Media Technology and Cultures of Memory: Mapping Indian Narratives [1 ed.] 9781032385860, 9781032395692, 9781003350330

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Media Technology and Cultures of Memory

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory studies narrative memories in India through oral, chirographic and digital cultures. It examines oral cultures of memory culled from diverse geographical and cultural landscapes of India and throws light on multiple aspects of remembering and registering the varied cultural tapestry of the country. The book also explores themes such as oral culture and memory markers; memory and its paratextual services; embodied memory practices in the cultural traditions; between myths and monuments; literary and lived experiences; print culture and memory markers; marginalized memories in hagiographies; displaying memories online; childhood trauma, memory and flashbacks; and the politics of remembering and forgetting. Rich in case studies from across India, this interdisciplinary book is a mustread for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, sociology, political science, English literature, South Asian studies, social anthropology, social history, and post-colonial studies. Elwin Susan John has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Sophia College (Autonomous), Mumbai, India, since 2015. Prior to this, she was a UGC-SRF researcher at the University of Hyderabad, where she worked on the socio-cultural intersections between body and disease narratives. She was awarded an MPhil in 2012 and a doctoral degree in 2018. Ever since, she has been actively involved in interdisciplinary research ventures, along with fulltime teaching. Amal P. Mathews has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Assumption College (Autonomous), Kerala, India, since 2012. She was awarded an MPhil from the University of Hyderabad in 2012. Besides being involved in various teaching and learning initiatives, she is also interested in exploring new dimensions of literature and translation. She is currently pursu­ ing her doctoral research in the interdisciplinary field of children’s human rights in twenty-first-century fiction.

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory Mapping Indian Narratives

Edited by Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Mathews

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Mathews; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Mathews to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-38586-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-39569-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-35033-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India: An Introduction

vii viii xi

1

ELWIN SUSAN JOHN AND AMAL P. MATHEWS

PART I

Oral Culture and Memory Markers 1 Between Myths and Monuments: Memorialization in the Koti Chennaya Tradition of Tulunad

21 23

YOGITHA SHETTY

2 Khuded Geet: Nostalgic Songs of Garhwali Married Women

39

MAMTA SHARMA

3 Translation as Intergenerational Transmission of Memory: Snake Worship in Kerala

51

APARNA JITH

PART II

Print Culture and Memory Markers 4 A Baker’s Dozen on Memory: Reading and Writing “Acknowledgements” K. NARAYANA CHANDRAN

67 69

vi

Contents

5 Saints Textualized: Pious Commemoration of “Friends of God” and Vernacular Hagiographies in Nineteenth-Century Malabar

81

MUHAMMAD NIYAS ASHRAF

6 My Memory Keeps Getting in the Way of Your History: Memory as Counter-Historic Discourse in the Poems of Agha Shahid Ali

100

ARNAB DASGUPTA AND SWAGATA SINGHA RAY

PART III

Electronic Culture and Memory Markers 7 Mayurakshi: A River to Live By

111 113

SAURABH BHATTACHARYYA

8 Mnemonic Reimaginations: Situating the Anglo-Indian Literary, Lived, and Spatial Representations in Post-Colonial Kerala

124

AISWARYA SANATH AND MANOJ PARAMESWARAN

9 Traumatic Memory and a Child’s Cry in the Film Guilty

138

MOUSUMI SEN

PART IV

Digital Culture and Memory Markers

151

10 Gender, Partition and Memory: Case Studies in Micro-Heritage and Identity

153

MEGHAMALA GHOSH AND SARASI GANGULY

11 The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: The Plurality of Subjectivity in Memories of “Desh”

170

DEBARATI CHAKRABORTY

12 Meals and Migrations: Sindhi Culinary Memories of the Partition

183

YASH GUPTA

Index

198

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 3.1

3.2

3.3 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

The most popularly circulated image of Koti Chennaya Koti Chennaya statue in the garodi at Kalmady in Udupi district Garodi at Tingale in Udupi district Parava’s mediumship of Koti Chennaya in the garodi at Anjaru in

Udupi district Some of the serpent idols from other sacred groves were moved to

Mannarashaala Sree Nagaraja temple through the Kaavumaattam

(‘transfer of sacred groves’) ritual A Pulluva woman singing pulluvan pattu, accompanied by a

Pullorkkudam in Ondikkaavu, Ochira Parabrahma Temple,

Kollam District The Aayilyam puja at a ‘lone tree’ kaavu of a family home in

Sreemoolanagaram, near Aluva, Ernakulam District Antique Durga idol from Bhattacharya, Arijit Antique armlets from Ganguly, Jaba Antique armlets from Ganguly, Jaba Anjali Acharjee’s heirloom ring from Ganguly, Priyadarshini

26

29

31

34

55

58

60

159

161

161

166

Contributors

Muhammed Niyas Ashraf is an Assistant Professor in the History Department of GITAM University Bengaluru, India. He also submitted his doctoral thesis at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His PhD project unravels Arabic-Malayalam devotional poetry of Malabar Muslims in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean littoral. In 2019, he was a DAAD Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research includes print and literary culture in the Indian Ocean, vernacular textual tradition, and Islamic intellectual history, among others. He recently published a monograph, Islamic Reformism and Malaya-I.i ummah in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Kerala, South West Indian Ocean (SASNET Lund University, 2020). Saurabh Bhattacharyya is an Associate Professor and IQAC Coordinator in a government-aided college in West Bengal, Chandraketugarh S.S. Mahavi­ dyalaya, a college affiliated with the West Bengal State University, India. His PhD thesis, for which he was awarded his doctoral degree in 2010 by VisvaBharati, is entitled “The Changing Image of the West in Indian Prose Writ­ ing in English”. His areas of interest and publications include post-colonial literature and he has recently completed a Minor Research Project on dys­ topian Indian fiction in English, funded by the University Grants Commis­ sion, India. He is also a guest faculty at West Bengal State University, India. Debarati Chakraborty completed her graduation, post-graduation, MPhil and PhD from the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. An oral history enthusiast, she has worked as a field investigator in the Department of History, Jadavpur University in a SEPHIS-funded digital archive project, “Remembering the Native Place: A Nucleus of Social Memory among the People Displaced by Partition of India (1947)”. She joined the Department of English, Techno India University, West Bengal, as an Assistant Professor, where she is currently Head of the Department. She was recently elected as Vice President of the Oral History Association of India for the second term. K. Narayana Chandran has been a teacher of English for 50-odd years. He is the Institution of Eminence Research Chair Professor of Literary and

List of contributors

ix

Cultural Theory in the Department of English, School of Humanities, at the University of Hyderabad, India. Arnab Dasgupta is presently pursuing his PhD at Presidency University, work­ ing on his thesis entitled “Remapping the Urban: Space and Postmodern Aesthetics, 1970–2015”. He completed his MPhil in English on J.M. Coetzee at the University of North Bengal in 2018. His research interests include modernist and post-modernist literature, science fiction and Indian writing in English, posthumanism, and cultural and literary theory. He qualified as a UGC-JRF in 2016. Sarasi Ganguly is a postgraduate student in the School of South Asian Studies, Pondicherry University, India. A history and heritage enthusiast, she is deeply interested in museums and cultural spaces. Her interests include cul­ tural studies, international affairs and conservation. She aspires to create a safe space for all things old, through social media, public engagement and creative endeavours. Meghamala Ghosh is a postgraduate student of English Literature at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. She is interested in memory studies, war stu­ dies, diaspora studies, and literary horror and intends to pursue a career in academic research. Her field of interests also includes translation and gender studies, contemporary politics, art and cinema. At present, she is also working with heritage outreach through The Memory Gazette which she co­ founded, and which deals with the archiving of micro-heritage and indivi­ dual memory, especially from the times of the Partition of Bengal. Yash Gupta is a postgraduate student at the University of Münster, Germany. His previous professional experiences include research, documentation, and museology. A graduate in Literary and Cultural Studies, his previous works concerned the analysis of gendered textualities in online pandemic obituaries; evaluation of gendered and sexual interpellation in connection with mythic constructions; and methodological applications of asexualities as a mode for surveying the construction of compulsory sexuality in online South Asian dis­ courses. His research interests include the influence of power and hierarchies on digital discourses, death, nationalisms, food, identity, a/sexualities, and other tangential themes. Aparna Jith is currently finishing her PhD in Translation Studies from the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies (CALTS), School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, India, on narratives related to serpent worship in Kerala. The chapter submitted for this publication is part of her PhD research at the University of Hyderabad. Her areas of interest include Malayalam folklore, Translation Studies, collective memory, narrative ana­ lysis, English literature and Gender Studies. Manoj Parameswaran is a PhD scholar in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, UK. His primary area of interest

x

List of contributors is the sociology of religion and he is currently pursuing his research in reli­ gion and development.

Swagata Singha Ray is a faculty member in the Department of English in Gur­ udas College, Kolkata, India. She completed her MPhil on Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy as a posthuman text. Her areas of interest are Indian English writing, feminist writing, diasporic studies and modernist and post-modernist literature. Aiswarya Sanath is a PhD research scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur, India. Her research interests include the frameworks of memory and migration studies. Mousumi Sen is currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of English, Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India. She earned her master’s in English Literature from the University of North Bengal. Besides academic writings, she is also passionate about composing poems, and some of her poems were published in Sage Cigarettes Magazine, in the United States. Her research areas include popular culture, Gender Studies, and feminism. Mamta Sharma is a JRF scholar, pursuing an MPhil in Comparative Litera­ ture in the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, Delhi University, India. Her area of interests and research are studying folklore and tribal literature. She has written a couple of papers on the folklore of Garhwal, Uttarakhand, and has also presented a paper on the topic “Folklore of Uttarakhand: A Perspective”. She has also translated folktales of Garhwal, which are currently under review process. She has been teaching English Language and Literature at NCWEB (Delhi Uni­ versity), as guest faculty since 2020. Yogitha Shetty is an Assistant Professor of English in the Government First Grade College affiliated to the University of Mysore, India. She has a PhD degree from the University of Hyderabad for her research on the public memory of twin deities Koti and Chennaya among the Tulu-speaking com­ munity on the west coast of South India. Her research works have been published in Indian Literature, Sage, Rupkatha, Shodha and other reputed journals. Yogitha’s areas of interest include gender and minority discourse, mnemocultures, community and Tulu language and culture.

Acknowledgements

Words fail us in expressing our sincere thanks to Professor K. Narayana Chan­ dran, the seasoned scholar in English teaching in India. It was a moment of pro­ found joy when we received his chapter, which incidentally happens to be a meta work on “Acknowledgements”. Through this venture, we ardently hope that we have done justice to your passion for reading and research which we have imbibed under your tutelage at our alma mater, the University of Hyderabad. The Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS) and its founders and chairpersons, Dr Merin Simi Raj and Dr Avishek Parui, have been instrumental in igniting our interest in this nascent yet exciting field of Memory Studies. We express our gratitude to INMS for being a fecund platform for the critical deliberations and its stalwarts. We also thank Professor Arjun Ghosh of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT New Delhi, for the critical gleanings and insights we have gained from his course. Much appreciation to Dr Vimal Mohan John (SB College, Kerala) for his careful and meticulous reading of the draft. We would also like to thank all our contributors who have offered their chapters to this book. We express our indebtedness to each one of you for your contribution and cooperation. We would like to place on record our thanks to Angelin Joy, Antara Ray Chaudhary, Brinda Sen and Shashank Shekhar Sinha in the Routledge editorial team for accommodating us and our myriad queries in the process of publishing this book. We are deeply indebted to the thorough copy editing by Susan Dunsmore which has taken the project to its completion. This brainchild of ours would never have been conceived, had it not been for the unstinting support of our friends and family. Our parents, spouses and children have been generous in affection and magnanimous in tolerance while we traversed the ups and downs at various junctures in the past months.

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India An Introduction Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Mathews

A wicked messenger falls into trouble, But a faithful ambassador brings health. (Proverbs 13:17) Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes. (William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1) X Æ A-12. (Goodall and Spark, 237)

1 Introduction The three texts mentioned above are taken from three different phases of the history of communication with each being centuries apart. The first one, from the Old Testament, the Book of Proverbs, is a collection of wisdom sayings and ethical instructions from the Bible. A history of oral tradition is indisputably embedded in this book which was written down and later translated and interpreted in different geospatial contexts. The second quote is taken from William Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, which directly points to the importance of a certain kind of speech, when King Lear warns his daughter Cordelia to rephrase her answer. And the last cryptic quote is the name given by Elon Musk to his son, born in 2020. These distinct quotations from different socio-cultural contexts are used as a prologue to this introduction in order to mark the sig­ nificance of communication in the life of human beings and also to signify the transformations in the history of communication. Communication is essentially a form of remembering and forgetting, or rather, an interplay of memories. Different mediums of communication will ensure that matters of cultural significance are selectively remembered and for­ gotten, depending on the socio-political agencies that are at work in each cul­ tural context. Therefore, in an ontological and epistemological positioning, media technology is the manner in which technology fabricates and recalibrates memory. Here, memory is regarded not only as the subject matter of a DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-1

2

Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Matthews

communication, but also as the determining factor behind the act of remem­ brance and forgetting. Therefore, it can be suggested that the encoding and decoding of individual and collective memories are synchronous corroborators of our historical narratives. Every culture and every civilisation have their own mnemonic codes and vehicles of preserving memories and what posterity reads as “history” is a projection of how efficiently and politically these mne­ monic devices might have been functional in the past and retained in the pre­ sent. There could be memories that are consciously pushed to the fringes or purposely left unnoticed or even deliberately wiped out from any forms of discernible manifestations. This idea would be sufficient to contend that the political act of cultural remembering and forgetting has accompanied human­ ity all along its evolutionary trajectories. This volume aims to bring together a collection of essays which will map the technological mediations that have defined and modified the socio-cultural significations of the personal and col­ lective memoryscape in India. Subsequently, these essays will suggest that the selective and modified memories have caricatured the convenient histories of our times. With the term “technology”, this volume wishes to emphatically broaden the scope of a systematic treatment of narratival memories in India through oral, chirographic and digital cultures. This approach to the study of select narratives is relevant as the discourse of memory will be negotiated through its unique situatedness in India where orality, print and the digital media co-exist and grapple with each other, in the present as well. More interestingly, the various historical events that have moulded and altered Indian consciousness can be read as the reciprocations of individual and collective memories too. Extending Astrid Erll’s treatment of memory studies as “not on the past as it really was, but on the past as a human construct” (Erll 5), this collection of essays will explore the mnemonic contours that are constructed in the Indian imaginary through technological ideations. All the chapters in this volume argue that media technology and its offshoots play a pertinent mediatory role in designing and conceptualising the world around us.

2 Evolution of Media Technology: From St John’s Word to MS Word The history of the world and the evolution of human operations can be traced with the help of the history of communication. In fact, the transition from oral forms of communication to digital technologies will inform us about the chan­ ges that have undergone in the biological and cultural progression of humanity. It clearly states how technological improvisations have been the products of a socio-cultural evolution. In other words, the needs of human societies and the intellectual prowess of humanity paved the way to newer forms of technological inventions. This volume argues that all kinds of technological advances in the history of communication are a form of stepping across, that challenge existing norms, attempt dares and traverse unchartered territories. As Salman Rushdie notes in “Step Across This Line”:

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India

3

The first frontier was the water’s edge, and there was a first moment, because how could there not have been such a moment, when a living thing came up from the ocean, crossed that boundary and found that it could breathe. Before that first creature drew that first breath there would have been other moments when other creatures had made the same attempt and fell fainting back into the waves, or else suffocated, flopping fishily from side to side, on the same seashore and another, and another. There were perhaps millions of these unrecorded retreats, these anonymous deaths, before the first successful step across the waterline. (75) The history of humanity is therefore a series of trials and errors. While some trials turned out to help humans, some other attempts proved to denote the limitations of humans as a species; we are just “fish who by chance learned how to crawl” (Rushdie 75). If this sampling of crossing over and stepping across is brought to the context of communication, one would notice that technologies of media communication have undergone tremendous alterations since time immemorial. There have been inventions, erasures and re-inventions that have completely dismantled humanity’s perception of knowledge systems. Broadly put, this evolutionary trajectory of media technology can be grouped under orality, chirographic and typographic traditions. Prior to the invention of writing with the aid of script and print technology, communication was primarily oral. This phase of communication is now called the pre-print culture. In oral cultures, memory possessed an embodied character as tales and experiences were shared orally. This was essentially a bardic world where stories were either passed on through generations or retained within a community itself. Some of them were told by travelling story tellers who tra­ velled from one locality to another, who shared stories for a living. Stories and tales would be shared either with or without an accompanying musical instru­ ment by a teller while a group of people were listening to the teller. Each time the teller repeats the story, the framework of the story is retained but the order of narrating will change, depending on the artistic and verbal skills of the nar­ rator. In other words, memory in oral cultures was not verbatim memory. The history of epithets can be traced back to this tradition of storytelling. In order to avoid monotony and repetition of a similar pattern of story, story tellers generated new comparisons while narrating stories. The story was enriched with a variety of comparisons and more creative elements, depending on the narrator’s knowledge and experience. Orality lacks chirographic documentations. Hence, every telling of a story and rendition of a song will be different. Due to the lack of a written proof of the final or authentic version of a text, narrators always improvised their stories and songs. This means that there could be erasures and additions to a previous version of the same narrative, which facilitated the possibility of refuting, debating and never reaching a resolution in the situations of a general dis­ pleasure. However, in order to ensure continuity and progress to the narrative,

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Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Matthews

certain lines in the stories and songs would be repeated. Oral traditions therefore thrived on internalisation and memorisation. The need for memory was greatly appreciated in these cultural contexts for the teller and listener. Walter J. Ong suggests: In a primary oral culture, to solve effectively the problem of retaining and retrieving carefully articulated thought, you have to do your thinking in mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence. Your thought must come into being in heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expressions, in standard thematic settings (the assembly, the meal, the duel, the hero’s ‘helper’, and so on), in proverbs which are constantly heard by everyone so that they come to mind readily and which themselves are pat­ terned for retention and ready recall, or in other mnemonic form. Serious thought is intertwined with memory systems. (34) This formulaic construction of narratives (with rhyme, rhythm, etc.) which aided memory in oral traditions, can be found in the earliest versions of written nar­ ratives. Stories like Panchatantra, The Arabian Nights, etc. adopted a style called frame narrative. There was an overarching framework to these stories and, at the same time, these stories can be narrated independently too. Similar vestiges of orality can be read in the earliest poems, such as Bocaccio’s The Decameron and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The rhythmic trait of oral narratives aided the process of memorising verses in the many pre-print cultural expressions of India, as in Dastangoi, Voviyo, Margamkali, Theyyam, Kathaprasangam, Buta Kola, Yakshagana, Villupattu and many more regional oral traditions. All these cul­ tural traditions were performative in nature, complemented with a lot of singing, dancing and theatrics. Of significance is also the fact that knowledge sharing in oral cultures was solely dependent on meeting people. There was no other entry point to access these cultural knowledge systems as opposed to chirographic traditions where knowledge would travel across space and time without the presence of the author/narrator. This limitation of oral culture also denotes the significance of it in our contemporary times. The earliest form of written communication is probably visual telling, such as the traditional paintings and wall art forms as in the case of the Gabarn­ mung cave in Australia, the Cave of Beasts in the Libyan desert or the Bhim­ betka rock shelter in Madhya Pradesh. In visual expressions like frescoes, murals and wall art, the representation of memory continued to be fluidic in nature and specific to cultural practices. In Indian visual traditions, such as Pattachitra, Kawad, Warli, etc., the teller used the visual elements as an aid to memory. The scroll contained paintings that narrated a story but the story was completed only with the oral translation of those images by the narrator. Therefore, from this tradition of visual communication, the idea of writing also underwent several changes before it reached the stage of the nature of digital

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India

5

communication. This transition is a product of how human lives and their requirements have also begun to change. When there was a need for portable forms of communication, Sumerian clay tablets replaced cave paintings and inscriptions. Later, these tablets also caused issues of comprehension, storage and transportability. Moreover, in hieroglyphs and cuneiform, there were a limited number of images and stock characters which in a way restricted com­ munication. Decoding the images also turned out to be a difficult task as only a limited group of people could make sense of the images and what they signified. Therefore, two simultaneous advances were promoted in the history of com­ munication, namely, writing surfaces and writing systems. Papyrus, palm leaf manuscripts, parchments, scrolls and finally paper were invented as a con­ venient writing surface. Writing systems evolved in different civilisations, as did languages and its associated scripts. With more reliable writing systems and writing surfaces in place, the chiro­ graphic tradition adapted itself to a new socio-cultural context. Knowledge production and consumption are closely associated with power and this rela­ tionship is further asserted in chirographic culture, when there was a mismatch between the ones who could compose narratives and the ones who could write them. This historical juncture can be called a scribal culture. Very often, people who composed verses couldn’t write and they were dependent on scribes to complete the task of writing. In the early manuscript world, narratives became alive only through their utterance. Similarly, in chirographic culture, writing is only giving a direction to the utterances that it registers. However, the dynam­ ics of power relations were very evident as literacy continued to be the pre­ rogative of noblemen and clergy. Books and the scriptoriums were guarded and positioned in special locations within the monasteries. M.T. Clanchy notes: Books guarded, preserved, and enshrined their contents between their boards more effectively and visibly than rolls. The scribe-evangelist writing in a bound book became a medieval stereotype because he embodied this ideal of the durability of holy Scripture; such an image does not aim to portray ordinary writers in their mundane workplaces. (120) Philosophers like Plato argued that written knowledge is impersonal and the process of writing itself is mechanical. He opined that writing can externalise knowledge and hence weaken the mind. Therefore, an inhuman way of pro­ cessing knowledge can reduce the need for memory, as in the oral tradition, when poets relied on the formulaic conceptualisation of thought. However, after the invention of alphabets and writing systems, writing became an effec­ tive way to store and disseminate information. As Walter J. Ong notes: The new way to store knowledge was not in mnemonic formulas but in the written text. This freed the mind for more original, more abstract thought. Havelock shows that Plato excluded poets from his ideal republic

6

Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Matthews essentially (if not quite consciously) because he found himself in a new chirographically styled poetic world in which the formula or cliché, beloved of all traditional poets, was outmoded and counterproductive. (24)

As the history of writing progressed, the question of authorship also arose. An author’s name is tied with the book and written along with the text, where the author claims a space for himself or herself. Speech is transitory and performative in nature and it is always tied to the speaker. Oral traditions always required a speaker to complete the process of meaning-making and these practices would be invalid without a speaker/performer. Whereas for the written word, the author’s control over the interpretation of the written text is on unstable ground. More­ over, the written text crossed geographical boundaries at ease, reaffirming the externalisation of knowledge. Further ahead, when chirographic cultures were coupled with the revolutionising printing press, the construction of memories was supplemented by written documentations. This also enabled the possibility of questioning and subverting the constructed memories as print equipped humanity with the chance to go back to a written narrative. The evolution from scrolls to codex has been thus an eventful storytelling of our history. In scribal culture, the number of copies of the same document was limited, while the printing press ensured a greater number of copies in less time. The history of writing thus marked the entry into a typographic age from the previous chirographic age. Print is a mechanical process which did not develop in isolation. Just as any machine can alter our relationship with the “other”, so did print technology. Print played a significant role as a tool for communication in the revolutions that happened in Europe during the eighteenth century. Further modifications like Gutenberg’s moveable type helped humans and made the production of various goods, including books, more convenient. This transition from a nat­ ural economy or chirographic age to that of a money economy or typographic age also marks the features of modernity, such as the rise of individualism, democracy, capitalism, etc. The printed text made scientific inquiry possible. Unlike in the oral traditions, the presence of the author is not required to settle disputations of the printed text. The role and access of the reader increased tremendously as it was possible to analyse, reconsider and go back to the pro­ positions made in a printed text. This eventually led to the creation of new knowledge systems and, hence, the possibility of alternative power structures with a nuanced hold of things. From the great reliance on authority and authorship as in medieval times, print technology catered to the interests and inclinations of the reader. With the popularity of print technology and increased readership, literacy became a common objective of the masses. This enabled them to question authority and reorient their own understanding of the world around them. The typographic age redefined the trope of memory, as memory did not exist only in terms of memorising a text, rather, it facilitated a constant rejuvenation of creative and imaginative memories. The printed text allows one to frame and visualise a sound (orality) by writing about it.

