Culture Religion and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia 1506439926, 9781506439921

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[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-02-29 23:24 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

CULTURE, RELIGION, and

HOME-MAKING in and

BEYOND SOUTH ASIA James Ponniah

CULTURE, RELIGION, AND HOME-MAKING IN AND BEYOND SOUTH ASIA

CULTURE, RELIGION, AND HOME-MAKING IN AND BEYOND SOUTH ASIA

Edited by JAMES PONNIAH

FORTRESS PRESS MINNEAPOLIS

CULTURE, RELIGION, AND HOME-MAKING IN AND BEYOND SOUTH ASIA Copyright © 2020 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Cover image: © iStock 2020; The Taj Mahal and Agra town at dawn by Pasu Lo-utai Cover design: Emily Wyland Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5064-3992-1 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-3993-8

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CONTENTS Acknowledgments

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Contributors

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Foreword Brian K. Pennington and Amy L. Allocco Introduction: Homes and Spaces under Transformation James Ponniah and Amitha Santiago

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PART I Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Migrants, and Home-Making 1. The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony: A Shadow of the Political Realm in the Domestic Sphere? Rituparna Ray Chowdhury 11 2. Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik: A Norwegian-American in China L. DeAne Lagerquist

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3. Old Identities in a New Space: The Role of Hindu Priests in Making Diasporic Communities Feel at Home in Mumbai Usha R. Vijailakshmi

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4. The Ramakrishna Movement in Japan as Seen through the Activities of the Nippon Vēdānta Society Midori Horiuchi

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5. Reconfiguring Home: Cuisinic Negotiations of Religion, Culture, and Identity in Marsha Mehran’s Pomegranate Soup Lisa John Mundackal 85

PART II Traditions, Female Agency, and Domestic Space 6. Searching for the Quintessential Home: Home-Making and Trans-Identity S. Susan Deborah

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7. Pushing Boundaries: Negotiations of Power in the Domestic Space Kochurani Abraham

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8. Women Make it Work: The Story of Inter-Religious Marriages in Urban India James Ponniah 133 9. Women and the “Bratas”: The Practice of Vows among Rural Women in Bengal Trayee Sinha 161 PART III Religion, Literature, and Home-Making 10. Bayit Ze Isha: Housing the Body of the Woman through Spatializing Metaphors Amitha Santiago

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11. Contextualizing Place in Sri Lanka through Popular Literature Dilini Wijeweera, Surangi Gunawardena, and Dimantha Weliange 185 12. Terra Firma and Transcendent Space: A Hagiographic Study of “Arunachala” in Sri Ramana Maharishi’s Life and Works V. Bharathi Harishankar 215

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS One of the oldest, foundational, and ubiquitous human realities is home. Its longevity in spite of its transformations in relation to place, culture, religion, and shifting lifestyles, and across a range of geographical contexts and historical periods deserves scholarly attention. This book, entitled Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia, is an outcome of such a scholarly endeavor that sought to take cognizance of the phenomenon of home-making through an international conference jointly organized by “The Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society,” Elon University (USA) and “The Department of Christian Studies,” University of Madras (India) in Tamil Nadu’s capital city of Chennai from July 28–29, 2016. The essays of the edited volume, except for the four (essays by Mundackal, Deborah, Abraham, and Ponniah), were presented as papers at the conference. I am very grateful to Prof. Brian Pennington, Director, The Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, for making available a grant from Elon University to support the conference, and to my longtime colleague and collaborator, Dr. Amy Allocco, Professor of Religious Studies, Elon University, for meticulously planning with me the conference and making it a dream come true. While I thank Elon University for the grant, I also stand indebted to the local host, The University of Madras, its honorable Vice-Chancellor, its Registrar, and the administrative staff for their timely help and the institutional facilities that were generously made available. The conference would not have materialized without the substantial support of Prof. Gnana Patrick, Head, Department of Christian Studies, and the staff and the students of the Department of Christian Studies whose cooperation I always rely on and remain ever grateful for. It is the academic success of the conference that has led to the publication of this volume. Publishing an edited volume is a team work. It is the synergy of so many minds that have contributed to the volume. I am deeply indebted to all the contributors who delivered on their promises to write and revise the essays in keeping with the suggestions of the reviewers. I stand in admiration of and gratitude to Ms. Deeksha Sivakumar, Emory University, vii

for her unfailing professional help in reviewing and copy-editing all the essays on time. Without her timely help, the book would not have seen the light of day. I extend my sincere gratitude to my colleague and dear friend, Dr. Amitha Santiago, Bishop Cotton Women’s Christian College, for coauthoring the introduction, who with her long involvement in Gender Studies has provided her insightful ideas to formulate this introduction. I would also like to thank Dr. Jesudas Athyal, the Acquiring Editor of Fortress Press, for his efficiency. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the publisher, Fortress Press, for bringing out this edited volume in time. James Ponniah Editor

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CONTRIBUTORS Amitha Santiago is Professor and Head, Post Graduate Department of English, Bishop Cotton Women’s Christian College, Bangalore. She began her research with her doctoral studies in Caribbean identity and religions and now engages questions pertaining to religion in Asia with a culturalist approach. She is currently a Research Fellow with the University of Hong Kong pursuing research amongst the transgender community in Saundatti, Karnataka. Her writing has been in the areas of religion, gender, and identity politics in Asia.  Bharathi Harishankar is Professor and Head, Department of Women’s Studies, University of Madras. Her research interests include gender studies, postcolonial studies, and translation. She has taught courses, guided research, and published extensively in these areas. She has successfully completed projects for UGC, IIT Madras, NCW, and IDRC Canada. At present, she is part of an EU project. She has won several awards and honors including the Humanities Research Centre fellowship, Shastri Indo-Canadian fellowship, and invitations as speaker at University of Cambridge and La Pietra dialogues at New York University, Florence. Dilini Wijeweera is a researcher and writer, helping students develop creative questioning capacities to view interconnections and situations holistically. Her interests include technology adoption, innovation spaces, and knowledge networks. Before returning to Sri Lanka, Dilini worked at the Technology and Social Change Group, University of Washington. She is a Fulbright Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. Dilini also holds an MBA degree and is a Chartered Architect. Dimantha Weliange  completed his architectural education at the Queensland University of Technology, graduating with Honours in 2002. He has been in private practice since 2009. Dimantha is a senior lecturer at the City School of Architecture, Colombo, ix

serving as the Deputy Head for the Academic Session 2011–12. He promotes a holistic approach to design where the social, cultural, and aesthetic aspects of design are balanced with the client needs, financial viability, and environmental sustainability. James Ponniah is Assistant Professor of the Department of Christian Studies at the University of Madras, Chennai, where he earned his PhD. He has authored a book, The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and has co-edited many books. His areas of research include folk religious practices of India, ritual power, popular Catholicism, Dalit Christianity, Inter-faith religious practices, religious violence, and Christian responses in India and Sri Lanka. He was awarded a Collaborative International Research Grant by American Academy of Religions in 2015. Kochurani Abraham is a feminist theologian, gender researcher, and trainer from Kerala, India, with a PhD in Christian Studies from the University of Madras, India. She teaches feminist theology in some institutes of formation and is the regional coordinator of the Indian Christian Women’s Movement in Kerala. Her research interests include gender, ecology, spirituality, and transformative education, and she is passionate about bridging the academia and the grassroots for a liberative praxis. L. DeAne Lagerquist is the Harold H. Ditmanson Distinguished Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College (Northfied, Minnesota), where she joined the faculty in 1988. She earned the PhD in the History of Christianity from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In addition to her scholarship about American religion and Lutheranism around the world, she teaches a course on Christianity in India and takes students to Greece and Turkey studying sacred places. Lisa John Mundackal works as an Assistant Professor of English at Vimala College (Autonomous), Thrissur, Kerala. Her teaching career is nearly a decade old. She holds an MA in English Language and Literature from Stella Maris College (Autonomous), Chennai, and is currently pursuing her research in food narratives, particularly recipe fiction. She has presented research papers at various national and international conferences and has several publications to her credit.

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Midori Horiuchi is Professor of the Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion, Tenri University in Japan. She was a research scholar by invitation of the Indian Government at Banaras Hindu University (1984-88) and studied the comparative study of interpretations of Bhgavad-Gita in modern India, and was conferred a PhD in Philosophy. Her fields of interests are religious studies, especially modern Hinduism, new religions in Japan, gender studies in religion, and Tenrikyo studies. Rituparna Ray Chowdhury is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Rishi Bankim Chandra Evening College, West Bengal State University. She is an alumnus of Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her research interests are socio-cultural history of British colonial era, gender, and labor studies. She had participated and presented papers in quite a few national and international seminars. S. Susan Deborah, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, M.E.S. College of Arts & Commerce, Goa. She is one of the editors of Ecocultural Ethics: Critical Essays (2018), Ecodocumentaries: Critical Essays (2016), and Culture and Media: Ecocritical Explorations (2014). She is the recipient (along with Rayson K. Alex) of ASLE-USA Media Subvention Grant, for creating an interactive video space for ecocinema scholarship. Her interests lie in ecocriticism, ecomedia, gender studies, and food studies. Surangi Gunawardena, obtained BSc (BE) and a  MSc  (Architecture) degrees in Sri Lanka. A Chartered Architect with 16 years of experience, she is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of School at the City School of Architecture, Sri Lanka. Her vision as a senior academic, with her interests being environment, sustainability, and conservation of heritage, is to  encourage the teaching and practice of responsible humanitarian architecture that is wholeheartedly conscious of people, society, and the environment. Trayee Sinha is Assistant Professor of English at Bidhan Chandra College, Asansol. She has done her MPhil and PhD from Women’s Studies Research Centre, University of Calcutta. She has presented papers at national and international seminars and has published articles in peer reviewed journals and books. Her area of research includes gender studies, Indian writing in English, and postcolonial literature.

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Usha R. Vijailakshmi is Associate Professor of History at Patkar-Varde College, University of Mumbai. Her passion is to research on the Migration of Historical Communities in India. Her doctoral research was on “Migration of Tamilians to Karnataka from 850-1350: Study of Political and Socio-Economic Aspects.” She undertook a post-doctoral research on “The Migration of Marathas to Tamil Nadu and its Impact on the Maratha Diaspora.” She recently completed a project on “Tracing the Intra-City Migration in the City of Mumbai through the study of Hindu Temples.” She is a member of the Management Council of the Asiatic Society; and the Chairperson of Mumbai Research Centre, Mumbai.

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FOREWORD What makes a space a home? How does a particular site, whether it is a built structure, a network of dwellings, a region, or a nation, come to evoke the memories, emotions, persons, and physical features that we associate with the richly evocative but perhaps undefinable idea of “home”? These are among the questions this volume invites us to ask. By identifying its scope as “in and beyond South Asia,” the book reminds us that conceptions of home will vary from place to place but that it is a concept we can identify and recognize across cultural registers. By reflecting on the process of home-making, it reminds us that homes are not naturally occurring entities, but rather they must be fashioned through human processes and that they are produced and reproduced within political contexts, social systems, and economic flows. Home-making is a fundamentally human act, and homes are building blocks of human culture. As these chapters will show, religion offers a powerful set of resources for the work of forging homes and our ideas and feelings about them. The chapters in this book reflect on the cultural and ideological dynamics that transform the spaces in which people reside, whether they be neutral, welcoming, or hostile, into homes. The techniques and technologies that home-makers employ are various. These authors examine how food, ritual, and art bind people to places and forge affective bonds between them. They also examine how, in a globalizing era of mass migration, transnational organizations with their origins in the homeland can ease the transition for those settling in new lands. Collectively, these pieces reveal that shifting circumstances routinely demand the utilization of home-making processes. War, conquest, and economic disruption give rise to the demands for new homes. We observe, moreover, very different processes when migrants come as foreign occupiers than we do when they are refugees. Many of these essays are about movement as a result of such events. Migrants bring with them a set of cultural practices to their destinations that help make alien space familiar and that, in turn, transform the new places they come to call home. In addition, however, their new surroundings present both challenges xiii

and resources that are also novel, and those factors also influence their home-making strategies. Homes are gendered spaces, and home-making is gendered activity. Although the home is often figured as feminine or female space, those who identify as male or trans* often find themselves in circumstances that call on them to develop their own strategies. Nevertheless, as many of these essays underscore, the burden of home-making very often rests on women, even as they may need to traverse physical and emotional boundaries and geographies to make these processes possible. Several essays in this collection raise the issue of women’s agency in establishing domestic space, and practice and trace patterns of negotiation, contestation, and conflict between and among family members. The present collection grows out of the international conference, “To Take Place: Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia” that was organized by James Ponniah (University of Madras) and Amy L. Allocco (Elon University) and held at the University of Madras in Chennai, India, in July 2016. As a first outgrowth of their recently inaugurated Memorandum of Understanding, the conference was jointly sponsored by the Department of Christian Studies at the University of Madras and the Elon University Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, located in Elon, North Carolina. Following a keynote address presented by Brian K. Pennington (Director of the Elon University Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society), some twenty papers were presented by scholars from across India, the United States, Japan, Sri Lanka, and Canada. Several of these papers are included in the present volume, along with others that were solicited subsequently. Together they comprise a unique and provocative collection on home-making in diverse contexts related to South Asia and its diasporas. At a historical moment when competing claims about what constitutes home, and contestations about the values and ideologies that undergird the notion of home are increasingly strident, this volume illuminates some of the particular histories of homemaking and their intersections with religious traditions and communities. Brian K. Pennington and Amy L. Allocco Elon University

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INTRODUCTION: HOMES AND SPACES UNDER TRANSFORMATION James Ponniah and Amitha Santiago

In order to make it possible to think through and live [sexual] difference, we must reconsider the whole problematic of space and time…. The transition to a new age requires a change in our perception and conception of spacetime, the inhabiting of places and of containers, or envelopes of identity.

Luce Irigaray1 Irigaray’s formulations leave a trial of implications for this book that as its starting point focuses on the home as place, which has often enough been transformed into space by the identities that have traversed it. The home has been rigorously tied to the woman as the prime inhabitant and regulator of the home as a place of belonging, nurturing, and the place of return or belongingness. The home as place has been accommodated in the imagination as the point of origin, the beginning of journeys, and the first syntax of the narrative of becoming. The home is a place that has been tied normatively to the woman, the female sex and that which is feminine. She has been assigned the role of a home-maker across time and space. And so, a range of sexist stereotyping in terms of the functions, she is meant to serve as home-maker accompanies this assigning of roles. It also overtly sanctions the distinctions made between private and public space. It is to this maneuver that this book at one level seeks to respond. The home as a place/space has a long history of relevance to the understanding of sexual difference. The construct of home as an architectural

1

As quoted in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000), 218.

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

space, an emotional habitus, a chora2 of origins, a perpetrator and sustainer of being and becoming gathers around itself a many splendored thing: a politics of experiencing the world and representing those experiences in a narrative that is clamoring for identity. The home has long walked hand in hand with the spatial politics of preserving the division of the home from the world such that the performativity of female and male identities is assigned space to the one and the other respectively and irrevocably. Both home and space also need to be explored as a larger reality that transcends the subjectivities of women and is inscribed by other global phenomena such as colonialism, migration, displacement, and globalization and inter-faith marriages, which also inflect religious subjects. Andy Clark provides a useful insight when he says, “The mind is just less and less in the head,” and it enters “deep and complex relationships with non-biological constructs, props, and aids” (Natural 4–5).3 Thus it is that the topoi4 is perhaps one of those “info-material”5 sources out of which and upon which initiating schema of human behaviors are deployed. The idea of the chora in philosophy, aesthetics, and cultural feminism has overlapped with the idea of topoi to bring about a place/space of initiation that resonates with the rhetorical discursive protocol. Effectively, these “info-material” sources of initiation are involved in a producing of spaces and are in turn produced by the identities that are inscribed by the 2

3

4

5

The notion of chora first used by Plato and then by Irigaray and Kristeva develops the space of the womb and the placenta as the originary place/space of being and becoming in an individual’s life. While Plato in his “Timeaus” used the word chora to name a receptacle or a place that has no being or non being, but which is the space where form emerges, a number of other philosophers have variously used and interpreted the idea of the chora, namely, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and John Caputo to name a few. In the light of this trajectory of the term, in this introduction, chora is used to designate the overlap between place and space, home and the world, internal and external, the mind and matter, etc. Thomas Rickert, “Toward the Chora: Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention,” accessed March 10, 2018, https://www.scribd.com/doc/74345609/ Chora-Essay-Derrida-Kristeva. Topoi/ topos derived from the Greek word “koinos” means place, and has acquired aesthetic, rhetorical and architectural moorings over a period of time. Topoi is generally referred to as the rhetorical procedure adopted to place a particular argument within a spatial location. In this introduction, topoi is used to present the complexities of the information available in the material realities of everyday places (info-material sources), and how these in turn develop into contexts that contour space. “Info-material” sources are those everyday concrete realities that organize the places that are lived in and transformed into spaces through negotiation and re-inscriptions of identities.

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Introduction

evidential/contextual, so that, the contextual and the rhetorical brings to the surface the potential of the topoi and the chora to breathe as text. Titled, Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia, this book gathers together essays that revolve around the notion of home/ space across various cultures and nations in different contexts and historical periods. The different sites of home/space examined and described in this book emerge as topoi/chora and text/context. In this regard, this book takes cognizance of the production of home as conceived, performed and materialized by the people of South Asia and beyond. While some writers in the book produce the home as text/context through ethnographic means, others employ the descriptive mode and still others, the textual analytical method. These essays read the efforts of home/space makers as agential acts that deliver the promise of transformation, negotiation and re-visitations of the household, homeland, states of homelessness, and trajectories of being and becoming. Across the essays, the sites selected for scrutiny attempt to characterize the home as given and some produce the home as a politics of becoming, engendering experiential effects of positionality and empowerment. The book has been divided into three parts thematically. Part I is titled as Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Migrants, and Home-Making. In the first essay of this part titled as “The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony: A Shadow of the Political Realm in the Domestic Sphere,” the author, Rituparna Ray Chowdhury, looks at how colonial rule necessitated the memsahibs to structure their homes as micro British empires. Drawing upon household manual guides, contemporary journals, travelogues, and memoirs, this paper examines the efforts of English women in managing their domestic household as an opportunity to fulfill their mission as producers of a parallel imperialism. They developed an interesting way to promote and nurture a model of domestic life befitting the ruling race, drawing upon norms provided by early generations of British residents both male and female. This essay proposes that the process of homemaking and domesticity, as spelled out in the household compendiums, was a “political domesticity” that reinforced ideologies of race, empire, and gender. It examines the role of the English memsahib in creating, running, and sustaining this political domesticity in the British households during the Raj and investigates if it actually empowered the English women, as the manuals claimed. The second essay titled, “Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik: A Norwegian-American in China,” is written by DeAne Lagerquist who, through an instance of “third culture kids,” explores the life of Gertrude Sovik as a text as lived out in the USA, China, and in postwar Europe. She derived her identity from her birth in China, American 3

Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

citizenship, Norwegian heritage, and Lutheran community. Her expressions of affection and longing for home in hundreds of letters referred less to stable location than to continuing relationships. Home began with her parents and brothers, encompassed the missionary community and Chinese Christians, and extended to relatives and church members in Europe and the USA. In varying degrees, they were linked by language, ethnicity, nationality, theology, and religious practices. Common experiences and institutions, notably the American School Kikungshan (ASK), China nurtured these connections. Sovik taught at ASK and St. Olaf College, worked for the Red Cross in American military hospitals, and administered resettlement programs in Europe and for Vietnamese refugees. In spite of her several experiences of dislocation and the dislocated, her Pietist Lutheran beliefs and practices allowed her to be at home on three continents, viz., America, Europe, and Asia. Her firm sense of being at home in her family and transnational, religious community informed her efforts to make a home for her students, injured soldiers, and refugees. This essay unpacks the potentiality of religious faith to form a durable, and yet portable, understanding of home that allows participation in multiple cultures and provides orientation during periods of geographic dislocation. The author describes in this essay, the possibilities that religion offers to transform the topos of China and Hong Kong into the chora through acts of hospitality, educational service, and social engagement. Dwelling upon the spatial and linear context of regional migration within India, the third paper by Usha Vijailakshmi, entitled ‘“Old Identities in a New Space: The Role of Hindu Priests in Making Diasporic Communities Feel at Home in Mumbai,” not only describes how the temple-construction in the colonial city of Mumbai made it possible for the working class Hindu migrant communities to call Mumbai their home, but also probes into the struggles of home-making by the priests employed to serve in these temples. In doing so, it narrates the process of home-making among migrants from different parts of India. It records migrants’ efforts to feel at home in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai by relocating their rural religious universe through constructing temples and performing their temple-based, home-based religious practices with the help of the priests. Just as these priests help the migrants to experience a sense of home in an “alien” land, the monetary compensations given to them by these migrants are not enough to support their own homes left behind in their villages. This loss for the home is partially compensated by the priests some of whom live with their families in the temple premises, while others live together as a religious community where they care for one another, making a home among the priestly fraternity. 4

Introduction

The fourth paper in Part I, written by Midori Horiuchi, draws the reader’s attention to the context of another diasporic phenomenon in Japan. It presents the Japanese Ramakrishna movement as a new religious site in Japan, which on the one hand through meditation, hymns, devotional songs, and discourses help Japan’s Indian diaspora to nurture their native religious roots just as it makes available to the native Japanese the philosophical/religious heritage of India. On the other hand, the philosophy of practical Vedanta helps them to extend humanitarian works to the Japanese society wherein they become part of the Japanese civil society, thereby entering mainstream Japanese social spaces even as they reconnect with their homeland. “Reconfiguring Home: Cuisinic Negotiations of Religion, Culture, and Identity in Marsha Mehran’s Pomegranate Soup” by Lisa John Mundackal attempts to investigate how the Aminpour sisters “survive” hostilities and reprobations at home and outside, with food. The essay explores how their cuisinic marvels redefine edibility, and transgress the geographical, political, and religious demarcations and distances between Iran and Ireland. The reconstructive and transformative abilities of food are studied in the light of a re-territorialization, which it effects in the wake of a cross-cultural encounter between an obstinate West and a tantalizingly exotic Orient. The arduous traversal from “homelessness” to “home” is made less bitter by food. Recipe fiction like Pomegranate Soup fuses the domestic kitchenscape and the politico-religious landscape to formulate a new rubric to read lives. The essay analyzes the novelist’s attempts to subvert the cult of cooking into a transformative act, and the space of kitchen into a locus of power, constructing an expansive circle that encompasses the public and the private histories of women, thereby enabling reconfigurations through cuisine. Efforts are made to study food as a facilitator in Mehran’s narrative of alienation, personal struggle, reconciliation, and growth, and to prove that besides a war or revolution, food too can sometimes be polemical. Part II entitled, Traditions, Female Agency, and Domestic Space, takes into consideration traditions, female agency, and domestic space as intersecting with one another to produce spaces for negotiation, creative conformity, and reconstruction of one’s identity. It describes the processes that are enabled by the performatives of tradition and female agency within the spatial text of domesticity. The essays deal with the creative agential acts of the female as found in the case of brata rituals, inter-faith marriages, transgender home-making, and Syrian Christian domestic spaces, that suggest that the performatives stand in for the initiating space of the chora. These essays source info-material evidence to organize a rereading of place/space that underwrites questions of identity and agency. 5

Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

“Searching for the Quintessential Home: Home-Making and Transidentity” by Susan Deborah focuses on a group of six aravāṇikal (In Tamil, aravāṇikal is the plural form of  aravāṇi  referring to a male-to-female transgender) namely, Pandiammal, Sasikala, Shailaja, Amala, Vasuki, and Mythili who have left their natal homes (hereafter, NH), or the homes of their birth in and around Madurai district, and have established a new home in T. Kallupatti, in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. The identity of an aravāṇi is usually seen as a blend of all the homes she has lived in—the cultural memory is that of her NH while that of her present-day living is that of the transgender culture. It could be seen that every aspect of an aravāṇi’s home-making and life is an ongoing conflict between the  akam (interior) and the puram (exterior). It is the dream of the six aravāṇikal to lead a normal life, retaining their gender identity, without the conflicting  akam  and  puram  that is  discussed in the essay. In the narratives, it was often mentioned by either one of the aravāṇikal that they would have loved to remain in their NH if their akam was left in peace. Hence, it can be concluded that a harmonious home in an aravāṇi’s life is to be ideally found within the purview of their ancestral home where the nature-culture-sacred nexus is balanced. Kochurani Abraham’s essay titled, “Pushing Boundaries: Negotiations of Power in the Domestic Space,” examines the question of how the women of the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala negotiate power in order to push the boundaries of the restricting family spaces allotted to them. Employing the feminist standpoint for analyzing women’s experiences, the essay seeks to identify the nuances of the real struggle of the Catholic Syrian Christian (CSC) women in their negotiation of power against their particular socio-economic and religious contexts. The political underpinnings of patriarchy and the negotiations by the Keralite CSC women are examined from three angles: the gendered ordering of family relationships; sexual relations within the framework of marriage; and the political economy of the household. It argues that, even though the gendered boundaries are apparently well defined, particularly in the domestic space that is labeled as “home,” pushing these boundaries becomes imperative in the negotiation of power. James Ponniah’s essay titled, “Women Make it Work: The Story of Inter-Religious Marriages in Urban India,” documents the problems and prospects of inter-religious marriages faced by urban women in the city of Chennai. Based on the case studies of urban women from Hindu, Christian, and Muslim religious traditions, it explores the agency of these women in struggling to craft a domestic space. It goes on to investigate how inter-religious marriages invariably render marriage as an institution of democratic space, wherein the roadmap to married life in terms of life 6

Introduction

cycle rituals, day-to-day religious practices are not given by default as in single religious marriages. This compels them to be in constant conversation, negotiation, and re-visioning of their marital commitments in the face of conflicting views and practices that stem from two different religious traditions that the married couple belongs to. The third essay in Part II written by Trayee Sinha, titled “Women and the “Bratas”: The Practice of Vows among Rural Women in Bengal,” describes the role of both upper caste and lower caste women in the preservation and continuation of brata rites. It analyzes the practice of bratas (vows) by Hindu women who not only perform these rituals to fulfill their individual and family wishes but also play an important role in constructing domesticity. This essay also attempts to trace out the connection between the bratas practiced by the rural women of West Bengal and the importance of their equivalents in other cultures. The third part of the book titled, Religion, Literature, and HomeMaking, looks at how the notion of home evolved and was produced in literary texts. While the first essay in Part II transits from performative female agency in spaces to women’s acts of re-inscription in literature, namely, Talmudic literature’s construct of woman as home, the rest of the essays look at other literature materials and use the idea of topoi/place as determining identity. Like the essays in Part II, these essays too source info-material evidence available in the domain of religious/secular literatures to organize a rereading of place/space that underwrites the question of identity. Amitha Santiago’s essay, “Bayit ze Isha: Housing the Body of the Woman through Spatializing Metaphors,” explores how Talmudic sages produced the metaphorization of the woman for cultural consumption and circulation. The spatial metaphor of the woman as house is captured through this essay. The Talmud is distinguishable as being responsible for the transference of the metaphor of house from its initial site of the Torah to that of the woman. The Talmudic rabbis have long placed on record the architectonics of being woman, describing her in blatantly architectural terms. Employing this textual evidence, the essay plots the function of the metaphor in producing an understanding of how situated forms of human acts and ethics are processed in space and time. Just as it argues that Talmudic authors articulated such anxiety that a governance of the woman was made possible through spatializing her as house, it also draws the reader’s attention to the agency of the Jewish women in redefining such depictions. The second essay in Part III titled, “Contextualizing Place in Sri Lanka through Popular Literature,” argues that an investigation of place-identity 7

Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

in Sri Lanka is necessary to understand the ongoing fast-paced changes of space, culture, and home in the post-war context. Using popular literature set in Sri Lanka during different time periods, the author identifies the characteristics in the experience of “home,” including discussions of religious rites and celebrations within that experience, as a means of documenting changes and their evolution. It explores diverse relationships to home, including forms of homesickness evidenced in the lived experiences expressed in popular literature by Sri-Lankan-born authors who no longer live in the country. The final essay in Part III entitled, “Terra Firma and Transcendent Space: A Hagiographic Study of Arunachala in Sri Ramana Maharishi’s Life,” by Bharathi Harishankar describes how the very name of the holy site “Arunachala” sparked self-realization in Sri Ramana Maharishi, one of the most influential sages of modern times. Maharishi refers to Arunachala as his “father’s house” and it is significant that he never left Tiruvannamalai in his mortal life. There are several references to the material and spiritual aspects of Arunachala in the texts on the life of Sri Ramana Maharishi and in his own writings. Using hagiographic framework to examine the texts related to Arunachala or Tiruvannamalai, this essay describes how space is invested with material and spiritual connotations in the case of Arunachala, a religious town in Tamil Nadu, and how there exists a continuous temporal link from legendary through historical to contemporary times. Thus, this book, Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and beyond South Asia, brings together essays that develop the idea of home and space in different locales and from varying perspectives. These ideas have a continuing history of relevance because both home and space have achieved a certain vibrancy through negotiations and re-inscriptions by such subjects who have found themselves grappling with contexts of coloniality, globalization, war, displacement, migration and inter-faith or patriarchal domestic space. At the heart of these developments we see women, transgender persons, migrants, religious subjects who exercise agency to live their lives on their own terms, thereby installing themselves as architects of a transformative world.

8

PART I Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Migrants, and Home-Making

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-02-29 23:24 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

1

THE MEMSAHIB AND HER HOME IN THE INDIAN COLONY: A SHADOW OF THE POLITICAL REALM IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE? Rituparna Ray Chowdhury

Introduction The English as colonial conquerors had set up their alternate homes in India. The creation of British households was deemed essential as an extension of colonial rule in India, in which the memsahibs played a vital role.1 As part of the process of creating English homes, exalted by the norms and principles of Western ways and values, the British residents of Indian colony had undergone a lengthy and complex evolution. This process again went on in parallel with the course of empire building and experiments on methods of control. There developed an interesting way to promote and nurture a model way of life befitting the ruling race, aided by a host of manuals and guide books on household management written by the early generation of British residents, both male and female. This essay proposes that the process of home-making and domesticity, as spelled out in these household compendiums, was a “political domesticity” that reinforced ideologies of race, empire, and gender. It examines the role of the English memsahib in creating, running, and sustaining this political domesticity in the British households during the Raj and investigates if it actually empowered English women, as the manuals claimed. In this regard, this essay proposes to study middle-class and

1

A married white or upper-class woman (often used as a respectful form of address by non-whites). For details, see https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/memsahib,

accessed June 5, 2016.

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

upper-middle-class Anglo-Indian householders who could maintain their separate bungalows.2 The importance of creating and running the household was put forth by contemporary journals, travelogues, memoirs. These were mostly written by first generation British men and women, who having already faced the problems of raising a British home in India, passed on their advice to the second generation of memsahibs who were trying to cope with life in the unknown land their male counterparts had colonized. How to better manage the private sphere and at the same time uphold the sanctity of the master race in it—was the recurrent theme in the advice books. These household compendiums had a specific agenda of imparting instructions to the new wives on replicating British life in the Indian colony and at the same time upholding the sanctity of the master race within it. Some very popular guidebooks were, The English Woman in India Etc. (1864) by A Lady Resident, The European in India or Anglo-India’s Vade-Mecum (1878) by Edmund C. P. Hull, Morning Hours in India: Practical Hints on Household Management, The Care And Training of Children Etc. (1887) by E. Garrett, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1888) by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The English Bride in India: Hints on Indian Housekeeping (1909) by Chota Mem (C. Lang) and others. In fact, the popularity of these household manuals revealed the increasing urge of British women to settle in India; but more than that, it revealed the conqueror’s desire to adopt India as their second home. “The publication and popularity of household guides reflected the increased number of British women [living] in India, consolidation of imperial domesticity . . . and British confidence in imperial rule and its reproduction on a household scale.”3

The Home Away from Home: The Creation of an AngloIndian Household The household manuals helped English women by warning them beforehand what to expect of life in India. They covered almost all aspects, from the requirement of outfits most suitable for the Indian climate, the best time and season to commence the journey to India via the easiest route, furnishings for the homes, housekeeping, servants, upbringing of 2

3

The term “Anglo-Indian” is used to refer to the members of the civil service posted in the subcontinent who constituted the official English community. They should not be confused with the present day Anglo-Indian descendants of the British and Indian parentage, residing in India or abroad. Alison Blunt, “Imperial Geographies of Homes; British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 24, no.4 (1999): 422.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

children, care of pets and animals, recipes, common cure for diseases, and every other trivialities required for household management. These guides helped in every way to create English homes in an alien land. There was no dearth of reading materials about everyday life in the colonies. The advice and suggestions about managing and running English colonial homes was repeatedly published in books, newspapers, women’s magazines, and periodicals. There was no lack of preparation regarding information and knowledge about life in the colony. Such well thought-out models for home-making, however, did not emerge from the very inception of colonial rule. There had been marked shifts in the pattern of domesticity as the Empire itself moved toward maturity. Initially, in the days of the East India Company rule, the English homes in the colonies resembled Indian homes rather than British homes. In the eighteenth century, the rulers of the East India Company who came to India often learned local languages, participated in “native” customs like hooka-smoking, enjoyed nautch performances and brought up families with local women. They often tried to replicate the lavish lifestyles of the Mughal nawabs. Even though the custom of adopting a native mistress was often regarded as a socially and sexually transgressive act, it was a commonplace occurrence in the early English colonial settlements. The European ruling class appropriated the luxurious, extravagant, and aristocratic lifestyle of the glorious princes of India. For the British, this adaptation was necessary so that they not only looked like the wealthy nawabs but they also behaved like the ruling class of India. But as commerce grew, the necessity was felt for a more effective administration that would tie up the colony with the mother country. But more than that, new currents of thoughts like Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism pushed forward for a fundamental change in the nature of the Company’s administration in India. Both these ideological schools of thought tried to legitimize British occupation of the subcontinent, by declaring that Indians should get the benefit of more progressive and enlightened British rule. As argued by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “while the Utilitarians began to talk of social engineering and authoritarian reformism, the Evangelists argued about the necessity of government intervention to liberate Indians from their religions that were full of superstitions, idolatry, and tyranny of the priests.”4 The introduction of the English education system was the first and perhaps the most important “intervention and innovation” of the East India Company’s rule in India. But the revolt of 1857 transformed British attitudes toward India once and for all. The rebellion of the sepoys shook the very basis of the Company’s rule. All the alleged atrocities committed 4

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition and After, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2015), 70-71.

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

by the rebellious sepoys, particularly on white women and children, left a lasting impact on the subsequent British rule in India. Indians were no longer to be trusted. Racial discrimination was firmly entrenched, as Indians were regarded not only different but also racially inferior. The “reformist zeal of self-confident Victorian liberalism” was abandoned, as many believed Indians were beyond any reform. The changed attitude after the rebellion of 1857 forced the British to carve out a distinct identity for themselves from the Indians, who could now no longer be trusted. The British government consciously encouraged the British residents in India to take British wives, instead of Indian mistresses. As argued by Alison Blunt, after 1858, importance was given to reconstruct the imperial rule including imperial domesticity. British women were needed for re-establishment, and to legitimize imperial rule in India.5 British Victorian ideals of womanhood also emphasized women’s role in the domestic arena of the home; a woman’s place was in the home, as domesticity and motherhood were considered as the perfect embodiment for women. In fact, the gendered division of the public and private realms, and the ideology of domesticity as argued by Susan Zlotnick, “emerged out of the evangelicalism of the Clapham sect in the earliest decades of the nineteenth century to become the dominant ideology of the middle classes by the 1830s and 1840s.”6 Domesticity was therefore central to the formation of middle class identity, and it particularly became significant by the mid-nineteenth century that was marked by the bourgeois ascendency in Victorian Britain.7 The idea of middle class domesticity, not surprisingly, found its way into the British Empires. “European bourgeois domestic discourse was able to move into a global role as a naturalized and universal standard of family through the interactions and complex exchanges of the nineteenth century’s colonial and imperial relationships.”8 The Indian empire was in dire need of a white middle-class English-patterned domesticity that would ensure English wives for English men. This would not only protect the British men from the “immoral sensual exotic” women of the East; it would also help to maintain the racial exclusivity of the English ruling class. Even before the demand for English ladies to sustain the British officialdom, some of them used to come to India. From the very inception of 5 6

7

8

Blunt, “Imperial Geographies of Homes,” 427. Susan Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England,” Frontiers, 16, no 2/3 (1996): 53. For details, see Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Classes, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Judith E. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice (USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 12.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

the colonial state, some English women faced the hazards of tedious long sea voyages to be with their partners or to find good husband material for themselves. Since many of the eligible bachelors among the British men were posted in the Indian subcontinent, British women’s destiny followed them for a possible suitor and family life here. In fact, these unmarried girls popularly became known as the “fishing fleet” for their intentional voyage to the subcontinent. Those who failed to procure any husband for themselves had to return with the pejorative tag of “returned empties.”9 The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 also made the journey shorter for English women and they began to come in greater numbers in search of suitable partners from among those posted in the colony. Their destiny followed them for a prospective household fortune here, as wives of civil and military personnel posted in the Indian colony. English women’s presence in the colonial empire had brought a subtle moral dimension in the British domesticity of apparent material opulence and behavioral arrogance. As active members in setting up the homes away from home in the colonies, English women were seen as the guardians of morality. The underlying expectation about a comfortable domesticity was supposed to prevent the English rulers from submerging themselves into moral degeneration by cohabiting with local mistresses. The newly arrived British women, therefore, would restore the status between the ruled and the ruler by disrupting existing relationships between European men and their indigenous concubines. It was not as independent individuals but rather as the spouses of officials that European wives became incorporated into the official community of the Raj, and thus into the service of imperialism in India. English women, their husbands, and the official community as a whole, perceived officials’ wives as a crucial part of both the social and cultural aspects of the Anglo-Indian community and of its political-imperial functions. As argued by Mary A. Procida, it was marriage that gave the English women “access to the sources of imperial power and allowed them to accumulate the knowledge and experience to participate in imperial politics and practices.”10 Officials’ wives were perceived as a crucial part of the Anglo-Indians’ political-imperial functions.

Memsahibs at Work: Managing the Colonial Homes Once married and settled in India, British women had the responsibility of running the British households in India. Away from the comforts of English home life, the domestic compendiums often emerged as the sole 9 10

Margaret Macmillan, Women of the Raj (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988), 16. Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire (UK: Manchester University Press, 2002), 11.

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

companion of the young mistress. These guidebooks shaped the mindset of the novice memsahibs about the ordeals of creating English homes in the colony. The uninitiated to the colonial life were already being initiated to the life in the colonies through reading about it. One interesting trait of the guide books was to create a set-pattern in the everyday activities of the memsahib. Following a daily routine was one of the major prescriptions given for every hour of the day. In the words of Steel and Gardiner, “The great object is to secure three things—smooth working, quick ordering, and subsequent peace and leisure to the mistress.”11 Most of the household manuals advised that the mistress must, after having her breakfast, oversee the daily routine of the household with the servants. Mrs C. Lang for instance writes, I advise punctuality in seeing your servants after breakfast and trying to keep to the same hour daily, as a good housekeeper should show an example to her servants, in keeping to a good routine and method. Half-anhour should be sufficient time for your housekeeping, so after first seeing the cook, sally forth to your store-room or godown, where your servants will come to you for their different requirements. After this your butler should come to you with his list of bread, milk, etc., used the day before, and then you can give any orders for the day to him. Go to your cook house and see that every utensil is spotlessly clean and that the sweeper has brushed the floor and put phenyle in sink .… After finishing with the servants I advise you to enter up accounts, and do any necessary writing, and then you will always find plenty of work in the way of dress-making, and making things for the house, such as curtains, cushion covers, lamp shades, etc.12

Thus, emphasis was put on the supervision and managerial qualities of the mistress of the household. She was responsible for its upkeep, and laziness in performing her duty could lead to loss of control over her dominion. The memsahib’s duty was to maintain the balance of power within her household. The manuals therefore time and again harped on the strict surveillance by the memsahib, and she was advised not to be idle at any cost. “Native servants of all classes, good, bad, and indifferent, require

11

12

Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook: Giving the Duties of Mistress and Servants, the General Management of the House and Practical Recipes for Cooking in All its Branches (London: William Heinemann, 1909), 8. Chota Mem (Mrs. C.Lang), The English Bride in India: Hints on Indian Housekeeping (Madras: Higginbotham & Co, 1909), 4-5.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

the most incessant supervision.” That the first chapter in the Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook is devoted to the duties of the mistress notes that even everyday expenses were given undue importance, and keeping of accounts was made compulsory. Strict vigilance was also mandatory for articles kept at storerooms or go-downs, as it was “natural to expect them [servants] to pilfer small articles of food.”14 So, the memsahib must keenly govern everything that goes on in her household. Thus, for the Englishwoman, housekeeping meant supervising her house that was her dominion.15 13

The Memsahib and Her Subjects: The Indigenous Servitude Class The English home in the colony was a sheltered zone under the supervision of the memsahib. There were an innumerable number of native servants directly under her authority. Indeed, the management of servants was a very serious issue and most of the memoirs, journals, and travelogues mention it. Fanny Parks, for example, provides a detailed list of servants employed in her household, no less than 50 to 60 servants in total, costing 290 rupees per month.16 However, during the 1880s, these numbers decreased to comprise around 30 servants. Still, the retinue of servants had been conspicuous even in the not-so-elaborate households of the master race. To quote Calcutta Review: “The smallest establishment will contain from ten to a dozen, the larger from a dozen to twenty or thirty servants … with every one of these the Memsahib is more or less in contact, and the happiness and comfort for their lives depends largely on her supervision.”17 The number of servants employed increased with the increase in the professional hierarchy of the civil officers. In the 1930s, the numbers of servants found in one of the Viceroy’s tours were about two hundred.18 The memsahib was in charge of the vast retinue of servants. The 13

14 15

16

17

18

A Lady Resident, The Englishwoman in India: Containing Information for the Use of Ladies Proceeding to, or Residing in, the East Indies, on the Subjects of their Outfit, Furniture, Housekeeping, the Rearing of Children, Duties and Wages of Servants, Management of the Stables, and Arrangements for Travelling to that are Added Receipts for Indian Cookery (London: Smith Elder & Co, 1864), 58. A Lady Resident, The Englishwoman in India, 58. Rosemary Marangoly George, “Homes in the Empire, Empires in the Home,” Cultural Critique, no. 26, (winter 1993-1994): 108. Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Search of the Picturesque during Four and Twenty Years in the East: With Revelations of the Life in Zenana, vol I (London: Pelham Richardson, 1850), 209-210. J.E. Dawson, “The Englishwoman in India: Her Influence and Responsibility,” The Calcutta Review CLXVI, Part II (1886): 363. Charles Allen, Plain Tales from the Raj (Great Britain: Abacus, 2010, reprint), 91.

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servants were mostly male while the female servants often comprised of the ayah, including the under-ayah, wet-nurse, and the female sweeper.19

The Caste Card in Play? The servants were of different faiths and caste. In fact, the need for so many servants has often been attributed to the prevalent caste system. The prevailing caste system and its corollary appendages of traditions and customs were often interpreted in terms of refusal of a servant to perform other’s duties as they performed only their respective caste-ordained duties. As pointed out by Edmund C.P. Hull, “it might have been supposed, that when once a caste native was permitted to undertake domestic service under Europeans, it would matter little whether he dusted the table, or swept the floor; put the family dinner on the table, or lit the evening lamp; handed round a full dish, or washed an empty plate … for a while a servant will look upon the one as his proper duty, he will consider himself dishonored in performing the other.”20 Caste-based jobs in India was something that the memsahibs had to learn over a period of time, often uneasily. For instance, Marjorie Cashmore, an English woman, in her attempt to discard a dead bird from the garden compound learned the customs of the caste system the hard way. “So I told the bearer to call the masalchee, but the masalchee wouldn’t touch it.21 Then I called for the sweeper and he wouldn’t touch it, so I asked the bearer who could move it and he told me to send to the bazaar for a dome, a man of very low caste. So we had to pay to get this lad to come and take the bird away.”22 Indira Ghose, on the other hand, argues that the existence of countless number of servants was a “classic strategy of native resistance against exploitation.”23 Caste and class prejudice certainly was an escape route adopted by the native servants against exploitation and overwork. There was undoubtedly a lot of work to be performed in the colonial domesticity, which 19

20

21

22 23

The ayah is diversely described as the nanny, caretaker of children or nursemaid. The word is derived from two sources: Aia (Portuguese) and Aya (Hindi/Urdu) both meaning “nursemaid.” The job of the under ayah was to wash and dress the children “in conjunction with the head ayah.” For details see, A Lady Resident (1864), The Englishwoman in India, 153. Edmund C. P. Hull, The European in India or Anglo-India’s Vade Mecum: A Handbook of Useful and Practical Information for Those Proceeding to or Residing in the East Indies Relating to Outfits, Routes, Time for Departure, Indian Climate and Seasons, Housekeeping, Servants, etc. (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2004, reprint), 134. Masalchee loosely translated referred to the scullion or kitchen helper who did the rough and dirty work in the kitchen. Allen, Plain Tales from the Raj, 91. Indira Ghose, ed., Memsahibs Abroad (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 184.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

could not be managed by two or three servants. The domestics always had to be on their toes and constantly heed to the inconsiderate demands of their employers. This would not have been possible without vast retinues of servants. Thus, caste inflicted value system was often the only ploy the domestic class had in their disposal to avoid excessive chores and further exploitation. The memsahib, however, also could not rise above the caste prejudices. Steel and Gardiner highlighted the memsahib’s reluctance to employ a “low-caste” woman as an ayah.24 It is interesting to find that even Western women also blindly accepted the caste structure in the job distribution of their so called “European” model households. This then signified according to Indrani Sen, “the apparent internalization of caste prejudices…by colonial memsahibs as well.”25 However, in the course of historical development of empire, the rulers having a claim over the labor of the subjugated subjects became the natural order of things. The claim of servitude thus remained an area of self-indulgence as well as conscious portrayal of the right of the rulers. The aristocratic bourgeois homes in England also employed a number of servants, so what was different in Indian context? The fact was that the majority of the British colonizers were mostly not part of the conventional ruling milieu or inheritors of the traditional aristocratic class in their home country. But in the Indian colony, all British classes were part of the ruling elite. As pointed out by Steven Patterson, “All British classes in India were ruling classes, but the middle and lower orders became something quite different in an imperial context. The middle class, who in England had been associated with limited government and liberalism, transformed themselves into autocrats in India who ostensibly ruled as enlightened despots.”26 Thus, in the colonial context, master-servant relation took a multidimensional dialectics. The classic ruler and the ruled paradigm was replete with class dimensions and received another layer of complexity when influenced by the caste dimensions of the indigenous societies. In the Indian colony, Anglo-Indians imagined themselves as “natural” rulers, by their authority and power over the “lower order.”27 Hierarchy over the “racially inferior” Indians became an ordained order of things. Thus, the array of Indian servants, who for a short time caused bewilderment to the English, eventually became a habit. As representatives of a colonial 24 25

26

27

Steel and Gardiner, Complete Indian Housekeeper, 84. Indrani Sen, “Colonial Domesticities: Ayahs, Wet-Nurses and Memsahibs in Colonial India,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16 (2009): 304. Steven Patterson, The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 26-27. Also see Procida, Married to the Empire, 84. For details see, Crispin Bates, Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600 (London: Routledge, 2007).

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

power, they were to keep a larger number of servants, and live at a greater level of luxury that would not have been affordable in Britain. The vast numbers of domestics were not only a symbol of the ruling elite; they were an indispensable part of Anglo-Indian domesticity. That was why, in spite of so many “negative” habits of the Indian servants, they were tolerated, “suffered” through, because of the labor and hard work they put in to sustain the colonial “home away from home.” At its core, then, imperialism typically rested on the claim of the superior civilization to rule an inferior one. The imperial homes gave an opportunity for the memsahibs to transfer all domestic chores on to the Indian servants and to enjoy relative leisure at the cost of the indigenous servitude class. The two major attributes of an ideal servant in British household were discipline and obedience so as to adhere to their master/mistress without question. In this context, it is interesting to note that the idea of parent-child relationship was invoked to ensure obedience. The memsahibs were advised to treat the servants as their children, “[T]he Indian servant is a child in everything save age, and should be treated as a child; that is to say, kindly but with greatest firmness.”28 Echo of a similar kind is found in another manual, The English Bride in India: Hints on Indian Housekeeping, that exhorts: “Be patient with your servants and treat them more or less like children, remembering they love praise, and don’t treat them as if they were machines.”29 Voicing this mai-baap (literally mother-father) paternalism of British colonial administration, the household compendiums infantilized the relationship between the memsahib and her servants. The mistress and the servants were bound by the benevolent bond of paternalism that entailed a part of colonial imperialism. Paternalism was the dominant ideology of the Raj in post-1857 India. Ann Laura Stoler remarks, “racialized Others have invariably been compared and equated with children, a representation that conveniently provided a moral justification for imperial policies of tutelage, discipline and specific paternalistic and materialistic strategies of custodial control.”30 In the private arena, memsahibs were the carriers of the paternalistic bond between the Indian servants and the ruling class. The image of mother being superimposed on the memsahib made her appear as an illusory nurturer. Being the “Angel of the home,” the memsahib was not only in charge of her husband and children, she was also responsible for the “discipline and punishment” of the indigenous servants. The goal of European women was to “replicate the empire on a domestic scale—a benevolent, much supervised terrain 28 29 30

Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 3. Chota Mem, The English Bride in India: Hints on Indian Housekeeping, 55. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 150.

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where discipline and punishment were meted out with an unwavering hand.”31 Only a memsahib with a “superior” religious value could instill order, obedience, and governance into “uncivilized, barbaric, dirty, and heathen” people. As pointed out by Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, supervision on the part of the memsahib was a must; Any neglect on the part of the mistress would result “in the servants falling into their old habits with the inherited conservatism of dirt.”32

The Taste of Imperial Cuisine Garden parties, luncheons, and dinners (including tennis games and all sorts of things) were advised to keep the monotony of daily life away. Party menus and recipes found a significant place in these household manuals for women. Every minor detail of hosting a party was given importance—like different sequences of the menu, appropriate dresses for the master and mistress, the cutleries to be used, the proper etiquette to be followed while entertaining guests, the convenient hours for hosting the party, and the decorations of house. Attempt was made to transform India into Little Britain. Nowhere was the attempt more obvious than in the cuisine. There was a deliberate effort to differentiate from the English diet of the Company days, which had a strong sense of Indian aristocratic flavor. There was an attempt to distinguish their eating habits from the earlier English colonialists of India. Wyvern, for instance, writes in Culinary Jottings: “Our dinners of to-day would indeed astonish our Anglo-Indian forefathers. With a taste for light wines, and a far more moderate indulgence in stimulating drinks, has germinated a desire for delicate and artistic cookery . . . and the molten curries and florid oriental compositions of the olden time—so fearfully made—have been gradually banished from our dinner tables.”33 British cuisine in the colonies in the twentieth century therefore dissociated itself from the English food habits of the Company days and tried to be more refined, elegant, and sophisticated. Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, for example, had several sample menus for hosting dinner parties that could be easily associated with any British or French restaurants in the continent. The menus included were as follows: Menu One (For a party of four): Celery Soup Salmon fried with Tartar Sauce 31 32 33

George, “Homes in the Empire, Empires in the Home,” 108. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 12. Arthur-Kenny Herbert, “Wyvern,” Culinary Jottings, 5th ed. (Madras: Higgenbotham & Co, 1885), 1.

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Chicken with Green Peas Fillet of Beef, larded Asparagus and Eggs Vol-au-vent of Greengages Coffee Cream Ice Cheese Biscuits, Anchovy Butter Dessert Menu Two (For a party of four): Golden Quennelle Soup Turbot with Cream Sauce Stewed Partridges with Soubise Sauce Leg of Mutton with Anchovy Sauce Stuffed Tomatoes Charlotte Russe Delicate Trifles and Cheese, etc Dessert34 Almost all the household manuals invariably contained chapters on menus and recipes. These compendiums consciously advised adaptation of European style of cuisine against Indian style. They, however, mostly depended on indigenous ingredients and also on native cooks to accomplish this task. As food became a site of colonial supremacy, the adjustment, adaptation and transformation over the variety, ingredients and styles of recipes had received a connotation of cultural imperialism too. The Indian ingredients were adapted to create and re-create a culinary experimentation that gave birth to continental flavor suiting the English taste and satisfying the cultural identity of the ruling race. And, it was the responsibility of the memsahib to ensure that this distinct culinary identity was not tampered with.35

Home is Where the Heart is: Domesticity in “Exile” Manuals tried to create a world befitting the rulers; a life which was unique and exclusive to the white colonial master race. Every effort was put to transform the English homes in India under the regulation of memsahibs into a “home in exile.” The bungalows with their sprawling compounds 34

35

Anonymous, Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: W. Newman & Co, 1881), 422-425. For details see, Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (London: Vintage Books, 2006); Jayanta Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal,” in Modern Asian Studies 44, Issue 1(2010); Cecilia Leong-Salobir, Food Culture in Colonial Asia (London: Routledge, 2011).

