Invented Identities: The Interplay of Gender, Religion and Politics in India 0195652932, 9780195652932

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SOAS Studies on South Asia Understandings and PerspectiveJ;

INVENTED IDENTITIES

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SOAS Studies on South Asia Understandings and Perspectives

INVENTED IDENTITIES The Interplay of Gender, Religion and Politics in India

Edited by

Julia Leslie Mary McGee

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Contents

Acknowledgements Note on transliteration Contributors Introduction Invented identities: the interplay of gender, religion, and politics in India

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vu

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Vlll

ix

1

Mazy McGee

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I

Speaking gender: vie and the vedic construction of the feminine Sally J. Sutherland Goldman

57

2

Language, gender and power: the sexual politics of language and language acquisition in traditional India Roben P. Goldman

84

3

The evolution of third-sex constructs in ancient India: a study in ambiguity Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet

4

Untouchables, women and territories: rituals of lordship

133

intheParasaraSm,ri Mikael Aktor

s I 6

From nayiki to bhakta: a genealogy of female subjectivity in early medieval India DaudAli

157

Pierced by love: Tamil possession. gender and caste

181

Karin Kapadia 7

From demon aunt to gorgeous bride: women portray female power in a nonh Indian festival cycle Ann Grodzins Gold

203

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VI

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INVENTED IDENTITIES

8

Heroes alone and heroes at home: gender and intertextuality in two narratives Lindsey Harlan

231

9

Gender and the representation of violence in Pandav Lila William S. Sax

252

10

Engendering communal violence: men as victims, women as agents Amrita Basu

265

11

Identifying differences: gender politics and religious community in rural Uttar Pradesh Patricia Jeffery

286

Acknowledgements

Seven of the twelve chapters in this volume began as papers presented at the international conference on 'Gender, Religion and Social Definition · in South Asia' held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in January 1996. Both workshop and volume fonn part of the Centre of South Asian Studies Project entitled 'South Asia: Understandings and Perspectives' convened by Peter Robb, the general editor of the series. My thanks m~ therefore go first to the three succc~ive heads of the Centre: Peter Robb for insisting that I convene a workshop on some aspect of genjer in the first place; Giles Tillotson for encouraging me m tum the workshop into an edited volume; and Stuart Blackbum for supporting the completion of the project. Thanks are also due to the individuals responsible for the arduous practical details: Barbara Lazoi organized the workshop, collected the papers, started the work of producing this volume, and saw it m its close; in the middle, both Janet Marks and Brita Pouget took over the typing work for a while; and in the final stages, Shckhar Krishnan acted as Centre ~istant For financial suppo~ I am indebted both to the Centre of South Asian Studies and 1D the Publications Committee of the School. As usual, however, the contributors deserve the greatest thanks and praise. Thank you for agreeing to participate in this volume and for allowing it to take its time. It has been a pleasure working with you all. Finally, I must add a personal note of thanks to Mary McGee whose agreement to act as coeditor rescued an endangered project. Julia Leslie Department of the Study of Religions School of Oriental and African Studies • University of London London

Note on transliteration

Regarding conventions of spelling and transliteration, I have striven for consistency in tenns of each discipline throughout the volume. Thm indological conventiom are followed in the text-historical papers, apart from the widely accepted anglicized 1pdlinp of modem names, p ~ and some common tenns. Ethnographic accounts and discussions of contemporary India, on the other hand, reflect both vernacular usage and a more modem idiom.

Contributors

Mikael Aktor, Research Assistant, Department of the Study of Religions, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His Ph.D. dissertation, submitted to the University of Copenhagen in l 99i, is entitled 'Ritualization and segregation: the untouchability complex in the scholarly Indian literature on dhanna with special reference to Parisarasmfti and PariAaramidhavi)'a'. He bu published several articles on untouchability. He is currently working on understandings of the body in the early Upani~, and the phenomenology of the body and subjectivity. Daud Ali, Lecturer in Early Indian History, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. Apart fio m several articles, he bu edited a volume of papers entitled Invoking the past: the uses of history in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). He is currently completing a book on pleasure and selfhood in early Indian courts ~ on his doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of Chicago in 1996, entided '.Regimes of pleuure in early India: a genealogy of practices at the Chola court'. Amrita Buu, Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College, MA, USA. Her publications include: Two faces of protest: contrasting modes of women's activism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992); editor, The challenge of local feminisms: women 's movements in global pe,spective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995; Kali for Women, 1999); co-editor with Patricia Jeffery, Appropriating gender: women's activism and politicaed religion in South Asia (New York and London: Routledge 1998; reprinted a Resisting the sacred and secular: women's activism and politicaed religion in South Asia, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999); and co-editor, Community conflicts and the state in India (Oxford University Press, 1998). She is currently working on a book entitled The lotus and the trishul: the Bharatiya Janata Party and the growth of Hindu nationalism.

AM Grodzins Gold. (Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1984) is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, New York, USA. Her extensive work· in the north Indian

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mre of Raj~than has included studies of pilgrimage, gender relatiom, epic tales of world renunciation, and cultural constructions of the environment. Her publications include three books (all published by the University of California Press, Berkeley): Fruitful journeys: the ways of Rajasthani pilgrims ( 1988); A carnival of parting: the tales of King Bharthari and King Gopi Chand ( 1992); and Listen to the heron's words: reimagining gender and kinship in North India (co-authored with Gloria Goodwin Raheja, 1994). Robert P. Goldman, Professor of Sanskrit and Chair, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, USA. His publications include: Gods, priests, and warriors: the Bhirgavas of the Mahibhirata (New York: Colwnbia University Press, 1977); Devavil;upravesika: an introduction to the Sanskrit language, coauthor with S. J. Sutherland (Berkeley: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, 1980; revised editiom, 1986, 1992); ~ Ramiyal)B of Vilmiki: an epic of ancient India, Vol. I, the Bilakil;J{lli: Boyhood (translator and editor, annotation with S. J. Sutherland), Vol. II, The AyodhyakiQa

Manu Sm,ti 10.52 with Kulliika's commentary. Medhitithi on Manu Smrti I0.38, and Vi~Qu Smrti 16.14. )a P.463 on Manu Sm,ti S.88 = 5.89. zz Halbfass 1988: 313-14 and 332-3. Halbfass' exposition of dharma as »

represented in the indological literature ( 1988: 310-33) is particularly revealing in that it unravels the impact of neo-Hindu reinterpretations of indological research and then reconstructs the tenn by pursuing its usage in vedic and postvedic literature. ?1 For aryivarta, see Baudhayana Dhannasutra 1.1.2. 9-10, Vas#rha Dharmasistra 1.8.10, Manu Smrti 2.22; for brahmavarta. see Manu Smrti 2.17-18. Jt tasmin de~e ya icaiaJ:, piramparyakramigataJ:, I VanJina,i, sintarilinlqJ sa sadiclra ucyate II Manu Smrti 2.18.

UNTOUCHABLES, WOMEN AND TERRITORIES

143

First, the customs which constitute dhanna are the customs of a territory. Outside this or similar territories are the lands of the mlecchas, those foreigners who are not ordered according to the four va~as and who therefore represent what is adharma. Second, these are the customs of particular people bound together by kinship. The 'v~• in between' are the so-called 'mixed castes' ( va~asa171kara)-such as the CaQ~la-which are claimed to result from relations across the four varnas. was an actual factor . The issue here is not whether vamasamkara . . . in the formation of castes or merely a speculative manoeuvre. is In both cases, kinship relations are regarded as a prerequisite for inclusion, whether this is obtained by the tolerated hypergamous ( anu/oma) relations or the prohibited hypogamous (pratiloma) relations. It is a remarkable, although logical, consequence of the historical process of social integration that the Manu Smrti includes even the va11)asa,nkarz among those who carry on particular sadaciras. We find nothing like this in the older Dharmasutras. And it is in this light that we have to understand Manu Smrti IO where these duties are described. Here patterns of interaction, which have evolved gradually during previous centuries, are elevated to the level of svadhannas, occupations sanctioned as dhanna. This indicates that they have been recognized as 'services' included in the discourse of lordship. But they are only dhannas in so far as they conform to this discourse; that is, as the 'topographic' evidence above demonstrates, there are the obedient ca,_ujalas pursuing their prescribed duties in the village, and there are the ferocious caQt;ialas of the jungle. As already suggested, the territory of dharma can be divided into three concentric areas: the home, the village, and the country. In political terms, these areas correspond to each other by the common notion of lordship that connects the king with the dominant groups of ~

Hocart ( 1950: 54-5) regards his own ethnographic data as a confirmation that intermarriage between castes actually led to the formation of new castes, but others (for instance. Jha 1986: 5. Shanna 1990: 240 and 336-7. Tambiah 1973: 218 and 223) see va17Jasamkara as a brahminical fiction. Sharma ( 1982: 189-90) relates the concept to actual class conflicts. while Kane ( 1968-77: II. 50-1) points to the fact that vedic authority constrained the smina authors to formulate their explanations of social proliferation within the scope of the fourvaTQa scheme. A systematic examination· of the various van:iasa,,ikara systems found in di fTerent texts or in di ffcrent chronological layers of texts. and a hypothesis of the development of the system. are offered in Brinkhaus 1978. Brinkhaus later ( 1980: 165-80) extends this analysis to Bhiruci · s commentary on Manu Sm,ti which was published by Derrett after the earlier study had been completed.

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the village and the individual householder ( Hocart 1950: 68; Quigley 1993: 118). At each level dominance is constituted inter alia by practices of untouchability, segregation or other avoidances ( in relation to women, ca1_1(lala and mlecchas respectively). These practices keep the domains of lordship (the house of a householder, the village of a dominant landowner, and the country of a king) free from inauspiciousness. To elucidate the role of untouchables in relation to the rituals that constitute these domains, I shall use as examples the purifications that are prescribed in the Parisara Sm,ri in the event that a house has been polluted by the presence of a caQ(iala. The Purification of a House

The Smrti envisages the foil owing scenario: When it has become known that a clU)(Jila has stayed incognito in a house, a council of twice-born men offers guidance to the master of the house when he approaches it. Relating the laws which have proceeded from the mouths of the saints (that is. the dharmasmrtis], experts on dharma who are well versed in the Vedas should rescue the fallen man from the combined evils which the event causes. The master together with all others should cat barley mixed with cow's urine together with milk, sour milk and clarified buner, and should bathe at the three conjunctions of the day. He should eat this for three days with sour milk. for three days with clarified butter, for three days with milk, and for a further three days, one for each of these ingredients. He should not eat this with a feeling of disgust. nor as if it were food left by others or spoiled by wonns.:e

The text then specifies the quantities of each ingredient. These are small amounts as the whole penance is a kind of fast. Only one mouthful of the basic ingredients, barley and cow urine, is to be eaten at each meal. Apan from paraphrasing the text, Madhava turns his attention to the expression papasaqikarit, here translated as 'from the combined evils'. A similar expression occurs in Parasara Smrti 2. l l.55c-6b, where Madhava understands it as referring to all cases of evils which have not been explicitly specified. These cases occur typically when one ~

avijilitas tu ca,:,(jilo yatra vesmani ti$rhati I vijilite tupasannasya dvijil:J kurvanty anugraham 11 munivaktrodgatin dharman giyanto vedapiragi/:1 I patantam uddhareyus ram dharmajni'-1 pipasar,,karit II dadhni ca sarpi~ caiva k~iragomutraya\-·akam I bhunjita saha sarvais ca trisar,,dhyam avagihanam // tryaham bhunjita dadhna ca tryaha,ri bhunjita sarpi~ I tryaha~ k$ireQa bhutljita ekaikena dinatrayam .1/ bhavadu$fa,ri na bhunjita nocchi$ram krmidii$itam 1/

Parasara Smrti 2.6.34-8b.

UNTOUCHABLES, WOMEN AND TERRITORIES

145

associates for a longer period with evil people due to the complexity of the situation. This is elaborated further in Parasara Smrti 2.12. 79c-80b which states that, 'Evils are transferred by sitting, sleeping, driving, talking and eating together, like a drop of oil spreads on water' .27 However, in the case of a cai:i(lila who dwells in the house of a twicebom, Midhava gives a slightly different explanation: Although the evil in dwelling together with a Cal)(Jila is only one, it bas the capacity of rendering the many daily and occasionally perfonned rituals defective. The expression 'from the combined evils' should be understood in this sense. 21

The rituals mentioned are the rituals of the home, such as the five great sacrifices (daily rituals), and the various calendrical rites and the initiations related to family life (occasional rituals). The destruction of these rituals brings about the ruin of the home and the family, since both are established on their basis and are supposed to be centred on them. The only householder ritual in which a car.u)ilalsvapaca has an accepted role (according to the Dhannasutras and Smrtis) is the daily vaisvadeva where food is spread on the ground outside the house 'for dogs, outcasts, svapacas, people punished by disease, crows and worms. 29 Here the cai:it;lala is obviously no threat to the home but is in a subordinate position befitting his status as 'the lowest of men'. lo The Smrti then goes on to describe the purification of all the household goods: copper, brass, clothes and so fonh. Then.

isanic chayanid yanit sambhi~t sahabhojanit II samkrimanti hi papini tailabindur ivimbhasi II 21 yady api ca,:1(iilasahavisa ekam eva pipaf11 tathipi tasmin saty anu~hitini,n nityanaimittikinir,, bahuniqi vaikalyasair,bhavam abhipretya pipasarplcarid ity uktam II Midhava on Parisara Smrti 2.6.35. The extracts from Midhava's commentary included in this chapter are here translated into a Western language for the first time. 19 Manu Smrti 3.92. See also Apastamba Dhannasiitra 2.4.9.5 and Vasi~tha Dharmasistra 11.9. JJ Manu Smrti 10.12, 16 and 26. Fools (as fonner sinners) are designated similarly ( Manu Smrti 12.52). In contrast to the attitude towards cal)(ialas inside one's home in this part of the Parisara Smrti, the same text seems surprisingly liberal in a previous verse: whoever comes to one·s home at the time of vaisvadcva, even a ca,:u;li/a or a brahmin-killer. is to be treated as a guest ( 1.1.58). But we should always be cautious when interpreting these 'even' sentences. They are not to be taken literally but as a means of placing emphasis ( anhavida) on the main rule ( \.'idhi) . here the duty of hospitality. Madhava's comment is also guarded: 'They do not deserve full hospitality' (na tu asc~tithyasatkirarhatvam). r,

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Having put aside the saffron, molasses, cotton, salt, oil, clari tied butter and grains at the door, he should light a fire inside the house. Thus purified he should feed the brahmins, and he should distribute among them a fcc of thirty cows and one bull. 11 The ground of the house is purified by being dug and plastered anew, by offerings in the household fire. and by sacred mantras. Also when brahmins stay there the defect in the soil disappears.!!

The pollution of the ground by caQ(ialas .. and the purification and reappropriation of it through offerings, constitute a parallel to the practice of appropriating land on a larger scale, that is, at the level of the country. Manu Smrti 2.23, defining the territories of dhanna mentioned above, tells us that the land where the black-spotted antelope roams freely is fit for the perfonnance of sacrifice, but that the land beyond that is the land of the mlecchs. Medhitithi comments that land is not impure by itself even where mlecchas live and walk on it. If a noble k~atriya king invades that mleccha land, establishes the four v~as there, and turns the mlecchas into caQt;lilas as in izyivart~ then that land becomes fit for sacrifices.n The passage is interesting as an example of how these territories are analogous to each other and how they are marked by a contrast between dhanna and its rituals inside and adharma outside. If land beyond the territory of dhanna is appropriated, then it becomes fit for sacrifices, and the people formerly outside the scope of dhanna become integrated as caQ them. There were also two very large hooks which were to go into the back of the devotee who would draw 'Murugan's chariot' (a humble little cart, glorified with decorations of coloured paper) after him. When the priest gave the wor~ the alaku-piercer and his assistant, a man of the same age, got to work: they were going to do the toughest jobs first, starting with the spear-piercings. This was also a recognition of status: those who were going to have spears driven through their cheeks were obviously going to suffer far more than the rest, so they deserved to come first. The piercer and his man each grabbed an ann of the possessed devotee, standing him up, then the piercer grabbed the devotee's two cheeks and pulled at them, causing his mouth to open, then close. Warning the crowd to keep off for a minute, he held the point of the spear to the devotee's cheek, then, carefully, swiftly, pierced it He pulled the spiked cheek further out m the spear and pierced the next cheek, swiftly pulling the spear through so that the tiny hole grew to the three-quarter-inch diameter of the spear. Not a drop of blood appeared, leaving me amazed. My companions in the crowd, however, were entirely unsurprised: 'It shows the power of God! Yes, of course, you or I would bleed profusely if our cheeks were pierced with a spear!' The spears were long, measuring some seven feet. The professional piercer stepped bac~ surveyed the equal lengths of the spear on each side of the devotee's face, pulled the two cheeks out a little so that the devotee's mouth opened, then released them. The devotee had his eyes open throughout and seemed hardly to feel the pain. When I asked the professional piercer about this later, he replied, 'He feels it just

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~

a pin-prick. because he is possessed.' It was extraordinary to watc~ ct close quarters, a man being willingly skewered with a spear: my feelin~ were confused, between fear, at the actual wounding, astonishment and admiration. My companions, however, were content; all was going well. 'God is with us!' they said, for now the possessed devotees were not merely symbols of Murugan. they were Murugan incarnate.

Murogan incarnate Murugan or Kandan is the younger son of Shiva and Parvati and is enonnously popular. He is the most popular perso"611 deity in Aruloor, equally popular with all the castes. This remarkable cross-caste appeal, widespread throughout Tamilnadu, is due to his interes(ing intermediate position, for he is both a Sanskritic and a non-Sanskritic deity (Clothey 1978). Murugan is a hunter and is therefore often portrayed holding a spear; he has two beautiful wives, Valli and Devayanai; he is considered approachable, sympathetic, loving and tender. These last qualities are particularly evoked by the numerous, very popular representations of him as a child holding a spear: here he is portrayed as having the fresh beauty, vulnerability and openness of a child, and ~ a 'child god' -he also appeals (like the child Krishna) to the maternal instincts of women. Being the most popular of all deities, Murugan's shrine at Palani is the most wealthy and most visited shrine in Tamilnadu. At Palani, Murugan ~ ponrayed as Dandayudapani, the ascetic who holds a staff. Elsewhere, as Arumugham, he is the slayer of demons and wields his spear ( ve/). This spear is an important icon: it is a central symbol of Murugan, whose other names include Thangavelu (~Golden Spear') and Velayudham ('Spear-Weapon'). Consequently, by causing themselves to be pierced by Murugan's ve/, devotees offer themselves to be 'destroyed' by him: annihilated as themselves and pierced through, transfonned by his grace. Being pierced by the phallic ve/ thus signifies, publicly, a spiritual transfonnation wrought by Murugan' s grace, for possession by Murugan means that Murugan himself now masters that 'female' devotee's body. Although the religious devotion of devotees varies greatly, I was told that •genuine devotion shines through'. This was what my companions believed and I understood what they meant when I saw how irresistibly, in every street, it was to one devotee in panicular that the crowds were especially drawn to offer worship. This man ·s name-like that of the god who possessed him-was Kandan.