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India

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And by this time, historically speaking, civilisations did not have to invent a language. Once they had the right materials to write, ideas were written down. The rise of the novel tradition during print modernity further corroborated the birth of leisure time. There was increased urbanisation and thereby there was a clear distinction between work time and leisure time. Due to increased literacy, people started discovering solipsistic modes of entertainment to engage them­ selves during their leisure time and reading was an interesting option available to them. This can also be traced as a biological evolution as Walter J. Ong identifies the changes in the human brain after the invention of print and writ­ ing technologies. Ong quotes the work of Julian Jaynes that argues that the human brain was bicameral in the beginning. However, one hemisphere lost its functionality with the advent of writing: Jaynes discerns a primitive stage of consciousness in which the brain was strongly ‘bicameral’, with the right hemisphere producing uncontrollable ‘voices’ attributed to the gods which the left hemisphere processed into speech. The ‘voices’ began to lose their effectiveness between 2000 and 1000 BC. This period, it will be noted, is neatly bisected by the invention of the alphabet around 1500 BC, and Jaynes indeed believes that writing helped bring about the breakdown of the original bicamerality. (Ong 30) The next significant turn in the history of media technology was photography and moving pictures/cinema. During the eighteenth century, electricity was invented and this led to other electronic mediums of communication, such as television, the telephone, the telegraph, radio, etc. Electricity as a medium stands out as this doesn’t contain any content of its own unlike other media. Electricity enables other mediums to alter their composition and functionality similar to how manual machines turned out to be instantaneous and mechan­ ical. In terms of the networks of communication, the juxtaposition of visuality, as in photography, with the electronic medium of communication revealed the representation of memory in more graphic detail. This brings the history of media technology from the manual mode to the mechanical mode. Photography is a form of mechanical reproduction where the camera become an extension of the eye. It can create images faster than the hand can draw them, which is essentially a shift from manual to mechanical mode. However, there is no quality of an original here as all that the camera produces is a negative. When a work of art is reproduced, its authenticity factor is tampered with, as opposed to probably a manuscript which is unique and not mass produced. Walter Benjamin’s seminal work on art and mechanical repro­ duction argues: Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one ele­ ment: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the

8

Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Matthews history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original. (219)

Furthermore, mechanical reproduction can erase any element of authenticity or originality from a work of art. Therefore, the temporal and spatial location of a work of art needs to be noted. As Benjamin points out, “The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced” (220). This essence is conceptualised as the aura by Benjamin, which is depleted by mechanical reproduction. The aura can also be understood as the memory which was designated to a work of art originally. This order of memory redu­ ces with the products of mechanical reproduction, as in the case of the infinite number of copies that can be generated from a single negative of a photo. The negative in itself is not a photo but several procedures mediate the process of creating these several copies. In this scenario, the historical function of art transforms from a ritualistic concern to a secularised and commercialised one. Here, the creation of art becomes a political act: From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. (Benjamin 222) Further advances in photography and cameras paved the way to cinema which was also mass consumed. The “moving images”, as cinema was initially called, in terms of technicality and functionality, relied on a constant supply of images to the viewer’s eyes. This continuity of visual images dispossessed the viewer from the possibility of introspecting or contemplating or rekindling old mem­ ories. In a way, it distanced the viewer from the work of art and hence the performance lacked an “aura”. Art in the age of mechanical reproduction hence, signalled a political understanding of art. It can be argued that art can be manipulated by the changing patterns of media technology. Any form of art is therefore an epistemological response to history. In cinema, the actor’s performance is fixed, as opposed to traditional theatre where the actor could improvise due to the feedback of the audience during the performance itself. The relationship between audience and performers changed, similar to how the relationship between technology, media, society and culture also had altered. Another mechanical device that hastened the progress of the

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electronic medium is television. Television revised the functions of existing social institutions and social relationships. The power of this medium, which has both visual and auditory appeal, altered the meaning of news and enter­ tainment. Newspapers became a stagnant and outdated mode of news delivery, with the birth of live television, where there are specialised channels that pro­ vide round-the-clock news coverage. This locates the history of media technol­ ogy in a capitalist mode of production. It resulted in unforeseen consequences on the institutions of the family, culture and social life. The specialised TV channels, prime time news delivery, etc. aided a consumer economy. Raymond Williams observes in his work on television as technology and culture: The ‘commercial’ character of television has then to be seen at several levels: as the making of programmes for profit in a known market; as a channel for advertising; and as a cultural and political form directly shaped by and dependent on the norms of a capitalist society, selling both consumer goods and a ‘way of life’ based on them, in an ethos that is at once locally gener­ ated, by domestic capitalist interests and authorities, and internationally organised, as a political project, by the dominant capitalist power. (36) The active involvement of memory further deteriorated in the electronic age. Television extended the existing mechanism of passivity. Audience put in very little effort to understand what they consumed through the television and they continued to be uncritical couch potatoes, aiding a consumer economy. The development of the internet, which was originally for military purposes during the Cold War period and later on as a commodity for civilian usage, marks the birth of the digital era. Digital space ensures the possibility of an indefinite kind of space. It is more efficient in synthesising data from innumerable books that are accessible through digital media. For example, the hypertext allows linking of texts across spaces, disciplines, etc. Digitality has further refashioned writing spaces: “the space of electronic writing is both the computer screen, where text is dis­ played, and the electronic memory, in which text is stored” (Bolter 13). However, the human brain cannot read infinite amounts, neither can it retain boundless memories. Studies are proving that the attention span of humans is falling with the advances in technology. Therefore, instead of reading many books, humans rely on the graphic visualisation of data by computer algorithms. Computer programs can read many documents and prepare a visual projection of the summary of the data it has gleaned, probably in a matter of minutes. Furthermore, with the merging of the internet and social media, customised communication came into being. In this, each individual receives personalised feeds in their news streams. Due to digital technologies, retrieval and archiving of memories have been transformed into amorphous clouds. In the digital world, an institutional control and authority over the flow of information are challenged, as anyone can post news and fake infor­ mation online and they can go viral. Governments and other institutional appara­ tuses are yet to implement efficient laws that can contain these truth bubbles.

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There are a lot of unique signifiers that make digital media different from the other existing modes of communication. Digital media require appropriate codes to access them and they have revolutionised the traditional approach to a text and a printed book. Hypertext authoring programs like Storyspace, inter­ active fiction, virtual reality projection rooms like CAVE, etc. transgress the possibilities of digital media in reimagining and recreating our communication systems vis-à-vis the relevance of humanity within the dynamic epoch that we inhabit now. N. Katherine Hayles observes: Like the boundary line between computer games and electronic literature, the demarcation between digital art and electronic literature is shifty at best, often more a matter of the critical traditions from which the works are discussed than anything intrinsic to the works themselves. (12) Media technologies have changed their form and modality from orality to digi­ tality, reaffirming the fact that humanity cannot survive without communication and that cultures are always improvising the existing forms of communication technologies. It is also inferred that the evolution of media technology is not only an intellectual and technological evolution but also a biological evolution, depending on how media, memory and language are co-related to ensure that the communication pathways are smooth. The medium of communication is an important component which tells us the way to understand content. Thus, homo sapiens has come a long way from the oral world to the digital world of codes. We have acclimatised to the changes and advances in science and technology with perfect ease. Living in a century of digital natives, the older generations have witnessed the latest entrants operating and adapting technology and its diverse applications, with matchless alacrity. The digital migrants, on the other hand, are slow learners who pick up new knowledge and expertise in a laborious, if not an awkward manner. It is also significant to note that govern­ mental institutions around the world are meticulously engaged in a digitising mission in all the various areas, such as health, tax, law, academia, registration, insurance, banking, medical science and other allied fields, particularly in the developing countries. Thus, individuals and governments are so completely enmeshed in a digital whirlpool of codes. With the advent of cloud computing, the localised nature of data storing changes to non-localised indeterminate “clouds”. It is significant to note that cloud computing enables the storage, management and processing of applications and operating systems, by using a network of servers which is remotely accessed. Hence, memory has literally and metaphorically moved to the unchartered domain of “clouds”.

3 Memory, Media and Language Memory studies is a burgeoning area of exploration in India and these chapters aim to explore, in an interdisciplinary manner, the protean nature of memories

Media Technology and Cultures of Memory in India

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and their potential to shape and contest Indian narratives. Even though the liminal nature of memory is debated as a reliable source of evidence, the proliferation of memory in our situatedness continues to influence the pro­ duction and destabilisation of Indian narratives. Chapters in this collection are from the disciplines of history, cultural studies, literature, comparative literature, art history and translation studies, and they collectively represent the technological revolutions that have influenced the construction of memories. Communication is relevant as it highlights the significance of humanity as a species and the manner in which humans have improvised the different media to improve their networks of communication. In Aztec and Inca civilisations, a recording device called khipu was used to record ideas and information. It is essentially an intricate pattern of tying knots on a string and historians have been trying to decode these khipu knots for decades. Gary Urton’s study of these knots reveals: To begin with, as far as we can tell, what these Inka “knot makers, orga­ nizers, and animators” – khipukamayuqs – were doing was a version of what I am doing as I type this text out on my computer; that is, they were making signs, using strings, knots, and colors in a rule-bound way to store information – in a manner akin to what we refer to as “writing” – that could be accessed by knowledgeable people to retrieve it in a process simi­ lar to what we call “reading.” (xi) Or, the paintings by the cowboy artists of America reveal that the Native Americans generated smoke signals to send messages, although communication was restricted to limited signs and symbols. In all these examples, language played a significant role to translate the signals, symbols and signs into com­ prehensible utterances. This is closely connected to the idea proposed by Mar­ shall McLuhan that all media are extensions of human senses. Any kind of technological advance can be connected to the human senses and how humanity has grappled with the affective responses to communicate: What I am saying is that media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among themselves, when they interact among themselves. Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or doc­ umentary novel. It is the poets and painters who react instantly to a new medium like radio or TV. Radio and gramophone and tape recorder gave us back the poet’s voice as an important dimension of the poetic experi­ ence. Words became a kind of painting with light, again. (McLuhan 64)

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The changes in the medium of communication are therefore reflective of the kind of messages that are conveyed through a particular medium and how complicated the messages started becoming. This reiterates what Marshall McLuhan has conceptualised as, “the medium is the message” (2). This is because the message conveyed through a medium is not only to do with what is communicated using the new medium, but also ipso facto about how challen­ ging the surrounding socio-cultural context of the user has become. Technolo­ gical advances introduce pace and efficacy while constructing novel models of a society. As McLuhan suggests: For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure. (2) Therefore, McLuhan categorically identifies with technological determinism through his dictum, the medium is the message, because new forms of media are a product of advances in technology. An alternative point of view is offered by Raymond Williams when he argues that technology is a product of history. This particular practice of historicising technology kind of palliates technology as a singled-out culprit behind the changes in our living systems and thought processes. Technological development is therefore understood as a certain momentary juncture in history, which will evidently alter with the changing times. For example, a gramophone could play only recorded music while a radio could broadcast live music. Television further responded to the needs of society by ensuring both audio and visual moments. It could exploit the needs of a society on a larger scale. In the words of Williams: Television, like any other technology, becomes available as an element or a medium in a process of change that is in any case occurring or about to occur. By contrast with pure technological determinism, this view emphasises other causal factors in social change. It then considers particular technologies, or a complex of technologies, as symptoms of change of some other kind. Any particular technology is then as it were a by-product of a social process that is otherwise determined. It only acquires effective status when it is used for purposes which are already contained in this known social process. (5–6) Keeping this role of historical needs as a nudge towards technological advances, one can argue that science fiction in literature is an indicator of social needs. The utopic representations and unprecedented plots in literature can be read as a prudent signifier that certain social needs are already in place while the tech­ nology to resolve those needs is yet to be developed.

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The different advances in media did not introduce communication or interaction into human communities, but it challenged the existing forms and then accen­ tuated the efficacy of the newer models, such as how print medium worked better than orality or how electronic media were better than print, or digital technology being better than electronic media, so on and so forth. Ultimately, all media used language for communication and this volume traces how language registers memory through the changing trends in media technology. Suzanne Nalbantian points out, “artistic expression in whatever form is a supremely human mechanism for retaining memory” (5). Whether it is a painting or a written piece of literature or an oral tradition, all these expressions of communication can be conceived as a form of memory. These routes taken by memory may not be comprehensible to everyone, probably due to the lack of a specific artistic training. However, the fact of the matter remains unaffected, which is that memory is stored and preserved in all forms of artistic and literary expressions. This justifies this collection of chapters as it probes the representation and preservation of memory through the various contributions enabled by media technology. Memory in the digital highlights two significant things, according to Alice Bell, “first, that more and more ephemera seems to be kept online – accidentally or otherwise. Second, that memories are becoming increasingly public – social, even” (n.p.). Since information is more readily available and as it is documented in some place, people tend to remember less using the biological functions of memory. This is similar to the transition from orality to print, where less use of memory was required and hence authors started to attempt genres that did not incorporate rhyme schemes or a rhythm, which were hitherto techniques to memorise pieces of literature in oral cultures. Similarly, in the digital, the need to remember using the structures of memory is deemed not required because, after all, memories are public and remembered collectively. Not only collective experiences, but individual memories are also shared on social media, which are further shared by friends or followers and are later reminded by the social media itself in the form of celebrating one year of knowing someone or how social media reminds you to contact someone on their anniversary, etc. Essentially, in the digital, algorithms and simulations decide truth, reality and situatedness. Here, memory becomes a technological function and not a biological one. Memory is always known to have worked with an external resource, like a book or a place or an individual. Digitality as an external resource extends the possibilities of memory by augmenting biological memory and refurbishing it as a technology-laden memory. This medium alters the abilities of human memory. This argument irrevocably claims that memory does not necessarily remain isolated or it is not a solipsistic function. Memory is therefore a colla­ borative function where external resources can modify the acts of forgetting and remembering. Unlike books and other tangible objects of ephemera, digital technologies augment the functions of memory in unfathomable measures. The information available on the internet is inexhaustible. Daniel M. Wegner uses the term, “transactive memory” to refer to this collaborative behaviour of coding, storing and retrieving information. A study by Storm and Soares states:

14

Elwin Susan John and Amal P. Matthews Transactive memory systems are formed whenever two or more individuals share the responsibility of learning and remembering. By dividing the labour of remembering as a function of individual expertise, and then relying upon each other when such information is needed, each individual can potentially have access to more information than they would have had alone. In a transactive memory system, individuals do not need to know any particular piece of information- rather, they merely need to know who knows it or where to find it. (5)

The internet and its offshoots promote cursory reading and it is also about reading more within a short reading span. This accounts for the distraction of the mind and weakening of memory. On the contrary, the internet thrives on these distractors which keeps the reader hooked to the screen, through doom scrolling, advertisements, shopping offers, online payments, etc. This distractive modality of the internet prevents deep and active thinking. The fake interactivity offered by this medium can make one oblivious to real life. Nicholas Carr studies these tendencies of communication technologies: When we click a link, we get something new to look at and evaluate. When we Google a keyword, we receive, in the blink of an eye, a list of interest­ ing information to appraise. When we send a text or an instant message or an e-mail, we often get a reply in a matter of seconds or minutes. When we use Facebook, we attract new friends or form closer bonds with old ones. When we send a tweet through Twitter, we gain new followers. When we write a blog post, we get comments from readers or links from other bloggers. The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment. (10) Consequently, it becomes extremely difficult for the brain to create strong synapses, when the same neurons are used for multitasking. When we do not pay mindful attention to what we consume as data, what is fed into the working memory will not form strong cords within the neural pathways. Instead, this new data or the cognitive load will stand out and our understanding of that information will remain shallow: We become mindless consumers of data. We’re able to transfer only a small portion of the information to long-term memory, and what we do transfer is a jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source. (Carr 11)

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Once again, this can be perceived as the problematic of a new intellectual and communication technology. Nevertheless, digital technology has ensured documentation on a massive scale that is unheard of. Hence, the maddening pace at which governments and non-governmental institutions are forever engaged in digitising data in all spheres of life. “Go digital” is a trending hashtag and it is here to stay. This is an era of digitalisation in all spheres of life by individuals, governmental machineries and corporate companies worldwide. This can be attested by the fact that the unique identification code of each individual/citizen, linked with their vital biometrics, enables the recognition of fake and ghost identities, even in the developing economies of the world. With the advent of Artificial Intelli­ gence (AI), humans are forever hooked on technology and this is going to remain so with even more force and pervasiveness. Inroads are being made by AI to undertake tasks which specifically require human intelligence and dis­ cernment. Henceforth, the existing population and the posterity of netizens will have to think and act as per the dictates determined by the offshoots of tech­ nology. The day is not far away when AI robotic intelligence can program a new and updated wave of AI robotic intelligence counterparts, as portrayed in The Terminator movie series.

4 The Current Project: Mapping Indian Narratives All the chapters are streamlined according to the coherent central theme of memory, and there is a systematic theoretical and methodological progression in each of the Parts in the collection. The Parts are connected through the lens of media technology and memory in the Indian context. The chapters are divi­ ded into different sections not only on the basis of the medium (oral, print, electronic, etc.) used for documenting memory but also on the kind of memory that is shared, represented and constructed through the different media. Part I articulates orality and oral cultures of memory culled from diverse geographical and cultural landscapes of India. It throws light on those multiple aspects of remembering and registering the rich and varied cultural tapestry of India, through the lens of orality. Chapter 1, “Between Myths and Monuments: Memorialization in the Koti Chennaya Tradition of Tulunad”, by Yogitha Shetty, is structured around the intricate matrix of memory, region and identity. Drawing on Halbwach’s (1925) argument of social memory, that any act of remembrance from an individual perspective is located on frameworks provided by societies, Shetty explores the trajectory of the Koti Chennaya brothers in the landscape of Tulunad of south­ western India. By analysing and interpreting the vast repertoire available on these brothers, the chapter opines that communitarian memory constructs a past that informs the present in myriad creative ways. Memory becomes a potent and symbolic raw material by means of the reminiscences and mythical associations woven around the tradition of the twin brothers. The topographical dimensions are brought in through the edifice-myths or sthalapurana of the people, which in

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turn brings together the oral and the archaeological in order to amplify the memories constructed around Koti Chennaya. Chapter 2, “Khuded Geet: Nostalgic Songs of Garhwali Married Women”, by Mamta Sharma, analyses the folk songs of Garhwal sung by women, recal­ ling their earlier lives and the hardships of their present life. It views nature as a partaker and memory marker. The chapter argues that these songs are alternate histories of everyday struggle and harassment encountered by women in the familial spaces. The insular nature of the area has caused Garhwal to remain isolated from the rest of the country. Hence, this repertoire of songs are a rich source of tradition and alternate history. The Garhwali khuded geet folklore offers a noteworthy contribution to the condition of women, which is unseen and unnoticed. The chapter argues the uniqueness and priceless contribution of oral narratives which serve as an alternate history of Garhwali women. In Chapter 3, “Translation as Intergenerational Transmission of Memory: Snake Worship in Kerala”, Aparna Jith maps the varied myths and legends associated with the sarppakaavu tradition in Kerala. The chapter highlights the instrumental role played by memory and argues that the translation of collec­ tive memory is an act of intergenerational transmission which nourishes the belief system among the worshippers. The chapter explores the symbiotic nexus between the sarppakaavu and the myths surrounding it, which is made possible through the conduit of collective memories. The narratives aided by these memories are in multiple genres facilitating each other. Part II is on memory and print cultures with representative readings on book history, hagiography and poetry. The chapters in this Part focus on the framing of memory as a handy trope for creating counter-historic discourses. Part II offers an eclectic reading experience by navigating through motley contexts. Written by a seasoned scholar of literary studies, Chapter 4, “A Baker’s Dozen on Memory: Reading and Writing ‘Acknowledgements’”, by K. Nar­ ayana Chandran, explores the mutual, if not circular, relationship between “acknowledgements” and memory. It takes into account the multiple layers of signification embedded in “acknowledgements” per se by focusing on the paratextual aspects. He offers an interesting reading of paratexts based on Gérard Genette’s argument that these spaces act as vestibules which lead a reader to “spaces guarded by memory”. This interesting premise on the prefatory ingre­ dient of a text relies heavily on memory. The chapter is an entertaining read for all bibliophiles with its metanarrative on memory. Chapter 5, “Saints Textualized: Pious Commemoration of ‘Friends of God’ and Vernacular Hagiographies in Nineteenth-Century Malabar”, by Muham­ med Niyas Ashraf, debunks the labels and stereotypes attributed to the Mappila community in Kerala by post-colonial scholarship. By analysing hagiographies of pious men in Malabar, the chapter counters the various colonial manipula­ tions to label the Mappila community. A scrutiny of hagiographic texts that presented the memory of a holy person is an apt tool to study constitutive memories. This chapter maps the historical sensibilities imagined and devised by the Mappilas, which is distinctively different from the standard European

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notion of history-writing. It further argues that hagiographies are repositories of communal pasts of Mappilas and serve as channels of self-expression which were hitherto neglected. Arnab Dasgupta and Swagata Singha Ray, in Chapter 6, “My Memory Keeps Getting in the Way of Your History: Memory as Counter-Historic Discourse in the Poems of Agha Shahid Ali”, analyse the poems of Agha Shahid Ali to underline the significance of memory in constructing an alternate history in a suffering landscape like Kashmir. Narrative aided by memory serves as a fra­ mework to re-model the discourse of violence which is at play in the poet’s homeland. The conflicting nuances of personal memory and official history are delineated in the chapter. The diasporic distancing of the homeland through a triadic model of memory, nostalgia and longing is brought in to frame the dis­ cursive polemics of Kashmir. It operates as a counter-discursive mechanism to come to terms with the epistemic violence rampant in the region. The chapter reveals memory as a transcultural trope in the poems of Agha Shahid Ali. Part III is a reflection on the electronic media of communication with a focus on cinema and how memory is layered into narrativisation through photo­ graphs and moving images (cinema). Spatial mnemonic assemblages are employed in this Part. Saurabh Bhattacharyya’s Chapter 7,“Mayurakshi: A River to Live By”, maps the varied contours of memory, music and movies. In the electronic milieu of canonical Bengali cinema, Bhattacharyya projects the archetypal roles of the redemptive feminine figures and the multiple metaphorical levels of existence in which they reside. As partakers of a collective legacy, the river image, especially the river of rejuvenation and its redemptive flow are meticulously mapped and asserted amid the politics of erasure and privileging. Chapter 8, “Mnemonic Reimaginations: Situating the Anglo-Indian Literary, Lived, and Spatial Representations in Post-Colonial Kerala”, by Aiswarya Sanath and Manoj Parameswaran, highlights the memorialisations of AngloIndians in Kerala, based on Assmann’s ideation of cultural memory. This chapter is a product of ethnographic research conducted by the authors and therefore the mixing of different media of communication to reimagine the workings of memory needs to be highlighted. It registers the collective identity crisis of the community through the reconstruction of cultural memories and by traversing fragmented identities to subjectivities. The cultural and affective memory markers of the community serve to deconstruct the absolutist notion of belonging. It also addresses the elisions and absences that mark the cultural memories, particularly, the ways in which Anglo-Indian settlements are trans­ formed as public memorials. The chapter closely studies the cultural and col­ lective transmission of memories in the Anglo-Indian identity formation. Mousumi Sen, in Chapter 9, “Traumatic Memory and a Child’s Cry in the Film Guilty”, examines the role of popular cinema in negotiating traumatic memories of rape and sexual violence. Directed by Ruchi Narain, Guilty (2020) depicts the horrific aftermath of a rape, which is brought to light, due to the “#Me Too” movement. The chapter also uses insights from Freud’s findings on

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hysteria as the two central female characters are portrayed as rape victims. The manifest and latent manner of the traumatic effects of rape is also brought into the purview of this chapter. Part IV is a succinct proposition on how memory can be conceived in digital cultures. This Part follows a methodological framework with a focus on the different digital modes of archiving memory and the conceptualisation and digitalisation of memory through technological mediations. In Chapter 10, “Gender, Partition and Memory: Case Studies in MicroHeritage and Identity”, Meghamala Ghosh and Sarasi Ganguly present the varied mechanics of memory markers in micro-heritage and their multi-faceted relevance. The chapter also draws attention to the indispensable role played by social media in preserving and archiving micro-heritage. In the present-day era of digitalisation, technology serves as an apt tool to curate and document micro-heritage in digital format, thus giving voice to the voiceless and fractured selves of the survivors of the traumatic episode of the Bengal partition. The chapter calls for a renewed understanding of the role played by gender in the creation of memories. The authors reiterate the need to archive and digitalise micro-heritage pieces. The corpus comprised of a large plethora of repressed partition memories rightfully becomes a part of national memory. The chapter closely examines the positioning of micro-heritage, which comes under the larger umbrella of intangible cultural heritage, and stresses the utmost need to preserve these stories. Chapter 11, “The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: The Plurality of Subjectivity in Memories of Desh”, by Debarati Chakraborty, analyses the politics of remembering and forgetting through the lens of the nation, and asserts the role played by oral narratives and oral histories. It highlights the role of oral history in historical documentation and archival materials. Memories of the partition become a significant tool in analysing the plurality of subjectivity. Chakraborty underscores the elements of trauma and nostalgia with their quintessential human dimensions which are at work in the memoirs and fiction of the Partition of 1947. The testimony of those who lived through it and the digitisation of oral narratives in the making of an archive will serve as a treas­ ured repository for posterity. The chapter calls for an urgent act of digitising these vestiges of episteme in order to create a counter-history of the partition. Along with written narratives, some of the other narratives that are analysed in this chapter are recollections through interviews conducted by Chakraborty, for a digital archive project at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Chapter 12, “Meals and Migrations: Sindhi Culinary Memories of the Parti­ tion”, by Yash Gupta, explores the notion of food as a conduit for conceptualising individual and collective memory, through the detailed interviews he conducted with Sindhi women. Gupta argues that the construction of homeland and belong­ ing is enabled through culinary narratives. His chapter follows the critical tradition of evaluating food as a cultural artefact manifesting several forms of memory. He delineates how migration and memory were as much influenced by the absence of food, as by its presence. The second- and third-generation Sindhis’ perception of

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homeland and food takes one to the claim of the post-memory as to how memory is shared, imparted and taught. This chapter sketches the fluidity of culinary remembrance as both internal and influenced.

5 Conclusion Media technology has enabled far-reaching connotations of memory through surveillance technologies, social media representations and AI interfaces. This volume underscores the myriad significations of memory in the individual and collective Indian psyche that come across as apt tools to deconstruct the totalising and overarching narratives, constructed and reinforced across various timelines. They serve to give voice to many unheard narratives from the margins, hitherto neglected or often side-lined. This collection is an innovative approach to the study of the history of communication, technological determinism and the socio-historical changes that facilitate the birth of newer forms of technology.