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

and gardens thus became exclusive English spaces within a foreign turf; a site for British cultural efflorescence amid strange cultural surroundings. Even gardening became a part of British cultural setting. Advice books on gardening, such as Indian Gardening (1872) by Fred Pogson, A Manual of Gardening for Bengal and Upper India (1874) by Firminger, Gardening: A Guide for Amateurs (1903) by W.W. Johnstone or Gardening in India: An Amateur in Indian Garden (1935, Second edition) by Percy Lancaster suggested creating English styles gardens with Indian plants. They clearly tried to establish English authority over Indian territory. The role of the mistress in creating and maintaining the imperial household was thus crucial. The unsuitable climate of the subcontinent was a recurrent theme in the books and perhaps for this reason, all the guide books included chapters on home remedies for diseases. The mistress of the home was recommended to keep a “limited stock of medicines”36 handy. The mistress thus had to have everything under her control, and when situations arose, she had to administer quick solutions. The list of home nursing and firstaid remedies goes on from minor discomfitures like headache, ear ache, coughs, hiccough, indigestion to acute ailments like fever, cholera, malaria, asthma, diarrhea, convulsion, poisoning due to dog bite or snake bite, and so on. One adaption of Indian domestic remedy was given for acute indigestion: “ujwain water with twenty grains carbonate of soda.”37 The guide books, however, never truly acknowledged their debt to the Indian home remedies. Rather, there was great belief and pride in the scientific and progressive way of Western science and medicine. Memsahibs brought stability in the imperial homes of the colony. By being the caretakers of the well-being of the European ruling class and guardians of morality, European women helped to perpetuate the English way of life in the Indian subcontinent. The memsahibs played a significant part in the civilizing mission through transporting the high domestic ideal of the Christian white rulers into the colonies. They were also spurred on to take up a civilizing mission within the extent of their colonial residential bungalows.38 J.E. Dawson also pointed out in the 1886 issue of The Calcutta Review that the memsahib had a “[g]reat scope of working ‘within her own compound,” which was under her command, as it was a ‘conglomerate not of individuals as in England, but of families.’”39 The main purpose of the household compendiums was to facilitate the 36 37 38

39

Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 173. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 179. Indrani Sen, Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India, 1858-1900 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), 33-35. Dawson, The Englishwoman in India, 365.

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memsahib to replicate, as much as possible, British domestic practices in a foreign land; “Every kind of English seeds are to be planted, English foods are to be served.”40 It was however doubtful to what extent the tropical climate of India allowed English flora and fauna to flourish without hindrance. Still, all efforts were geared toward transforming English homes in the colonies into a favorable home embodying British cultural spheres of influence. English homes in India, thus, were a site of cultural imperialism.

Family is a “Little Church”: Obedience and Discipline in the English Domesticity British domesticity with memsahibs at its helm was considered an ideal to be followed. In this, religion influenced and structured the rhythm of an English family’s everyday life and daily routine. This was particularly true when everyday domestic affairs became sanctified by Christianity. Daily domestic rituals such as saying grace before dinner, evening prayers, and children’s blessings, were all reaffirmations of sanctified family time. Religious rituals not only structured daily life, they also shaped a family’s experience of the week and the year. Sunday was a time to worship the Lord, to put on one’s best clothes and to demonstrate a family’s Christian identity by attending church. Recurring Christian feasts such as Christmas and Easter were also celebrated. “The Christmas party is a great occasion, . . . the grouping of a circle of companions in exile, who try, for a few brief hours, to keep up the old fashions, and to make believe that they are quite at home.”41 The Christian ethics of home-making was supplemented to the Indian context through English brides. Even in domesticity, it was the responsibility of the memsahibs to uphold the superiority of their race and religion against the perceived superstitious religions (that were often looked down upon as paganism) of the subject population. The memsahib and her Western domestic values became a prototype to be emulated by the Indian women who were gradually emerging from the veil of decadence and ignorance.42 Thus, the memsahib had a heavy burden on her shoulders and had to uphold the British sense of superiority in every household affair. The Calcutta Review echoed the same, “There are however points on which we think we are fairly entitled to claim undisputed superiority: and among these we place in distinct relief our domestic institutions.”43 40 41 42 43

Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 143. William H. Hart, Everyday Life in Bengal (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1906), 108. Sen, Woman and Empire, 34. Dawson, The Englishwoman in India, 359.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

English wives already educated in “higher” principles of Western thought and religion, reproduced imperial rules on a household scale. In an alien land with completely different religious belief and practices, memsahib as the guardian of the home was responsible for the religious upbringing of her children and her family’s observance of religious practices and norms. The children were brought up within a strict daily routine. All their daily activities were regulated by well-established routine. The children woke early to the sound of crows, had their chota hazri—a banana, perhaps, or a glass of juice and took morning exercise. After an hour’s ride there was a bath and a change of clothes. Breakfast was taken with one’s parents, often on the verandah or under a shady tree. The older children started lessons and the younger ones played in the garden until it got too hot. A light lunch would be taken up early and then, after a long siesta, more dressing up for dinner.44 The daily routine was often not enjoyed by the children who became jealous “of the little Indian children running about with almost nothing on.”45 The memsahibs as mothers therefore were responsible in bringing up the future generation of the ruling class with discipline and order. This was not an easy task; particularly when child rearing was concerned. The memsahib was always under constant fear that the children might get too attached with the servants and would cease to obey their own parents. Julia Maitland, alarmed about her child becoming “Indianised” under the ayah’s influence, declared: “I intend, as much as possible, to prevent her learning the native languages, though it is rather difficult—most English children do learn them . . . and grow like little Hindoos.”46

Thus, the home in the colony was a highly contested space where the memsahib was charged with the responsibility to restore, maintain, and sustain the imperial rule. In spite of the subtle insecurity over influence and control of the domestic hands on their infants, the memsahibs in general continued to carry forward their domestic empire quite gracefully with all the structural and symbolic synchronization between the British way of life superimposed upon the regal life style of the Indian nawabs. An artificial distance marked the preferred seclusion of British domestic zone from the native territory. This created the binary of white town and black town within the newly created colonial urban space. This racial distance was maintained even within the colonial bungalows. The servants’ quarters were always at a “safe distance” from the master’s bungalow, within the same compound. The memsahib’s dominion was generally limited within the compound, often enclosed by a wall, and containing a garden, bungalow, and the servants’ quarters. This undoubtedly reinforced 44 45 46

Allen, Plain Tales from the Raj, 27. Allen, Plain Tales from the Raj, 28. Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras, During 1836-1839 (London: John Murray, 1846), 114.

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racial and class hierarchies between the ruler and the ruled. The kitchen was also located outside the bungalow, in the servants’ quarters. The complex web of racism perhaps played a rather vital role that kept the distance between the kitchen and the bungalow alive. The native kitchen or bawarchi kana was portrayed as symbolic of all that was filthy, dirty, and barbaric about oriental cultures. The author of a cookbook described a typical kitchen in an Anglo-Indian compound as “a wretchedly mean, carelessly constructed, godown . . . inconveniently far from the house, and consequently open to every passerby.”47 This proved that racial distancing between the ruler and the ruled was increasing with time.

Anglo-Indian Domesticity as a “Political Domesticity” The domestic manuals glorified the duties and responsibilities of the memsahibs in the empire building process. By the 1880s and 1890s, the management of the British households began to be compared with running the Empire. Scholars like Alison Blunt and Rosemary Marangoly George have already shown how empire and home were synonymous terms. F.A. Steel and G. Gardiner made it clear by declaring in their book, “an Indian household can no more be governed peacefully without dignity and prestige than an Indian Empire.”48 Describing domesticity as “the formation of a home—that unit of civilization,” this manual equated the memsahibs with the “public servants in India.”49, 50 The memsahib was seen totally responsible for its upkeep. Hence, she could not afford to be lazy in performing her duty as it could result in the loss of her control over the household and weaken her dominion. Much like the ruler’s control over the Indian subcontinent, the memsahib’s duty was to maintain the balance of power within her household. This in a sense replicates the role of male white colonizers whose duty was to oversee efficient running of the colonial administration in the public sphere while his wife in the private sphere did the same for the smooth running of the imperial household. Being the rulers, the white colonial rulers were at the helm of administration; they supervised while the menial job was undertaken by the indigenous subjects. Similarly, the guide books advised the memsahibs only to preside over the daily chores and never to take up the job with their own hands. “Never do work which an ordinarily good servant ought to be able to do.”51 This, in the views of most of the manual authors, helped to keep the servants in control and at the same time espouse the superiority of the 47 48 49 50 51

Herbert, “Wyvern,” Culinary Jottings, 499. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 9. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 7. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 19. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper, 15.

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The Memsahib and Her Home in the Indian Colony

colonial rulers. It is the proper conduct expected of the rulers. And, it was the responsibility of the British women of “domesticating imperialism.”52 In India, status as an Anglo-Indian official automatically conferred entry to imperial society. The role played by Englishwomen in the colonies gave them a chance to establish themselves in the “public sphere” otherwise dominated by the male rulers. The Anglo-Indian domestic space was an orderly, open, controlled, and disciplined in contrast to a chaotic and closed Indian domesticity. In an imperial society, almost every facet of private life was on permanent display. The servants always barged on to the privacy of the memsahibs. In the inner domain of the colonial bungalow, there was no scope of avoiding contact with the servants; they were omnipresent and everywhere. Radclyffe Sidebottom recalled, “My wife would have the bath first and the ayah would dress her. I would go in and have my bath and my personal servant would bring in a drink and give it to me in the bathroom and my wife and I would carry on a conversation as if the two servants in the room weren’t there.”53 The Anglo-Indian home was also a sphere for political discussions and administrative action, where official servants of the British Raj were invited on a regular basis. This invariably placed Anglo-Indian domesticity at the center of imperial politics. The altered nature of the imperial household affected women’s place both within the home and beyond in the realm of imperial politics. The British Raj drafted home and housewife into the professional service of empire. Anglo-Indian domesticity was a public domesticity. The inner domain of the colonial household was never a secluded territory. It was always accessible to both the Indian servants as well as to the European members of the colonial society. In the Anglo-Indian home, social occasions became opportunities for discussing and formulating imperial policy. Anglo-Indian women’s connection with the domestic sphere did not seclude them from the world but, rather it integrated them into the symbolic and functional practices of imperialism in India. By transferring, adopting, and adapting cultural values and customs, they fashioned a new imperial reality, influencing the course of empire by cutting across, and restructuring gender, class, and racial borders.

The Burden of Imperial Domesticity It should however be pointed out that in spite of the recurrent mention of public domesticity, it ultimately restricted women in the private spheres of the home. There were, however, exceptions who tried to carve out a 52

53

Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England,” 51-68. Allen, Plain Tales from the Raj, 90.

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distinct identity for themselves away from domestic responsibility. Some of these women like Mary Kingsley traveled independently and shared in imperial power away from the feminized domesticity of life at home. But most of the women who came to the colonies had the ulterior motive of settling down and raising an English-styled home-away-from-home. The household compendiums inflated domestic responsibilities by equating them with imperial service. The instruction manuals harped on the significance of the wives’ services to the nation and empire. The memsahib was made to believe that it was her sacred duty to her nation. The domestic lives of British women were intimately shaped by imperial politics both in the metropolis and in the wider empire. For example, maternity and consumption were regarded as domestic responsibilities of national and imperial importance. The imposition of a Western scientific system facilitated the introduction of punctuality, using clocks in an attempt to discipline the “savage” Indians. Order was thus established in housework. A peaceful and restful home environment consequently facilitated an efficient governance of the empire by the husbands of the memsahibs. British women thus had the responsibility of “white woman’s burden”—of both representing the virtues of domesticity and perpetuating the British rule.54 This benevolent service to the imperial cause, however, should be interpreted as a ploy to restrict Anglo-Indian women to the domestic life only. The memsahibs hardly had any voice in official matters. Even when official decisions were finalized in the homes, they were being decided by her husband. For the memsahibs, the promise of this glorified service to the nation dissuaded her from engaging in active politics. This was particularly true when Great Britain was rocked by the women suffragist movement during the 1860s and 1870s, Anglo-Indian women were passing their time raising English homes in India. The contemporary household compendiums also played a part in convincing the memsahibs that they were actively participating in the Empire building process. They were already a part of political domesticity and there was no need for hankering of voting rights. The memsahib’s domain of influence was restricted within the bungalow only. Her role was to supervise the continuation of English and Christian way of life in the colonial households. The political and public domesticity of Anglo-Indian households never tried to empower the memsahibs in the true sense of the term. The manuals therefore designed a gender specific role model for the memsahibs which bound them to domestic life only. Having said that, however, in the context of the British Raj, memsahibs as members of the ruling race did participate in otherwise largely male-oriented colonizing process. The 54

Thomas. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, first published 1995, reprint 2017), 110.

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British Raj therefore, should be seen, as argued by Mary Procida, as “. . . that of a partnership between men and women as imperialists in a masculine mould, rather than one of an antagonistic polarity between adventuresome men and ultra-domestic women.”55

55

Procida, Married to the Empire, 6.

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References A Lady Resident. The Englishwoman in India: Containing Information for the Use of Ladies Proceeding to, or Residing in, the East Indies, on the Subjects of their Outfit, Furniture, Housekeeping, the rearing of Children, Duties and Wages of Servants, Management of the Stables, and Arrangements for Travelling to which are Added Receipts for Indian Cookery. London: Smith Elder and Co, 1864. Allen, Charles. Plain Tales from the Raj. Great Britain: Abacus, reprint 2010. Anonymous. Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables. 2nd ed. Calcutta: W. Newman & Co, 1881. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. From Plassey to Partition and After. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2015. Bates, Crispin. Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600. London: Routledge, 2007. Blunt, Alison. “Imperial Geographies of Homes; British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, vol 24, no.4 (1999). Collingham, Lizzie. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. London: Vintage Books, 2006. Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Classes, 1780-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Dawson, J.E. “The Englishwoman in India: Her Influence and Responsibility,” The Calcutta Review, CLXVI, Part II (1886): 358-370. George, Rosemary Marangoly. “Homes in the Empire, Empires in the Home,” Cultural Critique, no. 26 (winter 1993-1994): 95-127. Ghose, Indira, ed. Memsahibs Abroad. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hull, Edmund C. P. The European in India or Anglo-India’s Vade Mecum: A Handbook of Useful and Practical Information for Those Proceeding to or Residing in the East Indies relating to Outfits, Routes, Time for Departure, Indian Climate and Seasons, Housekeeping, Servants, etc. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2004, reprint. Kenney-Herbert, Arthur. “Wyvern,” Culinary Jottings: A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles. Madras: Higginbotham & Co, 1885. Leong-Salobir, Cecilia. Food Culture in Colonial Asia. London: Routledge, 2011. Macmillan, Margaret. Women of the Raj. London: Thames & Hudson, 1988. Maitland, Julia. Letters from Madras, During 1836-1839. London: John Murray, 1846. 30

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Mem, Chota (Mrs. C. Lang). The English Bride in India: Hints on Indian Housekeeping. Madras: Higginbotham & Co, 1909. Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj. Delhi: Cambridge University Press, first published 1995, reprint 2017. Parks, Fanny. Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Search of the Picturesque during Four and Twenty Years in the East: With Revelations of the Life in Zenana, vol I. London: Pelham Richardson, 1850. Patterson, Steven. The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Procida, Mary A. Married to the Empire. UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. Sen, Indrani. “Colonial Domesticities: Ayahs, Wet-Nurses and Memsahibs in Colonial India,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies (2009): 299-328. ———. Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India, 1858-1900. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002. Sengupta, Jayanta. “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal,” Modern Asian Studies 44, Issue 1(2010): 81-98. Steel, Flora Annie and Grace Gardiner. The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook: Giving the Duties of Mistress and Servants, the General Management of the House and Practical Recipes for Cooking in all its Branches. London: William Heinemann, 1909. Stoler, Ann Laura. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Walsh, Judith E. Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice. USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Zlotnick, Susan. “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England,” Frontiers 16, no 2/3 (1996): 51-68.

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2

HOME AND SACRED PLACE IN THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE SOVIK: A NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN IN CHINA L. DeAne Lagerquist “I don’t quite know how to thank you both for the nice time I had at home but I guess you know how WONDERFUL it was for me to be there! There’s just no place like MY HOME—no matter where it is!”1 In 1947, Lutheran missionary, teacher, and relief worker, Gertrude Sovik (19071992) wrote this to her parents. Her comment suggests that not all places are the same. Scholars of sacred place and of home-making discussed in this paper agree. If by home we refer simply to one’s place of origin, then Gertrude Sovik’s home is located in China where she was born and grew up. However, as her words suggest, home is much more than a place that can be located on a map. Home is also a complex experience that involves relationships, habits, and meaning. During her life, Sovik was at home on three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe. Her experiences of being-at-home, longing for home, and making a home, involved her family and an extended social network that included “China-folk,” many of whom shared her ethno-religious identity and participated in similar cultural and religious practices; her home-making also extended beyond those circles to people displaced from their homes by war. Her sense of home was rooted in a confident Christian faith that sustained her through evacuations from China, during separation from her family and community, and while working to provide home for others. Sovik’s experiences of home were distinctly her own; nevertheless, her life story resonates with those of many people who experience home as a place different from other places and, at the same time, more than a place. Within a multi-disciplinary study of home, scholars of religion, such as Belden C. Lane, offer 1

Gertrude Sovik to Anna and Erik Sovik, January 2, 1947, Box I, Folder 13, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accession #1506), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN.

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Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia

insight into the ways one place is different from another: home rather than not home, sacred place rather than ordinary space. The eldest of four children in a family of Norwegian-American Lutheran missionaries, Gertrude Sovik was a contemporary of publisher Henry Luce (1898-1967), novelists Pearl Buck (1892-1973) and John Hersey (1914-93), and other China “missionary kids.” Unlike Luce, Buck, and Hersey who rejected their parents’ Christian calling, Sovik regarded herself as a missionary even long after China was closed to Western evangelists. From childhood, Sovik wrote frequent letters to her parents, brothers, and other family members reporting on her life as a student and in her several work places in China, the United States, and Europe. These letters are the principal source for considering her experience of home.2 Her letters suggest that Sovik experienced home in three, chronologically overlapping modes: receiving home as a gift, taking responsibility for making her home, and offering home to others who were dislocated. The first mode lasted throughout her childhood in China and her college years in the United States. The second began while she attended American School in Kikung (hereafter, ASK), a boarding school for missionary children, and during her student years at St. Olaf College (1927-31). She took increasing responsibility for making her home when she remained in the United States after college, after she returned to teach at ASK in 1935, and throughout her life. She engaged the third mode in several episodes, usually coincidental to her own dislocation from familiar places: in China during the Sino-Chinese War; at an American military hospital in Texas during World War II; with displaced persons in post-war Europe; and, following her retirement from teaching at St. Olaf, with Vietnamese refugees in the United States in 1975. In this essay, Sovik’s three modes of experiencing home are each explored in conversation with three approaches to sacred place presented by Lane.

2

In addition to the hundreds of Gertrude’s letters written between 1915 and 1950, the St. Olaf Collection includes some letters from her family to her, scattered additional correspondence, and other miscellaneous materials. This essay is based upon that collection, materials held by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Archives, and an oral history: Gertrude Sovik, interview by Charlotte Gronseth Martinson, January 2, 1978 to November 3, 1978, and Midwest China Oral History and Archives Collection, Luther Seminary Library, St. Paul, Minnesota. While the letters give Sovik’s own account of her experiences, without a larger sample of letters to recipients other than her parents, it is difficult to tell how much her reporting and reflections are tailored specifically to her family’s commitments. This chapter anticipates on-going study that will delve into the letters in more detail and with closer attention to Sovik’s theology.

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Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik

Home and Sacred Place The common English saying—a house is not a home—articulates a truth evident in Sovik’s life, and explored by a variety of scholars.3 The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but a multi-dimensional notion of home must acknowledge that a house is transformed into a home by interactions between the objective fact of a place and subjective, experiential factors. Etymology suggests the range of meanings and values attached to home. Latin roots highlight the intimate realm of the domestic while Greek alludes to the larger context of ecology.4 German and English origins suggest that a home is a particular sort of place or experience: a family residence, a place of security, comfort, and meaning.5 Sociologist Shelly Mallett points to recent scholarly treatments of home as a “socio-spatial system” formed by physical house and social household.6 In its ideal manifestation, Mallett suggests, a home offers “a nurturing environment underpinned by stable relationships that provides continuity of care and fosters interdependence while also facilitating a capacity for independence.”7 There is another common saying—home is where the heart is. However, human longing for this ideal is not always realized. According to philosopher John Randolph LeBlanc, a home is a place of origin not only in physical space, but also as “the intellectual (and psychological or spiritual) space out of which we speak and in whose language we order, understand, and articulate the world.”8 It is also the case then that the experience of being-at-home is not limited to a single building or location. Thus, the concept of home can be expanded from a house to a region or a country, and from a family to a community or a nation. Gertrude Sovik’s 3

4

5 6

7 8

Shelly Mallett offers a useful introduction to recent scholarship, particularly from the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, human geography, architecture, and philosophy. Shelly Mallett, “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature,” The Sociological Review (2004): 62-89. Leeke Reinders and Marco Van Der Land set out “a relational perspective…in which the subjective and culturist notion of home and housing is located within wider social and politicaleconomic structures” and provide a more recent bibliography. Leeke Reinders and Marco Van Der Land, “Mental Geographies of Home and Place: Introduction to the Special Issue,” Housing, Theory and Society 25, no. 1 (2008): 1-13. John Martis, “Living Away from Home—and Loving It: Tweaking a Christian Metaphor,” Pacifica 15 (June 2002): 125. Mallett, “Understanding Home,” 65. P. Saunders and P. Williams, “The Constitution of Home: Towards a Research Agenda,” Housing Studies 3, no. 2 (1988): 82 quoted in Mallett, “Understanding Home,” 68. Mallett, “Understanding Home,” 78. John Randolph LeBlanc, “Camus, Said, and the Dilemma of Home: Space, Identity, and the Limits of Postcolonial Political Theory,” Strategies 15, no. 2 (2002): 240.

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home, certainly, extended beyond the childhood house she shared with her parents in Shekow, China, to other residences in China, the United States, and Europe. Nonetheless, as anthropologist Mary Douglas asserts, even if home “is not necessarily a fixed space,” it is “a kind of space.”9 And since this is true, then there are spaces that are not home and not all places are the same. In this notion, a home is like a sacred place that is distinguished from profane or ordinary spaces. Perhaps home, at its best, can be described as “a place of extraordinary significance” and thus akin to sacred place.10 That they are different from other places is not the single characteristic home and sacred place share. They are also similar to each other in the ways they differ from other places. Scholars of religion offer theories about both the nature of those differences and how to account for similar human perceptions across specific traditions. Based on his survey of this vast, sometimes conflicting, scholarship, Lane presents terminology for, axioms about, and approaches to sacred place that take account of, but are not determined by particular religions or regions. He introduces topos and chora, two Greek terms for place, which are also useful for considering Sovik’s experience of home. Topos is represented on a topographic map and can be precisely defined by longitude and latitude; in contrast, chora is experienced as a dancer moves through space. “Place as chora,” Lane explains, “carries its own energy and power, summoning its participants to a common dance, to the ‘choreography’ most appropriate to their life together.”11 Sacred places and homes might be located by an address, but their significance, energy, and power are not fully comprehended by knowing where they are. Topos can be known objectively, without being present, by mere “map knowledge.” In contrast, chora requires “‘experiential place sense,’ the imaginative, affective response to a place that allows it to become significant for a person or community.”12 Without denying that buildings and their physical context are part of home-making, 9

10

11 12

Mary Douglas, “The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space,” Social Research 58, no. 1 (1991): 289 quoted in Mallett, “Understanding Home,” 79. Belden C. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place: Three Models for Understanding American Sacred Space,” Religion and American Culture 11, no.1 (2001): 53. Lane offers an instructive overview of various treatments of sacred place by scholars of religion, including Mircea Eliade and his critics. My brief summary cannot replicate the nuance of Lane’s discussion. Lane’s own work considers sacred spaces in the United States and elsewhere. It is informed by Protestant and Roman Catholic Christian theology, but not limited to that tradition. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 54. Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 261; 268-79, quoted in Douglas Burton-Christie, “Place-Making as Contemplative Practice,” Anglican Theological Review 91:3 (Summer, 2009): 351-2.

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considering home as chora highlights the importance of experiences and relationships in that process. Further, it opens the possibility that home may be detached from a single topos, as is evident in Gertrude Sovik’s life story. Lane further offers four axioms about sacred place drawn from his experience and study of sacred spaces—both Christian and others—in the United States. He observes: first, sacred place chooses rather than being chosen by the one who encounters it; second, sacred place may be walked on and yet not entered into; third, ritual transforms ordinary space into extraordinary and; fourth, sacred place both draws in and sends out.13 A dancer embodies the choreographer’s design; a critic analyzes the performance from outside. A similar distinction can be made between a practitioner who describes and interprets religious experience from inside, using resources from a tradition and a theorist who considers sacred place from a distance, looking for patterns across traditions. Of course, one person may be a choreographer, a dancer, and a critic. Lane himself describes his experiences of sacred spaces, reflects theologically on those experiences, and includes them in his analysis of the very concept. His work illustrates the value of listening to the insights gained in each of these positions. Among the ways contemporary scholars account for common human experiences of sacred place, and for awareness of chora-ness, Lane identifies three approaches that are also applicable to how home is made: the ontological, the cultural, and the phenomenological.14 While they address similar questions, scholars employing these approaches differ in their “philosophical and methodological starting points” and in their conceptualization of and terminology for the sacred and its opposite. Acknowledging these differences, nonetheless, Lane argues that these approaches need not be regarded as competing; rather each one contributes to the full understanding of sacred space. So too, all three inform a robust analysis of home-making. The first ontological approach is closely associated with Mircea Eliade’s pioneering work, and exemplified by his exposition of axis mundi, a center point that organizes the cosmos around it. In this view, sacred places, sharply differentiated from the profane, are sites “of hierophany, where supernatural forces have invaded the ordinary.”15 Literary scholar 13

14

15

Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality (Maryland, US: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 17-20. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 57-60, for brief introduction of the three approaches applied to the example of his own experience of Medicine Wheel. Each is further elaborated in the remainder of the article. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 60-63. Some scholars who take this approach, in particular Jonathan Z. Smith, nonetheless dispute Eliade’s sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. Lane also includes Victor Turner in this category.

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Joyce Quiring Erickson quotes “the folk saying...home is where the heart is” and suggests that in an analogous way, home is “the geographic and ontological center of the world.” Further, she observes, “[t]he metaphor of rooted[ness] implies that being at home is not something chosen but something given: organic not artificial, natural not cultural.”16 In contrast, the second, cultural approach shifts consideration from transcendent to human forces, asserting that sacrality “is always a social construction of reality” that most often involves conflicting views.17 The cultural view is consistent with the observation in Mallett’s discussion of home that “the identity and meaning of a place must be constructed and negotiated.”18 It also resonates with Erickson’s emphasis on contemporary experiences of being-at-home in the context of a culture of mobility and choice. The third, phenomenological approach introduces place itself as an actor with “changing visual, auditory, olfactory, and kinesthetic qualities.”19 Sacrality arises from the “intersubjectivity” of human encounter with place. Sociologist of religion, Rhys H. Williams, hints at something similar by noting the parallel between human embodiment and emplaced social life.20 Sacred place and home involve physical space and material objects encountered by embodied humans with all their senses and emotions. Lane contends that all three approaches are “essential to the holistic perception of the way any manifestation of the holy is perceived in space.”21 So too each approach contributes to a full understanding of the experience of being-at-home. Longing for home may be universal, but in the twentieth century, multitudes were dislocated from their homes. War, political decolonization, economic globalization, and natural disasters all contributed. In view of this history, the fact that being-at-home is chosen and constructed as much as, if not more than, a natural state is inescapable. More than tracing one’s movement from one topos to another on a map is needed to generate the chora of home. Even as the reasons for relocation vary, so does the process of making a new home. As immigrants and missionaries, expats and exiles, Gertrude Sovik and her family experienced multiple 16

17

18 19

20

21

Joyce Quiring Erickson, “On Being-at-Home,” Cross Currents (Summer 1993): 236. She cites Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 236-7. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 57-58. Scholars who take this approach include John Eade, Michael Sallnow, and Edward Linenthal. Mallett, “Understanding Home,” 70. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 67. Scholars who take this approach include James Gibson, Tim Ingold, and Edward S. Carey. Rhys H. Williams, “Introduction to a Forum on Religion and Place,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (2005): 239. Lane, “Giving Voice to Place,” 60.

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Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik

topographic dislocations typical of their times. Her father and maternal grandparents emigrated from Norway to the United States. Her parents answered missionary calls to China, where they resided for decades, while maintaining ties to family “back home.” At the beginning of Communist rule, the Soviks and other missionaries were exiled from China. Gertrude and her brothers were born and grew up in China, yet their parents were rooted in and formed by Norwegian and American cultures. Like other children of expats, including diplomats and business people, the Soviks were third culture kids.22 The term, coined by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, refers to “children of one culture, raised in a second culture, [who] …go on to create a ‘third culture’ of their own.”23 For them, beingat-home required negotiation among these cultures. Pastoral counselor Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner identified five responses among missionary kids, a distinct sub-group of third culture kids. The first two groups either declared themselves either to be torn between the two cultures or to have no home. Two others resolved the tension, claiming either “I am at home in both cultures” or “I am at home wherever I am.” A fifth group mixed these responses.24 As the quotation that introduces this essay illustrates, Gertude Sovik’s letters show that she could be at home “no matter where”; however, they also reveal that being-at-home was more difficult for her in some locations and at some times in her life than others, particularly as she moved from receiving it as a gift to making home and offering it to others.

Home as a Gift Gertrude Sovik experienced home first as a gift, then she takes responsibility for making it, and later she extends that gift to others who found themselves not at home. From her parents, Erik and Anna, she received a home well into adulthood; nonetheless, at age eight, her first letter written at boarding school signaled the beginning of a new phase of her life. Previously, home was located in a house shared with her parents and brothers, whether in China, on the Sovik farm in Norway, or with her grandmother in Minnesota. Now the topos of her home stretched more than 100 miles from her parents’ seminary residence in Shekow to ASK. It was a socio-spatial system that encompassed the Lutheran Agency and Home in Hankow and the ecumenical, summer missionary colony 22

23

24

Because their father and maternal grandparents were immigrants to the United States, the Sovik children might better be described as fourth culture kids who negotiated Norwegian, American, Chinese, and their own culture. Jonathan S. Addleton, “Missionary Kid Memoirs: A Review Essay,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (January 2000): 30. Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 31.

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on Kikungshan. As in the Sovik household, in these institutions multiple ethnic and national cultures intertwined in language, food ways, and holiday observance. The missionary community was neither fully integrated into, nor totally isolated from its Chinese neighbors. While a student, Gertrude spoke in Chinese to ASK staff members, attended Chinese worship services, and was delighted to eat Chinese food. She participated in American Thanksgiving celebrations, observed Lincoln’s birthday, and exchanged valentines with her classmates. She spoke Norwegian with missionaries from Norway. At Christmas, her family read the nativity story in Norwegian and English, feasted on traditional Norwegian foods, and joined Chinese seminarians and their families for a party. At the center of this chora-home was a shared faith that connected the Soviks with Lutherans of several national and ethnic origins, with American Christians from various denominations, and with Chinese Christians. Reflecting upon his childhood in China, Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck described ASK and Kikungshan summer colony as “international and interdenominational.”25 Lindbeck recalled that although the missionaries’ differences were well defined and widely understood, the genuineness of each group’s Christianity was acknowledged and respected. Missionaries affiliated with the China Inland Mission, the Christian Missionary Alliance, and Lutheran groups held joint song services. Beneath the denominational and linguistic divisions, ran a traditional piety, deeply concerned for personal faith. Gertrude Sovik’s sense of home was rooted in this piety. As Erickson notes, the metaphor of rootedness suggests an ontological understanding of home. It also evokes the image of a tree, a primary instance of Eliade’s axis mundi, the ordering center of the world, established by an invasion by the transcendent. Gertrude and her father instead employed pietistic, Christian, theological vocabulary to account for God’s presence in their household and religious community. China was Gertrude Sovik’s home, the place of her heart. As Lane’s first axiom asserts, she did not choose it, but it chose her. Or, more prosaically, it was given to her by her parents. The same is true for all children whose house is where their parents reside. What was different for missionary kids was that their parents did not choose their own topos; rather God chose it for them. Erik Sovik was in China because God called him, and Gertrude was there because her parents answered that call. On the day Gertrude was born, Erik knelt in his study and dedicated his infant daughter to the same Christian work. Later, he recalled his action in his birthday letters to her. This regular reminder that she was chosen—if not 25

George Lindbeck, “Paris, Rome, Jerusalem: An Ecumenical Journey,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, no. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 2004): 389-90. Lindbeck uses the term “sacramental pietists” to describe the Lutheran missionaries.

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Home and Sacred Place in the Letters of Gertrude Sovik

by China, then by God for China—was reinforced by the choreography of the larger community’s mundane and religious practices. Morning family devotions, weekly worship, and religious instruction at ASK, preaching, communion services, and mission business meetings on Kikungshan were rituals that recall Lane’s third axiom, that ritual transforms ordinary topos into chora. China became for Gertrude not only a place on a map, but a place of extraordinary meaning and significance. Her father would have attributed this to the Holy Spirit’s intervention. The gift of home Gertrude received also can be understood culturally. It was constructed by humans, as a social activity that infused the given—less as a gift than as determined—with meaning. Those activities enabled her not only to walk on Chinese soil, but to put down roots in it and be-at-home. Despite few references in her letters to support a phenomenological approach, young Gertrude appreciated the grandeur of the mountains, the extravagant spring blossoms, and thrill coasting down the slopes in winter; however, these were not necessary for her to be at home. Participation in Christian worship, time with her family, and the companionship of other “China-folk” allowed her to perceive the chora-ness of that place as well as of other places as she negotiated between three (or four cultures) and traveled far from China.

Making Home One missionary kid in Stevenson-Moessner’s study compared himself to a small tree: “Like those saplings in a plant nursery with a burlap sack around them. ‘You just brush a bit of the soil of the place over it [the roots] so you’re as inconspicuous as possible.’”26 This organic metaphor evokes all three approaches to sacred place: the rootedness of an ontological view, the cultivation of the cultural, and the interaction of the phenomenological. All three are also relevant in the second mode of Sovik’s experience of home: creating home for herself and those around her. This began while she was a student at ASK, intensified when she began her teaching responsibilities, and continued throughout her adult life. As soon as the two older of her brothers—first Edgar and then Ansgar—arrived at ASK she assumed responsibility for their material and spiritual welfare. Her letters to her mother are filled with particulars about her efforts on their behalf and her care for the family’s summer house on Kikungshan. Then Anna and the four children moved to the United States, where Gertrude and Edgar attended St. Olaf College, their father’s alma mater, in Northfield, Minnesota. Their topos changed, but their community did not. After Anna and Erik Jr. returned to China, Gertrude took up the task of home-making: for her brothers, for her students at Concordia College and St. Olaf 26

Stevenson-Moessner, Portable Roots, 1.

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College, and for herself. In 1935, she received a call to return to China and ASK. As a teacher she continued in this mode, making home for her students and colleagues with the cherished practices of the school. Before long, political unrest disrupted routines and prompted evacuation of the entire school to Hong Kong. Although made a refugee, Gertrude found a familiar community among Norwegians, Americans, and other Lutherans. In 1940, she accompanied the last ASK students to the USA where she remained until the end of World War II. Then she returned to China and ASK for a few years before Communist rule. After working with refugees in Europe for several years, she made her home with her parents in their house in Northfield, Minnesota and assumed a faculty position at St. Olaf College. Gertrude understood her work within the missionary community as a response to her father’s dedication, and to the clear call she received while a college student. When the United Norwegian Lutheran mission confirmed her missionary calling, her father cautioned her to be certain that her return to China was not motived by desire for a beloved place but had a spiritual motive. He wrote, “My only prayer now is that you will . . . come in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. A full surrender to the Lord’s will from the very start, Gertrude! Have no vain hope of enjoying much of earthly pleasures. Just come to serve, to give your life. If you do, you will be happy, wonderfully happy!”27 She shared her father’s view about the centrality of a spiritual motive. The high value Gertrude placed on vocation was evident in her criticism of teachers—like her future sister-in-law—who seemed to her to lack a firm sense of calling and thus to regard their work as a mere job. As she lived out her missionary vocation, she did not see herself pushing the boundaries of appropriate female behavior and work. To the contrary, she affirmed conventional standards and gender roles. She was “disgusted” by women she encountered in Red Cross work who she described as “hard-boiled.” When the sudden death of ASK’s beloved principal left an urgent vacancy, Gertrude argued that the post required a man, preferably a pastor. Despite her persistent theological interests and 27

Erik Sovik to Gertrude Sovik, May 31, 1935, Box 1, Folder 7, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accession #1506), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN. Her mother, in contrast, allowed more continuity between divine calling and love of place. “And now you are in the land of your birth. Does it seem more like home to you than the land you have just left? I’m sure you had many thoughts and strange feelings when you sighted the shores of old China. May God bless your coming and every day that he allows you to live and work here. How I hope that the changes you will find will not make you love China and its people less. I think it ought to act the other way.” Anna Sovik to Gertrude Sovik and Edgar Sovik, September 15, 1935, Box 1, Folder 7, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accession #1506), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN.

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notable leadership skills, she did not aspire to be a pastor, not even after her skepticism that a woman could be an effective preacher was overcome by hearing Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Within the missionary community, Gertrude had the examples of married and single women who took on less conventional women’s work: her mother was the mission’s treasurer and taught male seminarians, other women did station work and provided medical services. Her own work was most often in education or social service. These modes of home-making were consistent with early twentieth century American gender expectations for women. There was nothing extraordinary about an eldest sister looking out for her younger brothers or about an only daughter taking care of her aging parents. These roles frequently fell to unmarried women. Like most young women of her generation, Gertrude’s letters to her parents mention romantic interests and reveal some youthful anxiety about her single state, but that receded as she matured.28 Unlike her pastor father, uncle, and two brothers, Gertrude’s missionary vocation fell within the Lutheran notion of the priesthood of all believers, not the office of public ministry. She did not preside at the sacraments or preach from the pulpit. Instead, her work of home-making was consistent with the task of instruction that Martin Luther delegated to parents in the preface to his Small Catechism and with the responsibility to serve the neighbor, which is central to Luther’s notion of vocation. The way that she did this recalls the phenomenological approach to sacred place in that she was attentive to the material, sensory, and emotional aspects of being-at-home. She provided her mother with verbal sketches of her physical spaces whether in an American dormitory, the ASK facility in Hong Kong, or military quarters in Texas: the newly purchased chair, the familiar curtains, the red Chinese dishes. In Minnesota, she carefully replicated her brothers’ favorite Norwegian foods from childhood Christmases and thoughtfully offered her students and colleagues “eats” that introduced them to China. Home need not be located in a particular topos, but it must be some place; roots require soil. The cultural approach anticipates that 28

Jane Hunter, “Single Women and Mission Community,” in The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 52-89. Hunter’s chapter treats years prior to Sovik’s life, and the women she discusses were native-born Americans, not immigrants such as those active in the United Norwegian Lutheran mission. Further, those single women came to China on their own, not as children of missionaries. Nonetheless, her observation that “[s]ingle women relied on membership in their paternal family as a proof of their normalcy,” (p. 56) may be applicable in this case as well. Similarly, her discussion on friendships among single women, particularly when they shared a residence, offer useful insights about Sovik’s experiences as a faculty member at ASK, as well as earlier at Concordia College and St. Olaf.

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the soil is prepared by human effort. Social interactions, sometimes conflicts, generate or cultivate chora. Gertrude participated in and helped to orchestrate activities for her students, other staff members, and the larger community. She took great pleasure in the entire social-spatial system that constituted her home. In Hong Kong, her household extended to the congregation gathered for Norwegian worship by the Seaman’s Mission chaplain, to her friends living at Tao Fong Shan, Christian Mission to the Buddhists, and to Peng Fu, a visiting Chinese church leader. As in experiencing home as a gift, so too in her home-making there was a powerful awareness of the presence of God that gave order and meaning. This was consistent with the ontological approach Lane describes. Gertrude’s understanding of explicitly Lutheran views matured through theological discussions with ASK faculty, without diminishing her concern for personal piety. She was attentive to her students’ spiritual state and sought out for herself opportunities to hear evangelical preaching, sing gospel hymns, and receive communion, even in non-Lutheran settings. And wherever she lived, the chora-force of her Chinese home exerted a powerful centripetal force, drawing her heart there even when her body was far away.

Offering Home In her third mode of home-making, Sovik experienced longing for her own home and worked to provide a home for others beyond her extended community. In China, the United States, and Europe, she made home for persons dislocated from their topos. During the Sino-Japanese War, that forced ASK’s evacuation to Hong Kong, Sovik received her sole appointment to evangelistic work. In 1938-39, she was stationed in Sinyang, a city inundated with people driven from their homes and in need of every sort of assistance. Initially, material needs—housing, food, medical attention—dominated the work. Foreshadowing what would follow in other locations, Gertrude observed: “to folks at home it may not sound like missionary work—but it is something that just has to be done if our Christians are not to starve when the Japs get here. Oh, I tell you, there isn’t time for much preaching these days—but we have to be of service in other ways!”29 She spent the summer of 1940 in Shanghai where she was deeply moved by the plight of German, Jewish refugees she encountered at the Hebrew Mission. As hostilities increased, ASK closed in January 1941. Preparing to escort the last students to the United States, Sovik wrote: “I’m so afraid that if I leave China now, I’ll never get back—though I won’t let myself believe that is going to be! But the future is in God’s 29

Gertrude Sovik to Anna and Erik Sovik, September 20, 1938, Box 3, Folder 2, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accesion # 1612), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN.

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hands—and how happy I can be for that! . . . So let’s go into the new year with a courage and strength that knows no fear—and face the future with the knowledge that God is our strength!”30 Red Cross service took Sovik to McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas where she encountered co-workers and patients whose religious views and moral standards, race or ethnicity, and cultural experiences differed significantly from hers. After her brief return to China from 1946 to 1950, Sovik relocated to Europe (Munich and then Austria) where she worked in the Lutheran World Federation’s resettlement program. Unfortunately, her family letters from those years are missing, but official correspondence and reports convey the same combination of administrative efficiency and personal warmth that characterized her home-making for those closest to her. From 1958 until her retirement from the St. Olaf faculty in 1973, her students (along with family and extended household) were the principal recipients of that home-making. Then in 1975, she responded to a call from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to assist in resettlement of Vietnamese refugees, by overseeing interviews at Camp Chaffee. Finally, in 1982, Sovik returned to her beloved China on a tour with others associated with ASK. Sovik’s work offered home to others, often quite different from herself, coinciding with a shifting concept of mission, away from focus on evangelism and toward “being of service in other ways.”31 As her comment from Sinyang indicated, she did not give up concern for the spiritual dimensions. At McCloskey General Hospital, she was acutely aware of her own spiritual needs and concerned that the patients receive better care than provided by chaplains, whose preaching she judged to be thin platitudes. Her spiritual hunger was better fed by Lutheran services off the base and during visits with people she knew from China then living in nearby cities, Lutherans, and others. She socialized with Red Cross staff members who had similar moral values, if not the same Lutheran beliefs. Her official responsibilities were bureaucratic; however, her notes and letters reveal more than formal interest in the men’s lives. In addition to her official duties, she visited men on the wards. Most were in their 30

31

Gertrude Sovik to Anna and Erik Sovik, New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1940, Box 3, Folder 6, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accesion # 1612), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN. Grant Wacker, “Pearl S. Buck and the Waning of the Missionary Impulse,” Church History 72, no. 4 (December 2003): 852-74. Wacker insightfully traces changing views of mission among mainline, American Protestants, particularly Presbyterians, in conversation with Buck’s own views, noting her public participation in the debate stimulated in part by William Ernest Hocking and others, Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932).

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homeland, but far from house and family. In their common dislocation, Sovik offered friendship that created—at least for some—a temporary household in a strange topos. For a Chinese man she secured reading materials, including a New Testament. After he was discharged, she corresponded with a Roman Catholic who had become a friend. She struggled to find a proper, Christian response to German POWs. Sharing Christmas worship enabled her to recognize them as men loved by their families as she loved her own and to see their common faith despite the fact that their nations were at war. In Europe, Sovik’s efforts were focused on securing actual houses—or the promise of houses, sponsors, and livelihoods in the United States—for fellow Lutherans displaced by World War II. In this task she joined other single women, including Cordelia Cox, her supervisor in New York. Although the pastoral office was closed to them, the church’s increasing involvement in service to neighbor was consistent with conventional notions of women’s work. These professional church workers contributed to social ministries whose benefits reached beyond their own ethnic or religious communities such as the Vietnamese refugees Sovik interviewed, counseled, and oriented. Urging members of her congregation in Northfield to meet their new neighbors and invite them to their homes, she quoted Leviticus 19: “The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as a home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.” Lane’s fourth axiom is that, “the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal.” He observes further that, “the lure of sacred space, therefore, is strongest among those who are homeless, alienated, estranged.”32 Gertrude Sovik’s experience of home exemplified these characteristics. Throughout her life the home she was given as a child drew her back, to the axis mundi of her faith, to her family’s house, and to the place of her heart—China. Her missionary calling was a sending out (in Christian terms a vocation, in Lane’s a centrifugal impulse) to make home for others in places familiar and unfamiliar. Dislocation acted as her axis mundi, orienting her, and supporting her in home-making. Enacting the choreography, she had been taught, Sovik recalled God’s presence in unfamiliar places. In new locations, she arranged her domestic spaces in ways that engaged her memories and emotions. Her resettlement work was home-making at its most basic, but it was not restricted to the material dimension. In addition to overseeing soldiers’ hospital discharges and refugees’ placements, she responded to their social and spiritual needs, even though their worlds were not always ordered around the same divine center. Less tightly knit than ASK or the group of missionaries she called “China-folk,” the households her efforts created 32

Lane, Landscapes, 19, 34.

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were nonetheless real. An anecdote Sovik recorded in a manuscript for a talk demonstrated the potential for unexpected consequences from her home-making efforts. While working at Camp Chaffee, she received a phone call from Mrs. Szasemiet, a woman she had interviewed in Europe in 1956. After telling the story of her new life in the United States, the former refugee informed Sovik that her congregation in Pennsylvania was sponsoring a Vietnamese family. Whether this family found chora-home in the unfamiliar topos of Pennsylvania is not known. The possiblitiy that they might have done so can be traced through Mrs. Szasmiet’s making a home there to Gertrude Sovik’s experience of being-at-home and her lifelong efforts to make home for herself and to offer it to others.

Conclusion Is home different from other places? In her 1947 letter, Sovik seems both to agree and disagree. “There’s just no place like MY HOME—no matter where it is!”33 Considering home as a sort of sacred place helps to resolve the apparent contradiction. Sovik’s case tells us that topos becomes chora when there is an intervention of the divine, when that encounter is solidified by the social/cultural practices of religious ritual and family routines, and when that experience takes account of but is not defined by a location’s physical features. The axis mundi established by God’s intrusion—first in her infancy and later through shared ritual—was portable. Rather than dividing places into sacred and profane, it ordered and gave meaning to whatever place she was in. Gertrude Sovik’s experience of being-at-home, while nurtured in a specific place—a place identified with a house and a school, with a family, a community, or with a nation—did not require staying put in the same location; to the contrary, it enabled her to venture out, to be at home elsewhere, and to make homes for others. Yes, home is different from other places. And, not every house is a home. But, because home is more than a place and more than a house, all places have the potential to become home. As Icelandic-Minnesotan poet Bill Holm has written, “The heart can be filled anywhere on earth.”34

33

34

Gertrude Sovik to Anna and Erik Sovik, January 2, 1947, Box I, Folder 13, Gertrude Sovik Papers (Accession #1506), St. Olaf College Archives, Northfield, MN. Bill Holm, The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2001).

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References Addleton, Jonathan S. “Missionary Kid Memoirs: A Review Essay.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (January 2000): 30-34. Burton-Christie, Douglas. “Place-Making as Contemplative Practice.” Anglican Theological Review 91, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 347-371. Erickson, Joyce Quiring. “On Being-at-home.” Cross Currents (Summer 1993): 235-46. Hunter, Jane. “Single Women and Mission Community,” in The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China, 52-89. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Lane, Belden C. “Giving Voice to Place: Three Models for Understanding American Sacred Space.” Religion and American Culture 11, no.1 (2001): 53-81. ———. Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. Maryland, US: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. LeBlanc, John Randolph. “Camus, Said, and the Dilemma of Home: Space, Identity, and the Limits of Postcolonial Political Theory.” Strategies 15, no. 2 (2002): 239-58. Lindbeck, George. “Paris, Rome, Jerusalem: An Ecumenical Journey.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, no. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 2004): 389-408. Mallett, Shelly. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review (2004): 62-89. Martis, John. “Living Away from Home—and Loving It: Tweaking a Christian Metaphor.” Pacifica 15 (June 2002): 122-137. Reinders, Leeke and Marco Van Der Land. “Mental Geographies of Home and Place: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Housing, Theory and Society 25, no. 1 (2008): 1-13. Stevenson-Moessner, Jeanne. Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Wacker, Grant. “Pearl S. Buck and the Waning of the Missionary Impulse.” Church History 72, no. 4 (December 2003): 852-74. Williams, Rhys H. “Introduction to a Forum on Religion and Place.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (2005): 239-70.

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3

OLD IDENTITIES IN A NEW SPACE: THE ROLE OF HINDU PRIESTS IN MAKING DIASPORIC COMMUNITIES FEEL AT HOME IN MUMBAI Usha R. Vijailakshmi Introduction In a megapolis peopled with diasporic communities from within the state and from different parts of the country, dotted with innumerable temples and a myriad of belief systems, it is pertinent to study the role of the community temples and their priests in making the diasporic population feel at home, and further probe whether the priests who serve these temples themselves have made the city their home. As per Hindu belief, the saints of the ancient times identified sacred spaces and installed the images of various gods after energizing them through mantras or sacred hymns. Vedas talk of multiple forms of divinity; Rig Veda talks about Saguna Brahman or the supreme divinity with attributes that can take any form as it pleased. Though worship of images was known during the Vedic period, it was not given prominence. Prevalence of image worship is mentioned in both Ramayana and Mahabharata. The latter text talks about the prevalence of temples. Patanjali, the author of Yogasutras, defines dhãrana or fixity of attention as the process of fixing the mind on some object well defined in space, thereby justifying the reasons for image worship.1 There are two opinions prevalent on how temple building activity picked up in India. One is that it was inspired by the Buddhist temple building activity and the second is that the non-Aryan communities, especially the Dravidians, always built 1

Swami Krishnanda, The Study and Practice of Yoga: An Exposition of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, accessed July 21, 2017, https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/ patanjali/raja_46.html.

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temples for worship, and temples became more spectacular in size and design due to Buddhist influence. A tour around the country would reveal that even to the present times, wherever people settle down they first build a temple and sometimes multiples of it. A newly settled community builds its own place of congregation where like-minded members meet wherein the priests facilitate the continuation of their cultural beliefs and religious practices. When people migrate to a new city, the unfamiliarity with the alien social and cultural values unnerves them and makes them a stranger in the new space. Georg Simmel explains this strangeness as “those who are close feel remote and those who are remote feel near.”2 One of the important markers of feeling at home in a new space is the community temple, which brings in a certain continuity of tradition and allows migrants to relax and unwind in a new space. The size and the aesthetics of the temple depend on the patronage it receives but even without it, people build for collective worship a functional temple, which expresses the religious aspirations of the community that live in a locality. The temple precinct, its daily rituals, and the performing priests give them a certain comfort and a sense of belonging that they feel confident to negotiate with the new city’s values. Kurt Lewin calls this the creation of an “in-group” to bring about the acceptance of a new value system.3 Over time, the migrant community settles down and makes the host city its home. For the succeeding generations, the community temples are one of the support systems they fall back on in reaffirming their identity while managing their day to day life in a cross-cultural environment. A priest living in a large city like Mumbai faces a few challenges in acculturating with its lifestyle or its values. His earnings do not permit him to own or rent a decent accommodation unless otherwise provided by the trustees of the temple. So, living with family becomes out of question for many of the priests. Furthermore, the orthodox social and cultural setting, in which they were raised and they now serve, make many believe that a big city will erode their cultural values and as such is not a safe place to raise children. This makes them maintain a long-distance relationship with their families, either living alone or with other priests. In such a scenario, the essay attempts to study the nature of these temples, the role played by the priests, their training into priesthood, their reasons for choosing this profession, the socio-cultural ethos in which they 2

3

Donald N. Levine, ed., Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), 143-149. Kurt Lewin, Gertrud Weiss Lewin, and University of Michigan Research Center for Group Dynamics,  Resolving Social Conflicts, Selected Papers on Group Dynamics [1935-1946] (Human Relations Collection. New York: Harper, 1948), 56-68.

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function, the part they play in the present times, how they are viewed by the people, and how they view themselves and their services in the rapidly changing city, and investigates if they feel at home in the city of their livelihood.

About the Study The essay is based on an extensive fieldwork research done over a period of three years from 2010 to 2013 on the Hindu temples of Mumbai covering a distance of 22 km in the north-south direction.4 A total of 279 city temples were surveyed during this period to gather the history of the temples and their priests. In 2016, I visited twenty odd suburban temples; had discussions with the priests and the trustees to understand the role and functions of the priests; and the daily rituals performed in these temples. The survey and the study form the primary sources of this essay. The context of this study has been pieced together from Mumbai Gazetteer and other published works of both the nineteenth and the late twentieth century along with the Sthalapuranas of various temples.5 The questions put forth during the survey and later during the discussions were framed keeping in mind the current social and cultural debates. Though the research paper in general has considered the temples of the entire present-day city of Mumbai including the suburban areas, the focus of the research is on the Mumbai City District or what is popularly called the island city. The essay is divided into four parts: The first part deals with a historical overview of emergence of Mumbai as a modern urban space; the second is on the religious beliefs and practices in the island, and the temple building activity during the colonial period; The third part is on the role of temples in making diasporic communities feel at home; and the fourth is on how the priests consider the temple they serve as their home while having a transactional relationship with the city, and wanting to go home once they retire.

