to this holy earth, or is it the tyranny of the present rule? What a cruel, difficult, and ugly scenario it is . . . What is this, tell me, why are you quiet? Are you scared? Whose garden has been destroyed, the flowers of which are now scattered? (Lal, Pārasī-Hindī Ran˙gamañc, Parsi-Hindi Stage 50, translation mine)

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In his autobiography, Kathavachak writes of an occasion on which Param Bhakt Prahlād came under suspicion: The [New Alfred Theatrical] Company’s electricity manager, Mr. Manikshah Balsara, told me that an officer of the local police came thrice with his diary in an attempt to catch the play on the basis of its opposition to the British and have it stopped, but he failed. Prahlad and Pramod [characters in the play] certainly spoke very openly against oppression and dominance in the play, but the question was—whose dominance?21

Kathavachak’s recounting of this incident confirms the difficulties that censors faced with regard to keeping a check on performances. Even if written plays could be obtained, there was “no information as to any ‘gag,’ which might have been interpolated during the performance,” making it difficult for officials to take action under the Act of 1876, or under the Indian Penal Code.22 As a cultural phenomenon, therefore, mythological drama, as I have argued elsewhere, “can be seen as a vital and invigorating activity that challenged the political machinery and, on occasion, rendered futile its attempts to suppress drama. Its celebrations of mythological heroes and warriors and questioning of tyranny and injustice through manipulation of dialogue and language that concealed attacks on the British rulers disseminated oppositional ideas to large and varied audiences” (Bhatia 49). Such attacks became even more pronounced in Īśvar Bhakti, through references, in scene six of act one, to the plight and mistreatment of famine victims and the inability of the “Raj” or “Sarkar” to take care of them. This scene expresses an acute social vision, gives voice to the subaltern, and exhibits the tyrannical behavior of rulers through their refusal to give any hoarded food to the starving populace. Yet these plays also became deeply invested in tying their anticolonial messages with social reform, as evident in the following dialogue, in the opening scene of Vīr Abhimanyu, regarding the usefulness of theatre for mobilizing public support, and the larger social and reformist implications and purpose of the drama. Following the prelude, Vīr Abhimanyu initiates the following conversation between the Nat.a (actor) and the Nat.ī (actress), characters whose function is to introduce the play to the audience: Nat.a: Arya woman, today there is tremendous enthusiasm in the theatre. We should shower the drama rasa [the taste, savor, flavor, or essence of drama] on the devotees. We should arrange for a play.23 Nat.ī: . . . the truth is that indecent plays have destroyed the chief purpose of theatre. They have corrupted the viewers’ means of merriment. The art of

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drama is the ancient art of the Aryas. Whenever, in accordance with prevailing times, some failing occurs in the behavior of mankind, then through drama reform is brought about . . . in society. This is because the effect that cannot be reached through lectures or song alone can be achieved through acting. Therefore . . . it is our job to bring those back who are lost onto the right track. Nat.a: This is precisely our duty, but . . . Nat.ī: Interests are now changing. There is a tradition of mythological drama. At such a time, we should think about playing a significant drama; along with entertainment, we should also preserve our society and our nation. Nat.a: Is that so? Then, to show to the children of India the pride of India’s brave ones . . . let us play . . . Abhimanyu Natak . . . Nat.ī: Abhimanyu? Which Abhimanyu? . . . In the battle of Mahabharata when the Indian field was being marked with the sacred blood of the brave ones, the one who gave up his life to fulfill the pledge [to the nation] . . . that Abhimanyu? Nat.a: Yes, that Abhimanyu, son of Arjun . . . the one who immortalized his name by giving up his life . . . / Let us sing the praises of that brave and powerful one. (8–11, translation mine)

This opening dialogue, as I have commented elsewhere, is an important theoretical statement that grounds the social, political, and reformist role of drama and theatre. It “invites the audience to seek critical engagement with the genre and examine its relevance to the political and historical context of the time” (Bhatia 47–48). While articulating the need for staging stories from the repertoire of heroic tales of the past during a period of anti-imperialist struggle, the dialogue simultaneously promotes an idealized Hindu Aryan civilization of the past to achieve these goals. Such a frame, thus, “clarifies at the outset the distinct goal of drama in politically charged times and the specific goals of a return to the past, one whose objective is not nostalgia but an attempt to shake the nation out of its stupor and awaken its people to recognize the need for collective mobilization” against colonial rule (Bhatia 47–48). Increasing demand for Kathavachak’s plays led to their production in various urban and suburban centers in Bengal and in Uttar Pradesh, and in cities such as Bombay, Lahore, and Delhi. At times, theatre companies performed on temporary stages. Most plays underwent considerable preparation and mounted elaborate sets and scenery. A typical stage of the New Alfred Theatre Company was 70 feet wide, including stage and wings, and about 60 feet long. Dressing rooms were separate. The space for audiences was about 115 feet long and 60 feet wide. A hole in the middle of the stage served as a path for actors to go into the earth, which was especially useful

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for scenes in which gods would emerge from this spot on stage. In accordance with the theatrical style, there was also a machine on which the actor could be made to sit and was propped up or down (Merā Nāt.ak Kāl 153–154). Vīr Abhimanyu and Param Bhakt Prahlād became household names and attracted national attention. Several journals praised Vīr Abhimanyu as follows: According to Sarasvati, “The play gives primacy to Vīr (heroic) and Karun.ā (compassion) rasa. The emotions are very beautiful.” Vijay responded by saying that “[t]he characters of the play are exemplary. The poetry is full of rasa and sweetness.” Bharat Mitra claimed that “Vir Abhimanyu is a play that brings Hindu ideals to the forefront.” Brahamachari posited, “There is so much rasa and interest in the play that only a distressed person can leave it in the middle of reading the play.” Aaj reported that “[a] picture of the courage and duty of our men has been appropriately sketched out.” Sanatandharma-Pataka found that “[t]he puritanical emotions and the new style of prose and poetry will be highly beneficial for the lovers of Hindi literature” (cited in Rai 18, translation mine). When the New Alfred Company opened Kathavachak’s play Īśvar Bhakti in Delhi, it was inaugurated by the then Congress President, Motilal Nehru, who was accompanied by the feminist activist Sarojini Naidu. The plays thus succeeded in engaging the attention of multiple audiences that ranged from literary writers to political activists and nationalist figures. Overall, the popularity of mythological drama had several important consequences. First, in addition to disseminating anticolonial and reformist messages, it helped reinstate the reputation of theatre. The rhetoric of “obscenity” and “morality” used by colonial, middle-class nationalists and social reformers had imparted a dubious reputation to theatre, and affected, as a result, attendance by the “respectable” populace, especially women. The sanctimonious character of religious and mythological drama challenged perceptions about theatre as “immoral” and “obscene,” and altered perceptions about Parsi theatre companies, which were dismissed by some literary moralists as “vulgar.”24 Premchand, a leading Hindi writer who chaired the inaugural conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936, and spoke up for the nationalist cause, praised Vīr Abhimanyu in Madhuri, the journal he edited, as follows: “We understand that before this no Hindi play of such caliber has come on the Parsi company stage . . . The ways in which descriptions, characters, and presentation of the nationalist sentiments of the time and the ways in which they gave strength to Hindu society, is highly significant” (quoted in Lal, Pārasī-Hindī Ran.gamañc, 45; translation mine). Additionally, mythological drama increased the participation of women as viewers through its representation of images of ideal Hindu women such as Sita, Subhadra, and Uttara, which made it “respectable” for middle-class