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Kandan was of average height and of slightly stocky build but with a remarkably serene, well-chiselled face. In his early forties, he was a rice merchant of Muthurajah caste. He had taken great interest in organizing the festival. At the river bank, he was the one in whose shoulders the great hooks to pull the cart should have been pierced bu~ to my surprise, he had refused this, only having the numerous small hooks (with little coloured packets hanging from them) put all over his chest and back. I had thought that this was because he was not sufficiently possessed to bear the pain of the huge hooks, but when we reached the front of the Ayyanar Temple, I realized that I was wrong. 1bere was a teeming multitude here, far more people than down m the river bank. Kandan had deliberately chosen to wait so that the piercing could be done here, watched by many and thus giving greater glory to his god. The hooks were put into his back by the piercer, but only through the thin folds of the epidennis, I noted. Thus he could hardly have pulled a cart; his skin would have tom off. In fact he did not have to pull the cart (although to a casual observer it appeared that he did so, occasionally); instead the cart was pushed along from behind by his friends and kin, while the ropes from the hooks in Kandan's back hung slackly down. But the climax was yet to come, and it was so unusual and impressive that it made a profound impression on the crowd. This was the fact that, unusually, Kandan was going to have a spear pierced 'through his chest'. Once again the professional piercer expertly pinched up a fold of epidennis, at two points, above and below the che~ and passed a spear through them. The piercing through the cheeks was probably a more serious wounding of the body than Kandan's spear. However, and this was generally acknowledged, Kandan's aspect was so noble, with his eyes shut in rapture and with a spear 'through his chest', that he was indubitably ihe most touching and majestic of all the possessed devotees. The spear through his chest had an instantaneous effect: women cried out and raised joined palms above their heads in salutation to Murugan incarnate. Unlike the other devotees, there was a -slight smile oo Kandan's face and, unlike them, he would close his eyes from time to time as he walked. His finely chiselled face showed a deep serenity, an inward contentment and joy, and this gave him a most attractive appearance, to which the public of Aruloor warmly responded. Consummate actor or true devotee--or perhaps both, for a devotee might well feel that he has to project the personality of the god who ~ entered him- Kandan became the chief manifestation of Murugan that day.

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Hierarchies of submission In all the meets that the procession went throu~ women came out m pour water on the feet of the five men who 'wore alaku and the three men who carried pots of milk or miniature palanquins. In most · of the stieets, the women would first pour their pots of water on the feet of as many ~ ~ible of the cami ('deities', the term used to refer 1D the possessed men), then they would kneel down in the oozing mud and touch their heads to the ground in front of the cami. It was striking that this ritual worship of the possessed men was perfonned almost salely by women; many men stood watching too, but only a handful (all very young men) prostrated themselves. Thus formal obeisance was done almost solely by wome~ providing a public enactment of the submi~ion of female to male. A hierarchy of submission was thus implied in this Chittirai Full Moon pageant: the submission of women to men, and of men to deities. This public subordination of women to men makes it quite explicit that by appropriating •female' qualities. the possessed men do not become mere 'women'. If they di~ ~ in symbolic tenns, women would be their equals. On the contrary, the possessed men become more than men in appropriating 'femal~', and their superior position in the gender hierarchy is preserved by lhe ~ted public obeisance of women to them. Ritual worship (araccana) was offered to the alaku-wearers by many households, exactly ~ it would be k> a deity passing in procession in his or her 'chariol' (tlr). Thus the procession made frequent hal~ stopping whenever anyone wanted to perform worship of these men in whom Murugan had manifested himself. The male head of the household would give the Mutburajah puciri a tray containing betel leaves and arccanu~ two bananas, a few burning joss sticks stuck in a banana, burning camphor and a coconut. 1be puciri would neatly cleave the coconut in two, giving both halves back to the family; he would then wave the tray with the burning camphor three times in front of the chosen devotee and return it to the householder. The edibles were now /ir.acadarn. food imbued with divine grace. Most people chose to perfonn worship of K.andan. Several people also stepped close to him and murmured anxious questions about the future to which they believed the possessed man could give prophetic answers. Kandan (his eyes often closed) replied readily, calmly and fluently to all: the questioners would step hie~ looking more cheerful. I heard him tell several: 'Do not worry: all will be WCll! '; convinced that they had heard Murugan himself, they were consoled. Kandan and the 9

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other alaku-wearers distributed sacred cWl (tirun.ir/viptltl) k> all who Bed for it, and many did. Every woman who poured water and prostrated herself requested av! too. The cami would drop i in the recipient's cupped hands and the latter would immediately rub some m her forehead with her right hand. To have sacred av! on one's forehead is considered purifying; here the Mb was doubly holy in being given by a man who was temporarily God in human fonn. Several parents brought babies or little children to be blessed: the cami readily did so by personally rubbing av! on the foreheads of the children. However, the attitude of the Aruloor public was not purely devotional; this was also a grand spectacle to be enjoyed. Spikes and vows At this Murugan festival, the devotees who had spears pierced through their cheeks had star-shaped metal frames around their faces to help support and steady the spears. Their chests and backs were pierced with a multitude of little hooks from which small packets or small limes hung as weights. All the cami were p~fusely garlanded, some with four or five garlands. They were all bare-chested and dressed simply in clean white clothes. The two devotees who, porcupine-like, wore cages of spikes were also impressive. The most demanding alaku of all, called the 'aeroplane-alaku ', ~ not done at this Murugan festival. This is an aJaku penance where a man bangs, suspended in mid-air fro1n a beam by hooks pierced through his bac~ his buttocks and calves, and with his anm outspread., like an aeroplane. I have only seen this amamtg alaku at Angarai Village. But i had been done in Aruloor the previous year by a young Pathmasaliar man who was admired greatly for his extraordinary endurance and religious zeal. This Aruloor 'aeroplane-alaku' had used a small mobile crane towed by a tractor to suspend the devotee, a striking instance of modem technology assisting ancient religious tradition. 1be upper castes claimed that there was a large measure of exhibitionism in the 'wearing' of alaku: this was the criticism made by Palani Chettiar who echoed what several upper-caste infonnants had told me. Exhibitionism apart, however, the main reason why anyone wounded his body with alaku was lit iversally agreed to be a religious vow. No man did it merely to show his courage or strength; he did t because he had vowed to do it, and he did it either in thanksgiving for a boon fulfilled or io anticipation, having asked a favour of the deity. The ability to be pierced by the spear, hooks or 'porcupine'-cage without

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being banned is visible proof of dedication to God. A problem therefore arises if the devotee's wish is thereafter not fulfilled, for this implies that his behaviour was wanting in some way. This may be why I was told, 'You shouldn't tell others why you put alaku---it should remain your secret.' Indeed, it was impossible m find out why the five Aruloor men had taken their vows. At Mallarchipuram, the friendly Pallar hamlet on the outskirts of Tiruchi city, people were more fonhcoming. At their festival in honour of Mariyamman, two young men had pierced their cheeks with spears k> show their devotion to the goddess. One young man had vowed k> 'wear' the spear-a/aku in the hope that his devotion would win a son for him: he and his wife had been manied for two years but had no child The other young man had done this as his promised thanksgiving for a desired job that he had gained. Others, we learned, did it in the hope that they would be cured of some long-tenn ailment. Several men in Mallarchipuram 'wore' alaku year after year, having vowed to do so for three, five or seven years, depending on the 'greatness' of the boon desired from the Great Goddess.

The ending of possession The most intense times, in a possession event, are the begiMing and the ending of the possession. This is because it is at these points in time that the alaku are, initially, pierced through the devotee's body and, finally, taken out. Immense excitement had attended the first, 'putting-on' period, as noted above: the crowd had shouted, the pucari had sung and w~ everyone had been most concerned that the possession should occur. Al. the end, another kind of anxiety grips the public, namely that the aJaku should be taken out with no flow of blood, because this extraordinary fact indicates the continued power of the deity's possession. Just as the possession starts in a 'pure' area, by running water on a river bank, so too it ends in a sacred space: it ends in a temple, directly in front of the deity who has been incarnated. Thus, at the start of a possession event, it is .the deity who comes to the devotee, far away on a river bank; at the end, the devotee, who now incarnates the deity, 'returns' to the shrine of that deity. This movement is found in many festivals for deities who possess people. Fuller has suggested that it is a progress from 'impure' exterior to 'pure' interior, where the highest fonn of the deity is present ( 1988).

The devotee is held to have been in a ~ te of possession since it was first induced. yet. in this final stage. the possession is intensified by the

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same means a it was first inspired: the crowd shouts and the pucari sings. Once agail\ the utuJc}cai is beaten and a peak of excitement is reached. This time, the possessed devotee is standing directly facing the stone statue of the deity: god-made-man views god-represented-in-stone. At the appropriate moment, when possession-or the trance state-is most intense, the priest gives the signal and the professional piercer sets to work at great speed, removing the spear from the mouth of the devotee. As he extracts it, he stuffs sacred ash into the holes (the ash is made from cow dung which is considered to be an efficient anti-bacterial agent) both to stave off any bleeding and to prevent an infection. Both a Mallarchipuram and in Aruloor, the holes bled a little, but the bleeding was quickly stopped by pressing more sacred ash on the holes . After the spear had been removed, in Aruloor, each devotee closed his eyes and collapsed, and was then bodily carried to a comer in the cool temple corridor where he was revived and given water. Yet the collapse may have had a touch of the histrionic about it because no collapses occurred at Mallarchipuram where, if anything. the Pallar men, with spears through their cheeks, had walked even further than those in Aruloor. In Mallarchipuram, after the spears had been extracted, the men were given water to drink and sat down quietly where they had been standing while more ash was put on their cheeks. So here there was m dramatic canying away of 'fainted' devotees as there was with the cami in the huge courtyard of Aruloor's ancient Shiva temple. Where the aJaku are taken out-that is, where the procession and possession end-is indicative of the sta~ of the group involved. Th~ while the middl~e Muthurajah Murugan procession ended in Aruloor's prestigious Shiva temple, the Pallar procession at their Periakka festival in Aruloor did not even enter the Shiva temple. It stopped outside the entrance where the Pallar acting-priest (Ramaiah) perfonned worship to the little shrine of Vakuvalamman, the village deity outside the temple. Then it turned sharply round, ending in the Pallar sbeet, in the temple-house (koyil vi,u) of Periakka, in front of her image. In all cases, however, the possessions ended directly in front of the deity involved, thus a double unification occurred during the possession event: on the one hand, Deity (Mariyamman or Murugan) incarnated as man, indicating the potential wtity of man and deity; on the other, the goal of the procession was that final moment in the temple when man met the deity face to face. Thus, while Deity came to possess man, man also went to meet Deity. Woman, however, remained absent throughout. In all the three major group-possession rituals I witnessed, the possessed person was brought out of the possessed state into a 'normal'

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state quite easily by the puciri simply throwing sacred ash on the head of the person after the alaku had been removed.

Possession and Gender Thi • c ; in Aruloor where womm also mpl cy boc ne possessed was the low-ranking Pallar caste, ·yet it was in this caste that possession-of both women and men-was most sceptically questioned (Kapadia 1996). Pallar women's possession was mocked and made fun of by other Pallar women, although not actually to the faces of the women concerned. Yet many of the Pallar women respected and believed in the possessions that occurred at the Chittirai Paumami Murugan festival, described above, when middle-caste men had been possessed. Throughout the village, it was women, rather than men, who took the ritual role of offering worship by kneeling down, washing the devotee's feet and bowing their heads to the ground in front of the possessed alaku-wearers. Even with the Chettiars and Brahmins, it was their women who emerged from seclusion to pour water on the road in front of the possessed men, to cool the hot road for their feet. Although these upper-caste women did not kneel to the middle-caste .cami, what was enacted was in effect a massive public dramatmtion of woman's submission to man-as-god. Yet, with all the possessed males of all castes, the process of becoming possessed involved a striking symbolic appropriation of what to the Tamil min~ are female characteristics: the male devotee hmnbly submitted, 'opened' himself and gave himself up, so that the deity might 'enter' him. Thus, remarkably, the period of ~endent bliss (or divine possession) is, for these Tamils, a period when man becomes female. Only to man-as-female submissive, open, filled with passionate devotion-does God come, to possess him; that is, only when man has rendered himself powerless can Deity possess him. But man cannot surrender temporal power and control in the Tamil universe: man must remain in control. Consequently, to become man-as-female and vulnerable to possession is also, implicitly. briefly, to desert one's duty as master of the temporal order. Thus. for the devotee, possession is only a temporary respite from his gendered 'maleness', and from the duties this maleness imposes in the Tamil context. Further, possession is not a solitary experience: it needs a social context to stimulate and create it and to celebrate it So the social world of a man surrounds him even while he is possessed: it honours him ~ a deity and then, inevitably, brings him

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of possession, back to the temporal reality that he is required to control. Possession thus reverses the Tamil 'natural order' in which ~ ~ superior to men and men are superior to women by creating, although only temporarily, a space and a time during which deities become men and men become female. But they do not become women, for that would lower their status. It is this symbolic androgyny of divinely possessed men that provides ordinary men with an immense freedom and symbolic strength, for all men are represented ~ potentially both 'female' and 'male', u these gender consttucts are Wlderstood in Tamil culture. This freedom to 'become female' that is so easily available to men locks most Tamil women even more securely into their marginal~ role, because the freedom to 'be male' is rarely allowed to women in any ritual situation. Women are prohibited from transmuting their gender: they are allowed to be only 'female' all the time. Even upper-caste rituals perfonned solely by women in Aruloor, such u nowu (vows; vrata in North India) carry the ideological message of the superior worth of men and the inferior value of women. As Robinson has aptly put it, 'while vnitas are of women and by women, they are not for women' ( 1985: 200); they are for men. Thus women are offered few C:CUions on which they can symbolically take control and dominate, in other words, 'be male' in the Tamil sense . It is true that during the female puberty rites young women are represented ~ being 'goddess-like' in their new-found powers of generation. They are represented iri all the non-Brahmin castes as being significantly 'empowered' at puberty: procreation is the most central of the 'divine female powers' that come to menarchal young women. Yet the focus of the puberty rites is on making safe these female powers for appropriation and control by men (Kapadia fonhcoming). That is why the rites ~c the fonn of a symbolic marriage which must precede the actual marriages that these empowered women make (Good 1991). There is never the suggestion that women might autonomously control their 'divine' powers of procreation. On the contrary, the implication of the prohibitions that hedge in the menstruating girl suggest that her powers are potentially dangerous both because they are so enonnous and because women are so wlnerable to the influence of malign powers ('bad' planets, the evil eye and evil spirits). Women have 'divine' generative powers but are incapable of directing these powers wisely. They are the source of creative energy, but it is men who embody the wisdom that must control and direct these energies. out

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It is this essentially religious conception of gender that explains the paradox of Tamil possession. Women do not need 1D be divinely 'empowered' because they naturally embody 'divine' power and energy: this is made evident in the non-Brahmin belief that children oome primarily from women (Kapadia 1993, 1994). Women are ritually 'empowered' in ~ puberty ri~ only in the sense that these rites celebrate and protect their already inherent, distinctively female powers. These rites also 'domesticate' their· powers, rendering 'empowered', menarchal women marriageable to ordinary men. However, when men are ritually empowered through possession, being filled and energiDm with divine power, they are, unlike women, able m din:ct these divine 'female' powers as well. This is because, unlike women,~ when they are 'female', can represent and embody Deity in a whole and complete manner, for they encompa.u both Power/Energy and Wisdom. Thus only men can be 'complete'. It is exbetnely impo11ant m note in what social group this religious discourse of gender is currendy taking place. k ii occurring among middle-r f iag wm-Brahmin Ctlfll wlllb alt ◄ IW11dly mobile and theaefore oriented towards ~-clw wl 11 r cale values. 4 These values comtitute symbolic capital and their appropriation signifies a rise in social status. It is not surprising, therefore, that this middle-caste representation of maleness closely parallels the Brahmins' construction of thermelves in religious symbolism ~ self-sufficient and complete and not involved in dependence on lower cutes: in the 'Brahmanical ideal ... relatiomhips with inferiors are denied' (Fuller I 988: 19). This ideology of male completeness is given subtle but powerful iconic fonn in the remarbble androgynous image of Shiva Ardhanari. This ico~ where androgyny is beautifully represented, is regarded as most pleuing and satisfying to the Tamil ae&1hetic sensibility. Comummately executed in South Indian bronz.e sculpture, this fonn of the Great God, Shiva, represents half of his body as female and half as male. Half his face is gently feminiud. But the philosophical assumptions behind this artistic muterpiece are subtly hinted at by the fact that, though androgynous, the identity of the .divine image is male. This is suggested by the slight predominance usually given 1D the male half of the sculptured image and it is unambiguously stated in the na111e of the icon: Shiva Ardhanari, that is ·, Shiva as Half-Woman'. It is rarely described~ 'Parvati as HaJf-Man'. It is this ritual androgyny of men-for women ~ not allowed to be androgynous-that helps to explain the conundrum of the 'female' gender of Pow.er or salcti. It is often assumed, because Shakti is another

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name for Parvati, Shiva's wife and the Supreme Goddess of the Sanskritic pantheon, that in India 'women are powerful' and are symbolically viewed ~ 'intrimically' possessing more 'power' than men. Such an assumption seeks suppon in the fact that Shakti/Parvati ~ described as the 'active principle' of the universe while Shiva is its 'passive principle', and in the statement that Shakti 'acts' while Shiva is 'still'. Most convincing of all is the saying 'Shiva without Shakti is ai\1811J (a corpse)'. However, to asswne that 'passivity' is synonymous with inferior status, and 'activity' with superior status, is 1D misunderstand the ~ of this brahminical discourse. Further, this discourse is very distant from other, more esoteric discourses, which view Shakti/Kali u the Supreme Deity (Wulff 198S ), and which much more closely approach popular religion in Aruloor. The message of this brahminical discourse is that Wisdom is 'still' and 'passive' and that this 'stillness' is a far superior mode of being 1D the 'restlessness' of Shakti. Further, in this discourse, Wisdom or Knowledge (iiin) is gendered ~ 'male' and is hierarchically related 10 Power or Energy, which is gendered as 'female'. Wisdom controls and directs the exuberant creativity of Power. When divinely possessed, men are both wise and powerful, being 'male' and being temporarily 'female' too. It is consequently only men who can autonomously represent Divinity completely, for only men, in the possession rites, become androgynous and thus 'complete'. And because only men can thus join Wisdom to Power, women are forever separated from Wisdom. But the lower-caste view of the divine sees the Goddess as supreme: Mariyamman, the Great Goddess, unites both Wisdom and Power. One of the most striking differences between brahminical religion and popular, lower-caste non-Brahmin religion in Aruloor is the radical difference in their understanding of the nature of Mariyamman. To the · aat,mins and upper-c1.lk nan-Bndlmi.a&, &lie is merely the powerful ' smallpox gconsiderable material exists on Holi and Sitala in rural North India. Holi is most often treated for its camivalesque reversals of social hierarchies, including gender hierarchies (Marrion 1966, Wadley 1994: 227-30). Dimock ( 1982), Kolenda ( 1982) and Wadley ( 1980), among others, have considered Sitala's figure as offering insight into constructions of femaleness. For Dasa Mata, see Gold ( 1995) and Gold and Harlan ( 1995 ). For urban Gangaur, see Erdman (1985 ). q

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merely imposed by the outside observer. Calendrically, the four festivals are continuous, overlapping, and ritually marked by women as a series. 11 The festivals take place during the month of Caitra, as the moon wanes after the full moon of Holi on the last day of Phalgun.12 Gangaur takes us two days into Caitra's bright half. This is the harvest season for crops planted in the winter, especially barley and wheat. Holi conventionally marks the beginning of the hot season. 13 Alone among these festivals, Holi is a major national holiday in India, and in the village an inclusive community event in which men and women, young and old, high and low participate. Sitala's Day is also a community-wide festival; every household in the village participates, but it is totally in the hands of women. Dasa Mata contrasts with both these in that participation is voluntary, and in many households the day may go completely unnoticed. Although it involves group worships-where two or three dozen women come together in different neighbourhoods-it has much in common with personal vows and fasts ( vrat). Participation in Gangaur is limited not by wish but by birth; it is celebrated only by women of the three highest-ranking caste communities-roughly 30% of the female population at most. The three events following Holi are explicitly counted out from it: seven days to Sitala, ten to Dasa Mata, sixteen to Ganga\lr. These links, as will emerge, are ritually expressed in various ways beyond dates. For example, the virgins performing gangaur piija make a red dot, a (ika, on the courtyard wall starting the day after Holi, until the sixteen tikis of Gangaur have accumulated. Because Holi charters the rest, begins the cycle, I spend disproportionate time on it. Holi is the destruction of a demoness; the other three are worships of forms of the goddess. In the ways they envision female power, the four festivals offer sequential commentaries. This essay loosely follows my own participation in the festivals, as house 11

See Anderson 1993 for a richly documented study of 'spring festivals' in Sanskrit textual sources. Her discussion of the ·demoness' associated with childhood diseases, obscenity and fire (pp. I 55-68) is particularly relevant to Ghatiyali •s ethnography. 12 Here I follow the samvat calendar used in Ghatiyali. There are several systems of calculations based on the lunar calendar which governs most ritual timing; these may differ from region to region. u I lack the space here for comparative ethnography: each village has its particular customs, but there is a region-wide character to most festivals due in part to the circulation of women who carry the practices of their natal vi Hages into their marital homes. For two accounts of the annual festival round in rural Rajasthan, see Chauhan ( 1967) and Srivastava ( 1974 ).