Colonial City of Mumbai Mumbai being a colonial city, many of its temples were either built or rebuilt during British times. Studies on the ancient history of Mumbai state that it was a non-descript fishing village, which was part of Aparanta in North Konkan.6 If not earlier, since the time of the Mauryas the group of 4

5

6

“The Hindu Temples of Mumbai: A Sociological Perspective” was a project undertaken by the author for the Asiatic Society of Mumbai during 2010-2013. Sthalapurana gives information on the origin of the deity and the history of the temple that is normally documented by every temple. S.M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1902), 1-4.

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unconnected islands became a trade route that connected the mainland India to the Arabian Sea with a north-south orientation.7 Satavahanas, the successors of the Mauryas, controlled some parts of present Mumbai, then known as Suparaka, one of the busiest seaports in western India.8 They were followed by powerful empires of the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas who controlled the islands and treated them as an important trading post. Puri, the ancient capital known as the “Island of Elephanta” that lies about 10 km to the east of Mumbai, was well known to many foreign travelers and traders.9 From the ninth century, the local kingdom of the Shilaharas controlled the islands with their capital in Thane.10 In the fourteenth century, the Yadava prince by name of Bhimba captured Mahim.11 He settled many caste groups in the various islands, which moved in with him.12 After the Yadavas, Mumbai became the military outpost of the Surat Sultanate that did not pay much attention to the growth and prosperity of the islands.13 In 1509, the Portuguese visited the city and from then on, they regularly visited Mumbai with the object of plunder.14 Since sixteenth century, the islands of Mumbai paid annual tribute to the Portuguese since they started controlling the islands militarily. The marriage treaty of 1661 drawn up between the Portuguese and the English king Charles II for his marriage with Catherine of Braganza saw the islands being made over to the English.15 Within seven years, Charles, in need of money, leased out the islands to the English East India Company. In the seventeenth century, Surat was an important trading post in western India but it was subjected to the administration of the local sultanate. The British had a license to establish and run a factory there but they had to abide by 7

8

9 10

11 12

13

14 15

These islands were connected during the British times to form the modern city of Bombay. Two of the Mauryan edicts have been found at this place. According to Edwardes, many of Ashoka’s rock inscriptions and Mahavamsa mention trade contact with Aparantha. Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and Ptolemy on Ancient Geography of India (Calcutta: Prajna, 1980), 20-23; 82-88. J. Gerson Da Cunha, The Origin of Bombay (JBBRAS, Bombay, 1900), 11-21. Thane is the immediate neighbor of the Mumbai City and forms a part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mahim is now part of Mumbai. Murali Ranganathan, ed., Govind Narayan’s Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863 (Delhi: Anthem Press, 2008), 64-66. I have used both the terms “island” and “islands” while referring to Mumbai. Till the group of islands were connected through land reclamation during the British period I have used the plural term, and after the islands were connected, I have used the singular term. S.M. Edwardes, “The Rise of Bombay,” 64-68. James Hens Gense, How Bombay Was Ceded (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1930), 1-13.

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the conditions laid down by the sultanate. In such an atmosphere, developing Bombay as an independent port city was very important for them. The British believed that if they could develop a modern, efficient police state that could provide the inhabitants the much-needed security and order, a guarantee of religious harmony and the freedom to exercise their choice of beliefs, many merchants and traders would be interested in migrating to the new city that would make it a successful port city. Though the Court of Directors of the East India Company continued to direct their British men to spread Protestant religion, their commercial interests forced them to accommodate freedom of worship for the natives. The March 1662 command of the British government to Governor Abraham Shipman regarding the religious policy in the island says, “You are to give such encouragement (as securely you may) to such natives and others as shall submit to live peaceably under our obedience … and you are to suffer them the exercise of their own religion without the least interruption or discountenance.”16 Many such directives were given through the years and each one was followed by an instruction to maintain the zeal of proselytization and the supremacy of the Protestant faith. The early British rule in Bombay subscribed to what Antonio Gramsci in a different context would argue as cultural hegemony. Their rule assiduously created both a political and a civil society in the island and depending on the citizens’ compliance or the lack of it, the ruling class exerted power through both of the societies.17 From the beginning, the Company wanted to develop these islands into a colonial city and with this intent took efforts to connect them with each other. The work that commenced in 1782 was completed in 1784. Called Hornby’s Vellard, a causeway was built by the then Governor to reach across the breach in the western sea and this was quickly followed by connecting various islands through other causeways. Connecting the island with the suburbs took place in 1845. With these efforts, the scattered islands became one and presented about forty-one kilometers of land space for the British to build a city. Further, they invited many communities to settle down here and pursue various vocations, which would be beneficial to both the colonizers and the immigrants. Several merchants from the neighboring state of Gujarat were the early immigrants as they strived to escape religious restrictions and the pressure put up by the Sultanate to convert them to Islam in their hometowns. The immigrants preferred to live amongst their community members and in 16 17

J. H. Gense, “How Bombay was Ceded,” 14-27. Thomas R. Bates, “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36, no.2, (1975). 351-366, accessed August 20, 2017, DOI: 10.2307/2708933, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708933.

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general, people liked living close to their community to be able to adhere to dietary restrictions and religious practices. Accordingly, the British broadly divided them based on their food habits and religious beliefs and settled them in various parts of what is now called South Mumbai. This act of the British is widely acclaimed as an example of their liberal outlook and their mindfulness toward the sensitivities of the new settlers. But, what is less conspicuous is the turmoil it created amongst the Koli (fishermen community) and the other old settlers of the islands who must have been forcibly evicted from their residences to accommodate the new settlers who aided the British in building the new city into a modern metropolis. During my interviews, many old residents of the city living near the coastline recalled family stories about the conflicts between old and new settlers in early times, and how their parents found it unsafe to travel alone to certain areas near the seacoast even at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Religious Life in Old Bombay Fishermen being the original inhabitants must have worshipped nature, seasons, and even animals that at an unknown past must have merged with the mainstream Hindu beliefs. Even today, the vestiges of this practice can be noticed in a few Koliwadas or “fishermen enclaves” where the rock formation shaped like a fish in some places with the fin being conspicuous have been coated with vermillion paste and worshipped as Hanuman. The city is dotted with Hanuman temples and in the early twentieth century, they were the most numerous.18 The islands, being the connecting link between Puri and the mainland, were always targeted by pirates and other robbers from whom the islanders constantly had to seek protection. Many visitors including Marco Polo have testified to the presence of pirates near Mumbai’s coast.19 In the early years of British rule, piracy was rampant on the island. The early islanders worshipped female goddesses or Devis who were tutelary deities who offered protection from vagaries of climatic conditions, from diseases, and from outsiders who from time to time marauded the islands from the sea. The shrines of ferocious protective Devis are on all sides of the city and a circumambulation of island of Mumbai would reveal that all the Devis, whichever direction they are housed, face the island with a protective gesture. An early Chalukyan inscription of the seventh century refers to Puri as Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity of the western ocean signifying that the areas surrounding the islands or the islands themselves were 18

19

K. Raghunathji, The Hindu Temples of Bombay (Bombay: Fort Printing Press, 1900), 3-5. Edwardes, “Rise of Bombay,” 16.

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very prosperous. The earliest reference to building a Mahadev or Shiva temple was from the time of the Shilaharas who built the Walukeshwar Mahadev Temple along with a few other Devi shrines. Iconographically, Mahadev is the first of the Ekadasa Rudras and the name implies that he was the greatest amongst the Rudras.21 Mahadev signifies prosperity and hence, this practice of building Mahadev temples existed since earlier times, and more Mahadev temples were built during the British period. Ram temples, though not numerous, were built by settlers from north India followed by a few Maharashtrians. Some maths (monasteries) that were built in the past by mendicant orders from various states have now been converted into temples, as the mendicants no longer reside there. Gujarati settlers in the city were keen builders of temples for various manifestations of Vishnu including Lakshmi Narayan, Satyanarayan, Krishna, etc. Maharashtrians built temples for Ganapati, Vithoba or Vittal, the most popular folk deity of Maharashtra, and a few other folk deities such as Mahsoba, Khandoba, and other local gods. Venkateswara, Murugan, Siva, and Sakti temples built by south Indian settlers are all part of the religious landscape of Mumbai. Since the 1980s, temple-building for Saibaba, a nineteenth century saint, has become popular. But, these temples, barring a few, are in general very small and are located on the side of the road. 20

Migrant Communities and Community Temples Mumbai in the nineteenth century provided people immense opportunities, both materially and socially. The new settlers who came from different regions chose the comparatively free climate of the city to settle and grow. They had settled according to their caste group, and when other immigrants joined, they too settled down in the same way and lived in the same area in south Mumbai. This necessitated the establishment of the community temples in south Mumbai: While the fishermen continued to live in their enclaves in Colaba, Cuffe Parade, the area near Sassoon Dock, Worli, Gorai, Vasai, and Borivili, other immigrants settled in different parts of the city that were both coastal and interior areas. Several north Indian settlers chose Malabar Hills, while the Gujarati settlers resided in large numbers in Marine Lines, and Charni Road, especially near the C.P. Tank area. They lived along with the Marathi inhabitants who themselves had migrated from various parts of Maharashtra. Generally speaking, both the communities are made up of middle-class to upper-middle-class residents. On the eastern front, the area near Masjid Bandar has a predominantly Muslim population but in the nineteenth and till late twentieth 20 21

J. Gerson Da Cunha, “The Origin of Bombay,” 22. T.A. Gopinatha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968), 44-47.

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century, it had a sizeable population of north Indians. The Mazgaon area had a predominant Muslim community who lived along with Goan Christians, Parsis, Jews, and Maharashtrians. The Grant Road area, especially in the eastern side, had Maharashtrians from the lower-middle class background settling down. It was also home to communities such as Vanjara, Lingayat, and Telugu immigrants from Dharmapuri area of Telangana. Parel in Central Mumbai had a predominant Marathi population, and so was the case with Wadala. While the upper caste Tamils, Kannadigas, Telugus, and Malayalis settled in Matunga, the long road connecting Antop Hill with Sion saw non-Brahmin Tamilian settlement from north western Tamil Nadu in the early 1930s. A few temples in this area are managed by the transgenders who migrated from Tamil Nadu. Dharavi was populated by various communities from south India including the Lingayats, and the Maharashtrians, and the people of north India along with many Muslims. The road leading from Dadar to Mahim had a predominantly Maharashtrian population, while the road leading from Dadar to Sion had a mixed population of various communities. The community temples were built in the old city along this settlement pattern. Though the contours of the city kept changing, a major change occurred when the textile mills closed in 1985. With that, the textile mill workers moved out of Lalbaugh and Parel areas of Central Mumbai, while the laborers who worked in small scale service industries that catered to the textile mills moved out of Grant Road. This population shift had a major impact on the maintenance of the temples. As the population dispersed, managing of these temples became a challenge for the keepers. Since the 1990s, the manufacturing industries gave way to the knowledge-based industry and this again led to a shift in population. Many high-rises have come up in the old city, which again has given rise to new reasons for insecurity amongst the priests of the old temples in the area.22 In general, the language and community-wise settlement pattern can be broadly mapped on five major roads that traverse through the city in the north-south direction from Mahim to Colaba. Out of these, the Koli temples are in the Koliwadas or enclaves spread out near the seashore of both the eastern and western sea front. Most of the Marathi temples are located on the eastern and western side of the western and central railway lines. Closer to the southern extremity of the island, the Gujarati temples share space with the Marathi temples. In Malabar Hills, on the southwestern arm, there are several temples built by Gujarati and northern settlers. These share space with the Parsi Tower of Silence in the area. In the eastern side, in approximately the same latitude, there are many temples 22

These observations are based on the author’s field survey from 2010-2013, and the interviews held with the temple priests during the period.

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built by north Indian settlers who share space with Marathi, Gujarati, and Muslim inhabitants along with Christian, and Jewish settlers. On the eastern side of the central railway closer to the northern side in Matunga and Sion, many south Indian temples have been built. Moving away from the family and community into a new city can be an uneasy experience, where an individual feels a lack of kinship and a loss of identity while faced with people speaking different languages, and following varied customs and values. Interface with other cultures and practices can be unnerving if one does not have the privilege of falling back into one’s own. This is essentially where the community temples play a vital role amongst the new settlers. When the numbers of the community grow, they feel the imperative need to build a community temple where they can spend time during free hours, and congregate during festivals and other special days. Such congregations strengthen kinship and, in turn, boost one’s confidence to face the outside world whose values are still alien to the settlers. Loss of membership is always a worrying factor to any community. When many leave a town or a village to settle in a new city seeking opportunity, the sense of the village or town of origin provides both an opportunity in terms of being able to spread their community values in a new city, and a sense of responsibility toward other members who have migrated to an alien city so that they do not lose touch with their community values. This is when the community’s core temple or the math gives permission to the members to build a temple in the city of settlement. Many who were interviewed talked about how their Guru gave permission to build a community temple. If there was no previously organized congregation, in memory of what was left behind, the settlers constructed a temple. In the latter scenario, one among the settlers assumed the role of the knowledgeable elder to guide others to become a community in the new city. For example, the Adi Dravida trustees of Dharavi’s “Arulmigu Sri Mahaganesar Tirukoil” said that in the 1900s, Dharavi had several tanneries and the Muslim owners from Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu brought their elders to work in these tanneries. Every day, the Muslims broke for mid-day prayers in the mosque and this inspired the Adi Dravida workers to have a place of worship of their own. They installed a Ganapati image under the leadership of one of the members and later, through their voluntary contributions, purchased the present spot where they built the temple for the deity.23

23

Ashok Kumar V., President, Arulmigu Sri Mahaganesar Alayam, in discussion with the author, Dharavi, September 12, 2011.

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Priests and Community Temples To serve the temple, invariably the founders appointed priests from their own village and performed as many rituals as was known and practiced in their place of origin. This activity is very therapeutic to the settlers who then can negotiate with the “outer” world with the strength they gain from the “inner” world. That was how the migration of priests from various cities and smaller towns toward Mumbai started. The present study conducted on Mumbai temples reveal that three kinds of situations can arise over a period of time:

[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-02-29 23:24 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

1. The original trustees lose interest in the temple and hand it over to the priest. So, he manages it on his own. 2. The trustees are active and they wish to bring priests from their village or their state of origin. 3. The trustees are unable to bring priests from their village and they employ priests from anywhere, especially from north India. Getting a priest, especially a good priest, is very difficult. Most temple trustees complained about the rarity of priests. Some even complained that the Brahmins taking to software and other jobs were not interested in the priestcraft. The wealthy trusts such as Siddhi Vinayak, Mahalakshmi, Babulnath, Bhuleshwar, etc., hired Brahmin priests from their own language group. But this involves paying them a respectable salary and providing them residential quarters. Getting into these temples is tough, the appointments are made through referrals, and the management consults the chief priest at the time of appointment. If a temple run by the Gujarati or Marathi trust could not get a priest for any reason from the same language group, they then try getting one from either Uttar Pradesh or Rajasthan. Though the temples run by the south Indian management prefer south Indian priests, none from either Marathi, Gujarati or Hindi temple trusts would hire south Indian priests, since it is difficult to understand their south Indian accent and customs. The priests from Uttar Pradesh or Rajasthan are most adept at managing any situation. They are very resilient and do not leave the temple easily once they become priests. In general, the priests come from the following places: Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand, Rajasthan, Bihar, Odhisha, various places of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Seemandhra, Telangana, and Kerala. The general trend noticed is that the Gujarati priests work in temples founded or run by Gujarati trustees. The priests from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa, and Bihar are willing to work in small temples and they take complete charge of the temples in the absence of the trustees. Priests from Telangana work in temples in Grant Road East 58

Old Identities in a New Space

where the Telugu Munnurvar community had built temples a hundred years back. Priests of all southern states work in any south Indian temples as they too prefer working with their language group. South Indian priests prefer their own living quarters with attached toilets and they do not like using community toilets.24 While a well-trained priest would be most expensive to hire, a priest with basic knowledge on temple rituals and every day religious duties, and a few sacred chants could be hired by paying a salary of Rs.3000/month with residential arrangement, which may not have an attached toilet. Many a times, when the original donor of land or the trustee and their families are not interested in caring for the temple, it is handed over to priests who manage the temple on their own. This makes the priests the de facto owners of the temple. Many hundred-year-old temples in Malabar Hills belong to this category; interestingly, many of these are from Gujarat. The priests in these temples make a portion of the temple as their residential quarters to live with their families, and pay the electricity and other charges just as they maintain the temple with the income that comes from the temple. Over time, they acquire a right over the temple, as they have been taking care of it for at least three generations. In some of these temples, the younger generation, having been educated, are employed elsewhere, and serve the temple only during morning and evening hours. People can visit the temple during the morning and evening. Brahmins from north India serve as priests in some temples but do not bring their family. However, they live inside the temple premises with assistant priests. Temples such as Rokhadiya Hanuman Mandir in Zaveri Bazar, Kãpreshwar Mandir in Byculla, Vithobha Mandir in Vittalwadi, Marine Lines, Sri Hanuman Mandir in Kamatipura, many smaller temples in Malabar Hills, and in general many temples in south Mumbai belong to this category. The priests visit their family once in two years or so. Once they become old, they appoint either a family member or one of their assistants as the next senior priest. Here, the junior priest learns priestcraft by assisting their seniors. Each temple has a set of daily rituals to follow. These rituals make a temple a home for the deities and may be similar in the temples of a language group or those of the same religious order. The daily rituals include waking up the deity with an arti before sunrise, followed by giving the deity a ritual bath and decorating it while chanting mantras, offering neividhya, again offering a mid-day dinner that may be a simple fare or a 24

A South Indian trustee complained to the researcher that though he had been trying very hard to hire a south Indian Brahmin priest, he was not successful as the temple is in a chawl where there is no separate toilet and bathing facility that south Indian priests consider a must.

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regular meal with puris, rice, dhal, curries, and a sweetmeat.25 The temples close at noon and open again by 5 p.m. in the evening. An evening ārti is performed and at that time mantras are chanted or people get together to sing bhajans. Again, at the time of closing at 8.30 or 9 p.m. sayan arti, which is the ritual of putting the deity to sleep, is performed. This daily routine aims at making the temple a private sacred space for the deities to feel at home. While the above-mentioned general routine is followed in most of the temples, there are variations. Temples that follow Pushtimarg follow a slightly different routine.26 In south Indian temples, the deity is offered meals three times a day, though depending on the time of the day, it can vary from a simple meal in the morning to a sumptuous midday dinner and a light supper. During fasting days such as Ekādasi, they do not offer anything to the Lord as he is supposed to fast.27 During the day, depending on the presiding deity, either the priest or his assistants chant the Ramayana if it is Ram temple, Bhagavatam if it is Krishna temple, Rudram if it is Shiva temple, and Devī Bhāgavatam if it is Devi temple. Besides these, on festival days, to perform special homas, they invite specially trained priests who freelance.28 Occasionally, the temple priest is well trained in performing specific homas that are considered advanced ritual performances. How and where do the priests learn their craft? Most answered that they learned it from their seniors. Yet, within the city there are three wellknown vedic schools that train Brahmin students in priestcraft. They are: Bhavans college, which conducts an evening course in priestcraft; a vedic school inside Nerul SIES Engineering college; and a school at Muralidhar Temple in Sion, which trains Brahmin boys in temple rituals and vedic chants. Outside Mumbai, many places such as Poona, Pandarpur, etc., have vedic schools where they train the Brahmin boys. India witnessed the emergence of socio-religious reform movements in the nineteenth century. Some of the important social movements had their origin or their growth in the city. Eminent reformers had spent significant time in this city and influenced the thought and actions of the people in fighting against social inequalities. Some of them were strident in voicing against Brahmin dominance in the society and in religion. The earliest successful temple entry movement led by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar took 25

26

27 28

Arti is waving the camphor lit plate in the presence of the image of God to the chants specific to that deity. Neividhya is offering of food. Pushtimarg was initiated by Vallabhacharya, a fourteenth century saint. In general, the Krishna temples in Mumbai follow Pushtimarg. The eleventh day after the new moon or full moon day. Oblations to God through fire.

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place in the city in the Thakurji Muralidhar Temple in Marine Lines.29 The emergent voices of the marginalized sometimes merged and in other times differed from the nationalist thought. Many nationalist leaders who spoke against British imperialism also spoke against the caste system and priestly dominance in temples. Twentieth century Mumbai was impacted by such voices. Post-independence, time and again, the social reformers have raised the issue of Brahmin dominance in Hinduism. So, this was one of the questions I raised at the time of interviewing the trustees as to why they preferred Brahmin priests. The answers were evasive and none answered directly. When I raised this question to the trustee of a Mahãr temple in Kamtipura, he posed a counter question: “Shouldn’t we hire one at all?”30 The trustee of the Muralidhar Temple in Sion who also runs the veda patashala (vedic school) says that the society asks for this.31 Some trustees said that people preferred having Brahmins for religious duties. Some trustees avoided answering the question. Only in Worli Koliwada, the trustees pointed out that they appointed someone from their Koli community as a priest. Since they live cohesively in the enclave, they could identify persons suitable for this duty. According to the trustee, a priest should be spiritual, soft-natured, and a vegetarian. In comparison, when young people in Koliwada near Manori were interviewed, many said that they had no interest in becoming a priest. While the replies were varied, they weren’t answering the issue raised. It was finally the trustee of a temple in Dharavi who answered the question in an indirect way. He explained how with great difficulty he identified a Jangam priest for the temple.32 When asked why he didn’t become a priest, he responded with a chuckle: “I would like to unwind in the evening with a dose of alcohol and meat and these were not possible if I became a priest.”33 Barring a few temples, which had non-Brahmin priests, most of the trustees believed that the priest’s vegetarianism was important for efficacious religious service in the temple. The non-Brahmin priests serve in temples housing folk deities or the guardian deities such as Shitala Devi, Mazobha, and Kantobha temples. Some of these temples conduct homas once a year by inviting Brahmin priests. Otherwise, their daily worship ritual is waving ārti, and offering oblations to the deity in the form of a small meal. Sometimes, 29

30

31

32 33

The trustee of the Thakurji Muralidhar Mandir, in discussion with the author, Marine Lines, February 21, 2011. Mahar is a prominent scheduled caste community in Maharashtra. The trustee of the Mahadev Mandir, in discussion with the author, Kamtipura, Grant Road, April 28, 2011. The trustee of the Muralidhar Mandir, in discussion with the author, Sion, May 9, 2011. Jangam are the Shivite priestly class of the Lingayat caste, they are not Brahmins. The trustee of the Shiva temple, in discussion with the author, Dharavi, September 14, 2011.

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local people offer a fowl to the deity and they conduct an annual festivity called Jatra on the annual day or any of the special days of the deity.34 This is organized by the non-Brahmin priest and his family in general. When asked why they chose this profession, many priests had no answer. It was something they were initiated into since their childhood. Many said that their family was in this profession for many generations. Some responded saying that an elderly relative brought them to the city as their assistant and they stayed back. Their economic background is in general lower-middle-class to middle-class, but very few admitted that they are comfortably placed in life. How do priests view themselves in this constantly changing city? One of the endearing sights that meet the eye is that in some of the lesser known temples, due to long hours of work, the priest gets sufficient time to remain in the temple. The neighborhood people take the liberty to walk in to discuss their personal issues with the priest. The reticent priest listens to this for some time and then checks the horoscope to find a remedy. For the local people, the priest in the temple is someone who is close to god, who is a good counselor, and who can predict their future from their horoscope. Many priests are either trained in performing homas or in preparing horoscopes. Many priests feel that it was a duty that was initially thrust upon them either by the father or by the village elder that later became their way of life. Though Mumbai is a megapolis with various language groups and a cosmopolitan atmosphere, the underlying linguistic tensions in the city are palpable and they come to the fore occasionally. The year 2008 was one such year when hatred against the north Indians, especially the Biharis, was quite intense. Every now and then, the tremors of this tension could be felt in the city. In the backdrop of this, when the priests were asked whether they were comfortable living in the city, especially in areas where Maharashtrians are in large numbers, the surprising answers was “yes,” and “no problem.” Almost all said that neither the politicians nor the local people troubled them. They only fear two groups: Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that tries to evict them for lack of possession of ownership certificates, and the builders who attempt to throw them out of the temple, and convert the properties into high-rises. Property prices being very high in the city, the space on which the temples stand is often considered precious. Many a times, if a temple does not 34

Jatra is an annual festival conducted in honor of the guardian deity of any locality by the original or long-time inhabitants. People believe that if the deity is not propitiated, it would get angry and the entire locality might face sudden calamities. On the other hand, if the Jatra is conducted, auspicious things may happen to people of the locality.

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have regular patrons, the trustees sell the place along with the temples, and the new owner tries his best to dislodge the priests and close down the temple. Such cases are quite common in Malabar Hill area and now some temples in Charni Road face similar such issues. Under such circumstances, it is the local politician and their party that help the priests by negotiating with the owners. Another strange situation that has arisen for a few more than hundred-year-old temples is that, they were built at a time when there were no proper roads or layouts. When the paving of roads and marking of public and private spaces occurred, these temples appear to be on the road corner instead of being within the residential area. This gives the impression that these temples have encroached on public property. Though locals and BMC know the fact and in general do not disturb them, the new high rises that are bordering them consider them as nuisance, and constantly complain against the temples and the priests. The third important change that took place was the closure of textile mills in 1985, as mentioned above. With this one important event, a sizeable Maharashtrian population moved out of south Mumbai to far away areas. Some of these areas have now been inhabited by people of other faiths. This has led to the temples not having enough patrons and creating the consequent insecurity amongst the priests.

Concluding Remarks The section above summarizes what is going to be the future challenge that these priests will face in the city that keeps constantly changing. Mumbai is expanding northwards, and there is a population shift toward north Mumbai. In particular, the old settlers of south Mumbai are selling their property and moving toward northern suburbs. New language and religious groups that are affluent but may not be interested in patronizing these older temples have settled down in south Mumbai. This may lead to more confrontations between the builders, new residents, and the priests. But, one positive aspect is that many new temples are being built in both north Mumbai as well as in New Mumbai which is a suburb that is fast developing, and more priests are being hired there to service the temples that have been recently built. Do these priests consider Mumbai their home? Most said no. They further expressed their desire to settle down in their native villages in their old age. Many go home once in two years, though there are also some who do it annually. When asked the question why they were not living with their family, the answer was that the city is prohibitively expensive, and it is too distracting and would be detrimental to the upbringing of the 63

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young people. Although the profession has a lot of challenges and insecurities, almost all the priests held that, even if they were given a choice, they would not like to leave the temples and do something more profitable. When asked about reasons for this stance, the responses were varied but reflected a similar thought: “Someone must do it and it better be me,” said one. “My father told me to take care of this temple, I cannot leave it,” said another. “I have to do my service to God,” said yet another priest. The most passionate ones uttered: “How do I leave my Iśwar? God will take care of me… I am not afraid.” Thus, though the city of Mumbai does not offer a sense of home to most of the migrant priests, yet they choose to live there out of multi-layered obligations.

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References Bates, R. Thomas. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36, no.2, 1975, 351-366, accessed August 20, 2017, DOI: 10.2307/2708933, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708933. Chattopadhyaya, Sudhakar. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and Ptolemy on Ancient Geography of India. Calcutta: Prajna, 1980. Cunha, Jose Gerson Da. The Origin of Bombay. Bombay: JBBRAS, 1900. David. M.D. Bombay: The City of Dreams. A History of the First City in India. Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House, 1995. Edwardes, S.M. The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect. Bombay: Times of India Press, 1902. Gense, James H. How Bombay Was Ceded. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co, 1930. Krishnanda, Swami. The Study and Practice of Yoga: An Exposition of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, accessed on July 21, 2017, https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/patanjali/raja_46.html. Lewin, Kurt, Gertrud Weiss Lewin, and University of Michigan Research Center for Group Dynamics.  Resolving Social Conflicts, Selected Papers on Group Dynamics [1935-1946]. Human Relations Collection. New York: Harper, 1948. Raghunathji, K. The Hindu Temples of Bombay. Bombay: Fort Printing Press, 1900. Ranganathan, Murali, ed. Govind Narayan’s Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863. Delhi: Anthem Press, 2008. Rao, T.A. Gopinatha. Elements of Hindu Iconography. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968. Levine, Donald N., ed. George Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.

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THE RAMAKRISHNA MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AS SEEN THROUGH THE ACTIVITIES OF THE NIPPON VĒDĀNTA SOCIETY Midori Horiuchi Introduction After the “Japan-US Treaty of Peace and Amity” was concluded between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan in 1854, the number of foreigners staying in Japan began to increase. Subsequently, the Bombay route opened in 1893, and the number of Indian people who came and stayed in Japan particularly increased. Most of them were traders dealing in cotton and silk, and they stayed in the cities of Yokohama, Kobe, and Osaka, which were the main port cities of Japan. However, after the Great Kanto (Tokyo) earthquake in 1923, many of the Indian residents shifted to the south, to the Kobe area. As the Indian immigrants in Kobe settled down with their families, they gradually divided into three major groups. They are the Sindhi, who are merchants dealing in soft goods and electrical appliances, the Gujarati (Jain) who handle mainly pearls, and the Punjabi who traded in miscellaneous goods and automobile parts. They each have their own religious facilities such as the Hindu mandir, the Jain temple, and the Sikh gurudwara that are the cultural and religious centers of each respective group.1 In recent times, since 1970, the number of Indians in Japan has been increasing in the Tokyo area. Especially since 1990, Tokyo has become the location of the highest Indian population in Japan. The overall number of foreign registrations in Japan has increased since that year, and in particular, after the year 2000, the Indians in the Edogawa-ku ward of Tokyo 1

Feifan Zhou and Hideo Fujita, “Chiikishakai ni okeru gaikokujin no shūjūka ni kannsuru tyōsahōkoku: edogawaku no indojin komunitī wo tyūshin ni [New Ethnic Community in Japan: A Survey in Indian Immigrants of Edogawa, Tokyo],” Gengobunkaronsō [Paper on language and culture] (March 2007): 82-83.

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have exceeded 10 percent of all Indians in Japan. Most of these Indian newcomers are working in IT companies and are single males. The Vēdānta Society of Japan (Nippon Vēdānta Kyōkai) was founded in 1958 and became affiliated with the Ramakrishna Mission in 1984. The Society began to translate the speeches and works of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda from English into Japanese, publishing a magazine and organizing talks by the monks of the Ramakrishna Order. Additional activities have developed over the years and eventually, a Swami was sent from the main Ramakrishna Order to take charge of the Japanese Vēdānta Society in order to facilitate members’ personal spiritual fulfillment and selfless service. Over time, discourses, retreats, and private interviews have been held under the Swami’s guidance, resulting in a steady flow of visitors to the Society. Most of these visitors have been Japanese, but the Swami has kept in close contact with the Indian community in Japan and drawn in Indian visitors as well. The present Swami, Swami Medhasananda, has regularly presented lectures on Vēdānta and the Bhagavad-Gīta at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo since his inauguration as the head of the Society in 1993. The connection between the Society and the Indian Embassy appears strong and of a special nature. Furthermore, on occasions such as the birthdays of Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Krishna, Gautama Buddha, and Jesus Christ, special programs are held incorporating meditation, hymns, devotional songs, and discourses. These events draw many Indian people and reveal the ways that Indians who have maintained their Indian (Hindu) identity in Japan, are engaging with their homeland and religious traditions via the Ramakrishna movement. In this essay, I would like to postulate that the Ramakrishna movement in Japan constitutes a new religious movement of Hinduism, and describe how the Society connects with the Japanese Indian community, and imparts to them a sense of home.

The Ramakrishna Movement On the website of the Belur Math and the headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, the following is written: Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are twin organizations which form the core of a worldwide spiritual movement2 (known as 2

The Order described the reason why the name of the Ramakrishna Order (Math and Mission) commanded respect all over India and even outside as follows: The Ramakrishna Mission does not believe in conversion in the sense of the world as understood in common parlance. If anything, these monks try to make “a Hindu a better Hindu, a Moslem a better Moslem, a Christian a better Christian” and

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Ramakrishna Movement or Vedanta Movement3), which aims at the harmony of religions, harmony of the East and the West, harmony of the ancient and the modern, spiritual fulfillment, all-round development of human faculties, social equality, and peace for all humanity, without any distinctions of creed, caste, race or nationality.4

The Movement clearly has practical and social aims, and its monastic members have worked to realize these aims in this world from the beginning of the establishment of the Association. Swamis often refer to this point. For example, on the occasion of the release of the souvenir “The Ramakrishna Movement” on December 30, 1979, Swami Vivekananda presented an address at the Ramakrishna Mission of New Delhi.5 At that time he lectured on the main ideas of Ramakrishna. The first one is the harmony of religions that comes from the Rig-Vedic words of ekam sa vipra bahudha vadanti (“Truth is one, sages call It by various names”). The other idea is the oneness of humanity. He explained that Ramakrishna has proven it in a scientific way, by actually practicing the different religious ideas and proving that all religions finally lead to the

3

4 5

so on. They ask people to go to the root of religion, which is trying to reach God somehow or other and not merely talking about Him. The Ramakrishna Movement (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1991), 24. Swami Bhajanananda explained Neo-Vedanta in his article as follows: From his own spiritual intuition, his study of Hindu scriptures and his first hand knowledge of conditions of Hindu society at the grass roots level, Swami Vivekananda came to the conclusion that not only was Hindu religion not the cause of India’s degradation but it was the way of least resistance to bring about changes in the socio-politico-economic life of the nation. He discovered that Hinduism and certain life-giving principles (the potential divinity of the soul, the principle of sakshatkara [direct intuitive experience of God], the principle of harmony) that, when put into practice, could lead to a rejuvenation of India. It was because these dynamic principles had not till then been properly applied in solving individual and national problems that India’s fortune declined and she became a slave to foreign powers. The corpus of these life-giving principles and the technique of their practical application taken together is called Neo-Vedanta. Swami Bhajanananda, “Swami Vivekananda and Neo-Vedanta,” Vedanta 375, JanuaryFebruary (2014): 5-6. Swami Satprakashananda states that a distinct contribution of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta Movement to the modern world is its message that all help given to men by individuals or by society should be based on the recognition of man’s innate divinity regardless of man’s differences. Swami Satprakashananda, Swami Vivekananda’s Contribution to the Present Age (St. Louis: The Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1978), 115. Belur Math, “Welcome,” accessed June 8, 2017, http://www.belurmath.org. “Ideals of Ramakrishna Mission by Swami Vireswaranandaji,” accessed May 31, 2017, http://www.rkmdelhi.org/articles/ideals-of-the-ramakrishna-mission-by-swami-vireswaranandaji/.

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same goal, to God-realization.6 The Swami also said that with this idea, he (Ramakrishna) wanted people to work for socially uplifting the poor and backward sections of humanity. This is why their practical activity is called as a movement, rather than a mission. They are also referred to as “Neo-Hinduism” or “Modern-Hinduism.”7 Furthermore, the ideology of the Ramakrishna movement which characterizes the Movement itself, is that it is modern (in the sense that the ancient principles of Vedanta have been expressed in the modern idiom), universal (in the sense that it is meant for the whole humanity), and practical (in the sense that its principles can be applied to solve the problems of everyday life).8 It consists of seven basic principles, which are:9 1. God realization is the ultimate goal of life 2. The potential divinity of the soul 3. The synthesis of the Yogas 4. Morality is based on strength 5. The Harmony of Religions: a. Harmony within Hinduism b. Harmony among all world religions 6. Avatarhood of Sri Ramakrishna 7. A New Philosophy of Work: a. According to Vedanta, the physical universe is a manifestation of God known as Virat. Hence, as Sister Nivedita has stated, there is “no distinction between the sacred and the secular.”10 6

7

8

9 10

Ramakrishna taught that there was infinite moral and spiritual potential in man, and that to develop that potential was man’s foremost duty in life. Furthermore he said that religions were like so many paths leading to the same goal, i.e. God. That is why man reaches his religious goal when he attains his highest moral development. (The Ramakrishna Movement, 2-3.) Gwilyn Beckerlegge points out that Vivekananda’s reinterpretation of Hinduism and his master’s teaching, now institutionalized in the structures of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, was the product of a specific period and in response to particular needs. Gwilyn Beckerlegge, The Ramakrishna Mission: The Making of a Modern Hindu Movement (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 78. “Ideology of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission,” accessed June 8, 2017, http://www.belurmath.org. “Ideology of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.” She has also stated: To labor is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life itself is religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid. Birth Centenary Publication, ed., The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, vol.1 (Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girls’ School, 1967), 9.

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b. The Gita (18.46 and 9.24) states that the all-pervading God is the ultimate source of all work and the enjoyer of the fruits of all sacrifice. Hence, all work is to be done as worship and the fruits of actions are to be offered to the Lord. c. Shiva Jnane Jiva Seva, “to serve Jiva as Shiva.” d. In Swami Vivekananda’s words, “He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak and the diseased, really worships Shiva; and […] with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.” e. Work as a spiritual discipline (Karma Yoga). This has been put in the movement’s motto as “Atmano mokshartham jagat hitaya cha,” (For one’s own salvation and for the welfare of the world), formulated by Swami Vivekananda. In this way, it can be said that their activities as presented above are based on Ramakrishna’s interpretation of the Karma-yoga.11 One scholar, Gwilym Beckerlegge, stated that the belief that both Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda brought a message appropriate for the modern world is linked to the emphasis placed on Swami Vivekananda striving to develop a religious philosophy that would be in tune with science. Furthermore, Beckerlegge states that, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda are held to be modernizers and unifiers of the Hindu tradition in their different ways: the former by accepting as valid all its forms, a synthetic catholicity embracing both personal and non-personal understandings of ultimate reality, and the latter by strengthening Indian and Hindu culture by defining its foundations and galvanizing Hindus into action.12 11

12

Swami Vivekananda said, “What makes this world what it is? Lost balance. In the primal state, which is called chaos, there is perfect balance. How do all the formative forces of the universe come then? […]to plunge into the world and learn the secret of work […] is the way of Karma-Yoga […] It (work) is a part of nature’s foundation, and goes on always […] Although this universe will go on always, our goal is freedom, our goal is unselfishness; and according to KarmaYoga, that goal is to be reached through work.” Swami Vivekananda, “KarmaYoga,” in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol.1 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1977), 113-115. Many disciples of the Ramakrishna Movement have referred to Swami Vivekananda’s Karma Yoga. Swami Swahananda’s Service and Spirituality in 1979 including his essays on “Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of Service” that would make it easy for us to understand Vivekananda’s ideal of karma between humans, and “Vedanta for Modern Man” that would enable us to know why the Ramakrishna movement is called Neo or Modern Vedanta, is an example. Gwilym Beckerlegge, “Ramakrishna—ARSP,” accessed May 31, 2017, https:// wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/ramakrishna/.

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Nippon Vēdānta Kyōkai (Vēdānta Society in Japan) Swami Vivekananda made a presentation on the occasion of the World’s Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893 that produced a large impact on the audience, and he made a lecture trip across the USA after the Parliament. Beckerlegge says that Swami Vivekananda’s aim in making the journey to the USA was an attempt to find sufficient funding to realize his vision of transforming India through a new style of mission conducted by sannyasins, having despaired of finding the necessary support in India.13 In 1894, Swami Vivekananda founded the Vedanta Society of New York. This is the name that came to be adopted by many branches of the Ramakrishna movement. He returned to Calcutta in 1897 and formed the Ramakrishna Mission Association (Sangha)14 with young disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. At the meeting in 1897, there were several resolutions made to establish the organization based on Ramakrishna’s teachings. Among them, an article on the foreign missions was written clearly. It was to have two branches of action. The first would be Indian: Maths (monastries) and Ashramas (convents for retreat) were to be established in different parts of India for the education of sannyasins and lay brethren (householders) “as may be willing to devote their lives to the teaching of others.” The second foreign: It was to send members of the Order into countries outside India for the foundation of spiritual centers, and “for creating a close relationship and spirit of mutual help and sympathy between the foreign and the Indian centers.” 15 Subsequently, the Belur Math (or “monastery”) was consecrated in 1898. On his way to the USA in 1893, Swami Vivekananda made a brief stop in Japan and visited some cities there. Some Japanese who met him at that time, referred to him as the “second Buddha.” Swami Vivekananda, in turn, was also impressed by such positive qualities of the Japanese character, such as patriotism, hard work, the power of assimilation, cleanliness, 13 14

15

Beckerlegge, “Ramakrishna—ARSP.” “This Association will bear the name of him (Ramakrishna), by whose inspiration we have taken to this life of Sannyasa, accepting whom as the ideal you have been leading the life of householders; whose sacred name and the influence of whose unique life and teachings have scarcely within these twelve years (one yuga) of his passing away, spread in an unthought-of way both here and in the West. Therefore, let this Association (Sangha) be named as the Ramakrishna Mission. We are only the servants of the Master. May you all help us in our endeavours!” declared Swami Vivekananda. The Ramakrishan Math & Mission Convention 1926 (Belur: The Math), 234-235. Romain Rolland, Roman roran zenshū 15 denki II, trans. Miyamoto Masakiyo [Complete works of Romain Rolland 15 biographical writings II], Misuzu shobō, 1980, 322-324.

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and a strong sense of aesthetics. Swami Vivekananda later spoke of these good qualities of the Japanese to his Indian audiences on a number of occasions. It is said that he observed that Indians, especially the nation’s youth, would benefit by studying secular matters in Japan, just as the Japanese would benefit from the study of Indian spirituality. This may be one reason why the Ramakrishana movement flourished in Japan. In 1931, Romain Rolland’s biography of Vivekananda was translated into Japanese and was possibly the first publication of RamakrishnaVivekananda literature available to Japanese readers in their own language. Subsequently, some Japanese who were very interested and spiritually moved by the sayings and words of Sri Ramakrishna, translated, and published some of his other works into Japanese. The official history of the Nippon Vēdānta Kyōkai (NVK) states as follows: 16

An academy for the study of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Vedanta, that was started in 1957 by Mr. Narayan Uchigaki in collaboration with some Japanese and Indians near Osaka, became a Society around 1960. This Society also published some books on Sri Ramakrishna and his disciples. And although the Society used to keep in close contact with the Ramakrishna Order, in the course of time it stopped that. When the recent President of the Ramakrishna Order, Swami Ranganathanandaji, visited Japan in 1958 on a lecture tour sponsored by the Indian government, he inspired a few, including Japanese professor Nikki Kimura and Mr. V. S. Rao, to form a Society to study and preach the ideas of Vedanta and Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Accordingly, the Vedanta Society was formed in November 1958. Prof. Kimura, Professor Emeritus of Risshyo University […] became the newly formed Society’s first president, while Mr. Rao, a retired Indian officer of the British Indian Army who had settled in Japan in 1953, became the first secretary. On May 2, 1959, the Society was formally inaugurated by Swami Nikhilanandaji, [...], at a public meeting attended by Sir C.P.N. Singh, the Indian Ambassador to Japan, and some Japanese scholars. Swami Ranganathanandaji was not only the inspiration behind the Ramakrishna Movement in Tokyo, he also impressed the Indian government enough to release an annual grant to the Society for its activities. This grant, which was a substantial amount in those days, brought great financial relief to the fledgling Society.17

In 1960, Mrs. Haru Nakai, a devotee of great resolution who had joined the Society and dedicated her life to it, began to live in the newly constructed “Holy Mother’s House” in Zushi, a town fifty kilometers 16

17

Swami Medhasananda, Suwami Vivekananda to Nippon [Swami Vivekananda and Japan] (Zushi: Nippon Vēdānta Kyōkai, 2009), 59-62. Vedanta Society of Japan, “History,” accessed June 15, 2017, Vedantajp-en.com, http://www.vedantajp.com/.

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southeast of Tokyo. In 1970, by donations, a small plot of land was purchased near “Holy Mother’s House” and a little house was erected. The main Ashrama was built in 1978, the Annex in 2012. Swami Bhaswarananda of the Vedanta Society of Seattle visited the NVK quite often in the 1970s and it was on these occasions that members had many opportunities to interact closely with a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and learn more about the Order’s ideals and objectives. Finally, in 1984, the NVK was officially declared as one of the centers of the Ramakrishna Math. Swami Siddharthananda was the first monk assigned as president of the NVK by the Order in June 1984. He continued in this position until December 1993. According to the official history of the NVK: The Swami rose to the occasion and introduced the routine lifestyle of an Ashrama, including spiritual programmes of meditation, evening services, etc. Regular birthday celebrations of the great trio of the Order, the Buddha and Jesus Christ were introduced. Discourses, retreats and private interviews began. The publication of new titles was undertaken and sales systems were greatly improved. Through these activities the Centre witnessed a steady flow of visitors. Some even lived there to derive the benefit of the Ashrama atmosphere and to help the Swami run the Centre. Most visitors were, of course, Japanese, but the Swami kept in close contact with the Indian community as well. Many of these contacts proved to be of great help to the Society.18

Swami Medhasananda, the current head, took charge of the NVK in December 1993. He continually thinks of ways to spread the message of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda to an even wider Japanese audience and presents lectures in Osaka nowadays every two months. The 50th anniversary of the NVK was also held in Osaka. More than 500 people gathered and celebrated it with the Indian Consul General in Osaka and other noted Indians of the community. Thus, discourses and classes that are held outside the NVK and Tokyo, in such places as Nagoya, Osaka and Tajimi and so on, are mostly led and run by the local disciples. The Swami visits these places and lectures to them on occasions. One class consists of about twenty to fifty attendants. The NVK celebrates many birthdays and performs pujas on several occasions, as well.19 These are based on Hindu cultural and religious ceremonies. It is through these celebrations that Indian Hindus would 18 19

“History.” According to their website, several celebrations are performed. They are: Birthday celebrations of Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ through a programme of meditation, hymns, devotional songs, and discourses; Public celebration of Swami

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be aware of, or keep and form their “identity” as Indians in Japan. For Japanese followers of the NVK, these ceremonies and pujas seem to offer “a spirit of Indian thoughts” visualized. Over the years, the activities of the NVK have become known to the Japanese people through the exposure given by the Japanese media. For example, in 1995, a one-hour interview on “Sri Ramakrishna and the Harmony of Religions” conducted with Professor Tsuyoshi Nara, former professor of Tokyo Foreign Language University, was broadcast on NHK television. The NVK has recently produced CDs on the Vedic mantras, Srimad Bhagavad-Gita, and guided meditation in Japanese and English. It has also launched a Japanese and English website and has been publishing a bilingual (Japanese and English) newsletter, The Vēdānta Kyōkai, which is delivered via internet through email since April 2003. These activities are considered to contribute to the influence of, and provide familiarization with the movement. Besides these regular activities, there are also Outdoor Summer Seminars, Yoga Sessions, Inspirational Quotes shared through e-mail in Japanese, and private interviews with the resident monk, Swami Medhasananda. Swami Medhasananda is forthcoming and happy to discuss matters on spiritual practice and provides clarification of Hindu scriptures. These are direct activities for spiritual development. Furthermore, Vivekananda Cultural Centre (VCC) has been offering classes on Yoga and other Indian subjects since September 2009 in the Indian Embassy of Tokyo.20 In Japan, the growth of the Vedanta Movement is slow but steady. When I met Swami Medhasananda in Zushi for the first time, it was just after his arrival in Zushi in 1993. He said at that time that he wanted to help improve the spiritual condition of the Japanese. He noted that Japan had developed very much in the field of economics, but people’s mind might not be cultured properly. He said to me that Japan has beautiful traditions and cultural heritages, however, Japanese people, especially the young people, are not aware of them. So, he said, he would like to help their spiritual development. Thanks to his activities, many Japanese visit the NVK Centre and try to understand the heart of the Ramakrishna

20

Vivekananda’s birth anniversary: Akhanda Japam (continuous spiritual practice 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the shrine twice a year); Outdoor Spiritual Retreat, etc. (“Celebrations,” accessed June 30, 2017, www.vedantajp-en.com). Six months long courses are offered at VCC that start in the months of January and July every year. About 2,200 students have enrolled and learned Yoga at VCC since year 2010. The current session has 256 students. “Yoga in Japan,” accessed June 13, 2017, https://www.indembassy-tokyo.gov.in/Yoga_at_VCC.html.

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movement. These Japanese meet Indian nationals there, and resident Indians also meet the Japanese there, thereby creating a cross-cultural bridge. The Swami considers that Vēdānta, as preached by Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, is gradually being recognized as a modern, scientific, and universal religion, and as perfectly suited to the needs of the Japanese people as it is to all nations of the modern world.

Indian Newcomers in Nishikasai in Tokyo Nishikasai in Edogawa ward in Tokyo is the popular location for many Indian newcomers. Many IT engineers arriving in Japan started living there after the year 2000. One notable Indian national, Jagmohan S. Chandrani, visited Japan in 1978, and due to Nishikasai’s location near the Yokohama Port and Narita Airport, it was a convenient location for the distribution of his tea trade business. He made that place his home and later his family joined him there. A lot of excellent IT engineers came to visit Japan just before 2000 in order to cope with the highly anticipated, but ultimately insignificant, “Y2K” computer problem. Around the same time, Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori visited India in 2000. The political climate changed, and visa issuance was largely relaxed for system engineers who worked in Japan led ITrelated companies. In this way, the number of Indian nationals working in Tokyo increased drastically.21 As an early arriver, Mr. Chandrani began to help these newly migrant Indians who were searching for rental rooms and he also started cooking vegetarian food for Indians, which was in short supply in Japan. Eventually, he opened an Indian restaurant to meet their culinary needs. He has been looked upon as the “The Father of Indians in Nishikasai.” In this way, the Indian population in Nishikasai has increased year by year since 2000. A Hindu mandir (temple) that has a vegetarian restaurant and an Indian school (Global Indian International School) have also shifted their bases here. In addition to Mr. Chandrani’s kindness, there are several other reasons why Indians have increasingly settled in Nishikasai. A recent Nikkei web article presented several of these points. • Good location for convenient transportation to Nihonbashi with its Wall Street located in Ōtemachi and the Tokyo Stock Exchange and 21

Kobayasi Akira, “Naze tōkyō edogawaku ni indojin-mura ga tanjō? [Why Indian Village Is Made in Edogawa, Tokyo?],” Nikkei Style, November 25, 2014, accessed March 31, 2017, http://style.nikkei.com/article/ DGXNASFE2203L_S4A720C1000000?channel=DF280120166607&style=1.

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to Kayabachō with many head offices of financial institutions and the head offices of brokerage firms. In addition, • Few obstacles to renting and lower room rent charges. • A large population of fellow Indians. • Many facilities with connections to India including: Indian restaurants and Indian food shops, an Indian school, and the Hindu mandir of Iskcon, Tokyo. • The Arakawa River reminds many Indians of the sacred Ganges River.22 Thus in 2000, Indian expatriates began living in Edogawa, Tokyo, an area with a high concentration of Indian IT engineers, where they founded the Indian Community of Edogawa.23 Other Indian communities include: The Indian Community Activities Tokyo, whose Diwali celebration draws 2,500 participants, as well as the Indian Merchants Association of Yokohama; The Oriental Club, one of the earliest Indian community organizations established in 1904 in Kobe but known as The India Club in 1913; Indian-dominated Silk Merchants’ Association, The Indian Social Society, and The Indian Chamber of Commerce,24 that were founded in the 1930s. Prior to 1990, the Indian community in Japan remained centered on the Kobe area in western Japan, which is quite a distance from Tokyo. However, after 1990, the number of Indian nationals in Tokyo began to show a sharp increase.25 Migrants who arrived in the 1990s included industrial trainees sent by Japanese car manufacturers who had set up factories in India.26 IT professionals and their families also came to Tokyo, settling primarily in Setagaya and Minato wards.27 After the year 2000, Indian nationals making a living in Japan were dominated by IT engineers, and this phenomenon is often described by the media as “India in Japan.” In regard to the number of Indian nationals in Japan registered in the year 2010, 2,336 of 22,000 Indians live 22 23

24

25 26 27

Akira, “Naze tōkyō edogawaku.” Masako Azuma, “Indians in Tokyo and Its Vicinity,” in Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia, (Tokyo: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008), 262. Takeshi Minamino and Munenori Sawa, “Zainichi Indojinshakai no hensen: Teijūchi Kōbe o jirei toshite [Changes in Indian Society in Japan—Focusing on the Case of Kobe Residents]” (PDF), Hyōgo Chiri 50 (2005, retrieved 2009), 8. Azuma, “Indians in Tokyo,” 256. Azuma, “Indians in Tokyo,” 258. Takeshi Minamino and Munenori Sawa, “An Emerging Indian Community in Tokyo: A Case Study of Nishikasai,” The Indian Geographical Journal 82 (1) (2007): 66.