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women to attend these performances. Recognizing this gender shift among audience members, Narayan Prasad Betab, whose Mahābhārata delighted audiences in 1913 at the Sangam Theatre in Delhi, wrote in his preface: “With my drama, people who considered it a sin to show drama to their women now started bringing them to the theatre without hesitation. The women (the term used in the Hindi original—“Devī”—translates as “goddess,” a respectful form of address) showed so much respect for these plays that the manager had to specially arrange a play once a week for women, in which men were not admitted” (quoted in Lal, Pārasī-Hindī Ran.gamañc, 99; translation mine). According to Gupt, the “greatest impact of this drama was that it put an end to the dominance of Urdu on the Parsi stage. Company owners perceived the pulse of the audience and began to have plays written and performed in Hindi” (83). Despite Kathavachak’s dismissal of communalism in his autobiography, Merā Nāt.ak Kāl, and emphasis on his ability to write plays in both Hindi and Urdu, Gupt’s comment, and the playwrights’ evocation of a valorous and spiritual (Hindu) civilization, shows that mythological plays had begun to respond to the growing demand for the separation of Hindi and Urdu as distinct languages, and (consciously or unconsciously) served the cause of Hindi at a time when the debates spawned by rising linguistic nationalisms recast differences between Hindi and Urdu in terms of differences in religion. Conclusion Undoubtedly, mythological plays performed a political function at a time when colonial policies and practices complicated dramatic renderings of nationalism and through analytical representations of stories from the Rāmāyan. a and the Mahābhārata commented on contemporaneous sociopolitical events. As Anuradha Kapur asserts, Kathavachak made mythology more accessible to viewers for political ends.25 This was achieved both through the opening conversation between Nat.a and Nat.ī, who introduced spectators to the theme of the play, and through the action where most scenes alternated conversations among the gods with situations that focused on ordinary peoples’ lives, and even integrated these situations and conversations. Such apparently seamless integration of the divine and the worldly was designed to create the illusion that the relationships between gods and mortals are “real,” and enabled the plays to comment on philosophy, dharma, duty, and contemporaneous sociopolitical situations. In Param Bhakt Prahlād the conversation between Nat.a and Nat.ī at the beginning of the play highlights the role of theatre in bringing to viewers the power of the “Paramātmā.” The conversation also locates the relevance of the story

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for the viewers in the context of divisiveness among people and insists on the need for getting rid of conflict among all those who are the sons of the same “mother India.” As Nat.a tells Nat.ī: “Be they Arya or Sanatani, Christian or Muslim / their views may be different, yet they all belong to the same kin” (10, translation mine). To this Nat.ī replies, “May your thoughts exercise a good influence on society. May brothers tie the knot of love and, with collective bodily mind and life spirit, increase the glory of the community” (10). In the same conversation, Nat.a tells Nat.ī that while the play is about “Param Bhakt Prahlād,” it is “up to the sharp minded viewers to understand its nuanced and obvious meanings” (10, translation mine), hinting at the relevance of the themes to the contemporaneous moment. The numerous conversations in the play regarding corrupt social practices of those in power—king Hiranyakashyipu against his subjects; exploitation of the “prajā” or subjects, of farmers, and dāsīs (servants), of hierarchies operative within families; and the need for women to join the agitation against oppressive forces—are carefully located in the context of Prahlad’s story. Yet they are also applicable in terms of the ongoing anticolonial agitations, which involved women and subaltern groups as participants. So the play is marked by a social vision that critiques a range of tyrannies. The portrayal of women in multifaceted roles and their ability to take on authority is highlighted in a number of places. In a confrontation between a father and a son about whether wealth is greater than name and fame, the wife and mother Chanchala decides to act as the judge in a mock court trial and declares that the true human being is one who desires neither fame nor wealth. Consequently, she announces that such a being is “the woman of this nation who desires neither fame nor money, but the love of her husband and son” (65, translation mine). Chanchala’s persuasive argument eventually convinces both father and son, and the father (her husband, Lobhi, implying “greedy”) tells her that he honors her verdict and accords her a more elevated social status in relation to himself. Yet the women who are shown in these elevated positions and roles are, for the most part, Arya women, who are expected to uphold Kshatriya values of valor and honor. They fight in the name of duty toward the family, community, and the nation, and uphold their strīdharma (wifely duty) toward their husbands. By contrast, a reference to “prostitutes” as sycophants in Vīr Abhimanyu sets up a sharp dichotomy that is immediately dismissive of the latter. For all its well-intentioned efforts then, the stories staged by mythological drama supported the revivalist phase of Hinduism at that time. As in Vīr Abhimanyu, the plays asserted the supremacy of Arya dharma at a time when divisions along religious, regional, and caste lines

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were on the rise. The conversation between Nat.a and Nat.ī in the opening scene of Īśvar Bhakti especially encapsulates existing visions of a Hindu India: Nat.ī: Son of Arya, are you seeing . . . what’s in front [of you]. Nat.a: What is it dear? Nat.ī: . . . Sanctimonious rivers such as Ganga [and] Yamuna—and protected by beautiful mountains such as Himalayas and Vindhyas is our dear country Bharat. Nat.a: Yes, I am seeing. This is that country, where Rama, Parshuram, Krishna, and Buddha have taken avtar. This is that country, where Maharishis like Panini, Parashar, Vashitha, Valmiki, Vyas, Yagzavalkya and Bhardwaj have been. This is that country, where warriors such as Hanuman, Brahmancharis such as Bhishma, mace-operators such as Bhim, archers such as Arjun, and children such as Abhimanyu have immortalized their names. This is that country, where honest men like Harishchandra, undefeatable men like Bhagirathi, philanthropists like Karna, gurus like Nanak, Vedic preachers such as Dayanand, poets such as Sur-Tulsi [Suradas and Tulsidas] have left their imprint alive. At our present time too, Mahatma like Gandhi, Brahmin like Malviya and sacrificial people such as Nehru are here. (6, translation mine)

As this conversation continues, it conveys to spectators the need for national unity but more importantly the need for religious devotion, thus justifying the need for performing a play on another figure from mythology—Ambrish—and through the story of his devotion inspire society toward action. The myriad mythological stories, revived, transformed, and restaged through dramatic modes, then contributed to the dissemination and consolidation of a nationalism that constructed Hindu India as the norm, a theme that is especially pronounced in Vīr Abhimanyu’s emphasis on the need to know Sanskrit and Vedanta. And even as mythological drama opened up theatrical activity for middle-class women and promoted their participation in the nationalist cause, the core of its nationalist ideology fashioned an identity for women, which, in spite of showing them as independent, courageous, and empowered, reinforced their roles as primarily those of “good” mothers and wives.26 As well, the success of these plays and their dissemination through the publication of plays by vernacular presses, and among a body of spectators who duly attended these performances, opened up a dialogue with the larger public. Seen as a tremendously important contribution to Hindi literature and culture, Vīr Abhimanyu was prescribed as part of the course syllabus in Punjab University (Merā Nāt.ak Kāl 69) and permeated the education system, an institutional

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arm of civil society, which, in Althusser’s estimation, functions as an apparatus through which dominant ideologies and ideas get shaped and disseminated. Performance Details of Some of Radheyshyam Kathavachak’s Full-Length Plays 1. Vīr Abhimanyu (Heroic Abhimanyu):27 First performance, 4 February 1916. It became very popular in the Hindi world and sold 100,000 copies. It was also prescribed on the Punjab University Syllabus (Rai 18). Its success also inspired others to write plays and form their own theatre companies, as in the case of playwright Lala Vishambar Sahay “Vyakul,” who initiated the Vyakul Bharat Company (Rai 19). 2. Īśvar Bhakti (Devotion to God): First performance, 1929 in Delhi. Inaugurated by the Congress President (at the time), Motilal Nehru. The play was advertised in Delhi newspapers and viewers came from Meerut, Bulandshahar, Khurja, Ghaziabad, and Riwari; hence several people in Delhi were unable to get tickets (Rai 55). 3. Mahār..si Vālmikī (Great Sage Valmiki): First performed in Calcutta on 28 May 1932 by Madan Theatre (Rai 34). 4. Satī-Pārvatī (Virtuous Parvati): Procured by Shahjahan Theatrical Company in 1944 in Delhi. 5. Śravan. Kumār: First performed in 1916 by Shree Survijay Natak Samaj in Sangam Theatre in Delhi; second performance was by the New Alfred Theatrical Company in May 1918, inaugurated by the Arya Samaj leader Shri Indra Vidyavachaspati (Rai 46). 6. Param Bhakt Prahlād (Supreme Devotee Prahalad): This play was written at the request of the Vyakul Bharat Company, to be performed by this Company, but because of the death of Vakulji, the Company disbanded and the play could not be performed. It was first performed by the New Alfred in 1921 under the direction of Sorabji in Ahmedabad (Rai 48). During the writing of Prahlad, which took five years, Kathavachak also wrote other plays. 7. Parivartan (Transformation): Written in 1925, performed by the New Alfred Theatrical Company in Delhi. At the request of spectators, it was performed continuously for nine days, and set a new precedent for the Parsi stage. Initially it played under the direction of the Gujarati director Daniel Dada, and later under the direction of Kathavachak (Rai 50). 8. Māśrikī Hūr: Written in response to the objection by some Muslims to Parivartan, who felt that New Alfred was turning into a Hindu Company—so Kathavachak wrote a drama with a Muslim theme.