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guest and ethnographer; it layers oral texts with interviews in which my collaborator, Bhoju Ram Gujar, and I attempt to gather exegesis of both ritual and textual meanings, both from women and from men. In 1993-perhaps because I was living with Bhoju Ram's family and shared with that household's women in the first three festivals' actions-I was struck forcefully by the ways these events discuss, enact, create and embody aspects of female power as demonic and domestic, ugly and beautiful, dangerous and life giving. My language sets these up as contrasting pairs, even as my title demon aunt/gorgeous bride does. I could continue in that vein: Holi is ugly; Gangaur is fair. Holi is mockingly decked in cowdung ornaments; Gangaur wears bride's clothes. Sitala presides over fever and pox; Dasa Mata over well-being. Yet I have recently critiqued a prevailing dichotomous view of Hindu femaleness, arguing that women's expressive traditions often present female nature as ·more unified than split, more auspicious than dangerous, more creative than destructive' (Raheja and Gold 1994: 71 ). Similarly, in the festivals on which I focus here, although both sides of dualistic characterizations emerge, the prevailing experience of female power as women portray and worship it is one where positive and negative ultimately blur and add up to creative force. 14 For example, there are songs for each of these festival days that talk about ornaments, pretty clothes, tasty food. Holi, though she herself may be on the side of evil, is addressed with a kind of familiar affection and her songs also speak of her adornment, if only with cowdung; and her grooming, if only to remove lice. The offerings that please female power connect visibly, substantially, with these themes: squares of bright cloth named as the epitomizing female garment in Rajasthan, the orhni or wrap; jewellery and kitchen utensils modelled from dung or clay; special fried treats. Each festival in its perfonnance complex includes open or barely veiled references to women's sexuality and/or birth-giving capacities. All four acknowledge, directly or obliquely, some dangerous potential in female nature, but show it coexisting with women's auspiciousness rather than opposing it. Holi 's valued nephew-whose birth from the destructive flames is ritually in the hands of women-was taught to love God by a fearless female devotee. Sitala Mother, even as she gives pox, protects children's health and causes marital and agricultural fertility: all these traits of hers are evoked simultaneously . .. For women's experience of rituals, especially those dedicated to female power. see Emdl ( 1993 ). Harlan ( 1991 ). Hegde and Niranjana ( I 994) and Sax ( 1991 ).

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My argument is not that women deny an identification of femaleness with dangerous power, but rather that they situate the dangerous and the beneficent in close proximity, thereby diffusing dichotomy. Each holiday, it seems to me, addresses traditions of male superiority and authority, both to correct and to appropriate them. Thus each performatively denies_ some of the disadvantages Hindu patriarchal systems impose on women, both in ritual and in social life.'' I hope to show, then, that women in rituals celebrating female power, demonic and divine, make claims for female worth and community that run counter to male-authored devaluations and fragmentations. Holi

Holi takes place throughout North India on the full harvest moon (often early March). One month beforehand, Holi's arrival in the village is signified by a dead tree or sizeable tree branch that is staked in the ground. In 1993, in Ghatiyali with its population close to 4,000, there were several Holis belonging to various neighbourhoods, or caste communities in the case of the Malis ('gardeners') and Regars ('leatherworkers'). Once Holi has been staked, certain taboos on the movements of women ensue. During this period. daughters are not sent to their marital homes nor are sons' wives called back. In other words, the perpetual travelling back and forth of women from parents' to husbands' villages is shut down for the entire month. Why? One woman said it was 'because Holi has a bad reputation, because people are shouting behind her and throwing dust and singing diny songs'. This would make any travelling female subject to the contagion of Holi's bad name. What is so bad about Holi? Here is the most articulate version of her story that I recorded, from a non-literate male fanner in his forties. Mohan Mali. It's like this. there was a King Hamakush"' and his sister was Holi. The king. Hamakush . didn·t let anyone take the name of Ram [God]. If anyone took Ram's name. he ground him in the oil press. But there was a potter woman. and she fixed all the pots in the open kiln/· she put all the pots in place and lit the fire. At this moment. there came a cat with kittens. and they all slipped into the fire. •~ See Smith ( 1992) for Vedic sources of women·s ritual disadvantages . .,. Sanskrit. HiraQyakasip~ for his story in the PuriJ:las. see Dimmitt and van Buitenen ( 1978: 76-9). '' Picture not an oven but an open-air pile of cowdung fuel in which the unfired pots arc nested. with more cowdung patties layered on top . crowned with broken pots ( iv).

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She saw that the cat had gone in and she couldn't put out the fire, she staned to call · Hey Ram, hey Bhagvan. there is only you.· [That is. no one else can save the cat and kittens.] Then while she was doing this Prahlad (the son of King Hamakush] came along, and he asked the potter woman. 'Why are you taking the name of Ram?' She says • ·There is nothing but Ram·. · What happenedT · After I lit the fire the cat went into this kiln with its kittens and now only Ram is their master.· So Prahlad said, 'Don't take Ram's name. if he (that is, his father, the king] knows you are taking the name of Ram he will put you in the oil press and grind you.· 'I'm not worried. Let him put me in the oil press.· And again she started to

say · Ram, Ram·. Prahlad thought. 'I would like to know about Ram.· So he also sat down over there. So when all the pots cooked and it became cool she opened the kiln. There were still three unfired clay pots. and in them were the cat and its kittens. and they were alive. Then Prahlad thought, 'Oh this is amazing, there is nothing but Ram,' So from that day Prahlad also started to take the name of Ram. So thenHamakush found out about it. and he thought. 'lfmy own son takes the name of Ram then I should ki II him first.' [He tries to kill Prahlad in various ways, but they all fail because Ram/Vishnu protects him.] Then Hamakush thought of his sister. Holika, who took a fire bath every day. And he told his sister, ·You take Prahlad in your lap and take a fire bath and he will die and you will come out.· ·sure. brother. I'll kill him. no problem.' But when she began her bath then Holika burned up and Prahlad was saved. So from that day the Holi festival began.

Bhoju Ram asked Mohan, •After burning Holi what is the sign of Prahlad?' He replied, •Just after we bum Holi we pull it out [of the fire] and put it in the well. and that is Prahlad.' This was the first I had heard of Prahlad's physical representation in the Holi festivities. His 'sign· is a charred stump, 'delivered' from the flames by women (in spite of Mohan's 'we'), a custom that seems to echo the rescue not only of the devotee demon's good son but of the innocent kittens.

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Mohan Mali's knowledge of the Holi story comes to him as an oral tradition, one coexisting with Sanskrit texts, with Hindi versions, and these days with media productions. Nevertheless, not everyone in the village shares such detailed knowledge. Here is a fragment of a conversation we had with Nathi, a drummer's wife, about the chartering myth of Holi. We had sought her out, after a casual encounter, because she struck us as remarkably articulate about women's ritual practices surrounding Holi. But when I asked her about the story, I did not learn

much: Ann: Who is Holi?

Nathi: ... somebody's wife ... was it Arjun's wife (A,jun ki bu)? [She gives up.] Bhoju Ram: Why do we bum Holi?. Nathi: She was a bad whore. Bhoju Ram: Why was she bad? Nathi~ You don't know? We saw it on TV. She took her nephew in her lap and sat in the fire. But he didn't bum and he jwnped away in the water and that whore burned up. The boy was a darling (/a/yo); the darling boy is Prahlad and the father's sister was Holi.

Nathi 's seemingly casual attitude towards, or disinterest in, the mythology does not by any means reflect ignorance of the festival, its multiple rituals and their meanings for her and other women. These focus ·not on Holi, but on the /a/yo, t\le 'darling boy'. At dusk on the first night of Holi (6 March in 1993 ), little girls initiate the festival action by taking cowdung ornaments they have fashioned and bedecking Holi with them. These will later fuel the flames, when Holi is burned by grown men. I went with Bhoju Ram's daughters and their cousins when they took their ornaments to the nearby school-yard Holi and scampered home again. For a while. I watched the girls and young women of this household dance and colour their hands with henna. Bhoju Ram and I had decided to observe the Malis' Holi fire. because their community is reputed to be the most 'traditionally' inclined, or resistant to social change, among Ghatiyali 's major caste groups. The Malis' caste occupation is gardener, but most Mali families in Ghatiyali farm grain as well as growing vegetables. and an entire branch are stone quarriers. As we wandered through their neighbourhood, passing the time until the fire, we chanced upon a cluster of girls

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singing with gusto of the demoness herself. She is not addressed with anger and scorn. She is an honoured ~lady-guest'. 1

Play. play with the cowdung ornaments (barbuliyal ' Holi is just like a lady-guest (piva,:,IJ. and she will leave. and so we should play a lot. Balu Bhai [any girrs brothcr·s name] shakes the berry tree and his sister picks up the berries. Holi is just like a lady-guest. and she will leave, and so we should play a lot. 0 brother. go to the country of Lady Holi. seat her in a car, and bring her here. 0 Holi. there are so many lice in your hair. so please come soon and I will pick them out.

Picking out lice is an intimate act of affection (although saying someone has lots of lice can be a teasing insult). I am most struck by the way this song lingers on the comfortable brother/sister relationship, valued, co-operative, loving. It thus juxtaposes Holi's relationship with her brother, the evil king whom she supports and protects, to the singers' bonds with their beloved brothers. It seems to suggest that Holi's attempt to destroy Prahlad was a way of serving her brother as a good sister ought. It thus evokes identity with the demoness who shares with these girls not only the common affliction of lice, but valued sibling loyalty. Rather than revulsion, I heard a playful identification in their words. After the song of Holi, the same girls spontaneously broke into another very vigorous song of new, perilous, but thrilling possibilities for women: 0 innocent Shivji, my younger sister is going to school while riding on a motor bike (phag,hafiyi). 0 Shivji, she studied to the sixteenth class and joined the army. She beat the policemen with four sticks and hurt them. and the police grabbed her and brought her.

The girls' song seems uncertain where women's new educational and professional freedoms may lead, but sounds a decidedly adventurous note. Later that night, still passing the time until the bonfire, we interviewed a mature man of the same Mali caste as these girls. He sang '" This is a special tcnn used. as far as I know . only for the ornaments crafted by girls to decorate Holi.

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us some verses describing the modem degenerate era as a time known through the shamelessness of its women: The Kali Yug has come while calling, openly. In this Kali Yug, ladies are wearing sheer clothing. They are walking in the market half-naked. They have given up wearing wraps, And they haven't the least bit of shame. Oh, the men have shaved their moustaches and their masculinity is gone. In the Kali Yug. women arc smoking cigarettes, Their husbands bring them cigarettes to smoke.

In the late twentieth century, Kali Yug that it is, gender ideologies are certainly in flux, and both songs recognize this. But the girls' song of educational advancement and the man's of shameless women present two strongly contrasting visions of changing sex roles perfonned on the same occasion within the same community. These visions seem rooted in the contrasting ritual roles of men and women on the night of Holi. Men will beat down the demonic female whereas it is women's part to rescue the child, with all its potentiality. Still later, close to midnight, men lit the bonfire. At the Mali fire, drunken men sang and danced with abandon. Their songs were graphically sexual, and of a genre they share with women called kcsya. 19 A mild verse goes: KeJya, if you want to play then play before Holi.

Lover, if you want to play then play before Holi: Later the fierce sun beats down.

Women do not normally arrive at this scene until both the fire and the men's rowdy singing have died down. In 1993. I had decided that my grey hairs and long-term relationships in the village would protect me, and I was determined to witness this festival moment. Bhoju Ram, my dear friend, host, assistant. adviser and guardian, seemed willing to go along with this until, at the fire, I found myself the centre of attention from a group of drunken farmers who persistently demanded that I photograph their semi-obscene dance motions. Bhoju Ram panicked and became enraged, hissing through his teeth in English 'I request you to go back!' Gripped by the scene, and frankly fearing to walk alone in the dark, I stayed put. Bhoju later apologized for his rage, explaining that because I was living in his home, he had to protect my honour as if I were a woman of his own family. and the drunken males· attentions were threatening it. ,.. For kesyi. see Raheja and Gold ( 1994: 45- 7. 62-6 ).

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However, he well understood the passions of an anthropologist. When he saw I would not budge. he channelled his anger into brilliant mid-revelry interviews. Thrusting the recorder right into the heat of the men's action, as they beat the glowing embers with sticks, Bhoju asked them what they were doing. This also served to draw attention away from me. Bhoju Ram: Why are you beating Holi'! Mali man: That's just what I was thinking. Second Mali man: We are not beating Holi. We are beating the . darling boy' ( la/yo).

Bhoju Ram: The ·ctarling boy' was good and took the name of God so why are you beating it? Gisar Lal Mali: No no no! We are beating Holi because she wanted to bum him. Shiv Ram Mali: Holi was a woman of bad character [duriciri] and she didn't want anyone to take the name of Ram ... Holi is burning. but even so something is saved ...

Something is saved. Women . gathered in the street within hearing but not seeing distance, waited a long time for the male revelry to cease. Then . with their own high-spirited jokes and gestures . they set forth to rescue the darling boy. A physically powerful woman whom I knew quite well, Tulsa Mali. claimed the charred log. Tulsa was proud of her strength, her family. her skills, a leader among her caste. She hefted the log to her shoulder and bore it to her house. Bhoju Ram and I trailed behind her. Bhoju Ram: Why did you bring this darling boy here? Tulsa: It is an omen (sun). If I don't take it then someone else will take it. It is women's work. Bhoju Ram: Of what is it an omen? Tulsa: From bringing it our family will grow. After the child is born, we will make a peg for the oxen from it. Bhoju Ram: You have the darling boy in your house so your family will grow. ls it good for anything else. like crops. and so forth? Tulsa: Everything will increase. like grain, animals. people. agriculture. everything.... It is a matter of satisfying one's soul. It's like: even if the field is dry and there is just a little rain. we put the seeds in-not knowing if there will be rain or not. in the same way. we have the same kind of faith in the darling boy.

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The next day. the second day of Holi (holi ko diisro dirt is also called dhulendi which must derive from the word dhul for dust. Men take through the streets a noisy procession led by a false, mocked king (called bidsih) and engage in all kinds of wild, sometimes violent, horseplay, including inversions of the social order. Women and children stay home or visit neighbours, themselves playing energetically with coloured powder. At Bhoju and Bali's house I was vigorously engaged in Holi games. Women rub the powder hard in one another's faces, including teeth and gums. Moods are very high; appearances are transformed; rose-coloured dust fills the air. w Sita/a

Some women do not bathe between Dhulendi and Sitala's day. seven days later. They may wash their anns and change their clothes but they should not wash their bodies. Why is this'? One person told us Sitala is a 'butcher's wife·; thus she is dirty. This deliberate storing up of women's bodily dirt for seven days makes an explicit link between the two festivals. In referring to dirt' (gandagi). women probably include whatever secretions would accumulate in their private parts. This dirt seems to connect the destruction of Holi, followed immediately by the darling boy·s rescue from the fire, with the Worship of the Cool Mother, a ritual that explicitly saves children from the deadly fire of fever.:?• I also heard that Sitala likes being worshipped by menstruating women, something many other deities find offensive, and perhaps another sign of her affinity both with the demoness and with women's generative capacities understood to reside in uterine blood. 22 On Sitala Seventh, the Cool Mother or 'Smallpox Goddess' embodied in crystal rocks must be ritually persuaded to stay cool. She forbids the lighting of the cooking fire. The night before her festival, 4

The day after Holi is also a ritually busy one for Rajasthani women, as the prescribed occasion for Brother Second ( bhii doj). for the first Dasa Mata story. and for ,!hu,:,~ana. a protective ritual for first sons born during the preceding year (see Raheja and Gold 1994: 152 for more details). 11 Speculatively, I could connect this with the still common practice for women not to bathe for a ritually prescribed series of days after childbirth (nine but often reduced to seven or even three). !: See O'Flaherty for the 'blood of defloration' in the Rg Veda as 'resonant with expressions of fertility' ( 1980: 20). See Leslie ( 1994) for complexities of menstrual pollution from different categories of textual sources. For positive associations with vaginal blood. sec also Margi in ( 199S) and Marglin and Mishra ( 1993 ); and for female sexual fluids. sec Margi in ( 1990). .J)

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women cook double: the evening's usual meal and the food to be eaten cold the next day. The holiday foods arc fried breads and doughnuts, treats common to all festivals. Special for Sitala, though, is oliyi. made of thin com porridge mixed with buttermilk, a very cooling food. Bali, my companion, prepared her tray carefully on the eve of Sitala's worship. It included a piece of cloth for Sitala's wrap, a brass jar which she would fill with water in the morning, henna powder, a coloured suing, and a pile of seeds~ These included wheat, barley, millet. large millet, white beans, com, and a seed valued for buffalo fodder. Bali had to go to the neighbours to borrow the com, millet and barley-dec/asse grains which many no longer eat, but without which the ritual offerings are lacking. From ordinary wheat flour bread dough Bali modelled small items to include in her offerings: a cooking hearth, a flour-grinder, a pot with a lid and a spoon representing a pot of oliya, arid jewellery. Bali and I waited in the street for the other women of her Gujar community. Each caste or neighbourhood group goes together in prearranged order. Finally, a large group gathered and we walked sedately to the shrine. singing a sombre devotional song to Sitala: Honoured Mother, a pendant for your forehead I'll bring. Honoured Mother, a jewel in your forehead ornament I'll set. Lady, my pox-remover, put pox behind, My giver of sweet feasts, Sitala. Fulfil me with a son. Mother.

Give the other ladies four pox. You who wraps me in yellow cloth, Sitala. Support my life. Sitala. fulfil me with a son, Mother. A yellow cloth is worn by a mother after giving birth. Sitala deals not only in disease and death but in birth and health. This song acknowledges both aspects, without setting up any striking contrast between them. Like all village women, the goddess desires 'a pendant for her forehead'. 21 Yet the lines 'fulfil me with a son, Mother, Give the other ladies four pox', prevent us from imagining an un~ifferentiated or non-competitive female solidarity. Inside the temple, lamps bum before the altar. All the little moulded dough models are set down in a jumble. Each worshipper bathes the goddess. puts henna on her, sticks multicoloured strings to the wet muddy henna. and sprinkles grains on top of that, until Sita la's aniconic stones are smeared with countless layers of auspicious stuff. The

~• For women's desires expressed in songs. see Gold ( 1998).

