Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town 9788132208846, 9788132208853, 8132208846, 8132208854

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Usha Menon

Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town

Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town

Usha Menon

Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town

Usha Menon Department of Culture and Communication Drexel University Philadelphia, PA, USA

Part of Chapter 8 is based on the author’s article “The Three Selves of Adulthood: Cultural Conceptions of Self Among Oriya Hindu Women,” published in Psychological Studies 56(1): 23–35, DOI 10.1007/s12646-011-0058-1. © 2012 National Academy of Psychology, India. Reprinted with permission. Part of Chapter 9 is based on the author’s article “Does Feminism Have Universal Relevance? The Challenges Posed by Oriya Hindu Family Practices,” published in Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 149.4. © 2000 Russell Sage Foundation, 112 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10065. Reprinted with permission. ISBN 978-81-322-0884-6 ISBN 978-81-322-0885-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3 Springer India Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013933060 © Springer India 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Unless specifically mentioned, most statements and the long excerpts of conversations presented in this book were part of taped conversations and discussions that I had with the women and men of the temple town. Some statements have been taken from notes that I maintained while doing fieldwork. I am also responsible for the translation of all this material. Odia terms have been italicized. I have also tried to remain faithful to pronunciation in Odia. Therefore, because in Odia the medial “a” is usually pronounced as an “o” rather than an “a,” I have tended to transliterate these vowel sounds as “o” rather than “a.” Therefore, the word karma is karmo in spoken Odia with the last vowel sound being pronounced as an “o” rather than either remaining silent or being pronounced as an “a,” and so that is how it appears in the text. Proper nouns like Lingaraj and Siva are presented using the usual English spellings. In addition, the glossary contains all of the Odia terms that are frequently used in the temple town.

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Preface

This is a book about a group of Odia Hindu women living in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in eastern India and their understanding and experience of wellbeing. It is also a book that addresses a much broader subject: The idea that women living in societies that do not necessarily embrace the values of liberalism can still lead lives that have meaning, power, and a sense of purpose; that liberal formulations, despite what many secular liberals may think, do not exhaust the possibility of living life fully and satisfyingly. This is, therefore, a multicultural feminist text that focuses on the concrete contexts of these women’s lives, and by doing so it expands the parameters of feminist discourse. The present book’s research site—the temple town of Bhubaneswar—is unique in many respects. As a pilgrimage center of some repute, it has never been isolated from the outside world. It is not, therefore, some kind of secluded backwater where time has stood still. On the contrary, people here are, and, perhaps, have always been, well aware of the wider world as well as their position in it. At the same time, precisely because it is a pilgrimage center, it is a bastion of fairly traditional Hindu values. The upper castes here, particularly the Brahmans, not only derive great pride from their high ritual status but also recognize that this high status stems from their disciplined lifestyle, from the restrictive life practices they follow. Not surprisingly, therefore, upper-caste residents of the temple town are invested in maintaining these restrictive life practices. Thus, despite the increasing numbers of intrusions from the outside world, customary Hindu thinking and practice still tend to guide and shape the orientation of temple town residents toward life and the world. Perhaps because this neighborhood is unique, it has also been the research site for successive generations of scholars from a variety of disciplines. If one focuses simply on the anthropological investigations that have been done here, there exists a substantial body of knowledge against which the claims and findings of the present book can be juxtaposed. When I went into the temple town of Bhubaneswar to do fieldwork in the summer of 1992, I was a typical product of a Westernized education and an upper middle-class, urban Indian upbringing. While I hesitate to describe myself as a “flaming liberal,”

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I certainly saw myself as modern woman not overburdened by cultural or religious baggage. And I have to admit that my initial attitude toward the upper caste, fairly orthodox, seemingly subservient Odia Hindu women of the temple town was edged with some slight superiority. However, through doing fieldwork and through getting to know some of these women and their families rather well, my attitude changed, imperceptibly perhaps but quite profoundly: I began to realize that these women and I shared certain fundamental values despite all the differences that separated us in terms of class, caste, and cultural and linguistic identity. Nevertheless, I only realized the full degree to which my attitude had changed when I returned to the USA and began analyzing the data I had collected. There is little doubt that many of these women, especially when they are young and just married, live under enormous constraints: from a liberal perspective, temple town society is an illiberal one. But I found it hard to represent these women as victims of a misogynistic ideology. I found it equally hard to suggest that these women—even the younger ones—were protofeminists, simply waiting for an opportune moment when they would rise up and rebel and demand a radical change in social and kinship arrangements. In the end, after careful and detailed readings, and rereadings, of the transcripts of conversations I had with the women of the temple town, after hours of mulling over my interactions with and my observations of them, I finally began thinking that it made much more sense to portray these women as inhabiting a distinctively different moral universe in which the virtues they aspire to are not those that animate a liberal moral universe: instead of seeking to be free to live life as one chooses or to be the equal of everyone else as liberals tend to do, many of these women work to cultivate self-discipline and to achieve self-refinement through such self-discipline. It is particularly instructive to explore the temple town paradigm of domesticity presented in this book against the backdrop of the “opt-out phenomenon” and recent debates occurring in the USA about whether and how professional women can combine highly demanding careers and family life. While no one is suggesting that the America of the 1950s when middle-class women tended to choose domesticity over paid labor is going to stage a comeback, it does appear that many highly educated women are reevaluating domesticity, an indication, perhaps, that there may be more enduring associations between domesticity and women than many of us are willing to acknowledge. To conclude, I am well aware that fieldwork is an enterprise that is fraught with pitfalls and problems. Furthermore, like many other anthropologists, I acknowledge that “contradictions and instability” characterize most cultural situations, and I recognize that anthropological interpretations are, at best, partial and incomplete. Therefore, what I present in this book to my readers are plausible explanations, “best guesses,” for the “apparent consistencies” (Wolf 1992: 129) that emerge from the data. ******** Over the past many years, I have accumulated several debts of gratitude. I would like to acknowledge them by mentioning the people and institutions that have supported me during these years of intellectual endeavor.

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I have to thank the MacArthur Research Network on Successful Midlife Development (MIDMAC) and its Chairperson, Dr. Gilbert Brim, for their generous funding of my fieldwork in Odisha in 1991 and 1992–1993. This research was also funded in part by Radcliffe College. In addition, the Bernice Neugarten Award and an award from the Robert Kahn Memorial Fund—both given by the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago—provided support for some of the writing and analysis. I am enormously grateful to Richard Shweder. Over the last 20 years and more, Rick has been both mentor and guide. Understanding and generous with his time and knowledge, he has patiently read through this entire book and has made significant and constructive suggestions that have vastly improved it. I also owe a most profound intellectual debt to McKim Marriott. Even today, more than a decade and a half after I left the University of Chicago, my thinking is still shaped and influenced by his acute insights and his deep understanding of Hindu cultural realities. My work has never received the kind of enthusiastic reading that he has given it. An invaluable mentor, his critical evaluation and meticulous attention to detail has been truly inspiring. I should also mention Gilbert Herdt, Raymond Fogelson, and Sylvia Vatuk, all of whom in their own distinctive ways challenged me to think critically and cultivate self-awareness. Since 1997, I have been privileged to know Douglas Porpora at Drexel University. Doug has been a stimulating colleague and friend. He has taken time out of a very busy schedule to read this book from cover to cover; and his feedback has been invaluable in improving it. In addition, Christina Honde, Stanley Kurtz, Girishwar Misra, and Susan Seymour have been wonderful friends and colleagues, helping and supporting me in all kinds of ways during both good and not so good times. I am also grateful to Shinjini Chatterjee, Senior Editor at Springer (India), for her early support of this work and the wisdom and clarity of her many suggestions. Two anonymous reviewers did yeoman service, providing solid and constructive suggestions that ultimately strengthened this work. It goes without saying that this work would never have come to fruition without the generosity and cooperation of the people living in the temple town of Bhubaneswar. Maheswar Mishra has my gratitude for enabling that process. From the very beginning, so many families in the temple town—those of Sarat Mahapatra, Guna Mahapatra, Hrushikesh Mishra, Shankuntala Gorabadu, and Usha Mahapatra— responded to my intrusions and inquiries with a truly astonishing degree of openmindedness. And if this book has any merit, it is entirely due to their honesty and candor. Finally, the people who have sustained me during this intellectual enterprise have been my mother, my husband, and my children. It is sad that my father who was present when I started down this intellectual path and who took such pride in my achievements is not here to see this book published. Without my family’s unflagging faith and confidence in my abilities, I doubt very much that I would have completed this book.

About the Author

Usha Menon received her Ph.D. (with Honors) in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1995. She has done fieldwork in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, as well as in the northern Indian city of Meerut. She has written extensively on different aspects of Hindu society and civilization, in particular on goddess worship, family dynamics, gender relations, Hindu morality, Hindu women and liberal feminism, and Hindu–Muslim religious violence.

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Contents

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Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity: An Introduction ............................................................ Multicultural Feminism ............................................................................ The Value of Domesticity ......................................................................... “Imperial” Liberalism ............................................................................... Choice as a Universally Desirable Moral Good........................................ The Indigenous View of Cultural Constraints........................................... Odia Hindu Understandings About Wellbeing ......................................... Fieldwork .................................................................................................. Odia Hindu Women of the Temple Town ................................................. Locating the Temple Town........................................................................ A Cultural Model of Wellbeing ................................................................ References .................................................................................................

1 1 4 5 7 9 10 11 13 17 20 22

Entering the Temple Town of Bhubaneswar ........................................ The Temple Town of Bhubaneswar........................................................... The Native/Indigenous/Postcolonial Anthropologist................................ The Lingaraj Temple................................................................................. Entering the Temple Town ........................................................................ Five Families in the Temple Town ............................................................ The Patra Family .................................................................................. The Nandas........................................................................................... The Pandas ........................................................................................... The Patis ............................................................................................... The Beheras.......................................................................................... Other Informants ....................................................................................... Mamata................................................................................................. Chanjarani ............................................................................................ Manogobinda Mahasupakaro ............................................................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

27 27 29 31 37 40 40 42 45 47 49 51 51 52 52 53 54 xiii

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Contents

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Odia Hindu Ways of Thinking ............................................................... “The Good Life” in the Temple Town ...................................................... The Good Death ........................................................................................ Rebirth....................................................................................................... Bhagya and Karma and Lalato Lekha in the Temple Town...................... Lalato Lekha......................................................................................... Bhagya.................................................................................................. Karma................................................................................................... Connections Between Karma, Bhagya, and Lalato Lekha ....................... Manipulation of Karma............................................................................. The Human Body ...................................................................................... Disease and the Human Body .............................................................. The Maternal Body ................................................................................... Diet and Daily Practices............................................................................ The Temple Town Conception of the Mana (Mind/Heart) ....................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

57 58 60 61 62 62 63 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 72 73 74

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Perceptions of Femaleness ...................................................................... Prevailing Feminine Sensibilities.............................................................. A Popular Origin Myth ............................................................................. The Odia Hindu Woman and Domesticity ................................................ Techniques of Managing the Process of Maturing as a Woman ............... Marriage: The Most Significant Samskara for Women ............................ Relations Between Wives and Husbands in the Temple Town ................. Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

77 78 79 80 84 86 90 97 98

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Images of the Life Course....................................................................... Conceptions of Life................................................................................... Talking of Significant Life Course Events and Experiences..................... The Two-Phase Model .............................................................................. The Five-Phase Model .............................................................................. Childhood or Balya Avastha................................................................. Youth/Maidenhood or Kishoro Avastha ............................................... Young Adulthood or Jouvana Avastha ................................................. Mature Adulthood or Prauda Avastha ................................................. Old Age or Briddha Avastha ................................................................ Odia Hindu Conceptualizations of the Female Life Course and the Dharmasastras ......................................................... Levels of Life Satisfaction in the Past, Present and Future....................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

101 102 103 106 107 108 109 111 113 115 118 119 121 122

Contents

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Managing the Household: Achieving Control, Being Productive, Distributing Resources ............................................ Female Family Roles and Duties and Their Implications for Women’s Wellbeing............................................................................. The Sample ............................................................................................... The Daily Routines of Women Occupying Different Family Roles ......... Usual Actions or Nityakarma ............................................................... The Daughter in Her Father’s Home ......................................................... The Daily Routine of a “New” Son’s Wife: The Junior Wife ................... Daily Routine of a Senior Wife................................................................. Daily Routine of a Married Husband’s Mother ........................................ Daily Routine of a Widowed Husband’s Mother ...................................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

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123 124 125 128 128 129 131 137 140 144 147 149

The Auspicious Heart: Influence, Productivity, and Coherence ......................................................................................... “Auspicious Heart of the Family” ............................................................. The Transition to Becoming Auspicious Centers ..................................... Influence, Productivity, and Coherence: A Cultural Model of Wellbeing ................................................................ How Lived Experience Diverges from This Cultural Model .................... Misleading Responses............................................................................... Unfortunate Experiences: Widowhood and the Permanent Return of a Married Daughter .................................... Widowhood ............................................................................................... A Married Daughter’s Permanent Return ................................................. Time’s Eroding Effects ............................................................................. Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

162 162 167 170 171 173

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Managing Life and Its Processes ........................................................... Future-Oriented Attitudes of Active Acceptance and Engagement .......... Living in Extended Households ................................................................ Cultural Conceptions of the Self ............................................................... The “Emergent” Interdependent Conception of Self ................................ The “Encompassing” Interdependent Conception of Self ........................ The Non-interdependent Self of Old Age ................................................. Life’s Challenges ...................................................................................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

175 176 178 182 184 186 189 191 192 193

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An Alternate Moral Order ..................................................................... Gynarchy ................................................................................................... Hindu Men on Their Mothers and Wives.................................................. Domesticity Valued ...................................................................................

195 196 198 200

151 152 153 155 157 160

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Contents

Variations in Representations of Hindu Women ....................................... Hindu Woman as Passive Victim .............................................................. Hindu Woman as Subversive Rebel .......................................................... Hindu Women as Active Upholders of an Alternate Moral Universe....... The Idea of “False Consciousness”........................................................... Conclusion ................................................................................................ References .................................................................................................

205 206 209 211 213 215 215

Conclusions .............................................................................................. Women’s Wellbeing in the Temple Town ................................................. Domesticity and Family Life in the Temple Town ................................... Gender Relations in the Temple Town ...................................................... Family and the Female Sense of Self ........................................................ References .................................................................................................

219 220 221 223 225 227

Glossary ........................................................................................................... 229 Index ................................................................................................................. 233

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8

Map showing the state of Odisha and the state capital Bhubaneswar ........................................................................ The neighborhood of the Lingaraj Temple and the location of the ten households that participated in this study ........................ Sketch of a typical house in the temple town .................................. Patra family chart ............................................................................. Nanda family chart........................................................................... Panda family chart ........................................................................... Pati family chart ............................................................................... Behera family chart..........................................................................

Fig. 5.1

Average scores of life satisfaction across the life course................. 120

Fig. 2.2

28 35 39 41 43 46 47 49

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List of Tables

Table 5.1

Average scores for life satisfaction across the life course ................................................................................. 120

Table 6.1

Distribution of the women in the sample according to family roles ................................................................................ 126 Distribution of women in the sample according to life phases .................................................................................. 126 Distribution of women’s wellbeing according to family roles ................................................................................ 148

Table 6.2 Table 6.3

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Chapter 1

Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity: An Introduction

Contents Multicultural Feminism ............................................................................................................. The Value of Domesticity .......................................................................................................... “Imperial” Liberalism ................................................................................................................ Choice as a Universally Desirable Moral Good......................................................................... The Indigenous View of Cultural Constraints............................................................................ Odia Hindu Understandings About Wellbeing .......................................................................... Fieldwork ................................................................................................................................... Odia Hindu Women of the Temple Town .................................................................................. Locating the Temple Town......................................................................................................... A Cultural Model of Wellbeing ................................................................................................. References ..................................................................................................................................

1 4 5 7 9 10 11 13 17 20 22

Multicultural Feminism This book explores the subjective wellbeing of traditional, upper-caste Hindu women leading sequestered lives in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Odisha (earlier, Orissa), eastern India. It focuses on Odia Hindu wives and mothers, and the opportunities they have over their life course for achieving control over their own lives, as well as empowering themselves in their relationships with others. While the book is an anthropological account of the lives of women in an orthodox Hindu devotional community, it is also a “third wave” or multicultural feminist text written with an eye to contemporary debates about the deep and persistent connections between femininity, family, and domestic life. Perhaps as an acknowledgement of the complexity and ambiguity that characterizes women’s lives today, feminists who came of age in the 1990s have, in a striking departure from the intellectual position held by earlier feminists, rehabilitated the notion of domesticity (Walker 1995; Henry 2004). Betty Friedan’s famous and enormously influential text The Feminine Mystique (1963), a canonical liberal feminist volume written before the emergence of multicultural feminisms of various sorts, caricatured the housewife and domesticity so successfully that, for an entire U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_1, © Springer India 2013

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1 Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity…

generation of feminists, being a housewife was anathema1: emancipation, it was believed, could only be achieved if one left domesticity behind. Yet, today, Rebecca Walker, one of the more eloquent spokespersons for late twentieth-century feminism, argues that there is more than one way to be a feminist. In her writings, she exhorts women “to be real,” to be true to all aspects of themselves—even those of wife and mother. This book, therefore, might be viewed as a multicultural “third wave” anthropologist’s response to Betty Friedan. It is certainly not a liberal feminist text because it tries to remain true to the moral perspective of the women it is portraying, to the values they adhere to—and these women are not liberals. They live in a moral world that does not privilege liberty and equality—the central values of liberalism—over all others; instead, in their world, it is the values of self-discipline and self-control, loyalty, patronage, protection, and sacrifice (including the ability to defer or even subordinate personal gratification) which are the most prized moral goods. As part of a growing literature in “multicultural feminism” or “third wave feminism,” a way of thought and a practice that emerged in the late twentieth century (see Minow 1990; Gunning 1991, 1995; Lâm 1994; Walker 1995; Volpp 2001), this book aims to broaden the parameters of feminist discourse by taking into account the perspectives of women outside the dominant groups of American and Western European societies. As Maivan Lâm has written, multicultural feminism distinguishes itself from liberal feminism because it “advocates” women’s “empowerment within the specific contexts of their cultures and societies” (Lâm 2001: 10164), not necessarily individual liberty or gender equality. Context, in fact, is crucial to the multicultural feminist perspective. As Lâm says, “multicultural feminism eschews, in the main, the universal versus relativist debate … it insists, instead, on context, not as a device for evading discussion of the human rights of women, but as the necessary framework within which to conduct them” (ibid., emphasis added). Consistent with this multicultural feminist emphasis on context, the present book is a detailed ethnography that explicates a particular model of human flourishing and that, simultaneously, elaborates on a distinctive paradigm of domesticity and family life. Its aims are twofold: firstly, to interpret these women’s beliefs and practices as exhaustively as possible so that their underlying logic becomes readily accessible to the reader and, secondly, to represent them in ways that they themselves would recognize—neither to ignore the illiberal family practices that sometimes constrain their actions nor to underplay the power they possess to construct for themselves meaningful and purposeful lives. As a way of previewing the themes discussed in this book and suggesting their relevance to contemporary debates about work, family, and female identity, consider a recent demographic shift that has often been termed the “opt-out revolution” or the “opt-out phenomenon” (Belkin 2003; Moe and Shandy 2009). Around the 1

But Friedan’s stigmatization of the label “housewife” has not lost its highly negative connotations. Moe and Shandy’s (2009) research shows that, even today, women who stay home to take care of their children prefer to call themselves “stay-at-home moms” or “homemakers”—never “housewives.”

Multicultural Feminism

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turn of the twentieth century, the United States has witnessed a surprisingly sharp drop in the number of college-educated, married mothers who work full time. In fact, Moe and Shandy (2009: 2) calculate that “the full-time labor force participation of married women with professional degrees and children under eighteen fell from nearly two-thirds to just over one-half between 1998 and 2005.” These are the women who have, to use Belkin’s phrase, “opted out” of the workplace. Those who would diminish the significance of such a move often point out that these figures relate to a tiny minority—privileged women, educated in Ivy League institutions, and pursuing path-breaking careers—and, therefore, say little about women’s participation in the labor force, more generally. Whatever the merits of such criticism, one should not dismiss “the symbolic and real importance of these women’s actions” (ibid.) because it illustrates the problems that all American women confront when trying to juggle a career and motherhood. The “second shift” that the sociologist Arlie Hochschild first observed in the late 1980s seems to have persisted. Using data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Moe and Shandy calculate that in 2006 employed married mothers were still doing two-thirds of housework and childcare. And some women respond to this persistent “gender division of labor at home” (ibid.: 61) by either cutting back on their work or giving it up altogether. A more pertinent question, however, is whether there are “opt-out dads” (ibid.: 32). There are—but not very many. In keeping with the gender division of labor at home, Moe and Shandy, quoting U.S. Census Bureau statistics, say that, in 2006, there were 159,000 fathers who stayed home and took care of the children. This is a staggeringly small number when compared to the 2.6 million mothers who stay home (ibid.: 32–33); in fact, fathers who stay home constitute only 2.7 percent of all parents who stay home. Thus, despite the enormous social and cultural changes that have occurred as a result of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s and despite the huge advances that American women have made in education and in the workplace, it appears that when they are on the verge of wielding substantial economic and political power, the best-educated, most privileged among them choose to walk away. Interestingly enough, this opt-out trend does not appear to be restricted to married women, in their 30s and 40s, who, after the birth of children, find the tug of motherhood irresistible and decide to stay home rather than pursue a demanding career. In an article published in the New York Times in late September 2005, Louise Story introduces readers to a sample of hardworking and high-achieving women undergraduates at Yale, 60 percent of whom have already decided that “they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.” Many of these young women plan to go back to part-time work or work on contract once their children begin school, but, clearly, for these women careers come a long way behind child-rearing. Yale is not unique in having large numbers of its female undergraduates uninterested in shattering the glass ceiling—Story discovered the same trend at both Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. I am hardly suggesting that highly educated American women are choosing domesticity over paid labor à la the 1950s but I am suggesting that these women are reevaluating domesticity— an indication, perhaps, that there may be more enduring associations between domesticity and women than many of us are willing to acknowledge.

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1 Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity…

The Value of Domesticity Of course, the Odia Hindu women whose lives form the subject matter of this book live in a cultural universe far different from that of the American women discussed above. And yet, given that these highly educated American women appear to be reevaluating domesticity today, it is instructive to examine the Odia Hindu model of domesticity for its contrasts and differences. The first and most obvious difference is that the Odia Hindu model has evolved in a cultural context where extended, rather than nuclear, families are the norm. A nuclear family consisting of one set of parents and their children lasts but a single generation. In contrast, the extended family or household found in the temple town is more corporate in its structure and functioning. Such a household, commonly three generational, numbering at least 10–15 people who share a single cooking hearth, tends to break up when the oldest male or female member dies (see Seymour 1999: 63–69). The eldest son usually inherits the ancestral home, while his brothers may set up separate nuclear households, but when their resident sons grow into adulthood, marry, and have their own children, such a household gets extended once again. Thus, an extended household, because of the vicissitudes of life, may grow and shrink, and grow again—but, unlike a nuclear family, its identity endures over time. In the neighborhood of the temple town, women, upon marriage, shift from their natal households to their husband’s natal household—the so-called patrilocal residence pattern, in the language of anthropology. No woman claims that living in her husband’s extended household, adjusting to it, and assimilating into it is easy; instead, they all see it as a challenge that has to be met and overcome. Success, for these women, means assimilating so well into their new conjugal families that, with time, they advance to becoming the linchpins of the household, with every member coming to depend on them. Residents of the temple town believe that the primary task of any community is to reproduce itself: only through perpetuating themselves do human societies transcend the depredations of time. They also believe that the family represents the most appropriate site for such social reproduction. Therefore, both men and women regard the domestic domain—the home and family—as the most vital sphere of human action. As the following chapters will make clear, men play a peripheral role in the affairs of the household, while women, especially senior women, are in control. The responsibility for educating and cultivating the next generation, therefore, rests almost exclusively in these women’s hands, making them important and influential social actors. Not surprisingly, the women of the temple town see domesticity as a career—a career for which they are uniquely qualified by their gender and, therefore, a career, that in their eyes, is the most appropriate. They are responsible for the material prosperity and the spiritual welfare of all members of the family (see Hauser 2010). Like the upper-caste Khandayat women studied by Tokita-Tanabe (1999) in a village just 50 km south of the temple town, women here see themselves as embodying the energy/power of Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism, and they are not shy about asserting that a family’s material prosperity depends not on what men earn and bring home, but on how women manage the household. Indispensable to the

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smooth running of the household, in control of household finances and decisions about household expenses, domesticity affords these women opportunities to develop their skills and cultivate expertise as knowledgeable, professional managers. As a 55-year-old married mother-in-law, proud of her accomplishments as a manager of her household, told me, “When one is able to take 5 or 25 people along with one, then one gets satisfaction. When a husband and wife live together by themselves, what is there in that? There is no special happiness in that.” Clearly, this kind of domesticity is a far cry from the one that Betty Friedan disparaged in The Feminine Mystique (1963). Unlike Friedan’s lonely, isolated suburban housewife, Odia Hindu women live in bustling communities. More importantly, Friedan ascribes the pervasive sense of sorrow and worthlessness that American housewives of the 1950s are supposed to have experienced to their exclusion from paid labor; not only did such exclusion lead to economic dependence on their husbands, but it deprived them from developing a wholesome sense of identity that they otherwise would have from their work. Odia Hindu women are different: these women—and their menfolk, too—like Hindus elsewhere (Parish 1994; Lamb 1997) create and positively value their sense of identity through their involvement with their conjugal families, through their relationships with others. And so, being excluded from the public sphere does not seem to have the same deleterious effects on these women that Friedan saw afflicting the women she sarcastically mocked as “happy housewife heroines.” Far from assuming “an opposition” between “relationships and self-development” as Gilligan (1995: 122) claims Western theories of psychological and political development tend to do, the temple town paradigm of domesticity sees self-development and maturity as occurring through the process of cultivating and maintaining relationships with others. As will become clearer in later chapters, an Odia Hindu woman living in the temple town becomes a mature adult, develops her sense of self most fully, and exercises power most substantially, by embedding herself in social and familial relationships— certainly not by separating herself from others and severing her connections to them. She, and others in her community, and Hindu social and psychological theories, more generally, recognize that to be human is to be part of society: far from subscribing to any idea of “ontological individualism” (Bellah et al. 1996: 143), social arrangements are seen as part of nature and as more enduring and fundamental than the people who participate in them. One cannot, therefore, opt to become part of society—although one can certainly opt out of it, as countless renouncers have done in their attempt to achieve release from samsara, the never-ending cycle of rebirths and redeaths.

“Imperial” Liberalism Odia Hindu women, then, see themselves as playing an important role in the biological and social reproduction of society. While they do not seek equality with their menfolk, they do seek to influence and exercise power over those who are closely related to them, both women and men. I argue in this book that a first step to a clearer understanding of these women and their world is to acknowledge that they

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live in a moral universe with which we, who live in liberal, secular societies in the West, are unfamiliar. In this moral universe, the values that people aspire to are selfdiscipline, duty to the family, service to others, and deferred gratification—not equality, autonomy, or freedom of choice. A stranger to the temple town, unaccustomed to its mores, would be most struck by the constraints under which these women, especially younger women, live, their lack of autonomy as well as the cultural expectation that they sacrifice any desire for choice or personal satisfaction at the altar of family duty. And it is possible that this stranger’s reaction to these women and their lives would be a visceral rejection of the illiberal cultural beliefs and practices that appear to prevail here. I should emphasize that those who would reject the temple town’s way of life are by no means exclusively, or even predominately, Westerners; there are many modern, educated, Westernized Indian men and women who denounce and repudiate the practices and values found in the temple town. I speak from personal experience: a couple of years ago, I tried to describe the lives of temple town women to a group of students and faculty at the Centre for Developing Societies, in Thiruvananthapuram, India, an educational institution well known for its progressive credentials, and was taken aback by the audience’s undisguised hostility to my remarks simply because I was unwilling to dismiss the culture of the temple town as retrograde and in need of serious reform. Such a stranger, then, would more than likely make common cause with Susan Okin, one of the fiercest and most articulate critics of multiculturalism,2 and assert that women in the temple town, like women in other illiberal cultures, “might be much better off if the culture into which they were born were … to become extinct” (1999: 22, emphasis in original). Okin belongs to that group of liberals3 who believe that personal autonomy or freedom of choice should be “the preeminent or unifying regulatory ideal for any decent or desirable way of life” (Shweder 2009: 3). Given this definition of what constitutes a “desirable way of life,” it is not surprising that these “imperial” liberals believe that, in the interests of building a better world, illiberal cultures that do not share this value should give way to liberal ones (see Mehta 1999). Implicit in this assertion is the notion that, in those cultures of the world not privileged to enjoy the intellectual tradition of Western liberalism, custom is somehow less legitimate and more despotic. Custom, imperial liberals allege, weighs more heavily on non-Western people, constraining their actions and circumscribing their spirits. The not-so-subtle meaning of all this, is, of course, that Western liberal cultures are morally superior, and non-Western cultures would do well to aspire to and live by Western values.

2

I define multiculturalism as the idea that more than one extant culture is worthy of respect, that no particular culture is intrinsically more or less worthy than all other because as Parekh (1999: 74) says, “no culture exhausts the full range of human possibilities.” 3 Shweder identifies Okin and those who agree with her as “imperial” liberals or liberal “monists” in contrast to other liberals—“permissive” liberals or liberal “pluralists”—who do not grant such “preeminent value” to freedom of choice.

Choice as a Universally Desirable Moral Good

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One major aim of this book is to interrogate this imperial liberal idea of liberalism’s universal superiority, with special reference to its implications for women’s wellbeing. A second aim is to contribute to multicultural feminist scholarship by making it more apparent to liberal readers that the way of life exemplified in the temple town represents an “authentic variety of human flourishing” (Gray 1996: 152) and that, while the people who live there do not, for the most part, subscribe to the values central to liberalism, their own moral order with its emphasis on duty, discipline, and self-refinement is in no way less elaborate or less ethically defensible. Furthermore, while these values may appear strange to a modern sensibility and, perhaps, even a little difficult to relate to, I think that “rational and morally decent people” (Shweder 2009: 263n) would find it hard to deny their righteousness. In a plural and varied moral universe (see Parekh 1999) that consists of many, sometimes conflicting, liberal and illiberal values, Odia Hindus of the temple town seize upon self-discipline, duty to the family, and service to others as the ideals they seek to manifest in their lives—this is their expression of moral truth. And, as you will see further in this book, it is through adhering to these values that Odia Hindu women gain control over their own lives and influence over others.

Choice as a Universally Desirable Moral Good For imperial liberals, the fundamental value of liberalism is freedom of choice, a value that they see as self-evidently good. This view that choice is an unmitigated good has been challenged—most famously by Barry Schwartz (2004). Schwartz makes the case that “more is less,” that a plethora of choice far from guaranteeing better options and greater satisfaction leads, instead, to more stress and anxiety and a decline in psychological wellbeing. While this is an intriguing idea, especially in the United States where choice is enshrined as an objective moral good, I am not sure that Schwartz’s argument has much relevance to Odia Hindu women of the temple town—because the world they live in is so substantially different. Firstly, freedom of choice hardly has the salience or the significance that it has for Schwartz’s American subjects; many Hindu women of the temple town, and I would wager many other Hindus as well, see themselves as leading contingent lives, several aspects of which are given rather than freely chosen. And secondly, not only are these women not confronted by an abundance of choice but their culture discourages them from focusing exclusively on personal gratification, from being “maximizers” (2004: 77), to use Schwartz’s terminology. Choice certainly exists, as these women will tell you, but, because the circumstances of life are largely given, it is the choice between engaging in self-alteration or not. Many of the more articulate women in the temple town tend to say that we humans are infinitely malleable, that through self-control and self-discipline it is always possible to work on ourselves, to alter our attitudes and behavior, so as to make the best of a given situation, however disadvantageous it may be.

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A more pertinent challenge to the imperial liberal claim that freedom of choice is a universally desirable moral good comes from research done by Sheena Iyengar and others (Iyengar and Lepper 1999; Iyengar 2010)—more pertinent for two reasons: firstly, because their findings about how different ethnicities view choice and define autonomy undermine this claim and, secondly, because their findings bear directly on the importance of choice in the lives of temple town residents. In a study comparing two groups of children, one Anglo-American and the other Asian American, Iyengar and Lepper (1999) found that the former had greater “intrinsic motivation” when they made choices for themselves while the latter were more intrinsically motivated when choices were made for them by “trusted authority figures or peers” (ibid.: 349). In fact, Asian American children appear to “actually prefer to have choices made for them by significant others” (ibid.: 363, emphasis added) because their “intrinsic motivation and performance … proved highest not in contexts offering personal choice, but in those in which choices were determined for them by valued in-group members” (ibid.). Iyengar and Lepper ascribe these differences in motivation and performance to the differing senses of self that tend to prevail among these two groups. Anglo-Americans, who experience themselves as fundamentally separate and distinct from others, are thought to possess a more independent sense of self while Asian Americans who seek interconnectedness with others and harmony within the group are said to have a more interdependent sense of self (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Thus, because Anglo-Americans express their individuality and uniqueness through the choices they make, autonomy and choice are intimately tied up with their sense of self; in contrast, choice and autonomy are not such major concerns for Asian Americans because they define themselves in terms of interdependencies and relationships. Significantly, Iyengar and Lepper conclude “unfettered personal choice may not universally produce the greatest psychological benefits and that having others make choices for one may not always prove detrimental” (1999: 364). Such a finding is interesting especially when one juxtaposes it to, say, the illiberal practice of arranged marriages that prevails in the temple town (and in other parts of India) or the rather common tendency that many Indian parents have of deciding career choices for their sons and daughters. As Iyengar and Lepper found, Asian American children do not stint on effort or lack motivation or perseverance when asked to work at something a trusted authority figure has chosen for them. Similarly, in the temple town, where a more interdependent sense of the self prevails, young people, both women and men, work sincerely to succeed at choices that are routinely made for them by trusted elders—whether it be marriage4 or a career. More importantly, perhaps, as Iyengar and Lepper themselves note, their research underscores the point that Western theories and Western concepts, far from being

4

With respect to marriage, there is an additional reason for young men and women in the temple town to demonstrate lack of interest in the choices being made on their behalf—and this is the cultural idea, often explicitly stated, that to overly concern oneself with the attributes of a prospective spouse smacks of grossness and lack of refinement (see Hauser 2008: 237).

The Indigenous View of Cultural Constraints

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universally applicable, are very much a product of the culture in which they have emerged, and, therefore, they are culture-specific. Thus, while in the West, choice is almost universally acclaimed as an essential human need, it may not be seen as such in other cultural contexts—people in the temple town, for instance, seek not autonomy and choice, but rather the satisfactions that come from doing one’s duty to the family and, as Iyengar and Lepper put it, the pursuit of interdependence. This is precisely the point that the political philosopher Bhikhu Parekh makes when responding to imperial liberal assertions that liberalism’s values have universal significance. As Parekh says, “the liberal view of life is culturally specific and neither self-evident nor the only rational or true way to organize human life; some of its values, when suitably redefined, may be shown to have universal relevance, but others may not” (1999: 74).

The Indigenous View of Cultural Constraints Thus far, I have been discussing the outsider’s view of life in the temple town, but I would like to shift focus now. What do the women and men who live there think about the circumstances of their lives? Do they agree with the liberal outsider that a life hedged by restrictions necessarily translates into a less satisfying life? The answer to this last question is an unequivocal “no”—and the key to this answer can be found in the local meanings attached to restrictive life practices. The first point to note is that there is considerable variation in the customs and practices of the temple town. By no means do all caste- or kinship-based groups adhere to a rigid and restrictive lifestyle. More importantly, there is a clear correlation between a highly disciplined life and high ritual rank and great social prestige. Thus, the more rigid and constraining of practices are, more often than not, observed and followed by the Brahmans, a reflection of the purity of their physical substance and the need to maintain that purity.5 Women belonging to previously untouchable groups, for instance, are not expected to follow the customs and practices laid out for Brahman or even other upper-caste women—and in fact, they do not. Thus, these women are not secluded in family compounds, and, they can, if they choose, divorce their husbands, or if widows, remarry—in short, and in that sense, they lead freer lives than Brahman women. But the Odia Hindu culture of the temple town devalues such “freedom” because it is equated with a more natural and, therefore, less refined life. Thus, restrictions are positively valued—they are the techniques provided by culture to shape and polish human beings, thereby making them more perfect cultural artifacts. 5

Again, one needs to be clear that not all practices are uniformly more restrictive to Brahmans. Thus, death pollution taboos are far less onerous to Brahmans—shorter periods of death pollution, for instance—because of the belief that their bodies, being constituted, as I have stated above, of more superior substances than those of lower castes, are able to withstand the rupture that death signifies more robustly (see Mines 1990).

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Given this view of restrictive life practices, it is hardly surprising that Brahmans in the temple town jealously guard their prerogative to maintain these practices—those restrictions both express their ritual and social superiority and maintain it. And when lower castes do emulate some of these restrictive Brahmanical practices—for instance, secluding their womenfolk, becoming vegetarian, and ceasing to consume alcohol— using this shift in practice as a way of claiming higher ritual rank within the caste hierarchy, the Brahmans are the first to resist such attempts at social mobility. This process of group mobility, first observed by the Indian anthropologist M.N. Srinivas, who termed it Sanskritization, continues to occur in the temple town. It may have disappeared in other parts of India, especially in the south and the west, where the anti-Brahmanical backlash over the last half century has been particularly virulent, and powerful dalit6 movements have widespread grassroots support. But, in Odisha, and most certainly in the temple town, it continues to have great salience. Thus, for upper-caste Odia Hindus of the temple town, restrictive life practices far from being impediments to leading a satisfying life are integral elements of such a life because they are strategies to self-refinement and, thereby, to self-respect and social prestige. They are also a privilege, available only to a small minority. And as a privilege, they are part and parcel of the self-definitions of these upper-caste groups. Finally, people here do not see deviations from these life practices as a sign of freedom, a mere matter of making a choice, but as a mark of one’s subordination to the natural passions and impulses of the moment. In this, upper-caste temple town residents are espousing a rather traditional Hindu viewpoint that views unrestrained satisfaction of the senses, immediate gratification in matters both big and small, as the surest route to pain and suffering.

Odia Hindu Understandings About Wellbeing I have already said that the vantage point from which this book examines these women’s lives is that of their access to and experience of wellbeing. Wellbeing or hito, the Odia word for it, and its contrary condition, ahito, are fairly common concepts in the temple town, and they express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the way life is moving. As far as traditional Hindu thought is concerned, wellbeing is a clear and precisely formulated category (Zimmermann, pers. comm.). In Sanskrit, the term hita has many meanings, prominent among them is the sense that it refers to “anything beneficial, advantageous, salutary, wholesome” (Monier-Williams 1899: 1298). More particularly, ancient Hindu texts claim that “appropriateness … produces wellbeing” (Zimmermann 1987: 23–25), appropriateness here implying a convergence of attitudes of mind and behavior with the demands and circumstances of one’s life.

6 Dalit, which is a Marathi word meaning “that which is ground or crushed,” is the name that members of previously untouchable groups use to describe themselves and the social protest movement that they have organized.

Fieldwork

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The Odia language, with its roots in Sanskrit, has maintained this causal connection between appropriateness and wellbeing. Having, however, dropped the physical component of wellbeing—referred to in Odia today as svasthya—it defines hito as the kinds of emotions and mental orientations (manobhabo, manobrutti) that result from fulfilling one’s responsibilities (daitva) according to one’s station in life and from being involved in the exchanges and distributions appropriate to one’s life circumstances. Such a transactional definition of wellbeing among Odia Hindus is not surprising, given as Marriott has remarked, the “explicit, institutionalized concern for givings and receivings of many kinds in kinship, work and worship” (1976: 109) in Hindu culture. For an Odia Hindu woman, it is the intensity of her involvement in exchanges, and the degree to which she initiates and controls these exchanges, that is key to her sense of wellbeing. Implied in this definition is the idea that wellbeing peaks when a woman gives more than she receives because through such giving she underscores her superiority and her influence over others: she “encompasses” lesser others in a Dumontian sense, “outranking” and “pervading” them (Marriott 1990: 19). Exercising power and control are, thus, integral to an Odia Hindu woman’s sense of wellbeing. But as I describe later in this book, having power, influence, and maximal access to wellbeing is not routinely available to all women: not only do they characterize just one particular phase of an adult woman’s life, that of prauda or mature adulthood—but, more importantly, not all women necessarily have the good fortune to traverse this phase. Thus, the wives of younger sons may never fully savor the power, influence, and wellbeing that their husbands’ elder brother’s wife enjoys—that is, the privilege of primogeniture; unless, of course, the senior woman is too meek or too incompetent in which case she is likely to be supplanted by the enterprising wife of one of her husband’s younger brothers. People in the temple town clearly distinguish between happiness (sukho) and wellbeing (hito). Many tend to think that only children, unthinking and irresponsible, can experience happiness. In contrast, the adult experience of happiness is fleeting, ending in a mere matter of seconds, lost as soon as one recalls the burdens of life. In associating happiness with transience, immaturity, and irresponsibility, they are echoing ideas first articulated by Bharata, the ancient Hindu philosopher of the emotions, who, in the Natyasastra (see de Bary 1958), classified happiness as one of 33 subordinate and transitory affective states—not a basic, enduring emotion. Given this view of happiness, many Odia Hindus believe that it behooves mature, responsible adults to strive instead for wellbeing, a far more enduring (sthayi) state of mind.

Fieldwork The fieldwork for this book was done in two stints—4 months in 1991 and 12 months in 1992–93. During the first stretch of fieldwork, I interviewed 92 informants—66 women and 26 men—about a variety of subjects (see Menon and

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Shweder 1994), including their conceptualizations of the life course. This sample was predominantly upper caste7: 73 informants were Brahmans while 19 belonged to what is referred to locally as “clean castes”.8 This caste distribution remains roughly the same with respect to women in the sample—out of the 66 women, 53 were Brahman and 13 belonged to “clean castes.” The second time around, in 1992–93, I had very detailed conversations with 37 women belonging to 10 extended families about their daily routines and their roles and responsibilities within the family. Again, of these ten households, seven were Brahman; the rest were “clean castes.” Twelve of these women were part of the original sample. The 37 women, who participated in the second phase of fieldwork, are fairly homogeneous in terms of caste affiliation and occupation, although perhaps less so in terms of education and income. Firstly, they are all either upper caste or “clean caste.” Secondly, none of them is employed outside the home; instead, these women spend their days in cooking and caring for their extended families—thus, there is little variation in terms of occupation. In terms of education and income, however, there are discernible differences. With respect to education, for instance, there is a cohort-related change, in the sense that younger women have had more years of formal schooling than older women. But several older women, none of them completely illiterate, compensate for this lack of formal schooling by knowing more about the scriptures and being familiar with other sources of traditional knowledge. And as far as income goes, almost all of these women belong to families of ritual specialists who earn money by performing rituals either inside the temple or in people’s homes. In addition, most families have agricultural incomes: as ex officio tenants of the presiding deity of the temple, the Hindu god Siva represented here as Lord Lingaraj, these families cultivate land that has been endowed to the temple and appropriate its harvest. Some families, however, also have one to two male members running a shop or holding a clerical job, and the income such additional employment generates does make a noticeable difference to the family’s living standards. The critical variable that does differentiate these women is the family roles that they occupy—those of daughter (jhio), junior son’s wife (sana bou), senior son’s wife (purna bou), married husband’s mother (sasu), and widowed husband’s mother (burhi ma). Family roles are important because as I plan to demonstrate, each role has associated with it duties, responsibilities, and challenges, all of which influence a woman’s access to and achievement of wellbeing. Thus, as an Odia Hindu woman journeys through life, moving from one family role to another, there is a patterned regularity to her experience of wellbeing.

7 Being upper caste does not necessarily imply having wealth or belonging to the upper class; it only means that in terms of ritual notions of purity and pollution, upper castes are relatively purer than lower castes. 8 “Clean castes” refers to those groups who do not belong to the highest castes—the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and the Vaisyas—but from whom these castes will, nevertheless, accept water.

Odia Hindu Women of the Temple Town

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In my conversations with the 66 women who were part of the sample during my first stint of fieldwork, I asked each of them how satisfied they felt about their lives in the present, how satisfied they had been 5 or 10 years ago, and how satisfied they expected to be 5 or 10 years hence. The data that these questions generated were quite remarkable in that it became abundantly clear that the middle years of life— the phase known locally as prauda or mature adulthood—is the most desirable period of an Odia Hindu woman’s life. The question, then, that I sought to answer in the second phase of fieldwork was as follows: what was it about mature adulthood that made it so special and so meaningful to these women? In searching for an answer to this question, I asked them to describe in detail their world, to elaborate on the responsibilities they undertake and the powers they exercise as women in different family roles, and to discuss the kinds of life experiences that they value as satisfying. Thus, through examining the ways in which they negotiate the various challenges they face, the maneuvers and strategies they adopt, and the rewards and advantages they garner, it is possible to apprehend their perspective on wellbeing— what constitutes it, how it is gained, when it is lost.

Odia Hindu Women of the Temple Town In describing the world of the Odia Hindu women of the temple town, I rely heavily on their accounts of their workaday lives and their ratings of wellbeing and physical health. The description of their lives that emerges from these accounts diverges from previous representations of Hindu women in many different ways. In the past, many of these representations have described Hindu women as passive victims of a patriarchal society and a misogynistic ideology (e.g., Dhruvarajan 1988; Jeffrey et al. 1988; Kondos 1989; Sen 1999; Hochschild 2003). Thus, Hochschild, drawing on the Bengali poet and writer Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s account (1999) of her mother’s experiences as a child widow during the early part of the twentieth century, talks of “patriarchal fathers” who “subcontracted to their wives the job of keeping patriarchy going” (2003: 149). I find it a little hard to agree with Hochschild’s interpretation because I think her claim that Hindu women are complicit in their own subordination says less about these women’s lives and more about her liberal perspective with its emphasis on equality and individual rights. More recently, some studies (e.g., Raheja and Gold 1994; Jeffrey and Basu 1998) have begun depicting Hindu women very differently—as subversive rebels rather than as victims. Thus, Raheja and Gold, based on their analysis of north Indian women’s songs, portray them as aware of their antagonists and oppressors (which include other women of the extended family) and as ready to oppose them with satire and ridicule. Again, I would like to suggest that though the representation of Hindu women has shifted quite dramatically from complicit victims to clandestine rebels, it is still the product of an imperial liberal perspective. I discuss these liberal interpretations of Hindu women’s lives in some detail later in this book.

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In contrast to the studies just mentioned, I think that if one were to examine Odia Hindu women’s lives from the perspective of multicultural feminism, that is to say, if one were to examine the context of these women’s lives and local conceptions of power and value, one would find that many of these women affirm their culture’s meanings as they go about their daily lives. Rather than being victims or rebels, they appear to be upholders of a particular moral order in which service to others (sewa), self-control (atmasanjamta), and deferred gratification rank high on the list of virtues. But these self-denying virtues are not always easy to live by. It is, thus, possible to detect in some of what these women say and do, the ambivalences they feel, and the struggles they contend with as they strive to be virtuous, to earn the approbation of others—thereby demonstrating, I think, that their local cultural world is not a cartoon and that there is heteroglossia in every tradition of values. Well aware of the advantages they garner and the sacrifices they entail, most of these women choose to maintain existing social and family arrangements—but some do not. Thus, there are young wives who abandon their husbands’ homes and old widows who are quite unable to maintain culturally prescribed renunciant practices, and, as I describe in this book, they pay a price, sometimes a heavy one, for such transgressions. While service to others, self-control, and deferring personal gratification are the cardinal virtues of the Odia Hindu moral order, there is another dynamic—that of Hindu theology—at work here, shaping these women’s moral perspective. This theological system, as articulated in the temple town, conceives of cosmic power and energy as female. The Great Goddess of Hinduism is a major presence and force to be reckoned with in this region of India (see von Stietencron 1978). Many Odia Hindus here, both men and women, embrace this way of thinking, and for them, the female represents primordial energy/power (adya sakti), the force that creates, maintains, and destroys the universe. Thus, Odia Hindus tend to believe that every woman simply by virtue of being female contains within herself the power to sustain and destroy both the family and society at large. Myths about the awesome power of Parvati, Durga, and Kali form part of local discourse (see Menon and Shweder 1994); more importantly, the most salient meaning of these myths, repeated again and again, is the need to contain such power—from within, through the exercise of self-control. Only then, is the goddess’s power harnessed most fruitfully for the good of humanity and the manifest world. A few scholars (Babb 1970; Wadley 1977) have suggested that unmarried goddesses, in particular, represent uncontrolled malevolent power, that only when the goddess is under male control is her power channeled productively, so as to promote prosperity. As the following pages will make clear, Odia Hindus of the temple town tend not to share this view of the relationship between male and female gods. According to them, even married goddesses may not submit to external control. A goddess must herself decide to discipline the natural power she embodies; the control has to originate from within her; only then will this power be transformed into righteous or moral power that turns the “undoable into the doable and the impossible into the possible,” to use the words of temple town residents.

Odia Hindu Women of the Temple Town

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By emphasizing the role discipline and self-control play in transforming raw, natural power (adya sakti) into righteous or moral power or authority (dharmik sakti), Odia Hindus are invoking two important and widely prevalent Hindu ideas. Firstly, that natural power, in and of itself, is not generative; it has to be refined, to be culturally shaped, for it to become truly potent. As Kinsley points out, Hindus generally think that “human destiny is to refine and perfect oneself … there is nothing desirable about unrefined nature, either in its human or nonhuman aspects” (Kinsley 1993: 68; see also Parish 1994). Thus, privileging the cultural over the natural is central to Hindu ways of thinking. And secondly, Hindus deem discipline and self-control as the most effective techniques for achieving self-refinement: as Ingalls has pointed out, “the virtue of virtues in the Sanskrit epic is … discipline” (Ingalls 1957: 44), and the goal of such discipline is self-refinement. For an Odia Hindu woman, then, disciplining herself leads both to self-refinement and to acquiring moral power or authority. From this perspective, self-refinement and moral power are but two sides of a single coin. Related to these Odia perceptions of culturally shaped and refined female power are their concerns for purity/pollution (suddhata/asuddhata) and auspiciousness/ inauspiciousness (subho/asubho). These concerns order all of Hindu society and Odia women of the temple town are no exception (see Marglin 1985; Raheja 1988; Fruzzetti 1989: 273). The natural experiences that women partake of—sexual intercourse, menstruation, childbirth, and sometimes widowhood—as well as some of the activities that women are more likely to perform (the care of the very young and the very old) are thought to pollute them. However, through activities like cooking and household worship in which they specialize, women also strive to achieve and maintain purity. Thus, women more than men, and younger women more than older women, are constantly alternating between conditions of purity and pollution. At the same time, the female potential for reproduction is celebrated and worshiped as auspicious while barrenness and widowhood are abhorred as inauspicious. These two orderings—the concerns for purity and auspiciousness—as this book will show, do not necessarily converge, but when they do in the person of the older, postmenopausal, sexually inactive, no-longer-care-giving, but still-married mother, they serve to make her the purest and most auspicious woman of the household. The indigenous logic underlying this evaluation is that being postmenopausal, sexually inactive, and no-longer-care-giving makes it easier for a woman to maintain bodily purity and being still married makes her auspicious. These advantages, partly physiological, mostly cultural, serve to make her the most powerful and dominant woman within the household. Old age and widowhood, however, tend to exile a woman from these conditions. Apart from their concerns for purity, auspiciousness, and self-refinement, the attitudes of women in the temple town are noteworthy for other reasons. Firstly, these women display what can only be described as a future-oriented, developmental perspective. Many of them tend to see life as a confluence of processes, in which their places are continuously shifting and changing, never static. Given such a vision of life, junior wives look 10 or 15 years into the future and see themselves exercising greater power and authority within the household. And so, instead of bemoaning their present situation at the bottom of the family hierarchy, many of them begin to

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work at relationships within the family, most importantly, relationships with the other women of the family. These are the relationships that enable rapid and effective assimilation into their conjugal families, assimilation being the prime guarantor of future success within the family and wellbeing. And the second is their view of marriage. In this neighborhood, arranged marriages continue to be the norm.9 Marriage initiates a young Odia Hindu woman into adulthood; and, the rituals of marriage constitute the single most important ritual of refinement that she experiences. These rituals designate her the life sustainer of the family (by cooking and feeding family members) and the life maintainer of the lineage (by giving birth to sons). Highlighting Hindu understandings of the human body as a relatively permeable container, they also serve to remake her substance unambiguously into that of her husband’s lineage (kula) and his family (kutumba), beginning her process of assimilation into these groups. This remaking is symbolized for a Brahman bride by the new first name she is given by her husband and his family at marriage. Notwithstanding the cultural significance of marriage as an important transformative experience—or perhaps because of it—many Odia Hindu women of the temple town, unlike most liberals, do not expect marriage to be an intimate, emotionally satisfying relationship between equal partners. Thus, Manisha Roy’s portrayal (1975) of upper middle class Bengali Hindu women as unhappy wives, whose desire for emotional closeness with their husbands is never satisfied, is unlikely to strike a chord with many temple town women. In contrast, Odia women say, quite explicitly, that they are born into this world to marry and procreate, to take part in the flow of life (samsara), and to do their work (karma). What they look for in marriage is not romantic love or the ideal partner, but rather complete assimilation into a family that will, with time, become their own. Through such assimilation, they hope to achieve control over their own lives and power and dominance over others. As I discuss in this book, they see the success of their married lives as resting on their relationships with the women of their conjugal families, most particularly with their husband’s mother, his sisters, and his brothers’ wives. Most wives, I found, are relatively sanguine about their marital relationships with their husbands because they believe that the sexual nature of this relationship gives them, rather than their husbands, the upper hand. This is a rather widespread cultural belief in the temple town shared by most husbands’ mothers who fear the power of sexual attraction that young wives may wield over their sons. Given their view of the purpose of life in this world—that we are all born to do our part in the never-ending cycle of rebirth and redeath—it is perhaps not surprising that these women rarely complain about their transfer, after marriage, to their conjugal families. Unlike north Indian women who reportedly describe the practice of women leaving their natal families upon marriage as “this custom of degenerate times” (Raheja and Gold 1994: 187), Odia Hindu women say succinctly, “When we

9 See Tokita-Tanabe (1999) and Hauser (2008, 2010) for the continued prevalence of arranged marriages in the towns and villages of Odisha.

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are born as women, it is to live in our sasus’ (husbands’ mothers) households.” To a woman, they do not deny the sorrow they feel at leaving their father’s homes—a sorrow expressed vividly in the songs of lamentation sung when a bride leaves her father’s home (bapa gharo) for that of her husband’s mother’s (sasu gharo)—or the sense of isolation they initially experience in their husband’s mothers’ homes; one woman, for instance, described the transition as “falling from heaven to earth with a thud!” But, with the birth of children and the passage of time, they say things change. Substantial connections with their conjugal families are being built up everyday just as links with their natal families gradually attenuate, until, soon, they have very little but happy memories to remind them of their unmarried past.

Locating the Temple Town Clearly, the temple town portrayed here is a long way from the India of, say, a Mira Nair film. Many of the characters in her 2001 movie, Monsoon Wedding, for instance, are secular, Westernized Indians as much at home in Manhattan as they are in New Delhi—while for many a temple town resident, the modern metropolis of New Delhi would be as alien as Manhattan. Indeed, one could get a better feel for the flavor of life in the temple town if one visited the Hasidic communities of Brooklyn because, in some fundamental sense, Odia Hindus of the temple town and Hasidic Jews think about the meaning and purpose of life in rather similar ways. Thus, in both communities, there is the same meticulous attention to rituals and religious observances, both draw a sharp distinction between private and public space, and both maintain with equal care gender differences in terms of roles and spheres of activity (Goldschmidt 2006; Fader 2009). At the same time, however, there is a major difference between these two communities: Hasidic Jews set themselves apart from the rest of mainstream American society very deliberately and self-consciously; Odia Hindus of the temple town do not. The temple town is a pilgrimage center; many of the people who live here have hereditary connections with the temple; many of them are also ritual specialists—for all these religious, historical, and cultural reasons, the temple town has a unique identity, but I do not think that the people who live here attempt to carve out for themselves a niche separate from the rest of Indian society. If one looks for other Hindu communities that share a temple town sensibility, three ethnographic studies come to mind: Parish’s 1994 investigation of moral understandings among the Newaris of the town of Bhaktapur in Nepal, Vatuk’s work (1987, 1990, 1992) on middle-aged and old women who live in the north Indian village of Rayapur, and Lamb’s exploration (1997, 2000) of aging among women in the Bengali village of Mangaldihi in eastern India. I find Parish’s analysis and representation of Newari culture and society quite remarkable because they correspond in so many ways with my own understanding of life in the temple town: the stress on interdependency, the notion that the self emerges because and through such interdependencies, and the importance of refinement and ritual transformation

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in self-fashioning—to name just a few of these shared characteristics. And with respect to the work done by Vatuk and Lamb, the present book shares, quite explicitly, their focus and replicates some of their findings. Thus, Vatuk demonstrates that as they mature and age, Rayapuri women go through changes that parallel in several details those experienced by Odia Hindu women: for the former, like the latter, “status” within the joint family peaks in “early old age,” “status” being defined by Vatuk as having access to power, authority, and autonomy. However, the work that is the most evocative of the temple town in terms of customs, attitudes, and linguistic expressions is Sarah Lamb’s exploration of growing old in a Bengali village. This is not surprising given that, as most observers would acknowledge, Odisha and Bengal, despite their differences, do constitute a relatively homogeneous culture area within Hindu India. While Lamb does not explicitly examine the middle years of life, she does note that Bengali women, like their Odia counterparts, do “enjoy considerable authority and autonomy” during this phase, deciding “what to cook and how to spend and allocate money, and direct the activities of daughters-in-law, her own daily movements, and the like” (2000: 240). And while it is important to note that the temple town is not a unique enclave with its own distinctive sensibility, it is also necessary to acknowledge the nearly two decades that have elapsed since the fieldwork on which this book is based was done—decades in which India, though less so Odisha, has witnessed economic liberalization and unprecedented economic growth. The question then arises: to what extent does the portrayal of Odia Hindu women presented in this book remain valid? My answer to this question is in two parts: firstly, to point to research done among Odia Hindu women, some years after my own fieldwork was completed, that tends to support my representation of temple town women and, secondly, to suggest that sociocultural change is a complicated process and that economic liberalization, even when accompanied by the spread of satellite TV and greater Internet access, does not necessarily imply a smooth and unproblematic adoption of Western ideas and values—in fact, the reverse is often the case with indigenous ideologies growing stronger rather than weaker. Thus, many of my claims about temple town women, their lives and their self-understandings, appear not to be unique to them but are shared by Odia Hindu women more generally. The prevalence of arranged marriages, the importance of self-control and self-discipline in women’s lives, the positive evaluation they have of their seclusion, the belief that women embody the power of the goddess and that women are responsible for the material prosperity and spiritual wellbeing of their families are cultural characteristics found among other groups of Odia Hindu women, according to research done by two anthropologists, Yumiko Tokita-Tanabe (1999) and Beatrix Hauser (2008, 2010). More to the point, much of this research was done in the decade or more following my own fieldwork. In later chapters, I will have occasion to refer to these studies, highlighting the affinities and similarities that exist between these works and my own.

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In addition, the Indian experience of economic liberalization has resulted in lifting millions of people out of poverty, but Westernization, in any substantive sense, has not followed. India is no stranger to Western ideas and influences—after all, British colonial rule lasted for nearly two centuries. While globalization, because its influences are more insidious and far-reaching,10 may be more successful than colonization in remaking India into an image of the West, many observers have noted that the socioeconomic changes occurring in India today are not experienced uniformly; some parts of the country and some sectors of the economy are modernizing rapidly while others are lagging behind (Yardley 2009; Upadhya and Vasavi 2011)—and the temple town belongs to the second rather than the first of these groups. Furthermore, as even a casual student of India’s recent political history knows, the period of economic liberalization coincided with the rise of Hindu nationalism (Hansen 1999; Jaffrelot 2007, 2011) and a resurgent emphasis on the importance of preserving Hindu traditions.11 It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that Peter van der Veer, citing research done by Upadhya and Vasavi, claims that, even those working in the most globalized sector of the Indian economy—information technology (IT)—have hardly given up on “older Indian patterns of caste, marriage or kinship” (van der Veer 2008: 387). To take but one example—the practice of arranged marriages: apparently most women working in IT “prefer conventional arranged marriages (rather than ‘love marriages’ that may be opposed by parents)” because such marriages “will ensure that they have the support structures they need to continue working” (Upadhya and Vasavi 2011: 35). Odd thought it may sound to liberal ears, the general consensus among IT professionals seems to be that this continued adherence to tradition is the result of women’s empowerment: “women IT professionals ‘are more practical and mature; because they are empowered they do not go for love marriages’ ” (Fuller and Narasimhan 2011: 202). And as far as the impact of Western influences on Odia women is concerned, it appears, according to Tokita-Tanabe’s research, that urbanized, educated, professional Odia Hindu women separate themselves quite explicitly from both Western women and Westernized Indian women: they see the former as women who “do whatever they want regardless of what anyone else says” and the latter—particularly “urban feminists”—as “selfish” and “alienated” (1999: 148). I suspect that many upper-caste temple town women would share these opinions. Proud of their ritual

10 When people talk of global images of modernity, femininity, and consumerism being disseminated over satellite TV in India, for instance, they tend to forget that many of these images are less likely to have been produced in the West and far more likely to have a Bollywood provenance (Ganti 2002; Tyrrell 2011). Thus, women in the temple town are exposed to Indian rather than Western images, and even these images are likely to be “customized,” that is, interpreted in terms of their own cultural meanings, in the process of being consumed (see Inda and Rosaldo 2008: 18–20). 11 A recent example of such attempts to preserve Hindu traditions is the actions taken by village panchayats in western Uttar Pradesh to control the way women dress and their ability to move around freely. According to news reports, these actions of the panchayats are in accordance with what local women want (P.I. Siddiqui, Times of India news report, July 21 and 23, 2012).

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and social superiority, unimpressed by the social equality and greater freedoms that Westernization may bring, they are likely to resist rather than embrace Western influences. In the final analysis, it is hard to state definitively how and to what extent the women in the temple town have changed—changes have surely occurred in some aspects of their lives, but they have not been so profound as to undermine their moral perspective or alter the fundamental precepts of their moral world.

A Cultural Model of Wellbeing I would like to conclude this introduction with a few words about the cultural model of women’s wellbeing that I present in this book. As a cultural model, it consists of the features that women living in the temple town believe to be the most salient and significant—that is, it tries to remain true to the cultural context in which it emerges. In general, Odia Hindu women of the temple town expect the middle phase of their lives to afford them the most satisfying experiences because this phase is characterized by a vigorous involvement in exchanges and transactions that they, as the senior women in the household, control and manage. During this phase, they will be either the most senior woman in the household, or the next to most senior. As such, a woman has dominance—a substantial degree of control over her own body and her actions, but, more importantly, considerable control over the activities of others within the family. She is also at her most productive—likely to feel and to be felt central to the order and material welfare of the family. In addition, she experiences increased coherence within herself. Inner coherence, here, has two aspects. The first refers, very specifically, to a woman, at a certain point in her life, feeling consistent within herself, not fragmented and disarranged, realizing that her own self-interest and that of her conjugal family’s have finally converged. And the second refers to the coherence that emerges when, for physiological and cultural reasons, her connections and communication with divinity are regular and uninterrupted. This notion of coherence has, as many other Hindu concepts do, moral, psychological, and physical dimensions to it (Marriott 1990: 7). Therefore, for these women of the temple town, influence and ascendancy coming from seniority, productivity emerging from centrality (see Raheja 1988; Lamb 2000) and coherence (Marriott 1990: 15) resulting from internal consistency, and the capacity to approach divinity without reservation are the three salient dimensions of wellbeing. All imply controlling and managing the intense distributing and exchanging that a woman is involved in within the family, between the family and the community, and between the family and the divine. Furthermore, these three dimensions are not competing, but complementary. Having control over one’s own activities and dominating those of others makes one centrally involved in producing, distributing, and ensuring the family’s wellbeing. Both of these conditions allow one to experience coherence, as an inner consistency and as a sense of moral goodness. When a woman achieves all three, usually during the middle years of life, her wellbeing peaks.

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Another noteworthy feature of this cultural model is that it documents the systematic variation in an Odia Hindu woman’s access to and achievement of wellbeing across the life cycle. There are periods in an Odia woman’s life when she is so valued within her family and her activities are so significant for the auspiciousness and material prosperity of the entire family that her own sense of wellbeing peaks, and then, there are times when she is less essential to the family’s wellbeing, and her own sense of wellbeing declines. These are facts well recognized by these women themselves. They will tell you that control and lack of control, dominance and subordination, and wellbeing and distress characterize different phases that are ultimately woven together to form the uneven and patchy, though continual, fabric of a person’s life. In focusing on indigenous definitions of wellbeing among women in the temple town, I am building on earlier ethnographic work done by Shweder and his associates (Shweder and Bourne 1984; Shweder 1990, 1991; Shweder et al. 1990, 1997) in precisely the same research site. Some of this earlier work (1997) has looked at indigenous moral discourse and concluded that three themes—“the ethics of autonomy,” “the ethics of community,” and “the ethics of divinity”—“play a central role in the cultural construction of ethics and well-being” (ibid.: 140). While they conclude that “all three goods are goods because they enhance human dignity and self-esteem,” they also believe that these three goods are often in conflict because they argue, “in the material world, the world of embodiment and constraint, there may never have been a place or time when all three goods have been or could have been simultaneously maximized” (ibid.: 141). Thus, they say, “the discourse of autonomy and individualism is backgrounded in Hindu society, whereas the discourses of community and divinity are foregrounded, made salient and institutionalized…. Themes of personal autonomy are often absorbed into discourses of community and divinity…” (ibid.). However, the women of the temple town, who spoke to me, conceive of wellbeing a little differently. They view the goals of autonomy, meaningful connections with others, and unrestricted access to divinity as distinct and separate but not necessarily conflicting. Indeed, they see achieving these goals as three directional thrusts generally occurring in a sequence that move them toward wellbeing. Shweder et al. (1997: 138) suggest that autonomy involves a “conceptualization of the self as an individual preference structure, where the point of moral regulation is to increase choice and personal liberty,” but for these women, who have an interdependent sense of self rather than the independent one that Shweder et al. seem to be describing, autonomy has a slightly different flavor: it has less to do with choice and liberty and much more to do with simply having control over their bodies and their actions. Finally, there is one last point I need to address before concluding this chapter. This is the tendency among some scholars to explain the relatively less circumspect lives that middle-aged, non-Western women lead in terms of the relaxations that age, in and of itself, seems to bring. Thus, Brown and Kerns (1985), summarizing cross-cultural data, explicitly state that middle age brings several positive changes in the lives of women who live in non-Western, nonindustrial societies—geographical mobility, the right to exert authority over junior kin, the right to make decisions within the family, and the possibility of occupying special offices and enjoying

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recognition beyond the household (ibid.: 3–6). The social psychologist Leigh Minturn (1993), who did a longitudinal study of Rajput women in the north Indian village of Khalapur, seems to agree that the relatively less restricted lives and situations of middle-aged women she observed and interacted with can be understood almost exclusively in terms of the relaxations that age brings. While I acknowledge that such relaxations do occur for Odia Hindu women too, I do not interpret them simply as a consequence of growing older. Instead, given this book’s multicultural feminist approach, I examine the context in which these relaxations in social customs and family practices occur, attempting thereby to uncover the cultural meanings attached to them. Thus, for most women in the temple town, the middle phase of life provides opportunities for achieving wellbeing that previously were, and subsequently will become, unavailable to them. While a cursory examination may suggest that this increase in wellbeing is simply the result of being older, these women do not regard age to be the crucial variable. Rather, the family roles they occupy during mature adulthood—those of senior wife or still-married husband’s mother—are what confer greater wellbeing on them; and, as I mentioned earlier, not all women are fortunate enough to be the senior-most wives or even married husband’s mothers. But, when they are so fortunate, then these mature adult women are the linchpins that hold families together; they are the managers of households who ensure its material and spiritual prosperity. They represent the family within the community, maintaining its name and reputation; they also represent the family in its communication with the household gods. This involvement in distributive networks within the family and the community and substantial control over such involvement, rather than simply the physiological fact of being older, are what makes a senior wife, or a married husband’s mother—women in mature adulthood—feel well, content, and satisfied.

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Chapter 2

Entering the Temple Town of Bhubaneswar

Contents The Temple Town of Bhubaneswar ........................................................................................... The Native/Indigenous/Postcolonial Anthropologist ................................................................. The Lingaraj Temple .................................................................................................................. Entering the Temple Town ......................................................................................................... Five Families in the Temple Town ............................................................................................. The Patra Family.................................................................................................................... The Nandas ............................................................................................................................ The Pandas ............................................................................................................................. The Patis..... ........................................................................................................................... The Beheras ........................................................................................................................... Other Informants ........................................................................................................................ Mamata .................................................................................................................................. Chanjarani .............................................................................................................................. Manogobinda Mahasupakaro ................................................................................................ Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. References ..................................................................................................................................

27 29 31 37 40 40 42 45 47 49 51 51 52 52 53 54

The Temple Town of Bhubaneswar As a multicultural feminist text that considers context to be critical to any understanding of the challenges that the women of the temple town face and the rewards they garner, this chapter, and the following two, will attempt to provide the reader with a detailed picture of the circumstances of these women’s lives. Such an exercise that elaborates on the social, cultural, and moral aspects of their lives should throw into sharp relief the path to empowerment that is available to Odia Hindu women living in the temple town. The neighborhood around the Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneswar is the research site of the present study. Old Town is the name used locally to distinguish this neighborhood from New Capital, the modern city of Bhubaneswar, and the capital of the eastern Indian state of Odisha, which was planned and built after 1948 (see Fig. 2.1). However,

U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_2, © Springer India 2013

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Entering the Temple Town of Bhubaneswar

Jharkhand West Bengal

INDIA

Chandipur Orissa Chhattisgarh

Bhubaneshwar Konarka Puri Gopalpur B A Y O F B E N G A L

Andhra Pradesh

Fig. 2.1 Map showing the state of Odisha and the state capital Bhubaneswar. Prepared by Lawrence Milliken, Hagerty Library, Drexel University

I prefer to use the phrase “the temple town” as it is more evocative of the people who live here and their ethos. The Lingaraj temple is the heart of this neighborhood. The presiding deity is the Hindu god Siva, represented here as Lingaraj, the Lord of the Phallus. Historians presume that the temple town is an urban settlement that dates back to at least the eleventh century (Panigrahi 1961; von Stietencron 1978). Of the many research sites in Hindu India that scholars have trained their gaze on, the temple town of Bhubaneswar must surely rank as one of the more studied communities (see Seymour 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1999; Shweder 1991, 1996; Shweder and Bourne 1984; Shweder et al. 1990, 1997; Mahapatra 1980; Menon and Shweder 1994, 1997; Menon 2000, 2002a, b). The reason for the degree of scholarly attention given to the temple town is that it, together with the modern city of Bhubaneswar, was part of the Harvard-Bhubaneswar Project1 (Seymour 1980) that lasted for more than a dozen years. The project has, over the years, produced substantial scholarship representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives.2 1 The goal of the project, initiated in 1961 by Dr. Cora DuBois, professor of Anthropology at Harvard, was to observe and explain the rapid sociocultural change occurring in Bhubaneswar then. Fourteen graduate students, some Odia but most American, examined different aspects of sociocultural life in the more traditional temple town and in the more modern state capital. 2 DuBois’s papers are archived at the University of Chicago.

The Native/Indigenous/Postcolonial Anthropologist

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Some of the work done within anthropology is listed above—but it is an incomplete list. The present work is part of this body of scholarship. There is a certain advantage in being part of such a research tradition in that, if a broad agreement exists between the various researchers about the cultural meanings that prevail in a group, then that broad agreement works to bolster intersubjective validity. Whatever the particular differences between individual researchers in terms of their perspectives, subjectivities, and theoretical approaches, the overlap in findings and interpretations serves to validate each researcher’s work. Thus, Shweder’s early work on moral codes, moral development, and personhood; Seymour’s longitudinal research on the adaptations made in family structures and gender relations to the forces of modernization; and my own on wellbeing and Odia Hindu family practices overlap in interesting and important ways, suggesting there exists a measure of validity to our descriptions of the temple town and its residents.

The Native/Indigenous/Postcolonial Anthropologist I have sometimes been asked the reasons for choosing the temple town as my research site. And my answer has usually been that it made excellent sense for me to do fieldwork in Odisha, a place where I had lived for more than a dozen years and where I had many local connections and relationships. I knew the Odia language fluently, I was familiar with local customs and practices and my husband’s position in the local bureaucracy ensured me access and smooth entry into the temple town. In fact, there was no question, when I entered graduate school, that I would do fieldwork in the temple town of Bhubaneswar: my professors at the University of Chicago, pointing to the very advantages I mention above, agreed that the temple town was an eminently sensible choice as a research site (see Visweswaran 1994: 108–109). And this brings me to a topic that has been debated about in anthropology at least since the 1980s. I am referring to discussions about the theoretical and epistemological implications of non-Western anthropologists doing anthropological fieldwork in their own societies (Ohnuki-Tierney 1984; Harries-Jones 1996). These anthropologists, oftentimes educated in the West, make it a practice to return to their native lands in order to study their own people (Fahim and Helmer 1980; Kondo 1986; Abu-Lughod 1988, 1993; Altorki 1988; Narayan 1993; Visweswaran 1994; Shahrani 1994; Bakalaki 1997). They have been described in a variety of ways—as native, as indigenous, as “halfie,” as postcolonial. While the term “postcolonial” has a slightly different flavor, the basic idea behind the other adjectives is that a shared identity with the people one is studying is likely to have a significant impact on the dialogical relationship, central to the production of anthropological knowledge, that, historically at least, has been between the Western Self and the non-Western Other. Where does the native anthropologist locate herself in this relationship? After all, as a nonWestern anthropologist, trained in the West and studying her own people, she embodies within herself elements of both the Western Self and the non-Western Other.