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Performed in 1926; first published by Radheyshayam Pustakalay in 1927 (Rai 51). 9. Śrikr..sn.a Avtār (Sri Krishna Incarnate): First performed in 1926 by New Alfred in Amritsar, after which the Company performed it in Lahore (Rai 53). 10. Draupadī Svayam.var (The Self-Chosen Marriage Ceremony of Draupadi): First performed in 1929 in Amritsar (Rai 57). 11. Devr..si Nārad (Sage Deity Narad): First performed by Radheyshyam Natak Samaj in Bareilly (Rai 59).

Notes 1. Home Department Proceedings, “Draft Bill to Empower the Government to Prohibit Certain Dramatic Performances.” Public 228–230 (March 1876), National Archives of India, Delhi. 2. For an example of surveillance methods, see P. K. Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage. Calcutta: Barnali, 1989, 36. 3. It is to be noted that in 1876, the year that the D. P. Act was passed, Jahangir Pestanji Khambata formed the Empress Victoria Theatrical Company “as a limited joint stock company with several shareholders” and a board of directors (Gupt, The Parsi Theatre 123–124). In 1875–76 Kaikhushro N. Kabra formed the Natak Uttejak Company (Gupt 133). And also in 1876, a few young men, mainly college students, founded the Shakespeare Theatrical Company (Gupt 143). 4. For further discussion of these plays, see Bhatia, Acts of Authority / Acts of Resistance. 5. For Ghosh, there was tremendous hope to be derived from mythological plays, because he believed “Homer, Virgil, Milton and Michael [Madhusudan Dutt] produced their best pieces on mythology . . .[T]he best three novels of Bankim Chandra are based on the most popular religious pieces—the ‘Bhagbat Gita.’ No poet’s conception can surpass that of Vyasa or Valmiki nor has any poet or dramatist or historian been able to depict a more sublime ideal than of Rama or Krishna, Lakshman or Vasma, Sita or Subhadra” (quoted in Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage,114). 6. These included Abhimanyu-Badh (The Murder of Abhimanyu, November 26, 1881), Lak.sman. Barjan (December 31, 1881), Sītār Bibāha (The Wedding of Sita, March 11, 1882), Rāmer Banabās (The Exile of Rama, April 15, 1882), Sītā Haran. (The Abduction of Sita, July 22, 1882). The Star Theatre staged Dhrūb Caritra (The Character of Dhrub, August 11, 1883), and the mythological romance Nala-Damyantī (December 15, 1883). 7. Writers such as Bharatendu Harishchandra wrote the popular play Satya Harīśacandra.

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8. For a discussion of Rāmlīlā (published by Khurshedji Balivala, J. N. Petit Parsi Orphanage, Captain Printing Press, Mumbai, n.d.), see Gupt, The Parsi Theatre, 76–78. 9. It is unclear if the versions performed by the Parsi theatre companies drew on Bharatendu Harishchandra’s play. Gupt mentions a copy in his possession bearing “the monogram of Parsi Amateur Dramatic Society” that says “rehearsal copy” and “printed by Jam-e-Jamshed Press where most of the Victoria Company’s dramas were published” (79). Gupt also mentions that the Alfred Theatrical Company performed Harīśacandra in 1883 in Bombay and with great success in Lahore in 1884 (128). Also, it is noteworthy, points out Gupt, that Bharatendu, in his essay “Nāt.ak,” written in 1883, refers to a play Śakuntalā performed by a Parsi company and wonders if this “could have been the opera Śakuntalā composed by Narsharvanji Khansahb and performed by the Victoria Theatrical Company”(119). 10. Joshi, 25–26. According to Joshi, their plays were different from the literary drama that marked this period, which is known as the Prasād Yuga (the Age of Prasad), a phase to which Jaishankar Prasad made an important contribution through Hindi drama. Betab was born in 1872 in Aurangabad in Bulandshahr district, Uttar Pradesh (Gupt 81), Hashr was born in 1879 in Banaras (Gupt 84), and Kathavachak was from Bareilly. Although they worked for Parsi theatres, these playwrights were not Parsi. 11. For additional commentary on the topic, see Kapur, “Rājā and Prajā: Presentational Conventions in the Rāmlilā at Rāmnagar.” In Rāmāyan.a and Rāmāyan.as, ed. Monika Thiel-Horstmann. Weisbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991, 153–168. 12. Threatened by the jātrās, however, the government revised the laws of sedition and prosecuted Mukundalal Das, Gour Mohon Sutradhar, and Anath Guha, who organized jātrā theatres, on charges of sedition. 13. For a discussion of the Hindi public sphere, see Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere. 14. This article originally appeared in Sudha 1, no. 2 (September 1932): 253–267, and has been reproduced in Anand, Ran˙g Dastāvez 1: 302–307. 15. This comment is especially interesting given that Parsi theatre companies, even in the nineteenthcentury, were themselves attentive to social reform. Somnath Gupt, in The Parsi Theatre (trans. and ed. Hansen), discusses Kaikhushro Kabraji (1842–1904), a Parsi playwright who established the Victoria Theatrical Company, as a social reformer “who led the movement for the betterment of Parsi society” and, for “the social advancement of Parsi women, brought out the magazine Strībodh” (49). Gupt also asserts that he “wrote plays like Harīśacandra, Sītā Haran., Lavkuśa and Nand Batrisī and thereby encouraged reformist Hinduism” (49). Also see Kathryn Hansen, Grounds for Play, for an evaluation of the social reformers’ response to naut.an˙kī. 16. Kripanath Mishra, “Hindī Ran˙gamañc kā Sudhār,” Ganga 16 (April 1932): 510–512. Reproduced in Ran˙g Dastāvez 1, 317–310. 17. For details, see Radheyshyam Kathavachak’s autobiography, Merā Nāt.ak Kāl (My Time in the Theatre, 1957).

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18. For example, he gave the part of Shyamlal to the Muslim actor Shakir Bhai in Parivartan (Merā Nāt.ak Kāl, 122–123). 19. Rioting became common in the United Provinces and Punjab, especially over cow slaughter, and spread over much of North India. In Maharashtra, riots occurred between 1893 and 1895, and in Bombay, a Gujarati mill owner organized a cow protection society in 1893. In Calcutta, the first recorded riots occurred in May 1891, followed by disturbances during Bakr-Id in 1896, and a large-scale riot in North Calcutta in 1897 (Modern India 20–60). 20. Kshatriya refers to one of the four social orders in the Hindi social system organized along caste, and implies the military and ruling order. 21. Kathavachak, Merā Nāt.ak Kāl, 44, translation mine. 22. Bhattacharyya, Shadow over Stage 136. 23. According to Pravas Jivan Chaudhury, “The Theory of Rasa,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11 (1952): 147–150, “Rasa is regarded as extraordinary or unworldly; the pleasure which accompanies it is transcendental” (147). 24. For example, in “Bhāratīya Filmem, Hindī Ran˙gamañc kī Āvaśyaktā, Hindī Talkie,” the (unnamed) author calls Parsi theatre companies “vulgar” (303). 25. See Anuradha Kapur, “The Representation of Gods and Heroes. Parsi Mythological Drama of the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Arts and Ideas, nos. 23–24 (1993): 85–107. 26. For a discussion of the representation of women in multifaceted roles in Hindu traditions and Hindi drama, see Dimitrova, Gender, Religion, and Modern Hindi Drama. 27. Source of the performance details: Narvadehsar Rai, Pan.d.ita Rādheyśyām Kathāvācak ke Nāt.ak (The Plays of Pandit Radheyshyam Kathavachak). Patna: Shree Siddhanath Press, 1982.