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coloured squares of cloth, Sitala Mother's 'wraps', are also placed on the shrine. A male priest sits outside, well removed from the action, but collecting his due in cooked food and grain. After completing their worship, women go behind the temple and in the loose dirt they create •fields '-using their fingers to make furrows-an action they explicitly name as ploughing (hankno). In these fields they sow all the seeds left on their trays, which prescriptively are the appropriate seeds for the coming agricultural cycle (to be planted several months later when the monsoon breaks). Although women often do the work of sowing, ploughing is ordinarily a tabooed task for them (the situation throughout South Asia and in many other parts of the world as well). I often asked the reasons for this, and only a few claimed that the work was actually too hard for women. More common responses had to do with appropriateness and auspiciousness and decorum. Were a woman to drive the plough, people told me, it would be as if she were to sit on her husband's head. I find this a striking image. In this ritual, merrily, women plough. Then one covers another's eyes from behind, and the woman whose eyes are covered says something like 'If I die, then show this buried treasure to my children [naming them]'. This was explained to me as a bequest. The term I translate 'buried treasure' is khai kota. Khai refers to a large ditch, and kota is a common household grain storage bin. Apparently rulers of old sometimes stored large grain bins in the ground in case of future famine. Thus women ritually claim a concealed but vast grain-treasure, as well as the right to pass it on to their children. This is contrary to normal inheritance practices, just as their ploughing is contrary to the normal division of labour. Perhaps their claim is to the fertility of the earth itself, which is linked by the next move of the ritual to active sexuality. 24 In this move from the symbolic fields to Bhairunji's shrine and back to the main goddess temple in the village, women break into the bawdy No one has more eloquently summed up the symbolic force of the seed and field complex in Hindu gender constructions than Leela Dube in her masterful genninal essay. 'Seed and eanh'. There she documents at length the reproductive metaphor of male seed and female field and sums up its implications: 'the symbolism is utilized by the culture to underplay the significance of woman's contribution to biological reproduction' ( 1986: 38). Dube connects this metaphor to patrilineal agrarian economy. and hence to male ownership of both land and progeny. See also Doniger and Smith ( 1991 ) and Doniger ( 1994 ). For evocative associations between women and water . more positive than those between women and earth. see Feldhaus ( 1995 ). JI

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songs called kesyi. virtually the same songs that the men were singing at the Holi fire. In these songs women laughingly attribute sexual voraciousness to one another (Raheja and Gold 1994: 63-5). One woman pantomimed the motions of sexual intercourse; another put her hand somewhat forcefully if briefly between my legs. ·It's all a joke, don't mind,' she smiled. When they reach the temple, five serious songs of the goddess are perfonned, and the frolic is over.

DasaMata Three days later Mother Ten, the Goddess of Well-Being, identified with Lakshmi, is worshipped both as Pipal Tree Mother and as a geometric design painted in lime and cowdung paste on the plastered courtyard floor. Women who choose to do so keep Mother Ten's fast for ten days, counting from the day after Holi's bonfire. The cotton skein that will embody Mother Ten as an icon for her devotees has been ·caused to see' the Holi fire: usually from the safe distance of the house roof; that is, a woman preparing the ritual ingredients stands on her roof and holds the skein up . exposing it to the light of the Demoness in flames. During the ten days of the fast, the yam is further empowered through storytelling and worship. Finally . it is separated into a number of string necklaces, each with ten knots, sometimes stained yellow with turmeric. After the ritual of the tenth day. women will tie these around their necks. The story of the tenth day is about the string·s imponance and power. The string is the Goddess. Here is how one telling of that story begins: 25 Once there were a king and queen. One day the queen worshipped Dasa Mata. The queen had golden jewellery. golden necklaces. silver necklaces. But after she worshipped Dasa Mata. she put on Dasa Mata's white string. In the evening the king came into the castle and. after they ate. the king and queen began to play Parcheesi [make love]. While they were playing, the king"s gaze fell on the queen's neck. ·oho!" he said. and not listening he broke it and burned it. What'? Dasa Mata's string. ·uh Oh! You've done a frightening thing! That was my Dasa Mata and it is a women's custom to wear it. What have you done? You've burned up Dasa Mata. and now what will happen?' · Are there such vinues [guQ] in that Dasa • in that white string?' ·Yes. there are great virtues in it. You"II find out tomorrow. no. even tonight in your dreams. You've done a lot thafs very bad. This was my special . . woman s magic.

.

~

All extracts from Dasa Mata·s story are from Gold and Harlan ( 1995).

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By tearing the sacred string, ·it seems the king wished at once to assen his own singular, independent selfhood as ruler, husband, absolute power holder. and to regard his wife as without agency, a pleasure object at his command. But through this act he fa tally failed to acknowledge her human, religious, female worth, not to mention the Goddess's divinely superior, female power. The king's pretensions crumble instantly with his wrongful act, as do the symbolic turrets of his castle. I shall not recount the rest of the story here. but note that the impetuous and imperious male soon bitterly regrets his mistake, loses everything he values, and eventually rectifies it only by acknowledging his own error, and the wonh and meaning of his spouse's devotions. Towards the end of the story he accepts instruction from his wife with perfect meekness: 'King. sir, one whole year has passed and we have experienced sorrow. Now ... I will do this. You bring me some cotton thread. and for ten days I will tell the stories and on the tenth day I will put on Dasa 's channed string. Previously you forbade me. but don't forbid me now in that way. Previously you forbade me and that is why we had bad luck.'

[Humbly indeed he replies]: 'No matter, Lady queen, I won't forbid you'.'

The moral of this story is obvious: husbands who deny or suspect their wives' religious knowledge and practices are fools who will eventually learn the hard way to know and act better. Women wear the string all year, affirming their identity with Dasa Mata, and with the devoteeheroine of her story. The worship ingredients for this day look a lot like those for Sitala, and include a wrap, henna, and coloured string. as well as bread dough models; for Dasa Mata specifically, these include ten balls and ten rings. I watched two worships, one mostly by farmer women who gather early in the day around a Pipal tree growing in a central location in the village. They need to worship and break their fasts so that they can get out to work in the fields without much delay. Rajput and Brahmin women worship at their leisure, somewhat more elaborately, later in the day. In 1993, one group gathered at the home of a literate Brahmin storyteller. This was Ugmi Purohit (who, as it happens, was also in charge of the adult literacy campaign for women in Ghatiyali). A number of Gujars joined these high-caste women, including my hostess, Bali; the tie among them, as is often the case, was neighbourhood proximity. In Ugmi's courtyard, lacking a real tree, the worship focused on a construction of pipal leaves set up in the din. Ugmi told me that the stories are for the string; women do not need to hear them, she stressed; they are for the Goddess. Thus the Goddess

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is understood to be pleased by this story that affinns her power and her devotees' righteousness vis-a-vis arrogant males. In another Dasa Mata story, an explicit connection between devotion to the Goddess and women's superior intelligence is made when the narrator describes the heroine as knowing many things because 'Mother Ten had turned her heart's key, and opened her heart, and put ideas in her brain' (Gold 1995: 441 ).

Gangaur Gangaur falls on the sixteenth day after Holi, the first day of Caitra's waxing moon. Girls panicipating in this festival fast and worship on all 16 days, praying to be suhagin or 'auspiciously married to living husbands'. They also pray that their husbands will be handsome and kind. The story of Gangaur is not told ritually, like Dasa Mata's, but is known to all. It is the story of how Parvati, or Gauri as she is called here, through intense ascetic practice, won Lord Shiva as her husband. It is thus a story of female initiative in love and marriage. In 1993, I left the village for a job interview in the United States on the morning of Gangaur. My description here is based on observations made in 1980. I would not, in any case, have seen Bali or her daughters worship Gangaur, as Gujars do not participate. In their household, the festival is celebrated only with delicious food. Songs of Gangaur portray intimacy between husband and wife. The wife beckons, offers, and makes requests: Come at Gangaur, beloved bridegroom guest. At Holi bring a yellow wrap, groom, At Gangaur bring a multicoloured veil.

The yellow wrap, again, is a sign of the birth of a son. Another song goes: Bring a pendant for my forehead. 0 my stranger-spouse. Please stay right here. sir. Stay here. foreign gorgeous man, stay right here. sir. Stay here, fair woman's gorgeous man, stay right here, sir!

I will feed you milk sweets at Gangaur, 0 my good spouse. Please stay right here, sir ... etc.

Bring bracelets for my ankles. 0 my stranger-spouse. Please stay right here, sir ... etc. I'll meet you in the bedroom. I'll meet you on the balcony. rn meet you in the fields.

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You will climb from your horse, and I will feed you bananas and lots of doughnuts and chips.

Obviously, this song stresses women's nourishing qualities-indeed, their cooking skills-which are rather blatantly merged with their sexual attractions. On the sixteenth day, the girls doing the ritual gather in the Hanuman temple at the reservoir, where they themselves dress up gorgeously like married women. One among them takes the part of groom, wearing pants and a turban, and is linked with another playing her 'bride'. The couple leads the other girls in a procession back to the home of a matron and ritual expen who has presided over the 16-day ritual. 26 The girls carry brass pots on their heads with green leaves in them as signs of auspicious fertility. Beautiful Gauri, the fair one, is enshrined in an elaborate multicoloured wall-painting along with her perfect husband. First the girls, followed by the household's married women, make offerings to and then manipulate the picture, uniting the divine couple with coloured strings. Thus each worshipper emulates the male Brahmin officiant who knots together the clothing of bride and groom at a real wedding ritual. Conclusion: Soft Claims

These festivals offer. a kaleidoscope of ritual and narrative imagery: envisionings and imaginings in words, icons, stories and songs of what female power is and does. Taken together they may still seem as ephemeral as icons formed of cotton string, as unproductive as toy fields ploughed with fingers. Yet piled up as they are in minds and days, in songs and stories and practices taught and shared from year to year, mother to daughter, mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, they possess weight. My attempt here has been in part to highlight counterpoint claims made in these cultural perfonnances for female authority in It pains me to recall Gangaur in 1980, for one of the chief figures in the 1980 Gangaur puji. Shobhag Kanvar's granddaughter Kamalesh. to whom I have dedicated this chapter. was murdered by her husband in the spring of 1993, a little more than 13 years after this festive day. Rituals do not always work. She had been married not to the godlike person she prayed for but to an abusive and violent man. I do not want to expunge Kamalesh,s participation or her terrible fate; neither do I wish to malign this ritual as false. I hope to forget neither the meaning of the ritual. and its value and validity for many who perform it . nor the actuality of one woman's tragedy that for me has darkened the pageantry of this holiday for girls. Kamalcsh played the 'groom' in 1980. y,

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worship and knowledge, and against female devaluation on biological or cosmological grounds. I have also tried to present some views of female power----divine, demonic, mortal----differing from those found in male-authored texts and male-dominated rituals. To summarize: 1) At Holi, conceptually, the female demonic is humanized, her kinship acknowledged. Although complete identification is certainly avoided, complete horror is never posed. Ritually, it is men who vividly act out aggressive, demonic violence, while women take the pan of rescuers and life-givers. 2) On Sitala's day, conceptually, the goddess who inflicts and protects from disease and fever is the very goddess who is pleased with fem ale body grime and menstrual pollution, and who grants fertility to newlywed couples. Ritually, women transgress the taboo on ploughing and claim the right to bequeath property, recognizing the intimate connection between these two. 27 Thus they assert an opposition to these doubled ritual and economic disempowerments. 3) On Dasa Mata's day, conceptually, women claim superior knowledge, superior intelligence. They teach men's folly in attempting to control wives and make them into passive objects. Ritually, women put on the ·ugly' string that ensures that the Goddess's beneficent power will bless their households. 4) On Gangaur, conceptually, women enact self-determination in marriage arrangements, and a capacity for ascetic feats. Ritually, Gangaur celebrates couples. As high-caste pageantry, explicitly defined as imponant only for those groups who forbid widow remarriage or divorce, it is nearest among the four festivals to taking a view of females as subservient half-bodies. Yet, just as women plough like men on Sitala's Day, on Gangaur a girl acts the pan of a groom, and women-officiating through their 'interactive' wall art at the divine couple's union-act the parts of male Brahmin priests at weddings. I have called conceptualizations of gender evident in women's celebrations 'counterpoints' offering both blunt and subtle denials of a dominant male-authored discourse of female devaluation and subordination. I have explored in detail the ways that women through narratives, worships, celebrations, plastic and verbal arts, claim authority in contradistinction to male-authored prescriptions for their sex. Neither I 17

See Agarwal -( 1994) for powerful discussions of this link: •But it is the taboo against women plowing. found in most cultures, and, to my knowledge. certainly in all communities of South Asia, which presents perhaps the biggest obstacle .... This taboo makes dependence on men unavoidable under settled cultivation, and severely constrains women's ability to farm independently' (pp. 212-13).

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nor other writers sympathetic to the coexistence of multiple gender hegemonies-writers of what I have earlier called Type 2 bent-have argued that women's counterpoint claims give them any significant advantages in economic or political realms. However, I cannot view women's words and acts as meaningless play or-worse-delusive hindrances to understanding their actual subordination. 28 All the Rajasthani women I know understand well the several apparent disadvantages of being female; nevertheless, they take great pleasure and satisfaction in ritually enacting expressions of female worth and power.

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knowledge, sexual science: the history of attitudes to sexuality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp.63-81. Marglin, Frederique, 1990. 'Refining the body: transformative emotion in ritual dance', in Owen Lynch (ed.), Divine passions: the social construction of emotion in India (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp.212-36. - - , I 995. 'Gender and the unitary self: looking for the subaltern in coastal Orissa', South Asia Research 15, I ( 1995), pp. 78-130. Marglin, Frederique, and Puma Chandra Mishra, 1993. 'Sacred groves: regenerating the body, the land, the community', in Wolfgang Sachs (ed.), Global ecology: a new arena ofpolitical conflict (London: Zed Books), pp. 197-207. Marriott, Mc Kim, 1966. 'The feast of love', in Milton B. Singer (ed.), Krishna: myths, rites, and attitudes (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp.200-12. Mohanty, Chandra, 1991. 'Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses', in Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds.), Third world women and the politics of feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) pp.51-80. Mukta, Parita, 1994. Upholding the common life: the community of Mirabai (Delhi: Oxford University Press). Narayan, Kirin, 1994. 'Women's songs, Women's lives', Manushi 81 ( 1994), pp.2-10. - - , 1996. 'Songs lodged in some hearts: displacements of women's knowledge in Kangra', in S. La vie and T. Swedenburg (eds.), Displacement, diaspora and geographies of identity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press), pp.181-213.

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O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, 1980. Women, androgynes, and other mythical beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Ortner, Sherry B., 1990. 'Gender hegemonies', Cultural critique, Winter ( 1990), pp.35-80. Prakash, Gyan, 1990. Bonded histories: genealogies of labor servitude in colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). - - , 1991. 'Becoming a Bhuinya', in D. Haynes and G. Prakash (ed), Contesting power(Berkeley: University of California), pp.45-174. Quigley, Declan, 1996. Review of Listen to the heron's words by Gloria G. Raheja and Ann G. Gold, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, 2 ( 1996), pp.391-2. Raheja, Gloria Goodwin, 1995. '"Crying when she's born and crying when she goes away": marriage and the idiom of the gift in Pahansu song perfonnances', in Lindsey Harlan and Paul Courtright (eds.), Hindu marriage from the margins (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.19-59. Raheja, Gloria Goodwin, and Ann Grodzins Gold, 1994. Listen to the heron's words: reimagining gender and kinship in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press). Sax, William, 1991. Mountain Goddess: religion and politics in the central Himalayas (New York: Oxford University Press). Scott, James C., 1985. Weapons of the weak: everyday fonns ofpeasant resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press). Skinner, Debra, Dorothy Holland, and G.B. Adhikari, 1994. 'The songs of Tij: a genre of critical commentary for women in Nepal', Asian Folklore Studies 53, 2 ( 1994), pp.259-305. Smith, Frederick M., 1992. 'Indra's curse, Varuna's noose, and the suppression of the woman in the Vedic srauta ritual', in Julia Leslie (ed.), Roles and rituals for Hindu women (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass), pp.17-45. Srivastava, S.L., 1974. Folk culture and oral tradition (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications). Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita, 1991. 'Introduction', in Susie Tharu and K. Lalita (eds.), Women writing in India 600 B.C. to the present (New York: Feminist Press), pp.1-37. Wadley, Susan S., 1980. 'Sitala', Asian Folklore Studies 39, I (1980), pp.33-62. - - , 1994. Struggling with destiny in Karimpur, 1925-1984 (Berkeley: University of California Press). Young, M. Jane and Kay Turner, 1993. 'Challenging the canon: folklore theory reconsidered from feminist perspectives', in Susan Tower Hollis, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young (eds.), Feminist theory and the study of folklore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), pp.9-28.

Chapter 8

HEROES ALONE AND HEROES AT HOME: GENDER AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN TWO NARRATIVES Lindsey Harlan lntn>duction

In many parts of India heroes who die violently are worshipped as. deities and mernorialaed with stelai-bearing relief images of weapon-wielding warriors. 1 At hero shrines in Rajasthan, where I have done field research on hero veneration, devotees celebrate heroes with songs of praise and offer them luxuries such ~ sweets, cigarettes, opium and alcohol. Many of these shrines are maintained by shamans ( bhopa1 whom the heroes possess and through whom heroes cure afflictions such as alcoholism, drug addiction, demon possession, and infertility. Most apotheosized heroes are ancestral deities in martial lineages: descendants invoke their sacrificial deaths and posthumous miracles ~ indices of family glory. Some ancestral heroes eventually attract other devotees and their shrines may draw pilgrims from neighbouring villages and beyond. Barcb may sing of their glory and in some cases an oral epic may develop, such as the epic of Pabuji. Most heroes, however, are known only by the cl~ to which they belong: they are jhWJjharji (a warrior who loses his head in battle but struggles on to kill many enemies before finally succumbing to his injuries), sagasji ('powerful one'), and bhomiyiji(loosely translated ~ 'earth-protector'). 2 ' Special thanks arc due to John D. Smith for his helpful comments as I developed my arguments in this ~y and to Komal Kothari for his generosity and guidance in the field. I also acknowledge indebtedness toll S. Ashiya, Ann Gold, Alf Hiltebeitel, Dennis Hudson, Joyce Fluekiger, Paul Courtright, Gene Gallagher, Kathleen Emdl and Julia Leslie for their- instructive and sage suggestions. What follows is based on research conducted for a book, tentatively entitled, The Goddess's henchmen: gender and virility in Jndjan hero veneration. 2 The verbal form of jhiil)jharji is jhib_Jjhno or jUl)jhno-. 'to fight'. The etymology for sagasji is vari~ly given u akti, 'power', and ~ . 'person, individual'). For further discussion of these terms, see Harlan, in progress. For a practical typology, see Lambert (1988, esp. 133-48, 174-90). For lgeneral backgro1111d, see Gold (1988). 231

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There ~ been insufficient scholarship devoted 1D Indian hero worship despite the fact that such worship is ancient and widespread. Most of what we know about hero cults comes from work on epics, which are perfonned primarily by men. 1 Many hero cults, however, focus on ritual. 9 When I pressed women for details in heroes' lives, I usually received a response such as: 'if you want to know the history (itihis), go uk my husband/father-in-law/brother-in-law'. 10 There are numerous reasons for this lack of interest in the details of heroes' stories. One is a general perception that what happens outside the home primarily concerns men. Politics and warfare are subjects that many men and women have perceived ~ pertaining primarily to men and ~ belonging to the public domain in which men interact. 11 Details of martial and political manoeuvres abound in men's accounts of heroic struggles, but they are hard to find in women's accounts. Instead domestic relations are fore grounded and the war story is sketchy and often simply an implicit point of departure. It could be said that the domestic space-the interior space in which family members interact and familial rituals are enacted (as well as the representation of domesticity in women's accounts)--lacks temporal depth: it contains living generations of men and women related by blood and by marriage. In it transpires the here-and-now, the rec unent business of interdependent living. This is the realm in which stories (kahini, katha) proliferate: stories about living or remembered relatives, stories about gods and goddesses, stories about some unnamed mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The sense that external affairs and history, which chronicles them, pertain primarily to men is bolstered by child-rearing practices. 12 Although the number of girls who attend school has been gradually increasing, educating girls has not been considered important In Udaipur, the city in Rajasthan where I have done most of my researc~ I knew many families who sent their daughters to school simply m increase their marriage prospects. Families may want educated daughters9

Joyce Fleukiger remarlced that the men whom she interviewed about the folk traditions she studied tended to recite narratives whereas women were more likely m describe ritual performance (personal communicatio~ August 1995). 10 The same paucity of narrative is evident in women's accounts of kuldevis (guardian goddesses). See Harlan ( 1992: 52-4 ). 11 The distinction between household stories and 'itihasic' accounts roughly corresponds to the distinction in South India between puram (public) and akam (domestic) narratives. According to Ramanujan, puram stories, traditionally recited by bards in public, tend to be longer and more detailed than akam stories, or 'granny's talcs'. which women recite at home ( 1986: 41-75 ). 12 One elderly Rajput woman told me that, when she was young, girls in her family were not allowed to read newspapers because they were not supposed t> be concerned with non-domestic affairs. Preswnably this would also keep them from being exposed to new ideas about social organization.