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in Edogawa ward, in particular in the Nishikasai area. This is approximately ten percent of the entire Indian population living in Japan. Thus, Nishikasai became the popular location for many Indian newcomers.28 Subsequently, the Nishikasai Little India Initiative Preparatory Committee (NLI) was established in 2014. They have five active projects such as: construction of a Hindu temple; creation of an Indian street; holding of a curry grand prix contest; creation of sister-city affiliations; and, hosting cricket games. Swami Medhasananda took up posts as one of the committee presidents. The committee states as follows: As of 2014, more than two thousand Indians live in the Nishikasai area, which accounts for about 10 percent of Indians residing in Japan. Although 30 years have passed since the first Indian national started residing in Nishikasai, up till now, no “Little India” has been created in the area. We presume that following conditions have hindered creating a Little India: the fact that many of Indians stay here briefly because of their businesses, pending arrangement of visas, residency and religious (mandir) and dietary or educational issues. Therefore, some of the Indians and local Japanese decided to cooperate for the creation of a Little India in the 28

The development of IT industry is indispensable for the acceleration of it. In this situation, and under these circumstances, the Indian society around Tokyo witnessed a sudden increase with IT engineers along with elite community of business men employed in multinational corporations, the managers of Indian restaurants, cooks, and unskilled labor in sub-contract factories. Thus, the Indian society in Tokyo is currently characterized by different classes. Minamino and Sawa, “An Emerging Indian Community in Tokyo,” 16. In the case of Indian IT engineers, the employing companies enter into contract with the residential rental corporate administration, and thus problems of hesitation for ethnic reasons get solved (Asians may find more difficulties to get houses for rent). Moreover, Nishikasai, being a new residential area, enjoys a cosmopolitan outlook and as such, foreign residents may get accepted with greater ease. Since 2000, it is seen that the single IT engineers soon get married or bring their wife and children, and thus Nishikasai now witnesses more Indian families settling down. When the single IT engineers settle down with family, the existence of a mutually helpful Indian family and community becomes very important for them. Minamino and Sawa, “An Emerging Indian Community in Tokyo,”18-19. There are three factors constructing the identity in Tokyo. First of all, it is the religion. Second, it is the mother tongue (native State). The third factor is the nationality. Immigrant Indians in Tokyo gathered around in a cluster to form a community and found their “own place” afresh in Nishikasai. Later, in the vicinity of this area, an Indian school was established. All this development in Nishikasai has made “others” to say that this “place” is of Indians. This kind of “togetherness” of Indians in this “place” has resulted neither from the basis of mother tongue nor of religion, but based on nationality; the idea of nationality provides a needed threshold to gather Indians overcoming their differences. Minamino and Sawa, “An Emerging Indian Community in Tokyo,” 22). See Yōko Nagasaki, Indo kokkyō o koeru nashonarizumu [India: Nationalism Crossing the Border] (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2004), 129-130; 136-139; 142-150.

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area. This was the beginning of the Nishikasai Little India Initiative. This scheme must give Indian residents a town where they can live for a long period and give local Japanese chances to exchange friendship with them and possibility to make the area a tourism hub. Japanese and Indians are expected to contribute to the strengthening of the partnership. The town, Nishikasai, will be a symbolic town of Japan-India friendship and this is precisely our goal.29

Thus, the Nishikasai Little India Initiative has started in Tokyo area. It is different from the former Indian communities, that is, it mainly consists of younger people who are single and young couples, who are not sure whether they will live permanently in Japan. Their social, cultural, and religious manners are various; however, it is open to not only all sorts of Indians but Japanese as well. That is why its committee hopes that “Nishikasai will be a symbolic town of Japan-India friendship.”30

NVK: An Agency of Indian Identity Construct Indian emigrant communities have existed in Kobe from the Meiji era, and there are many people who are already the third and the fourth generations of Indian immigrants, and some who have gained Japanese nationality. So, permanent residents are the center of the India community in Japan. The Indian emigrants in Kobe are characterized by the residency and domiciliation of their family unit. The community is formed of three merchant groups as mentioned above. As Zhou and Fujita have pointed out, “Each group forms the network which is strong and is led by slightly exclusive religion facilities.”31 In strong contrast to these historical precedents, the Nishikasai area around NishiKasai Station of the Tōzai subway line in Tokyo has become a new large center of an Indian community. However, there are few permanent residents there, and many are only temporary workers and residents. In this way, the Indian communities in Japan exhibit two distinctive patterns. Because the NVK is located in Kanto area near Tokyo, it has influence on Indians living in this area specially, to form their own Indian identity. That is, the NVK might play a role of creating a new “Indian Identity” based on Indian ideals as envisaged in the worldview of Ramakrishna movement. First, as a part of the Ramakrishna movement, activities of the NVK have contributed to the spiritual development of Japanese people and this 29

30 31

“About Us,” accessed March 30, 2017, http://www.tokyo-littleindia.org/english. html. “About Us.” Zhou and Fujita, “Chiikishakai,” 83.

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has led to an understanding of Indian cultures and religions. For many Indians, the Hindus in particular, the activities of the NVK provide a Hindu way of rituals that offers an atmosphere of “Mother India,” a sense of home in a diasporic context. It could be said that the NVK helps Indian people transcend their regional identity boundaries to evolve a singular Indian identity. As the NVK has had strong connections with the Indian Government from the beginning through the Indian Embassy in Japan, the Indian ambassador or the consul general has generally attended events of the NVK. As a result, many Indians residing in Japan have come to trust the NVK association and its activities. This is also helpful for the Indians to know about, and join the NVK activities. At the same time the Swami of the NVK accepts all Indians warmly. Second, after Swami Medhasananda took up the post of president of the NLI, the NVK joins the NLI events and introduces the NVK and its activities. For example, the Hindu festival of “Diwali” is a symbolic activity that the people of Nishikasai hold every year in October. The refreshment outlets of the Indian dishes are opened, and not only Indian dances but also Indian music are played for the audience. “Communication with the Japanese” is the main theme of this festival. The NVK also displays photos and the panels of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda that explain the NVK’s activities and history in Japan. This is an effective information dissemination method in that it gives Indians a chance to know, and join the NVK program. Similarly, the scenes of the Diwali festival depicted in a Hinduway can be seen at the events held by the NVK in Zushi of Kanagawa Prefecture. In this way, “Nishikasai Little India Initiative Preparatory Committee (NLI)” functions as a link between the Indians living in Japan and the NVK. Their activities discussed above help Indians in Nishikasai adapt themselves to the local Japanese society without making a wall between the two countries. Third, when one comes to the NVK, one would find no religious and societal prejudices there. The NVK hold prayers and celebrate birthdays of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Krishna, Jesus, and Buddha, and so on. Their performances are held in Hindu style with a faithful mind. This means that the Swami wants to help people overcome religious differences through the ideal of Ramakrishna movement i.e. “unity of religion.” Such an ideal might be a beginning for making new religious relationships for the Indians of Nishikasai in the future; even the NVK is considered as the reformed Hindu movement. Thus, the NVK’s works as a Ramakrishna movement offer a place to retain a traditional Indian mindset and Indian customs for the Indians that contribute to form their “identity” as Indians. For the Japanese, NVK’s works are new opportunities to learn about Indian thoughts and 80

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customs. Thus, NVK comes across as a promising place for individuals of both the nations to conduct cultural and intellectual exchanges.

Closing Remarks Once when I went around the Nishikasai station area for a few hours, I saw some young Indian men walking and talking in twos and threes. It was Sunday. I saw an Indian food store, about five- or six-minutes’ walk from the station, located in the first floor of a large complex. While I talked with the shopkeepers, a few couples with little babies came and bought Indian food such as rice, Indian flour, and incenses. These observances made me realize that the Nishikasai area is becoming a new town for the Indians. Though members of the NVK are mostly Japanese, the Indians who participate in the events of the NVK have been increasing in recent times, making the role of the NVK visible and wider in the lives of the Indians. The activities of the NVK, based on the Ramakrishna movement abroad, are important for the Indians in Japan. The new comers of the Indian diaspora in Nishikasai would now have a chance in the NVK to “find and re-form” their own Indian identity here. Thus, the NVK has been playing a significant role for the newly emerging Indian Diaspora—to make them feel at home in a foreign country.

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[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-02-29 23:24 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

References Azuma, Masako. “Indians in Tokyo and Its Vicinity.” In Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia. 255-268. Tokyo: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008. Beckerlegge, Gwilym. “Ramakrishna – ARSP.” Accessed May 31, 2017, https:// wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/ramakrishna/. Beckerlegge, Gwilyn. The Ramakrishna Mission: The Making of a Modern Hindu Movement. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Belur Math: The Headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, India. “Welcome.” Accessed June 8, 2017, http://www.belurmath.org. ———. “Ideology of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.” Accessed June 8, 2017, http://www.belurmath.org. Bhajanananda, Swami. “Swami Vivekananda and Neo-Vedanta.” Vedanta 375 January-February (2014): 5-13. Birth Centenary Publication, ed. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, vol.1. Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girls’ School, 1967. Budhananda, Swami. The Ramakrishna Movement: Its Meaning for Mankind. 2nd ed. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1994. Dasgupta, Santwana. The Sociological Views of Sister Nivedita. Calcutta: Sarada-Ramakrishna Saran, 1994. Embasy of India (Tokyo, Japan). “Yoga in Japan.” Accessed June 13, 2017, https://www.indembassy-tokyo.gov.in/Yoga_at_VCC.html. Gambhirananda, Swami. History of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. 3rd rev.ed. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1983. Ghosh, Gautam. The Prophet of Modern India: A Biography of Swami Vivekananda. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2003. Kobayashi, Akira. “Naze Tokyo Edogawaku ni indojin-mura ga tanjo? [Why Indian Village is Made in Edogawa, Tokyo?].” Nikkei Style, November 25, 2014. http://style.nikkei.com/article/DGXNASFE2203L_ S4A720C1000000?channel=DF280120166607&style=1. Kripal, Jeffrey J. Kālī’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Little India Tokyo. “About Us.” Accessed July 16, 2016. http://www.tokyo-littleindia.org/english.html. Medhasananda, Swami, ed. The Universal Gospel Special Issue 54 (no. 3 June 9, 2013), Zushi: The Vedanta Society of Japan, 2013. ———. Suwami Vivekananda to Nippon [Swami Vivekananda and Japan]. Zushi: Nippon Vēdānta Kyōkai, 2009. 82

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Minamino, Takeshi and Munenori Sawa. “Emerging of An Indian Community in Tokyo: A Case Study of Nishikasai” (PDF). The Indian Geographical Journal 82 (1) (2007): 7-26. ———. “Zainichi Indojinshakai no hensen: Teijūchi Kōbe wo jirei toshite [Changes in Indian Society in Japan—Focused on the Case of Kobe Residents]” (PDF). Hyōgo Chiri 50 (2005, retrieved 2009): 4-15. Nagasaki, Yōko. Indo kokkyō o koeru nashonarizumu [India: Nationalism to Cross the Border]. Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2004. Prabhananda, Swami. Swami Vivekananda’s Vision of Rural Development. 2nd ed. Narendrapur: Ramakrishna Mission Lokasiksha Parishad, 1992. Ramakrishna Mission Delhi. “Ideals of Ramakrishna Mission by Swami Vireswaranandaji.” http://www.rkmdelhi.org/articles/ ideals-of-the-ramakrishna-mission-by-swami-vireswaranandaji/. Ramakrishna Vedanta Society of North Carolina. Top page, “Ramakrishna Movement.” http://vedantanc.org. Rolland, Romain. Roman roran zenshū 15 denki II. Translated by Miyamoto Masakiyo [Complete works of Romain Rolland 15 biographical writings II], Misuzu shobō, 1980. ———. The Life of Vivekananda: and the Universal Gospel. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1975. Satprakashananda, Swami. Swami Vivekananda’s Contribution to the Present Age. St. Louis: The Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1978. Swahananda, Swami. Service and Spirituality. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math Mylapore, 1979. The Ramakrishan Math & Mission Convention 1926. Belur: The Math. The Ramakrishna Movement. Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1991. Vedanta Society of Japan. “History,” “Celebrations,” “Events.” Accessed June 15 & 30, 2017, Vedantajp-en.com, http://www.vedantajp.com/. Vivekananda, Swami. “Karma-Yoga.” The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol.1. 25-123. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1977. Yamazaki, Toshio, Masao Naitō, Mitsuru Takahashi, Yokō Nagasaki, Hiroshi Satō, Hideki Esho, and Masayuki Usuda. Nihon to indo: kōryū no rekishi [Japan and India: A History of Japan-India Relation]. Edited by Toshio Yamazaki and Mitsuru Takahashi. Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993. Zhou, Feifan and Hideo Fujita. “Chiikishakai ni okeru gaikokujin no shūjūka ni kannsuru tyōsahōkoku: edogawaku no indojin komunitī wo tyūshin ni [New Ethnic Community in Japan: A Survey in Indian Immigrants of Edogawa, Tokyo.” Gengobunkaronsō [Paper on language and culture] (March 2007): 81-102. 83

5

RECONFIGURING HOME: CUISINIC NEGOTIATIONS OF RELIGION, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY IN MARSHA MEHRAN’S POMEGRANATE SOUP Lisa John Mundackal It seems to me our three basic needs for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

M.F.K. Fisher Food is rarely rational. It is, rather, culture, habit, craving and identity, as the American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer has opined. It is an elemental and a concrete component of life. It has primordial significance owing to its essentiality in matters of survival. Assurance of food has always been an assurance of life. The nutritional and biological associations of it have always been documented with clarity but rarely confronted. However, with culture studies suddenly soaring to elevated zones, food, a component of it, has assumed an unforeseen status of a great cultural signifier, opening up the scope for wider vistas of newer deliberations, denigrations, and divisions based on its presences and absences. With its inevitably entrenched locus in the cultural strata of societies, food has become a decisive marker of the most crucial components of identity, such as race, class, gender, geography, economy, etc.: It is no longer the untainted and the unobtrusive. With the social, political, religious, and larger cultural ramifications that encircle it, food is fast losing its naiveté and innocence. Quite often, if not always, however, food narratives are treated as texts of lesser quality and lustre owing to a few factors; primarily that of the ordinariness of their subject matter. Most of these narratives being women-generated are considered to be unworthy of serious study. In discussing the philosophy of food and the reasons as to why it took so long to come into existence, philosopher Deane Curtin says, “In many, if not most cultures, 85

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food production and preparation activities are women’s work and/ or the work of slaves or lower classes. Certainly this is true of Euro-American cultures, and to that extent it is not difficult to determine why Western philosophers have not considered food a properly philosophical topic.”1 Curtin adds that for this matter, women’s writing has always faced this disregard in general, relegating it as merely “introspective and recreational,” catering only to the emotive faculties of perception.2 The tendency to trivialize food narratives is best explained by Curtin as Western philosophy’s tradition to always privilege the rational and the abstract over the concrete, practical, and everyday elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas stressed the role of food as signifier, classifier, and identity builder.3 In the 1980s, food studies underwent rapid development owing to several changes that occurred in the world of food itself and also due to the so-called cultural turn in the social sciences. The notion of identity was taken up, to which food was directly and intimately linked. This is strongly supported by the claim that sentiments of belonging via food do not only include the act of classification and consumption, but also the preparation, the organization, the taboos, the company, the location, the pleasure, the time, the language, the symbols, the representation, the form, the meaning, and the art of eating and drinking. Cooking has been most often conceptualized as part of women’s oppression and therefore liberation meant freedom from being connected to food. Recent researches have increasingly started rereading food and its preparation. Cooking is something that was and still sometimes continues to be imposed on women, but it is also an activity that can be a creative part of their daily lives. Food, though central to our survival, is often taken for granted, and so are its associated preparation processes. A heavily laden table often may not provoke the diners to give a thought to the hands that toiled to prepare them or the time taken to create them. Through cooking, women have managed to forge spaces of and for themselves within the otherwise oppressive domestic domain. Gloria WadeGayles describes Black women’s own kitchens as temples; as therapeutic sites where wounds of oppression, often inflicted by the white women in the kitchens where Black women labored, were healed by creating wonderful food and finding the space to bond with each other and establish

1

2 3

Anne L. Bower, ed., Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 6. Bower, Recipes for Reading, 7. Clara Sarmento, ed., Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 96.

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a sisterhood. Cooking becomes a vehicle for artistic expression, a source of sensual pleasure, an opportunity for resistance and even power. Preparation of a meal is a silent but overt gesture that displays one’s love and care for the one served, because food is a positive avenue of communication, of nurturing. George Bernard Shaw opines in his play, Man and Superman, that there is no love sincerer than the love of food. Recipe fiction is often a deliberate attempt to reclaim the importance of cooking. Explorations of women’s relationships to food—the cooking, the eating, the sharing—offer the opportunity to delve into concrete and daily activities that are deeply embedded within their cultural and political contexts. Pomegranate Soup is a novel structured like a cookbook and hence is a blend of narrative and referential discourses. Each chapter begins with a recipe with a narrative thread centered around it. The “non-literary” (recipes within the narrative) aspects of it, help in rereading the literary content of it. The stories that these recipes bind together within their folds aid to review the lives and values of the characters involved within and around them. Every recipe is a cultural artifact leading the thread to the particular culture that has produced it, thereby opening up wider windows that allow the readers to take a look at the larger social, religious, and political arenas that constitute the backdrop of the novel. Each ingredient in the recipe speaks a story. Every dog-eared, stained page of a recipe/cookbook speaks stories of grinding, mixing, blending, dicing, stirring; stories of ladles, spoons, kettles, cups, plates, and many more utensils; stories of baking, boiling, fermenting, and much more. Iranian by birth, Marsha Mehran was born in Tehran, but escaped the Iranian Revolution with her family when they managed to move to Buenos Aires where they started running a Middle Eastern Café. This was not however the end of Ms. Mehran’s sojourn as she later moved to Australia and from there to New York city, to finally reach Ireland where she died in April 2014, at the age of thirty-six. Taking its name from the fruit pomegranate, the original apple of sin, the fruit of a long gone Eden, which shields itself in a leathery crimson shell used in the Roman times as a form of protective hide and the bitter skin when peeled back reveals a juicy garnet flesh, popping and bursting in the mouth, and endowed with marvellous healing properties, the novel Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran is largely autobiographical. The writer chips large slices off the long array of personal experiences from her real life and fits them into her fictional work. Set in the small idyllic Irish village of Ballinacroagh, couched beneath the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick, in the quiet damp County Mayo, the novel narrates 4

4

Arlene Voski Avakian, ed., Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 8.

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the story of three girls—Marjan, Bahar and Layla—the Aminpour sisters from Iran. Largely exotic elements play around in the narrative, as the author furnishes the readers with their details. Exoticism runs through and around them in variegated ways—their facial features, skin tone and complexion, their attires, their language, their religion, and most of all their food and tastes. Ever since the radical Islamic Revolutionary faction started invading the colors and liberties from their lives, Marjan and her sisters have been on the run. They flee Iran, in a search for home; for refuge. For the Aminpour sisters, the story of escapade from their homeland Iran holds within its folds, stories of liberation from chador—“the three square metres of scratchy wool strategically wrapped and clenched in chattering teeth, revealing nothing above thinking pupils, nothing below dripping nostrils”—revolts, bullet-ridden banners, prisons, a stern-browed ayatollah, an unaccommodating, intolerant religion and its dictates—a land with reverberating chants and demands for death.5 Ultimately when they reach Ballinacroagh, they manage to pierce their way through the obstinate gates of resistance displayed initially by the village, chiefly the liquor baron of the county, Mr. Thomas McGuire, in spite of the fact that the place appears to be peaceful, passive and receptive—a land of “ crazed sheep and dizzying roads.”6 The sisters open a restaurant, the Babylon Café in the space leased out by Estelle Delmenico, the Italian widow of Louis Delmenico who ran a pastry shop on Main Mall. For the Ballinacroaghs, the name Babylon itself has religious connotations of sinfulness, reminding them even of Sodom and Gomorrah. For the Aminpour sisters, cleaning up the musty and acrid odors and stale, petrified deposits of the flour and dough left behind by the pastries made in the past, painting it anew, setting up the samovar, laying out the Persian curios and carpets is not in the least degree tedious because they nurture the dream of this space transforming itself into a home for them; a space that is more or less an oasis that offers them their much-desired freedom, peace, and refuge. The Babylon Café evolves into a creative deck for the Aminpour sisters, where their liberated selves enjoy their freedom and celebrate it by their marvellously fragrant and liberating culinary creations, and transmitting this spirit to all those who partake of them. Marjan worked her magic over both men and women in a more practical, equally intriguing manner. Through her recipes, Marjan was able to encourage people towards accomplishments that they had previously thought impossible; one taste of her food and most would not only start dreaming, but actually contemplate doing. It was no different for Father 5 6

Marsha Mehran, Pomegranate Soup (London: Arrow Books, 2005), 104. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 21.

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Mahoney. As the priest chewed his last bit of meat-filled lavash, he felt a little lump in his stomach. It was a seed that would not bloom for at least another month, forever changing the course of his life, but for now it only rustled against the abgusht and gave him an unsettled feeling. Father Mahoney did not know what had happened to him exactly, but he knew that he was a very different man from a half-hour ago.7

It is crucial to note that Father Fergal Mahoney, the parish priest and the religious guardian of Ballinacroagh, is the first customer to Babylon Café and the first therefore to experience the transformative, liberating properties of Marjan’s food and call it nothing short of “divine,” which makes him hooked to the place to revisit it for every lunch and tea. This reads as a sign hinting the change awaiting Ballinacroagh. In Ballinacroagh, the townpeople’s attitudes toward the Aminpour sisters range from reserve, mistrust, preconceptions, and xenophobia, to curiosity and the eventual acceptance into their midst. This transition from rejection to acceptance is felt in varying degrees by the three sisters. Layla, the youngest, who enters a new school in the new locale, easily falls in and adapts herself to the new ambience, culture, and place, especially due to the new friend whom she wins over—Malachy McGuire. Bahar, the middle one, however, and the darkest complexioned, struggles harder, owing to the emotional and physical trauma she had gone through in Iran. She wasn’t blind to the stares thrown her way whenever she stepped out of the café doors. How could she ignore the obvious cuts of silence, the breaks in street conversations whenever she walked by a cluster of townspeople ?...three crotchety gossips…had scanned her up and down with their myopic eyes….she should have returned their disapproving looks… but all she had done was keep her head bowed as she hurried out of the shop.8

There are instances in the novel where sometimes this disapproval reaches the level of verbal abuse. When Layla does not return home at the usual time one afternoon, Bahar goes around the village in search of her “missing” sister enquiring after her, only to face hostile attitudes and reprimanding remarks. Angry embarrassment washed over Bahar’s cheeks and sent her stomach into a spin. Something was very wrong here…something that went beyond the sad little curiosities…whatever she thought of that kind of small-mindedness, it was nothing compared to the bald hatred before her. It was an exclusion as foul as she experienced in those scary early years in London, when the whole city was under the alert of terrorist threats, and anyone who looked slightly foreign was watched with suspicion…Just as 7 8

Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 123-124. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 199-200.

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the door slammed behind her, a sinister voice called out: “Go back to yer stinking camels!”9

Marjan’s trauma is associated with the Gohid Detention Centre of Shah’s secret police—a place where revolutionaries were taken either for a quick death or for days of torture and mind-boggling interrogations. Upon her return to the apartment after four days of detainment in its torture cells, she sees her two younger sisters who were left alone in their apartment, suddenly thrown into the midst of a lot of perilous changes and presences. Little Layla fattened with buttery dishes, was seen with her apple head wrapped in a matronly headscarf, holding the photo of a turbaned idol of the Revolution in her plump finger. And sixteen-yearold Bahar was already a militant member of the Women’s Party, being charmed by Khanoum Jaferi. The latter herself had taken to the veil and chador at the age of twenty. She preached of the need to purge their beloved Persia of Western influence—the Shah—and tried for and awaited an Islamic Revolution. For Bahar, the ill-fated marriage to Hossein Jaferi, Khanoum Jaferi’s sadistic son with a deeply dented and distorted face, and who lacked “the responsibilities of belonging to the human race” was enough to give her a palate-full of memories to last for a lifetime.10 All that resulted from the marriage was nothing but an ochre and yellow assembly of bruises, imprints of contorted fingers, a violet of burst veins, a torn earlobe, thighs embossed with thick baton grooves—things that left unseen wounds all through, in her. The very name of the man and the “sinister hiss of its middle consonants” evolved itself into one capable of sending down tremors throughout the “entire frame of her body.”11 What helps the Aminpour sisters get over the trauma of their past, are the dishes they prepare with utmost zeal and care. For Bahar especially, they go a long way in alleviating her excruciating migraine pains, fears, and pessimism. When she prepares torshi, she convinces herself how she too wishes to be the same—like the torshi vegetables that somehow managed to survive their pickling period and the assault of vinegar. “That’s what she wanted to be: a survivor, afraid of nothing.”12 In Pomegranate Soup, Marjan, Bahar, and Layla are political refugees who flee the Iranian regime seeking succor, security, and safety outside the boundaries of their nation. They are on the run, and mobility for them means safety, progress, and freedom. Food, one of the primary components of culture, becomes a significant element that facilitates a reconstruction of space; of home, in the novel. Food that characterizes a 9 10 11 12

Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 224. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 219. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 270. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 193.

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particular place often tells stories of movement and mixing, particularly so in the modern times of globalization where cultures get increasingly redefined in terms of mobility and change, and not merely stability and permanence. As Sarah Gibson observes, “food is good to think mobilities with.”13 It has often been one of the chief facilitating factors of crosscultural encounters. Pomegranate Soup becomes a fictional literary illustration of food and what counts as food acting as a signifier of belonging, cultural identity, and home. It becomes a dramatization of how food causes a cultural confrontation and ensuing transformation. Religion most often constructs the sturdiest barricades around any culture. This was especially true of a place like Ballinacroagh where the natural phenomena were dominated by Croagh Patrick or The Reek, upon whose perch St. Patrick had nestled for forty days and forty nights. Ballinacroagh is a sleepy, seaside village, closed and safe as it always chooses to guard itself against all foreignness. Traces of urbanity are retained low and diversities are maintained sparse. The village is too obstinate and resistant to the cultural otherness that attempt to percolate into the safe folds of its structures. This resistance has always been to ensure the purity and endurance of its own in cultural, social, political, and religious terrains. The unaccommodating nature of Ballinacroagh, represented through the big presences of Dervla Quigley and Mr. Thomas McGuire is largely owing to the staunch Catholicism that had its deep roots in the place. Ballinacroagh’s obstinacy toward foreignness is embodied in its truest and fullest measure in the character of Dervla Quigley. From her bedroom window, in a flat above The Red Relics shop, Dervla Quigley could see the universe. Or its equivalent, which for her were the comings and goings of all who ventured up and down Main Mall…At most times of the day— except during 6 o’clock mass—Dervla could be found spying out of her bedroom window.14

Dervla employs the vilest strategy ever—the unceasing gaze—with a shockingly amazing controlling power, to ensure stability in her village. She functions more or less like a self-burdened guardian of social order and a functionary of moral discipline. Her contempt for anything and anyone foreign is evident in the way she detests the frequent hippie visitors to Ballinacroagh—the Tinkers—not once bothering to learn the tumultuous history of Ireland’s travelling people. She says, “Dirty, disgusting things, those tinkers…If she wasn’t around to look after things, just

13

14

Sarah Gibson, “Food Mobilities—Traveling, Dwelling and Eating Cultures,” Space and Culture 10, no.1 (2007), 4. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 35-36.

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imagine what sort of scum would come cruising down her beloved Main Mall!”15 It is the same disgust that brews in Dervla when the Aminpour sisters arrive at Ballinacroagh. She looks upon them as creatures that carry a nasty reek of foreignness. Thomas McGuire becomes the perfect aide to Dervla in his skeptical gaze at the Aminpour sisters. This is evident in the way he perceives the fragrances emitted by Babylon Café. The smell first hit Thomas McGuire as he was directing the underpaid Guinness man down into the pub’s freezing cellar. Its spicy, sinful intonations reeked of an unknown evil; a god forsaken foreignness that set off alarm bells in Thomas’s large potato head, and froze him to spot….The surly drink baron growled and spat on the cracked pavement below the old bakery’s door. It was pure witchcraft.16

When Ballinacroaghs’ obstinacy does not permit them to read beyond “witchcraft,” what they are oblivious to is the real “magic” in the hands of the Aminpour sisters and the miraculous propensities of their cuisines that can effect transformation in the people who partake of it and also the whole of the cultural landscape. The exotic Irani aromas become transgressive when they start to permeate the familiar smell of Irishness and make an encounter inevitable. Food dramatizes a cross-cultural encounter in Pomegranate Soup and offers the Aminpour sisters a “place”/ “home”; a sense of being rooted and thereby allowing them to dream anew and live with renewed hopes. Unlike the Ancient Greeks, for whom the fruit symbolized the inescapable cycle of bitter death, with a remorseful Persephone returning to the underworld for her six months of required winter, Marjan liked to believe the old stories of Persian soothsayers, who held a different vision for the tart fruit’s purpose in life. She liked to remember that above all else, above all the unfortunate connotations of death and winter, the pomegranate was and always would be, the fruit of hope. The flower of fertility, of new things to come and old seasons to be cradled. It had shown even her that some of the best recipes are the unwritten ones, the ones that happen when you pour yourself a generous glass of Shiraz vino, pop on a soothing Billie Holiday song, and just let the bountiful ingredients lead you. Because, like it or not, life will go on with or without you, forever blooming in someone else’s back garden, giving flavor to yet another pot of pomegranate soup…The myriad seedlings that could only, really, be the flower of new beginnings.17

Food is often approached with a reductionist attitude. It is read only along the lines of consumption and health. Such an approach eclipses the 15 16 17

Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 38. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 4. Mehran, Pomegranate Soup, 362-363.

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equally pertinent issues of identities, histories, and cultures embedded within it. Foregrounding the processes of cooking, serving, and feeding instead of the clichéd method of studying the biological and organic properties of food, enriches food discourses of all kinds. It opens up varied and crucial dimensions of understanding individual selves and societies. This essay has attempted to study Marsha Mehran’s debut novel Pomegranate Soup, as a recipe fiction showcasing an array of recipes around that the author weaves a scintillating tale of regimes and revolutions—political and religious—that force individual selves to flee from the nostalgia and sweetness of the memories of their homeland and seek an asylum outside of its perimeters. It has investigated how the Aminpour sisters “survive” hostilities and reprobations at home and outside, with food. Their culinary marvels redefine edibility and transgress the geographical, political, and religious demarcations and distances between Iran and Ireland. The reconstructive and transformative abilities of food are studied in the light of the changes that it effects in the wake of a cross-cultural encounter between an obstinate West and a tantalisingly exotic Orient. The arduous journey from “homelessness” to “home” is made less bitter by food. Recipe fictions like Pomegranate Soup fuse the domestic kitchenscape and the politico-religious landscape to formulate a new method to read lives. The essay has analyzed the novelist’s attempts to subvert the cult of cooking into a transformative act, and the space of kitchen into a locus of power, constructing an expansive circle that encompasses the public and the private histories of women, thereby enabling reconfigurations through cuisine. Food acts as a facilitator in Mehran’s narrative of alienation, personal struggle, reconciliation, and growth, and proves to be polemical, effecting great changes.

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References Avakian, Arlene Voski, ed. Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Bell, D. and G. Valentine. Consuming Geographies. London: Routledge, 1997. Print. Bower, Anne L., ed. Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Counihan, Carole M. and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2013. Floyd, Janet and Laurel Forster. The Recipe Reader. Edited by Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Gibson, Sarah. “Food Mobilities—Travelling, Dwelling and Eating Cultures,” Space and Culture 10, no.1 (February 2007), 4-21. Mehran, Marsha. Pomegranate Soup. London: Arrow Books, 2005. Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Sarmento, Clara, ed. Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows.Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Schofield, Mary Anne. Cooking by the Book: Food in Literature and Culture. Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989. Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2002.

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PART II Traditions, Female Agency, and Domestic Space

6

SEARCHING FOR THE QUINTESSENTIAL HOME: HOME-MAKING AND TRANS-IDENTITY S. Susan Deborah “But new homes are not so easily found, nor old ones left behind.”

Urvashi Butalia1

Introduction The focus of this essay is on a group of six aravāṇikal 2 (In Tamil, the plural form of aravāṇi refers to a male-to-female transgender) namely, Pandiammal, Sasikala, Shailaja, Amala, Vasuki, and Mythili who have left their natal homes (hereafter, NH), or the homes of their birth in and around Madurai district and have established a new home in T. Kallupatti, in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. Madurai is often regarded as the bedrock of the Tamil culture. This paper employs the concept of tiṉai (a key trope in Tamil Sangam literature that stands for nature-culture-sacred nexus) to analyze the narratives of the aravāṇikal, and argues that the concept is embedded in the individual and collective consciousness of the aravāṇikal. Pandiammal is the head of their new home and the aravāṇikal are under her care and support. The reasons for the aravāṇikal to leave their natal homes are financial prospects and the need to live with individuals who are similar in orientation, and can thus provide emotional and mental support. The conflict of not being able to live in their natal homes because of the various taunts and distress caused by the members of the village and their own family owing to the aravāṇikal’s behavior, dressing, and body language that is prevalent in the narratives of the six aravāṇikal will be analyzed through the ancient Tamil concepts of akam (interior) and puram (exterior) that belong to the tiṉai tradition of the Caṅkam age, 1

2

Urvashi Butalia, “Mona’s Story” in The F Word (Essays and Memoir). Granta 115: The Online Edition. Last modified May 9, 2011. https://granta.com/monas-story. All the Tamil words in this essay except the names of person(s) and place(s) are transliterated according to the Tamil lexicon style.

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the characteristics of which can be philosophically summarized as a nexus of three features—natural, cultural, and sacred. Tiṉai home is defined as, . . . any specific place on earth; especially, a house with its own land surrounding it, a homestead. . . . tinai [has also] come to mean “family,” particularly, family that occupies a specific place, and also with kin members. Earth and the household are tinai because the constituents that go to make these entities, namely, earth and household are so compacted as to produce a hard, firm unit.3

The tiṉai home has two domains—akam (interior) and puram (exterior). “Akam, consists of such actions that are private and intimate and do not directly involve more than two persons. . . . puram, comprises actions that are public and may involve any number of persons.”4 But in the present essay, akam will refer to the thoughts, beliefs, poetry, family, gender and everything that constitutes the cultural identity of the aravāṇi community (interior) and the puram will refer to the socio-cultural environment that forms the basis of the aravāṇi’s akam. Rather than a private space between two individuals, as Nirmal Selvamony defines it, I consider akam as delimiting the transgenders’ “space” within the body, and the immediate functional space within their “homes.” This space constantly meets (sometimes confronts, mostly conflicts, causing much destruction within) the puram. This socio-cultural conflict predominantly manifests in three aspects of their life, namely the members of their “homes,” the “deities” that belong to their homes (NH and Koti homes and “occupation”—the one followed by their natal family, and the occupation after they choose to leave home. The primary data of this essay is derived from my extensive fieldwork that I carried out with a group of aravāṇikal in T. Kallupatti, Madurai district of Tamil Nadu between 2007 and 2010. It was observed that two inmates namely, Vasuki and Mythili were contemplating on an emasculation operation (I use the word operation instead of surgery in this context, owing to the process that involves severing the male organ without anesthesia by a mid-wife or tāyamma) and the rest, Pandiammal, Sasikala, Shailaja, and Amala had already undergone the emasculation operation. Pandiammal, Sasikala, Shailaja, and Amala had left their natal (birth) homes but Mythili and Vasuki were sporadically living in both the homes; whatever the situation, the new home bore a strong semblance to the 3

4

Nirmal Selvamony, “Tiṉai Studies” in tiṉai 3 (Chennai: Persons for Alternative Social Order (PASO), November 2003-July 2004), 1. Nirmal Selvamony, “An Alternative Social Order” in Value Education Today: Explorations in Social Ethics, eds., J. T. K. Daniel and Nirmal Selvamony (Madras and New Delhi: Madras Christian College and All-India Association for Christian Higher Education, 1990), 223.

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home that they had left behind either by means of the organization of the homes, carrying out of rituals or the distribution of space. While their natal homes consisted of a heterosexual family with extended family and the family’s deities, the recreated home also consists of a family albeit a matrilineal one with a new deity that is considered the deity of the aravāṇikal. In the forthcoming paragraphs, I will discuss the various agencies that cause a conflict between the personal space of an aravāṇi that is termed as akam and the space that constitutes the external or the puram of the aravāṇi. a)

Inmates

“My elder sister used to say that if I go to her house in a sari, it will not be good and that my brother-in-law will make fun of me. She tells me not to come dressed like a woman. So, I don’t go to my elder sister’s place,” says Pandiammal when she talks about her sibling.5 In spite of Pandiammal being comfortable in donning the sari, her immediate blood relatives become uncomfortable and see it as a disgrace. This conflict between the trans-identity of Pandiammal with her immediate family causes tension which is one of the reasons that she does not prefer to live with her blood family. Pandiammal’s mother also reiterates this conflict when she mentions, “Her father and I wanted a male child. After continuously praying for years and waiting, we got this male child after three girls. He was the only boy. Her father was very grieved that his only male child had become like this.”6 As long as Pandiammal’s father was alive, says her mother, she did not wear the sari but after his death, she started having her own way. In spite of cordial relations between the mother and the son, now daughter, there is a tinge of regret in the mother’s voice and tone when she speaks of her Pandi who has become Pandiammal—the suffix ammal that actually means “mother” is a very common south Indian appellation for women. In Pandiammal’s case, the name also gains additional significance since she is looked upon as a mother figure by many aravāṇikals who live in her house. The inmates of the NH of male-to-female transgenders consist of parents, siblings, and sometimes extended blood relatives of the family (mostly from the paternal side). The natal homes of most of the male-tofemale transgenders are located in villages, many kilometers away from Madurai, where there are no urban facilities like electricity, water pipes, and so on. The aravāṇi homes that are formed after they leave their natal homes are referred to as the kōti “home.” The transgender spectrum usually consists of male-to-female trans-people, bisexual, and homosexual men. 5 6

Pandiammal, in discussion with the author, November 2008. Pandiammal’s mother, in discussion with the author, November 2008.

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Though there are different categories of sexuality, the term kōti is used as a generic term to identify the aravāṇi community as a whole. The specific meaning of the term kōti is a man who has not been operated upon, but, identifies with the female sensibilities and emotions and is a part of the male-to-female transgender kinship. For purpose of clarity, the kōti home has been further divided into: Natal kōti home (NKH), First kōti home (1KH), Sub-kōti home (SKH), and Second-kōti home (2KH). Natal Kōti Home (NKH) This kōti home is specific to Pandiammal alone since she was the only one who lived in a separate room attached to her natal home. This “home,” which is more or less a small room attached to the natal home, is the space in which the individual cooks his own food and entertains friends. Since this home is neither a separate kōti home nor a complete NH, it will be referred to as a natal kōti home. When Pandiammal recognizes that his akam is gradually disturbed by the elements of the puram owing to the changes in his psychological and emotional frame of mind, he decides to live separately. The ensuing conflict is not in Pandiammal’s desire to become a woman but between the members and extended family of his natal home who find the changes undesirable and queer. Pandiammal therefore attempts to live on his own without completely severing his ties with his parents, siblings, and extended family. Pandiammal lived in her natal home for nearly five years before migrating to T. Kallupatti. In her own words, I came here [T. Kallupatti] for (the) sake of my business. For the sake of my dance I came here. If I was in my village, no one will call me for dance but T. Kallupatti is a town and I will get many calls. There was an aravāṇi like me here, when I came here, I took shelter from her. She used to sing, dance and mourn in funerals. Being with her I learned everything. After I learned everything, I took a house for myself and started staying on my own without her.7

Further, the period in NKH, for Pandiammal, was more or less like an initiation period where he weighed different possibilities before finally leaving his8 natal home, joining an aravāṇi community, and undergoing the emasculation operation. While living in the NKH, Pandiammal started wearing the sari occasionally and adorning himself with flowers, ornaments, and other embellishments, but he was still to undergo the emasculation operation. The 7 8

Pandiammal, in discussion with the author, November 2008. Please note that the gender specific personal pronoun “he” is used while referring to the individual before the emasculation operation and “she” is used to refer to the individual after he has undergone the emasculation operation.

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occupying of a small room (NKH) attached to the NH where the individual does not leave the parent’s house nor makes a distant place his home can also be seen as a form of protest—a protest against the established norms of his family and of their resistance toward his changing sensibilities and choices. Furthermore, Pandiammal could not pursue dance and drama, while she lived in her natal home since most of the programs are in the town and her village was far off. Dancing in the vicinity of one’s natal home is not seen as something normal for a man to engage in and causes embarrassment and disgrace to the family. While Pandiammal remains close to her family, Sasikala only visits her natal home now and becomes teary while discussing her home. She says, “The people at home feel embarrassed about me. They think that neighbors will start gossiping about me.”9 The fear of social exclusion faced by Sasikala’s family is explained in these lines by Khan et al. who remark, . . . hijra (The Hindi and Urdu word for male-to-female eunuch/transgender) are located at the extreme margin of exclusion having no sociopolitical space where a hijra can lead life of a human being with dignity. Their deprivations are grounded in non-recognition as a separate gendered human being beyond the male-female dichotomy.10

The lack of space in the akam, caused by the “non-recognition as a separate gendered human being” in the puram, becomes a source of conflict for Sasikala. Shailaja, Sasikala’s cousin’s story is similar to Sasi’s— “When I was about 12, I used to wear women’s clothing and dance on the stage. All my uncles used to make fun of me. They told me that it was a bad name for them and so I had to leave home.”11 Amala’s natal home, unlike the others, had her grandparents as the inmates. Since she grew up without her parents, she had to face hostility from her brother-in-law (sister’s husband) and leave home. Vasuki left her home when she was about seventeen, unable to bear the torture meted out to her by her family and since her uncle was also an aravāṇi, she came to T. Kallupatti and started living with Pandiammal. Mythili is an exception since she continues living with her natal family in spite of the tensions with them. Mythili’s case is an example of continuing in the akam despite facing hostility from the family. While the natal family constitutes the akam, it could be observed that the fear of the puram comprising of the society provokes the members of 9 10

11

Sasikala, in discussion with the author, November 2008. Sharful Islam Khan et al. “Living on the Extreme Margin: Social Exclusion of the Transgender Population  (Hijra)  in Bangladesh,” Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition 27(4) (Aug 2009): 441–451, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC2928103/. Shailaja, in discussion with the author, November 2008.

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the natal family to cause distress to the aravāṇi making her troubled in her own home. This causes friction in the akam thus forcing the individuals to leave the place of conflict in search of a place that is free of abuse and provides them security and self-esteem to lead lives according to their preferred gender. First Kōti Home (1KH) 1KH is the place where the transitioning males and aravāṇikal first gather after leaving their NHs and NKHs. The transitioning male moves out of the confines of the NH to join communities that have members of similar sexual identity. 1KH can also refer to the first aravāṇi community that the individual is a part of, in spite of living in a separate home. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, the young individual born as male finds that he is not comfortable with his gender. His dream and desire are to become, dress, and act like a female. Immediately, after arrival in the first kōti home a woman’s name and clothes are given to the kōtis by a senior aravāṇi or the guru. After living in 1KH for some time, the newcomer is adopted by a senior aravāṇi who becomes the guru or “mother” of the new initiate. One transgender adopts another, the adopted becomes an adopter later, and the link goes on. The aravāṇi who has been operated upon and has been living in the community for some years, who adopts another, is called the guru, which in Hindi and Urdu translates as teacher. The adopted child is known as chela which is translated as disciple. Once an individual is adopted by a transgender, there is a certain obligation on the part of the chela toward her guru. The aravāṇikal in T. Kallupatti follow a fictive kinship pattern that is matrilineal. Fictive kinship refers to kinship that is not related either by blood or marriage.12 Ferraro refers to different forms of kinship like adoption, descent or marriage, college fraternities, members of the same race, and among others who are not biologically or maritally connected; but he does not mention a fictive kinship that is formed within the members of the same sexual identity. The adoption of one aravāṇi by another is a process of initiation into the aravāṇi community or family (as they would like to call it) wherein a new form of kinship emerges. Such a new form of kinship does take care of some common functions of a kinship system. For instance, it provides “social continuity” in the case of male-to-female transgender.13 The system where one aravāṇi adopts another “appear(s) to invert the association of biology with permanence, by presenting their 12

13

Gary Ferraro, Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective (Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2001). Ferraro, Cultural Anthropology, 208.

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“chosen” ties as the “most reliable and enduring of kinship relations.”14 Instead of a heterosexual couple, the 1KH consists of mother, daughter, granddaughter, and so on. According to Reddy, “... ‘family’ for hijras was defined primarily in terms of other hijras, especially one guru lineage; relationships with other hijras (and kōtis), rather than natal family or ‘husbands’ and their kin ....”15 The aravāṇi community is modeled like that of a family and through “a web of fictive kinship a chela automatically takes on the ‘relatives’ of her guru, thereby expanding the chela’s social, emotional, and economic life.”16 The guru or “mother,” functions like the head of “home” and has under her custody daughters and granddaughters or cēlas. The daughters or cēlas are those the guru has adopted by paying a sum of Rs. 5.50/- to the jamāt or council of older male-to-female transgenders. The term jamāt “derives from a Muslim cultural pattern.”17 Reading the account of the jamāt system in northern India and Hyderabad given by Nanda and Reddy, we learn that it is a strict council that is quite hierarchical in nature. Though aravāṇikal in T. Kallupatti follow a similar system, theirs is not as stringent as it is in other places. The jamāt plays an important role when an aravāṇi is to be adopted into the community. This system provides a sense of belonging to male-to-female transgenders. The jamāt is initially a part of the puram for the aravāṇi before she is adopted and initiated into the community system. After adoption, the jamāt becomes part of the aravāṇi’s akam since it is the system that allows adoption. The jamāt system is very similar to the panchayat system followed in villages where a group of elders from the village convene and take decisions and formulate certain norms for the village to follow. The hierarchical system of the jamāt though it provides a community for the aravāṇi, is also not without conflict. If the aravāṇi is not adopted by another, then she does not have any means of economic stability since the means of earning and the programs are discussed only with the head or the guru of the community, and individual dance performances and other activities are not allowed. If an aravāṇi decides to live by herself without affiliating to a community, then she becomes an outcaste with no means of respectable sustenance and has to resort to beggary and sex-work. Sasikala’s example is one such where her inability to live in the system and the 1KH, forces her to migrate to Chennai from Madurai. 14

Gayathri Reddy, “’Men’ Who Would Be Kings: Celibacy, Emasculation, and the ReProduction of Hijras in Contemporary Indian Politics,” Social Research 70.1 (2003): 163-200. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. January 7, 2010.

15

Reddy, “’Men’ Who Would Be Kings,” 151.

16

Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman (Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999), 45.

17

Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, 40.

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It is in 1KH that the aravāṇi is also initiated into a new language—the kōti language. The words are combinations of Tamil, Hindi, and Urdu. This language comes in handy when the male-to-female transgenders are in public places, among others who do not belong to their community. Every relationship has a name and some unique words that they use. These words are used as code signals between the male-to-female transgenders. The usage of these words gives a communal feeling to the aravāṇikal. Since language is a predominant cultural marker of a community, speaking this language among them in public places enable them to maintain discretion. The learning of this new code language can also be seen as an example of the puram seeping into the akam. These words are always taught to those who come and join the community. This code-mixing exhibited by the aravāṇikal is another instance where they shift from their mothertongue and adopt a new way to communicate between members of their community. The aravāṇi who continues to visit her natal home, switches to her mother-tongue while in conversation with her family and extended family. This code-mixing enables her to maintain discretion while in the midst of her family with whom she might be reluctant to share intimate details of her new life, friends, and sometimes, her lover or husband who in kōti language is referred to as a paṉti. Paṉti is part of an aravāṇi’s life but not the kōti home. He never stays in the aravāṇi’s home but can often be seen there. He offers emotional and sometimes even financial support to the aravāṇi who is regarded as his “wife.” In many cases, the man is married with family and children, but continues to have relationship of love and sex with an aravāṇi. In some cases, the guru of the 1KH conducts the marriage of her daughter or granddaughter to the man whom she loves. This marriage that is symbolic of real marriage involves the couple exchanging garlands and the man tying a tāli (sacred thread which is a symbol of marriage) to the aravāṇi in front of the image of Bahuchara Māta—the goddess of the aravāṇikal. Despite the fact that an aravāṇi is married, she continues to live in 1KH. This could be seen as another conflict in the akam—the inability of an aravāṇi to live as the legal wife of a man, and so is the case with the man who claims love and affection but cannot admit being married to an aravāṇi. In Pandiammal’s words: For about six years, he (referring to her paṉti) was in a relationship with me without being married. He used to spend most of his time with me. Then all of a sudden one day his family wanted him to get married. I confronted him and asked him how he could do this to me; we had been together for so many years. . . .Then before the wedding, I took an auto and along with fifteen aravāṇikal, I went to his house. . . .He pleaded with me and told me that he will drink poison and commit suicide as his name

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will be spoilt.... It was at that time that I had started to drink heavily... My pain was even more than what women feel. For three days I did not eat anything. I was drinking non-stop and crying.18

In the aforementioned extract, Pandiammal’s need for love, sex, and emotional gratification is analogous to the feminine role that she plays that is provided for by the man who later succumbs to the pressures of his family and cultural background. The paṉti’s family is unable to accept Pandiammal as a wife to the son, again facing a denial of her gender from the puram, which fails to acknowledge her beyond the male-female dichotomy. Failure to be fit into one of the categories of male or female has always been a source of consternation for Pandiammal and other aravāṇikal when they want to lead a life that is normal, with a husband and home; The aravāṇi often wishes that the symbolic marriage is a real one and that she gets to enjoy the respect and pleasure associated with a marriage and hearth. Pandiammal’s paṉti was able to provide emotional and sexual comfort during their courtship period but he was unable to stand by her, and refuse a marriage proposal that his family had brought for him. While Pandiammal was able to realize the love and the comfort of a companion, she is unable to sustain the same because of her gender status. This social exclusion by the members of the puram often causes repercussions like Pandiammal getting addicted to alcohol, and extreme cases of behavioral patterns like threatening the paṉti and his family. While this behavior is common in a heteronormative jilted lover’s narrative, in Pandiammal’s story, it gains significance as her chosen gender causes this strain, though her loyalty and ability to love are not doubted. The six aravāṇikal in this essay have faced some form of love relationship that has had to bear the brunt from the puram in terms of acceptance, loyalty, and betrayal. While every aravāṇi dreams of marrying a man and living with him as his legally wedded wife, most of the time, she is unable to do so. But 1KH provides a possibility for the aravāṇikal to connect to prospective lovers that are usually near to impossible in the natal home where love and sex are permitted only between a man and a woman. b)

Deities

Deities and family are inextricably connected when it comes to a sense of belonging, familiarity, security, and family or community identity, and is an integral part of the akam of every aravāṇi. Every NH has a family deity that is worshipped during special ceremonies. Once an individual leaves his NH, the memories of the home always remain within them and quite often many aravāṇikal worship two deities—one of their natal home’s and one that the transgender community worships. While Pandiammal’s deity 18

Pandiammal, in discussion with the author, November 2008.

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is Sangayan Pattinam Sāmi, a male deity whom the family worship by coming together every month with family and extended family—and sacrificing a bull that is later cooked and consumed by everyone who is gathered in the presence of the deity; Sasikala’s deity is Yaman Kallan Thudan, though she also worships Kāli Māta and she also has a figurine of her in a small corner of her room; Amala’s is Sundaramurthy and Mythili’s is Ayyaṉār. Yaman (also known as Yamaraj in the northern states of India) is the god of death, worshipped by both Sasikala and Shailaja (both belong to the same family), and is a more popular deity than that of Pandiammal’s or Amala’s. Aravāṇikal like Sasikala have an additional deity along with their community’s and the blood family’s. In a community that is devoid of blood family, the deity plays an important role that provides emotional succor and the strength of familiarity. Once the aravāṇikal leave their NH, they adopt the aravāṇi community’s goddess Bahuchara Māta, and worship their family deity only when they visit their NHs.19 Aravāṇikal like Sasikala worship both the deities (Kāli and Bahuchara Māta) in the 1KH while the others follow and pray to Bahuchara Māta alone. In Pandiammal’s words, “I worship my family deity only when at home in my village. In T. Kallupatti, I worship Māta. These two deities (the NH’s and 1KH’s) have no connection.”20 While Pandiammal strikes a balance between her akam and her natal family’s akam, Sasikala draws strength by worshipping two deities alternatively. Bahuchara Māta, an important deity for the aravāṇikal, is worshipped by the community during rituals and ceremonies. Every 1KH has a picture of Bahuchara Māta, a mother goddess, because there are many myths surrounding the deity that speak of her as a transgendered person. One popular myth that people in Gujarat are familiar with, goes like this: Bahuchara was a pretty, young woman who was travelling along with a party of people through a forest in Gujarat. The party was attacked by thieves, and Bahuchara fearing that the robbers would rape her, drew her dagger, and cut off her breast. The act and her death, led to her deification and the practice of self-mutilation and celibacy by those who worshipped

19

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Bahuchara Māta is an important deity for the transgenders. See Lawrence Cohen, “The Pleasures of Castration: The Postoperative Status of Hijras, Jankhas and Academics.” Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture (1995): 276; Samira Sheikh, “The Lives of Bahuchara Mata,”  The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography, and Text (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan,  2010), 84-99; Jennifer Ung Loh, “Narrating Identity: The Employment of Mythological and Literary Narratives in Identity Formation among the Hijras of India,”  Religion and Gender  4, no. 1 (2014): 21-39; and Serena Nanda, Neither Man Nor Woman, 2nd ed. (Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999), 25. Pandiammal, in discussion with the author, November 2008.

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her to secure her blessings and favor. Serena Nanda remarks, “Bahuchara Māta is particularly associated with male transvestism and transgenderism; several hijras are always present at her temple, near Ahmedabad, in Gujerat (sic), to bless visitors and tell them about her powers.”22 Bahuchara Māta is key to the process of emasculation operation of aravāṇikal. The day and the time for the operation are decided only after the head of the jamāt prays and seeks the blessings of the goddess, Bahuchara Māta. After the individual is operated upon and is convalescing, the name of Bahuchara Māta is evoked for courage and emotional succor. The Māta’s blessings are specially sought not only when the emasculation operation is being performed but also after the process, for continued prosperity and long-life. Despite the fact that the goddess is from Gujarat and the ritual has come down from north India, the cult is embedded in south Indian culture; the offerings made to Māta, the ornaments worn, and many such things make the ritual resemble any south Indian rural custom or ritual. Since the goddess is evoked during the time of their operation, there is an emotional connection formed with the new deity. It is observed that the akam of the aravāṇi gradually includes aspects that make her feel part of the community and the new home in spite of having a familiar deity that was her ancestors’. The adoption of Bahuchara Māta could also be viewed as an act of experiencing solidarity with the larger aravāṇi community that has now been added to the akam of the aravāṇi, failing which could lead to ostracization, causing a disturbance in the akam of the aravāṇi that would result in the hostile puram of the world outside of the aravāṇi community. The 1KH, which closely resembles the NH in the distribution of power, offers shelter and comfort to the confused individuals who leave their NH. Since the individuals are vulnerable and directionless after fleeing home, the 1KH provides emotional and financial stability. Mingling with similar individuals like them and learning the occupation of dancing and professional mourning23 gives them the required courage and strength. While some choose to remain in the 1KH, some move to bigger cities for better economic prospects. The next home they establish in another city will be their second kōti home; some aravāṇikal, start by staying in 21

21 22

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Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, 25. Serena Nanda, “The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role.” In Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, eds. Richard Guy Parker and Peter Aggleton (London, UK: UCL Press, 1999), 231. Professional mourning known as oppari in Tamil, is when mourners usually unrelated to the family are invited by the members of the family to mourn their dead. The mourners wail and howl, sometimes expressing the good deeds of the dead person on behalf of the family members from the morning of the funeral till the body is taken for cremation.