Bibliography Primary Sources Kathavachak, Radheyshyam. Īśvar Bhakti. Bareilly: Radheyshyam Pustakalay, 1990. Kathavachak, Radheyshyam. Merā Nāt.ak Kāl. Bareilly: Sri Radheyshyam Pustakaly, 1957. Kathavachak, Radheyshyam. Param Bhakt Prahlād. Bareilly: Sri Radheyshyam Pustakalay, 1973. Kathavachak, Radheyshyam. Vīr Abhimanyu. Bareilly: Sri Radheyshyam Kathavachak Pustakalay, 1974.

Secondary Sources Althusser, Louis. Essays on Ideology. Translated by Ronald L. Martinez. London: Verso, 1984. Anand. Mahesh, ed. Ran˙g Dastāvez. Sau Sāl 1850–1950. Vol. 1. Delhi: National School of Drama.

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“Bhāratīya Filmem.: Hindī Ran˙gamañc kī Āvaśyaktā, Hindī Talkie.” Sudha 1, no. 2, September 1932. Reproduced in Mahesh Anand, ed., Ran˙g Dastāvez 1. Bhatia, Nandi. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Bhattacharyya, P. K. Shadow over Stage. Calcutta: Barnali, 1989. Chaudhury, “The Theory of Rasa.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11 (1952): 147–150. Das Gupta, The Indian Stage. Vol. 3. Calcutta: M. K. Das Gupta, 1944. Dimitrova, Diana. Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama. Montreal and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Freitag, Sandra B. “Enactments of Ram’s Story and the Changing Nature of ‘The Public’ in India.” South Asia 14, no. 1 (1991): 65–90. Gupt, Somnath. The Parsi Theatre: Its Origins and Development. Translated and edited by Kathryn Hansen. Calcutta: Seagull, 2005. Gupta, Charu. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community. Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Hansen, Kathryn. Grounds for Play. The Nautanki Theatre of North India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Home Department Proceedings. “Draft Bill to Empower the Government to Prohibit Certain Dramatic Performances.” Public 228–230, March 1876, National Archives of India, Delhi. Jones, Kenneth W. Arya Dharam: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Punjab. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. Joshi, B. A. Hindī ke Paurān.ik Nāt.ak. Kanpur: Saraswati Prakashan, 1991. Kapur, Anuradha. “Rājā and Prajā: Presentational Conventions in the Rāmlīlā at Rāmnagar.” In Rāmāyan.a and Rāmāyan.as, ed. Monika Thiel-Horstmann. Weisbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991, 153–168. Kapur, Anuradha. “The Representation of Gods and Heroes. Parsi Mythological Drama of the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Arts and Ideas, nos. 23–24 (1993): 85–107. Lal, Laxminarayan. Pārasī-Hindī Ran˙gamañc. Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1973. Mishra, Kripanath. “Hindī Ran˙gamañc kā Sudhār.” Ganga, 16 April 1932:510–512. Reproduced in Mahesh Anand, ed., Ran˙g Dastāvez 1: 317–310. Narayan, Birendra. Hindi Drama and Stage. Delhi: Bansal, 1981. Orsini, Francesca. The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940. Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pandhe, Pramila, ed. Suppression of Drama in Nineteenth Century India. Calcutta: India Book Exchange, 1978. Rai, Narvadeshwar. Pan.d. ita Rādheyśyām Kathāvācak ke Nāt.ak. Patna: Shree Siddhanath Press, 1982. Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India. 1885–1947. Delhi: Macmillan, 1983. Singh, Ranvir. Parsi Theatre. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Sangeet Natak Academy, 1990. Solomon, Rakesh. “Culture, Imperialism, and Nationalist Resistance: Performance in Colonial India.” Theatre Journal 46 (1994): 323–347.

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CHAPTER 10

From Kuruks.etra to Ra¯mara¯jya: A Comparative Analysis of the Star Personas of Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan Sunny Singh

“O

nly sex or Shah Rukh sell,”1 an aspiring Mumbai actress declared in 2004, referring to the man who is often considered the last great screen icon, the embodiment of a twentyfirst-century India, and a one-man industry capable of articulating and representing the zeitgeist of a billion people who constitute the nation: Shah Rukh Khan (hereafter SRK). Thirty years ago, following the successes of films like Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973), Sholay (Embers, 1975), and Deewar (The Wall, 1975), all starring the screen legend Amitabh Bachchan, one could have just as easily declared: “Only violence and Bachchan sell.” While reams of film press and acres of celluloid have been devoted to the two stars’ personal and professional lives, there is little written about the ways in which they serve at once as sites for locating contemporary Indian nationalism, as symbols of national aspirations, as well as the complex intersections of a parallel text that conflates star personas with Hindu epic narratives. This essay explores how SRK and Bachchan’s parallel texts intersect with the aspirations of a nation, and the way these challenge and subvert the popular discourses of politics in the country. John Ellis suggests that a star may be defined as a “performer in a particular medium whose figure enters into subsidiary forms of circulation, and then feeds back into future performances.”2 Furthermore, in Hindi cinema, the “star text is created within the film themselves as vehicles for

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star performances which in turn build on images in other films and in other media to give them roles as national icons of beauty, desire and utopian beings.”3 Moreover, as Mishra points out, “there is something symbiotic and emotional, a form of an aesthetic relish in the materiality of the star, something resonating deep in Indian psychology that explains the initial moment of conjunction of star and spectator.”4 However, as “complex signs embodying historical cultural and economic meanings, Bombay stars are cultural ‘compromises’ of a bewildering complexity.”5 Indeed, any reading must also admit the possibility of a range of other, potentially conflicting readings. However it is imperative to recognize that the two star narratives occupy the interstice of myth and national icon of desire, in addition to embodying multiple sites of contested identities in modern India—of language, region, caste, class, and religion. Add to this mix, the struggles between urban/rural, Western/traditional, and feudal/ modern, and the entire country may well appear to occupy a hotly contested liminal space. Only Amitabh Bachchan’s star text, as the undisputed “superstar” of the 1970s and 1980s, based on the heroes of the Mahābhārata6 and constructed on an “aesthetic of mobilization,”7 matches SRK’s. However, unlike SRK, Bachchan’s “film persona challenged the figure of the noble, transcendent Rāma as the dhārmik model of the hero,” relying instead on the “features that belonged to the antihero Karna in the Mahābhārata.”8 Indeed, the parallel texts of the two biggest stars of the industry provide a fascinating glimpse of the zeitgeist of the times of each star. If Bachchan’s parallel text is rooted in the “imaginary fulfilment of the slum dweller’s own fantasies,”9 SRK’s parallel text mirrors the rise of the postliberalization middle class. If Bachchan’s “star biography” was constructed on accounts of a privileged childhood, a brooding, melancholic personality, and rumors of liaisons with glamorous actresses,10 SRK’s emphasizes his middle-class upbringing and values, an open, friendly personality, and an intense faithfulness to his wife and family. Bachchan’s parallel text rests on an incongruous combination of a screen persona of the disenfranchised “proletariat” and a privileged personal life, and is thus prone to consistent destabilizations and limitations. SRK’s parallel text seamlessly blends, especially post-1995, his personal life and screen persona. It is important to note that stars “matter because they act out aspects of life that matter to us; and performers get to be stars when what they act out matters to enough people.”11 Through specific cinematic texts that consistently assert a modern urban Indian identity—replete with a sophisticated nationalism and drawing on the mythical persona of Rāma—SRK’s parallel text becomes at once representative of a wildly diverse society as