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in-law who can teach their children well, bti often they do not want daughters-in-law who have the independence and employability that a diploma might provide. Weddiop me frequendy til11Cd t> precede and preclude graduation. In short, families want 'homely girls', as even the marriage advertisements placed by relatively unconventional Raja.ctbanis attest It is true that during the past few decades upper-caste women have gradually and often subtly expanded the theoretical parameters of pardi: some matrons living in tourist towns have transfonned their spacious homes into guest houses; some urunanied girls from prominent families go out to teach in nursery schools; most women will show their faces i1 the bazaar outside their home town. 13 Neverthel~, their sense of the distincrivene~ of male and im ale space remaim acute. 14 Good women still 'know their place' and eagerly distinguish themselves - ~ ioWer~ ciste- women who must work in public and career women, especially fenunists who -make a virtue of outside employment. 15 Presumably another reuon why women are relatively vague about the history of heroes and specific about domestic ritual vene1ation of heroes is that when women many into families, they are i ~ by mothers- ' ,, in-IDV on how to perfonn rituals for household deities. Leaming t> / perform the rituals is a duty; learning the history behind the rituals is not. Men, however, have heard the stories of heroes and other important family deities since binh; they continue m hear these same stories throughout their lives. Moreover, in families that lDltil recently kept strict pardi, the stories were typically related by men (family members, bards, panegyrists, epic perfonners) in the mardini or men's quarters. Th~ men told stories about their lineage primarily among themselves in their own space. These days, when maintaining status is a struggle for oncepowerful families and the stories tend k> be invoked • reminders of a lineage's glorious heritage, men socializing together or engaging in discussions of politics often invoke vivid and detailed written accounts of their family's heroic sacrifices, especially those found in Colonel James 11

For discmsion of 1he elulicity of panJi, see Harlan (.1992: 38-9), and Gold ( 1994). • w This is evident in some of the legendary or 'itihasic' stories that Rajput women do tell. I have argued elsewhere that Rajasthani stories about Rajput heroines more or lea require that women end up as satis if they have transgressed 1hc bowxlary between domestic and non-domestic, female wl male space ( 1992: 182-204). 15 The disapproval of career women by home-makers is not, of course. a sentiment unique to Rajasthani, or for that matter Indian, women.

236

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INVENTEDIDENTITIES

Tod's celebrated Annals and antiquities of Rajastban and Kaviraj Shyamaldas's recendy republished Vir vinod. In 1990, I gladly kept my promise k> research a book on heroes and returned to the field This time my work was not focused on Rajputs, although many of the heroes who are worshipped by people from vario~ cute backgrounds are Rajput and exemplify the martial ethos generally associated with the Rajput commwlity. I visited many hero shrines and consulted with variom devotees of heroes, including the priests and shamans who perfonn rituals at these shrines. I gathered narratives wherever I could find them and observed many household rituals. Some of the most valuable resources were women's songs about heroes. I find these interesting not only because of the light they shed m heroic tradition in general but because of the distinctive way in which they represent women and women's interests. The songs offer pe1spectives on divine heroes that are frequently different from pe1spectives offered in men's accounts. Like the narratives women recited during interviews, these songs are little concerned with story line. One hero song I collected (for the epic hero, Tejaji) lacks any specific reference m heroic action or even to the hero himself. Instead, it offers a list of the things that are important in life (including hmbands and wives, ~9_µs - -·-. in-laws, and cows and horses). As I have indicated, I think that --the . sketchiness of narrative in such songs is almost as interesting u the is.gie of which narrative elements are selected for inclusion. The nanative fragments found in women's hero songs imply decisions about and . commentary on what is crucial in the traditions primarily perpetuated by \~. men. At one point in my research I met with Komal Kothari, director of Rupayan Sansthan, a folklore institute in Jodhpur. After I had told mm of my interest in the ritijagi songs, Kothari arranged for a perfonnance of the ritijagi song sung for a hero (bhomiyiji) in the epic, Pibiiji. On hearing the song perfonned at his home, I quickly realized that I had already collected two variants, one contained in a professionally recorded cassette I had purchased at a bazaar in Jodhpur and the other an account told by an attendant at a small hero shrine. This hero song is unlike any other ritijagi song I have heard and it 6 not hard to imagine why. It represents an epic transformation of a woman's genre. Comparing this epi(! song with a sam pie ritijagi song that women sing reveals strikingly divergent points of view. The women's ratijagi song selects what is deemed most crucial in epic narratives while the epic song reflects the importance of values espoused .

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in the ritiia,i genre. Juxtaposing the songs allows for a glinipse of the ways in which men and women appropriate and transfonn the heroic scenarios that render these ancestors worthy of worship.

The Songs First, the ritiia,i song. As noted above, such songs are sung during a wake ritual in which women praise the various deities impol1ant m the family and invite them to be present on auspicious occasions. The singing is sometimes led by [)bolhim, female drummers who may also play hannonium. The most exuberant singers are usually older women who have heard the songs throughout their lives and know them by heart. 16 The ritijagi song I tram1ate here seems m adopt the pe1spective of these older women: in closing, it asks the jbUl)jbirji m preserve the singers' eyesight and 1D protect the singers from developing weak knees. 17 Song for Jhiil)jhlrji

My meny struggler, take pin• My saffron-donning struggler-take pin The king worships you-take pin Lord, my sons' wives and ~ n s • wives grup your feet-take pin My ruddy struggler-take pin The king's son worships you-take pin Lord, make our bangles and red saris indestructible My saffron-donning struggler-take pin My ruddy struggler-take pin Lord, in the forest you fought alonc----take pin Lord. the king worships you-take pin Lord, to the brothers give long life Lord, make our bangles and saris indestructible-take pin My saffron-donning struggler-take pin The ~ m worship you-take pin Lord, give the children and adolescents long life-take pin Lord, make sure they get marricd----takc pin Lord, we singers grasp your feet-take pin Lord. give all the sons and grandsom long life-take pin Lord, make our eyes and knees long-lasting

The Rajput families I came to know well during my research trips to India often include drmesticlservants in the singing seuion, espccialty those they call Darogas (servants whose ancestry includes a Rajput father and a mother from another eatc). Members of this group generally refer to thermelves u Rajputs. 17 It was swig to me by an elderly Daroga servant working for a Rajput family. This tramlation appeared plfflously in Harlan (1995: 275). 11 Pin (a mixture of spices and tobacco wrapped in betel leaf) and tobacco are frequendy offereli to heroes. 16

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This song vividly illustrates the paucity of plot so characteristic of women's hero songs. 1be heroic scenario is not rehashed. Nor is there anything here that would identify this hero as an individual. We know almost nothing about his story or, perhaps, we know only what we need to know. 19 We know that he is a jhUl)jhirji, which means that he lost his head fighting, the epithet presenting a heroic scenario with radical efficiency. Because he lost his head fighting, he is now being worshipped: end of story, or almost. And we know that he wore saflron, the colour of ascetic self-denial worn by warriors who expect to lose their lives in battle. 20 We also know that he is ruddy and merry. lbese characterizations surely refer to his intoxication by stimulants such ~ opium and alcohol or by battle, most likely by both. 1be colours of his clothing and complexion and the characterization of the jhUl)jhirji as ruddy and merry, however, are not primarily allusions to the hero's story. Rather, they are presented as iconographic details. Women's ritijaga songs are often lengthy descriptions of the features of a divine image, whether a material image used in worship or a prevalent conceptualization of a divinity's appearance. 21 1be iconographic references indicate his status as a hero, of course, and also his appearance while living-fighting-dying, but the focus in women's songs is not the man who once became a hero, but rather the hero who is being worshipped in the ratijagiritual by family members right here and now. Absorption in the present is characteristic of ritijagi songs. Those songs that do not describe divinities from head to toe (a fonn of praise) focus on making petitions, offering hospitality, or describing appearances made and blessings given by the divine beings to devotees. 1be song above, which invites the hero to take pin and expresses devotion while asking for various blessings, is typical. It is overwhelmingly concerned with the good life, which includes children, health, and longevity for the members of the family. It requests IJ>od fortune for the lineage; it seeks protection for sons and grandsons and asks that all children marry. 22 "On economy of narrative in women's traditions, see Ramanujan (1986: 43-51.) :o On sacrificial battle against unbeatable odds. sec Harlan ( 1992: 122-3) and Ziegler (1973: 69). ~• Most of these songs describe a deity from head to toe, listing all the fine clothing and ornaments that lhc deity wears. For examples, see Harlan ( 1995: 272, 276). !: Moreover. it mentions the king and his son. This may mean that the song is also implicitly asking for protection for the king and his family. but it may mean protection for the head of the family. This song was sung by Rajputs: h! king may well be both head of the household and head of the realm.

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Although chiefly concerned with lhe welfare of family members, however, the song indicates that women also seek their own personal comfort and welfare. As noted previously, the singers conclude the song by asking for good health-good eyesight and strong knees-for. themselves. Moreover, surely the women singing such. a song want longliving husbands not only for the husbands' sake (and for the sake of the lineage) but tor themselves? Thus when the singers say 'keep our bangles and saris indestructible' (that is, keep our husband, alive so that we can continue k> ornament ourselves with bangles and wear the brightly coloured saris appropriate to our statm as subigins, women with living husbands), they are also, if you, will, applying for a sort of life.. imurance policy, not one that pays if the husband dies but one that keeps him alive for everyone's sake-including the wife (who may or may not love her husband u fully • the ideal wife is supposed to) and her children. In any case, the song's concern with blessings and benefits demonstrates an extmnely positive valuation of day-to-day domestic life. The women worshipping heroes whose lives were cut short seek husbands with long lives, not heroes! Having emphasiZ-ed the skimpiness of narrative in ritijagi songs m general, I have thus far ignored what is certainly the most evident and specific narrative allusion in this song. Sandwiched between two petition.. for husbands' longevity (the request for indestructtble saris and bangles is repeated a few lines later) is the phrase 'in the forest you fought alone'. This line has been directly appropriated from epic and other songs typically composed and sung by men. In fac~ it is one of the most common fonnulaic elements of hero songs. What is it doing here? It is hardly daring 1D suggest that the insertion of this line is an implicit indication of what is critical in the narrative. Like the hero's epithet, the st a ~ t evokes the entire heroic scenario but, unlike the tenn jhUJ)jhirj i which focuses attention on the fact of fighting headlessly, it focuses attention on fighting single-handedly. This is evidently the one narrative detail meriting an entire line. There are two aspects of this heroic solitude that bear mention at this point First, dying alone separates the hero from other warriors. In most of the narratives, the hero sets off to fight alone or, having seen his compatriots slaughtered by enemies, en identify heroes with boundary-keeping deities such m Kshettapal. On the identification of heroc s with the dihs in Banaras, sec Coccari ( 1986: 66-84 ). :,c On Pibuji and bhomiyijis. see Smith ( 1991: 90-91. 99) and Blackbum ( 1989: 25). ! fight. Idiot! Lowest of men! If I had come to you unanned only then would this conduct have been proper.'•

The selection of mili_tary episodes for dramatization, the focus in those episodes on the theme of Kshatriya honour, and the great ritual imponance of weapons-all these features underscore the fact that violence is central to Pandav Lila. But this violence is not associated with men or masculinity per se. Rather, it is associated with the Kshatriya VMQB, the 'class' of warriors. This is certainly true in a mythological and ritual sense, but it is equally true in a sociological sense because, although non-Kshatriya castes participate in the Pandav Lila, they rarely take warriors' roles. 9 Brahm ins, for example, typically participate in their class-specific capacities as astrologers, priests, or cooks: they set the dates of perfonnances, officiate at the worship of village deities, and prepare the large feasts with which Pandav Lilas culminate. Pandav Lilas are nonnally produced by predominantly Rajput (that is, Kshatriya) villages; on the single occasion when I saw a Pandav Lila sponsored by a Brahmin village, a vastly disproportionate number of the players were Rajputs, while Rajputs from nearby villages regarded the entire affair as a sham (Sax 1995 ). Participation in Pandav Lila by men of the Musician (dis) ame ~ essential, and their contribution is highly valued. Their drumming n indispensable for the performance itself, as well as for the rituals associated with it By means of ritual chants (birad, from the Sanskrit vrddhi), they summon village deities as well as the characters in the 'Mahabharata 14. 78.3-7, translated by Goldman (1978: 330). 9 There might be an exception to this tendency in the Nagpur/Kaliphat regi~ where increased participation by Brahmins is apparently associated with the introduction of printed scripts and the attenuation of regional stories not found ii Sanskrit versions of the epic, such as the Rhinoceros talc (see Purohit 1993 ).

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drama. But they take no dramatic roles, they do not engage in any representations of warfare, and they are forbidden to grasp the ritually powerful weapons. Once I watched as a drummer, who had begun bobbing up and down in his anistic enthusiasm, was threatened with a beating by drunken youths for daring to •dance' during a perfonnance. Participation in Pandav Lila by members of the lowest cames (Kohli. Lobar, Rudiya and so on) is strictly limited to peripheral and servile activities such as providing firewood. canying loads. and so forth: there is no question of men from these castes taking any sort of role in the drama itself. So it is clear that violence. a central aspect of Pandav Lila, is associated not with men or masculinity per se. but rather with the Kshatriya class. Moreover, it is associated not simply with Kshatriya men. but also with Kshatriya women. Ritual Sacrifice and Female Violence

The Pandava brothers· common wife, Draupadi, is a central character in both Mahabharata and Pandav Lila, and the local mythology surrounding her may be summed up in a single proposition: Draupadi is Kali. 10 The folk traditions of Garhwal unanimously assen that Draupadi/Kali caused the Mahabhirata war in order to slake her thirst for blood. As one proverb has i~ Draupati took eight incarnations ; the Kali of Kailash caused Kurukshetra."

When Draupadi dances. she always begins by circumambulating or otherwise honouring the fire that is kept burning in a comer of the dancing square. because she was born from the fire sacrifice of King Drupad. But when the drummer plays the drumbeat of war she becomes Kali. raising her anns above her head. crossing and recrossing her wrists. signifying conflict and strife. It is sometimes said that Draupadi was born in order to arrange the Kauravas • destruction. and that she was the Pandavas" divine protector as \\'ell as their wife {see below). In some Garh"'ali versions of .~ahabharota . the Pandavas' mother. Kunti. is also associated v.'ith violence. According to m c song I collected from the Tons river basin . both Kunti and Draupadi "'ere witches who conspired to arrange the i\1ahabhlirata \\'ar in order to satisfy their thirst for blood (Sax 1996).

·n1c explicit identification of Draupadi with Kali is also a katurc of th~ cult of Draupadi in Tami lnadu. Sc~ 11 ihcbcitd ~ I9XX. 1991 ). ~ifho ,I\ ,11,ir durop,lti lino: kiili k,: k,n ilih kun1k.~c..'tr;1 kino. 1

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11

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Like Kali, Draupadi craves blood. Perhaps the most graphic example of her bloodthirstiness is a ritual associated with Pandav Lila in the To~ river basin in the far west of Garhwal. This ritual is the culmination of a vow that is undenaken at Kali· s command after she has become attracted to some woman. or has become attached to her through contact with a ritual object such as a sword. For three weeks or thirty days or even three months. the woman must remain celibate, avoid intoxicants and red foods (such as meat, chillis, red lentils), and not engage in any son of offensive discussion during meals. Then, in a public ritual, she makes her culminating blood sacrifice to Kali. In January 1994. I witnessed a perfonnance of this ritual on the final day of a Pandav Lila. On that day, nine women-an unusually large number-were dancing in the bodies of their female 'beasts'. One by one they went and stood before the drummer. When they began to tremble and shake, the men dancing the parts of the Pandavas loosened their hair, which the women would then toss violently about, all the while dancing more and more wildly-an electrifying display! The women's trances ended only after they were seized by the hair and forcibly seated by one of the men playing the parts of the Pandavas. The day was filled with dancing. singing, and other rituals (see Sax 1996 for a fuller account). In the evening, as the sun dipped towards the horizon. the dancer playing the pan of Arjuna sprinkled a pinch of yellow pine-dust on the amulet of each female 'beast'. Meanwhile. a small tent-like structure had been set up in one comer of the dancing square, in which two men crouched with the goat kid stretched between them. 'Kali' became entranced for the ~ time, passed by the fire burning at one side of the dancing square, and grasped a handful of glowing coals. At the very instant the sun touched some nearby mountain peaks, the drummer gave a signal to the men inside the tent. Simultaneously, 'Arjun• flung yellow pine-dust on all the participants, so that they were all covered with bright yellow powder, while 'Kali' swooped into the enclosure and furiously sucked the blood from the young goat. It took her severdl minutes to do this, in silence, shielded from everyone·s eyes by the walls of the tent. When she was finished, the dancers each took up a blanket and fonned a cloth wall around the fire, where they sacrificed a second kid and threw it onto the coals. After the ritual was complete, the crowd sat silently, sated by so much violence. Meanwhile. the men were very solicitous towards the young \\'Oman "''ho had been possessed by Kali. They helped her wash her hands and face. and fed her fried breads and semolina s\\·eetmeats (puri-prasad). She sat quietly: it seemed to me that. once

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again. she had become a shy young woman, amazed to have played such a part in the ritual. As I watched her, a man turned to me and said, 'Now her 30-day vow is complete.' This ritual exemplifies in a graphic way what folklore and proverbial wisdom ~rt: that Draupadi is Kali~ Draupadi demanded the blood of her enemies, the Kauravas, in order to avenge the insult she suffered • their hands, and she wu in this sense the bloodthirsty 'cause' of the Mahabharata war. Garhwalis offer many examples of her bloodthirstiness, such as the following story: Draupadi's five sons were killed by Duryodhana. She said, 'The fire in my heart will be quenched only by blood.' Bhimsen said. 'A second Mahibhirata can't be fought; where will the blood come from?' So he threw his club up in the sky and it landed on his chest. Blood rushed from his mouth, and fell on the fire-pit from which Draupadi had been born, which had burned continuously until that momen~ and extinguished iL So they sacrifice the goat kid in memory of Bhimsen.

Draupadi is a font of violence, and the centrality of this fact in Pandav Lila shows how, in indigenous thought, violence cannot be linked exclusively to males. Women are also implicated, but not all women. Just ~ masculine fonns of violence are associated, not with 'men' in general, but rather with Rajput men, so female violence in Pandav Lila is associated exclusively with Rajput women. How is this so? , To begin with, the women who dance major parts in ~, ~specially the part of Draupadi-are always Rajputs. This rule · is, if anything, stricter with regard to female characters than male ones. Thus, although Brahmin men occasionally dance some part in the Ii/a, and Das men are prominently involved as musicians, Brahmin women rarely if ever take a public role, and the participation of Das women is limited to (rarely) fonning a kind of chorus for their menfolk. 12 Once again, it is not so much the gender categories of 'male' and 'female' that are detenninative here, but rather the indigenous- category of v~, :' specifically the Kshatriya ~ or 'warrior class'. Women who represent \ violence in Pandav Lila do so, not as women per se, but as Rajputs \ supporting their warrior husbands. In the Garhwali folklore surrounding Draupadi, it is often asserted that the Pandavas would have lost the war but for her support: - ·. 12

I know of one exception: on two occasions several •years apart, I saw the same low-caste woman dance the part of Runiya Chamari ('Runiya the Leatherworker', a low-caste character) in Pandav Lilas in the Tons Basin. It is, however, noteworthy that she often danced on her knees, in a clearly subservienJ role.