References Bell, Alice. “Memory in the Digital Age”. The Guardian, 14 January 2012. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/memories-in-the-digital-age# Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In Illu­ minations. edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn. Schocken Books, 1969, pp. 218–222. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Routledge, 2001. Carr, Nicholas. “The Juggler’s Brain”. The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 92, no. 4, 2011, pp. 8–14. Clanchy, Michael T. From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Goodall, Zoë, and Ceridwen Spark. “Naming Rights? Analysing Child Surname Disputes in Australian Courts Through a Gendered Lens”. Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 2020, pp. 237–255. Halbwachs, Maurice. The Social Frameworks of Memory. University of Chicago Press, 1925. Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1994. Nalbantian, Suzanne. Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience. Palgrave, 2003. Rushdie, Salman. “Step Across This Line”. Tanner Lectures on Human Values, no. 24, 2004, pp. 73–106. Storm, Benjamin C., and Julia S. Soares. “Memory in the Digital Age”. PsyArXiv, 29 June 2022. Urton, Gary. Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources. University of Texas Press, 2017. Wegner, Daniel M. “Transactive Memory: A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind”. In Theories of Group Behavior. Edited by Brian Mullen and George R. Goe­ thals. Springer, 1987, pp. 185–208. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. Routledge, 2004.

Part I

Oral Culture and Memory Markers

1

Between Myths and Monuments Memorialization in the Koti Chennaya Tradition of Tulunad Yogitha Shetty

1 Introduction Arriving from the southern side, Koti Chennya reached Katpadi manor house, and asked the chieftain (Ballala) for a piece of land to build a shrine (garodi). Ballala refused to share any land. Koti Chennaya then came to a place called Kallapu. As they were on their way, Ballala realized that the twin brothers were miraculous. He repented, and promised to offer land to build a garodi. Koti Chennaya proclaimed that they would not take a step back. Thus, this same location was given away by the manor house, and a garodi was built on this spot. Koti Chennaya came to Karkala Bailadka garodi and informed the Bhairava king in his dream that they had arrived. Moving ahead, they marked a place for garodi construction at Peruvaje … Around 50 years earlier, people had bought the same piece of land and built a rice mill. Even after three days on the steaming stove, the paddy did not boil to become rice. When they asked an astrologer why, he informed them that the place belonged to the twin brothers, and thus they couldn’t prosper there. The place was then given away to the Mahalingeshwara Temple. The above two anecdotes (Amin and Kotian) are a part of the hundred such other sthalapurana recollected by the people of a region to explain why a par­ ticular deity’s shrine is built in their respective village. This chapter, at the outset, is an attempt to understand these figments of memory as intricately connected to the questions of region and identity, and their manifestation within the theoretical understandings of memory. It aims to analyse the dyna­ micity of topographic and monumental memorialization associated with a community’s heroic deities by taking the case of Koti Chennaya’s memory in the distinct landscape of Tulunad in Southern India. Meanwhile, an account of the emergence of memory as a theoretical tool in analysing the processes of remembrance, community formation, and its relation to ‘history proper’ is discussed below to briefly trace a trajectory of this field of enquiry. DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-3

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2 From Social to Cultural Memory Foremost in a sustained and systematic study of the social dimensions of memory, the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs argued in his study, The Social Frameworks of Memory (1925) that it is through their membership of social groups that individuals acquire, localize, and recall their memories. Any recollection, however personal it may be, finds expression only within the fra­ meworks provided by societies or groups to which that individual belongs. In his later works,1 Halbwachs discussed the publicly available commemorative symbols, rituals, and representations as ‘instruments’ for the sustenance of col­ lective memory. While recollection takes place within the ‘frameworks’ pro­ vided and used by the people living in a group, he pointed to the way pasts are reconstructed on the basis of the present. New communities would take up the tradition of older ones and appropriate them according to the concerns, beliefs, aspirations, or interests of the present. Memory is thus exclusively a social phenomenon for Halbwachs, and his fundamental contribution of establishing a connection between collective memory, social groups, and symbolic com­ memoration has been a starting point for many later memory-centric studies. While Halbwachs analysed memory as a social act and demonstrated how social groups inscribe memory on the landscape (1925; 1941 [2023]; 1950 [1992]), later memory theorists like Connerton (1989) and Assmann (1998; 2006) located it in bodily practices and in the archive of cultural traditions such as myths and images, sagas and legends respectively. These and later theorists2 of memory have reiterated how, unlike history that relies on the archives of textual, topographic and other tangible sources, memory encompasses any mode of remembrance, without a constant reaching after facts or ‘rational logics’. Further, it is noted how, while history attempts to arrive at accurate homo­ geneous time – the incontestable, fixed ‘time’ of the past – memory makes ‘disjointed’ connections, always dwelling in heterogeneous, relative times. Unlike history proper, memory is not organized in linear mode but follows a diachronic connection between multiple points of time. The logics of self­ referentiality guide the formation and sustenance of memory. Memory can combine multiple viewpoints, numerous material sources, and conjoin the workings of both ‘scientific’ and ‘mythical’ elements in maintaining several alternative narratives. Memory is, thus, a collective activity accommodating any adaptation, mutation, or translation to suit the needs of communities. The theoretical framework of memory is also useful in analysing the complex multilingual, socio-economic and religious context of the Tuluva people on the south-west coast of India in general, and the highly prevalent worship tradition of Koti Chennaya twin brothers in the region in particular. The multifarious ways in which these brothers/deities are remembered in Tulunad could be grasped in its entirety under the rubrics of a fluid field of enquiry like memory studies. This chapter is an attempt to analyse, in particular, the topographic memories and the sthalapurana or what I call ‘edifice-myths’ woven around the presence/construction of hundreds of shrines3 for these twin heroic brothers,

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called Koti and Chennaya, across Tulunad. These materials constitute a major repository of memory, intertwined with the questions of land and caste identity in the region. This chapter aims to understand this dynamicity by con­ textualizing the fragments of memory within some larger questions of memor­ ialization, identity and region. It begins with an overview of the worship tradition of Koti Chennaya as prevalent within the imagined geo-linguistic region of ‘Tulunad’.

3 Koti Chennaya in the Tuluva Imaginary ‘Tulunad’4 is a widely used name to refer to the geo-linguistic region consisting of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi districts of Karnataka state and a few parts of Kasaragod district in Kerala in South India with roughly 1.8 million speakers. This ethno-linguistic minority region with Tulu as lingua franca within the predominantly Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka is often referred to as ‘Tulunadu’. Apart from TuI.u, Konkani, Kannada, Havyaka, Beary, Malaya­ lam, Urdu, Kodava and English languages are spoken in the region (Chaudhary, 1985). The region is also rendered unique by the worship of hundreds of deities specific to the Tulu religious cosmos; its matrilineal social system; the encounter with German Basel missionaries as their first post in India in 1836, along with the socio-economic modernity they brought; a large-scale migration to Mumbai and the Gulf countries, thereby creating transoceanic connections; an increased presence of the private organizations in both education and the health sector; and the emergence of Hindutva assertions in last three decades. One of the most popular deities among the pantheon of hundreds of ‘Tuluva’ deities are the twin heroic brothers, Koti and Chennaya (Figure 1.1). Because of their inseparability in the Tuluva imagination, they are always addressed toge­ ther as Koti Chennaya, or also as ‘Baiderlu’. Koti Chennaya are believed to be historical figures who lived in the sixteenth-century Tulunad. They are believed to belong to a particular caste in the region, Billawa or Biruva (with toddytapping as their traditional occupation), now categorized under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) by the Government of India. Although the narrative of Koti Chennaya’s life occupies three adjacent villages in southern Tulunad (Permale-Panja-Enmuru), their itinerary both during their life and in the after­ life spans the Tulu belt, but barely outside the geo-linguistic region of Tulunad. The foremost textual documentations of their narrative are found in the midnineteenth century, composed by the German missionaries (Reverend A. Manner, [1886] 2008) and colonial officers (A.C. Burnell5 in 1894), followed by compilations in different genres by Tulu scholars.6 Almost all the Tulu deities, including Koti Chennaya, are remembered through paddana, or oral songs, and they vary in length, ranging up to hundreds of pages. Due to lack of space, I relate the story of Koti Chennaya in a few lines below:7 With her medicinal skills, a pregnant Billawa woman called Deyi Baidedi helped the ruler (Ballala) of Permale village to recover from a fatal thorn wound. Soon after, Deyi delivered twin boys within the palace premises. With

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Figure 1.1 The most popularly circulated image of Koti Chennaya

Deyi’s untimely death, the children were raised by their maternal uncle. As the brothers grew into two strong, merited youth, they found themselves in a land feud with the court minister Budyanta whom they eventually killed. When summoned to the court of Ballala, the brothers demanded what was due as a promise to their mother when she helped the Ballala to recover. As the Ballala

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refused to give any of the items they demanded, the trusted brothers left Permale for good. Koti Chennaya then travelled to the adjacent Panja province. They met their elder sister Kinnidaru at Panja. Due to some conflict, the Ballala of Panja cap­ tured the brothers by deceit. However, Koti Chennaya escaped from the dun­ geon and entered the neighbouring province of Enmuru where they found protection and recognition. The brothers fought on behalf of the Enmuru Bal­ lala against the allied force of Panja and Permale. When the elder brother was killed in treachery, the younger brother killed himself in grief. On his death bed, Koti ensured that the three Ballalas were united, and assured benediction in their death. In return, the Ballalas promised to erect garodi for the brothers. In some versions of the ‘epic’, the brothers continue their journey in the after­ life, further traversing parts of Tulunad. Thus, the major episodes of the narrative take place in three provinces with three different rulers, all addressed as Ballala. Koti Chennaya begin their journey in Permale, moving on to Panja and finally ending their life in Enmuru.8 These brothers are remembered primarily for their fight against injustice and against dominant forces like the court minister and the Ballala of Panja. Over the years, they have grown as symbols of resistance, particularly for the Billawa caste in the region. This aspect has been dealt at length in the author’s writings elsewhere.9 For the purpose of this chapter, I focus on the way the memory of Koti Chennaya is spread over the Tuluva landscape, creating what we could call for heuristic purposes, both a ‘historical’ and ‘ahistorical’ repository of memory. I discuss below how the Koti Chennaya publics10 of Tulunad both create and invoke the memory of the brothers in multifarious ways: Sometimes relying on the ‘scientific’ ‘rational’ tenets of history like topographical and monumental memory, and other times on materials of self-referentiality like sthalapuranas around the construction of garodis. Collectively, this chapter deals with the cultural mnemonic of Koti Chennaya that is primarily spread over the land­ scape of Tulunad, also bearing implications on the larger socio-economic organization of the Tuluva society.

4 Topographic ‘Sites’ Investigating one of the major modern metanarratives, the nation, in the French context, Pierre Nora undertook a study of what he called lieux de mémoire, or ‘sites of memory’, bringing a range of entities which by dint of human will or the work of time have become symbolic elements of the memorial heritage of any community. These material or non-material entities are evoked by the communities in the continuous-present to assemble a view of the past, and to present it as a tangible reality. They become symbolic repositories, and offer an evidential basis for the remembering groups to establish historical veracity. In another context, the publics formed around Koti Chennaya in Tulunad have perpetually relied on sacred geography and topographical mappings to authenticate the existence of Koti Chennaya and invoke a historical image of

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these Billawa caste heroes. Their itinerary from birth in Permale to death and entombment in Enmuru is attested by an appeal to the physical sites spread across a small pocket in the Tulu region, albeit within the geo-linguistic boundaries of Tulunad. These publics inscribe the narrative of Koti Chennaya on the landscape across Tulunad, especially in the Enmuru-Panja-Permale region in Dakshina Kannada district. They find corroborative evidence for the historicity of their heroes by identifying sites like the house of Koti Chennaya’s mother Deyi (Koove Tota, or Koove Garden); the Sankamale forest as a place where Deyi was forsaken; the buffalo race (kambala) tracts of Koti Chennaya and the villainous court minister; the Ballala’s palace; the stone on which Koti was laid after his injury; and Koti Chennaya’s tomb in Enmuru. Asserting their historical presence, Tulu writers Kotian and Kalmady state: ‘Not only these, but also many other small memorials stand as archive to the history of Koti Chennaya. If a scientific, careful scrutiny is undertaken, more light could be thrown on this historical account’ (Kotian and Kalmady 8). Fur­ ther, in the book Baidya Darshana: Sachitra Kathakosha [Baidya Revelation: A Pictorial Story], the editors reiterate the significance of landscape as: Many sites related to the entire account of Koti Chennaya who lived hun­ dreds of years ago are a living symbol and witness to the events that took place. The tangible cultures that reverberate the tale of Koti Chennaya – from ‘Koove Tota’ in Padumale in which Koti Chennaya’s mother Deyi Baideti resided to the Enmuru tomb erected after Koti Chennaya attained heroic death, concluding their life of extraordinary achievement – are accessible even to this day. (Kalmady and Perampalli 91) While the ‘sites’ or traces of memory are important in establishing Koti Chen­ naya’s historicity, they are employed by scholars like Dejappa Dallodi in also positing the brothers’ purported period of existence as the fourteenth century, thus situating them as the earliest heroic icons of the Billawa community. Through the topographic mode of record, the community forms a historical vision of Koti Chennaya’s life, thus evoking a different set of referents to ima­ gine the past. It is an instance of how a particular community reimagines and constructs a landscape to historicize its ‘legendary’ icons, and how ‘history’ is authenticated by invoking a memory that is dispersed over geography. As is evident in the two quotes above, while the conjectures of Koti Chennaya’s life are founded on the evidence of their paddana, they are reinforced by an appeal to physical sites. Thereby, the public of Koti Chennaya creates its own histor­ ical archive, rewriting the grammar of historiographical exploration.

5 Garodi Sthalapurana: Edifice-Myths Garodi or garodi are structures meant almost exclusively for the worship of Koti Chennaya as central deities. Garodis also are constructed for other deities

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like Bermer, Okku Ballala, Jumadi, Mayandal, or Jogi Purusha. They are con­ sidered martial art centres of an earlier period, like Kalari in Kerala, eventually converted into places of worship. Some paddanas of Koti Chennaya mention that the brothers had 66 garodis built for them. A team from Udupi11 – consisting mainly of Billawa youth and sponsored by the entrepreneurs in Mumbai – began its search for the 66 garodis in the 1980s, and to their immense surprise, found more than 200 garodis spread across the stretch of the Tulu belt (Amin and Kotian). The team also found that a few garodis had been erected in the neigh­ bouring district of Kodagu, in Kasaragod district in Kerala, in the metropolitan city of Mumbai in Maharashtra, and even in the Gulf countries. The number of garodis worshipping Koti Chennaya in present-day Tulunad extends to around 220 (Nandavara, 2001), and at least half of them narrate edifice-myths, or sthala­ purana (Amin and Kotian, 1990), recollecting how the brothers’ arrived in their neighbourhood was marked by the construction of a garodi. A number of causative narratives behind the construction of garodis highlight the appearance of Koti Chennaya in diverse forms. People associated with respective garodis recollect that the twin brothers appeared in people’s dreams, at different localities, ‘demanding’ a site to reside in exchange for divine pro­ tection; or presented themselves in mediated bodies during the rituals,12 or made their presence felt through the sprouting of boiled rice.13 More than half of the available edifice-myths recount a supernatural event leading to the con­ struction of a garodi in hundreds of villages. Koti Chennaya appear in multiple embodiments in the people’s memory: as deities appearing in dreams; as tra­ velling youth; as deities during annual bodily mediations; as miraculous beings in invisible form; as deities appearing in joga, or physical form; as youth inspiring the sculptor to carve their statues (Figure 1.2).14 Thus, a host of

Figure 1.2 Koti Chennaya statue in the garodi at Kalmady in Udupi district

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miraculous events are created around Koti Chennaya’s life which more often interact with the spatial specificities of hundreds of ‘localities’ that come toge­ ther to create the ‘region’ of ‘Tulunad’.

6 The Songlines of Tulu Land The spread of more than 200 garodis across the Tulu-speaking region creates the imagined ‘region’ of Tulunad, making it a transregional entity. People’s memory of the brothers’ itinerary from one village to the other, and the sub­ sequent construction of garodis create lieux de mémoire (Nora, 1989) for the Tulu land. Memory, thus, acquires a peripatetic nature, travelling along the Songlines15 of Koti Chennaya. Most of the available edifice-myths always begin by connecting their garodi with one or other places or garodi, always also expressed in terms of Koti Chennaya’s arrival in their locality from such and such a village nearby. Thus, one spatial construction always connects with another spatiality, regardless of the ‘escaping-temporality’.16 The public of Koti Chennaya dream a track into existence, connecting locales of the brothers’ sacred journey within the geo-linguistic bounds of the Tulu region. The ‘meso space’17 or ‘region’ thus imagined is an intimate geo-cultural production, which is at the same time, ‘a process, a spatio-social becoming’ as discussed in G. Aloysius’ (2013) Conceptualizing the Region (19). Invoked by multiple ways of narrating and symbolic monuments of garodis, a distinct landscape is imagined, which is, to sum up using Tilley’s words, ‘a series of named locales, a set of relational places, linked by paths, movements and narratives’.18 The Koti Chennaya landscape thus emerges as a mnemonic of sacred belief, intimately connecting the itinerary of Koti Chennaya with that of the spatio-cultural imagination of Tuluva land. Thus, constructed through a spatial-social imaginary over a period of time, such intermediary ‘regions’ are invested with much human emotion and imagination, having continuous interaction and negotiation with the social structures, hierarchies, or social realities existing within the ‘perennial becoming’ that the region essentially is (Aloysius 34). The region is thus a production of myths-histories, memories, motifs, world-views, dominance-resistances shared by a group of people within a specific ecological setting (Aloysius 22). The region imagined by Koti Chennaya publics also infuses the land with a network of communicative symbols, including the construction of garodis in their respective locality (Figure 1.3). While a detailed analysis of the spread of garodis is dealt with elsewhere,19 I focus on the edifice-myths here in order to substantiate the ‘fullness of being’ (Klein, 2000) that memory vibrates with in public practices like Koti Chennaya. A study of their after-life explorations and their confrontation with other deities through the edifice-myths unravels different facets of the Tuluva life, such as caste and associated land conflicts, resistance to hierarchies, and the way the Tuluva community imagines its heroic deities into existence through the meshing of the oral and the structural.

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Figure 1.3 Garodi at Tingale in Udupi district

7 Land and the Garodis Interestingly, a bargain over a tract of land, symbolized by the construction of gar­ odis, characterizes many of the edifice-myths recounted by the publics of Koti Chen­ naya. Most of these recollect the twin brothers, either in physical (joga) form or within a dream-vision, approaching the most powerful men in the locality and demanding garodis to be built. Such centres of authority are represented either by a powerful land-owning manor family (guttu) (who could be the patel/chief of the vil­ lage20) or a popularly remembered ruler. After arriving from such and such a place, Koti Chennaya invariably approach the dominant leader21 first, demonstrate their divine power (karnika) and demand a piece of land to build a garodi. I discuss below the trope of defy-punish-surrender that is woven into the edifice-myths of garodis. Conflict with the Centres of Power According to the edifice-myth of Bailadka garodi, 22 in a village in Karkala taluk, Koti Chennaya appeared in the dream of a local ruler (Bairava, a Jain king) and ‘cautioned’ him to build a garodi. The king didn’t heed their caution. As a result, his throne-elephant starved itself to an almost-death stage followed by many other ominous incidents in the palace. Bairava sought the help of astrologers (balime) who pronounced that ‘Baider have arrived in this country’ and a garodi needs to be built for them. Accordingly, Bairava vowed that he would let his elephant draw a boulder to build garodi if everything was set on its proper course. Consequently, with things falling into their right place and the throne-elephant recovering, king Bairava had a garodi built for Koti Chennaya. An elephant-stone in front of the garodi is identified as the same boulder drawn by the throne-elephant (Amin and Kotian 284–285).

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While confrontation with Bairava kings is found in the edifice-myths of more than one garodi in Karkala taluk where the Jain Bairava kings ruled for a long time, a similar confronting encounter takes place between the brothers and a Ballala (again, largely identified as a Bunt or Jain rulers) as per the memory of the people surrounding Saanada Gudde Garodi in Karkala. When the annual mediumship ritual (nema) was conducted in the absence of a garodi, Koti Chen­ naya demanded in rage,’We are suffering in wind and rains. Build a garodi for us.’ The Ballala didn’t pay attention to their rage, and instead suggested they could leave if they wanted to do so. Koti Chennaya, in turn, wanted to know if they could leave a mark of their departure behind. As the Ballala nodded in affirmative, the next morning his manor house was found to be heaps of ash. A garodi was built for Koti Chennaya immediately (Amin and Kotian 299). Similar vignettes of Koti Chennaya’s encounter with the dominant caste and class include events such as how once a feudatory chieftain’s horse knelt down and refused to take a further step near Udyavara,23 and how his promise to build a garodi for Koti Chennaya, ‘who resided in that place’, made the horse get up on its feet again (Amin and Kotian 255); and how the palanquin of a priest of a Brahmin centre (mutt) stopped at the spot where a garodi once existed, and how the palanquin moved only when the priest vowed to ‘reserve that piece of land to rebuild a garodi’ (Amin and Kotian 260). Further, a place of hostility during their lifetime, Panja in Sulya Taluk is believed to be under the ‘wrathful-eye’ (uri drishti) of the brothers even to this day. The people here believe that there is no scope for an organized development in the entire Panja region. Their memory also supplies a proof for that belief in a Brahmin’s story, who supposedly bought a piece of land near Panja garodi ‘some 30 years ago’ and attempted agriculture only to face more and more hardships and hurdles later. An astrologer had also warned that the land belonged to Koti Chennaya alone. But as the Brahmin neglected to offer periodic rituals to the brothers, it is said, he lost his sanity and vacated the place forever (Amin and Kotian 343). Thus, while many presents are interlinked to the heroes’ extra-human itiner­ ary in different localities, a few others are intricately connected to their human life in the three villages of Permale-Panja-Enmuru. All these traces of memory – of a Jain or a Brahmin or a Bunt guttu house expressing disbelief in the mir­ aculous powers (karnika) of Koti Chennaya and eventually submitting to their divine power – constitutes a chief polyptotonic vignette maintained by the Koti Chennaya publics in Tulunad. Further, in the section below I discuss Koti Chennaya’s confrontation with other deities in the region and its implication within the hierarchical deity order prevalent in the Tuluva religious cosmology. Conflict with ‘Upper’ Deities The twin brothers Koti Chennaya not only confront the socially ‘upper’ castes but also encounter other ‘higher’ deities of specific localities during their after-life itin­ erary. The resistive imagination of Koti Chennaya continues as they encounter ‘upper’ deities, categorized as rajan daiva 24 or ‘royal deities’. While in some

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localities, they abide by the word of the resident deity – largely belonging to the mainstream Hindu pantheon like Shiva and Durga – in some other instances they challenge the deities principally worshipped by the land-owning caste of Bunts like Kodamantaya. Such challenges to the influence of rajan daiva are a continuation of their resistance to the equivalent dominant castes of Brahmins, Jains and Bunts. An alternative imaginary of a powerful deity is represented by the twin Billawa brothers Koti Chennaya who negotiate allegiance through their ubiquitous presence across the Tuluva region. I quote a sthalapurana below as a substantiation for the way the supremacy of ‘higher’ deities is challenged through an instance in people’s memory. According to the edifice-myth of a garodi in Karkala taluk, once when Koti Chennaya were resting with beetle leaves in their mouths, a member of a manor house walked by in a dejected mood. The brothers promised to fulfil his wishes and enquired about the cause of his grief. Their assurance of blessing came in exchange for an elaborate ritual offering (dharmanema) similar to that conducted for other deities of the family.25 The manor house member held their feet and shared his grief at losing his land because of being in debt to the government. Koti Chennaya gave him three small stones to be placed in his stone chest, and warned him not to look back until he reached his home. When he was about to reach the entrance of his house, he heard the drums of his family deity Kodamantaya. Remembering the assurance of the twin brothers, he did not stop and placed the stones in his stone chest. Koti Chennaya reappeared in his vexed dreams. The next morning when he opened his stone chest in front of the debt collectors, he found golden coins, to his immense surprise. Clearing all his debts, he worshipped Koti Chennaya in lofty reverence (Amin and Kotian 294–295). Couched in symbolic language, the instance of a manor house member not paying heed to the drum of his family deity Kodamantaya, but instead believing in the protective assurance of Koti Chennaya denotes a shift in the allegiance of a most-likely ‘upper’ caste Bunt or Jain household. Koti Chennaya come into his house, demand dharmanema and thus are established as the chief protective spirit of his family. They emerge as parallel powers to the relatively ‘superior’ deities, and could be seen as challenging the existing order of authority of deities, denoted by Kodamantaya here. While the above-narrated and such other memories of the publics of Koti Chennaya weave and maintain a language of resistance and recognition, a few other inter-communal conflicts also are translated as memory associated with the twin brothers. For instance, the social conflict between proselytizing Christian missionaries and the local population is translated in the cultural language of edi­ fice-myth associated with a garodi in Karkala taluk. People here remember how the ritual of nema was conducted at the locality even before the construction of a garodi. However, every time the ritual was held, a nearby Jesuit Cross always fell to the ground. After three consecutive years of similar incidents, the missionary priest enticed the mediating Parava26 couple to bring a handful of mud from the ritual site to put under the Cross. The Cross ceased collapsing. However, both the Parava couple and the missionary met with sudden death. Due to this, it is said, Koti Chennaya left the locality and settled in a nearby place (Amin and Kotian 281–282). This is an instance where the memories of Christian conversion,

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especially of the people belonging to ‘lower’ castes, are interwoven with that of the erection of a garodi, thereby a section of the society recording its disapproval of conversion to Christianity – a wide phenomenon since the middle of the nineteenth century in Tulunad. By interweaving such memories of caution into the edificemyths of garodi, and thus with Koti Chennaya, an anti-conversion position is encoded in a ritual language (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 Parava’s mediumship of Koti Chennaya in the garodi at Anjaru in Udupi district

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Thus, within the contours of the vernacular religion of Tuluva people, deities like Koti Chennaya, Kalkuda Kallurti, Koddabbu, Koraga Taniya, belonging to socially deprived castes, fight against temporal authorities, if not during their lifetime but at least in their after-lives. Belonging to the genre of retributive narrative, the memories of Koti Chennaya range from their claims for justice within the oral epic to the innumerable memories constructed in diverse spatio-temporals. The large corpus of polyphonic edifice-myths nar­ rated around hundreds of garodis carry the subtext of a ‘subaltern’ claim for both social and economic recognition. The roster of vignettes recorded above underline Koti Chennaya’s claim on land; the dominant leader’s submission to their authority; an unparalleled expansion of Koti Chennaya publics across the Tulu ‘region’; and, finally, the imaginary of the Tulunad ‘region’ con­ structed through geo-cultural mnemonics.