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well as a symbol of a nation that hopes to put aside internal divisions in pursuit of economic development and political strength. In the same way, when we look back to the construction of Bachchan’s parallel text, his onscreen persona consistently draws upon two key mythical figures from a different epic: Arjuna and Karna of the Mahābhārata driven by righteous anger and inhabiting the margins of a society that is driven by conflict and despair. The two options available to the “angry young man” were victory in the face of all odds or a glorious death—both of which are constructed over a long series of iconic films including Zanjeer, Deewar, Sholay, and Muqaddar ka Sikandar (King of Fate, 1978). Finally, in Coolie (Porter, 1983)—in which star text and filmic narrative, star persona and real life collide—when Bachchan nearly dies during the filming, the film must change its conclusion, allowing the Karna figure to live. Understanding the development of two parallel texts requires at least a cursory look at the sociopolitical conditions that have framed the two careers: In Bachchan’s case, these would include the 1971 war with Pakistan—an event whose impact on the Indian popular imagination has yet to be considered fully, the first round of nuclear tests in 1974, the Emergency, and the first round of non-Congress governments. At the same time, internal divisions, political instability, and economic despair coincided with a clearly postindependence generation that was coming of age. The Mahābhārata seems the most appropriate meta-text for such trying times, and its themes and personas find their way into popular cinema, culminating in the 1980s with overt references in titles such as Aaj ka Arjun (Today’s Arjuna, 1990), Chakravyuha (The Labyrinth, 1983), and so forth. Bachchan’s parallel text however deploys and conflates these themes in far more subtle and complex ways. Similarly, SRK’s parallel text intersects with crucial political events such as Ayodhya, the 1992 Mumbai blasts and the ensuing riots, the 1998 nuclear tests, and the Kargil border war with Pakistan in 1999. These events have often been linked to a generic rise of “Hindu nationalism” in the Indian polity. Various critics have also pointed to the renewal of Rāmāyan. a as a central subtext of Hindi cinema and a seemingly concurrent rise of a “Hindu nationalist” movement in the country throughout the 1990s. This viewpoint is often located in the “new middle-class culture of Hindu nationalism, which is currently engaged in reinterpreting Indian history to silence Muslims, denying the simultaneity of such multiple traditions.”12 There is, of course, little evidence of a “direct, unmediated, connection between the popular and Hindutva politics.”13 SRK’s personal origins lie among this same emergent middle class, while his marriage to a Hindu and his explicit assertion of his identity as an

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Indian Muslim complicate simplistic readings of a hegemonic Hindu nationalist discourse in popular culture—especially cinema—of the 1990s. His parallel text further consolidates and builds on what may be termed as an “aesthetic of stabilization,” in contrast to Bachchan’s “aesthetic of mobilization,” drawing on images and themes from the Rāmāyan. a, thereby reflecting, articulating, as well as helping build the zeitgeist of the times. In discussing the construction of Bachchan’s star persona, Prasad points out that the “integration of star-value with narrative” demonstrates not a particular star’s mystique but rather “the demands placed upon the star image by a new form of narrative in which the innate charm of the aristocracy was no longer the obvious central content of the text.”14 Bachchan’s parallel text of an earlier generation is based on a screen persona requiring a forced “ordinariness” of characters such as a porter, mineworker, or policeman with concurrent themes and emotions of anger, rebellion, and social isolation. Bachchan’s persona links him to the fast-growing urban “working class” of the 1970s—a problematic fit at best, especially given the star’s own privileged upbringing and social status, which placed him firmly within the country’s elite.15 In comparison, SRK’s text builds on his origins as a “middle-class” man with aspirations of economic prosperity for himself and his “loved ones.” This “hero” doesn’t let fists fly when faced with opposition or injustice; instead his weapons of choice are negotiation and persuasion. Mishra delineates the opposition between “divinity and demonization” where on “the side of truth stands Rāma, noble, sacrificial, dhārmik, and democratic; on the side of evil stands Rāvan.a, dark, brooding, “tāmasik,” and dictatorial.”16 Indeed, this not only sums up the distinctions between SRK and Bachchan’s star texts but also indicates the growth of SRK’s persona from that of the Rāvan.a-like brooding violent hero in the early 1990s, as a final extension of Bachchan’s persona, to his post-1995 Rāma-based persona figured around the purus.ottam, or the ideal man. As Prasad points out, after Bachchan’s early roles failed to garner success, he began working on “middle-class” cinema with Hrishikesh Mukherjee. In these films he played a cultured, concerned doctor in Anand (Joy, 1971), the brooding son of an industrialist in Namak Haram (Disloyal, 1973), and a bumbling English professor in Chupke Chupke (Silently, Silently, 1975). It is interesting to note the difference here in the “middle-class” persona Bachchan projected in these films as contrasted to SRK’s late-1990s screen characters. These were “comfortable” characters, retaining status quo in their middle-class trappings, rather than aspirants determined to seek better conditions. This may well be one reason that this aspect of Bachchan’s screen persona is often ignored—it did not capture the zeitgeist of the

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nation nearly as well as the angry young man and his “aesthetic of mobilization.” At the same time that Bachchan’s persona spoke to the urban subaltern spectators through his “angry young man” on screen, his personal narrative linked him to the upper echelons of society, thus legitimizing him for the middle classes. His illustrious father, socialite mother, expensive private education, and links to the Gandhi family all helped mobilize an off-screen narrative that often collided with his on-screen persona. As Mishra points out, “the rags-to-riches theme that always paralleled the narrative of personal revenge in Bachchan’s films was the imaginary fulfilment of the slum dweller’s own fantasies.”17 Yet Bachchan himself formulated this anger as legitimate—even for the middle classes—pointing out that he drew his “anger” from his father’s writings, drawing an explicit link between intellectual achievements, national aspirations, and his own embodiment—on screen—of these. The on-screen angry young man is born in the aftermath of the 1971 war, with increasing unemployment and political disenchantment that is reflected in many films of the time. However, the explicit link with the Mahābhārata epic is forged with Zanjeer—the film that establishes the angry young man as the embodiment of the times. At this initial point, the text is still about the young man seeking justice. Through the narrative he finds allies among other marginalized social groups—through his friendships with a knife sharpener and a small-time gangster. It is an initial articulation of the Arjuna persona, of the warrior taking up arms against a more powerful enemy. Yet, within two years, Bachchan’s persona becomes far more closely intertwined with that of Karna—perhaps it is inevitable as the two heroes stand as counterpoints and mirror images in the epic. With Deewar, Bachchan’s position within the narrative as Karna—righteous in his own “anti-hero” way but doomed to failure and death by circumstance—is established for the first time. It is a persona that films like Sholay and Muqaddar ka Sikandar develop further. Yet the narrative is not of Karna alone. A parallel strand continues the Arjuna narrative—perhaps because Karna’s narrative alone would be unsustainable over a long period of time. In films like Parvarish (Upbringing, 1977), Suhaag (Matrimony, 1979), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), and Naseeb (Fate, 1981), Bachchan’s on-screen persona consistently and repeatedly references Arjuna. In these films, he plays the caring hero who protects the weak; he is the obedient younger brother (Amar Akbar Anthony) who will follow in the elder brother’s lead; he is the caring son who will not only forgive but also continue to love an errant father-figure (Suhaag and Naseeb), thereby echoing Arjuna’s love for Bhis.ma and Dron.ācarya.