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In addition, fieldwork often thought of as the rite of passage for becoming a full-fledged, professional anthropologist, loses much of that transformative significance because it is done at home and because the bracing effects of culture shock that are part and parcel of that experience never occur. Furthermore, it is thought that fieldwork in one’s own culture makes it difficult to cultivate reflexivity (OhnukiTierney 1984; Kim 1987). The native anthropologist, so close to her own culture, so completely immersed in it, cannot create the distance necessary for reflexivity to emerge because, as Babcock says, reflexivity requires that the self “become an object to itself” (1980: 2). Distancing is key to this process of objectification, and distancing, it is argued, can only occur if one has first traveled to a foreign culture— the Other—to study it, and then returned to one’s own. While not denying the significance of the issues raised in this debate, I am going to confine myself to those aspects of it that are directly relevant to my role as an anthropologist in the temple town. First of all, I am not a native anthropologist in the strict sense of the term because the people who participated in my study—the residents of the temple town—and I are not members of the same culture: they are Odia Hindus while I am a Malayali Hindu. At the time of the fieldwork, we certainly shared a nationality because we were all citizens of India, the modern nation state; and, we share a civilizational identity because we are all Hindus—but we do not share a cultural identity. I come from a group—the Nayars of Kerala in South India—that, too, has enjoyed its fair share of anthropological attention (Fawcett 1901[2004]; Jeffrey 1976; Fuller 1976; Gough 1981, 1989; Arunima 2003). The Nayars are very different, however, from the patrilineal, patrilocal Odia Hindus of the temple town who speak Odia, an Indo-Aryan language with its roots in Sanskrit. We are matrilineal and used to be “natolocal” (Fox 1967) in the sense that all members of a residential unit were related biologically and not through marriage—although social comparisons (Festinger 1954; Suls et al. 2002) with neighboring patrilineal groups and the British, and later, modernity have affected this postmarital residence pattern quite radically. Furthermore, we speak Malayalam, a Dravidian language with roots in proto-Tamil that has, over the last 200 years, been heavily Sanskritized. Thus, the differences between the Odias of the temple town and my own people run rather deep, both culturally and linguistically. However, I do accept the notion that I am a postcolonial anthropologist working in a postcolonial society. But, instead of struggling to locate myself in the dialogical relationship between Self and Other, I intend to adopt the strategy suggested by Alexandra Bakalaki who, as a Greek anthropologist educated in the United States and doing fieldwork in her native Greece, has dealt with similar issues. While Bakalaki does not directly address the issue of postcolonial anthropologists studying postcolonial societies, her advice to native anthropologists studying their own societies applies equally well to the postcolonial situation. She recommends that we, as native and/or postcolonial anthropologists, become aware of our own “positionality,” become attentive to “the multiplicity of identities” (1997: 518) we all embody.3 For me, these multiple elements would include being 3 I am not claiming that a composite identity is unique to native or postcolonial anthropologists; instead, I am more inclined to think that almost everyone living in today’s globalized world cannot but possess a hybrid, composite identity.

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a matrilineal Nayar, a South Indian, a member of the privileged, urban, upper middle class in postindependent India, and a woman who has enjoyed the advantages of a Westernized and Western education. Bakalaki warns that an “excessive emphasis on positionality … may lead to self-absorption” (ibid.: 518), but she also notes that sharing parts of one’s identity with one’s “respondents, fellow natives, ‘local’ and international colleagues” (ibid.: 519) makes it harder to maintain the façade of the omniscient anthropologist, simply because the people with whom one shares parts of one’s self do not hesitate to challenge and contest one’s analyses and interpretations. One, thus, learns to make modest claims about the people whose way of life one is examining, always aware that one’s understanding is at best, partial, and incomplete; that one can only hope to provide plausible explanations, “best guesses,” for the “apparent consistencies” that emerge from the data; always acknowledging “the contradictions and the instability” (Wolf 1992: 129) that characterize every cultural situation. Anthropologists are supposed to “translate” between local particularities and their global characterizations, to tack back and forth between these two kinds of descriptions so as to produce a believable, three-dimensional portrait of another cultural world. But as Geertz points out, “‘Translation’, here, is not a simple recasting of others’ ways of putting things in terms of our own ways of putting them (that is the kind in which things get lost), but displaying the logic of their ways of putting them in the locutions of ours”4 (1983: 10, emphasis mine). My goal, therefore, is to strive to achieve, in some measure, this kind of Geertzian translation; so that, by book’s end, the reader can appreciate the “logic” that underlies the lives and choices of the Odia Hindu women who live in the temple town.

The Lingaraj Temple Devout Hindus regard the area within a radius of 5–6 miles around the Lingaraj temple as a sacred zone (kshetra) of considerable antiquity; and, the numerous temples, some living, many abandoned, attest to the faith and fervor that built religious monuments in this region, from perhaps the third century B.C.E. to the sixteenth century C.E. (see Panigrahi 1961; von Stietencron 19785). The temple compound extends over an area of 4.5 acres and is surrounded by a high wall made of laterite. There are three gates, the largest of these being the one to the east, which is 31¢ wide, guarded by a pair of stone lions and crowned by a pyramidal roof that is 51¢ high. The paved courtyard inside is crowded with 60–70 smaller temples, the most impressive of them being dedicated to the goddess, represented here as Bhagavati,

4

I am assuming, and I think correctly, that when Geertz mentions “the locutions of ours,” he is referring to anthropological discourse, the discourse in which those trained in anthropology engage, and not to parochial, Euro-American discourse. 5 Scholars associated with the Orissa Research Project (1970–75) of the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg have made significant contributions to a better understanding of the religious and cultural history of Odisha.

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the wife of Siva. The Lingaraj temple, the Bhagavati temple, as well as many of the smaller temples are architecturally quite stunning, elaborately carved, and decorated with statuettes, bas-reliefs, and bands of flora (O’Malley 1984 [1908]). Knowledgeable people here say that Yayati Kesari I, a ruler belonging to the Somavamsi dynasty, began constructing this temple, dedicating it to the god Siva, sometime during the tenth century (see von Stietencron 1978). Yayati I is supposed to have built the celestial chariot (vimana) of the temple and the inner hall (jagamohana). Subsequently, the temple was remodeled: the dance hall (natamandira) and the outer hall from where offerings are made to the deity (bhogamandapa) were added, perhaps in the thirteenth century, by Anangabhima III (see Kulke 1978) and Narasimha I,6 respectively, both kings belonging to the Ganga dynasty. In the sanctum sanctorum of the Lingaraj temple, a self-existing (swayambhu) phallus (lingam) represents the deity. The lingam is an un-carved block of granite roughly 8 ft in diameter and rising about 8 in. from the ground. Surrounding the lingam, there is a raised, roughly circular rim of black chlorite with a tapered end pointing northwards representing the yoni (the vulva). Repeated washings, over the centuries, of the upper surface of the lingam have somewhat smoothened its uneven surface. A noteworthy feature of this Saivite shrine is the extent to which it has incorporated Vaishnavite elements, an integration that the Ekamra Purana7 describes as having occurred very early in its history, and the result, perhaps, of the influence, architectural and otherwise, exercised by the Ganga kings, worshipers of Visnu (see von Stietencron 1978). For instance, images of Jagannatha and LakshmiNarayana have been so placed that devotees while circumambulating will first meet these Vaishnavite deities and only then enter the main shrine that contains the lingam. Today, priests and others familiar with the temple point to a natural crack in the lingam and describe it as the line that demarcates the Visnu and Siva portions of the deity who is thus invoked as Harihara.8 Worship, too, is similarly mixed, having both Vaishnavite and Saivite elements: for instance, both tulasi (Ocimum tenuiflorum, also known as Ocimum sanctum), an integral part of Vaisnava worship, and bilva (Aegle marmoles), reputed to be a favorite plant of Siva’s, are offered during temple rituals. In fact, the mixed nature of the deity worshiped in this temple can be noticed long before one even enters the temple because the summit (shikhara) of the temple, visible from afar, is decorated with Siva’s trident (trisul) as well as Visnu’s disk (chakra).

6

He is also the builder of the exquisite and very famous Sun temple at Konarak, a seaside village located about 30 miles southwest of Bhubaneswar. 7 A thirteenth century text, written in Sanskrit, about the Lingaraj temple, its origins, its customs and rituals and the community that serves it; the area around the temple town, also known as Ekamra Kanan, the Single Mango Forest, gives this text its name. Other medieval Sanskrit texts that provide information about this temple are the Kapila Samhita, the Svarnnadri-mahodaya and the Ekamra-chandrika. 8 H. von Stietencron suggests that Harihara iconography in the Siva temples of Odisha is not uncommon and is “intended to show the all-embracing quality of Siva who comprised even Visnu within himself” (1978: 15).

The Lingaraj Temple

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Apart from these Vaishnava elements in the worship performed, and in the architecture of the temple, there is also present in this neighborhood a fairly strong Sakta9 tradition. There are several temples in this region, dedicated to the goddess; in fact, on the main road (Bada Danda) leading to the Lingaraj temple, there is the Koppali mandir10 in which the main idol is a granite statue of Kali with her tongue out. To the south of the temple town, there is an open air temple dedicated to 64 female ascetics (yoginis), each believed to possess some special yogic ability. Even within the wards of the temple town there are small neighborhood shrines where the chief deity is some form or the other of Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism. And finally, the small temple located in the middle of the public tank, Bindusagar, north of the Lingaraj temple, boasts of idols of Siva and Parvati in which, in sharp reversal of customary tradition, Siva is shown massaging his wife’s feet.11 The Lingaraj temple, too, like the more famous Jagannatha temple to the south at Puri, reveals its mixed, non-Brahmanical origins (see Eschmann 1978) in the community that serves the deity and performs the temple rituals. Thus, the priestly community (pandas) at Lingaraj includes the original custodians of the temple, known as Badus or Batus, as well as those Brahmans who claim to be the descendants of families that were brought to Odisha from north India by the Vaishnavite Ganga kings. The Badus, descendants, according to the Ekamra Purana, of a

9

Put very briefly, belief in the supremacy of the female principle and acknowledging the Great Goddess as the supreme deity. 10 Koppali means “she who wears skulls,” that is, the goddess as Kali wearing her necklace of skulls, koppalo being the Odia word for “skull.” 11 Temple town residents explain this reversal of tradition with a story: There used to be two demon brothers, Kruttivasa and Krittivasa, whose tyranny and cruelty made the people in the area so unhappy that they prayed to the gods to rescue them. The gods, however, could do nothing and finally, Parvati had to come to the rescue of the people. She came dressed as a cowherdess (gopi), and the demon brothers found her so beautiful that they wanted to marry her. She accepted their proposal on the one condition that they would satisfy a long-standing wish of hers—that her future husbands should carry her on their shoulders. The demon brothers were only too willing to indulge her and they lifted her on to their shoulders. But then the goddess grew extraordinarily heavy and she buried them in the ground. After getting rid of the demons, the goddess was so tired that she decided to rest under the shade of a tree. In the meantime, Siva missed his wife and came looking for her. He found her asleep under the tree; he sat down and his love for her was so great that he began massaging her feet. Parvati then woke up and was utterly dismayed that she had committed the sin of touching her husband with her feet, and she asked him, “From where shall I find the water pure enough to wash away this sin?” Then Siva took his trident (trisul) and threw it into the ground—water started bubbling from the point where it pierced the ground and formed the pond that is called Bindusagar today. The water of the Bindusagar is said to consist of the waters of all the rivers of India, except the Godavari. The Godavari declined to join the rest of the rivers of India in washing off Parvati’s sin because she said that she was menstruating and could not come. But this refusal made Parvati so angry that she cursed Godavari, saying that only once in 12 years would her waters be pure enough to wash off the sins of those who bathe in her. At any rate, Parvati was able to wash off her sin and the incident is commemorated in the idols of Siva and Parvati found in the little temple at the center of the pond.

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Savara12 mother and a Saivite ascetic (tapasvan), Siddhabhuti, hold the key to the outer door of the temple but apart from that, they have no specific role in the rituals of worship today, most of these, including the preparation of ritual offerings, usually food (bhoga) for the deity having been taken over by the other Brahman groups. While the Badus wear the sacred thread (poivita) and refer to themselves as Brahmans, they are nonvegetarian, intermarrying with neither the other Brahman groups of the temple town nor with Brahmans from other parts of Odisha. In fact, these other Brahmans refer to them as Sudra sevakas (servitors), emphasizing their mixed and non-Brahmanical origins. While historically, Badus were an endogamous group, they have, over the last several decades, begun marrying into Karan13 families outside the temple town. The temple town is a rabbit warren of narrow lanes branching off into other narrower lanes, but by and large, living space is organized, as it has been for the past several 100 years, according to caste and subcaste affiliations (see Fig. 2.2, which shows the Lingaraj temple, its neighborhood, and the location of the ten households that participated in this study). All the lanes (sahi) have names, often taken from the subcaste of the families who live along it, and sometimes, from the small shrines dedicated to different gods and goddesses that are scattered throughout the wards of the temple town. Sarat Mahapatra and Guna Mahapatra, under whose auspices I entered the temple town, belong to the Mahasuara subcaste of Brahmans and they live with other Mahasuara families in a single, contiguous neighborhood, as do other Brahman and non-Brahman groups. However, the lane they live is not named for their subcaste but rather for the small shrine at the bottom of the lane dedicated to the goddess and is, therefore, called Hara Chandi sahi (see Seymour 1999). But, there is Misra sahi (because along this lane most residents are Misras) and Pujapanda sahi (because Pujapandas live on that lane). And, similarly, among non-Brahmans, there is the Behera lane where Goudas (cowherds) live and neighborhoods where Telis (oil crushers) or Chassas (peasant farmers) or Maharanas (carpenters) predominate and so on. Although it does not equal Puri in terms of religious significance, the temple town is a pilgrimage site (teertha sthana) of some importance and attracts a large number of devout pilgrims, especially from north India, Bengal, and Assam. Most of these pilgrims are on their way south to Puri and regard Lingaraj a necessary stop on their itinerary. Several ashrams are also located in the neighborhood around the Lingaraj temple, and renouncers (sadhus, samnyasis) are a noticeable segment of the population here; of course, these renouncers have little to do with temple rituals that are performed exclusively by the male members of families with the hereditary right to do so. The connections that they have with the temple and its servitors are limited and infrequent and extends only to expounding on and interpreting 12 The Savaras are a tribal group of southern Odisha. Apart from this association with the Lingaraj temple, they also have hereditary associations with the Jagannatha temple at Puri—the image of Jagannatha is believed to be of Savara provenance (Eschmann 1978). 13 The Karans of Odisha, like the Kayasthas of Bengal (see Inden 1976), are traditionally supposed to have been a subcaste of writers and account keepers, often attached to local zamindars (feudal lords).

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The Lingaraj Temple

ne Li ta ay lcut lw a ai R oC T

N

E

W

The New Capital of Bhubaneswar S

Bindusagar Temple Tank

ine y L ras a ilw ad Ra o M T

Lingaraj Temple

To Puri

Fig. 2.2 The neighborhood of the Lingaraj Temple and the location of the ten households that participated in this study. Each dot in the sketch represents a household

passages from various sacred texts at the invitation of the senior priests of the temple, not at the temple itself but at dharamsalas (free boarding houses for pilgrims) or in maidans (open fields). For those who do not belong to the temple town, the priests of Lingaraj represent the worst elements of Hinduism. They are described as corrupt and avaricious, addicted to intoxicants (ganja, bhang), exploiting innocent pilgrims, playing on their fears and hopes to extort money that they can ill afford. However, those who belong to this neighborhood view their birth into this community as a blessing (barad), an indication of accumulated spiritual merit (punya) and regard their notoriety as the result partly of the bad actions (kukarma) of a few, and partly the envy (dvesha) of those who have not been equally blessed. The body of literature that shapes the perceptions and attitudes of the people in the temple town of Bhubaneswar is more medieval than modern. Stories from the Odia text the Chandi Purana (dating back to the fifteenth century) and Sanskrit texts like the Kapila Samhita, the Ekamra Purana, Brahmavaivarta Purana, the

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Siva Purana, the Linga Purana, the Kalika Purana, the Nrusingha Purana, the Devibhagvata Purana, and the Bhagvata Purana14—to name only those that are most popular in the temple town—mold and define their sense of values, their sense of life’s possibilities, as well as the meanings they derive from mundane events and experiences. Rituals at the Lingaraj temple resemble those in other Hindu temples: the deity is woken up every morning, he is bathed, he is offered food, he retires and, at regular intervals, he allows his devotees to gaze on him (darsan heba). The hum of activity in the temple town is regulated by temple rituals: on particularly holy days when there are heavy influxes of pilgrims, roads are jammed, the public address system blares prayers (bhajans) in Odia, and all is confusion and bustle. On other days, when Siva is doing nothing very strenuous, life is calm, most shops shut well before midday for an afternoon siesta, and the hereditary priests, the pandas, gamble quietly outside the gates of the temple. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the winds of socioeconomic transformation that are sweeping through other parts of the country are far less noticeable here—though not completely absent. Unlike their mothers and grandmothers, almost all girls, today, attend school. Sons, more often younger rather than the older, are finding jobs outside of Bhubaneswar, frequently outside of Odisha; and non-Odias are moving in and renting homes in the temple town, changing the flavor of life here, and to some degree its ethnic composition. The temple town also has a couple of Internet cafes, and satellite TV is ubiquitous, with many homes here able to view news and entertainment from around the world. However, most of the images that do flicker on TV screens in the temple town are produced in Bollywood (Ganti 2002; Tyrrell 2011), not in the West. It is important to note, therefore, that women in the temple town are exposed to Indian, rather than Western, images of modernity, femininity, and consumerism; and even these images are likely to be “customized,” that is, interpreted in terms of their own particular cultural meanings, in the process of being consumed (see Inda and Rosaldo 2008: 18–20). What needs to be remembered, of course, is that, as a pilgrimage center of some repute, the temple town has never been isolated from the outside world. It would, therefore, be a mistake to portray it as some kind of secluded backwater where time stands still. On the contrary, people here are, and, perhaps, have always been, well aware of the wider world as well as their position in it. At the same time, precisely because it is a pilgrimage center, it is a bastion of fairly traditional Hindu values. And the upper castes here, particularly the Brahmans, not only derive great pride from their high ritual status but also recognize that this high status stems from their disciplined lifestyle, from the restrictive life practices they follow. As I suggested in the previous chapter, upper caste residents of the temple town are therefore, most invested in maintaining these restrictive life practices because they are strategies to 14

Puranas are read aloud to fairly large crowds in the dance hall of the Lingaraj temple on 2 days of the week; the readings begin late in the evening and continue past midnight. Similarly, old women, both married and widowed, gather every Thursday afternoon at the Koppali mandir to read from the Puranas.

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self-refinement, and thereby, to self-respect and social prestige. Given this situation, it is less likely that these people—even the younger generation—would succumb to the lure of Westernization, would alter family practices and gender relations because of liberal notions of individual liberty and gender equality. Thus, despite the increasing numbers of intrusions from the outside world, customary Hindu thinking and practice still tend to guide and shape the orientation of temple town residents toward life and the world (see Singer 1980: 320ff). The next two chapters will be devoted to describing this kind of thinking and practice.

Entering the Temple Town I first entered the temple town of Bhubaneswar in order to do fieldwork in the summer of 1991. However, I have been familiar with Odisha and Odia society since 1973. I first went to Odisha during the monsoon of 1973, a few months after my marriage because my husband happened to be working in Bhubaneswar, the state capital. Neither of us had any prior connection to Odisha or its people. Our connection to Odisha and Odias although begun in this purely fortuitous manner has grown and strengthened over the years. Thus, when in 1991, I decided to do fieldwork in the temple town, I was, as I have already mentioned, familiar with Odia customs and practices, I spoke the language fluently, and I dressed as any middle-class, married Odia Hindu woman would. In short, I could pass myself off as an Odia with considerable ease. Like many other sites of Saivite worship in India, the neighborhood around the Lingaraj temple has, as I have already mentioned, an unsavory reputation.15 I was told that for a woman to go alone into the temple town without a respected resident of the neighborhood as guide would be asking for trouble. More importantly, no one would take me seriously and I would hardly find any knowledgeable or decent person willing to talk to me. And so I asked an acquaintance of my husband’s, a member of the provincial civil service, to help me out. This person, Maheswar Mishra, had been, in the early 1980s, the executive officer on the Board of Trustees that manages the affairs of the Lingaraj temple. He is also a Brahman, and although he does not belong to the temple town (his natal village lies to the south of Bhubaneswar in Puri district) by virtue of having administered the temple effectively for more than 6 years, his credentials are impeccable. Maheswar Mishra was enormously helpful in introducing me to two of the more prominent residents of the temple town—Sarat Mahapatra and Guna Mahapatra. Guna Mahapatra made it clear that although my project had his official blessing, his political, business, and charitable16 engagements kept him so busy that he would have difficulty finding the time to introduce me to families in the temple town. 15

Many Hindus are suspicious of priests who serve Siva temples; they are often suspected of being capable of hypnotizing people, of being addicted to intoxicants, of indulging in lecherous behavior. 16 His family has for many years maintained and managed the largest dharamsala (a free boarding house for pilgrims) in the temple town.

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Sarat Mahapatra, however, who had retired 8 years ago from his government job as overseer in the Public Works Department was more than willing to sponsor my entry into temple town society. Although he was actively involved in managing the affairs of the temple (having been nominated to the Board of Trustees—the same one that Maheswar Mishra had served on many years earlier), he said that he would have no trouble in taking me around and introducing me to various families in the temple town. The only difficulty he foresaw was that people would be unwilling to talk to me on ekadashis (the eleventh lunar day of either the bright or the dark fortnight of the lunar month), sankrantis (days that mark the passage of the sun from one planetary body’s house [grha] to another), amabasyas (the night of the new moon, the darkest night of a lunar fortnight), purnimas (full moon nights), or days such as those of pitru paksha (the dark lunar fortnight in August/September when temple town residents worship their ancestors), and so on. I soon realized that I would have to take the local almanac (panchanga) into account while arranging my meetings with people! Manamohan Mahapatra, an anthropologist, a professor at a local college, and a native of the temple town, was another contact I had in the temple town. However, as a member of the state educational service, he was under orders of transfer and could do very little to further my acquaintance with the people of the temple town. The one useful thing he did do was to introduce me to Prafulla Kumar Badu and his family who turned out to be both friendly and helpful. The Badus are, as I mentioned above, a subcaste of temple servants who because of their heterogeneous origins have an ambiguous caste rank, other Brahman groups denying them Brahman status. P.K. Badu’s wife Urmila and his son Bibhuti Bhusan introduced me to their relative Mamata, a woman who became a good friend and an amazingly knowledgeable and articulate informant about the customs and practices of the temple town. She also has an inexhaustible fund of stories about Odia heroes and heroines as well as about every landmark in the temple town, some of which will be presented in this book. As far as talking to people was concerned, in no sense were these interview situations. First of all, there is no Odia word that glosses even approximately the English word “interview” with its implications of formality, privacy, and one-on-one exchange. Thus, people in the temple town and I had informal conversations. Apart from the informality, I found arranging a one-on-one conversation in a secluded place difficult to ensure. Our conversations would usually take place in courtyards or on verandas outside kitchens. (A sketch of a typical temple town house is given in Fig. 2.3.) Other people were sometimes, though not always, present. Children were almost constantly around. And even, when I did speak to a woman alone, both she and I were very aware that others in the family could easily overhear our conversations. Furthermore, the conversations that I report about hardly ever occurred the first time I met these men and women. It would take two or three visits to a household before I felt comfortable broaching the idea of having a serious conversation about the topics I was investigating. A regular feature of my initial interactions with nearly everyone in the temple town was their slightly puzzled curiosity. The first question that temple town women would almost invariably ask me was, “Where is your father’s village?” And when I replied that it was many

39

Entering the Temple Town

Back Street

Back Garden

Corridor

Verandah Kitchen

Bedroom

Store

Verandah

Well

Neighbor

Bath

Verandah

Inner Courtyard Toilet

Neighbor

Bedroom

Corridor

Verandah

Worship Room

Open Terrace

Main room Main Bedroom Front room Balcony

Verandah Lower Floor

Upper Floor

Front Street Fig. 2.3 Sketch of a typical house in the temple town

hundreds of miles away in the south of India, they would nod their heads, and immediately, ask, “So, your husband is Odia?” When I corrected that supposition, they would shake their heads, rather bewildered and say, “So, you’re not Odia?” This happened so frequently in the early days of my fieldwork that, when I met someone for the first time, I often launched into a description of myself even before these questions could be asked. There is also another aspect of my early interactions with these people that I should mention. While the men and most women rarely said anything about my attempts to do research, a few women openly disapproved of my activities. When they realized that I had left my husband and children to study abroad, they were aghast. Perhaps their reactions would have been a little less extreme had I been a foreigner. In any case, they saw my actions as completely contrary to their perceptions of right conduct (dharma) for a Hindu wife and mother. In order to ensure that nothing would jeopardize my fieldwork, I soon brought my husband and children to visit Sarat Mahapatra and his family. Slowly, as word trickled around that my husband approved of what I was doing and, in fact, supported me in my activities, local disapproval died down. Nevertheless, a couple of women continued to pity my predicament in having to do

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fieldwork, one that necessitated my “wandering”17 around the temple town—and they did not hesitate to comment on it! But I also had my supporters: older women, for instance, like Sarat Mahapatra’s wife, Priyambada, who would refer to me as their dharma jhio—a term, hard to translate, but one that could be glossed as “daughter in faith”—indicating, I think, their unstinting approval of my activities.

Five Families in the Temple Town I present below thumbnail sketches of the five families—the Patras, the Nandas, the Pandas, the Patis, and the Beheras—that I grew to know rather well. All except the Beheras, who belong to a cow-herding subcaste, are Brahman. These brief descriptions of family life in the temple town provide, I think, the reader with a flavor for the pace of life in this neighborhood, for the ways in which families are structured and family dynamics play out, for the issues and concerns they consider important.

The Patra Family This is the family with whom I have become the most intimate. Sudhansubabu is in his late 60s and the head of this large, four-generational household, whose genealogical chart is given at the end of this chapter (see Fig. 2.4). Resident are his 90-year-old mother, his wife Satyabhama, his four sons, his eldest son’s wife, his two unmarried daughters and his two grandsons. His eldest daughter is married, the mother of two sons, and lives with her husband’s family in the modern city of Bhubaneswar. The younger of his two unmarried daughters, Anupama, is adopted: she is the daughter of Satyabhama’s younger brother who died when she was less than a year old. Sudhansubabu and Satyabhama have raised Anupama as their own so as to lighten the burdens borne by her widowed mother. Satyabhama is a spare, stern, little woman of 58 years who does not warm to people quickly. But she uses her dry sense of humor with great effect, and once she takes to you, there could be few companions more amusing. Satyabhama, whom I soon began to address by the kin term mausi (mother’s younger sister), had a miserable time when she first entered her husband’s house. Her husband’s mother was, she says, extremely cruel (ati nishthur). While Sudhansubabu never raised his hand against her, his mother often did, once going so far as to catch Satyabhama by the hair and swing her head against one of the concrete pillars of the courtyard. To this day, she bears on her forehead the scar from that injury. Satyabhama says that after this incident she went back to her father’s house (one of the other Brahman households of the temple town) taking her two small sons with her. Sudhansubabu

17

“Wandering,” it should be noted, has certain unsavory connotations of “looseness” and “promiscuity.”

41

Five Families in the Temple Town =

Susdhansu Babu

=

=

= Sanjukta

=

Satyabhama

= Rajani

Anupama

Fig. 2.4 Patra family chart

would keep visiting her, pleading with her to return, and finally, after 7 years, she did. Another reason for Satyabhama’s sorrow during those early years of marriage was the fact that she lost seven children: three of seven sons and four of six daughters were either stillborn or died in infancy. Sanjukta, Sudhansubabu’s eldest son’s wife and the mother of two sons, is, by her own account, an extremely unhappy woman. She claims that she has no problems with her husband: “He (her husband) never says anything to me, he is happy with me.” In sharp contrast, Sudhansubabu and his wife, she says, disapprove of her completely: “The others, father-mother (nona-bou), they criticize me to each other in such a way that I can hear what they are saying.” She ascribes their dissatisfaction with her to the fact that she hardly brought any dowry (joutuko) with her. For her part, Satyabhama says that her son’s wife is either a poor learner or does not try to adjust to the demands of a large family. As she says: Even today, after eight years of marriage, she will come and ask me everyday how much rice she has to cook. When will she learn? And when relatives come over, instead of asking them to sit down, instead of giving them water to drink, she will stand staring at them with her mouth open.

Whatever the reasons for her parents-in-law’s dissatisfaction with her, Sanjukta is one of several junior wives in the temple town who somatize their emotional distress: she has chest pains, swoons, and suffers from indigestion. Her husband, she says, has taken her to several doctors, Western-trained, Ayurvedic, and homeopathic, but no one has been able to diagnose her physical ailments, far less cure them. Rajani, the elder of Sudhansubabu’s two unmarried daughters, appears, at first sight, to be a clearheaded, no-nonsense kind of a person. She is 28 years old and, by temple town standards, has remained unmarried for an unconscionably long time. Apparently her marriage had been arranged within the temple town but it fell

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through: the prospective groom’s family broke the engagement because they received another proposal that promised a far more substantial dowry. While I was doing fieldwork another marriage, again within the temple town, was arranged for Rajani and, she did finally get married. My family and I attended her wedding. I have visited her in her conjugal home and she appears content with her new life. There is one aspect of Rajani’s personality that is at odds with one’s initial impression of her as a woman in control of herself: she says that she is sometimes possessed by the ghost (preta) of a Muslim man, a mian, as she calls him. She claims the possession began when she was in the last year of school, and it resulted in her doing badly in her school leaving examinations. Since then, she has been to a local gunia (sorcerer), who spoke to her at some length about when the possession began and other details, performed some rituals, and then made her a gold amulet to wear on her upper arm. She removes the amulet during the first 4 days of her menstrual period fearing pollution, and thereby, a loss in its potency, but she says that whenever she is without it, she feels “ill and out of sorts.” While I got to know each of these three women very well, I hardly became acquainted with the adopted daughter Anupama, because she had been living away from home, attending school in Nimapara, a small town about 30 km away. From the little I did get to know of Anupama, I realized that her sense of belonging to her adoptive family is strong. When others would mention in her presence that her “real” father had died when she was less than a year old, she would make a point of referring to Sudhansubabu as “father” (nona) and to Satyabhama as “mother” (bou18) and to Nandini, the biological mother to whom she bears a striking resemblance, as mother’s brother’s wife (mai). Once Sudhansubabu was telling me how tired he was of the world and all his responsibilities as father and husband, and as Lingaraj’s servitor (sevaka). He said that he wished above all else to renounce the world, to retreat to some hermitage (ashram) outside Rishikesh, the sacred city at the foothills of the Himalayas. Rajani, who was present, raised her voice and in mock anger said: And what about the duty you owe your youngest daughter? She is still in school—don’t you have to marry her before you decide to go away? We aren’t going to let you get away without doing all your duties!

The Nandas The Nandas are another family in the temple town that I came to know very well. The genealogical chart for this family is given in Fig. 2.5. As you can see, the Nandas are related to the Patras: Satyabhama, Sudhansubabu’s wife, is the eldest

18

In Odia households, children address their mothers as “son’s wife”, bou, rather than “mother”, ma. It often becomes very confusing—a son’s wife is addressed and referred to as bou, as is one’s mother, and sometimes, one’s husband’s mother.

43

Five Families in the Temple Town

= Sarala

= Satyabhama

=

=

Kuntala = = Jagannatha

= = Sashibala

=

=

Nandini =

=

=

Fig. 2.5 Nanda family chart

sister of Jagannatha, the head of the Nanda family. Apart from his wife (Kuntala), his three sons, his eldest son’s wife (Sashibala), his unmarried daughter and his little granddaughter, Jagannatha Nanda’s household includes his widowed mother (Sarala), his younger brother’s widow (Nandini), and her eldest daughter (Bijoya) and her only son (Sisir). Jagannatha Nanda is the second son; Sarala’s eldest and third sons having moved, with their wives and children, into other houses in the same neighborhood. Sarala’s second daughter, like her eldest daughter Satyabhama, has married into a temple town family while her youngest daughter has married into a family that lives in Tangi, a small town in southern Odisha, along the Puri-Ganjam border. I never did get to meet the other two sons or the youngest daughter. I did, however, meet the middle daughter who, unlike Satyabhama, appears to be very close to her widowed mother. Although they live just a few yards from each other, Satyabhama rarely visits her mother. Sarala complains unceasingly about Satyabhama keeping secrets from her; for example, she claims that she was never informed about the negotiations or the arrangements for Rajani’s marriage. In contrast, Satyabhama’s sister comes to her brother’s house and shares every meal with her mother. Sarala told me that this daughter was the only one of her children who really cared for her and this sharing of meals was a measure of her love for her mother; I was, however, not able to talk with this daughter about her reasons for such devotion. That Sarala is a harsh and intolerant woman becomes clear within minutes of meeting her. She is a striking personality and if she decides to like you, few people can exceed her in amiability. But, as her widowed son’s wife (bou), Nandini, said to me, She may like you one day and then she will put you on her head, and kick everyone else to the ground. But the next day, she may like someone else and kick you to the ground. She likes to do that with people, with her own children, with her sons’ wives—she likes to play with people.

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Sarala herself admits to having so much anger and hatred (raago o dvesho) within her mind/heart that she can hardly contain herself. She is furiously unhappy with her present situation, yearning for a bygone era when her husband was alive and pandered to her every whim. Both her sons’ wives—Kuntala the older and Nandini the younger—remember that, in the early days, when their cooking displeased her she would enter the kitchen and kick the vessels that contained the food, spilling food onto the floor, and making it unfit for human consumption. Today, service (sewa) is done for her, but only in the most perfunctory and limited sense; no one in the family, not even the young granddaughters, feel the slightest sympathy or affection for this angry old woman. And for her part, she is utterly discontented with this service and has no hesitation in displaying her rage at the world. Both sons’ wives (Kuntala and Nandini) live harmoniously together, leaving Sarala to provide a convenient target for whatever negative feelings they may have about life in their extended household. Kuntala is a stout, pleasant featured woman, who is so devoted to her husband and their children that she cannot sleep at night unless everyone, including her two grown sons, is home and in bed. She too belongs to the temple town; her father’s home is just a stone’s throw from her husband’s mother’s. Despite this proximity, however, Kuntala could not attend to her dying mother, could not give her the customary ganga jal (Ganges water19) in her last few moments, because Sarala forbade her from leaving the house. The most recent sorrow that Kuntala has experienced is the death, roughly 3 years ago, of her 22-year-old third daughter. The young woman, the mother of a baby boy, died of meningitis, after having been married for just 2 years. A little over a year ago, Kuntala’s fourth daughter, Sandhyarani, married her dead sister’s husband, and today, she too is the mother of a baby boy. In terms of her work within the household, Kuntala is gently withdrawing from doing the household chores herself to supervising the work that is done by other, junior women. She says: I like to cook and feed the children, but now a son’s wife has come into the house, I don’t want people to think that this husband’s mother won’t give up cooking, and so nowadays, I’ve begun moving out of the kitchen. Eldest son always says, ‘Bou, you’ve brought a bou in and so now you don’t give us anything to eat or drink’, and I say, ‘Yes, a bou has entered the house, isn’t it time that I started detaching myself, moving out of the kitchen? How else can it be?

From what her husband’s younger brother’s widow says, Kuntala has been the epitome of kindness and generosity to that unfortunate woman. Nandini states categorically that she would have never survived the last 15 years if Jagannatha, her husband’s elder brother (dedhasuro), and Kuntala, his wife (bada bhaujo) hadn’t shielded and protected her and her children’s interests. Apparently the other brothers together with their mother were eager to lay their hands on the dead brother’s property. Jagannatha Nanda stood firm and endured abuse, but succeeded in ensuring that his dead brother’s children were not done out of their rightful share of family property. 19 It is customary in the temple town for close relatives to give someone on his or her deathbed ganga jal, or water from the river Ganges, because the holy water is presumed to cleanse the dying person of moral imperfections as well as physical impurities.

Five Families in the Temple Town

45

Nandini has no pleasant memories of her husband. She reports that he used to get drunk frequently and, when intoxicated, would be physically abusive. But with his death, she became even more vulnerable. She describes in vivid detail the kinds of gross and subtle violence she has been subjected to as a widow. She says her eyes were never fully dry during the early days of widowhood. Her father20 used to visit her twice, sometimes even thrice a week, but she stopped him from coming when Sarala began saying that she was giving him the jewels she could no longer wear as a widow, one piece at a time. As Nandini says: That jewelry is my children’s wealth. Will I give it away? And to my father? And as if he would take them! But there is no sense to what she says and thinks and so I told my father, ‘Don’t bother about me. I will manage but you must stop coming’, and so he stopped coming here altogether. These people never let me out of the house for the next three years; only after that did I go and visit my father and mother.

Incidentally, when she was widowed, her parents adopted her second daughter while her third daughter, Anupama, as I mentioned above, was adopted by Sudhansubabu and his wife Satyabhama, Nandini’s husband’s eldest sister. These two adoptions were undertaken to help ease her burdens somewhat; Nandini, therefore, has only been involved in the raising of her eldest daughter and her only son. She claims to be far from well: long-standing heart problems as well as, more recently, problems of digestion afflict her. She says that these problems began emerging a couple of years after her husband’s death, which occurred when she was just 21 years old: the probability that she is somatizing the enormous sorrow she has endured, and continues to endure, is obviously very high. But she says that with her son growing up, she feels better every day and more hopeful about the future. The other person I spoke with in this household was Bijoya, Nandini’s daughter. She was 6 years old when her father died and says she has clear memories of him. She wonders why her mother has had to suffer widowhood, and says that seeing the kind of treatment meted out to her, destroys any peace of mind, making it impossible to study hard and do well at school. At the moment, she is waiting to get married. A few good proposals have come and she has confidence that Jagannatha Nanda, her father’s elder brother, will find her a suitable husband.

The Pandas Pratima, the eldest son’s wife in the Panda household (see Fig. 2.6), clearly dominates family life here. Manjula, her husband’s mother, is not weak, but she is so understanding and so willing to compromise for peace within the family that Pratima takes advantage of her goodness and gets her own way in most family disputes. Of her two son’s wives, even a relative stranger can make out that Manjula prefers her younger son’s wife, Sushila—partly because of similarities in temperament, both 20 Unlike many women in the temple town, Nandini was not born in the temple town. Her natal village, Konarak, the site of the famous Sun Temple, is about 60 km southwest of Bhubaneswar.

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= Prafulla Manjula Panda

=

= Pratima

=

=

Sushila

Fig. 2.6 Panda family chart

women being quiet and retiring, and partly because she feels for the younger woman. Manjula thinks that her second son is an inconsiderate husband and tries to shield his wife from his ill temper, as much as she can. For instance, Sushila says that whenever someone comes from her father’s home to take her on a visit, her husband throws a tantrum and refuses to let her go. Then, while the person waits, Manjula will sit with her son, explain the necessity for Sushila’s visit, soothe him, and finally persuade him to let his wife go. The first and second sons are both presently employed, but while the elder has a relatively good and stable clerical position in a bank, the younger has a poorly paid job that he is in imminent danger of losing. Manjula also feels that Pratima is insensitive to Sushila’s feelings, flaunting new and expensive saris in front of her, well aware that the younger woman’s husband’s job is uncertain, and that even if it were not, he could never afford to buy his wife such expensive clothes. Manjula regrets Pratima’s undiscriminating behavior (abibeki byabharo) but is unable to reprove her. For her part, Pratima feels ill-used because she can sense the older woman’s preference for Sushila. She feels that after almost 15 years of faithfully performed service, becoming second in her husband’s mother’s favor, set aside by someone who entered the house just yesterday, is almost too much to endure. I also became quite friendly with Prafulla Panda, Manjula’s husband. A voluble old man, he claims to have been the second college graduate in the temple town. He worked as a teacher in government-run schools till his retirement a few years ago. After his retirement, he worked for some time in a school run by the Ramakrishna Mission21 in the temple town, but left after quarreling with the management. Today he

21 The Ramakrishna Mission is a philanthropic organization founded by Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of the Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, in 1897. The Mission runs health centers, schools and other social service organizations in 114 centers spread across India.

47

Five Families in the Temple Town

=

= Biraja

Pushparani

= Sukumari

= Snehalata

=

= Labanya

Fig. 2.7 Pati family chart

is involved in some legal dispute about money that he claims the Mission owes him. He says he is a Gandhian and took part in the freedom struggle. In 1942, during a “jail bharo andolan” (fill-the-jails agitation), he was arrested and spent some time in prison. He is very despondent about India’s future and expects nothing good to happen. The Pandas are interesting for another reason: the third son in the family has charted a life for himself very different from that of his peers in the temple town. After completing his undergraduate studies in Bhubaneswar, he won a scholarship to pursue graduate work in an Australian university. He now lives and works in Australia, having married an Australian woman and fathered two daughters. Although he maintains contact with his natal family sending them letters and photographs regularly, he has returned home only once for a visit that lasted just 2 weeks. At that time, he and his wife and children stayed in a hotel outside the temple town—although they visited the Panda home nearly every day. Manjula and Pratima acknowledge that it was an exciting yet difficult encounter: they were delighted to see their son/husband’s younger brother again but there were matters of pollution to take into account as well as the fact that conversations between the Australian daughter-in-law and her Odia relatives were next to impossible because of the language barrier. While the entire family is proud of this man’s accomplishments, they also agree that he is in some sense lost to them, an understanding that is underscored by the fact that when the old parents die, he is not expected to, and indeed, would not be allowed to participate in their last rites.

The Patis I became acquainted with the Pati family through P.K. Badu, whom I have already mentioned as one of my initial contacts in the temple town. They proved to be very well-informed and knowledgeable about the temple town, its history and its residents. Of all the families I met, the Patis are perhaps the poorest (see Fig. 2.7). There

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is only one earning member in the family; the rest of the menfolk subsist on whatever they can get from the pilgrims who come to worship at the temple. This family thus has no steady income. On particularly sacred days, when the influx of pilgrims is heavy, the men earn substantial amounts of money, but on other days, pickings are meager and life is tough. In the Pati household, I spoke to both the women of the senior generation— the two married husband’s mothers, Pusparani, the elder, and Biraja, the younger. Each of them has a son who is married and so I spoke also to the two son’s wives. Pusparani’s married daughter, Snehalata, has chosen to abandon her husband and return permanently to her father’s home, and I was able to speak with her, too. The most sympathetic character in this family is Biraja, the younger husband’s mother, aged 55. With her thin, bony face, and very bright, deep-set eyes, she always responded thoughtfully and intelligently to my questions. In the chapters that follow, I use a lot of what she said to describe and illustrate the ways in which people in the temple town think and live. With three daughters approaching marriageable age, Biraja’s mind/heart is filled with anxieties: from where will suitable husbands come? From where will she find sufficient dowries for her three daughters? But despite this uncertainty regarding the future, she does not appear to resent Snehalata’s permanent return to her natal family—behavior that is highly unusual and socially disapproved. As she says, “We did our best, she did her best, but things did not work out as planned. What can we do?” Snehalata’s mother, Pusparani, suffers from acute asthma; apparently she has suffered from this disease all her adult life. As a consequence, she has never done much work around the house. Biraja says that when their husbands’ mother was alive, the old woman shared with her the burden of doing household chores while sparing the elder son’s wife, and now that two sons’ wives have entered the household, they do most of the work. I spent many hours trying to talk to Pusparani, but the old woman was always wheezing, too sickly to be able to make much conversation. Despite a married daughter’s permanent return to her father’s home, and despite the fact that they are not very prosperous, life in the Pati household appears to me to be, when compared to life in other households, the least discordant—or at any rate, they display much less conflict. Understandably, there is some friction between Snehalata, the married daughter and her elder brother’s wife, Sukumari. Seeing me as Snehalata’s friend, Sukumari was very careful not to sound critical of Snehalata or her husband’s mother when she spoke with me. But Snehalata tells me that Sukumari has already begun to make clear her disapproval of the family’s welcome to Snehalata. When I first met Snehalata, she was determined to enter an ashram after her parents’ deaths; today, she is less sure of this course of action. She feels that a woman cannot be sure of her safety in an ashram, and therefore, she is preparing herself to continue to live in her brothers’ home— apparently working on the principle that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

49

Five Families in the Temple Town

=

= Jogidei

Phuladevi

= Rani

=

= Basanti

= Jyotsna

=

Fig. 2.8 Behera family chart

The Beheras The Beheras are the only non-Brahmans in this group of five families. The house they live in is located in the Behera sahi, the cowherd lane, far from the Brahman centers of the temple town. Their house itself is new, the only pukka22 structure in that neighborhood. Noteworthy features of this family (see Fig. 2.8) are that the senior-most woman in this family, Phuladevi, is a very self-possessed and remarkable old woman, and her eldest son, Narayan, is regularly possessed by the goddess at the small neighborhood shrine dedicated to the goddess Jogeshwari (an aspect of the Great Goddess, Devi). Every Tuesday and Saturday evening from about seven till ten or eleven at night, the goddess enters Narayan and gives what he calls “commands” (hukum).23 Narayan says that the people who come to him are couples who are unable to have children, or those with some other ailment that both Western-trained and indigenous doctors (baidyas) have been unable to cure. Sudhansubabu introduced me to the Behera household despite having serious reservations about Narayan’s activities as a medium (kalasi) for the goddess— 22 Pukka applied to a house means permanent and in this case refers to a modern structure rather than one of mud with a straw-thatched roof. 23 The goddess began entering Narayan some 10 or 12 years ago after the previous kalasi, a Brahman woman died. For many years previously, Narayan used to assist the old woman in her prayers, and so when she died, his body was, he says, ready to receive the goddess, his conduct over the previous years having prepared it for her entry.

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reservations that he, initially, kept to himself. Only subsequently, when I asked him whether he had ever attended any of Narayan’s sessions, did he discredit Narayan’s possession as a hoax, a cynical performance designed to cheat credulous and unhappy people of their money. Whatever the justice of Sudhansubabu’s accusations, Narayan has become a very wealthy man since the goddess began entering and speaking through him. Starting life as a landless cultivator, he and his two younger brothers are now reputed to own three houses in Bhubaneswar (one in the temple town and two in the New Capital), a fish pond, a shop that sells fodder, and many acres of agricultural land. Narayan explains that his accusers are jealous of his success, and that whatever he possesses he has earned through the blessing of the goddess and through his own hard work. At the spring equinox (Chaitra sankranti), he digs a pit in the compound of the Jogeshwari temple, builds a fire in it, and then walks barefoot over burning coals. He declares that he could not possibly perform such a severe penance without the goddess’s support and believes that these abilities of his should effectively silence his critics and nonbelievers. Phuladevi, Narayan’s mother, was widowed relatively early but has managed through sheer force of personality and hard work to keep the household going. She says that in the early days of widowhood, her husband’s mother supported her in whatever she did, as did her husband’s younger brother, who with his wife, son, son’s wife and grandson, still form part of this extended household. While Phuladevi still holds the family’s purse strings, she has abdicated much of the actual responsibilities of running the household to the next generation of women in the household. Those tasks, she says, are shared today between Rani, Narayan’s wife and Basanti, Phuladevi’s youngest son’s wife. Rani, Narayan’s wife, was hardly the ideal informant. She complained that our conversations cut into the time she usually spends sleeping. She says she hardly does any of the cooking and cleaning for the household—all that is taken care of by Basanti. As the eldest son’s wife, Rani only serves family members their food, and when that is over, she says, she curls up in a corner, pulls her sari over her head and goes to sleep. The other women in the household, Phuladevi’s youngest son’s wife Basanti, Phuladevi’s husband’s younger brother’s wife, Jogidei, and Jogidei’s son’s wife Jyotsna, all spoke with me. Much of what the two older women—Basanti and Jogidei—said echoed the opinions and attitudes of other women in the temple town; they rarely added anything particularly insightful or evocative, and so, I have little occasion to mention them specifically in the chapters that follow. Jyotsna, however, is different. She is another of the junior wives who is very unhappy and somatizes this distress. She complains that she is unwell, that she suffers from a multitude of disorders that no doctor has been able to diagnose, far less cure. After many conversations, she told me that her husband finds her ugly, and that he never wanted to marry her. In order to avoid marrying her, he asked for a ridiculously high dowry, hardly expecting her father to comply, but the old man managed to muster up the dowry, and the marriage went through. Apparently, Jyotsna was unaware of all this before her marriage: only later did Rani and Basanti, undoubtedly with some malice, enlighten her much to her continuing distress.

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Other Informants Apart from the women who belong to the families presented above, there were other people who spoke at considerable length to me. Many of these I had met during my first spell of fieldwork. The second time around, I was specifically looking for extended families in which all the women of the family were willing to talk to me about their sense of wellbeing. Some of the women who had been very articulate and forthcoming during the first period of fieldwork belonged to families in which the other women were reluctant to talk to me, and so these women did not participate during the second phase of fieldwork. However, they do have a great deal to say about life in the temple town, and their words and attitudes figure extensively in this work. Of these women, the two most prominent are Mamata and Chanjarani. I describe them below.

Mamata Of all the women I met in the temple town, I found the 42-year-old Mamata the most compelling. She has a slight, rather appealing, stutter. Usually, it is hardly an impediment but when she gets really involved in a story, when the images that she is creating are flowing thick and fast, the stutter will suddenly appear, stopping her in the middle of a sentence. And then she has to pause for breath before continuing. Born and raised in Cuttack district to the north, she married into the temple town when she was 17 years old, her husband being the middle son in an extended household. But despite being the middle son’s wife, Mamata has shouldered the responsibilities that usually belong to the eldest son’s wife: thus, she took on the care of her husband’s father, who had suffered a stroke and was bedridden. And later when her husband’s mother, a diabetic, needed care in the months before she died, Mamata looked after her, too. A wise and capable woman, Mamata, is looking ahead to the day and making arrangements for the time, 2 years down the road, when her husband will have retired from his job as a clerk in a state government office. She has four children— two sons and two daughters. Her primary concern at the moment is to ensure some kind of job for her 21-year-old son and the marriage of her 23-year-old daughter. The boy, by her own account, is a poor student and so she thinks that the best solution will be to set him up in some kind of business, like TV repair. To that end, she has enrolled him in classes that provide training in such areas. As far as getting her daughter married off is concerned, she has been trying very hard. Several potential daughter’s husbands (juiin) have come and seen Namrata, her daughter, but no one has made an offer. I think Mamata is quietly desperate about her daughter’s chances of getting married, but she consoles herself as best she can, saying, “Somewhere, there must be a boy for her.” In all these decisions about the children, she is careful to get her husband’s approval, although, as she herself says, such approval is pro forma because “he doesn’t like any pressure being put on his head.”

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Relatives as well as other people come to her for advice. They respect her as someone who controls her household and ensures the welfare of every member. They view her as someone who can be relied upon to give sound advice, someone who has a finely developed sense of right and wrong. A woman who had come to ask Mamata for advice (paramarsha) once told me, “Her ability to discriminate works properly.” Although she did not grow up in the temple town, she knows a great deal about the temple and the neighborhood, much more than many women who have lived their entire lives here, given that their fathers’ homes and their husband’s mothers’ (sasus) homes are both in the temple town.

Chanjarani Chanjarani belongs to the occupational caste of oil crushers (teli). Many who belong to this subcaste have accumulated considerable wealth, and Chanjarani comes from such a family. She is the mother of four sons, two of whom are married. She regards herself as old, and yet, going against local custom that expects old women to tone down their dressing, she continues to wear a great deal of gold ornaments and dresses in brightly colored saris. She relishes this particular phase of her life, seeing her exit from the kitchen as well-deserved retirement. Of all the women I have described above, I know Chanjarani the least. My reason for including her here is because she articulates, very ably, the primarily Brahmanical sensibility that characterizes many non-Brahman women like her who live in the temple town. These women aspire to live like their Brahman counterparts: thus, concerns about purity, auspiciousness, and self-refinement tend to shape much of what they say and do. At the same time, unlike Brahman women, fewer restrictions hedge their lives—they do not seclude themselves to the same degree, they are not strict vegetarians, and as Chanjarani’s brightly colored saris and gold ornaments demonstrate, they can take more liberties with temple town conventions than most Brahman women can.

Manogobinda Mahasupakaro Finally, I need to mention Manogobinda Mahasupakaro—someone I came to know without ever getting to know either his wife or other members of his family. It is no exaggeration to say that Mahasupakaro is, perhaps, the best spokesman for the temple town and its way of life. He is erudite, articulate, and infinitely generous with his time. A Sanskrit scholar, he taught at the Sanskrit University in Puri for many years before retiring and returning to his home in the temple town. Trained in Ayurveda, he currently runs a small clinic. I have heard people in the temple town say that he is a very good physician. While I cannot vouch for his talents as a physician, I do know that he is very knowledgeable about many different matters. Much of what he

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told me—his description of the phases of life, of what constitutes “the good life” from a Hindu perspective, the meaning the goddess Kali has for her followers— form a substantial part of this study, and I do not think I could have given an account of life in the temple town with any degree of authenticity without his assistance. Most of the men I became acquainted with in the temple town were the husbands of the older women I spoke with or their sons. In this community, men and women, unless they belong to the same family, and until they are old enough to become, in a sense, de-gendered, lead very separate lives. Thus, I came to know mostly either old men or much younger men—those in their early twenties. I hardly got to know any men who were roughly of my own age, even if they were the husbands of the younger women who spoke with me. For instance, although I spent a great deal of time in Sudhansubabu’s household, I did not get to know his eldest son, Sanjukta’s husband, who is approximately my age, but I did get to know his youngest son who is barely 22 years old. I suppose I could have tried to breach these gender barriers but I did not feel comfortable venturing on such a course of action. Given my presentation of myself as a married Hindu woman, people like Sudhansubabu and his wife would have disapproved my interviewing men around my own age, and I believe that this disapproval would have seriously jeopardized my relations with them as well as my fieldwork in this community. The women of the temple town are circumspect in their behavior, very careful as to how they comport themselves, and I could be no less. Thus, my statements about men refer to this group of old and young men. However, given the similarity in views expressed by both old and young men, I am led to believe that men who are in their 30s and 40s are not likely to have very different ideas. I should mention that throughout this book I have used pseudonyms to refer to the women and men who speak on these pages. When asked whether they would be upset or offended if their given names were used in anything published about them, few showed much concern. They certainly did not want what was said in their homes to be repeated in the households of their neighbors and relatives, but, for the most part, they were hardly troubled about their names appearing in a text written halfway across the world and they said so. However, given the candor with which these women have confided their intimate thoughts, hopes, and fears, I have decided it best to use pseudonyms for everyone mentioned in this book.

Conclusion In the rest of this book, my aim is to use indigenous concepts and native exegeses (Marriott 1990) to explain the lives and conditions of these women. It should be emphasized that lives and situations are far from ideal. But, no one I spoke with, no matter how young and naïve they were, expect life to be ideal or comfortable. Rather, they expect life to have some rewards but are also prepared to find it messy and chaotic, and thus, oftentimes disappointing. More importantly, when their lives

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go badly, they are prone to say that such suffering is deserved. Some of the men and women I spoke with would describe the difficult life situations that they and others have faced or are facing presently as karma, the fruits of past actions (in past lives or even in this life), retribution that they have to endure and work through in order to get rid of it. I think I would be going beyond their experiences to interpret these indigenous explanations as examples of illusion, perhaps, or error, or exploitation, or oppression. I make a determined and consistent effort here simply to portray these women as they see themselves, highlighting the virtues and values they cherish, underscoring the experiences they view as desirable, as well as drawing attention to the constraints that restrict them. As the rest of this book will show, the married women in the temple town— unlike Friedan’s American housewives of the 1950s—do not lead lonely or isolated lives because they live in extended household—in bustling communities, as I said in the previous chapter. They do, of course, lead secluded lives, in the sense that they cannot, except as old women, walk out of the house whenever they feel like it and they rarely have much to do with unrelated others. Perhaps, as newly married junior wives, they do feel a little lost and need to find their bearings in an unfamiliar world populated by relative strangers. But they also know, having watched other women— their older brothers’ wives, for instance—negotiate the same terrain that the best thing to do as a newly married woman is to begin building relationships with the other women of the household—their husband’s mother, his sisters, his elder brothers’ wives. Such relationships are the best guarantee of wellbeing in the future. Finally, my strongest, most enduring feeling when I think of these women and their lives, when I hear their voices on the tapes I made of our conversations, has to do with the sense that, but for an accident of fate, I could be one of them. I feel, furthermore, that I could have lived in one of these households and not suffered any particular discomfort. One potential criticism to this work could, therefore, be that there is some blurring of boundaries between these women and myself, that I hear in what they say, in their pauses, their inflections, their laughter, meanings that I want to hear. But I disagree. I believe that such blurring, to the limited extent that it may exist, only heightens my sensitivity to the meanings these women derive from their experiences, making me better qualified perhaps to interpret them.

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Seymour, S. (1976). Caste/class and child rearing in a changing Indian town. American Ethnologist, 3(4), 783–796. Seymour, S. (1980). Some conclusions: Sources of change and continuity. In S. C. Seymour (Ed.), The transformation if a sacred town: Bhubaneswar, India (pp. 257–273). Boulder: Westview Press. Seymour, S. (1983). Household structure and status and expressions of affect in India. Ethos, 11(4), 263–277. Seymour, S. (1988). Expressions of responsibility among Indian children: Some precursors of adult status and sex roles. Ethos, 16(4), 355–370. Seymour, S. (1999). Women, family and childcare in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shahrani, M. N. (1994). Honored guest and marginal man: Long-term field research and predicaments of a native anthropologist. In D. Fowler & D. Hardesty (Eds.), Others knowing others: Perspectives on ethnographic careers (pp. 15–68). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shweder, R. A. (1996). True ethnography: The lore, the law, and the lure. In R. Jessor, A. Colby, & R. A. Shweder (Eds.), Ethnography and human development (pp. 15–52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shweder, R. A., Mahapatra, M., & Miller, J. (1990). Culture and moral development. In J. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. H. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 130–204). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shweder, R. A., Much, N., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119–173). New York: Routledge. Singer, M. (1980). When a great tradition modernizes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Suls, J., Martin, R., & Wheeler, L. (2002). Social comparison: Why, with whom and with what effect? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(5), 159–163. Tyrrell, H. (2011). Bollywood vs. Hollywood: Battle of the dream factories. In F. J. Lechner & J. Boli (Eds.), The globalization reader (pp. 372–378). Malden: Wiley. Visweswaran, K. (1994). Fictions of feminist ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. von Stietencron, H. (1978). The advent of Visnuism in Orissa: An outline of its history according to archaeological and epigraphical sources from the Gupta period up to 1135. A.D. In A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, & G. C. Tripathi (Eds.), Cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa (pp. 1–30). New Delhi: Manohar. Wolf, M. (1992). A thrice-told tale. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chapter 3

Odia Hindu Ways of Thinking

Contents “The Good Life” in the Temple Town ....................................................................................... The Good Death ......................................................................................................................... Rebirth........................................................................................................................................ Bhagya and Karma and Lalato Lekha in the Temple Town....................................................... Lalato Lekha........................................................................................................................... Bhagya ................................................................................................................................... Karma .................................................................................................................................... Connections Between Karma, Bhagya, and Lalato Lekha ........................................................ Manipulation of Karma.............................................................................................................. The Human Body ....................................................................................................................... Disease and the Human Body ................................................................................................ The Maternal Body .................................................................................................................... Diet and Daily Practices............................................................................................................. The Temple Town Conception of the Mana (Mind/Heart) ........................................................ Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. References ..................................................................................................................................

58 60 61 62 62 63 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 72 73 74

This chapter sketches the broad contours of the cultural world in which the Odia Hindu women of the temple town live—the world in which they seek, as mature adults, to control their own lives and influence others. It elaborates on ideas, practices, and assumptions about the social and natural world that are mostly taken for granted in this neighborhood but are, perhaps, unfamiliar to many readers. By getting to know the ways of thinking and behaving that prevail in the temple town, liberal readers can gauge for themselves the way of life that is exemplified here. And, at the end of the day, they may acknowledge that while most Odia Hindus who live here do not subscribe to liberalism’s central values, the moral order they do espouse with its emphasis on duty, discipline, and self-refinement is ethically defensible.

U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_3, © Springer India 2013

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“The Good Life” in the Temple Town David Kinsley suggests that the “persistent” tension within Hinduism between dharma or world-affirming values and moksa or world-renouncing ones and its insistence on viewing both sets of values as “essential in fulfilling human destiny” are distinguishing features of this tradition, ones that set it apart from other sacred traditions (1993: xiii). I tend to agree with Kinsley because, in the temple town, this tension and this insistence are quite vividly displayed in the lives and attitudes of the Odia Hindus who live here. Thus, while these people are well aware of renouncers and their lifestyle—after all, they are a very visible element of the social landscape here—hardly anyone1 I spoke with expresses any admiration or any desire to emulate their thoroughgoing renunciation of this world and all connections to it. The dharmasastras (ancient law books) teach Hindus that life should culminate in renunciation. Only after the three debts owed to one’s gods, teachers, and ancestors have been repaid by living as a householder is one free to take the path of renunciation. But temple town residents believe that rejecting the world and one’s ties to it, even at the end of life, secures neither nonattachment in the present nor release (moksa) in the future. Krushna Chandra Mishra, an 86-year-old widower, speaks for many when he says that to renounce (tyaag) the family one has raised fills the mind/ heart (mana) constantly with thoughts and feelings about them; it is only when one’s eyes are filled with the sight of them that the mana is free to move away from them and become nonattached. The Odias who live here belong to families that have hereditary associations with the Lingaraj temple. The menfolk are involved in temple rituals and in serving divinity: they believe that such service is the one significant dimension of their lives that adds grace (anugraha) to all else they do—and such service is very much a thisworldly activity. Not surprisingly, perhaps, both men and women are unanimous in describing life in this world (sansariko jiban), the life of the householder (kutambi jiban), as the most blessed (dhanya), as the most excellent (shreshtha), and as the most contented (anandamoya): in their estimation, this is “the good life.” In so evaluating the householder’s life, temple town residents are holding to an idea articulated in the Rg Veda (c. 1200 B.C.) that describes the experiences of this world—to be born, to live, to eat, to make love, and to procreate—as worthy and valuable goals worth repeating in future lives (see Doniger and Smith 1991: xxxiv). They are, also, echoing, perhaps unwittingly, the views expressed by ancient Hindu philosophers: thus, Gautama, Baudhayana, and Manu all assert that there is no other stage of life equal that of the householder’s (Kane 1941: 640). In fact, Manu is quite explicit in his admiration for the householder. Invoking the authority “of the revealed canon of the Veda,” he lauds the householder stage as the best of the four stages of 1

The one exception to this is Snehalata, the 38-year-old married woman who, as I mentioned in the last chapter when describing the Pati household, has left her husband and returned to her natal household; in 1991, she expressed a desire to renounce the world and join one of the many ashrams in and around the temple town, but in 1992–93, she was less certain that this was the right course of action for her.

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life outlined in the Hindu model of an ideal life (varnasramadharma), because he (the householder) supports the other three—the celibate student (brahmacharin), the forest dweller (vanaprastha), and the renouncer (sannyasa) (6: 89). And when Manu says, “just as all rivers and streams culminate in the ocean, even so people in all stages of life culminate in the householder” (6: 90), he is implying that the householder, fully embedded in familial and social networks, represents the ultimate in human development. From the Hindu perspective, then, a mature sense of self emerges in the context of interconnections and relationships, not in isolation: connections are fundamental to being human (Parish 1994). But despite their full-throated affirmation of the householder’s lifestyle, the idea of renunciation persists in the temple town. It has persisted in two related ways. Firstly, temple town residents tend to admire and try to emulate and recommend that others emulate renunciant values—especially in old age. Thus, regular fasting, sexual continence, vegetarianism, abjuring alcohol and other intoxicants, reading from the scriptures and practicing yogic discipline are advocated even for a householder as ways of garnering moral authority. And when the old, for instance, do not uphold such values in their daily lives, they are castigated for having forgotten the true purpose of life and of having relapsed into a “second childishness” (dvitya pilaliya). In thus espousing renunciant values, Odia Hindus of the temple town—both Brahmans and non-Brahmans—are conforming to Dumont’s interpretation of Hindu society in which he claims that renunciation and the other-worldly attitude that it engenders are the most enduring cultural ideals in Hindu society and that renunciation is “a sort of universal language of India” (1970: 52). And by adhering more stringently to these renunciant values than other temple town groups do, the Brahmans who live here appear to exemplify Heesterman’s assertion that their social and ritual dominance lies in their being “the exponents of the values of renunciation” (1985: 44). Secondly, the idea of renunciation has persisted in the notion of nonattached action (nishkama karma)—of not being concerned about the results of one’s labor in this world. This is not surprising, perhaps, given the positive valuation that people here give the householder’s life because as Madan say, nonattachment is what emerges when renunciation is “translated into the householder’s idiom” (1987: 3). Like the Kashmiri Pandits whom Madan has studied, Odia Hindu householders of the temple town believe that being involved in the activities of the world is not evil in and of itself, it is becoming enslaved by such involvements that has to be avoided at all costs. Not only do Odia Hindus equate “the good life” to that of the householder’s, but they have also expended considerable thought to identifying the six elements that they see as essential components of such a life. According to Mahasupakaro, the Ayurvedic physician mentioned in the previous chapter, these ingredients are clean, unadulterated food, an alert and attentive son, a self-disciplined wife, a caring ruler, an intellect that produces good thoughts, and the ability to discriminate and make just decisions, in that order. A natural corollary of enjoying such a good life—at least for these people—is that it also is a long life, one that, despite its length, includes no untoward events. Odia Hindus of the temple town claim that the normal

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lifespan for a human being is 120 years and it is because of the corruption that characterizes the present age of degeneracy—Kali yuga—that humans no longer live that long. They share this concern for longevity with most other Hindus. The very name given to the indigenous system of medicine in Hindu India—Ayurveda meaning “knowledge about longevity”—attests to that concern, and most Ayurvedic texts devote themselves to devising prescriptions and techniques to ensure that people enjoy long and healthy lives.

The Good Death For the Odia Hindu of the temple town, an intrinsic part of a good life is the notion of a good death: in fact, the time and place, and the manner of dying are themselves important factors in finally determining whether a person has had a good life or not. In the vicinity of the Lingaraj temple, the best place to die is at home, the house within which one has lived one’s working life (karmamoya jiban), where one’s ancestral spirits (pitru loku) reside, and where one’s household deities (kula debata) are worshiped. The time of death should be astrologically appropriate because that would ensure a smooth transition out of this world of humans. And finally, there is the manner of dying, the pain and suffering involved, the length of time taken to die, and the indignities and humiliations one endures—all figure in an estimate of what constitutes a good death, and thereby, a good life. Even after death, who touches the body, who lights the funeral pyre, and where the cremation occurs are all important factors in judging who has lived a relatively good life and who has not. Sarala, the 78-year-old widowed grandmother of the Nanda household, takes these concerns very seriously. Waiting to leave this world, she wants to make sure that after death, her body will suffer no extra indignity: Don’t take me to Puri. In Puri such low things happen, hadis2 are cremated there, bauris3 are cremated there. No, no. Here, do it here—at the cremation grounds here. My husband, my husband’s elder brother, my husband’s father, all my people, their final rituals (antim samskaras) were done here. Do mine too here. Recently, a woman died. Today it’s six days since it happened. Her health wasn’t good. She got up in the morning and said, “Daughter, take me to the hospital. Something is wrong, I’m not feeling well, take me to the doctor.” The daughter called a rickshaw and they went. I was rolling a betel leaf (paan) at that time. As the woman went by, she was making strange sounds. I had not even put the paan in my mouth, when the daughter returned, crying. I asked, “What happened, child?” “Bou died,” she said, weeping. Shame (hai)! Shame (hai)! Who knows who the rickshaw driver was? Bauri? Chassa? Who knows? Did he touch her when the spirit was leaving the body? Who knows?

2

The traditional occupation of the Hadis has been to clear night soil from latrines. They belong to a previously untouchable caste. 3 The Bauris are another group of the previously untouchable. Their traditional occupation is the weaving of straw mats and baskets.

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Rebirth Notwithstanding the presence of a few skeptics—and there are some fairly vocal ones—most Odia Hindus in this neighborhood believe quite sincerely that rebirth (punarjanma) is inevitable. There are several stories well-known in the temple town that disseminate and support this belief. In common with most stories told here, they are related to the sacred geography of the area around the temple.4 A widely prevalent notion is that, given that one dies a good death, one will break out of the cycle of rebirths only if one breaks with desire (kamna o basna5 truti gole)—if there is no unsated desire at the moment of death. People here also believe that if, at the moment when the soul (atman) escapes the gross body (sthula sariro), one can remember to say god’s name and then, too, one escapes rebirth. But because such consummations, however devoutly hoped for, hardly ever occur, people rarely speak of their chances of achieving release (moksa); there are, also, those who are sufficiently nimble-witted to argue that to want to break out of the cycle of rebirths is itself a desire and one more indication that one is still bound to this world of enchantment and illusion (moha-maya). 4

Manogobinda Mahasupakaro, the Ayurvedic physician (kabiraj), and my source for much of what I know about the temple town, says, “that there are other lives (janmantaro) is certain. Why, there is this story that is told here that demonstrates this—here in this sacred area (kshetra) there is a pond (kundo) called the Papanasini (destroyer of sins) kundo—this was a pond that was created through the penance (tapasya) of Siddhabhuti, a devotee (bhakta) of Siva. But it also has another name—the she-monkey’s pond (Banari kundo). This pond lies right to the northwest corner of the temple, near the Municipal hospital. The way it got this name—Banari Kundo—is remarkable. A she-monkey used to live in the bamboo trees that surround the pond; in a previous birth, she used to be a queen, but because of the bad actions (kukarma) that she had done, she was reborn as a she-monkey who lived among the branches that hang over this pond (pokhri). She finally died in those trees and her bones (asthi) fell into the waters of that pond. And the waters of that pond are so excellent that she was reborn in a king’s household as a princess, but her face remained that of a monkey’s. Then she tried and tried and, in the end, remembered (jatismaro: remembering the incidents of one’s previous birth) why her face was that of a monkey’s. She saw that in her previous birth she had been a monkey; a bamboo stem had pierced her and she had died and her body had fallen into the pond below. She then told the king to organize a gift-giving (daan) and she gave instructions that if Brahmans from Odisha were to come, she was to be told. When Brahmans from Odisha finally came, she was told. She asked them where they were from and they replied that they had come from Odisha, from the temple of Jagannatha. She then asked them if they were familiar with Bhubaneswar and the temple of Lingaraj. They said that they were and so she told them to go there to the bamboo trees that surround the pond called Papanasini and look for the the head of a monkey that is stuck in the branches. She told them to drop the monkey’s head into the pond and then to return to her. The Brahmans did as they were told to. At that time, the queen was sleeping; when she got up and looked at herself in the mirror, her face was no longer that of a monkey, it was that of a beautiful woman. The queen gave no explanation to the king for her changed face, but when the Brahmans returned, everything was explained and they were rewarded. The king and queen then both came to this region (kshetra) and established two phalluses (lingams) of Siva here. Prathamastami (a particular religious festival) is the day when the monkey head was liberated (mukti hei thila), and on that day every year, worship (puja) is done to those two phalluses. Therefore, this story proves to us that there are other lives (janmantaro).” 5 In the Odia language, kamna and basna are synonyms for “desire.”

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Bhagya and Karma and Lalato Lekha in the Temple Town As has already been mentioned in the previous chapter, the Brahmans of the temple town view their birth into this community as a blessing and an indication of spiritual merit (punya) accumulated over several lifetimes. Discussions about blessings and spiritual merit frequently drift into wide-ranging conversations about all kinds of subjects, including the differences between people—differences in terms of traits and abilities—and the control they exercise over the events in their lives. Despite the variety of viewpoints expressed in these conversations, most temple town residents are united in insisting that “difference” rather than “similarity” characterizes the social and the natural world, that every life form is unique and, therefore, infinite variety epitomizes these worlds. People would routinely ask, “How can people be similar when even children born of the same womb are different?” And they would underscore the point they were making by going on to ask, “Are the five fingers of a hand identical?” The karma accumulated over many lifetimes—the balance of penalties and rewards—shapes the qualities and properties a person possesses, that is, her nature (prakriti), as well as the environment into which she is borne and in which she will be raised (paribesh). While some temple town residents claim, “our karma from past lives determines our dharma in this life,” others are quick to note that karma is not the only determinant of a person’s innate characteristics and her life circumstances— fate (bhagya) and forehead writing (lalato lekha) also play a role in making a person who she is and who she will become. Theoretically speaking, the temple town notions of forehead writing (lalato lekha) and fate (bhagya) appear to be fairly simple and straightforward; action or the fruits of past action (karma), however, is a different matter altogether—it is a complicated concept having several meanings that vary contextually, often confusing even those who live here.

Lalato Lekha6 Hindus in the temple town believe that which is written on the forehead is done so at the moment of birth and consists of only five elements: the number of years one will survive (ayus), the knowledge one will acquire (vidya), the means of livelihood (brutti) one will follow, the wealth one will accumulate (vitta), and the time of one’s death (nidhano). They also believe that Bhagavan (Absolute God) or Paramatman (Supreme Soul)—people in the temple town use these two terms interchangeably— asks every human being, just before the moment of birth, their preferences in terms of these five characteristics, and so, these are personal demands that the supreme being has granted, although, of course, the trauma of birth wipes these memories from our minds/hearts.