8 Conclusion Through a study of some of the vignettes associated with Koti Chennaya, we can understand how communitarian memory constructs and sustains a past that reconfigures the present in creative ways. While ‘seen as an individual and as a social capacity, memory is not simply the storage of past “facts” but the ongo­ ing work of reconstructive imagination’ to sum up in the words of Jan Ass­ mann (1997, 14). Memory is always processed and mediated depending upon the semantic frames and needs of a given society at a particular point in the present. The edifice-myths constructed by the memory publics of Koti Chen­ naya also intertwine their sacred conceptualizations with that of the present socio-economic realities. In the process, the twin brothers transform into sites of continuity, living on and unfolding in the collective memory of remembering publics. The twin brothers are instituted in each village of their own, weaving highly personalized, localized narratives, and thus creating a songline for the Koti Chennaya region. As demonstrated above, Koti Chennaya traverse after their death, connect multiple zigzag memories, make their presence felt through human-superhuman deeds, and thus, establish themselves as ubiquitous sacredsocial figures of Tulunad. In this process of the reutilization of a set of reminiscences and mythical associations, memory becomes a symbolic raw material. It assists in the inven­ tion and maintenance of traditions of cultural ancestry. The predominantly oral culture of the Tuluva society authenticates the oral by making tangible the mythical memories. By enmeshing the oral and the monumental or topo­ graphical, the collective imagination of the Koti Chennaya publics lends itself an authoritative voice. As the memory of Koti Chennaya is a crucial factor in both the imaginary of Tulunad and an assertive Billawa identity, the process of the materialization of memory takes precedence in the Koti Chennya tradition. This act of materialization interweaves the mythical and the topographical dimensions. The edifice-myths or sthalapurana of the people bring together the oral and the archaeological in order to authenticate the memories around Koti

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Chennaya. By meshing the oral with that of the material relics of garodis and topographical traces, a continuity of the imaginative recollection is ensured. As ‘an ongoing work of reconstructive imagination’, the memories around Koti Chennaya continue to provide authenticating material connections between a distant mythical narrative and a monumental ‘site’ in the present in the process of cultural production for a communitarian cause.

Notes 1 These works are: The Social Frameworks of Memory (1925), The Legendary Topo­ graphy of the Holy Land (1941) and On Collective Memory (1950 [1992]). 2 For more, see Assmann and Czaplicka (1995; Assmann (1998; 2006); Olick. and Robbins (1998); Klein (2000); Srinivas (2004); and Novetzke (2008). 3 Worship centres for particular local deities in Tulunad are referred to by terms such as garodi, alade, butasaana, butakotya or daivasaana. With reference to Koti Chennaya, it is always a garodi or garadi, and I will use the word ‘shrine’ wherever necessary. 4 Unless used as in citations, I retain the term ‘Tulunad’ to remain close to the way it is designated in Tulu language. 5 A. C. Burnell’s writings, published in Indian Antiquary between 1894 and 1897, were compiled and reprinted by A. C. Navada and Denis Fernandes in 2008. 6 To mention a few, Mangaluru Jarappa’s Koti Chennaya Padyamalike (1930), Panje Mangesharaya’s Koti Chennaya (1930), Doomappa Master’s Tulunada Veerer Koti Chennayere Kate – Tulupada (1975), Kakemani’s Koti-Chennaya (1974) and Damodara Kalmady and Cheluvaraj Perampalli’s Janamanasadalli Koti Chennayaru (1998). 7 For a detailed story of Koti Chennaya, see Shetty (2017b). 8 All these three provinces fall within the Sulya and Puttur taluk of present-day Dakshina Kannada district. 9 For more, see Shetty(2017a; 2017b; (2018). 10 For the purpose of this chapter, ‘publics’ is a collective that comes together to create an image of the past centred around the figures of Koti Chennaya. This ‘public’ is founded on a shared memory of the brothers which is largely demonstrated in the public. For more, see Shetty (2017b). 11 Consisting of Bannanje Babu Amin, Mohan Kotian, Madhava Adiudupi, Shivarama Bannanje, K. Tejappa Bangera, Shekhara Kidiyuru, and Sanjeeva Poojary. See, for more, Amin and Kotian (1990, p. xiii–xvi). 12 During annual mediumship practices called nema, Koti Chennaya are evoked in human bodies at multiple levels. 13 Sprouting of the already boiled rice is considered inauspicious. 14 The edifice-myth narrated at Kurkalu garodi recollects how an ‘immense’, ‘handsome, valiant youth with heroic radiance’ appeared before the anxious sculptor, and inspired him to carve their wooden statues. It is generally believed that Koti Chennaya will appear to the sculptors in a dream, facilitating the erection of their statues (Amin and Kotian 253). 15 According to the aboriginal tribes of Australia, songlines are the dreaming and travelling trails of the sacred ancestors, whose spirits, the community believes, continue into the present, representing a time-out-of-time. They continue to exist both before birth and after death, eternally residing in the realm of the Dreaming. Such figures of heroic proportions with supernatural abilities dreamt and sang the land into existence, thereby both creating as well as travelling trails in it. Through their dreams, the land both existed as well as was created, engendering songlines in the land created. Singing these songlines or ‘dreaming tracks’ could map out a region, and are recorded in traditional songs, stories, dances and painting.

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16 I say ‘escaping-temporality' because these connected garodis recount completely dif­ ferent periods as the time when their garodis were set up, more often not allowing an easy sequential connection in time. 17 G. Aloysius’s (2013) concept of ‘meso space’ as a region between nation-state and locality; between macro nation and micro locality. 18 From Christopher Tilley’s A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments, quoted in Pearson (2006). 19 Shetty (2017a). 20 B. Surendra Rao (2010) points out how four prominent households or guttus were identified within a ‘Grama’ (the basic unit of administration) as the functioning foci of power, and how ‘by way of formalizing their status and authority, their jurisdic­ tion (gadi) were marked’ in the hands of guttu gadipattinar/guttu chief (55). 21 ‘Dominant’ in the Tuluva context could be understood as the caste groups that have traditionally held rights over land and have been deemed ‘upper’ in the caste hierarchy, such as Bunts, Brahmins and Jains. The Billawa caste, to which Koti Chennaya are claimed to have belonged, comes under the OBC list of the government of India. Mentions of their erstwhile ‘untouchable’ status is also found in some of the writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 22 Also called Anekallu garodi. 23 Edifice-myth associated with Kutpadi garodi in Udupi taluk. 24 Rajan daivas occupy the foremost position in the hierarchical categorization of the deities, worshipped largely by elaborate guttu families. Some of the rajan daivas are Jarandaya, Kodamantaya, Kukkinantaya, Jumadi, and Ullakulu. 25 Most of the guttu or barke families worship particular family deities, offering ela­ borate annual rituals called boota kola and nema. As noted already, deities like Kodamantaya, Jarandaya are worshipped by the Bunt caste in the region. 26 One of the Scheduled Castes of the region is Parava, who are identified largely as buta/deity mediums during annual rituals.

References Aloysius, G. Conceptualizing the Region. New Delhi: Critical Quest, 2013. Amin, Bannanje Babu and Mohan Kotian. Tulunada Garodigala Samskrutika Adhyayana [A Cultural Study of the Garadis of Tulunad]. Udupi: Bramha Baidarkala Samskrutika Adhyayana Pratishtana, 1990. Assmann, Jan. ‘Mnemohistory and the Construction of Egypt’. In Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Assmann, Jan. ‘Introduction: What is “Cultural Memory?”’ In Religion and Cultural Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Assmann, Jan and John Czaplicka. ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’. New German Critique 65 (Spring–Summer, 1995): 125–133. Chaudhary, S. C. Survey of English: South Kanara District, a Report. Hyderabad: Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, 1985. Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Dallodi, Dejappa M. Billava Samskrutika Sampada [Cultural Treasure of Billava]. Mangalore: Akrithi Aashaya Publications, 2012. Halbwachs, Maurice. The Social Frameworks of Memory. Chicago: University of Chi­ cago Press, 1925. Halbwachs, Maurice. The Legendary Topography of the Holy Land. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941 [2023].

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Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Edited by L. A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950 [1992]. Kalmady, Damodara and Cheluvaraj Perampalli, eds. Baidya Darshana – Sachitra Kathakosha [A View of Baidyas: Pictorial Narrative]. Udupi: Shri Brahma Baidarkala Samskrutika Adhyayana Pratishtana, 2000. Klein, Kerwin Lee. ‘On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse’. Representa­ tions, Special Issue: Grounds for Remembering 69, (2000): 127–150. Kotian, Mohan and Damodar Kalmady. Koti Chennaya Moukhika Sahityada Antaratma Darshana [Revelation of the Inner Soul of Koti Chennaya Oral Song]. Udupi: Shree Brahma Baidarkala Samskritika Adyayana Prathistana, 1995. Manner, M. Paddanolu. Mangalore: Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, [1886] 2008. Nandavara, Vamana. Koti-Chennaya: Janapadiya Adhyayana [Koti-Chennaya: Folklor­ istic Study]. Mangalore: Hemanshu Prakashana, 2001. Navada, A. V. and Denis Fernandes. The Devil Worship of the Tuluvas: From the Papers of Late A. C. Burnell. Mangalore: Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, 2008. Nora, Pierre. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations, 26 (1989): 7–24. Novetzke, Christian Lee. History, Bhakti, and Public Memory: Namdev in Religious and Secular Traditions. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008. Olick, Jeffrey K. and Joyce Robbins. ‘Social Memory Studies: “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’. Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998): 105–140. Pearson, Mike. ‘Introduction: Region, Locality, Choreography, Landscape, Memory, Archaeology, Performance’. In “In Comes I” Performance, Memory and Landscape. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006. Rao, B. Surendra. Bunts in History and Culture. Udupi: Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Sam­ shodhana Kendra & Mangalore, World’s Bunts’ Foundation Trust(R), 2010. Shetty, Yogitha. ‘Recast(e)ing the “Heroes”: Memory, Identity and Koti-Chennaya Pub­ lics in Tulunad’. Dissertation. University of Hyderabad, 2017a. Shetty, Yogitha. ‘Koti and Chennaya: Culturally Resistant Symbols of Tulunadu’ and Trans. ‘Unrivalled “Two in the Biruva Crew:” Koti Chennaya – A Tulu Folk Epic’. Indian Literature, LX(2) (2017b): 156–160. Shetty, Yogitha. ‘Mayoda Gadi or Wound of Abstraction: Death and Life-After in KotiChennaya Tradition’. In Disease, Death, Decay in Literatures and Cultures. eds. Ryszard W. Wolny and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska. Opole, Poland: University of Opole, 2018, pp. 251–263. Srinivas, Smriti. Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India’s High-Tech City. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd, 2004.

2

Khuded Geet Nostalgic Songs of Garhwali Married Women Mamta Sharma

1 Introduction Garhwal, one of the two administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, has folklore in abundance. Be it folk songs, folktales, ballads, proverbs, festivals, etc., one can find a plethora of folk forms in Garhwal. If we talk about folk songs, var­ ious ones exist for different purposes. Among a range of folk songs, mangal geet, bajuband, and khuded geet 1 come mainly under the expertise of women. The khuded geet, specifically, is about and for women only. It is an address of a married woman, particularly to her mother, and sometimes to birds and hills, and to her siblings as well. These songs, showing the woman’s longing to see her parents and siblings, are full of nostalgia associated with her natal home. The harassing and atrocious behavior she suffers in her in-laws’ house alienates her. It persuades her to live her past life by visiting her parents, though for a short time only. These songs are sung in the absence of the in-laws, either in forests while collecting fodder and grazing cattle, or while working in the fields. The song is sung by an individual woman, and also by a group of women col­ lectively while working. The local term khud means missing someone. Govind Chatak,2 in his “Introduction” to khuded geet translated this term (khud) in Hindi as “mayike ki smriti” (“memory of natal home”). Many scholars have made successful attempts to collect these songs now and then from different villages of Garhwal; however, nowadays these songs are not that prevalent among women. Therefore, these songs can be taken primarily as a matter of the past and should be examined for what they convey to us. Undoubtedly, folklore says a great deal about its community, society, or group. It is not created in a vacuum without any meaning in it. It contains the truth about life in a given society. The songs under scrutiny in this chapter reflect the lives of Garhwali married women. These songs tell us what history has not dared to say. While moaning about the terrible condition of life at her in-laws’ house, recalling her life in her natal home, and wanting to visit there, through these songs, the woman tries to vent her pent-up emotions. It is significant to note that despite there being many of them, these songs are not given titles if viewed loosely. One of the possible reasons why is because the songs are spontaneous results of women’s singing to release their anxiety. DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-4

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2 The Spring Season and Nature as the Markers of Memory A married woman is supposed to visit her parents’ house in conventionally fixed months, and chait “the spring season” is one of them.3 As soon as the woman observes rejuvenating woodlands and blossoming flowers, and hears birds singing, she is reminded of her natal home. From then on, she begins waiting for her brother to take her away, or an invitation from her parents, and sings: Hills are covered with fyonli 4 flowers, Chataki 5 are singing on the river’s bank, Chait season has arrived, Crickets are humming. (Song 1, lines 1–4, p. 195) With the arrival of liveliness in nature, the woman wishes for that same liveli­ ness in her life as well. She cannot experience that in her in-laws’ house because, as the further lines of the song suggests, she is suffering “grief” there, and wants to forget that by going back to her family, and weeping over that pain to her mother. While there is brightness everywhere in the spring season around her, she is still in darkness. The season, birds, and flowers are the ones she associates herself with in her songs. They are the markers of invoking her desire to see her parents. In another song this is made more explicit: Happening month and time of longings have come,

All seasons have come, and all flowers have bloomed.

(Song 5, lines 1–2, p. 198)

Further, watching other fortunate women going to meet their parents, she weeps about her fate, and addresses her mother saying: Why did you bring up

An unfortunate flower?

(lines 15–19)

She calls herself an “unfortunate flower” because she is not blooming with the season. She has withered even before she could bloom to her best. This is sug­ gestive of the unhappiness she is living with after marriage and it is only in this natural imagery that she can express her grief. The woman also asks the birds to send her message to her parents as follows: O kafu 6 bird sing, you are one of my closed ones, Kafu, sing towards my natal home. When you sing, the spring season will arrive … (Song 6, lines 1–3, p. 199)

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Here, the bird is not only a messenger but someone who is as close to the woman as her parents. In an atmosphere where she cannot find anyone else to tell her heart’s secrets to, she finds a bird who, through its chirping and singing, will remind her parents that spring season has arrived, and it’s time to call their daughter back home. Listening to the bird’s voice, her family, as the further lines of the song hint at, will have hiccups that are traditionally believed to be experienced when someone is being remembered by somebody else.7 In short, the bird kafu becomes a symbol of her natal home itself. Govind Chatak in his “Introduction” to khuded geet says that, in Garhwal, birds like kafu, hilas, and ghughuti symbolize separation. Hence, as Chatak says, listening to their voices, the woman’s repressed feelings are awakened. The woman is separated from her family, and hence she is calling a kindred bird for help. While at her in­ law’s house, it reminds her it is the time to see her parents during this season, she is asking the bird to remind her parents of their daughter too. The kafu bird is the voice of her heart, and the fyonli flower is the reminder of one’s lost wishes (Chatak, 15). It details what she has forgotten in her life, birds and flowers stir her up to remember all that. The separation which the marriage has created, this month is going to efface that. This joy, however, she knows is only temporary. As the month of spring is temporary and moves on, so she will have to come back to her in-laws’ house. But she still wants to relive her pre-married jovial life in that month at least. Spring is a season of newness and birth. It is a token of having newness in her life, which will be only with her family. It is also a symbol of her origin, and the roots of her past where she once lived, and hence, there is a longing to visit that past again. In the breaking-up of nature (into seasons), she finds her sleeping anguish (Chatak, 193). Her anguish is called sleeping because she cannot share it with others; it lies sleeping within her. But when the season takes a turn, she speaks not only of her grief but her wishes as well; however, still there is no one to listen to her except nature where she spends her entire day while working. After her marriage, the woman is charged with all the work in the fields, grazing cattle, collecting fodder, cooking, etc. Thus, she finds herself closer to the natural environment rather than the members of her husband’s family, who exclude her. This is why, more or less, every song involves seasonal liveliness, birds, animals, hills, rivers, and flowers. In one of the songs, the season is directly seen as a sign to recall her natal memories as she says, “Seeing this season, O my brother, I cry” (Song 12, p. 205). The spring season aggravates her desire to go to her parents as soon as possible. Further, in another song, she says: The month of bhaadu has come again.

My nostalgic heart is overjoyed.

(Song 8, lines 1–2, pp. 200–201)

It is only the arrival of the new season that makes her happy because it is reminiscent of her going to her parents and siblings. Interestingly, the woman

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feels delighted and discomfort simultaneously. With the advent of a new month, she is “overjoyed” in the hope of meeting her parents, but the waiting to get there disheartens her. Now the question is, what purpose do these songs serve here? As said above, the woman sings only when she is away from the house, either in the forests or in the fields so that no one can hear her. Thus, songs are to release her pent-up pain which could not be let out for a long time. Also, as few women still remember these songs and sing them nowadays, though only for enjoyment, and as they have also been noted down, they are useful to teach what has not been learned through other ways. These songs are an inadvertent attempt by women to document unofficially what they have been subjected to and pour it out in the form of songs. Singing songs at a specific time of chait season while using natural imagery gives them the opportunity of doing what they genuinely don’t do. These songs comprise Garhwali women’s contemporariness, which for us now is a matter of the past, but their songs are relics for us to study their past and their lives.

3 Noting Their Own History So far, we have learned about a woman’s longing to go back to her natal home that directly suggests that she is unhappy with her in-laws. Thus, it is impor­ tant to observe what makes her so sad. What does she have to say about her inlaws? What is there that compels her to leave that place? As the new season has provided her with an opening, she recollects all she has suffered as yet, and put it in her song as follows: They judge me. Spears are hit, Sword’s wounds are inflicted. (lines 1–5) The head is tonsured, and the ears are pierced.8

(Song 4, line 7, p. 197)

This song explicitly suggests the mental and physical torture the woman is going through. This is inflicted by her in-laws; mainly her mother-in-law. In Garhwal, hitting a daughter-in-law with smoldering sticks used to be the common way to torture her. The wounds this song is hinting at are both verbal and physical. When a woman is unable to do what is expected in the desired manner, she is called names and is criticized, and defamed. All this never lets her be in a comfortable relationship with them. This is why in the song she refers to her husband’s house as nirdayi nagri (“the unkind town”) of the videshi (“foreigner”/“stranger”). She always feels isolated here. She compares herself to the extreme meditation state that a disciple must follow, when instructed to do so by the preceptor demanding him to tonsure his head, and

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pierce his ears. Her life at the hands of her mother-in-law is as punishing as that of a disciple of the Nath tradition (Chatak, 192). She finds herself unable to serve and respect such people who only curse her. All this weighs her down. Notably, this atrociously hard life of the women of Garhwal has never been mentioned in any historical or scholarly work. These songs reveal the tor­ mented lives and inhumane position of women in the history of Garhwal’s society. Also, as oral narratives chiefly rely on the memories, which might be selective and be effective more than others, the woman is talking particularly about those episodes of her married life which dominate it as recurring events. In this regard, it should be noted here that the spring season symbolizes the youthfulness and bliss of conjugal life. Fyonli has the warmth of beauty. Like­ wise, the blossomed burans 9 flower is intoxicating, full of vigor, and a symbol of love (Chatak, 128). In contrast to this, the woman is an “unfortunate flower” whose youth, beauty, and vigor are fading in the woods. She does not have the chance to talk about her developing relationship with her husband or her curi­ osity about conjugal bonds, because such moments hardly appear in her life. Most importantly, a woman has to face all this because conventionally she is expected to adjust, as not to do so would bring shame for herself and for her parents too. Even though she finds it incongruous, she has to compromise. Sometimes she wishes her parents would interfere by talking to her in-laws: … Dispatch my message to my mother.

Tell her that I still miss the sour curd of our buffalo

( Song 7, lines 2–3, p. 200)

Ask my father to come and see me, and

Talk to my in-laws.

(Song 7, lines 5–6, p. 200)

Here, she is also recalling the curd of her mother’s house, it is still in her memories. It is indicative of her life before and after marriage. This incompa­ tible and inappropriate change is unacceptable, but there is no way out. As a result, she asks her parents to negotiate on her behalf, but this was next to impossible in the time she belongs to. What is more tragic is that a daughter-in-law is asked to perform all kinds of work, but at the moment of her right in her husband’s house, she has none. Fur­ thermore, she doesn’t receive enough food to stave her hunger. The following two songs depict this dreadful situation honestly: O mother, my mother-in-law has pierced my heart. I have to gulp down chancheda 10 reluctantly. Mother, she gives me stale chapatis with salt. She has fixed only two chapatis as my day’s meal. (Song 16, lines 1–18, pp. 209–210)11

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And in another song where she is coming home tired late in the evening from the woods, missing her parents, addressing her mother in the song, she sings: ‘I have been hungry since morning./If you had been there, O my mother,/You would have served me kaleyu’ (Song 18, lines 7–12, p. 212). Reading these two songs together, the burden of work the woman is under becomes evident. She is not even considered a human being who needs enough food to fill her stomach. It also depicts a woman’s relationship with another woman. As these songs are transferred orally from one generation to another, the referred mother-in-law would also have sung the same songs at some time in her life, when she was a daughter-in-law. There is no mercy for the daughter-in-law nonetheless. Thus, it verifies the ongoing mistreatment of a woman by another woman. This is no less than a trauma; it can neither be opposed nor be evaded. Therefore, such a coarse life in her husband’s house turns her thoughts toward her parents, and she wants to wipe away her distress with the tears brought on by the memories of her tender childhood spent in her parents’ love and care (Chatak, 198). This is why she is found remembering the curd of her mother’s house, kaleyu, and the days before marriage when she was dear to her mother. The comparison between a mother’s and a mother-in-law’s behaviors hinted at in these two songs suggests how a woman’s behavior toward another would change with the change in space and relationship. Before marriage, a woman is caressed by her mother and is also served fresh food. That ceases to be after marriage in the in-laws’ house. In one of the mangal songs sung during the seven pheras “seven rounds of the sacred fire,” Anjali Capila observes that with the seventh round a girl’s relationship with her parents is broken completely. She says that with the completion of the seventh phera, the “girl ceases to belong to her parents.” From kunwari (“virgin”) to bunwari (“daughter-in­ law”), her image changes “drastically” (Capila, 63). Further, with the comple­ tion of this ceremony, her parents terminate their rights over the girl. One of the local women Anjali talked to said, “We have no adhikar [right] on the daughter, her in-laws have all the rights now.” The parents, interestingly, have no say with respect to their daughter after her marriage. The mangal geet for the seventh phera states, “As you complete the seventh round of the sacred fire/ You have become your mother-in-law’s Beloved daughter-in-law” (Capila, 63). With these verses, the right of the mother-in-law over the bride is asserted. It denies any self-agency by the bride and all rights over her by her parents. This pathetic situation has now changed with time, but the songs are there so we can look back on the time when women were barely considered human beings. Hence, folk songs tell both stories and history together (Chatak, 23). The woman who is forced to accomplish all the manual work is compelled to starve. Saying that the water pot is empty, and the chulha “the fireplace” has not been lit, she is implying that other people in the family are at rest. She is in charge of carrying out every kind of work, but sadly she is not in charge of filling her stomach. It is a kind of bonded labor that she has to do without any food, let alone appreciation. These issues are the core of khuded geet. Chatak also, in his “Introduction” to the book, states that in khuded geet the Garhwali

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woman’s wretched condition has been effectively described. According to him, hunger, nakedness, her mother-in-law’s mistreatment, the burden of work, and the lack of love and respect collectively present a horrifying image of life in the in-laws’ house in Garhwal society. Aikant in his article, “Echoes from the Garhwal Hills,” states that due to the inaccessible terrain, the larger part of Garhwal remained untouched by the major socio-political life of the country. As a result, reports produced by the divisional commissioners of the then British rule were the only sources of knowledge about the people there and their land. Primarily, there were only the British gazettes for historical purposes, and the historical texts composed by the native scholars, later on, were also chiefly based on these gazettes only. Both of them, knowingly or unknowingly, gave no space to women. The woman cre­ ated the required space herself through folk narratives such as songs. Folk songs with natural imagery give her the space to store and express her desires and pain. This, in turn, could include what was neglected. More significant to observe here is that due to the “absence of heinous crimes,” British Garhwal had no concept of the police. The revenue police and the village head had the powers of the police (Arora, 91). Crimes such as rob­ bery, murder, and forgery were non-existent. However, the songs mentioned hitherto hint at a silent crime committed against women on a daily basis. This is probably why one can find frequent incidents such as women’s suicide by jumping into the Ganges, women dying due to starvation, and family’s negli­ gence behavior regarding sick women in Garhwali short stories, specifically those by Vidyasagar Nautiyal.12 Khuded geet, thus, exhibits the traces of unacknowledged crime invisible to the then administration of Garhwal. At the same time, the songs are echoes of women’s stifled voices and a compilation of their sufferings in their harrowing circumstances. The usual attempts to ransack historical texts by scholars to determine the truth of the past are evident. However, the possibility of producing dis­ criminatory facts, and their conscious erasure cannot be denied. The history of Garhwali women seems to be dismissed due to such a possibility. It is at this juncture that the songs take part in producing an alternate history of Garhwal. Remarkably, the women themselves are the unrecognized historians of their own history. Though not recorded officially, these songs comprise first-hand accounts of women’s sufferings without any exaggeration. The fact that all married women, including mothers-in-law, knew these songs but never acknowledged them openly, tells us that they remained part of their lives and memories. That the woman spends her life in odd circumstances, in which she also will die, finds space in lokgeet, “folk songs” (Chatak, 18). Accordingly, “the study of folklore has great historical significance apart from its intrinsic cultural value” (Aikant). In his “Introduction” to khuded geet, Chatak states that a few moments of happiness, affection, and peace make life immortal. A woman will be blessed while having such moments in her mother’s house. It does not, however, mean that she is satisfied with her parents. Her pitiless present experiences influence

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her to see her past in the natal home critically. As a consequence, she holds her parents responsible for what she is going through now. Her memories of the past also become unpleasant when she sees them as a married woman. The following song notes her despair caused by her parents. She says: If I had been a father’s son, I would have gone to school.