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However, by mid-1980s, the angry young man begins to flounder. Not only had Bachchan aged, but he had also suffered reverses in electoral politics. Charges of corruption—the same ones that his on-screen persona had fought—begin to taint the parallel text. This is no Arjuna/Karna attempting to uphold dharma in the face of difficulty. Instead he seems increasingly beleaguered, more of an aging Bhis.ma, caught in the dogma of dharma rather than its actual practice. The decline of Bachchan provides an interesting glimpse of the ways star texts embody, represent, and interact with national narratives and zeitgeists. More importantly, with economic growth becoming steadily noticeable, and with a gradual decline of major insurgencies, the nation begins to look for other star personas to embody their hopes. Not surprisingly, with the privileging of steady social and economic growth, the “aesthetic of mobilization” that had unified a frustrated nation around Bachchan’s star persona in the 1970s and 1980s became unstable and dangerous in the 1990s. This is also the point of transition between the two epics—from the proverbial Kuruks.etra, the final battlefield of the Mahābhārata, to the Rāmarājya, the peaceful and prosperous kingdom established by Rāma upon his return from exile. These two images are crucial to the Indian imaginary, symbolically conceptualizing human life as a cosmic struggle in the first instance and as prosperous status quo in the second. By the mid-1990s, violence is not only unsustainable but threatens to overwhelm a nation that is desperately seeking economic growth and social security. It is significant that the Mumbai blasts, post-Ayodhya riots, and the “opening” of the Indian economy all take place in a small window of time from 1992 to 1993. It is not surprising that like the Mahābhārata, the violence not only reaches horrific proportions but also crosses over to adharma—much like the killing of Duryodhana. The films of this period reveal a similar propensity toward gore—rather than the earlier representations of violence. The early 1990s mark not only the transition from the “angry young man” to the “psychotic hero” but also SRK’s early screen persona.18 In three back-to-back films, SRK reprises the role of the psychotic hero, an adhārmik avatār of the “angry young man,” apparently exhausting the Mahābhārata-linked narrative of violence. By 1994, and with the release of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (What Am I to You, 1994), violence seems to have not only been exhausted but also become unacceptable to the audiences. A family saga of love, devotion, familial affection, and safety appears to displace the adhārmik violence that had dominated the screens less than a year earlier. This is not to suggest that action or violent films stop being made, or that there weren’t comedies

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and love stories to be found in the 1970s, but that these were no longer the most successful films of their times. In the postglobalization era, SRK’s star image is constructed through two primary points of entry into the national imagination—of the middle-class aspirant (whose affluence grows in direct proportion to his career chart and India’s economic strength) who can gain success by merit and graft, and of a new postindependence, post-Emergency model of nationalism that is independent of, and separate from, the trauma of Partition. In 1995, Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jayenge (The Braveheart Will Take the Bride, popularly referred to as DDLJ), a glossy, candy-sweet romance, with resonating references to the Rāmāyan. a, begins to define the new zeitgeist. And it is SRK’s parallel text that becomes most intricately intertwined with the new national narrative. The film—perhaps appropriately—draws most heavily on the Bālakān. d. of the Rāmāyan. a, referencing the earliest portions of the epic for the audience. The pleasure of the film—like that of Bālakān. d.19 of the Rāmāyan. a—is in the telling of the tale, in anticipating and savoring the twists and turns in the story until the final consummation. The film went on to become one of the greatest commercial successes of Hindi cinema, and continues to be screened thrice daily in one popular Mumbai theatre, over a decade after its release. The following years—and films like Pardes (Abroad, 1997); Yes Boss; Dil to Pagal Hai (The Heart Is Crazy, 1997); and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens, 1998)—continued to build on the Bālakān. d. ’s theme of Rāma’s youthful exploits, which include episodes of the hero realizing his own strength as well as finding a “true mate.” Interestingly, the links between SRK’s star persona and a youthful Rāma had become so intertwined that Dil Se (From the Heart, 1998), which cast him as a man obsessively in love—this time with a female suicide bomber targeting the Indian Republic Day parade—failed abysmally at the box office despite much critical acclaim. Here it is interesting to note the point of contact between the two narratives in Mohabbatein (Love Stories, 2000) that brought together the two stars for the first time. The “angry young man” of the 1970s, Bachchan played the autocratic, patrician school principal that SRK, playing a young music teacher, must face and defeat. Bachchan’s persona was successfully recast here from the original Karna/Arjuna to that of patrician Bhis.mapitāmah. of the Mahābhārata. In contrast, SRK’s Raj Aryan is an ideal, fraternal figure whose only interest is to ensure the happiness of his young students. Even his celluloid name, a “royal elder,” resonates with mythic significance. It is the climax of the film that brings together the two stars in an antagonistic encounter that signals the shift in audience identifications

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and preferences. Bachchan’s character remains isolated, self-absorbed, and angry, recalling his earlier screen persona, except the righteous anger of the “angry young man” has now decayed to bitterness and narcissism. It is Raj Aryan, humble, righteous, and self-sacrificing, who emerges as the “hero.” For the audience, brought up on a diet of enacted, recited, and retold Rāma myth, the film provides a rare pleasure, one that the literary text cannot provide: the spectacle of a grieving Daśaratha expressing his remorse for sending Rāma into exile. The identification of SRK’s parallel text with Rāma grew in the following years with three consecutive films, Veer-Zaara (2004), Main Hoon Na (Count on Me, 2004), and Swades: We, the People (Our Country, 2004), reinforcing the point. The last film especially brings about the complex conflation of star persona, cinematic narrative, audience’s prefilmic knowledge of the epic, and Hindu philosophy of “embodying” divinity in a single scene that centers on a Rām-līlā, a ritual, theatrical reenactment of the Rāmāyan. a. The sequence, lasting approximately 32 seconds that focus solely on SRK/Mohan, forms the most explicit articulation of Rāmāyan. a references that inform the star’s parallel text. At the end of SRK/Mohan’s explanation, the camera cuts back to Gita, who expresses recognition and acknowledgement of Mohan’s embodiment of Rāma-like qualities. The sequence works on three simultaneous levels of identification with Mohan articulating his devotion for Rāma, the crowd on screen identifying him as the momentary embodiment of the deity, and the cinematic audience recognizing SRK’s extratextual possession of the qualities intrinsic to the deity, thus establishing the inextricable identification of SRK’s parallel text with Rāma. After such complete identification between the star and the epic personas of the two biggest stars of the past 40 years, one could legitimately wonder: What next? In the case of SRK, what can be the next stage for a star whose cinematic narrative has reached its mythic culmination? So far, his star persona appears to be furthering the purus.ottam narrative, with the in-house 2009 release Billu Barber (2009) retelling the Krśna-Sudāma story. Meanwhile, Bachchan’s filmic choices, limited partly by age, appear to further an alternating cycle of paterfamilias with an embittered, embattled aging warrior, consistently replicating the earlier star text. The continuation of the star texts in such close alignment with the epic narratives leads to the question: Is this cyclical? Shall star texts in the future continue to shift between the two epics, reflecting the cycles of conflict and peace, through the cinematic medium? If so, shall the next stage and the next superstar mark a return to the Mahābhārata?

From Kuruks.etra to Ra-mara-jya

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Notes 1. Diacritical marks may appear inconsistent in this chapter; however, they have been used in concordance with film scholarship. Film titles appear without diacritical marks, as they have been spelled by the directors. Literary texts and classical references have been diacritically indicated. 2. Ellis 1992: 19. 3. Dwyer 2000: 118–19. 4. Mishra 2002: 147. 5. Ibid.: 126. 6. Mishra 2002: 138. 7. Prasad 1998: 138–59. 8. Mishra 2002: 128. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid.: 132. 11. Dyer 1986: 19. 12. Ibid. 2000: 16. 13. Mishra 2002: 233. 14. Prasad 1998: 133. 15. Ibid.: 141. 16. Mishra 2002: 205. 17. Ibid.: 128. 18. Mazumdar 2000: 238–64. 19. The Bālakān. d. (Book of Youth) of the Rāmāyana comprises 77 chapters and traces Rāma’s birth, his education, and early exploits, tests of strength as a hero and warrior, as well as the most “erotic/romantic” aspects of the epic—involving his wooing and winning of Sītā. This is one of the best known and loved parts of the epic as it depicts a youthful—generally loveable and peaceful—coming of age.