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When the Pandavas were in the city of Viral. someone came to Kanka [Yudhisthira ). and said ·Your hairdresser [that is. Draupadi] goes to the burning ground every day. eats the flesh of corpses, then bathes. washes. brings water and cooks your food. Why do you keep such a dirty woman with you?' So Yudhisthira sent Vallabh [Bhima] to check and see if the story was bUC. Bhima went to the river and saw that Draupadi was indeed eating human flesh. When she had finished. she bathed and washed, filled her vessels. and began to carry them home. Bhima took the fonn of Shiva. and sat along the path where she could see him. When she reached there, she said · Hey Bhima, why have you taken the form of Shiva today?' He was astonished that she had so \.easily recognized him, and asked her how she had done it. She said. ·oh Bhima, you probably think that I am your wife. But I am the power of God ( bhaga\·an ki sakti ). I am not your woman (stn). Lord Vishnu has sent me to protect you. I also protected you when you were exiled to the forest. and that is why you had no sorrow for twelve years.· She opened her mouth and. inside it, Bhima saw the sun and the moon. the earth and all il~ rivers. and so on. He saw it all and was astonished. 13

Draupadi is. then. understood as simultaneously a goddess and the most loyal of Rajput wives. supporting her v.'arrior husbands. That both Draupadi and Kali should be strongly associated with Rajput women should come as no surprise. since Pandav Lila is clearly a Rajput tradition (Sax 1995 ). The main characters in the story. both protagonists and antagonists. are Rajputs (that is. Kshatriyas); local Rajputs believe themselves to be directly descended from the protagonists of Mahabharata; dancers and actors in Pandav Lila are usually Rajputs; Pandav Lila celebrates the martial virtues of Rajputs by focusing on military episodes; the most powerful ritual objects in it are Rajput weapons; and Pandav Lila depicts a world where Rajputs are and should be in a position of power and authority. Draupadi herself was a Rajput whose divine violence was properly directed toward~ her husbands" enemies.

Conclusion Representations of both male and female violence in Pandav Lila are understood by Garhwalis. not in tenns of 'gender'. but as instantiations of the dhanna of the KshatriyalRajput. Rajputs. whether male or female. participate in violent acts (sacrifice) and in dramatizations of violent acts (the manial /i/as), not primarily as males or females but as Rajputs whose dham1n includes violence. Men and v.'omen from the other classes do not represent violence in this way. with the single exception of Brahmin ,: Cf. Draupadi's , i.,,~1nipm11 in Hiltc~itd ( 19XX: 85 . .:?91. :!93).

GENDER AND 11fE REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE

263

men. But even ~ the Hindu tradition, though it does not approve,

neverthel~ allows a Brahmin DW1 ID make his living as a warrior. 14 Drona and his son Ashvatthaman are the outstanding examples in the Mahibhirata of anomalous Brahmin warriors. 1' Pervasive reprcsentatiom of violence in Pandav Lila are not in the first instance manifestations of gender but of ~ - Does this mean that the purportedly universal category of 'gender' is of no me in understanding the culturally specific tradition of Pandav Lila? I think not. For one thing, the representation of violence in Pandav Lila is itself clearly gendered, inumuch ~ female violence is limited m myth, ritual and sacrifice, while male violence has m do primarily with warfare. However, it will not do m argue that Pandav Lila is ~ 'mere' representation somehow separate from the 'real world'. Public, ritualized events like Pandav Lila are crucial k> the self-understanding and the cultural con.muction of Garhwalis; they are ~ 'real' and powerful as a soldier's gwt, or the blood of a sacrificial vi~ or the suffering of an abused wife. Moreover, the relationship between representation and practice ~ by no means simple or straightforward. Religious images of bloodthirsty goddesses may simply be projections of male fantasies, or they may serve m mask a more widespread masculine violence: such hypotheses would require careful fonnulation and testing. One thing is clear, however. that in order to understand representatiom of violence in Pandav Lila. one must begin with local categories. This is as true for the scholar interested in the analysis of 'gender' as a universal category ~ it is for the one who is content to limit herself to the Indian material. To parap~ Rousseau, if we wish to understand humans, a single culture will do, but if we wish to understand humanity, we must look farther afield. 16 References

Goldman, Rohen P., 1978. 'Fathers, sons and gums: oedipal conflict in the Sanskrit _epics', Journal of Indian Philosophy 6: 325-92. Hiltebeitel, Alf, 1988. The cult of Draupacli. vol. l. Mythologies: from Gingee to Kurulcyetra (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). - - , 1991. The cult of Draupadi. vol. 2. On Hindu ritual and the Goddess (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) . .. See, for ~ l e . Manu 10.81. Karve ( 1974, chapter 8) suggests that such persons are unspeakably cruel: it was after all Drona who orchestrated the hein~ killing of Abhimanyu. 16 See Todori>v ( 1993, chapter I). 1 '

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Karve, lrawati, 1974 ( 1969). Yuganta: the end of an epoch (New Delhi: Orient Longman). Purohit, Data Ram, 1993. 'Medieval English folk drama and Garhwali folk theatre: a comparative study'. Ph.D. thesis, Department of English, H.N.B. Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, India. Sax, William S., 1991a. Mountain Goddess: gender and politics in a Himalayan pilgrimage (New York: Oxford University Press). - - , 1991 b. 'Ritual and perfonnance in the Pandaval ila of Uttarakhand', in Arvind Shanna (ed.), Essays on the Mahabharata (Leiden: E. J. Brill), pp. 274-95. - - , 1995. 'Who's Who in Pandav Lila?' in William S. Sax (ed.), Lila: religion and play in South Asia (New Y orlc: Oxford University Press), pp. 131-SS. - - , 1996. 'Draupadi and Kunti in the Pandav Lila', in Axel Michaels and Cornelia Vogelsanger (eds.), The wild Goddess in South Asia (Zurich: Studia Religiosa Helvetica), Vol. I, pp. 3S5-8 l. - - , 1997. 'Fathers, sons, and rhinocerose~: rnuculinity and violence in the PiQc;lav Lili', Journal of the American Oriental Society 117(2): 278-94. - , 1999 'Worshiping epic villains: a Kaurava cult in the cenbal Himalayas', in Margaret Beissinger, Jane Tylus and Susanne Wofford (eds.), Epic traditions in the contempora ,y world: the poetics of community {Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 169-86. - - , forthcoming. 'PiQ4av Lili', in Peter J. Claus and Margaret A Mills (eds.), South Asian folklore: an encyclopedia (New York: Garland). Sukthankar, Visnu S. 1933-66. The Mahabharata. Critical edition, 19 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute). Todorov, Tzvetan. 1993. On human diversity: nationalism, racism, and exoticism in French thought, translated by Catherine Poner (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press).

Chapter 10 ENGENDERING COMMUNAL VIOLENCE: MEN AS VICTIMS, WOMEN AS AGENTS.

Amrita Basu Introduction

From the l1lBM rape of Bosnian women ~ part of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing to the brutali7ation of Afghan women who have resisted the Taleban's reprivatization of women's roles, ethnic and religious conflict is suffused with stories of sexual violence. In .studying these transcripts of violence we find that the perpetrators of violence not only seek to kill, loot and destroy, but also to redefine their own identities as well ~ those of their victims. One fonn this may assume, which has received relatively little attention, concerns the victimi7Jltion of men from minority religious or ethnic communities by men from dominant communities, the state and nationalist movements. I argue that a key dimension of what is tenned 'communalism' 1 in India. conflict between members of different religious groups, is the attribution of ~uline or feminine traits to entire communities or, more precisely, to rren from these communities. In the course of riots, men from the majority community can settle scores with the hated Other by renegotiating their self-defined gender identity ~ well ~ that of the Other. Most commonly this entails adopting a 'hypennasculine' identity ·to compensate for their feelings of weakness while seeking to emasculate men of the other community whom they perceive~ overly aggressive. Thanks to feminist scholarship, we have come to recognize the political significance of the violence that is enacted in the domestic sphere and, its corollary, the rape of women ~ an instrument of warfare. Susan Brownmiller's classic Against our will ( 197S) identifies the ways in • I an grateful for research and writing support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 1

I have not used the term •communalism• ia this paper because its

implication that conflicts derive from differences in religious identities obfuscates their economic and political dimensions. Furthennore, I prefer not to ~ the same term to describe violence against the Sikh community in 1984 and agaiMt Muslims in 1990-3 when the causes of these conflicts are quite different. I hope to analyse the fluid and shifting natme of both gender and religious identities. 265

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which men from one nation or comnumity rape women from the opposing nation in wartime situations in order to humiliate their opponents. A variety of human rights reports demonstrate the prevalence of rape in situations where male power is destabil~ community identities are threatened and national boundaries have been eroded (Coomaraswamy 1994). In India, human rights groups allege that the anny has systematically raped Mmlim women in order to denigrate and demoraliz.e secessionist groups. Combatants and other state agents rape to subjugate and inflict shame upon their victims. an identify the implications of victimll'.ation for feminist activism. At the hean of MacKinnon's writings on Bosnian women is the attempt kl expand existing conceptions of human rights to take account of violence against women. Indeed this represents one of the major objectives of the international women's movement, ~ expressed at the Fourth International Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995. The weakness in her account, both analytically and prescriptively, however, is her tendency kl recognize only one group of victi~. Like women, minorities may be victims in one context and agents in another. What has been described as a pornography of violence (Mac~nnon 1994) is not only enacted on the bodies of women but also on the bodies of religious and ethnic minorities. The challenge for feminists is m broaden yet further existing conceptions of human rights to appreciate the multiple ways in which sexuality and sexual identity can be both violated and protected, be they the rights of women or of persecuted men. References

Agarwal, Purshottom, 1995. ·surat, Savarkar and Draupadi: legitimizing rape as a political weapon', in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia (eds.), Women and the Hindu Right (New Delhi: Kali for Women), pp.29-57. Agnes, Flavia, 1993. 'Behrampada: a besieged Dami', Manushi 74-5 (January-April 1993 ), pp.8-23.

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Alter, Joseph S., 1994. 'Celibacy, sexuality and the transfonnation of gender into nationalism in North India', Journal of Asian Studies 53, I (February 1994), pp.45-66. Ballbatc~ Kenneth, 1980. Race, sex and class under the Raj: in,petial attiq,,des and policies and their critics, 1793-1905 (New Yorlc: St Martin's Press). Basu, Amri" 1995. 'Feminism inverted: the gendered imagery and real women of Hindu nationalism', in Tanika Sarlcar and Urvashi Butalia (eds.), Women and the Hindu Right (New Delhi: Kali for Women),

pp. 158-80. - - , 1996. 'Mass movement or elite conspiracy? The puzzle of Hindu nationalism', in David Ludden (ed.), Contesting the nation: religion, community and the politics of democracy -in India (Philadelphia: Uni~ersity of Pennsylvania Press), pp.55-80. - - , 1999. 'Hindu women's activism and the questions that it raises', in Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu (eds.), Resisting the sacred and the secular: women's activism and politicaed religion in South Asia (New Delhi: Kali for Women), pp. 167-84. Bhagalpur Ri"'-! (Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi, April 1990) pp. 1-70. Brownmiller, Susan, 1975. Against our will: men, women and rape (New York: Simon and Shuster). Chakravarti, Uma and Nandita Haksar, 1987. The Delhi riots: three days in the life of a nation (New Delhi: Lancer International). Citi7.Cns' Commission, 1985. 'Delhi 31 October to 4 November 1984: report of the Citizens' Commission' (unpublished report, New Delhi). Coomaraswamy, Radhika, 1994. 'Violence against ,women: its causes and consequences', a preliminary report submitted by the UN special rapporteur, The thatched patio 1, 6 ( 1994), pp.1-116. Das, Veena, 1990. 'Our work to cry: your work to listen', in Veena ~ (ed.), Mirrors of violence: communities, riots and swvivors in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp.345-98. - - , 1995. Critical events: an anthropolqgical perspective a1 contemporary lndia (Delhi: Oxford University Press). Des Pres, Terrence, 1982. 'The struggle of memory', The Nation 10 (April 1982). Devji, ·Faisal, 1994. 'Gender and the politics of space: the movement for women's refonn, 18S7-1900', in Zoya Hasan (ed.), Forging identities: gender, communities and the state (New Delhi: Kali for Women), pp. 22-37. ~

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E_lson, Diane and Ruth Pearson, 1981, 'The subordination of women and the intemationali22tion of factory production', in Kate Young et al. (eds.), Of marriage and the market: women's subordination internationally and its lessons (London: Routledge), pp.18-40. Feldman, Allen, 1991. Fonnations of violence: the IUU13tive of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Freitag, Sandria, 1989. Collective action and community: public arenas and the emergence of communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press). Godelier, Maurice, 1981. 'The origins of male domination', New Left Review 127. Ghosh, Amitav, 1995. 'The ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi'. The New Yorker, pp.'35-41. Goldman, Robert P., 1993. 'Transsexualism, gender and anxiety in traditional India', Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, 3 ( 1993), pp.374-401. The Human Rights Watc~ 1995. Global repon on women's human rights (New York). Jurgensmeyer, Mark, 1993. The new cold war: religious nationalism confronts the secular state(Berke ley: University of California Press). Kakar, Sudhir, 1995. The colours of violence (New Delhi: Viking Books). Kishwar, Madhu, 1984. 'Gangster rule: the massacre of the Sikhs\ Manushi 25 ( 1984 ), pp. I0-32. MacKinnon,Catherine A., 1994. 'Rape, genocide, and women's hwnan rights', in Alexandra Stigalmayer (ed.), Mass rape: the war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). pp.183-96. Mayaram, Shail, 1993. 'Communal violence in Jaipur', Economic and Political Weekly (November 13-20), pp.2524-41. McClintok, Anne, 1995. Imperial leather (New York: Routledge). Mehta, Suketa, 1997. 'Mumbai', Granta. pp. 98-126. Menon, Ritu, 1993. lRecovery, rupture, resistance: Indian state and abduction of women during partition', Economic and Political Weekly (24 April, 1993 ), pp. WS2- I I . Miller, William Ian, 1993. Humiliation and other essays on honor, social discomfon and vio/ence(lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). Nandy, Ashish, 1983. The intimate enemy: loss and recovery of self under colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press).

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- - , 1993. 'Which of us are Hindus?' in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), Hindus and others, the question of identity in India today (New Delhi: Viking), pp.238-72. Peoples Union for Democratic Rights, 1984. Who are the guilty? Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November, jointly published by the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights, New Delhi. Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder, 1993. Real and imagined women: gender, culture and post-colonialism (London: Routledge). Report of the Joint Delegation of National Women's Organisations, 1993. Women against communalism (New Delhi). Ry~ William, 1971. Blaming the victim (New York: Pmitheon Books). Sc~ Joan, 1988. Gender and the politics of history (New York: Columbia University Press). Setalvad, TedSa, 1995. 'The woman Shiv Sainik and her sister Swayamsevika', in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Vaid (eds.), Women and the Hindu right(New Delhi: Kali for Women), pp.233-44. Shah, Kalpana, Srnita Shah and Sneha Shah, 1993. 'The nightmare of Surat', Manushi, 14-5 (January-April 1993 ), pp.50-8. Sinha, Mrinalini, 1995. Colonial masculinity: the 'manly Englishman' and the 'effeminate Bengali' in the late nineteenth century (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Tambi~ Stanley J., 1996. Leveling crowds: ethnonationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press). Weisberg, Robert, 1995. 'Private violence ~ moral action: the law as inspiration and example', in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Keams (eds.) Law's violence (AM Arbor: University of Michigan Press).

Chapter 11 IDENTIFYING DIFFERENCES: GENDER POLITICS AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY IN RURAL UTTAR PRADESH Patricia Jeffery

Introduction Movements associated with politicized religion-especially the Hindu Right or Sangh Pariwar-have acquired considerable social and political salience in India in recent years. 1 Usually, they have both essentialized the terms 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' and given a central place to gender issues. This paper explores the interplay of gender and religious community in one local setting, rural Bijnor (in western Uttar Pradesh). Religion as theological discourse, folklore and ritual practice has been amply examined elsewhere in this volume. By contrast, this paper focuses on the social and political significance of membership of 'religious' communities. There are, of course, dangers in replicating the Hindu Right's essentializing of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' communities, and considerations of space preclude detailed examination of the complexities of people's lived experiences. In any case, however, 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' are relevant social and political categories in Bijnor. Despite the claims of locals that Bijnor is an area of communal harmony, communalism has been an important and long-standing element in rural social life, whether the 'everyday communalism' outlined below, the 'institutional communalism' that structures rural life and affects minorities' access to key resources (P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998), or the dramatic and violent communalism that erupts in times of crisis (R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery 1994, Basu 1994). 1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the workshop 'Gender, Religion and Social Definition• in January 1996. Much of this paper was contained in a longer paper entitled 'Engendering communalism: everyday and institutional aspects of gender and community in Bijnor' that was originally prepared for the S.S.R.C. (New York) workshop 'Appropriating Gender' held at Bellagio in September 1994; other portions of 'Engendering communalism' appear in P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998. I am very grateful for helpful comments from participants at both workshops and from Roger Jeffery, as well as from numerous colleagues over the years, but I remain responsible for the paper that appears here.

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The Hindu Right in India also tends to essentialize the 'Hindu woman' and differentiate her from the 'Muslim woman', but assertions that Muslim women are singularly oppressed by 'Islamic tradition' cannot be sustained. For one thing, despite the differing locations and interests of women within communities (indeed, even within households), it is vital to appreciate the numerous parallels in the everyday domestic lives of Muslim and Hindu women in rural Bijnor; for another, as members of a minority, Muslim women in general are more adversely affected than Hindu women by communalized social and political processes beyond their homes (P. Jeffery and R. Jeffe 1998). Moreover, Hindu and Muslim women alike often critique aspects of the 'everyday sexism' to which they are subject in their domestic lives, but their critiques have not created an effective rallying.: cry for women to identify themselves primarily as women across th~· communal boundary. Bijnor District is distinctive for its large rural Muslim population, which (at over one third in 1991) is the highest in all of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.). Certainly, there are villages dominated by particular Hindu castes and others without substantial settlements of Muslims. But there are many 'mixed' villages with the populations of Hindus and Muslims more evenly balanced and yet others that are entirely Muslim or largely so. In Bijnor District, there are distinctive and separate Muslim institutions and class and caste structures to a degree that is not true in areas where Muslims fonn a small minority. Bijnor Muslims, then, are diverse and located in the full range of class positions, from wealthy landowners and businessmen to landless labourers. from cattle traders to barbers and traditional birth attendants (dm). Much of my joint fieldwork with Roger Jeffery has focused on two villages: Dharmnagri, which is populated by Hindus (both caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes), and Jhakri, which is a five-minute walk away across the fields and has an entirely Muslim population.2 We lived in a disused building 2

We worked in rural Bijnor for over a year in 1982-3 and for two months in 1985 on 'The social organization of childbearing in rural north India' ( funded by the S.S.R.C./E.S.R.C. (U.K.) and the Hayter Fund, University of Edinburgh), and for a year in 1990-1 on 'Demographic transition, women's status and agrarian change in north India (funded by the O.D.A.) when we worked in two other villages in addition to Dharmnagri and Jhakri. Both projects were conducted jointly with Roger Jeffery. We are grateful to the funding agencies for enabling us to do the research, to our research assistants and above all to the people of the villages where we worked for their patience and goodwill.