I was an enemy to my father, so he wedded me far away.

(Song 16, lines 21–22, pp. 209–210)

The woman is condemning her parents for not sending her to school like her brother. She plainly underlines the gender bias she had to face and is still facing, as she is not called home. She was not sent to school, and even in the natal home, since her childhood, she had to learn and do what she would do after marriage, i.e., searching for fodder, for wood, cooking, and spending time in the fields, in rain or sunshine (Chatak, 198). Recalling her childhood, she links her present with her past; both appear biased and harsh to her. Certainly, very often the past is reflected in the present, and also influences it. Had the woman been taught and gone to school like her brother, she would not have met the appalling future, which is her present now. The parents also, however, are not at fault here. They all are part of a society where, according to Chatak, the father finds himself in as a boy or a son, and the mother sees herself entangled in the male-dominated system. Whether it is a mother’s or mother-in­ law’s house, what stays the same is a woman’s life with lack of respect. The parents are responsible, however, for not inviting her even for a month when she, by custom, is supposed to visit them. In songs number s1 and 18, the woman appears, crying over her misfortune of not being called home by her parents. This shows her absolute denial of her parents’ part. Her wish, revealed in the seventh song, for her father to come and negotiate with her in-laws, insinuates that he is inattentive to her married life. This indifference, however, is customary as marriage bestows all rights on the in-laws only. The least thing that she wants and the least that could be done is for her parents to invite her back to her natal home. In that case also, unfortunately, the parents are heedless. By saying that her heart is with her natal home, she not only means the physical house once she was part of but also the house which still holds her past. This past is comprised chiefly of her childhood and teenage years only, as she, like all Garhwal women, was married at a tender age. That childhood past of her is too raw to question the love of her parents, and cannot be visited except via memories. Thus, however, the woman yearns to visit her parents’ house, her memories mainly consist of an undeveloped mind with memories of her childhood when she could not find faults with her own parents. The maturity to see through her parents’ self-interest and biased interests arrives with marriage. This adds to her woes. She might be feeling guilty to interrogate her parents, and hence sings: “O ghughuti, don’t sing toward my mother’s house” (Song 17, p. 211). On the one hand, she asks her friends and birds to communicate her expectations to her parents, but the very next moment she

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refuses the same because the message she wants to dispatch would make her mother “shed tears” and her father “appease the mother-in-law.” The customs which restrict her parents from having any right over her, also control her emotions and stop them from being expressed distinctly. The absence of an invitation from her parents, however, is pricking her heart. Realizing her par­ ents’ disinterest in calling her home, at the end of the eighth song, she says: No one noticed the calamity I am in. What I received coming to this world, No one ever praised me. (Song 8, lines 10–12, pp. 201–202) Here, she is including both her in-laws and parents as her tormentors. Both of them remained unconcerned about her yearnings. So, remembering all that she has gone through at her mother’s and her husband’s houses, she concludes her life is of no value to anyone. Her life matters only to carry out the incessant work like a beast. She is trained by her parents, and now her in-laws yoke her to that. The parental love, and memories of the past to which she wishes to go back, also appear unfavorable when seen from this vantage point. The following song depicts the most horrendous and frightful time the woman has to encounter due to the callousness of her parents. In this song, the woman says: O mother, you are not my mother, Wear a nose ring with the money you earned. Father did not observe the oldness of the groom, He did not find phlegm behind the chulha. (Song 13, line 12, pp. 205–206) This song encompasses all the valid reasons to detest both her husband and her parents. As an immature girl, she could not decide whom to marry. The old age of the man she married and the torments he inflicts on her refreshed her mind to figure out what she could not do the day she got married. It is likely to be the case that she, as an adult now, observed other girl-children being married to old men by their parents, in return for a good sum of money, and in that pro­ cess learned about her parents’ insensitivity as well. The daughter is questioning here the parental love that fixed her match with an old man and how that love benefited from a bride-price. She is satirically telling her mother to buy a nose ring with that money. Her father, because of money, ignored the old age of the groom, who was close to dying. Holding her parents accountable for her pre­ sent condition in this and other mentioned songs, she also expresses her anger toward them, saying: “Curse on you, mother, you wedded me to a bad house” (Song 15, lines 13–14, p. 208). Aikant also pointed out this fact when he argued that women in Garhwal had no say in the choice of their husbands. As a result, mismatched marriages were very common. Having no choice, women in turn

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would use songs to express their grudges against the marriage, their unwilling­ ness to leave their homes, the callous behavior of their in-laws, and the hard work they were forced to do. The violence the woman has to face for slip-ups is upsetting. As hinted ear­ lier, the same as by her mother-in-law, here also she is burnt with burning woods inflicted by her husband. In the same song, she further states that after a day’s labor, it is he who eats a good meal, and she has to sleep on an empty stomach. This song, quite different from others, also talks about the fallacious practice of the bride-price. This is the practice of selling girls as brides to older men. The song talks of the time which has never been recorded. Today, instead of the bride-price we may find the silent presence of dowry in Garhwal. How and why the Garhwal society traveled through this past of bride-price and arrived at its present form of dowry is another unexplored matter. At this point it is important to understand that, however, we find every song from a first-person pronoun “I,” but the songs are not an expression of a parti­ cular woman. The songs are utterances of all women of Garhwal because they have shared experiences. Being contemporaneous with each other, they all suffer the same fate once they are married. Subsequently, individual experiences become collective realities when seen from a distance by readers or listeners. Regarding this, it is crucial to recognize that not only the past of the women is referred to in these songs, but it is also the past of the society in which they live. Furthermore, the repetitive use of terms like the season’s name, birds, and the harshness of the mother-in-law affirm both the shared views of women of their lives and the importance of memory. The moment, after marriage, when women encounter the unexpected reality, they go to their memory lane recalling the songs they must have heard their elders singing in the woods while working with them. After all, folklore exists and appears relevant as long as members of the respective society can associate with it. The relevance only makes any folk element reach the next generation. The fact that Chatak collected these songs in the middle of the twentieth century suggests that women at that time as well could identify them­ selves with unhappy married lives. Taking all the songs together, it is not wrong to say that women have unknowingly archived their current circumstances, and it is only through these songs that we can learn what was left unnoticed.

4 Khuded Geet in the Present Context Undoubtedly, in the era of urbanization and globalization, the folklore of Garhwal is receding day by day. From folk narratives to performances, the entire folk culture has been greatly affected. One can still find, though much less often, khuded geet in the villages. But these songs are not similar to what has been mentioned and studied in this chapter. There are hardly any womenfolk working in the fields, rearing cattle, and going into forests searching for wood and fodder. The songs, thus, are merely to entertain oneself. More than this, the mass exodus in the last few decades has made the folk culture alive only in the memories of the people. With the changing scenario, the collection of folk

Khuded Geet: Nostalgic Songs of Garhwali Married Women

49

culture has also changed. One can find a number of YouTube channels and blogs promoting folk elements. Many scholars like Govind Chatak have col­ lected folklore in textual form. Recently, Mahipal Singh Negi’s Bajuband: Garhwali Khuded Geet came out as a collection of khuded geet. A number of singers like Narendra Singh Negi, Meena Rana, Shiv Prasad Pokhriyal, Satish Chandra Kukreti, and Pritam Bharatwan have given wings to the orality of Uttarakhand. The first four singers have produced melodious khuded geet. It is interesting to note that many recent Garhwali singers have composed khuded geet relying on the oral ones. Two such songs, lyrics and composition by Narendra Singh Negi13, are as follows: Ghughuti of my home is singing

Chait has come now.

(lines 1–2)

Burans flowers must have blossomed in the hills,

Fyonli must be swaying in the path.

(lines 7–8)

And in another song, The months when married daughters are full of nostalgia Many months of March and December come and fly away I have waited to hear from my parents But no invitation from them has ever come. (Bijalwan, trans., lines 17–20, p. 33)14 Like the songs mentioned so far from the oral collections, Narendra Singh Negi has also used the trope of the chait season, fyonli flowers, and the singing of birds. In the video of the first of these two songs, a woman is seen singing either in a vacant house or while working in the field, or while going to the woods with a sickle. No one is around here to listen and see her. This song is the best way to visualize the nostalgia, solitude, and unfulfilled wishes of women. The second song reflects the constant misery the woman is in and her condemnation of her parents. The remaking of these songs while confirming the reality of the past is also exposing the hidden and blunt face of Garhwal society. If listened to within the context in which the recreated khuded geet are sung, the present generation will be able to see the unseen and unwritten subject. Once that is done, historic preservation tacitly delineated in the folk songs will be observable to all.

Notes 1 Mangal geet are songs sung by women while performing different rituals of a girl’s marriage. Bajuband are songs in the form of dialogues between a man and a woman. A few of the khuded geet are also sung by women remembering their husbands migrating to cities for employment.

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2 Govind Chatak (1933–2007) has extensively worked on the folklore of Garhwal. The songs referred to in this chapter have been taken from his book Garhwali Lokgeet: Laghu Geet – Khand Ek, published in 1956. This book includes songs like bajuband and mangal collected by Chatak from different villages of Garhwal from the people themselves. He subtitled khuded geet as maayike ke smriti vishayak geet (“memor­ able songs related to the natal home”). He noted down all the songs in the Garhwali language and translated them into Hindi. Translation of all songs from Garhwali into English in this chapter is by the author unless otherwise noted. 3 From mid-February to March. Other than this, bhaadu (mid-August–September) and maagh (mid-January–February) are the months when women visit their parents. A Garh­ wali month starts in the middle of a Gregorian month and ends in the middle of the next month. 4 A tender bright yellow-colored flower. In the folktale of Garhwal, a princess by this name was unintentionally killed by her father due to her love for the rival prince. She was then blessed by Lord Indra to be worshipped by the people of the hills during the spring season. The women probably associate themselves with this story due to the absence of love in their married lives. 5 A sparrow. 6 Kafu, ghughuti, and hilas are the birds frequently referred to in the songs. Kafu is a small beautiful Garhwal bird. Ghughuti is a dove, and hilas belongs to one of the species of parrots. 7 Baaduli or hiccup. It is a folk belief that a person gets the hiccups when he or she is being remembered by somebody. The woman, further in the song, says that due to the kafu’s singing, her parents will get hicupps and be reminded of her. 8 In a Shaiva sub-tradition of Hinduism, also called Nath or Gorakhnath, the ascetics split their ears to wear large earrings. 9 A bright red-colored wildflower. Rhododendron arboretum. 10 A Garhwali dish made up of sour buttermilk and jhangora (“Barnyard Millet”). It would be consumed in times of economic hardship or by poor families. 11 Often, the first line in every couplet is formed only to rhyme with the second line without any relation to the first one. This is a great feature of Garhwali folk songs. Songs number 16 and 18 have this feature, and hence, the first line of the couplets has not been translated here. 12 Vidyasagar Nautiyal (1933–2012) has contributed to Garhwali literature, mainly writing about women and their position in Garhwal society. 13 A prestigious folk singer of Uttarakhand and recipient of Sangeet Natak Academy Prize on 9 April 2022. 14 Deepak Bijalwan, the translator of Narendra Singh Negi’s songs into English, has put this song with others under the title “Songs of Reminiscences.”

References Aikant, Satish C. “Echoes from the Garhwal Hills.” In Dil ki Zubaan: Language of Songs. Seminar, #741, May 2021. Available at: www.india-seminar.com/2021/741/741_essay.htm. Arora, Ajay. Administrative History of Uttarakhand (Kumaun and Garhwal): During the Rule of the East India Company (1815–1857). Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1996. Bijalwan, Deepak (trans.) A Stream of Himalayan Melody: Selected Songs of Narendra Singh Negi. 1st edn. Dehradun: Samay Sakshya, 2020. Capila, Anjali. Images of Women in the Folk Songs of Garhwal Himalayas: A Partici­ patory Research. Delhi: Concept Publishing House, 2002. Chatak, Govind. Garhwali Lokgeet: Laghu Geet – Khand Ek [Garhwali Folk Songs: Short Songs – Part One]. Dehradun: Sahitya Sadan, 1956.

3

Translation as Intergenerational

Transmission of Memory

Snake Worship in Kerala Aparna Jith

1 Introduction The origin myth on the ‘formation’ of the land that became known as Kerala as found in the collective memory and accepted anthologies of myths and legends in Malayalam, for example, Aithihyamala [A Garland of Legends], the Puranic Encyclopedia etc., leads inevitably to Parashuraman, the sixth incar­ nation of Vishnu, and from him to the serpent gods. It is the blessings of the latter that are believed to be the reason behind Kerala’s verdant and fertile terrain. The widespread presence of sarppakaavu (‘sacred groves dedicated to the worship of serpents’) across the length and breadth of the State is also an example of the deep-rooted beliefs still continuing to the present. Collective memory and translation of these memories play crucial roles in the continua­ tion and spread of this belief system. Sacred groves are believed to be inviol­ able holy spaces of worship, and this fear still remains as the main reason behind a small and densely populated state like Kerala still retaining a large number of sacred groves centuries after when they were first dedicated as ‘holy’ spaces. This chapter will look at a handful of narratives related to serpent worship in Southern Kerala, focusing on the three main Sarppaar­ adhana kendrams [serpent worship centres] of Ananthankaadu, Vettikode and Mannarashaala. Here, translation of collective memories is viewed as an act of intergenerational transmission. The narratives for analysis will be from origin stories, place legends and oral narratives associated with these sacred groves. The main aim of this chapter is to explore the deep-rooted symbiotic connection between the sarppakaavu and the many myths and legends surrounding them, and the intergenerational translation undergone by the ‘sacred’ space as well as the collective memories in the form of narratives in multiple genres.

2 What Is a Sarppakaavu? Sacred groves (കാവ്) in Kerala are ‘holy’ spaces usually designated or dedicated to a deity. A number of such small and large sacred groves are found throughout the state of Kerala. Most of these are dedicated to certain gods and goddesses like DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-5

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Ayyappan, Bhadrakali, Yakshan, Yakshi, etc. and to snakes, monkeys and other animals. Of these, the most widely seen are the ones dedicated to the snakes, the sarppakaavu (സ൪പ്പകകാവ). ് ് Sarppam (സ൪പപം) ് means ‘serpent’ and kaavu (കാവ്) is ‘sacred grove’ in Malayalam. As stated by the Environmental Informa­ tion System of Kerala (ENVIS),1 the state currently has roughly 1,500 sacred groves (ranging from a single tree to an area a few hectares wide) and the majority of them are dedicated to serpents. This number is in fact the dwindling estimate from a total of 10,000 in 1956 at the time of the formation of the State to around 1,200 in the year 2015, according to a report prepared by the State Assembly Committee on Forest and Environment, chaired by the then Forest Minister of Kerala State, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.2 According to the Environmental Information System of Kerala (ENVIS): The sacred groves of Kerala are the remnants of evergreen forest patches, protected and conserved based on religious beliefs and a great repository of many endemic, endangered and economically important plant species. The study reports revealed that floristic diversity indices of the sacred groves of Kerala are equal or nearly equal to the forests of the Western Ghats. It is also revealed that these isolated patches are self-sustainable ecosystems functioning as a bioresource centre and closed system for the nutrient and water cycles for the nearby areas. (ENVIS Network, n.d.)

3 What Is the Link Between Sarppakaavu and the Origin Myth(s) of Kerala? The connection between snakes and the land begins with the myth related to the formation of the Kerala landscape. Historians are still divided about the arguments regarding the historicity of serpent worship in Kerala. One group leads the argument that even before the arrival of Brahmins in Kerala, there existed a large indigenous tribe of people who were serpent worshippers while the other group vehemently opposes this view. According to the former, the members of this group were nature worshippers, but not part of the Hindu religion. They were called ‘Nagas’ and later came to be called ‘Nairs’, which is still a caste name in Kerala (Chembra 24). Whatever the case, serpent worship is today an integral part of the Malayali culture. What is curious is that the fear of the power of the snakes is not restricted to one region or religion in this state. There are some Syrian Christian Churches in places like Idappalli, Aru­ vithura, etc. where devotees offer prayers to saints for protection from snake bites. There are also some mosques in and around Travancore region which are connected to serpent worship (Chembra 32). There are numerous myths and legends associated with such places of worship, which shows the depth of the people’s beliefs in the worship of snakes, and it also shows the integral part played by serpent worship in the culture of the land.

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4 Why Is Serpent Worship Important to Kerala and Its People? The stories concerning the divine status and magical powers of serpents in India mainly come from the Hindu mythology and epics. Mahabharata has side stories about the members of the Ashtta Nagas including Shesha, Vasuki, Thakshaka, Karkodaka, etc. The temple legends connected to the origin of many of the prominent serpent worship centres in Kerala, have their roots in these mythologies. There are also an amazing number of stories and folklore connected to each of these temples which narrate the miracles and incidents that have taken place there. Some of these stories became legends, and then acquired the status of myths for the later generation of people connected to these worshipping centres. If one examines in depth the historical background of serpent worship in Kerala, then it will invariably lead to Parashuraman, the mythological figure believed to be one among the ten avatars of Vishnu and the myths related to the origin/formation of the Kerala landscape. Books such as Kerala Charithram, vol. I, Prachina Kera­ lam, Pulluvanpaattum Nagaradhanayum, etc. argue that serpent worship in Kerala is at least as old as the land’s origin. Aryans referred to the Kerala landscape as ‘Ahi bhoomi’, or the land of the ‘Ahi’ or snakes and the Western Ghats as Sahyadhri (‘Sa’ + ‘Ahi’ + ‘Aadri’), which can be roughly translated as the moun­ tains with the snakes. Certain mythology books and Tamil epics consider the Kerala region as the boundary of the mythical Nagalokam [abode of serpents]. This is mainly because, most of the geographical area of Kerala is below sea level and the people who inhabited here were serpent worshippers since ancient times (Jayakumarikunjamma 13). Whatever the case, serpent worship is an important part of the current Hindu religion in Kerala. The proof of this can be seen in the existence of small and large sacred groves dedicated to serpents, strewn across the state. Another interesting aspect is the presence of the serpent deities as separate installations in almost all temples across the state. Whoever the primary deity of a temple; Shiva, Vishnu, Karthikeya, Durga, Parashuraman, etc., the temple will have a separate space for the worship of the serpent as subsidiary deity there (Jayashanker, 2016, 161). Another aspect that shows the importance of serpent worship to Kerala is that one day (Aayilyam) of each Malayalam month is dedicated to the worship of the serpent gods in the temples. Hence, unlike the rest of the country, Nagapanchami is not the only day when special pujas or acts of worship are offered to the serpent gods. Also, the deep-rooted influence of snakes can be seen reflected through traditional ornaments and craft items like Naagapa­ dathaali, Naaga vilakku, etc. Many place names like Thiruvananthapuram, Karunagapalli, or Paambummekkaadu have their origin related to serpents or serpent worship. Sacred groves in India exist as part of religious beliefs and are spaces which are believed to be ‘holy’. By offering rituals and ritualistic performances there on a regular basis, this sacred ‘nature’ of the space is maintained and carried forward. It was a general practice in olden times to dedicate a small portion of

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a family’s land in the south-western corner to be a sacred grove, before turning the rest of it into a human settlement. In particular, sacred groves dedicated to serpents (sarppakaavu), were considered to be special spaces that should be left undisturbed by humans, other than to light an oil lamp in the evenings. Stone idols of serpents were installed in the groves, but left open to the elements. The main belief being that the serpents, in return for the devotion and the prayers offered, would become the protectors of the family. If they are neglected or the sacred space encroached upon, it is believed that the entire family down to the last member will face ill fortune. This belief in sarppakopam or ‘inducing the anger of the serpents’ has even to this day inspired fear in the successive gen­ erations and has helped the sacred groves remain untouched by the wanton destruction of nature by man in the name of ‘development’. This is the main reason behind a small and densely populated state like Kerala still retaining a large number of sacred groves centuries after when they were first dedicated as ‘holy’ spaces. The connection between snakes and sacred groves can be traced back to the ancient times of nature worship, when there was no organized religion or idol worship. Snakes, as part of nature, induced fear among the inhabitants of the forests. Snakes were also worshipped along with the trees and, thus, gained the status of ‘sacred beings, guardians or protectors of nature’. Thus, worship became a form of control and borrowing of the powers of nature and its ability to harm human beings. It is assumed that the idol worship of serpents began with the coming of Aryans to Kerala. Most of the important serpent worship centres in Kerala like Mannarashala Nagaraja Temple (Figure 3.1), or Vetticode Nagaraja Temple claim their origins from the hands of Parashuraman himself. It is widely believed that Parashuraman received help from the serpents of the Naagalokam to make the land claimed from the sea arable. Hence, he instruc­ ted the Brahmins, to whom he distributed the land, to worship them (Nair, K. 382). Another variation of the same myth claims that Parashuraman led the first colonists to Kerala after its formation. The continuous confrontations between the colonisers and the Naagas, the denizens of Naagalokam forced the former to abandon the newly claimed land. Parashuraman negotiated a peace treaty between the two warring groups, according to which ‘the Naagas should be given one corner of every occupied compound and they should be propitiated by the performance of annual ceremonies’ (Jayashanker, 2016, 159–160). This is what could have led to the birth of the first sarppakaavu in Kerala. There are different arguments regarding this point. There is a separate claim by some historians that the Dravidians called ‘Nagans’ in ancient Kerala were serpent worshippers, who later came to be called ‘Nairs’. This could have been an act of ancient colonisation and cultural appropriation of the indigenous nature-worshipping practices by the colonisers in order to appease the natives of the land. Or it could have been the adoption of local practices to mitigate the genuine fear of the venomous snakes found in abundance in their new land. Whatever the case may be, the point to be noted is that most of the villages and ancestral houses, especially belonging to Nair families, in Kerala, have sacred

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55

Figure 3.1 Some of the serpent idols from other sacred groves were moved to Mannar­ ashaala Sree Nagaraja temple through the Kaavumaattam (‘transfer of sacred groves’) ritual

groves attached to them (Jayashanker, 2016, 160). These are green patches of land that have withstood the test of time and the encroachment of ‘develop­ ment’. They are also a safe haven for flora and fauna of different kinds. The main reason being the religious beliefs attached to a sacred grove and its

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Aparna Jith

connection to the serpents. They have been worshipped as guardian deities of wealth, prosperity and health by generations of people in a family or a village. Even now, this belief prevents people from harming or killing a snake, and, thereby, incurring the curse of the serpents on the entire family. Many large sacred groves owned by prominent joint families have now shrunk to small installations under the shade of a single tree. There is a saying in Malayalam which can be roughly translated as ‘a single tree does not make a sacred grove’ (ottamaram kaavalla). But the current generation seems to have forgotten this warning and considers the scope of the sacred grove to be reduced to a couple of stone idols under a single tree. It is in this situation that the sacred groves still preserved by the serpent worship centres become impor­ tant. They are not only sites of worship, but also green patches that contribute to sustain the environmental balance and also are the last few refuges available to flora and fauna of different kinds. A number of differences can be seen in the practices related to serpent wor­ ship and the worship of the rest of the deities. The main difference is that, unlike other places of worship, these temples and sacred groves allow and accept worship by women and people from marginalised communities in diverse forms (Aravindhaakshan 24). In Mannarashala, the main puja and the yearly offering to the main deity are allowed to be offered only by the eldest daughter­ in-law in the family and this role of the priestess is hereditary (Jayashanker, 1997, 308). She is referred to as Valyamma, and she has the right to prepare and offer the Noorum paalum to the deity. It should also be noted that it is the eldest, married woman of the family who becomes the Amma. 3 Another dif­ ference is that most of these temples include the Pulluvar, a community of Scheduled caste people, to perform the Pulluvan Pattu inside the temple pre­ mises and it is also a crucial part of the temple festivals. Pulluvan Pattu is the oral rendition of a set of songs describing and praising the serpent deities. It is usually performed by a man and/or a woman who use special musical instru­ ments like the Pullorveena and Pullorkudam as accompaniment. Here also, we can see an instance of cultural appropriation in the sense that, the Pulluvar community of days past used to live based on offering their own set of ritua­ listic performances as part of agrarian and religious festivals independently. Snake worship and sarppakkaavu-related pujas were the prerogative of their community, just decades ago. When sacred groves gave way to temples, these roles were taken over by the ‘priests’. Even so, they could not be completely removed from the scene, as Sarppaaradhana [snake worship] has deep-rooted connections with the community, its oral renditions and other hereditary per­ formances (Aravindakshan).