Bibliography Booth, Gregory D. “Traditional Content and Narrative Structure in the Hindi Commercial Cinema.” Asian Folklore Studies 54, no.2 (1995): 169–190. Chopra, Anupama. King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. New York: Warner Books, 2007. Dwyer, Rachel. All You Want Is Money, All You Need Is Love: Sexuality and Romance in Modern India. London and New York: Cassell, 2000. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: British Film Institute, 1986. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: British Film Institute, 1979. Ellis, John. Visible Functions: Cinema, Television, Video. London: Routledge, 1992 (1982). Mishra, Vijay. Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

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Mazumdar, Ranjani. “From Subjectification to Schizophrenia: The ‘Angry Young Man’ and the ‘Psychotic’ Hero of Bombay Cinema.” Making Meaning in Indian Cinema. Ed. Ravi. S. Vasudevan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, 238–64. Prasad, M. Madhava. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Filmography Aaj ka Arjun, “Today’s Arjuna,” 1990. Prod.: K. C. Bokadia; dir.: K. C. Bokadia. Amar Akbar Anthony, 1977. Prod.: Manmohan Desai; dir.: Manmohan Desai. Anand, “Joy,” 1971. Prod.: N. C. Sippy; dir.: Hrishikesh Mukherji. Billu Barber, “Billu the Barber,” 2009. Prod.: Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan; dir.: Priyadarshan. Chakravyuha, “The Labyrinth,” 1983. Prod.: V. Somasekhar; dir.: V. Somasekhar. Chupke Chupke, “Silently, Silently,” 1975. Prod.: N. C. Sippy and Hrishikesh Mukherji; dir.: Hrishikesh Mukherji. Coolie, “Porter,” 1983. Prod.: Ketan Desai; dir.: Manmohan Desai and Prayag Raj. Deewar, “The Wall,” 1975. Prod.: Gulshan Rai; dir.: Yash Chopra. Dil Se, “From the Heart,” 1998. Prod.: Mani Rathnam; dir.: Mani Rathnam. Dil to Pagal Hai, “The Heart is Crazy,” 1997. Prod.: Yash Chopra; dir.: Yash Chopra. Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, “The Braveheart Will Take the Bride,” 1995. Prod.: Yash Chopra; dir.: Aditya Chopra. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, “What Am I to You,” 1994. Prod.: Kamal Kumar Barjatya, Raj Kumar Barjatya, Ajit Kumar Barjatya; dir.: Sooraj Barjatya. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, “Something Happens,” 1998. Prod.: Yash Johar; dir.: Karan Johar. Main Hoon Na, “Count on Me,” 2004. Prod.: Sanjiv Chawla, Ratan Jain, Shah Rukh Khan, Gauri Khan; dir.: Farah Khan. Mohabbatein, “Love Stories,” 2000. Prod.: Yash Chopra; dir.: Aditya Chopra. Muqaddar ka Sikandar, “King of Fate,” 1978. Prod.: Prakash Mehra; dir.: Prakash Mehra. Namak Haram, “Disloyal,” 1973. Prod.: Jayendra Pandya, Raja Ram, Satish Wagle; dir.: Hrishikesh Mukherji. Naseeb, “Fate,” 1981. Prod.: Manmohan Desai; dir.: Manmohan Desai. Pardes, “Abroad,” 1997. Prod.: Siraj Farooqui, Subhash Ghai; dir.: Subhash Ghai. Parvarish, “Upbringing,” 1977. Prod.: A. A. Nadiadwala; dir.: Manmohan Desai. Sholay, “Embers,” 1975. Prod.: G. P. Sippy; dir.: Ramesh Sippy. Suhaag, “Matrimony,” 1979. Prod.: Subhash Sharma, Ramesh Sharma, Naresh Sharma, et al.; dir.: Manmohan Desai. Swades: We, the People, “Our Country,” 2004. Prod.: Ashutosh Gowarikar; dir.: Ashutosh Gowarikar. Veer-Zaara, 2004. Prod.: Yash Chopra; dir.: Aditya Chopra. Yes Boss, 1997. Prod.: Ratan Jain, Umed Jain; dir.: Aziz Mirza. Zanjeer, “The Chain,” 1973. Prod.: Prakash Mehra; dir.: Prakash Mehra.

Index

absurd, the, 13, 156, 159, 161 agnosticism, 154 Agyeya, 26–27, 33, 38–39, 42 alienation, 13, 125, 131, 156, 159, 160, 166 anarchy, 125, 145 angry young man, 215, 217–220, 222 archetype, 4–5, 7–8, 10, 12, 14, 69 Aristotle, 2 Arjuna, 133, 136, 141–143, 179–180, 215, 217–219, 222 Arya Samaj, 38–39, 185, 196–197, 207 Babri Masjid, 95, 120, 146, 177–178 Bachchan, Amitabh, 14, 64, 213–220 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 9 Barthes, Roland, 9, 16 Beckett, Samue, 13, 153, 155–159, 161, 166, 168–169 Bhabha, Homi K., 17, 128, 171, 174, 186–187 Bhagavadgı¯ta¯, 17, 48, 41, 179–181, 187, 208, 220 Bhagavad-Gı¯ta¯. See Bhagavadgı¯ta¯ bhakti, 12, 16, 18, 23–25, 30, 32, 35, 37–41, 43, 45–47, 57, 59, 60, 62–63, 66–67, 70, 72, 76, 88, 132, 136, 144, 149, 162, 195–196, 200–201, 203, 206–207, 210 Bharati, Amrita, 11–12, 18, 23–31, 35–43 Bodkin, Maud, 8 Bollywood film, 12, 46–48, 50–51, 54, 64, 69, 71–72, 75, 77–81, 221

Brahmin, 40, 70, 88, 131–134, 137, 140–141, 146, 149, 206 Bruhl, Lucien Lévy, 3–4, 7, 15 Cassirer, Ernst, 4, 7, 15 Chase, Richard, 8 cha¯ya¯va¯d, 25, 43 Christianity as colonialism, 13, 171–176, 178, 181, 183–186 Christians, Indian, 171–173, 181–185, 188 Christians, St. Thomas, 173, 181 colonialism, 11, 171–172, 174–179, 181, 185–186 colonizer, 11, 88, 128, 176–177, 180–181, 195 communalism/communalist, 12–13, 96, 102, 105–107, 109, 111, 113–120, 122–123, 125, 146, 151, 177–178, 184, 186, 189, 204 dalit, 86–89, 95, 132, 183, 185 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 76 Devı¯, 57, 70, 72–73, 75–77, 79–80, 104 dharma, 24, 39, 52–53, 59, 60, 63–64, 69–70, 96, 131, 133, 135, 137, 140–143, 146–147, 173, 180, 185, 203–205, 218 Dharmas´¯astra, 70 Diva¯n, 98, 101–102, 104, 112, 121, 123 drama, Hindi, 11, 13–14, 16–18, 76–77, 79, 191–194, 198, 201–205, 207, 209–211

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Dramatic Performances Act of 1976, 13, 191–192, 194, 208, 211 dream, 31, 34–35, 41–42, 60, 74, 99 Durkheim, Emile, 3, 4, 15 Eliade, Mircea, 5, 15, 167 embodiment, 71–72, 110, 141, 213, 217, 220 Epicureans, 2 exile, 13, 40, 43, 153, 155–159, 163, 165, 166, 168, 190, 208, 218, 220 faith, 13, 26, 56, 144, 148, 153, 155, 161–163, 165, 171–173, 175, 178–179, 183, 197, 214 Feminism, 24, 30, 79, 81 Fergusson, Francis, 8 film stars, 221 fragment, 91, 97, 99–102, 112–113, 115, 118–125, 157 Frazer, James, 3–4, 7–8, 15 French sociological school, 2–3 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 7–8, 15 frontiers, 13, 131, 136–137, 142, 144, 147 Frye, Northrop, 8, 16 Gandhi, Mahatma, 13, 46, 48, 64, 127, 178, 180–181, 185–189, 199, 206, 217 gender, 1–2, 10–12, 16–18, 24, 26, 29–30, 43, 45, 47, 62–63, 66, 69–72, 75–77, 79, 81, 111, 118, 120, 128–129, 136, 192, 197, 204, 210, 211 Gı¯ta¯. See Bhagavadgı¯ta¯ globalization, 172, 219 Gulzar, 12, 45–48, 50–54, 60–66 habitus, 110–111 Hegel, 2–3, 14, 184 hierarchy, 3, 13, 66, 88–90, 137, 146 Hindu, 12–13, 16, 18–19, 39, 43, 45, 51–52, 54, 62, 64, 66–67, 69, 71–72, 74–81, 95–99, 102,