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on the dispensary compound on the edge of Dhannnagri, and women often visited us after they had consulted one of the medical or paramedical staff. People also availed themselves of rides into Bijnor town in our jeep. Thus, we often overheard and participated in conversations between women who might otherwise have had little occasion to meet. One day in 1982, for instance, Najma and Khurshida (two Muslim women from Jhakri), Viramvati and Vimla (two Scheduled Caste women from Dharmnagri) and the Muslim woman who was then the assistant to the Auxiliary-Nurse Midwife (A.N.M.) had congregated in our residence. Conversation turned to women's clothing. 3 Vimla looked Najma and Khurshida up and down with a mischievous glint in her eye. 'With a dhoti,' she commented to Najma, 'we can easily pee when we need to, but you have to untie your pajama cord and pull your pijima down. What happens if a man comes along suddenly? Surely it must be hard to get up quickly. We can just stand up and he won't see anything!'• The others laughed uproariously. 'True,' replied Najma. 'But our pijima cords make it harder for our husbands to trouble us [demand sex]! With your dhoti, how can you keep him off you?' Vimla and Viramvati nodded assent and more raucous laughter broke out. Once it died down, the A.N.M. 's assistant broke in, still giggling as she did so. 'And anyway, Muslim counyards generally have dry latrines, so we Muslim women don't have to contend with our pajamas in the open space of the fields like you Hindu women do!'

1

In rural Bijnor, Hindu women wear a dhoti (like a cotton S8f1) with a kurta (a shirt with the bodice down to the hips and with long sleeves), while Muslim women (and also Hindu girls before marriage) wear salvir or pijima (cotton trousers with wide or narrow legs) and qamiz (a long-sleeved dress down to the knees). Communal differences between men arc also marked in dress: Hindu men wear either pijimi or a dhoti that is drawn between the legs, while Muslim men wear lungi, a long wrap-around piece of cloth. The women's names arc the same pseudonyms as in Jeffery, Jeffery and Lyon (1989). ' In Bijnor, people speak local fonns of Hindi or Urdu that differ in common parlance only in some minor points of vocabulary; the scripts are entirely distinct (Hindi being derived from Sanskrit and Urdu from Persian/ Arabic) but few villagers are literate in either. Men's speech is relatively uniform, although those men who had attended school often talked to us in more standardized Hindi. Women's speech is somewhat variable because few had attended school and marriage migration meant that they had been raised in different localities. Here, transliterations normally follow the conventions used by McGregor ( 1993 ).

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This interchange highlights some common idioms and assumptions about women and men, about female bodily modesty and the embarrassment of being spied less than fully clad by a man, about sexual relations between husbands and wives. It also hints at these women s awareness of community differences (for instance, in women's dress) while suggesting an ignorance of some intimate details of domestic life that would easily have been evident if they visited one another's homes. On our first arrival in 1982, local people had proudly claimed that Bijnor experienced no serious communal problems even during the Partition period; there were also apparently no major outbreaks of communal violence in Bijnor during the 1980s, in contrast to neighbouring districts such as Meerut and Moradabad. This lack of overt communal tension in Bijnor nevertheless co-existed with the marking of communal difference (of which dress styles are one immediately striking example), even before the autumn of 1990, when the viciousness of the arson and killing in Bijnor town and the surrounding rural areas took many locals by surprise (R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery 1994; P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998, Basu 1994).5 From the outset of our work in Bijnor, indeed, we have had _to engage with the interplay of gend_er issues with religious affiliations and communal politics, a question of considerable salience within feminist theorizing.6 Behind Vimla and Najma 's jesting and banter, was there a potential for sisterhood transcending the communal boundary?

Domestic Politics and Everyday Sexism Throughout South Asia, movements associated with politicized religion have accorded a central place to gender issues. In India, organizations of the Hindu Right have constructed Hindu women as respected mothers of the nation, expected to rear pure and patriotic Hindu citizens, or to protect the birthplace of Ram with the ferocity of a mother defending her children's interests (Basu 1993, Chhachhi 1991, Mazumdar 1992 and 1995, Sarkar 1991, Sarkar and Butalia 1995 ). An essentialized 'Muslim woman' oppressed by 'Islamic tradition', ~

Communal disputes were not the only potential threats to public order in 1990-1: the period also included anti-Mandal demonstrations in 1990, the Gulf war and the Indian census in early 1991, and the election campaign and Rajiv's assassination in April/May 1991, all of which affected Bijnor. 6 See Afshar and Maynard (1994 ), Anthias and Yuval-Davis ( 1992), Feminist Review(l993a and b), hooks (1981 and 1984), Jayawardena (1986), Kandiyoti (1991), Moghadam (1994a and b), Phillips (1987) and Ramzanoglu ( 1989).

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victimized by her own menfolk (who are caricatured as prone to violence, sexually voracious and polygamous), and in need of rescue by gallant and fair-minded Hindu men has also been crucial to the thinking of the Hindu Right (Bacchetta 1994; Kapur and Cossman 1995 ). The 'vulnerability· of Muslim women was a key issue in the Shah Bano affair (which culminated in legislation denying divorced Muslim women legal redress to obtain maintenance after divorce) and latterly, but mercifully less dramatically, in relation to the 'triple talaq' (which centred on the notion that a Muslim man can divorce his wife at a whim) (Engineer 1987, Hasan 1989 and 1994, Pathak and Rajan 1989. ----~--es 1994 ). 7 Although the provisions of Muslim and Hindu family law alike are discriminatory on grounds of sex, portrayals of the Muslim woman oppressed by Islamic doctrine, seclusion practices and so forth have taken root in public discourse (Parashar 1992, Kapur and ossman 1995, Kishwar 1986). When we consider the lived experiences of women in rural Bijnor, however, this contrast between the domestic situations of Hindu and Muslim women does not stand up well to scrutiny. Domestic life in Bijnor is premised on gendered differences in resid~nce patterns and control over resources. Marriages are generally arranged by the couple's parents, and the bride's parents are expected to provide a dowry. Poor or disabled men who fail to attract a respectable dowry marriage might 'buy a bride'. Women usually neither control substantial economic resources, especially land, nor work outside the family enterprise, either of which might give them access to independent income in cash or kind. Young married women should be deferential, e~ecially to men (and older women) in their husband's village. -~omen's fertility (especially their ability to bear sons) is vitally ~mportant to their in-laws, but the bodily processes entailed in child(hearing are regarded with considerable disgust. Marital breakdown is 'rrrely dealt with through the law couns; generally, a woman flees to her parents' home, or her husband fails to collect her after she visits her parents. Either way, there is no question of maintenance. If there is no reconciliation, the woman will probably be swiftly remarried by her parents or brothers, often as a 'bought bride' .8 There is no necessary 7

For a more general comment on the creation of the 'Third World' woman as victim. see Mani ( 1990). • For more detailed accounts of the situation in rural Bijnor, see the references to my publications with Roger Jeffery listed in the bibliography. For other examples from the northern parts of South Asia, see Mandelbaum ( 1988 ).

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relationship between 'customary practice' in people's everyday lives and the formal principles of law and theologians' pronouncements, for all that the latter provide part of the context within which the state and other institutions operate both nationally and locally. In brief, the normal day-to-day functioning of domestic life in rural Bijnor is an important site (though certainly not the only one) for an 'everyday sexism' that does not differentiate Hindu and Muslim women as markedly as either legislation or religious doctrine might lead us to expect. Yet some details of women's domestic lives do seem to relate to their religious affiliations as Muslims or Hindus. 9 Among Hindus in Bijnor, a potential bride's parents initiate marriage negotiations, while among Muslims the potential groom's parents do so. But when we asked about the implications of such differences. people did not connect them to religious injunctions and simply said that it had been like this 'from the start' (pah/e-se). Muslim women know that Islam provides them with rights to a marriage settlement (mahr) which has no parallels for Hindu women, but they also point out that few Muslim women ever receive the mahr. Despite the Hindu Right's complaints about Muslim polygamous marriages (and the censorious comments of many high-caste Hindus in Bijnor about Muslims and polygamy), polygamy is slightly more common among Hindus than Muslims (in both cases extremely rare), for all that it is supposedly illegal for Hindus. On the other hand, Muslims and many Hindus comment adversely on de facto fraternal polyandry among the Jats, the dominant Hindu landholding caste in the locality. Further, Muslims often (though by no means always) arrange marriages between close relatives who would be prohibited as marriage partners for Hindus. While Hindus accuse Muslims of marrying their 'sisters', Muslims scorn the Hindus' propensity to marry their daughters into households of distant strangers. Not entirely implausibly, Muslims claim that their densely knit kinship networks and their capacity to ostracize miscreants protects them from dowry demands and deceptions about the potential bride or groom's character or education, or the standing of the family. 10 In addition,

Wadley (1994), Agarwal (1994), Dyson and Moore (1983), Raheja and Gold ( 1994 ), and Shanna ( 1980). • Here I am ignoring class differences in women's work, and the chances of aloung woman living jointly with her mother-in-law. One of our research assistants (a Brahmin woman) said that several recent marriages in her extended family had breached conventional prohibitions on

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Muslims often claim, married women can be saved from excessive · harassment (about dowry or other matters), and that veiling, seclusion, '• and visiting between married women and their natal kin compare favourably with Hindu women's experiences. ~ This might seem to place many Muslim women in a better position than Hindu women. F~r instance, the Muslim village of Jhakri feels like a ·face-to-face' (rather than a 'back-to-back') village, with constant coming and going within the village and with neighbouring villages, because women do not need a male chaperon. In addition, dowry demands are affecting rural Hindus in Bijnor, but not (as yet) rural Muslims. In some measure, the pressure to provide dowries may result in higher rates of girl child mortality and more masculine sex ratios among Hindus than among Muslims. Local people, however, were unaware of this feature of their d~mographic regimes. Yet such differences do not appear to translate into greater access to education, health care or contraception for Muslim women (Jeffery, Jeffery and Lyon 1989, P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998, R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery 1997). But the point here is emphatically not that I am arguing that Muslim women are less (or, indeed, more) oppressed than Hindu women. Rather, the above discussion is intended to help us dismantle the claims of the Hindu Right about the 'Muslim woman' and her special vulnerability to 'Islamic tradition·. Crucially, in ~heir daily lives, Hindu and Muslim women in rural Bijnor are embedded in similar domestic situations, in which religious doctrines as such play only an oblique part. At the same time, however, the parallels in women's domestic lives should not tempt us to conclude that religious affiliations are irrelevant in their lives.

I I

Everyday Communalism

Indeed, everyday (or 'banal') communalism was an established feature of Bijnor rural life well before the high profile and dramatic communal troubles that erupted in Bijnor and elsewhere in 1990 (Billig 1995). During our first fieldwork in Bijnor in 1982-3. for instance, communal stereotypes provided an important means by which people located themselves and othe~ (including us). In asserting this, however, I want to distance myself from discus- ,' sions of communal politics (not ohly those emanating from commun- 1 alist organizations) that essentialize communal identities, claiming that marriages between certain relatives precisely because of the anxiety about the deceptions perpetrated by strangers.

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they are given at birth and are the only authentic source of identity. 'Authenticity' is often central in identity politics, yet it rests on deeply problematic assumptions about internally homogeneous and timeless cultures, for ever distinguishable from one another (Bhabha 1990, Hall 1992, Said 1993 ). On the contrary, communal boundaries and their markers are penneable and fluid rather than static, socially constructed rather than natural, and continually sustained and reworked through social praxis (Barth 1969). Often, distinctions seem small-scale and even trivial to an outsider. But if they are compellingly real-if not entirely stabl~-markers of difference to people on the ground, they can have immense social and political significance. During the early days of our research in rural Bijnor, commun1l stereotypes often emerged when people asked us questions aimed at placing us in the local social topography. Some Muslims derided Hindus for 'setting up a stone anywhere and worshipping it', and they asserted the superiority of Islam and Christianity as monotheistic religions of the Book. Many of our Muslim friends were worried about our habits, such as joining in the antics associated with the Hindu festival of Holi. From the O!her side, some Hindus saw Muslims as rigid fanatics, while Hinduism was superior because it accommodated a range of views and deities. People pointed out how a Muslim baby's birth may be marked · by a chathi (and later, if it is a boy, by circumcision) while a / Hindu baby may be welcomed with a jasthaun or mandal (as well as a mundan or shaving of the head). 11 Marriage ceremonies differ (although many associated practices are similar for Muslims and Hindus) and Hindus cremate their dead while Muslims bury theirs. Contrasts were drawn on the basis of women's clothing (sari or dhoti versus salvar-qamiz) or marriage patterns (clan- and villageexogamy among Hindus versus tolerance of close-kin marriage and village endogamy among Muslims). People commented on diet (respecting vegetarianism versus preferring meat; avoiding beef versus avoiding pork; attitudes to alcohol). Hindus characterized ; Muslims who share a common plate as eating polluted food Uiithi), / while Muslims considered that the rigid separation of food onto : individual dishes signalled a lack of love between family members :· and friends. Caste Hindus (in particular) were deeply exercised by I

11

All four terms denote ceremonies for the removal of birth pollution .

either among Muslims or among Hindus. These ceremonies are not always perfonned, however. especially not if the binp is high parity and/or a girl. or if the family is very poor.

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.ur wilful insistence on accepting food in any home, especially Scheduled Caste and Muslim. And people in many quarters regarded our bed-bug infestation as just desserts for our reckless mixing with ·people from all walks of life. Muslims, Chamars and Jatabs (members iof Scheduled Castes) were regarded as having dirty habits; they were .blamed and blamed each other. 12 The Islamic year is punctuated by Ramzan, the two Eid festivals, Moharram, and Shab-e-barat, and the Hindu calendar is marked by Holi, Tijo, Divali and Dussehra. Differences in religious practice certainly provide ready-made repertoires through which people could differentiate themselves from others. But hardly anyone attends the Dhannnagri mandir except during major festivals, and Dharmnagri people do not make pilgrimages. Kathi performances are unknown in the village, and homes in Dhannnagri do not have domestic shrines that are the focus of regular piiji. Few women or men can read the sacred texts of Hinduism, and worship is not a regular part of their daily lives. Indeed, at several domestic festivals we attended, women curtailed the proceedings with comments like, 'Enough, that's all I can remember'. Likewise, few people in Jhakri can read the Qu 'ran Shari£ A handful have been to Sufi shrines in other parts of Uttar Pradesh, and one man has been on Haj to Mecca. Some Muslim men (by no means the majority) pray regularly at home or in the village mosque. Those women who know how to pray say that they cannot do so regularly because their work (dealing with animal dung and small children's excrement) precludes the requisite ablutions. feople '~sense of identity as a Hindu or as a Muslim thus derives not so much from its rei-~forCCment "by --d3jfr" rilual pr:actiCeSaS -.:a--=m~o~re~a~."P.l,rP!o'lu-se-aw~ren_eSSQ-fdlfference. --- · -------In the early I980s, the verbalization of communal stereotypes was rarely associated with overtly hostile, let alone violent, interactions. Indeed, people generally expressed their views in the absence of the 'Other' to whom reference was being made and interactions across the communal boundary were usually dealt with in a mutually couneous or jovial fashion. By 1990- I, however, some of the rhetorics and stereotypes common before the Shah Bano and Ayodhya affairs had been supplanted. or else supplemented, seemingly by commentary

}rom~-

•~ We had anticipated something of this: indeed, we employed Muslim and Hindu research assistants precisely to try to ensure their acceptability in the villages where we would be working. While the Hindu assistants became accepted in the Muslim village. however. the Muslim assistants were never welcomed in the same way by Hindus.

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emanating from the Hindu Right or from prominent Muslim clerics. Hindu Jats, for instance, reproduced arguments found in the newspapers, Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujal~ about the determination of present-day Muslims to destroy India like Babur had destroyed Hindu shrines; they complained about the introduction of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday into the national calendar and about processions taken out by local Muslims; they said they were justified in taking the law into their own hands to defend themselves and Lord Ram in the face of violent and hot-blooded Muslims who were anned to the teeth; and they welcomed the Provincial Armed Constabulary (P.A.C.) onslaught on local Muslims. From both sides of the communal divide came fears for personal security that had not been overt (or maybe even present) previously.

Communalized Gender Politics High-profile politicized religion in India-as elsewhere in the region and beyond-is deeply gendered in its manifestations, whether in the offerings of its ideologues or in the operation of distinctive systems of family law (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992, Mann 1994, Basu 1993, Moghadam 1994a and b ). At the local level too, and often in matters of everyday significance, gender politics and communal politics are intertwined with one another. In Bijnor, the near coincidence of Eid and Holi in April 1991 created anxieties about what trouble might erupt, anxieties that were exacerbated by the imminent start of the election campaign. The District Magistrate was rumoured to have said that he could not be responsible for the safety of any women out on the streets over this period. Even if his warning was no more than rumour, it made complete sense to the people we knew in Dhannnagri and Jhakri for women to be advised to stay at home during a period of communal tension. As is commonly the case, women in Bijnor have been both passive and active markers of communal difference. This is evidenced, for instance, in the entirely uncontroversial (at least at village level) way in which marriages are arranged. There is general agreement that sexual relationships ought to take place only within marriage. Moreover, marriages should be arranged by the parents or guardians of the bride and groom, using the advice and contacts of their relatives, including their own out-married sisters, fat hers' sisters and so on. A respectable marriage entails the transfer of a young woman to the household of her husband, who should be of the same caste and community. Among Muslims, the Sheikh, Qasai, Teli and so forth do not knowingly arrange

296

INVENTED IDENTITIES

marriages with someone from another 'caste', let alone a non-Muslim. Similarly, Jats, Rajputs, Sahnis, and Dhimars marry their own kind and would not dream of arranging a marriage 'outside', any more than members of the Scheduled Castes would. The exceptions are all socalled 'bought brides', when adult men arranged their own marriages. Local gossip always suggests that the woman is from a lower caste, but there is rarely any firm evidence since these women are all from many miles away and effectively cut off from their natal kin. Under normal circumstances, then, the selection of marriage partners is premised on marking caste and community. and on the (ideal) separation of spouse pools, in which married women may play important active roles. Not all sexual relationships keep within the fonnal rules, of course. Liaisons within castes generally cause only brief scandals, while across-caste relationships are usually harder to handle. But the taken-for-granted appropriateness of normal marriage arrangements is highlighted by the small number of sexual liaisons across religious community boundaries. In Dhannnagri and Jhakri, relationships of any sort between men and women from different religious communities are much less commonplace than intercommunal relationships between men. Hindu medical staff at the Dharmnagri dispensary deal with Hindu and Muslim women, Hindu and Muslim rickshaw-pullers' clients include women of either community, and Hindu shopkeepers and staff at the Government Co-operative Store in Dharmnagri serve people from several surrounding settlements. There is also an elderly Muslim woman from a third village, who is the traditional binh attendant who works in Dhannnagri; she also herds goats for a fee, and her clientele includes Hindus as well as Muslims. More intimate liaisons across the communal boundaries, however, seriously menace the normal order and may result in violence. Women are key to the izzat (honour, _respect) of their families. Casting slurs on the reputation of women or subjecting them to sexual harassment is one idiom through which the jockeying for position is played out by men from dominant castes, classes or communities (who display their ability to harass and humiliate women from weaker sectors). or by men from subordinate groups (who try to tum the tables on their superiors). Tue )'Ulnerability of women and of their reputations, and the dire implications of this for their men(ofk, are Centrar- to the social controls over ·w~~-" 's mobility and general . -··--~ demeanour. In 1982, the following instance indicated how the interaction of communal and gender considerations could be manipulated to aven the -- - - - - - - ·