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the 1KH but leave that and have a sub-kōti24 home that is situated very close to the 1KH and is similar to the NKH. The inability to follow the traditional occupations like farming, toddy-tapping and breaking stones, that the family members of the aravāṇi follow, because of the love for alternative occupations like dancing, singing, and acting in plays poses a problem in the akam of the aravāṇikal. Susan Seizer remarks about the stigma of women who involve in acting, “Unlike the chaste loyalty of the good wife who reveals herself to only one man, the actress’s profession requires that she willingly expose herself to the gaze of many unfamiliar men.”25 The stepping out “into the limelight of the public sphere” conflicts with the traditional role of women in the akam and poses a conflict to the aravāṇi because “several Tamil words whose etymological origins refer to actresses and dancers commonly mean ‘prostitute’ (kūttāṭi, tēvaṭiyāl, tāci).”26 Hence, in spite of the aravāṇi willingly choosing singing, dancing, and acting as her occupation, it is not taken kindly by the members of the puram causing a conflict in her akam. c)

Occupation

The main occupations of the people in the NH are farming and other activities related to the land. Many families have moved away from the occupation of their fathers and forefathers, despite staying in the same place inhabited by their ancestors. Conditions of the land and poor economic prospects have forced them to take up other forms of occupation that are completely disconnected to the land. Not only adults but children also in the NH sometimes worked in fields or in some small company situated a few kilometers away from the village. Children either drop out of school or are forced to work to support the family. Usually, NH consists of many children out of whom many siblings prefer to work rather than study in a school. They usually work for daily wages that is enough to help the family. When the family is larger, there are many siblings who come together during meals and other communitarian activities. At times each child is assigned a duty at home: One is in charge of washing, while another takes care of cleaning the house, and so on. There are also times when there is not enough food at home and the children and adults share the food available or go hungry to bed. The food is usually simple, consisting 24

25

26

I call this sub-koti, since its location is quite close to the 1KH, and not a complete home with amenities. The sub-koti home could also be seen as an expression of revolt against the main 1KH. Susan Seizer, “Gender Plays: Socio-spatial Paradigms on the Tamil Popular Stage,” in Tamil Geographies: Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India, eds. Selby and Peterson (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2008), 255. Seizer, “Gender Plays,” 255.

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of rice or ragi (finger millet) gruel and chillies. But this situation undergoes a change when it comes to the kōti home since every single member has to earn her own living and fend for herself. In the kōti home, there is a collective earning that is distributed amongst the various members of the home. The tasks and responsibilities are usually split in the kōti home that is overseen by the guru who in many ways functions as the head of the family. In 1KH, there are specific duties assigned to each aravāṇi similar to the NHs of some aravāṇikal like Pandiammal. If one aravāṇi is in charge of cooking, another is in charge of washing, and so on. The guru is the oldest member of kōti home and she is the one who divides roles and responsibilities for each aravāṇi. The main occupations of members of the 1KH in T. Kallupatti are dancing, sex-work, and professional mourning. Pandiammal’s 1KH is well-known for dance programs and her family members often get invited to dance in neighboring villages. Even though this communitarian occupation provides employment for all the members, there are some aravāṇikal who are preferred over others for their dancing skills. The preference can lead to intra-family conflicts. For instance, Sasikala, over a fight with one of the members, has set herself ablaze. While the exact details of the fight were not disclosed, it was hinted that the act of setting herself on fire was caused by envy and preference of her dance over the others. While the aravāṇi tries to flee her NH and the conflict caused to her akam while living there, she does not escape the troubles even after she seemingly finds comfort in the new home. The money earned from dancing and mourning is handed over to the guru who divides the money among the members of the home. Some gurus do not collect the money earned by sex-work. Sexual favors in exchange for money are frowned upon by Pandiammal and other senior aravāṇikal who do not approve of prostitution but most of the aravāṇikal in Pandiammal’s kōti home engage in sex-work for want of funds and also to fulfill their bodily urges. On many occasions, indulging in sexual activity causes a conflict within the kōti home since sex-work is seen as a disrespectful occupation condoned and looked down upon by the members of the puram. Nothing is done individually by members of 1KH. But when it comes to doing sex-change operations and hormone enhancements, the individuals have to collect money on their own accord. In spite of having a mother in the 1KH, she will not provide the money required for the operation. Economically, aravāṇikal are dependent on the guru. Some of the things that they buy without the consent of the gurus would include make-up articles, cosmetics, and small artificial jewels. While the system of a kōti home complete with a mother and aunts lends an emotional succor and camaraderie, issues of controlling the cash inflow by the guru 109

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and senior members of the home cannot be questioned; Whenever an aravāṇi tries to question or takes some extra cash for herself, she incurs the wrath and ill-will of the other inmates that sometimes lead to her looking for another house that is closer to the 1KH. This home that we will term sub-kōti home (SKH) closely resembles the 1KH. For purposes of occupation and livelihood, the aravāṇi staying in SKH will join with the members of 1KH. Cooking, sleeping, and receiving guests are some of the activities that are only done in the SKH. In some cases, if one member quarrels with another member of 1KH, she might resolve to leave 1KH temporarily and live with another aravāṇi in SKH. Maybe after some time, the aravāṇi who has settled her problems will return to 1KH. SKH is a branch of 1KH and often serves as a stopgap arrangement for any aravāṇi who has quarreled with members of 1KH. Sometimes in spite of living in a separate home, the aravāṇi finds it claustrophobic to live under the constant scrutiny of the guru and so shifts to another town, city or state and lives on her own or shares accommodation with similar aravāṇikal who have left their 1KH. The home is referred to as Second kōti home (2KH). In the 2KH, the aravāṇi is not always under the gaze of her guru and fends for herself. She is free to do what she pleases. The communitarian life present in 1KH gives way to a very individualistic way of life. But in 2KH, the aravāṇi should take care of her economic requirements. In many cases, since there are no communitarian activities like dancing and mourning at funerals, male-to-female transgenders are forced to beg in public places like markets, bus stands, and trains. The money earned from begging can be anywhere from Rs. 450/- to Rs. 500/- a day. Expenses incurred for rent, groceries, food, make-up, alcohol, cable-television, and others are taken care of by the guru in 1KH since the money earned is always with her. But in the 2KH, an aravāṇi is at times unable to meet all the expenses. Further in the new location, her new neighbors are strangers. In 1KH, the guru who is the head of the “home,” is well-known in the locality and she is respected and treated well. The shopkeepers are known to her and over the years a good rapport is built between male-to-female transgenders and the villagers. Like the shopkeepers, the people around the place also respect male-to-female transgenders. They do not insult and hurt the sentiments of male-to-female transgenders by calling them derogatory names. But when an aravāṇi breaks away and sets up a 2KH, she is not familiar with either the neighbors or the place itself. The aravāṇi has no choice but to beg and yield to the pressures of sex-work in order to feed herself. Despite the fact that an aravāṇi earns money through sex-work in 1KH, sex-work is not the main source of income, whereas in 2KH, it is mandatory for livelihood. Sasikala from Pandiammal’s kōti 110

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home left Madurai and started living in Chennai owing to quarrels with Pandiammal and other members of the 1KH. In spite of leaving Madurai, she always carries fond memories of T. Kallupatti and remarks, “When I needed shelter, it was there I found comfort so it’s very close to me.”27 In spite of moving away physically from the 1KH, an aravāṇi’s mother and guru will remain the same. Once a year, an aravāṇi who has formed a 2KH will visit the 1KH bringing presents in cash and kind. Sometimes an aravāṇi, who has left the 1KH, will also perform in dance programs involving members of the 1KH. Similarly, members of the 1KH visit the 2KH and stay there for a week or ten days. When members of the 1KH visit an aravāṇi in the 2KH, they also take part in her everyday activities like begging just to keep company and avoid being left alone at home in a big city. An aravāṇi who has a 2KH also cannot take part in festivals, rituals, and some practices that take place in the 1KH. Though she is informed of the happenings in the 1KH, she cannot attend them for want of money and also because her new home is far away from the 1KH. The relationship shared between an aravāṇi in 2KH and the members in 1KH is one of gratitude and memories. An aravāṇi has fond memories of the 1KH. The uprooting from her 1KH is a conscious decision, unlike the first uprooting from the NH that along with a conscious decision is laced with the conflict that was present in the puram, such as social and cultural pressures from the people who surrounded her. In spite of living with inmates of similar orientation, there are many issues of jealousy, lovers’ tiffs, financial conflicts, and many others that force the aravāṇi to change homes and establish a new home far away physically from the 1KH. Though this shift causes discomfort in monetary and emotional terms, there is no way out for the aravāṇi.

Conclusion The identity of an aravāṇi is usually seen as a blend of all the homes she has lived in—the cultural memory is that of her NH while that of her present-day living is that of the transgender culture. It could be seen that every aspect of an aravāṇi’s home-making and life is an ongoing conflict between the akam and the puram. It is the dream of the six aravāṇikal to lead a normal life, retaining their gender identity without the conflicting akam and puram that is discussed in the essay. In the narratives, it was often mentioned by either one of the aravāṇikal that they would have loved to remain in their NH if their akam was left in peace. Hence, it can be concluded that a harmonious home in an aravāṇi’s life is to be ideally found within the purview of their ancestral home where the nature-culture-sacred nexus is balanced. 27

Sasikala, in discussion with the author, November 2008.

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References Butalia, Urvashi. “Mona’s Story.” Last modified May 9, 2011. https://granta. com/monas-story/. Cohen, Lawrence. “The Pleasures of Castration: The Postoperative Status of Hijras, Jankhas and Academics.”  Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture (1995): 276-304. Ferraro, Gary. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2001. Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman. 2nd ed. Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. ———. “The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role.” In Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Richard Guy Parker and Peter Aggleton, 226-238. London, UK: UCL Press, 1999. Rapport, Nigel and Joanna Overing. “Home and Homelessness” in Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routlege, 2000), 154-162. Reddy, Gayathri. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006. ———. “Geographies of Contagion: Hijras, Kothis, and the Politics of Sexual Marginality in Hyderabad,” Anthropology & Medicine 12.3 (2005): 255-270. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. January 7, 2010. ———. “‘Men’ Who Would Be Kings: Celibacy, Emasculation, and the ReProduction of Hijras in Contemporary Indian Politics.” Social Research 70.1 (2003): 163-200. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. January 7, 2010. Seizer, Susan. “Gender Plays: Socio-spatial Paradigms on the Tamil Popular Stage.” In Tamil Geographies: Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India, edited by Martha Ann Selby and Indira Viswanathan Peterson. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2008. 253-291. Selvamony, Nirmal. “Tinai Studies” in tinai 3 (Chennai: Persons for Alternative Social Order (PASO), November 2003-July 2004), 1. ———. “An Alternative Social Order.” In Value Education Today: Explorations in Social Ethics, edited by J. T. K. Daniel and Nirmal Selvamony. Madras and New Delhi: Madras Christian College and All-India Association for Christian Higher Education, 1990. 215-236. Sheikh, Samira. “The Lives of Bahuchara Mata.” The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography, and Text. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010. 84-99.

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Ung Loh, Jennifer. “Narrating Identity: The Employment of Mythological and Literary Narratives in Identity Formation among the Hijras of India.” Religion and Gender 4, no. 1 (2014): 21-39.

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PUSHING BOUNDARIES: NEGOTIATIONS OF POWER IN THE DOMESTIC SPACE Kochurani Abraham Boundaries are important markers of identity. It is all the more conspicuous in the case of gender identity, particularly in cultures that are marked by patriarchy. In the wake of the twenty-first century, gender boundaries are apparently blurred in the public space since there is a growing visibility of women in the socio-economic and political spheres. Exercising agency outside the home may come with greater ease for women, thanks to the increasing opportunities for education and employment. However, the domestic space continues to be a defining boundary since it is deeply inscribed by culturally conditioned gender norms and related roles. Power negotiations in the family settings become more difficult since its boundaries are marked by a complex combination of factors that vacillate between rigidity and fluidity depending on the socio-religious conditioning of the actors who occupy these spaces. This essay takes the experiences of women of the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala as a case for analysis in order to examine how women negotiate power in the domestic space.1 Gendered boundaries are mainly ideological, though in the case of some women they can be physical as expressed in the popular expression “the four walls of the home.” They are culturally inscribed, religion being a major factor that legitimize these boundaries through its injunctions The Catholic Syrian Christians (henceforth CSC), link their religious heritage to St. Thomas the Apostle, who according to their tradition is believed to have arrived in Kerala, the south western state of India, toward the middle of the first 1

This paper is based on my doctoral research on the impact of patriarchal ideology on the Catholic Syrian Christian women of Kerala. See Kochurani Abraham, “Between Patriarchy and Development: Negotiations of Power by the Catholic Syrian Christian Women of Kerala” (PhD diss, Madras: University of Madras, 2011).

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century C.E. and converted caste Hindus to Christianity. This religious ethos has strong implications on the women of this community as the socio-cultural nuances of this tradition have left a specific mark on their identity construction and gender relations. In this essay methodologically I take a feminist standpoint for analyzing women’s experiences as it would help identify the nuances of the real struggle that the Catholic Syrian Christian women undergo in order to negotiate power in their particular socio-economic and religious contexts. The political underpinnings of patriarchy and its negotiations by the Keralite CSC women are examined from three angles: the gendered ordering of family relationships; sexual relations within the framework of marriage; and the political economy of the household. Here, the notion of “politics” is deployed as a heuristic tool to examine the dynamics of power equations that underlie CSC women’s experience—what conditions them to a subjugated existence and what enables in them subjectivity and autonomy.2 A political inquiry facilitates the identification of the different shades of meaning attributed to power as operational in women’s lives. First, the ideological setting of their gendered domestic spaces is examined so as to have a better understanding of the operational dynamics of their power negotiations.

GENDERING IN THE DOMESTIC SPACE OF THE FAMILY The family plays an important role in the education and socialization of both women and men, but it becomes a gendered site, depending on the structuring of its power relations. Gendering refers to “the internalization of the constructed differences by the sexes, which gets normalized as the way of being women and men.”3 I read the experiences of Celine, a female respondent in her forties, who is also a college lecturer to depict how domestic spaces can be gendered and what its implications are on women. In her words: My husband is not a dominating or controlling person, but I always feel life is so much easier for him than for me. Both of us are equally qualified, the only difference is that I had a first rank for post-graduation, and we work as lecturers. His college is just 3 kms from where we stay and he drives to college everyday whereas mine is about 35 kms, and I have to change three buses to reach on time. I have my old mother-in law 2

3

In social theory, the term politics is deployed to indicate the methods, practices and ideologies used by an individual or group to assert power or to gain control and power over another. See Julia Leslee and Mary Mc Gee, eds. Invented Identities (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 9. Anne Oakly, Sex, Gender and Society (London: Harper Colophone Books, 1972) cited by Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (New Jersey: Zed Books, 1986), 22.

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at home, so from the time I wake up at the crack of dawn, I am on my toes keeping everything done and ready for her and for the children. My breakfast is usually in the bus and that is the only time I sit even for any reading that I want to do. Sometimes my husband scolds me for straining myself so much, but what to do. May be I have taken my “womanly” role too seriously that I cannot neglect my duties to the family. I would have liked my husband to give a helping hand without having to request him every day, but that doesn’t happen as he is “busy” with his reading and writing work, and paper presentations. A woman is tied to the family with the thali and once married, she loses her individuality and the prospects for further growth, but in the bargain the family gains at her expense.4 When I see myself and other women working like machinery, sometimes I laugh at the irony of the whole system. If I, with so much education and awareness struggle to make sense of who I am, what about other women who really believe that this is the way God has created man and woman to be who they are?5

Celine’s assessment of gender roles and related power equations within the family gives expression to a contradictory consciousness, which as theorists observe, manifests when social groups find it difficult to dispute the hegemony of other groups or challenge the cultural concepts that stigmatize them. Politically weak in terms of exercising power, they may not be in a position to disagree with the constructions of reality that more dominant groups produce and disseminate, instead they may even conspire with the dominant culture to make the social order that oppress them appear objective and unalterable, natural and moral, and even just.6 Celine’s narration is illustrative of the contradictions that women experience when they feel morally compelled to uphold a system that they know is oppressive but do not resist because of their gendered socialization. Nonetheless, they are not totally powerless and this makes the question of boundary negotiations significant. 4

5

6

Thali is a symbolic pendant that a man ties on the women’s neck at the time of marriage. Originally, thali was part of the Hindu culture but some of the Christian communities in India have incorporated it into their nuptial rite. In personal communication with Celine (name changed) at Changanacherry, Kerala, on May 30, 2008. All the names of the respondents in this essay have been anonymized to protect their identity. Steven M. Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of Consciousness in Caste Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8-9. Pierre Bourdieu makes the same assertion in his observation that people work to make the dominant order’s often capricious foundations seem moral, necessary and natural. See Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: University Press, 1977), 164.

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Even as it may appear that the CSC women endorse their own subordination and remain inert and passive within the conventional socio-cultural framework, there are narrations that give expression to their assertions of power. This happens when they have a critical awareness of their subordination and look for means that would make a difference to their own lives. There is ambiguity in their expressions as their consciousness is also entwined with the socio-religious mediations of patriarchy. All the same, they exercise subjectivity within the difficult patriarchal terrain, as they toss between acquiescence and resistance.

The Politics of Assertion in Finding their Space The CSC women live the dialectic tension between a gendered consciousness and the desire for a liberative breakthrough. In their assertion for the space they need lies the art of finding themselves. I would like to categorize this primary level negotiation of power as simulative and tactical bargains. While women’s experiences defy clear-cut categorization as their negotiations of power are not in water-tight compartments, a distinction is made to facilitate greater clarity as to how they are pushing the boundaries of the domestic space. Simulative Bargains It appears that CSC women are cast in a gendered mold of feminine stereotypes, yet a deeper probing in Focus Group Discussions discloses the reasons as to why they take such a stand. The gendered discourse of women, though it appears to be in close conformity with how the dominant groups would wish to have things appear, is at the same time a clear sign of simulation as a mode of finding their space within the patriarchal framework. The term simulation is used here to refer to the false compliance of women pretending to conform to their gendered norms of behavior but with a specific purpose of some personal benefit. While women tend to take a subordinate stand in their relationship with their husbands, for some, it is a conscious choice for the sake of the family: “For the sake of peace and for stability of the family, we keep to the limits of the husband’s control.” For others, it is a strategy to protect themselves from violence: “When we see that the husbands are serious, we women will come down immediately. We keep quiet because we don’t want to be beaten up. There is no domestic violence because we are careful.” And they add: “If we take extra care to see that they are not provoked, we can be safe, otherwise….” Still for several others, “they are the ones who lead the family. As head

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of the family, we give them respect. There will be peace if we follow their way.”7 While these responses apparently suggest subservience, it is not a state where these women are fully incapacitated. Their simulation is a conscious choice. It gives them a certain power to able to resist, subvert and find ways of living their lives with some meaning. In this context, though “domains of powerlessness” overlook the complexity of women’s roles and agency within the household or the workplace as Kabeer observes, they are simulating compliance because dissent may expose them to danger, stigma or even isolation.8 Further, women observe that on simulating submissiveness, everyday concerns like getting permission from their husbands to go out, to visit their family members or to buy things for themselves or for the house becomes easier. If they are acquiescent to the patriarchal norm that demands that their husbands stand one step higher to them, they can win over their husband’s favor, which works to their own advantage. Thus, women’s bargaining power for getting what they want is subtly built into their very simulation even though their stand reflects the cultural and social parameters defining womanhood in their particular context. Simulation of compliance for CSC women then becomes a public transcript, which as James Scott points out, is the public performance required of those subjected to elaborate and systematic forms of social subordination. Scott deploys the notion of “public transcripts” and “hidden transcripts,” to describe the interaction between the subordinates and those who dominate in power-laden contexts.9 In the case of CSC women, through simulation there is a public performance of expected behavior, though the hidden agenda is obtaining some personal gain. Conformity to hegemonic gender norms is then a public transcript, a mask worn by them. It is a simulation that acts as a necessary strategy for creating the space necessary for survival and well-being.

7

8

9

At the Focus Group Discussion held at Itthithanam, Kerala, on June 1, 2008 at a Self-Help Group meeting of Catholic women where eighteen housewives were present. I borrow this expression from Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Developmental Thought (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995), 224. Steven Parish has made similar observations in the light of his fieldwork. See, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 15. For a detailed study on public and hidden transcripts, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990).

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Tactical Bargains Going one step beyond the simulative bargains with patriarchal norms is what can be termed as tactical bargains. In tactical negotiations, women do not outrightly contest the patriarchally defined power dynamics but create their own space for producing and organizing deeper meaning for their lives. Within the dynamics of the interplay between hegemony and resistance, what appears to be acquiescence to patriarchal practices may be a form of agency for women, as it can be a means of negotiating gender roles and practices within the household and the community. To illustrate the tactical negotiations of power, we have the life story of Lissie, another college lecturer in her mid-forties. Lissie is married to a lawyer and has two children. She believes that women can handle even difficult marriages, provided they have the tact and sharpness to negotiate power. For her, tact is the political tool that can teach women the art of negotiating power. In her words: The boldness I have today is not something I got from my childhood. I grew up in a very controlled environment where my mother wanted us girls to be “good girls,” which meant very obedient girls. So, I grew up without personal choices and my thinking was very dull. It is only after my marriage I realized that I have a personality and that I can make choices in life. My mother-in-law who was a strong woman was my mentor. She encouraged me to learn driving so that I can become more independent, and at the age of thirty-nine, once my kids were both in school, she challenged me to do post-graduate studies. Thanks to her faith in me, I grew in self-confidence. I completed M.Com sitting with students who were nearly half my age and I am employed today. Initially my confidence was a threat to my husband, maybe because his friends’ wives were all submissive types. But I realized that I would add to the problem if I restrain myself out of fear. I became conscious of the fact that the more I suppress myself, the more he would dominate. To deal with men, women certainly need “nayam” (tact) because men get threatened easily. Slowly I learned to be tactful, in saying what I need to say, and in a manner that does not threaten him. I started developing an adult to adult relationship with my husband, which I think is foundational for a healthy married life. The problem is that we women live pleasing everyone, because that is a means of feeling a sense of self-worth. I can say I lived from such a false image for long. But now I realize that we need to live a healthy sense of self which implies that we resist wrong attitudes and behaviors when necessary. If women become more sensible, then we will know how to handle situations tactfully. I think it is very important that women find ways to become economically independent also, because economic dependency on the husbands will make us slavish.

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I think even domestic violence can be handled tactfully. My husband has a very short temper, but somehow I have learned to manage it without being trapped when he flares up. My husband once flung a file with papers as he got angry with someone. I was there in the room, but I refused to bend down and pick up the papers that were scattered on the floor. When I did not do it, he picked them up himself, and I am sure he got the message that he won’t get me to dance to his notes of temper. Sometimes I feel that the only emotion that men know is anger and that is because they are very insecure. So, it is essential that we make them feel important but at the same time not becoming victims of their need to dominate. I have little say in many important decisions that my husband takes, but I don’t sit and cry about it. I express my resistance not by reacting immediately—that will only make the situation worse. My resistance is through dialogue at the appropriate moment where I make my mind known, and I am sure he respects me more now because I do not become a doormat.10

Lissie’s case is illustrative of women pushing the ideological boundaries of patriarchal control through the art of nayam that signifies discretion or tact, and they do so consciously in a manner without disturbing men’s need to feel a sense of importance in their role as head of the family. This mode of negotiating power enables them to find not just a space free from violence in the family but gives a certain bargaining power to fulfill their needs and realize their abilities. Being aware of the high costs of openly inciting conflict, these women choose not to assert overtly more claims over household decision-making and resources. However, they exercise subtle forms of power and use strategies to negotiate and push the boundaries of their subordination. Thus, nayam becomes a tool in women’s hands for getting what they want without “rocking the boat.” While tactical bargains may have certain resemblance to simulative bargains, the difference lies in the way power is exercised. Being tactful, as exemplified in Lissie’s case, points to conscious choices made in order to subvert power that is exercised in a dominant mode. Thus, it goes deeper than mere simulation of acquiescence because it facilitates a change in power equations that underlie gender relations. In being tactful, women exercise discretion and that gives them a certain mastery over their lives. Consequently, they are not overpowered by emotions nor are they easily intimidated by oppressive experiences. As Lissie’s narration testifies, nayam or tact equips women to push their rational boundaries and having enabled their capacity to think before they act, they are able to handle even difficult situations. 10

Experiences of Lissie is a clear indication of tactical negotiation of power. This interview was done on November 12, 2008, at Vazhakulam parish of Kothamangalam diocese, Kerala.

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Despite the fact that tactical negotiation of power works to their advantage in individual women’s situations, it has its limitations. It is not an effective tool for tackling patriarchy as it does not challenge or disturb the power structures and socio-religious norms that restrict women’s growth as persons. Here, as in situations of caste domination, “hierarchy and apparent equality co-exist in an uneasy, mutually subversive, but nonetheless vital complementarity.”11 Since resistance is exercised here mostly as a hidden transcript, whereby the anger and frustration at the experience of oppression is expressed in a concealed manner behind the oppressor, it does not confront the structural problematic of patriarchy.

SEXUAL RELATIONS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF MARRIAGE In societies like India where patriarchal inscriptions continue to inform man-woman relationships, sexuality is an area where manipulation of power is significantly felt. In such societies, sexual relations are governed by the manner in which masculinity and femininity are defined. In this context, marital rape also becomes a non-issue, as patriarchy grants men rights over women’s bodies, their sexuality, and their minds, making impunity an unwritten law operative in the domestic space. Having internalized the patriarchal myth that their supreme duty as wives is to be unconditionally at the service of their husbands, women themselves perpetuate this impunity.12 Kate Millet coined the expression “sexual politics” based on the conviction that sex is a category with political implications. By affixing the term “politics” to sexuality, she refers to the manner in which power is exercised in sexual relations.13 In the Catholic Syrian Christian community, even if the hegemonic codes of religion serve to keep a control on women, we have some narrations of women from the in-depth interviews that give a different picture of women exercising sexual agency and thus pushing the ideological boundaries with regard to sexuality. Women’s Assertion of Sexual Agency While sexuality has been condemned historically to remain at the margins of “decent” and “respectable” Malayali society, the ideal woman who is strictly domestic and maternal, is expected to provide sexual pleasures to the husband, such pleasure being recognized as instrumental to marital 11 12

13

Parish, Hierarchy and its Discontents, 17. For an elaboration on this, see Kochurani Abraham, “The Saga of Sexual Violence in India,” in Corruption, Concilium 5 (2014), eds. Regina Ammicht Quinn, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Carlos Susin: 40-47. Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (Great Britain: Rupert Hart Davis, 1971).

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stability. The divided opinions on the question of women initiating sex as brought out in the quantitative research by male respondents, explains the patriarchal conservatism characteristic of the community.15 However, in the qualitative data we have stories of women asserting sexual agency. The apparent contradiction between quantitative and qualitative data points to a subtext of loyalty to tradition mingled with the voices of dissent. This makes manifest the dialectic tension between women’s contradictory and critical consciousness within the framework of patriarchal marriage. The narrative by a female respondent given below explains the dynamics of women’s assertion of sexual agency, which demonstrates sexual politics from a feminist standpoint. 14

Overt compliance and covert resistance Beena, a housewife in her late forties, is from an upper middle-class family. She is the mother of two grown up boys. Reviewing her twenty years of married life, Beena relates the story of her bargains with sexuality in her efforts to cope with the struggles of marriage:16 I was married at the age of nineteen before I had any notion of what sexuality is all about in marriage. In my teens, the movie/novel romances fed my imagination and I fantasized a state of great marital bliss, but now after years of marriage I realize that fantasy is far distant from reality. When I look back, one event that is engraved in my memory is the dialogue that I had with my grandmother, the previous night of my marriage. She called me aside and told me that I was about to enter the most important stage in my life, and that my husband would be the most important person in my life henceforth and so, my fulfillment in life would depend on making him happy. And she added: “never say no to your husband. Making yourself available to your husband is the sacred duty of a wife.” Even though I was filled with excitement at the thought of getting married, her words made me uneasy and I remember looking at her with certain apprehension as she herself was the mother of eleven children, delivering children all through her reproductive years. I managed to escape further indoctrination as someone called me. One thing I can say is that sex is not something peripheral, but central to married life. For me it is important, not because I am satisfied always, but that becomes a means to make my husband depend on me at least for one thing. Of course, I feel used in the bargain, and I resent it. He does 14

15

16

Malayali society refers to Kerala society. See Devika J., “Bodies Gone Awry: The Abjection of Sexuality in Development Discourse in Contemporary Kerala,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16 (2009): 21-46. The quantitative data shows that while 48.3 percent men are positive about wives expressing sexual desires or initiating sex, 43.4 percent have a contrary opinion. Beena, in discussion with the author, at Pulinkunnu parish of Changanacherry diocese, Kerala on March 14, 2009.

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not even allow me to go and spend some days with my parents. But the very fact that he is sexually dependent on me gives me some power in our relationship. I don’t believe in my grandmother’s word that being always available to one’s husband is the sacred duty of a wife. I wish I could say a loud “no,” but I don’t, because pleasing him is important for my own sake. That is the key to my meaningful survival in marriage.

What we see here is a clear transition in women’s outlook as generations move ahead. Conventionally, Christian women have been religiously socialized to see submission as a feminine virtue, particularly on the question of sexual submissiveness to husbands.17 However, younger generations view and interpret the same reality from a different angle. Beena’s narration illustrates how women use their sexuality as a tool to negotiate power in a conjugal relationship. While they are overtly compliant to their husband’s sexual demands, covertly they are exercising agency in order to change circumstances in their favor. Here, they work tactfully, engaging in calculated assertions of sexual power with the ulterior motive of winning over their husbands, whereas for Beena’s grandmother it is the sacred duty of the wife to be at the disposal of the husband without counting the cost. The changing notion of femininity is the key to negotiation of power that enables the younger generations to push restrictive boundaries and create their own liberative spaces. While majority of women engage in tactical bargains in their sexual relationships with their husbands, some are more assertive in taking a stand as to how they exercise their sexuality. This assertion expresses itself as resistance to abusive sexual relations within marriage. Outright resistance The experiences narrated by Siji, a lower middleclass housewife in her thirties with two school-going children, express the assertion of sexual agency through outright resistance.18 I got married at the age of eighteen. The problem with my husband is that he drinks and he is not steady in his job. As his drinking increased, I knew I had to handle it by confronting his vulnerability. When he came to me to have sex, I pretended to be sick and feigned that the smell of liquor is nauseating. I ran outside the room and feigned to vomit. In his semi-conscious state, my husband thought I was really vomiting. Then I told him that I am getting allergic to the smell of liquor and so no sex 17

18

The scriptural injunction “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22) is deeply internalized by many Catholic Syrian Christian women as in the case of Beena’s grandmother and this has served as a hegemonic code to elicit women’s collaboration in sustaining the patriarchal grip on their lives. Siji, in discussion with the author on January 7, 2008 at a rural Parish of Kanjirappally diocese, Kerala.

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if he drinks excessively. Even though he has not stopped drinking completely, this trick has had some effect that he does not approach me when he is very drunk. You see, a woman’s life is constant bargain, and I think the only way to cope with it in a dignified manner is when you know to resist abuse.

The experiences narrated by Beena and Siji depict an outlook, which is not envisaged in the conventional sex-roles allotted to women in the Syrian Christian religious ethos. We hear them challenging the conformist behavior codes mediated by women themselves. In these stories, we encounter women who are becoming sexually assertive even if with different motives. They raise critical questions about their sexual lives, and this points to a critical consciousness that make obvious their bargaining power. Their voices articulate, though in a subtle way, a counter-normative politics that challenge men’s hegemony in sexual matters, making sexuality a tool for negotiating power “in the subterranean mode.” 19 The sexual politics as articulated through these stories is also an expression of agency. As Naila Kabeer argues, agency “can take the form of bargaining and negotiation, deception and manipulation, subversion and resistance, as well as more intangible cognitive processes of reflection and analysis.”20 Both Beena and Siji exercise sexual agency through manipulation, subversion and resistance, and consequently, they make their sexual relationships an occasion for the negotiation of power. The observations by Lissie are also significant on the question of women exercising sexual agency. In her words: I think sexuality holds an important key to adult relationships in marriage. I would say that it is imperative that we women become sexually assertive. As a young wife I was more frigid, may be from my family background of “good woman” training. Also, I had a painful experience of having an earlier engagement broken because that boy did not find me appealing enough. But when I grew into a healthier consciousness of myself as a woman and I learned to become sexually assertive, I mean, I started becoming active in sex, and this has had a very positive effect on my marriage. Even though my husband has a very dominating character, we have grown over these years into a healthier adult relationship 19

20

Though apparently conformists, Syrian Christian women are strong-willed and assertive as is clear from the case studies, and as Susan Visvanathan observes, women’s sexual and emotional bonds with their husbands do allow them to have some say in the way matters proceed. See Susan Visvanathan, “The Status of Christian Women in Kerala” in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Aravind Sharma (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 192. Naila Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment,” Development and Change 30 (1999): 438.

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in our marriage. As I see it, healthy sexual relationship is crucial for a healthy marriage. I think it is important that the church teaches women Kamasutra rather than natural family planning during the pre-marital catechesis.

Lissie’s advocacy of Kamasutra is interesting because it breaks the taboo on sexuality, which is rather strong in the Indian cultural setting particularly in relation to women. This points to women coming of age and discovering a sense of self as persons in their own right. This sense of personhood has strong implications on women’s growth in sexual agency, which in turn, helps them to use sexuality as a tool to negotiate the boundaries of gender, and to establish inter-dependent relationships with men. Lissie’s assertion of her views regarding sexuality is also a telling indicator of women daring to subvert the sexual politics of the CSC religious ethos. At the marriage preparation courses in the CSC framework, which Lissie terms as “pre-marital catechesis,” sexuality is addressed mainly in relation to natural family planning and related concerns. Since women’s compliance to men in a conjugal relationship is the expected pattern of behavior, sexual agency exercised by women can serve to challenge and re-define the patriarchally defined sexual norms and gender relations of CSC marriage.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE HOUSEHOLD The economic power equation between women and men in the family is a decisive factor determining the quality of gender relations in the domestic space. Since gender prescriptions come into play in the material and ideological bases of human relationships, it is necessary to bring into relief the subtle manipulations of power in ideology as well as in its concrete applications. The question of political economy becomes significant from this point of view. Political economy refers to “social relations, particularly power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources.”21 It can also be explained as the “(political) management of economic variables, relationships, and functions.”22 Using the lens of political economy, we now look at women’s attempts to negotiate power and I like to term this as agensic bargains. Since agency expresses one’s ability “to define one’s goals and act upon them,” agensic bargains imply women’s 21

22

Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996), 25. Inter Pares-Occasional Paper Series, “Towards a Feminist Political Economy,” 5 (2004), accessed September 18, 2009, http://interpares.ca.

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political assertion of their will, to achieve their desired ends.23 Women exercise agensic bargains when they are ready to confront the socio-cultural definitions that keep them subjugated and negotiate power in an open and unambiguous manner. Hence, a precondition to agensic bargains is the exercise of autonomy as it helps to break through oppressive boundaries.24 We now take two life stories that illustrate agensic bargains. Agensic Bargains in Pushing Boundaries Lilly’s case is representative of the women who have successfully negotiated the domestic thresholds in order to find meaning and economic independence. In her words: I studied only up to class 10, but discontinued because my mother got sick and there was no one to take care of the house. At the age of twenty, I was married off to a lower middle-class family. My husband was a daily wage earner and very hardworking and I used to manage the home well. We got two children and everything seemed to be going on well until my husband met with an accident and even though he recovered, he could not do any hard work. As a lot of money was spent for treating him and when we really hit rock bottom, I had to take the responsibility of becoming the bread winner of the family. As I had no specific skills to generate an income, the only option was to join the national rural employment scheme. To me it was a big decision as I had not worked outside like that before, and was so dependent on my husband even for daily marketing. But the situation demanded that we reverse roles, he would be at home and I do the work outside. Once I got out, I found there was nothing to fear. After working for about six months on the scheme, I became a supervisor which meant I had to go every day to different places where the scheme was initiated. The new responsibility really gave me a sense of self I had never experienced before, but because I had to be out often, there were comments from some of our relatives like “kayaroori Vittirikkukaya” (let loose from the rope). I decided not to give an ear to whatever people would say because I knew I was doing the right thing and thanks be to God, my husband stood with me. I think the problem with us women is that we allow ourselves to be manipulated by public opinion. Once we become free of these controls, life becomes meaningful.25

23 24

25

Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements,” 438. Barbara Hermann in her analysis of agency observes that autonomy is the condition of the will that makes agency possible. See Barbara Hermann, “Agency, Attachment and Difference,” Ethics 101, 4 (1991):775-797. Lilly, in discussion with the author at Vazhakulam, Kothamangalam diocese, Kerala, on December 4, 2008.

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Lilly’s story is encouraging as it is a success story of women finding their meaningful space. She rose up to the occasion that called for a transition from a dependent housewife to be the bread winner of the family. In her active engagement in the public space, she develops a critical consciousness which in turn made her bold to negotiate and cross over gendered boundaries. In this crossing over, there is an “oppositional political struggle,” because it requires pushing against the delimiting boundaries set by patriarchally inscribed class, caste, and gender ideologies.26 Since Lilly’s political struggle was occasioned by a crisis situation, the question is whether such a change in consciousness is possible even in ordinary circumstances where majority of women find themselves. Increased physical space does not necessarily indicate a women’s empowerment. As Deshmukh observes, physical spaces have to be evaluated for their form, content, extensiveness, intensiveness, and also for the meaning they have for the women concerned.27 However, Lilly makes a strong case for women’s productive roles and poses a challenge to the “orthodox equation between women and domesticity.”28 As in Lilly’s case, the life story of Sheela, a hospital administrator in her mid-thirties, speaks of the agensic negotiation of power by exercising autonomy. In her words: My parents were keen on getting me settled as soon as I finished my graduation, but I was determined to study further and joined for post-graduation in management studies. While doing this course, I met my future husband who was a young lawyer at that time. Since he belonged to a different community, overcoming resistance of my family to this match was a major hurdle. All the same, I decided to go ahead with the marriage at my own risk without the full blessings of my family. This meant I had to part with many of the traditional customs associated with marriage like receiving a dowry and other support from my paternal home. After marriage I got a job that was rather far-off from my husband’s place of work. Then again, we had to make some important decisions which would take a different course from the traditional ways of doing things. I took up this job and my husband would join me for weekends. Once this job became permanent, we built a house near my place of work. I used to tease my husband saying that he has become “matri-local,” as against the practice in my community where generally the wife follows the husband everywhere. Even though I have been labeled thandedi (bold 26

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Bell Hooks, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” in Women, Knowledge and Reality, eds. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (New York: Routledge, 1996), 48-55. Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive, Space for Power, Women’s Work and Family Strategies in South and South-East Asia (Noida: Rainbow Publishers, 2002), 155. Kabeer, Reversed Realities, 6.

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in a negative sense), I am happy for the space I have and for the way my life has evolved.29

Agensic bargains involve voicing dissent and negotiating power even at the risk of facing unpleasant consequences. In this sense, agency determines how a person acts or refuses to act and defines her motives for choosing one action over another. Amartya Sen observes that women’s low bargaining power is compounded by their tendency to value the well-being of their family members more than their own, to silently accept their fate and to engage reluctantly in hard bargaining.30 Exercising autonomy signifies making a breakthrough of the categories of thought constructed by others, to think afresh and analyze one’s predicament, and to make one’s choices in terms of what one has rationally and independently arrived at.31 Sheila’s story gives evidence to autonomy as she is not swayed by the customs and hegemonic codes of tradition, but acts in accordance with her authentic interests.

Conclusion We have identified mainly through the narrations of women’s life stories, the ideological and structural grip of patriarchy on women and men in spite of women’s advancement in development indices. This is all the more conspicuous against the backdrop of the religious ethos that marks gender relations in this setting. The ideology that underlies Catholic Syrian Christian marriage and family life continues to be informed by patriarchal norms, and this is the common denominational factor determining the power equations between women and men. The privileged position of man as head of the family allots to woman a subordinate status as wife, and she would enjoy a rather comfortable existence if she lives up to the subordination expected of women at all levels. However, as the narrations illustrate, women are not totally powerless and they do not remain mere victims of the system that subjugates them ideologically and structurally. Deploying different strategies for negotiating power such as simulative, tactical, and agensic bargains, they are able to have a say in matters concerning their lives and that of the family. Negotiations of power help these women to attain greater economic 29

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Sheila, in discussion with the author at Ernakulam, Angamaly-Ernakulam Diocese, December 9, 2008. See Fabienne Peter, “Gender and the Foundations of Social Choice: The Role of Situated Agency” in Amartya Sen’s Works and Ideas: A Gender Perspective, eds. Bina Agarwal, Jane Humphreys and Ingrid Robeyns (New York: Routledge, 2005), 15-34. Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), ix.

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freedom and mobility. It enables their capacity to set goals and achieve them even though it may involve resisting the gendered socio-cultural prescriptions. The impact of patriarchal ideology and women’s capacity for pushing the boundaries of their prescribed spaces is related to their consciousness. When their consciousness is still contradictory, they assent to the prescribed norms though they may negotiate power without challenging the systems that are oppressive. However, on developing a critical consciousness, they become free to name and resist oppressive gender norms even when it implies losing the “good woman” label according to patriarchal standards. This critical consciousness can be rightly termed as feminist consciousness, and this is imperative for women if they have to succeed in reclaiming autonomy in thought and action. The move from dependency to autonomy is not easy as it entails resisting and undoing the patriarchal conditioning in the domestic space and availing more and more the opportunities in the public space. All the same, women with a feminist consciousness emerge as more confident and freer persons and this growth process has a transformative impact on the family and the larger society. The power dynamics that is operative in a patriarchal setting is the interplay of hegemony and resistance. As pointed out by Foucault, these are ontologically inseparable, and they exist as conditions of possibility, each for the other.32 Even in the case of power negotiations by Catholic Syrian Christian women, we see hegemony and resistance being operative particularly within the household. But, when women engage in pushing the boundaries set by hegemonic norms, they are liberated and this has a ripple effect on society. The challenge of the present times is to engage more and more women in the “boundary-pushing” exercise so that it has a greater transformative impact on Indian society.

32

Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings 1972-1977, ed. C. Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 142.

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References Abraham, Kochurani. “The Saga of Sexual Violence in India.” In Corruption, edited by Regina Ammicht Quinn, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Carlos Susin. Concilium 5 (2014): 40-47. Agarwal, Bina, Humphreys Jane and Robeyns Ingrid, eds. Amartya Sen’s Works and Ideas: A Gender Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2005. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Devika, J. “Bodies Gone Awry: The Abjection of Sexuality in Development Discourse in Contemporary Kerala.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 16 (2009): 21-46. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon. U.K: The Harvester Press, 1980. Garry, Ann and Marilyn Pearsall, eds. Women, Knowledge and Reality. New York: Routledge, 1996. Herman, Barbara. “Agency, Attachment and Difference.” Ethics 4 (July 1991):775-797. Hooks, Bell. “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness.” In Women, Knowledge and Reality, edited by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, 48-55. New York: Routledge, 1996. Inter Pares. “Towards a Feminist Political Economy.” Occasional Paper Series, 5 (2004), accessed on September 18, 2009, http:// www.interpares.ca. Kabeer, Naila. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change, 30 (1999): 435-464. Kabeer, Naila. Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Developmental Thought. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995. Leslee, Julia and Mary Mc Gee, eds. Invented Identities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. New Jersey: Zed Books, 1986. Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. Great Britain: Rupert Hart Davis, 1971. Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996. Parish, Steven M. Hierarchy and its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of Consciousness in Caste Society. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen and Parekh Bhikhu. The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. 131

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Ranadive, Joy Deshmukh. Space for Power: Women’s Work and Family Strategies in South and South-East Asia. Noida: Rainbow Publishers, 2002. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Sharma, Aravind. Women in Indian Religions. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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WOMEN MAKE IT WORK: THE STORY OF INTER-RELIGIOUS MARRIAGES IN URBAN INDIA James Ponniah Introduction Both for the history of humankind and for the institution of marriage, inter-faith marriages are recent phenomena. Academic literatures on this subject produced early on in the Americas1 or in Europe2 discussed the problem of inter-faith marriages among the Jews3 or about the struggles and conflicts between inter-denominational marriages within Christianity.4 Some analyzed the issue mostly from the viewpoint of organized religion.5 Some studies were done on inter-faith marriages between

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David de Sola Pool, Intermarriage (New York: Jewish Welfare Board, 1958); Kate McCarthy, Interfaith Encounters in America (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007). P. H. Besanceney, Interfaith Marriages: Who and Why (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1970); S. Della Pergola, Jewish and Mixed  Marriages  in Milan, 1901-1968 (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972). David Kirshenbaun, Mixed  Marriage  and the Jewish Future (New York: Bloch, 1958); Louis A. Berman, Jews and Intermarriage: A Study in Personality and Culture (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1968). Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Roman Catholic Relations, Marriages  between Anglicans and Roman Catholics (London: S.P.C.K., 1972); Larry R. Petersen, “Interfaith Marriage and Religious Commitment among Catholics,” Journal of Marriage and Family 48, no. 4 (1986): 725-735. Arlene Anderson Swidler, ed., Among the Religions of the World (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) that discusses how the ideals, models and laws proposed by world religions as regards marriage and the stand taken by these religions on inter-religious marriages.

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Abrahamic religions.6 Not much attention was paid to marriages between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions. Nor did early literatures on this topic look at the impact of inter-faith marriages on the domestic space as the main focus of study except viewing it in the context of issues it posed for the identity and upbringing of children in inter-faith marriages,7 or deal with it as a way of addressing parents’ anxiety toward their children’s stable and happy married life.8 As far as India is concerned, the studies on the situation of the inter-faith marriages are steadily on the increase9 and the works on inter-faith marriages almost doubled between 1981 and 2005.10 These works,11 however, do not discuss how religion plays out in the home space. One of the recent books, Inter-religious Marriages in India: Issues and Challenges,12contains three essays that discuss such challenges faced by inter-religious couples as religious identity of the children, family adaptability, and anxiety faced by the parents and children in 6

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Gianluca Parolin, “Interfaith Marriages and Muslim Communities in Scotland,” Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) 3 (2015): 83-96, accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/110597/1/Parolin%20 Interfaith%20Marriages.pdf. Donna E. Schaper, Raising Interreligious Children: Spiritual Orphans or Spiritual Heirs (New York: Crossword, 1999). Steven Carr Reuben, There’s an Easter Egg on Your Seder Plate: Surviving Your Child’s Interfaith Marriage (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2008). Early writing on this subject is: A.H. Jaisinghani et al. Intercommunal Marriage (Karachi: Bharat Print Press, 1931). But this book is out of print and rare to get. S. Goli, D. Singh and T. V. Sekher, “Exploring the Myth of Mixed Marriages in India: Evidence From a Nation-wide Survey,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 44, no 2 (2013): 193–206. A.A. An-Na’im, Inter-religious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005); Ansari, A. A. and M. Anjum. Inter-religion Marriages in Indian Society: Issues and Challenges (Delhi: LG Publishers Distributors, 2013); A. Gilbertson, “From Respect to Friendship? Companionate Marriage and Conjugal Power Negotiation in Middle-class Hyderabad,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 225–38; S. Grover, “Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love, and Kinship Support Amongst Poor Women in Delhi.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 43, no.1 (2009), 1–33; S. J. Jejeebhoy, K. G. Santhya, R. Acharya and R. Prakash, “Marriage related Decision-making and Young Women’s Marital Relations and Agency,” Asian Population Studies 9, no.1 (2013), 28–49; Ravinder Kaur and Rajni Palriwala, eds., Marrying in South Asia: Shifting Concepts, Changing Practices in a Globalizing World (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014); P. Mody, The Intimate State: Love-marriage and the Law in Delhi (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008); K. P. Pothen, “Inter-religious Marriages in Central India,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 4, no.2 (1974): 191–96. Vincent Sekar, ed., Inter-religious Marriages in India: Issues and Challenges (Bangalore: Claretian Publications, 2017),71-139.

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inter-religious households—some cases of which deal with the domestic space in passing, but do not focus upon the relationship between religion and domestic space per se. An exception to all of this is the article by Shweta Verma and Sukhramani13 which, based on the personal narratives of inter-faith and inter-caste couples in Dhanak, an organization for inter-caste and inter-faith couples, explores the ways in which such couples negotiate domestic space that is much more complex today. Along this line, this essay inquires into the domesticity of inter-faith marriages and stands out different from the above studies in that (a) It discusses the enabling and disabling potentialities of religion in the production of domestic space; (b) It takes into account the role of both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions through case study method; and (c) It seeks to unpack the role of women in the production of a creative, dynamic, and democratic domestic space.

The Universe and Method of Study This essay through case study method, inquires into the world of urban women who opted for inter-faith marriage. The universe of study is six women of inter-faith marriages: 1. A Muslim woman married to a Christian man (to be denoted by MCM, i.e. Muslim Christian marriage); 2. A Christian woman married to a Hindu man (to be denoted by CHM. i.e. Christian Hindu Marriage); 3. A Hindu woman married to a Christian man—an Anglo-Indian Catholic Christian (to be denoted by HCM1); 4. A Hindu woman married to a Christian man—an evangelical Christian converted to Christianity five years ago (to be denoted by HCM2); 5. A Christian woman married to a Jain man (to be denoted by CJM); and 6. A Hindu woman married to a Muslim man (HMM). All these women are all well educated, holding PG degree and above (three of them have a PhD degree) and they are in the age group of 25-40 years. Snow-ball sampling method was used to choose the cases and the data below was elicited through in-depth interviews with the check list of questions.

Women and Natal Homes The woman in the MCM comes from a somewhat liberal Islamic home wherein she and her siblings were not forced to do Islamic prayers five times a day but Friday namaz was mandatory. They had a strong foundation in Islamic beliefs and values like charity, hospitality, fear of God, and respect for the elders. Their father, an educated railway officer, laid emphasis on the education of children, both girls and boys. He also exposed them to other traditions by narrating stories from Hindu and Christian 13

Shweta Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith  Marriages  and Negotiated Spaces,” Society and Culture in South Asia 4, no. 1 (2018): 16-43.

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scriptures. The woman is married to a Catholic Christian whose religious background was then not known to her much except that she had seen them being regular for Sunday mass. Unlike the Muslim girl, the woman in CHM hails from a very strict conservative Protestant household wherein everything was black and white. The world around them was seen as either Christian or non-Christian. Hence, her marriage to a then agnostic boy from a God-denying Dravidian family background was received very negatively as a wedlock with a Hindu. Just like the boy in CHM, the woman in HCM1 also hails from a rather liberal Brahmin family wherein her father was a rationalist, who deemed religion as a personal affair; her mother was religious but not ritualistic and orthodox. The woman in HCM2 comes from a strong orthodox Hindu family, though she herself with her higher education is more open toward other religious traditions like Christianity. This Malayali Hindu woman faced stiff opposition to her marriage with a Tamil Christian boy, a recent convert to Pentecostal Christianity, though his parents are still Hindus. The woman in CJM came from a pious Catholic background but her parents were open to her marriage with an agnostic Jain boy, since he agreed to a marriage in a Catholic church and to bring up the children in the Christian faith. But the boy’s Svetambara Jain parents, though not that orthodox except that they pursued the tradition of eight full days of fasting and prayer for Mahavir Jayanthi (birthday of Mahavir), did not approve of his exogamous marriage with a Christian woman. The woman in HMM, like some others above, was also born in a Hindu family with a strong Dravidian background. Her Muslim husband was also not from an orthodox Muslim family. Being rather well educated in their respective caste communities as a lecturer (woman) and a civil engineer (man), they decided to do only a civil marriage. From the above description, it can be stated that most of the women have come from a family background which can be characterized as either liberal or moderate or rationalistic. Hence, these women were open minded, and fell in love with men who were also either moderate or liberal or agnostic in their religious orientation. Pre-Marriage Conversations in Inter-religious Marriages Inter-religious marriage between a man and a woman, like any other marriage, means becoming part of another person’s life. Becoming part of someone’s life in inter-faith marriages definitely includes accepting to become part of someone’s home, constructed differently in religious terms, which calls for some degree of change in the life of an individual, be it a male or a female. This means that, in a patriarchal society like India, the onus is more on the woman. When she is married off to a man, 136

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she acquires a new status not only as a man’s wife but also as a daughterin-law of his parents and their household of another faith tradition. In most cases, the female interlocutors of inter-religious marriages in the city of Chennai stated that in their decision to marry outside their fold, the question of religion did become a point of discussion between the spouses even before their marriage, just as their parents saw religion as a stumbling block to their marriage. As a result, the couple to marry had to openly discuss the role of religion in their lives, and more often than not, they decided to respect each other’s current religious status. As one interlocutor expressed it, “before marriage we agreed that we would respect each other’s religion. We will not force the other to convert or to do something the other does not like or is not convinced of.”14 In the case of the Hindu girl in HCM2, it was openly acknowledged that, even before marriage, there were some quarrels over religious belonging and beliefs. But a truce was arrived at when the boy told the girl before marriage, “I would not disturb you, you continue in Hinduism. But whenever you find time, you read the Bible.”15 The respect and freedom the boy gave to the girl in this case seemed to have instilled certain openness in the girl who is now tending toward Christianity. The Christian girl in CJM also said that religion was never a point of conflict with the boy who claimed himself to be an agnostic. The latter told her, “I am not forcing you into Jainism. Please do not force me into Christianity either,”16 even though he had to exit his parental home to marry this Christian girl, as his parents did not approve of his exogamous marriage. For the Brahmin woman in HCM1, once again marriage was not a point of disagreement since neither of them was ritualistic, and both considered religion as something personal and private. Hence, changeover to the boy’s religion (Christianity) did not become a condition for the marriage, though the Brahmin parents of the girl, in spite of being unorthodox, did not accept their daughter marrying into a Christian family. In the case of the Hindu girl in HMM, religion was not at all a point of debate and discussion, as she said, “for both of us, emmathamum sammatham. Mathha pattru illa anaal irai pattru undu (Any religion is acceptable. We do not have attachment to any religion but to God).”17 Being highly educated in their respective communities, the couple in HMM considered themselves liberal and progressive, and hence did not force religion upon one another. The girl in CHM stated that they were so madly in love with one another that they did not fully see through the complex decisions their marriage would entail in every step of their 14 15 16 17

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author July 10, 2017. The woman in HCM2, in discussion with the author, August 15, 2017. The couple in CJM, in discussion with the author, August 15, 2017. The woman in HMM, in discussion with the author, December 20, 2017.