104–105, 107–110, 112–117, 119–210, 122–124, 126–129, 133, 135, 137, 145–147, 150–151, 161, 163–164, 171–173, 176–185, 187–188, 192–193, 196–199, 202–204, 206, 207, 210–211, 213, 215–216, 220 Hinduism, 13, 17, 46, 69–70, 74, 78, 80–81, 164, 174, 178, 183, 197–198, 205, 209 Hindutva, 13, 115, 120, 171–172, 176–179, 181–184, 188, 215 home, 23–24, 28–29, 46, 51–52, 54, 57, 74, 84, 86, 89, 97, 104, 112, 118–120, 122, 129, 140, 142–143, 156, 176, 180, 182, 187, 192, 200, 208 hybridity, 11, 128, 163 hybridization, 154, 163 ideal, bhakti, 12, 32, 54, 56–57, 72 ideal, sati, 56 identity, 3, 11, 13–14, 16–18, 28, 38, 50, 66, 95–96, 101, 105, 107–108, 113–115, 120–122, 124–125, 128–129, 131, 136, 146–147, 157, 173, 184, 197–198, 206, 214–215 ideology, 2, 9–11, 13, 26, 67, 70, 72, 76, 78, 80, 111, 113, 115, 119–120, 123, 125, 139, 174, 176–178, 193, 206, 210, 222 images of the feminine, 11–12, 69–71, 75–76 intellectual, 3, 7, 96–98, 100, 102–103, 105–107, 109, 110–112, 125, 140, 217 intertextuality, 23, 52, 132 Is´var bhakti, 195–196, 200–201, 203, 206–207, 210 Jacobson, Roman, 15, 18 Jung, Carl, 4–5, 7–8, 15, 32 Kandhamal, 182–184, 187–188 Karna, 206, 214–215, 217–219

Index Kathavachak, Radheyshyam, 14, 192–193, 195–204, 207, 209–210 Khan, Shah Rukh, 14, 213, 221–222 Kipling, Rudyard, 172, 188 Kolatkar, Arun, 10, 13, 131–138, 142, 144–148, 150–152 Krishna, 12, 24, 25, 37–39, 42, 45, 48–50, 52–60, 62, 133, 136, 141–143, 153, 179–180, 196, 198, 206, 208 Lang, Andrew, 2, 14 languages, Indo-European, 2 Levinas, Emmanuel, 13, 185–188 Lévy-Strauss, Claude, 6–8, 15, 18 literature, Hindi, 10, 16–19, 23, 25–29, 38, 42 literature, South Asian, 1–2, 10–11, 16–17, 19 literature, Western, 3, 7, 10 ma¯ya¯, 161 Madan Theatre, 193, 195, 207 Maha¯bha¯rata, 13–14, 17, 70, 132, 137, 178, 180, 199, 202, 204, 214–215, 217–220 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 3–4, 7, 15 . mangalsu¯tra, 50 Man.usmr.ti, 25, 27, 70 Mı¯ra¯. See Mı¯ra¯ba¯¯ı Mı¯ra¯ba¯¯ı , 12, 24–25, 29, 38–39, 43, 45–67, 70, 72–73, 76, 105 Meletinsky, Eleazar, 4–5, 7–9, 14–16 Metalangue, 9 Mueller, Max, 2, 14, 178 myth, 1–19, 24, 30, 71, 76, 78, 80, 83–90, 131–132, 147, 149, 153, 177, 220 myth-model, 69, 71–72, 75 mythological drama, 13–14, 191–194, 198, 201–203, 205–206, 210–211 mythologizing, 1, 2, 7–11, 14–15, 17, 69, 72

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mythology, 1–10, 13, 16, 18–19, 24, 37, 70, 149, 192–193, 198, 204, 206, 208 mythology, Indo-European, 2 nationalism, 11, 13–14, 48, 105, 146, 150–152, 171–172, 178–180, 185–186, 192, 198, 204, 206, 211, 213–215, 219 nayı¯ kavita¯, 26, 43 neo-Platonists, 2 New Alfred Theatrical Company, The, 193, 195, 196, 201, 207 obscenity, 128–129, 203, 211 orientalism, 11, 17, 19, 184, 188 Orissa, 182–184, 187 Orthodoxy, 74, 131, 143, 149 pain, 13, 25, 27, 33, 35, 38, 119, 125, 134–135, 154, 156–158, 160, 162, 165–167 parallel text, 213–216, 219–220 Param Bhakt Prahla¯d, 195, 199, 201, 203–205, 207, 210 Parsi Theatre, 193, 195–196, 198, 203, 208–211 pativrata¯, 60, 72 philosophy, classical, 2, 14 Plato, 2 poetry, Hindi, 11–13, 23, 25–26, 28, 129, 138, 143 politics/political, 1–3, 9–11, 13, 16–19, 48–49, 55–56, 64, 66–67, 76, 78–80, 95–96, 103–104, 107, 110, 114, 119–120, 125–126, 128–129, 132, 138, 140, 146–147, 150–151, 157, 165, 172–176, 178, 183–185, 187, 193–195, 201–204, 211, 213, 215, 217–218 propaganda, 107–108, 113–114, 176 Propp, Vladimir, 9, 16 psychological theory of myth, 7–8 Pura¯n.a, 18, 70

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Index

Ra¯ma, 72–73, 78, 206, 208, 214, 216, 218–220 Ramanujan, A. K., 76, 80, 131, 136, 149, 150, 152 Ra¯mara¯jya, 218 Ra¯ma¯yan.a, 16, 19, 80, 132, 149, 198, 221 ra¯mlı¯la¯, 193, 198, 209, 211 ra¯slı¯la¯, 198 reappropriation, 154, 164 religion, 1, 3, 10–12, 14–19, 26–29, 38–40, 62, 64, 66, 69, 71–72, 76–81, 91, 95–97, 114–115, 126, 128–129, 132, 137, 146, 148, 165, 167, 174, 176, 178, 180, 183–185, 188–189, 197, 204, 210–211, 214 religious, 1–4, 11, 13, 16–17, 23, 25–27, 29, 30–32, 42, 46, 50–51, 53, 58, 64, 71–72, 75–80, 84, 95–96, 104, 107, 109, 114, 125–126, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 147, 153, 163–164, 167–168, 171–173, 176, 178–180, 184–185, 192, 194, 197, 203, 205–206, 208 ritual, 2–3, 5, 8–9, 11–12, 76–77, 79–80, 90, 133–135, 137, 140, 143, 220 ritualization of myth, 5 Sahgal, Nayantara, 13, 171–174, 181, 186–188 Satı¯, 200 sati, 55–57, 196, 207 saubha¯gya, 71, 75–77, 80 Scheduled Castes (SCs), 183 Schelling, F. W. J., 2, 7, 14 Schlegel, Friedrich, 7 secular/secularism, 13, 64, 78, 95–97,

102, 106–109, 112–113, 115–117, 122–123, 125–126, 153, 173, 176, 178, 187–189, 193, 196 Shree, Gitanjali/S´rı¯, Gı¯ta¯ñjalı¯, 10, 128 Sı¯ta¯, 70, 72–76, 78, 80–81, 132, 149, 192, 198, 203, 208–209, 221 Smith, William Robertson, 3, 15 Sophists, 2 South Asia, 1–2, 10–12, 14, 16–17, 19, 45, 63, 66, 76, 78–81, 96–97, 126, 128–129, 158, 164, 168, 193–104, 211 Stoics, 2 strı¯dharma, 24, 52, 69–70, 205 structuralist theory, 6, 8–9, 11 subaltern knowledge, 11 surrealism, 36, 38 symbolic theory of myth, 4 theory of myth, 2, 4 time, 5, 6, 14, 26, 29, 31, 34–37, 101 totemism, 3 tradition, Hindu, 69–70, 75–76, 80, 210 Tylor, Edward B., 2, 14 Upanis.ad, 27, 39 Veda¯nta, 23, 27, 30, 37–39, 206 Verma, Mahadevi, 25–26, 28, 35–36, 38, 43 violence, 96, 107, 109, 115–117, 121, 123, 125, 134, 138, 140–141, 151, 179–180, 183–184, 218 Vı¯r Abhimanyu, 195, 198–203, 205–208, 210 Viswanathan, Gauri, 171, 174, 186, 189 vrata, 52