6

The Odia Hindu version of the South Indian talai eruttu or talai vidi (see Daniel 1980; Ramanujan 1986).

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But, for the Odia Hindu of the temple town, these are default settings; they carry little force and can be overridden by appropriate or inappropriate action (karma/apakarma). Renu Bewa, a 72-year-old widow who had recently broken her hip and was in considerable pain, explained the fact that Yama, the god of death, had not come to get her although she had been ready and waiting for him for the past several years, by saying: I have to live out the lifespan (ayus) that I asked for, that which is written on my forehead. But look at my daughter’s son, only 26-years-old and already dead—he too must have asked for a long lifespan but his unfortunate actions (apakarma) killed him. He did not drive his motorcycle at a steady speed, he never looked to the back of him or the front and he died in an accident.

Bhagya For the Odia Hindu of the temple town, bhagya means inexorable fate; it is a neutral term, having neither positive nor negative connotations. It is quite arbitrary and therefore absolves the person subject to it from all responsibility: whether good or bad, reward or punishment, the person experiencing it does not, in any sense, deserve it. They conceive of bhagya as decisions made by Bhagavan or Paramatman that are completely unrelated to past or present actions. So whenever one is unwilling to claim moral responsibility for a present predicament, or cast blame on another for hers, then people turn to bhagya for an explanation. Being arbitrary, bhagya cannot be transferred from one person to another, nor can anyone change one’s bhagya during one’s lifespan. Residents of the temple town will also say that, over the course of a lifetime, bhagya usually balances itself out, being good for half the time and bad for the rest. Sometimes, like the Kannada speakers of South India that Ramanujan (1986) writes about, they will use karma and bhagya as synonyms, indicating that, in these contexts, karma means little more than fate or destiny; “this is written in my karma” (Eta more karmare likha heichi).

Karma More often, though, the Sanskrit word karma means “doing,” “making,” and “causing.” And keeping to these three primary meanings, Odia Hindus employ the concept of karma in at least three discernible senses. In the first sense, karma refers to the concrete actions that a person does through being and living in this world; here, the “doing” aspect of karma is being emphasized. This is what people in the temple town mean when they say, “humans are born into this world to do work.” In the second sense, karma is employed in a proactive, future-oriented way, such use emphasizing the “making” aspect of karma and implying the degree of control that people assume they have with respect to their future. Sudhansubabu’s daughter Rajani reveals this perspective quite clearly in the passage given below. Contemplating her future life in her husband’s mother’s home just 6 weeks before her wedding is to take place, she says: Father-mother (nona-bou) haven’t given us our karma, they have given us only birth (janma). They have given me birth, and they have also given me learning (sikhya), they have

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3 Odia Hindu Ways of Thinking given me competence (jogyata), that is my good fortune (bhagya). Now with that, if I decide to do good work in their house7, then it will arouse their appreciation (prashansa), but if I don’t do good work, they will criticize me and that I will have to endure. But it is all in my own hands. My karma is in my hands. If I want to do good and gain appreciation, it is in my hands.

In the third sense, karma refers to the accumulated rewards and penalties that one carries with one from past lives—as people commonly say, “when we are born, we bring with us our karma from past lives.” Karma is the balance sheet of merits and demerits accumulated over several lifetimes. It is often invoked, explicitly, to explain situations that defy common sense and indigenous logic. Thus, when an old woman who has led an exemplary and virtuous life suffers a painful and undignified death, most Odia Hindus in the temple town would interpret it as a consequence of some debt (rno) she acquired in a past life that had to be burned off in this one before she could proceed onto the next. But more commonly, and often implicitly, within the wards of the temple town, the unequal burdens of accumulated karma from past lives are thought to justify the social inequities of today. Karma documents the progress of the self (atman) through cosmic time, and because past karma determines present ranks and duties in society— that is, present dharma—it locates one’s position in the cosmic order. In this connotation of karma, social rank, ritual prestige, appropriate behavior, and personal talents and abilities all come together. People born into a stigmatized caste, or those whose lives are full of hardship and suffering, have no one to blame but themselves. As Ramanujan says, “karma implies the self’s past determining the present, an iron chain of cause and consequence, an ethic of responsibility” (1990: 44). The fundamental assumption here is that not only do people deserve their present social and ritual ranks because they have earned it through actions in past lives but, more importantly, the innate characteristics they possess today—their characters, talents, and abilities—match the social roles and positions they occupy in this life. Thus, there is no reason to question or challenge present social arrangements because natural abilities and social rank are assumed to converge and because the prescribed codes of conduct for people as members of groups are assumed to reflect and express their natures. Karma and dharma cohere seamlessly to provide a logically consistent explanation for one’s place in the social system and for the system itself. Karma, therefore, is an ethic of personal responsibility with respect not just to the past but with respect to the future, too. It is this activist, future-oriented aspect of karma that Rajani highlights in that excerpt from her conversation given above when she talks about her future life in her husband’s mother’s home. Past karma sketches the broad contours of one’s life but does not define its details. Therefore, speaking from a woman’s perspective, the accumulated karma one is born with determines one’s talents and abilities, the family one is born into, the family one marries into, and the kind of husband one marries, but this accumulated karma does not influence the choices one makes about one’s actions in the world today and, therefore, does not define one’s success in this world. Thus, present actions are 7

“Their house” refers to her future husband’s family home.

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consequential because they shape one’s future life in this world: as Rajani says, people do hold their futures in the palms of their hands. In fact, Odia Hindus of the temple town believe that even the gods envy human beings their capacity to do karma—what they describe as the right (adhikaro) to do karma that humans alone enjoy. In saying this, people here are distinguishing between superior forms of divinity like Bhagavan, Paramatman, Visnu, Siva, and Ma,8 who are above bhagya and karma, and the hundreds of minor deities who are subject to bhagya but are unable to improve their nature and their situations through karma. In particular, they mention Indra, the king of the gods, whose misfortune (durbhagya) is that he is passionate, willful, thoughtless and arrogant—character traits that lead to his downfall time and again. Of course, people are aware that karma is a double-edged sword: bad actions (kukarma; also referred to as dushkarma) can jeopardize future lives, perhaps even one’s evolutionary status as a human being.

Connections Between Karma, Bhagya, and Lalato Lekha The connections between the first two meanings of karma and the concepts of bhagya and lalato lekha are not always easy to distinguish—they blur and merge seamlessly, often even in the same conversation. A young Odia Brahman woman, Geetanjali Mishra, tries to explicate the ways in which Odia Hindus use these three concepts in the following way: What happens in our lives is in our own hands. How many years we will survive, our lifespan, is written in our forehead, and whether we will be more happy than sad or more sad than happy, that depends on our fate, but our life of work (karmamoya jiban) is in our own hands. If a student should appear for an examination without studying for it, he cannot say, “Whatever will happen, will happen. If it is my bhagya to fail, I’ll fail; if it is my bhagya to pass, then I’ll pass.” He is making a mistake behaving like this; he doesn’t understand what bhagya is, what karma is. He has to study for his examination—that is his karma, which he has to do. If after studying, he should fail, then … then, that is his bhagya. One will only pass if one studies; but in cases of failure, when one has done one’s karma, one can say, “It isn’t in my bhagya that I should succeed in this examination.” Always in life we get fruit (phala) according to the karma we do—our health, our bodies, our eating and drinking, our studies, everything is in our own hands. For instance, a person who because of his qualities (gunas), because of the kind of person he is, is unable or unwilling to eat well—maybe he is poor, maybe he is a miser—he eats poorly and dies young. Say he has long ayus written on his lalato but his karma makes him prone to early death. His karma has gone against lalato lekha, his karma was stronger than his lalato lekha. But suppose this person, despite his weakness and ill health, survives and lives out his full ayus, then that is because he is fated to do so, he is fortunate (saubhagyavan).

8

In the temple town, Ma is the most common way of referring to Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism.

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Manipulation of Karma In their conversations about karma, temple town residents make it very clear that, in their opinion, karma is communicable, it can be transferred from person to person and it can be altered even in a single lifetime: it is “particulate” (Marriott 1976) and material. Thus, Sudhansubabu, speculating on his sons’ futures, tells me confidently: Even if these children go astray, now when they’re young, because that is the karma they are born with, I am certain that they will return to the right path. Our karma, the karma of this house (gharo9) they are born into, the love and attention they have received from us, the food they have eaten here—all that will change their karma, bring them back. I am absolutely certain of that. The children will enjoy my good karma.

Clearly, the Hindus of the temple town, like the Tamils that Sherry Daniel (1983) studied, believe that karma is contained in and transferred through bodily and other material substances. They, too, see blood as one of the prime carriers of karma. Thus, when children, who were orphaned when very young, grow up to lead satisfying and successful lives, Odia Hindus will say, “the father-mother’s good deeds make the child happy” (pita-mata sukruto, putro hou sukhi). The children have inherited from the parents their good karma. A specific instance of such virtuous action by parents is when they do service (sewa) for their own old and dying parents. Temple town residents almost unanimously contribute to the view that such sewa results in a karmic transference from them to their children that enables the latter, in their turn, do sewa to parents. Another way of manipulating and transforming your karma is through cultivating virtues, through developing those virtues that are particular to your kind (jati10). For womankind (stri jati), but most particularly for married women, chastity (satitva) is an extremely important virtue; it sustains your husband’s health and prosperity, and it ensures his long life. Chastity is powerful enough to alter karma, your husband’s and your own. Many women will recount Savitri and Satyavan’s story to illustrate this point: When Satyavan died within a year of marriage and Yama, the god of death, came to carry him away, Savitri, his wife, followed them. Yama was surprised to see her behind them and so he turned and asked, “Ma, do you want something?” Savitri begged, as a good son’s wife should, that her husband’s blind father’s eyesight be restored to him and the kingdom he had lost returned. Yama replied, “So be it (Tatha astu),” and went on. When he looked around after a little while, he saw that Savitri was still there. He asked, “What else do you want?” and Savitri asked that her own father who had no sons be given a son. Again, Yama replied, “So be it.” After some 9

Gharo here means both the “family” and the “physical structure, the building.” To people unfamiliar with Hindu India, caste appears to be the most salient characteristic of the Hindu world, but as Marriott and Inden have correctly observed, caste, defined as an “institution of ranked, hereditary, endogamous occupational groups, is a foreign concept” (1977: 230). There is no indigenous term that is a perfect synonym for it. The word that Hindus use is jati, which is the Sanskrit cognate of the Latin “genus,” and, not surprisingly, both terms connote much the same thing: “class, kind, and group sharing essential characteristics.” 10

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distance, when Yama turned around, he was astonished to see that Savitri was still following them and again asked “What more do you want?” and she said, “Give me seven sons,” and forgetting himself because he was so impressed by her singleminded devotion to her husband (ekagrata o bhakti), he again said, “So be it.” A little while later when he looked around, Savitri was still there. He stopped, again, and said, “I’ve given you all you asked for, why do you still follow me?” And she replied, “Can I keep my chastity (satitva) and give birth to another man’s sons?” Yama, finally, accepted his defeat and brought Satyavan back to life. Odia Hindus, unlike the Tamils of Kalappur (Daniel 1983), do not represent the myth as an example of wit defeating karma (although Savitri is certainly full of guile in her interactions with Yama); instead, it is her single-minded devotion to her husband, her satitva, that confuses Yama, temporarily clouding his mental faculties and thereby allowing her husband’s karma to be reversed. Like the rest of patrilineal Hindu India, most Odia mothers and fathers of the temple town desire sons. As the saying here goes: “A son, the lineage’s preserver” (Puo kulo rakhya). But despite this preference for sons, they also want at least one daughter. The reason lies in their belief that the gift of a virgin in marriage (kanyadaan) is the ultimate, most selfless gift a human being can give another, ultimate because it leads to the birth of children, new recruits to the receiver’s lineage, which thus gets perpetuated, and selfless because the giver expects no recompense—at least not in this life. Such a gift transforms positively the karma of the giver, the father of the bride. But such a gift would be sullied if there were even a hint of reciprocity attached to this transaction. Therefore, in the temple town, the parents of married women exercise enormous caution to ensure that they accept nothing, not even a glass of water, in their married daughter’s home because even the most insignificant gesture of hospitality could be seen as reciprocity. The greatest gain in karma accrues when a girl is given in marriage before she attains puberty, and many Odia Hindus in the temple town today regret the fact that social legislation passed in post-Independence India forbids girls under 18 from being married.

The Human Body In ordinary everyday conversations, Odia Hindus of the temple town refer to the human body as a relatively porous container through which substances, experiences, and influences flow. The human body is likened to a vessel filled with water that has at its base a hole. And just as water leaks out of the pot, drop by drop, life seeps out of the human body from the minute one is born, slowly but surely. The finite amount of water in the vessel represents the lifespan, and once it drains out completely, life is over. Some play on the words for “body” (sarira) and the verb “to be spent” (sariba) and say that the human body is that which is spent. Kakar (1982) points to Ayurvedic texts that analyze the human body as a tree, drawing liquid nourishment from the soil and exuding sap and resin. Such an image

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is consistent with the way people in the temple town think, although there is a particular local twist to this imagery: the human being is called an opposite tree or a tree-in-reverse (ulta brukhya) because among humans, the flower (phula) or the afterbirth emerges from the mother after the child is born, unlike plants in which flowers bloom before the fruit appears. Odia Hindus appear to be focusing on process (that of reproduction) rather than form when they make this connection.

Disease and the Human Body In keeping with the value they place on life in this world, Odia Hindus here emphasize the need to keep the body healthy. Without a healthy body, no one can perform their karma—and with a healthy body, as people in the temple town say, everything11 is possible (sariro madhyam khilo dharma sadhanam). Odia Hindus of the temple town visualize the human body as a container for 64 diseases12: the human body, they say, is a temple of diseases (vyadhi mandir). And so, good health essentially consists of preventing these diseases from escaping: people in the temple town do not talk of “falling ill,” they talk instead of “diseases coming out” (roga baharuchi). Furthermore, Odia Hindus see balance (samansya), moderation (niyomito) and appropriateness (upjogita, uchit) as the surest way of keeping diseases confined to the inside of the human body: an appropriate diet eaten in moderate quantities at the appropriate time, moderate exercise, a moderate amount of intellectual activity, a moderate degree of sexual activity—in a nutshell, nothing should be done to excess; as the Ayurvedic physician, Manogobinda Mahasupakaro, says, Excessive food, the body is injured, excessive sexual activity, the body is injured, excessive walking, the body is injured. The mind/heart has to be attentive to all these while moving on with life. Wherever a way opens up, a disease will come out. The sensorium-motorium has to be restrained—there is no other way.

To the extent that no one is able to escape disease, to the degree that controlling the senses fails more often than it succeeds, Mahasupakaro believes that ignorance (agyata), bad nature (dushprakriti), and greed (lalsa) are usually responsible for diseases appearing. He argues that we must cultivate restraint (sanjam) as we would cultivate a friend; he contends that it is only too easy for even wise people to forget restraint and give diseases a chance for self-expression. Odia Hindus of the temple town share with other Hindus the notion that the human body is relatively open to both improvement and contamination via external 11 Dharma has been translated here as “everything” because “dharma,” in this context, has a variety of meanings: destiny (bhagya), duty (kartavya), and one’s nature (prakriti or svabhav). 12 Of course, not all diseases are included in this list of 64: for instance, Odia Hindus of the temple town believe that leprosy and small pox have different causal ontologies—for instance, kicking a Brahman in a past life results in leprosy in this life.

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influences and so there is the need to at least maintain a certain level of non-pollution in the body. The rigorous rituals prescribed for cleansing before and after eating and after defecating described a little later in this chapter give some idea of the strength of their concerns for reducing contamination during these processes when the body is most vulnerable. Thus, in orthodox Brahman houses in this neighborhood, adult males prefer to eat, often one at a time, with just one of the more senior wives of the family serving them. They eat either in the kitchen itself or some other room that is located within the center of the house, so as to reduce the chances that while eating, they would hear inauspicious sounds from neighboring houses or from outside—for instance, the widowed mother in the house next door clearing her throat or a Bauri13 in the street outside calling out his wares. The thinking behind this is that the human body is most vulnerable when food is being ingested and inauspicious sounds, if heard, can then be absorbed and have deleterious effects. Odia Hindus in the temple town also place an inordinate emphasis on the effects that the environment and friends have on a person as she is growing up. Even a child born into a good family can, through continued association with undesirable friends (kusanga), so absorb the qualities of others that she reconstitutes her body and becomes capable of only wrong action. In a similar vein, 33-year-old Meena Mishra credits the transformations (parivartan) that have taken place in her to her husband’s father: I haven’t always been good. My husband’s father is such a good person, coming into close contact with him I became good. When someone lives with a saint, however wicked he may be, the love that the saint gives him binds him in such a way that he leaves all his original qualities behind and only good qualities emerge.

The Maternal Body People here liken the maternal body to the earth (vasudha); just as the long-suffering earth endures and absorbs all the dirt and pollution that her children cast upon her, so too human children climb all over their mother, stamp her, lie on her, and pollute her with their saliva (lalo), vomit (banti), and excrement (jhada). Like the earth, women too have an almost limitless capacity to absorb pollution; by the same token, women almost never approach states of perfect purity (suddhata). Only during the latter part of the middle years of life do still-married, postmenopausal women, who are not involved in serving and caring for others, who are sexually abstinent, and who are in possession of all their faculties, uniquely combine auspiciousness, purity, and refinement. The earth, too, like human mothers menstruates; while human mothers menstruate every lunar month, the earth menstruates once every year—on the 15th of June, the 13

Bauris are a previously untouchable caste. Their traditional occupation is the weaving of straw mats and baskets.

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festival known in Odisha as Rajja14 (see Tokita-Tanabe 1999). On that day, no one hoes or digs or plows—mother earth is allowed to rest; coincidentally, this is also the date around which the monsoon usually breaks in Odisha. This similarity of experiences between the earth and women is extended in local thinking because the earth and women, together with flowing water and the moon, have taken on the burden of Indra’s punishment for his sin of Brahamanicide, his murder of Vrtra (see O’Flaherty 1976). The particular punishment that women endure is that they menstruate every month while the moon is eaten every other fortnight by a demon and the earth and flowing water are regularly polluted by human and other waste. When a woman menstruates, she is polluted (mara) and has to keep out of the kitchen and stay away from all other family members, especially her husband, because, so the local belief goes, she would otherwise cause him injury (khyati). Today, in the temple town, a menstruating woman no longer remains secluded in a room at the end of the courtyard, and she may even move about the house but she is still careful not to touch another person, enter the kitchen, or touch a cooking utensil. If her 4- or 5-year-old child should come running to her, a mother will often cry out, “don’t touch me, don’t touch me. I’ve just stepped on dog shit” (Chuo na, chuo na, kukro jhada madhichi). But such distance is not maintained before the child is weaned, because to the Odia Hindu way of thinking, as long as the mother nurses her child, she and the child are a single entity and there is no possibility of the mother injuring the child. And even after weaning, for the next 2 or 3 years, the harm that a mother could do her child when she is menstruating is minimal because the connections between mother and child continues to be strong. Finally, there is the extremely common way people here have of talking about the need for women to be circumspect in their behavior because they, unlike men, are like earthen pitchers (mathiya), porous and easily contaminated, once they get blackened with soot, they can never be cleaned, only thrown away. In contrast, men are like brass pots, which, however blackened they may become, can always be cleaned and polished to a shine. As I see it, the two ideas behind this metaphor are, firstly, that the physical substance of female bodies, unlike that of male ones, is somehow inherently unstable and extremely mutable and, secondly, that female and male are as different from each other as earth is from brass. A logical development of this idea—but one only rarely highlighted by scholars of Hindu India—is that the very mutability of female bodies makes women capable of far greater transformation than men.

Diet and Daily Practices Even within this fairly homogeneous community, appropriate diet varies with the particularities of the group being discussed because, according to the local way of thinking, the food eaten has to suit the person consuming it, and if this compatibility 14 In Odia, rajja also means “female secretions” that when joined with male semen (bija) creates new life. Etymologically, the word rajja is related to the Sanskrit rajas, one of the three gunas that constitute all matter in the manifest world, and implies “passion, dust, creativity, menstrual blood, etc.”

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(see Daniel 1984: 103) is not achieved, an aperture is provided for a disease to appear. As servitors of Siva, appropriate diet includes food that is classified locally as “hot,” food that excites the senses: meat, fish, red lentils (masoor dal), onions, garlic, and dishes that are both oily and spicy. The Badus, generally acknowledged as the original servants of Siva and as having heterogeneous origins, enjoy just such a diet. But for those Brahmans of the temple town, who claim to have descended from families brought by the Vaishnavite Ganga kings from the Gangetic plain, right diet is, despite being born to serve Siva, bland, vegetarian food (sada bhojan15). Their diet, therefore, includes predominantly boiled foods and the products of the cow (milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, and clarified butter [ghee]). Going against the widespread Hindu custom that says offerings made to Siva are not to be accepted indiscriminately as prasad by all Brahman subcastes, Lingaraj is one of the few Siva temples where offerings to the deity, even boiled rice, are accepted by everyone. The reason may lie in the fact that the preparation of these offerings has been taken over by Brahman groups other than the Badus (whose heterogeneous origins make them less than ideal preparers of prasad) as well as the fact that it is prepared in the Ananta Basudev temple, a shrine dedicated to Visnu, adjacent to the Lingaraj temple. Together with diet, many Odia Hindus—most particularly Brahmans—pay a great deal of attention to the correct performance of daily ablutions (nitya karma16). For these men and women, performing daily ablutions properly requires, at the least, the following: defecating twice a day, bathing after each defecation, bathing every time one returns home from any excursion outside, offering prayers to the household deity in the morning and again before the evening meal, bathing before eating a meal, and washing the body from the waist up after every meal, and for men, reciting specific prayers (most frequently, the Gayatri mantra) in the morning. The rituals for cleansing that are observed before and after eating and defecating are remarkable because, I think, they highlight the indigenous conception regarding the relative openness of the human body to both contamination and improvement and the need to maintain a certain degree of non-pollution. Also, the emphasis on defecating twice a day demonstrates the Odia Hindu concern that there should be a smooth and unhindered flow of substances, nutrients, and waste through the body. They believe that it is from strict adherence to such rules of conduct that the higher intellect (buddhi) develops which then leads to the acquisition of knowledge (gyano) and subsequently creates the capacity to discriminate between good and bad, right and wrong (bibek srushti houchi)—thinking that displays once more their belief in the nonduality of the mind/heart and the physical body (sarira, deho). Regulating the body, nourishing and cleansing it appropriately at appropriate times, ensures a proper development of the mind/heart. In the temple town, people see defiance of cultural norms—whether it be neglect of one’s daily ablutions (nitya karma) or marriage by choice (“love marriages” as they are termed locally)—not as a sign of freedom, a mere matter of making a 15 Sada means plain or pure, depending on your perspective, and so sada bhojan means plain/ pure food. 16 For more on the nitya karma particular to women, see Chap. 6.

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choice, but as a mark of one’s subordination to the passions and impulses of the moment. In this again, temple town residents are espousing a traditional viewpoint which views unrestrained satisfaction of the senses, immediate gratification in matters both small and big, as the surest route to pain and suffering.

The Temple Town Conception of the Mana (Mind/Heart) For Odia Hindus who live in the temple town, like Hindus elsewhere, the mana is an organ that both thinks and feels: it is the seat of both cognition and emotion. Thus, mana is often glossed as “mind/heart” rather than as just “mind.” Odia Hindus speak about mana in many different ways. They acknowledge the mana as all-powerful: it is not subject to the constraints of space and time, and it can transport one into the past or across the world in a fraction of a second. They describe it as restless (chanchalo) as a monkey, jumping and climbing, moving hither and thither, constantly distracted, and unable to follow a consistent plan of action. They describe the mana as the kingdom of the gods as well as the realm of hell. Its contents can be your worst enemy as well as your closest friend, since it can be filled with good desires and thoughts as well as bad ones. In common with Buddhists and other Hindus, people here see the mana as a distraction in the search for true maturity and enlightenment. These people view calming the mana, stilling its desires and thoughts, as essential to achieving liberation from circumstances. As they describe it, the mana is constantly agitated: thoughts roil it just like waves churn the surface of a turbulent sea. Just as the sea becomes limpid when the waves die down, so too when thoughts, needs, and desires disappear from the mana, it becomes transparent and stable (sthiro). Sudhansubabu, Mamata, and Mahasupakaro all claim that through applying oneself to certain mental activities,17 one can achieve this stable mental state—and then, and only then, they claim does a person become truly mature and worthy of respect. Curiously enough, there is, in the temple town, a cultural aversion to particular kinds of thinking: people here believe that excessive thinking (besi chinta) weakens the body enabling diseases to appear—but in saying this, they are referring to thinking of a particular kind. It is not reflection on life’s larger questions that is forbidden— people are perfectly willing to expound on the meaning of life and relations that exist between the divine and the human; rather, it is narcissistic self-reflecting on one’s situation in life, on one’s relationship with family members, on one’s own narrow, and selfish expectations for the future that is frowned upon. The logic in this

17

For instance, Sudhansubabu told me that as a young man, he was told by his father and the family priest to spend a few minutes every day staring at a flame (beginning with 15 min and then gradually increasing the time spent till, in the end, one gazes into a flame for an hour). After many days of such single-pointed concentration (ekagrata), one finally sees one’s own image in the flame, and then one finally approaches effective control over one’s mana.

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case is that too much of this kind of thinking lowers the body’s capacity to hold diseases within—when the body weakens, its boundaries become more permeable and the diseases escape and the person experiences illness. The solution is to focus one’s attention on action and on performing one’s duties as excellently and as unquestioningly as possible. Such a focus and such actions, Odia Hindus suggest, will ensure the kind of self-alteration necessary to ensure compatibility between oneself and one’s life circumstances. There is also current in this neighborhood, the point of view that anxious thoughts can cause illness. As Sansari Behera, one of the poorer residents here, says: As night comes around, we think, from where shall we get food for the children tomorrow? What will they eat? Where will they go? What will they get? With such thinking, diseases become more. The body becomes lean and tired.

Such a view of the body’s relationship to disease does not appear to be restricted to these Odia Hindus. Sakala (1981), in her unpublished analysis of the lives of seven prominent Chitpavan Brahman men and women of Maharashtra in western India, makes a somewhat similar point: “negative thoughts poison the body; calm thoughts purify it” (47). She describes the ways in which family members would divert the minds of those who were mentally troubled, believing that such diversion would prevent them from falling ill. It appears that the Chitpavans define negative thoughts more narrowly than Odias, but there is a basic similarity in their ways of seeing the impact of certain kinds of mental activity on physical health. While for the Chitpavans, only anxious, troubling thoughts merited being defined as negative, Odia Hindus identify both anxious thoughts and obsessive self-reflection as negative. But the point to note is that these notions of the vulnerability of the body to illness stem from belief in the nonduality of the mind and body and from belief that the mind and body are both substantial, although the body is gross (sthula) and the mind is infinitely more subtle (suksma).

Conclusion To summarize, it appears that the worldview of Odia Hindus who live in the temple town includes the following distinctive features. Firstly, Odia Hindus conceptualize the householder’s life as the epitome of “the good life.” In addition, Odia Hindus believe that the householder represents the ultimate in human development—it is as a householder that the full potential of what it means to be human is realized. This is also the phase of life when a person is most fully occupied with the activities of the world, when her connections and relationships with others are at their densest. It appears, therefore, that for Odia Hindus, maturity and self-development occur through building and maintaining relationships, not through isolating and separating oneself from others. Secondly, while Odia Hindus certainly consider the householder’s life to be preeminent, they also attach great importance to renunciant values—especially toward the end of life. Even the householder is encouraged to lead a self-disciplined life in which being involved in this-worldly activities does not result in being in thrall

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to them. In the temple town, a self-disciplined life—especially for Brahmans—garners enormous prestige as well as social and ritual dominance. Thirdly, Odia Hindus view the inequities and inequalities that exist in the temple town between the various jatis as expressing innate differences in talents, abilities, and physical substance—the manifest workings of karma—and, therefore, defensible. Finally, for many Odia Hindus of the temple town, all things, even apparently nonmaterial things like the mind, thought, gaze, time, space, and activities (karma), are material and have substance— that is to say, they have relational properties and can affect other phenomena. They, also, tend to believe in the nonduality of the mind and the body, with the latter being conceived of as a relatively porous container, open to external influences. Because of the continual exchanging that people are engaged in, the consequence of merely living and being in this world, people are always mixed, and Odia Hindus of the temple town recognize the sheer impossibility of making radical separations or perfect purifications. While impurities are recognized as part of everyday life and all humans oscillate between relative purity (suddhata) and relative impurity (asuddhata), people here, particularly Brahmans, constantly strive toward moving toward the former rather than the latter. The seclusion of women, the attention paid to dietary rules, and the meticulousness with which daily ablutions are performed attest to this effort. Clearly, the Odia Hindu cultural world portrayed in these pages is imbued with a Brahmanical sensibility. Even the non-Brahmans who live in this neighborhood, the “clean castes” adhere, as far as they can, to Brahmanical values, those of purity and self-refinement. In contrast, most Brahmans and non-Brahmans alike do not subscribe to liberalism’s central tenets—those of equality and liberty. While they recognize the social and ritual inequality that characterizes their world, they regard such inequalities as but surface manifestations of real and fundamental differences. Furthermore, liberty, freedom of choice, and personal gratification are values that tend not to resonate in the temple town because in this moral world, it is self-control and self-discipline that garner ritual prestige and social dominance. In the end, while this moral order is undoubtedly different from that which most liberals are accustomed to, it is hard to sustain the view that its emphasis on purity, self-discipline, and self-refinement is not ethically defensible.

References Daniel, S. (1980). Marriage in Tamil culture: The problem of conflicting ‘models’. In S. S. Wadley (Ed.), The powers of Tamil women. Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Daniel, S. (1983). The tool box approach of the Tamil to the issues of moral responsibility and human destiny. In C. F. Keyes & E. V. Daniel (Eds.), Karma: An anthropological inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Daniel, E. V. (1984). Fluid signs: Being a person the Tamil way. Berkeley: University of California Press. Doniger, W., & Smith, B. (1991). The laws of Manu. Middlesex: Penguin. Dumont, L. (1970). Homo hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heesterman, J. (1985). The inner conflict of tradition: Essays in Indian ritual, kingship and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Kakar, S. (1982). Shamans, mystics and doctors. New York: Knopf. Kane, P. V. (1941). History of dharmasastra (Ancient and medieval religious and civil law) (V vols.). Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Original work published 1930–1962 Kinsley, D. R. (1993). Hinduism, a cultural perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall. Madan, T. N. (1987). Non-renunciation. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Marriott, M. (1976). Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer (Ed.), Transaction and meaning: Directions in the anthropology of exchange and symbolic behavior (pp. 109–142). Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Marriott, M., & Inden, R. (1977). Toward an ethnosociology of South Asian caste systems. In K. A. David (Ed.), The new wind: Changing identities in South Asia (pp. 227–238). The Hague: Mouton Publishers. O’Flaherty, W. D. (1976). The origins of evil in Hindu mythology. Berkeley: University of California. Parish, S. (1994). Moral knowing in a Hindu sacred city: An exploration of mind, emotion, and self. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramanujan, A. K. (1986). Two realms of Kannada folklore. In S. H. Blackburn & A. K. Ramanujan (Eds.), Another harmony: New essays on the folklore of India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ramanujan, A. K. (1990). Is there an Indian way of thinking? In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 41–58). New Delhi: Sage. Sakala, C. (1981). The stream of our lives. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Tokita-Tanabe, Y. (1999). Body, self and agency of women in contemporary Orissa. Unpublished PhD dissertation submitted at the University of Tokyo. Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http:// www.glocol.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/staff/tokita/pdf.html.

Chapter 4

Perceptions of Femaleness

Contents Prevailing Feminine Sensibilities............................................................................................... A Popular Origin Myth .............................................................................................................. The Odia Hindu Woman and Domesticity ................................................................................. Techniques of Managing the Process of Maturing as a Woman ................................................ Marriage: The Most Significant Samskara for Women ............................................................. Relations Between Wives and Husbands in the Temple Town .................................................. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. References ..................................................................................................................................

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Chapter 3 highlighted certain elements of the worldview that prevails in the temple town. It, thereby, sets the stage for discussing, in this chapter and the next, indigenous definitions and understandings of femininity, motherhood, and the importance of domesticity. It is through analyzing and interpreting these indigenous understandings and their implications for women’s wellbeing that the book interrogates the idea of liberalism’s universal superiority. This chapter elaborates on what it means to be a woman in the temple town and on the nature of gender relations that prevail here. Odia Hindus believe that female power energizes the entire world, which simply by being female, women share in the goddess’s energy/power (sakti); they further believe that this energy/power has to be controlled from within for it to be creative and productive rather than merely destructive (see Tokita-Tanabe 1999; Hauser 2008, 2010). Not surprisingly, given this idea of female energy, the reproductive potential of women is celebrated, married mothers being regarded as the embodiments of auspiciousness. At the same time, women also believe, together with their menfolk, that they are, as physical beings, less pure than men and less coherent. Over the following pages, I intend to demonstrate the ways in which these ambiguous meanings attached to being a woman tend to influence some Odia Hindu women to act in self-controlled ways that refine them, till finally, with time, they are, as moral beings, as “cultural artifacts,” superior to men and to other women who may not practice such self-control.

U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_4, © Springer India 2013

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Prevailing Feminine Sensibilities To someone unused to the ways of the temple town, the women who live here appear docile, submissive, and withdrawn—women without voices. But a closer acquaintance reveals a radically different picture: these are women who clearly have minds of their own. They are self-aware and very conscious of their positions and relationships within the family. They do not see themselves as powerless, and they confidently believe that it is they who hold families, and ultimately society, together. And this is not a view that only women have about themselves; men too believe it. The following pages delineate the ways in which such self-understandings grow and develop among these Odia Hindu women. Kakar’s comment that, in Hindu India, “the preferred medium of instruction and transmission of psychological, metaphysical and social thought continues to be the story” (1990: 1) describes quite accurately much of indigenous discourse in the temple town of Bhubaneswar. Women here use a vast repertoire of stories from the various Puranas,1 as well as folktales particular to the region, to give logic and meaning to their experiences. Usually, they hear these stories for the first time as little children, from their mothers and grandmothers while being fed: as Ramanujan has remarked, children in India do not hear bedtime stories; they hear “food-time stories” (1986: 46). As they grow older, some read them themselves, and others, less literate, hear them repeated innumerable times. But however these women may have come by this knowledge, it appears to exercise a profound influence on the way they perceive themselves and the world around them. To them, the stories from the Puranas are more “real” and more relevant and thus more worthy of repetition, than events reported in the daily newspapers. And for them, the female protagonists, divine and human, of these stories—Parvati, Durga, Kali, Kunti, Draupadi, Sita, Radha, Savitri, Anasuya—exemplify womanly virtues. Their experiences elucidate a woman’s code of conduct (stridharma) and define a woman’s nature (prakriti). Their qualities tell them what it means to be a Hindu woman. Women here see these figures as paradigmatic, paradigmatic not only because they represent ideals that are worthy of emulation but because, simply by being female, these heroines and they themselves all share the same gendered anatomy, the same female configuration of the same female substance. Because of this Puranic orientation and because of the fairly strong Sakta2 tradition prevalent in the temple town (see von Stietencron 1978), Odia Hindus here, both women and men, are liable to say that women have more gunas (qualities, properties) in terms of absolute quantities than men do. This is why they believe that

1 Oftentimes, temple town perceptions refract these stories from the Puranas, and so the temple town versions differ quite dramatically from the corresponding stories in these texts. 2 Those who worship the Great Goddess of Hinduism and believe that it is female energy/power, sakti, which keeps everything going. According to von Stietencron (1978), the Sakta tradition in the temple town stretches back into antiquity, preceding by several hundred years the Saiva tradition which itself dates back to the fourth–fifth centuries.

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women can turn the undoable (asadhya) into the doable (sadhya) and the impossible (asambhav) into the possible (sambhav). Women are characterized as givers of energy/power (saktidayinis) and as being filled with energy/power (sampoorna sakti). Women are commonly described as those who maintain the cycle of life (samsaroku3 sambhaliba) as well as its drivers (samsarore chalak), as those whose duties include satisfying everyone (samasthoku santhosta koriba), as well as ensuring peace and order (shanti shrunkhala rakhiba). The Tamil proverb quoted by Wadley (1980a: xiii)—Siva without Sakti is a corpse—is well known here, though not as a proverb. Instead, Odia Hindus in the temple town play on the way the words siva and sava are written in Odia: sava (corpse) has no vowel markings, and it is only when one adds the marking for the vowel sound “i” (harsa “i” or short “i”) that sava becomes siva and, more importantly, the vowel sound “i” stands for the female, for energy/power (sakti).

A Popular Origin Myth Many Odia Hindu women and men ascribe to the Siva Purana the very popular story of creation that they tell their children and interested strangers. But whatever the textual source maybe, the story itself is remarkable for the prominence it gives to the female while at the same time acknowledging the need for the male, in the process of creation. Their version goes as follows: We believe in one God. We say there is only one God, there is no second—all the others are just his various forms. At the beginning of creation when Bhagavan looked around him, he was not content. He felt he could only be Bhagavan if he was also a creator (srushtikarta) and so he made the sound Om, and out of the round shape of the Om (golakaro), Ma emerged. And then Ma desired a male (purusa). When she wanted to unite with a male, Bhagavan made the trinity, Brahma, Visnu and Maheswar (Siva) out of his body. But Brahma feared Sakti4 just seeing her, fierce and glowing, was enough to age him, his hair turning grey and Visnu, too, wary of unadulterated Sakti, moved away, refusing to accept her. He thought, “If I have to manage her, then I will have to neglect everything else.” And so he said “Namaskar” to Sakti, bowing his head and greeting her as a mother. And Sakti said, “I need a male to unite with. Who is the male here?” Then, turning to Siva, Visnu asked him to accept Sakti. And so Siva did. Visnu then smiled to himself, thinking, “Siva had all along desired Sakti but had pretended indifference.” But Sakti, present in everybody, was present in Visnu too and she knew then that he was mocking Siva and so she cursed Visnu. She said, “You left me to Siva, you withdrew and so he will be immortal (amar), he is Time (Mahakaal), there will be no births or deaths for him, but you, you will be condemned to being born again and again on this earth. Siva is filled with my energy/power (sakti) and so immortal, but you have only a little of my energy/power (sakti), you will soon be depleted of it (saktiheen), and you will have to replenish your sakti through your many

3 For the Odia Hindus of the temple town, samsaro stands for the social and natural worlds as well as for the never-ending cycle of rebirths and re-deaths that characterizes all existence this side of final liberation. 4 Here, the reference is to the goddess as the source of all energy/power (sakti) in the cosmos.

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births.” And then Visnu pleaded, “Ma, you have cursed me in this way but I have no energy/ power of my own. I will need you if I am to preserve this world.” And so, Visnu has his many incarnations (avatars), one after the other, his ten incarnations, and each time he is born, he destroys demons (asuras) and when he cannot, he calls upon Ma and she comes and kills them: Mahisasura (the buffalo demon), he couldn’t kill and so Durga came and killed him; in this pilgrimage center (teerth sthana), this Lingaraj temple, there used to be a pair of demons whom no one could kill, Krittivasa-Kruttivasa, again Ma came as Parvati and killed them. Even Visnu can do nothing without praying to Ma for strength.

Thus, Devi or Ma, the Great Goddess, the embodiment of all energy/power, emanates from the genderless Bhagavan, prior to the gods, Brahma, Visnu, and Siva. But she herself does not create parthenogenetically; she needs to unite with a male in order to create new life. (Only as Kali, in her most destructive aspect, do bloodthirsty demonesses [chandi, chamundi] tumble out of her body, devouring all life that comes in their path.) In this story, Devi emerges from the energy/ power that seeps (jhoriba) from Bhagavan’s auspicious and all-powerful sound Om (the seed mantra), and only then are the three male gods emitted from Bhagavan. Here, unlike the Kannada creation myth quoted by Ramanujan (1993), the theme of incest is missing. The male gods and Devi are not siblings because the sound Om produces the female prior to the three male gods emerging directly from Bhagavan. And the goddess is not “destroyed, divided and domesticated” (ibid.: 120) among the three gods; rather, as befits a Saivite temple town, only Siva possesses the ability to consort with her, and from this union, the world and all its creatures are born. Siva, therefore, has such an abundance of sakti that he never dies, he is Mahakaal, and unlike Visnu, his sakti does not have to be replenished by constant rebirths in various incarnations. And the strong Sakta tradition in the temple town is further underscored when the myth depicts Visnu as recognizing and deferring to Devi as the source of his sakti: whenever he, in any of his several incarnations, fails to kill a demon, he prays for her assistance and she comes to his aid.

The Odia Hindu Woman and Domesticity Most Odia Hindus of the temple town believe that social reproduction is the primary task of any group, and for them, the family represents the most appropriate site for social reproduction. Both men and women will say, “We are born into this world to build families.” They emphasize the impermanence of all things in this world, the fact that continual change is the only stable feature of life—after all, they say not even stones can withstand the depredations of time. They believe that only through procreating and raising children to responsible adulthood does a group achieve immortality. Not surprisingly, therefore, women in the temple town, and their menfolk too, regard the home and the family—the domestic domain—an important sphere of human action, equally, if not more important than what could be called

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the public domain.5 And with the senior women of the household controlling and managing all its affairs, this responsibility for enculturating the next generation rests almost exclusively in their hands, making them important and influential social actors. Many residents of the temple town, women and men, agree that men have only a peripheral role to play in achieving prosperity for the family and the wellbeing of its members (see Hauser 2010). Men earn, but this marks the limit of their contribution— whether what men earn is utilized effectively and productively depends on the sagacity and capability of the women of the household, particularly the senior-most women. Men readily acknowledge that women shoulder many more responsibilities than they do (striro daitva purusa opekhya jyateshtha adhika) and that the work women do is six times as much as men have to do (stri jatinkoro karma chho guna adhika). As Mahasupakaro, the Ayurvedic physician and 60-year-old husband and father, quoted earlier, says: Look at a 20-year-old man. He is a 20-year-old child: he knows nothing, he just roams here and there; but a 20-year-old girl, she has become the mother of two children, she runs her household and family, she cares for the cows and calves under her care, the children and the house, she cooks and serves her husband, she cleans the children, dresses them and sends them to school, makes sure that they are well, she manages the parents of her husband, she cleans the house. Compared to a man’s, a woman’s responsibilities are far more. When you compare men and women of the same age, that is what you find.

And as Mamata, 42 years old and herself the mother of four children and the senior-most woman in her household, believes: If a man was to earn a lakh6 of rupees today and bring it home, and if a woman was not to run the household as she should, then despite the money, the household would never prosper. And more than that, if a woman doesn’t impose restraints, a man will never remain within them … because … what we call our maternal energy/power (matru-sakti) that we have, that which we believe in—this thing called ‘ma’ (mother), those Puranas that we believe in, those Puranas, the Bhagwata, those ancient texts that we read, in those we have seen that a woman’s energy/power (stri-sakti) is the greatest there is. If that energy/power is not there, then a man can do nothing. That is why we have a particular way of referring

5

Historically, the public domain in the temple town primarily meant work connected with the temple—the worship of the deity, the conducting of pilgrims, and the running of dharamsalas (free hostels for pilgrims) and hotels that cater to pilgrims. In the past, men from this community were also employed as the family priests of landowning families in the coastal districts of Midnapur in West Bengal, Balasore, Cuttack, Puri, and Ganjam in Odisha, and Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. While most families in the temple town continue to maintain their connections with temple worship (in fact, unemployed men spend their days outside the main gate of the temple waiting for pilgrims), few of the men are employed as family priests, and the kind of involvement with the outside world that most of them engage in today is state government employment, either in the state secretariat as clerks and typists or as teachers who belong to the state educational service. Brahman men from the more prominent temple town families have also joined local politics. But no one in the temple town thinks of these kinds of employment as more prestigious or more significant than the managing of a family or the raising of children. 6 A lakh is a cardinal number equal to 100,000.

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to ‘woman’—janani, bhagani, jaya—jaya7 is wife, bhagani is sister and janani is mother. Only if she can be all three kinds of woman to a man—as a mother, she protects and advises him, as a sister, she works shoulder to shoulder for the prosperity of the family and as a wife, she loves and respects him. If she can do all three kinds of work, only then can a man do what is right for himself, only then can a man go along the right path in life. It all depends on the woman. And if a woman can be like that, then however bad the man is, he will on his own come back to the right path. That is why for the man, for the children, for everyone, for the family, only a woman’s contribution is really crucial—even if she were to match the work of the man, step for step, outside the house, inside the house, checking on the children, that is on her, the responsibility towards the husband’s parents (sasu-sasur), that is on her—animals, birds, good, bad, every responsibility within the household is a woman’s. That is why compared to a man, a woman’s responsibility is much, much more.

But such popular recognition of the worth of women’s work and such widespread acknowledgement of greater female effectiveness in this world hardly translates into espousing a feminist viewpoint: neither men nor women believe that men and women are equal, in any sense of the term. In fact, temple town men and women, whose view of the world is built on the logic of difference and complementarity rather than on equality and competition, would find such a proposition amusing and immature. According to them, male and female are the only two castes (jatis) in the world whose differences are so profound that they can never be transcended. For Odia Hindus, difference is a given fact, but the prerogatives and privileges enjoyed and the power exercised are fluid, varying with particular contexts (Ramanujan 1990). According to Sudhansubabu, men, in terms of the constitution of their substances, have disproportionately more of the quality of balance or goodness (sattva) and are, therefore, regarded in that respect as “purer”; because of that, they enjoy privileges in some situations, while women, because they possess more qualities in absolute terms, exercise power and control in others. For instance, men can approach divinity whenever they wish, provided, of course, they are in a state of purity (suddha avastha); men can also leave home and go out without any restriction whatsoever. Odia Hindus reason that since men have more goodness and are more balanced, they are relatively more stable, less open to change and transformation, and less likely to exude and absorb bodily substances. Therefore, men can function in the world outside without suffering too much contamination—though they do suffer it. Most scholars who study Hindu India agree that distinctions in social and ritual rank are made in terms of purity and pollution (Dumont 1970). Thus, in the temple town, Brahman men and women, who have the highest ritual rank, are the people who are most concerned about exposing themselves to possible contamination and ritual pollution. When Odia Brahman men become polluted through touch (chuaan)—for instance, if they accidentally brush by a dog or a menstruating woman or a Scheduled Caste person—then they undertake a rather elaborate set of activities to cleanse (suddha koriba) themselves inside and out. Such activities would include 7 This is an interesting use of the word jaya (pronounced jaayaa). Jaya is a special kind of wife: according to Manu (9.8,9), a wife is called jaya because the husband is born (jayate) again in her— the wife gives birth to a son who is just like the husband she makes love to.

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bathing, changing the sacred thread (povita), reciting particular prayers (Gayatri mantra), eating a tulasi or bilva leaf, and eating special sacred foods (mahaprasad8 or nirmaliya9). As professional servitors of Lingaraj, such concern for maintaining the body’s purity makes sense; Marglin (1985a) describes similar behavior for the priests of Jagannatha at Puri. Non-Brahman men, however, hardly ever engage in these rituals of cleansing. In general, as I described in the last chapter, women are considered to be more vulnerable to pollution and less easily cleansed. Their bodies are thought to be more permeable, their potential for mixing greater and so, their transformations a continual anxiety that has to be guarded against. Furthermore, because women are involved in feeding the ancestral spirits (pitru loku), in worshiping the household deities (kula devata), and in cooking, feeding, and caring for family members, it becomes crucial that they maintain their bodies in conditions of relative purity and that they do not distribute impure, undesirable substances to others in the family. While non-Brahman women are somewhat concerned by such matters, Odia Brahman women feel that they must be especially circumspect, careful about what they eat, where they go, what they distribute, whom they associate with, what they give and to whom, and what they receive and from whom. Given this concern for possible bodily transformations, Odia Brahman women in the temple town restrict themselves, in terms of space, to the home and, in terms of interactions, to those who are superior or familiar (for instance, traditional servants of the family), or kin, those with whom they share bodily substance. In fact, these Brahman women value restricted contact and limited movement for itself. To shun contact, to maintain exclusivity, confers, they believe, a mark of distinction on the person who shuns: some older married women proudly acknowledge their aversion to intimate contact with others by saying that they do not fondle or kiss (gelo koriba) their own infant grandchildren (see Seymour 1975, 1976, 1983), and they will point to the distaste a child may display when fondled as a sign of his innate refinement (sanskriti). Apart from these fastidious older women, even younger Odia Hindu women here do not resent such restricted contact and movement. Strange as it may sound to modern ears, Odia Hindu women do not desire the freedom to move and interact with people indiscriminately, and they value positively their lack of geographical mobility and their limited interaction with the outside world, interpreting these features of their lives as signs of their superiority over others, of their independence of the outside world—they do not need to meet others, and they do not need to move around the city or the neighborhood. And they are not alone in having such a positive evaluation of their seclusion. Tokita-Tanabe working in a village roughly 50 km to the south of the temple town noted similar attitudes among the upper-caste Odia

8 Leftovers of offerings, usually food, made to the deity. God consumes through gazing upon the offerings, which is then shared by devotees as mahaprasad or bhoga. 9 This is a solution made from dried prasad from the Lingaraj temple; every Brahman house in the temple town keeps a certain amount of this solution in the prayer (puja) room.

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Hindu women10 with whom she worked. She writes, “the confinement of women in the home is also a mark of their high caste status as far as the Khandayats in this village are concerned. Khandayat women value the fact that they stay at home whereas the untouchable Sweeper caste women come around to sell baskets and work in the fields” (1999: 84 fn). Another indication that these women value seclusion and view it as a marker of social prestige can be found in their attitude toward my own actions in doing fieldwork. As I have already mentioned, many women pitied my predicament, one that necessitated my “wandering” from door to door in search of people to talk to (the Odia verb buliba [to move about] encompasses the meaning “to wander about”; it is similar to the Hindi verb ghumna-phirna). I remember asking Netramani, a middle-aged widow, whether she would be sending her 17-year-old daughter to college and she responded good-humoredly, “Why? So that she will become like you, going from door to door talking to everyone?” When younger women complain, as they sometimes do, about restrictions on contact and movement, they have in mind restrictions during the early years of marriage on visiting their natal families, on meeting people who live in their fathers’ neighborhood, and on standing in the front doorway and seeing the world go by. They are not thinking of freedom in terms of a lack of restrictions on one’s movements: the freedom, say, to go see a movie by oneself, to go shopping on one’s own, and to walk out of the house unaccompanied whenever one feels like it. Odia Hindu women find such activities—shopping and seeing movies—pleasurable only to the extent that they share them with others. They would not regard independence from interference by others as freedom; on the contrary, they would interpret it as rejection, as lack of interest and concern on the part of others in the family—which is precisely how old women in the temple town construe the freedom of movement they have because of their age. Instead of relishing such freedom, most of them see it as one more indication that the families they have cared for all their lives are no longer concerned about them. When, in the course of our conversations, I would ask the women of the temple town specifically about their reactions to living alone, they were unanimous in declaring that there is no greater sorrow, no worse punishment, than to live alone, to do things alone. For these women, to assimilate successfully into a group, to unequivocally belong to a group, or to participate in communal activities is what gives meaning and purpose to life, and it is what gives them a sense of identity.

Techniques of Managing the Process of Maturing as a Woman To the Odia Hindu way of thinking, menstruation (masikia [the monthly] or rtu sapo [the curse of the seasons] or as the younger women of the temple town nowadays say, “menses”) distinguishes women from men in a very fundamental way. Odia 10

Tokita-Tanabe’s informants were Khandayats, a group that constituted local militias in the past, and today are a dominant group both politically and economically, similar in some ways to the Jats of north India.

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Hindus of the temple town regard menstrual flow as the one physical process that cannot be controlled or regulated through particular actions, diets, or fasting: culture appears helpless in the face of natural processes. During menstruation a woman is polluted (mara); birth and death are the only other natural processes that result in this condition, the difference being that while menstruation affects only women, birth and death pollution impact the entire lineage (kula). In this community, there is a quiet recognition of the advent of puberty, known euphemistically as “gained knowledge” (gyano paigola) or “remained at home” (gharore rohigola) or simply as “matured” (bado heigola). Unlike South India, there is little fanfare in the ceremonies that surround the marking of puberty, women from neighboring houses being neither invited nor present. And, unlike in north India, several rituals are observed within the household, with only the women of the immediate family in attendance, to mark this passage into sexual maturity (cf. Tokita-Tanabe 1999). Indigenous thinking holds that the menstrual flow indicates the excessive heat within the girl’s body and is itself the natural way of relieving such heat and remedying the situation. She is considered to be both vulnerable herself and dangerous to others—more so, now on the occasion of first menstruation than at any subsequent one. Her vulnerability to disease requires that she not bathe and also that she eats “calming, cooling” foods. She is dangerous to the health of others in the household because she can cause them injury (khyati) with just her glance, the idea being that, at the time of first though not at subsequent menstruations, the girl radiates a kind of energy (electrical energy is the metaphor favored by Odia Hindus of the temple town to describe this condition) powerful enough to injure men and children. Unlike the Tamils about whom Reynolds (1980: 42) reports, men here are not seen as “stimuli” who would aggravate the heated condition of the girl’s body but rather as possible victims who have to be protected. And so with the onset of menstrual flow, the girl bathes (although this is optional and occurs only in some households) and then is isolated from the rest of the family, except for her mother or her father’s mother attending on her. For the next four days, she does not bathe, and she eats only bland (sada), tasteless (svadaheen) foods, those that do not excite the palate— boiled, having neither salt nor spices, and nothing sour. After four days of isolation, the girl undergoes a ritually purifying bath, using sesame oil, turmeric,11 and a small quantity of dry cow dung. The house too is ritually purified using cow dung water and all used earthenware pots are thrown away and replaced by new ones. The girl is dressed in new, brightly colored clothes— usually yellow or red—she is made to wear ornaments, particularly glass bangles and anklets, she applies kohl (kajal) to her eyes and paints a red dye (alita) along the edges of her feet, and the final ritual requires her to hold in her lap and feed one by one seven small boys of the neighborhood specially prepared cakes made of rice powder and unrefined sugar (jaggery or gur), fried or baked in plantain leaves.

11 Turmeric is thought to be cooling apart from having antiseptic properties that protect the skin from sores and infections.

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Generally in this neighborhood, a girl past puberty braids her hair tight (or if it is wet, she will tie a knot at the end), wears a six-yard sari with a broad border, wears bangles and anklets, and applies alita along the edges of her feet—practices of dressing and ornamentation that indicate, I think, a cultural concern for maintaining boundaries, for holding in the energy/power that she now possesses as a sexually mature woman. To one familiar with life within the Odia Hindu household, it is always possible to recognize a woman who is menstruating even if she does not observe menstrual seclusion. The hair will be left unbound, no oil would have been applied, and it would be uncombed. And despite the fact that these days she may move around the house, the woman will be extraordinarily careful not to touch anyone or anything— she will squat on the ground at a distance, she will not eat and drink with others, and there is a certain way that she orients her body away from contact with others that is very revealing of her condition.

Marriage: The Most Significant Samskara for Women No Odia Hindu woman in the temple town desires to remain an unmarried virgin in her father’s home for long. And no Odia Hindu parent of the temple town wishes to keep an unmarried adult daughter at home; people here believe that by doing so, ancestral spirits are compelled to drink her menstrual blood and such sins only bring disaster in their wake. Despite the fact that most girls are aware that life in their husband’s homes is often difficult and demanding, especially in the early years, they anticipate with pleasure the prospect of getting married—I have yet to hear a girl saying that she would prefer to remain unmarried in her father’s house. To marry, beget children, and establish a family are seen as part of the “natural” process of living—“we are born,” as these women say, “to build families.” Almost all marriages in the temple town, even today, are arranged (cf. TokitaTanabe 1999; Hauser 2008, 2010). Deference to elders as well as confidence in their ability to arrange a suitable match make it unlikely that the young man and woman who are getting married get to see each other before the ceremony. Married women and unmarried girls will often say, “What need do we have to see the person we are marrying? We know that our father-mother will never desire our harm; they only want the best to happen to us—so then why should we look and see?” And young men, too, will deny any need to see their future wives. Temple town residents interpret such disinterest in one’s future wife or husband as a mark of refinement (cf. Hauser 2008). They appreciate such self-abnegating behavior as the appropriate kind of limited involvement in the world (see Heesterman 1985) that refined people display. The most important ritual of refinement (samskara) that Odia Hindu women experience is marriage (bibaho). And while it is not explicitly said during the ceremony that a woman is reborn, as boys are during the sacred thread ceremony

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(brata12), rituals do explicitly remake her substance and assimilate her into her husband’s family, designating her life sustainer (by cooking and feeding family members) and life maintainer of her husband’s lineage or kula (by giving birth to sons) (again, cf. Tokita-Tanabe 1999). For a Brahman bride, such remaking is symbolized by the new first name that she receives from her husband—the name by which she will be known henceforth. Such remaking alters permanently her relations with her natal family; births and deaths in her father’s lineage no longer incapacitate her, and she has almost no responsibilities (daitva) toward her natal family. She observes death pollution rituals only when her own parents die; and even then, it is only for 3 rather than the usual 12 days. For men, too, marriage is an extremely important ritual of refinement because having a wife is what completes a man, makes him a mature adult, the reproductive householder, and the performer of household rituals (kartta). For instance, in the temple town, unmarried men and widowers cannot offer oblations, particularly the biannual food offerings, to their manes (shraddha); an unmarried eldest son can perform the funeral rites for his dead father or mother, but he is forbidden from performing any subsequent rituals of ancestor worship till he marries. A wife, the female head of household activities (karttri), is required to prepare the boiled rice (bhatha) from which the rice balls (pinda) will be made that are then offered to the ancestors. In this neighborhood, marriages are never consummated till 4 days after the event—the chaturthi. If for some reason—a birth or sometimes the death of a distant relative—the family becomes polluted (mara) and it becomes inauspicious to hold to the original date of the chaturthi, then an alternative suitable date is selected. In the days before the marriage is consummated, the new bride is sacred, she is called divine virgin (devakanya), and she is worshiped as such: she does no work, neither entering the kitchen nor serving anyone; instead, she is served by her husband’s mother and his sisters as an honored guest. During this period, she never bows her head nor touches the feet of anyone in the house. Nothing is allowed to interfere with or disrupt these few days when the virgin bride is worshiped; people here believe that the fruitfulness of the marriage and the prosperity of the family depends on this period being observed undisturbed. On the evening of the fourth day, a ritual occurs that serves to initiate the bride into activity that is her main duty as a wife of the house—to feed and sustain the lives of family members and to give birth to children and maintain the lineage. She is taken by her husband’s mother into the kitchen and made to touch the cooking utensils. Boiled rice is then cooked and the groom offers rice balls (pinda) to his ancestors with his bride by his side. That night the marriage is consummated. The day after the consummation is called the day of hiding (lucha dina), and it marks the transition for the bride from divine virgin to son’s wife (bou), the decline in her position from relatively matched, unmixed, and unmarked virgin to

12

This is the upanayana samskara (the sacred thread ceremony) that boys from the three highest castes—Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaisya—undergo in order to gain their twice-born status, dvija.

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the diametrically opposite position of being mixed, marked, and unmatched, the consequence of becoming sexually active (Marriott, personal communication). For that one day and one night of hiding, the husband and wife are not permitted to see each other; if the bride has a maternal uncle or some other relative on her mother’s side in the neighborhood, she is sent there to spend the next 24 hours; if not, the bridegroom spends the day outside the house. Married women are known generally as sadhaba (the opposite being bidhaba or widow) or, if Brahman, as ahya. A married woman wears on her person several signs of auspiciousness (subha lakhana), which distinguish her as married, as well as declare in no uncertain terms her commitment to her husband and his family. Odia Hindus who live in this neighborhood believe that these markers—vermilion (sindur) in her part, the red spot (bindi) on her forehead, black beads around her neck, glass bangles, brightly colored saris with broad borders, and toe-rings—create an aura of auspiciousness that maintains one’s husband’s health and long life. These women believe quite literally that they are the custodians of their husband’s lives and wellbeing and that of his family, too. I do not know of any Odia Hindu woman in the temple town, however unhappily married she may be, who has deliberately removed any of these signs of auspiciousness. Two women I know have separated from their husbands (neither has children) and have returned to their father’s homes—their lives are sad and empty and their situations precarious, but both of them still think of themselves as married and continue to dress as such. To do anything else would be tantamount to desiring one’s husband’s death, actions that constitute a grave sin (mahapaap). Snehalata is one of these two women. Her natal family, the Patis, is one of the five families described in Chap. 2. The following anecdote is painfully telling because it highlights the ambivalences raging within her. Very devout, Snehalata has undergone religious initiation (dikhya) and, at one time, had planned to join an ashram once her parents die, although she is now reconsidering her decision. According to her, one day, while praying to her personal god (ishta devata), Lord Krishna, she suddenly had an evil thought: she wanted her husband to suffer an injury, any injury, just so that it would make up in some measure for the sorrow he had inflicted on her over the past 20 years. Hardly had the thought crossed her mind that she regretted it and asked Lord Krishna for forgiveness. Later that day, she slipped in the inner courtyard of her father’s house and broke her leg. For more than a month after that, she could not perform her usual worship, and there was, for those days, a void in her life that left her feeling more empty than usual. She interprets her accident as Krishna withdrawing himself from her, denying her the joy of worshiping him, a just punishment for a wicked thought about her husband. Indigenous discourse maintains that a family’s prosperity and survival depend less on the men who are born into it and more on the women who, born into other families, marry into it. The women are well aware of the irony of the situation, but see it as the way the world is organized, one of life’s paradoxes, perhaps, but nothing extraordinary or unjust that needs to be changed (see Raheja and Gold 1994, for a contrary view held by north Indian women). But of course, one of the consequences of this situation is that these women, if they are to serve their husbands’ families

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effectively, have to be remade into the substance of these families. The marriage rituals begin this process of “reconstruction” (Lamb 2000) quite explicitly. Subsequently, daily practices such as washing the husband’s parents’ feet and drinking the water, eating their leftovers, and massaging their feet are ways whereby the new bride actively absorbs substances from the family and, slowly, grows to become a part of it. After a few years, with the birth of children, son’s wives usually stop observing these practices. Newly married couples, even today, are extremely circumspect in their behavior toward each other in the public spaces within the house, avoiding conversation and even glances when other family members are present (Mandelbaum 1970: 74–79; Seymour 1999: 64). However, with time and familiarity, things change, and, unlike the Rayapur couples that Vatuk (1975) writes about, temple town husbands and wives spend more and more time with each other as they grow older. On many mornings, I have observed old husbands reading from Odia language newspapers to their wives who sit by their side, the son’s wives having now shouldered the burden of cooking and caring for the household. And, it is not unusual to see a 65-year-old husband take his afternoon nap, with his head on his wife’s lap while she threads garlands of flowers for Lingaraj, or, with spectacles on nose, mends a blouse for her daughter. Perhaps it is the almost complete absence of any insistence on masculinity in the temple town as compared to north India (see Hershman 1977; Vatuk 1975; Raheja and Gold 1994; Derné 1994) together with a belief in the necessity and importance of both male and female in any creative process—the begetting of children and the establishing of a household—that leads to such compatibility between older couples. I am not suggesting that marital discord does not occur within this community, but just that many older couples do tend to display a kind of relaxed, unembarrassed comfort in each other’s company. Perhaps this comfort stems from the fact that older couples are presumed to be celibate, their relationship no longer sexual, often being described as akin to that between brother and sister. The idol of Siva massaging Parvati’s feet in the little temple in the middle of the temple tank, Bindusagar, illustrates, perhaps, one aspect of the way people in the temple town view marriage. Although everyone agrees that for a wife to let her husband touch her feet goes against all social norms, the tenderness that the divine husband displays is viewed indulgently and is often described by both men and women as admirable. I think it highlights the fact that in Hindu India (and perhaps, elsewhere as well), a reversal of traditional hierarchy often characterizes relations between sexual partners. The greater the intimacy between a husband and a wife, the greater the degree to which they abandon traditional rules of behavior in private. Sarala, the 78-year-old widow reminiscing about her marriage, or Mamata elaborating on the love that a husband and wife, ideally, should feel for each other, says that a husband massaging his wife’s feet and a wife feeding her husband food that she has previously half-chewed (what Odia Hindus refer to as the mother bird feeding her young) are expressions of true intimacy and selfless love (cf. Trawick 1990)—both husband and wife are willing to risk compromising their chances of achieving moksa (final liberation) for the sake of the this-worldly love they feel for each other.

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The temple town view of marriage also holds that, ideally, when a woman marries, she forgets herself and she immerses herself in the family she has married into, assimilating so completely that she achieves family (parivariko) as well as personal (nijo) wellbeing (hito)—such wellbeing includes good health (svasthya) for all, financial prosperity (arthika unnati) for the family, and reproductive success (phalapradanta) for herself. Women use the story of Draupadi and her five husbands to illustrate the way in which familial wellbeing takes precedence over, but ultimately ensures personal wellbeing: One woman, will she ever want to have five husbands? We see that for women, the wellbeing of the families we marry into, the wellbeing of others, is our wellbeing. If there is no wellbeing in the family, then we have no wellbeing. When Draupadi became a son’s wife and came … before that Kunti … she had told her five sons: Whatever you bring, you will divide amongst yourselves equally. She had said that, and the sons had obeyed their mother, sharing equally whatever they brought home. But this time, it wasn’t fruits that they had brought home, they had brought home a wife, and they now had to divide a wife between the five of them. Will anyone ever desire to be wife to five husbands? But for the wellbeing of the family, to preserve the truth of her husbands’ mother’s (sasu) words, she accepted five husbands. We know how it is to live with one husband and two or three children, to make sure that they have all that they need, to manage them properly, we know how difficult it is. When she took five husbands, what did she have left for herself? Nothing. She used up all her strength talking to them, understanding their needs, and giving them peace. What could she do for herself? Nothing, all that she could do was pray (pranam) to God with devotion (bhakti), that was all—and this was all because of the family.

To these Odia Hindu women, it makes no sense that a woman would prefer to be married to five husbands. As they say, everyone knows that just one husband and two or three children are trouble enough—who would want to take on the burden of making five husbands happy and maintaining the peace between them, unless it was for some more worthwhile cause, such as achieving familial wellbeing or preserving the truth of one’s husbands’ mother’s words. As the wife of the five Pandavas, Draupadi had no time to take care of herself, no time to do anything more than merely bow her head to God, but that was enough, these women claim: her concern for the family she had married into as well as her complete involvement in its affairs was enough to ensure the success of her husbands and the ultimate wellbeing of everyone, including herself. However, if, unlike Draupadi, a woman thinks only of herself, if she is absorbed in achieving her own exclusive wellbeing, then Odia Hindus think that she and the family she has married into are headed for almost certain disaster (bipada re podhijibo—they will fall into misfortune).

Relations Between Wives and Husbands in the Temple Town It is hard to define the kinds of relations that exist between wives and husbands in the temple town because these relations exemplify much more than male dominance and female subordination. In some ways, while Daniel’s (1980) three possible models for marriage among Tamils in South India—the Chidambaram, the Minakshi, and

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Ardhanariswara—are useful theoretical constructs, they can hardly be applied, I think, to Odia Hindus of the temple town. According to Daniel, the Chidambaram model stands for a male-dominated marriage because in the famous temple at Chidambaram, the presiding deity is Siva, not his wife, Parvati. The Minakshi model is the reverse—a female-dominated marriage—because in the Minakshi temple at Madurai, the goddess is the central deity, Siva being merely her consort. The Ardhanariswara icon is half-Siva and half-Parvati, and Daniel suggests that, in this model for marriage, husbands and wives relate to each other as equal partners. I doubt if, in the temple town, any of these models exist—even as possibilities. For instance, no one in the temple town will say, as Daniel’s informants do, when describing the Minakshi model for marriage, that women “have a greater proportion of the sattvika guna” (72); neither will they say that the half-man/half-woman icon of Ardhanariswara implies that gender equality should reign within the household. Instead, for many Odia Hindus here, the Ardhanariswara symbolizes the tensions and oppositions that exist between male and female and the need for union and coexistence. At one, perhaps the most obvious level, the Odia Hindu husbands in the temple town dominate their wives, and they are the absolute, unquestioned heads of their households. In terms of public presentation, the Odia Hindu wife is extremely careful to display the utmost respect and deference to her husband. Women explicitly refer to their husbands as their gods (ame tanku amor debata manuchu, we accept them as our gods) and publicly display rituals of deference and worship. In fact, the Odia word for “husband” is swami—meaning “lord”—while that for “wife” is stri or “woman.” Thus, wives in the temple town will commonly say, “For a woman, her husband is her god…we [that is, humans] call to parameshwar, bhagavan, but for a wife her husband is every kind of god.” Thus, traditional wives will perform an aarti13 every morning to their husbands before eating anything, and even for those who fancy themselves “modern,” the very first duty of the morning is to bow their heads to God and then touch the feet of their (often sleeping) husbands. But this is not the entire picture. I think the following story, very popular in the temple town, especially among women, gives a better indication of Odia Hindu understandings about the relations between wives and husbands. This is the story of Anasuya, the wife of the sage Atrimuni. As women introduce the story, they will emphasize that Anasuya is not divine, but human. They say, “Anasuya is not any goddess, she is like us, and so great (mahaan) that even the gods had to accept defeat at her hands.”14

13

Aarti is a particular kind of worship in which lights are waved in front of the deity. The story that they are referring to is one in which the three gods, Brahma, Visnu, and Siva, try to seduce Anusaya, but the power of her chastity (satitvare sakti) is so great that when they try to hold her, they turn into little boys who are trying to clamber into her lap. This story, too, like the one about the prostitute Lakhyahira is a temple town variation. In the textual version, part of the Brahmanda Purana, the three gods do not try to seduce Anasuya; rather, she asks and is granted a boon by the three of them that they would be born as her sons, and so when they clamber on her lap, they are her sons. 14

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The story told in the temple town elaborates on the relationship between the sage Atrimuni, his wife Anasuya,15 and the courtesan Lakhyahira. In the words of women in the temple town: Anasuya, a king’s daughter, married the sage Atrimuni, a leper. Anasuya nursed her husband faithfully and since the disease had eaten away his feet, he could not walk, and she had to carry him on her shoulders. One day, when he was fully recovered from his illness, he saw the courtesan, Lakhyahira. The eponymous Lakhyahira demanded a lakh of diamonds (hira) from each of her customers for the privilege of spending one night with her. Atrimuni desired the beautiful Lakhyahira but knew that there was no way he could collect enough diamonds to buy her favors even for a single night. And so, his mind felt sad. His wife noting this sadness asked him the reason for it and Atrimuni told Anasuya that if only he had a lakh of diamonds, he could go to Lakhyahira for a night. Anasuya clearly realized at this point that her husband was going down the wrong path (bhul bato) but despite this, she set about to find a way to satisfy his desire. She thought that as there was no other way of getting together a lakh of diamonds, she would serve Lakhyahira every day till finally her service equaled in value a lakh of diamonds. And so, she began going every morning to Lakhyahira’s place to sweep and clean the compound and the front of the house. Lakhyahira, noticing this well-born woman who came every morning to sweep out the compound, remarked to herself, “Who is this woman? She is obviously well-born; why then does she come every morning to clean and sweep out the compound and the front of my house?” One morning, after many days of watching Anasuya do such work, Lakhyahira asked her, “Who are you? Don’t you know who I am? I am a fallen woman (patita). When good people see me, they loathe me (ghrna korunti). Decent women don’t even want to look upon my face. Why, then, do you clean my house?” And Anasuya replied, “My lord was sick. But after he saw you he became even more sick—he wishes that he had a lakh of diamonds so that he could come to you for one night. That is why I have been cleaning your house; I thought that when my labor (parishramo) equaled in value a lakh of diamonds, I would come to you, and, with folded hands, request you to accept my husband for a single night.” Hearing this, Lakhyahira was transformed. No woman wants to send her husband to another woman but Anasuya was great (mahaan) enough to want to do so. Lakhyahira, then, clasped Anasuya’s folded hands in her own, and said, “Go now. As many days as you have worked that is the equal of a lakh of diamonds. Go now, and at night, bring your husband. I will spend the night with him.” That night, several potential customers were present in Lakhyahira’s house, traders and merchants with their diamonds, wealthy people, but Lakhyahira sent them all away, saying, “Tonight, there is someone coming as my guest.” When they asked who it was, she replied, “He who sits there,” and they saw a leper with bandages covering his deformed hands and feet. They were disgusted, saying to themselves, “She has gone mad. We have come with a lakh of diamonds and she doesn’t take one of us, young and beautiful, she prefers a leper.” And they left. Atrimuni sat in Lakhyahira’s house, overwhelmed by her beauty and her luxurious home. His throat went dry with fear, and he asked for some water to drink. Lakhyahira went into the house and brought out two vessels filled with water—one was an earthen pot and the other a golden one. She placed them down before Atrimuni and asked him which of the waters he would drink. She told him, “The earthen pot has water from the Ganga, while the water in the golden vessel has been sweetened with sugar—which of these would you prefer to drink?” And Atrimuni replied, “I need the water in the earthen pot. There is no sugar mixed in it. If I drank sweetened water, it would not quench my thirst.” After he drank the water, Lakhyahira, who recognized greatness when she saw it, told him, “This earthen pot with water from the Ganga is your wife and this golden pot with sweetened water is me. If you had me for one night, then for as long as you are alive you would long for me, your 15

Interestingly, the Sanskrit meaning of the name Anasuya is “she who is without envy.”

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thirst for me would never be slaked, you would repeat my name in vain and your life would be without meaning. But this earthen pot with water from the Ganga is your wife, pure and good, and you have chosen her.” By saying this, she was able to make Atrimuni understand his own mistake and then she carried him back to Anasuya, saying, “Elder sister, you have won and I have lost,” and from that day on she gave up the business of being a prostitute.”