5 The Origin Myth: the Parashuraman Connection Kerala, or Ahibhoomi, as it was known in the mythologies, has an interesting origin story connected with the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, Parashuraman. There are many variations of this story, but it all boils down to one simple

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thread. After killing all the Kshathriyas in the world, Parashurama decided to do penance to wash away all his sins. He had also committed the heinous crime of slaying his own mother. As part of his penance, he resolved to give away land to Brahmins. But he did not own any land to give away. Hence, according to the advice from Shiva, he threw his parashu [axe] into the ocean. His action brought up a piece of land to the south, which is believed to be the current Kerala landscape which gained the names Bhargava-kshetram or Parashurama­ kshetram (Jayashanker, 2016, 10). Now, the land that is donated should not be inhabitable, but the land gained from the sea was not arable and was saline. He again asked for advice from Shiva who instructed him to please the King of the Serpents, Vasuki. When Parashuraman prayed to Vasuki, the gratified Naagar­ aja appeared from Paathalam (the underworld) along with numerous serpents and they sprayed their venom on the surface soil. The venom absorbed the salinity of the soil and made it extremely fertile. Now, the land partly belonged to the snakes, as they were the reason behind its fertility. Hence, Prashuraman, when he divided the land among the brahmins, instructed them strictly to leave a part of each plot for the habitation of the serpents and to worship them daily. This in time became the sacred groves. Even now, almost every ancient Tharavaadu or ancestral house of a main family will have a sacred grove in its compound dedicated to the serpents. According to legends, Parashuram is also believed to have installed eight major serpent worship centres all through Kerala, the first at Vettikode in the district of Kollam in Southern Kerala. Though there are varied accounts related to this origin myth, there are no archaeological finds or inscriptions to prove the veracity of the narrative. The oldest available print material describing the narrative the researcher could access was a reference dated 1816–1820 from the Travancore State Manual published in 1906 (Aiya 59–62). There are oral nar­ ratives describing the same story by the Pulluvar community, which are claimed to date back centuries. Unfortunately, the community mostly performed oral renditions and attempts to collect and publish their narratives have only begun in recent decades (Figure 3.2).

6 Place Legends Every important serpent worship centre and sacred grove in Kerala has its own collection of place legends recounting the miracles performed by the serpents as the symbols of fertility and wealth. These are mainly related to curing poison bites, prosperity, infertility treatments or bountiful harvests. Serpents are also seen as protectors and guardian deities of a family. Hence, any ritual performed at the sarppakaavu will usually require the mandatory presence of all the members of the family. Most of these sacred groves are either under the man­ agement of the Travancore Devaswom Board or privately owned by an estab­ lished family. Major serpent worship centres, like Mannarashaala, Vetticode and Ananthakaadu, are part of the latter group and are headed by an elder from the concerned family or illom.

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Figure 3.2 A Pulluva woman singing pulluvan pattu, accompanied by a Pullorkkudam in Ondikkaavu, Ochira Parabrahma Temple, Kollam District

The Embraan, Valyamma or Karanavar positions are passed down from generation to generation. They are not only in charge of the daily rituals and management of the temple, but also the counsellors to devotees coming with myriad doubts and concerns related to serpent worship. They are also the kee­ pers of the narratives (either oral or written), palm leaf manuscripts and other texts that are passed down through the generations. They are meticulously trained by the previous family head and the rituals and beliefs related to the place of worship are also handed down. Most of the positions require the temple heads to stick to strict rules of celibacy, fasting, rituals and isolation from worldly pleasures. They can be considered to be living memory reposi­ tories4 and the guardians of the respective knowledge systems. The flip side being that the knowledge system and texts are exclusive to the perusal of the kaaranavar or head of the family of each generation and it is forbidden to share

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59

or publicise them, even to their own family members. This strictly guarded collections of memory texts and narratives pave the way for the continued practice of rituals, customs and poison cure treatments of these serpent worship centres from generation to generation. Places like Mannarashala are said to have existed for at least a thousand years following this strict handing over of memory texts (Jayashanker, 2016, 259).

7 The Three Serpent Worship Centres The three locations focused on for this chapter are from the three southernmost districts of Kerala. All three are well-known sacred groves turned into temples and still privately owned and managed by ancestral families. Two of the tem­ ples claim to be installed by Parashuraman and assert authenticity by reaching back to the popular origin myth of Kerala. The first temple in the list deviates from this and claims its existence from the narratives on God Vishnu and Vil­ wamangalam Swamiyaar himself (Jayashanker, 2016, 322). Each temple exists not just as a place of worship but also specializes in curing poison bites, astrology, sacred grove transfer (Kaavu maattal), ayurveda, etc. 1

2

Ananthankadu: This serpent worship centre is located in the nerve centre of the capital city of Kerala. Unlike the other two, this temple does not have extensive greenery as part of the ‘sacred grove’. Ananthankadu claims its place in the history of Kerala as the origin spot of the now famous Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple. Legend says that this is the exact place where Vilwamangalam Swamiyar, a great devotee of Krishna, got a glimpse of Lord Vishnu reclining on Anantha or Shesha Naga in all his glory (Anon 16). This used to be a scared grove, from which the Travancore kings later on separated the Vishnu element to the current Pandmanabhaswamy temple (located less than half a kilometre away). The temple is a man-made structure built around a hooded serpent idol installed beneath a single cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis, or Naga Danthi). The anthro­ pomorphic, five-hooded idol is ensconced among the roots of the tree. Ananthankadu worships Lord Anantha, as the servant or rather the sub­ ordinate of Vishnu. The temple head and the main priest are hereditarily addressed as ‘Embraan’. The priest not only conducts the daily rituals but also offers counselling and assistance to the devotees on a plethora of areas, such as horoscope times, predictions related to family, fertility issues, bodily ailments, etc. Vettikode: This serpent worship centre is known as Aadimoolam Vetikode Sri Nagaraja temple. As the name suggests, it claims to be the very first serpent worship centre in Kerala and traces its roots all the way back to Parashuraman. The principal deities here are Ananthan and Nagayakshi (Jayashanker, 2016, 226). The temple is surrounded by luscious greenery spread over about 5 acres, maintained specifically as the habitat of the many snakes and other fauna. The main idol is that of a five-hooded

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Aparna Jith Anantha. The temple is run by the members of the Meppallil illam. Most of the other scared groves for serpents follow the Shaivite system of rituals, but Vettikode deviates by following the Vishnavite system. The temple is famous for curing skin-related ailments and infertility issues. The main festival is during the Aayilyam day of the Kanni month (September–Octo­ ber) of the Malayalam calendar (Figure 3.3).

3

Mannarashala: The Sri Nagaraja temple at Mannarashala is situated in Haripad, in the Alappuzha district of Kerala. The principal deity here was Ananthan but later it was discovered that the spirit is more favourable towards Vasuki. Hence, the rituals here follow both Shaiva as well as Vaishnava elements. Even so, the rituals followed are mostly that of the Shiva system. Another specialty of the temple is that the main rituals

Figure 3.3 The Aayilyam puja at a ‘lone tree’ kaavu of a family home in Sreemoolana­ garam, near Aluva, Ernakulam District

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require the presence and supervision of the female head of the family and the chief priestess for the offerings and rituals to be acceptable to the deity. This is in complete contrast to all other sacred groves and temples of the serpents in Kerala. The eldest daughter-in-law who marries in to the Mannarashala illam has the right to offer puja at the temple. She is respectfully addressed as the Amma or valyamma [elder mother)] Upon her death, the next eldest daughter-in-law becomes the Amma. She is also the highest authority when it comes to the temple matters. The Amma also advises the devotees on their dilemmas related to personal life, infertility and serpent worship-related issues. There is a separate time each day and a special room in the southern side of the chuttambalam where she usually rests, meditates or meets with a selected number of devotees needing urgent counsel (Jayashanker, 2016, 259). All main pujas are offered by the Valyamma with the help of other priests who are male members of the illam. The most famous Uruli kamazhthal ritual related to the temple is believed to bless infertile couples with children. Hundreds of devotees offer this ritual each year at the temple using a traditional wide-brimmed, bronze vessel called ‘Uruli’. The main festival is on the Aayilyam day of Thulaam month (October–November) of the Malayalam calendar.

8 The Sought-After ‘Sacred’ Space and the ‘Migrant’ Gods A long time before the terms ‘ecology’ or ‘environment’ were coined and became current, people in India were aware of the intrinsic connection between Man and Nature. They were also involved in the preservation of plants and animals, rivers, mountains and water bodies by ascribing ‘holy’ status to these. Certain patches of land were conserved as ‘sacred groves’ and these were considered out of bounds for humans other than for performing rituals during certain times of the year. These green and wild patches of land were maintained by the concerned villages/ settlements and were not to be destroyed or claimed for living space by people. All forms of vegetation inside the grove, including shrubs and climbers were believed to belong to the deity. Grazing and hunting were prohibited here and sometimes even the removal of dead wood was considered taboo. Thus, they acted as sanctuaries for flora and fauna equally, while maintaining a clear boundary between the human cultivated areas and the wilderness. In return, the sacred groves provided rare medicinal herbs and helped in maintaining the eco­ logical balance, air quality and the level of the water table. They were also a great help in preventing soil erosion during heavy monsoons.

9 The Role Played by Collective Memory Fear itself played and continues to play a huge role in the maintenance of sarppakaavu, even if the once-sprawling verdant sacred spaces have shrunk to stone idols left isolated beneath lonely trees. In his thesis on sacred groves of Kerala, Rajendraprasad describes them as ‘self-generating, self-sustaining

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ecosystems’ where ‘in situ or onsite conservation’ takes place. He describes sacred groves as ‘tracts of virgin forests; the vestiges of an ancient practice in which people protected forest patches to avoid the perceived wrath of its resident God’. This is because the concept of a sacred grove or kaavu of Kerala in its complete sense includes not just a piece of land but also the flora and fauna occupying it. It is supposed to have three main elements to be considered complete: (1) the piece of land that forms the grove along with the stone idol installations; (2) the water body attached to the land, usually in the form of a small pond or a spring; and (3) the trees and other vegetation facing the sky above (Prabhakaran 79). The marked difference between a sacred grove and a ‘temple’5 lies in the fact that the ‘deity’ in the form of the serpent idol is left unprotected from the elements. There is no concrete, wood or stone structure to isolate and ‘shield’ them, nor a sanc­ tum sanctorum to offer daily prayers in. The space is a confluence of all three elements of earth, water and air, plus the idol installations which share a sym­ biotic relationship to each other’s continued existence. A popular saying with profound meaning in Kerala, which when roughly translated, means ‘a single tree cannot form a sacred grove’. Only if all the elements involved come together can a sacred grove serve its true purpose (Chembra 66). A lone tree along with some idols placed below it cannot fulfil the functions of a minor ecosystem. The irony of the current age is that, most people have forgotten this fact and rampantly encroach upon the land of sacred groves, and a large number of them have been reduced to existence as only a few idols installed under a lonely tree. The bigger purpose and the core mean­ ing behind the need for such spaces have been lost to the modern generation. Even these ‘single tree’ groves are now facing the axe, literally, in many joint family plots as a result of property disputes. To facilitate the ‘smooth’ handling of the erstwhile sacred groves, priests are invited to safely ‘transfer’ the idols to the concerned main serpent worship centres. Thus, the gods themselves become ‘homeless’ and a visit to any famous ser­ pent worship centre in Kerala can show you their plight as ‘migrants’ occupying a forgotten existence. The large number of idols strewn across these centres might appear a curious attraction to any visitor, but the point missed by those without a discerning eye is that each ‘homeless’ idol signifies one less sacred grove in existence and the death of one more self-sustaining ecosystem. Thus, the sacred groves that once were formed as a result of ‘colonisation’ have been double-colonised, now resulting in their demise. The flora and fauna that the sacred grove used to shelter are either destroyed or driven away. This includes many snakes, some of them venomous. It is ironical, because a snake spotted inside a house instantly invokes panic and fear in our minds, usually resulting in the capture and death of the reptile, while we never once reflect upon our own actions resulting in the wanton plunder and destruction of their homes. Verdant groves have given way to concrete jungles, but the snakes are here to stay, it is their land as well. The disastrous Kerala floods of 2018 saw not just people being displaced but snakes as well. The role reversal happened when the people had to leave their

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homes and vehicles while the reptiles occupied those vacant spots as shelter. There were multiple news articles appearing in the months after the floods about snakes such cobras, kraits, vipers and even pythons being spotted curled up in houses, abandoned cars, roof tops, etc. People had government facilities and flood relief camps, while the reptiles lost the trees and flora that used to be their usual shelters. There are also snakes that have been removed far from their habitats in the deluge. Arun Prakash Lal, secretary of SWARA, says, “There were one or two instances of people spotting Bibron’s Coral Snake, which is bright red with thin bands. These are usually found deep in the forest but they have made their way to the outskirts of the towns in Wayanad and Kannur.” (Sidhardhan)

10 How Can We Be Trained to Read Between the Lines? Why is the fear still so deep-rooted in the minds of the people of Kerala that lead them to irrationally continue the age-old practices of snake worship? This question will require a deeper understanding of the concept of collective memory and the intergenerational transmission of such memories. In his work Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud asks a question that is per­ haps similar to this situation, “What are the ways and means employed by one generation in order to hand on its mental states to the next generation?” (158). Both questions can be partially answered by Bella Brodzki’s analysis of intergenerational transmission as inevitably obtaining the future by sharing one’s common past (113). She views the processes of intergenerational and inter­ cultural transmission as acts of translation (111). In the same sense, any act of continuous passing down of shared memory or remembrances to future gen­ eration, in the form of narratives, beliefs or ritualistic performances can be viewed as an act of translation. In the context of this chapter, the shared past of the ritualistic practices and belief in the associated power of the sarppakaavu has passed on the fear and faith towards serpent worship to the future genera­ tions of Malayalis. The different serpent worship centres have used temple publications, dedicated websites and even advertisements to propagate the nar­ ratives and legends surrounding their respective places of worship regarding the power and ‘efficacy’ of their deity or deities. By continuing this cyclical nature of narrative being transmitted from generation to generation, what has been lost in translation is the reason behind the practices. The need for a dedicated space in the kannimoola (south-west corner) of ancestral properties is not just because of an age-old custom or the belief in a legend surrounding Parashura­ man (Jayakumarikunjamma 18). The idea behind leaving a portion of the land uninhabited, filled with trees and shrubs and a water source could have been for the survival of the reptiles and animals that were the original inhabitants of the area. The sacred groves played the role of wilderness where these animals could live undisturbed, while the fauna of the place provided fresh air and protection

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from wind, soil erosion, at the same time maintaining the ground water level as well. The continued destruction and occupation of the sacred groves mean the loss of natural habitat and lack of all the goodness provided to humankind by these self-sustaining ecosystems. It is high time that we became aware of our surroundings and the hidden messages behind age-old practices. Blind belief in rituals and customs are not going to help humanity. We need to not just believe without questioning, but also understand the reasons behind the narratives that lead to the age-old practices. Fear alone is no longer enough to protect the sacred groves, the sci­ ence and interpretation behind them need to be disseminated and redistributed among the masses. Two years of back-to-back floods and the continued appearance of frequent cyclones and other natural disasters should be enough of a wake-up call for us to pay attention to the environment and its protection.

Notes 1 ENVIS or Environmental Information System, established by the Government of India in December, 1982, is a planned programme after realising the importance of collect­ ing and maintaining a database of the environmental information of every State and Union Territory for future policy making. Environmental Information System: home page (www.envis.nic.in). 2 Sacred groves of Kerala: down from 10,000 to 1,200 (www.downtoearth.org.in).

3 Temple pamphlet, Mannarashala Sri Nagaraja Temple, Kerala.

4 The researcher has been able to interview the members of the temple trusts of all

three sacred groves and the fact about daily notes and case diaries handed down by the temple heads was conveyed during the December 2015 interview with Narayanan Embraan, the current head of Ananthankaadu Sri Nagaraja Temple. The interviews were held as part of the fieldwork for the researcher’s thesis. 5 What are called serpent worship centres or sarppa aaradhana kendram are modernday temple structures that have evolved from famous sacred groves in different parts of Kerala. Some parts of the grove are cleared of flora and fauna so as to be ‘human­ friendly’ and built in the form of a Hindu temple. Some others have unfortunately ceased to exist as a grove and have been completely converted into concrete temple structures, like the Ananthankadu Temple, which is situated in the nerve centre of the capital city of Kerala.

References Aiya, V. Nagam. Travancore State Manual, vol. II. Government of Travancore, 1906. Anon. History of Sree Padmanabha Swami Temple. Narayana Publications, 2011. Aravindakshan, Panmanna. Pullothbhowsaraaya Pulluvarum Paarambarya Anushttaa­ nangalum [Flora-born Pulluvar and Hereditary Practices]. Kalam Books, 2012. Brodzki, Bella. Can These Bones Live?: Translation, Survival, and Cultural Memory. Stanford University Press, 2007. Chembra, Radhakrishnan. Nagaradhanayile Kalmezhuthureethi [The Kalam Drawing Style in Serpent Worship]. Krishna Publications, 2012. ENVIS Network (n.d.) ‘Home Page’. Available at: www.envis.nic.in Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Translated by James Strachey, Norton, 1990.

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Jayakumarikunjamma, C.S. Nagaraadhana Keralathil [Serpent Worship in Kerala]. International Centre for Kerala Studies, University of Kerala, 2012. Jayashanker, S. Census of India: Special Studies – Kerala; Temples of Kerala. Directorate of Census Operations, Kerala, 1997. Jayashanker, S. Census of India: Special Studies –- Kerala; Temples of Alappuzha. Directorate of Census Operations, Kerala, 2016. Nair, G. Ravindran. Snake Worship in India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1993. Nair, K. Shivashankaran. Praachinakeralathinte Charithram [History of Ancient Kerala]. DC Books, 2006. Prabhakaran, Suma. ‘Sarppakaavum Aaradhanayum Saamskarika Paithrikathinte Adayaalangal’ [Serpent Sacred Groves and Worship as Symbols of Cultural Heritage]. Vignana Kairali, December 2009, pp. 78–80. Rajendraprasad, M. ‘The Floristic, Structural and Functional Analysis of Sacred Groves of Kerala’. PhD thesis, University of Kerala, 1995. Sidhardhan, Sanjith. ‘Kerala Floods: Snake Experts Slither in to Action’. Times of India, 23 August 2018. Available at: www.indiatimes.com

Part II

Print Culture and Memory Markers

4

A Baker’s Dozen on Memory Reading and Writing “Acknowledgements” K. Narayana Chandran

1 Introduction Memory is vital to creature identity. However fragile or faint, memory shores up one’s identity against people, places, and things that make the human in us. If memory goes, what are we but effigies of selves that have lost their sense of what/ who they are? This chapter considers texts marked “Acknowledgements” in published documents as a form of memory, and memory as a form of acknowl­ edgement. This circularity and mutuality of “Acknowledgements” constitute its multiple paratextual services. To acknowledge is to reassure one’s self that it can and does remember. Anamnesis is the power to recall, the potential for and object of remembrance. The Oxford English Dictionary illustrates this sense by the liturgical practice of the Eucharist. Unless the sacrifice of Christ is recalled and accessed in detail, why would a Christian partake in it? “Acknowl­ edgements” are not therefore a series of mere statements. This is recorded ana­ mnesis, one where we share our discoveries in knowledge with communities that build and sustain epistemic values. In “Acknowledgements” begin the responsi­ bilities of human discourse. That agreed, other questions that come relate to larger meanings of the “ethical” we ought to remember. Where do researchers see themselves situated when they write? What motives foist a voice as “authorial” at the centre while the affectational one tosses it out to the margins? How do a writer’s prefatory remarks and remembrances, admissions of commission and omission, make for respectable reading relations? The difficulty of writing “Acknowledgements” is perhaps the writing of difficulty, a realization that memory obligates most writers often to speak in voices other than their own, or ventriloquize differences, now of the centre and now of the margins.

2 The Baker’s Tale First of all, that old folktale about a baker called Van Amsterdam, and an old woman who stops by his shop to buy a dozen Saint Nicholas cookies, for which the Albany shop in New York was famous. The shopkeeper puts a dozen cookies in a bag and is about to hand over the packet to the old woman when she protests that she knows that she asked for a dozen, and not just 12 cookies. DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-7

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Van Amsterdam is sure that he is right about the dozen but the old woman won’t settle for anything less than 13 for a dozen, according to her, 13 is cor­ rect. A few minutes of haggling follow and before she leaves the shop, she says: “Van Amsterdam! However honest you may be, your heart is small and your fist is tight. Fall again, mount again, learn how to count again!” The tale goes on to show how the curse sticks and Van Amsterdam’s shop loses its old customers’ goodwill, with fewer and fewer customers over the fol­ lowing months. One night he has a dream of Saint Nicholas handing him a new bag of cookies, but before he could thank Saint Nicholas, the old woman appears to him, smiling. A changed man now, Van Amsterdam tells himself that a baker of Saint Nicholas cookies ought to make his dozen 13, as the old woman once had demanded. Sure enough, as his shop opens the next day, in walks the old woman and pays for a dozen Saint Nicholas cookies and walks away with 13 of them. She blesses him for the act that would bring him rewards. And it does. The old customers promptly return. And the new ones stampede to his door for the baker’s dozen in the weeks leading to December 6, the Dutch Saint Nicholas Day. In my memory pastiche, I forget where I first heard this tale or from whom. Now who do I acknowledge for the gift of this knowledge? That, I suppose, is pretty much like who “heard” the dozen wrong: the old woman or Van Amsterdam? And why, again, only the baker’s dozen is still 13. A folktale is the best short example of a fluid narrative, memory mixing desire in strangely dis­ proportionate ways, the s´ruti (the heard) at once confirming and denying the smṛti (the recalled) in its delivery among people and places.

3 Paratext Users of books now read everything: all that there is to read in, around, and about them. It would appear there is much more close reading to be done, as our attention slowly shifts from the writing to the scene of writing. And then we hear voices arguing that finer distinctions are still possible and desirable among levels and layers of fine print. All in order to keep track of our mem­ ory’s peregrinations. For such circumtextualities as titles, dedications, printer’s blurb, promotional titbits, collegial endorsements, prefaces and acknowl­ edgements, Gérard Genette gave us the cover word, paratext. Of course, we know what to make of a paratext when we spot it, because Genette has also told us that everything that holds a text in place, frames it (“an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations”, etc.) and is a paratext. His other descriptions of the paratext are the following: “the reinforcement and accompaniment of a certain number of productions”; things that “surround [a text] and prolong it, precisely in order to present it …”. What strikes us most about these is Genette’s recourse to metaphors. He writes, for example, that: the paratext is for us the means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself as such to its readers, and more generally to the public …

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[W]e are dealing in this case with a threshold, or … with a ‘vestibule’ which offers to anyone and everyone the possibility either of entering or of turning back … (261) Naturally, we turn away from, or enter spaces guarded by memory. Usually, at thresholds, memory makes us pause, if we are cautious. But it is still arguable that some parts of “Acknowledgements” qualify as variations on the good old marginalia on extended wings, or perhaps memor­ abilia donning paratextual costumes for a party of readers of all ages and per­ suasions. It is hardly surprising that a writer of “Acknowledgements” has consulted and copied out passages from her commonplace books. Since none of us claim perfect recall, or keep a vigilant track, of our inspirational moments and patterns while acknowledging sources and citing correspondences, our commonplace books are home to memories. But most entries there, we agree, are not only codes and quotes, raw ideas, but also our on-the-spot reactions and immediate provocations in black and white. Copied-out marginalia, in short. Very brief entries suggesting aha! moments, succinct cross-referencing Cf. clues, self-directing mnemonic hints, cautionary asides, thrilled gushes, grumpy punctuation, or plain notes or queries to oneself or the writer (who is by now our fantasy interlocutor).