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way, though they decided to respect each other’s religion at the time of marriage. Nuptials and Inter-Faith Marriages The key event through which a woman socially and publicly becomes part of a man’s home is the ceremony of nuptials. The wedding rite(s) that materializes after a process of conversations, negotiations, and compromises in an inter-religious marriage is itself somewhat indicative of the kind of domesticity the bride and her partner would encounter in the days to come. Of the inter-religious marriages studied in Chennai, though a civil marriage took place in almost all cases as noted elsewhere by An-Naim,18 Ansari and Anjum,19 Chopra and Punwani,20 the inter-religious couples invariably felt that a religious form of wedding was important to begin their domestic married life, which involved wedding rituals of at least one religious tradition in every case and of both the traditions in some cases. The interfaith married couples in Chennai also adopted a combination of different forms of marriage for “the purpose of seeking approval of families”21 as observed by Shweta Verma and Sukhramani and others like Ansari and Anjum22 and Mody23 in their study. For instance, in the case of a Muslim woman in MCM, there were three formats of wedding—civil, Christian, and Muslim, while the last one was on a very minor scale. “At home the Imam came and did Islamic prayers, then we signed the papers. That made my parents very happy too,”24 shared the Muslim interlocutor. For the Hindu woman in HCM2, the marriage was civil, Hindu, and Christian. Though the newly convert Christian boy was not fully convinced of Hindu wedding rites, yet in order to earn his parent’s goodwill and to become part of their household, he had a Hindu wedding in the morning, and for his satisfaction, a Christian wedding in the evening. For the couple in CHM, the primary marriage was in Christianity and 18

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A.A. An-Na’im, “Introduction,” in A.A. An-Na’im, ed., Inter-religious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005), 7–43. Ansari, A. A. and M. Anjum, Inter-religion Marriages in Indian Society: Issues and Challenges (Delhi: LG Publishers Distributors, 2013). R. Chopra and J. Punwani, “Discovering the Other, Discovering the Self: Interreligious Marriage Among Muslims in the Greater Bombay Area, India,” in Interreligious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community, ed. A. Abdullahi An-Na’im (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005), 45–162. Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith Marriages,” 27. Ansari, A.A. and M. Anjum, “Inter-religion Marriages.” P. Mody, The Intimate State: Love-marriage and the Law in Delhi (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008). The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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the subsequent ceremony was conducted according to Hindu tradition. Interestingly, in the case of the marriage between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man, the wedding took only one form, namely, a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act. Inter-religious marriages in some cases (either for the boy or the girl) meant an exile from one’s parental home. For instance, the Jain boy who wanted to marry a Catholic girl was estranged from his parents at the time of marriage. Hence, the wedlock took place in a Catholic church, though the boy remained an agnostic Jain. In a similar vein, the Hindu Brahmin woman married to a Catholic had to face a lot of heat from her parents and had to sever ties with her natal home. The wedding between them though, was held in the church while the woman remained a Hindu. In the case of Christian partners, though the inter-religious marriage took place in churches, except in one case, the religious other was given the freedom to continue in her or his religion. Even in one case where conversion to another religion took place, the boy told the girl “In your heart of hearts, you remain a Muslim and practice Islam; but for the sake of my parents and their social acceptability among their relatives, you become a Catholic.”25 Thus, conversion for the sake of social acceptance seems to be present in some cases of inter-religious marriage as noted also by Verma and Sukhramani.26 In the recounting of the events surrounding inter-faith weddings, the religious freedom enjoyed by the spouses dominated the conversation as a Jain man put it: “My wife gave me the freedom to convert or not to convert, though her parents wanted me to become a Christian. I did not want something forced upon me. I did not want God to become just an element in my marriage.”27 So too felt the Hindu woman in HCM1, “My husband believes ‘religion is a personal thing.’ Hence, it was not a point of conflict either at the time of marriage or later.”28 Thus, in most cases, the change of religion on the part of the woman was not a precondition to enter into wedlock with a man and to make a new home in urban Chennai. Transformations in Inter-religious Marriages to Become Part of a New Home The central issues in inter-religious marriages are the disparity of religious affiliation between the couple and, obviously, the conflict and resistance their proposed marriage would provoke in their respective families. Though the couples I conversed with were all invariably in favor 25 26 27 28

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017. Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith Marriages.” Page No. The Jain couple, in discussion with the author, August 15, 2017. The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017.

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of respecting the freedom of the spouse to remain in his or her natal religion, the very entry into an interreligious marriage meant some transformation or the other either in one’s religious identity, or dress code, or food habits as observed by Mody in the city of Delhi.29 Though such a transformation took place either voluntarily or involuntarily in varying degrees, it was certainly an attempt to become part of another home that was different from their natal homes in terms of religion and culture. The range of transformations that occurred in urban inter-religious marriages varied from more fundamental forms of change of religion to occasional wearing of tilak or burkha. Whatever form or name it took, the interlocutors I conversed with maintained that it was never done as a necessary pre-condition to marriage. Change was undertaken rather voluntarily, in most of the cases, to please the parents, the elders, and the social constituents of the spouse. As one of the interlocutors, the woman in MCM, described it, one’s change of religion was a social compromise, “for the sake of society i.e, the relatives, we both decided that I would convert. We both thought that our parents should not feel the heat from their relatives and siblings because of our marriage.”30 However, conversion was not easy for her, as she recalled, I was upset. In fact, I cried, as I was totally against giving up my religion and becoming Christian, and taking a Christian name “Graceline,” which was never put to use either by me or my in-laws. My husband said, in the heart of hearts you remain a Muslim, we will respect each other. We will not force each other into doing something which we will not like. But if it happens out of your own love, i.e, when you like somebody so much so that you feel like doing certain things for that person, it is okay. This is how I understand the transformations in my life especially in religious matters.31

For her, the official adoption of Catholic Christianity was not the negation of her natal religion of Islam but an addition of another layer of religion that does not contradict her original religion. She said, “My inter-religious marriage was possible because of Christianity. I feel both religions have many things in common. It was not very difficult for me to accept Christianity. I am a believer and a rationalist. Hence, becoming part of a Christian household was not very difficult. Probably I would not have said ‘yes’ to a Hindu man.”32 Becoming part of another religious household not only means change of religion but change in dress pattern and costumes. These 29 30 31 32

Mody, “The Intimate State,” 61-101, 111, 157 and 276. The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017. The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017. The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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transformations in dress and costumes, though superficial, had to be undergone for the sake of non-conflictual and peaceful ambience at home. For instance, the Hindu woman in HMM freely and voluntarily prefers to wear burkha when she visits her in-laws in their village. Unlike her, the Muslim woman in MCM was displeased when she was asked to give up certain habits, styles, and colors by her Christian in-laws. She said, Married Muslim women in India have black beads in the chain around the neck. That is the sign of being married. Though my husband’s family did get me one such chain, they did not like me using it. So I avoid using it. Covering the head is another thing which they associate with Islam. They do not like me covering the head, not even in the church as other Christian women do, nor even under the scorching heat of the sun. They do not like me either wearing sandals covering my toes. My in-laws associate all of that with Islam. Initially, I grudgingly conformed to their expectations to avoid unnecessary conflict at home. Now I do not conform to them very strictly.33

Similarly, the north Indian Christian girl in CHM also conformed to the so-called south Indian tradition of metti (toe ring) and thali (a pendant worn by married women in India) during her Hindu marriage ceremony. If inter-religious marriages make women to conform to the costumes and insignia of another religious tradition in order to belong to a new home, it has also provided space for some women to defy the traditional insignia thali in Indian culture. For instance, in the case of the Hindu woman in HCM1, marriage was held not by the tying of thali but with the exchange of rings. Similarly, in the marriage between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man too, the woman did not want thali to be tied by her husband. Instead, she had asked him to trace tilak on her forehead and fix metti to her toe privately. Both these women, groomed in feminism and women liberation, hold a strong view that the thali that man ties to his wife symbolizes women’s servitude to men in the institution of marriage. Thus, they were able to reject the prevalent Indian or the Hindu wedding ritual of “tying of thali,” thanks to their inter-religious marriages. However, it must also be noted that inter-religious marriages cannot be construed solely in terms of conformity to another tradition or non-conformity to one’s own tradition. Be it conformity or non-conformity on the part of the woman, it was never wholesale 100 percent. For instance, for the Muslim woman in MCM, her inter-faith marriage did not imply a total change over to the Catholic tradition, as she often avoided wearing “kumkum” like her mother-in-law except when she went to attend the relatives’ social function, and that too, not to cause embarrassment for the in-laws. Similarly, for the Hindu woman in MHM, while the Hindu tradition of thali was 33

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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rejected, metti as a sign of marriage was adopted. In a similar vein, the Hindu custom of metti is very dear to the Hindu woman in HCM1 just as the Christian wedding ring had to be broken and given up for a while as it was causing pain to her nerves. Similarly, both the Muslim woman married to a Christian, and the Christian woman married to a Hindu do not regard thali as sacrosanct, reflecting the changing and open-minded attitude of modern Indian women toward the traditional insignia like thali. Even when these women are liberated from some traditional notions of marriage, they want to be rooted in other aspects of their natal home such as language and culinary practices. For the Muslim woman in MCM, the initial years in her husband’s home were very alienating as her mother-in-law would frown upon her conversation with her mother in Urdu. And to satisfy her in-law, she would switch over to Tamil which was very uncomfortable for her at that point. For another couple, language became a source of conflict in a different way. For the Christian woman in CHM, her domestic space was a conflictual terrain in the initial years as her foster mother would ill-treat her husband because he was a stranger linguistically, culturally, and religiously. Thus, inter-religious marriages meant for some women a degree of alienation, brought about not only by the change of religious conversion, dress code or costumes but also by the linguistic ambience, different from those of one’s natal home. The feeling of alienation perhaps would be partially overcome in the case of the Muslim woman in MCM through some of her home culinary practices, which were liked and appreciated by her in-laws. She observes for instance, “food at my husband’s home was very plain and simple. No ginger, no garlic, no curd, no chapatti, no raitta, no pulavu, no sweets, etc. After my coming into their home, things have changed very much. They like my food. In terms of dietary practices, it is more of an Islamic home with meat balls, sweets, biryani, etc. After my marriage, pork was never cooked at my in-laws’ home. I cook beef at my home sometimes.”34 The change in dietary practices due to inter-religious marriage ranges from no change in food habits to accommodation and appreciation of another person’s customs. While in the case of a Muslim woman cited above, there was not only an appreciation of women’s tradition but rather a transformation in the domestic space of the Christian home, whereas in the case of a Brahmin woman in HCM1, there was no change in her dietary practices at home. As she put it: “my husband is an animal lover. So, I cook only vegetarian at home. But mine is not a Brahmin kitchen either. I always used lots of garlic even before marriage, and my mother, a traditional Brahmin woman, does not like it.”35 34 35

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017. The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017.

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There is also an element of accommodation and sacrifice when it comes to the question of dietary practices in inter-religious marriages. For instance, the Christian girl in CHM said, “In my home now there is no pork or beef that I used to take before marriage. I hate cooking. My husband cooks. My mother-in-law is a pure vegetarian. She cooks in the morning. We both cook chicken, mutton, or fish whenever we want. But during the period of religious observance of fasting either by my mother in-law or my husband, our house turns purely vegetarian.”36 In a similar vein, the Christian girl married to a Jain boy said that she likes to cook and eat Jain food, though she has not given up non-vegetarian food. During the eight days of fasting in view of Mahavir Jayanti, she keeps her home purely vegetarian. But for the sake of her baby, they want to do more vegetarian and Jain food at home. The Christian woman told me: “But we want to keep our baby vegetarian, as she is growing, so that she does not cry for non-vegetarian food when she goes to my in-laws’ Jain home, a vegetarian household. We want to avoid conflict for the baby. When she is fully grown, she will understand it better. At that time, we will introduce her to non-vegetarian food.”37 In the case of the Hindu woman married to a Muslim engineer, once again there is accommodation in dietary practices. Though she does not cook meat, she does cook fish and prawns to make him happy. But along with her husband, she also undertakes Islamic fasting. When she fasts during Ramadan, her mother’s family sends her food. She also learned to prepare some Islamic sweets to make her husband happy. Thus, accommodation, adjustment, sacrifice, and openness to embrace something new seem to underlie domestic dietary practices of inter-religious couples. Inter-religious Homes, Religious Beliefs and Practices Central to inter-religious domestic space are the questions of home religion, such as: What is the home religion of inter-religious couples? Whose religion defines the domesticity in terms of rituals, symbols, and icons? Would the women, who are universally accepted as home-makers, prevail over men in matters of religious beliefs and practices? Do they enjoy religious freedom to practice their parental religion or do they have to surrender theirs to become part of a patriarchal male household? Answers to the questions are varied and complex. The answer depends upon the persons, contexts, and issues that are involved at a given point of time in a particular family. What emerges clearly from the responses obtained in the study is that women do not remain mute spectators to the religious life either of their homes or of their partners or children. They are able 36 37

The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017. The Christian woman in CJM, in discussion with the author, August 15, 2017.

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to accept and practice, though very selectively, the religious traditions of their husband’s household. They very thoughtfully draw upon, blend and integrate beliefs and practices from more than one religious tradition. This blending was experienced by two women (HCM1 and HMM) as more harmonious. For these women, this blending took a very concrete form of inter-religious altar. For instance, in the case of Hindu Brahmin woman in HCM1, her home altar itself is inter-religious in character. She states: “We have a mixed altar at home. Gods from both traditions are there. During Christmas I offer ‘flowers’ to both gods.” I am comfortable with Christianity and particularly with Mother Mary. I see Mother Mary in Christianity as one of the important manifestations of Devi, the mother Goddess in Hinduism.”38 The inter-religious character of the home was surprisingly seen in the case of the woman in HMM who is ideologically rational but culturally Hindu. Being married to an educated and liberal Muslim man, she maintains an interreligious altar (see figure 8.1) and observes, “In my house I have a Hindu village goddess. I light lamp for her. I also have the picture of Jesus. For me any religion is acceptable. I do not have faith in religions but in gods.”39

Fig. 8.1 An Interreligious Altar

A neutral and rational attitude toward religion in general and toward one’s own in particular, on the part of one of the spouses makes the domestic space non-conflictual as reported in the case of the home between a Christian woman and a Jain man. According to the woman, her home is a Christian home with Mother Mary’s statues, stickers, and Bible verses found in her home. In this woman’s practice of Christianity, her Jain husband, who regards himself agnostic, joins in by holding hands together 38 39

The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017. The woman in HMM, in discussion with the author, December 20, 2017.

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with his wife to recite the Christian prayer of “Our Father in Heaven,” which for him is the most beautiful prayer of all religions. For another woman, a harmonious synthesis of her religion with that of her husband’s is more conceptual in terms of similarities of ideas and ideals. According to the Muslim woman in MCM, her Islam and her husband’s Christianity teach the same core values. For instance, she observes, “Both the religions impart the same moral values like ‘Speak truth always; Be good to your brother; Help one another; Believe in one God; Pray together as one family: Stay as one; Forgive others.’ The only difference is that they (Christians) follow it their way. We follow it our way. For instance, while sneezing, Christians say ‘God bless you’ and we say ‘Alhumdulillah.’”40 In term of religious symbolism, her home remains a Christian home, though her fulfillment of her natal Islamic religion’s obligations such as namaz and other practices is strictly a private affair. The Muslim woman’s construction of her Christian home’s domestic space is three-layered. The common spaces like the porch and the drawing room are neutral with no religious symbols of any kind whatsoever. The second layer that includes dining and the kitchen space is Christian. The Islamic element of the home is relegated to the private bedroom where her religion is safely quarantined but can be comfortably practiced. It exists but only in self-circumscribed form so that it does not mix with and contaminate the Christian character of the home—the topmost concern of her in-laws expressed time and again. The inter-religious character of the home in another case has remained unblended. The domestic space of the Christian woman in CHM remains dominantly Christian. She kept it purely and stubbornly Christian in the initial years of their wedlock. As the woman was a staunch Christian, the husband who was actually raised in rational Dravidian ideology began to explore his ancestral Hindu religious roots. During this period, he brought pictures of Hindu gods such as Hanuman and placed them in the wife’s Christian altar. The Christian woman objected to it and even tore the Hindu pictures on a couple of occasions. This did lead to domestic squabbles caused solely by religious matters. However, they arrived at a truce to let each other’s freedom be what it is and practice what one believes in. A new situation has risen recently with her mother-in-law having moved in to live with the couple, primarily to look after their baby girl. This pious Hindu mother-in-law is assigned a sacred space over the refrigerator to place her Hindu idols and do pooja. Thus, two religious sacred spaces have come to co-exist parallely in this inter-religious home. Looking back and reflecting upon the path of conflicts traversed in her inter-religious marriage, the woman now says, “Earlier I wanted him to 40

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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come to my way; he wanted me to go his way. Now we know that I cannot change him; he cannot change me. So, we now have come to accept the differences. We have moved from mere tolerance to mutual acceptance of differences in matters of religion. Respect is yet to come.”41 Domestic religion does not remain static in terms of altars, icons, and symbols. It is primarily a dynamic space punctuated by daily, occasional, or annual ritual events and religious practices. It is a sphere of ritual actions and religious/spiritual observances. The domestic religious practices in urban inter-faith homes are always drawn upon more than one religious tradition. The religious practices of women in inter-faith homes can be viewed at three levels. They are children-related, husband or in-laws related, and the personal religious life of the woman, all of which play out in the domestic sphere. A.

Child-Centered Religious Practices

The eclectic religious character of an inter-faith marriage that began already at the nuptial ceremony itself, in some cases, as described earlier, is further continued at the time of pregnancy and child-birth. For instance, when the Muslim woman was living in her in-laws’ Christian home during her first pregnancy, she would go to her bedroom and recite certain verses from Quran for her child’s wellbeing in the womb and for safe delivery, thereby making her husband’s home an inter-faith space. When she gave birth to a son, her parents whispered his Islamic name into his ears and called upon Allah to protect him, a typical Muslim custom, though he was baptized in the Catholic church. Likewise, when the Christian woman in CJM was pregnant, a Jain song was played so that the baby could hear it. Even when the baby girl was two months old, they used to play the music to stop her crying. Soon after the child was born, the Jain man gave his little daughter jaggery according to his Jain custom, while the girl’s parents traced cross on her forehead and blessed her. Similarly, the Hindu woman in HCM used to play both Christian magnificat and Hindu suprapatham music when she was pregnant then and even later, till today. By such customs and practices, domestic spaces have been steadily rendered by the women as the sites of inter-faith lived experiences. The very name given to the children, as we will discuss later, bears the inter-religious character of such a marriage. In almost all cases they chose a name that was very meaningful to the couple and agreeable to both the traditions so that their very names do not sound foreign to their respective religious communities. Further, the inter-faith ideas are carefully imparted by the mothers as the children grow up. Almost in all cases the mother sows the seeds 41

The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017.

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of both the faith traditions, though the interlocutors I met had decided to give the child one religious identity officially. For instance, the Hindu woman in HCM1 used to narrate stories of both the traditions to put her son to sleep. As an English professor, she has taught a course on “mysticism, spirituality, literature, and religion,”’ and she had learned some basics of Christianity that she imparted to her son while he was preparing privately for the holy communion. When she narrated the story of Moses from the Bible, her son was making connections to the story of Karuna in Mahabharata. She insists that her husband takes him for Sunday Mass and be raised in the Catholic tradition. Though her son is more comfortable with Catholicism, she exposes him to other religions as well. She said, “I will give him the freedom of religion. Children are more sensible than adults. I will give him all religions. Some are not comfortable in one religion. I, for one, am happy now because I crossed the boundaries of different religions. Similarly, my son is comfortable in both the traditions.”42 Just as she baptized him in the Christian tradition, she says, “Ideally, I will like to do the life cycle rituals for my son in both the traditions. But I hate upanayanam (sacred thread) ceremony practiced by my (Brahmin) community. For me, upanayanam is more of a gendered thing. Hence, we consciously avoided it. We did not allow that to enter into my family.”43 Likewise, the Muslim woman too has baptized her son in the Catholic faith, takes him to Sunday Mass every week, and has not only taught him all the Christian prayers but also ensures that he says those prayers everyday at home. But that has not prevented her from introducing her son to other traditions. She has given him bedtime stories from various faith traditions including Hinduism just as her father did to her. She has deliberately put their son in a Hindu management school wherein he has learned to recite slogans from the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads. They celebrate all major festivals not only of Christianity and Islam, their natal religions but also of Hinduism such as Deepavali and Karthikai. In fact, the ritual observances of Deepavali such as oil bath early in the morning and bursting of crackers etc., are something she had learned from her Christian in-laws’ house. Being a Muslim, she has also faithfully introduced her son to the Islamic way of life as well. She is strongly of the view that her son should not remain alien and indifferent when he visits her Muslim parents and participates in their religious festivals. Hence, training him in Islamic religious life is very important as she wants him to belong to both the households, the Catholic household of her in-laws and the Muslim household of her parents. For this reason, just as she has taught him Christian prayers, she has also taught him Islamic doctrines, 42 43

The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017. The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017.

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prayers, and practices. In doing all this for the children and her household, this Muslim woman has transformed her home into an inter-faith domestic space that bespeaks not only of Christianity and Islam, but of a multi-religious reality that makes her home a microcosm of the macrocosmic religious pluralism of India. B.

Household Religious Traditions of the Husband

The domestic religious culture of an inter-faith couple is not only shaped by the desire of these women to expose their children to different religious worlds. It is also dictated by their intention and efforts to accommodate the religio-cultural customs of their husbands’ families. For instance, the Christian woman’s accommodation of the religio-cultural practices of her Hindu husband’s family meant not only allowing her mother-inlaw to do pooja to the Hindu deities every day, but also making her home totally vegetarian when they fast during Navaratri or prior to undertaking pilgrimage to Sabarimala, a famous Hindu pilgrimage site in Kerala. Similarly, the Hindu woman married to a Muslim man also fasts during Ramadan and follows very strictly Islamic dietary restrictions to show her solidarity with her husband, even though he is physically away in Saudi Arabia on his job assignment. Likewise, the Christian woman married to a Jain man also observes along with her husband the nine-day fast for Mahavir Jayanti. In fact, it is the occasion of celebration of the Jain festival, Mahavir Jayanti, that has helped the couple to reconcile with the parents who became estranged from their son because of his decision to enter into an exogamous marriage with a Christian woman. As the Jain custom would have it, on the last day of fasting for Mahavir Jayanti, it is a common practice to seek pardon from the humans and others whom one has hurt. In accordance with this custom, the boy’s mother sent her son a mobile text message seeking pardon from him and his wife (the daughterin-law) in the very first year of their marriage, while in the second year she called them over the phone, asked pardon, and made reconciliation with them. Thus, religion in this case became a source of conflict resolution just as it was a cause of conflict, expulsion, and division at the time of their marriage. The religious accommodation of the Christian woman in CHM went beyond the domestic space and got displayed in other ritual contexts. For instance, she along with her husband performed the rituals of the dead for her father-in-law. She also went along with her husband and his family to visit their clan deity’s Hindu temple. Visiting the temples/shrines of gods and goddesses in accordance with the husband’s family tradition to perform the ritual of shaving the head or piercing the ears for the children, a common custom in India, is also widely seen among the inter-faith 148

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couples. In order to make their in-laws feel happy, welcome, and accepted in their home, the women would go the extra mile to accommodate the religious symbols, insignia, and beliefs of their husbands’ parental religions. The insertion of the cross made out of the Palm Sunday’s palm leaves into the door/window frames in the home of a Muslim woman in MCM and the installation of the pictures/idols of the Hindu deities in the home of a Christian woman in CHM are ways in which they conceded to the religious customs of their husbands’ families. The accommodation and hospitality offered by the Christian woman in CHM is received so well by the mother-in-law that she prefers to stay in the home of the Christian daughter-in-law as she is not satisfied with the Hindu homes of other sons who are married to her own brother’s daughters. “My mother-in-law is happy with us. She prefers to stay with us, feels more comfortable with me than with my co-sisters. I know what she wants and how to take care of her. That makes her, my husband, and me very happy. When she goes to her other sons’ houses, she is not happy with other daughters-in-law though they are her own brothers’ daughters.”44 It shows that this woman in CHM has gone the extra mile to make her mother-in-law happy. An outsider and a stranger, religiously and linguistically, makes her home much more hospitable than others. C.

Women’s Religion in the Domestic Sphere

Though urban Indian women have to constantly negotiate and reframe their domesticity to accommodate the religious beliefs and customs of their spouse’s family, they do not fail to invent a personal niche for themselves to practice their autonomous religious lives either. For instance, as we described earlier, the Muslim woman in MCM makes her Islamic prayers very privately, especially on Fridays in her bedroom where she keeps her prayer mat and the Quran, which she offers to her father too for his namaz when he visits her home. Likewise, she also observes full fasting for Ramadan and feeds the poor according to the Islamic custom. She also practices zakkat, alms-giving to the poor. She says, “I do not pressurize my husband. He says, ‘if you want to, give zakkat.’ We do this not necessarily during Ramadan but once a year in the church and on occasions like when he cleared a career promotion exam. We make it a point to do some donation every year, but not necessarily fitting into a period of Islamic religious practice. Giving to a church is not an issue. Since I was educated in a Christian institution, I know whatever I give is used for the right purpose. That makes me feel happy that I am practicing faithfully one of the five pillars of Islam.”45 It is to be noted that an Islamic act 44 45

The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017. The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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in its intention and content is fulfilled in a church. This definitely points to a woman’s creative negotiation of religious obligations in an inter-faith marriage wherein there is a convergence of religious customs from two different religious traditions. The fulfillment of religious obligations either inside or outside of an inter-religious home does give her a sense of religious satisfaction that leads to a more harmonious domestic space, according to my interlocutor. The women’s version of religion at the individual level includes personal belief in certain deities, objects, and practices that help them to create a new situation of making meaning, and finding peace and security in inter-faith marriages. For the Hindu woman in HCM1, it is belief in and prayer to goddesses—irrespective of religious affinity, call it Devi in Hinduism or Mother Mary in Christianity—that gives her solace to deal with the ups and downs of her life. In fact, she considers Mother Mary as an aspect of Devi whereby she has reimagined and integrated the Christian saint within her Hindu religious framework. Further, she often takes to the Hindu practice of lighting of the lamp to find calm and happiness in the midst of her busy life. She observes: “religion gives some security through some practices and rituals one holds on to. In my life, it is lighting the lamp. I do it very religiously. I do it in the morning or evening. Sometimes I light more than once. I also do meditation in the small garden where I grow flowers.”46 Celebration of Navaratri festival and making of kolu47 in her home is another religious activity that gives her enormous happiness. Interestingly, she came to appreciate the meaning of kolu through a Catholic priest. In one layer of kolu, she keeps Christian icons, thereby making the Hindu custom of kolu an inter-religious event. Likewise, she keeps drawing various forms of kolam48 within the crib, thus making it an inter-cultural or inter-faith space. For the Muslim woman in MCM, it is listening to the recitation of the Quran in her mobile while travelling in her car that gives her peace of mind. For the Christian woman in CJM, it is holding hands with her husband, and praying together to God that gives her happiness. Being in an inter-religious marriage has actually helped the women and their spouses to understand their own religion better and sometimes in a personalized way. Faced with the reality of another religious belief and practice in their lives, the women were able to differentiate and appreciate the values of their own religion better. For instance, for the Muslim 46 47

48

The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017. Kolu is the decorative display of dolls and figures in an altar during Navaratri festival, a custom mostly found among women in south India. Kolam is a form of drawing that is drawn by using rice flour/white rock powder in various colors in front of homes, very popular among the people from south India. It is a south Indian women’s art form, practiced mostly among the Hindus.

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woman in MCM offering charity to the poor in her Muslim home was practiced very differently from that in her husband’s Christian home as she notes, “Feeding others, especially the poor, in the name of God (Allah) comes first. We cook a big quantity of food happily and feed the poor. My husband thinks I am suffering when I cook to feed the poor. As a Muslim, it is a matter of great joy to do cooking for others. Similarly, we give a portion of the food to others first and we eat next. For my husband’s family, it is just the opposite. They eat first and give the rest to the poor. Similarly, when we gave clothes to the poor for charity, my parents used to buy the same dress for us and for the poor children. When I buy the same saree for my maid and myself, my husband does not like it much. But now he has come to accept it. The practice of egalitarianism in Islam even in charity is something I have come to appreciate, thanks to inter-religious marriage.”49 Similarly, for the Christian woman in CHM, it was she and her ardent practice of Christianity that triggered her husband to explore his Hindu religious roots who was otherwise an agnostic and a rationalist, like his father, a staunch follower of Dravidian ideology. Vice versa, it is his questioning of certain aspects in Christianity that made her learn about her Catholicism more deeply.

Conflicts, Conversations and Merits in Inter-religious Marriages The institution of inter-faith families, like other families and marriages, is not without its own share of conflicts, concerns, and differences of views. Conflicts and differences do not render the inter-faith couples helpless and passive. Nor do they result in a prolonged impasse and stalemate in their married life. Instead, they produce not only conversations and exchange of views between a woman and a man, but a better understanding of and sensitivity toward the religious other and his/her traditions. The inevitable conversation that begins in inter-religious marriages even before marriage over marriage rites, conversion etc., as seen earlier, continues to develop its own trajectory all through a couple’s married life. One such occasion that led invariably all the inter-faith couples to a process of consultation, discussion, and decision-making was the naming of the children. Though the child was officially conferred the religious identity of the father (except in the case of Christian women whose marriage with non-Christian partners in the church mandated that the children be baptized and raised in the Christian faith), the name they opted for was a common name very carefully chosen to make it acceptable to both the parents. For instance, the Muslim-Christian couple chose Raphael for their son and Sophia for the daughter, names that were common to both Christians and Muslims. 49

The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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Similarly, the Christian and Jain couple named their daughter Mia, agreeable to both the parents, and the Christian and Hindu couple chose for their daughter the name Sana which means “luster” and “long lasting” for the Hindu in-laws, while it stood for “Hosanna” (meaning “praise be to God”) for the Christian side. One Hindu-Christian couple named their son Nithin, while another couple named their son, Neil Bernard. The latter case is paradoxical in that while the Hindu woman chose a Christian name “Bernard” for her son, given her appreciation for Saint Bernard for his devotion to Mother Mary, the Catholic husband chose the name Neil in consultation with a Hindu astrologer who suggested choosing a name that begins with the letter “N.” The next occasion that generated some discussion and deliberation between the couples was the schooling of the children. Unlike other Indian parents who look for a school that ensures high academic achievements, these couples seem to have a different set of priorities. The decision they make as regards the school is dependent upon what kind of religious and social identity they want their children to obtain as they grow up. Here again, the woman in HCM1 was of the view that she and her husband made a deliberate choice to place their son in a school that is religiously neutral, a school that does not ask for (rather prohibits the revealing of ) background information of the students such as religion, caste or class. The Muslim-Christian couple chose to send their son to a Hindu school in line with their decision before marriage to expose their children to different faith traditions, though they officially placed them in Catholicism through Baptism. The other three couples, whose children are very small, are of the view that they would prefer to put their children in Christian schools for discipline and Christian values. All these inter-faith couples have extensively discussed with each other about their children’s religious belonging. To a question about the principle they follow for their children’s religion, every one of them said that they would raise children in one faith, expose them to both religious faiths with all respect to the differences of each tradition when they are small, and give them the independence to decide their religious paths when they grow up. Interestingly, no couple chose the option of either consciously keeping them religiously neutral till they become adults or bringing them up religion-less. Thus, the policy that the inter-faith couples evolved as regards children’s religion seems to have determined to which school they would send their children as we saw in the case of the couples in MCM and HCM1. Conflicts and differences of opinion are acute when both the partners are firmly rooted in their faith traditions, while they are less intense and easily manageable when one of the partners is either liberal or agnostic. Conflicts are often bound to happen when parents of both partners are 152

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brought together at the same time in an inter-faith home. Hence, the woman in MCM told me that she and her husband would, to the extent possible, avoid inviting home the parents of both at the same time. However, when some common occasions like birthday or housewarming make them come together, they often faced some conflict. One such occasion was the housewarming ceremony during which the Christian inlaws who came late started simultaneous Christian rituals in another spot within the same hall wherein the Muslim parents were already reciting in one corner some Quranic verses to seek God’s blessing over the new home. Not all differences in inter-faith marriages are solved through a process of conversation and dialogue. When the in-laws disrespect the religious and cultural differences of the woman, or when deep misunderstandings occur between the couple, it is belief in one’s God or prayer to the husband’s God that carries them through the situations of crisis. As one woman put it, “At one point I wanted to break up with my Hindu husband, but it is the promise that I gave in the church that firmly put me back in my inter-faith marriage.”50 Likewise, we have discussed earlier how the Jain practice of seeking pardon on the occasion of Mahavir Jayanti helped the couple in CJM to reconcile with the boy’s parents. Thus, just as religion in inter-faith marriage is at times a point of conflict either between the spouses or between the woman and the in-laws or the man and his parents, it does help to resolve the issue at hand by drawing upon the core values and practices found in the given religious tradition. In comparison to single religious marriages, inter-faith marriages do provide more opportunities for communication between the spouses to understand different viewpoints, respect differences, and solve problems. Encounter of differences in inter-faith marriages has not only led to conversations between partners, but has also helped the women to develop core values of life as one of the interlocutors opined: “Inter-religious marriage has increased my patience and tolerance. Now I know that there are others who are different from me in what they feel, what they think and live. As a result, I have learned core human values of respecting differences and accepting the other persons as they are. If it is the same religious marriage, no such occasions would have risen. In that sense, inter-religious marriage has made me a better human being.”51 But for another woman, inter-faith marriage has done well to switch from tolerance of differences to acceptance of differences. The Christian woman in CHM described it thus: “Inter-faith marriage has led me from tolerance to mutual acceptance. Earlier I wanted him to come my way; he wanted me to go his 50 51

The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017. The woman in MCM, in discussion with the author, July 10, 2017.

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[128.104.46.206] Project MUSE (2024-02-29 23:24 GMT) UW-Madison Libraries

way. Now we know that I cannot change him; He cannot change me. So, we now have come to accept the differences but respect is yet to come.”52 She further added “As a human being, I would not have had the scope of developing my humanness, if I had married the person of my religious background; everything would have been the same. Now I have learned, though not without pain, the core human values of tolerance, acceptance of differences and understanding the other without biases and prior judgements. I would have had the truth neatly packaged and unambiguously delivered to me in a single religious marriage. As a result, I would not have had the option of looking beyond the tradition.”53 On similar lines spoke the Hindu woman in HCM1: When you are following only one religion, you tend to defend it and justify it when others ask questions about it. You are not critical enough of your tradition; But straddling between two religions in inter-religious marriages, you can look at your own tradition more critically and also of others. For instance, Mother Mary with a child is something that connected me to Christianity. When people say Mother Mary was a docile woman, I would say “not on my life.” She is extremely thoughtful. From Mother Mary, I have learned that I have to let go of “my son.” He is not sure if he wants me or not as he is growing. If I were to be in a single-religious marriage, I would not have been happier; somewhere the pressure would come. I do not want people to put pressure on me. My husband is extremely kind toward me, because I come from another tradition and background.54

For the Christian girl in CJM, the merit of inter-faith marriage is very simple and plain: “Many confuse religion with culture. Inter-faith marriage has helped me to distinguish between religion and culture. Many religious things are cultural. I have that clarity now thanks to inter-religious marriage. Hence, there is no conflict. I like the Jain way of eating, dressing, and living which does not interfere with my Christianity.”55 What makes inter-faith marriages different and unique is that the lack of a roadmap for a family life provided by a single religious worldview necessarily renders inter-faith families a site of conversation. The case studies indicate that women with the higher level of education tend to be better conversation partners and negotiators as noted also by AnNaim,56 and Verma and Sukhramani.57 Faced with two different sets of beliefs, practices, norms, and ideas stemming from two different religious 52 53 54 55 56 57

The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017. The woman in CHM, in discussion with the author, September 20, 2017. The woman in HCM1, in discussion with the author, December 15, 2017. The Christian woman in CJM in discussion with the author, August 15, 2017. An-Naim, “Inter-religious Marriages Among Muslim.” Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith Marriages.”

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traditions and worldviews, the couple in inter-faith marriages cannot but talk to and listen to each other, accept the differences, analyze the issues for their merits and demerits, and arrive at a consensus to find peace in the domestic space so as to make their inter-faith marriage work. In the process, the men and women in question are ready to forego one’s own stand-point and embrace the other’s views and practices, thereby rendering inter-faith marriages a democratic space. The roadmap to involve religion in home-making is clear in arranged marriages, whereas the role of religion in inter-religious homes is not at all clear as seen in the case studies described in this essay. This provides room for a creative mix of beliefs and practices from different religious traditions. It also seems to be the case that inter-religious marriages make home a democratic space, that is otherwise male-dominated in Indian societies. The active role of educated women in this regard is well recorded in this study. The narratives above confirm the findings of Jejeebhoy et al. in their study on58 women across six states in India, and Verma and Sukhramani’s study that notes “women in semi-arranged or self-arranged marriages (as compared to family arranged marriages) had higher level of communication with their husbands and were more likely to report agency”59 in decision-making. No doubt the conversations and communications between the inter-faith couples have transformed the age-old vertical and hierarchical relationship between husband and wife in Indian families into more of a horizontal and equal relationship as noted by also Gilbertson,60 and Verma and Sukhramani.61 But unlike their studies that suggest that responsibility for balance and compromise lies more with women, the stories of women in this study accord equal responsibility to men in compromising and maintaining peace.

Agency of Women in Interfaith Marriages: Concluding Remarks The above narratives of the urban women in inter-faith marriages in the city of Chennai strongly point to the role of educated women’s agency in making the inter-faith marriages a success story. Given the fact that contemporary literature on women’s agency is very vast, the final section, due to lack of space, only briefly discusses it with the help of earlier studies done on women’s agency in India. Thapan in her book entitled, Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India, notes that Indian women construct their agency through “twin processes 58 59 60 61

Jejeebhoy et al. “Marriage related Decision-making,” Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith Marriages,” 28. Gilbertson, “From Respect to Friendship?” 225-238. Verma and Sukhramani, “Interfaith Marriages. 16-43

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of their everyday lives, namely, compliance and resistance, submission and rebellion as they assert themselves and their identities.”62 The works of Jejeebhoy et al. and of Verma and Sukhramani cited earlier have highlighted how the agency of women is perceived to be more in self-arranged or inter-faith marriages. Their studies point to compliance or submission in matters such as nuptials, while they have detected resistance in women’s efforts to protect their identity in terms of their religion and exposure of children to both faiths instead of following only one faith—that of the father. The seven stories of women’s inter-faith marriages in Chennai, four from Abrahamic faith and three from Hindu faith, unravel further nuances in the agency of educated women. This is not to deny the role of submission to the faith of their husbands in some way or other but this was done more deliberately and strategically to avoid conflict and win domestic acceptance. However, such a decision was not that easy but rather painful in the beginning for two women—interestingly both from Abrahamic religions, one Muslim woman in MCM and another Christian woman in CHM. While readiness to belong to another faith home and accept another religious tradition sprang forth a lot more easily and spontaneously for the Hindu women, it was a bit of a struggle and more of a compromise for the women from Abrahamic religions. Is this strain found to be more on the part of all women from Abrahamic faiths? Do they stem from the institutionalized character and the closed nature of Abrahamic religions? These are questions for further research on inter-faith marriages in India. All seven women reveal their agency in matters of faith such as their personal religion and that of their children in varying ways and degrees. Except the woman in CHM who showed resistance and a bit of rebellion, all others have consistently displayed their agency, not through resistance, but through conversation and consensus. Even this one woman later realized that domestic peace can be brought about not through confrontation and resistance, but through dialogue, openness, and acceptance of differences as mentioned earlier. Given the fact that most of the men in inter-faith marriages are either agnostic, disinterested, or neutral in religious matters, the urban women invariably entered into conversation with their male partners on a variety of religion-involving situations and issues in order to make their homes religious and their lives more open, inclusive and harmonious. They treaded this path of dialogue both to gain acceptance from their in-laws and their parents (and the elders, and relatives from both the sides), and to implant their children in one particular religious tradition so that they are not deprived of God and a value-system as they grow up. Their proactive role in making their home an inter-faith 62

M. Thapan, Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India ( New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2009), 170.

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space is also significant in that it is these women who showed more interest in creatively blending practices and symbols from both the traditions to make their domestic space more open, diverse, and welcoming. In this context, it is heartening to note that the women interlocutors from Chennai felt that an inter-faith marriage is more of a boon than a bane as it makes it possible for them to carve out a personal space for themselves and to be more dialogical, dynamic, open, creative, and accommodative.

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References An-Na’im, A.A., ed. Inter-religious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community. New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005. Ansari, A.A. and M. Anjum. Inter-religion Marriages in Indian Society: Issues and Challenges. Delhi: LG Publishers Distributors, 2013. Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Roman Catholic Relations. Marriages between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. London: S.P.C.K., 1972. Berman, Louis A. Jews and Intermarriage: A Study in Personality and Culture. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1968. Besanceney, P. H. Interfaith Marriages: Who and Why. New Haven: College and University Press, 1970. Chopra, R. and J. Punwani. “Discovering the Other, Discovering the Self: Inter-religious Marriage Among Muslims in the Greater Bombay Area, India.” In Inter-religious Marriages Among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Social Identity in Family and Community, edited by A. Abdullahi A-Na’im, 45–162. New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005. de Sola Pool, David. Intermarriage. New York: Jewish Welfare Board, 1958. Gilbertson, A. “From Respect to Friendship? Companionate Marriage and Conjugal Power Negotiation in Middle-class Hyderabad.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 225–38. Grover, S. “Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love, and Kinship Support Amongst Poor Women in Delhi.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 43, no.1 (2009): 1–33. Jaisinghani A.H. et al. Inter-communal Marriage. Karachi: Bharat Print Press, 1931. Jejeebhoy, S. J., K. G. Santhya, R. Acharya and R. Prakash. “Marriage related Decision-making and Young Women’s Marital Relations and Agency. Asian Population Studies 9, no.1 (2013): 28–49. Kaur, Ravinder and Rajni Palriwala, eds. Marrying in South Asia: Shifting Concepts, Changing Practices in a Globalizing World. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014. Kirshenbaun, David. Mixed Marriage and the Jewish Future. New York: Bloch Pub. Co., 1958. McCarthy, Kate. Interfaith  Encounters  in  America. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Mody, P. The Intimate State: Love-marriage and the Law in Delhi. New Delhi: Routledge, 2008. 158

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Parolin, Gianluca. “Interfaith Marriages and Muslim Communities in Scotland: A Hybrid Legal Solution?” Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) 3, (2015): 83-96, accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/110597/1/Parolin%20 Interfaith%20Marriages.pdf. Pergola, Della S. Jewish and Mixed Marriages in Milan, 1901-1968. Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972. Petersen, Larry R. “Interfaith Marriage and Religious Commitment among Catholics,” Journal of Marriage and Family 48, no. 4 (1986): 725-735. Pothen, K. P. “Inter-religious Marriages in Central India.” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 4, no.2 (1974): 191–96. Reuben, Steven Carr. There’s an Easter Egg on Your Seder Plate: Surviving Your Child’s Interfaith Marriage. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2008. Schaper, Donna E. Raising Interreligious Children: Spiritual Orphans or Spiritual Heirs. New York: Crossword, 1999. Sekar, Vincent, ed. Inter-religious Marriages in India: Issues and Challenges. Bangalore: Claretian Publications, 2017. Singh, Goli, S., D. and T. V. Sekher. “Exploring the Myth of Mixed Marriages in India: Evidence From a Nation-wide Survey.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 44, no .2 (2013): 193–206. Swidler, Arlene Anderson, ed. Among the Religions of the World. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Thapan, M. Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2009. Verma, Shweta and Sukhramani, “Interfaith  Marriages  and Negotiated Spaces.” Society and Culture in South Asia 4, no. 1 (2018): 16-43.

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WOMEN AND THE “BRATAS”: THE PRACTICE OF VOWS AMONG RURAL WOMEN IN BENGAL Trayee Sinha Brata: An Introduction On the general topic of bratas (also called vratas or vratams in Sanskrit), the god Brahma states to the sage Vyasa in the Garuda Purana: O Vyasa, hear me discourse on the mode of performing a variety of bratas which can win the good graces of the god Hari, who blesses the performer with all his cherished boons in return. A vratam signifies an act of living in conformity with the rules of conduct and self control as laid down in the Sastras. The vratam is but another name for penance (tapasya). A vrati (performer of vratam) is under the obligation of observing specific rules of conduct and self control.1

The world is a place of cultural diversity. Every culture has its own rituals and customs. Such rituals and customs vary according to time, place, religion, and even climate. The eternal cycle of seasons creates diversity in the rituals and festivals of every place. The rituals and festivals have become the part and parcel of the culture in every region. Be it the Nabanna utsav of the Bengalis or Bihu festival of the Assamese—a range of varieties are seen everywhere. All the festivals and rituals are more or less related to certain gods and goddesses. One of such rituals popular among women in Bengal is brata, which means vow. In her famous work, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives, June McDaniel defines brata as “A brata is a vow or promise, usually to a deity, associated with a ritual practice. It is generally performed in order to gain some goal—a husband, a happy family with many sons, wealth, a job or recovery from disease 1

June McDaniel, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 100.

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or disaster.”2 The present essay attempts to show how the bratas are inextricably linked to the domestic life of a woman and how observation of such bratas develops their agency. What is Brata? Bratas occupy a significant space in the culture of Bengal. P.V. Kane, like the other brata analysts, tried to trace the origin of bratas. According to him, the term “brata” comes from the tracks or routes that stars and planets trace in the heavens. They are “commands or ordinances, religious or moral practices, or worship and vows” as well as “religious practices or modes of sacred worship.” The term “brata” is found in the Rig Veda, in Dharmaśāstra texts, and in the Purāṇās and histories.3 The medieval Puranas emphasized the access of all people to brata rituals. Bratas were simpler, easier, and less expensive than Vedic sacrifices and they did not always require a priest. Many bratas have come from the Dravidians. For example, we can point out that the concept of goddess Manasa has come from Dravidians (Manchamma-Manasa). Mary McGee, in Bratas, Fasting, Feasting: The Vrata Tradition and its Significance for Hindu Women, has noted that women see the rites as obligatory to dharma rather than optional and that they contribute to saubhagya (fortune). She calls bratas “the primary vehicle available to women to the organized pursuit of religious duties and aims.”4 There are folk bratas handed down by oral tradition and performed by village women, asking various local deities for blessings, and there are more formal bratas, which are based on classical, brahminical Indian religious literature, the Vedas, the Purāṇās, and the Dharmaśāstras. Folk bratas are performed by women of all ages. Susan Wadley, an anthropologist, notes that bratas are a part of women’s obligations or strī-dharma in mainstream Hinduism. Brata is very much the ritual performed by women. It is significant to note that bratas focus primarily on two areas—nature and morality. It is also quite interesting to note that bratas involve a collective sense. A brata rite to be specially called as such must be observed collectively by people having the same emotions and feelings. When a girl observes a rite for the growth of paddy or for rain, she observes it not for herself; but the common desires

2 3

4

McDaniel, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives, 29. Kane in History of Dharmashastras (1930-1962) as cited in McDaniel, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives, 40. Mary McGee, “Bratas, Fasting, Feasting: The Vrata Tradition and its Significance for Hindu Women” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1987), 35.

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of the community find expression in the rites she observes. These brata rites are actually observed for collective social prosperity.5 Among the earlier studies on the bratas, Abanindranath Tagore’s Banglar Brata is worthy to be mentioned. J.M. Chatterjee’s Alpana: Ritual Decoration in Bengal (1948) discusses a few bratas. Dr. S.R. Das is one of the early explorers of folk religion of Bengal in his various works. Among them, Folk Religion of Bengal Part I, Folk Ritual Drawings of Bengal: A Study in Origins and Folk Religious Rites, furnishes more valuable information on the history of bratas. Krishnendu Chaki has also contributed lots of resources about bratas in his publication of Bratakatha. Regarding the sociological significance of the bratas, one can find that the bratas work as a mode of recreation in the domestic drudgery of women. On the one hand, women construct domesticity and bratas are a constituent part of it. It also provides them opportunity to build up their agencies. They could develop their skills in painting the alpanas, singing the songs related to the bratas, dance, and also the art of recitation. The chanting of the bratas follows a particular rhythm and through repeated practice, women acquire efficiency in such skills. In addition to this, women’s desire to listen to stories is also fulfilled through the bratas because most of the bratas have some verse that narrates stories related to the gods and goddesses; similar to mantras in the brahminical tradition. Different Kinds of Bratas Before going into the specific kinds of bratas, I would like to concentrate on the general classification of bratas. The history of bratas involves different traditions. Brata rites have been occupying a greater part of the religious life of the womenfolk in Bengal. A brata, sometimes based on sympathetic magic, is a special type of worship mostly performed by womenfolk for invoking the blessings of either supernatural powers or various deities to secure happiness of the individual, the family, and the community.6 It is a domestic form of religion having no connection with temple worship. The bratas are handed down from generation to generation. Each brata has got its individuality having the alpana, the spells or chharas (verse), and katha (story) or history that glorifies either the deity or the supernatural powers. The bratas that are the most popular among all folk rituals and in essence non-Aryan in character, had their origins in two fundamental instincts of human life—to live peacefully and to procreate. In many cases, 5

6

Shila Basak, Banglar Brataparban (Kolkata: Pustak Biponi, 1998), 214; 1405 is the Bengali year. Now, it is the Bengali year 1422. As noted by James Fraser in Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1957), 58.

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stories related to the bratas have no connection with the purposes of the observances maintained. It is believed that barren women and mothers of short-lived children would be blessed with offspring or long-living children respectively as a result of observances of the bratas of procreation. Similarly, the women of Bengal observe the bratas with the hope of being blessed with a happy marital life. To increase the fertility of women and to fulfill womanhood in cases of young women, many bratas had their origins in Bengal. Among the provinces of eastern India, i.e. Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam; Bengal offers an interesting study of bratas because Bengal is the only province of the Indo-Bangladesh subcontinent whose varieties of bratas, both customary and satiric, were being observed throughout the year. Customary in the sense of those bratas being mandatory rituals and satiric in the sense of observing those bratas without any specific purpose, a brata was just a ritual to be performed. The bratas are roughly divided into different categories depending on the purpose they serve. Such bratas include: 1. Bratas associated with agriculture and fertility of the soil. 2. Rain-compelling bratas. 3. Bratas associated with human fertility. 4. Disease curing bratas. 5. Miscellaneous bratas. Origin of Bratas Dr. M.S. Randhawa remarks that “in spirit and content, the bratas are the magico-religious rites performed by womenfolk in Bengal for invoking the blessings of various deities to secure domestic happiness and welfare of dear ones.”7 Bratas’ antiquity may be traced back to the medieval period. It is strongly believed by a host of scholars that most of the bratas are basically non-Aryan in origin and a good number of them have later on, been absorbed into and assimilated with brahminical Hinduism. It is observed by Tapan Mohan Chatterjee that the bratas, although they were celebrated since ancient times, have come down to us only in fragments. We see in these bratas a true picture of the woman’s heart—her desires, fantasies, and imaginations—a great worship of life unlike the dead ceremonial worship alleged to be based on the scriptures. Dr. S.R. Das believes that two ideas—worship of the ancestors, and worship of the Mother-Goddess—have been merged in these bratas and that one of the mother-goddesses depicted during Bengali bratas could 7

As cited in McDaniel, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives, 126.