Before discussing the meanings salient in this story, a caveat is in order. The sage Atrimuni and his wife Anasuya are real characters who figure in many stories in the Puranas and in the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. But the story I have just presented has only the most tenuous connection to those found in the Puranas. The main plot of this story—a sage who wants to visit a prostitute and who is carried to her on his wife’s shoulders—is found in the Puranas, but, in every other detail, as far as my research has shown me, the temple town story is an original creation.16 Thus, in the Puranic version, the sage is Ugrasravas, not Atrimuni, the wife is Silavati, not Anasuya, and Lakhyahira does not appear at all. But the lack of a textual version (while curious and interesting) hardly affects its popularity among the women of the temple town. And this popularity, I believe, is significant because it demonstrates that the relations between husband and wife as portrayed in the story have meaning and resonance for the women here. The main theme of this story, at least in the way these women purport to tell it, is the fact that Anasuya is Atrimuni’s servant and as his servant, it is her duty not to question his desires but rather to do everything to satisfy them. But at the end of the story, this is hardly the meaning that is communicated; indeed, the final message appears to be that being the master does not guarantee that one’s amour propre remains intact. Clearly, this is a woman’s story, told mainly by women and about women, the female characters being heroic, self-controlled, and self-abnegating, women who contain themselves. Even Lakhyahira realizes at the end that mere wealth is meaningless, that the desire for it can never be satisfied, and gives up being a prostitute. The only male in the story—Atrimuni—is hardly admirable. Despite being a sage, and presumably wise, he comes off as weak and lustful, a creature of his passions; the fact that he has to be carried by the women in the story only emphasizes his helplessness. It also elucidates several culturally salient meanings. Firstly, as the servant, a wife can never tell her husband, her master, when he is doing wrong. Secondly, men are uncivilized (abhadra), incapable of discovering and recognizing their mistakes on their own: they need a woman—even if she is a prostitute, someone despised socially— to do it for them. Thirdly, women, given their substance, are more susceptible to improvement as Lakhyahira shows us: Anasuya’s greatness purifies her so that not only does she persuade Atrimuni to recognize his own perfidy and foolishness but she also gives up being a prostitute while Atrimuni displays considerable immunity to 16 This is yet another example of the genius of these people—and perhaps they share it with other Hindu groups—to pick up elements and characters from the Puranas and weave together a remarkable narrative that speaks to their own contemporary questions and concerns (see Menon and Shweder 1994, 2003).

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improvement despite being married to Anasuya. And fourthly, indulgence can never slake desire. To gratify one’s desires is to make matters worse; one gets caught even more inextricably in the net of illusion and enchantment (moha-maya re jaal). It is only when one fulfills one’s desires with what is pure, good, and appropriate—in this case, Atrimuni satisfying his sexual desire with his wife Anasuya, rather than with the beautiful prostitute, Lakhyahira—that one can finally work through desire so as to transcend it and move on to a higher plane of non-desiringness. In keeping with the general tenor of this story, indigenous perceptions tend to describe the male caste (jati) as uncivilized (abhadra) when compared to women, incapable of experiencing civilizing emotions (bhadra bhabo) like modesty, deference, and sensitivity to the needs of others (lajya) while at the same time displaying other emotions, like anger (raga) and laughter (hasa) with little reticence. Sudhansubabu explains this situation by saying that, although men are less open to external influences because their physical constitution, from a Hindu perspective, is more stable, continued interaction with the outside world has the inevitable effect of corrupting men. To counteract this tendency, women have to draw men away from the coarseness and corruption of the outside world. Thus, the public domain, as far as Odia Hindus of the temple town go, is an inherently corrupting place, while, in sharp contrast, the domestic domain is inherently incorruptible. Nonetheless, this in no way means that men are not predominantly good or balanced (sattvika), or that they become progressively less suited to serve Lingaraj. I should perhaps mention here that—contrary to most anthropologists’ descriptions of Hindu perceptions of women,17 contrary to Manu’s description of women needing to be controlled by men throughout their lives (5.148)—I have never heard anyone in the temple town describe women as being fickle or capricious or needing to be supervised and controlled. I realize that I am making a categorical statement, one that leaves me open to contradiction, but I need to make it because it accurately reflects my experience in the field. Indeed, men, both young and old, tended to say to me that women are far more responsible than men and that they have a greater sense of duty. As Prafulla Panda, the retired school teacher, told me: Look at a five-year-old girl. She helps her mother in the kitchen, fetching and carrying. She spends half her day with her younger brother or sister on her hip. If she is playing and her younger brother or sister cries, she will leave off playing and come running to see what the matter is. Her brother who is two years older will never do anything like that—he only thinks of himself.

Together with these particular understandings of what is male and female, Odia Hindus of the temple town also maintain that creation only results from the union of two separate entities, both being causes/sources of what is created. Mamata explicates this idea by asking rhetorically, “What is common to a creeper (lata), a poem (kabita) and a sexually active woman (bonita)?” and then, elaborating: 17

Reynolds (1980: 46), for instance, writes, “Culture decrees that woman left to her own devices is unpredictable, capricious, wily, fickle, voracious in sexual appetite, disrespectful of boundaries, limits and categories. As such, woman is a being in need of control.” And she is not alone. Other anthropologists have remarked upon it and Manu has elaborated on it at great length.

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Lata is a creeper, it cannot grow on its own, it needs support; kabita is a poem, a poet cannot write a poem, just by himself, he needs inspiration; and bonita is a woman, a sexually active woman, but if she has to create (srushti) a child she needs a man.

Similarly, Odia Hindus of the temple town regard the mother and the father as equal producers of the child, both contributing to the generating of new life. They differ from the Bengalis of Mangaldihi who, according to Lamb (2000: 324), believe that only the father is “actively responsible for generating the child through producing and planting the ‘seed.’” In the temple town, however, the formal way of referring to both mother and father is as birth-givers—janani and janaka (or janamdata), respectively—perhaps reflecting the fact that according to indigenous belief, a child is created when the man’s bija (the seed) and the woman’s rajja (female secretions) mix. (Rajja, in this case, refers to the colorless (sada), vaginal secretions and not to menstrual blood.) Interestingly, this is exactly how the Khandayats with whom Tokita-Tanabe worked describe the process of conception (1999: 55). In this, Odia Hindus seem to be going against Manu’s teachings (9.35–37). Residents of the temple town, therefore, argue the mother is more than just the field (kshetra) in which the seed is sown. She is more than just the bearer of the fetus in the womb (garbhadharani) who simply nurtures the child within her body. And they clinch their argument by recounting the story of the sage Kasyapa and his two wives, Diti and Aditi. They ask, “How could a single father sire both devas or gods (Adityas, the sons of Aditi) and asuras or demons (Daityas, the sons of Diti)?” It could only happen, they say, because the mother contributes more than just the womb to grow in; she also gives the female seed (rajja), the colorless secretions of the vagina. That is why a mother is referred to as birth-giver along with the father. And so, after integrating these various elements of Odia Hindu meanings about maleness and femaleness, Odia Hindu ideology about the relations between women and men appears to be as follows: firstly, women believe that, compared to men, they are continually in conditions of relative impurity. Menstruating, giving birth, nursing infants, caring for small children, and tending to the old all contrive to keep women in such conditions. As such, they respect men as being, in terms of Hindu physiology, purer than them. For them, purity equals superiority and so they acknowledge men as their superiors, as their masters. When women accept men as their masters, it is a voluntary decision. Perhaps, it could even be described as a mature recognition of a natural fact. Men do not need to exert brute force to ensure this subordination. At the same time, men are often unworthy masters. Confident in their “natural” superiority, they see no need to control their desires or their passions, and they are often untruthful and treacherous. Women, on the other hand, are different. When they voluntarily subordinate themselves to men, when they serve them, they have to exercise selfcontrol, they have to contain their emotions, and they cannot let their passions sway them. They may suffer but such suffering, because it is voluntarily accepted, ennobles rather than degrades. I agree with Reynolds (1980: 35–57) when she says that for Hindus, power lies in subordination, but I would contend that this subordination is not the result of explicit male domination but rather a voluntary subordination because only such subordination is, at least in the temple town worldview, truly moral, self-refining, ennobling, generating real power.

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There is another reason for women to cultivate and exercise self-control, and that is the fact that they, like the goddess, perceive themselves as imbued with “natural” or primordial sakti—adya sakti. Indigenous discourse does not see such sakti as truly generative. This perception is very Hindu for, as Kinsley has remarked, Hindu thinking “sees nothing desirable about unrefined nature, either in its human or nonhuman aspects” (Kinsley 1993: 68). In fact, many Hindus tend to think that “human destiny is to refine and perfect oneself and one’s world” (ibid.). Therefore, for such sakti to become truly generative, it needs to be worked on, controlled, and disciplined. Once such disciplining and refining has occurred, “natural” or adya sakti transforms itself into dharmik sakti (or moral or righteous energy/power) and almost nothing, according to people in the temple town, can withstand this sakti. It is this female moral energy/power that keeps the cosmos and the manifest world going. Therefore, among Odia Hindus of the temple town, Ortner’s original formulation (1974) nature: culture: woman: man does not hold water. For Odia Hindus, a woman certainly derives her power from her natural substance, but such power gathers its full significance only when it is subjected to cultural, ultimately moral, control that originates from within her. As Ramanujan points out, the Levi-Straussian opposition between nature and culture is itself culture-bound: in the Hindu alternative, “culture is enclosed in nature, nature is reworked in culture, so that we cannot tell the difference” (1991: 50), another of the reversible “container-contained relations” (ibid.: 50) found in other Hindu concepts and ideas. This relationship between adya sakti and dharmik sakti is again elaborated in the meanings that Odia Hindus of the temple town attach to a highly popular icon of the goddess Kali (see Menon and Shweder 1994). In this representation, the goddess is shown with a lolling bloodred tongue and her foot placed squarely on the chest of a supine Siva. When asked, most people in the temple town claim that the goddess is biting her tongue in lajya.18 Lajya, an Odia emotion term, often loosely and somewhat imperfectly translated as “shame,” refers to one of the primary moral emotions that upper-caste Odia Hindus of the temple town, especially women, are expected to cultivate. As it happens, lajya encompasses a much broader lexical domain than that indicated by the English emotion term “shame”; it would be more accurately translated as “modesty,” “deference,” “shyness,” “circumspection,” “being civilized,” “being respectful to elders and superiors,” and “knowing one’s place in society.” The intellectual elite in the temple town says that the goddess was on a murderous, yet morally justified, rampage because the male gods had betrayed her. They had sent her in to do battle with the buffalo demon, Mahisasura, without telling her that the boon the demon had received from Brahma protected him from every living being except a naked female and that to kill him, she would have to remove her clothes, expose herself to him. Her murderous rampage, the result of this humiliation, is an example of “natural” sakti bursting through its constraints, destructive and devastating. But they also say that she became calm, regained her composure, not

18

In the temple town, “experiencing lajya” is lexicalized as “biting the tongue” (jibho kamdiba) (see Menon and Shweder 1994).

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because of anything Siva did but because when she stepped on him—her husband and, therefore, her social superior—she realized the degree to which she had forgotten her place in society as a wife to Siva and as a mother to the world, and she was overcome with lajya. Siva, after all, they argue, could have done nothing to prevent her; if she had wished, she could have stamped him and gone on with her destruction. In the eyes of the temple town, this story exemplifies voluntary subordination and the deliberate exercise of self-control. Such self-control has its inevitable impact on women. According to the more articulate Odia Hindu women I spoke with, repeated exercises in self-control strengthen and develop the capacity for further self-control. In terms of emotional functioning, moral development, and selfrefinement, women, in time, become superior to men. They grow in moral stature. They gain such moral authority that finally even men, their “natural” masters, are ready to acknowledge their superiority and respect them. This story also exemplifies the role that lajya plays in enabling the goddess to exercise self-control, thereby transforming adya sakti into dharmik sakti. Through cultivating the ability to experience lajya, women learn to comport themselves in culturally appropriate ways. In this regard, Tokita-Tanabe’s research among urbanized, educated, professional Odia Hindu women during 1997–1999 is particularly telling. In her evocative explanation about the moral significances of “shyness,” one of Tokita-Tanabe’s informants echoes words that women in the temple town use when elaborating on the moral and civilizing qualities of lajya. This informant says (and I suspect she is using “shyness” as a gloss for lajya): “Shyness is something which is quite intrinsic to Indian girls and women. And shyness acts as a sort of curb, while you talk to elders and to people whom you respect. Shyness comes as a factor which does not allow you to speak certain things which are not spoken in such circumstances.… So I don’t mean shyness means putting on your veil or sitting closed in one corner of the place.… It means that you shouldn’t do things which are not done in certain places” (ibid.: 146).

Conclusion This chapter elaborates on the self-understandings of Odia Hindu women who live in the temple town. It highlights the ambiguous nature of these self-understandings as well as the complexity that characterizes relations between wives and husbands. Such relations cannot be described straightforwardly as men being dominant and women subordinate. Odia women in the temple town certainly consider themselves to be the “natural” inferiors of their husbands and, therefore, their social and ritual subordinates. But they are also keenly aware of the “natural” power they embody simply by being female—a power that could potentially destroy family and even society. Thus, they are inferiors who are more powerful than their social and ritual superiors; indeed, they hold the lives, health, and material prosperity of these superiors in the palms of their hands. Simultaneously, there is the sense elaborated in

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myths and folktales that great care should be taken to not unleash this natural power and that such power should be harnessed for the prosperity of families and all of society. And the culture provides the techniques to ensure the transformation of potentially destructive natural power into productive moral power: the practice of self-control and the cultivation of self-discipline. As it happens, self-control and self-discipline are also part and parcel of the behavior prescribed for subordinates. Thus, when women behave as subordinates should, when they practice self-control and cultivate self-discipline, they become, ultimately, in terms of culture and morality, superior to their husbands: they have, with time and effort, transcended the natural inferiority of being women while simultaneously imbuing themselves with productive moral power. This interpretation of women’s self-understandings and marital relations in the temple town demonstrates, I think, the importance of context in coming to any judgment about whether a group of women do or do not enjoy human rights (Lâm 2001). While liberalism’s goals of individual liberty and gender equality may not be met in the temple town, neither are its autonomous and disembodied subjects (Sandel 1982). Instead, as subjects, the Odia Hindu women of the temple town are fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional actors, the very particular products of their sociocultural world. It is only possible to appreciate their identity as subjects if one pays close attention to the context of their lives. And when one does so, it becomes clear that for these women, the goals that give meaning to life are not liberty and equality but purity, auspiciousness, and self-refinement. The three cultural orderings at play here do not necessarily correlate with each other, but when they do, they serve to make the older, postmenopausal, sexually inactive, no-longer-care-giving, still-married, and self-disciplined mother the purest, most auspicious, and most refined of women. While two of these cultural orderings—purity and auspiciousness—are the result of cultural and physiological factors and therefore, to some extent, outside a woman’s hands, the third, self-refinement, is entirely within her ability to achieve. Later chapters will discuss the cultural and physiological factors mentioned above in greater detail. But, for the moment, it needs to be emphasized that self-refinement is the path to moral superiority and self-empowerment. It is a long and arduous path, involving self-control and self-discipline, and not all women are capable of following it, but those who do become cultural artifacts par excellence, moral beings, superior to, and stronger than all men and those women who are not similarly selfdisciplined.

References Daniel, S. (1980). Marriage in Tamil culture: The problem of conflicting ‘models’. In S. S. Wadley (Ed.), The powers of Tamil women. Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Derné, S. (1994). Hindu men talk about controlling women: Cultural ideas as a tool of the powerful. Sociological Perspectives, 37(2), 203–227. Dumont, L. (1970). Homo hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Hauser, B. (2008). How to fast for a good husband? Reflections on ritual imitation and embodiment in Orissa (India). In A. Henn & K.-P. Koepping (Eds.), Rituals in an unstable world (pp. 227–245). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Hauser, B. (2010). Performative Constructions of Female Identity at a Hindu Ritual: Some Thoughts on the Agentive Dimension. In A. Hoffmann & E. Peeren (Eds.), Representation Matters: (Re)Articulating Collective Identities in a Postcolonial World (pp. 207-221). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Rodopi. Heesterman, J. (1985). The inner conflict of tradition: Essays in Indian ritual, kingship and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hershman, P. (1977). Virgin and mother. In I. Lewis (Ed.), Symbols and sentiments. London: Academic. Kakar, S. (1990). Intimate relations: Exploring Indian sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kinsley, D. R. (1993). Hinduism, a cultural perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall. Lâm, M. (2001). Multicultural feminism: Cultural concerns. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 10163–10169). New York: Elsevier. Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mandelbaum, D. (1970). Society in India: Continuity and change. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marglin, F. A. (1985). Wives of the God-king: The rituals of the devadasis of Puri. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali’s tongue: Cultural psychology and the power of “shame” in Orissa, India. In H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama (Eds.), Emotion and culture (pp. 241–284). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (2003). Dominating Kali: Hindu family values and tantric power. In R. McDermott & J. Kripal (Eds.), Encountering Kali: In the margins, at the center, in the West. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ortner, S. (1974). Is female to male as nature is to culture? In M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere (Eds.), Women, culture and society (pp. 67–88). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Raheja, G., & Gold, A. (1994). Listen to the Heron’s words. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ramanujan, A. K. (1986). Two realms of Kannada folklore. In S. H. Blackburn & A. K. Ramanujan (Eds.), Another harmony: New essays on the folklore of India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ramanujan, A. K. (1990). Is there an Indian way of thinking? In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 41–58). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ramanujan, A. K. (1993). On folk mythologies and folk puranas. In W. Doniger (Ed.), Purana perennis (pp. 101–120). Albany: SUNY Press. Reynolds, H. (1980). The auspicious married woman. In S. S. Wadley (Ed.), The powers of Tamil women. Syracuse: Maxwell school of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Sandel, M. J. (1982). Liberalism and the limits of justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Seymour, S. (1975). Child-rearing in India: A case-study in change and modernization. In T. R. Williams (Ed.), Socialization and communication in primary groups (pp. 41–58). The Hague: Mouton. Seymour, S. (1976). Caste/class and child rearing in a changing Indian town. American Ethnologist, 3(4), 783–796. Seymour, S. (1983). Household structure and status and expressions of affect in India. Ethos, 11(4), 263–277. Seymour, S. (1999). Women, family and childcare in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tokita-Tanabe, Y. (1999). Body, self and agency of women in contemporary Orissa. Unpublished PhD dissertation submitted at the University of Tokyo. Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http:// www.glocol.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/staff/tokita/pdf.html

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Trawick, M. (1990). Notes on love in a Tamil family. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vargas, C. (2010). Performative constructions of female identity at a Hindu ritual: Some thoughts on the agentive dimension. In A. Hoffmann & E. Peeren (Eds.), Representation matters: (Re) articulating collective identities in a postcolonial world (pp. 207–221). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Vatuk, S. (1975). The aging woman in India: Self-perceptions and changing roles. In A. de Souza (Ed.), Women in contemporary India and South Asia (pp. 142–163). New Delhi: Manohar Publications. von Stietencron, H. (1978). The advent of Visnuism in Orissa: An outline of its history according to archaeological and epigraphical sources from the Gupta period up to 1135. A. D. In A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, & G. C. Tripathi (Eds.), Cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa (pp. 1–30). New Delhi: Manohar. Wadley, S. (Ed.). (1980). The powers of Tamil women (South Asian series, Vol. 6). Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.

Chapter 5

Images of the Life Course

Contents Conceptions of Life.................................................................................................................. Talking of Significant Life Course Events and Experiences.................................................... The Two-Phase Model ............................................................................................................. The Five-Phase Model ............................................................................................................. Childhood or Balya Avastha................................................................................................. Youth/Maidenhood or Kishoro Avastha ............................................................................... Young Adulthood or Jouvana Avastha ................................................................................. Mature Adulthood or Prauda Avastha ................................................................................. Old Age or Briddha Avastha ................................................................................................ Odia Hindu Conceptualizations of the Female Life Course and the Dharmasastras .............. Levels of Life Satisfaction in the Past, Present and Future...................................................... Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

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In this chapter, Odia Hindu women of the temple town discuss the ways in which they conceptualize the life course, their understandings of significant or typical life experiences, and their expressions of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their past and present life situations as well as their expectations about the future. These data on the female life course describe a paradigm of domesticity and family life that spotlights marriage as the single, most significant, and transformative experience of a woman’s life. They also indicate that women in the temple town view the middle years of life—what they identify as “mature adulthood” (prauda)—as the most satisfying. Furthermore, these data imply that, from the perspective of the women who live here, self-development and maturity occur through the process of cultivating and maintaining relationships with others rather than the reverse. Thus, they speak to the opportunities women have, over the life course but most particularly during mature adulthood, for achieving control over their own lives as well as for influencing others. These findings are significant because they influenced substantially my understanding about the issues surrounding women’s wellbeing in the temple town and the connections that I saw between access to wellbeing and the family role a woman occupied. U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_5, © Springer India 2013

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They, therefore, affected who I sought to speak with during my second stint of fieldwork as well as the shape of my conversations with them—matters that are elaborated upon in the next chapter.

Conceptions of Life In several, lengthy conversations, during the summer of 1991, 66 women1 spoke to me about the processes of maturing and aging that occur during a person’s journey from birth to death. The women who participated in these conversations were recruited from families resident in the neighborhood by word of mouth, through networks of friendship. All of them are devout Hindus, belonging to families that have hereditary associations with the Lingaraj temple. Although income from temple work no longer suffices nor does temple work constitute a full-time occupation for men, at least one male member in each of the families of those who spoke with me continues to perform hereditary duties in the annual cycle of ritual activities that occur in this temple. The majority of these women, 53 in all, are married; of the rest, there are five widows, six young women who have yet to marry, and two who have left their husbands and chosen to return to their father’s homes. In addition, this group is predominantly Brahman: of the 19 non-Brahmans, 6 are Karans,2 5 Maharanas,3 and 8 Chassas.4 Contrary to expectations held by many scholars who work in South Asia (e.g., Lamb 2000), all the women I spoke with, both Brahman and non-Brahman, gave me what appear to be suitable answers about their chronological ages with confidence and without referring to notable events in their own lives or in the history of the temple town. Their familiarity with the concept of personal age may partly result from the care with which these people—again, both Brahman and non-Brahman—keep records of the dates and the times of birth so that their personal horoscopes can be cast accurately. Lives of people here are also continually punctuated by fasting and other ritual observances on full moon days (purnima), new moon days (amabasya), the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight (ekadashi), as well as the various times when the sun transits from one planetary home to another (sankranti). Being thus governed by the positions and movements of astral bodies makes them, perhaps, particularly aware of times and dates and the passage of years. In terms of age, 5 of these women are less than 21 years old, 19 women are between 21, and roughly 33 years of age while 14 of them are older than 55 years of age—the oldest woman being 78 years old. However, the largest group of women— 1 This particular set of women form part of a larger sample—that of 92 men and women—who spoke to me, during this time, on a variety of other matters. 2 See Chap. 2, p. 34. 3 See Chap. 2, p. 34. 4 See Chap. 2, p. 34.

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28 of them—is between 33 and 55 years of age. This system of age classification with four groups—less than 21 years of age; between 21 and the early 30s; between the early 30s and the mid-50s; and the late 50s and older—is an indigenous one that the women themselves volunteered. The significance of this system of classification will become clearer later in this chapter when I present these women’s understandings about the different phases that constitute a female life course. In terms of schooling, 15 have had no formal schooling, while about half of the rest had attended school for more than 9 years. However, no woman was completely illiterate. All, except the separated women, maintain traditional female roles in their households as daughter (jhio), son’s wife (bou), married husband’s mother (sasu), or old widow (burhi ma).

Talking of Significant Life Course Events and Experiences While a few of the women readily engaged in conversations about significant and/or typical life course events and experiences, most of the women who spoke to me needed a little push to set them talking. I would, therefore, initiate these conversations with some stimulus material, something to spark their thinking and channel their responses. I would present them with a sheet of paper on which I would make two dots, announce to them that these dots represented a person’s birth and death, and ask them to try and fill up the spaces between these dots with events and/or experiences that they saw as either significant or typical or both in an “ordinary person’s” (sadharano maniso) life. I would also tell them that I was interested in hearing about their own lives. I was thus expecting two narratives from these women: one, a description, in fairly generalized terms, of how life proceeds for the average person and the other and a detailed, fairly elaborate personal life history. But my expectation turned out to be naïve. Perhaps reflecting the Hindu sensitivity to context that Ramanujan (1990) comments upon so brilliantly and perhaps reflecting the near unanimity that exists among these people about the uniqueness of every human being,5 some of the older women I spoke to stated quite explicitly that they could hardly speak about the life of “an ordinary or average person.” Each person’s life has its particularity (biseshta). I can’t say this is how life goes for everyone. It depends on what kind of a family you are born into, what your jati is, whether you’re a boy or a girl, whether you’re the eldest child or the second or whatever, what your own capabilities are, what karma you have brought with you. Each person’s life is different from everyone else’s. How can I tell you this and this and this happens in everyone’s life? What can I tell you about those kinds of things? You know about them. Everyone does. You are born, you grow up, you grow old, you die. Do you want to hear that?

When confronted by such logic, I would modify my question, suggesting that perhaps they could set the parameters for our discussion—they could decide about the kind of family, the caste, and the personal talents of this ordinary person—and then tell me the ways in which life would progress for such a person. 5

See Chap. 3, p. 62.

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What finally happened was that most of the women blurred these two narratives. Their initial generalities began to get fleshed out with so many details and examples from their own lives that then asking them to speak exclusively of their own lives became pointless. Or if a woman began with her own life history, she rarely hesitated to generalize from it; again, it became superfluous to ask her to go back to the point of birth and begin again with the details of the life of an “ordinary person.” And so I ended up with vivid portrayals of what it is to live life as an Odia Hindu woman in this community, rich in detail and meanings, in which the general and the particular are so intertwined that it is difficult to disentangle the one from the other, and perhaps unnecessary to do so, since the people who live these lives see their personal experiences as segments of an expected general sequence and when they do not, they recognize and remark upon the contrasts. Toward the end of these conversations, I would also tell these women that I was particularly curious about how satisfied (santhushta) they felt when they looked 5 or 10 years back into the past, how satisfied they felt about the present, and what their expectations were when they looked 5 or 10 years ahead into the future. With respect to this last question about levels of life satisfaction, the women had to select from a range of five choices: that bad (mando) events/experiences predominated greatly (jyatheshtha adhika) over good (bhalo) ones (meriting a score of 1 point), that bad events/experiences predominated slightly (alpa adhika) (score of 2 points), that good and bad events/experiences were equal (dvita samano) (score of 3 points), that good events and experiences predominated slightly (score of 4 points), and that good events/ experiences predominated a great deal (score of 5 points). Apart from these women’s insistence on the significance of context, another point to note about these conversations is that about half a dozen women explicitly stated in their descriptions that the life stages they identified apply equally well to both men and women, although the kinds of duties that one has to perform and those to whom one owes distributive responsibilities vary according to whether one is a man or a woman. And when, during their narrations, they actually state that certain experiences are common to both men and women, I make that explicit in the excerpts that I have included, but usually, women assumed that an “ordinary person” was female and spoke in those terms. While the women I spoke to were neither uniformly thoughtful nor articulate, they did share a particular, perhaps culturally distinctive, way of viewing life and of discussing life-span changes: first, they tend to divide the life course into phases, though the number of phases they postulate varies, from as few as two to as many as four or five; second, they do not initially identify these phases with specific, personal ages and only when I pushed them did the more articulate of them suggest rough approximations of the ages that could be associated with each phase; third, they see life as a cycle—the end of life marking a return to the beginning and the last few months of life resembling the first few—rather than as a linear, unidirectional sequence of changes; and fourth and, for this work, most importantly, these women, almost without exception, perceive mature adulthood (prauda avastha) to be the most satisfying phase in a woman’s life. Another general finding is that when these women discuss life-span changes, they tend to speak in terms of changes in duties (kartabya) and variations in a sense

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of responsibility (daitva bhabo) to others. To them, such changes appear to be the most salient variables. Because such changes often accompany transitions from one family role to another—say, from daughter in one’s natal household to son’s wife in one’s conjugal household—role changes are a significant part of the idiom for discussing life course changes in the temple town. Furthermore, to the Odia Hindu woman, changes in roles and responsibilities both require and imply internal psychological transformations; as children grow and as people mature, intellectual development (baudhika vritti) occurs and knowledge of life and this world increases (samsariko gyano badhuchi), enabling an adequate performance of duties and a proper fulfillment of responsibilities. However, they rarely mention physical transformations per se, such as the development of motor skills in an infant or pubertal changes or menopause. In fact, they do not name such physical transformations as defining significant life course phases or events. The only exception is when these women speak of old age (briddha avastha); then, they do speak of the decline in physical and mental capabilities. But, it is as though this decline deserves mention—and this is a point that will be discussed in much greater detail later in this chapter—because there is nothing else to say about this last phase of life; old age is culturally defined as a time for disengagement from this world and its affairs, and therefore, there are no family duties or responsibilities associated with it. Many of the women, as reported above, tend to spontaneously postulate two, four, or five phases to describe life-span changes. Thus, some women describe life as divided between that spent in their fathers’ households and that lived in their husband’s mothers’ homes. However, the most common way of describing life-span changes is in five, sometimes four, phases. These phases are (1) childhood (balya avastha or pila avastha), (2) youth or maidenhood (kishoro avastha), (2) young adulthood (jouvana avastha), (3) mature adulthood (prauda avastha), and (4) increased or old age (briddha avastha). When only four phases are mentioned, the first two phases—balya avastha and kishoro avastha—are collapsed and classified as a single category: childhood or balya or pila avastha. Toward the end of each conversation when I realized that no associated ages were going to be forthcoming, I would probe; I would ask them if they could point to particular ages as marking the beginning or end of particular phases. And although a majority replied that it was possible to do so, few appeared comfortable actually doing so; only the more articulate would volunteer specific ages. This discomfort is quite understandable given that these women correlate life-span changes not to particular chronological ages but to shifts in family roles: thus, for them, a 25-year-old unmarried woman is still a ‘maiden’ while her brother’s wife, who may be 5 years younger than her, has already become a ‘young adult’ by virtue of being married, becoming sexually active, and shouldering the familial responsibilities that come with being a ‘new’ or junior wife. The chronological responses that were made suggest that childhood begins with birth and continues till the age of 7 or 8; youth or maidenhood lasts from 7 or 8 years of age till about 19/20; young adulthood begins around the early 20s and lasts till the early 30s; mature adulthood is from the early 30s till the mid to late 50s; and old age begins in the late 50s and ends with death. It should be noted that the four age classes that I mentioned earlier in this chapter, when discussing the age distribution of the 66

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women who spoke with me, match the ones just presented. Thus, the sample of 66 women consists of 5 women who are in the kishoro or youthful phase of life, 19 young adults or jouvan, 28 mature adults or prauda and 14 who are old or briddha. An intriguing feature of all these descriptions is that while all women generally agree about what characterizes maidenhood, young adulthood and mature adulthood, there is considerable and systematic variation in the narratives that are produced about old age. Interestingly, the narratives of old age diverge depending on whether the narrator is herself old or not, the experientially based stories of old age being strikingly more poignant than those based on mere observation. I should note that these conceptualizations of the female life course do not resemble the stage models formulated by some Western theorists like Jung (1933), Erikson (1950, 1959), Buhler (1933), Neugarten (1968, 1973) and more recently, by Baltes (1987), Baltes and Baltes (1990) and Baltes et al. (1992). These Western stage models propose an irreversible sequence of changes that build upon previous stages and imply steady and continual personal improvement (cf. Ryff and Heincke 1983). Odia Hindu women do not see people as continuing to develop with age, as becoming progressively more differentiated mentally, as functioning at a higher level. Instead, indigenous discourse about life-span development maintains that growth and development of the body (saririko vritti) reaches its peak during young adulthood and the mind’s functions (bicharoshilta, bodhasakti, bibechana) achieve maximum differentiation during mature adulthood. After this, people here claim that there is a steady decline in physical and mental capabilities, at least for the ordinary run of humanity, and as death approaches, there is a reversion to early childhood. And so, most of these women would agree with Vatuk’s informants in saying that old age is a “second childhood” (1990: 67) (dvitya pila avastha), or a “second childishness” (dvitya pilaliya). The following two sections present the two models used by Odia Hindu women of the temple town to describe life course changes. No woman describes either of the models in detail. Each is a composite of what all have to say—the points that they agree upon, illuminated by the details that some of the more thoughtful women articulated.

The Two-Phase Model About one-third of the women (23 members of the sample) believe that the lives of all women are divided into two main phases: life in one’s father’s household (bapa gharo) and life in one’s husband’s mother’s household (sasu gharo) after marriage. These women view marriage as the demarcator, the single defining experience (sabuto gurutvapoorna anubhabo) of a woman’s life, bringing with it an enormous increase in distributive responsibilities to be shouldered and discharged. It involves the most profound transformation of themselves and their lives: they are transplanted into an almost completely unfamiliar milieu, surrounded by critical and suspicious strangers, presented with new relationships, and asked to perform physical labor that is as heavy as it is unaccustomed. In her father’s household, before marriage, a woman is indulged as a guest (kunia) who does not belong, whose stay is limited, and who will soon be on her

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way, but in her husband’s mother’s household, she is considered to be an in-marrying yet permanent member of the household, with her own particular place in it, and so, she shares fully in the managing and running of the household. For those familiar with north Indian society, the temple town women’s way of describing the structural shift that marriage involves—from father’s house to husband’s mother’s house—is likely to ring a little strange because north Indian women, almost invariably, talk of the shift in a diametrically opposite way: from mother’s home (mai-ke, naihaar) where they are pampered and indulged to their husband’s father’s home (sasuraal) where life is a burdensome and serious business. But the distinctively temple town description of this shift derives from a peculiarity in Odia Hindu kin terms of address. This peculiarity has to do with the fact that a woman is addressed as bou (son’s wife) not just by her husband’s parents but by her own children as well: Odia Hindus do not address their mothers as ma or “mother” but as “son’s wife.” And in fact, when Odia Hindus do address someone as ma (as they do when referring to the various aspects of the great goddess of Hinduism or addressing a little girl or a strange woman), the primary meaning of the term is almost never “mother” but rather “woman” or, perhaps, “lady” would be a better gloss, because ma does carry connotations of respect. Ma, thus, appears to be an acknowledgement of female reproductive potential rather than of a biological relationship. After marriage, therefore, when women talk about their natal households, the only way they can refer to it, without awkwardness, is as their “father’s homes.” And their habit of referring to their conjugal households as their husbands’ mothers’ homes (sasu gharo), rather than their husbands’ fathers’ homes (sasuraal or sasuro gharo), as is customary in north Indian society, reflects, perhaps, the femalecentered character of temple town households: women organize and manage almost all household activities. Men earn the income that the household subsists on, but how that income is distributed and spent depends entirely on the women, especially the senior ones. So sasu gharo is an accurate description of the power and decision structure within temple town households. And, thus, in the course of discussing the important events that define the female life course, when young women speak of their prospective lives in their conjugal households, they do not ignore this possibility for this future exercise of power and influence.

The Five-Phase Model While the two-phase model has its adherents, a majority of the women6 (30) see a woman’s life as consisting of the five phases mentioned earlier in this chapter: (1) childhood, (2) maidenhood, (3) young adulthood, (4) mature adulthood, and (5) old age. What follows is a nonspecific, fairly general description of the way life 6

There is a minority of six women who discuss changes in the life course in terms of a four-phase model: these are the women who collapse the first two phases—balya avastha and kishoro avastha—into a single phase, childhood or balya avastha. By collapsing these two phases, these women’s descriptions lose much in terms of detail and richness. Because they give less detail, I leave these particular accounts out of this chapter.

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proceeds for a woman7 born into a Hindu family, either in the temple town itself or in rural Odisha, and marrying into a family8 here. Much of the language used in the descriptions that follow is directly taken from what these women said in Odia, as literal a translation as I could manage so as to convey the texture of these women’s thoughts about life and its different phases.

Childhood or Balya Avastha Odia Hindu women idealize childhood, describing it as a time of complete irresponsibility (daitvasunya) and, consequently, a period of undiluted, complete happiness (bisuddho khushi, pura khushi). As Gitanjali Mishra, 29 years old and herself the mother of a 3-year-old daughter says: What does a child know from the time it’s born till it is five or six years old? This is the time for restlessness (chakalato). A child will only play, roam around, eat something. It has no knowledge. In whatever environment it is raised, it will learn from that, it will do whatever it is told. This time of life is like that, it (the child) has no responsibility, it doesn’t know what it has come into this world for, father-mother give it food to eat, it eats and wanders around, it plays, it learns the lessons it is told to learn.

Odia Hindus describe the young child as soft and tender, innocent and helpless, and completely dependent on her mother for her sustenance and her survival. But this dependency, they say, is more than compensated for by the inordinate charm that a child possesses, a charm that captivates all those who care for her. They view a young child as extremely malleable, absorbing influences from the environment she is raised in as well as from the people with whom she comes into contact. She is unformed, not ready, neither physically nor mentally, for instruction or education or discipline till she is at least 5 years of age. Odia Hindu women state quite explicitly that gender is of no consequence at this time of life: “whether son or daughter, life proceeds in exactly the same way.” Neither as a daughter (jhio) nor as a son (puo) does a child have any duties to perform or responsibilities to fulfill and children are completely ignorant of the reason for being born. This lack of duties, this absence of responsibilities, and this ignorance of life’s purpose are the conditions that make for the child’s happiness. The other seven women involved in these conversations had very little to say about these questions, preferring to remain quiet. I am unable to decide whether this was because they had no thoughts on the subject or because they disliked being interviewed or because they chose to keep their own counsel. When pressed to speak about such things, the response was invariably: “What shall I say? You know everything. What is there left for me to say?” (mu kaun kohibi? apano to sabu januchanti. au kaun ochi mute kohiba paiin?) 7 Those women, who denied the possibility of being able to speak in generalized terms of a person’s progress through life, explicitly stated that they could only speak for an Odia Hindu woman and so narrated the way life proceeds for her. 8 Son’s wives in most temple town families come either from other families within the temple town itself (this was more common a generation ago) or from the districts of Cuttack or Puri—women marrying into temple town families do not come from distances greater than this. The farthest these in-marrying women have to travel upon getting married is roughly 3 or 4 hours by bus.

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In these descriptions of the earliest phase of life, Odia Hindus are united in stating that the mother is irreplaceable in a child’s life. Ideally, the mother nourishes and cares for the child in every way till she is 5 years old. If at any point during this period a child is removed from her mother, she will suffer, both physically and mentally. The most important ingredient necessary for a child’s successful mental and physical growth, therefore, is close proximity to her mother.

Youth/Maidenhood or Kishoro Avastha Despite the phase of life having changed from childhood to youth or maidenhood, there is no change in family role occupied—a daughter remains a daughter. Women say that, in the early years of youth, children’s intellects grow so that they are able to discriminate between right and wrong. Mothers say: Just as when they were very small we told them, ‘Learn to walk, learn to eat, eat with your right hand, don’t eat with your left hand, do this good work, don’t do that bad work’…just as we tell them about the difference between good and bad, in the same way, their intellect grows and they learn to distinguish between what is good and bad.

This is the time when children begin to pray for themselves; Odia Hindu women say: This god we believe in, we tell the children to pray to him in the morning and the evening. Till the child is about five or six, the mother herself has to do the prayers for the child but after this age, the child gradually becomes able to pray for herself.

Around 7–8 years of age, a child begins to imitate (anukaran) the behavior of those around her. A young girl, women in the temple town say, loves to follow her mother and the other women of the household, sitting by them in the kitchen and observing them do their work—fetching water, cutting vegetables, and cooking— and she will imitate them in her play. During this phase of life, differences between girls and boys begin to get elaborated. The women in the household take it upon themselves to teach young daughters about the characteristics of the caste of women (stri jatiro guno). And as is commonplace in the temple town, such instruction takes the form of stories from the Puranas, stories about Savitri and Anasuya, about Kunti and Madri,9 and Draupadi and Sita, stories that explore and define proper conduct for women (stridharma) and her nature (stri jatinkoro prakriti). These stories teach quite explicitly that a woman should be loyal and chaste and that true power (asalo sakti) lies in fidelity and chastity (swamibhakti o satitva). Daughters are taught that to be refined (bhadra, sabhya) which means to be aware of one’s place in the family and society and that decorum, deference, and circumspection characterize an ideal woman’s conduct.

9

Kunti and Madri are the first and second wives of King Pandu, the father of the five Pandavas. Kunti is the mother of these princes who fought a fratricidal war described in the Mahabharata.

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They are told that it is essential that they cultivate a sense of responsibility toward others. And they are given practical training in this respect by being made to take care of the younger children in the household, by running small errands for the women of the household, and by helping out in the kitchen—keeping an eye on the rice as it is cooking or on the milk so that it does not boil over and stirring the curry so that it does not burn at the bottom of the vessel. According to women here, maidenhood is a critical (nirnayako) juncture in a girl’s life, because it determines her future and it decides her chances of living a good life as a grown woman. This is the time when a girl has to build herself in the proper way. If during this period she follows the right path (bhalo bato), systematically applies herself to her studies, as well as to what she is taught by the older women in the family, then there is no problem. It is, therefore, absolutely essential (nihati darkar) that the people who guide a young girl—her parents, her teachers, and her elders—are able to direct her toward that right path. If they are able to give her sound instructions (sikhya) on her future duties as a son’s wife (bou), and if the daughter is attentive, and if she takes to this discipline (anushasan) well, then her future life will be bright (ujjvalo). But those daughters who at this time are insufficiently disciplined (shasanhinya), who do not obey their superiors, and who mix with the wrong people, for them, the future is going to be hopeless and bleak (nirashjanak). This is also the time that young girls become aware that their future lies elsewhere, in someone else’s house. They internalize the idea that they are mere “guests” (kunia) in their natal homes, transient visitors, who are just passing through. Not only is this phase of life a critical juncture in a girl’s life, but some women in the temple town go so far as to describe maidenhood as the “most dangerous” (atyanto maratmiko) phase of the female life course and as “full of crises and hardships” (vipadajanako)—a time of great temptations, when a girl could quite easily be led astray. They say that it is during this period that a young girl begins to notice the boys who live in the neighborhood (podhisa-sahi); she may find the friends her brothers bring home handsome and attractive. If she is without care, guidance (updesho o jatna), and good advice (paramarsha) during this phase of life, a girl may stumble (podhijibo) and make really serious mistakes that she will regret for the rest of her life, such mistakes as will shroud her future in darkness. It behooves an elder sister, therefore, or an elder brother’s wife or the mother to keep a “constant and watchful eye” on the daughter (satarko rohibo). And yet, while emphasizing the need for strict supervision, Odia Hindu women will also say that the effectiveness of such supervision is outside their control—it depends ultimately on the girl herself and on her own qualities that make her open to these kinds of good influences. But despite the restrictions and supervision of this phase, most women recall the years spent in their fathers’ households with great fondness. Many of them echo Mamata when she says: In my father’s house, as a daughter, I never knew anything.10 When I became twelve, I gained knowledge11 and after that I stopped going to school. But I still didn’t know how to 10

“Never knew anything” means “complete ignorance,” an ignorance that is blissful because all your needs are met and because you suffer neither pain nor lack of anything. 11 She achieved menarche.

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eat properly—I would half-finish my food … I would leave the thali (metal plate) and wander off. I never used to comb my hair, mother would do it, she would do everything for me. I never did anything for myself. Enough, all I did was eat something, leave the dirty vessels where they were and get up and walk off. In this way, I lived. I didn’t know what was good or bad or what was sorrow or what it was to lack something. Mother would try to discipline us a little, she would tell us, ‘This is what you, as a daughter, should do, this is the right thing to do. Oh, God (hai prabhu), what will you do when you become a son’s wife, when you go to your husband’s mother’s house? You will have to do this and that, you will have to do everything. All that penetrated my head was that I would one day have to go to my husband’s mother’s house … that I couldn’t avoid it. Mother would teach us many things … how to cut petticoats, how to cut and sew blouses; she would not let us mix with third-rate people, she would tell us only to do good things, she would read to us and tell us to read the Puranas.

Thus, according to these women’s descriptions, maidenhood represents that time during the life course when a daughter begins to learn about the duties and responsibilities of a woman in this life and becomes aware that her obligations are not toward her natal household but to an as yet unknown household of strangers and that leaving home is an inevitable and essential element in becoming an adult. A growing daughter realizes gradually that everyone is born into this world to do work (karma), to fight life’s battles, and to become entangled in life’s numerous crises and that only when old age comes around will there again be freedom from duties and responsibilities. This is the time, then, when the unclouded happiness of early childhood slowly slips away never to return.

Young Adulthood or Jouvana Avastha For the Odia Hindu women of the temple town, maidenhood ends and young adulthood begins with marriage. Young adulthood signifies, for both men and women, the beginning of domesticity (grahastha asrama arambha koranti). It marks the introduction to the moving, fluid world of family and relationships. It is also described as a time of uncertainty, change, and lack of peace (ashthirata, paribartan, o ashanti). Young adulthood marks the time when “one gets tied down in relationships” (bandhanre abadha heijibo). Odia Hindus define it as the time when “one’s power of understanding comes into one’s own,” “when one realizes one’s responsibilities toward the family,” and “when the weight of one’s distributive responsibilities settles on one’s head.” When women talk of this period, they often begin by saying that it is as difficult for men as it is for women. For a man, as a husband, he gets a new wife but he has to get to know her, he has to get her to like him. To manage with her isn’t easy. As his wife, she is his responsibility and he has to do what he can to make her satisfied. He has to balance his desire for this new wife with his duties towards his parents, and that—if he wants to do the right thing—isn’t easy. And for a woman too, when she gets married, as a ‘new’ son’s wife, she has to live with new people, in a new environment, doing new kinds of work. This is a difficult time for her too. As a ‘new’ son’s wife, she has distributive responsibilities towards her new husband, towards his parents, towards his brothers and sisters, towards the children that are borne of the marriage and finally towards herself. Marriage creates new relationships and changes

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old relationships and that is so for both men and women and to live with these changes, with these new things, is never easy.

Another additional reason for describing young adulthood as a period of stress and uncertainty for both men and women is the modern problem of unemployment. Today, in the temple town, every household has unemployed sons and tension within some families runs high. As so many of the mothers say: When young men sit around useless (bekar) then their heads too don’t work properly; they don’t value good advice, they are always frustrated and we too are frustrated with them. After all, everything continues to weigh down upon us. They come to us for money to spend on good or bad or whatever and we get irritated and when we can’t satisfy their wants, they get even more irritated. These are the conditions that prevail. What can we do? How do we survive? We survive because of the mutual sharing that exists within families, between the seniors in a family and other members, but this kind of unemployment amongst young men destroys such sharing. They can’t give anything to others, to us. They can only take. There is no mutual sharing—and that destroys families.

Thus, young adulthood, according to the older women, is the time when a man shoulders his responsibilities toward his parents and other members of the family and starts giving back. While such reciprocity may sometimes be onerous, the situation becomes even more distressing when a young man cannot satisfy his obligations because of a lack of suitable employment. And when a man cannot perform his duties as a son and a brother, then his wife, too, finds it more difficult to perform her duties as a son’s wife, and oftentimes, she becomes more vulnerable to her husband’s family’s criticism of her conduct as a son’s wife. However, as these women begin describing in greater detail their own experiences, it soon becomes clear that, during this phase of life, it is as women, as junior wives, that they face particular kinds of difficulties. Marriage marks the transition from maidenhood to young adulthood, from daughter to “new” or junior son’s wife (nua bou, sana ja). The rituals of marriage explicitly begin the process of transforming the woman’s physical substance into that of the patrilineage that is receiving her as a bride: she is being “remade” and “reconstructed” (see Lamb 2000), and her relationships with her natal family are forever altered. Young adulthood, therefore, is a transformative period in a woman’s life—a time when she is literally recast into a different kind of being. Next, women, but rarely men, leave their natal homes at marriage. And the transition to a husband’s mother’s home is almost never smooth or without stress. As Mamata says: In one’s father’s house, there is always someone who runs after you to see if you have eaten or not. Why, even when I was 15-years-old, my mother would follow me with a plate of food in her hands, coaxing me to eat! But after you get married, as a ‘new’ son’s wife if you don’t eat, you don’t eat, no one bothers. If you don’t eat at the right time, only you will suffer, no one else, and so for the first time in life you have to take responsibility for yourself.

Women compare the transition from daughter to “new” son’s wife to “tumbling from heaven to earth”: After coming to the husband’s mother’s (sasu’s) household, we suffer a great deal. There are so many hardships, we have to take care of all these people…husband’s mother,

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husband’s father, his brothers, his sisters. We used to be completely free. At home, mother loved me, father loved me, uncles and aunts, they all loved me. We lacked for nothing. After that, to come here, to be a ‘new’ son’s wife, was like being in prison. As ‘new’ son’s wife, we weren’t able to eat something if we wanted to, we couldn’t even boil a handful of rice, we had to ask husband’s mother for permission. After entering this place, we felt ‘What else is there to happen in life? How will we survive here, what should we do, how shall we carry on?’ And then there is this rule that after we come to our husband’s mother’s house, even if our parents want to, they can’t do anything, they can’t take their daughter home, and so in husband’s mother’s house, we have to carry on, whatever the good and the bad, whatever the conveniences and the inconveniences, we have to carry on here. In those days, without asking husband’s mother permission, we couldn’t go upstairs, we couldn’t go downstairs, we couldn’t go to the front of the house, we couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t go anywhere. No, the kind of freedom we had when we were daughters, growing up with our parents— today, we say we want this and it would come to us, we want to do this thing and that would happen. When we first came, it was just like tumbling from heaven to earth and after falling, we had to experience a lot of suffering—for at least five to six years.

Thus, women are nearly unanimous in describing young adulthood as a time of suffering (kashta paiba samayo) and a time to cope with unfamiliar situations (aparichito sthiti pariothibaro samayo). The questions that dominate above all else in their minds are “how will we survive in the middle of all this? What should we do? How shall we carry on?” Yet, these questions do not necessarily perplex them—for they do know the answers. In the years that they lived in their fathers’ households, they have seen their brothers’ wives face the same challenges and have observed some of them succeed, and others not, at the task of assimilating with one’s conjugal household. Furthermore, they have also been taught quite explicitly that the only way to survive and succeed as a junior wife in one’s husband’s mother’s house was to cultivate a proper sense of responsibility toward the husband’s family and perform service (sewa) with total attention and sincerity. During these early days of marriage, doing sewa basically boils down to getting to know what each person’s preference and pleasure is and taking that into account while cooking and serving them. Thus, they say, you have to learn about every member of the family, each person’s particular taste, and his or her specific preferences—who likes more spices (masala), who likes more salt, who doesn’t like oil, who likes sweets, who likes to eat between meals, and who has to be coaxed to eat. And then, you have to act upon this knowledge sincerely and do everything you can to satisfy the needs and desires of family members, both young and old.

Mature Adulthood or Prauda Avastha During this phase of life, a woman is no longer a junior wife; she has matured into a senior wife (purna bou). As a senior wife, as a mature adult, she has a clearer sense of her goals—what she hopes to achieve, in particular, for her children, and for others in the family. And, finally, she is beginning to control the activities of the household, beginning to have a say in what is done and how it is done. Mature adulthood,

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therefore, marks the period when a woman becomes actively involved in the business of living and when she begins to control and decide to some degree the activities of her world. Women have already given birth to their children during the previous life phase, and now, during mature adulthood, they have to complete the task of raising them to become human beings12 (maniso koriba ochi). The husband’s parents are likely to be aging, their health is waning (tankoro svasthya saruchi), and the care of ailing parents takes up a lot of the household’s time and resources. Senior wives are, therefore, completely absorbed in household activities, fully entangled in trying to manage the family’s affairs, and constantly thinking of what is good for the family, what is bad, how to achieve the good, how to avoid the bad, and they go from resolving one family crisis to another. While these women acknowledge the crisis-ridden nature of mature adulthood, they, simultaneously, emphasize the range of opportunities available to them for ordering their own lives and of those around them. During this phase, a woman has the greatest control over future events (bhabisya upore sabuta adhiko niyantrano) and her ability for getting things done peaks (karma korba jogyata sarbadhika houchi). The time has come for a senior wife to take care of her world, and if she does not do so now, Odia Hindu women say that she will forever regret her lack of action and she will certainly suffer in the future. Planning and making arrangements for the future involve ensuring that children are directed in the proper way, taught their responsibilities toward their parents and other members of the family, and told the crucial importance of doing well in school—if such precautions are not taken, women in this community warn that one’s old age will be dark and devoid of contentment. Such talk about making arrangements for the future is framed in terms of the responsibility one has toward others— one’s responsibility toward one’s children, one’s responsibility toward other members of the family, and one’s responsibility toward oneself. Women also emphasize the need to live within a budget; as they see it, one of the hallmarks of a responsible adult is one who ensures that the household’s expenses do not exceed its income. While everyone emphasizes the need to cultivate such a sense of responsibility, these women concede that not everyone has the same capacity for assuming or discharging responsibilities, and those who are less talented or less skilled in this respect will inevitably suffer in the future. Toward the end of this phase, when she welcomes her eldest son’s “new” wife into the family, a senior wife becomes a husband’s mother (sasu). The entry of a “new” son’s wife indicates that the husband’s mother’s working life (karmamayo jibano) is drawing to a close. Now, finally, women acknowledge how tough life has been. After constantly struggling on life’s battlefield (jiban kshetrare sangharsh korikori), they recognize the toll it has exacted of them. And many, although

12

From the perspective of the people who live in the temple town, the process of becoming human is a long drawn-out one, usually culminating with marriage for both men and women. Birth is but the first step in this process—a process requiring both physical maturation through the passage of time and cultural construction through the undergoing of several rituals of refinement (samskaras).

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certainly not all (see Cohen 1995), claim that they are finally ready to acknowledge how tired they are. Women tell themselves: At last, I can now sit down and take rest (chutti). A ‘new’ son’s wife has come into the house and I can sit back and let others take care of the work…let them manage the travails of this life.

As Mamata, who is fast approaching this time herself, says, “a somewhat lighter time of life is coming around for us” (cf. Lamb 2000).

Old Age or Briddha Avastha As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, old age or briddha avastha is the one phase of life in which the accounts of those who are yet to experience it diverge quite markedly from those who are living it. Despite this divergence, however, all narratives agree that complete dependence (sampoorna adhinta) on others is the defining feature of this phase of life. For those who are already in this phase, such dependence breeds real anxiety. Like Vatuk’s north Indians (1990) who fear that adult children will not reciprocate the care lavished on them during childhood and youth, the elderly in the temple town also worry that their children may not live up to their responsibilities. Renu Bewa, 72 years old and a widow, acknowledges that when one accepts old age, one is also accepting a position of complete dependency. She, therefore, describes old age as the unhappiest period (sabutu dukhamayo samayo) in a person’s life. She says: In the age of truth (satya yuga), children felt devotion to father and mother (pitrubhakti o matrubhakti). Serving one’s parents equaled serving god. But nowadays where are there such feelings? In this age of degeneration (kali yuga) all that is lost and when there are no longer such feelings, then to depend on others is painful. In this kali yuga, people may be generally happy throughout their lives, but in old age all of them suffer. Only in degenerate times does this kind of thing happen, this kind of sorrow in old age. And to add to this sorrow, are all the infirmities of the old body. In old age, the body dries up, the blood dries up, there is no longer any phlegm—all the phlegm has dried up. There is only wind and more wind and all the diseases that have been held within the body all these years finally come out.

And Sarala, the 78-year-old widowed grandmother of the Nanda household, well advanced in her journey through old age, agrees, saying: This is the time of life when one definitely becomes dependent on one’s children. We have faith that when the son’s wife comes, that as much it cost us to raise our children, the son’s wife will do as much for us—that she will cook and give us a little something to eat, that she will take care of our heads and bodies. If she is good, then there is no problem, or if there are no sons, if the daughter’s husband is good, then there is no problem—our life will go well. But if not, if today the son’s wife doesn’t want to take care of her husband’s mother and father—then a son, what will a son do? What happens usually after a man marries? After marriage, their minds become somewhat of a different kind. What happens to them is that they become husbands to their wives, they become fathers, and their minds become different. All that affection (mamata) that they had while they were being cared for by their

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father and mother, if that was sixteen parts, then twelve parts go away, twelve parts of the affection they have for their father-mother, it goes away and only what remains is there for the old people. But this is the time that the father-mother hope to feel more affection from their son but the time they hope to get more affection is the time the son has no affection for them and so what the father-mother hope for—that is never fulfilled. Usually as we grow old, our intellect declines and as our intellect gets weaker and weaker we depend more and more on our children. The same way in which very small children depend on their fathermothers, in the way small children are cared for by their father-mother, we old people want to be cared for just like that by our children—but it doesn’t always happen that way. And then, uncertainty, anxiety and worry are born in the mind.

Thus, those who are already old emphasize their feelings of helplessness, dependence, and anxiety. Those who have yet to experience this phase acknowledge this dependence but have little patience with it, seeking, instead, to underscore the kinds of physical and psychological changes that occur in old age making it, from their perspective, the most unappealing (beakarshito) of life’s various phases. In contrast to how the old describe old age, the consensus in the temple town among the not-yet old is: With old age, men and women can see the end of life approaching. This should be a time for rest and relaxation (bishram) but, instead, they become more and more hard-hearted (nishthur) about everything, and they become more and more greedy (lobhi). Their desire for having new experiences grows: I will do this, I will do that, I will eat this, I will keep that. And then during this period, the senses (indriyas) stop functioning. As time passes, the old become more and more irritable in nature. They’re always irritated. They don’t like anyone. They get angry with everyone, even with their son’s son, they get annoyed. They are only concerned with their own selfish needs. And they create trouble in the households in which they live. This is how they are in old age. The senses have stopped functioning as they used to. No knowledge of any duties remains…All that is left now is to for the physical body to exhibit various kinds of diseases. And if you live long enough, you will eventually reach a stage when even your own son’s wife will stop serving you rice.

Satyabhama, Sudhansubabau’s wife, is in her early 50s, and so, not yet on the threshold of old age herself. But she takes care of her husband’s mother, a 90-yearold widow who is both hard of hearing and extremely demanding—an experience that she clearly does not relish. And, she says: With old age comes anger, and more anger. With old age, all that happens within the house, all the quarrels that occur, all the little disagreements that happen, are told to the whole world. Some old people can’t see well, others have grown deaf—in this way they suffer. Some will urinate where they are lying, others will spit where they are sitting. All that, we son’s wives have to clean up—when things get dirty, we have to clean them up.

And Mamata adds: How old people are treated depends on how physically fit they are, to what extent they have retained their mental faculties. If someone is always sick, always needing the care of others, then family members will find that person annoying. Ill-health also means that you are no longer taking on any duties and responsibilities, others are doing that, sons and their wives, they are doing everything now, they have taken on the burden of running the house. Gradually, an old person becomes more and more useless within the family, the old person also starts to feel more and more useless and soon, others begin to ignore you. After 60/65, an old person relapses into childhood, he is irritable, demanding, unreasonably

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angry. If you are fortunate in your son’s wife, then you can at least hope that she will ask about you.

And Manasi Patra, barely 25, is even less tolerant of old people’s foibles and failings when she talks of her husband’s father’s brother’s widow—her khudi sasu. According to her: That old woman is always irritable (chidua)! She is constantly muttering (bakbak bakbak koruchi); she is always making cruel remarks to our husband’s mother, making her cry. When I look at khudi sasu I think old age is like the fire that is about to go out. Just before the flame finally goes out, it hisses and spurts and burns bright red. All that irritability, all that anger (raago) is like the bright red of the flame, ineffective because it is no longer really hot though it continues to be noisy.

A remarkable feature about this phase of life is that no one identifies any particular family role with it; no one mentions any duties or responsibilities associated with this phase. Clearly, people here see old age as a time when one has outlived one’s utility as a person; one is no longer a social being involved in the distribution of resources within the family and the community, and to that extent, one becomes relatively peripheral to the concerns of others. Once an old woman stops playing her part in the management of household affairs, she may continue to be consulted for some time by her son’s wives on domestic matters, but soon enough, such consultations become more and more perfunctory till, one day, they stop entirely. Women tend to see the mental and physical infirmities that accompany old age as making any positive involvement in household affairs close to impossible. While no one explicitly associates old age with widowhood, being married or not becomes almost irrelevant during this phase of life. Whether married or not, old, infirm women are referred to and addressed as old mother (burhi ma), not husband’s mother (sasu). And, as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, the primary meaning of “ma” is “woman” or “lady,” rather than “mother,” and that is how the term “burhi ma” should be understood—more as “old lady” than as “old mother.” Another noticeable feature is that old age, in and of itself, brings with it no special privileges. The lack of special privileges may come as a surprise to those who believe that in more traditional societies, people revere the old simply because they are old. This impression does not stand up to ethnographic scrutiny—at least not in the temple town. There certainly are culturally prescribed habits that old people can adopt so as to earn the respect, perhaps even the reverence, of others within the family and their community—but they are not necessarily easy to practice. All these cultural prescriptions have to do with adopting renunciatory practices; they garner the approval of others because such practices are seen as the most appropriate for someone approaching death and final disengagement from the world. Thus, old people are encouraged to fast, to meditate, to attend religious discourses, to go on pilgrimages, and to engage in yogic discipline and scriptural study. With respect to those old people who do not or cannot adopt such behaviors, people in the temple town have little patience, castigating them as having relapsed into a “second childhood”—as dependent as little children are on others for their survival but without a trace of the charm that the latter have in such abundance.

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Odia Hindu Conceptualizations of the Female Life Course and the Dharmasastras It is instructive to compare this contemporary five-phase conceptualization of the female life course to two traditional models of the ideal Hindu life that can be found in the dharmasastras, the ancient law books on social custom and practice. The first of these is the rather well-known four-stage model of the ideal life course that applies only to upper-caste men and the second is a model of the female life course that Katherine Young (1981) has gleaned from her study of these texts. The four stages of the first model are those of student (brahmacharin), householder (grhastha), forest-dweller (vanaprastha), and renouncer (sannyasin)—with each stage having its distinguishing moral code (asramadharma). Superficially, the traditional classification appears to grant equal importance to each of the four stages. But as Dumont (1960) has noted, that is the hardly the case: there are two crucially important stages, that of householder and renouncer. The first stage—that of the celibate student—is preparation for the relational life of the householder and the third one—that of forest-dweller—is transitional from the fully relational householder to the a-relational renouncer. There are several differences between this traditional four-stage model and the five-phase conceptualization of the temple town—the most obvious being the discrepancy in the number of phases involved and the fact that the former pertains only to upper-caste men while the latter applies only to upper-caste women living in the temple town. A more pertinent difference is that the temple town conceptualization lacks an explicitly defined transitional phase that separates mature adulthood from old age. However, there is an important similarity, and it has to do with the centrality of the householder and the mature adult woman—both fully relational—in the two models. As far as the dharmasastric model of the female life course is concerned, Young claims that Hindu women are supposed to live their lives in “three ‘acts’: maidenhood (kaumarya), marriage (vivaha) and, should the husband die first, sati or optionally, widowhood (vaidhavya)” (1981: 937). She says that in every “act,” the point of orientation is the husband. Thus, maidenhood is spent in maintaining fasts and performing rituals in order to marry a good husband (see Hauser 2008); marriage itself is a period for serving one’s husband devotedly, and widowhood, if one is unfortunate enough to become a widow, is a time for atoning for the sin of allowing one’s husband to die through performing austerities and penances and praying to be reunited with him in the next life. The striking similarity between this dharmasastric model of a woman’s life course and that suggested by the women of the temple town has to do with the overwhelming and continuing importance of marriage in a woman’s life. But there are differences. The first, of course, is that no woman in the temple town mentions widowhood as a routine, to-be-expected phase in a woman’s life. This is hardly surprising. Given the stigma and inauspiciousness attached to widowhood, it is the goal of every Hindu wife, however unhappily married, to avoid becoming a widow as far as is humanly possible. Instead, women in the temple town speak of old age.

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And the second is that this dharmasastric formulation emphasizes the continual and cumulative intellectual and moral development that women experience when they adopt renunciatory practices as married mothers-in-law, during the latter part of mature adulthood—practices that include fasting, silence, meditation, yogic discipline, scriptural study, and going on pilgrimages. The proximate reason for adopting such practices is to gain spiritual merit and thereby postpone widowhood, but they have the additional advantage of helping women develop intellectually so that they can speculate on the meaning of life, look at their aging bodies, and recognize the ephemerality and illusoriness of the manifest world. Thus, in this traditional formulation of the female life course, rigorous intellectual introspection is supposed to characterize the last phase of life—not the helplessness and dependency and certainly not the “second childishness” that many in the temple town claim characterizes the female experience of old age. In this respect, the traditional formulation resembles Western phase models (Jung 1933; Buhler 1933 [1959]; Erikson 1950, 1959; Neugarten 1968, 1973; Baltes 1987; Baltes and Baltes 1990; Baltes et al 1992) that imply steady and continual personal improvement (cf. Ryff and Heincke 1983) more than it does the conceptualization put forward by the women of the temple town.

Levels of Life Satisfaction in the Past, Present and Future Many women were a little reluctant to answer the question relating to past, present, and future life satisfaction—at least initially. Women would remark that one can hardly even depend on the breath that one inhales and exhales (nishvasre kichi vishwas nahi), so how can one talk about the future. Others would preface their answers by saying: Why do you ask such questions? What can we say but that humans survive on hope—what else keeps us alive?

Still others would say: Can life be all good or all bad? How can it be so? Is it always hot? Don’t the rains come after the summer heat? Is it always day or always night? Isn’t good and bad always mixed up in life? How would we know we are happy if we didn’t know what it was to be sad?

But ultimately, they did respond to my question and chose one of the five responses (see p. 104) with which I presented them. As I have mentioned earlier, these questions relating to life satisfaction were asked in terms of good and bad experiences rather than as “positive” or “negative” ones because colloquial Odia does not lend itself to a discussion of the positive or negative aspects of any phenomenon. In Table 5.1, I have followed the five-phase classification of the life course indigenous to the temple town. Omitting childhood, I have divided the 66 women respondents into the four phases—thus, there are five girls who are unmarried and less than 19/20 years of age (kishoro avastha), 19 women who are recently married and between 20 and 33 years of age (jouvana), 28 married women between the mid30s and the late 50s (prauda avastha), and 14 women who are older than the late 50s (briddha avastha).

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Table 5.1 Average scores for life satisfaction across the life course Phases of life (avastha) Orientation

Maidenhood (kishoro)

Young adulthood (jouvana)

Mature adulthood (prauda)

Old age (briddha)

Past (ateet) Present (bartaman) Future (bhavisya)

2.5 3.0 2.8

3.2 3.0 3.6

2.7 3.2 2.8

3.5 2.25 1.33

Average Scores of Life Satisfaction across the Life Course

4 3.5 3 2.5

Series1 Series2 Series3

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0

1

2

3

4

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Phases of Life

Fig. 5.1 Average scores of life satisfaction across the life course

The table presents crude average scores for levels of life satisfaction for the various age groups. When a woman gives herself a score of three for her expectations regarding the future, she is saying that she anticipates good and bad experiences to be roughly equal to each other; a score of four implies that good experiences predominate slightly over bad ones, identifying a period when life as relatively satisfying; and so on. Each woman, therefore, provided 3 scores for herself: one each for the past, present, and future. These scores have been averaged for each of the four indigenously defined age groups. A graphical representation of this figure is presented in Fig. 5.1.13 The broken line (Series 1) represents scores for life satisfaction in the past, the solid (Series 2) for life satisfaction in the present, and the dotted line (Series 3) refers to expected life satisfaction in the future. Along the x-axis, 1 stands for women who are

13

Broadly speaking, I am following a method of analysis that was done by Paul Cleary and his associates at the Harvard Medical School in their unpublished study on the levels of life satisfaction enjoyed by 1,000 North American women.

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classified as maidens, 2 for young adult women, 3 for mature adult women, and 4 for old women. On examining the score that each group gives itself for each time period, it is clear that while young adult women are neither satisfied nor unsatisfied with their present lives, they look back on their lives before marriage as having been relatively satisfying. Women who are now mature adults look back and assess the burdensome days of their young adulthood as having had predominantly unsatisfying rather than satisfying experiences and look toward a future in which, again, unsatisfying experiences are likely to predominate. Finally, old women in the temple town exhibit a dramatic decline in both present and anticipated life satisfaction. But the more important finding, and one that is of particular relevance to the question of women’s wellbeing, is that women of all ages identify mature adulthood— prauda avastha—as that phase of life that is most likely to provide them with satisfying rather than unsatisfying experiences. Thus, those who are, at present, young adults give the highest score for expectations about life in the future—3.6. These women anticipate with some eagerness the next phase in their lives—that of being mature adults. At the same time, old women say that satisfying experiences predominated over unsatisfying ones when they think of the past. Old women, therefore, look back to the days when they were mature adults with great nostalgia—they were much more satisfied then than they are now. Finally, mature adult women are the one group that says that life in the present is “good” and that the present affords them many more satisfying experiences than unsatisfying ones. Admittedly, this is not very sophisticated statistical analysis, but despite the lack of sophistication, the data do indicate the rather important finding that, for Odia Hindu women, mature adulthood is the most desired phase of the life course; it seems to represent for these women the phase that possesses the greatest potential for positive life satisfaction.

Conclusion The most distinctive, but not surprising, impression to emerge from this first phase of fieldwork is the degree to which traditional Hindu ideas hold salience within the temple town. In the temple town, as in the dharmasastras, marriage is considered to be the single, most important and transformative experience of a woman’s life. In the temple town, as in the dharmasastras, the phase of life that is the most relational is the one that is valued the most—mature adulthood in the 5-phase temple town conceptualization of the female life course and the householder stage in the 4-stage dharmasastra model of an ideal life. Finally, in the temple town, as in the dharamsastras, the ultimate in human development is thought to be achieved when a person is fully embedded in familial and social networks, fully engaged in fulfilling her or his duties and responsibilities—and again, that would be as a mature adult woman in the temple town and as a householder in the dharmsastras. The findings presented here provide the backdrop for the second stage of fieldwork which focused on understanding the ways in which Odia Hindu women of the temple town define and experience wellbeing. Hito, the Odia term for wellbeing,

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is an analytic category familiar to the 66 women who participated in this study,14 and defined very broadly, it refers to being satisfied with the way one’s world is moving. More importantly, these women’s experience of wellbeing varies across the life course, being low during young adulthood, peaking during mature adulthood, and declining sharply in old age. Therefore, during the second period of fieldwork, I sought to speak with women at different phases of the life course, hoping thereby to better understand the crucial differences that separate mature adulthood from the other phases of a woman’s life. The next chapter elaborates on the distinctive features that characterize mature adulthood and the two family roles associated with it—senior wife and married husband’s mother.

References Baltes, P. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 611–626. Baltes, P., & Baltes, M. (Eds.). (1990). Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Baltes, P., Smith, J., & Staudinger, U. (1992). Wisdom and successful aging. In T. B. Sonderegger (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, psychology and aging. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Buhler, C. (1933 [1959]). The course of human life as a psychological problem. Gottingen: Hogrefe. Cohen, L. (1995). Toward an anthropology of senility: Anger, weakness, and Alzheimer’s in Banaras, India. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 9(3), 314–334. Dumont, L. (1960). World renunciation in world religions. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4, 33–62. Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society (1st ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. Erikson, E. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. New York: International Universities Press. Hauser, B. (2008). How to fast for a good husband? Reflections on ritual imitation and embodiment in Orissa (India). In A. Henn & K.-P. Koepping (Eds.), Rituals in an unstable world (pp. 227–245). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Neugarten, B. L. (1968). The awareness of middle age. In B. L. Neugarten (Ed.), Middle age and aging (pp. 93–98). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neugarten, B. L. (1973). Personality change in late life: A developmental perspective. In C. Eisdorfer & M. P. Lawton (Eds.), The psychology of adult development and aging (pp. 311–335). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Ramanujan, A. K. (1990). Is there an Indian way of thinking? In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 41–58). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ryff, C. D., & Heincke, S. G. (1983). Subjective organization of personality in adulthood and aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(4), 807–816. Vatuk, S. (1990). “To be a burden on others”: Dependency anxiety among the elderly in India. In O. M. Lynch (Ed.), Divine passions: The social construction of emotion in India (pp. 64–88). Berkeley: University of California Press. Young, K. (1981). Why are Hindu women traditionally oriented to rebirth rather than liberation (moksa)? In Proceedings of the third international symposium on Asian Studies (pp. 937–945). Hong Kong: Asian Research Service.

14 Often, when describing past or present or future experiences as satisfying (santhoshtu), they would use the adjective hitojanako (productive of wellbeing).