4 Reading “Acknowledgements” Apart from the serial logic that we should begin with the “first things” in published books, such as “Prefaces” and “Acknowledgements”, these texts are perhaps the best preparatory material to begin with. While “Acknowledgements” in a book is certainly not a guide to the ill-fitting parts of an author-puzzle, sometimes it is more a reflection of its writer than a writer is a reflection of the “Acknowl­ edgements”. If nothing else, we could tell ourselves whether a writer we are about to read has had the gift of life as well as the gift of the library. Although most institutions anyway consider writers to be most self-directed, and agonistically individual, as readers, we might want to know what such gifts have made of this writer. Ethics, after the dharmic texts of ancient India and Emmanuel Levinas, is nothing but a recognition of the Other. (A little later, I shall return to some views on learning as a gift, authorial rights as a non-issue.) When solitary hunter-gath­ erers in the humanities begin to read “Acknowledgements”, they realize that only the naivest among them would feel free as authors to proudly embrace their indi­ vidualities. It is a commonplace that there is hardly any personal accomplishment as far as a researcher is concerned. If we asked the following for starters, we might get to know how good or bad their memories are, and how such memories guided their hand. Would it pose unusual problems rhetorically for authors when they compose “Acknowl­ edgements”? What is acknowledged, and to what end? Publishing research calls the lone workers at their carrels and studies into an open conference space of

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readers, critics, and reviewers. This considered, what would academic writers say to the world out there? (Note, especially, the hybridized prefatory acknowledgements that aim to cross bridges and close gaps between the solitary and the social.) Do the acknowledging “paratexts” just plant milestones, or meticulously map a journey: how have they reached where they now are––a secure, professional perch? Or do they betray the anxieties that beset the selfproclaimed conformists and rebels of the profession? How truthful to their own dodging and distracting selves would they try to be in this effort? And, finally, what do we learn about publishing research (the ethics of it all to the extent we might discern them)? Is there a reliable index or card catalogue to the sub­ conscious library of writers?

5 Internal/External Emotions Ingratiating effusion, self-promotional asides, and suggestions, and perhaps excul­ patory statements and excuses also find some place in formal acknowledgements. We sense modulations of unctuousness when certain authors record personal obligations and professional collaboration. The objects of such grateful memory live mostly in the shadows. But in all this, as memory can only flourish or fade, we should be able to tell the difference between the perfunctory and the banal, and the more diligent and cordial record of scholarly and personal debts. Perhaps it is to the modern (western) imperfect understanding of memory that the Dravidian/Tamil classical akam–puram (interior/exterior) poems point. In akam poems we have exquisite landscapes of the mind triggered by the sensorium. What this suggests is that we, as lovers, live in two correspondent worlds at the same time. That is to say, perhaps, that the memories of the interior mingle with experiences of exterior lands, although one is unverifiable and the other empirical. They are indeed separate and distinct. In ancient Tamil love songs, certain land­ scapes generate specific emotions in sensitive human beings, and supposedly even in animals and birds. Love is in the air, and it is acknowledged. The emotional setting is virtually conditioned by the natural setting. There are even types of landscapes and regions (tinai . as vaguely understood in English) that evoke feelings of love, longing, union, and separation. Now the lesson for us who read “Acknowl­ edgements” is that the akam–puram dichotomy of writers is hard to capture, and even harder to appreciate. Remembered when told, recalled when retold, are we sure which landscapes of the mind are sketched truthfully in “Acknowledgements”? For every speaking of which we have thinking of which memories. And who can tell how we remember what we do with clinical precision?

6 Memory Matters It comes as no surprise that the text of “Acknowledgements” is tonally and structurally split at the root in most academic publications. Their writers have perforce to remember being alone amidst a scholarly and institutional crowd. At least once, at the outset. Research is solitary but its pursuit must be

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accredited by public institutions (such as universities, funding agencies, presses, organizations and cohorts sponsoring research), its findings scrutinized and approved by peers, the copy reviewed and later vetted by professional editors for stylistic and other conventions of public address, and finally published/made public by further censoring and accrediting agencies. While all the processing of methods and material is intellectually stimulating for individual researchers, they are nonetheless aware that the writing-up of their results, the ordering and establishing of evidence, revision, submission of papers, co-edited results that qualify finally as “publications” are tasks and obligations communally shared. They have, in short, their memory to thank. The real challenge is not only to see this irony in a professionally decent light but also to say all that in mem­ orable words that are satisfying both to oneself and others who matter. Memory matters most, and especially, because we are generally short on mat­ ters of memory. And yet more daunting is the prospect authors have always recognized: the complete incomprehension, and occasional suspicion, that nonhumanists widely share when humanities scholarship presents itself at selection venues, tenure reviews, and competitive preferments. Of course, the humanities writer/critic, it would seem, will have not only to be scholarly but also to look, feel, and sound scholarly at the evaluative academic hustings. Seriously read, “Acknowledgements” in scholarly books from some western uni­ versity presses sometimes cannot help giving the dubious impression that the researcher’s role in the publication must have been small, considering the illustrious company he/she has kept over the years, and the continuing professional support he/ she has been receiving from such globally reputed institutions, generous endowments and funds, distinguished colleagues and superior mentors. Collegial courtesy and professional modesty urge that one owns up to the faults and omissions that still remain, despite the writers’ best efforts made within an eminent scholarly domain, they were lucky to flourish. Now the question might well be: Who would not pro­ duce exceptional work, given such outstanding nurturing circumstances? Writing “Acknowledgements” therefore is not merely an exercise in the so-called “writing skills” but one performed with a discrete awareness that one’s personal language is now entering public discourse. Memory is legion. It should not play tricks on the writer at this crucial moment of acknowledging favours and timely assistance. The liminality of “Acknowledgements” proclaims that it is much more than just “for the record” but an open admission that as “author” one has no more authority than what others grant to one. If a book is known by the company it longs to keep, or its author’s lineage attested by its contents, its “Acknowl­ edgements” serve much the same putative function as an epigraph or quotation does in a scholarly debate. Assuming that the latter indeed makes a point, it is only as good as their user’s own discursive purchase and appositive claims. No matter how respected your cited source or its universal acclaim, your case must be strong enough as scholarship on its own in the first place. In Louis Menand’s words, however, this hardly works the way it should:

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K. Narayana Chandran Since it is the system that ratifies the product … the most important func­ tion of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduc­ tion of the system. To put it another way, the most important function of the system … is the production of the producers. (28)

Menand’s is perhaps the most unblinkered look at doctoral work in English in universities, and he makes no bones about academic peers who ensure that the scholarship they review conforms to, rather than challenges, the rigours of existing knowledge. What do we acknowledge then: the vanity of all scholarly vanities, or the accreditation of all such vanity in print?

7 Proclaiming One’s Self Words rarely say enough. Gestures, sometimes material signs, remind and acknowledge the given, the taken. And sometimes in published works, an acknowledgement turns out to be precisely the difficulty of proclaiming that it is one.1 (No wonder many authors keep their prefaces long and their appen­ ded note of thanks short. An essential gesture, hardly striking an attitude.) The struggle for most writers is to maintain a steady rhetorical poise, not letting their narratives lapse into lifeless clichés, coy euphemisms, and empty slogans. On the one hand, their genuine gestures of professional goodwill are still apt to give them the slip. (Memory, like all of us, slips not on mountains but on stones.) On the other, it is likely that honest words sound tendentious. Prestigious authors/institutions/affiliations cited in gratitude may be seen by some readers as an author blowing his or her own trumpet, proclaiming his or her isolated superiority by association; canvassing future support, endorse­ ment, or approval of their work. The question is: shouldn’t the acknowledger seek the acknowledgee’s permission to remember? Should they be free to publicly use the latter’s name or their association with a project?2 As one enters conversing as a writer, does not one’s identity unintentionally become fictional in some way? Ethical safeguards could not be any more scrupulous than this.

8 The Academic Voice Jane Gallop once wrote that we need to think of academic writing as a foreign language, one that we need to learn first to be able to express ourselves quite well in it. (That is to say, the native speakers of English, so-called, jump much the same set of rhetorical hurdles in writing academically as the Indians do.) The “essay” where Gallop offers this cheering notion is called “The Work of Writ­ ing”, in two parts mixing two disparate discourses, a “story” and a “conversa­ tion”, both, to my mind, exemplary “Acknowledgements” by proxy but neither presumably deemed marginal to the other. And what do they acknowledge? Gallop’s first part called “Jane’s Story” puts it this way:

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.[A]cademic writing is like a foreign language: you have to learn it before you can express yourself in it … It’s not like you start out expressing yourself; you start out imitating other people. Somewhere in that process, you become articulate. You learn … to put your own voice into this lan­ guage … There is no expression … that hasn’t passed through this process of learning a language that belongs to someone else before it belongs to you …Trying to get voice into writing is really hard. (30) Gallop is telling us at once that there is only so much distraction we can deal with when we read debits and credits. If no “Acknowledgements” really cap­ tures the spirit of a genuine gesture but only its obligatory pose, it is time we began recognizing its three major dummies: the first that fondly remembers, the second that clean forgets, and the third that remembers to forgive all those trailing peccadillos in an author’s race for publication. Isn’t it charming that while looking at the style of certain samples, the word certain invariably appears in circumstances of uncertainty? After all, we need a little language to salute the language, its supreme memory that helps one balance professional ethics and verbal facility.

9 Narrative Gifts Gallop’s insight conducts us through a series of short reflections and some contentious issues. First, I am not sure that my memory is now robust enough to tell me very clearly the stages of my learning a language––never mind what I call that language: first, second, third, or fourth. Like most Indian middle-class kids of my generation in a small business town, no language was dominant and powerful enough to neglect the floating tongues in my vicinity. How I learnt any language(s) I couldn’t tell, now or ever. Second, Indian folkways and the indigenous notions of education define any learners’ debts as primordial and generational. Vidya- (learning) for most Indians signifies not merely bookish lore but a gamut of learning social skills further classified sometimes as art-skills, manoeuvres, discipline, stratagem, acumen, discernment, scholarship, and a whole range of pre-colonial arts and sciences for the cultivation of the human mind and body. While Sanskrit pundits were known to repay nothing, they did pay exemplary homage at the very outset to their revered masters for all gifts received and returned many times over in a splendid circularity of dharmic gestures. That granted, there is something faintly ridiculous about open declarations of acknowledgement to one’s mentors in black and white. For da-na, the Sanskrit for donation, covers all that one gives obligatorily or com­ plementarily for free. And once given away, what is given is delivered of bon­ dage on both sides, now or ever. I recall at this point Trinh T. Minh-ha who tells us that all narrative gifts are shared and endless, way too unspecific to be personally acknowledged as yours or mine, ours or theirs. Trinh’s point is that a gift, like a story it really is, is in circulation, “an empty gift which anybody

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can lay claim to by filling it to taste, yet can never truly possess. A gift built on multiplicity. One that stays inexhaustible within its own limits. Its departures and arrivals. In quietness” (2). What she is suggesting, I think, is memory cannot be transferred as such when shared. If it is da-na/donation, what does one give, and what does one take, in learning? The teachers, of course, give us only what they know, and rarely what they do not yet know. But either way, vidya- requires further study and spec­ ulation. Teaching is hardly akin to the transfer or sale of private property, goods and services, because there is nothing of a teacher’s to give, or nothing that can be owned like property, exchanged like commodity, by the disciple. Instruction indeed gives nothing away, as when one alienates one’s rights to property. No proprietary rights are involved or claimed in scholarly transac­ tions, none granted as in business, the reason research publications are not commercially priced and paid for. We are lit to lighten, as they say. Scholarly acts of further generosity follow. Enter patents, copyright, rights and permis­ sions etc., however, when our scholarship reaches and passes into business hands. No wonder novices have to be told to guard themselves against pre­ datory publishers and pre-publication tempters.

10 Rings It has seemed to me no coincidence that rings worn as ornament in most cultures are memory and desire synecdochically rolled into one. They mutually feed their significance of something known, and later acknowledged, many times over. Rings that bind and loosen amorous relationships have fed the cultural imaginary for millions of years. And those circular ornaments (metallic loops and chains, anklets, nose-rings, and bangles included) have always had much to do with marital faith, spousal assurance, and mutual commitment. Rings are memory. They are also knowledge remembered, recognition, acknowledgement par excellence. Abhigna-na (re-cognition enabled by memory) is all this in the famous play by Kalidasa where the lover-king’s signet ring remains known and unknown every time Shakuntala ponders its value when it is lost and found. No wonder memory is the most selfreflexive study the world over, a theme first aligned to telling truths by The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning. (When rings as ornaments show that they remember and honour faith, it sounds tautological when someone talks about an engagement ring.) Let us also recall in conjunction such English phrases as ring a bell, ring true, etc. (The Gyges Ring of Plato’s Republic, Book 2 is a magic ring that lets one vanish at will, like some of our betters allowing themselves to forget us when we need their support most. The abuse of memory, if you will.) When we move towards literary, mythical and advertising lore: Shakuntala, Portia, Sita, and a million DeBeers’ rings. I regret my scanty knowledge of nursery rhymes but when I see “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” played in open places I can’t be sure that the play energizes the memory of school children. If we are still enamoured of rings and lovers, Wendy Doniger collects and interprets those narratives of signet rings in The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry (2017).

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11 Acknowledging The oedipal memory of borrowing and forgetting is most trying in print cultures. The ethics involved in the legitimate use of others’ ideas and views on loan, credits and obligations, is a large subject. Due acknowledgement of all sources consulted and listed in Notes and References, besides quotes checked for the accuracy of verbatim reproduction, constitute decent ethical practices in western scholarship. Among Indian scholars working with indigenous materials, however, what guides citational logic is largely dharma, what best suits the sharers of a stupendously rich and diverse spiritual-epistemological Vedic tradition, compris­ ing tales of the tribe, argumentative logic and folk-sciences, spiritual exercises and metaphysical debates, and innumerable oral discourses for self-culture and public good. All free, and freely circulating among the folk. Most Indian scholars therefore do not follow any strict citational logic, or insist on formally precise acknowledgement, for what they learn from s´ruti (the heard) and smṛuti (the remembered). When all knowledge is by far freely shared and exchanged, and further on to be delivered in a spirit of fiduciary goodwill, why formally acknowledge that freedom? T. S. Eliot, probably unmindful of the irony or the Indic roots of that wisdom, caught its true spirit in the phrase, “the Word unheard”, a phrase that appears in the opening verse of “Ash Wednesday”, Sec­ tion V, line 4. Alastair Pennycook busts the “originality myth” around which much plagiarism debate is still conducted in non-Asian and non-African printing and publishing cultures. In “Borrowing Others’ Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism”, he tries to clear much air relating to the authorial rights, claims and privileges perceived differently in cultures still engaged in post­ colonial debate and dialogue. Of particular relevance here is Pennycook’s discus­ sion of colonized memory under the heading, “Cultures of Memory and Text”.

12 Marginalia Ordinarily, “marginalia” are readers’ notes scribbled in the margins of books/ printed matter, perhaps extended to accommodate the marginal corrections and additional inscriptions on the drafts by a composer of texts, critical or creative. Lest we forget! Strangely, these notes scribbled in the margins are rarely acknowl­ edged by writers. They form, however, a silent group of menacing grousers, those errata of conscience, only a poet would perhaps recall so conscionably in order to record them. Here, for example, is the second part of Eve Joseph’s poem called “Acknowledgements” which is wholly devoted to the waste and clutter a poet makes in the act of finding what will suffice for her finished product: Thanks to working titles: discarded, dumped, delayed: for disappearing without a fuss, for being frame, scaffolding, the one bowl big enough to hold the fruit. (17)

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Concealed in this poetic gesture is perhaps a shrewd acknowledgement that aligns marginalia and waste. Memory banished is memory revisited. For unac­ knowledged lessons, we turn to Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror. The abject of Kristeva meets the human abstract of William Blake. Value is the key to this conceptual and ethical alignment we seldom want to acknowledge: we reject what we least value as “material”. As the poet remembers, in real life we want our waste to “[disappear] without a fuss” (Joseph 17).3 Poets know what to make of their diminished things, like those arrayed so fondly by Joseph. The best-ever acknowledgement of a writer’s work can sud­ denly turn up anywhere in a book most unexpectedly, even gnomically, as a flash of innocence amidst a mound of experience, like Walter Benjamin’s in The Arcades Project: “What the child (and, through faint reminiscence, the man) discovers in the pleats of the old material to which it clings while trailing at its mother’s skirts—that’s what these pages should contain” (391). We only need to remember that The Arcades Project at bottom is Benjamin’s marginalia.

13 Conclusion The lessons from sampling “Acknowledgements” are manifold. We read memory disguised as texts; first, in order to see if the concept and act converge as acknowledgement in some decent definition rather than continuing in an unseemly semantic disarray. The difficulty of writing “Acknowledgements” is indeed the writing of difficulty, but think of the great relief of sharing the une­ dited life of secrets with strangers who read one’s work. One such sample stood out for me: Barbara Kingsolver’s “Acknowledgements” to her collection of essays called Small Wonder. I noticed its unusual placing among the last pages of her book. Second, her text distinguishes itself as the most candidly pithy apologia pro vita sua of the fraught political life she led with her husband in the few years leading to the publication of her book: I’m deeply indebted to the readers, booksellers, librarians, and friends who stood by me through the months when a handful of ultraconservatives sliced part of a sentence from my essay in defense of the flag, reversed its meaning, and paraded it across the country to revile me as Patriotically Incorrect. (266–267) In less than two pages we have sanity restored, while nothing is forgotten or forgiven. Given that the texts we look at were written by several seasoned hands, “Acknowledgements” affect our habitual modes of thought (about language and professional ethics) in unpredictable ways. My samples therefore extend my thought and discussion well beyond the peripherally stylistic. The drafting of a decent page of acknowledgement must have taken longer for most book-writers like Kingsolver than revising sections of their argument-driven chapters. A good chapter will likely find its own momentum once we set it on its narrative

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course. “Acknowledgements”, on the other hand, are no argument. If anything, they argue with themselves without letting the author’s mask slip. They have, in other words, to work so hard against any utterance that is apt to sound ego­ centric, tendentious, or immodestly assertive of the book’s distinction and iso­ lated superiority. Second, written with a clear intention, “Acknowledgements” had better wear their mission lightly, their address ideally simple and supple in contrast to the frame-locked prose of chapters where authors fall upon the dis­ putatious thorns of points and counterpoints, only to bleed. I also note that ethical compulsions guide the choice of words for most writers. Very few “Acknowledgements” I sampled seemed to shadowbox adversaries and antago­ nists, directly confront detractors and dissuaders, or malign critical opponents in anticipated fury. Only rarely if ever were spoilsports even recalled in passing, to be graciously forgiven. In a word, I often saw in a writer of “Acknowl­ edgements” more of a composed Prospero of the last scenes than an ill-tempered Caliban of the middle scenes of The Tempest. They were all ripeness, readiness; noble and forgiving tragic heroes in thanking their masters and benefactors who figure in the last act of their respective plays. Memory, again, benign at its best. Other lessons I seem to have learnt often took the form of passing thoughts. First, the nice thought that having lived as authors in bringing a book to life, Barthes and Foucault notwithstanding, published writers no longer consider themselves “dead” while asserting their prime, inalienable right to enter debits and credits in the appropriately discrete columns without ever getting lost in the thickets of sentiment. They celebrate their lives as memory. How? Not as authors, but as authorial personae who assert their Thoreauvian right to say where they live and what they live for. The ends they gladly meet at little cost. Second, it also occurred to me while recalling that sentence from Walter Ben­ jamin that no one yet considered calling their autobiography just Acknowl­ edgements. As readers, wouldn’t it please us to appreciate acknowledgements as fondly nostalgic as Benjamin’s that act as bridges? Self-ingratiating forms tend to speak in codes to one’s self and to others, while trying not to sound like they are. If “Acknowledgements” open up ethically to the live presences they ima­ gine, what could be better than that? Better still, wouldn’t it be a wonderful experiment to write “Acknowledgements” as a fragment of what Leah Price calls an It-narrative, one that speaks not as a person but as a thing?4 If a pub­ lished book were to speak its mind directly to its readers, gracefully listing all its makers and distributors, all ought to augur well in its progress, a record set in the annals for analytical bibliographers and book-historians.

Notes 1 This “difficulty” can take many forms. Let me mention just two. We find authors helpless to adequately acknowledge books or articles that appear too late to be fully accounted for or credited in their works. Some courtesies writers must acknowledge, but they cannot explain or credit the truly exceptional ones that go far beyond the required duties of professional peers and assistants.

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2 Hua Peng who has surveyed acknowledgement patterns in Chinese dissertations poses the same question, according to Laura R. Micciche. In Chinese culture, name-dropping could be construed as “a face-threatening act for the acknowledged who does not want to be mentioned as such on a public occasion" (quoted by Micciche, 2017, 17). Since privacy issues may be involved in an author’s open acknowledgement of support for subjects considered controversial or partisan, prior “no objection” clearance would be desirable before someone might be seen as guilty and supportive by association with a dubious cause. 3 For a brief but pointed discussion of deficient ethical commitments, see Julia Kriste­ va’s “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and … Vulnerability”, in Hatred and Forgiveness. I see part of this essay, especially pp. 34–36, as acknowledging the vanity of charity, rather than the ethical delusions from which socio-religious institutions do not seem to recover, in dealing with their disabled and vulnerable wards. 4 For a detailed discussion of the “It-narrative” and an incisive commentary on its for­ tunes, see Leah Price (2009).

References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Doniger, Wendy. The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems: 1909‒1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Gallop, Jane. “The Work of Writing”. In The Future of Scholarly Writing: Critical Interventions, eds Angelika Bammer and Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 29–39. Genette, Gérard. “Introduction to the Paratext”. Trans. Marie Maclean. New Literary History, 22(2) (1991): 261–272. Joseph, Eve. “Acknowledgements”. Antigonish Review, 38(151) (2007):.16–17. Kingsolver, Barbara. Small Wonder: Essays. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Kristeva, Julia. Hatred and Forgiveness. Trans. Jeanine Herman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Menand, Louis. “The Ph.D. Problem: On the Professionalization of Faculty Life, Doctoral Training, and the Academy’s Self-Renewal”. Harvard Magazine, November–December (2009): 28–31. Micciche, Laura R. Acknowledging Writing Partners. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearing House, 2017. Available at: https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/micciche/pa rtners.pdf (accessed 15 September 2021). Minh-ha, Trinh T. “The Story Began Long Ago …”. In Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. Pennycook, Alastair. “Borrowing Others’ Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Pla­ giarism”. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2) (1996): 201–230. Price, Leah. “From The History of a Book’ to a ‘History of the Book’”. Representations, 108 (2009): 120–138.

5

Saints Textualized Pious Commemoration of “Friends of God” and Vernacular Hagiographies in Nineteenth-Century Malabar Muhammad Niyas Ashraf

1 Introduction Saint veneration was a form of religious expression among Muslim commu­ nities of Malabar, popularly known as Mappilas, and devotion to a saint was demonstrated significantly through composing hagiographies and organizing annual celebrations in shrines, providing a distinct form through which a saint’s recognition and popularity were enhanced. The devotion to a walı- Alla-h - Allah) - or a Sufi saint and endeavors of writing (“friend of God,” pl. awliyaʾ about their lives and its ritual recitation gradually developed as a crucial expression of Islamic piety among them. In Malabar, hagiographic poems on Sufi saints, known as Ma-lappa-t.t.u (literally “garland songs”), composed in ver­ nacular Malayalam and written in Arabic script, popularly known as ArabicMalayalam, emerged to shape and reshape the sacred religioscapes of Mappilas. Such eulogies claimed to embody the charisma of a saint as a lived reality, in creating saintly sanctity, the saint was believed to be alive from beyond the grave, a kind of sacred memory that articulates religious facts and concepts of sanctity, or the truth of manifestation. A vast network of individual supplicants, loyal admirers, and devotees constructed saintly cults and generated religious communities with eschatological hopes and also hopes for blessings in material life. It is this continued vitality of the ma-lappa-t.t.u tradition that textualized the saint as an active and embodied charismatic reality, as saints are actualized in the present through practices of commemoration and remembrance, and their sanctity, which this chapter interrogates. In studying embodied sanctity in ma-lapa-ttu, this study looks into how hagiographic composition textualized pious commemoration through the con­ struction of saintly charisma. How did the devotees experience the sainthood of - as an extension of divinely granted authority? This chapter surveys the awliyaʾ elements of pious commemoration in the Kara-mat Ma-la (1868; herein KM) of - kh Shah, who is particularly venerated Moyinkutti .. Vaidyar that eulogizes Istiya . in the region of Kondotty in North Malabar and is renowned as a patron of intercession and healing, and played an intriguing role as the benefactor of the Malabar locale. In other words, such textual productions become a means of collective mnemo-technique, to understand how collective memory functions. It DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-8

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is also crucial to consider the interplay between how these depict the con­ stitutive memories of awliya-, made and remade to serve the changing societal interests and needs of the ordinary Muslims in nineteenth-century Malabar.

2 Mappilas and Arabic-Malayalam Devotional Literature In the colonial narratives and reports, Mappilas were stereotyped as violent and ignorant, a reputation gained through several centuries of resistance against European colonial regimes from the Portuguese to the British. Such negative stereotypes also extended to their devotional songs on saints and stories of Islamic heroes (Fawcett 1901). In contrast to the colonial ambivalence regarding Mappila literature in general and the negative perception of their poems in particular, this chapter situates ma-lapa-ttu that played a significant role in the construction and maintenance of the cult of a particular saint. Muslim society in Malabar was connected through networks of traders and Sufi scholars with the Arabian Peninsula, which resulted in the formation of an Arabic literary network toward the end of the fifteenth century. During this period, Arabic was the primary medium of Islamic normativity and the asser­ tion of an Islamic tradition in Kerala, which underscored the necessity and importance of local Muslim scholars in engaging with the language. However, from the seventeenth century onwards, a substantial shift in this literary sphere limited the use of Arabic as the primary language of literary expression through the development of a vernacular idiom strongly influenced by Arabic, popularly known as Arabic-Malayalam. The term “Arabic-Malayalam” in its most basic meaning refers to the practice of writing the Malayalam language not in the left-to-right-running Malayalam script, but employing the right-to-left-running Arabic script, introducing modified letters to represent native phonemes alien to the Arabic language. This variety of Malayalam shares both Malayalam and Arabic grammatical elements and draws from a register of loanwords not only from Arabic, but also from Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, and Urdu as well. One can say that the Arabic script for writing Malayalam originated side by side with the Arab trans-oceanic commercial enterprises with Malabar. Generally, the Arabic-Malayalam literature can broadly be classified into prose texts and poetry. However, the main part of this literary corpus is ma-p­ - composed until the early twen­ piI.apa-tt . . or “Mappila songs.” The mappiI.apatt, .. tieth century, comprised of hagiographical texts, popularly known as ma-lappa-tt .. ­ t, the and kissappa- t..t which form the majority of the collection. The ma-lappat .. earliest genre in Arabic-Malayalam literature, mostly dealt with saintly figures or praise of holy personalities in Islamic history. The kissappa-t. narrativized spiritual, historical, mythical and extra-religious Islamic figures and themes from the broader Islamic tradition and Malabar. In both these genres, Islamic Prophets mentioned in the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and wives, early and later Sufi saints, and martyrs are the central protagonists. Many of these texts summarized their biographies, but their focus is mainly on the veneration of their divine qualities and miracles.