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be compared with the Cretan Mother-Goddess. This resemblance indicates the origin of brata-like rituals in the pre-historic past among agricultural communities. It is also important to note that by observing vows or bratas, we can identify the self-reliance and individuality of a woman. With the advent of Brahminism, all the rituals are performed by the male Brahmins, the role of women are mere suppliers of the ingredients of those pūjas and rituals. Therefore, through the celebration of bratas, women try to build up their identity and their own agency. Regarding the mantras, there are no such strict ones; more concentration is upon the chharas (rhymes) that form part of women’s domesticity. The chharas include their activities related to daily life. It is also noted that bratas directly or indirectly signify some supernatural forces that may not be visible to everyone but is accepted by those who believe in these things. The verses are explored through elaborate and colloquial language and especially the womenfolk practice it. Finally, women’s active participation in the brata rites makes them the active agents of such rituals. The bratas in every culture involve some goddesses. Among them some are closer to folk religion, some to brahminical Hinduism, while some focus on distant goddesses and some on human women. Bratas in Bengal and Female Agency One can note that there is more or less at least one brata to be observed in each month of the year among the people living anywhere in Bengal. West Bengal is not an exception to this. Beginning from the Bengali month of Baisakh till the last month called Chaitra, there are many bratas observed and celebrated by the women of Bengal. Prithibi Brata is one such brata that begins from the last Bengali month Chaitra and continues till the end of Baisakh. The main reason to celebrate this brata is to protect the earth (Prithibi) from natural calamities and to pray for a happy life. Basudhara (another name of earth) brata is celebrated for rain. Another example can be cited from Abanindranath Tagore’s famous book, Banglar Brata, about the whichle community of America where similar rituals were performed to pray for the rain. If we try to find a connection between the celebration of such bratas and women’s agency, we see that the women are observing this brata for rain which is the source of water. Women who are sources of human life display their agency in performing these bratas for rain, the source of water which in turn is the source of life for all living beings in the cosmos. Female agency in the performance of the bratas is displayed more by non-Brahmin women than by the urban and Brahmin women. In folk bratas, it is the older women who speak to the young women of the village 165

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and tell them the stories. In the more brahminical traditions, we have pundits or male scholars, who recite the story to upper-class women and perform pūja with Sanskrit mantras. In the rural settings, non-Brahmin women build ponds, making the dolls, and organizing ritual pitchers; in the urban areas, high-caste women tend to be more passive and the priest performs most of the ritual action. The first thing about observing the bratas is to eternalize the blessings of the deities. Unchangeability is the main force behind it. These bratas show the tenacity of women through fasting and other such trials. The Magh Mandal Brata and the Itu Brata are popular ways of sun worship. The sun is believed to be associated with the fertility of the soil, so the sun god Surya or the sun is worshipped both for the fertility of the soil and for offspring. Specifically analyzing the significance of this brata, one can find that women always think about their family, their offspring, thus inextricably linking their bratas with their domesticity. Punyipkur brata is believed to be observed for the preservation of water in nature. This brata is performed in the month of Baisakh, during the summer season. It is a brata to pray to the god so that the ponds are not dried up during summer and the plants may not die. Making a miniature pond is the main activity of the brata rite here. A miniature pond is made, then a twig of a tree is placed in the pond and it is filled with water. Then a verse is recited by spreading flowers in the water. Satyajit Ray’s famous film called Pather Panchali offers an example of the observation of Punyipukur brata. The character Durga performs the Punyipukur brata. Kneeling outside her home, she digs a hole in the ground and places a branch inside, before offering flowers and invoking the rains and a divine blessing for a good husband: “Holy pond, flower garland, who prays here at noon? I am the pure maiden, Leelavati, the sister of my brother… Mother Goddess, teach me. I know not how to pray. May I give my husband a son. May I die by the Ganges. Oh, Haro of Parvati…May I always be pure.” The scenes that follow are of water of a pond being rippled by the wind and a prairie of lotuses swaying under a downpour. Adorshinghasan brata is observed from the end of chaitra and it lasts till the entire baisakh. Adore means love. This brata is mainly taken with the wish to be the husband’s beloved forever. In this brata, a woman who is loved by her husband is attended by the other women of her community so that they would offer food and accessories and support her to be beloved by their husbands. Such a brata has greater significance in the construction of women’s domesticity because healthy and wealthy domesticity is built with love and affection. Women who perform the bratas try to bring both health and wealth by their offering to the gods and goddesses. In order to get a peaceful domestic life, women need their husband’s 166

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love and appreciation. Therefore, such a brata is observed by women in rural Bengal. Maa Shashti brata is one of the significant bratas, especially for the construction of domesticity because without the well-being of their offspring, woman cannot even imagine their family. This brata is observed by a large number of women. Shashti is the goddess of fertility, one who protects children from evil means. Therefore, all the mothers take the vow of the goddess Shasthi to protect their children from the evil forces. In the Bengali month of Jaishtha, this brata is celebrated. They try to satisfy the goddess by fasting. It is important to note that many bratas have fasting rituals. Bhaduli brata is observed for the well-being of the relatives of a woman. The relative may either have gone abroad for business purposes and that also mainly by voyage. It is a brata that signifies a prayer of the women for the safety and security of either their husband or father or brother—but, more significantly it is a man who used to go for such voyages. From the name of the Bengali month Bhadra, the brata is known as Bhaduli brata. There are different unforeseen dangers in a voyage such as heavy downpour, drowning of the boat or it may also be dacoits. The celebration of this brata includes the drawing of the image of the god Bhaduli, two people carrying umbrellas over their heads, a pair of boats, and the image of some ferocious beasts are also drawn to signify the unforeseen dangers created by them. It is the prayer of the women so that their relatives may successfully end the journey and safely come back home. Such a wish of the happiness of the entire family forms the part and parcel of women’s domesticity because women’s role playing is primarily related to the constructing of domesticity through the wish for a wealthy and healthy family. Senjuti brata is one of the bratas significant for women’s peaceful domestic life. This brata is mainly observed to get rid of the “other” woman from the husband’s life. Married women mainly celebrate this brata to pray for a wealthy family. This brata is observed from the first day of Agrahayan till the last day of this month. Asaththhapata shatthapata brata is symbolic of women’s great concern for both trees and a happy family life. They worship the asaththha tree; it shows their awareness of nature and trees, and on the other hand they also dream of a happy family life. This brata is observed in the month of baisakh and it is a brata mainly observed by the unmarried woman. Gokal brata is significant of an animal (especially cow: “go” means cow) to be worshipped in the form of god. This brata is observed to pray for the safety and well-being of the domestic animals. In the rural areas, domestic 167

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animals are used for many purposes—ploughing, churning milk, and much more. Women observe this brata so that the animals remain healthy and their domestic life is enriched. Tush-tushli brata is observed and celebrated in the Bengali month of Pous. Rich crop, immense wealth, and abundant happiness in the families are the main reasons for observing this brata. This brata is observed in honor of a deity named Tush-Tushli, who is believed to preside over the fertility of the field. She is believed to be an agricultural goddess and the brata known as Tush-tushli brata is said to have originated in early times as a fertility ritual of the soil, performed in honor of that goddess. The rhyme/verse/chhara related to this brata is the following: Tush-tushli tumi ke/ Tomar puja kore ye/ Dhane- dhaney baranta/ Shukhe thakey adi anta/ Toshla lo tusk kunti/ Dhane dhaney ganye gunti/ Ghare ghare gai bi unti. (Translation: Tush-tushli who are you? The person who worships you becomes wealthy and lives happily throughout life).

Lakshmi brata is one of the significant bratas for the abundance of resources. There is a point of similarity in the Lakshmi brata of Bengal and the ancient rituals dedicated to the goddess in Mexico. The women of the villages in Mexico wore their hair unbound, and shook and tossed it, so that by sympathetic magic, maize might take the hint and grow correspondingly long. In Bengal, women worship the goddess Lakshmi for the abundance of harvest and resources. There is a significant point to be mentioned. As Bengalis observe bratas for various goddesses, similarly, in ancient Mexico the goddesses known as Centeotl and Xilonen were worshipped using various rituals. While going through Myths of Mexico and Peru to find out the point of similarities of bratas and rituals between Bengal and Mexico, one can observe that a special group of deities called Centeotl presided over the agriculture of Mexico, each of whom personified one or the other various aspects of the maize plant. This plant is symbolic for performing one of the rituals to the goddess Centeotl in ancient Mexico. There is a similarity between paddy in Bengal and maize in Mexico in terms of wealth for observing Lakshmi brata and Centeotl worship, owing to similarities between the symbolism of the two goddesses. Moreover, as maize is symbolic of harvest and hence wealth to the Mexicans, paddy is a valuable crop in Bengal, vital to its rural economy. Hence, one can recognize a parallel between the observance of brata-like rituals to the goddess in both cultures. An Assessment of the Bratas According to Dr. Shila Basak, the rituals performed by women to observe the bratas indicates the heritage of a matriarchal society because it 168

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is women who perform the bratas; they take the initiative for performing them and hence contribute significantly to the wealth and well-being of the family. According to Krishnendu Chaki, down through the ages, it is the women of Bengal who have performed the brata rituals for the well-being of their family members, and above all, for the society. The ingredients of most of the bratas include mangal ghat or an “auspicious pot” full of water, a green coconut to place over it, mango leaves to put on the rim of this pot, banana and images of swastik or doll made over the ghat with vermillion, kari, betel leaf—all these are symbolic of certain things. Banana and coconut are symbols of fertility, kari indicates wealth, betel leaf is symbolic of women’s genitalia, the mangal ghat full of water, and green coconut are symbolic of pregnant women, and the flourished mango leaf signifies full-fledged life. The bratas thus is largely indicative of women’s world and various angles related to it. Thus, from the analysis of the bratas we can explore the construction of women’s agency and domesticity. One significant criticism made against it is that the observation of the bratas encourages patriarchy in several ways. Women feel for their family; their children and their fulfillment of life is developed mainly around it. A woman’s thought revolves around her husband, her children—she is nowhere present alone. Even she thinks her identity is constructed in terms of her husband and thus, even without her knowledge, she is involved in constructing patriarchy. Apart from that, the observation is that some bratas are symbolic of women’s subordination to their husbands. In Savitri brata, the last ritual performed by women indicates a woman’s utter surrender and subordination to a man. The woman breaks her fast after this brata only after she wipes the wet feet of her husband with her hair and gives him fruit and rice to eat. Only then she eats. The Savitri brata initially began with the vow of the increase of the fertility of soil and green land, but later on it was transformed into the vow of the well-being of the husband and children. The chharas also indicate women’s complete surrender to men. So, the bratas could work as a double-edged sword which, on one hand, construct women’s agency but at the same time bratas also display gender politics in the garb of the religious rituals. In spite of such critique, the bratas and chharas still provide womenfolk some agency with which they can construct their identity.

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References Basak, Shila. Banglar Brataparban. Kolkata: Pustak Biponi, 1998. Maity, P.K. Folk Ritual of Eastern India. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1988. McDaniel, June. Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. McGee, Mary. “Bratas, Fasting, Feasting: The Vrata Tradition and its Significance for Hindu Women.” PhD diss. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1987. Tagore, Abanindranath. Banglar Brata. Kolkata: Viswabharati, 2013.

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PART III Religion, Literature, and Home-Making

10

BAYIT ZE ISHA: HOUSING THE BODY OF THE WOMAN THROUGH SPATIALIZING METAPHORS Amitha Santiago But may the will to truth mean this to you: that everything shall be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly evident, the humanly palpable.

Nietzsche: Islands of Bliss: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1965)1

Introduction For love of Nietzsche, this study begins in the realm of the conceivable. And in this realm, we are approached by the sign that comes calling as metaphor. The metaphor central to this study is called Bayit ze Isha or Woman as House. The Jewish Talmud2 is the site from where this metaphor arrives. In this esssay the spatializing metaphor of the woman used by Talmudic sages will be analyzed to produce an understanding of the function of the metaphor in an attempt to control space and so the woman. It will also demonstrate how the metaphor was subversively used by Talmudic women to recast domestic space as the house of learning or Bayit Midrash. Employing Lefebvre’s idea of production of space,3 this brief study seeks to demonstrate how Jewish women negotiated the production of themselves as architectural space constructed by the Talmudic Rabbis. 1

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3

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The  Talmud is a book of collection of Jewish law and tradition, compiled and edited between the third and sixth centuries. “The main text of the Talmud is the  Mishnah, a collection of teachings written in Hebrew, redacted by Rabbi  Yehudah the Prince, in the years following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.” Yehuda Shurpin, “What is the Talmud: How and Why Was the Oral Torah Written?” accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.chabad. org/library/article_cdo/aid/3347866/jewish/What-Is-the-Talmud.htm. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991).

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Talmudic Idea of Woman as Home We read in the Torah, Leviticus 15:19 and 15:24,4 that the menstruating woman or Niddah is impure for a period of seven days. If sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman is indulged in, then the man is contaminated too and remains impure for seven days.5 She is imaged and described by Talmudic sages in a metaphorization as a house for purposes of cultural consumption and circulation, in the interests of masculine control of space vis-à-vis the body of the woman. The spatial metaphor of the woman as a house moves toward this end and is captured precisely in the following quote: …(there is in her) a room and a foyer and an upper storey; blood in the room is ritually unclean [because it is assumed to be menstrual blood], and if found in the foyer its condition of uncertainty is deemed ritually unclean because it is presumed to be from the fountain [that is, if a woman is uncertain whether or not it is menstrual blood, it is assumed to be so—“from the fountain”—in order that ritual purity precautions may be taken.]6

The spatialization metaphor of the woman’s body as a house, interestingly, makes its entry into Jewish Talmudic literature first, with the naming of the Torah itself as a dwelling or a house. In fact, Weisel points out that the Torah “begins with the letter bet…Bet is a house. Thus, we are told that the Book of Books is a shelter, a dwelling place.”7 With the Talmudic notion of the Torah as home, the question of what home means is answered by using a metaphor that presents a direct relationship not only between the woman and the home but also between the Torah and the woman. For instance, Weisel writes, “What is a home? In Talmudic literature, the question is quite simple. Bayit ze isha— ‘home is a woman’.”8 The Talmud therefore is distinguishable as being responsible for the transference of the metaphor of house from its initial site of the Torah to that of the woman’s body.

4 5

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https://thetorah.com/niddah-menstruation-from-torah-to-rabbinic-law/. “When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being blood from her body, she shall remain in her impurity seven days; whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening….  And if a man lies with her, her impurity is communicated to him; he shall be unclean seven days, and any bedding on which he lies shall become unclean.” (Leviticus 15:19; 15:24, The Torah). Cynthia M. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 52-53. Ellie Weisel, “Longing for Home,” in The Longing for Home, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Press, 1996): 17-25. Weisel, “Longing for Home,” 17-25.

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The Talmudic rabbis have long placed on record the architectonics of woman’s subjecthood, describing her in blatantly architectural terms as cited earlier. The house/woman as used in the niddah is to be “set in order” and in fact the process of ritually purifying the female body is referred to here as “cleaning the house”. Baker points out that architectural language of this or any other kind is used only to refer to the woman and not to the man.9 The man when referred to is spoken of as “building his house” or “serving his house,” the latter referring to sexual intercourse.10 No masculine equivalent of this architectonics of the body is found in the Talmud. Baker goes on to say that in rabbinic semantics, the woman/wife is made to configure with the house, so that the phrase “his house that is his wife” or the phrase often used in “the house of Abraham,” which refers to a whole community, or family, simultaneously plots the purity of the wife, and the purity of a community, a family, and a space (the house).11 The burden of sustaining the “purity” of every one of these items is thus placed on the woman, in that the purity of her body qualifies the purity of the house, the family, and the community. Baker points to Philo’s Midrash and to the Song of Songs: 8:8-10:12 We have a little sister and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister when suitors besiege her? If she is a wall, we will build a silver turret upon her. If she is a door, we will bolt her with beams of cedar wood. I am a wall and my breasts are towers. But for my lover I am a city of peace. The lines above refer again to the anatomy of the woman as architectural space. All of these texts seem to point to the ways in which a desire is made visible. The Function and Effects of the Metaphoric Procedure Employing this textual evidence, it is possible to plot the function of the metaphor of Bayit ze isha (home as a woman) and to produce an understanding of how situated forms of ethics about woman are processed in space and time. The metaphor being a structural edifice establishes the rationale quotient. The metaphor is a formidable argument escaping refutation by virtue of the swirling cloak of logic that it wears. It is logic at its most effective for it survives on the curtsies of the cognitive elite igniting mass semiologies. 9 10 11 12

Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 53-54. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 55. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 52. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel,51.

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The rationalizing procedure of the metaphor, using popular imagery, conceives woman as a spatial category of house. It engages in the metaphorization of the female body as house in order to refashion the form of the woman as house. The woman is thereby set within boundaries, governed by rules and prohibitions. The woman as house can now be governed and controlled. She can thus be known. The casting of woman through the metaphor of the house opens up the possibility of producing knowledge of the woman through narrative and image. The Talmud through its “form”ulation of woman as house places her as a governable spatial entity, which can be measured, known, made knowable, organized, reproduced in like order, and given certain specific functions. The rationalizing procedure of the metaphor also instructs space to accommodate multiplicity and therefore it enables a simultaneity of existence. Thus, we see that women, though spatialized as house, resided both inside and outside of the house in Jewish antiquity as described by the texts above, diminishing the rigidity, and even rendering mortal the binarizing protocol of the private and the public. One also suspects that this blurring of the private and public by Jewish women orders the governance of women’s bodies in an authorial anxiety amongst Talmudic authors. An anxiety that aids in the governance of the woman through spatializing her as a house. This anxiety-driven governance of women as architectural space confers on domestic space/woman the conditions needed for the pursuit of respect by these women. Further, the metaphorization of the female body as house nudges at the notion that form is the artifice of time. The woman becomes a structure imbued by time in a linearity that procures an epistemology of the woman in the service of male authority. In other words, her form as woman/ house in being spatialized is inevitably linked to the linear programmatic of time, such that she is available for knowledge making and factualizing procedures that promote male scripting of the woman as knowable and thus governable. Perhaps this historical turn that is employed to name, describe, and pronounce statements about the woman, is the procedure by which the spatial challenge of heterogeneity is evaded. So that, with the “form”ulation of the woman as house, arrives that meta-narrative called linear time. The notion that the metaphoric is heavily invested in time is in evidence when we look at the use of architectural space as the metaphor for becoming and thus for historicizing the female form, situating it, in other words, in linear time. Bayit ze Isha or “the House as Woman” offers up the object (read the woman) that the desire for respect and the desire for responsibility needs. The House and the Woman in the habitus of the metaphoric in one accord move its logicality in the direction of an epistemology of the woman. This 176

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in turn unfolds the terrain of power, control, and spatial governance of women’s bodies. Desire for control and power seeks an object in space to manifest itself, to gain presence. The desire to produce knowledge of the Jewish woman so that her governability is made possible accompanies this production of woman as spatial entity. The production of this space assists the endeavor to describe, analyze, prohibit, parameter, bind, and investigate the workings of the woman, so that knowledge of the woman is procured, documented, and circulated. The spread of this knowledge would mean the endorsement of an oppositional gendering of space in most cases. However, on examining the case of the Talmudic Jewish woman conceived of as a house, we find that metaphoric procedure of controlling the knowledge generated vis-à-vis Bayit ze Isha is not quite so resilient. Subverting the Spatial Metaphor of the House through the Politics of Consensus Specific Talmudic texts reveal that there were ways by which Jewish women who were invented as the spatial entity of the house, reinvented themselves as Bayit Midrash or the house of learning. We find that they were able to enter the house of learning, which was earlier a prohibited space for women, since many rabbis actually taught the Torah and Talmud in their own houses or in other houses where women were present and listened to the teachings regularly.13 This allowed for the metaphoric reconstruction of the woman as house and effectively, its governance of women to be dismantled. In these instances she recasts herself, the woman subversively enters the metaphor of Bayit ze Isha transforming its boundaries with a fluidity that escapes from the oppositional category it delivers. Jewish women thus declined to remain as mute spectators to the discourse of Talmudic Rabbis that imprisoned them in the metaphor of Bayit ze Isha. Rather, they negotiated Talmudic production of themselves as architectural space through a politics of consensus that struggled around public and private spaces in Jewish architectonics. As mentioned in the introduction, Lefebvre’s classic Production of Space14 is followed by a host of implications for this paper’s argument. The politics of consensus that ushers in the production of space and builds systems of opposition, involves modes of production that participate in an architectonics of ontological imperatives, namely those of being 13

14

Judith Hauptman, “A New View of Women and Torah Study in The Talmudic Period,” accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/9-2010/Hauptman. pdf. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space.

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and becoming as observed by Lefebvre.15 The ontological imperatives of being and becoming are, to state the obvious, relational, and in the first instance are executed on space. It is plain to see that for any existential theatrics, the spatial is brought forth in the very moment that the subject’s interpellative potency is deployed. Lefebvre’s principle of singularity that uses the dynamics of oppositional systems in order to produce space comes to mind here.16 The production of the woman as house in the Jewish Talmud is complicated by the epistemological intent that gathers around her/its production. As she is produced as house, she is known more succinctly. She is also prohibited variously from certain spaces. One such space is the Bayit Midrash or the house of learning where the Torah and the oral and written Talmud were taught. In “Buildings Fraught with Meaning: An Introduction to a Special Issue on Synagogue Architecture in Context,” Weissbach makes a useful entry on the synagogue.17 While it was customarily known as beit knesset, a house of assembly or beit tefilah, which is a house of prayer, we are told that it was also known as beit midrash: the house of study. Weissbach goes on to point to one of the functions of a synagogue building. It is assigned an additional function of being a mivneh simli, “a symbolic structure fraught with meaning.” A synagogue building thus “was a concrete representation of the character and condition of the Jewish community it serves.”18 The behavior, thinking, and beliefs of the Jews were contained and revealed in this symbolic structure of the synagogue as mivneh simli.19 This is interesting because the woman as house served a similar purpose as the synagogue in its rendition as mivneh simli. As house she characterized its inmates, their beliefs, their traditions, their behaviors, and their ways of being, so that one could know the house (its inmates) by knowing the woman and vice versa. In this sense, knowledge of the object of public display—the house—and the inhabitants of the private space within the house were both rendered visible and knowable through this metaphor. 15

16

17

18 19

For Lefebvre, the most relevant of all being that particular process of stretching outwardly and the reaching back inwardly that endorses the symbiotic gesture intrinsic within being and en route to becoming. Lukasz Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesotta Press, 2011), 132. Lee Shai Weissbach, “Buildings Fraught with Meaning: An Introduction to a Special Issue on Synagogue Architecture in Context,”  Jewish History  25, no. 1 (2011): 1-11. Weissbach, “Buildings Fraught with Meaning, 1-11. Weissbach, “Buildings Fraught with Meaning,” 1-11.

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Knowledge production being essential to regulating the female subject, the house of learning too was not accessible to Jewish women, according to halakha.20 They were not “obliged” but rather prohibited from the teaching of the Torah according to Rabbinic laws. We find the first law regarding women and the earliest mention of Torah study by women occurs in Sifrei:21 “And you shall teach your sons and not your daughters.”22 Keren has documented the prohibition of the study of the Torah pronounced by Tanna Eleizer ben Hyrcanus at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century C.E.: The Mishnah (Sotah 3:4)—“Anyone who teaches his daughter Torah teaches her tiflut” (BT Sotah 21b).23 The word tiflut, she says, is usually thought of as meaning two things: either sexual license or a blemished thing. It was also the anxiety of the Rabbis that the woman who studied the Torah would end up winning arguments with her spouse and this would further help her to “sin in secret.” She further lists the Jerusalem Talmud as documenting Eliezer ben Hyrcanus who opined that: “Women’s wisdom is solely in the spindle.”24 A narrative that demonstrates this anxiety about women by Rabbi Eliezer is interesting to read here: A [wealthy] matron [of the Rabbinic academy] asked Rabbi Eliezer: “Why is it that there was one sin committed with the golden calf, and yet [we learn that] three punishments were meted out?” [Rabbi Eliezer] said to her: “There is no wisdom in women other than the spinning wheel, as it is written: And all the women who were wise in heart spun with their hands (Exodus 35).” [Rabbi Eliezer’s] son, Hyrkenus, said to him, “Why could you not answer her with some words of Torah? [Because she has been insulted] I will lose 300 kor in donations from her every year!” [Rabbi Eliezer] said to him, “The words of Torah should burn rather than be taught to women.”25 20

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23 24 25

Halakha in Hebrew refers to the collective body of Jewish religious laws derived from the written and oral Torah, governing religious practices and beliefs as well as everyday living. Sifrei refers to the handwritten Torah scrolls that are seen as the most sacred form of the Torah in Jewish tradition. Women were prohibited from touching these scrolls because they were seen as menstruating women or Niddah. Rachel Keren, “Torah Study,” accessed March 10, 2018, https://jwa.org/ encyclopedia/article/torah-study. As quoted by Keren, “Torah Study.” As quoted by Keren, “Torah Study.” As quoted in Rabbi Sharon Borus, “Worse Than Invisible Ruminations on Woman and Talmud Torah,” accessed March 1, 2018, http://www.bj.org/Articles/ worse-than-invisible-ruminations-on-woman-and-talmud-torah.

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On women’s subordinated role in Rambam’s halakha of the Talmud Torah, Rabbi Sharon comments as follows: “Rambam’s very first  halakha  regarding the laws of  Talmud Torah  unabashedly confirms my suspicion that the Rabbis never intended their texts to be read by women. “Women, slaves, and children are exempt from the obligation to study Torah,” writes Rambam. (Rambam, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:1) .… Rambam revealingly notes: ‘most women simply do not have the mental capacity to learn.’”26 Desire, as stated earlier, needs an object in space and every object is bestowed an intention in space—the same intention that brings Truth to its knees. The object here is undoubtedly, Bayit ze Isha, but while the object is given intention, the space within which this intention is pursued is ungovernable, untenable, and fugitive. As such, the woman/house that is both, object bestowed with intention and ungovernable space, disrupts the fixity of desire, so that it was possible for the Torah to be learned by girls and women within their own houses. They then practiced its tenets and laws within the home, questioned it, and reshaped it, and thus negotiated these halakhic laws within the domestic space of the house. This was the way in which the production of woman/house in a fluidity, mediated both the private and the public. It rendered the binarizing discourse of public and private spheres duplicitous in effect. Thus, it follows that the “woman as house,” which was initially birthed by a logico-historical turn of the metaphor curries favor with the ontological practice of being and becoming such that the epistemic pursuits of the earlier metaphor Bayit ze Isha overflows its banks. We thus find that the metaphor rather than governing the space/body of the woman evades the binarizing discourse. So, it is that the earlier attempt of the metaphor Bayit ze Isha to frantically don a cloak of logic as a recourse to the epistemological whereby the woman /female body is known and made known, trembles at its own vulnerability. The logical is thereby pursued into the ontological that is carried forth into the epistemological in an internal dynamics of simultaneity that maligns any attempt to assign a careful linearity to the process. It thus begets a situated form of ethics, situated in what is produced as public and private space in a de-walling of the binarizing ethos inbuilt within it. Massey points to Derrida when he speaks of stances of recognition and respect in situations of mutual implication.27 Derrida speaks of Space as the dimension of the initiating moment of respect and Time as the dimension of the responsibility of the subsequent interaction that will follow. Massey proposes that space is the dimension of multiplicity while Time is the 26 27

As quoted in Rabbi Sharon Borus, “Worse Than Invisible Ruminations.” Doreen B. Massey, For Space (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 154.

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dimension of sequence, so that space is imbued with Time. She goes on to say that space then is in fact the dimension of contemporaneous existence, it is the dimension of the social that poses the political question of coevalness or how we are to live together.28 Jewish women in Talmudic times reveal through subversive praxis the way by which the spatializing metaphor can be cracked open to let in the skies.

The Study of the Torah and Talmud, Domestic Space and Women as Interlocutors To explore the role of women in their study of the Torah/Talmud in the domestic space of the house, let me turn to Hauptman’s work29 that brings into play Massey’s and Derrida’s politics of space. Women’s interventions with regard to the ways in which space generates a politics of being and becoming circumscribes Hauptman’s revealing case studies. The space where women and girls learned the Torah, the Bayit Midrash (house of learning) was not necessarily a fixed space where students went to study the Torah. On the other hand, the Rabbi, we are told, would move from house to house to teach and so it was that girls and women were part of this Midrash on the move. They learned as much as perhaps the young boys and men who gathered around the Rabbi to learn the laws of the Torah and Talmud. There are such instances recorded in the Jewish Talmud and Torah where a woman of a certain household questions a articular deviance from lawful practice and is answered in terms of new knowledge that is emerging to serve the new context of the said practice.30 Hauptman’s study of a series of such anecdotes shows that although the prescriptive halakha did not permit women to study the Torah, descriptive texts in the Talmud revealed that women variously had halakhic debates and tutoring within the house. Many of these teachings given to women within the house concerned cooking, dietary, and practical aspects of running the house of which women were in charge. Episodes such as this concern the raking of the stove after Sabbath, the keeping of food warm, the using of an oil lamp to read, the aborting of a foetus, the preserving of an egg, using a utensil, etc.31 Every one of these discussions are occasioned within the walls of the house and are begun by the women of the house asking a question as regards a particular Talmudic law. Hauptman shows that these women were learned about these laws and 28 29

30 31

Ibid. Judith Hauptman, “A New View of Women and Torah Study In the Talmudic Period,” JSIJ 9 (2010): 249-292, accessed March 10, 2018, https://www.biu.ac.il/JS/ JSIJ/9-2010/Hauptman.pdf. Hauptman, “A New View of Women,” 251-252. Hauptman, “A New View of Women,” 260-267 & 271-273.

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raised questions with changing contexts. The answers procured by them were dependent on their knowledge of the Talmud. This goes to prove that women learned the Torah and the Talmud within the house and augmented them through questioning their daily relevance and effectiveness. In the context of the earlier discussion of the woman as house, we find that these women who were conceived of as the house learned the Talmud from their husbands or fathers or from listening in on Torah and Talmud discussions if they were from Rabbinic houses themselves. Hauptman’s work suggests that the attempt to control the woman through the use of the spatializing metaphor was rarely taken seriously either by women or by men in concrete life-contexts. On the contrary, the women lifted the roof off the metaphoric controlling device, to let Rabbinic teaching and learning into the very house that the metaphor said they were. New halakhic knowledges were produced through these subversive interventions made by women. This drafts an argument for the non-sustainability of the binarizing, metaphoric rendering of woman as house, in its stead de-walling the house, to explore spaces of respect in an alterity of being and becoming.

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References Baker, Cynthia M. Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Friedrich Wilhelm, Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Hauptman, Judith. “A New View of Women and Torah Study In the Talmudic Period,” JSIJ 9 (2010): 249-292, accessed March 10, 2018, https:// www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/9-2010/Hauptman.pdf. Keren, Rachel. “Torah Study,” accessed March 10, 2018. https://jwa.org/ encyclopedia/article/torah-study. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991. Massey, Doreen B. For Space. London: Sage Publications, 2005. Rabbi Sharon Borus, “Worse Than Invisible Ruminations on Woman and Talmud Torah,” accessed March 1, 2018, http://www.bj.org/Articles/ worse-than-invisible-ruminations-on-woman-and-talmud-torah. Stanek, Lukasz. Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesotta Press, 2011. Shurpin, Yehuda. “What is the Talmud: How and Why Was the Oral Torah Written?” accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.chabad.org/library/ article_cdo/aid/3347866/jewish/What-Is-the-Talmud.htm. Weisel, Ellie. “Longing for Home.” In The Longing for Home, edited by Leroy S. Rouner, 17-29. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Press, 1996. Weissbach, Lee Shai. “Buildings Fraught with Meaning: An Introduction to a Special Issue on Synagogue Architecture in Context.”  Jewish History 25, no. 1 (2011): 1-11.

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CONTEXTUALIZING PLACE IN SRI LANKA THROUGH POPULAR LITERATURE Dilini Wijeweera Surangi Gunawardena Dimantha Weliange Introduction This essay investigates contextualizing place in Sri Lanka, through an exploration of popular English literature by Sri Lankan born authors. It discusses the concept of home and place identity in post-war Sri Lanka. The notion that Sri Lanka’s recently built environment lacks a local identity initiated this paper. The term “built environment” is commonly used in the construction professions to denote the constructed or manmade environment as opposed to the natural environment. With many people having left the country during its thirty years of war, their return raised countless questions regarding Sri Lanka’s pursuit of identity. While various styles of construction and other projects were popping up, very few seem to reflect the people or the localities they were in. Two of this paper’s authors are among those returnees, trying to make sense of the place. Returning eyes often measure what they see against what they remember. Those leaving their homeland have a stronger perception of home and place; of what they left behind.1 In having left, they have a more static idea of their homeland than those seeing and living through change. Homesickness creates a yearning for what they are missing while being away, a yearning to see the familiar: their home, their place, their identity,

1

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 3.

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in a nostalgic impression of home.2 With the post-war construction boom, the sudden changes are inconceivable to the people who return to their homes after many years. In returning, they look for a memory of the place they held near and dear in their hearts and minds, the image of the home they left behind.

Fig. 11.1 The Rebranding of Place Identity after a Change Event

Place identity is an integral part of the self-identity of a person. Alexander states where “love, care, and patience are in adjustment with environment,” that “human variety, and the reality of specific human lives” is reflected in the structure of places.3 As Holl, Pallasmaa, and Pérez Gómez point out, “all experience implies the acts of recollecting, remembering, and comparing. An embodied memory has an essential role as the basis of remembering a space or a place. Our home and domicile are integrated with our self-identity; they become part of our own body and 2

3

Yasmine Gooneratne, “Remembering the House: Sentimental Memory, Symbol or Title-Deed?” in The Writer’s Sense of the Past: Essays on Southeast Asian and Australasian Literature, ed. K. Singh (Singapore: Singapore University Press: 1987), 65–76. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, Center for Environmental Structure series vol. 12, Second print (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 164.

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being.” It is, therefore, important for its people that Sri Lanka looks back before moving forward in order to build and re-build with sensitivity. As represented in Figure 11.1, PEOPLE, through the experience and knowledge of a PLACE, invest meaning in it, thus creating PLACE IDENTITY. This place identity then forms an innate part of that individual’s self-identity.5 In this paradigm, PLACE and PEOPLE are inseparable. Yet, this complex of PEOPLE and PLACE, being mostly subconscious, is not directly accessible to inquiry. If people were to be surveyed on the meanings they attach to a place now, it would be limited to those approachable in this time. Meaning, the only available respondents would be from this instant, and never those in the past. Literature captures moments in time, and through these literary images, the subconscious thoughts on PLACE become explicit and accessible to inquiry. AUTHORs through their use of language and CHARACTERs create powerful PLACE IMAGEs. Figure 11.1 that broadcast a PLACE BRAND. The PLACE IMAGE forms an essential component of the self-identity of the AUTHOR and can be found in the descriptions of imagined and remembered places described in the literature. This is the premise of the study’s literary journey of Sri Lanka. The study explores works of Sri Lankan born authors, whose stories focus on life and times in Sri Lanka. The stories center on various timelines and capture the gamut of activities, concerns, histories, and outlooks relevant to the time. Further, where the storyline and publication date are close together, the authors’ writing is an in-depth exposition of their own experiences and memories of the time and place. 4

Historical Background To understand where Sri Lanka is now, the present context of the country, the paper first provides a brief background using the statistics and the history that characterizes the country at the point of writing this paper. This understanding is crucial to the literature analysis that follows. Defining Sri Lanka after a thirty-year conflict as being in a war-less state of “post-war,” in reality, describes nothing about the country. This essay attempts to understand where Sri Lanka is now, beyond its popular characterization as “post-war.” “Our existence today is marked by a tenebrous sense of survival, living on the borderlines of the ‘present,’ for which 4

5

Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez Gómez, Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture (Tokyo: A+U Publishing, 2008), 37. Harold M. Proshansky, Abbe K. Fabian, Robert Kaminoff, “Place-Identity: Physical World Socialization of the Self (1983),” in The People, Place, and Space Reader, ed. Jen J. Gieseking et al. (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 77.

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there seems to be no proper name other than the current and controversial shiftiness of the prefix ‘post’: post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-feminism.”6 The use of this prefix highlights the preoccupation with defining times by what they are not, rather than what they are. The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, with a population of just over twenty million people in 2016. Throughout history the island’s geographic location and safe harbors made it strategically important, whilst also subjecting it to the influence of diverse maritime travelers. Forty percent of Sri Lanka’s population have never known their country without a conflict. The 2012 census of Sri Lanka is the most complete since 1981, after which conflict made the collection of census data from the entire island impossible. The data states that Sri Lanka’s population age distribution at 2012 is nine percent below four years, forty percent below thirty years, forty-four percent between thirty and sixty-four years, and eight percent above age sixty-five. As a developing country that sustained thirty years of military expenditure, Sri Lanka’s rank in the 2014 Human Development Index (HDI) is high, at seventy-three of one hundred and fifty-one (73/151) countries in the world with the Inequality adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) rank at forty three of one hundred and fifty-one (43/151) countries. For comparison, India’s HDI rank is one hundred and thirty (130/151) and IHDI ninety-nine (99/151). This is a formidable accomplishment for the country. When considering the earlier discussed post-narrative, it provides a brief summary of historical events that are touched upon in the stories.7 Figure 11.2 identifies the foreign arrivals the island experienced; from the Indian subcontinent, to the colonial powers of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, until 1948 when Sri Lanka gained independence. From 1833, English was the official language, until the 1956 Act made Sinhala the country’s only official language. The table further indicates the post-independence protests, satyagraha (nonviolent resistance), a coup, multiple insurrections and assassinations, and a civil war. The 2004 boxing-day tsunami devastated the coastal regions of Sri Lanka, providing a respite to the fighting, which soon started again. In 2009, the civil war ended, and a cult of personality based on triumphalism began. In 2015, an electoral coup ousted the incumbent president and brought in a coalition

6

7

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge Classics (London: Routledge, 2004), 1. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1.

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government, which is described and discussed later in this paper, along with its implications.8

Fig. 11.2 - Historical Background (SomeDdata from PACT) 9

Sri Lanka has seen a construction boom and “Colombo has undergone a very visible facelift—an economic, class, and visual alteration.”10 Most of the new urban projects are high-end apartments, hotels, and commercial buildings, with hotels, civic buildings, and tourist infrastructure forming 8 9 10

See footnote 85.. The Centre for Poverty Analysis: CEPA, “Peace and Conflict Timeline–PACT.” Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 388.

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the bulk of the non-urban construction. The Lotus Tower (top left circle in Figure 11.3), a telecommunications tower and tourist attraction, fast becoming a high point of visibility in the city of Colombo, is perhaps an example of some of these projects having a covertly symbolic function, modeled on the lotus flower, an often used symbol of the previous presidency.11 The leadership of the time seemed to project an image of a new “post-war” Sri Lanka, one in conformity to a global brand identity whilst also espousing a nationalist political agenda locally, leading to questions regarding the image Sri Lanka is pursuing. New construction is visible in many regions of the country that had been closed to investors due to the conflict. Figure 11.3 is a photograph of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s major commercial hub taken in 2016, highlighting building sites with their tower cranes. Similarly, “Hambantota, a backwater city … 241 km south of Colombo, is being transformed into a major hub for no particular reason other than it happens to be the birthplace of the president … A megalomaniac project of transformation.”12 Blinded by the tropical sun reflected on sheer glass skyscrapers, in the “less palatable aspect of the Singaporean dream that informs policy makers,”13 this paper wonders if looking back to understand should be in order, before moving forward. What is being voiced here is the desire for rebuilding, with sensitivity14—in the face of a crane-filled, rapidly changing skyline. Change without first understanding the history of a place can lead to alienation and exclusion. Studying place identity provides a tool allowing exploration of the country’s image components that are most memorably experienced by its people. “The urge to build, to transform nature, to make something out of nothing is universal. But to conserve, to protect, to care for the past is something we have to learn.”15 This reference to a coral reef in Sri Lanka during the 1960s and 1970s is equally appropriate to the place; villages, towns, and cities of this country, nurtured and maintained by the multitude of relationships coexisting in them. Builders create physical places and change place identity, over time leading to changes in the people of the place.

11

12 13

Sri Lanka’s 6th President “Mahinda Rajapaksa,” accessed June 10, 2017, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahinda_Rajapaksa. Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 390–91. Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 389.

14

Edward Relph, “Sense of Place,” in Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World, ed. Susan Hanson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 214.

15

Romesh Gunesekera, Reef, 20th Anniversary ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 188.

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Fig. 11.3 - 2016 Image of construction cranes (circled) in central business area of Colombo with the sea, Galle Face, and Beira Lake visible

Whilst the country’s internal conflicts brought about vast changes in the nation and its people, it also slowed down the influence of international drivers on the country, which were bringing about change in the rest of the world. To elaborate, these international drivers changing environments globally are: (a) changing mobility patterns by increasing accessibility to places; (b) urbanization; (c) large tracts of land being subject to global and national centric decision-making that often overrules local concerns such as the creation of the EU or even Brexit; and, (d) disasters such as the 2004 tsunami that devastated much of coastal Sri Lanka.16 Changing environments are not necessarily negative; however, the scale and pace of the change along with the environmental problems caused are worrying. In Sri Lanka, the development of better and wider roads increased visitor traffic to previously unchanged areas, increasing private developments of accommodation, dining, and similar services long before any government planning or regulation could provide adequate services or guidelines for such activities. Further cause for concern stems from these changes resulting in loss of diversity, coherence, and identity of the existing landscapes for the country and for the world, resulting in further alienation of citizens in a post war country. 17

What does this all mean? Considering the history and statistics about Sri Lanka, it is still not an easy task to understand what these facts really mean. “Always the counting. Numbers … But we had names … Must we forget them now? Names … known among friends. Parents. Loved ones. In which country? … The one we have left behind.… We are travelling on 16

17

Marc Antrop, “Sustainable Landscapes: Contradiction, Fiction or Utopia?” Landscape and Urban Planning 75, 3-4 (2006): 190, doi:10.1016/j. landurbplan.2005.02.014 Isil Kaymaz, “Urban Landscapes and Identity,” in Advances in Landscape Architecture, ed. Murat Özyavuz (Rijeka, Croatia: InTech, 2014), 29.

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many unknown roads. … The guides change from time to time and place to place.” 18

While facts provide a skeletal framework of context, they lack the concreteness of life, as eloquently stated above by Arasanayagam in All is Burning. To flesh out the skeleton, this paper turns to the stories told by various authors, as the method of gathering insight into what this place called Sri Lanka means to them. Contrasting times of change within the nation initially provides for nostalgia and soul searching amongst its citizens. Then, they lose their sensitivity to all but survival, and carrying on with their lives in the midst of the turbulence. “We see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed ... all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.”19 A turbulent history full of transitions and transformations has provided plenty of material to write about to those residents in the country or domiciled abroad. Living abroad provided little escape from being affected by the tumultuous events in the country. And as Bachelard points out, “Each one of us … should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; [and] … should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows.”20 It is this “speaking” of experiences that lends authors abundant material to weave their stories. Place Identity in Popular Literature As a way of collecting the undiluted memories of “home,” the main author selection criteria firstly considered Sri Lankan born authors living abroad, writing in English, with stories set primarily in Sri Lanka. The timelines within the stories were considered as a means of providing recollections of places at various points of time that would otherwise not be available. To fill gaps in the timelines, then, Sri Lankan authors living in the country and writing in English with stories set in Sri Lanka were added. In considering the writing, authors of critical acclaim and award-winning works were given preference. A majority of these books were from the fiction genre. The genre being fiction or non-fiction was considered immaterial to the investigation considering the papers’ interest in capturing the place meanings and memories held of Sri Lanka by Sri Lankans at various points in time. Those places mentioned and used in the writing to evoke imagery and emotion were deemed significant by their use in the writing by the authors. 18 19

20

Jean Arasanayagam, All is Burning: Short Stories (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995), 1. Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage International, 1982, 1993), 179. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, with the assistance of Maria Jolas, 22nd printing (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 11.

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A close reading of the first page of each story was used to identify the “setting of the scene,” and in categorizing the predominant themes that relate to the place in the stories. Here the characters, scenes, imagery, and emotions evoked were considered. Thereafter, the body of the text was scrutinized to find recurring images that related to the predominant theme. As indicated previously in Figure 11.1, PLACE IDENTITY is subconscious and not directly accessible to inquiry, this paper uses the broadcast PLACE BRAND of the imagined and remembered place images described in the books to embark upon the study’s literary journey of Sri Lanka. The following definitions are the key to the paper. PLACE—A place is formed once a space is endowed with meaning by people through experience.21 While a physical space exists in reality, alongside are the people who create it as a place by way of investing meaning in it. Thus, a space unknown to people is not a place.22 PLACE IDENTITY—The outcome of the reciprocal relationship between people and environments. It is a subconscious process.23 Place identity evolves as the physical environment changes. This evolution provides continuity to one’s place-identity. Stories become cultural devices that transmit notions of self and place identity.24 PLACE BRAND—This refers to the outcome of the process by which devices such as writing, art, film, photography, and social media transmit place identity.25 Place images and expressions of identity become place brands as they are captured and broadcast by the various genre of media. This includes popular literature and the medium of writing being explored in this paper. The written word carries with it the ability to evoke a place brand; be it of cities like London or New York, Mumbai or Colombo, or be it of landmarks that symbolize cities/countries like the Times Square for New York/USA or Galle Face for Colombo/Sri Lanka; all providing the author means by which to communicate an image, an atmosphere, and an emotion to the reader.26

21 22 23 24 25

26

Tuan, Space and Place, 387 Edward Relph, “Sense of Place,” 205. Tuan, Space and Place, 410-411. Proshansky et al., “Place-Identity,” 77. Simon Anholt, “Definitions of Place Branding—Working Towards a Resolution,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 6, no. 1 (2010): 10, doi:10.1057/pb.2010.3 A location in the city of Colombo noted for its public open space adjoining the sea and the main coastal road leading south to the city of Galle. One of the country’s oldest hotels, The Galle Face Hotel, overlooks the space.

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The Selected Books—Based on Author, Story Timeframe, Awards, and Availability Twenty popular literature titles primarily set in Sri Lanka and written by Sri Lankan born authors were explored. The story timelines range from the 1900s to 2014 and the dates of publication range from 1935 to 2016, providing vital glimpses into Sri Lanka’s past. The impulse to write about [Sri Lanka] … does not arise out of a sentimental memory but from a desire to pass on to the next generation something that we hold precious. Our urgency results from the knowledge that we are on the point of losing that inheritance. The book becomes … a kind of gift from the past to the future or … a translation from one cultural “language” to another with the writer intermediary and translator.27

As mentioned by Gooneratne in the quote above, these times would otherwise be unavailable for scrutiny. The authors included in the paper are winners of awards such as the Booker Prize, the Gratiaen Prize, the Commonwealth Book Prize for the Asian Region, the Premio Mondello Five Continents Asia Prize, the Yorkshire Post First Work Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Prix Médicis along with some writers shortlisted/ longlisted for these and similar awards. The Author’s Details and Bias in Representation In the selection of English authors, there is an inherent bias in this study that must be raised and acknowledged. English was installed as the country’s national language in 1833, and, removed from that status in 1956 in favor of Sinhala. Each of these changes caused the rise and fall in the status and fortune for its users within the country’s history. Currently, Sinhala and Tamil are the state’s official languages with English a recognized state language. For the purpose of this study, where the writing of those having left their homeland is used to inform the basis of place identity, English becomes the most logical choice. Sri Lankan born writers of English, especially those who have received critical acclaim internationally, are few, yet due to the quality of their written imagery and with their comparative observations of their “old home” and “new home” country, their work becomes a significant starting point for this inquiry. The second group of authors was selected from those who are resident in the country. This provides a contrast to the earlier group and allowed for the difference in the relative viewpoints and imagery between the two groups to be available for analysis. 27

Gooneratne, “Remembering the House,” 67–76.

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Fig. 11.4 - Selected Books and their Authors’ Information

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All efforts were made to secure as many publications as possible to be representative of the diverse gender, age, and ethnic backgrounds of Sri Lankans and the historic timeline. However, some of the original books being out of print shaped the final selection. Figure 11.2 below summarizes all the authors’ details; providing information on their gender, current residency, ethnicity, and age range at the time the book was published, along with the books title, date of publication, and the timeline of the story. • Half of the fourteen authors are currently resident in Sri Lanka, with six females and eight males. • Of twenty titles, three each, come from Selvadurai and Ferrey, and two each from Ondaatje and Muller. Figure 11.4 (see page 195) presents the analysis of the content of all the literature reflects the country, its places, characters, and their background at various points in time. 1. Main Characters - People • Most male (10/20) • Most religion non-practicing • Most minority ethnicity (14/20) • Most economically privileges (11/20)

3. Story Environment - Places • Urban Colombo centric (15/20) • Houses(s)/Neighborhoods • Regional places • Traveling

2. Character Cast - People • Family & friends (14/20) • Residents of location (3/20) • Servant & employer (0/20) • Coworkers (1/20)

4. Story Scenes - Events • Returning and leaving • Funerals, weddings, festivals, and holidays • Historic events - bombs, violence (9/20) • Travel

Table 11.1 Content Summary of the Literature

Table 11.1 summarizes the content of the books. The main protagonists are mostly males of ethnic minorities, economically privileged, and religiously ambivalent. • Mostly surrounded by a cast of characters who are friends and family. Other stories feature fascinating residents of neighborhoods, domestic workers, and co-workers. 196

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• Places are usually urban centered, their stories focused around an ancestral or family home, a well-defined neighborhood, with plots usually taking the characters on journeys within and without the region, from place to place. • Story scenes capture returning to and leaving a place, new arrivals and departures, births and deaths; and, historic events, holidays, ritual, and festival celebrations or family events such as births, funerals, weddings punctuate the narratives. • Stories within the historic times of conflict in the country captured deaths, bombings, destruction, roadblocks, security personnel, racial and religious one-upmanship, desensitization, sadness, a sense of inevitability, and uncertainty. The similarity between some of the authors and their written characters, in terms of the socio-cultural backgrounds and actual historic events expressed within the storylines, form a good case for the argument that the authors’ own experiences are being incorporated into the writing. Thus, their writing on place becomes a valid expression of what the “Sri Lankan Place” constituted in their experience. Where the various authors’ expressions converge, a common place identity could be observed. The discussion of these converged observations follows.

Discussion The study of the literature revealed three significant areas of observations and led to the analysis listed in the sub-sections that follow as: 1. Convergence of authors’ place identity; 2. Continuity through time; and 3. Changing place. Each sub-section presents; first, an introduction to the finding; then, a discussion of the excerpts; and, finally, a summary or diagram presenting the discussion with any relevant theoretical underpinnings. The discussion culminates in the conclusion that follows, providing a more accurate contextualization of Sri Lanka than the popular “post” narrative. 1. Convergence of Authors’ Place Identity—Nature the Dominant Place Image The first significant area of observation in this study relates to the convergence seen in the various authors’ place identity images, to the depiction of nature as the dominant place image. A description of nature starts the story in nine of the twenty (9/20) books explored and is the dominant place image used to set the scene of Sri Lanka in the books.

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Jean Arasanayagam, in the first story in All is Burning, describes home in Sri Lanka purely by its natural settings as “Home: hills, fields, valleys; rivers, jungles, habitations, trees, flowers, and fruit.”28 Nature at dawn, near a beach at the airport, and in a drought, is presented by Ondaatje and Selvadurai.29 Vijayatunga describes a languid afternoon near a beach and lagoon in Grass for My Feet.30 While Muller describes a sunset and dusk at Galle Face, where people view the sea and harbor in Colombo.31 Romesh Gunesekera starts his book, Reef, with an introduction to the beauty of coral.32 Jayawardena in Sam’s Story showcases nature’s cycles and abundance.33 Finally, Ferrey in Serendipity, describes a garden in the aftermath of a bomb.34 Of the rest; three books start with descriptions of built environments, four more describe characters while four start off with socio-cultural events. A closer exploration of the topics that started the stories, led to the finding that in three of the four topics; “nature,” “built environments,” and “socio-cultural events,” nature is still part of the predominant experience descriptor of the country written by most authors. These written nature images of the country, could be further categorized into corresponding “natural environment,” “nature in built environment,” and, “nature in socio-cultural environment” for a more in-depth discussion of the finding. The following sub-headings discuss a representative selection of excerpts from the literature that feature nature images denoting the authors’ converged place identity of Sri Lanka. Natural Environment The sub-heading of natural environment provides references to expressions of the sense-experience of nature, water, and climate, exemplifying the integral component that sense-experience of nature plays in many Sri Lankans’ place identity. Gunesekera describes Triton’s experience in the 1960s of the afternoon heat; the sun, and of sitting “in the front bay with the bamboo tats half rolled up. The floor in the house was cool … The breeze blew over the low parapet walls and under the greenish tubes of the tats. The sound of 28 29

30

31 32 33 34

Arasanayagam, All is Burning, 1. Shyam Selvadurai, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (Toronto: Tundra Books, 2005), 3; Ondaatje, Running in the Family, 17. J. Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 2nd ed. (Colombo: Sooriya Publishers, 1935, 1999), 1. Carl Muller, Colombo: A Novel (New Delhi India: Penguin Books, 1995), 3. Gunesekera, Reef, xi. Elmo Jayawardena, Sam’s Story (Singapore: Times Editions, 2004), 1. Ashok Ferrey, Serendipity, 1st ed. (Colombo: Ashok Ferrey, 2009), 1.