Chapter 6

Managing the Household: Achieving Control, Being Productive, Distributing Resources

Contents Female Family Roles and Duties and Their Implications for Women’s Wellbeing ................. The Sample .............................................................................................................................. The Daily Routines of Women Occupying Different Family Roles ........................................ Usual Actions or Nityakarma ............................................................................................... The Daughter in Her Father’s Home ........................................................................................ The Daily Routine of a “New” Son’s Wife: The Junior Wife .................................................. Daily Routine of a Senior Wife................................................................................................ Daily Routine of a Married Husband’s Mother ....................................................................... Daily Routine of a Widowed Husband’s Mother ..................................................................... Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

124 125 128 128 129 131 137 140 144 147 149

Maivan Lâm has written that multicultural feminism derives its validity as a theoretical perspective from “its close analysis of the concrete, complex and variable contexts of women’s lives” (2001: 10164). This chapter, by elaborating on the paradigm of domesticity that prevails in the temple town, is attempting precisely such an analysis. This paradigm delineates the path to empowerment and wellbeing available to the Odia Hindu women who live here. In it, as you will see, women regard domesticity as a career for which they are uniquely qualified by their gender and, therefore, a career that is most appropriate for them. Believing that they embody the energy and power of Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism, these women are not shy in asserting that a household’s material prosperity depends less on what men earn and bring home and much more on how the senior women manage its affairs (cf. Hauser 2010). These senior women, therefore, hold themselves responsible for the physical and spiritual wellbeing of all members of the household. Indispensable to the smooth running of the household, in control of household finances and decisions about household expenses, domesticity affords these women opportunities to develop their skills and cultivate expertise as knowledgeable, professional managers. Furthermore, the Odia Hindu paradigm of domesticity tends to see self-development and maturity as occurring through the process of cultivating and maintaining U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_6, © Springer India 2013

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relationships with others. Thus, an Odia Hindu woman becomes a mature adult, develops her sense of self most fully, and exercises power most substantially, by embedding herself in social and familial relationships—certainly not by separating herself from others and severing her connections to them (cf. Gilligan 1995). She, and others in her community, and Hindu social and psychological theories, more generally, recognize that to be human is to be part of society: far from subscribing to any idea of “ontological individualism” (Bellah et al. 1996: 143), social arrangements are seen as part of nature and as more enduring and fundamental than the people who participate in them. In addition, this paradigm of domesticity encompasses a particular model of human flourishing, in which mature adulthood—as the previous chapter explicated— is the most desired, and most desirable, phase of woman’s life. The present chapter explores the reasons for such an evaluation. Why do Odia Hindu women identify mature adulthood as the phase when they are most likely to achieve substantial wellbeing? What are the roles they occupy and duties they perform that contribute to this greater wellbeing? And what are the crucial differences that set this life phase apart from other life phases? Any attempt to develop an indigenous model of human flourishing would have to include the events and experiences that typify mature adulthood because they appear to constitute the essence of female wellbeing and contrast quite strikingly with those that characterize other life phases. In order to understand these contrasting evaluations, I spoke not only with women who saw themselves as having reached mature adulthood but also with those in other phases of life—youth (kishoro), young adulthood (jouvana), and old age (briddha). Altogether, I conversed with 37 women. All were selected because they belonged to extended family households. I believed that such households would display the greatest diversity in the kinds of family roles that women occupy. In order to get the full flavor of life within each household, I felt I needed to talk with all the women there. But this was less easy to arrange. While some of the women in several of the households that I knew were eager and willing to speak with me, not all their female relatives were equally cooperative. Their excuses were many and varied—they didn’t have the time, they felt shy, they had nothing to say, and they were ignorant. My total of 37 consists of all the women in 10 cooperative households. I do not think that my search for cooperative households necessarily biases this sample in favor of presenting a uniformly rosy picture of life in the extended family. As these women readily acknowledge there are conflicts and competing interests in almost all temple town families, including their own.

Female Family Roles and Duties and Their Implications for Women’s Wellbeing In my conversations with these 37 women, I began by asking them to describe to me, in as great a detail as possible, all that they do during a day in their lives. I asked them to include every small detail of their daily routines—even those that they thought were totally unimportant and could be of no possible interest to me. I was

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hoping that by doing so I would get to know and understand better these women’s situations and the logic underlying their behavior. Apart from women’s descriptions of their daily routines, I also make use of my own observations of life in these families, of cooking and worship, and of events like births and marriages, as well as casual conversations that I had when the situation was not defined as one in which I would ask questions and elicit answers. I intend to show here that the experience of wellbeing is likely to peak when a woman takes on the family role of senior wife and, subsequently, married husband’s mother. The relationship is not between middle age per se and increased access to wellbeing although this does appear, on the surface, a plausible explanation. In many societies, growing older does result in a relaxation in the restrictions under which women may operate (cf. Brown and Kerns 1985; Minturn 1993). However, in the temple town, women’s wellbeing hinges quite crucially on family roles and relationships. In particular, Odia Hindus who live here attach positive values and meanings to the roles of senior wife and married husband’s mother. By incorporating such indigenous values and meanings, I intend to develop a model of wellbeing that is salient for women in the temple town, though it may not coincide with the lived experiences of all.

The Sample The 37 women I spoke with range in age from 19 to 78. These women follow traditional family roles, those of daughter (jhio), junior or “new” wife (nua bou), “senior” wife (purna bou), husband’s mother (sasu), and old widow (burhi ma). Their distribution, according to family role occupied, is given in Table 6.1. Thus, there are 2 daughters, 15 junior wives, 5 senior wives, 9 husband’s mothers, and 4 old widows. None is employed outside her home. According to their own five-phase life-course classification, these women belong to four of the five phases: youth or maidenhood (kishoro), young adulthood (jouvana), mature adulthood (prauda), or old age (briddha). There are 2 unmarried adult daughters who fall into the youthful category; 15 married women who have only recently entered the reproductive phase of their lives and are young adults; 5 senior wives who have been married for several years and 8 married, all 13 of whom qualify as mature adult; and 5 women who fall into the category “old.” This last cohort consists of four widowed mothers and one old husband’s mother whose own husband is still alive but who has, with age and infirmity, become completely peripheral to her family’s affairs. This distribution according to life phases is given in Table 6.2. There are two women whose positions within their families are anomalous—the first is Nandini, the 36-year-old widow in the Nanda family whose husband died 15 years ago, and the other is 38-year-old Snehalata of the Pati family who has chosen to leave her husband’s mother’s home and return to her father’s. They are not included in either Table 6.1 or 6.2. They have no clearly defined roles within the family and no specific distributive duties or responsibilities toward other family

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Table 6.1 Distribution of the women in the sample according to family roles Son’s wife Daughter Household 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total

Junior 1 2

1

Husband’s mother Senior

Married

1

1 1 1 1 1

1 1

1 2 1 1 2 2 3 15

2

1 1 1

5

Widowed

1

1 1

1 1 2 1 4

9

Table 6.2 Distribution of women in the sample according to life phases Youth (kishoro) Household 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total

1

Young adulthood (jouvana) 1 2

Mature adulthood (prauda) 1 1

1

2

1 2 1 1 2 2 3 15

1 1 1

5

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8

Old age (briddha)

1

1 1

1 1 5

members, and although the ages of both approximate the ages of mature adult women, neither claims to possess any measure of wellbeing. I will discuss, at some length, these women’s very particular experiences in Chap. 7. By caste, in the sample of ten households selected, seven are Brahman1; of the rest, one is a Chassa, another a Teli, and the last a Maharana. Except for the Patis,

1

Of these seven households, the caste status of five of them appears to be quite clear: one belongs to the high-status Kshetrabasi subcaste, while the other four are members of the Mahasuaro subcaste, again a relatively high-status subcaste of Brahmans who are entrusted with the task of cooking for the deity. However, the caste status of two of these families is contested: they claim to be Brahmans (they wear the “sacred thread”), although other Brahmans contest their claim and classify them as Sudra sevakas.

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one of two Sudra sevaka families in the sample, the rest of the nine are fairly well off: they own agricultural land and other property—houses and shops—that earn rent. Signs of this relative wealth can be seen in the fact that all households have at least one scooter, perhaps two, as well as television sets, refrigerators, and other household appliances. The membership of these households varies from 6 to 24, with the average being 13. Of the 37 women, there are 2 daughters (jhio), 22 son’s wives (bou), and 13 husband’s mothers (sasu). Two of these son’s wives belong to four-generational households, and so are themselves husband’s mothers to the newest generation of son’s wives. In terms of education, a generational effect is clearly noticeable: husband’s mothers rarely have more than 3 or 4 years of education, while almost all the son’s wives have completed 10 years of formal schooling. There are, moreover, five husband’s mothers who state that they are unable to read or write; of these, three are non-Brahmans while the other two belong to one of the two Sudra sevaka families in the sample. Using open-ended, loosely structured interview schedules, I asked women to describe their daily routines; the degree of control they exercise over their own actions and bodies; the degree of control they exercise over others; their sense of belonging to their families, of being part of a meaningful communal life, and of having connections with divinity; and the extent to which they felt they had achieved wellbeing. In order to measure the extent to which these women experience wellbeing, I resorted to a mode of estimation commonplace in the temple town. Ordinary folk here often speak of having “not even one anna2 of control over what happens in life” or of having “fully sixteen annas of happiness in childhood,” and so when it came to asking women how healthy they were or how much wellbeing they thought they had, I framed the question in these everyday terms. Therefore, the answers I typically heard were, “Six annas of good health (svasthya)” or “Four annas of wellbeing (hito).” The women were candid, articulate, and eager to participate, and consequently the conversations are long and detailed; none lasted for less than an hour and some went on for more than 2 hour. The reasons for their candor and eagerness are not hard to understand: I believe most women saw these interactions as an opportunity for a kind of expansion therapy. They permitted themselves to speak their minds with relative freedom to a stranger who spoke their language and understood their concerns but who did not appear to share their constraints. While many interactions were one-on-one conversations in secluded rooms, the feeling that others in the household were close at hand, sometimes within earshot, was not easy to shake off. Often when the women felt that they were saying something particularly critical of other household members, their voices would drop, but at other times they would deliberately raise their voices so that others could hear their complaints. Thus, most junior wives spoke in low undertones while husband’s mothers and, sometimes, senior wives spoke loudly and self-confidently, often even aggressively.

2

An anna is a coin that is no longer in circulation. In pre-independence India, there were 6 paisa (or pice) to an anna and 16 annas to a rupee.

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The Daily Routines of Women Occupying Different Family Roles Usual Actions or Nityakarma Except during the first 4 days of menstruation,3 most women report that they begin their day by performing what they term nityakarma. While this term can be translated literally as “usual or habitual actions,” it means much more than that. Here it refers to the essential rituals of cleanliness that these women perform on their own bodies and on the houses in which they live (cf. Tokita-Tanabe 1999). An important aspect of such continual, daily actions (nityakarma) is the fidelity with which each woman maintains the locally accepted sequence of these rituals4—washing the face (muho dhoiiba); bowing the head in the general direction of the pictures of gods that decorate the walls of temple town homes (mundiya mariba); sweeping out the house, the inner courtyard, and the threshold (gharo, angano, o dvaro uleiba); throwing out the garbage (oliya pokaiba); defecating (jhada jiba); cleaning teeth and scraping the tongue (danto o jibho ghosiba); bathing (gadheba); and, finally, praying to the sun god (Surjya) by offering water as well as watering the sacred plant, tulasi (Ocimum tenuiflorum or holy basil), and circumambulating it three times. Whatever little variation exists in these daily routines has to do with last of these rituals—worshiping the sun and the tulasi plant. Junior wives rarely take time to perform these, but—according to their own accounts—they usually rush to the kitchen, still wet after their baths, smear the kitchen hearth with cow dung paste and then light the fire to begin the day’s cooking. Only old women—marginalized through age and peripheral to the household’s activities—are free to do what they want when they want: they may bathe and then get right back into an unmade bed, they may bow their heads to god or they may not, they may eat in bed either before or after bathing. Women in the temple town believe that performances of habitual actions maintain and protect them and their households and ensure mental and physical wellbeing. They say, “Doing habitual actions is necessary for mental and physical wellbeing. For the welfare, the auspicious future, of the family, it is advisable to perform such actions” (manosiko o saririko hito paiin nityakarma darkaro ochi. Parivaroro kalyano paiin nityakarma korabata uchit). Excepting serious illness, nothing can stop non-menstruating women from performing these daily rituals of cleanliness. They even believe that any violation of this sequence would have unfortunate consequences. Through purifying their physical bodies and the houses they live in—both gross containers—women prepare themselves and their households every morning to renew connections with the rest of the community and with divinity.5 3

During these 4 days, women usually do not bathe, cook, or help in cooking; they do not oil or comb their hair; and they remain secluded, usually eating alone. 4 Geertz (1973: 40), when discussing variability in people’s “orientation to reality,” describes Hindus as “obsessively ritualism”: perhaps, the fidelity with which Odia women perform these daily ablutions demonstrates such obsessiveness! 5 Madan’s (1987: 36) speaks in a similar vein when talking of the domestic life of the Kashmiri Pandits he has studied.

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Irrespective of family role, all women, except perhaps the old, perform nityakarma meticulously. There is very little, therefore, that distinguishes one family role from another when it comes to these habitual actions. The same, however, cannot be said about the daily chores that women do. Instead, the distribution of routine daily tasks among the women of each household reinforces distinctions among the five main female roles—those of daughter, “new” or “junior” son’s wife, “old” or “senior” son’s wife, husband’s mother, and old widow.

The Daughter in Her Father’s Home An adult, unmarried daughter enjoys a carefree and irresponsible life, far more carefree, in fact, than those of even her brothers, for whom, the pressure to obtain a means of livelihood makes the years of late youth and young adulthood very difficult and stressful. She is indulged, she has no prescribed duties, and whatever she does, she does voluntarily. The daily routines of the two daughters in the sample make this abundantly clear. As Rajani, Sudhansubabu’s daughter and one of the two daughters in the group, says when talking of her activities during most mornings: After eating rice,6 I may stitch something or I may knit or if I want to, I may watch some T.V. or I may go to sleep. I do things like that.

And as the other unmarried daughter, Bijoya Nanda says explicitly, daughters have no responsibility toward anyone in their fathers’ households: My responsibility? What responsibility? I have no responsibility. As long as my fathermother are alive, I have no responsibility towards anyone.

At the same time, however, they are aware of the transitory nature of life in their fathers’ homes: they know that they are temporary residents and that their permanent homes will be elsewhere. One of the stimuli that I presented toward the end of the conversation with each woman was to ask her to think of herself in a strange place amidst strangers and to describe to me the feelings and reactions she would expect to have. All the married women, even the old widows, reacted strongly and negatively to this question. All said that they would find life insupportable under such circumstances. The following excerpts are a sample of the responses that this suggestion evoked among married and widowed women: As Shakuntala, the “new” wife in Prafulla Panda’s household, emphasizes: How could I survive like that? I’ve grown up in the middle of all this noise and bustle, surrounded by people who are familiar and known, how could I survive in that kind of an environment? All the time, my mind would be on these people, and whatever I ate or drank, there would be no peace of mind for me. 6

In the temple town, most Odia Hindu men and children eat the main meal of the day consisting of rice before going to work or attending school. Since a usual working day begins around 10:00/10:30 in the morning, this means that men and children eat this meal around 9:00/9:30. Unmarried daughters, who no longer attend school, are the next to eat, soon after the menfolk and the children have left home, around 10 in the morning.

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And as Satyabhama, Sudhansubabu’s wife and a married husband’s mother says: I would feel weak, without any strength, all the time the children’s faces would be in front of my eyes. One may be able to eat and drink all that the world has to offer, one may have all the wealth in the entire world, but nothing would have any value. Nothing in life would have any value.

And finally, Sarala, Satyabhama’s 78-year-old widowed mother, unhappy and dissatisfied though she may be with her present life circumstances, declares: I have never lived alone. I have never gone anywhere alone, never lived alone. I won’t feel good living alone. No, no, I won’t be able to live alone. Suppose you were to invite me, ‘Come, travel with me, I will show you my country” I would say, ‘No, I can’t come.’ I’m not accustomed to going alone. That is not the custom I’m familiar with, so how can I go? From where will such a custom come?

But the reactions of the two unmarried daughters are strikingly different. Unlike the other women, they face the prospect of leaving their father’s homes, moving to a strange home, and living amidst strange people with equanimity. As Rajani states quite matter of factly: I will not suffer the lack of anything. Home will always be a special place, the place where I was born, the place where father-mother live. But if I have to live separate, then I just have to put up with it.

And Bijoya echoes her, saying: One will miss nothing. One can always carry on, even if there is no family member close by. There’s nothing like that. Definitely, if one is alone in a strange place, part of a strange family, one will not have one’s mother’s and one’s father’s love to support one but that is something one can make oneself understand. One can always make one’s mind/heart understand why they aren’t with one. I don’t think that that is a very important thing that I will feel the lack of. No, definitely not.

At the same time, and perhaps understandably enough, they are unwilling to elaborate on their expectations about life in their husband’s mother’s home. Rajani, who was to be married within 6 weeks of our conversation, was knitting a sweater while we talked and claimed that she had, at that moment, fully sixteen annas of happiness, rather than wellbeing, saying: R: I have no troubles … (laughs) … The only worry I have is whether I will be able to finish this sweater for my brother before I get married. There are just six weeks left and I don’t seem to be able to find the time. U: You are getting married in six weeks time. What do you think of when you look into the future? R: I don’t think about it. Whatever will happen, will happen. There is nothing to be gained by letting your head be eaten by thoughts. U: Doesn’t it happen that even without wanting it, your mind/heart drifts to thinking about your marriage, what he will be like, what life in their household will be like—don’t you think of these things? R: (faintly) I don’t think of these things … (a long pause, and then in a stronger voice) … I don’t think of these things.

And yet, despite this reluctance to speculate upon life as a son’s wife, these young women have very clear ideas about how they should comport themselves in that role. Rajani, for instance, says that during the early years of marriage, a son’s

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wife should try to avoid experiencing lajya,7 at least with her husband’s mother and his sisters. A son’s wife, she says, should open herself completely to her husband’s mother, keep nothing hidden, and be as candid as she would with her own mother, for only such behavior guarantees complete assimilation into the family one has married. Part of this process of opening oneself is emptying oneself—so that one can be filled up with substances from one’s husband’s family more effectively. Only such opening and emptying, women in the temple town say, guarantees assimilation and, ultimately, wellbeing. As Chhanjarani, the 55-year-old married husband’s mother in the Maharana family, explains: If the son’s wife thinks, “Why should I speak of this? I feel too modest to tell anyone about this, I will keep it in my own stomach.” Then she is only doing herself a disservice. It all depends on the son’s wife—if she continues to see herself as separate (poro) from the house, then the others in the house will also treat her as though she is separate, but if she treats her husband’s mother as she would her own mother, if she opens her mind/heart completely and tells her everything frankly, if she empties herself of all old feelings and thoughts, then the husband’s mother, too, will look on her as a daughter and not as a son’s wife.

Both daughters, unlike the other women I spoke to, prefer to use the Odia word for happiness, sukho, rather than hito or wellbeing, when asked to assess how many annas of wellbeing they enjoyed. Both claim to have complete happiness—although Bijoya refused to quantify her happiness, saying: When I get what I want, I feel happy, I have complete happiness. If one’s desires are fulfilled then one is happy, and in one’s father’s house, aren’t one’s desires always fulfilled?

Happiness, then, characterizes life in one’s father’s home, a life of noninvolvement in household activities, a life absolved of duties and responsibilities. But this happy life is also, by definition, a short-lived one because all girls expect to get married, Hindu parents being enjoined by tradition to find suitable husbands for their daughters.

The Daily Routine of a “New” Son’s Wife: The Junior Wife Unlike a daughter of the house, a “new” son’s wife or junior wife has explicitly defined and understood duties, the most important and the largest of which consists of doing service (sewa) to senior members of her husband’s family. Such service has very concrete dimensions: she has to do all the cooking and some of the serving of the food, much of the cleaning and washing, as well as performing rituals of deference to her husband’s mother and father. These rituals include massaging their feet (pado manchaliba) daily, drinking the water used to wash their feet before taking food herself, as well as eating out of the metal plate previously used by either of her husband’s parents. According to many, these actions are ways for a son’s wife to effect “oneness and bonding with the patrilineage” into which she has married.

7

Lajya, glossed as modesty, deference, and reticence, is a moral and civilizing emotion that Odia Hindu women are usually exhorted to cultivate (see Menon and Shweder 1994).

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Such rituals of deference continue the process of remaking the bride’s bodily substance begun explicitly during the wedding ceremonies and symbolized, for Brahman brides, by the new first name they receive from their husbands (see Inden and Nicholas 1977). They are in keeping with Hindu notions of the body that emphasize its relative openness to external influences (Marriott 1976). Such rituals contribute directly to the increase or decrease of a son’s wife’s sense of wellbeing. When an angry husband’s mother withholds permission, preventing the younger woman from performing these rituals, all sons’ wives interpret such refusal as a rejection by the family, as an obstacle to their assimilation. It can be the source of considerable sorrow and distress. As Sanjukta, Sudhansubabu’s very unhappy, son’s wife says: I drink the water that I use to wash their feet with—both father’s and mother’s. Only after I drink that water do I eat anything. Sometimes, when mother is angry with me, she won’t let me wash her feet and then I stay hungry till 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Every time during the day when I try to go towards her with the water, she will move away without saying anything to me. Finally when I beg her, crying, to let me wash her feet, only then does she let me do it. I want them to accept me. I want to live as a daughter, but they don’t want me. There’s no peace in my mind/heart—only sorrow and disturbed feelings.

In the following paragraphs, 23-year-old Sashibala, married for the last 5 years, the “new” wife in the Nanda family, describes her daily routine, one shared by most other junior wives of the temple town. She has a 3-year-old daughter and is the eldest son’s wife in a family of twelve. Her account of her day is quite typical: S: As soon as I get up, I sweep out the house and then I go to the bathroom. I clean my teeth, have a bath and then I start the breakfast. Once the breakfast is done, people come in one by one to eat. I serve each of them breakfast. Once that is done, we have our breakfast together … husband’s mother (she refers to her husband’s mother as mother— that is, bou not sasu) and I eat together. And then, I start preparing lunch … that is all done by about 2 pm. Once that is done, again people come in one-by-one to eat. By three, we would also have eaten and I would have washed up after lunch. Then, I come and lie down in the afternoon. I lie down, maybe sleep, for an hour. I get up at four. I again sweep out the house and then I go down to start making something to eat with tea. I knead the wheat flour and make different kinds of bread. Again, people come one-byone to eat. I serve them and then it would be sundown by now and I offer evening worship (sandhya) before I start cooking the night meal. I am usually cooking till nine in the night. Then I go and watch the serial on TV. After that, at about 9.30, everyone will come to eat and I serve them. And then we eat. After finishing eating, we go to bed. The dishes are left as they are till morning. I just leave them till the morning when I wash them. In the morning, the first thing I do is take out and wash the ointha (polluted by leftovers) dishes, then I leave them out in the sun to dry, while I sweep out the kitchen, wash it out and then take the vessels back in again. U: …Would you like to add anything more to what you’ve just said? S: No, nothing else. U: What about worship (puja)? In the morning do you do worship after your bath? Give water to the tulasi or offer water to sun-god (surjya)? S: No, I do nothing. Husband’s mother does all that. All I do is wash our burhi ma’s (husband’s father’s widowed mother) feet and drink the water after my bath and before I go to make breakfast. I used to do it for husband’s mother and father (bou and nona) in the beginning but after some years they stopped me from doing it. They said that it was enough to do it for burhi ma. But apart from that I don’t do any worship (puja). I offer evening worship (sandhya) but that is only in the kitchen—husband’s mother offers it in the puja room and over the rest of the house.

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Most junior wives’ accounts resemble Sashibala’s, with minor variations. In the early years of marriage, the amount of sheer physical work that these women have to do is considerable—they have to cook for a household of at least 10 or 20 people, often have to clean all the cooking utensils, and wash their children’s and their own clothes. During this phase of life, none of them worships any gods; for them, it is enough to worship their husband’s parents, who are earthly gods having the power to withhold or bestow blessings. As Sabitiri, another junior wife, married for just 4 months, told me: At my time in life, it is appropriate that I worship bou.8 What need is there for me to worship any other god? She is my god.

These junior wives are working up the ladder of family hierarchy, and they regard the opportunity to worship their husbands’ mothers and fathers rather than the gods as opportunities for promotion, not a deprivation or a humiliation. At this stage, given her position in the family sequence, a junior wife appears to have few other distributive responsibilities. As Sashibala says further along in her interview: For the moment, I have no particular distributive responsibility within the household. There are so many people older than I am. They take on the responsibility for distributing the activities and resources of this household.

Nevertheless, as she herself is aware, distributive responsibilities (daitva) are never completely absent. A competent son’s wife has to learn to be adept in maintaining harmony among the younger members of the family by effectively distributing attention, information, and knowledge among those she interacts with during this phase9 and to take on the role of friend and advisor to them, perhaps even intervene as an intermediary between them and their mother, her husband’s mother, when the latter’s consent and approval is required but unlikely. This aptitude, this capacity to “understand what lies in the minds of the husband’s younger sisters (nanad) and husband’s younger brothers (diyoro)” (janiba kahar manare kaun), distinguishes a successful son’s wife, trusted by her conjugal family. Further in the interview, Sashibala describes the restrictions under which she lives, which may appear to be fairly severe. She rarely goes out, hardly meets anyone but family members. Her trips to her father’s house are infrequent and depend on the wishes of her husband’s mother and father. U: What about going to your father’s house? How often do you go? S: I have always to ask for permission from husband’s mother. Husband’s mother and husband’s father together they decide. I’ve been married five years and in this time, I’ve gone home about five times. It has always been when I get news that mother isn’t well. They tell me how many days I can stay there—eight days, ten days. U: What about going to neighbors’ houses—do you ever go and sit there, maybe when you have a few minutes to yourself, do you ever go and just sit and talk?

8

She is referring to her husband’s mother. As a junior wife, these people would be her husband’s younger brothers, his younger sisters, his elder brothers’ wives and his mother. 9

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S: No, not here. But in my father’s village, I used to do it all the time. But here I can’t go. This is husband’s mother’s house and none of these people go and so—here, no one goes wandering to other people’s houses, so where would I go? U: Do you ever invite your friends here? S: It’s too far away from my father’s house—no one can come. And, I’ve never wanted to invite any of my friends … because this is the house of the husband’s mother. If we had been living separate, then maybe I would have invited friends, but here we’re all together. Who knows who will think what. And so I’ve never invited anyone. U: Do you keep any money—does anyone give you money to keep for monthly expenses? S: No, I keep nothing. Husband’s younger brother, he keeps, and husband’s father, he too has money. He (her husband) too has money, but no one gives me money. But we don’t need money. Whenever we need anything, we just tell them and they get it for us. They (her husband, her husband’s brother and her husband’s father) manage everything, they get everything for the house.

Sashibala’s description of her situation is not unique—all other junior wives appear to have similar experiences. Sushila, Manjula Panda’s second son’s wife, roughly the same age as Sashibala and married for as long, explains how she has never in the last 5 years gone to see a movie or a local theatrical performance (pala), has never bought clothes for either herself or her 1-year-old daughter, and has left her husband’s mother’s house only to visit her father’s house and her married elder sister’s house. When asked to describe the difference between life in her father’s house and life in her husband’s mother’s house, she says: When I was a girl, I was free10—I could go wherever my mind/heart took me. I could go and come as I pleased but as a son’s wife, I remain inside these four walls. I don’t go anywhere, I don’t see anyone. And so my mind/heart feels a little sad.

And even within her husband’s mother’s house, a junior wife may be unable to move freely: she has to hide from any male affines who are senior to her husband. Sandhyarani, another junior wife, speaks for most other junior wives when she says, “All that one does in a sasu’s house is hide” (sasu gharo ame luchuchu). In terms of wellbeing, only a couple of junior wives claim to have achieved substantial wellbeing, 15–16 annas of it. Not surprisingly, perhaps, these are women whose marital households are small, having only seven or eight members, and whose husband’s mothers are both noninterfering and not very demanding. Thus, Sujata, whose husband is his parents’ only son, says that she has close to sixteen annas of wellbeing, I am very well. I have everything I need in this life. Husband’s mother and father (sasusasur) treat me as though I was their daughter. I lack for nothing. I think I have close to sixteen annas. I have everything I need.

At the other extreme, there are two junior wives who appear to suffer considerable distress, one claiming to have no wellbeing at all and the other only two annas of wellbeing. Sanjukta, Sudhansubabu’s eldest son’s wife, is extremely unhappy with her situation in life and complains to me about it: I haven’t achieved any wellbeing—not even one or two annas. Whatever I thought I would get, I haven’t got. There is never any peace in my mind/heart. I think all I need is peace. 10

She uses the English word “free.”

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Here no one likes anything I say or do, they have never liked me—not even in the beginning. They don’t respect me. Whatever I do, husband’s mother is never satisfied, she never tells me how things should be done, she never says what I should do, but she is always angry with what I do. I know that. And so I don’t feel well. He (her husband) never shouts at me, but it’s not him that I have to get on with, it’s them (husband’s mother and father) that I have to get on with. They never say anything openly but there is anger in their mind/hearts that is shown in their behavior towards me.

For the most part, then, junior wives have a wide range of estimates of their own feelings of wellbeing: if 16 annas indicate that a woman has achieved complete wellbeing, a junior wife, on the average, has about 8 annas of wellbeing. Sashibala’s description of her experience of wellbeing serves quite well for other junior wives like her: Everyone here is kind. They don’t try to make me unhappy. But sometimes when I’m alone, when I’m eating alone after everyone else has finished eating, or when I’m about to go to sleep at night, I think of father-mother, I remember the life I lived with them and then my mind/heart fills with sadness, and I want to go home to them. And when these people see my eyes filling with tears, they shout at me, “You will stay there for one day or two days or maybe three days, but can you live there all the time? Why do you cry for something that you can’t have … that is the past, over and done with.” Maybe I have eight annas of wellbeing according to your calculations. Over here, no one tries to make me unhappy, but this is a large household—there are at least fifteen/sixteen people here. They all have different tastes, they demand different kinds of food, and I am always busy, there’s always work to be done, not just cooking, but there’s work outside the kitchen too, sweeping, swabbing, washing clothes, cleaning the dishes. There’s never any time left after work. Even if I get up at five or six in the morning, there’s never any time. It wasn’t like this in my father’s house.

A notable feature of these interviews with junior wives, but one that rarely recurs in other interviews, is fairly clear evidence for the somatization of emotional distress. Junior wives who give themselves low scores on wellbeing complain of night fevers, chest pains, and swooning. Such somatization is recognized in local discourse. There are junior wives who say that they are so sad that they cannot digest their food; this may lead to chest pains that the doctors they consult are unable to explain. Sanjukta says: I feel very weak but I manage. I am forced to carry on—what else can I do? I have this pain in my chest. I have it throughout the day but at night it gets even worse. I don’t sleep because it hurts too much. I can’t lie down. When I lie down, the pain gets worse. What I then do is to pile up the pillows and sit up. In that way, I get some rest. The doctors can’t find out what’s wrong, they took X-rays, they did other tests, but all that showed nothing— they don’t know what’s wrong. I also have stomach trouble—problems of digestion—all these health troubles are connected. If I eat in the morning, I can’t eat at night. If I force myself to eat something at night, then I feel this burning inside me, in my chest and in my stomach. I have this terrible pain. Medicines don’t help. Things are better when I take the medicine but when I stop the pain begins again—so what is the point of taking medicine? Nowadays, I’ve got used to the burning. I am so sick all the time, I can’t even climb the stairs. I get dizzy, and I feel so tired. It’s because I can’t talk of what’s in my mind/heart that makes my health worse. My mind/heart is so sad. My mind/heart keeps thinking about my situation, and it is sad. And that makes my health worse, my chest pain gets worse and worse all the time.

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But, Rajani, Sanjukta’s husband’s younger sister, has a different explanation to offer. She places the blame unhesitatingly on Sanjukta, saying that her brother’s wife makes no effort to assimilate with the rest of the family and that she is angry and resentful of everyone else and exhibits this anger and resentment by refusing to eat. Such starvation, according to local ways of thinking, encourages diseases to appear in the body. Rajani says: There’s nothing wrong with her body. She has had all kinds of tests—for TB and other illnesses. X-rays for her chest were taken, blood, urine, stool, everything was tested—but nothing came of it all. Her main problem is that of anger. All of us women, we sit down to eat, or have tea, laughing and joking, but she won’t join the rest of us. She’ll starve herself and go to bed hungry—won’t this kind of behavior make her body weaker? She never joins the rest of the family. Tell me, what does she have to worry about? She has nothing to worry about. God has given her two sons, she has found a good family, no one in this family gives her any trouble. But if you say, “I can’t manage such a large family,” then what can be done? And she also shows her anger, against her husband, against us, she swells up with anger, as though she has been pumped. I call her down to share rice with me and in her anger she refuses to come—then what should I do? I go and eat on my own. If you don’t eat even more diseases emerge from the body. An empty stomach helps diseases to emerge. We call her one time, two times, three times—how many times will people keep calling her? Don’t eat, let the anger in your stomach fill you up.

There are also son’s wives who feel so unappreciated in their husbands’ homes, so anxious to receive affection, so diminished in respect, that they experience (by their own accounts) a fall in their blood pressure and often swoon. As Jyotsna Behera,11 Jogidei’s 23-year-old junior wife says: My health isn’t at all good. I have many problems. I feel weak all the time. My legs and arms always ache, I don’t know what happens to my head. Sometime ago, the doctor told me that I have very low blood pressure. My head hurts, I feel dizzy, I feel like crying a lot— that’s how it is. These people (referring to the other women in the family) didn’t want me as a son’s wife because I’m so ugly. I didn’t know about all this. Only after coming here, I’m hearing all this. Husband’s father (sasur) insisted on the marriage. He (her husband) didn’t want to marry me because of my ugliness, husband’s mother didn’t want me—husband’s elder brothers’ wives (ja-mane) tell me all this now. No one values me here, no one respects me.

Of course, this somatization has to be seen against the background of a strong cultural aversion to excessive self-absorption and introspection (see Chap. 3, page 92–93; cf. Kakar 1982: 7–8) about one’s physical condition and familial situation: generally speaking, people in the temple town believe that constant worrying about oneself is self-indulgent and deleterious. They think it leads, in and of itself, to illness and physical distress. Too much selfish thinking renders the boundaries of one’s body even more permeable than usual, thus allowing perhaps one, perhaps more than one, of the 64 diseases present within the body the opportunity to escape. 11

Interestingly enough, Jyotsna is the junior wife in household # 5 in Table 6.2 who gives herself a wellbeing score of 16 annas. Given what she says above and given that when she gave me the score, she spoke loud enough for anyone within earshot to hear her, I felt that her score was more a statement of defiance against the senior wives in her household who behave cruelly toward her rather than an accurate reflection of her sense of wellbeing. I, therefore, disregard it while calculating the average wellbeing score for junior wives. I discuss her score in more detail in Chap. 7.

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Much healthier and ultimately more effective in terms of results is carrying on with one’s prescribed duty as best one can, without reflection, without thinking of the consequences of the actions, thinking only of the actions themselves. Kuntala Nanda, Sashibala’s husband’s mother, puts it best when she says; We come into this world to do our karma, to do our duty. Without thinking, without reflecting, it is best that we do our duty. If we do so with our whole mind, with all our attention, then things get better by and by.

People tend to believe that such actions, if good and worthwhile, would, on their own, create more favorable, more comfortable circumstances in the future for the person doing the actions.

Daily Routine of a Senior Wife With age, the birth of children, and the entry of other younger son’s wives, a woman progresses to a stage that is referred to locally as “old” or “full” or “completed” son’s wife—purna bou. Purna is an interesting word because, while in this context it indicates seniority, it more commonly denotes “fullness” or “completeness.” When a woman matures and becomes a mother and then senior to other younger mothers, she finally becomes the “complete” son’s wife. While maturing and seniority happen on their own, women actively complete themselves as sons’ wives by seeking to give birth to children. By providing new members to the families they have married into, they are entrenching themselves within the household, embedding themselves in the families, and laying claim to being heard in family debates and discussions. When I asked senior wives to define the moment of transition from “new” or junior to “old,” or senior, many of them laughingly said: When it becomes appropriate for us to go to the front door and stand there and call out loudly for our children to come indoors, then (laughing) we have become senior wives … the children would be playing on the street, you know.

While reading the daily routines of these women, one can detect a gradual relaxation in some of the restrictions women experience as junior wives. Senior wives are no longer required to do a substantial part of the cooking; in fact, usually, they control the degree of their involvement in cooking and feeding the family. The restrictions on movement, on meeting people who do not belong to the family grow fewer, and even the emphasis on the performance of explicit rituals of deference grows steadily weaker. Rani, the 40-year-old senior wife in the Behera household, makes very clear her promotion out of the kitchen. When asked if she helps her husband’s younger brother’s wife in the cooking, she says, referring to herself as a sasu, though her son has yet to marry: No, no. I don’t have anything to do with the cooking. The husband’s younger brother’s wife, she does all that. We sasus don’t even enter the kitchen. She will do all the work, won’t she? She does the cooking, doesn’t she? Why should I do all that? I don’t cut the vegetables, I don’t grind the spices. I don’t touch the cooking utensils.

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On the other hand, 33-year-old Pratima, Manjula’s senior wife, plays a decidedly more active role in cooking and feeding the family, a role in which she clearly controls and manages the actions of her husband’s younger brother’s wife. As she says, when talking about who decides the daily menu: Either I ask husband’s mother what will be cooked or she asks me. Husband’s younger brother’s wife knows nothing about all this. She only does what I tell her to do. I tell her what to cook, how to cook. I tell her so-and-so likes this curry, so-and-so prefers this vegetable fried this way. If, by chance, I’m busy doing something else, I measure out things for her, tell her how to cut the vegetables and she does the cooking. Either husband’s mother or I, one of us gives her directions and if we are not busy elsewhere, then we help her.

More importantly, this partial movement out of the kitchen coincides with an increase in a senior wife’s interaction with the world outside the house. She begins to do the shopping for the entire family, choosing clothes not only for her husband, herself, and her children but also for her husband’s mother and father and often for her husband’s brothers, their wives, and their children. Again to quote Pratima: I never went to the market in the beginning. Only now do I go. I am no longer a junior wife and when my husband’s sister got married, I did all the shopping for the wedding. It is from that time that I began doing all the shopping for this family. I buy clothes for husband’s mother, I buy for her the clothes I know she will like. Also for husband’s father, I get him what I think he will like. Even the youngest husband’s brother, for him too I buy clothes. Husband’s brother’s wife—her husband has a job, he can afford to buy her clothes, but it often happens that I buy for her too, and for their small daughter—for her, too.

By this time, the senior wife has stopped asking her husband’s mother for permission to go out. Now, the older woman is only informed about where the younger woman is planning to go; instead of saying, “Mother, shall I go?” (Bou, mu jibi?), the senior wife now says, “Mother, I will be returning”.12 (Bou, mu asibi.) She gradually becomes the family’s representative in all social intercourse, entertaining not merely relatives but also those who come on business to meet the menfolk of the family. As Pratima explains: If people drop in, then it is my responsibility to serve tea to them, snacks, talk pleasantly to them, until whoever they have come to see is ready to meet them.

Interestingly, it appears that there is very little to distinguish the behavior of a senior wife in the temple town from that which Tokita-Tanabe (1999: 147) documents for urbanized, working Odia Hindu women when they entertain guests in their homes. As for not observing so strictly the rituals of deference toward the husband’s mothers, most senior wives explain it as merely a result of increased familiarity with one’s husband’s mother, a consequence of the passage of time, and a function of the number of years they have lived within their husband’s families. Often, their accounts of their day’s activities make no mention at all of any ritual of deference. And when asked specifically about the performance of such rituals, they will reply 12 In the temple town, as in other parts of Hindu India, it is considered unlucky to say “I am going” (mu jauchi) because it implies one may never return; so, usually, one takes leave by saying “I will be returning” (mu asibi).

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casually, as Sujata, the extremely capable 30-year-old senior wife who was quoted earlier, does: S: Oh, all those things I used to do earlier on, when I had just got married. But nowadays all that doesn’t happen. U: When did you stop doing all that? S: I used to do it for two or three years after marriage. Then with the children being born, with them needing my attention at all times, with my duties and responsibilities increasing within the family, I gradually stopped doing all that. U: Did they ask you to stop? S: No, no. They didn’t tell me to stop. I just stopped on my own.

An alternative, and, to my mind, more plausible, interpretation would be that such rituals are no longer needed: “full” or “completed” wives have completed their transformations into fully assimilated members of their husband’s patrilineages, and they are acknowledged as such by other members. Nonperformance of such rituals factors into their sense of wellbeing because it underscores the fact that they finally belong to their husbands’ families. As senior wives, it is not a question of being prevented from performing such rituals (as junior wives sometimes are) but rather that such rituals are no longer seen as necessary. They have served their purpose of “completing” son’s wives, “filling” them with the substances of their husband’s families. Thus, when a son’s wife senses that she finally belongs and that she has finally been accepted, she decides on her own to stop doing these rituals; no one in the family needs give her clear, explicit directions to desist from performing them, but everyone implicitly agrees that the process of assimilation has been completed. She stops “naturally” performing the rituals of deference that effected her assimilation. All senior wives speak in similar terms. With the passage of time and the birth of children, they have assimilated with their husband’s lineage. This assimilation has profound consequences for how these women experience themselves. The days of feeling fragmented and conflicted, torn by thoughts of the natal family they left behind, are finally over. They realize that their own self-interest and that of their conjugal family’s coincide, and with this realization, emerges a sense of coherence within themselves. Although they may still be some time away from being the senior-most woman of the household, they see themselves as well on the way to it and they have begun to take advantage of the privileges that that position is likely to bring with it, privileges that include influencing family decisions and telling juniors, both women and men, what to do and how to do it. A concomitant of this increased influence within the family, greater control over the productive and distributive activities of the household, and this new coherence within themselves is a sense of substantial wellbeing: on the average, a senior wife states that she has thirteen annas of wellbeing, although Lata, the senior wife who is quoted below, claims to have a near perfect score: I have nearly sixteen annas of wellbeing. There’s nothing that I haven’t got. All that I hoped for I have. When I came here…in the beginning, thoughts of my father-mother, my brotherssisters, I used to think of them all the time. But now what is left for me there? Nothing. My life is here. My children are here. When I first came, there were so many fears in my mind/

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heart. What kind of people were these going to be? Who is like what? Who will say what? How would I get to know all of them? How would I be able to understand what was in their mind/hearts so that I could satisfy their wishes and manage them as a united family? These were my fears at the beginning but now I don’t have any of those fears. I know them, they know me. I take care of everything now, with sana ja (husband’s younger brother’s wife).… I know that I’m able to keep this family content and so I’m content.

Lata clearly sees herself as actively creating her own wellbeing—through assimilating expeditiously, through performing her duties as a son’s wife exceptionally well, and through distributing resources and activities wisely. As a senior wife, Lata is coming into her own as a skillful family manager. And one of the major rewards of being a skillful manager is enjoying substantial wellbeing.

Daily Routine of a Married Husband’s Mother When her sons marry and a new generation of son’s wives enters the family, a woman’s position within the family becomes least assailable.13 She is influential within the household, distributing family resources, controlling the activities of all the younger women and children; she is productive, central to the material prosperity of the family as well as its fund of auspiciousness; she has greater coherence than even a senior wife, because it is now physiologically appropriate for her to approach the gods without restrictions. A casual reading of the following daily routine brings home in sharp detail the shifts that occur in the distributive activities performed and the opportunities available when a senior wife becomes a husband’s mother. Satyabhama describes her day in the following manner: S: We get up at 3:30/4 in the morning. As soon as we get up we wash our faces and then we bow our heads to god. We then clean our teeth, and go and defecate. After defecating, we may do some polluting work. And then we go for our baths. When we are returning from our baths, we pluck a few flowers for god. After we return, we pray to god, we light a lamp, incense sticks (agarbatti), offer flowers, repeat a few verses (slokas) and after that we have some tea to drink. After tea, I arrange the metal tray that I will be taking to the temple later on. Once I have finished arranging, I turn my attention to cutting vegetables or grinding spices. I have to do all that. It varies from day to day. Once that is done, I have to go to the temple. Once I have gone around the temple and returned, I have to see who has come, who has eaten, who has gone out, who is in the house, and then again, I have the job of arranging the flowers and other things for god. And then, I may sit down, go from this room to that, look out of the front of the house, whatever needs to be done in the house—that has to be settled, this has to be cleaned and washed. And then comes the business of serving food and seeing people eat. All the business of running a house. And then the children return home from school and it’s

13 Not all women have sons, but traditionally, people in the temple town have sought a way out by adopting a relative’s son, preferably one’s own daughter’s second or third son. The child is adopted formally into his maternal grandfather’s lineage and all ritual ties to his biological father are severed. In the present sample, Rani, the senior wife quoted earlier, and her husband have done just that.

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time to see to their eating, their studies. This would be about three in the afternoon. Sometimes it may be a little later but my work of arranging things for the temple goes on. I make the wicks for the temple lamps, I make garlands with flowers for the deity. I gather together whatever is necessary for my temple work. And then … I move around the house, from here to there and then we have tea. I join in the cutting of vegetables for the evening meal. After tea, I offer evening worship. Once I’ve given evening worship, I go and lie down. I cover myself and lie down right here. I only get up at about ninethirty or ten at night. I eat food then and go to bed soon after. Nowadays, because it’s cold, I cover myself and lie down, but even in summer, I lie down and close my eyes. After all, the food won’t be ready till 10 pm—so what is there to do but lie down and close one’s eyes? U: As you were saying, before you go to the temple in the morning, you bow your head to god? S: As soon as we get up, early in the morning, as soon as we have washed our faces with water, we turn to the one or two photos we have of god and we bow our heads three times. Then we clean our teeth, after that we defecate. After defecating, before going for our baths we may clean out the house, throw out the garbage, do all that kind of polluting work and then we go for our baths. On the way back from Bindusagar, we pick a few flowers and after returning home, there are again prayers in the prayer room upstairs. After doing worship, I water the plants and then I come down for tea.

Clearly, this daily routine’s emphasis is quite different from that of those of women at earlier phases. Satyabhama is freed from the strenuous work of cooking and feeding a large family; yet, she does more than most husband’s mothers. When she says, “… I turn my attention to cutting vegetables or grinding masala … I have to do that …,” she is subtly directing our attention to what she sees as her son’s wife’s incompetence at managing the kitchen independently. Most husbands’ mothers speak of themselves as moving out of the kitchen entirely. Chanjarani says in this regard: U: And they (the bous) do all the cooking and the serving of the food? You don’t even join in the serving? C: No, I don’t. I don’t serve. The senior wives do that. I don’t go near the kitchen. It’s now more than ten years since I entered the kitchen. These son’s wives came into the house. Before they came, I used to cook and serve, but once they came … it stopped on its own, by itself, my going into the kitchen stopped—why should I go into the kitchen when the son’s wives are there? They do the cooking now and we only sit and eat.

A husband’s mother’s work now is more of a supervisory nature, of ensuring that her little community runs efficiently. She has a considerable range of spatial mobility: she goes alone for her daily bath to the temple pond, worshiping everyday at the Lingaraj temple. She admits that during the day she looks out from the front of the house, watching the world going by. These are all activities that are strictly forbidden for a junior wife and, often limited, even for a senior wife. Most important, however, is the married husband’s mother’s regular communication with god and her uninterrupted association with offerings meant for divinity. This privilege of approaching divinity without reservation is a direct consequence of her ability to maintain her physical body’s purity, an ability that is relatively recent for her and the direct result of two factors. Firstly, when a son marries and brings his wife into the family, his parents usually cease being sexually active: the job of reproduction has been passed on to the son and his wife. According to the married husband’s mothers who spoke with me,

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this custom prevails in all temple town households. If it does not and if this fact becomes known in the neighborhood, great shame results for the family. Manjula, Prafulla Panda’s wife, speaks for all married husband’s mothers when she lowers her voice and in an embarrassed undertone, confides in me about her husband’s sister: Amongst us people, here in the temple town, when the eldest son marries and his wife steps over the threshold, that is the time for the old people to stop cohabiting—but what can one say about men? Do they always do what they should do? No. My husband’s sister —her only son married and brought his wife into the house. And then the old woman became pregnant—both husband’s mother (sasu) and son’s wife (bou), both pregnant at the same time. Hai! Hai! What a shameful matter! The old woman went away. She went to Cuttack. She stayed with her husband’s elder sister and gave birth to a daughter. The child was two months younger than her son’s son. Only when the child was more than six months old did she return home. So those things happen. But they shouldn’t. In most families, when the son marries, the old people become like brother and sister to each other.

More importantly, these women believe that this cessation of sexual activity makes it easier for them to maintain bodily purity. They view sexual activity and the exchange of substances during intercourse as inherently polluting. And the usual way of purifying oneself is to bathe or at least wash oneself below the waist as soon as possible after such activity. While these measures to maintain bodily purity more or less work, Odia Hindu women see withdrawing completely from sexual activity as the most effective way of remaining physically pure. Secondly, a married husband’s mother is often past menopause, and so there is no time of the month when she is polluted (mara). The impurity (asuddhata) of menstruation is keenly felt by all temple town women, both young and old. Having to stay out of the kitchen, out of contact with other members of the family, especially one’s children; having to eat out of leaf plates; and not being able to bathe or oil one’s hair—all these barriers to life as usual—serve to make these women feel out of sorts. They refer to menstruation as “the curse of the seasons” (rtu sapo), and they look forward with almost palpable relief to menopause,14 as a time when the “curse of the seasons ends” (rtu sapo bandha heigola). Both these reasons, then, make it appropriate that as the married, she is the intermediary between the household and god. This is a position that most women enjoy considerably; it gives them a greater sense of coherence, of moral goodness, and is the source of a heightened sense of wellbeing. The average score for 14 According to these older women, menopause does not affect a woman’s physical health adversely. Severe pains in the lower back, heavy, frequent, and irregular bleeding, hot flushes, irritability, and mood swings are symptoms that these women appear to be unfamiliar with, at least as the regular, to-be-expected aspects of menopause. When asked explicitly about the occurrence of these symptoms, they say that such problems happen only when menopause occurs earlier than it should. They say that women experience menopause around the time when the eldest son marries; if a woman should have menopause before this, then according to conventional wisdom, she will suffer pain in the lower back, pain in the legs and arms, and heavy, frequent bleeding. However, these women were first bewildered and then amused when I suggested that hot flushes, irritability, and mood swings are also features of this time in a woman’s life. Apparently, they have not heard of such symptoms.

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married husband’s mothers is consequently 12 annas of wellbeing. Three married husband’s mothers even say that they have fully 16 annas of wellbeing.15 Chanjarani says: [I have] complete peace of mind. I lack for nothing. I have no disturbing thoughts in my mind/heart. My mind/heart is clean. I believe that I’ve been blessed by god, my mind/heart is full because he has blessed me. Why doesn’t he bless everyone? He doesn’t bless everyone because not everyone looks to him with such devotion (bhakti), regards him as the only refuge in this world. Now that there are son’s wives, I no longer need to involve myself in the problems of managing a family. I can now turn to god, ask to let me see him (darsan), ask him to let me end my days well, in a good way, let the children remain well. He is after all our only refuge.

Married husband’s mothers underscore this movement toward occupying spaces that are more pollution-free, closer to divinity, by beginning to dress differently. They no longer wear bright reds and yellows, colors that are more suitable for junior and senior son’s wives, who are still sexually active and reproductive. Instead, married husband’s mothers wear cooling, more sober shades (see Lamb 2000), and, while they continue to wear all the auspicious signs of a married woman (sadhaba striro subha lakhana), they tend to wear fewer gold ornaments. Again, to quote Chanjarani: The son’s wife should wear gold ornaments all the time. That is auspicious for the whole family. Good will come to the household only if the son’s wife wears good clothes, bright colors, gold ornaments. If the husband’s mother wears more gold than the son’s wife, if she wears brightly colored saris and the son’s wife doesn’t, that is wrong, only bad will then come.

As the less conspicuous and less attached and the most senior and most auspicious women of the household, married husband’s mothers feel valued and respected, but a few supervisory tasks can be felt by them as burdensome. When family resources are limited and not all sons make equal contributions, then the opportunities for ill feeling and bitterness between brothers and between their wives may increase. Then the unenviable task of maintaining peace within the family falls to the married husband’s mother. They try to treat each of their sons and son’s wives similarly, and they try to ensure that those, who are more able, care for and support those who are less fortunate, but they often fail at this task. Manjula describes her predicament in the following words: Suppose one son and his wife are wealthy, prosperous. They dress well, the son buys his wife expensive saris that she wears all the time but the other son can’t do the same for his wife. He isn’t capable, financially speaking, of buying his wife good clothes. Then both the husband’s mother and father who see this will feel sad, their mind/hearts will be disturbed. But what can be done? Not even the husband’s mother can tell the wealthy son’s wife that 15 Satyabhama, however, says that she has only 2 annas of wellbeing. In Table 6.1, she is the married husband’s mother in household # 4 who gives herself this low score. But knowing the circumstances of her household and realizing that this low score was a way of expressing her anger and dissatisfaction with her son’s wife, I disregarded her score when calculating the average wellbeing score for married husbands’ mothers.

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she is doing wrong. What can she say? Can she say, “You are wearing such a nice sari, [won’t you] give your husband’s brother’s wife a similar one?” No, no, no, we sasus can’t. She [the bou] has to have the intellect (buddhi), the capacity to discriminate (bibek) to realize this on her own. She has to realize, “We all live together in such close proximity. It isn’t appropriate that I should wear this expensive sari and my sana ja a torn one. If I do, I will hurt her feelings.” But we, husband’s mother-father, we can’t say anything. We have given birth to all of them, and we look with equal favor on all of them. But in reality they are not the same. Are the five fingers of one hand ever the same? They aren’t, but those who are bigger and stronger should on their own make the effort to help and strengthen the weaker members. Only then will the family prosper. But can we put all this into words? No, we can only look on all this silently.

Before concluding this section, I need to emphasize that not all women will necessarily experience all of the privileges associated with mature adulthood. Usually, in a family with many sons, only the wife of the eldest son will become the seniormost wife. Enjoying the privileges of primogeniture, only she will savor fully the power, coherence, and wellbeing that come with being a mature adult. If, however, the eldest son’s wife is too meek or too incompetent, she is more than likely to be supplanted by the enterprising wife of one of her husband’s younger brothers. In addition, the wives of younger sons have another shot at enjoying the power and influence of mature adulthood if and when the extended household breaks up because of the death of their husband’s father or mother. In that situation, they and their husbands would set up their own nuclear households, which would become extended when they welcomed their sons’ wives into the family, thereby ensuring that these women become married husband’s mothers and mature adults. As I said earlier, it is as a married husband’s mother that a woman’s position is least assailable, but time degrades this and with old age, there are usually sharp reversals in her situation. An old woman has to minimize her transactions and exchanges with others. She may be the oldest, but she is no longer the dominant woman of the household: she controls her own activities but not those of anyone else’s. She stops being involved with the productive activities of the household, and little that she does has any effect, either positive or negative, on the family’s fund of auspiciousness. From a Hindu perspective, she is considered to be “cooler” and “drier,” and, therefore, she can be in continual contact with the gods, but only on her own account. Since she is not controlling household activities, however, she can hardly function as an intermediary between the household and divinity. Widowhood exacerbates the conditions of old age. As an old widow, a woman is relegated even more severely to the background within the household, expected to contribute nothing to the family, and expected to get little in return.

Daily Routine of a Widowed Husband’s Mother Socially speaking, for Hindu women, the experience of widowhood is one of deconstruction of personhood (see Lamb 2000). During the funeral of her husband, several rituals emphasize the erasure of a woman’s previous marital existence. One

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erasure is symbolized by her being deprived of the husband’s family name. A widow is usually known only by her personal name, prefixed to the title “bewa” (widow). She wears either a white (a cooling color) or ochre (the color of the renouncer) sari without a border. Sarala, 78, has been a widow for 36 years and her account of an ordinary day in her life typifies this experience of widowhood. S: I get up at three in the morning. I put some water for heating and then I go and defecate. After that I bathe. People would be still sleeping. It would be dark, some people may be awake but others would be sleeping. After bathing, I get back into bed. I cover myself up and go to sleep. I get up only when the tea comes. With tea, there would be something to eat. Whatever they had made, maybe some upma16 or whatever—they will call me and I get up. But I eat lying in bed—do you understand? Sometimes I sit and eat but sometimes I lie and eat. These days the weather is cold and so I wrap myself and go and sit in the doorway. By about ten or eleven, they would have finished cooking and they come and call me. My daughter would have come, she goes to the kitchen and serves for me and herself and the two of us eat together. We eat here in this room. After eating, we go and wash our hands and then we come back to this room. If daughter is not there, they serve me and bring the food here. On days when I’m not feeling well, I get back into bed after eating, I eat betel leaf and I lie down once more. But on days when my mind/heart is active (je dino mor mana gati koruchi), I sit in the doorway and chew betel leaf. I see you going by sometimes, sometimes I see an aunt going by, sometimes a mother, and they will say, “You’re sitting here?” After sitting for some time, when I again feel cold, I get back into bed, I cover myself and lie down. Then again tea and snacks will come and I will eat, again my middle daughter will be here and we have tea and snacks together. And then dusk falls, once dusk falls, there is no work whatsoever. You understand? Daughter will put the mosquito net over my bed and once again I lie down all covered up. In the middle of all this the evening meal arrives. At night, whatever comes, if I feel like it, I eat it. I eat a little of it and then I lie down. Bread (parathas), milk, curry, fried vegetables, whatever they have made that is what is served. After eating, then again I make myself some betel leaf, I eat one and keep one under the pillow. I lie down. I have no work to do, neither night nor day. At no time during the day do I have any work. I have nothing to do. When I get up in the morning, again I put water for heating, I shit, clean my teeth, I bathe. This is the month of January/February (Magha) all the women get up early, bathe, go to the temple, they do what they want to after bathing, I go back to bed. The grandson’s wife (nathani-bou), she comes and calls me, “Ma, you’ve fallen asleep, get up, get up, here’s your tea and breakfast.” Again the tea and something to eat. Some days it’s semolina (suji), some days it’s bread (parathas). U: When do you pray? S: There’s no more praying for me. Why? Do you want to know why? Our gods are kept upstairs. By the time I walk up those stairs, my strength disappears. God is taken care of nowadays by the son’s wives. Now that they do all that, what is left for me to do? On days when I have the strength I pour a little water on the tulasi at the back but otherwise all I do is put a few drops of nirmaliya17 in my mouth. Every day, every day, I put a few drops of nirmaliya in my mouth and then I lie down. Then the same things happen every day. Over and over again, the same things.

16 17

A dish made of semolina. “Nirmaliya” is a solution made of water and desiccated “prasad” from the Lingaraj temple.

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U: How often do you go to the temple? S: I can’t go to the temple. It is now two years since I went to the temple. My strength is declining, my body trembles, I may fall down somewhere and then people will say, “hai, hai,” people will criticize me for that.

Sarala appears to have been effectively marginalized by age, physical weakness, and widowhood. She does not distribute or channel any sustenance to the family, either materially by cooking and feeding others or spiritually by maintaining auspiciousness within the household. Her flouting of the usual conventions of proper daily actions (nityakarma)—climbing into bed after bathing and eating in bed—indicates her lack of centrality within the family. She maintains her physical purity by drinking a few drops of nirmaliya whenever she feels like it, but this does not enable her to intercede with divinity to ensure the health and prosperity of family members—only when a woman is central and productive to household activities can she do so. As she puts it: No one needs me for anything, no one asks me for anything, no one does anything for me. No one does anything to make me feel good. No one. Not one of these people.

And these feelings of being marginalized from all distributive activity and, in her opinion, neglected are recurrent themes in her conversations. She accuses the son she lives with of being indifferent to her health, although I could observe nothing that corroborated her claims: U: Suppose you’re ill, do you go to the hospital? How do you go? Does someone take you? S: No. Do I know beforehand that I’m going to be ill so I can arrange all that? Suppose I become unconscious? U: No, no, that’s not what I meant. You remember you were saying that you were having difficulty digesting food. In that kind of situation, would you tell your son and would he take you to the doctor? S: No, my son, he hears everything, knows everything, but he doesn’t take me. To save myself, I go on my own. According to my mind/heart, I see the doctor. He checks me, writes out the prescription, I buy the medicines, I come home.

As this exchange makes clear, there are few restrictions on Sarala’s movements— she can go wherever she wishes to. However, she interprets this, and perhaps quite accurately, not as a measure of freedom, the ability to go where she chooses when she chooses, but as one more indication that her sons and their wives and children are disinterested in her welfare. Not surprisingly, Sarala claims to have no wellbeing whatsoever: I tell you I have no wellbeing, I am empty of wellbeing. When there is no peace, when there is no wellbeing, then that is all one experiences, the lack of peace, the lack of wellbeing, the lack of happiness, of contentment. What does it matter if one has a bed to sleep on, food to eat and a roof to lie under? Those are unimportant matters—they can’t make you feel well.... Are things good here? Look around you. Can I get peace of mind now and here? The only thing that will give me peace is thinking that I will go with my hands and legs working. I should go like this. If I can be sure of that, I will have some peace of mind, I will have some measure of wellbeing. I am not anxious about anything else, I’m only anxious about how I will go. I have anger in my mind/heart about everyone. I have no peace in my mind about anyone—not sons, not son’s wives, not grandsons, not granddaughters—because…because of all this…because of the way I used to live, of the way I used to be. From where will happiness come? There’s only sorrow in my mind/heart. Who is there to give me happiness?

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I will carry on in this way till it is time for me to go. What else is there? When it is time for me to go, I’ll go. Even going, there’s no one to say, “Go”,18 and when Yama comes from the other side, there’ll be no one to keep me here. I sleep all alone, there’s no one willing to sleep with me. Everyone’s here, but there’s no one willing to sleep with me. And so, there’s no peace in my mind/heart. Sixteen annas of no peace. Everyone will say when it happens, eh! eh! the old woman died alone. The door had to be broken down, there was no one with her. Eh! eh! Won’t they say that? But will I hear the criticism? Of course not. These people will. I will hear nothing any more. They will hear all that, and that is the truth.

Sarala’s dependence on her sons and their wives and children, her lack of importance within the family, her lack of control over the activities of others, and her dissatisfaction with the service she receives from family members, all contrive to make this phase in her life almost unendurable. She is anxious that she should die while her hands and legs are still working, but the emotion she feels even more strongly than anxiety is anger. She is not anxious that her sons and their families will not feed her or that they will abandon her. After all, they have been housing, clothing, and feeding her for at least the last 30 years. Rather, she is furious with them for what she perceives as inadequately performed service, service that, in her eyes, lacks the proper components of worship (bhakti)—and she makes no attempt to hide the anger that is in her heart. In the previous chapter, when women described old age, they said that during this phase of life, people become irritable (chidua), unreasonable, and harshly demanding. Sarala appears to exemplify this general description of the old: her emotional tone during this phase of her life appears to be one of great dissatisfaction and irritability.

Conclusion To summarize, these accounts of women’s experiences at different phases of the life course demonstrate that the critical variable in the access to and experience of wellbeing is not chronological age but rather family role occupied. A comparison of the wellbeing scores of unmarried daughters and junior wives provides yet another example of this association (see Table 6.3). In extended households, unmarried adult daughters and junior wives are often of approximately the same age, and yet, their sense of wellbeing differs vastly, daughters having near perfect scores and junior wives strikingly lower ones. Of the four phases of life discussed in this chapter—youth, young adulthood, mature adulthood, and old age—three of them coincide rather neatly with particular family roles. Unmarried daughters who are of marriageable age fall into the category youth, kishoro, although they would be toward the later end of this phase; junior wives, who have entered their husband’s mother’s homes and have become sexually active, fairly recently, are young adults (jouvan); and, widowed husband’s mothers are no longer referred to as husband’s mothers (sasus), but described simply as old (briddha). 18 This notion of having a loved one tell the dying person to give up her hold on life, “to go,” is, according to Madan (1987: 125n) a “widely prevalent” one among Hindus.

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Table 6.3 Distribution of women’s wellbeing according to family roles

Household 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Average score

Son’s wife

Husband’s mother

Daughter

Junior

Senior

Married

6 12, 10

8

**a

12 8 13 2b 8

16 16

0 2, 16c 10 10 8, 8 8, 8 4, 6, 6 No score computed 7.6

14.5 ** 16

13

Widowed

Anomalous women

0

1.5

14 9

16 16 6, 16 12

** 8 7.75

No score computed

a

Indirect responses made calculation of wellbeing scores well nigh impossible Score disregarded when calculating average wellbeing score for married husband’s mothers c Score disregarded when calculating average wellbeing score for junior wives b

The middle phase of life (prauda), however, differs in that it encompasses two central family roles—that of senior wife and married husband’s mother. More importantly, it is a phase that not all women necessarily experience. Every woman goes through the various phases of youth, young adulthood, and old age in the fullness of time (apey-apey, as they say in the temple town), but to be a mature adult, requires a touch of divine grace (anugraha), a blessing from god (devankoro barad). Life can produce events both mundane and tragic that interfere with the process of becoming a mature adult. Thus, being married to a younger son in a family with many sons or simply having a husband’s mother who impedes a junior wife’s process of assimilation into her husband’s family, as Satyabhama does to Sanjukta, effectively robs a woman of the chances she has of growing into a mature adult. And, then, there are tragedies like the untimely death of a husband or rejection by him and his family that summarily end the process of becoming a mature adult. Thus, mature adulthood is valued because it is definitive of having control and influence and of being productive and coherent and also because not every adult woman is so blessed. The kind of domesticity portrayed in this chapter could not be more different from the one that Betty Friedan decried in The Feminine Mystique (1963)—and the differences run deep because they reflect significant divergences in worldviews and self-definitions. Friedan ascribes the pervasive sense of sorrow and worthlessness that American housewives of the 1950s supposedly experienced to their exclusion from paid labor, an exclusion that had, as she describes it, two serious and deleterious effects. Firstly, it prevented them from developing a wholesome sense of self because, from an American point of view, one’s sense of self-worth is tied up in one’s work; and secondly, it made them entirely dependent on their husbands for the

References

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material conditions of their lives. Odia Hindu women, however, view themselves and the world a little differently—they do not resist culturally prescribed gender roles, and they do not seek to alter supposedly oppressive kinship structures. Some of them, junior wives perhaps, and old women certainly do experience sorrow, isolation, and a sense of loss for times past, but they do not think that the solution to these problems lies in a radical rearrangement of social relationships. Instead, women in the temple town believe—and this includes junior wives and old women—that selfcontrol and self-discipline, serving others sincerely, and doing one’s duty unswervingly constitute the most effective path (hard though it may be) to achieving both success and satisfaction in this world. Clearly, these vignettes of life in the temple town portray a moral world that does not privilege liberty and equality—the central values of liberalism—over all others; rather, to repeat what was just said, people here prize self-discipline and self-control, loyalty, patronage, protection, and sacrifice, including the ability to defer or even subordinate personal gratification. As the women who have spoken on the preceding pages make amply clear, these are the values they seek to manifest in their lives— this is their expression of moral truth. While these values may appear strange to a modern sensibility, perhaps, even a little difficult to relate to, I think that reasonable people would find it hard to deny their righteousness or to claim that they are ethically indefensible. More importantly, it is through adhering to these values, through maintaining practices, that liberals would deem “illiberal,” that Odia Hindu women, during mature adulthood, achieve substantial wellbeing. In these circumstances, liberals would have to acknowledge that even though they may not approve of the way of life exemplified in the temple town, it nevertheless represents an “authentic variety of human flourishing” (Gray 1996: 152).

References Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., & Swidler, A. (1996). Habits of the heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, J. K., & Kerns, V. (Eds.). (1985). In her prime: A new view of middle-aged women. South Hadley: Bergin and Harvey. Friedan, B. (1963[2001]). The feminine mystique. New York: W. W. Norton. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gilligan, C. (1995). Hearing the difference: Theorizing connection. Hypatia, 10(2), 120–127. Gray, J. (1996). Isaiah Berlin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hauser, B. (2010). Performative constructions of female identity at a Hindu ritual: Some thoughts on the agentive dimension. In A. Hoffmann & E. Peeren (Eds.), Representation matters: (Re) articulating collective identities in a postcolonial world (pp. 207–221). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Inden, R. B., & Nicholas, R. W. (1977). Kinship in Bengali culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kakar, S. (1982). Shamans, mystics and doctors. New York: Knopf. Lâm, M. (2001). Multicultural feminism: Cultural concerns. In N. J. Smelser & P. B Baltes (Eds.). International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 10163–10169). New. York: Elsevier Press. Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Madan, T. N. (1987). Non-renunciation. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Marriott, M. (1976). Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer (Ed.), Transaction and meaning: Directions in the anthropology of exchange and symbolic behavior (pp. 109–142). Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali’s Tongue: Cultural psychology and the power of “shame” in Orissa, India. In H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama (Eds.), Emotion and culture (pp. 241–284). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Minturn, L. (1993). Sita’s daughters: Coming out of Purdah. New York: Oxford University Press. Tokita-Tanabe, Y. (1999). Body, self and agency of women in contemporary Orissa. Unpublished PhD dissertation submitted at the University of Tokyo. Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http:// www.glocol.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/staff/tokita/pdf.html

Chapter 7

The Auspicious Heart: Influence, Productivity, and Coherence

Contents “Auspicious Heart of the Family” ............................................................................................ The Transition to Becoming Auspicious Centers .................................................................... Influence, Productivity, and Coherence: A Cultural Model of Wellbeing ............................... How Lived Experience Diverges from This Cultural Model ................................................... Misleading Responses.............................................................................................................. Unfortunate Experiences: Widowhood and the Permanent Return of a Married Daughter..... Widowhood .............................................................................................................................. A Married Daughter’s Permanent Return ................................................................................ Time’s Eroding Effects ............................................................................................................ Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

152 153 155 157 160 162 162 167 170 171 173

The previous chapter delineated the concrete contexts within which Odia Hindu women of the temple town can work toward empowerment and wellbeing as they go through life. Building on these data, the present chapter develops a model of female wellbeing, framed in terms of indigenous cultural meanings, that has salience in the temple town. As you will see, Odia women tend to consider this model to be ideal, in the sense that they all desire to achieve it. However, the lived experience of every woman does not necessarily match it. While many recognize the mature phase of life (prauda) and the family roles associated with it—that of senior wife (purna bou) and married husband’s mother (sasu)—as affording the greatest opportunities for achieving wellbeing, some senior women claim to enjoy almost no wellbeing at all, and their minds, they say, are continually filled with unhappy and discordant thoughts and feelings. It appears that not only are all women not guaranteed to become mature adults but being a mature adult, or at least possessing the objective circumstances of this life phase, is no guarantee of having wellbeing. And then there are others, either young women or the old, who assert, contrary to the cultural model, that they experience substantial wellbeing. Such intra-cultural variability is, of course, to be expected: the cultural model presented here lays down the broad parameters of what constitutes wellbeing, U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_7, © Springer India 2013

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but the concrete context of a woman’s life, perhaps some aspects of her attitudes toward life and this world, inflects her experience of wellbeing. Therefore, this chapter has a two-fold focus: firstly, it presents the cultural model of wellbeing, and then, it examines the intra-cultural variability in wellbeing that the temple town presents, exploring the particular life circumstances of those women whose experiences of wellbeing, for a variety of reasons, diverge from this model.

“Auspicious Heart of the Family” In 1991 when I was conversing with women and men in the temple town about their conceptions of the life course, an articulate Odia woman described a mature, married woman—a senior wife or a married husband’s mother—as the “auspicious heart of the family” (parivararo mangaliko antahkarano). For her, and I think she speaks for many women, being the “auspicious heart of the family” is the peak experience of a woman’s life. Women, here, hope to grow into being the auspicious centers of their conjugal families some time during their journey from birth to death—but they are not entirely confident that they will. That is, as was mentioned in the previous chapter, what makes this phase of life particularly meaningful—it is not guaranteed: many circumstances can obstruct the ideal sequence of life phases, from young adulthood into mature adulthood and, finally, into old age. Thus, if and when a woman does achieve mature adulthood, she feels singularly blessed (bhagyashali). People here reckon that, as the auspicious center of her family, an Odia woman embodies the life and prosperity of her family. They see every action of hers as having implications for the family’s wellbeing. Every item of her attire, every mark on her body, every exchange with family members, and every distributive activity with those within and outside the household—all these are thought to affect the degree to which people within the family stay healthy and prosperous. Mature married women acknowledge, “the burden of giving and distributing that they shoulder” (ame strimane daitvare bharo dharuchu—we women bear the burden of giving and distributing) as senior wives and married husband’s mothers, yet this burden is simultaneously the source of their considerable wellbeing. In order to understand how Odia women translate being burdened by such duties into a sense of wellbeing, one has to appreciate the Odia concept of daitva (literally “givingness”) as it is understood and used in the temple town. The word daitva has no simple English equivalent. It is related to other Odia words for “give” and to the Sanskrit dana. Given the transactional nature of Hindu cultures, what Marriott calls the “explicit, institutionalized concern for givings and receivings” (1976: 109), it is perhaps not surprising that through giving to others, Odia Hindu women experience wellbeing. Raheja, in her analysis of the giving and receiving of prestations (dan) between households in a Gujjar-dominated village in north India, arrives at two important understandings about giving in the Hindu context (1988). Firstly, the giving of prestations transfers inauspiciousness from the giver to the receiver, enabling the

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giver to gain wellbeing and auspiciousness. And secondly, giving is “constitutive” (Raheja 1990: 97) of a dominant caste in that its dominance of, and its centrality to, village life is asserted through the giving of dan, and this dominance and centrality are acknowledged by lesser others when they accept this dan. While I did not fi nd any evidence for the transfer of inauspiciousness from givers to receivers within the households of the temple town (see Lamb 2000, for interesting parallels between her village of Mangaldihi and the temple town), I think Raheja’s idea that the act of giving, in and of itself, connotes dominance and centrality is particularly relevant to the activities of mature adult women in the temple town. Thus, while the obligations to give birth to children and to provide food, love, attention, devotion, and knowledge are heavy burdens, through every act of such giving, mature adult women are simultaneously asserting and strengthening their influence and centrality within the household; and through every act of receiving, others acknowledge this influence and centrality. Giving can be usefully thought of as a double-edged sword: burdensome no doubt, yet exemplifying the influence and centrality of these women—the two key elements that constitute female wellbeing in the temple town.