. ~ ..........--,-

e

.__..,____._ _ _ _

--

··--~

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threatened crisis. Initial accounts presented the case in these terms. A Sheikh man in Jhakri was in dispute with a distant cousin over land and inheritance. One night, he abducted this cousin's wife and brought her to Dhannnagri where he sold her to some Chamars (Scheduled Caste). They then sold her on to some wealthy Sahnis (caste Hindus), for Rs 2,500 according to one version we heard. When she was eventually tracked down by the police (some accounts talked of her being found in Bareilly, about 150 km away), she was wearing a sari, had a bindi on her forehead and sindiir in her parting. People in Jhakri were outraged that Hindus-Scheduled Castes to boot-had taken one of their women, given her a Hindu woman's appearance, and challenged the honour of the entire village. Such an interpretation of her disappearance had the potential to force Jhakri men from beyond her husband's immediate family to take a stand. For the first few days, we all held our breath as tension mounted. In an effort to defuse the situation, a pailcayat was called. Thereafter, the account started to be reframed into the version that came to dominate. It began to be suggested that the Muslim woman in question had a reputation for running away from her husband. It was thus far from clear that she had been abducted: in all probability, she had eloped, or at least run away voluntarily. Within days, even women in Jhakri were endorsing this angle on the story. Some said that she had already run away into the fields outside the village the night she vanished, and she had gone from there with her husband's cousin. In another version, she was taken from her husband's house at night. But why, asked the commentators, had she not cried out to alert the people sleeping round about her? Surely that was evidence enough that she was a willing accomplice? Granted, her husband's cousin had been wrong to sell her-she was after all his cousin's wife, and she was also related to him in her own right-and he h~d not even made much money on the deal because the Chamars had given him only Rs 200. But the woman herself was not the sort of woman who should be kept in the village, because she was bringing be-izzat (dishonour) on them all by her repeated refusals to stay in her husband's house. As one Jhakri woman put it, 'that woman was no,goo~!ld me_wa~I}) ~~~ remain 111a husband's house'. Her husband said that he did not intend to divorce her, in order to punish her by preventing her from remarrying legitimately, but his fellow villagers considered this a mistake. Until he divorced her, they argued, she would continue to be called his wife, and he would have to tolerate the infamy. In short, the account modulated from one in which the Chamar men were regarded

to--

298

INVENTED IDENTITIES

as woman-thieves, stealing a defenceless woman and challenging tbJ honour of the Muslims, to one in which the woman herself was seen as \

an active agent in her situation, and cenainly not the sort of character · over whom communal tensions should be allowed to erupt. She had runi ·; away, and her husband was well rid of her. Instead of being angered,, : people should be relieved that she had gone. Communal trouble wasi I aYerted ~landeri~ a woman. .._, · Another HaTson p1np0iriB" a funher aspect of the dangers posed to public order. In 1985, a family of Muslims from Moradabad Dis~rict rented the large mango orchard between Dhannnagri and Jhakri. They set up camp in the orchard to protect the crop from thieves and to organize the harvest. One of them-the nephew of the man in charge-started a relationship with the daughter of poor Brahmins from Dharmnagri. One evening, the couple was seen together by the girl's father. They ran away and took shelter in Jhakri, at the house of the man who had supplied drinking water to the family in the orchard. The girl's father complained to Kunwar Satya Vira, the richest landowner in Dhannnagri, who was often asked to settle disputes. The next morning, all the parties appeared in front of him. He was most annoyed with the Muslim man who had offered shelter, commenting, 'He acted very foolishly. He was putting his whole village at risk by his behaviour. If the police had been called, they would have gone to Jhakri and razed the village to the ground.' In both Dhannnagri and Jhakri, people often told us that Kunwar Satya Vira was 'bigger than the police' and that this protected them from the depredations for which the police were locally notorious. People were relieved when he settled the matter peaceably. More generally, responses to sexual liaisons across the communal boundary are likely to be framed by local population and class balances. In addition, the Uttar Pradesh police are considered prone to act against Muslims (and, to a lesser extent, against Scheduled Castes) in ways they would rarely do against caste Hindus, especially the locally dominant castes such as Jats. All this structures the ability of Muslims (and others) to influence the outcome of incidents, even if they are the numerical majority in a particular locality. In 1990, the interplay of gender and communal identities was again dramatically clear and women were often directly involved in the unfolding events. From September 1990, communal issues had been foregrounded at national and local levels. In Bijnor town, attempts were made to build a temple on disputed land next to a mosque. Muslims and Scheduled Castes travelling to Bijnor for an 'anti-communalism' rally I

I

IDENTIFYING DIFFERENCES

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held by Mulayam Singh Yadav (then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh) were involved in fighting in the villages they passed through. During October, Hindu kar sevaks (volunteers) on their way to Ayodhya were arrested and imprisoned in the girl's secondary school in Bijnor town (itself closed in the wake of the Mandal disturbances). Hindu women associated with the local branches of the Durga Anny (durgi vihini) provided food for them and organized petitions and demonstrations calling for the release of local leaders of the Hindu Right organizations (Bharatiya Janata Party or B.J.P., Rashtra Swayamsevak Sangh or R.S.S., and Shiv Sena) who had been arrested in an attempt to pre-empt trouble. Women from these organizations also led the 'victory procession' through the streets of Bijnor on 30 October, allegedly chanting slogans such as 'Hindus are Ram's children, Muslims are bastards' (hindu rim ki bacci, musulmin harim ki bacci). On and immediately after 30 October, many parts of Bijnor District (including rural areas) were convulsed by violence, murder, theft and arson, and a curfew was in force in Bijnor town for over a week. Women were among the early victims of police firing. Allegations of abductions of women from their homes and of rapes and other sexually explicit attacks on women in Bijnor town-of Hindu men goring the pelvic regions of Muslim women with tridents (triAu/), of Muslim men amputating the breasts of Hindu women-and of the targeting of Muslim women by the local police and the Provincial Armed Constabulary spread like wildfire into the surrounding rural areas (R. JefTery and P. Jeffery 1994 ). Adjacent to Dhannnagri was one of several colonies established when Bengali Hindus from the then East Pakistan were resettled in India. Several young men from the Dharmnagri Bengali colony had joined the R.S.S. During the curfew in Bijnor town, they busied themselves cutting down bamboo from a plantation opposite the dispensary, making sharpened staves, and reputedly dipping them in cyanide for more effect. Attendance at the Dharmnagri clinic by women from Jhakri declined sharply. Tension remained high throughout the locality until after the ashes of the supposed Ayodhya martyrs of 30 October (asthi kailis) were brought through the town three weeks later. Over the succeeding months, local Muslims presented themselves to us as a vulnerable and embattled minority, increasingly fearful about their loss of relative certainties. And they certainly believed that the civil disorder associated with the communalization of local politics had borne particularly heavily on Muslim women (P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998). I met several Muslim women who had lost their relatives and

300

INVENTED IDENTITIES

their homes in Bijnor, and were reduced to wandering as beggars around the villages in the hinterland. Several events and rumours reinforced Muslim women's sense that their access to public space would be even more restricted in future. There were many stories of assaults, and we were told that some sldhlE) encamped by the Madhya Ganga Barrage (at the Ganges river a few kilometres to the west of Bijnor) had abducted several Muslim girls. Female Muslim students en route to the postgraduate women's college in Bijnor were said to have been challenged to respond 'Ram! Ram' to young men from the undergraduate college next door, or to have their way barred. The gauna (cohabitation) of a young woman married into Jhakri was delayed by several months by her in-laws' fear of travelling across the district with a dowry. Fears mounted again during the election campaign in April and May 1991. Muslims trying to use the main bazaar in Bijnor were harangued by anti-Muslim propaganda blasted from a loudspeaker at the B.J.P. offices. With the cries of 'Pakistan or the graveyard!' (pikistin ya qabristin) echoing in their ears, our Muslim friends in Jhakri no longer joked that there were so many Muslim villages in the vicinity that they were living in 'little ( chori) Pakistan'. The B.J .P. slogan of unity ( ektal, they argued, could mean only the obliteration of Islamic culture and religion. Before the election day, moreover, Muslim women in Jhakri were saying that they would be too frightened to vote, for the polling booth was to be in Dharmnagri. We reported the women's fears to Kunwar Satya Vira and he made arrangements to ensure that they would be able to vote without being hara&ied by local Hindu men.

Gender and Community Identifications According to the Hindu Right in India, Muslim women are victimized by Islamic tradition and the controls placed on them within their families. Yet the view from below suggests that Muslim women are often victimized by people and by social forces outside their community (P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998). Equally, the domestic situations of Muslim and Hindu women in rural Bijnor are broadly comparab1e, a conclusion based not solely on our own observations but also on the ways women and men talked about their domestic lives. In conversation, women might raise issues about marriage arrangement or dowry harassment in the course of more generalized quizzing of us about life in Britain (or simply trying to make sense of our domestic arrangements in Dharmnagri). Sometimes, groups of women

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would talk about wife-beating and insist that all married women in the locality have experienced it personally. Or they would complain about how their husbands and mothers-in-law disregarded their illnesses or devalued their work. Hindu and Muslim women, meeting in our home or taking a lift in our jeep, would hold fonh about the difficulties that parents face in trying to protect their married daughters, or about the conflicts between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. They would share the joy that a boy's birth brings or commiserate with the woman with several daughters, and they freely proffered advice to one another on how to deal with medical symptoms and recalcitrant daughters-inlaw. Similarly, conversations during our shared lunches with our Muslim and Hindu research assistants pointed up the many features of domestic organization that they too shared. Crucially, women's commentaries would often be distinctly critical in character, alluding to a sense of injustice that their work was so little appreciated or that their husband's quick temper made them liable to frequent beatings. And, sometimes, women gleefully recounted how they had managed to circumvent their mother-in-law's ~ommands, or succeeded in persuading their parents to chastise their husbands. In these and other ways, many women in Dharmnagri and Jhakri (and the other villages where we have worked in Bijnor District) readily critiqued at least some aspects of their domestic situations. ._ Nevertheless, there are numerous reasons why these critiques and resistances are unlikely to give rise to the ~ass activism of rural women l in Bijnor around gender politics. Far from )lecessarily having interests \ in common, women within a household-let alone beyond-may have contradictory and shifting interests. There are ambiguities in their

1 I

1 '

voices. Critiques of their domestic situations coexist with endorsements

1

of the status quo. And the balance of power is such that rebellion does not usually appear a wise course. Even within the community, the obstacles to women's local-level activism in rural Bijnor seem considera~le, though not totally insunnountable (P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1996: 1-3 7). Further, while emphasizing the similarities in the domestic experiences of Hindu and Muslim women in rural Bijnor we must also \; be ~-i~dful of the significance of communal identificatio11_s for women. Women, indeed, are often directly involved in sustaining communal .

1

dis_tinctions. They are not immune t0-communal stereotyping. They are ·\ generally implicated in the maintenance of caste and community dis~ 1 tinctions through marriage arrangements for their juniors. And women ·\I in Bijnor town itself played a prominent role during the communal i '•

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INVENTED IDENTITIES

oubles of 1990. The everyday signalling of communal differences and he entanglement of gender and communal politics, before as well as uring the events of 1990-1, hint at how the identification of women as ~omen-rather than as members of religious communities-cannot be ~ranteed because it is compromised by their other allegiances. Crucially, too, the communalization of life in Bijnor is delimited neither by the everyday communalism of village life nor by the highprofile communalism of national politics and communal riots. Rather, the processes by which resources are allocated demonstrate the profoundly communalized character of local society and of the local state, and the significance of inequality and not simply difference. As a minority, Muslims face difficulties in putting pressure on the local state to provide accessible schools and health facilities. Even with suitable education, Muslims generally lack the caste- and community-based contacts that provide men from the dominant Hindu castes (especially Jats and Rajputs) with access to employment, and Muslim men are underrepresented in white collar ·service'. Muslim women, as women and as members of a minority community, experience the interaction between the everyday sexism of their domestic lives and the communalization of local politics in a quite different way from Hindu women, especially those of the locally dominant castes. The processes that disadvantage Muslim women, then, have rather little to do with 'Islamic tradition' ( R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery 1997; P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery 1998). Such routine processes, alongside the more dramatic manifestations of the communalization of politics in north India, have an imponant bearing on women's identifications. If movements associated with politicized religion-whether Hindu or Muslim-succeed in laying claim to people's primary loyalties, women's capacity to build upon and mobilize around their insights into everyday sexism is seriously undennined. As so often, women's loyalties are liable to be divided (P. Jeffery 1998). 13 This, of course, implies flexibility and fluidity rather than fixity to people's identifications. In the early 1980s, communal identities did not overwhelm other sources of identity. Rather, they existed alongside other sources of identification-aside from gender-that were also struggling to be heard. Sometimes, countervailing voices claimed a common humanity with a common origin and destination, beside which mere matters of ritual and custom (rit, riviJ) and of Hindu and Muslim u See also Afshar and Maynard ( 1994 ), Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992).

Phillips ( 1987) and Ramzanoglu ( 1989).

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are of negligible importance. Such rhetoric generally sounded trite, however, and seemed to carry little weight in local political discourse. For instance, during the rioting in Bijnor town in October 1990, Kunwar Satya Vira (along with the Muslim landlord from a neighbouring village who is chainnan of the local madrasi committee) called a large public meeting in which leaders from all the surrounding villages made speeches in favour of communal harmony and stressed the common humanity of all, whatever their caste or religious allegiance. But most people we talked to after the meeting were cynical about the speakers' underlying motives. The rhetoric of common humanity was also sometimes deployed when people wanted to smooth over our persistence in visiting all manner of homes in the villages. During weddings, Roger was sometimes introduced to other guests-in apparently glowing terms-with reference to his insistence on regarding people as human ( insin) rather than as Hindu or Muslim. By contrast, other vocabularies subdivide the categories 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' along caste and subcaste lines. In July 1990, the government announced its plan to implement the Manda) Commission's recommen• dations to extend the reservation of college places and government jobs to Other Backward Classes (O.8.C.s) as well as Scheduled Castes (S.C.s). Consequently, the distinctions between O.8.C.s, S.C.s and other Hindus acquired a panicularly heightened political salience (Beteille 1992, Engineer 1991, R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery 1997). Members of dominant Hindu castes in Bijnor (such as Jats) argued that reservations gave S.C.s and O.8.C.s an unfair advantage in education and employment vis-a-vis the 'forward castes'. For their part, many members of the 'little' or lower castes (chote zit) distanced themselves from the dominant castes. Like the S.C.s and O.8.C.s, they often asserted that Jats and other big landholding groups treated S.C.s and little castes badly, and they insisted they would not be hoodwinked into believing they had interests in common with those who dominated them in the routine order. Muslims also resented the reservations, on the grounds that they were as deserving as the S.C.s and O.8.C.s, and equally excluded from the economic mainstream. Something of the fluidity and complexity of these caste and communal loyalties is reflected in the unstable party political alliances that have characterized the political scene in U.P. during the 1990s. The Bahujan Samaj Party presses for the interests of the S.C.s in U.P. but the numbers of S.C. people cannot give the B.S.P. electoral success without alliances with other parties. Over the past few years, political expediency has led the B.S.P. to ally at times with Muslims and

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0.8.C.s, and at others with the Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.). In 1990, the then Chief Minister of U.P., Mulayam Singh Vaclav (identified with the 0.8.C.s of eastern U.P.), held rallies throughout the State, trying to mobilize Hindu lower castes (0.8.C.s and S.C.s) along with Muslims around issues of class, caste and communal domination, but he met with no long-term success. Meanwhile, the B.J.P. was using the Ayodhya campaign to try to fabricate a 'Hindu' identity (glossed as 'Hindutva') as a means of combating the alignments privileged through the implementation of the Mandal Commission ·and Mulayam Singh Yadav's campaign. At the local level in western U.P., cross-caste and intercommunal political alliances are unstable, partly because they rarely map straightforwardly onto common economic interests, in contrast to eastern U.P. Economic differences (or perceptions of conflicting economic interests) may indeed constitute an element in caste and communal politics in western U.P ., but they almost certainly cannot alone 'explain' communal disturbances and tensions. Certainly, different castes and communities have no established patterns of political, social or economic collaboration. For example, the Dharmnagri Chamars and Jatabs (S.C.s) and the Jhakri Muslims were generally mutually disdainful, so it is unclear that alliances such as those attempted by Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1990-1 could ever be successful. Not surprisingly, voting in the Bijnor constituency in the 1996 and 1998 general elections has been divided three ways, with the winning parties gaining little more than a third of the votes cast. In sum, then, Bijnor's rural society is shot through with crosscutting fracture lines, sometimes papered over and muted, sometimes dramatically foregrounded. People's identifications are socially constructed in the face of competing alternatives, and reflect the outcomes of political struggles to win people's minds and loyalties, whether rallying imagined communities of believers or of those subject to class or caste oppression. A sense of commonality-and a sense of difference from ·the Other'--does not arise naturally or reflect natural or primordial allegiances, contra the rhetoric of movements associated with politicized religion. Other imagined communities can be fabricated that may carry greater conviction. As such, we should not expect people's identifications to be carved in stone, or their loyalties to have finality and stability. It is far from clear, however, that any eclipsing or ev~n erosion of religious com~unity as a source of social identity would necessarily result in the greater foregrounding of wo~en's identities as women.

.

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Certainly, communal identities seriously undermine women's identifi- . cation around gender issues. Indeed, feminists' attempts to build · allegiances among women have received a particularly hostile press from parties associated with politicized religion in India (and elsewhere , in the region) on the grounds that feminism is an inauthentic and i discreditable instance of cultural imperialism. 14 Moreover, politicized religion has also tended to be hostile to left-wing movements that focus' on class interests and threaten to divide the 'community'. Nevertheless. we cannot assume that the enemy's enemy is a friend. In South Asia (as in many other regions). left-wing organizations have been notoriously slow to attend to women's concerns and to afford the space in which their identifications as women are tolerated. On the contrary, in such organizations. women's activism is all too often construed as a means by which the class becomes divided against itself and distracted from its opposition to its Other. Women in such organizations face continual struggles to k.eep their concerns on the agenda ( Basu 1992, Rose 1992, Sen 1990). · In rural Bijnor, indeed: the everyday sexism that ~ffects women-albeit in differing ways-is more commonly taken for granted rather than challenged in the political programmes of male-dominated organizations, whether these are left-wing or are associated with politicized religion. J:veryday sexism is al~o-~_ k~_y_~s2J1__wby women in rural n~~h ~~~i-~ _d(! .!!oi fo~ a powerful political constituency. Women are largely contained within households betwtctt which, as well as within which, there is competition. Women also have few resources that could oil the wheels of the political system and (in our experience) they tend to vote as their hu~~ands insU'llet ,hem. Many village wol11CD-Ule1Jnor·do indeed critique their situations but this is not due to the influence of feminist activists (at least not in western Unar Pradesh). Under _thur~sent system of politics, however, women's critiques generally· translate into indi'vidll3Hstic ·and often secretive forms of resisiance~-ratlie"rtnari int·o· thCma·ss mobttization of women around gender identities in the political arena as more conventionally For an example of this, consider some of the responses to feminist interventions in the debates surrounding the Shah Bano case as well as the Roop Kanwar satiin 1987 (see Kumar 1994). Evidence that women at the grass roots critique and resist their situations undermines claims that 'feminism' is a Western impon. of course. but assertions that Indian feminists are out of touch with the everyday lives of (authentic) Indian women have been used to considerable effect against them (for a discussion of the dilemmas that the question of authenticity poses for feminists in South Asia, see P. Je(fery 1998). M

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understood. In brief, women's critiques of everyday sexism do not seem to provide a sufficient basis for their identification and mobilization as women. especially when faced with competition from other sources of identity and other demands on their loyalties, such as those articulated by the forces of politicized religion. References

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