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the breeze passing was in itself cooling,” and expresses Triton’s childhood memory of the sound of the breeze through the fronds of coconut trees.35 Vijayatunga, in 1935 experiencing the rain, describes the transition between rain and sunshine; the joy of feeling, the moist, and “sponge-like feel of the earth,” and, water dripping from leaves of various shapes, sizes, and shades of green. The sensation of wet sand is likened to that of “eating a luscious fruit,” an experience that evokes an emotion: taste and touch of nature.36 Hussein’s Khadeeja experiencing winter in the 1980s in her adopted country says, I think of Sri Lanka … the burning heat and the sweat pouring down my back … the hard monsoon rain turning the roads into little rivers ... belching buses and crowded roads with undisciplined drivers horning, when I think of all those things … I forget the cold … drudgery of winter … harshness of being alone. I remember that I have a country, that I belong somewhere else.37

Gunesekera describes the sound of lapping water and flapping lotus leaves, and the imagery of various birds rising on the air currents that move the water. The water he calls a “mirror” reflecting the natural environment, “a perfect peace that seemed eternal … the tank was a sea made safe by human imagination.”38 He attributes this image of stillness, conveyed by water, as a calming influence on the mind and body that soothes “our graceless lives.” 39 Hussein’s Abdullah observes the view of a rainy day from the cocoon of a car. She paints a picture of the “messy” landscape with children, puddles, cows, and dogs, “vendors huddled under flimsy tarpaulin roofs, pedestrians under a sea of umbrellas, and sidewalks converted to muddy streams.”40 Further, Hussein poignantly illustrates the Sri Lankan affinity with nature in attributing remorse to the rain, “that poured into the East Coast soon after the Tsunami was almost a cleansing in its own way. As if the heavens could not bear the destruction wreaked on earth and wept with grief themselves.”41 For a Sri Lankan, the descriptions above are all enduring images. 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

Gunesekera, Reef, 32. Gunesekera, Reef, 32. Ameena Hussein, The Moon in the Water, 1st ed. (Colombo: Perera Hussein Pub. House, 2009), 108. Gunesekera, Reef, 33. Gunesekera, Reef, 33. Hussein, The Moon in the Water, 233. Hussein, The Moon in the Water, 233.

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Nature in the Built Environment This sub-section discusses excerpts from the text of the built environment that includes houses and neighborhoods, cities and towns, and public spaces. Here the excerpts showcase the integration of nature in the built environment as an integral part of the authors’ place identity of Sri Lanka. “Visaka’s earliest and most tender memory” in Munaweera’s Island of a Thousand Mirrors, “the heart of the house is an interior courtyard … full of spilling foliage, birdcall and monkey chatter … the Judge sends the gardener to rip and uproot. But days after … branches send forth Vines [sic] to once again wind into the embrace of the wrought iron balcony.” 42 Gunesekera uses the destruction of a coral reef as a metaphor to describe the transformations taking place in Sri Lanka. He emphasizes the contradiction, traveling to a marine research center along a coastal road where, “skull-heaps of petrified coral-five-foot pyramids beside smoky kilns” are burnt to “make tomorrow’s cement fodder” for the building industry.43 Munaweera (2012) extends this metaphor by inversion; using an image of a city and its people to parody the teaming coral reef and its “spotted, dotted, striped, lit, pompous, and playful sea creatures.” 44 Vijayatunga (1999) and Ratnayaka (2012) ascribe the delight felt in Buddhist temples, to their courtyards, “scrupulously swept and covered with sand that is neither too smooth nor too rough, neither too gritty nor too fine” meditatively swept into patterns, and “open to sun and sky.”45 Ferrey (2009) satires Sri Lanka’s capital city’s development and its tenuous relationship with the monsoons, highlighting the shortfalls in its infrastructure leading to periodic flooding, “turning Colombo into a lake once more.”46 A Sri Lankan reading the above descriptions evokes the place image that Juhani Pallasmaa describes in Questions of Perception, and in this place image the built environment is not clearly separate from the natural environment.47 This discernible lack of difference between the built and the natural is another hallmark of a Sri Lankan place image. 42

43 44 45

46 47

Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors: A Novel, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 19. Gunesekera, Reef, 59–60. Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, 11. Madhubashini Dissanayake Ratnayaka, There’s Something I Have to Tell You, 2nd ed. (Boralesgamuwa: Prajaya Studio, 2012), 9; Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 108–9. Ferrey, Serendipity, 125. Holl, Pallasmaa, and Pérez Gómez, Questions of Perception.

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Nature in Socio-Cultural Environment This sub-section recounts excerpts of Sri Lanka’s socio-cultural environment forming the authors’ place identity. Here again, the incorporation of nature and its components in daily life, worship and ritual, festivals, and holidays become apparent. Dissanayake recounts in the 1970s and 1980s, “The Crow Bo tree outside the temple … a place where people sat and enjoyed a bit of shade in hot  afternoons. Pilgrim buses to Mihintale stopped there, since the Malwatu Oya was nearby and pilgrims opened their banana leaf wrapped lunch packets under the tree.”48 Similarly, Vijayatunga in the 1930s talks of pilgrims visiting “Sri Padha, the supposed imprint of the foot of the Buddha… or on their way to Kataragama, the Hindu shrine. Pilgrims, as they walk along … [give] the whole landscape an unreal atmosphere.”49 Vijayatunga (1999), Muller (1993), Hussein (2009), Ferrey (2016), all refer to the use of local leaves, fruits, and spices from nature in religious blessing.50 Muller, for instance, refers to the use of a “Palm Sunday coconut-frond cross” in a Christian context.51 Hussein describes a ritual in which Zay Saachi uses natural elements such as “red dried chillies, peppercorns, mustard seeds, rock salt, and an ice-cold lime” to ward off the evil spirits during her character’s childhood in a Muslim home.52 Ferrey in 2014, describes an exorcism where “bamboo-and-thatched structure was set up on the terrace,” and, the exorcist “slashed in half three limes on a single stalk”; to coax the demon to leave “the comparative four-star safety of my throat to enter the limes.”53 This is similar to Vijayatunga’s description of his uncle carrying out an exorcism in his village in the 1930s.54 Ondaatje (2000) refers to the ritual of painting the eyes of a Buddha statue, for which kings historically rewarded the painters with “new villages—high and low lands, jungles and ponds.”55 Ondaatje thus highlights how certain acts of socio-cultural importance were tied to nature and the land. Vijayatunga, Gunesekera, and Gooneratne describe the Vesak celebrations, exemplifying how cultural activities are conducted in outdoor settings.56 “As darkness fell, cloth wicks had been lit in the rows of tiny oil 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Ratnayaka, There’s Something I Have to Tell You, 239–40. Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 52. Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 95-96. Carl Muller, The Jam Fruit Tree (New Delhi, London: Penguin, 1993), 4. Hussein, The Moon in the Water, 230. Ashok Ferrey, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons (India: Random House, 2016), 5. Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 95-96. M. Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage International, 2001), 101. Vijayatunga, Grass for My Feet, 123; Gunesekera, Reef, 161.

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lamps placed along verandas and up flights of steps, so that they shone like stars and made normally humble homes look like palaces. From every tall tree, brilliant paper lanterns swung in clusters.”57 The above excerpts evoke the common link between the socio-cultural environment and nature that is intrinsically a part of the Sri Lankan place image. This section of the paper further explored the convergence of the authors’ place identity under the sub-headings of natural, built, and socio-cultural environments, concluding that in the contextualization of place, nature, and its symbols permeate all of them. This prevalence identifies the significance of the land, topography, climate, and vegetation to the people. Sri Lanka is a fertile tropical island where, prior to the advent of Buddhism, people often worshipped the land with rituals involving nature’s elements. Ferrey (2016) explains that, “We’re all supposed to be Buddhist or Christian or Hindu or Moslem [sic], but the belief in good and evil spirits goes back much further.”58 In addition, the Sinhala and Tamil communities forming the majority of the island’s population, descend from agrarian societies where harvest rituals frequently involved nature. The authors’ descriptions of nature in the literature from the 1900s to 2016 span through time and are still commonly seen and experienced. When considering these roots, it is perhaps unsurprising that nature forms such an integral part of the Sri Lankan writers’ place image. As Muller articulates, likening his Burgher family, brought from outside and dropped into the island, to Jam fruit seeds dropped in his garden growing and flourishing, “now forty years. Whole garden it shading [sic] now. Always I telling [sic], that tree like this family. Always flowers, always cherries. Enough for everybody.”59 Thus, it is arguable that the centrality of nature to the place identity of Sri Lanka and the self-identity of Sri Lankans is both natural and cultural. 2. Continuity through Time—Continuity and Restoration of Continuity The second significant area of observation in this study relates to continuity through time. Just as the author’s place identity images converge to depict nature as the dominant place image in Figure 11.1 above, it is also the continuity through time of the nature images that make them 57 58 59

Yasmine Gooneratne, The Sweet and Simple Kind (London: Abacus, 2010), 114. Ferrey, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, 15. “Burgher, an Eurasian ethnic group in Sri Lanka, descended from Portuguese, Dutch, British and other Europeans who settled in the island”. “Burgher_people,” accessed June 10, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_people; Muller, The Jam Fruit Tree, 19–20.

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significant to place-identity. With stories spanning several generations, from the 1900s onwards, it is clear from the place images revealed in the excerpts that continuity through time reinforces place-identity. A person’s place-identity reflects the physical world, with the continuity of recognition of places over time supporting the person’s own self-identity.60 Therefore, continuity through time is essential for the formation of the enduring place image. Two scenarios in the literature highlight the continuity through time relevant to a place identity discussion: First, popular location place images that retain an environmental continuity through time amongst most of the authors, an example of which is Galle Face, a significant public space in Colombo. Second, socio-culturally significant location images that were rebuilt in order to re-establish a continuity through time, examples of which are the restoration of the Maligavila Buddha Statue and the Jaffna Public Library. The popular location place image example of Galle Face is discussed below with excerpts highlighting its continuity through time. It is this continuity that provides various authors a branding tool to communicate meaning and identity, to the reader, through created characters and storylines. In doing so, Galle Face is also highlighted as a significant place image in the minds of most authors who continually featured it in their stories from the 1900s to this day and thus, highlighting the place as critical to the place identity of many Sri Lankans. Galle Face’s standing as a socio-cultural activity hub in the city, starts with a story by Ondaatje set in the 1920s: “The crowning achievement was my mother’s appearance at the Galle Face Dance as a lobster. When couples paired off to walk along Galle Face Green under the moonlight it would, after all, be embarrassing to be seen escorting a lobster.”61 Selvadurai (1998) describes the space in the 1920s as “an open lawn about one mile in length and three hundred yards wide. It was flanked on one side by the sea and the other by Beira Lake.”62 He describes the familiar image of a recreation space busy with “cricketers, foot-ball players, kite flyers, horse riders, and strollers.”63 Muller continues, “Galle Face Hotel is one of the few memorable buildings in Colombo today. In the 1930s, guests would come to the sweeping verandas and lean over the wall to watch the people of Colombo ‘take the air’ on the Green.”64 60 61 62 63 64

Proshansky et al., “Place-Identity,” 77. Ondaatje, Running in the Family, 118. Shyam Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens, 1st ed. (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 36. Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens, 36. Muller, Colombo, 114.

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Ferrey (2011) describes a morning at Galle Face seen by Piyumi, a recent returnee to Sri Lanka, “Old gents in baggy shorts rotated their outstretched arms vigorously as if taxiing for take-off. Young couples strolled arm in arm … An aged woman was being pushed in her wheelchair … Far out in the ocean you could see the irregular shapes of grey battleships smudged on a grey horizon,” where it then becomes the backdrop to a plot twist as, “She couldn’t decide later what it was that prompted her. Perhaps it was the feeling that her river of good fortune was about to strike rocks … She seized his arm and said: ‘Marry me’.”65 Hussein describes a familiar evening on the Green as seen by Khadeeja, another returnee to the country, who chooses Galle Face as a public place for her “first meeting” with Arjuna. Groups of families and friends sat in little clumps chatting and eating issovadais and kadale from paper cones. Ice cream vans blared Hindi film music ... Buses engorged with school children spilled their screaming cargo who immediately dashed towards the sea … Holding hands they sat on the promenade, looking out towards the black sea dotted with lit ships.66

Ondaatje relates a scene during the insurrection of the late 1980s through the eyes of Anil, who has also recently returned to the country. “It’s two in the morning!” … They were stopped at a roadblock and asked for their passes. A half-mile beyond… Gamini got out and bought them all something to eat … They … walked onto Galle Face Green and sat near the breakwater by the darkness of the sea. While Gamini unwrapped his spoils … in the next hour … [Gamini would] consume several packets of lamprais … She noticed him palm a pill and swill it down with Orange Crush.67

Gunesekera narrates an actual historic event with his character Dias’s experience as “a toddler on Galle Face Green when the Japanese attacked Colombo in 1942, ‘Six Zeros came and I ran like hell for cover.’”68 Ondaatje on the other hand fictionalizes a historic event by changing venues to include Galle Face. After  Katugala  [the President] finished speaking at Lipton Circus, he travelled in the bulletproof Range Rover towards the … rally on Galle Face Green… Katugala’s plan … was to get the procession of supporters from his constituency to join the crowd on Galle Face Green… [The bomber] was not the weapon but the aimer of it. The bomb would destroy 65 66 67 68

Ferrey, Serendipity, 2011. Hussein, The Moon in the Water, 163. Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, 133. Gunesekera, Reef, 56–57.

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whomever he was facing…. At four p.m. on National Heroes Day, more than fifty people were killed instantly, including the President.69

As seen in the excerpts above, its continuous use as a public promenade next to the sea makes Galle Face an oft used datum against which change is measured by characters returning home. In some cases, the location is literally the point of stability characters seek out at times of great turmoil or change in the plotted stories of their lives. This illustrates Galle Face as one of the many “places” providing continuity to place identity, despite continuous changes to its physical attributes, through times of peace and conflict, as a backdrop to personal journeys.70 This illustrates the multiplicity of continuities that it provides to the authors in crafting their stories, allowing characters to travel through time to reach a place familiar to all Sri Lankans. Ondaatje (2001) in Anil’s Ghost and Munaweera (2016) in Island of a Thousand Mirrors mention place images that depict continuity through time resulting from restoration efforts. The first refers to the actual restoration of the Maligavila Buddha statue, in the 1980s, restoring the function and community connection resulting in the historic continuity through time. The … statue had stood in a field of  Buduruvagala  for several generations. Half a mile away was the more famous rock wall of Bodhisattvas … This was a region of desperate farming, the nearest village four miles away. So these stone bodies rising out of the earth, their faces high in the sky, often were the only human aspect a farmer would witness in his landscape during the day. They [the statues including the one restored] brought a permanence to brief lives.71

The second, a more recent example of rebuilding, is the famed Jaffna Public Library mentioned by Munaweera, which was deliberately burnt to destroy a peoples’ identity.72 At the close of the civil war, the building was replicated to make amends for past wrongs, and to restore the lost place identity that the people of Jaffna had long mourned. It is clear from the above that continuity through time is essential for the formation of the enduring place image. A “place” continually used by the people, despite changes to its physical space or context, becomes a part of the place identity of those people, as seen in the case of Galle Face. In restoration of well-known edifices, monuments or landscapes, the “place” returns to being used by people, as evident in the cases of the 69 70 71 72

Gunesekera, Reef, 292–94. Ferrey, Serendipity, 201; Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens, 36; 106–7. Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, 299. Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, 76.

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statue and the library, thus, restoring a place identity that had been lost, and therefore, making continuity key to constructing place identity. The continuity of place identity is illustrated in Figure 11.5. In this, PLACE IDENTITY GEN N+1, consisting of People and Environment, is influenced by external and PLACE BRAND considerations, leading to the reforming of the PLACE IDENTITY GEN N+2. This second PLACE BRAND, is influenced by the ASPIRATIONS of the people, in a forward direction, while linking to and looking back on a HISTORICAL CONTINUITY. This cycle then keeps continuing.

Fig. 11.5 – Place Brand Cycle—Importance of Historical Continuity and Aspirations

3.

Changing Place—Unique Identity vs Global Homogeneity

The third and final area of observation relates to a majority of the authors’ reflections on the “Changing Place” of the country and the comparisons and contrasts with “another home” or with “another time.” This makes the following discussion on changing places and the dichotomy of creating identity—to maintain a unique place or comply with a global uniformity—a necessary part of this paper. The changing place stories of the literature are also seen in the ongoing building and rebuilding work in Sri Lanka now. This work is characterized by two different types of interventions: first, those in the heart of the commercial and administrative areas in Colombo and its suburbs; second, those in under-developed regions including those in the north and east isolated by the conflict, and those in the rest of the country neglected due to the lack of a critical mass of population. Developing the sensitivity to a local place identity requires motivation, time, and effort. In contextualizing place, what factors need consideration? Using Figure 11.6 below and applying the previous findings 206

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in sections “Convergence of authors’ place identity” and “Continuity through time” to the two types of interventions happening in the country, the following are observable.

Fig. 11.6 – Place Identity & Place Brand Relationship

Figure 11.6 offers the depiction above adapted from Shirazi, on the vertical axis how PEOPLE, PLACE CULTURE, PLACE IMAGE, and TEMPORAL DIMENSIONS contribute to PLACE IDENTITY, and on the horizontal axis how PLACE is communicated as PLACE IDENTITY leads to the formation of a PLACE BRAND.73 Colombo and Suburbs—Building, Rebuilding, Restoration, and Replication The postwar period brought fast paced interventions to the built environment, especially in Sri Lanka’s urban heart of Colombo and its suburbs, often by foreign architects and planners. Most often these were large projects, and the architects and planners looked to global branding rather than being sensitive to the continuity of local place identity, as presented here. The tight schedules and constraints on international designers led the new designs towards a more global aesthetic. Or as Relph mentions, “the process of replication and borrowing from elsewhere could be considered geographical quotation, or, less charitably, place plagiarism” than 73

P. Shirazi, “A Communication System for Participatory Civic Actions” (Master of Graphic Design, Thesis Project, North Carolina State University, Fall 2013-2014).

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to one continuing a local place identity.74 Ferrey (2009) in Serendipity parodies: that stretch of wasteland between Colpetty Junction and Galle Face Green. The area was littered with the debris of half-finished skyscrapers that looked more like coconut scrapers, rusty and expressionist, their mirrored glass tarnished, their concrete stained even before they were complete. (Oh, when would these award-winning architects learn that modernism didn’t stand a chance against the elements when you built at the tropical seaside?)75

“The balance between the local and the universal had been shifted, and sameness had begun to overwhelm geographical difference.”76 As roads get widened and small neighborhood shops get replaced by bigger and better outlets, Relph argues that new suburbs and rebuilt city centers only keep their “distinctiveness” due to old road patterns and names. Often their component office buildings, global and local franchises create identical places regardless of location. Underdeveloped Regions—Building and Rebuilding Building in underdeveloped regions provided an opportunity for the “megalomaniac” project to put forward a covert agenda in the guise of much needed infrastructure and built components to create a new place identity.77 As Relph points out, sense of place sometimes “carries within itself a blindness and a tendency to become a platform for ethnic nationalist supremacy.”78 Of the extravagant international standard infrastructure built in Hambantota, this is exemplified by the naming of its port as Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa port, “Magampura … coined to provide the illusion of antiquity for a totally new creation” alluding to that government’s nationalist platform, along with the inclusion of the president’s name perhaps intended by proxy to antiquate the history of his family.79 If Hambantota is an example, there is a high risk of losing a distinctive place identity that was unchanged, frozen in time as a by-product of the war. Tourism is an important industry to Sri Lanka, and distinctive places in some form are a prerequisite for it. Travel and tourism result from the existence of place and geographical variety, and could be seen as motivators for distinctiveness being protected and created. Where it is created Relph says, “Much of what is positive in sense of place depends on a 74 75 76 77 78 79

Relph, “Sense of Place,” 221 Ferrey, Serendipity, 192. Relph, “Sense of Place,” 221 Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 390–91. Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 390–91. Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 391.

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reasonable balance. When that balance is upset … the local identity of places is eroded.”80 However, with unrestricted travel all over the country including the north and east, and a lack of firm policies regarding development, the fate of these regions in terms of place identity, are uncertain.81 The place brand being created in Sri Lanka, seems one of economic expediency, borrowing heavily from the vocabulary of the popular global brands catering to global tourism, or national brands catering to national tourism, without regard for the local people and their place identity. “Reason and balance in sense of place, as in many things, can slide into feeble ambiguities. To follow the middle road requires determination and an ability to resist the easy seductions of both nationalism and place fabrication.”82

Conclusion-Speculating: Post-War and PostMegalomania, Inertia of a Change Event? With the discussion of findings above supporting convergence, continuity, and vibrant and unique places, the paper wondered as to why Sri Lanka seems stuck in an identity oblivion, post-war and post-megalomania? Was Sri Lanka’s unique place identity being traded for shiny images in international design magazines and material catalogues? If that were the case, who would this benefit? “It is important to know what belongs, what has been imported, and what has been invented in a place. It is important, in other words, not to be fooled by what is going on.”83 With this in mind Figure 11.7 considers the discourse presented earlier in Figure 11.5, with the addition of a post-war CHANGE EVENT, resulting in a NEW HISTORY via a re-reading of history and creation of myth, and a reconfiguration to NEW ASPIRATIONS via borrowed and natural symbols. This change event marks a re-branding; leading to the break in the continuity of both the aspirations and historical continuity; resulting in the discarding of the previous aspirations as irrelevant and their replacement with a brand new “more appropriate” set of NEW ASPIRATIONS. This paper speculates that the CHANGE EVENT depicted in Figure 11.7 is the post-war megalomania period, where all the old historic narratives seem to have been re-branded to depict a “more peaceful environment” oriented towards increasing revenue from its own citizens and foreign visitors. The 80 81

82 83

Relph, “Sense of Place,” Page no Anoma Pieris, “Southern Invasions: Post-war Tourism in Sri Lanka,” Postcolonial Studies 17, no. 3 (2015): 266–85, doi:10.1080/13688790.2014.987899 Relph, “Sense of Place,” Page no Relph, “Sense of Place,” 226.

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nationalistic fervor and economic elitism of some of these endeavors resulted in a place brand that alienated its local citizens regardless of race or religion.84

Fig. 11.7 – Inertia of a Change Event However, with the changing of the government to a coalition-led government in 2015 after the shocking presidential election win by Maithripala Sirisena, the common opposition candidate, the principal driver of the change event seems to have lost its momentum.85 The resulting loss has now translated into an inertia that is neither driven by the historic continuity and aspirations nor the constructed NEW HISTORY and ASPIRATIONS—myths. 84 85

Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, 388. “Presidential elections were held in Sri Lanka on January 8, 2015, two years ahead of schedule. The incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa was the United People’s Freedom Alliance’s (UPFA) candidate, seeking a third term in office. The United National Party (UNP)-led opposition coalition chose to field Maithripala Sirisena, the former Minister of Health in Rajapaksa’s government and general secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)—the main constituent party of the UPFA—as its common candidate. Sirisena was declared the winner after receiving 51.28 percent of all votes cast compared to Rajapaksa’s 47.58 percent. The result was generally seen as an upset.” “2015 Sri Lankan Presidential Election,” accessed May 10, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Sri_Lankan_presidential_election. “Rajapaksa had called this election two years early, confident that the usually fractured opposition would fail to produce a credible candidate. Sirisena will lead a coalition of ethnic, religious, Marxist and centre-right parties, which analysts say could hamper economic reform and encourage populist policies.” “The opposition’s coalition parties have not agreed on a common approach to economic policy and, in our view, were mainly united by the desire to unseat Rajapaksa,” Standard and Poor’s Ratings Services said in a statement. “Policy differences are likely to surface.”

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Ultimately though, at this moment in time, in a world where the incidences of terror events are increasing, some of the tourism infrastructure investments by the government and private individuals are bringing in rewards to this country where, a thirty-year conflict ended so that, peace, its people, and tourists could return to enjoy the unique and changing place called Sri Lanka once more. 86

Sirisena has pledged to abolish the executive presidency that gave Rajapaksa unprecedented power and hold a fresh parliamentary election within 100 days.” Shihar Aneez and John Chalmers, “Sri Lanka’s Strongman President Voted Out after a Decade,” accessed June 10, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lankaelection/sri-lankas-strongman-president-voted-out-after-a-decade-idUSKBN0KG1ZI20150109.

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References Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. Second print. Center for Environmental Structure series vol. 12. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Aneez, Shihar, and John Chalmers. “Sri Lanka’s Strongman President Voted Out after a Decade.” Accessed June 10, 2017. https://www.reuters. com/article/us-sri-lanka-election/sri-lankas-strongman-presidentvoted-out-after-a-decade-idUSKBN0KG1ZI20150109. Anholt, Simon. “Definitions of Place Branding—Working Towards a Resolution.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 6, no.  1 (2010): 1–10. doi:10.1057/pb.2010.3. Antrop, Marc. “Sustainable Landscapes: Contradiction, Fiction or Utopia?” Landscape and Urban Planning 75, 3-4 (2006): 187–97. doi:10.1016/j. landurbplan.2005.02.014. Arasanayagam, Jean. All is Burning: Short Stories. New Delhi, London: Penguin, 1995. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. With the assistance of Maria Jolas. [22nd printing]. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Bhabha, Homi K. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990. ———. The Location of Culture. Routledge classics. London: Routledge, 2004. En.wikipedia.org. “Burgher_people.” Accessed June 10, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_people. ———. “Mahinda_Rajapaksa.” Accessed June 10, 2017. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Mahinda_Rajapaksa. ———. “Sri_Lankan_presidential_election,_2015.” Accessed June 10, 2017. En.wikipedia.org. Accessed May 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/2015_Sri_Lankan_presidential_election. Ferrey, Ashok. Colpetty People: Short Stories. Colombo: Perera-Hussein Pub. House, 2005. ———. Serendipity. 1st ed. Colombo: Ashok Ferrey, 2009. ———. The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons. India: Random House, 2016. Gieseking, Jen Jack, William Mangold, Cindi Katz, Setha M. Low, and Susan Saegert, eds. The People, Place, and Space Reader. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. Gooneratne, Yasmine. “Remembering the House: Sentimental Memory, Symbol or Title- deed?” In The Writer’s Sense of the Past: Essays on Southeast Asian and Australasian Literature, edited by K. Singh, 65–76. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1987. ———. The Sweet and Simple Kind. London: Abacus, 2010. 212

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Gunesekera, Romesh. Reef. 20th anniversary ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Hall, Stuart. Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. Malden, Mass. [u.a.]: Blackwell, 2011. Hanson, Susan. Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. Tokyo: A+U Publishing, 2008. Hussein, Ameena. The Moon in the Water. 1st ed. Colombo: Perera Hussein Pub House, 2009. Jayawardena, Elmo. Sam’s Story. Singapore: Times Editions, 2004. K. Singh, ed. The Writer’s Sense of the Past: Essays on Southeast Asian and Australasian Literature. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1987. Kaymaz, Isil. “Urban Landscapes and Identity.” In Advances in Landscape Architecture, edited by Murat Özyavuz. Rijeka, Croatia: InTech, 2014. Lindstedt, Janne. “Place, Identity and the Socially Responsible Construction of Place Brands.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 7, no.  1 (2011): 42–49. doi:10.1057/pb.2010.36. Meis, Morgan. “The Teardrop of the Subcontinent: A Tour of the Literature of Sri Lanka.” Virginia Quarterly Review 88, 1 (Winter 2012): 243-249. Muller, Carl. The Jam Fruit Tree. New Delhi, London: Penguin, 1993. ———. Colombo: A Novel. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1995. Munaweera, Nayomi. Island of a Thousand Mirrors: A Novel. 1st US ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Ondaatje, Michael. Running in the Family. 1st Vintage International ed. New York: Vintage International, 1993. ———. Anil’s Ghost. 1st Vintage International ed. New York: Vintage International, 2001. Özyavuz, Murat, ed. Advances in Landscape Architecture. Rijeka, Croatia: InTech, 2014. Pieris, Anoma. “Southern Invasions: Post-war Tourism in Sri Lanka.” Postcolonial Studies 17, no. 3 (2015): 266–85. doi:10.1080/13688790 .2014.987899 Proshansky, Harold M., Abbe K. Fabian, and Robert Kaminoff. “PlaceIdentity: Physical World Socialization of the Self (1983).” In The People, Place, and Space Reader, edited by Jen J. Gieseking et al., 77–81. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. Ratnayaka, Madhubashini Dissanayake. There’s Something I Have to Tell You. 2nd ed. Boralesgamuwa: Prajaya Studio, 2012. 213

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Relph, Edward. “Writing about Places.” Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www. placeness.com/writing-about-places/. ———. “Sense of Place.” In Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World, edited by Susan Hanson, 205-226. New Brunswick, N.J.:  Rutgers University Press, 1997. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Bernard Frechtman, and David Caute. What is Literature? University Paperbacks 183. London: Methuen, 1986. Selvadurai, Shyam. Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1994. ———. Cinnamon Gardens. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 1999. ———. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2005. Shirazi, Parsa. “A Communication System for Participatory Civic Actions.” Master of Graphic Design, Thesis Project, North Carolina State University, Fall 2013-2014. Sinnetamby, Carmini. Let’s Go Somewhere. Colombo: Associated Publishing & Printing Company, Ltd., 1979. Sinniah, Bernard. Jaffna Boy. Colombo: Perera-Hussein Publishing House, 2015 original 2014. Stanley-Price, Nicholas, ed. Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery: Papers from the ICCROM Forum held on October 4-6, 2005. ICCROM conservation studies 6. Rome: ICCROM, 2007. The Centre for Poverty Analysis: CEPA. “Peace and Conflict Timeline—PACT.” Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977. Twigger-Ross, L., and D. L. Uzzell. “Place and Identity Process.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 16, no.  3 (1996): 205–20. doi:10.1006/ jevp.1996.0017. Vijayatunga, J. Grass for My Feet. 2nd ed. Colombo: Sooriya Publishers, 1999. Weliange, Dimantha. “Reconstructing the Dwelling Literary Revelations of Place and Identity.” Architectural Research Thesis, School of Design + Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, May 29, 2001. Wickramasinghe, Nira. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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TERRA FIRMA AND TRANSCENDENT SPACE: A HAGIOGRAPHIC STUDY OF “ARUNACHALA” IN SRI RAMANA MAHARISHI’S LIFE AND WORKS V. Bharathi Harishankar Introduction We are all in exile. It is the condition of our lives. We are all seeking or waiting for that time when somewhere, somehow, we can discover and rest secure in our own home, the place where ever it may be. Although we may be unsure of its shape, size, or location, every single one of us is aware at some deep atavistic level that home exists and we are searching for it.1

In this passage, the sense of “home” is inextricably intertwined with the feeling of exile and seeking or waiting for the unknown. While the quest is existentialist, it is not nihilistic because of the atavistic awareness of the existence of a place we call “home.” The present study is also about a quest for a geographical space by a young boy. Interestingly, the young boy emerged as one of the most influential Indian sages of modern times—Sri Ramana Maharishi. The place associated with him—Arunachala—has had a long lineage spanning myths, legends, history, and contemporary reality. It is interesting that the mere mention of the word “Arunachala” sparked the self-realization of Sri Ramana Maharishi. He refers to Arunachala as his “father’s house” and it is significant that he never left it in his mortal life. There are several references to the material and spiritual aspects of Arunachala in the texts on Sri Ramana Maharishi’s life and in his own writings. This study will use the hagiographic framework to examine these texts. This essay contends that space is invested with material and spiritual connotations and in the case of Arunachala, there appears to be a continuous temporal link from legendary through historical to contemporary times. 1

“Editorial,” Mountain Path 53, no. 3 (2016), 3.

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Geographical Coordinates of Arunachala/ Tiruvannamalai The mythological location of Arunachala is geographically situated in southern India. It refers to Tiruvannamalai, a town in the state of Tamil Nadu, which is 200 kms from Chennai. It is one of the 32 districts located in Tamil Nadu. It spans an area of 6,191 sq.kms and has a population of 2.4 million, according to the 2011 Census. Tiruvannamalai district consists of seven taluks, eighteen community development blocks, four municipalities, ten town panchayats and eight census towns.2 According to the 2011 Census, Tiruvannamalai district is ranked thirteenth highest in the state in terms of population. The sex ratio is 994 females to every 1000 males, which is lower than the state average. The literacy rate is 74.2 percent as against the state average of 80.9 percent. The decadal population growth of the district is 12.8 percent.3 From these statistics, it is evident that Tiruvannamalai is an ordinary town, with the exigencies of a semi-rural location. Given this, what makes Tiruvannamalai special to this study? The answer lies in its hoary past and its continuous existence in myths, legends, and history.

Arunachala in the Legends There are several myths and legends associated with Arunachala/ Tiruvannamalai. Two among them are more prominent than the others. In the legend associated with Arunachala, Siva is considered the supreme God among the Hindu Trinity of Gods that includes Brahma—the Creator, Vishnu—the Protector, and Siva—the Destroyer. Hindu mythology projects the supremacy of one over the other from time to time and in this case, Siva, as narrated below: Once Brahma and Vishnu quarreled for ascertaining the superiority of one over the other. They went on fighting to decide the issue, when Lord Siva appeared between them in the form of a column of fire or Jyoti and a voice was heard in the air that they must stop fighting. They could not understand what that Jyoti was. So, they started to find out the beginning and the end of the Jyoti. Brahma took the form of a swan and flew up to find the upper end of the column and Vishnu took the form of a boar and dived down to find the bottom. As they failed in their mission, they came back and prayed to the Jyoti to take a concrete form. Being pleased with their prayer, Lord Siva took the form of a Sthāvaraliṅga, i.e., Arunachala Hill.4 2 3 4

“Tiruvannamalai,” accessed July 24, 2016, http://www.tn.gov.in/district_view/. “Tiruvannamalai,” accessed July 24, 2016, http://www.census2011.co.in/. R. K. Das, “Temples and Legends of Tiruvannamalai,” accessed July 25, 2016, http://www.hindubooks.org/.

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That column of fire has taken on different forms in different epochs or Yugas. “It is said that in the Krita Yuga the liṅga was in the form of a flame (Jyoti) and in Treta Yuga it became a hill of jewels; in Dwapara Yuga it appeared like a hill of gold and in Kali Yuga it appears like a hill of Marakata. At present the color of the hill is reddish like copper.”5 The second legend associated with Arunachala presents Siva and his consort, Parvati. In this legend also, Lord Siva appeared as a column of fire, which now stands as the Hill of Arunachala. R.K. Das narrates the legend in the following manner: Once Parvati, the consort of Lord Siva, sportingly closed the eyes of Siva for a short while (nimisha). The eyes of Lord Siva are the Moon and the Sun and the Fire. As Parvati obstructed the vision of the eyes of Lord Siva, the sun, the moon and fire could not perform their duties. As the nimisha of Lord Siva is equivalent to several years in worldly computation, the clock of time had to be set back, which led to micalcuations and upset all natural laws. Many sages approached Lord Siva and Parvati and acquainted them of the situation. Lord Siva reprimanded Parvati that she, being the Creator and Mother of this Universe, should not have done this and the only remedy for it was to do penance (Prayaschitta). Under orders from Lord Siva, Parvati came to Ekambara Kshetra near Kancheepuram, made a Siva Linga of sand and started her penance. To test the sincerity of Parvati, Lord Siva ordered Nature to cause a flood and a heavy storm near the place where Parvati was worshipping the Linga. The place all round was surrounded with water and with a view to save the Shivalinga from flood, Parvati clasped it to her heart. As she pressed the Lingam made of sand, the impression of Parvati’s ornaments on her bosom fell on the Shivalinga, whereupon an unknown voice uttered that Parvati’s prayers were perfect and that she should go next to Arunachala Hill, the hermitage of Maharishi Gautama, and worship there. Thereupon, Parvati came to Arunachala Hill and Sage Gautama expounded the greatness of Arunachala Hill to her. It is further said that when Parvati was in penance at the hill, Demon Mahishasura came to the place and caused mischief. So, Parvati took the form of Mother Durga and killed Mahishasura …. Lord Siva became visible to Parvati in the form of a Jyoti.6

5 6

Das, “Temples and Legends of Tiruvannamalai.” Sangam period is one of the most important eras in Tamil history. It was divided into three phases, namely thalai, idai and kadai sangam. While traditionalist historians date the Sangam period between 500 BCE to 500 CE, recent research conducted on the literature of the period cite the dates as first to third centuries AD. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (New York: Dorset Press. 1986), 103.

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Historical Antecedents of Tiruvannamalai Historically, Tiruvannamalai provides a varied and interesting narrative. Tiruvannamalai was ruled successively by the Pallavas, Cholas, Rashtrakutas, Hoysalas, Vijayanagar kings, and the British. The first reference to Tiruvannamalai was during the Sangam era, when it was called Aruva Nadu.7 Right through the medieval period, Tiruvannamalai was in the region ruled by the Pallavas and Cholas. Temple inscriptions attest the history of Tiruvannamalai during and after the Chola period. The history of this town dates from the early Chola period i.e. the period of Aditya I and Parantaka I (A.D. 871-955) when the Chola empire had expanded northwards to include practically the whole of Tondaimandalam. After Parantaka I till the reign of Rajendra I, Chola rule over this region is not attested by the Tiruvannamalai inscriptions, possibly on account of the Rashtrakuta invasions …. The recovery of this region by the Cholas was a slow process and reached its successful conclusion only towards the close of Rajaraja I’s region i.e. AD 1014.8

The Chola rule continued up to 1300 CE and it was followed by the Hoysala rule. Following this period was the long reign of the Vijayanagar Kings between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. From the eighteenth century onwards, the region has witnessed several battles involving the Nawabs of Arcot, Hyder Ali, British, and French.9 In this long history of Arunachala, the years marking the stay of Sri Ramana Maharishi at Tiruvannamalai become significant indicators of a spiritual time frame and is the focus of this essay.

Hagiography: A Definition The Encyclopedia Britannica defines hagiography as “the body of literature describing the lives and veneration of the Christian saints. The literature of hagiography embraces acts of martyrs (i.e., accounts of their trials and deaths); biographies of saintly monks, bishops, princes, or virgins; and accounts of miracles connected with saints’ tombs, relics, icons, or statues.”10 By extension, hagiography can include, in its scope, biographies of evolved human beings in all spiritual traditions. 7

8

9 10

“Brief History of the District,” accessed July 24, 2016, http://www.tn.gov.in/ district_view/. “Hagiography,” Encyclopaedia Britannica. accessed July 21, 2016, https://www. britannica.com/topic/hagiography. Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India (London: Ryder, 1934). Gabriele Ebert, Ramana Maharishi : His Life, accessed July 21, 2016, http://www. hariomgroup.org/saints/Ramana; ”Eight Verses to Arunachala,” accessed July 24, 2016, https://www.sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns.

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Several studies on hagiography relate it to history. In this respect, a hagiographical text becomes a valuable record of local history, popular customs, and traditions. At present, however, hagiography is viewed with suspicion. The views expressed by Delehaye et al. are perceptive in this regard: “The work of the hagiographer may be historical, but it is not necessarily so. It may assume any literary form suitable to the glorification of the saints, from an official record adapted to the use of the faithful, to a poetical composition of the most exuberant character wholly detached from reality.”11

Arunachala Ramana: A Life There are several biographies of Sri Ramana Maharishi in many Indian languages and in English. Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India foregrounded Sri Ramana and his spiritual teachings to the Western world.12 The present study draws information for its hagiographic discussion of the life of Sri Ramana Maharishi from the following texts. 1. 2.

Gabriele Ebert’s Ramana Maharishi: His Life Arthur Osborne’s Ramana Maharishi and the Path of Self Knowledge 3. Major Chadwick’s A Sadhu’s Reminiscences of Ramana Maharishi 4. Ki.Va. Jagannathan’s Ramana Maamunivar: Vazhvum Vaakkum (Ramana Maharishi: Life and Teaching) 5. Kashyapan’s Ore Vaanam, Ore Bhoomi, Ore Maharishi (One Sky, One Earth, One Maharishi) Sri Ramana Maharishi was born as “Venkatraman” on December 30, 1879 at Thiruchuli village in the erstwhile Ramnad district. His parents were Sundaram Iyer and Azhagammai. His father was a government pleader and the family was well known for its philanthropy. The midwife who assisted the childbirth was an old woman with poor eye-sight. However, she saw a flash of light when the child was born. The growing up years of Venkatraman were nothing special. He had a carefree life till his father’s death, when he was twelve. He was physically strong and good at sports. He was an ordinary student at school but had a flashing memory. The highlight of his growing years was a constant refrain in his mind of the word “Arunachala.”

11

12

Hippolyte Delehaye and S.J. Bollandist. The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), 1. Nochur Venkatraman, “Aksharamanamalai: The Great Song of Adoration,” Mountain Path, 51.4 (Oct-Dec 2014), 9.

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Arunachala (translated as the Red Mountain) on the wide plain of southern India is geologically one of the oldest parts of the earth. For pious Hindus, it is one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites. There is a wellknown saying in southern India, which the young Ramana also knew, “To see Chidambaram, to be born in Tiruvarur, to die in Benares or even to think of Arunachala is to be assured of Liberation.” At that time, Ramana only knew that Arunachala was a very holy place. He had never connected it with any real place and did not know where the mountain was located. Nevertheless, from childhood onwards, he had been aware of a kind of permanent pulsating repetition (sphurana) of “Arunachala, Arunachala,” that was both spontaneous and uninterrupted. One day in November 1895, he met an elderly relative and when he asked him where he was coming from, the answer came back, “from Arunachala.” For the first time Ramana learned that Arunachala was a real place which one could visit. He further asked where it was situated and received the answer, “What! Do you not know Tiruvannamalai? That is Arunachalam.” Of course the town of Tiruvannamalai was well known to him.13 The pulsating repetition of Arunachala reached a climax in July 1896, when the seventeen year old Venkatraman had a near death experience. He was physically fit and had no ailments. But there was an instantaneous thought: “I am going to die .... now, in a few minutes, I am going to die.” The onset of this fear did not lead the young boy to the elders at home or to the doctor. He experienced the passion of dying and understood that the body has death but the soul continues to live. This self-realization, which becomes possible for sages and saints after extensive austerities and penance, came to Ramana Maharishi spontaneously and in an instant. This moment of self-realization took him away from the routine chores of everyday life. On August 29, 1896, he left Madurai and reached Tiruvannamalai on September 1, 1896. From that day till his death on April 14, 1950, Ramana Maharishi never left Tiruvannamalai in his mortal body. At the time of his death, a glorious shining star was seen to move in the direction of Arunachala.

Personalization of the Public Sphere When we study the life of Ramana Maharishi, it is punctuated and highlighted by the overwhelming presence of Arunachala. A geographical place becomes the spiritual home of the seeker. It further expands into an all-encompassing spiritual expanse for the innumerable devotees who came into the circle of Ramana Maharishi. For him, Arunachala was the sacred syllable that gave spontaneous self-realization and Tiruvannamalai 13

Mithin Aachi, “The Antipodes of Arunachala,” Mountain Path 47, no. 4 (2010), 78.

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became his father’s house. An instance that exemplifies this idea is the letter that Ramana Maharishi left for his family when he left for Arunachala. I have, in search of my Father and in obedience to his command, started from here. THIS is only embarking on a virtuous enterprise. Therefore none need grieve over THIS affair. To trace THIS out, no money need to be spent.... Thus, --------------.

The letter begins with the personal pronoun “I” and moves on to the impersonal “This” and ends with a long line, instead of a signature. This may be interpreted as the moment when he overcame the ego. Ramana Maharishi’s whole-hearted surrender to Arunachala was reciprocated by the Hill, the Temple, and the Town. For the first few years, different spots in Tiruvannamalai provided the much needed safety and succor to Ramana Maharishi. The personalized signature spaces include the Thousand Pillared Hall and Patala Lingam within the Arunachaleswarar temple precincts, Skandasramam and Virupaksha Cave on the Hill, and Pavazha Kundru and Manthoppu (Mangrove garden) in the Town.

Absolute Self Revealed through Arunachala Just as in life, Arunachala dominates the writings of Ramana Maharishi. In his Eight Verses to Arunachala, he states, Ah, there a mountain, as if insentient, stands,

its works amazing, past all human understanding. From innocence of youth, as mighty Arunachala, it shone within my thoughts, but of its meaning, knowledge I had none, even when I learned that it and Tiruvannamalai both, were one. It charmed my mind and pulled me on, near its presence, till, drawing near, at last I saw it as vast unmoving essence. (Emphasis added) 14 It is evident that Ramana Maharishi considered the Hill as a sentient being and the divine force. The “vast, unmoving essence” that it revealed to him also marked his advent into a continuous state of enlightenment or sahaja samadhi. Thus, Arunachala is the catalyst that helped the union of the individual self (Sri Ramana) with the Divine Self (Jivatma and Paramatma). It is also, to him, the physical manifestation of the Absolute Self. In his Aksharamanamalai, Ramana Maharishi weaves in bridal mysticism to explicate his relationship with Arunachala. As Nochur Vankatraman explains, “Akshara means letters or indestructible; manam 14

Ramana Maharishi, “Eight Verses to Arunachala,” accessed July 24, 2016, https:// www.sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns.

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means fragrance or marriage; malai is garland.”15 Sri Ramana uses pertinent similes and comparisons to present himself as the Bride and Arunachala as the Groom. Arunachala, you drew me close, inexorably, the way a magnet draws iron filings to itself. (Aksharamanamalai Verse 16) Thinking of you, as you caught me in your grace, you bound me in your web like a spider and ate me up. (Aksharamanamalai Verse 103)

In these two verses, there is a sense that the Divine Grace is a strong attraction, that cannot be repelled. At the same time, there is the indication that Ramana Maharishi had totally surrendered to the Divine Will to such an extent that he was completely consumed.

Arunachala as the Spiritual Guru Alongside the personal attraction to Arunachala, Sri Ramana also emphasized that Arunachala was a spiritual center, both as a geographical place and a spiritual space. As Mithin Aachi explains in his article, “The Antipode of Arunachala,” “he [Bhagavan Ramana] used to say that Arunachala was the top of the spiritual axis of the earth. There must be another mountain corresponding to Arunachala at exactly the opposite side of the globe, the corresponding pole of the axis.”16 One location of interest in this regard could be Machu Picchu area in Peru. According to Mithin Aachi, it is the mountain near the Bauer Basin of the Pacific Ocean thousands of metres below on the sea floor.17 Ramana Maharishi was also firm in his opinion that Arunachala is a spiritual hotspot. Many saints have lived there, merging their sanctity with that of the hill. It is said, and confirmed by Bhagavan, that to this day Siddhas (Sages with supernatural powers) dwell in its caves, whether in physical bodies or not, and some are said to have seen then as lights moving about the hill at night. 18 15

16 17 18

Ramana Maharishi, “Hymn to Arunachala,” accessed July 24, 2016, https://www. sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns; Ramana Maharishi, “The Necklet of Nine Gems,” accessed July 24, 2016, https://www.sriramanamaharishi.org/ teachings/hymns. Aachi, “The Antipodes,” 78. Aachi, “The Antipodes,” 78-80. Ramana Maharishi never expected or approved of difficult austerities, such as fasting, from his followers. The only practice he insisted and encouraged was the girivalam or the circumambulation of the Hill. From the passage cited, it becomes clear why he insisted on this practice. Kashyapan, One Sky, One Earth, One Maharishi (Chennai : Vikatan Prasuram, 2007), 34.

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The various descriptions of Arunachala by Ramana Maharishi reveal an anthropomorphic construction. It is interesting to note that Ramana Maharishi did not see himself as the highlight of the spiritual landscape of Arunachala but saw it as a spiritual power center. Further, for Ramana Maharishi, Arunachala became the manifestation of the Divine Grace. As he describes in Hymn to Arunachala, Ocean of Nectar, Full of Grace, Engulfing the universe in Thy Splendour! O Arunachala, the Supreme Itself! Be thou the Sun and open the lotus of my heart in Bliss. 19

Through the comparison of the lotus blooming with the rise of the sun to his spiritual awakening in the presence of the Hill, Ramana Maharishi connects Arunachala as the bestower of Satchitananda or eternal bliss. In another verse from The Necklet of Nine Gems, Ramana Maharishi foregrounds Arunachala as the supreme consciousness.20 Bearing and tending me in the world in the shape of my father and mother, Thou didst abide in my mind, and before I fell into the deep sea called Jaganmaya (universal illusion) and was drowned Thou didst draw me to Thee, Arunachala, Consciousness Itself, ... such is the wonder of Thy Grace!

In this verse, Ramana Maharishi presents the idea that Arunachala, as a spiritual guru, prevented him from falling into the illusion of the egofilled, physical existence, and routine life (samsara sagara).

Conclusion From the discussion above, both the tangible and the intangible aspects of the relationship between Arunachala and Ramana Maharishi become clear. It is interesting that Arunachala has a simultaneous presence in Ramana Maharishi’s life as a physical place, an intimate home space and a spiritual landscape. As Swami Natananandan explains in his article, “Arunachala Aksharamanamalai: A Detailed Commentary by Muhavai Kanna Muruganar,” When we consider the story of Bhagavan Ramana’s life, it is seen to be a tale of divine grace, in which “the flashing forth of Arunachala” (Arunachala Sphurana) appeared in him as his very nature “from the 19

20

Ramana Maharishi, “Hymn to Arunachala,” accessed July 24, 2016, https://www. sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns. Ramana Maharishi, “The Necklet of Nine Gems,” accessed July 24, 2016, https:// www.sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns.

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innocence of youth” entirely swallowed up his body, possessions, his very soul and caused him to exist as one with its very own Self.21

While describing the path of self-realization, four different ways are mentioned: Piplika Marga—Way of the Ant—which demands the practice of arduous austerities. • Vihamga Marga—Way of the Bird—which is the direct path through knowledge. • Markata Marga—Way of the Monkey—in which the sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) clings tightly to God, just as a young monkey holds on to its mother. • Marjala/ Marjara Marga—Way of the Cat—in which the Lord delivers the sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) just as a cat grasps its kitten by the scruff of its neck. In the case of Ramana Maharishi, following the Way of the Cat, the Lord Himself delivered the necessary self-realization.22 Thus, Arunachala, a geographical, mythological, and historically located place became a home space and a divine space for Ramana Maharishi. Moreover, at present, it connotes a spiritual expanse in that it houses both the Arunachaleswarar temple and Ramana Ashramam that provide spiritual succor to the seekers. •

21

22

Swami Natananandan, “Arunachala Aksharamanamalai: A Detailed Commentary by Muhavai Kanna Muruganar,” Mountain Path 53, no. 1 (2016), 10. Natananandan, “Arunachala Aksharamanamalai, 10.

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References Aachi, Mithin. “The Antipodes of Arunachala.” Mountain Path 47, no. 4 (2010): 77-81. Brunton, Paul. A Search in Secret India. London: Ryder, 1934. Chadwick, Major. A Sadhu’s Reminiscences of Ramana Maharishi. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanashram, 1984. Das, R.K. “Temples and Legends of Tiruvannamalai.” Accessed July 25, 2016, http://www.hindubooks.org/. Delehaye, Hippolyte and S.J. Bollandist. The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961. Ebert, Gabriele. “Ramana Maharishi: His Life.” Accessed July 21, 2016, http:// www.hariomgroup.org/saints/Ramana. “Editorial,” Mountain Path 53, no. 3 (2016). 3. “Hagiography.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed July 21, 2016, https:// www. britannica.com/topic/hagiography. “History of Tiruvannamalai.” Accessed July 4, 2016, http://tiruvannamalai. tn.nic.in/profile.html. Jagannathan, Ki. Va. Ramana Maharishi: Life and Teaching. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanashramam, 1956. Kashyapan. One Sky, One Earth, One Maharishi. Chennai: Vikatan Publication, 2007. Kulke, Hermann and Dietmar Rothermund. A History of India. New York: Dorset Press, 1986. Maharishi, Ramana. “Eight Verses to Arunachala.” Accessed July 24, 2016, https://www.sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns. ———. “Aksharamanamalai.” Accessed July 24, 2016, https://www.sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns. ———. “Five Hymns to Arunachala.” Accessed July 24, 2016, https://www. sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns. ———. “The Necklet of Nine Gems.” Accessed July 24, 2016, https://www. sriramanamaharishi.org/teachings/hymns. Natananandan, Swami. “Arunachala Aksharamanamalai: A Detailed Commentary by Muhavai Kanna Muruganar.” Mountain Path 53, no. 1 (2016): 9-14. Osborne, Arthur. Ramana Maharishi and the Path of Self Knowledge. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanashramam. "Tiruvannamalai." http://www.tn.gov.in/district_view/. Accessed 24/07/2016. “Tiruvannamalai.” www.census2011.co.in/. Accessed 24/07/2016. 225

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Venkatraman, Nochur. “Aksharamanamalai: The Great Song of Adoration.” Mountain Path 51, no. 4 (2014): 9-19.

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REIMAGINING HOME in an AGE of DISPLACEMENT Culture, Religion, and Home-Making in and Beyond South Asia explores how the idea of the home is repurposed or reenvisioned in relation to experiences of modernity, urbanization, conflict, migration, and displacement. It considers how these processes are reflected in rituals, beliefs, and social practices. It explores the processes by which “home” may be constructed and how relocations often result in either the replication or rejection of traditional homes and identities. James Ponniah examines the various contestations surrounding the categories of “home” and “religion,” including interfaith families, urban spaces, and sacred places.

“A book so rich in theory and methodology, illuminated by case studies, will appeal to a broad readership far beyond South Asia, just as the title claims.” —Richard Fox Young, Princeton Theological Seminary “This book explores concepts of home across three genders, multiple religions, and many specific places, from Sri Lanka to China and Japan, from Mumbai to Arunachal Pradesh. A conceptual and expansive tour de force, this book examines the aftermath of colonialism and war, and strategies for negotiating domesticity in light of food, interfaith marriage, and religious identity.” —Christopher Key Chapple, Loyola Marymount University “The essays in this wide-ranging, evocative book explore processes of home-making across a plethora of contexts. Collectively, these fascinating chapters reveal the many ways people come to manufacture a sense of home across religious, cultural, historical, and geographical register.” —Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University of Chicago “The book is a welcome collection of empirical studies on religion and space and in particular on the role of the idea of ‘home’ in South Asia, in diasporas, in the experience of women, and in literary texts. The book illustrates that sacredness of space and home is constructed by human agency as part of social and cultural processes and is ever changing.” —Knut A. Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Norway

JAMES PONNIAH is an assistant professor in the department of Christian studies at the University of Madras. He is the author of The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and editor of Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). His areas of research include popular Catholicism and Dalit Christianity.

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