The Transition to Becoming Auspicious Centers As I have had occasion to mention in earlier chapters, there is a tendency in scholarship on middle-aged and older women (Brown and Kerns 1985; Minturn 1993) to suggest that the process of aging, in and of itself, suffices to explain the increase in a mature adult woman’s sense of wellbeing. Such scholars argue that with age come relaxations in restrictions on speech, action, and movement; relaxations that of themselves result in significant increases in wellbeing. While older Odia women in the temple town do begin to lead relatively less restricted lives as a result of growing older, the increases in wellbeing that these women experience during mature adulthood have less to do with the relaxations that come with age and much more to do with the cultural meanings attached to this life phase as well as the family roles associated with it. For a son’s wife to grow senior and feel well, she has to enjoy the freedom to move out of the kitchen. She may not do so completely or even partly, but the possibility that she could if she would must exist. However, her ties to the kitchen continue to be important, as she is typically the primary server of food. This distributive responsibility is steeped in prestige as it emphasizes her centrality within the household. Through ensuring that each member gets his or her fair share of food, she sustains and maintains the life and health of the household. Like Lamb’s Bengali householders, a senior wife gives “food, knowledge, and services to” and makes “decisions for all others around … including retirees and the young children who were located on the household’s peripheries” (2000: 66). Again, if someone should come over to the house for social or business reasons and if the men of the household are otherwise occupied, she entertains them,

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representing the household and underscoring once more her centrality and importance. She stops performing the rituals of deference, demonstrating, as I suggested earlier, her full assimilation into the household. Finally, she begins to represent the household in its relations with divinity: one of the first tasks of any ritual significance that a senior wife does is to offer the first worship of the evening (sandhya). According to women in the temple town, they offer such worship twice every evening: the first, at 5/5.30 pm, is offered to the sun1 just “before it slips into Ma’s embrace” (mankoro [“ma” here referring to the goddess, Devi] kolore khasijiba agore) and a second one, later in the evening that invites Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and auspiciousness, into the house while keeping malevolent spirits at bay. People in the temple town consider the first evening worship to be more potent because it is seen as directly connected with the life and health of all members of the family, and only mothers, who by giving birth to children maintain the lineage substantially and by feeding family members sustain it materially, can offer it, while any non-menstruating woman in the household can offer the second worship. However, other factors, physiological and cultural, limit a senior wife’s involvement in household worship. Usually, she is still young enough to menstruate, is sexually active, and continues to be involved in the caring and feeding of her children. These processes and duties make her attempts to maintain bodily purity problematic and compromise her ability to approach divinity regularly and continually. In contrast, a married husband’s mother, because she is freed from the duties that burden a senior wife, can approach divinity without reservation. This ability constitutes the primary cause of her sense of greater wellbeing. With son’s wives entering the household, the business of reproduction is passed on to the younger generation. The older couple within the family withdraws from sexual activity, enabling the married husband’s mother to maintain bodily purity more easily. This also happens to be the time when most of these women are not involved in taking care of the very old or the very young: their children are past needing such care, and their own husband’s mothers and fathers are either dead, or their care has been handed over to the junior wives. During this phase of life, most Odia women go through menopause: now, there is no time of the month when a woman is impure. It is, therefore, both culturally and physiologically possible for a woman to go to the temple whenever she wishes to, to pray whenever she wants to, to perform the daily prayers (puja) for her family without hindrance, and to function as the family’s intermediary who seeks divine blessings for every member. Apart from this, the married husband’s mother is also relieved of the physical labor of cooking and cleaning for a large family; however, she continues to administer the affairs of the household and remains aware of everything that happens to family members. The possibility of geographical mobility, of traveling, of going on pilgrimages, and of visiting relatives—even if such events rarely occur—also contributes to her heightened sense of wellbeing. 1 Worshiping the sun at dawn and dusk is an important household ritual in the temple town. Together with other Hindus, Odias of the temple town believe that the sun, through the light and energy it radiates, propagates and preserves life.

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As Satyabhama, a married husband’s mother, says: Who should be concerned about where I go? I go to a neighbor’s house, or I go to my brother’s house at the end of this lane, it doesn’t matter. I go knowing that everything will be taken care of at home. The son’s wife is there, she will do whatever has to be done.

And Chanjarani, another married husband’s mother, talks with great pride about her pilgrimages: Since the sons’ wives came into the house, I have gone to Gaya. A lot of money was spent. I have gone to the four most sacred pilgrimage centers (dhams). I have gone to Badri Narayana, Kasi, Brindaban, Ayodhya. I’ve seen everything. Lachmanjhula, even that I’ve seen. I have seen the gods that live on the mountaintops. I’ve been to Calcutta, I have gazed at Dakhinakali’s at Kalighat. Seeing all that, my mind/heart has become full.

Furthermore, all the younger wives of the household pay explicit deference to the married husband’s mother. While this explicit display of social power must surely increase her sense of wellbeing, it also provides her with a forum in which to express her opinions: by refusing to accept a son’s wife’s deference, she conveys unmistakably her feelings of displeasure and disapproval without saying a word. A married husband’s mother, therefore, has greater opportunity to express negative feelings about other family members, and this perhaps does make her feel better: unlike the other women in the family, she does not, for the sake of family harmony, have to control what she says or does. Two anxieties, however, work to reduce the married husband’s mother’s feelings of wellbeing: firstly, the prospect of widowhood and the stigma that Odia Hindus in the temple town attach to that condition and, secondly, the process of growing old and losing the ability to care for herself physically. The older woman fears reaching a condition when, as Odias in the temple town tend to phrase it, her “hands and legs aren’t working.” I see these as the two factors that prevent a married husband’s mother from achieving levels of wellbeing that are higher than those achieved by a senior wife. Thinking of a possibly difficult future keeps her estimate of wellbeing roughly level to that of a senior wife whose sons are yet to marry.

Influence, Productivity, and Coherence: A Cultural Model of Wellbeing Wellbeing or hito and its contrary condition, ahito, as I have already said, are familiar concepts in the temple town, and defined most broadly, they imply satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the way life is going. The model presented in this section is based on the experiences, satisfying and unsatisfying, of women occupying different family roles, at different phases of the life course, and their interpretations of these experiences. An analysis of these various experiences suggests that Odia Hindu women conceive of wellbeing in terms of three measures. These are (1) having control over one’s self and influence over others, (2) becoming centrally responsible for managing the household’s productive activities and distributing

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its vital substances within the family and the community, and (3) achieving coherence. These measures differ, but are not necessarily in conflict with one another: attaining the first measure, it appears, facilitates attaining the second, and having these two measures, in turn, helps women to achieve the third, until, finally, as senior wives and as married husband’s mothers, women achieve wellbeing most comprehensively. No particular senior wife or married husband’s mother gives a consistent and complete description of the various measures that constitute wellbeing. This model is therefore, like the two- and five-phase models of the life course presented earlier, a composite of what senior wives and married husband’s mothers have said—the points they agree upon and the perspectives they share. As always, I rely also on observations that I made and the many hours of casual conversation I had with these women when I was not explicitly asking questions and eliciting answers. While both senior wives and married husband’s mothers report similar levels of wellbeing (see Table 6.3), I would like to suggest that a senior wife’s experience of wellbeing may be qualitatively different from that of a married husband’s mother’s because the three measures contribute differentially: for a senior wife, the first two measures are foregrounded, while the third is backgrounded; for a married husband’s mother, it is the reverse. For senior wives, their sense of being fully assimilated members of their conjugal family, their ascending positions within these families, and their central roles as intermediaries between their households and the community make them well and satisfied, while for married husband’s mothers, their wellbeing is very much the result of their role as the household’s best intermediary with divinity. Thus, senior wives are likely to say, as Sujata, married to Guna Mahapatra’s2 only son, and a very competent senior wife, does: I run this household. As the son’s wife of this family, I have so many duties. I do my best to make my husband’s parents, husband, son, daughter, content. I manage everything. Our family is an important one in this neighborhood and today it rests in my hands that it continues to be respected.

Many married husband’s mothers, however, would agree more with Biraja who ascribes her sense of wellbeing to the role she plays interceding with god for her family: Now, with the son’s wives coming in, I have nothing to do in the kitchen. From the day eldest son’s wife came, I let her manage on her own. So, now I have time to turn to God. Before I would call to him in the middle of doing work, but these days, I can spend time praying—praying for the children, for the sons. The two youngest sons don’t have any work; we live on the eldest son’s salary. It’s difficult. We pray for their health, their children’s health, we pray that we leave this world with our hands and legs working. Praying makes my mind/heart full—praying, making the metal trays ready for the temple, taking part in the religious fasts (oshas), all make my mind/heart full.

In addition, senior wives and married husband’s mothers may not experience the third measure—“achieving coherence”—in the same way. Senior wives are women who have fully assimilated into their husband’s patrilineages. Such substantial 2

Guna Mahapatra was one of my primary sponsors in the temple town (see Chap. 2).

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transformations imply that senior wives are now “matched” (Marriott 1976, 1990, 2003) with their husbands and their conjugal families in terms of physical substance—a process begun during the ceremonies of marriage but only now reaching completion. This matching has emotional overtones such that a woman experiences it as increased coherence within herself, coherence, here, referring, very specifically, to a woman feeling consistent within herself, not fragmented and conflicted in her mind. With the birth of her children, her conjugal family becomes finally her family; she identifies with it and is devoted to it, without reservation. She realizes that her own self-interest, those of her children, and that of the family’s converge. Thus, the inner coherence she feels is psychological, it is a consistency of the mind/heart. In contrast, the married husband’s mother’s coherence would be better described as moral goodness, the result of her ability to have regular, unrestricted access to divinity. Unlike a senior wife, she is better able, both physiologically and culturally, to maintain bodily purity. Past menopause and sexually inactive though married, no physiological process, no importunate husband can disarrange her body. Bodily purity and her continued involvement in the household’s productive activities make a married husband’s mother the best intermediary between the household and god. Now, she is in regular communication with the household gods and has uninterrupted association with offerings meant for divinity. As the family’s intermediary with divinity, as the moral upholder of her family, a married husband’s mother feels morally coherent—and this coherence is the source of her substantial wellbeing.

How Lived Experience Diverges from This Cultural Model Both men and women in the temple town would recognize this model of women’s wellbeing. But it describes an ideal path. Hearing the reported experiences and circumstances of just 37 of these women is enough to make me realize that a cultural ideal is rarely matched in living detail. Some women claim to enjoy substantial wellbeing even into old age; others, despite being mature adults, have yet to achieve it; and there are even a couple of women whose ratings of their own wellbeing appear to be more strategic than accurate. A widowed husband’s mother, for instance, may not be relegated to the margins, may continue to be a valued and respected member of the family, and, as a result, her wellbeing score continues to be high even in old age. And, it is also possible that a senior wife who should be fairly satisfied with the way her life is progressing may report having less wellbeing than many junior wives. I explore both these situations below. The following excerpt is from an interview with Phuladevi, the 72-year-old widow of the Behera household, whose husband died more than 30 years ago and who has raised her three sons to adulthood single-handedly and successfully. Phuladevi’s experience demonstrates some of this flexibility in the system—although

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it needs to be kept in mind that she is not a Brahman. She is a Chassa, and the restrictions that hedge women of her subcaste are not as stringent as they are for Brahman women. This is how she describes her day: P: I have become the elder (murabbi) in the family. In the morning, people may come over and I have to sit and talk to them. We discuss things. They may have tea, I may have some more tea. And then, I go for my bath. After my bath, the cooking would be almost finished, and so I eat. After eating, I take some rest, I lie down. I rest till afternoon. At about four, I get up and again, if people come over, I sit and talk to them. I talk to them till the sun sets. After the sun sets, once more tea is made, I drink some tea and then…I have no work, so right here, I take some rest. While I’m resting, the children will come, the son’s wives will come and they will say, “Ma, come, eat your rice,” and so, I go and eat. And then, I go to bed. What else is there to my day? …. U: Do you perform worship (pujas) to God? P: … [long pause, till finally, hesitantly] …ye..s, ye..s.... This eldest son’s wife, she does all that. I have become an old woman. I can’t have a bath that early in the morning. They all have their baths early and then they pray to God. Eldest son, he bathes, he is the medium (kalasi) at the Devi temple (Thakurani mandir). He goes there. U: Do you offer evening worship (sandhya)? P: No, I don’t offer any evening worship. I don’t have that responsibility to give any more. That is a responsibility that the son’s wives have and that they fulfill. I no longer touch the cooking vessels, they do and so they offer evening worship. This eldest son’s wife offers evening worship or if this one can’t, then the other or the other or one of the granddaughters—they offer evening worship. That is a burden that has slipped from my head. U: Do you tell them what to cook? P: No, no. I don’t bother my head with all that. When they first came to this house then I had to teach them everything. “Arre, ma, do this like this, do that like that,” I used to tell them. “This food won’t be enough” or “That is too much,” but now I have grown old and they have all raised their families, what is there for me to teach them now? Now that I am old, I eat the fistful of rice that they give me and I sit. What else is left for me in life? Why should I continue to keep all that in my head? U: When did you give up giving directions? P: It is now thirty years since I left all that. Once this eldest son’s wife came into the house, a few years after that, I stopped running the house. A few years after eldest son’s wife came, another son’s wife came into the house, and a few years later, another son’s wife came. In this way, three son’s wives came. They gave birth to children, and they managed running the house. Why should I try to keep the nuisance and trouble of running the household on my head? All that I do nowadays is soothe my grandchildren when they cry, carry them on my hip when they’re small, clean them when they’re dirty, see that they go to school regularly. Or when someone wants advice or when someone wants to give or take money, I do that—that’s my business now. …. He (her eldest son) keeps nothing. He comes and gives me everything. I keep all the money, when he needs money, he asks me. Say he needs 5000 rupees or 6000 rupees to pay the laborers who are repairing this house, he comes to me. I give him the money. Vegetables have to be bought, I give the grandsons the money to buy the vegetables. I keep all the money. When I go away to Unit VI3 to be with my middle son, then I leave some money with eldest son’s wife for household expenses but the rest of the money is still with me and he’ll (her eldest son) come to Unit VI when he needs money. 3

Unit VI is a particular neighborhood in the modern city of Bhubaneswar, planned and built after 1948.

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Like Sarala, the 78-year-old Brahman widow whom I quoted in the last chapter, Phuladevi is hardly involved in daily rituals. But although she too has little contact with divinity, her account makes clear that she continues at the center of her household. She holds the family purse strings, her sons choosing to give her all their earnings, and no expense is incurred without her knowledge. More importantly, according to other parts of her account, her sons and their wives make explicit their concern and affection for her: they make certain that food is cooked that she relishes and that her saris are clean and whole. They make sure that she knows what they are doing, where they are going, and whom they are meeting. They include her in their conversations and their activities. In short, she is continually reminded that she is a valued, respected member. There is a radical difference between the respectful service (sewa) that Phuladevi’s juniors perform for her and the minimal care provided by Sarala’s juniors. Service has, as Vatuk points out, a “mental (manisik) component” (1990: 72). Merely keeping a parent fed, dry and clothed is only its bodily (saririko) component; peace of mind (manore shanti) has also to be ensured. In fact, Sarala makes precisely this point when describing her lack of wellbeing, her absence of peace of mind (see Chap. 6, pp. 145–147). And then there is Pratima, the senior wife in the Panda household and the mother of three daughters, who recognizes that she has disappointed her husband’s mother and father by not providing sons for the lineage. Given the cultural preference for sons among many Odia Hindus, this inadequacy appears to affect her sense of wellbeing, resulting in her self-rating of eight annas—the lowest among all the senior wives (see Table 6.3). But this low wellbeing score is at odds with the reality of her life. Everything she says about her daily routine and everything that her husband’s mother and her husband’s younger brother’s wife say about their routines bolster the impression that she is the mainstay of her conjugal family. She decides what will be cooked—Manjula,4 her husband’s mother, frequently deferring to her in such decisions. She shops for the entire family, selecting the clothes that others, even her husband’s younger brothers, will wear,5 and she entertains guests and relatives when they visit.6 Sonlessness, though a matter for personal sorrow, does not shape her relations with members of the household. She and they do not permit it to define her as inauspicious: she plays the lead role in arranging both her husband’s younger sister’s marriage and his younger brother’s—inspecting the prospective bride, settling demands for dowry, making arrangements for the weddings, shopping for the entire family, and entertaining guests.

4

In her description of her daily routine, Manjula says that she often asks her eldest son’s wife, “I ask purna bou, ‘What shall be cooked today?’ and she will say, ‘Let’s cook this and this and this’ and then, that’s what’s cooked.” 5 Her husband’s mother tells me: “Purna bou, she gets me something to wear from the market. I never go to the market. I don’t even buy these glass bangles that I wear. She buys them for me and gives them to me to wear.” 6 Again, her husband’s mother says of her eldest son’s wife: “Purna bou will arrange whatever food and drink are to be given and serve the guests.”

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For such women like Phuladevi and Pratima, their lack of a single male (either husband or son) relationship neither circumscribes their lives nor marginalizes them as inauspicious—nor does it destroy their sense of wellbeing, although, admittedly, Pratima’s score is the lowest for senior wives.7 Phuladevi and Pratima are examples of ways in which the positive cultural meanings of other familial relationships are picked up and emphasized by these women (each according to her particular qualities) to create unique outcomes (see D’Andrade and Strauss 1992). Phuladevi is not just a widow—she is also the loving mother who single-handedly raised her three sons to adulthood. As such she is entitled to their respect and devotion, an entitlement that she appropriates in full measure. Pratima is not merely a “sonless” (Kondos 1989) mother; she is also the dutiful wife of the eldest son who has never stinted in her performance of service and who has been integral to the distributive activities of the household. As such, she has extended her influence throughout the household, making her its single most essential member. Probably no one in the temple town would deny that to predecease your husband, “to leave this world as a married woman” (sadhaba heikari bida heba), is a “special blessing” (debonkoro bisesh barad) and positive proof of a touch of divine grace. Similarly, every woman keenly desires to give birth to sons; by doing so, she not only expands her bodily self but also ful fi lls an important obligation to her husband’s family, ensuring the survival of their lineage and the salvation of their ancestors. Yet, as Phuladevi, the widow, and Pratima, the sonless mother, show, there exists space within which women can maneuver, opportunities that they can seize upon so as to continue to lead lives that have purpose and meaning.

Misleading Responses Satyabhama, the married husband’s mother whose description of an average day was quoted in the previous chapter, says that she does not even have two annas of wellbeing (see Table 6.3) and ascribes her lack of wellbeing to the conflicts within the family, conflicts that result from the failure of younger members to display respect toward their elders: Everyone thinks she8 is the superior of the other. Everyone thinks she is the family elder, everyone thinks she has to speak out, that she has to say what her opinion is. I’m not preventing others from talking, I’m only saying, “Think of everything, the person who is talking and the consequences of your talking back before you answer.”9

7

I have more say about this issue in the next section in which I discuss women who appear to provide misleading wellbeing scores. 8 The Odia language does not distinguish between male and female third person pronouns. I have translated the Odia pronoun “se” as “she,” but it refers to both men and women. 9 Said loudly, these words illustrate how some older women I spoke with used the situation to communicate their displeasure to other members of the household.

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In a society in which asymmetry of privilege and responsibility has such salience, perhaps lack of respect does lead to a sharp loss of wellbeing. However, there is an alternate, perfectly plausible explanation: Satyabhama was using the occasion of our conversation to inform others in the family, in particular her eldest son’s wife, of her unhappiness with what she perceived as discord within the family, without having to address the issue directly and face the possibility of retorts and disagreement. Her son’s wife, Sanjukta, definitely interpreted her statements to indicate just that and believed that her own conduct was the focus of this particular criticism. I tend to believe Sanjukta and think that Satyabhama was assessing her own wellbeing as being miserably low as a means to arouse the younger woman’s guilt at being a “bad” (kharap, manda) son’s wife. I also tend to think that when Pratima, the “sonless” mother discussed in the previous section, gives herself a low score on wellbeing, she is taking a leaf out of Satyabhama’s book; she announces her low score loudly so that those within earshot—most particularly, her husband’s mother and her husband’s younger brother’s wife—are made aware that she feels disrespected by them and the rest of the family. As I describe in Chap. 9, talking critically and loudly to no particular person is a strategy that powerful, senior women adopt in order to communicate their displeasure. And then there is Jyotsna who belongs to the Behera household—she is Phuladevi’s husband’s younger brother’s son’s wife. As I describe in my brief sketch of this household (see Fig. 2.8 in Chap. 2), the senior wives Rani and Basanti appear to take pleasure in being cruel to this young woman: they make hurtful comments, informing her that her husband finds her ugly and unattractive and that he never wanted to marry her. Not surprisingly, Jyotsna is unhappy and she somatizes this distress. She complains of many health problems, all apparently undiagnosable. But, despite admitting to me in low undertones, after many days of conversations, that she is very unhappy, when asked to rate her own wellbeing, she claims to have fully 16 annas. In sharp contrast to her usual low tones, she makes this claim in a loud voice so that anyone who may be within hearing range would not miss it. Again, like Satyabhama and Pratima, Jyotsna appears to be settling scores; in Jyotsna’s case with her tormentors in the household, trying to deprive them of any pleasure they may derive from hearing that they have succeeded in making her unhappy. Jyotsna’s and Satyabhama’s responses are not only extreme but they seem to contradict what these women had repeatedly said about the circumstances of their lives as well as my own observations. They have, therefore, not been included in calculating average wellbeing scores for the categories “junior wife” and “married husband’s mother” presented in Table 6.3.10

10 The scores point to a problem that afflicts much of social science research—how can one be sure that participants are being truthful in their responses? For my part, I think that ethnographic research, with its emphasis on fieldworkers building relationships with participants, has perhaps an advantage over other kinds of social science research in being able to detect a misleading response—but it is a problem that never really goes away.

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Unfortunate Experiences: Widowhood and the Permanent Return of a Married Daughter In the next couple of sections of this chapter, I intend to discuss the experiences of two Odia women in the temple town. I hope to demonstrate through this discussion that lack of wellbeing in these two cases results from these women being anomalies within their families, from them having no culturally defined family roles to occupy, no duties to perform, and no responsibilities to discharge. This association between having no well-defined family role and the absence of opportunities to achieve wellbeing tends to support the cultural model of wellbeing outlined earlier in this chapter—though it does so in a negative rather than in an affirmative way. The two women are in their mid to late 30s, Nandini being the 36-year-old widowed mother of four in the Nanda family and Snehalata the 38-year-old married and childless daughter of the Pati family who has chosen to return to her father’s home permanently. If their lives had moved as women’s lives are generally expected to in the temple town, they would be mature adults at this point in time, and their experience of wellbeing would be peaking. However, both claim to have little to no wellbeing. I would like to suggest that their lack of wellbeing results from their anomalous movements between family roles. Such anomalous movements can be of two kinds. In one, an event like the untimely death of Nandini’s husband can propel a woman prematurely into a much later life phase, and so she may never traverse the intervening phases. Thus, when Nandini was 21 and had just entered young adulthood, she was widowed; because of this, she never will become a senior wife or a married husband’s mother. The husband’s mother that she will become, when her son marries, will only be a widowed husband’s mother, and ultimately she can expect to become old. And in the other anomalous movement by Snehalata, a married daughter’s permanent return to her father’s house appears tantamount to a reversal of the expected sequence of life phases. With her marriage and departure from her father’s home, she had ceased being a youthful virgin (kishori, kanya); by returning she appears to be trying to undo her transformation, for the only coherent, orderly way a woman can remain in her father’s house is if she had never been sexually active. People in the temple town tend to say that both moves go “against order and coherence” (dharma birudha houchi). Both “disturb the practices of family life” (parivarik jibano golmaal houchi) and both “increase the disorder already prevailing in the current era” (kali yugore bishrunkhala borhuchi). Such disturbances are to be avoided, and the women whose movements bring them about—women like Nandini and Snehalata—are considered extremely inauspicious (ati asubho), the very opposite of married women, who are the embodiments of potent auspiciousness.

Widowhood Nandini, the youngest of five widows in this study’s sample of 37 women, lost her husband 15 years ago when she was only 21 years old. At the time of his death, she had been married for 7 years and was the mother of three small daughters

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aged 6 years, 4 years, and 10 months. She was also pregnant with her son who was born 6 months after his father died. Untimely deaths (apamrtyu) evoke “moral horror” among the Odia Hindus of the temple town just as they do among the Kashmiri Pandits about whom Madan (1987: 127) writes. A typical example of such untimely deaths is that of a young man, with parents still living, who dies leaving several small children. The moral horror people feel at such a death translates into dread when they confront his living widow. In Odia Hindu marriages, as in Bengal (see Inden and Nicholas 1977: 41–50; Lamb 1993: 387–389), Hindu ceremonies are performed that merge the woman’s substance with that of the man she is marrying: she becomes half his body (ardhangani) (Lamb 2000). When he dies, she, too, ought to be dead and her survival of his death is like that of a parasite surviving its host body—from a temple town perspective, a moral outrage. In addition, a woman is said “to hold her husband’s life, health, and wellbeing within her hands” (swaminkoro hito, jiban, svasthya, sabu kichi tar striro hatho bhitre ochi), and his death is proof that she has failed in her most important duty. Nandini has, therefore, been blamed and castigated endlessly for this failure. Her husband’s mother, the widow Sarala, who has spoken several times before on these pages, loudly proclaims her son’s wife to be directly responsible for his death. Sarala almost never restrains herself from abusing Nandini to her face and to others, calling her “that whore who has eaten my son” (se rando mor puoku khaideichi), invoking perhaps the parasite-host body imagery. Hindu women, conventionally, dread the thought of becoming widows precisely because its contrary condition—marriage—is so highly valued and celebrated. Nevertheless, even widowhood may not necessarily be experienced as completely lacking in wellbeing, provided that it occurs at what could be described as an appropriate time. Although widowhood is inauspicious at any phase, the changes it causes in a woman’s distributive activities are much less in old age than at any other life phase. An expected consequence of becoming old is that a woman becomes progressively less involved in household activities and management, and her distributive and other duties are delegated to others. Even if her husband continues to live, age and physical and mental infirmity marginalize the old woman in the household nexus. Thus Snehalata’s mother, Pusparani, is a married husband’s mother, but weakness and ill-health prevent her from performing any duty within the household, even those of a purely supervisory nature. And so today her sons’ wives serve her diligently, feed, clothe, and provide her with shelter, but ignore her when taking family decisions. Widowhood would bring Pusparani few additional incapacities— unlike widowhood in youth or mature adulthood, when such an event makes a woman prematurely incapable of distributing and transacting. Therefore, a woman widowed in old age is not stigmatized as inauspicious (asubho) to the same degree as a young widow like Nandini is. The primary duty of a widow is to avoid distributing the inauspiciousness that she embodies to others; far from having distributive duties, she now has to guard against any inadvertent distributive activity. A young widow lacks wellbeing not only because she is grieving for her dead husband but in large part because she

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is displaced from the distributional nexus of the household. The only other duty that is recognized for a widow is to atone for the failure of having allowed her husband to predecease her, by purifying herself constantly, through right diet, right practice, and good conduct. She can never hope to regain any measure of auspiciousness, but she can at least hope to stop distributing the inauspiciousness she embodies. Most pertinent to the present analysis are the ways in which Nandini has been made to systematically shed her former distributive responsibilities—some of it, oddly enough, through the altruism and compassion of those who have had her best interests at heart. Thus, trying to relieve her of the burden of some of her responsibilities, Nandini’s parents and Satyabhama, Sudhansubabu’s wife, who also happens to be her husband’s eldest sister, have intervened in ways that, I think, have reduced her as a social actor, as a person. By having less and less duties and responsibilities to perform, she becomes less and less of a person, less and less important to the affairs of the household, and more and more marginal in the lives of her own children. At the time of her husband’s death, Nandini gave up her rights as a mother to her two younger daughters. Her own parents adopted the elder of these two girls while, Satyabhama and Sudhansubabau adopted the younger. These adoptions were intended to ease her burdens as a widow, but they also made her a person less involved in the life of the household. Such reduced involvement with life, such “cutting of the entanglements of earthly life” (samsarore janjaloku katideba), may be desirable and “proper” (uchit) for an aging widow, but Nandini is distressed because of the resulting lack of involvement. Even today, 15 years after her losses occurred, she says: Husband’s elder sister (nani)11 has helped me so much. Even today she helps me. She looks on me as her son’s wife. Her children too help me. When she sees my sorrow, she feels sorrow. She took away my youngest daughter when her father died—she was hardly a year old then. She has brought her up as if she were her own daughter. I have never even for a day referred to her as my daughter—not even for a day. And she has never called me ‘mother’ (ma). She has lived in their house. Wherever children grow up, wherever they become human beings, that is their home and those who love them and take care of them, they are their fathers and mothers.

The one set of duties that one would imagine Nandini would always have to fulfill would be those connected with the two children left in her keeping—her 21-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old son. But even with respect to these two children, she has nothing to give or distribute. Her husband’s elder brother and his wife undertake the most clearly understood of such duties—that of arranging and performing the marriage of her 21-year-old daughter and the sacred thread ceremony (brata) of her 15-year-old son. As she says: He12 performed the sacred thread ceremony (brata) for my son. He has been a great support to me. But I can’t expect him to pay for my daughter’s marriage. He has had to marry off three or four of his own daughters. I will have to spend the money myself. It’s not right to 11 12

She is referring to Satyabhama here. She is referring to Jagannatha Nanada, her husband’s elder brother in whose house she lives.

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put so much responsibility on his head. But he would make all the arrangements, I know that. He will find a suitable boy, he might tell me to go and see him, but he would be the one to decide. I may give my opinion but nothing more than that. I would give my opinion, say what I thought was good or bad but in the end he would decide who my daughter would marry, he would perform the marriage.

Nandini will not even be present during these ceremonies celebrating significant life-cycle events in her children’s lives. During these ceremonies, as an inauspicious widow, she lurks in the background, hiding in corners, looking over people’s heads to observe what is happening to her children. As she says, “widows like me, we can’t touch anything or anyone, we only stand in a corner, out of other people’s sight, and watch what goes on, silently.” The extent of her involvement in her children’s lives, thus, depends almost entirely on her husband’s elder brother and his wife, on their relaxed attitudes toward cultural norms, on their “compassion” (daya), as she calls it. The lack of a prescribed role within the family and the absence of clearly defined and understood duties become painfully obvious when one listens carefully to her account of her daily routine. For what she does not do, she uses passive constructions of sentences—“the food is cooked,” and “evening worship is offered.” Only when speaking of her self-reflexive actions—daily ablutions, the prayers she recites, her own getting up, sitting down, and resting—does she use active constructions and the first person singular, “I” (mu). But when she talks of helping others in household work, she invariably appends herself inconspicuously by using the first person plural, “we” (ame). Not surprisingly, she does only the work that does not involve direct distributions to others, work left undone or partially done by others. Like unmarried daughters, she has nothing specific to do. But unlike them, she is expressly forbidden to approach the hearth in the kitchen,13 touch cooking vessels, or serve cooked food to the men in the family. Otherwise, she might jeopardize the life of the family more than she has already done. Thus, she begins her account of her day by saying: After getting up in the morning, I go first to shit. I then wash my hands and face, have a bath and then I pray to god. After that I go and see what I can do to help in the preparations for cooking. The morning meal would be being prepared. Husband’s elder brother’s eldest son’s wife (bou) does all the cooking but we help with all the outside work. We either cut the vegetables, or grind the masala or wash the dishes that have been used in preparing the morning meal—those that are lying around dirty, we clean them. After doing that, we wash the clothes that are lying piled in a heap. And then we sweep the house, the verandahs, the outside, sweep and swab and wash out. We do all that again, and then we sit down. I sit down whenever I find the time. Then everyone comes to have lunch, they have to be served. After they have eaten, I may lie down or watch TV. for some time. And then it’s again time to get up. Snacks are prepared, the snacks that will be eaten with tea.

13 In houses in the temple town (Fig. 2.3), the kitchen is the enclosed space, which has a cooking hearth. But many activities involved with cooking, such as those of cutting vegetables, grinding masala, and sifting and washing rice and pulses to get rid of stones and other impurities, are done outside the kitchen in the inner courtyard. Odias distinguish between actual cooking and these other activities.

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Once everyone has eaten, evening worship (sandhya) is offered. And then again cooking begins for the night meal.

There are two significant differences between this account of a day’s work and the others that I have presented in the previous chapter. Firstly, unlike other daily routines, Nandini’s day lacks a distinct structure; there is little specificity in the kinds of work that she does. She appears to wander aimlessly through the house, and whenever she sees incoherence—something that needs to be done—she does it. Her primary function seems to be to pick up the slack when necessary. At 36, if she had a living husband with a daughter of marriageable age, she would be entering mature adulthood and she should have the right (adhikaro) to direct others in their work, managing and supervising the household. Instead, she is filling in for others. Neither taking nor giving orders, she is both marginal to, and a minimal distributor in, the family’s affairs. Secondly, Nandini’s lack of distributive duties means that she has less existence as a social person, reducing her entitlement to something as fundamental as personal space. From the moment Nandini became a widow, she was locked out of the rooms she had shared with her husband: In those days, I didn’t even have a place to sleep in. She (husband’s mother) came up here and locked up all the rooms that I used to use when my husband was alive and she kept the keys. Those days, I would lie wherever I found space—with husband’s elder brother’s children, on the verandahs, in the store room. In those days, I had nothing to do. I just sat and listened to abuse. I saw neither the front door nor the back door. It is only in the last few months that I’ve begun to use these rooms again. My son is now 15 years old, he has become aware of things and he went to his grandmother and demanded the keys. He said he needs space to study and sleep in, and so, now, I’m able to sleep here14.

A contrasting example is that of Phuladevi’s, the 72-year-old Chassa widow we met few pages ago. According to Phuladevi’s own account, when her husband died, she was already in her early 40s; she had already entered the middle phase of life and was significantly involved in household distribution networks. Her three sons, who were approaching young manhood, were left under her care. It is quite possible that her remarkable personality, and her belonging to a non-Brahman caste, enabled Phuladevi to avoid the marginalization that is the fate of most young, high-caste Hindu widows. But, I would like to suggest that in addition to her personality and her relatively low-caste position, what saved her from becoming marginalized as Nandini has been was that she was already a mature adult when she became a widow, the mother of sons approaching young adulthood themselves. If Phuladevi had been a younger woman, only recently a young adult when her husband died, then her life, despite her extraordinary personal qualities and her nonBrahman subcaste affiliation, might have been more like Nandini’s. Thus, sequence is crucial. As Odia Hindus say, “Everything in this world depends on temporal connections” (Samayo upore samsarore sabu jiniso nirbhar).

14

She is referring to the room in which we were conversing—the room in which she sleeps these days.

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If widowhood happens to a woman when she is still a junior wife, she will have to wait, like Nandini has, for 25–30 years, for her son to marry, to become a widowed husband’s mother and formally enter old age. She can hope that at least then she will have some measure of wellbeing—not much, perhaps, but at least no less than many other old widows.

A Married Daughter’s Permanent Return I met Snehalata for the first time in the summer of 1990. She is, as I have noted earlier, part of Lord Lingaraj’s community of Sudra servitors (sevakas). She presents herself as no different from any of the other high-caste married women I met in the temple town. However, very early in our conversations, she admitted that she had returned home to her father’s house, permanently, roughly 6 years ago, although even before that time, she used to come on protracted visits. She said that she had been married at the age of 14 to the youngest of three brothers in a family that lived in the same neighborhood (podhisa sahi). The husband’s parents being dead, the wives of the two elder brothers managed the household. Snehalata’s mother and father thought this arrangement would help rather than hinder her in adjusting to her husband’s home, especially because Snehalata’s mother’s younger sister (her mausi) was married to the second of these three brothers. But, according to Snehalata, life in her husband’s home was intolerable because long before she entered that household, her mother’s younger sister had seduced Snehalata’s husband. Snehalata believes that everyone in her husband’s household colluded in this arrangement and that the only people who were kept in the dark were her mother and father. Snehalata says that her mother’s younger sister was interested in ensuring that her elder sister’s daughter married her lover because by doing so, she could control the young girl while continuing with her illicit relationship. Snehalata claims that she never had a chance in making her marriage work, although she tried for more than 15 years. About 6 years before I met her, she had returned to her father’s home, giving up hope of ever living in her husband’s house again. Snehalata’s situation provides an interesting counterpoint to Nandini’s. Unlike Nandini’s plain white clothes and lack of ornaments, Snehalata dresses as colorfully as do all other auspicious, married women in the temple town, right down to the last detail of vermilion (sindur) in the part of her hair and the silver toe-rings. However, her position within her family is far more anomalous. Her manner of dressing, more than anything else, drives home the point that she is no longer an unmarried daughter, but rather a sexually active,15 married daughter.

15 From what I could gather from our conversations, the marriage was never consummated and so, despite her style of dressing, she is not, and has never been, sexually active.

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As a temporary visitor in her father’s home, Snehalata would be treated as an honored guest. But as a married daughter, who has decided to return permanently, she has no family role to occupy. She attempts to work her way through this unusual situation by carving out for herself a separate space within the household by turning to religion. She devotes herself exclusively to her preferred deity (ishta devata) Krishna and has almost nothing to do with the rest of the family. She has a guru, she has taken her religious initiation (dikhya), and she has talked in terms of joining an ashram (mattha) after her parents die. As her description of her daily routine makes clear, her whole day revolves around the worship of Krishna, whom she treats somewhat as a wife would treat her husband.16 S: I get up around 3:30/4. That is my custom. I get up and then I sweep out the place where I have slept. I sweep out god’s place too, if there are his vessels that have to be washed, I do that and then I go to pluck flowers. After I do that, I go and finish whatever usual activities (nityakarma) I have to do, and then I bathe. After bathing, I come … and … I sit down in front of him and I recite the prayers that I know. Then I do an aarti17 for him. All this takes me till 9:30/10 in the morning. I would have gone in at about 6:30/7 and for three hours I’m busy there. And then I come out. I would have drunk the water I used to wash his feet, I drink that and then I come out. I then go and milk the cow—the milk I take and put it to boil. And then I start the cooking. Whatever I cook, I first offer to god. As his devotee (bhakta), that is my duty. Whatever it is, whether semolina (suji) or wheat flour (atta), whatever, I first offer him and then only do I eat. U: Where do you cook? S: Here, right here close to god’s room. I don’t use the cooking hearths (chula) in the kitchen. Those are unclean. By 12/12:30, the offering of food (bhoga) would be made to god. Sometimes, rarely, I get later than this, but usually by 12/12:30, I would have made the offering to god. This is usually offering consisting of boiled rice (anna bhoga), and then I eat what is left. After that I may lie down for an hour or two. When I get up, if there is time, I may again come into his room and read from the Puranas. I do this for an hour or so and then the time comes around for the evening bath. Once the bath is over, I again have prayers to say, aarti to perform. And then there are those evening rituals that have to be done for the deity. He has to be lifted and made to go around on his evening outing, things like that. On days when I finish everything early, I sometimes go to the temple for viewing god (darsan) there, or I may go to the ashram to listen to a talk (prabachan). There is this ashram close by, I may go there. But there is nothing fixed. I don’t go more than three or four times a week. U: You go alone? S: No, no, no. I go with two other women who have taken initiation (dikhya) with me. Either one or the other goes with me. If I don’t go for eight to ten days, then I don’t know how but it’s as though the image of god (murti) starts dancing in front of my eyes pulling me towards the temple, pulling me towards the ashram, and if I don’t go I don’t feel well. I tell myself, “Let’s go, let’s go for viewing god (darsan).” But here, people will say, “Why do you have to go? What is kept for you there?” Nothing bad has ever happened, but these people hate the ashram. I don’t know why— but that’s how it is. U: People in this house? 16 In doing so, she follows many other very famous devotees in history—Mirabai, Chaitanya, Andal, to name just a few. 17 Worship involving the waving of lighted oil lamps in front of the deity.

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S: Yes, yes, people in this house too and also people in this neighborhood. People in this house used to say much more to stop me in the beginning but then they realized that I would go whether they abused me or not, and so the abuse became less. But even now, they don’t like my going. And I can never go alone, though close by is my mother’s mother’s house (ayi) house, but still. But I only go after doing all god’s work here, otherwise it would be disrespectful to him, I wouldn’t be fulfilling my responsibility to him. At the ashram, I listen to the talk or, at the temple, I just gaze on god and I come home quickly. After returning I have to make the offering for the night. I do that quickly, offer it to him and then eat and go to bed.

This daily routine is a curious description, quite unlike any other I have presented in this study. It is a self-sufficient account of a woman’s day in which she hardly mentions interactions with other people. This is quite amazing given that Snehalata lives in the midst of a large extended household consisting of two three-generational families that share a single cooking hearth—a total of 20 adults and 4 children. One way of understanding this daily routine is to see it as charting a radical movement toward renunciation. Snehalata is not seeking “detachment” in the middle of “worldly involvements” (Madan 1987: 318); rather, she shuns the household and all it stands for. Her account of a day in her life is singularly focused; it contains little apart from her service (sewa) to her god. She recognizes no distributive duty to anyone else within the family—not to her old mother, or her old father, or her younger brothers, or their children. When I ask whether she does anything for others within the family, she says: Yes, sometimes, if they ask, but they don’t usually ask for anything from me. They leave me alone. I don’t do anything for them. I don’t cook for them. I cook but I cook for god, only god. What is there to be gained by sitting with them, today they are good, tomorrow they are bad. It is better to serve god, he is always the same.

She may have been unhappy in her marriage, but the one relationship Snehalata does not appear to want to reduce is her union with her husband because it defines her as an auspicious married woman. At the same time, in much the same way as a married husband’s mother succeeds in doing, Snehalata is striving for a high degree of purity—as a married celibate (sadhvi). However, her situation is dramatically different from that of any married husband’s mother—she does not get respect or deference from subordinate others within the family; she does not control or supervise anyone’s actions, she has little geographical mobility, traveling no further than her guru’s ashram, and she is not central to either her natal or conjugal family’s wellbeing. Snehalata tries to make up for all these insufficiencies by renouncing the household around her, approaching her god only on her own (and perhaps her husband’s) behalf. By retaining the auspicious signs of marriage and by devoting herself single-mindedly to her god, she hopes to remain both auspicious and pure—a combination that characterizes the latter part of the phase of mature adulthood and the role of a married husband’s mother.

18 Of course, Madan was describing the domestic life of male householders; Snehalata is neither male nor is she a housewife in the traditional sense.

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But this is a foolish hope. Her pioneering attempt to carve out a new path for developing into a mature adult woman, one who combines both purity and auspiciousness and, therefore, experiences substantial wellbeing, does not and indeed cannot work—because it ignores the centrality of social and familial connections to the experience of wellbeing. In the end, as she herself admits, all she has is no peace of mind and no wellbeing (ashanti o ahito): What wellbeing? Wellbeing and what? Peace of mind? What peace of mind? There is peace of mind and then again there are times when there is no peace of mind. Even with the path that I have taken. I have taken this particular path for peace. And yet, there is no peace. My mind/heart may be stable (sthiro) now but soon it becomes restless (chanchalo). When I make the mind/heart firm (drudo), then it gets filled with peace and then a little time later, it breaks up (bhangijauchi) and gets filled with all kinds of disturbing thoughts.

And her father’s younger brother’s wife, Biraja, who was sitting and listening to our conversation, then joins in and says: From where will she get peace of mind? From where will we give her wellbeing? We can give her food to eat, clothes to wear, a mat to sleep upon, but what more can we do? Tell me. How will she have peace of mind? Where are her children? Where is her house? Where is her world (samsaro)? We do the best for her, we try to make her as well as possible, but won’t there remain lack of peace (ashanti) in her mind/heart? We try to ensure that no pain enters her mind/heart. But can we fill the spaces in her mind/heart? Those that should be there—husband, husband’s mother, husband’s father, sons, daughters, husband’s brothers’ wives—from where will they come?

Snehalata is trying to remake her own life on her own terms. She could have stayed on in her husband’s home, or even at this relatively young age, she could have renounced the world and joined an ashram, but she chose not to. By rejecting both options, she feels that she has more control over herself and her actions—but the price she pays is that of liminality, being neither householder nor renouncer. And this liminality signaled most strikingly by the contradiction between her presentation of self as a married woman, and her daily routine as Krishna’s steadfast, celibate devotee, exacts a painful psychic toll. Describing her suffering, she says: I have all kinds of desires, all kinds of wants, so many desires, so many wants—till tears start streaming down my face of their own accord (manu manuku) and then I don’t even know what I want. I don’t even recognize my own desires. Things come and things go. I am close to forty years and I feel restless (bichalito). I have never felt the way I feel nowadays. It must be the effect of this prayer (mantra) that I have recently started saying. After all god has so many disguises (mayabesho), he is testing us all the time, trying to see how strong our minds are. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s as though the soul (atma) desires something, is searching for something that it can’t find. However much I try to make it understand, it doesn’t understand.

Time’s Eroding Effects People in the temple town say that time wears out the problems of life and that “time erodes everything” (samayo sabu jinisoku drava koruchi). Nandini, no stranger to this belief, claims to have begun moving into a better phase in her journey through life: her

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son and daughter are growing up, and, Sarala, her widowed husband’s mother’s alienating control is disintegrating. As she says, talking of her husband’s mother: Nowadays no one is afraid of her. Her time has gone. She was so difficult and made life so hard for everyone that, nowadays, no one pays any heed to her. She is told that so and so is doing such and such but nothing more. That time when we were afraid of her is gone. But it’s because she made life so unhappy for everyone. We couldn’t endure any more of that unhappiness. It went against all principles (aniti), so is it any wonder those days are gone?

Although she has had to wait a long, long time, Nandini is looking ahead to the day when her son will be working, when her daughter will marry and become a mother. For Snehalata, too, the subsequent phases of her life may resolve her dilemma, although she herself does not admit the possibility. Her husband’s death will free her from the conflict of having to maintain herself as the wife of a neglectful husband. She does not explicitly talk of his death, but she does talk of the age difference between her husband and herself, and she talks of the paralytic stroke he suffered 3 or 4 years, indicating, I think, that the thought of his death has crossed her mind. In that case, she could continue to shelter within her father’s house, living out her days simply seeking purity as a renunciate widow. With less emotional and mental conflict, she may then achieve some measure of wellbeing. Meantime she states quite categorically that she has surrendered herself without reservation to god and that he will take care of her wellbeing. As I told you I’ve left everything in god’s hands…I have left everything in god’s hands. I tell him, whatever is to be done, you do, whatever is to be managed, you manage. Whatever happens is good. Whatever happened it was good. Whatever will happen it will be for the good. That’s what I tell myself whatever is, is. Nothing else touches me these days. Sorrow comes, that is god’s wishes, happiness comes, that is also god’s wishes. When I suffer, I think let him do what he wants to do, he wants to wring me dry, let him wring me dry. He will look after me when the time comes.

Conclusion To summarize, the cultural model of female wellbeing presented in this chapter is based on the satisfying and unsatisfying experiences that Odia Hindu women of the temple town speak of having as they move through the various phases of life that comprise adulthood and their interpretations of these experiences. This model identifies three measures as constituting wellbeing: having control over one’s own activities and influence over others; being centrally involved in the household’s productive and distributive activities; and possessing psychological and moral coherence. Furthermore, the model implies that access to wellbeing shifts and changes across the life course, being low in young adulthood, peaking in mature adulthood, and declining once again in old age. Therefore, the model suggests that there is an association between the family role a woman occupies—which changes as she moves through life—and her access of wellbeing. Conversely, if a woman is an anomaly within her household, if she has no culturally defined family role to

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occupy, then she is unlikely to experience much wellbeing. Nandini and Snehalata are such anomalies—and to the extent that these two women have little to no wellbeing, their experiences suggest that the association between family role and wellbeing that the model highlights is fairly robust. Recognizing that intra-cultural variability is a feature of many aspects of social life and human behavior, the chapter elaborates on such variability in self-ratings of wellbeing in the temple town. The model describes, as all models tend to, an ideal path. However, the reported experiences and circumstances of just 37 women is enough to drive home the point that a cultural ideal is rarely matched in lived experience. Thus, there are old widows who claim to have substantial wellbeing and mature adult women who claim not to. And, among these women whose responses and experiences contradict the model’s predictions, there are a handful who appear to be using the ethnographic situation to serve their own ends, to settle family scores, and to express displeasure and disapproval of others’ actions. But the larger lesson to be drawn from this chapter is its reiteration of the huge importance of marriage for women living in the temple town. Unlike liberal societies in which individual liberty makes marriage a matter of personal choice and widowhood a tragic but entirely private business with few social ramifications, marriage in the temple town, as these women keep emphasizing, is the single, most defining experience of a woman’s life and widowhood a dreaded purgatory. For Odia Hindus of the temple town, to be human is to be part of society; similarly, to be an adult woman is to be married. An adult woman who is either a widow or who has renounced marriage is incoherent, she goes against the natural order of things, and she is, therefore, an object of dread—at least from the perspective of temple town residents. The lives of the widow Nandini and the married celibate Snehalata, each in its own way, point to the cultural significance of marriage by illustrating a woman’s unenviable predicament in its absence. Nandini’s situation is tragic—her husband’s premature death and the untimely ending of her married life resulted in her becoming a nonperson when she was very young, stripping her of all social and familial duties and responsibilities. Unlike Snehalata, she appears to have little control over events in her life. As the hapless victim of illiberal Hindu practices, she represents everything that liberals find problematic in Hindu beliefs and practices—beliefs and practices that in exalting marriage and married women label a young widow inauspicious and accursed. If widowhood had occurred later in Nandini’s life rather than when it actually did, she may have been able to weather the storm a little better. The very fact that as an older woman, her children would have been approaching young adulthood themselves would have made a difference to her position within the family—she would have been less vulnerable to becoming a nonperson. In contrast to Nandini, Snehalata’s problems revolve around her self-definition as a married woman. She finds it almost impossible to renounce marriage even to a neglectful and uncaring husband because that would require renouncing the auspiciousness that suffuses a married woman—an auspiciousness that gives meaning to everything she does. Instead, she tries something quite novel, and I would submit, uniquely Hindu: she tries to be a married renouncer. By exercising self-control and cultivating self-discipline, she attempts to combine the auspiciousness associated

References

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with marriage with the purity associated with noninvolvement in the world—and she fails. Snehalata fails because she does not have a socially significant access to divinity—unlike a married husband’s mother, the only family role in which a woman simultaneously embodies purity, auspiciousness, and moral coherence.

References Brown, J. K., & Kerns, V. (Eds.). (1985). In her prime: A new view of middle-aged women. South Hadley: Bergin and Harvey. D’Andrade, R., & Strauss, C. (Eds.). (1992). Human motives and cultural models. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Inden, R. B., & Nicholas, R. W. (1977). Kinship in Bengali culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kondos, V. (1989). Subjection and domicile: Some problematic issues relating to high caste Nepalese women. In J. N. Gray & D. J. Mearns (Eds.), Society from the inside out. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Lamb, S. (1993). Growing in the net of Maya. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Madan, T. N. (1987). Non-renunciation. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Marriott, M. (1976). Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer (Ed.), Transaction and meaning: Directions in the anthropology of exchange and symbolic behavior (pp. 109–142). Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Marriott, M. (1990). India through Hindu categories. New Delhi: Sage. Marriott, M. (2003). Varna and jati. In G. R. Thursby & S. Mittal (Eds.), The Hindu world (pp. 357–382). London: Routledge. Minturn, L. (1993). Sita’s daughters: Coming out of Purdah. New York: Oxford University Press. Raheja, G. (1988). The poison in the gift. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vatuk, S. (1990). “To be a burden on others”: Dependency anxiety among the elderly in India. In O. M. Lynch (Ed.), Divine passions: The social construction of emotion in India (pp. 64–88). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chapter 8

Managing Life and Its Processes

Contents Future-Oriented Attitudes of Active Acceptance and Engagement ......................................... Living in Extended Households ............................................................................................... Cultural Conceptions of the Self .............................................................................................. The “Emergent” Interdependent Conception of Self ............................................................... The “Encompassing” Interdependent Conception of Self ....................................................... The Non-interdependent Self of Old Age ................................................................................ Life’s Challenges ..................................................................................................................... Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

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In the foregoing chapters, I have developed a model of wellbeing that works for a sampling of the Odia Hindu women who live in the temple town of Bhubaneswar. In doing so, I have described those activities that these women see as necessary for wellbeing and have reported on the degrees to which they experience wellbeing, access to wellbeing varying quite systematically across different phases of the life course. They view such variation in wellbeing as an inevitable concomitant of participating in the flow of life (samsara). Thus, they say that there are situations that tend to occur at certain phases of a woman’s life when her activities are so significant to the auspiciousness and material prosperity of the family that her own sense of wellbeing peaks and then there are periods when she is less necessary to the family’s wellbeing and her own sense of wellbeing declines. In the process of developing this temple town model of women’s wellbeing, I have offered a particular portrayal of these women and their world. According to this portrayal, Odia Hindu women who live here see themselves as playing an important role in the biological and social reproduction of society. They do not seek equality with their menfolk nor do they seek individual liberty; they do, however, seek to influence and exercise power over those who are closely related to them, both women and men. And, they believe assimilating successfully with their conjugal family, engaging in its productive and distributive networks, and ensuring its auspiciousness and material prosperity lead to personal wellbeing and to self-empowerment. The virtues they, U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_8, © Springer India 2013

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therefore, value and seek are self-control through deferring gratification, chastity through achieving and maintaining coherence, and self-maximizing altruism through serving and giving. The last of these—self-maximizing altruism—might sound like a contradiction in terms but it is not; instead, as I will discuss later in this chapter, this phrase captures quite neatly an inherent meaning of mature adult women’s serving and giving in the temple town. In the rest of this chapter, I flesh out this portrayal of Odia Hindu women and their life in the temple town. I do so through extending and elaborating upon themes that have not been explicitly dealt with so far—themes having to do with their notions about personal growth and maturity, their ruminations about the challenges, compromises and advantages that attend life in an extended household, and, finally, the shifts and changes that occur in their concepts of selfhood as they mature and age.

Future-Oriented Attitudes of Active Acceptance and Engagement One of the more remarkable findings of the present study relates to these women’s attitude of active acceptance and engagement toward the situations and events of their lives. I have mentioned this positive mental orientation (mano bhabana) before when describing Sudhansubabu’s daughter Rajani’s attitude toward her upcoming marriage (in Chap. 3, pp. 63–64); she says quite explicitly that her karma is in her own hands and whether she is appreciated by her husband’s family and whether she is contented and successful as a junior wife depends on her own actions, on the effort she puts into making her situation better. She is not alone in thinking in this fashion. Most people in the temple town hold to such personal, activist, future-oriented notions as logically entailed in, and part of, the karmic process. Rajani’s sense of having some control over what will happen to one in one’s life, of believing that human intentions really do matter (Babb 1983), and acting on that belief occurs in several of the other conversations, though perhaps no other woman articulated the idea so fluently or so personally and positively. All these women, daughters, son’s wives, and husband’s mothers, recognize the many givens in each of their situations, factors they cannot change, but they also realize that they can work with others within those situations to achieve success and wellbeing. As Guna Mahapatra’s son’s wife Sujata, young yet self-assured and competent, makes clear, one may not choose one’s life circumstances, but this does not in any way preclude human beings from influencing their outcomes, saying: In this world, we are given our conditions of life … we all know that … but we have control over how these situations turn out. It is all in our own hands … our future is in our hands.

Not only does one actively engage the world, accepting and working within the constraints of given situations, but one also strives for particular ends. Manjula Panda—Pratima’s husband’s mother—who presides over an extended family consisting of a husband, two married sons, their wives and daughters, and a third,

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unmarried son, expresses this sense of working toward goals when she reminisces about the past, with a sense of accomplishment: I did the best I could, I carried these children, and fed them, and cared for them. I had decided that the only way the children could improve themselves was through education and whatever the problems and troubles that came our way, I stood with my husband in every struggle and we managed to educate our children. He (her husband) was the second B.A. in this village, and three of my four sons are MAs.

Together with this future-oriented perspective, these women look on family life as an incomplete process, one that is continuously shifting and changing. When they marry and enter a new household, they do not see themselves as junior wives forever. Rather they see in front of them women in different phases of the life course, and they see themselves as being in those phases in the future. Thus, Sandhyarani, a junior wife of only two years standing, is already looking ahead to the day when her husband’s younger brothers will marry and their wives (her juniors) will enter the house. Her husband has five younger brothers still to marry but, at the moment, she is the junior-most woman in the household. She has her widowed husband’s mother and her husband’s elder brother’s wife above her. She anticipates rising to greater authority and then having to instruct the more junior son’s wives on their duties, to advise them about the particular preferences of the different family members, and to give orders about what should be cooked and how. When asked about the role she plays in preparing food for the household, she remarks: Can I say what’s in my mind/heart now? When I am the junior son’s wife? The youngest? I’ve just been married. How can I say what should be cooked? Or how it should be cooked?… Now nani (elder sister, i.e. husband’s elder brother’s wife) tells me what I should do, she decides everything. But when husband’s younger brothers (diyoro) get married, then I will be become senior, and then I will have the responsibility of telling the new wives (nua bous) what should be done, how things are done in this household. Not now—but after some years.

Thus, if one wants to understand these women’s motivations and actions, one has to assume their future-oriented, developmental perspective: they are deferring gratification, looking ahead into the future, often 10 or 15 years ahead, and seeing themselves not only contributing to but also influencing and controlling family decisions. Even the very old do not lack this future orientation: they see death as just another phase, or a punctuation mark, perhaps a comma, in the endless process of living numerous lives, and they clearly hope for a postmortem future rise. For instance, Phuladevi, the 72-year-old Chassa widow we have met before, who is waiting for Yama, the god of death, to lift her, tells me: Listen, ma, there’s nothing more to think about. Now the time has come to think about going away. This is the one hope I have—that with all these people present, I should go away as I am now, with my hands and legs working. Then everyone will remember me as I am now. They will say, “Yes, there was that old woman.” Like you, when you come back, you’ll ask, “Where is the old woman?” and people will say, “Yes, she was here, she was well, but one day, she went away.” That is all that I want to hear. To live long is not good, one should leave this world with one’s hands and legs still working. Then one knows one’s next life will be even better than this one has been. Everything depends on our manner of going.

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Living in Extended Households People in the temple town distinguish between extended living arrangements and nuclear ones. And, while nuclear living arrangements occur in temple town family cycles, extended households are most certainly regarded as ideal, and there is always a tendency to maintain or to move toward such living arrangements rather than the reverse. Extended households usually break up when either the oldest male or female member dies. Their adult sons may set up separate nuclear households but with the marriages of their resident sons and the births of their grandchildren, these households again become extended. Like many temple town residents who contend that they prefer extended living arrangements, Snehalata’s 62-year-old still-married mother Pusparani dreads the thought that when members of her generation (i.e., her husband, his younger brother, his younger brother’s wife (her sana ja), and she) die, the family will split up. As she said to me, covering her ears with her hands: Don’t, ma, don’t even mention that possibility. I don’t want to hear about what will happen to this family after we are gone.

Of course, extended households do break up (Goody 1958), and, when they do, people in the temple town often maintain that the costs of such separation in terms of personal suffering to the senior members still alive are enormous. Thus, 44-year-old Debi Prasad Nayak, a trade union leader employed by the Government Press at Cuttack, claims that when his younger brother built a wall separating his part of the family house and compound from Debi Prasad’s, his mother became ill with stomach cancer because she felt the pain of separation so acutely. But ultimately, separations do occur with brothers living separately, each with just his wife and children, nuclear beginnings of a fresh cycle of extended living. Unlike Debi Prasad Nayak’s situation, however, a catalyst is usually needed to set the splitting up into motion and often it happens to be the death of the father or of both father and mother. Son’s wives, both junior and senior, continue to live together till the passing of the older generation, because they are realistic and pragmatic about the options open to them. These women are very clear in their own mind/hearts about the advantages that accrue from living together in a single household: they realize that through pooling limited resources, everyone stands to gain. They will mention in particular the advantages of greater security, both economic and otherwise. The caring of children and household chores, too, are distributed among the womenfolk, thereby rendering them less tedious. Biraja, Pusparani’s husband’s younger brother’s wife, delineates several of the practical advantages of living within an extended family household: Suppose today my body isn’t well, I’m sick, I will be lying down. But there are husband’s brother’s wives (jas), husband’s brother’s daughters (jhiaris), they are all there, they take care of things for me, they take care of my children, they manage things for me. And so I don’t have any inconvenience. That is why it is such a joy to live together. Always living together, gives joy—that’s what I think. Suppose, I need something, money, some help, medicines, the husband’s younger brothers (diyoromane), the husband’s elder brothers (dedhasuromane), they will manage, they will give the money, they will get the medicines. That’s how it is in every matter. Whenever I have problems, they take care of me, when they have problems,

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I take care of them. In good times and in bad, you look out for me and I look out for you. No one keeps any account of who owes what to whom. We just take care of each other whenever the need arises.

Apart from these more obvious advantages, an important reason for continuing to live in extended households lies in the fact that there is room for maneuvering, for achievement, and for working toward personal goals. The best example of a senior woman enjoying these advantages is Pratima. As the eldest son’s wife and as one who has achieved the rank of senior wife, she decides on most of the important issues facing the household. Thus, as has already been mentioned, she played the major role in negotiating the marriage of her husband’s only sister and his younger brother. She tries to sort out the legal tangles her husband’s father has gotten into because he sued the Ramakrishna Mission for back pay after he quit his job teaching at the mission’s school. She accompanies the old man when he goes to court and she participates in his discussions with his lawyer. She attempts to secure a job for her husband’s youngest brother who is unemployed—she even enlisted me in this task! Together with this increased power within the evolving family and a greater say in the process of making decisions within the family, Pratima controls the activities of her husband’s younger brother’s new wife. She instructs the younger woman on how to cook, measuring out the ingredients for her and supervising the cooking process. But she, not the younger woman, serves the food that the latter has cooked. She, thereby, retains for herself this highly prestigious distributive task that underscores her ascendancy and centrality within the household. Finally, she also does her best to ensure as effectively as she can the future success of her own children: while her husband as the senior, earning member of the family, contributes his proper share into the family kitty, Pratima makes certain that all her three daughters have a tutor to help them with their school work and the three girls also take classes in music and dance—Pratima agreed with me that if she, her husband, and children had lived separate from her husband’s parents, the expenses involved in giving her children these extra advantages would have been prohibitive. No woman claims that living in an extended household, adjusting to it, and assimilating into it is easy: they all see their entry into and life within their husband’s families as a challenge. From their perspective, their lives within these extended families present ample opportunities to both excel and to fail. Success means integrating so well with the extended family household that ultimately every member in it comes to depend on the woman. Many of them claim, as Biraja does, that even a visit to other houses in the neighborhood is impossible because everyone in the family— sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, son’s wives, grandsons, and granddaughters— will track them down, interrupt their visit, and expect them to resolve some problem, however minor, or advise them on some matter, however trivial. Interestingly, none of the women I spoke to understood their postmarital residential pattern as patrilocal or patriarchal, but rather spoke of it as woman-dominated— a fact attested to by their usage of the term sasu gharo (husband’s mother’s home) to refer to their conjugal homes. No one bemoaned, at least when I was around, their transfer to their husband’s mother’s households as particularly hard to endure. For them, such a transfer is part and parcel of being a woman. As Chhanjarani says

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succinctly, “When we are born as women, it is to live in our husband’s mother’s homes.” And Jogidei, Phuladevi’s husband’s younger brother’s wife, echoes Chhanjarani when she asserts that her husband’s mother’s household is her “birthplace”: J: This is our birthplace, only here can we get peace of mind/heart. Nowhere else. Everywhere else there will only be disturbance in our mind/hearts—how else can it be? U: But this isn’t your birthplace—you were born in your father’s house, won’t you? J: How can you say our birthplace is in our fathers’ homes? When we came here we were reborn as son’s wives (bous) and we will die here. This is where our atman will abandon (tyaag) our bodies—this is our home.

Such identification with their husband’s mother’s homes does not, however, preclude their explicit and full-throated idealization of the time they spent as children in their father’s homes. Rani, Phuladevi’s eldest son’s wife, for instance, remembers her life before marriage with great nostalgia, much to the annoyance and discomfiture of her husband. Once, when talking of those halcyon days of childhood and early youth, she said, using the English word “free”: “In those days, I was completely free” (setevele mu pura phree thili). Her husband, who was present with us on that occasion, protested, interrupting her to say: How can you say those days were good? Did you have anything that you could call your own in those days? If you got a new sari you had to share with six sisters, what kind of “phree” was that? Nowadays, I buy you a sari for 500 rupees and only you wear it—how can you say those days were better?

But he could not get her to change her mind; she held to it that life in her father’s home had been idyllic, a life of untrammeled freedom and happiness. But at the same time, within a few years of marriage, these women say that they have less and less of interest in their father’s and brother’s homes. Unlike the practice in parts of north India (see Raheja and Gold 1994), in the temple town, after the first year of marriage, hardly any gifts come from a junior wife’s natal family, and soon, she has almost no sense of entitlement with respect to her father’s home. As Rani herself says, when talking of the frequency with which she visits her father’s house these days: Nowadays, I go sometimes, twice a year, more often, I go once a year. In the early days, I used to go much more frequently—three or four times a year but now what is left for me there? Nothing. Now my life is in this house, with these people, they need my attention and care—the children, husband’s mother, husband’s father’s younger brother (koka sasur). And anyway, what’s kept for me there? Nothing at all.

However, the husband’s mothers, the women of the older generation, generally agreed that present social conditions (ajiro desho-duniyaro avastha) have interfered with the harmonious functioning of the extended household. They see the lack of respect displayed by junior wives as being the main problem. Thus, according to Manjula: Nowadays, the world has turned upside down. The main difference is that we had respect for custom (parampara), we had respect for our husband’s mothers. We never stepped outside the house. We never saw the front of the house. We walked around even inside the house with our saris pulled a foot in front of our faces. Our husbands were people we never spoke to during the day. That’s how things were in those days, but where is all that today? Today, everyone is free. A son’s wife comes into the house. Well, she comes into the house today but tomorrow she is off visiting others, wandering around.

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And, she ascribes this lack of respect to the kinds of instructions daughters get in their fathers’ homes today, very different from that which she and other women of her generation received: In those days, fathers would tell their daughters, “Daughter, in your husband’s mother’s house show only your good qualities, you have to do your best to earn their praise and appreciation. If they praise you and are happy with you, only then do we want to see you but if you show your bad qualities, if they are unhappy and dissatisfied with you, then you will remain there and we will be here. We don’t even want to see your face.” This was the great fear that all daughters carried with them when they entered their husband’s mother’s houses. But today, what do they say in their fathers’ houses? “Why should you bother if your husband’s people are dissatisfied with you? Your husband has a job, he earns an income, you should do just as you please, dress well, eat well, and go wherever you wish. What do you have to be bothered about?” And because fathers are saying this, junior wives are no longer willing to respect their husband’s mothers.

But despite this dissatisfaction on the part of the husband’s mothers, the son’s wives themselves appear committed to the notion of maintaining the extended family. Sandhyarani, the junior wife who is already looking forward to the day when she will cease being the junior-most woman in the household, declares that she wishes to continue to live in such a household: In a family, no work—not inside the house nor outside—can be done by any one person alone. You always need the help of others—that is why we live as one family. Living as one family gives us strength. My hope is that all of us seven brothers will continue to live as one, live together. I never want to move away and live on my own with only my husband and children. My hope is that when the husband’s younger brothers get married, we will all continue to live together.

Pratima’s predicament is even more telling. She is a senior wife, approaching a phase in her life when she should be receiving considerable respect from the junior members of the family. But, as she unhesitatingly made clear to me and as her wellbeing score of eight annas indicates, she does not feel very well. The fact that she has no sons may be a contributing factor, but she explicitly ascribes her lack of wellbeing to the lack of respect shown to her by younger members of the family—a respect that she thinks she fully deserves for the years of unstinting service (sewa) she has provided. She blames Prafulla Panda, her husband’s father, for the situation, believing that the old man chooses not to exercise his authority as head of the household and compel others to be respectful toward her. However, despite what she sees as her justifiable disappointment with the elders in her family and despite her husband and her having built their own house on family property in another part of the temple town, she finds separating from the extended family hard to go through. She says: These people have no value for me. When one lives in an extended family, then everyone has to do his or her duty, only then will all be happy and the family prosper. If only one or two people do their duty and the rest think only of themselves, then the family will never prosper, family members will never be happy. I know all this and still I am not able to move away. My husband tells me to move away but I find it difficult to forget the duty and responsibility I owe these people.

Instead of moving away, Pratima expresses her unhappiness with her conjugal family by doing only what is strictly required of her as a senior wife; she recognizes

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that the household is not functioning efficiently but refuses to do anything about it, because she feels ill-used by others in the household. Many things do not get done in this house, or if they do get done, they don’t get done properly, but I prefer to stay back and not take it upon myself to get these things done. I think I could help in resolving our problems. But I let things be as they are, I let things slide.

Similarly, Satyabhama, who has already stated her views in the last chapter (pp. 160–161), believes that the lack of respect shown by juniors toward their seniors is the root of the discord that she says troubles her household. Yet, there is little evidence, in terms of my observations or their actions, to suggest that junior wives either behave disrespectfully or do anything else to subvert household authority. The reasons, of course, are manifold: they have been trained to censor themselves in their husband’s mother’s households, to anticipate negative consequences from expressing themselves too candidly; and, they know that their positions within their conjugal families are still too tenuous, that they have yet to exercise substantial influence. This is a point that has, I think, been insufficiently recognized by outside observers. There is a tendency to assume that junior women who are oppressed by family structures of power and authority, and, therefore, have the most to gain by subverting such structures, are the ones who drag their feet or mutter complaints under their breath. Such a view is perhaps natural, especially for those influenced by James Scott’s penetrating analysis (1985) of the “everyday acts of resistance” that Malaysian peasants carried out to both express their awareness of and hostility to the exploitation to which they were being subjected. But such an assumption does not work in the Odia Hindu context—because, here, it is the senior rather than junior women of the household who carry out such acts of noncooperation. Senior women drag their feet, they refuse to take decisions in a timely fashion, and they complain, not inaudibly but very loudly so all can hear: it is part of their repertoire of behaviors to ensure the conformity of others within the family, men and women, and senior and junior. Only a senior wife or a married husband’s mother, secure of her position within the family, can engage in such verbal and nonverbal displays of discontent with impunity. Apparently, these are ways in which confident women express their dissatisfaction or displeasure with what is happening within the family. These behaviors are not Scott’s “weapons of the weak” (1985); they are, more aptly, the “weapons of the empowered.” This is a point that I return to in the next chapter when I discuss the relevance of feminist meanings to the women of the temple town.

Cultural Conceptions of the Self Together with the future-oriented and active engagement with the world that I have just discussed, these women have a very distinctive notion of personal growth, one that has interesting implications for the sense of self that emerges and prevails during adulthood. Odia Hindu women do not conceive of personal growth and maturity as some kind of egocentric, inner process that involves detaching oneself from others. On the contrary, for them it involves expanding oneself more

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comprehensively, it requires a more inclusive extension of oneself. It demands that they weave themselves more strongly into the fabric of the family. And it is this notion of personal growth that provides one a vantage point from which to discern the shifts in cultural conceptions of the self that occur when women mature and age, moving from one to the other of the three indigenously defined phases of adulthood. Odia Hindu women tend, as I have discussed earlier, to conceptualize adulthood as consisting of three phases that can be very clearly distinguished from each other in terms of their roles, duties and responsibilities, and goals. I would like to suggest that these distinctions run deep enough to warrant identifying each phase with its own cultural conception of self. Thus, I see young adulthood as being characterized by an “emergent” interdependent self that is succeeded, in mature adulthood, by an ”encompassing” interdependent self, till, finally, in old age, a non-interdependent self prevails. For the last 50 years or more, many scholars working in Hindu India have devoted themselves to exploring and deepening our understanding of Hindu ideas of the self (Bharati 1985; Daniel 1984; Dumont 1980; Ewing 1990, 1991; Fox 1996; Lamb 1997; Marriott 1976, 1990; Marriott and Inden 1977; McHugh 1989; Mines 1988; Nandy 1983; Ortner 1995; Ostor et al. 1982; Parish 1994; Parry 1989; Raheja 1988; Shweder and Bourne 1984). While initially there may have been a tendency to identify the Hindu self and person as “relational” or “interdependent” and contrast it, perhaps a little too sharply, with the “individualistic” and “independent” Western self, that is no longer the case. The problem with making too sharp a contrast is, of course, that it tends to suggest that a single conception of the self prevails in each of these generalized culture areas—an inference that hardly can stand up to any kind of ethnographic scrutiny. As Spiro (1993: 117) has cogently argued “a typology of the self and/or its cultural conception which consists of only two types, a Western and non-Western,” is “much too restrictive” and needs to be expanded to include the many variants of the Western and non-Western selves that the ethnographic record suggests exist. Therefore, the general consensus, among those who study self and personhood these days, seems to be that, in every culture, there are multiple concepts of the self; that they tend to change over a person’s lifetime; that these concepts themselves evolve over time; and that they are shaped and influenced by social and historical processes (Nandy 1983; Fox 1996). Furthermore, most scholars would agree that the self cannot be thought of as “ontologically prior to or separate” (Lamb 1997: 296) from age and gender because both are integral to the way we all experience ourselves. However, despite the recognition that the Hindu sense of self is more independent than was earlier imagined (Ewing 1990; Lamb 1997: 297; McHugh 1989; Mines 1988; Parish 1994; Rudolph and Rudolph 1976), and the Western sense of self less so (Ewing 1990, 1991; Murray 1993; Spiro 1993; Holland and Kipnis 1994), and while I agree that our understanding of these conceptions is ill-served by drawing overly sharp contrasts between them, I still think that, along the continuum that stretches from “interdependent” to “independent,” the Hindu sense of self tends toward the “interdependent” end of the continuum, rather than the reverse. Thus, the three selves of adulthood that I discuss below, with regard to the Odia Hindu women of the temple town, are all variants of an “interdependent” sense of self: the “emergent” interdependent

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sense of self in young adulthood growing into the “encompassing” interdependent self of mature adulthood and, finally, aging into the “non-interdependent” self that characterizes old age. These are, I suggest, examples of “non-Western selves” that “are as different from one another as each, in turn, is different from any Western self” (Spiro 1993: 117). I describe these three selves of adulthood below.

The “Emergent” Interdependent Conception of Self As I have already remarked, in the temple town, three-generational, extended households are the cultural ideal. Old parents, like Pusparani, the 62-year-old married husband’s mother I mentioned earlier in this chapter, dread to think of their extended families breaking up. And one of the greatest threats to the survival of the extended household—apart from the deaths of old parents from which, as Pusparani makes clear, it rarely recovers—is the entry of the newly married woman. In common with other Hindus, Odias in the temple town believe that the sexual urge is both powerful and irresistible, and therefore, the sexual power a newly married woman exercises over her husband can potentially disrupt even the strongest of filial bonds and familial relationships. Thus, most members of the conjugal family initially view an in-marrying woman with deep suspicion, fearing that she will cause the family’s breakup (Bennett 1983). They subject everything she does—her cooking, her demeanor, and her performance of sewa—to critical scrutiny. Only slowly, with time, after she has given birth to children, entrenched herself within the ranks of the family, do their suspicions dissipate. In this situation, there are fears and desires on both sides: the members of the household fear that the in-marrying woman will split the family and they desire its survival, and the woman, for her part, unsure of herself and homesick, fears rejection by the family and desires rapid and effective assimilation. The key to resolving this predicament and ensuring that the desires of the family and the in-marrying woman are satisfied lies in remaking and reconstructing her. From this perspective, almost everything newly married women undergo and experience in their conjugal households makes sense. Behavior that from a Western perspective could be seen as indicating only subordination and passivity, when interpreted from a Hindu perspective seem to be quite different because Hindu notions of the body emphasize (Kakar 1982; Zimmermann 1979) its relative openness to both improvement and contamination. Thus, when a junior wife does service (sewa) to her husband’s mother, takes orders from her husband’s mother or eats her leftovers, or massages her feet or drinks the water that has been used to wash the older woman’s feet, these practices are not only a measure of her subordination and not at all a measure of her passivity; rather they are ways she actively takes into her body potent substances from a superior such that ultimately they empower her. Nandini, the 36-year-old widow, when speaking of Sashibala (her husband’s elder brother’s eldest son’s wife), says that the young woman drinks the water used

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to wash the feet of the elders in the household so that she will absorb the qualities of these superiors, so that she will become an integral part of the lineage: We all used to do that as junior wives. For the junior wife, the elders in the household are her gods. Just like you drink water from the Ganges (ganga jal), just like you drink Lingaraj’s padua pani (the water used to wash the feet of the deity), so too you drink the water used to wash the feet of the elders. As junior wives, we all hope to get something from doing this. Our superiors, we can hope to get their qualities, properties, their good thoughts.

And Chhanjarani elaborates on the same topic: It is appropriate for us, it is right for us to do our duty—service to our husbands, service to our husband’s mother-father. It is right for us to do all that. As long as we have entered this house as son’s wives, it is the proper thing for us to do. There’s nothing to think about all that. When we are born as women, it is to live in our husband’s mother’s house, to do service to them. A son’s wife, when she comes as son’s wife to her husband’s mother, how can she not do service? When she has left her own people and come, she has to merge with us and live—otherwise, how will she merge? How will she become one with the family?

These rituals of deference, the pressure to overcome lajya1 (often glossed as modesty or shyness), the admonition to empty and open oneself, the constraints placed on the newly married couple’s behavior in public, the restrictions on movement within and outside the house, the limits placed on contact with members of one’s natal family, and, finally, sewa are all integral to a newly married, junior wife’s life in her husband’s mother’s home and all serving to assimilate her, smoothly and effectively, into the household, thus eliminating any threat she may pose to its survival. A corollary to the assimilation that characterizes this life phase is the “emergent” interdependent self. I call it “emergent” because it is being created during these early years of marriage and to distinguish it from the more fully developed interdependent self that characterizes mature adulthood. Understandably, the early years of marriage are hard and many junior wives confess to recalling nostalgically their carefree days in their natal households. Their identification with their conjugal households is not entirely complete and, I think, that again justifies the label “emergent.” In the Odia Hindu context, performing sewa is the prototypical way to construct an interdependent self. The “pervasive attentiveness to relevant others in the social context” that Markus and Kitayama (1991: 225, emphasis in original) identify as typical of an interdependent self is more than exemplified in a junior wife’s performance of sewa. Thus, to do sewa requires learning about every member of the family—each person’s particular taste, his or her specific preferences. Sashibala, the 23-year-old junior wife in the Panda household, who has been married for 5 years and is a favorite of her husband’s younger brothers and sisters, reports with pride that she knows every family member’s particular tastes. Certain that this is the source of her popularity, she says: I know who likes more spices, who likes more salt, who doesn’t like oil, who likes sweets, who likes to eat between meals, who has to be coaxed to eat. I didn’t at the beginning but I observed and I learned.

1 See Chap. 6, p. 130–131, for a detailed discussion of the kind of behavior thought appropriate for a junior wife.

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Oftentimes, however, such knowledge, in and of itself, is not enough (Roy 1975). Kuntala, in her mid-50s, and Sashibala’s husband’s mother, goes further than her son’s wife and speaks for many in the temple town, when she says: Your conduct while doing sewa is very important. Even if you’re only serving boiled rice and lentils, it is the way you serve that transforms the food from simply rice and lentils into food fit for the gods. It is all in the feeling with which you perform service, it is the devotion (bhakti) with which you serve that is all-important.

In saying this, Kuntala is emphasizing the performative aspect of sewa, culturally significant because it is thought to reveal a woman’s state of mind, her desire to please. As Vatuk (1990) points out, sewa has both a physical and a mental component, and the physical component alone hardly suffices to satisfy a superior, as the old widow Sarala, Kuntala’s husband’s mother, makes amply clear when she expounds on her enormous dissatisfaction and resentment with the care provided her by her second son and his family (see Chap. 6, pp.145–147). It is noteworthy that while doing sewa is an indication of a junior wife’s subordinate position within the family, it is also the ladder that she climbs to achieve success and, ultimately, influence and centrality. Sewa’s potential for such ultimate empowerment derives from the fluidity of Hindu understandings about the body. Thus, when a junior wife cooks, serves, and takes care of others in the extended family, she is building relationships and exerting influence in various subtle and substantial ways. She, or at any rate her essences and her qualities, pervades the food she touches and cooks. By eating the food she prepares, people within the family are reconstituting themselves, in subtle ways, in her direction. Through every act of cooking, serving, and feeding, she is giving of herself to others within the family and making herself a vital channel of the family body.2 However, during young adulthood, as a junior wife, she rarely initiates or controls her interactions with family members; in addition, she gives, in terms of essences and influences, less than she receives. For both these reasons, she is less than a full person; hence, the “emergent” interdependent self of this life phase. With time, the birth of children—substantial contributions to the survival and perpetuation of the conjugal family—the “emergent” interdependent self of young adulthood, grows into the “encompassing” interdependent self of mature adulthood.

The “Encompassing” Interdependent Conception of Self The “encompassing” interdependent conception of self in mature adulthood emerges from the power, influence, and centrality that characterize this life phase. Mature adult women—whether senior wives or married husband’s mothers—have control

2 Here, I am conforming to the Hindu body image, according to which, the human body is a collection of channels through which fluids run smoothly in and out and sometimes collect (Zimmermann 1979). Hindus ascribe many diseases to the excessive flowing out of bodily fluids or the unnatural blocking of such flows.

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over their own bodies and actions and considerable control over others in the family, and they feel, and are felt by others to be, central to the order, material prosperity and auspiciousness of the family. Chhanjarani, the 60-year-old married husband’s mother who talked above about a junior wife’s need to assimilate, presides over an extended household that consists of her four adult sons and their families. She acknowledges her power and influence within her household when she claims that “everyone depends for their happiness” on her. She takes special pride in her abilities as a manager, in the skill and expertise she brings to bear in recognizing the needs and desires of others while simultaneously influencing them in ways that maintain domestic harmony. As she told me these are the qualities that characterize a mature adult: When you are able to take five or twenty-five people along with you, then you get peace of mind. When a husband and wife live together by themselves, what is there in that? There is no special happiness in that. But if you live within a family with husband’s mother (sasu), husband’s sister (nanad), husband’s younger brother (diyoro), husband’s elder brother (dedhasuro), then there is a special quality in your happiness—there is something special in doing that. Everyone depends on you for their happiness … then … that is when you are mature (prauda).

Together with exercising power and influence, mature adult women experience themselves as central to the activities of the extended household, as integral to its smooth running. Biraja, the 52-year-old married husband’s mother who has spoken before on these pages, best summarizes this feeling of centrality. She explains the rarity of her visits to other homes in the temple town by saying that even a short absence on her part would be noted in the family and everyone would come looking for her. All these people—sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, sons’ wives, husband’s younger brothers, grandsons—all will come looking for me. They want me to do this or that, they want to ask me about this or that. That’s how it is.

In addition to the power, influence, and centrality that they highlight, these women’s remarks also point to the kind of maturity that is valued and sought after in this community. Part of this maturity consists in recognizing that much in their lives is given and cannot be altered or wished away. At the same time, while maintaining family structures and family relationships—what Ewing (1991: 141) refers to as “their careful adherence to formal deference patterns”—they hardly hesitate to maneuver and negotiate with others within the family in order to achieve their personal goals. And all see such flexibility, compromise, and accommodation as admirable signs of maturity. Manjula Panda, who derives great pride and satisfaction from having ensured that three of her four sons have master’s degrees, describes such flexibility and compromise best when she says: Those who change their ways of behaving by looking at the situations, they can survive at all times, they can have peace of mind, peace in the house, everyone’s appreciation. For as many days as you survive in this world, you have to look around you, look upwards and around, and if you see the clouds gathering thick and dark, then you open your umbrella and you don’t get wet.

Oftentimes, critics, unconvinced of the validity of an interdependent conception of self, have suggested that such a sense of self would necessarily imply an inability

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to make “self-other differentiation” (Spiro 1993: 110). But as Lamb correctly points out, such criticisms “conflate a sense of personal identity with that of personal boundaries” (2000: 39). Like Lamb’s Bengalis of Mangaldihi, Odia Hindu women of the temple town can and do differentiate themselves from others while simultaneously seeing their identity as bound up in that of others. Far from being unable to make “selfother differentiation,” these women—especially competent mature adult women—are able to detach themselves from particular situations, distinguish their needs from those of others, assess the best way to achieve a mutually satisfying compromise, and then negotiate such a compromise. Their maturity appears to be based on what Ewing has described as “intrapsychic autonomy” (1991)—the ability to maintain one’s sense of self-worth and resilience even in the face of stresses and setbacks. But there is something more, something perhaps distinctive about the temple town women’s notion of maturity: for them, maturity involves expanding oneself more comprehensively, extending oneself to become more inclusive, and weaving oneself more strongly into the fabric of the family. To me, this maturity exemplifies a self-maximizing kind of altruism, which is why I label the interdependent self associated with mature adulthood, “encompassing.” Biraja describes the self-maximizing altruism that she applies to living in her large extended household, and, more clearly than most, she elaborates on the “encompassing” interdependence she achieves through such extensive mixing: You know, I never think that anything in this house is mine. That sense—this is mine—that I’ve never had. This house, material things, food, clothes, this-that, whatever, I have never felt in my mana (mind/heart) that this is mine, that is mine. I think everyone is mine, everything is mine. Till today nothing has been forbidden between all of us. We feel that way about all of us. Something comes into the house, everything is divided equally—I give her, she gives me, he gives to her and so on. And so the days have passed and the two of us [referring to her husband’s elder brother’s wife and herself] are old women. We never think … so-and-so is eating more, I am eating less. No, no, no. In today’s world, people think, we’ll go our separate ways, I will eat well, I will dress well, but will you take all that and go? No, you won’t. Living in a family like this, it is something special, there are those feelings, feelings of being one, of sharing, no one thinks she is separate, she is an outsider. Never. Her son and daughter are my son and daughter. Look at her [pointing to her husband’s elder brother’s wife], she has never done much work in this household, she is sickly, she has trouble breathing but do I say, she isn’t doing her share of the work? No, I just go on and do whatever has to be done. She is sick, she lies down all the time, she does what she can do. But I have no violence3 (hinsa) in my mana.

Mature adult women, thus, own not just their own activities, relationships, possessions, and spaces, but they appropriate those of others within their small community. This, then, is the expansive, “encompassing” interdependent self of mature adulthood. The process of assimilation begun during the rituals of marriage culminates in the power, influence, and centrality of mature adulthood. Being influential and

3 She is referring to the absence of antagonism in her mind and heart, to her feelings of inclusiveness and expansiveness as signs of her maturity, as indications of her successful development as a married woman, the manager of her household.

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central to the household, senior wives and married mothers-in-law initiate and control the interactions and exchanges in which they participate. Inevitably, as the seniors in these transactions, they give more than they receive. Thus, a woman is most completely her own person as a mature adult.

The Non-interdependent Self of Old Age The process of aging in the temple town, as readers are by now aware, requires old women to voluntarily withdraw from the households that they have been involved in for all of their adult lives, the households that they identify with completely. This is the cultural norm. The withdrawal is often framed as a “time of no responsibility” (daityaheen samayo) and “of liberation” (mukti) and a “time when the burdens of this world slip from one’s head and one is free.” While there are old women who do look forward to such liberation, who are quite relieved to leave the “entanglements of this world” (janjalo),4 they are a distinct minority. The more common situation is as Cohen (1995) observed in Varanasi: old women resist being displaced from their positions of power within the household, and the displacement itself is a fairly tortuous process that unfolds slowly over time. But whether old women of the temple town cooperate or not, they are marginalized. This social marginalization is most vividly expressed by their physical movement from the centers of activity within the household: the kitchen or the verandahs that ring the courtyard—to the margins—the front verandah, or the far end of the inner courtyard. It is also advertised through their manner of dressing—in predominantly white clothes with few ornaments, even if married—and their “pure” (sattvik) diet that avoids “hot” foods (fish, onions, garlic, red lentils [masoor dal]). The significance of this marginalization to the cultural conception of the self is that such cutting of connections and relationships takes the “interdependency” out of the “interdependent” self of the earlier life phases, thereby resulting, I suggest, in the “non-interdependent” self of old age. At the same time, there is another aspect of this life phase—the incoherence that, according to Ayurveda, characterizes it—that, too, leads to a “non-interdependent” self emerging. Ayurveda holds that aging, per se, leads to incoherence; it insists that sound physical and mental health depends on maintaining a balance between the three bodily humors, phlegm (kapha), bile (pitta), and wind (vata). In old age, there is natural tendency for wind to predominate, upsetting the humoral balance and causing incoherence, “disruptive change” (Marriott 2003: 12), and dissolution. To counteract the deleterious effects of aging, old people in the temple town are encouraged to maintain particular cultural practices—fasting, meditation, scriptural study, attending religious discourses, and going on pilgrimages. These practices are ostensibly to reduce the 4 This idea is very similar to what Lamb refers to as the “web of attachments” or the “net of maya” (1997, 2000) when speaking of the villagers of Mangaldihi and their view of this world and its entanglements.

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“natural” incoherence of old age, but a more important effect is that they encourage an inward rather than an outward focus, attention to the inner self rather than others, preoccupation with other-worldly concerns rather than this-worldly affairs, producing, thereby, a cultural conception of self that is best described as “non-interdependent”. “Non-interdependent” indicates that all duties and responsibilities to others have been surrendered and that social and familial connections are minimal. And yet, this cultural conception is not an independent conception of the self—at least, not the one that figures in the vast literature on the subject, the one that is thought to be exemplified in many segments of North American and Western European cultures (Markus and Kitayama 1991). As I see it, there are at least three chief differences between the independent conception of the self in the West and the “noninterdependent” conception of the self that characterizes old age in the temple town. Firstly, Odia Hindus in the temple town do not conceive of old age as a time for discovering or expressing oneself or one’s “unique attributes”; instead, it is a time for pondering on the impermanence of life and speculating on its true meaning. Secondly, as I just mentioned, old age is a time for renouncing all interest in social relationships, not cultivating “social responsiveness” for the purpose of achieving one’s selfinterest. And thirdly, the old withdraw from the world, primarily because they are conforming to cultural dictates: they are hardly satisfying their “internal repertoire of thoughts, feelings and action” (ibid.: 226), as an independent self is supposed to do. However, one aspect of this non-interdependent conception of the self— autonomy—does bear a curious resemblance to what is often thought of as an essential element in the independent conception of the self. Thus, old women are no longer dominant within their households but they are autonomous. They do not control the activities and movements of others but they do control their own. Nowhere is this autonomy more clearly visible than in their geographic mobility. Old women can wander all over the temple town and no one looks askance. A curious aspect of this autonomy, one that, I think, underscores their social marginality, is that old women are entirely free from the need to cultivate lajya. Shame/shyness/ modesty are norms that no longer constrain them. Thus, Lamb (2000: 2) writes of the “white-haired women” she saw in the Bengali village of Mangaldihi, “who left their homes to roam village lanes, not only with their heads and faces uncovered but bared to the waist on hot days, without regard to showing their long-dry breasts.” In the temple town, too, such old women are a common sight. Of course, it is the rare old woman who appreciates this freedom—to many of them (and Sarala, immediately springs to mind as one of these dissatisfied old women), it is simply another sign of their families’ disinterest in them and their welfare. The “non-interdependent” conception of the self has implications for personhood. Set apart from the social world, not involved or hardly involved in exchanges, many old women, whether married or widowed, receive little and give almost nothing back. In saying this, I am not implying that families do not take physical care of their burhi mas or do not perform sewa for them. Again, as Sarala’s case makes clear, families do, in fact, take care of old mothers: food is served, clothes are bought, beds are available, and, when necessary, medical attention is provided, but the emotional and mental component that Vatuk (1990) mentions as a necessary element in sewa

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is, according to some old women, absent. On the eve of her final disengagement, it appears that a woman’s personhood is at its lowest: she is almost a nonperson.

Life’s Challenges As with all cultural models, the shifts and changes in cultural conceptions of the self do not necessarily unfold as I have described them. Life can take unexpected turns, unfortunate events can occur, and the smooth evolution of one cultural conception of the self into another, as a woman matures and ages, can be rudely interrupted or entirely short-circuited. The untimely death of one’s husband or the rejection by one’s husband and his family are the most typical examples of such unfortunate events. As I described in some detail in the previous chapter, Odia Hindus of the temple town view both moves as “against order and coherence” (adharma), as examples of the mounting chaos that is overtaking the world today. In neither situation would a woman ever experience herself as an “emergent” interdependent self or an “encompassing” interdependent self. The most that such women could hope for would be that with time, as they age, they could cultivate enough coherence to experience themselves as non-interdependent selves. And then, there are far more mundane situations. It could happen that a husband’s mother blocks a junior wife’s assimilation for petty, personal reasons, deliberately preventing the latter from properly performing the rituals of deference—Satyabhama’s behavior toward her son’s wife, Sanjukta, is a prime example of such blocking. In this case, the older woman appears to lack (or chooses not to exercise) the skills and expertise needed to be a good manager of people—she does not possess the kind of maturity elaborated upon by the husband’s mothers, Biraja and Chhanjarani, quoted above. The husband’s mother’s incompetence effectively curtails her own development of an “encompassing” interdependent self as well as the junior wife’s acquisition of an “emergent” interdependent self. The reverse, of course, is also possible: junior wives who are disinterested in assimilating and make explicit this disinterest by not performing, or performing poorly, the rituals of deference and sewa. In a broad jeremiad against modern social conditions, husband’s mothers and senior wives often complain about junior wives in general, though never of their own junior wives. However, I have never met an unruly junior wife or witnessed such behavior myself. There are also those old women who have been compelled to withdraw from the centers of household power. Never reconciling to their loss of power, these old women complain incessantly about neglect and disrespect (cf. Lamb 2000). Far from adopting those cultural practices that would enable them to maintain coherence, they flout the conventions of daily actions (nityakarma)—eating in bed, not bathing daily, or climbing into an unmade bed after bathing. In the process, they relapse into the incoherence locally described as “second childishness”. For such old women, too, the non-interdependent self that emerges from withdrawal and holding incoherence at bay is out of reach.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have described in some detail the attitudes and orientations that Odia Hindu women have and the strategies they adopt in order to achieve their goals. My attempt, therefore, has been to portray them as self-aware and reflective people, who are not so oppressed by ideology as to have become cultural robots, unthinkingly performing their social roles, mechanically meeting cultural expectations. These women do not see themselves as mired in situations over which they have no control. Rather, they recognize the constraints under which they live but believe that they can maneuver themselves and negotiate with others in order to achieve at least some of their goals. More importantly, they believe that all humans, no matter what their ethnicity or culture or gender, tend to live under similar constraints; thus, they see nothing exceptional about themselves or in their situations—they and their life situations are just one example of human variability among myriad others (see Geertz 1983). It is important to remember this self-understanding when one tries to identify the reasons for Western-style feminism not being as successful in mobilizing Hindu women to protest gender injustices and gender inequities as it has been in the West, especially the United States (Jeffrey and Basu 1998). I discuss this subject—the relevance of feminist values to Hindu women—in fairly exhaustive detail in the next chapter. I have also invoked, in this chapter, the notion of personal growth salient in the temple town, using it as a launching pad to analyze and interpret the shifts that occur in cultural conceptions of the self as women mature and age. Contemporary anthropological discussions about concepts of the self and personhood no longer assume an enduring sense of the self that remains unchanged across the life course. I have tried to show that each phase of adulthood has its own goals, and the actions taken to achieve these goals inevitably shape the self that emerges and prevails in that phase. Thus, in young adulthood, many junior wives work toward rapid and effective assimilation with their conjugal families through performing culturally prescribed sewa and the rituals of deference; I, therefore, label the self in this phase of adulthood as “emergent” to highlight the notion that it is a ‘work in progress,’ the women are ”reconstructing” themselves, and transforming their physical substance so that it matches that of the patrilineage into which they have married. In mature adulthood, the goal is, as I describe it, to cultivate and develop self-maximizing altruism, which requires that they expand themselves more comprehensively, owning not just their own activities, relationships, possessions, and spaces but those of others within their small community. I highlight this tendency to expand and appropriate others by describing the sense of self in mature adulthood as “encompassing.” In old age, when the culturally prescribed goal is withdrawal and disengagement from this world, the old experience, whether they choose to or not, an attenuation of social and familial ties and connections; such culturally defined marginalization makes “non-interdependent” an appropriate label for describing the cultural conception of the self that prevails during this final phase of life.

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To conclude, I have in this chapter tried to “tack between two sorts of descriptions” (Geertz 1983: 10), to interpret local particularities in the idiom of anthropological discourse, hoping, thereby, that the cultural world that thus takes shape—the world of the Odia Hindu of the temple town—is recognizable to insiders and plausible to outsiders.

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Mines, M. (1988). Conceptualizing the person: Hierarchical society and individual autonomy in India. American Anthropologist, 90(3), 568–579. Murray, D. W. (1993). What is the Western concept of the self? On forgetting David Hume. Ethos, 21(1), 3–23. Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ortner, S. (1995). The case of the disappearing Shamans, or no individualism, no relationism. Ethos, 23(3), 355–390. Ostor, A., Fruzzetti, L., & Barnett, S. (Eds.). (1982). Concepts of person: Kinship, caste, and marriage in India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parish, S. (1994). Moral knowing in a Hindu sacred city: An exploration of mind, emotion, and self. New York: Columbia University Press. Parry, J. P. (1989). Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raheja, G. (1988). The poison in the gift. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Raheja, G., & Gold, A. (1994). Listen to the Heron’s words. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roy, M. (1975). Bengali women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rudolph, S., & Rudolph, L. (1976). Rajput adulthood: Reflections on the Amar Singh diary. Daedalus, 105(2), 145–167. Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Spiro, M. E. (1993). Is the western conception of the self “peculiar” within the context of the World’s cultures? Ethos, 21(2), 107–153. Vatuk, S. (1990). “To be a burden on others”: Dependency anxiety among the elderly in India. In O. M. Lynch (Ed.), Divine passions: The social construction of emotion in India (pp. 64–88). Berkeley: University of California Press. Zimmermann, F. (1979). Remarks on the body in Ayurvedic medicine. South Asian Digest of Regional Writing, 18, 10–26.

Chapter 9

An Alternate Moral Order

Contents Gynarchy .................................................................................................................................. Hindu Men on Their Mothers and Wives................................................................................. Domesticity Valued .................................................................................................................. Variations in Representations of Hindu Women ...................................................................... Hindu Woman as Passive Victim ............................................................................................. Hindu Woman as Subversive Rebel ......................................................................................... Hindu Women as Active Upholders of an Alternate Moral Universe...................................... The Idea of “False Consciousness”.......................................................................................... Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

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In this chapter, I attempt to present the women of the temple town in ways that accord with the ethnographic data I gathered. As I said at the beginning of this book, when I entered the temple town, I fully expected to encounter docile, submissive women who fitted the stereotypical depiction of the Hindu woman as the passive victim of a misogynistic ideology. My own upbringing as a woman belonging to a matrilineal group had primed me in this direction. However, as I analyzed the data, as I mulled over the conversations I had had with these women, and as I tried to make sense of their choices and their actions, I realized, with some surprise, that to cast them simply as victims seriously misinterprets their way of being in the world and their understandings of themselves as women and as social actors. This chapter, therefore, is the result of a thoroughgoing reevaluation of my initial impression of the women who live in the temple town, in light of the wide-ranging data that I collected in this neighborhood. In the first few sections given below, I recapitulate some of the material presented in earlier chapters so as to contextualize my representation of the women who live here. The reader will, therefore, have to bear with me because there will be some unavoidable repetition.

U. Menon, Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_9, © Springer India 2013

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Gynarchy In the temple town, many women and men are fond of saying that the differences between all the other castes (jatis) of the world are breachable, but those that separate the caste of women from that of men are so fundamental and so profound that they can never be transcended. Women, compared to men, are said to have more properties (gunas); this superabundance of properties imbues them with such energy and power that—like Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism— they are capable of turning the undoable into the doable and the impossible into the possible. This Saivite temple town is in many ways very Sakta in its orientation: there are innumerable small temples and shrines dedicated to Devi or Ma (as she is most commonly referred to here) and many residents regard themselves as her staunch devotees. This is perhaps not so surprising when one considers that, according to von Stietencron’s analysis of archeological and epigraphical evidence (1978), Saktism’s roots go much further back than Saivism’s which itself can be traced to the fourth to fifth century. People here worship Devi as the prime embodiment of sakti, the energy and power of the universe. They believe that it is her sakti that keeps the cosmos and the manifest world going. They state quite explicitly that the male gods have no sakti that is inherently their own, relying entirely on Devi to provide them with the energy and power necessary to perform salvific activities and to satisfy the unending requests of their devotees. And they play, as I have remarked before, on the name of the god (Siva) and the word for “corpse” (sava), saying, “Siva without sakti is sava.” According to the origin story from the Siva Purana that many frequently allude to, they claim that Siva accepted Devi as his mate, without reservation. That is how this Saivite town explains its belief in Siva’s eternalness: he is Time itself (Mahakaal), never reborn, unlike Visnu who recoiled from fully accepting Devi, and therefore, is condemned to being incarnated several times—whenever his sakti is depleted he has to be reborn into the world so that the sakti that animates him can be replenished. They also believe that human females simply by being female, like the goddess, embody energy and power. But when one analyzes what exactly embodying such sakti implies, it quickly becomes clear that temple town residents are moving back and forth between two ideas of sakti, both of which women, and only women, embody. The first, “natural” sakti or adya sakti, potentially awesome but unfocused and ungenerative and, therefore, not necessarily valued within the culture (see Kinsley 1993: 68–69, for Hindu views on nature), and the second, dharmik sakti, moral or sacred power, culturally controlled and refined and, therefore, truly awe-inspiring, truly generative, and deeply valued within the culture. Hence, all women are born with adya sakti, but it is only through making particular kinds of choices, performing particular kinds of actions, exercising self-control and self-discipline, through deferring gratification, and through self-abnegation, that

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such sakti is refined and becomes awesome power. Clearly, the lesson to be drawn is that not all women possess dharmik sakti—all women possess adya sakti but that does not guarantee them the respect and deference of others; only dharmik sakti ensures that. These women recognize that dharmik sakti can be used to both create and destroy. Many would, thus, tend to agree with Mamata when she says: A woman has the sakti to do everything that a man cannot do; if a woman wants to, she can destroy a family, if she wants to, she can preserve a family. She can rescue a man or she can kill him, she can enable his prosperity, she can arrange for his downfall, she can do everything for a man. A woman has the sakti for all this. And so…if a man goes down the wrong path, a woman has to endure a lot of pain, if a man doesn’t ask about the woman, he keeps another woman, or he goes elsewhere, a woman can’t endure that, then, whatever she has to do under those circumstances, she will do. Whatever she has to do to get the man onto the right path—she will do that. Just like when a woman has her good form, she is good, but when her cruel side emerges (rukhyo prakruti porheasibo), then she doesn’t remain within her good self, she lets the cruelty, the harshness lead her.

Mamata here is highlighting the idea that, when men betray women, when it is morally justified, then dharmik sakti can turn harsh and cruel and punish those who have transgressed. According to popular thinking, irrefutable proof of the supremacy of “natural” female power lies in the fact that all living creatures are born of woman. They see in women’s biological capacity to nurture life within their bodies and to give birth to a living human being an index of the great power and potential that resides in a woman and that no man can ever equal. Women say: all living creatures are born out of Ma’s sakti. We have seen that. Truly, we carry a child for ten months and then the child is born. The gods too when they take their different incarnations (avatars) are born of Ma. Everyone is born of woman, women are born of woman, and men are born of woman.

Khandayat women, according to Tokita-Tanabe (1999: 79), share very similar self-understandings: From the point of view of motherhood, men are seen as the children of women. The representation of the girl as a potential mother of a boy connotes that the ‘community of men’ are the sons of the ‘community of women.’ Manhood is encompassed here under the motherhood of women. It should be noted that this is not about particular filial ties but about the community of men as a whole being born from the community of women.

And Mamata continues to elaborate in greater detail the ways in which human females and Ma share the same sakti: Ma’s sakti is great. Our sakti is also great. We say that because—there is this story: there was a Saboro1 who only worshiped Siva. He never did goddess worship (sakti puja). He never wanted to look at a woman’s face, he even wanted to stay unmarried. All this time, he only worshiped Siva, he only wanted Siva. In this way many, many days passed. But by praying

1

Sabaras, a Mundari-speaking group of tribals who live in the hills of Ganjam district in southern Odisha. The idol of Jagannatha in the temple at Puri is supposed to be of Sabara origin and was stolen from them by an emissary of the king of Puri.

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just to Siva you will get no fruits, because he is Bholanatha,2 because he is a yogi3 (ascetic). But one day as this person was doing his worship (puja) for Siva, Ma, taking the shape of an ordinary woman came towards him. She brushed past him and went by. She did this three times. Now every day, this Sabaro would get an earthen pitcher (mathiya) and fill it with water that he used in his worship of Siva. What Ma did was, after brushing past him, she went and touched the pitcher filled with water. The Sabaro saw her do it, and thinking that a strange woman had polluted the earthen pitcher of water, he went to the pitcher and tried to empty it of the water, but he couldn’t lift it. He tried and tried but he couldn’t. Now here was an obstacle in his worship of Siva. Finally, he went to Siva and hit his head and said, “Let me finish my life today. I am not able to do your worship in the proper way. A woman touched the pitcher of water I use for your worship, and now I can’t even empty the polluted water and refill the pitcher. All because of a woman, look at my condition! There is no point in my living like this, I’m going to end it all.” Then Siva told him, “Arre, no, you are making a mistake, you don’t understand. That was Parvati who came and touched the pitcher.” But the Sabaro didn’t believe Siva. He said, “What sakti does a woman have, a woman touches the pitcher and I cannot lift it? What sakti do women have?” He couldn’t understand. Then Siva asked him, “From where did you come [i.e. how were you born]?” But this man had never seen his father-mother after his birth, and so he said, “Nothing, nothing, mother-father, there is no such thing, I was born, so I was born.” And then, Siva made him understand, “Go, say only ‘Om Sakti’ and then lift the pitcher.” He went from there, said “Om Sakti” and lifted the pitcher. He had asked what sakti was, and he now knew that all sakti in this world was Ma, and from that time on, he established an image (murti) of Ma and began worshiping her.

Odia Hindus interpret this (as they see it) biological superiority that women have over men as a “natural” inequality of opportunity. In terms of such “natural” creativity, women far outrank men. They do not deny that men have an essential role to play in creating human life—Odia Hindus constantly emphasize the complementary nature of creation (both male and female are necessary, ubhayo darkaro) but, in terms of nurturing and sustaining human life, men’s roles are seen as far less significant. At the same time, while they celebrate this “natural” biological superiority of women, these women are well aware that such superiority by itself means nothing; its importance lies in the fact that it affords them an opportunity to transform themselves into embodiments of dharmik sakti through exercising self-control and self-discipline— then, as cultural artifacts, they are valued and respected, perhaps even revered.

Hindu Men on Their Mothers and Wives Woman after woman have extolled on these pages the contributions that they make in supporting and sustaining their families; they have contended that they, as wives and mothers, are central to the material survival and the auspicious welfare of the 2

This is one of Siva’s many names and it means “Lord of the Simple or Innocent.” Interestingly, in this Saivite town, this, together with Mahadeva, Mahaesvara, Mahakaal, and Lingaraj, is one of the more common ways of referring to the god. The name Bholanatha has the additional connotation, at least in this neighborhood, of “one who is intoxicated” because Siva is reputed to smoke ganja and bhang, and the resulting intoxication is thought to make him ineffective and simpleminded. 3 As an ascetic, one who has renounced the world, Siva is disinterested in satisfying the worldly desires of his devotees.

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family. In contrast, temple town men have not, thus far, elaborated on the salience and significance of their mothers and their wives in their lives, but when they do, their accounts reflect these women’s own perceptions regarding their maternal and uxorial centrality. Thus, Debi Prasad Nayak, a 44-year-old father of four sons, ascribes whatever material and professional success he has achieved during his life to the sacrifices made by his mother. He considers her to be the central, most substantial influence in his life. D.P. Nayak works in the Government Press at Cuttack, and he takes pride in the fact that he has been, without interruption, a trade union leader for the last 22 years—he says that other labor leaders may have lost control over their followers but not him. He believes: It is the greatness of my mother. Whatever I have today, whatever I have succeeded in doing during my life, I owe it all to her, to all the sacrifices4 she made when she was raising my brother and me. When we were children, life was very difficult for us, but she felt that our education was the most important thing to accomplish and she did everything to ensure that we received education. And even after I started working, I would consult her about everything and whatever I did was according to her advice. Let me tell you something—I had applied for purchase of a scooter and when my mother was sick, dying of cancer, I was told that my number had come up and that I should collect the scooter. But I didn’t have the 12,000 rupees needed to buy the scooter, and I didn’t even really need the scooter. But, she wanted me to have the scooter, it was for her prestige that I was buying the scooter. She then sent my wife to her father’s house to ask for a loan, but my wife’s father refused. Then my mother said, “If your wife’s father and her brothers don’t give the money, it is now even more important that you buy the scooter,” and so she advised me to take whatever jewels we had in the house and using them as security, to borrow money from the bank. I did what she wanted me to do, it was only for her prestige, and a little, maybe, for my prestige. But I bought the scooter and she saw me on it before she died.

In the temple town, as in other parts of Hindu India, the meanings attached to “mother” are powerful and pervasive. As Madan (1987) and Lamb (2000) report about Kashmiri Pandits and Bengali villagers, respectively, a “bad mother” (kumata) is a contradiction in terms. Thus, Sudhansubabu, who has sakta leanings, elaborates on the significance of Kali and the nonexistence of the concept “bad mother” for Odia Hindus, saying: There can never be a bad mother. Mothers always want the best for their children, they will sacrifice anything, even their own lives, for their children’s welfare. Look at Kalima, she is fierce, terrible but even she wants only the best for us, her needy children. And how do we worship her? We worship her as ma, we address her as ma and there is a reason for this—because only then does she listen to us, only then will she not consume us. Let me tell you a story about the poet Bhanja.5 Bhanja was, as everyone knows, born a fool (bokka), a simpleton. One evening, late, he had gone to defecate in the fields and when he was returning, Chandi6 pursued him. He turned round and saw her wild-eyed and disheveled,

4

Such sacrifices would be fasting, eating last, and satisfying her sons’ needs without thinking of her own. 5 Upendra Bhanja is a medieval Odia poet who belonged to the ruling family of the native state of Ghumsur in southern Odisha. 6 Chandi is another name for the Goddess Kali.

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with her hair open, and he stopped. He asked her, “What do you want?” And she replied, “I want to drink blood. Give me blood.” And Bhanja was such a fool, he didn’t recognize Ma, but he took a sharp stone from the ground and cut his finger and gave it to Devi. Ma began sucking on the finger and she drained all the blood from Bhanja. When life was finally ebbing from Bhanja’s body, he moaned, “Ma.” Enough! That was enough! Ma heard her son calling her “Ma” and she stopped drinking his blood. Instead, she gave him back all his blood, brought him back to life, and said, “You were willing to give me your life, now ask me for a boon, any boon, and I will give it to you.” And Bhanja asked that he be given the power to imagine, to compose (kalpana koriba sakti). Ma asked him to open his mouth and on his tongue she wrote the alphabet, and from that day forth he became the silver-tongued poet that we know of today. Do you see now? When he called her Ma, she couldn’t resist him, even though she had this terrible desire to consume blood, she stopped thinking of herself and thought only of him.

While such worship of the mother has been documented for Hindus in other parts of India (Hsu 1971), most other accounts (Roy 1975; Kakar 1978, 1982) tend to argue that this worship is at the expense of respect being shown toward the wife. The temple town situation, however, appears to be somewhat different. Men here value and respect their wives, and they will say so explicitly if ever one asks them about the responsibilities that husbands and wives have toward the family and toward each other. Thus, Prafulla Panda, Manjula’s husband, waxes poetic when he praises his wife: She came into this house forty-six years ago, when she was only a small girl of twelve. But since that day, she has stood with me in whatever I have done. As my wife, she has had the responsibility of taking me along the path of righteousness. We men, we spend so much of our time outside the house, that we tend to do bad things. It is the wife’s duty to bring us back to truthfulness and rectitude (satyata evam saralta), and my wife has always done that. I trust her, I know her advice will always be in my best interest. Today, she knows what is in my mind/heart sometimes even before I know it. She is the pillar on which this house rests, the tree under whose spreading branches we all take shelter.

Domesticity Valued In keeping with this evaluation of women, domestic work, too, is rarely denigrated in the temple town. The reason for this is fairly obvious: domestic work maintains the family and provides the proper environment for raising children (if the environment within the family is not proper, the child will never grow into a human being, parivaro bhitre thik paribesh nothile, pila maniso7 heiparibo nahi). And most people here state that this task—that of raising children to be responsible adults and that of social reproduction—is the primary task of any group, and for them, the family represents the most appropriate site for such a task. The men and women I spoke

7

Maniso, in its simplest sense, means “human being.” But, Odias when they say maniso do not mean a raw human being but rather one who has been raised properly, one who has undergone the various rituals of refinement, and one who knows his or her responsibility toward humankind (manisojati prati daitvare gyana heba).

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with are unanimous in saying, “We are born to become entangled in the ebb and flow of life, to build families, and to raise children.” Emphasizing the impermanence of all things in this world, they believe that only through procreating and raising children to become responsible adults does a group achieve immortality. As I have already mentioned in earlier chapters, men and women believe that men have only a peripheral role to play in achieving prosperity for the family and the wellbeing of its members. Rashmi, 26 years old and a junior wife, the mother of a 6-year-old son, is a teacher in the local primary school. Of all the women who spoke with me, Rashmi represents, in terms of some of the choices she has made in life, the modern end of the continuum that stretches from the more orthodox to the less. And yet, as you will see, her perceptions of her role within the family are not very different from those of Mamata or Manjula or Pratima, older, more traditional women who are, perhaps, better representatives of temple town ways of thinking and living. Thus, she echoes Mamata, whom I have quoted in Chap. 4, when she says: Most importantly, men do not have the responsibilities that women do. Even if a man brings home lakhs of rupees, whether the family prospers and flourishes depends on the woman. If, for some reason or the other, she is incapable of managing the house…there are such women, women who have no sense of the responsibilities they owe others (phula phankia striloku) … then, it doesn’t matter what he brings home, the family will always be in want, the children will go hungry, ill-clad, ignorant. What is important is not the man’s ability to earn but rather the woman’s ability to manage the house. More important, it is the woman who controls the man, it is she who ensures that her husband doesn’t go down the path of wrongdoing, that he does his duty towards his family, his father-mother, his brothers. It is like the king and his minister—the king no doubt sits on the throne, but he could not rule were it not for the advice of his minister, and whether his rule is fair and just, whether the kingdom prospers or not depends on the quality of the minister’s advice, on his wisdom.

Men, too, readily acknowledge that a woman’s work is six times as onerous as a man’s and that women shoulder many more responsibilities than men do. Thus, Prafulla Panda reiterates the viewpoint made earlier in Chap. 4 by Mahasupakaro, the Ayurvedic physician, when he says: A wife always has greater responsibilities. Is the man’s that much? Yes, when the child isn’t well, if medicines have to be bought, if Horlicks has to be bought and given to the child, then that is the father’s responsibility. But all the labor and effort is the woman’s. Staying up at nights when the child is unwell, after doing all the work of such a big household, after satisfying everyone. Women stay at home, take care of the wellbeing of every member of the family, pay attention to all the needs of the children, every responsibility is on their heads, every possible household work is on their heads. Their work and their responsibilities are much more than men’s.

More importantly, a woman is said to hold “the future of the family in her hands” (parivaroro bhavishya striro hatho bhitre): if she is irresponsible in her management of the family’s resources, the household does not prosper; if she commits adultery, the family disintegrates. Mamata, for instance, insists that the effects on the family of a man committing adultery are far less profound than of a woman doing so because men are considered to be marginal to the wellbeing of the family. She cites Snehalata’s husband’s elder brother’s wife’s adultery (see Chap. 7) and

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points to the fact that that particular family is dying out—the women and men of that family appear to be either barren or sterile. In order to get around this situation, the adulterous woman adopted her mother’s brother’s son’s son, but even this young man, now married, has had no children. I never probed for an indigenous explanation for this belief, but a plausible one could be that through adulterous intercourse, women take in alien substances that they then tend to distribute through the household to the detriment of all. To the Odia Hindu, then, a woman embodies her conjugal family’s fund of auspiciousness. Both adultery and irresponsible financial management affect the family negatively, attracting misfortune and disasters, and, finally, the destruction of the family. If a woman maintains her chastity (satitva), it is said to be not because she lives in an extended family and others exercise a watchful eye over what she does but because she disciplines herself: satitva is an integral element of the dharmik sakti that imbues a self-disciplined woman (suhasto stri). This assertion is quite unlike what Derné (1994) found among upper-caste Hindu men in Varanasi, who said they relied on family structure and external forces to control their behavior. Mamata elucidates this Odia belief about the importance of a woman exercising self-control and self-discipline; she sees similarities between Kali whom she views as the adya sakti manifestation of the goddess, the uncontrolled, unable to discriminate between right and wrong manifestation, and a woman who decides to throw self-control to the winds and fulfill her own selfish desires. While discussing the very popular icon of the goddess as Kali, Mamata says that maintaining self-control is not easy, but it is the only way of transforming a woman’s adya sakti into dharmik sakti, which can then be channeled productively for the welfare of her husband and his family and ultimately for her own wellbeing: A woman if she wants to go down the wrong path herself, she can do so very easily, if she doesn’t find her own husband attractive, if she finds another man handsome, then she could get attracted and drawn towards that person. For a woman not to do that she needs to control herself, if she remains within her own control, she will think, my husband, however incapable (ajogya) he may be, short, deformed (kempa), whatever he is, he is my husband, he is my god. Just as we bow our heads to god—we don’t get to see god—but every woman thinks that this man (her husband) is my god. That is why this man’s world (samsaro) we must manage it well. His children, his mother, his sister, his relatives, his people—if we are able to manage them well, then the man too will worship his wife. He will see how well she carries on with his people and he will respect her for it, and she will have peace in her own mind/heart. Just like Ma, we as women, we have her sakti, each woman has that sakti within her, but if that sakti isn’t kept under check (daman koriba), then she will not remain controlled. Say today I see a handsome man (sundoro purusa), if I am greatly attracted to him, and if I don’t control myself, if I don’t tell myself, “To do this thing is a sin (papo), if I do this then harm (khyati) will come to my family.” Over here we have this saying, ‘let there be 1000 good qualities in a woman, but her most important measure is her character’ (hazaro guna roho pochare, striro charitro hou tar osare). If a woman’s character is right, then with the strength of this right character she can do a great deal, even that which is undoable, she can accomplish. What is important is her character. So the woman who maintains her character—even if you throw in front of her all the wealth in the world, or all the happiness in the heavens, she will have only contempt for it (tuchho koridebo). There are women who will be misled enough to think let my family not be there, let my husband not be there, I will go elsewhere. There are women

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who want that. For a woman to control herself is very difficult. We read in the Puranas how even Ma sometimes couldn’t control herself (nije ayato bhitre nahanti).

In the icon that Mamata is referring to, Kali is shown with her foot placed squarely on the chest of her supine husband Siva and a lolling tongue. I have already discussed (Chap. 4) the kinds of meanings that Odias of the temple town attach to this icon: the need for women to recognize their proper place in the world, to control and discipline their sakti, and to hold it in for the good of all living creatures. Odias here regard Kali’s red lolling tongue as her particular symbol (lakhyano), and she is worshiped in this aspect because it exemplifies voluntary subordination and deliberate containment of power. Women, here, value these divine examples because they demonstrate the importance of controlling their female power—gaining the respect of others and simultaneously ensuring the auspiciousness and material prosperity of their conjugal families. Male and female activities are said to belong to two separate spheres: male to the outside (bahare) and the female to the inside (bhitre) (see Tokita-Tanabe 1999). Men are suited by their physical substance to work outside the house, ensuring a steady inflow of material goods that enable the family to survive. Women’s physique makes them better adapted to all that has to be done within the four walls of a house—the cooking, the cleaning, the serving, and the taking care of others. And so Sudhansubabu believes that: The main duties of husbands and wives are the same—how will the children be raised, how will the children be educated, how will the children gain a good name (sunamo), and in this lies the happiness of husband and wife. And they work hard to achieve these objectives but they do it differently. I think the effort is equal but the shape it takes is different. Many others will tell you that woman’s effort (parishramo) is more. Maybe it is. But I think in today’s world getting a job isn’t easy—for a man, too, life is very difficult. The woman stays at home and does her duty while the man’s duty takes him outside the house where he has to earn a living so as to ensure that his family is maintained in some comfort. Women manage the home, they take care of all the conflicts and decisions within the home and men go out and earn a living. They manage the property, they are told this is not there, that is not there and they bring all that is required. The one additional responsibility that a wife has is that she has to bring her husband to the path of truth—that is true, women have that added responsibility. Men since they spend so much of their time outside the home tend to do bad things.

Because women remain at home, Odia Hindus of the temple town tend to believe that they are less exposed to contamination. Less affected by the disorders and the incoherences of the outside world, women are said to become, with time, more moral beings, better able to distinguish between right (thik) and wrong (bhul) and good (bhalo) and bad (mando). Remaining within domestic spaces, therefore, is in and of itself a lifelong process of refinement, conferring a mark of distinction on those who do so. And as I have remarked before, women interpret such selfconfinement as a sign of their independence rather than the reverse—their logic is that they do not need to meet with others or to move around the neighborhood to maintain themselves, they are independent of unrelated others. Satyabhama, as a married husband’s mother, goes every day to pray at the Lingaraj temple, taking a brass plate loaded with all kinds of offerings (bhoga) for

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the deity: but she speaks of the short walk from her house to the temple through streets lined with shops as an unavoidable, un-relished part of her daily worship. Thus, she tells me: I go straight to the temple and I come straight back. I look neither to this side nor that. But suppose for a particular festival (parab) or religious observance (osha) I need an apple or some fruit for god, then I go and buy that from the market. But I never go to the market to buy anything else, nothing else. I don’t even go to buy glass bangles from the market. I buy bangles from the bangle-seller who comes to the door. It’s only when something is absolutely necessary for god that I go to the market, for nothing else.

Shops and marketplaces seem to hold little fascination for Satyabhama—they are a necessary evil that one visits when one needs must. Apparently, this rather typical temple town attitude is not limited to this neighborhood: educated, professional Odia Hindu women living in the urban centers of Puri and Bhubaneswar also view shopping as little more than a bothersome chore that needs to be done. Thus, TokitaTanabe (1999: 144) reports: Working women point out that their job demands that they go out of the house and since they go out they also have to do the marketing for the house. They say it is a matter of being practical and cannot be helped. They say that it is not that they go out to the market just for the sake of their own pleasure.

Even Rashmi, the only woman in my original sample of 66 women, who works outside the home as a schoolteacher, makes it quite clear that her purpose in working is to bring in more money and raise the standard of living for her household—not because her work is part of her self-definition or because she finds her work fulfilling or satisfying. Although she claims to enjoy teaching small children, she says: If tomorrow something was to happen that made it unnecessary for me to work, I would immediately give up my ‘service’ (she uses the English word). I enjoy my work, I love working with small children, but if I could stay home and just manage my family I would prefer that. I work only so that we can have a scooter, we can save enough money so that soon with a government loan we buy a piece of land and start building a house. We have so many hopes, this son, I want to give him a good English medium education. These are the reasons I work.

Clearly, her sense of self is not wrapped up in her work. And, for her part, while she has educated her 21-year-old daughter Namrata, Mamata’s paramount concern is to find a good husband for the girl (see Hauser 2008). While discussing the chances that such an auspicious event would happen soon, Mamata says: M: What I want is to get her a good husband, someone with a good job and not a large family. A large family means he will have many responsibilities towards brothers and sisters, life will be difficult for her. But where does one get such a husband today? In the old days, boys never came to see the girl. The parents saw and that was enough. There was no dowry, you just gave what made your mind/heart happy. But today things are so different. They want a scooter, T.V., gold chain, gold ring, and the list goes on and on. U: But you have educated Namrata.8 You don’t think she should work? 8 Namrata has done her M.A. in political science. At this time, she was also doing a teachers’ training course.

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M: The education is so that if ever the need should arise, she can stand on her own two feet. If it should happen that her husband doesn’t ask about her, or her husband’s mother is so cruel that Namrata can’t live in their house any more or for whatever reason. But she has to get married. That is our duty as parents—to get her married, to search for a good husband and get her married.

She certainly does not view her daughter’s education as a path to a future career but rather as an insurance against something untoward and unexpected happening to the girl. As Hauser notes, “Although a growing number of middle-class families put intense effort into a girl’s education, most people remain much more concerned about her marriage” (2010: 213). To conclude, despite some modern notions about educating girls and women working creeping into the temple town, old habits appear to die hard.

Variations in Representations of Hindu Women To anyone familiar with the research done on the lives and experiences of Hindu women, the representation of Odia Hindu women of the temple town9 as it emerges on these pages does not accord particularly well with the kind of portrayals that are most commonly found. For many decades now, the lives and experiences of Hindu women have proven a fertile ground for observation and academic scholarship. The amount of work produced has been truly enormous (to name but a few, Fruzzetti 1982; Dhruvarajan 1988; Das 1976; Papanek and Minault 1982; Sharma 1980; Roy 1975; Jacobson 1982; Jain and Bannerjee 1985; Liddle and Joshi 1986; Reynolds 1980; Wadley 1980; Wadley and Jacobson 1992; Bennett 1983; Kondos 1989; Minturn 1993; Jeffery et al. 1988; Raheja and Gold 1994; Sangari and Vaid 1989; Haynes and Prakash 1991; Rajan 1993; Balakrishnan 1994; Vatuk 1975, 1987, 1990; Lamb 1997, 2000; Seymour 1983, 1999; Marglin 1985a, b; Hochschild 2003). I cannot pretend to provide even a marginally competent account of the various kinds of work that have been done; the sheer volume together with the nuanced differences between the positions of various scholars makes that task virtually impossible to accomplish within the limitations of this chapter. Rather, I will use the broadest of brushstrokes to give a sense of the more noticeable trends in this body of scholarship. Generally speaking, the two commonest ways of representing Hindu women have been as passive victim or as subversive, clandestine rebel. It would be remiss of me if I were not to mention, at this point, some notable exceptions to these two predominant kinds of representations; thus, Sylvia Vatuk’s work among the women of Rayapur in north India, Susan Seymour’s comparative study of the lives of Odia women in the temple town and in the modern capital city of Bhubaneswar, Frederique 9

I am not claiming that this representation reflects the experiences of all women in the temple town, but I am certainly suggesting that this representation is one that almost all of these women would recognize—while at the same time accepting that their own lived experiences diverge more or less from it.

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Marglin’s study of purity and auspiciousness among the devadasis at the Jagannatha temple in Puri, southern Odisha, and Sarah Lamb’s investigation of aging and gender in the Bengali village of Mangaldihi are stellar examples of work that resist this general pattern.

Hindu Woman as Passive Victim Apart from these few studies that have tacked an independent course for themselves, the predominant tendency, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, was to emphasize the utter passivity of Hindu women and, sometimes, their active complicity in their own subordination. Two examples of such a representation— perhaps extreme but, because of that, quite telling—would be Dhruvarajan’s (1988) work on Hindu women belonging to a village in the southern Indian state of Karnataka and Kondos’s (1989) description of Nepali Hindu women. There is also a more recent representation of Hindu women that I would like to analyze for its liberal bias. This is the sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s 2003 paper entitled “The Colonized Colonizer” in which she examines the lives and experiences of the mothers and grandmothers of a few eminent Indian women writers and scholars. On the face of it, the two studies by Dhruvarajan and Kondos have almost nothing in common: each is, of course, looking at subjects who happen to be women who happen to be Hindu, but there is nothing else that their subjects share, not region, or language, or caste affiliation or class membership. Yet, despite what would appear to be these rather significant differences, both studies end up describing Hindu women in remarkably similar ways: as traditional, family-oriented, culture-bound, often ill-educated, completely powerless women who have no sense of self, little control over their actions or their bodies; women who are, at all times, sexually constrained; and women who lead highly contingent lives. And there is another inescapable element in this representation and that is the subtle, yet compelling, contrast that emerges from these texts—of the Western or Westernized anthropologist (the Self in this dialogical interaction with the Other) as educated, as modern, as unburdened by tradition, as having control over her body and her sexuality, and ultimately as having the freedom to make her own decisions: someone who leads an independent life not contingent on circumstances or other people (see Mohanty 1988). Aside from the rather powerful whiff of “white women’s burden” that clings to such a representation, a problem with such works is the readiness with which the category “Hindu woman” is embraced. As Bhikhu Parekh says, the category “‘woman’ is too oversimplified an abstraction to allow us to appreciate the diversity of her status, roles and power” (1999: 72), and his criticism applies equally well to the category “Hindu women.” By assuming such a unitary category, these scholars are ignoring the myriad ways in which Hindu women, even if they belong to the same linguistic and

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cultural group, differ from each other, in terms of age, jati, class, family role, education, and occupation. As I have tried to demonstrate with respect to some Odia Hindu women of the temple town, the family role that a woman occupies makes all the difference to the duties and responsibilities she discharges, as well as the goals she aims to realize and the resources she can mobilize to achieve wellbeing. But, the deeper reason for such convergence in their representations stems from the fact that Dhruvarajan and Kondos share an ideology—a liberal ideology that views autonomy, individual choice, and personal satisfaction as moral goods having unquestioned primacy. Thus, Dhruvarajan (1988: 108) argues that Hindu “ideology manipulates the motivational structure of women to accept their position as underlings of men” and, furthermore, that “it strips them of the willpower necessary for self-reliance and personal growth.” And Kondos (1989: 190) describes the constrained lives that Hindu women are forced to lead in a cultural world in which “feminine success” is defined in terms of “the cultural imperatives to produce sons and to die before her husband.” Hochschild’s paper is little different—for one thing it is not based on fieldwork. On the basis of a year’s exposure to India as a Fulbright scholar and participation in a workshop at which prominent Indian women made highly personal and emotional presentations, chronicling their accomplishments and those of their mothers and grandmothers, she expounds on the idea that, in Hindu India, “patriarchal fathers subcontracted to their wives the job of keeping patriarchy going, much on the model of “indirect rule” under colonialism” (2003: 149). Hochschild builds her case for the complicity of Hindu women in their own subordination by relying on accounts presented at this conference—in particular Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s story of her mother Radharani Dev’s life recounted in “The Wind beneath my Wings” (1999). Both mother and daughter are noted Bengali poets and litterateurs. Needless to say, I find Hochschild’s thesis a little troubling.10 The bare facts about Radharani’s life are as follows. Born into a wealthy and privileged Brahman family in 1903, she was married at 12 and became a child widow at 13. Her mother, a staunch upholder of Hindu traditions, tried to impose on her daughter all the severe restrictions that typically characterize a Hindu widow’s life but failed because, at home, her husband undermined her efforts, and when she sent her daughter to her in-laws to thwart such paternal indulgences, her mother-in-law and her brothers-in-law insisted that Radharani lead as normal a life as possible, in terms of diet, attire, social contact, and pursuing her artistic and intellectual interests. Sen reports that her mother was treated “like a devi (goddess)” (1999: 227) by her inlaws, and she became the “centre of the family in many ways” (ibid.). At 28, Radharani married a man of her own choosing, the poet Narendra Dev, “in the presence of Bengal’s cultural celebrities” (ibid.), and her second mother-in-law welcomed a widow as her son’s wife with apparently no hesitation and little social cost.

10

As I have mentioned in Chap. 1, there are many modern, educated, Westernized Indian men and women who may agree with Hochschild’s thesis; in fact, it is possible that many of the women who presented at the conference would agree with her.

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Based on this life story—although Sen’s exposition is far more detailed and evocative than the sketchy one presented above—Hochschild claims that patriarchal fathers subcontracted the job of patriarchy to their wives.11 I find it hard to understand this claim because the data do not support it. Radharani’s mother certainly does try to impose on her daughter the harshest of customs associated with Hindu widowhood—but no one else does. Her father, far from subcontracting patriarchy, appears to undermine his wife’s authority by “encouraging” (Sen 1999: 226) his widowed daughter to continue to read and write—the very behavior that her mother claims had brought about her early widowhood. As Sen makes abundantly clear, Radharani’s in-laws from her first marriage cherish her, and when she marries a second time, her new mother-in-law welcomes her unhesitatingly. And her brothers-in-law, going against Hindu customs that consider widows to be the very embodiment of inauspiciousness, ensure that she is given control of household finances and is entrusted with the education of the school-going children in the household. Thus, except for her mother, everyone else challenges, resists, and modifies what they see as the most egregious practices of Hindu widowhood—and they appear to do so without suffering any social ostracism. The only reasonable explanation, as I see it, for Hochschild’s position is that her liberal bias, wittingly or not, makes her highly selective in her use of the data. Because of her selectivity and because she is so eager to emphasize all that she views as illiberal in Hindu customs and practices, she becomes blind in some degree to what is actually happening in Radharani’s life. This woman’s life, far from being the prototypical saga of the iniquities of patriarchy, documents instead the modernizing changes occurring among the intellectual and political elite of Bengal— changes that were occurring because of their exposure to Western thought, changes that constituted the Bengal Renaissance. From this perspective, Radharani’s mother, the intolerant upholder of Hindu traditions, is a vestige of an earlier era; she is not the norm. Ironically, Hochschild’s liberal bias betrays her scholarship to the extent that it prevents her from recognizing the ways in which liberal values were actually diffusing among this elite, relatively small group of Hindus during that era—that is the big story about this period that she seems unable to apprehend. Instead, Hochschild generalizes about Hindu women, representing them as pawns who, unaware of what is truly in their best interests, play the game of patriarchy for the paltry rewards of a little “authority and honor” (2003: 153) as older wives and mothers-in-law.

11

Hochschild makes several other highly questionable assertions. I will mention just two: first, she claims that “all women were subordinate to all men” (2003: 152)—an unwarranted generalization that is immediately refuted by Sen’s description of her maternal grandmother (1999: 222), and second, Hochschild mentions that at the time Radharani was widowed in 1916, “suttee” had not yet been banned; she appears to be unaware of the fact that the English had banned it nearly a century ago—in 1829. The only purpose for such a claim, as far as I can make out, would be to highlight the misogyny that liberal scholars think is inherent in Hindu ideology.

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The point I am trying to make here is that the liberal view of life is both culture specific and the product of a particular historical moment: its values—those of equality, autonomy, and individual rights—do not necessarily have universal significance (Parekh 1999). A liberal perspective, therefore, does not typically lend itself to representing the lives of non-Western women, who do not subscribe to its values, with much validity. Thus, whether it is Dhruvarajan or Kondos or Hochschild, the liberal lens through which these scholars examine the lives of Hindu women tends to skew their perceptions leading to misinterpretation and misrepresentation. All three appear to share their ideological position with the well-known and highly respected political philosopher Susan Okin who, while discussing the tension that she sees as existing between feminism and multiculturalism, suggested that non-Western women “may be much better off if the culture into which they were born were … to become extinct” (1999: 23, italics in the original). Liberals of this stripe believe that culture is the problem that prevents non-Western women from leading satisfying, liberated lives; that non-Western cultures are misogynistic because they regularly and systematically devalue and discriminate against women; and that the lot of Hindu women, for instance, would improve immeasurably if they would only abandon their culture and adopt liberal values—this is a hoary old chestnut that, centuries of European colonialism should, at the least, have taught us, is both ethically troubling and unlikely to succeed. In the cultural world of the temple town, men and women recognize each other as social actors, equal in importance and effectiveness, not competing with each other but rather complementing each other’s activities. To cast men as oppressors and women as victims is to posit a dichotomy which neither gender perceives. Any discussion of those in control and those controlled has to be made in terms of the sequence of life phases, the more senior controlling the activities of the more junior. But even here one needs to temper this statement because seniority is not valued in itself, only those seniors involved in the caring and careful distribution of resources for the welfare of both senior and junior others are respected and their opinions valued. Furthermore, as anyone familiar with life and society in Hindu India knows, men, especially younger men, like women live with major constraints. Most men and women in the temple town, just like most Hindu men and women in other parts of the subcontinent, do not decide for themselves what people in the West would regard as the two most crucial decisions of a person’s life: their professions and their marriages. This is not to say that there are no differences between men’s and women’s lives; there are, the most significant one being that men can move and interact with others quite freely. But, as I have tried to show, whether many women in the temple town would regard this as an unmitigated advantage is doubtful.

Hindu Woman as Subversive Rebel While scholarly expositions on the Hindu woman as victim continue to appear with remarkable regularity, another trend has emerged—to emphasize the “agency” and “activism” these women supposedly display. Inspired by James Scott’s work (1985)

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on Malaysian peasants, many feminist scholars now suggest that Hindu women only appear to acquiesce to male domination. Appropriating Scott’s words, they point to the “everyday forms of resistance” that Hindu women supposedly perform— complaining, foot-dragging, and mocking their oppressors: the men and senior women of the household. Thus, Jeffrey (1998: 222) argues, “In various low-profile ways, women critique their subordination and resist the controls over them—in personal reminiscences or songs, in sabotage and cheating. The husband treated like a lord or deity to his face may be derided behind his back or given excessively salty meals.” In a similar vein, while speaking of the expressive traditions of north Indian women, Raheja and Gold (1994: 26) suggest that “the active rebellion that may at one moment be impractical or impossible may at another moment become plausible precisely because the idea of social transformation has been nourished in proverbs, folk songs, jokes, rituals, legends, and languages.” While these scholars, too, espouse a liberal perspective, believing in the primacy of autonomy, individual choice, and personal satisfaction as moral goods, they differ from those who view the Hindu woman as passive victim primarily because they do not see these women as being subject to “false consciousness.” Thus, this activist perspective, which emphasizes the agency of Hindu women, contends that their consciousness has already been raised: apparently, they are only awaiting an opportune moment to rise up and demand a radical reordering of social arrangements. Such a representation of Hindu woman as clandestine or subversive rebel is enormously reassuring to feminist activists.12 Homegrown Indian feminists, stung by criticisms that they are out of touch with local realities and are the only malcontents, are drawing solace from such evidence of rural women’s discontent—these “protofeminists” make them feel less isolated and “deculturated” (Jeffrey 1998: 231). They take heart because the “one vital message in the voices of unlettered village women, unaware of feminism as conventionally understood, is that they do critique their situations” (ibid.: 232). However, there is a problem with this image of Hindu women and one that feminist activists themselves acknowledge—their apparent inability to mobilize Hindu women. Why, they ask themselves, have they been relatively ineffective in energizing Hindu women both to protest gender injustices and to directly fight them? Why—and this is a bitter pill to swallow—has “politicized religion” been so much

12 By “feminist,” I am referring to those Western/Westernized activists and scholars, who target Hindu cultural traditions as the root cause of gender injustices and exploitation on the Indian subcontinent today. Their goal is “absolute and complete equality as far as is humanly possible in any given situation at any given time” (Narayanan 1998: 26). There are others working to improve the lot of Indian women, but—and this is a crucial difference—these people are working not for gender equality but for female empowerment. They explicitly distance themselves from Western feminism—the most famous such example being Madhu Kishwar, editor of Manushi, a journal about women and society in India (see Kishwar’s article, “Why I Do Not Call Myself a Feminist”, Manushi 61 [Nov-Dec 1990]: 5). They believe that feminism, as an intellectual perspective and a movement, is located in a particular historical and sociocultural context and therefore has little relevance in contemporary India. They further believe that the potential for radical social transformation in India can be found within indigenous cultural traditions—one need not look westward for inspiration.

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more successful in motivating Hindu women to take to the streets in defense of a variety of religious causes? (see Jeffrey and Basu 1998; for “politicized religion,” Sarkar and Butalia 1995). As the feminist scholar Patricia Jeffrey acknowledges, “Feminists can surely derive little satisfaction, for instance, from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ability to mobilize women in defense of Ram’s birthplace,13 often in greater numbers than feminist organizations have managed to mobilize women to protest dowry murder” (Jeffrey 1998: 221). I am reluctant to overstate the distinctions between individualistic and group-oriented cultures, but the ideology of individualism that inspires feminism can certainly be identified as the primary reason for its failure to mobilize large numbers of Hindu women. Feminism, by focusing on the rights of women as individuals, attempts to challenge and dismantle family structures. It does not recognize and acknowledge the importance of the family in most Hindu women’s lives. It chooses to ignore the fact that, oftentimes, for these women, the family roles they occupy as they mature and age provide them with the deepest sense of who they are as persons. The various feminisms, despite their many differences, share this ideology of individualism—even Carol Gilligan’s “interdependent” or “relational” version that is elaborated on in her book In a Different Voice (1993). This version, despite distinguishing itself by stressing the importance of relationships in the lives of women, would be unacceptable to many upper-caste Hindu women. Gilligan sees women as achieving maturity as moral beings when they are able “to consider it moral to care not only for others but for themselves.” She questions the morality of selflessness and suggests that understanding the concept of rights properly enables women to see “that the interests of the self can be considered legitimate.” Thus, although Gilligan emphasizes the ethics of caring and the importance of relationships to women, the primacy of the individual is never questioned. This emphasis on the self would puzzle most residents of the temple town, men and women. They would see it as narcissistic, in some ways deeply immoral, and ultimately futile, because they believe that the experiencing self does not exist apart from its connections with others.

Hindu Women as Active Upholders of an Alternate Moral Universe In contrast to these two predominant ways of representing Hindu women, my attempt, in this book, has been to suggest that the Odia Hindu women who live in the temple town of Bhubaneswar and who shared their lives with me are neither passive victims nor subversive rebels. Rather, they are “active upholders of an alternate moral order” (Menon and Shweder 1998), one in which indigenous moral concepts like service (sewa), self-control (sanjamta) duty to the family (parivar prati kartabya), and a heightened sense of social responsibility (sampanna bhabore daitva heba)

13 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the nationalist Hindu party; Ram is an incarnation of the Hindu god, Visnu.

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constitute virtues. These Odia Hindu women see cultivation of these virtues as leading to personal growth, self-improvement, and wellbeing. Before describing the Odia Hindu women’s alternate moral universe, I need to remind the reader that my analysis is, very specifically, about upper-caste, predominantly Brahman women who adhere to a fairly rigid code of conduct, often seen by outsiders as restrictive. Lower-caste women are not expected to follow Brahmanical practice, and indeed, they do not. However, such practice remains the cultural ideal within the temple town, and when lower castes claim higher ritual status, they do so on the grounds that their customs and practices are becoming progressively more Brahmanical—the process termed “Sanskritization” by the Indian anthropologist M.N. Srinivas, who first described it. I also need to emphasize that I view culture, and most people, I think, would agree with me, as an evolving, complex system that enables its members to develop an identity and a sense of self, that provides them the intellectual and emotional resources to lead satisfying lives, and that gives them the meanings with which to make sense of the events and experiences of their lives. It is not something that a people can wish away, simply because it does not meet with the approval of outsiders. A culture is, also, a dynamic system in which members constantly engage in contesting and negotiating rank, power, privilege, and access to resources, and as Honig (1999: 39) has remarked in her critique of Okin’s position, “Rarely are those privileges distributed along a single axis of difference such that, for example, all men are more powerful than all women.” Such an understanding of culture is necessary in order to appreciate the ways in which Odia women of the temple town live their lives and make their choices. Even in this patrilineal and patrilocal community, where women, unlike men, do not inherit property and where they do change their residence at marriage, most of them contrive to lead fairly fulfilling, contented lives. The reasons for this—as I have been at pains to identify and explain over the last many chapters—are several. I present them below. First, their identification with Devi, the goddess, and her potential for dharmik sakti is a source of substantial self-worth. They see themselves as embodying the energy/power of the universe, but in a culturally distinctive, self-controlled way. On the one hand, there is present, in the temple town, a fairly strong sakta tradition. The fifteenth-century Odia poet Sarala Dasa, popular even today, articulates this femaleoriented sakta perspective: the Bilanka Ramayana, his version of the Hindu epic diverges from the north Indian Ramayana by portraying Sita as the one who, after transforming herself into Devi in a blazing glory of light, decapitates the 1,000-headed anti-god Ravana while her husband, Rama, stands cowering in the shadows. But, on the other hand, such recognition of the potency and effectiveness of female energy and power does not translate into a simple and unproblematic belief that the female is, always and universally, superior to the male.14 Hindus, as Kinsley 14

Tantrics are unabashed worshipers of the goddess and believe in the complete and total supremacy of the female principle. Of the 26 men that I spoke to during my first spell of fieldwork in the temple town, there were two who self-identified as Tantrics. Going by those figures, they are a very small minority even in eastern India where Tantric beliefs are more common than in other parts of India. I am, however, talking here of mainstream Hindu society which may be sakta in its orientation but not Tantric.

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(1993: 68) points out, do not think like this because they rarely, if ever, privilege the natural over the cultural; they, therefore, do not value naturally occurring female sakti (adya sakti) for itself. Such sakti has to be culturally controlled, held in, and refined, transformed into dharmik sakti (moral or sacred power). Dharmik sakti is culturally valued; a woman imbued with such sakti symbolizes everything pure, auspicious, and refined. Second, these women are universally regarded as being central to the material prosperity and spiritual welfare of their conjugal families. Most people would echo Mamata’s words: “… for the man, for the children, for everyone, for the family, only a woman’s contribution is really crucial.” Through feeding family members and producing its future members, these women see themselves, very concretely, as the maintainers and sustainers of life in their conjugal families. Third, within a few years of marriage, these in-marrying women identify themselves unreservedly with their conjugal families. Their sense of being reborn through marriage is critical to this identification. Their sense of self and personhood emerges from their involvement in the conjugal family. They would, unhesitatingly, agree with Hindu Newaris of Nepal who say, “Interdependency is where you find yourself. In relationships, you discover what and who you are, where you are going, and what you need to do” (Parish 1994: 129). At the same time, after the first year of marriage, hardly any gifts come from a junior wife’s natal household; consequently, her sense of entitlement with respect to that household diminishes rapidly. Her position within her conjugal family rests not on the stream of gifts that flow from her natal household but on the appreciation she earns through successful assimilation. For Odia Hindu women, success or failure in life depends on their efforts. When they embed themselves in their conjugal families, they are rewarded by power and prestige as they mature and age. Their sense of identity and self-worth comes from being valued members of the conjugal family, universally acknowledged as vital to its material prosperity and spiritual wellbeing.

The Idea of “False Consciousness” And finally, the relevance of the idea of “false consciousness”: How useful is it in trying to understand the lives and choices of Odia Hindu women? My position is that these women are not victims of “false consciousness.” I think so not because I believe that they are “proto-feminists,” biding their time before launching a social movement, but because irrefutable data about these women’s lives pushes me to think so. And this data has to do with the uniqueness of the relationship that exists between senior and junior women in an extended household. Generally speaking, scholars have not quite appreciated the fact that unlike all other relationships of dominance and subordination—for instance, those between peasants and landlords, or between workers and capitalists—this one reverses itself simply through the passage of time. Junior women who are subordinate today will, with the birth of their children and the entry of still more junior women, promote themselves and be promoted

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to senior positions. The senior women who dominate today will inevitably grow old. Physical infirmity and mental incapacity, the defining conditions of old age, will be exacerbated by widowhood. The junior women of today will come to occupy the central positions of power within the household tomorrow, and they will dominate not only those who are junior to them but also those who are presently dominant, the senior women. Of course, women do sometimes express discontentment with life within the conjugal family. But in this neighborhood, it is the senior rather than the junior women who express such discontent. Complaining loudly is a powerful tool senior women employ to make their feelings known. Complaining loudly, withholding advice, and refusing to make decisions in a timely manner are hardly the “weapons of the weak”; rather, they are explicit expressions of power by dominant women. The defining quality of these acts is that they are neither surreptitious nor subversive. When these senior women choose to withdraw from family discussions and household activities and choose to complain about behavior they consider unacceptable, they do not “sabotage” the structure of power and control within the household. On the contrary, they engage in such behavior, openly and obviously, to maintain control and ensure cooperation within their world. In stark contrast, junior wives appear to do nothing to subvert household authority. The reasons are fairly obvious. Having observed, in their fathers’ household, their brothers’ wives negotiating the process of assimilation, they realize that, as newcomers, to express critical comments in one’s conjugal household is foolhardy. They know that candor can be costly, because their positions within the family are still too fragile and they do not, as yet, exercise substantial influence. Spiteful and irresponsible behavior such as cooking and serving “excessively salty meals” would impede their assimilation into the family, something they value greatly and actively seek. It would negate the very principle that inspires most of their actions: too much salt added to the food they cook, food that is imbued with their essences, would ruin their attempts to extend their influences through the family. It also needs to be pointed out that there is no gender component to these expressions of displeasure: senior women do not direct their ire at the men of the household. Feminist scholars misunderstand conflicts within extended families when they identify them as being between women and men or describe them as women resisting patrilineal kinship structures. Such conflicts as do occur do not emerge along gender lines. Rather, they are almost always between the nuclear subunits of the extended family, each headed by a married son and including his wife and children. Sometimes, they occur between a particular junior woman and the rest of the family—when a woman is unable to accommodate to the demands of living with her husband and/or her conjugal household. Everyone in the temple town recognizes this possibility, but no one imagines that such a case of incompatibility represents something larger, such as systematic injustices against all women. Even more important is that everyone involved—the junior women, the senior women, and the men—knows, perfectly well, that the hold senior women have on power is transitory and that sometime in the not-too-distant future they will have to relinquish power to those who are junior now. Not surprisingly, junior women, waiting

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expectantly in the wings, see no point in resisting or rebelling, either covertly or overtly. They are quite disinterested, it seems, in fighting for a radical reordering of social arrangements. It should be fairly clear by now that feminists working in Hindu India have little to offer in terms of message and meaning that resonate with the lived experience of the women of the temple town. Feminism, I would submit, is so particularly a product of Western social and intellectual history, its moral order constructed so explicitly in terms of equality, individual rights, and personal choice, that it appears quire alien to temple town women who live within another, equally elaborated moral order that cherishes self-control, self-refinement, and duty to the family.

Conclusion To represent women’s lives as accurately as possible is a difficult, complex, and often hazardous task. It can never be done adequately by pointing to one or two aspects of being a woman and making them the overarching criteria of the quality of women’s lives, of the importance of being a woman in a particular culture. The temple town is both patrilineal and patrilocal in its social arrangements, but the women who live here manage, for the most part, to lead fairly satisfying lives. And the reason is not far to seek: they are mature, flexible, professionals who realistically assess their prospects as well as their current problems and then act accordingly. They recognize themselves for what they are: as females, they embody sakti, but for this sakti to become dharmik sakti, generative and culturally valued, it needs to be refined through the exercise of self-control and self-discipline. And so they do not strive to be what they are not; they do not strive to be men. Instead, if and when they move out of domestic spaces into the public arena, they carry with them these notions of self-control and self-discipline—Rashmi is a good example of a woman who has executed just such a movement but continues to subscribe to temple town notions of what it means to be a woman.

References Balakrishnan, R. (1994). The social context of sex selection and the logic of abortion in India. In G. Sen & R. C. Snow (Eds.), Power and decision: The social role of reproduction. Boston: Harvard Center for Population and Developmental Studies. Bennett, L. (1983). Dangerous wives and sacred sisters: Social and symbolic roles of high-caste women in Nepal. New York: Columbia University Press. Das, V. (1976). Indian women: Work, status and power. In B. R. Nanda (Ed.), Indian women: From purdah to modernity. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Company. Derné, S. (1994). Hindu men talk about controlling women: Cultural ideas as a tool of the powerful. Sociological Perspectives, 37(2), 203–227. Dhruvarajan, V. (1988). Hindu women and the power of ideology. Granby: Bergin and Harvey. Fruzzetti, L. (1982). The gift of a virgin. Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey Press.

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Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hauser, B. (2008). How to fast for a good husband? Reflections on ritual imitation and embodiment in Orissa (India). In A. Henn & K.-P. Koepping (Eds.), Rituals in an unstable world (pp. 227–245). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Hauser, B. (2010). Performative constructions of female identity at a Hindu ritual: Some thoughts on the agentive dimension. In A. Hoffmann & E. Peeren (Eds.), Representation matters: (Re)articulating collective identities in a postcolonial world (pp. 207–221). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Haynes, D., & Prakash, G. (Eds.). (1991). Contesting power: Resistance and everyday social relations in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hochschild, A. (2003). The commercialization of intimate life: Notes from home and work. Berkeley: University of California Press. Honig, B. (1999). My culture made me do it. In J. Cohen, M. Howard, & M. C. Nussbaum (Eds.), Is multiculturalism bad for women? (pp. 35–40). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hsu, F. L. K. (1971). Hypothesis on kinship and culture. In F. L. K. Hsu (Ed.), Kinship and culture. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Jacobson, D. (1982). Studying the changing roles of women in rural India. Signs, 8(1), 132–137. Jain, D., & Bannerjee, N. (Eds.). (1985). Tyranny of the household: Investigative essays on women’s work. New Delhi: Shakti Books. Jeffrey, P. (1998). Agency, activism and agendas. In P. Jeffrey & A. Basu (Eds.), Appropriating gender (pp. 221–243). London: Routledge. Jeffrey, P., & Basu, A. (Eds.). (1998). Appropriating gender. London: Routledge. Jeffrey, P., Jeffrey, R., & Lyons, A. (Eds.). (1988). Labour pains and labour power: Women and childbearing in India. London: Zed Books. Kakar, S. (1978). The inner world: A psycho-analytic study of childhood and society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kakar, S. (1982). Shamans, mystics and doctors. New York: Knopf. Kinsley, D. R. (1993). Hinduism, a cultural perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall. Kishwar, M. (1990, November–December) Why I m not a feminist. Manushi, 61, 5. Kondos, V. (1989). Subjection and domicile: Some problematic issues relating to high caste Nepalese women. In J. N. Gray & D. J. Mearns (Eds.), Society from the inside out. New Delhi: Sage. Lamb, S. (1997). The making and unmaking of persons: Notes on aging and gender in north India. Ethos, 25(3), 279–302. Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Liddle, J., & Joshi, R. (1986). Daughters of independence: Gender, caste and class in India. London: Zed Books. Madan, T. N. (1987). Non-renunciation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Marglin, F. A. (1985a). Wives of the god-king: The rituals of the devadasis of Puri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Marglin, F. A. (1985b). Female sexuality in the Hindu world. In C. Buchanan & M. Miles (Eds.), Immaculate and powerful: The female in sacred image and social reality (pp. 39–60). Boston: Beacon. Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1998). The return of the ‘White Man’s Burden’: The encounter between the moral discourse of anthropology and the domestic life of Oriya women. In R. A. Shweder (Ed.), Welcome to midlife! (and other cultural fictions) (pp. 139–188). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Minturn, L. (1993). Sita’s daughters: Coming out of Purdah. New York: Oxford University Press. Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61–88. Narayanan, V. (1998). Women of power in the Hindu tradition. In A. Sharma & K. Young (Eds.), Feminism and world religions (pp. 25–77). Albany: State University of New York Press. Okin, S. (1999). Is multiculturalism bad for women? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Papanek, H., & Minault, G. (Eds.). (1982). Separate worlds: Studies of purdah in South Asia. New Delhi: Chanakya Publications. Parekh, B. (1999). A varied moral world. In J. Cohen, M. Howard, & M. C. Nussbaum (Eds.), Is multiculturalism bad for women? (pp. 69–75). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parish, S. (1994). Moral knowing in a Hindu sacred city: An exploration of mind, emotion, and self. New York: Columbia University Press. Raheja, G., & Gold, A. (1994). Listen to the heron’s words. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rajan, R. S. (1993). Real and imagined women: Gender, culture and postcolonialism. London: Routledge. Reynolds, H. (1980). The auspicious married woman. In S. S. Wadley (Ed.), The powers of Tamil women. Syracuse: Maxwell school of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Roy, M. (1975). Bengali women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sangari, K., & Vaid, S. (Eds.). (1989). Recasting women: Essays in colonial history. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sarkar, T., & Butalia, U. (1995). Women and right-wing movements: Indian experiences. London: Zed Books. Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sen, N. D. (1999). The wind beneath my wings. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 6, 221–239. Seymour, S. (1983). Household structure and status and expressions of affect in India. Ethos, 11(4), 263–277. Seymour, S. (1999). Women, family and childcare in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharma, U. (1980). Women, work and property in North-West India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Tokita-Tanabe, Y. (1999). Body, self and agency of women in contemporary Orissa. Unpublished PhD dissertation submitted at the University of Tokyo. Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http:// www.glocol.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/staff/tokita/pdf.html Vatuk, S. (1975). The aging woman in India: Self-perceptions and changing roles. In A. de Souza (Ed.), Women in contemporary India and South Asia (pp. 142–163). New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Vatuk, S. (1987). Power, authority and autonomy across the life course. In P. Hocking (Ed.), Essays in honor of David G. Mandelbaum (pp. 23–44). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Vatuk, S. (1990). “To be a burden on others”: Dependency anxiety among the elderly in India. In O. M. Lynch (Ed.), Divine passions: The social construction of emotion in India (pp. 64–88). Berkeley: University of California Press. von Stietencron, H. (1978). The advent of Visnuism in Orissa: An outline of its history according to archaeological and epigraphical sources from the Gupta period up to 1135. A. D. In A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, & G. C. Tripathi (Eds.), Cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa (pp. 1–30). New Delhi: Manohar. Wadley, S. (1980). Hindu women’s family and household rites in north India. In N. A. Falk & R. Gross (Eds.), Unspoken worlds: Women’s religious lives in non-Western cultures (pp. 94–110). New York: Harper and Row. Wadley, S., & Jacobson, D. (Eds.). (1992). Women in India: Two perspectives. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.

Chapter 10

Conclusions

Contents Women’s Wellbeing in the Temple Town ................................................................................ Domesticity and Family Life in the Temple Town .................................................................. Gender Relations in the Temple Town ..................................................................................... Family and the Female Sense of Self ....................................................................................... References ................................................................................................................................

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This work, as I had said at the very beginning, is part of the burgeoning scholarship in what has come to be termed multicultural feminism or “third-wave” feminism. Multicultural feminism expands the parameters of feminist discourse: instead of promoting the liberal values of gender equality and individual liberty, it favors women’s empowerment. Thus, multicultural feminism encourages us to examine the “concrete and complex contexts” (Lâm 2001) of women’s situations in order to identify those resources and opportunities that provide them the wherewithal to lead meaningful and satisfying lives. And its focus is, more frequently than not, on women like the Odia Hindu women of the temple town—women who do not belong to dominant groups in Western Europe or North America. Given its multicultural feminist orientation, this study has tried to present a detailed ethnography of life in the temple town from the perspective of the women who belong to this orthodox, Hindu devotional community. As it stands today, this ethnography elucidates three major themes: a particular model of women’s wellbeing; a particular portrayal of domesticity, family life and, gender relations; and particular constructions of a woman’s sense of self. While no one can deny the enormous differences that separate the cultural universe of Odia Hindu women from that of American women, the findings of this study are an intriguing counterpoint to contemporary debates about work, family, and female identity. These findings speak to associations between women and domesticity, associations that have garnered increasing attention lately because highly educated professional women, in the United States, appear to be

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reevaluating domesticity1 and deciding in its favor by walking away from the workplace in what is often labeled as the opt-out phenomenon. Before discussing each of these themes in some detail, I need to explicitly acknowledge an aspect of this work that may be obvious to some readers but, perhaps, not all. I am referring to the Brahmanical sensibility that infuses it. This is not surprising given that the residents of the temple town are predominantly Brahman, conscious of their ritual superiority, proud of their way of being and thinking, and quite articulate in expressing this sense of superiority. Even the non-Brahman groups who live in the temple town, represented by the carpenters (Maharanas), the peasant cultivators (Chassas), the traders (Telis), and the cowherds (Goudas), have absorbed this Brahmanical orientation to the world, and it influences deeply their attitudes and actions. My samples reflect this demographic feature of the temple town: during both periods of fieldwork, the women who spoke with me were predominantly Brahman.

Women’s Wellbeing in the Temple Town The model of women’s wellbeing that has emerged from this study suggests that, in the temple town, Odia Hindu women enjoy wellbeing when they are deeply involved in giving and distributing within the family, between the family and the larger community and between the family and divinity. Unlike some studies (Brown and Kerns 1985; Minturn 1993) that have suggested that, for non-Western women, increasing age, in and of itself, leads to greater wellbeing, the women of the temple town do not view chronological age to be a significant variable. No doubt increasing age does bring with it some advantages in terms of greater freedom to say what is on one’s mind/heart, to move around within the house and outside more freely, and to mix with others within the family and beyond, but these factors are not the most critical in enabling an increase in women’s wellbeing. Instead, increased access to wellbeing depends much more on the distributive actions that a woman undertakes in the various family roles that she occupies. When the role a woman occupies makes her central to the family’s prosperity as well as its fund of auspiciousness, then a woman feels well. When her role becomes less essential in securing the family’s wellbeing, her sense of wellbeing declines. And for Odia Hindu women, there are two such central roles: those of senior wife (purna bou) and married husband’s mother (sasu). In both these roles, a woman not only has control over her own activities but she has influence over others in the family; she feels central to the productive and distributive activities of the family, and, lastly, she develops a sense of inner coherence within herself, a moral goodness. In short, a vigorous giving and distributing, in which the

1

Most recently, the political scientist Anne Marie Slaughter made headlines when she wrote an article entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” (July/August 2012, the Atlantic magazine) in which she discussed the challenges women face in trying to combine a career and family life.

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woman herself initiates and controls the exchanges and transactions she engages in, leads her to experience substantial wellbeing. This—the notion of self-directed and vigorous involvement in giving and distributing—is, perhaps, one of the more important findings of this investigation into women’s wellbeing. The temple town idea of women’s wellbeing plays into the Hindu notion of the greater openness of the woman’s body—the fact that she both emanates essences and influences and absorbs more than a man. In her phase of mature adulthood, when she works on this naturally given greater permeability to become an effective channel through which family members exchange and distribute substances smoothly, between themselves, and with divine and human others, she feels truly well. For a Hindu widow, however, as we have seen with Nandini, this giving is severely curtailed. Nandini is prevented from participating in any distributive activity, even with her own children. And I have argued that this severely restricted ability to give and to distribute affects her sense of wellbeing strongly and negatively. Given that a vigorous giving and distributing does not characterize all three phases of adulthood, it follows—and this is well understood and expected by these women themselves—that their access to wellbeing systematically shifts and changes over the life course, peaking when a woman is senior wife and/or married husband’s mother. In these critical family roles, a woman is actively, continually, and authoritatively engaged in giving and distributing. Neither as a widowed husband’s mother nor as a junior son’s wife can an average woman expect to achieve substantial wellbeing. In the first of these roles, she is not involved in any of the distributive activities that effect the wellbeing of the family; in the second, she may be essentially involved but neither manages nor controls these activities. This study, therefore, suggests that access to wellbeing will tend to slip away from women once they move out of these critical family roles, even if they are physically healthy and mentally alert. At the same time, it needs to be emphasized that, even in this small sample of 37 women, there is an old widow and a couple of junior wives who claim fairly high levels of wellbeing (see Table 6.3), indicating that while the cultural model implies that access to wellbeing is governed by the family roles an average woman occupies, there is enough play in the system for personal talents and qualities to make a difference. It is, thus, likely that culturally competent women who know when to expand and encompass others and when to curtail their interactions and withdraw into themselves are more likely to enjoy higher levels of wellbeing than their less competent sisters—no matter what the family role they occupy.

Domesticity and Family Life in the Temple Town Most Odia Hindus of the temple town believe that social reproduction is the primary task of any group, and for them, the family represents the most appropriate site for such reproduction. Both men and women say quite explicitly that they are born into this world to marry and procreate, to take part in the flow of life (samsara), and to

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do their work (karma). They emphasize the impermanence of all things in this world, the fact that continual change is the only stable feature of life. They believe that only through procreating and raising children to responsible adulthood does a group achieve immortality. Not surprisingly, therefore, residents of the temple town regard the home and the family—the domestic domain—an important sphere of human action, equal to, if not more important, than what could be called the public domain. Many residents of the temple town also agree that men have only a peripheral role to play in achieving prosperity for the family and the wellbeing of its members. Men earn, but this marks the limit of their contribution—whether what men earn is utilized effectively and productively depends on the sagacity and capability of the women of the household, particularly the senior-most women. Thus, senior women are important and influential social actors—controlling and managing the affairs of the family and shouldering almost entirely the responsibility for socializing the next generation. In an attempt to acknowledge the degree to which these senior women exercise control and authority, I use the term “gynarchy” to describe domestic structures of power in the temple town. Interestingly enough, it appears that such a situation in which mature adult women exercise power and authority within the family is not unique to the temple town—they are found in other parts of Hindu India as well (see Vatuk 1987; Lamb 2000: 240; Wadley 1995: 98). In addition to this privileging of the domestic domain, another significant point to note is that, in the temple town, extended, rather than nuclear, families are the norm. A nuclear family consisting of one set of parents and their children lasts but a single generation. In contrast, the extended family or household found in the temple town is more corporate in its structure and functioning. An extended household, because of the vicissitudes of life, may grow and shrink and grow again—but, unlike a nuclear family, its identity endures over time. No woman claims that living in one’s husband’s extended family, adjusting to it, and assimilating into it is easy; they all see entry into and life within their conjugal families as a challenge. Success means integrating so well into one’s conjugal family that, with time, every member comes to depend on the mature senior woman. Senior women confidently assert that they hold their families together and that they are responsible for the auspiciousness and material prosperity of the family. From this perspective, a family’s prosperity and its enduring identity depend less on the men who are born into it and more on the women who, born into other families, marry into it. Many women clearly recognize the irony of the situation: they are inmarrying strangers who determine a family’s material prosperity and who literally provide lifeblood to perpetuate its identity. Given the nature of extended families with many members having disparate needs and relatively limited resources, managing domestic affairs in the temple town requires talents, skill, and effort. Not surprisingly, women see domesticity as a career—a career for which they see themselves as uniquely qualified by their gender, and therefore, a career that is most appropriate. Indispensable to the smooth running of the family, in charge of family finances and expenses, domesticity affords these women opportunities to develop their talents and cultivate expertise as knowl-

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edgeable, professional managers. And senior women take considerable pride in their abilities as managers of households to influence, persuade, and, if need be, coerce family members to act in ways that benefit all. In the temple town, marriage is the single most important and transformative experience in a woman’s life. Yet, many women do not look for romantic love in marriage or for companionship—emotional closeness between wife and husband may, and often does, grow over time, but it is rarely something that young wives concern themselves when they enter their conjugal families. They seek instead complete assimilation with family into which they have been married and which they hope, with time, will become their own. Through such assimilation, they hope to achieve control over their own lives and power and influence over others. In addition, they see the success of their married lives as resting on their relationships with the women of their conjugal families, most particularly with their husband’s mother, his sisters, and his brothers’ wives—rather than their husbands. Most wives are relatively sanguine about their marital relationship because they believe that the sexual nature of this relationship gives them, rather than their husbands, the upper hand. This is a rather widespread cultural belief in the temple town shared by most husband’s mothers who fear the power of sexual attraction that young wives may wield over their sons. In short, domesticity and family life in the temple town exemplify the values of self-discipline and self-control, loyalty, patronage, protection, and sacrifice (including the ability to defer or even subordinate personal gratification)—values integral to a worldview that assumes the primacy of hierarchically structured groups over the individual, rather than one in which individuals are thought of as equal to one another, and as prior to and independent of society (see Bellah 1996).

Gender Relations in the Temple Town It is a little difficult to describe the gender relations in the temple town because of the multiple and ambiguous meanings attached to being a woman, but on one point people in the temple town are unanimous: they believe that the differences that separate male from female are insuperable; men and women are fundamentally different kinds of being. They are also unanimous in declaring that women share in the energy and power, the sakti, that the goddess embodies, sakti that animates everything in the manifest world and the cosmos. Sharing in the goddess’s sakti confers on women the ability to reproduce biologically—a “natural” superiority that women have over men and that is explicitly valued and celebrated as auspicious. However, the capacity for biological reproduction comes at a cost—the cost being the pollution associated with the physiological processes of reproduction: menstruation, childbirth, and lactation. In addition, the activities that women, generally, perform as primary caregivers to children and the elderly are regarded as equally polluting. Thus, women, especially younger women, tend, as physical beings, to be less pure than men and less coherent. This lack of purity and coherence has significant consequences

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because they restrict a woman’s access to divinity, unrestricted access to divinity requiring that a human body be pure (not mixed) and coherent (matched). In this regard, men are the clear, universally acknowledged superiors of women— something that even the goddess recognizes,2 witness the story told in the temple town about the creation of Bindusagar, the temple pond (see Chap. 2). The goddess manifest as Parvati, in this story, aware that she has committed an unforgivable moral breach by allowing her husband Siva, her superior, to massage her feet, recognizes that the only way for her to expiate her sin is by bathing in all the sacred waters of India—which is why Siva, sympathetic to his wife’s predicament, throws his trishul (trident) into the ground, making an aperture that allows the water from all India’s sacred rivers (except the Godavari) to bubble up forming Bindusagar, the temple tank where even today devotees of Lingaraj bathe before they worship him. Women, therefore, accept men as their superiors because of this advantage of unrestricted access to divinity. As the “natural” inferiors of men, in this regard, women have no alternative but to exercise self-control in all their dealings with superior males. The continual exercise of such self-control has the effect of refining women—they grow in terms of emotional functioning and moral development. There is, furthermore, another reason for women being exhorted to cultivate selfcontrol and exercise self-discipline—and this again, is because they, as part of their female nature, embody sakti. Hindu thinking sees nothing intrinsically valuable in what nature grants; only when the natural has been subjected to cultural fashioning and cultural refining does it gain in value and becomes truly fruitful and generative. Thus, the adya sakti that imbues women has to be controlled and disciplined by women themselves, from within, to transform it into dharmik sakti, moral or sacred power—power that is truly potent and productive and power that sustains and maintains the manifest world and the cosmos. And here the meanings that temple town residents attach to the very popular representation of the goddess Kali become relevant. Men, of course, confident in their natural superiority feel no need to exercise selfcontrol, and like Atrimuni, Anasuya’s husband, often act in ways that gradually debase them, sapping their potential for goodness and refinement. Ramanujan (1990: 50) has suggested that in Hindu India, nature and culture are so intertwined that it is difficult to say where one ends and the other begins. I believe few Hindu understandings exemplify this relationship between nature and culture better than the multiple meanings attached to a Hindu woman. Thus, while women may be inferior as “natural” beings, they can and should work on this inferiority culturally, by exercising selfcontrol, till finally, with time, they are, as moral beings, as cultural artifacts if you will, superior to men. And this self-refinement, this transformation from natural inferiority to moral superiority occurs, when women adhere meticulously to well-known and time-honored cultural practices. In the temple town, practices like drinking the water used to wash your husband’s parents’ feet, massaging their feet, fasting, eating

2

I do not want to belabor the point, but one of the central meanings attached to the very popular representation of Kali that I discussed in Chap. 4 also emphasizes the “natural” purity of men and their consequent social superiority vis-à-vis women.

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last, and eating leftovers are all significant ways for women to become refined and powerful, embodying dharmik sakti. Through exercising the kind of self-discipline required to maintain these practices, over many, many years, a woman gains such moral authority that her menfolk finally recognize and respect, and, sometimes, revere her as their moral superior (see Parekh 1999: 72). For my part, I would suggest that the world in which Hindu women work and live, the moral significances they construct, those about duty, service, and self-control, are radically different from those projected onto them by some of the scholars who study them—those of inequality, injustice, oppression, exploitation, and lack of autonomy. These women worship the goddess, but for them, she stands neither for gender equality nor for any transformation of society. They see her as full of sakti, sakti in whose effects all women share, but sakti that Hindu morality demands be held in and constrained, that through being held in and contained is transformed into dharmik sakti, the kind of sakti that far from upending society supports, sustains, and holds things together.

Family and the Female Sense of Self From a Hindu perspective, a sense of self emerges from one’s relationships with others through connections and interdependencies (Parish 1994; Lamb 2000); more importantly, this sense of self is seen as fluid, as continually being remade as a person moves through life. Odia Hindu women in the temple town are no exception to this general Hindu understanding. The differences, therefore, that exist between the three phases of adulthood in terms of their roles, responsibilities, and goals are significant enough to justify identifying each phase with its own cultural conception of self: the “emergent” interdependent self of young adulthood that evolves into the “encompassing” interdependent self of mature adulthood and, then, finally, into the non-interdependent self of old age. In addition, all three senses of self are “interdependent” rather than “independent.” I agree with Parish (1994) in that it is possible to overplay the interdependence angle and ignore the autonomy and sense of individuality that characterize the experience of self among Hindus, but I also think that along the continuum that stretches from “interdependent” to “independent,” cultural conceptions of the self in Hindu India tend toward the “interdependent” end of the continuum rather than the reverse. Even in old age when a woman is least embedded in social and familial networks, the cultural conception of self is better described as “non-interdependent” rather than “independent” because not being embedded does not imply that a woman begins to define herself as an individual, set apart from social connections; rather, not being embedded expresses her disengagement from the world, it presages her final disengagement from this world—death. Thus, when an Odia Hindu woman gets married, beginning with the wedding ceremonies, almost everything she undergoes and experiences is aimed at remaking and reconstructing her so that she achieves the goal of this life phase—assimilation—

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rapidly and effectively. As a new wife, doing sewa—her most clearly defined and understood duty—is the prototypical way of constructing an interdependent self because it involves an unremitting “attentiveness” (Markus and Kitayama 1991: 225) toward others in the family. This interdependent self is an “emergent” one because it is being created during these early years of marriage and because a new wife rarely initiates or controls the exchanges and interactions in which she participates. In contrast, in mature adulthood, the cultural conception of self that prevails is best described as “encompassing” because it expresses the power, influence, and centrality that characterize this life phase. Mature adult women have control over their own bodies and actions and considerable control over others in the family, and they feel and are felt by others to be central to the order, material prosperity, and auspiciousness of the family. But there is something more: this cultural conception of the self also exemplifies attitudes and behaviors that can only be described as self-maximizing altruism—a caring for others that occurs in tandem with expanding oneself more comprehensively. Mature adult women own not just their own actions, relationships, possessions, and spaces, but they appropriate those of others within their small community. This, then, is the expansive, “encompassing” interdependent self of mature adulthood. Interestingly, much of the serving and giving that mature adult women engage in that may appear “selfless” to an outsider is not necessarily experienced as such by these women because their expansive definition of self includes closely related others whose business then becomes their own. Finally, in old age, when women are marginalized, whether voluntarily or not, from the affairs of the household, the “non-interdependent” conception of the self emerges. The significance of marginalization to this cultural conception of the self is that such cutting of connections and relationships erases the “interdependency” from the “interdependent” self of the earlier life phases, thereby creating the “noninterdependent” self of old age with its focus on the inner self rather than the world outside. The one feature that this cultural conception of the self does share with the independent conception of self said to prevail among groups in North America and Western Europe is autonomy. And nowhere is this autonomy seen more clearly than in the geographic mobility that old women enjoy: free to go anywhere at any time. But old women hardly appreciate such freedom because they know that all it indicates, from an indigenous perspective, is their social marginality—not power or dominance. In the end, the picture that emerges about the Odia Hindu women who live in the temple town is one in which they appear neither as victims nor as rebels; rather, these are women who affirm their culture’s meanings as they go about their daily lives. They appear to be upholders of a particular moral order in which service to others, deferred gratification and self-control and self-discipline rank high on the list of virtues. But these virtues are not always easy to live by, and it is possible to detect in some of what these women say and do, the ambivalences they feel and the struggles they wage with themselves as they strive to be virtuous, to abide by cultural norms. Well aware of the advantages they garner and the sacrifices they entail, most of these women choose to maintain existing social and family arrangements—but some do not. Thus, there are wives who abandon their husbands’ homes and old widows who

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are quite unable to maintain culturally prescribed renunciant practices, and, as we have seen, they pay a price, sometimes a heavy one, for such transgressions. In the end, what does this journey into the temple town have to say for itself? How does it inform contemporary debates on women, work, and family? The first point, I suppose, to note is that Odia Hindus of the temple town are so different from many Americans. As Shweder has remarked, “cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self and emotion” (1991: 73). At the same time, as Ramanujan has pointed out, cultures have their “underbellies” (1990: 54): every tendency has its countertendency and every trend its countertrend. Thus, when American women who came of age in the 1990s, the beneficiaries of the feminist movement of the 1970s, reevaluate domesticity and conclude that there may be more to the pleasures and satisfactions of family life, motherhood, and child rearing than feminists of an earlier era were willing to acknowledge, they are perhaps exploring an aspect of contemporary American society’s underbelly—the countertrend to the feminist movement of the 1970s. And the present book, with its examination of a society in which the association between women, domesticity, and motherhood is highly elaborated, where to be a culturally valued adult woman is to be a married mother, provides them a glimpse of a world in which this countertrend is the “dominant ideal” (ibid.). In the end, exploring the various criteria of women’s wellbeing has provided a window through which we have been able to view another world, the world of the women of the temple town. And in portraying this world, I have tried to remain loyal to the ways in which these women think and derive meaning from their beliefs and practices. As Hindu women, the women who participated in this study and I share some common elements of a common culture. And some of these women— Mamata, Satyabhama, Pratima, and Snehalata—have become my friends. I, therefore, find it hard to echo Obeyesekere when he says with such certainty, “I am one of them yet not one of them” (1981: 11), because, after becoming familiar with the temple town, even if only partly, I feel more rather than less one of them. During much of this study, I have hovered on the threshold of their world; sometimes, I have stepped across it, slipping into it, adopting their ways of thinking, but sooner rather than later, I have pulled myself up short, and deliberately withdrawn. And while I wonder to what extent this blurring of the boundaries between them and me has affected my interpretation of their lives and situations, I do believe that I have portrayed their lives in ways that they would instantly recognize.

References Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., & Swidler, A. (1996). Habits of the heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, J. K., & Kerns, V. (Eds.). (1985). In her prime: A new view of middle-aged women. South Hadley: Bergin and Harvey.

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Lâm, M. (2001). Multicultural feminism: Cultural concerns. In N. J. Smelser & P. B Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 10163–10169). New York: Elsevier Press. Lamb, S. (2000). White saris, sweet mangoes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. Minturn, L. (1993). Sita’s daughters: Coming out of Purdah. New York: Oxford University Press. Obeyesekere, G. (1981). Medusa’s hair: An essay on personal symbols and religious experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Parekh, B. (1999). A varied moral world. In J. Cohen, M. Howard, & M. C. Nussbaum (Eds.), Is multiculturalism bad for women? (pp. 69–75). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parish, S. (1994). Moral knowing in a Hindu sacred city: An exploration of mind, emotion, and self. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramanujan, A. K. (1990). Is there an Indian way of thinking? In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 41–58). New Delhi: Sage. Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vatuk, S. (1987). Power, authority and autonomy across the life course. In P. Hocking (Ed.), Essays in honor of David G. Mandelbaum (pp. 23–44). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wadley, S. (1995). No longer a wife: Widows in rural north India. In L. Harlan & P. B. Courtright (Eds.), From the margins of Hindu marriage: Essays on gender, religion, and culture (pp. 92–118). New York: Oxford University Press.

Glossary

Agyato unaware, ignorant Ahito lack of wellbeing Ahya married woman Alita red dye used by married women and girls after puberty to color the sides of their feet. Amabasya the day/night of the new moon Amangala inauspicious Asanti lack of peace, discord Asirbad blessing Asubha inauspicious Asudhata impurity Avastha condition Baidya indigenous physician usually trained in Ayurveda Bala child Balya avastha childhood Bandhuta relationship Bapa father Bapa gharo father’s household, father’s home Barad blessing Bauri Scheduled Caste, weavers of bamboo mats and bamboo baskets Bewa widow Bhabo feeling Bhagya luck, fate Bhakti devotion Bhatto boiled rice Bhauja husband’s brother’s wife Bhitere indoors, inner spaces Bhoga offerings to a deity Bhoga koriba to experience, to enjoy Bhul mistake

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230

Glossary

Bilva plant favored by the god Siva, Aegle marmelos Bou son’s wife Brato sacred thread ceremony Briddha old, aged, completed Burhi ma widowed husband’s mother, also old woman Byaha marriage, wedding Chidua irritable, unreasonable Dada father’s elder brother Dadai father’s elder brother’s wife Daitva responsibility, onus Dana giving, distribution Darsano seeing or beholding divinity, implies receiving a blessing Dedhasuro husband’s elder brother, means literally “one and half husband’s father” Deho physical body Dikhya religious initiation Dharma natural moral order, coherence Dhyana focusing the mind/heart, meditation Dina day Diyoro husband’s younger brother Dosa fault, blemish Ekadashi the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight Gharo house, household, room Hadi scavengers, Scheduled Caste Hatha katha within one’s power to accomplish within one’s own control, literally within the palm of one’s hand Hito wellbeing, welfare Ja short form of “bhauja,” husband’s brother’s wife Janjalo worldly entanglements Jati genus, class, ilk Jhio daughter, sexually inactive woman Jibano life Jouvana young adulthood, phase of life when one becomes sexually active Jogyata capability, talents Juin, jamai daughter’s husband Kajalo kohl Kalasi medium, usually for the goddess Kalyano welfare, wellbeing Karma action, any work, the theory that past actions, whether in this life or previous ones affect one’s present life circumstances. Kartikko month of October–November Kartta male head of the household Kartabya duty, that which has to be done Kishor avastha youth, condition of sexual inactivity Kishor youthful male Kishori youthful female, maiden

Glossary

231

Kula lineage, family line Kutumba family Lajja shame, modesty, reticence, deference Lalato lekha that which is written on the forehead at the time of birth Mahaprasad prasad from the Lingaraj temple Mai mother’s brother’s wife Mamu mother’s brother Mana mind and heart located in the middle of the chest, the center of cognition and emotion Maniso human being Mara menstrual pollution Masikia menses Mausi mother’s younger brother Manobhabo feelings in the mind/heart Manobrutti attitudes or orientations of the mind/heart Manore santi peace of mind/heart Mukti release, liberation Niyamo, niti rule, norm Nirmaliya solution made from dried mahaprasad Nitya continual, daily Niyantrano control Nona-bou affectionate way of referring to one’s parents Nua bou newly married son’s wife Padua pani water used to wash the feet of a superior that is later drunk, seen to be as purificatory as water from the river Ganga Phalo fruit Pila small child Pilaliya childishness Pitru loko where ancestral spirits live Poita sacred thread worn by Brahman men to signify their “twice-born” status Prasad edible food first offered to a deity and, imbued with divine properties, is then consumed by devotees Prauda mature adulthood; middle phase of life when a man or a woman are the senior managers of households Puja worship Punya merit that accumulates when one performs actions according to one’s dharma Purnima full moon Puruso man Purno bou “full,” “completed,” “old” son’s wife Puo son Rajja female secretions, also a festival that marks mother earth’s menses Randi, rando pejorative way of referring to a widow, whore Rno debt Rtu sapo curse of the season, menstruation Sabara tribal group found in southern Orissa

232

Glossary

Sada white, plain, simple Sadhaba married woman Sakta worshiper of the Goddess Sakti female energy/power Samayo time Sampurna completely filled Samsara family life, the physical and social world, also the never-ending cycle of rebirths and redeaths that characterizes all life before one achieves release Samskara life-cycle ritual; refining, re-forming, polishing, civilizing, marking Sandhya the offering of lamps at sunset Sankranti passage of the sun from one astrological body’s house to another’s Sano small, junior, young Sapo curse Sariro physical body Sasu husband’s mother Sasu gharo husband’s mother’s household Sasur husband’s father Satitva truthfulness, chastity Sewa service, specific acts of service and care performed by juniors for their seniors and/or gods, has a mental component that includes attitudes of devotion and worship Sevako one who perform service Sikhya learning, education Sinduro vermilion worn by married women in the part of their hair Sraddha devotion, concentrated attention Suaro Brahman priests who cook in the temple kitchen Suddho pure Sudra sevako class of temple priests whose Brahman status is contested by other Brahman temple priests, believed to be descendants of a Sabara (tribal) mother and a Saivite ascetic Sukho happiness Swami husband, lord, master Tirtha yatra pilgrimage Tirtha sthana pilgrimage center Tulasi plant that is part of Vaisnav worship, Ocimum tenuiflorum, also known as Ocimum sanctum

Index

A Abu-Lughod, Lila, 29 Aditi, 95 Adultery, 201, 202 Adulthood. See Mature adulthood; Young adulthood Age classification, 103 Agency, of Hindu women, 210 Aging, 17, 102, 114, 119, 153, 164, 184, 189, 206 Ahito, 10, 155, 170, 229 Altorki, Soraya, 29 Altruism. See Self-maximizing altruism Anangabhima III, 32 Ancestral spirits (pitru loku), 60, 83, 231 Anglo-Americans, 8 Anthropologist indigenous, 29–31 native, 29–31 postcolonial, 29–31 Anusuya, 78, 91–94, 109, 224 Asian-Americans, 8 Assimilation, 16, 131, 132, 139, 148, 154, 184, 185, 188, 191, 192, 213, 214, 223, 225 Atrimuni, 91–94, 224 Attachment (kama), 58, 59, 189 Auspicious heart of the family, 152–153 Auspiciousness, 15, 21, 52, 69, 77, 88, 98, 140, 144, 146, 153, 154, 162, 164, 170, 172, 173, 175, 187, 202, 203, 206, 220, 222, 226 Autonomy ethics of, 21 individual, 21, 207, 210, 225 personal, 6, 21 Ayurveda, 52, 60, 189

B Babb, Lawrence A., 14, 176 Babcock, Barbara A., 30 Badus (or Batus), 33, 34, 38, 71 Bakalaki, Alexandra, 29–31 Balakrishnan, R., 205 Baltes, Margaret, 106, 119 Baltes, Pauk, 106, 119 Balya avastha, 105, 107–109, 229. See also Childhood Barnett, Steve, 183 Basu, Amrita, 13, 192, 211 Baudhayana, 58 Bauri, 60, 69 Behera, Basanti (temple town resident), 50, 161 Behera, Jyotsna (temple town resident), 50, 136, 161 Behera, Narayan (temple town resident), 49, 50 Behera, Rani (temple town resident), 50, 137, 161 Belkin, Lisa, 2, 3 Bellah, Robert, 5, 124, 223 Bengal, 18, 34, 81, 163, 208 Bennett, Lynn, 184, 205 Bhagavati, wife of Siva, 31–32 Bhagvan, 62 Bhagya, 62–65, 68 Bhaktapur, Nepal, 17 Bharati, Agehananda, 183 Bholanatha, 198 Bibek, 71, 144 Bilanka Ramayana, 212 Bilva plant, 32, 229 Bindusagar, bathing tank, 224

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234 Bodily humors, 189 Body Hindu views, 10, 196 maternal body, 69–70 men’s bodies, 49, 79, 163 openness of, 71, 221 permeability of, 221 vulnerability to pollution, 73 women’s bodies, 20, 70, 85, 221 Bou, as kin term of address in the temple town, 107 Bourne, Edmund J., 21, 28, 183 Brahmacharin, 59, 118 Brahmanical, 10, 52, 74, 212, 220 Brahmans Chitpavans, 73 jealously guard their privileges, 10 restrictive practices, 9, 10, 36, 212 seclusion of women, 74 in the temple town, 10, 34, 59, 62, 71, 74 Briddha avastha, 105, 115–117, 119. See also Old age; Second childishness defining characteristics, 115, 119 dependency during, 115 increasing incoherence, 189–191 irritability, 117, 142, 147 physical infirmities, 117, 214 Brooklyn, 17 Brown, Judith, 21, 125, 153, 220 Buddhi, 71, 144 Buhler, Charlotte, 106, 119 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3 Burhi ma, 12, 103, 117, 125, 132, 190, 230. See also Old age autonomy of, 190 dependency, 119 diet, 189 marginalization of, 189, 192 renunciatory practices, 117 Butalia, Urvashi, 211

C Carman, John B., 233 Celibacy devotee, 170 relationship, 89 student, 59, 118 Centrality and wellbeing, 20, 153, 170 Centre for developing societies, 6 Chandi Purana, 35 Chanjarani (temple town resident), 51, 52

Index Chassa, 34, 60, 102, 126, 158, 166, 177, 220 Chastity (satitva) most important womanly virtue, 78 power of, 66, 91, 109 Childhood, 105–109, 111, 115–117, 119, 127, 180, 229 Choice as an unmitigated good, 7 freedom of, 6–8, 74 personal, 6, 8, 21, 74, 172, 210, 215 Clean caste, 12, 74 Cleary, Paul, 120 Cohen, Lawrence, 115, 189 Coherence as a component of women’s wellbeing, 11 inner, psychological, 20, 157 moral, 171, 173 Colonization, 19 Community, ethics of, 21 Context, 2, 4, 8, 9, 14, 20, 22, 27, 59, 62, 63, 68, 82, 98, 103, 104, 123, 137, 151, 152, 182, 185, 210, 219 Contextuality, 62, 195 Control, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 16, 19–22, 42, 52, 57, 62, 63, 72, 77, 82, 85, 94–96, 101, 110, 113, 114, 123–149, 155, 167, 169–172, 176, 177, 179, 186, 189, 190, 192, 197, 199, 201–203, 206, 208–214, 220–224, 226, 230, 231 Couples behavior of newly married, 89, 185 relations of old married couple, 184 Cultural artifact, 9, 77, 98, 198, 224 Cultural conceptions of the self, 182–184, 189–192, 225, 226 Cultural ideal, 59, 157, 172, 184, 212 Cultural model of women’s wellbeing family roles and access to wellbeing, 21, 22 salient features of, 20, 21 systematic variation in access to wellbeing, 21 Culture, concept of, 182–184, 189–192, 225, 226 Culture-specific, 9, 209 Curhan, Katherine B., 233 Custom in the temple town, 9, 18 weigh more heavily on non-Westerners, 6 Customized, 19, 36

235

Index D Daily ablutions, 71, 74, 128, 165. See also Nitya karma Daily actions, 128, 146, 191 Daily routines, 12, 124, 125, 127–129, 131–147, 159, 165, 166, 168–170 Daitva, 11, 81, 87, 105, 133, 152, 211, 230 Dalit, 10 D’Andrade, Roy A., 160 Daniel, E. Valentine, 71, 183 Daniel, Sheryl B., 2, 6, 7, 90, 91 Das, Veena, 205 Daughters as guests, 110 and happiness, 108, 111 lack of duties and responsibilities, 108 Daya (compassion), 165 de Bary, W. T., 11 Debts (rno), the three owed by all humans, 64 Deferred gratification, 6, 14, 226 Dependence, as defining characteristic of old age, 115, 116 Derné, Steve, 89, 202 Devi, the Great Goddess of Hinduism, 4, 33, 49, 65, 123, 196 Dharma, 39, 40, 58, 62, 64, 68, 162, 230, 231 Dharmasastras (ancient law books) and the female life course, 118–119 and the fully relational life, 118 and the householder, 58, 118, 121 and the ideal life course, 118, 121 Dhruvarajan, Vanaja, 13, 205–207, 209 Diet appropriate for Brahmans, 71 for Badus, 71 during first menstruation, 84–85 in old age, 189 for widows, 164, 207 Discipline, 7, 9, 14, 15, 36, 57, 59, 96, 108, 110, 111, 117, 119, 202 Disease, the human body as the temple of disease, 68–69 Diti, 95 Divinity, ethics of, 20, 21 Domestic domain, 4, 80, 94, 222 life, 80, 222 sphere, 4, 80, 222 Domesticity as a career, 4, 222 temple town paradigm, 5 value of, 4–5 Doniger, Wendy, 58 Draupadi, 78, 90, 109

DuBois, Cora, 28 Dumont, Louis, 59, 82 Durga, 14, 78, 80 Duty, (kartabya), 104, 211, 230 Dvitya pilaliya. See Second childishness

E Economic liberalization, 18, 19 Ekamra Purana, 32, 33, 35 Emergent interdependent self, 183, 185, 186, 191, 225 Empowerment, 2, 19, 27, 123, 157, 186, 210, 219 Encompassing interdependent self, 183, 184, 186, 188, 191, 225, 226 Equality, 2, 5, 6, 13, 20, 37, 74, 82, 91, 98, 149, 175, 209, 210, 215, 219, 225 Erikson, Erik, 106, 119 Eschmann, Anncharlott, 33, 34 Ethics of caring, 211 Ethnography, 2, 17, 21, 117, 161, 172, 183, 195, 219 Everyday acts of resistance, 182 Ewing, Katherine P., 183, 187, 188

F Fader, Ayala, 17 Fahim, Hussein, 29 False consciousness, 210, 213–215 Family break-up of extended, 178 corporate structure, 4, 222 cultural significance of extended family, 16, 172 importance of family role in accessing wellbeing, 148 life, 2, 40, 45, 101, 162, 177, 219–223, 227, 232 prevalence of nuclear families, 4, 222 restrictive family practices, 9, 10, 36 structural shift from natal to conjugal, 107 tenuous links with natal family after marriage, 87, 112, 180, 185, 213 variations in family structure, 29, 182, 187, 202, 211 Fawcett, F., 30 Female dominance within the family, 140 during mature adulthood, 101, 106, 113–115, 122, 149, 152, 153 Female subordination. See Gender relations Feminine Mystique, The, 1, 5, 148

236 Femininity, 1, 19, 36, 77 Feminism liberal, 1, 2 multicultural, 1–3, 7, 14, 22, 27, 123, 209, 219 “second wave”, 2 “third wave”, 1, 2, 219 view of feminism among urbanized, educated Odia Hindu women, 19, 97, 138 view of feminism in the temple town, 215 Festinger, Ladd, 30 Fieldwork circumstances of, 11 conducting interviews, 11 entering the temple town, 12 temple town women’s attitude toward fieldwork, 15 Final disengagement, 117, 191, 225 Five-phase model of the life course, 107–117 Fox, Richard G., 183 Fox, Robin, 30 Freedom, 6–10, 20, 47, 71, 74, 83, 84, 111, 113, 127, 146, 153, 180, 190, 206, 220, 226 Friedan, Betty, 1, 2, 5, 54, 148 Fruzzetti, Lina, 15, 205 Fuller, Christopher J., 19, 30

G Ganga dynasty, 32 Ganga, the river, 44, 231 Ganti, Tejaswini, 19, 36 Gautama, the philosopher, 58 Geertz, Clifford, 31, 128, 192, 193 Gender relations complexity of, 1, 97 ‘natural’ superiority of women vs. ‘social’ superiority of men, 224 Geographic mobility, 190, 226 Gilligan, Carol, 5, 124, 211 Giving, 3, 11, 15, 16, 41, 45, 61, 87, 90, 95, 112, 152–154, 158, 166, 167, 176, 179, 186, 220, 221, 226, 230 Globalization changes in the temple town, 19 persistence of customary ways of thinking and behaving, 57 Gold, Ann, 13, 16, 88, 89, 180, 205, 210 Goldschmidt, Henry, 17 Good death, the, 60, 61 Good life, six elements found in a good life, 59

Index Goody, Jack, 178 Goudas, cowherders, 34, 220 Gough, Kathleen, 30 Gray, John, 7, 149 Great Goddess of Hinduism temple town myths, 14 various manifestations, 74, 202 women sharing in her sakti, 14, 77, 196, 197, 202, 223, 224, 225 Grhastha ashram, 118 Gross body (sthulo sariro), 61 Guna, 34, 37, 65, 70, 78, 81, 91, 156, 176, 196, 202 Gunning, Isabelle R., 2 Gynarchy, 196–198, 222

H Hadi, 60, 230 halfie, 29 Hansen, Thomas B., 19 Happiness (sukho) adult experience of, 11 subordinate and transitory emotion, 11 Harihara, 32 Harvard-Bhubaneswar Project, 28 Hasidic Jews, 17 Hauser, Beatrix, 4, 8, 16, 18, 77, 81, 86, 118, 123, 204, 205 Haynes, Douglas, 205 Heesterman, Jan, 59, 86 Heincke, Susanne G., 106, 119 Helmer, K., 29 Henry, Astrid, 1 Hershman, Paul, 89 Hindu theology and women, 14 views on nature, 196 ways of thinking, 15, 57–74 Hinduism world-affirming tendencies in, 58 world-renouncing tendencies in, 58 hito, 10, 11, 90, 121, 127, 128, 131, 155, 163, 230 Hochschild, Arlie, 3, 13, 205–209 Holland, Dorothy, 183 Honig, Bonnie, 212 Household extended, 4, 44, 50, 51, 54, 144, 147, 169, 176, 178–182, 184, 187, 188, 213, 222 joint, 58, 136, 168 Householder, male, 58, 59, 73, 87, 118, 121, 153, 169, 170

Index Housewife, 1, 2, 5, 169 Hsu, Francis L. K., 200 Human flourishing, 2, 7, 124, 149 Husbands, 5, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 33, 48, 51, 53, 88–91, 97, 98, 102, 107, 115, 131–133, 136, 139, 141, 143, 144, 148, 157, 180, 185, 200, 203, 223, 226. See also Wife relationship with wife, 16, 54, 125 worshiped as gods in the temple town., 15, 197

I Identity, 2, 4, 5, 17, 29–31, 84, 98, 188, 212, 213, 219, 222 Inauspiciousness, 15, 118, 152, 153, 163, 164, 208 Inda, Jonathan, 19, 36 Inden, Ronald, 34, 66, 132, 163, 183 Independent sense of self. See Self India, 1, 6, 8, 10, 14, 17–19, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 46, 47, 59, 60, 63, 66, 67, 70, 73, 78, 82, 84, 85, 89, 90, 127, 138, 152, 180, 183, 199, 200, 205, 207, 209, 210, 212, 215, 222, 224, 225 Indian, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, 22, 27, 31, 36, 62, 88, 97, 107, 115, 206, 207, 210, 212 Individual, 2, 13, 21, 29, 37, 98, 172, 175, 207, 209–211, 215, 219, 223, 225 Individualism, 5, 21, 124, 211 Individualistic self. See Self Influence, 5, 7, 11, 12, 19, 20, 32, 57, 64, 67, 69, 74, 77, 78, 94, 101, 107, 108, 110, 132, 139, 144, 148, 151–173, 175, 182, 183, 186–188, 199, 214, 220, 221, 223, 226 Information Technology (IT), 19 Ingalls, D. H. H., 15 Interdependency, 8, 9, 17, 188, 189, 213, 225, 226 Interdependent sense of self. See Self Intermediary with the community, 156, 157 (see also Purno bou) with divinity, 144, 156, 157 (see also Purno bou; Sasu) Internet, 18, 36 Intersubjective validity, 29 Intra-cultural variability, 151, 152, 172 Intrapsychic autonomy, 188 Iyengar, Sheena S., 8, 9

237 J Jacobson, Doranne, 205 Jaffrelot, Christophe, 19 Jagannatha, 32–34, 43–45, 61, 83, 164, 197, 206 Jain, Devaki, 205 Jati, 66, 94, 103, 107, 230 Jeffrey, Patricia, 13, 192, 210, 211 Jeffrey, Robin, 30 Jeffrey, Roger, 13 Jhio. See Daughters Joshi, Rama, 205 Jung, Carl, 106, 119

K Kakar, Sudhir, 67, 78, 136, 184, 200 Kali, the goddess, 96, 199, 202, 224 Kali yuga, 60, 115 Kane, P. V., 58 Kannada, 63, 80 Kanyadaan, 67 Karan, 34, 102 Karma as an ethic of personal responsibility, 64 particulate nature of, 66 three kinds of, 66, 83 transferable, 66 Kashmiri Pandits, 59, 128, 163, 199 Kerala, 30 Khalapur, 22 Khandayat, 4, 84, 95, 197 Kim, C. S., 30 Kinship, 9, 11, 19, 149, 214 Kinsley, David, 15, 58, 96, 196, 212 Kipnis, Andrew, 183 Kishoro avastha. See Youth Kitayama, Shinobu, 8, 185, 190, 226 Kondo, Dorinne K., 29 Kondos, Vivienne, 13, 160, 205–207, 209 Koppali mandir, 33, 36 Kshatriya, 12, 87 Kulke, Hermann, 32 Kunti, 78, 90, 109

L Lajya (emotion term for shame/modesty/ deference), 97, 190 Lakhyahira, 91–94 Lakshmi-Narayana, 32 Lalato lekha, 62–63, 65, 231 Lamb, Sarah, 5, 17, 18, 20, 89, 95, 102, 112, 115, 143, 144, 153, 163, 183, 188–191, 199, 205, 206, 222, 225

238 Lâm, Maivan, 2, 98, 123, 219 Lepper, Mark R., 8, 9 Liberal imperial, 6–9, 13 monist, 6 permissive, 6 pluralist, 6 Liberalism, 2, 5–7, 9, 57, 74, 77, 98, 149 Liberation, 72, 79, 89, 189, 231 Liddle, Joanna, 205 Life course conceptualization of the, 12, 106, 118–119, 121 female, 101, 103, 106, 107, 110, 118–119, 121 phases of the, 104–108 Lifecycle, 165, 232 Life satisfaction, levels of, 104, 119–121 Life span, 60, 63, 65, 67, 104–106 Lineage, 16, 67, 85, 87, 139, 140, 154, 159, 160, 185, 231 Lingaraj, 12, 28, 33–35, 42, 61, 71, 83, 89, 94, 167, 185, 198, 224 Lingaraj temple description of, 34, 35 history of, 31, 32 Lyons, Andrew, 13

M Ma, 42, 81, 107, 117, 145, 154, 158, 164, 177, 178, 199 Madan, T. N., 59, 128, 147, 163, 169, 199 Madsen, Richard, 5, 124 Mahapatra, Guna, 34, 37, 156, 176 Mahapatra, Manamohan, 28, 38 Mahapatra, Sarat, 34, 37–40 Mahaprasad, 83, 231 Maharanas, 34, 102, 220 Mahasuara Brahmans, 34 Mahasupakaro, Manogobinda (temple town resident), 52–53, 61, 68 Mahisasura, the buffalo demon, 80, 96 Maidenhood. See Youth Malayalam, 30 Male dominance. See Gender relations Mamata (temple town resident), 38, 51–52, 72, 81, 89, 94, 110, 112, 115, 116, 197, 201–204, 213, 227 Mana, 58, 72–73, 188, 231. See also Mind/ heart anxious thoughts that lead to illness, 73 cultural aversion to selfish thinking, 72 temple town view, 72

Index Mandelbaum, David, 89 Mangaldihi, 17, 95, 153, 188–190, 206 Manu, 58, 59, 82, 94 mara, menstrual pollution, 70, 85, 87, 142 Marginalization, 166, 189, 192, 226 Marglin, Frederique A., 15, 83, 205, 206 Markus, Hazel, 8, 185, 190, 226 Marriage arranged, 8, 16, 18, 19 Brahman brides acquire a new name at marriage, 16, 87, 132 consummation, 87 importance for men, 89 love’, 19, 71 signs of auspiciousness, 88 single most important transformative ritual for women, 16, 121, 223 women reborn during wedding rituals, 86 Married celibate, 169, 172 Married husband’s mother, 12, 22, 48, 103, 122, 125, 130, 131, 140–144, 148, 151, 152, 154–157, 160–163, 169, 173, 182, 184, 186, 187, 203, 220, 221. See also Sasu Marriott, McKim, 11, 20, 53, 66, 88, 132, 152, 157, 183, 189 Martin, R., 30 Material prosperity, 4, 18, 21, 97, 123, 140, 175, 187, 203, 213, 222, 226 Matrilineal, 30, 31, 195 Mature adulthood, 11, 13, 22, 101, 104–107, 113–115, 118–122, 124, 125, 144, 147–149, 152, 153, 163, 166, 169, 171, 183–186, 188, 192, 221, 225, 226. See also Purno bou characteristics of, 62 family roles occupied, 12, 22, 109 level of life satisfaction, 104, 119–121 Maturity, 5, 72, 73, 85, 101, 123, 176, 182, 187, 188, 191, 211 definition in the temple town, 5 Maximizers, 7 McHugh, Ernestine, 183 Medium (kalasi), 49, 78, 158, 204 Mehta, Uday Singh, 6 Men ‘natural’ inferiority, 98, 224 openness to improvement, 184 peripheral roles in the family, 4, 81, 201, 222 social superiority, 224

Index as uncivilized, 94 vulnerability to pollution, 73 Menopause, 105, 142, 154, 157 Menstruation, 15, 84, 85, 128, 142, 223 Miller, Joan, 21, 28 Minault, Gail, 205 Mind/heart, 44, 48, 58, 68, 71–73, 130–132, 134, 135, 140, 143, 145–147, 155–157, 170, 177, 178, 180, 188, 200, 202, 204, 220. See also Mana center of cognition and reason, 72 control of, 72 lack of stability, 170 Mines, Diane, 9 Mines, Mattison, 183 Minturn, Leigh, 22, 125, 153, 205, 220 Mishra, Maheswar, 37, 38 Mobility group, 10 social, 10 Models for marriage Ardhanariswara, 91 Chidambaram, 90, 91 Minakshi, 90, 91 Modernity, 19, 30, 36 Modernization, 29 Moe, Karine, 2, 3 Moha-maya (illusion), 61, 94 Mohanty, Chandra T., 206 Moksa, 58, 61, 89 Monier-Williams, M., 10 Monsoon Wedding, 17 Moral authority, 59, 97, 225 beings, 77, 98, 203, 211, 224 codes, 29 coherence, 171, 173 development, 29, 97, 119, 224 goodness, 20, 142, 157, 220 goods, 2, 207, 210 horror, 163 outrage, 163 power, 14, 15, 98 truth, 7, 149 universe, 6, 7, 211–213 world, 2, 20, 74, 149 Motherhood, 3, 77, 197, 227 Much, Nancy, 21, 28 Multicultural feminism. See Feminism Multiculturalism, 6, 209 Murray, D. W., 183

239 N Nair, Mira, 17 Nanda, Bijoya (temple town resident), 43, 45, 129–131 Nanda, Kuntala (temple town resident), 43, 44, 137, 186l Nanda, Sashibala (temple town resident), 43, 132–134, 184, 185 Nandini Bewa (temple town resident), 63, 115, 145, 229 Nandy, Ashis, 183 Narasimha I, 32 Narasimhan, Haripriya, 19 Narayan, Kirin, 29, 49, 50 Natal family, 47, 48, 87, 88, 112, 139, 180, 185 Natolocal pattern of residence, 30 Natyasastra, 11 Nayars of Kerala, 30 Nepal, 17, 213 Nepali Hindu, 206 Neugarten, Beatrice, 106, 119 Newaris of Nepal, 213 New Capital, 27, 50 Nicholas, Ralph W., 132, 163 Nirmaliya, 83, 145, 146, 231 Nitya karma, 71. See also Daily ablutions Nonattachment, 58, 59 Non-interdependent sense of self. See Self Non-Western, 6, 21, 29, 183, 184, 209 Nua bou, 112, 125, 177, 231. See also Young adulthood duties of, 110, 112, 125 responsibilities of, 111, 177 rituals of deference performed, 91, 131, 132, 139, 154, 191, 192 seva done by, 66, 113, 131, 181, 184–186, 192, 226 somatization of distress, 135 work done by, 18

O O’Flaherty, Wendy D., 70 O’Malley, L. S. S., 32 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 227 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, 29, 30 Okin, Susan, 6, 209 Old age, 15, 18, 59, 105–107, 111, 114–120, 122, 124–126, 144, 147, 148, 152, 157, 163, 167, 171, 183, 184, 189–192, 214, 225, 226. See also Burhi ma

240 Old age (cont.) characteristics of, 105 family role and, 116 level of life satisfaction, 104, 120 withdrawal and disengagement, 105 Old Town, 27 Old widow. See Burhi ma Ontological individualism, 5, 124 Opt-out dads, 3 phenomenon, 2, 220 revolution, 2 Origin myth in the temple town, 79–80 Orissa, 1, 31 Ortner, Sherry B., 96, 183 Ostor, Akos, 183 Other, the, 8, 16, 29, 30, 33, 34, 40, 41, 43–45, 50, 51, 54, 59, 79, 80, 92, 95, 103, 104, 108, 109, 122, 125–127, 129–131, 134, 136, 138, 143, 147, 155, 158, 160, 162, 166–168, 176, 183, 196, 201, 206, 212, 224

P Panda, Manjula (temple town resident), 45–47, 134, 138, 142, 143, 159, 176, 180, 187, 200, 201 Panda, Prafulla (temple town resident), 38, 46, 94, 129, 142, 181, 200, 201 Panda, Pratima (temple town resident), 45–47, 138, 159–161, 176, 179, 181, 201, 227 Panda, Sushila (temple town resident), 45, 46, 134 Panigrahi, K. C., 28, 31 Papanek, Hanna, 205 Paramatman, 62, 63, 65 Parekh, Bhikhu, 6, 7, 9, 206, 209, 225 Parish, Steven, 5, 15, 17, 59, 183, 213, 225 Park, Lawrence, 21, 28 Particulate, 66 Parvati, 14, 33, 78, 80, 89, 91, 198, 224 Passivity, of women, 184, 206 Pati, Biraja (temple town resident), 48, 156, 170, 178, 179, 187, 188, 191 Pati, Pusparani (temple town resident), 48, 163, 178, 184 Pati, Sukumari (temple town resident), 48 Patra, Anupama (temple town resident), 40, 42, 45 Patra, Rajani (temple town resident), 41–43, 63–65, 129, 130, 136, 176

Index Patra, Sanjukta (temple town resident), 41, 53, 132, 134–136, 148, 161, 191 Patra, Satyabhama (temple town resident), 40–43, 45, 116, 130, 140, 141, 143, 148, 155, 160, 161, 164, 182, 191, 203, 204, 227 Patra, Sudhansubabu (temple town resident), 40–42, 45, 49, 50, 53, 63, 66, 72, 82, 94, 129, 130, 132, 134, 164, 176, 199, 203 Patriarchal, 13, 179, 207, 208 Patriarchy, 13, 207, 208 Patrilineal, 30, 67, 212, 214, 215 Patrilocal residence pattern, 4 Person, 15, 37, 41, 44–46, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 82, 83, 86, 88, 103, 104, 116, 117, 121, 137, 147, 160, 161, 164–166, 181, 183, 186, 189, 198, 202, 225 Personal growth, 176, 182, 183, 192, 207, 212 Personhood, 29, 144, 183, 190–192, 213 Phuladevi (temple town resident), 49, 50, 157, 159–161, 166, 177, 180 Pila avastha, 105, 106. See also Childhood Pollution death, 9, 85, 87 menstrual, 42 Positionality, 30, 31 Prakash, G., 205 Prauda avastha. See Mature adulthood Prestations, 152 Priests (pandas) at the Lingaraj temple reputation, 37 self-image, 32 Primogeniture, 11, 144 Productivity, 20, 151–173 Puranas, 78, 81, 93, 109, 203 Puri, 33, 34, 37, 52, 60, 81, 83, 108, 197, 204, 206 Purity, 9, 12, 15, 52, 69, 74, 82, 83, 95, 98, 141, 142, 146, 154, 157, 169–171, 173, 206, 223, 224 Purno bou, 231. See also Mature adulthood centrality of, 118, 153, 170, 188 coherence gained, 20, 157 distributive activities, 139, 140, 160, 163, 171, 220, 221 duties of, 203 as intermediary between family and community, 144 level of wellbeing, 155, 156, 221 no rituals of deference, 137 power and influence exercised by, 107, 187 productivity of, 20

Index quality of wellbeing, 82, 214 responsibilities, 50, 201

R Radha, 78 Raheja, Gloria, 13, 15, 16, 20, 88, 89, 152, 153, 180, 183, 205, 210 Rajan, Rajeswari S., 205 Rajja, festival of, 70, 95 female secretions, 70, 95 Rajput, 22 Ramakrishna Mission, 46, 179 Ramanujan, A. K., 62–64, 78, 80, 82, 96, 103, 224, 227 Rayapur, 17, 89, 205 Rebirth (punarjanma), 5, 16, 61–65, 79, 80 Reflexivity, 30 Relationships, 1, 5, 8, 14, 16, 29, 30, 54, 59, 72, 73, 78, 89, 92, 96, 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 123–125, 149, 160, 161, 167, 169, 184, 186–190, 192, 211, 213, 223–226 Renouncers, 5, 34, 42, 58, 59, 118, 145, 170, 172, 198 Renunciation, 58, 59, 169 Renunciatory practices, 117, 119 Responsibilities (daitva) of married husband’s mothers, 125, 140–144, 156, 157 of men, 11, 42, 112, 201 of ‘new’ son’s wives, 105, 133 of ‘old’ son’s wives, 51 Reynolds, Holly, 85, 94, 95, 205 Ritual marriage as a ritual of refinement for women, 16, 17, 86, 87 rank, 9, 10, 64, 82 status, 36, 212 Rituals of deference, 91, 131, 132, 137–139, 154, 185, 191, 192 of refinement, 16, 86, 87, 114, 200 Rosaldo, Renato, 19, 36 Roy, Manisha, 16, 186, 200, 205 Rtu sapo. See Menstruation Rudolph, Lloyd, 183 Rudolph, Susanne, 183 Ryff, Carol, 106, 119

S Sabara (Savara), 34, 197 Sacrifice, 2, 6, 14, 149, 199, 223, 226

241 Sage Bharata, 11 Sage Kasyapa, 95 Saiva, 78 Sakala, Carol, 73 Sakta, 33, 78, 80, 196, 199, 212 Sakti, 77–80, 96, 196–198, 202, 203, 213, 215, 223–225 adya, 14, 15, 96, 97, 196, 197, 202, 213, 224 dharmik, 15, 96, 97, 196–198, 202, 212, 213, 215, 224, 225 Samnyasa, 59 Sample Caste, composition of the two samples, 12, 126 demographic characteristics of, 220 during first stint of fieldwork, 13 during second stint of fieldwork, 102 Samsara, 5, 16, 175, 221, 232 Sana ja. See Nua bou Sangari, Kumkum, 205 Sanskriti (refinement), 83 Sanskritization, 10, 212 Sarala Bewa (temple town resident), 63, 115, 145, 229 Sarala Dasa, 212 Sarkar, Tanika, 211 Sasu, married husband’s mother, 12, 17, 52, 82, 90, 103, 106, 107, 112, 114, 117, 125, 127, 132, 134, 137, 142, 144, 147, 151, 179, 187, 220, 232. See also Mature adulthood distributive activities, 220 geographical mobility of, 154 as intermediary between family and divinity, 144 least assailable position, 140, 144 level of wellbeing, 12, 90, 134, 151, 220 moral coherence of, 173 Sattva, 82 Satyavan, 66, 67 Savitri, 66, 67, 78, 109 Schwartz, Barry, 7 Scott, James C., 182, 209, 210 Seclusion, 18, 74, 83, 84, 86 Second childishness, 59, 106, 119, 191 Second shift, 3 Self, the, 8, 10, 17, 21, 30, 64, 97, 182–184, 189–192, 206, 211, 225, 226 independent sense of self, 8 individualistic self, 225 interdependent sense of self, 8, 21, 183 relational self, 74, 183 self-alteration, 7, 73

242 Self, the (cont.) self-control, 2, 7, 14, 15, 18, 74, 77, 93, 96–98, 149, 172, 176, 196, 198, 202, 211, 212, 215, 223–226 self-definitions, 10, 148, 172, 204 self-development, 5, 73, 101, 123 self-discipline, 2, 7, 18, 59, 73, 74, 98, 149, 172, 196, 198, 202, 215, 223–226 self-improvement, 212 self-interest, 20, 139, 157 self-refinement, 7, 10, 15, 37, 52, 57, 74, 98, 215, 224 self-respect, 10, 37 self-understandings, 18, 78, 97, 98, 192, 197 Self-maximizing altruism, 176, 188, 192, 226 Sen, Nabaneeta Dev, 13, 207, 208 Sensibility Brahmanical, 74, 220 feminine, 78–79 Separated woman lack of wellbeing, 159, 163 no prescribed family role, 129 self-presentation as married woman, 53, 170 Service. See Seva Seva components of, 186, 190 ladder to self-empowerment, 186 as mark of subordination, 10 performative aspect to, 186 Seymour, Susan S., 4, 28, 29, 34, 83, 89, 205 Shahrani, M. Nazif, 29 Shandy, Dianna, 2, 3 Sharma, Ursula, 205 Shweder, Richard A., 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 29, 93, 96, 131, 183, 211, 227 Siddhabhuti, 34, 61 Siddiqui, Pervez I., 19 Singer, Milton, 37 Sita, 78, 109, 212 Siva, 12, 28, 32, 33, 36, 37, 61, 65, 71, 79, 80, 89, 91, 96, 97, 196–198, 203, 224, 230 Snehalata (temple town resident), 48, 58, 88, 125, 162, 163, 167–173, 178, 201, 227 Social power, 155 prestige, 9, 10, 37, 84 reproduction, 4, 5, 80, 175, 200, 221 Somatization, 135, 136 Somavamsi dynasty, 32 Sonlessness, 159

Index South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, 31 Spiro, Melford E., 183, 184, 188 Srinivas, M. N., 10, 212 Story, Louise, 3, 78, 92 Stri, 66, 81, 91, 109, 202. See also Women; Women’s Stridharma, 78, 109 Sub-caste, 34, 38, 40, 52, 71, 126, 158, 166 Subordination female, 90 power in, 95 Sudra sevaka, 127 Sukho, 11, 131, 232. See also Happiness Sullivan, William, 5, 124, 223 Suls, Jerry, 30 Svasthya, 11, 90, 127, 163 Swidler, Ann, 5, 124, 223

T Tamil, 66, 67, 79, 85, 90 Teli, 52, 126 Temple town community in the, 4 description of the, 29, 40, 107 view of society, 38, 107 Third Wave feminism. See Feminism Time depredations of, 4, 80 smoothening effects of, 60 Tokita-Tanabe, Yumiko, 4, 16, 18, 19, 70, 77, 83–87, 95, 97, 128, 138, 197, 203, 204 Trawick, Margaret, 89 Tulasi plant, 128 Two-phase model of the life course, 106–107 Tyrrell, Heather, 19, 36

U Unemployment special burden on young men, 112 toll it takes of reciprocity within families, 112 Universal, 2, 7, 9, 59, 77, 209 University of Chicago, 28, 29 Upadhya, Carol, 19 Upper-castes in the temple town, 1, 4, 10, 19, 83, 96, 118

V Vaid, Sudesh, 205 Vaisnava, 32

243

Index Values, 2, 6, 7, 9, 14, 18, 36, 54, 57–59, 73, 74, 125, 149, 192, 208, 209, 219, 223 temple town, 6, 9, 36 van der Veer, Peter, 19 Vanaprastha, 59, 118 Varnasramadharma, 59 Vasavi, A. R., 19 Vatuk, Sylvia, 17, 18, 89, 106, 115, 159, 186, 190, 205, 222 Virtues advantages and sacrifices that they entail, 14 in the temple town, 14 that temple town women aspire to, 52 womanly, 14, 66 Visnu, 32, 65, 79, 80, 91, 211 Visweswaran, Kamala, 29 Volpp, Leti, 2 von Stietencron, Heinrich, 14, 28, 31, 32, 78, 196

W Wadley, Susan S., 14, 79, 205, 222 Walker, Rebecca, 1, 2 Weapons of the empowered, 182 of the weak, 182, 214 Wellbeing and appropriateness, 10, 11 psychological, 7 subjective, 1 transactional definition of, 11 women’s, 7, 20, 77, 101, 121, 124–125, 148, 157, 175, 219–221, 227 Western, 2, 5, 6, 8, 18–20, 29, 31, 36, 41, 49, 73, 106, 119, 183, 184, 190, 192, 206, 208, 210, 215, 219, 226 Westernization, 19, 20, 37 Westernized Indian, 6, 17, 19, 207 Wheeler, Ladd, 30 White women’s burden, 206 Widow anomaly with no family role or distributive responsibilities, 164 dietary practices, 164 erasure of personhood, 145 as inauspicious, 15, 69, 162, 163, 165, 172 lack of wellbeing, 162 temple town view of, 89

Widowhood stigma of, 118, 155 time of occurrence, 45, 172 Wife junior son’s (nua bou), 12, 112, 125, 129, 177, 221, 231 senior son’s (purno bou), 12, 129, 143, 231 Women American, 3, 4, 120, 219, 227 challenges that temple town women face, 27 as cultural artifacts, 77, 98 differences between women and men, 109, 209 as embodiment of sakti, 196 importance of chastity to, 66 lack of geographical mobility in the temple town, 83 non-Western, 21, 209, 220 sense of exclusivity among upper caste women in the temple town, 9, 10 Western, 19 women of the temple town, viii, 7, 13, 16, 20, 57, 98, 101, 106, 111, 122, 151, 171, 183, 188, 205, 207, 219 Women’s dharma, 39, 40 duty (kartabya), 104 importance of women’s work, 3, 202, 203, 211 jati, 66, 82 nature (prakriti), 62, 78 responsibilities (daitva), 11, 87, 133 success, 4, 90, 179, 207, 213

Y Yama, 63, 66, 67, 147, 177 Yardley, Jim, 19 Yayati Kesari I, 32 Young adulthood, 105–107, 111–113, 120–122, 124–126, 129, 147, 148, 152, 162, 166, 171, 172, 183, 184, 186, 192, 225, 230. See also Nua bou burdens shouldered, 112 characteristics of, 111–113 duties of, 111–113 level of satisfaction, 111–113 seva during, 113 somatization, 135

244 Young, Katherine, 118 Youth as a critical phase of life, 110 as a dangerous phase of life, 110 happiness during, 111 irresponsibility of, 110

Index level of satisfaction, 111 need for supervision, 110

Z Zimmermann, Francis, 10, 184, 186