Saints Textualized: “Friends of God” in 19th-Century Malabar 83 The ma-lappa-t.t. are hagiographical and laudatory songs commemorating the miraculous stories of Sufi saints and heroic martyrs of local and wider Islamic tradition as well as momentous events and episodes in the history of Islam and the Muslim community. The term ma-la literally means “garland,” but it sym­ bolizes the rhythmic union of meaningful words one after another, like beads in - . described ma-las are eulogies detailing the accomplishments a garland. Karım . and spiritual discourses (a-tm-ıya aunnityam) of a divine man (pun.yava-nma-r) or . holy saints (divya purus.anma-r) (Karım 1983, 128). These miraculous life stories extensively expounded divine elements, narrated with a considerable amount of fantasies. Such panegyrics recounted the heroic and supernatural charisma of - ma- la- (1607) divine personae. Most of the early malas, like the Muh.y-ıddın eulogizing the eponymous founder of the Qa-dirıyya t.arıqah (Sufi order) ʿAbd al-Qadir al-J-ıla-n-ı (AD 1078–1166), and Rifa’i ma-la- (1812) praising the master of the Rifaʽi t.ar-ıqah Ahmad ibn ʿAl-ı Ar-Rifa-ʽ-ı, have a clear connection to the Sufi orders whose founders they praised. However, ma-la- texts also commemorate miraculous stories of the Prophet and his family, local Sufi masters, and mar­ tyrs, and also deal with themes varying from historical events, legal and ethical questions, philosophical Sufism, and heroic events in Islamic history as well as from the Mappila chronicles. Generally, the ma-la is comprised of three sections. The poems begin by invoking blessings and peace upon the benevolent God and the Prophet Muhammad. This is followed by the central part of the poem, which states the protagonist’s noble pedigree or their unique status, illustrating their proximity to God, their spiritual height, their divine qualities of guidance, their powers of intercession, salvation, and healing, as well as, most importantly, the narration of their glorious life and miraculous deeds. The ma-la attempts to substantiate the virtue (porisha) of the lead character(s), narrating their remarkable person­ ality. The poems conclude with requests for intercession and blessing from God through the saint’s mediation, as well as tawassul (an appeal for intervention on the Day of Judgment), and by promising the rewards of healing diseases and gaining spiritual or material benefits to be gained from reciting the poem. In the concluding lines, the author prays for pardon for his sins and makes a dis­ - due to his claimer regarding any mistakes made in the composition of the mala limited knowledge, finishing with a particular dua (prayer) for the physical benefit and welfare of the reciter or performer.

3 Ma-la as Mana-qib: Memories of Saintly Life in Vernacular Hagiography Vaidyar, the composer of Kara-mat ma- la-, claims that the ma-la constituted a madh. (eulogy) in the form of a mana- qib, intended to be recited about the “powers” (balimakaI.) and “revealed” knowledge (kashf, lit. “unveiling”) of the saint. The ma-la thus itself asserts that it is oriented around an underlying framework of mana- qib, an Arabic term which literally signifies traits of character as well as acts and miraculous deeds. In its extended meaning, the term mana- qib refers to a

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laudatory biography or hagiography describing the merits, qualities, virtues, talents, praiseworthy actions, and remarkable deeds of Muslim luminaries. Therefore, it is not just an introduction to the biography of an individual or his/her actions, but also describes the moral qualities of a person, which mainly include the family lineage of the saint or their teachers and spiritual guides, to establish a noble pedigree for the subject (especially that of a Sayyid, or descendant from the Prophet’s family), and locate them within the various networks of Sufi orders. Supernatural accomplishments and miracles (karamat) often take up the most sig­ nificant part of the text, and these accounts exemplified a context for the continu­ ing intercessory capacities and miraculous healing powers of the saint. These texts, replete with blessings and devotional poetry attributed to the saint, emphasized the location of their shrine and the saints’ bodies as symbolic resources for the experience of sacred power (Kugle 2007, 1–42). Hence, mana- qib came to be asso­ ciated with miracles or the prodigies of a Sufi or a saint believed to be endowed with miraculous powers with the development of the cult of saints. Vaidyar specified that “authentic material for this ma-la was extracted from the valuable mana-qibs of some Islamic scholars like Ibn ʿAbd al-Az-ız, Mawlaw-ı ʿAlı- and Mawlawı- Muh.ammad” (KM, 27–28) (Vaidyar didn’t provide any fur­ ther details about these scholars). The conscious claim of such authors regard­ ing the adaptation of numerous anecdotes from a particular mana-qib text critically questions the general conception that the ma-las developed from the oral tradition. He emphasized its textual performance in ne-rccas (annual saint memorial celebrations or the act of taking a vow), made by a devotee to present some gifts to a deity or saint if prayers are granted (Dale and Menon 1995). In the Mappila context, ne-rccas were expressive ritualized venerations of saints or martyrs with elaborate ceremonies, including shrine visitation, and mostly occurred at the tombs of saints and martyrs. The main ritual in this public veneration is the recitation of ma-lappa-t.t. that eulogize the respective saint or the heroic exploits of the martyrs. Anecdotes may of course have circulated and were performed orally during the ritual in ne-rccas. However, ne-rccas were observed in private recitation ceremonies during rites of passage, such as the birth of a child, the death of a relative, circumcision, and marriage. Hence, ma-lappa-tt .. in these performative acts bind together the literary, thaumaturgical, liturgical, and practical domains in the recitation of praise poetry to ensure the presence of divine personages at every auspicious occasion. The pervasive influence of the significance of the ritual can be traced most easily in ma-las, the overwhelming majority of which are concerned with ne-rccas. Most of the ma-las were performed in general, hence, the authors of every ma-las were entitled to label their poetic works as “ne-rccappa- tu.” While a few scholars considered these texts to be some laudatory poems on fanciful miracles or sources of biographical information (Delahaye [1907] 1998, 224–225), instead, I will evaluate how the mana-qib/hagiography literature genre is a pious commemoration reconstructing a charismatic saint. In this chapter, I will depart from the traditional method of reading hagiography that divided the saint’s tale into the historical part and the mythical part, I argue that one

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of the central functions of these texts was to provide a “sacred biography” for those who were considered the guardians of Muslims, and to adequately explain how they became saints. John Renard considered sacred biographical genres dealings with lives of Sufi shaykhs, especially manaqib, as the “major subgenres of hagiography” (Renard 2009, 6). Thomas Heffernan observed that hagiographies are those texts not just admiring or narrating the life of a particular saint but having broad social relevance to those within the communities that create them and reflections of what its members regard as crucial since it iterates assured values and beliefs on the societal significance of marvels. (1992, 18) These hagiographies textualized memories indicating a saint’s ability to perform miracles as a crucial aspect of sainthood. Cornell also commented on how the hagiographers legitimated sainthood as collective memory, an endorsement of outwardly visible signs of the prospective saint, whose saintly status was esteemed through ascetic piety, intercession, evidentiary miracles or virtuous behavior, and they nurtured faith in a holy man and sought to stimulate pious veneration and seek intercessory action (Cornell 2010, 68). Hence, the perfor­ mance became a community-arranged culture of social memory sustained by commemorative rituals and performative memory (Connerton 1989).

4 Who Is a Saint? In most of the ma-las, the hagiographers constructed the saint as the “guardian” of true Islam, competent to interpret the theology to other religious scholars and as the “protector” of Muslims as well as capable of delivering miracles. These texts functioned to posit the spiritual leadership and religious mission of a person as a qualification to be considered a walı- or “saint.” For instance, - Shah Moyinkutti .. Vaidyar introduced Istiyakh . as the friend of God (wal-ı alla-h), a man who related to the mystical world of God, closed through his soul and spirituality, an ideal treasure (khans) to the believers, endowed with honor (sharaf) in this world and the other. He was considered as a guide who showed the worshipers how the holy prayers became an experience of happiness. He is someone close (muqar­ rab) to the divine and the most esteemed master. (KM, 6–8) Here, the primary concern of the hagiographer was not merely “inscribing the life of a saint in chronological order, but to transmit collective memory matters of practical spiritual value to a believing and pious audience” (Algar 1976, 134). Therefore, ma-la composers memorialized a saint as the friend of God and his or her supernatural powers as “simple icons of sanctity and virtues” (Head 117). John

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Renard identifies this intention as a common objective for every sacred hagio­ graphical narrative produced in the Islamic world (235–255). Hence, sacred bio­ graphies play a crucial role in cementing a Sufi master’s posthumous reputation as a friend of God by drawing “on eyewitness accounts, historical precedents, doc­ trinal evidence, and a rhetorical flair [such hagiographies] construct a story of sanctity” (Rozehnal 2007, 43). I will demonstrate how ma-las provide a blueprint for recognizing a wa-li’––to be specific, some of the central characteristics attrib­ uted to a saint in hagiography and how the memories of the saints were textualized and incorporated into a given society. - described a wal-ı as one who is dearest to God, a “holy man” who The malas earned the position as the friend of God, and his charismatic personality, evi­ - poets narrated anecdotes to denced by his blessings and miracles. The mala convey an image of a “true saint” as a perfect example of a wa-li to be followed by every Muslim. It is conventional in Sufi literature to use the term walı- or “friend” of God, regardless of a saint’s relative place in the saintly hierarchy. Wal-ı, roughly defined as “saint,” literally means proximity, has been translated variously as protégé, intimate, or a friend of God. It is generally found in the construct of wal-ıallah, that is, someone who is close to or intimate with God. - (being a In popular usage, since a walı- (being a friend of God) owns walaya protector or intercessor), he has the power to protect and intercede. - poems, we can observe how these hagiographies conceptualized In the mala and presented qualities of the saint in terms of their intense devotions and the severity of hardships during their lifetime, the significance of superior geneal­ ogy, and their endeavors to break the veil of the inner self (controlling the nafs), hence achieving the highest degree of Oneness with Allah. The Quran also introduced the idea of a wali’s closeness to Allah, predominantly based on his Iman (belief) and taqwa (piety), and we will discuss his spiritual excellence in the following section. In this regard, several stories, or incidents during their lifetime, constructed a saint, and sanctity was granted in every hagiographical ma-la composition. These hagiographic works presented the saints with qualities reminiscent of the Prophet, especially in character and behavior, to show them as the suitable prototypes of the “perfect man” (insa-n ka-mil) embodied most ideally by the Prophet Muhammad (Schimmel 1978). The construction of . - in ma-la literature bears notable similarities to Indo-Persian hagio­ awliyaʾ graphical texts which enlisted features of an ideal saint, such as claiming a prophetic lineage, adherence to shar-ıʿah and the moral attributes of Islam, a Sufi master (pir) of an established local or regional Sufi order or a noteworthy disciple (murid) initiated by his master, the performance of extraordinary miracles and supernatural deeds (kara-mats), etc. (Lawrence 1980a, 52).

5 The Saintly Paradigm of Wila-yat: Dimensions of Sainthood and Embodied Blessings Walı- is the immediate synonym in the Islamic tradition of the Christian notion of a saint, and sainthood is attributed with “sanctity,” wilayah (guidance or

Saints Textualized: “Friends of God” in 19th-Century Malabar 87 - (closeness or friendship). This status bestowed on a intercession) and walaya saint granted him the ability to mediate access to God’s power and intervene in favor of his followers from a position of proximity to divine justice (Pinto 2015, 196). This proximity enabled the source of saintly power which was expressed strongly through the concept of wilayah (guidance or inter­ cession) and walaya (closeness or friendship) (Cornell 2010, xxxi–xxxii). Commonly the term walayah was prominently accepted in the Sufi - literature implies the term wilayah literature; however, mala to emphasize sainthood as the exercise of power and authority on Earth, especially the saintly power in protecting or interceding for others as Allah’s deputy or vice-regent. In KM, wilayah introduced the meaning of the metaphysical relation that takes place between the shaykh and God that bestows the power of barakah - kh as the benefactor, or “embodied blessing” on the saint, endorsing Istiya . intercessor and the guardian saint (KM, 17–18). Vaidyar claimed that God - kh as the central authority for the wila-yah who can bless has chosen Istiya . his followers with eschatological hopes. He also reflects the relation of wilayah to the exercise of power and authority on Earth on behalf of God, - kh was ascribed a hierarchical position, asserting his super­ in which Istiya . iority empowered by hidden and mystic knowledge, and capable of mediat­ ing between humans, and with God and performing miracles. Moreover, according to KM, divine knowledge, personal insights, and meditations are the highest form of mysticism bestowed directly by God to walı- Allah as the one who embodied barakah and the great intercessor (KM, 94–96). Here, - has a social as well as a metaphysical signification: the the term walı- Allah Muslim saint protects or intercedes for others as Allah’s deputy or vice­ - the author imbued Istiya-kh Shah with power and regent. As a walı- Allah, . authority. By virtue of his intimacy with God, the walı- represented a stable and renewable source of blessings for the faithful who remember the saint by reciting his hagiography and visiting Sufi shrines on pilgrimage (Rozehnal 2007, 43). Devotional recitation of the deeds and sayings of deceased saints was also a way of calling their blessings upon oneself and veneration of the saint in this way was believed to aid the readers to expect his most holy intercession. The most significant aspect of these mala-s is not simply how the poems construct sainthood, but for barakah. The mala-s printed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries claimed their performance as devout practices that enable barakah. This is more evident in the concluding verses or description/ . . preface on the book’s cover or in the notice/parasyam/ viI.amparam on the last page, either included by the author himself or the publisher, thus emphasizing the curative and talismanic powers of these poems. For example, in the con­ cluding verses of KM, Vaidyar claims that, “whoever recounts the spiritual - kh, he will intercede for you in the excellence and miraculous powers of Istiya . doomsday and will instantly deliver his baraka protecting from dilemmas, troubles, and anxieties” (KM, 160–161).

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Muhammad Niyas Ashraf Furthermore, the note from the publisher of KM states: The reciters (otunnavar), those who funded the recitation (pa- t.hippikkunnor), and those listening to the recitation (ke-I.kkunnor) would enjoy divine blessings in the corporeal world and be guaranteed a place in paradise. Therefore, everyone will purchase and devotionally recite this ne-rccappa- tu in a ritualistic surrounding. May Allah bless everyone for this virtuous deed. (KM, Preface)

Hence, the KM accentuated the curative and talismanic powers of barakah, mainly through referring to a saint’s power to assist in resolving practical pro­ blems, and this was of central importance for the composition of panegyric and hagiographic poetry, as represented by the malas. Moreover, these statements also indicate the ma-las are community-arranged cultures of social memory lar­ gely dependent upon oral ritual settings for their transmission, and sustained by commemorative rituals and performative memory. Reading the devotional lit­ erature, hence, this brought the experiences regarding holy men into the ready mind of a reader/reciter/listener, no matter how pious and perceptive they were. Preferably, reading/listening to these texts is always a process of interaction and negotiation between the text and self, as Tony Bennett maintains, “the cultu­ rally activated text and the culturally activated reader, an interaction structured by the material, social, ideological, and institutional relationships in which both texts and readers are inescapably inscribed” (Bennett 1983, 12). Moreover, oral performance of a hagiographic song daily after the evening prayer or an annual ne-rcca in a shrine or tomb was a symbolic form of experiencing the memory of the friends in the reciters’ and listeners’ own time and with their own emotions (cf. Burke 1989, 97–113). The authors of ma-las aimed at communicating convincingly that the saint praised in their poem is the one who reveals the right path to God and the one who can protect the reciter from all distress, and that those desiring a decent life should follow him and seek protection from him. Vaidyar advised reciting - kh Shah walı- Allah and affirmed that KM to receive the protection of Istiya . “protection and gratification of desires are guaranteed to every disciple who visits his tomb in Kondotti” (KM, 162). These declarations demanded the reci­ ters read the text devoutly and listen to the performance piously, thereby demonstrating that commemorating holy men and women was not an isolated practice, but a fundamental part of the local perception of the past relevant to local society. Hence, one could say that the past became immanent in the pre­ sent of every performance (Kirk 2005, 7–9). Moreover, these recitations become a textual commemoration that rendered constitutive memories into enduring images within “the material basis of memor­ y”(Kirk and Thatcher 2005, 7). In this regard, performances commemorating - kh Shah were not merely an expression of inward belief but rather a belief as Istiya . a product of outward practice, and the cultivation of a moral and virtuous self through inculcating pious dispositions, a form of piety describing the coherent

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project of ethical self-formation situated in barakah (Mahmood 2005, 27–31). Hence the everyday domestic practice of hagiographic reading in Muslim house­ holds in Malabar developed a shared “mode of comportment and social perfor­ mance” (Melchert 2011, 284), creating a pious lifestyle and defining piety as “the construction of a definite and distinctive lifestyle of new religious tastes and pre­ ference” (Turner 2008, 2). While the ritual veneration of a saint in the shrine defined a space of sacred memory in a “public” social setting, the performance of hagiographies in domestic space enhanced a “private” ritual reading honoring awliya-ʾ, a literary-performative act of Islamic piety. Hence, memory flowed through recitation showing reverence to the saint and receiving barakah associated with the veneration. The collective memory spread throughout the community was the result of an interaction between the social practice and the cultural resources of producing texts and the cognitive efforts made by individuals to recite them (Hirst and Manier 2008, 183–200). While considering the textual production as a means of collective mnemo-technique, to understand how collective memory functions, it is crucial to consider the interplay between how hagiographies depict the con­ stitutive memories of awliya-ʾ made and remade to serve the changing societal interests and needs of the ordinary Muslims in nineteenth-century Malabar. The ritual and communal commemoration of saintly individuals through hagiography defined the anxieties of a group, the sense of its past, and its aspiration for the future, desired to be achieved through multiple manifestations of barakah. The Mappilas likely venerated a saint less because of his position as gnostic, but more for his intercessory power and his capacity to bestow divine blessings, something Pinto has referred to as the “performative character of the shaykh’s authority,” as bearer of barakah (cf. Pinto 2015, 197). Hence, the ma-las provided Mappilas with another method of spiritual connection with - that safeguarded them from massive upheavals. The intercession of a awliyaʾ walı and calling down his barakah to Earth were the main motivations for reciting ma-las. The concept of saintly power, in Cornell’s words, with the walıAllah as friend of God, is: Above all else, an empowered person––empowered to perform miracles, empowered to communicate with God, empowered to help weak and oppressed, empowered to act on behalf of others, empowered to mediate the course of destiny, empowered to affect the behaviour of other holders of power, is both an intermediary and a patron for his clients. (273) One of the other central aspects discussed in every mala- is intercessory power. Among them, the most notable promise is the protection on the Day of Judg­ - ma- la in the seventeenth century, ment. Since the composition of Muhiyud’dhın every author commenced or ended with a claim of reciting the ma-la as a sacred practice that, embodied with saintly barakah, would benefit the reader/reciter through the holy intercession of a saint on the Day of Judgment. These mala-s enjoined the reader to follow the saint’s orders or believe in his barakah to

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escape from hellfire. The devotees shared the belief that the saint’s barakah could help them to attain spiritual or mundane benefits. Vaidyar wrote: . - kh Shah] stated that hell (jahannam He [Istiya ) would be haram for disciples . of Khwa-ja’s path (bayyal). He will always remain with spiritual disciples who follow his caliphate. He hardly bothers about his wealth and family but mostly worries about the fate of the disciples in the spiritual and material world. Whoever sojourns in his path, will receive his blessings (poris´a). He promised that his followers would be victorious when they face judgment day … Whoever remembers him through the recitation of mala-, he will reach for their protection. He will find remedies for their vulnerabilities, provide comforts for them, and remain inside them eternally for guidance. (KM, 138–141) Most of the mala-s, regarding the significance of reading and listening to the hagiography and eschatological hopes, claim the ma-lappa-tt . . itself becomes the car­ rier of barakah. In KM, Vaidyar implied that listening to the ma-la with devotion and showing reverence with deep silence emanate barakah for the listener. He - kh and every ordered: “Recite this eulogizing ma-la with a profound belief in Istiya . prayer will be answered immediately” (KM, 227). The devotees did not simply achieve barakah though reciting hagiographies, but this barakah was believed to come in multiple shapes such as healing, provision of fertility, physical protection, prosperity, mental peace, and even guaranteed salvation after death. Many such verses with prayers of intercession reinforce the beliefs regarding the protection of saints during times of crisis through hagiographies. In Sufi philosophical thought, barakah helped to bridge the gap between God and humankind through the med­ iation of the saints, who became protectors and intercessors. The primary concern of a hagiographer was not merely inscribing the life of a saint in chronological order, but also transmitting matters of practical spiri­ tual value to a believing and pious audience (Algar 1976, 134). Various verses in KM detailed the spiritual intimacy between J-ıla-n-ı and the believer; furthermore, the author instructed the readers to secure the saint as an invisible companion. Thus, Mappilas were encouraged to consider a saint as a personal guardian who established an intimate relationship with the believer and pointed toward an ultimate spiritual connection between Mappila souls and a walı.

6 Spiritual Genealogy and Excellence The presentation of the genealogy was a central motif of these ma-las and a common feature of ma-la- literature and one of the significant aspects attributed to a saint was that he or she had to be born into an established Muslim family or Sufi orders. Most of the orders claimed their chain of biological genealogy derived from the Prophet, his cousin Ali, and his sons, thus convincing the fol­ lowers of a sense of legitimation. The malas’ emphasis on the biological or physical descent from Muhammad by the hagiographers of well-known shaykhs .

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and saints or tracing their roots, real or imaginary, to the line of his extended family as a means of receiving the prophetic genealogy, is not surprising. For example, Sayyid Alavi Ma-la (1909) of Muhammad Haji illustrated the pedigree of Sayyid ʿAlaw-ı (1750–1844) as a Hadrami Sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet Muh.ammad and the 32nd generation of the Prophet Muhammad (SAM 3, 12). . By connecting ʿAlawı- genealogically to the Prophet, his spiritual authority was enhanced by the legitimacy he possessed based on his birth. Connecting his lineage to the Ahl al-Bayt, SAM accomplished the aim of a common Mappila to create a saintly cult, believing that the prophet’s barakah flows through those Sufi shaykhs descending from the prophetic genealogy, eventually, preparing the aspiration of being blessed by the prophetic descendant and achieving material benefits. Mappilas adored these Sufis, not because of their t.ar-ıqah, but due to their relation to the Prophet that gave them an extra charisma, holiness, and commanding power (Kunhali 2004, 85). Rather than illustrating the visible aspect of the kin relationship, KM bestowed more value on the concept of spiritual genealogy, emphasizing the saint must either be a disciple of an accepted Sufi master or descended from virtuous ancestors. First, Vaidyar showed a genealogical tree tracing the spiri­ tual genealogy of Is.tiya-kh Shah and conveying his spiritual bond with J-ıla-n-ı and Muʿ-ın al-D-ın Chisht-ı (1143–1236 CE), the two most prominent saints of Sufism. Here, the concept of spiritual genealogy is elaborated, based on the spiritual excellence received by being a member of the Sufi ethical chain (silsila), the Qadiriya and the Chishtı-ya Order, as well as guided by Sufi leaders, including his celebrated grandfather Muhammad Shah (1708–1794), who was a prominent . saint in North Malabar. This genealogical tree is probably the most elemental representation of a Sufi order. He wrote: He is a Wa-li of the Creator And the most trustworthy among the prophetic religion The one who inherits the pathway of ghawth and Muhiyudiin (J-ıla-n-ı) - -ıya order He is the Khalifa of the Qadir The one who guides and heeds the words of Khoja Muiniduddin He is endowed as a faqir serving the Chist-ı order. (KM, 2–4) Hence, the emphasis here is not just on the biological aspect per se. Still, more importantly is the spiritual genealogy of a mystic derived from their connec­ tion with a chain of Sufi saints as a transhistorical character of Sufi initiation (Werbner 2003). This Sufi induction directs us to an attribute in the Sufi pro­ - Shah as the Khalifa of the Qadir - -ı file. The poet has already suggested Istiyakh . order, who accepted the discipleship of Jı lanı and Chistı , asserting a saint must be initiated by a Sufi master and acknowledging his discipleship as the sole agency of divine grace for him. Moreover, the saint must yet strive to attain his level of spiritual excellence, often through his religious piety and closeness with the divine.

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- kh Second, Vaidyar characterized the spiritual genealogy through Istiya . Shah’s spiritual excellence, piety (taqwa), or purity of the soul, primarily how the spiritual connection between him and God is maintained by obser­ ving and preserving the sanctified principles and religious values. He emphasized that spiritual genealogy necessitates a certain divine knowledge. - kh Shah, it is ma’rifa, gnostic knowledge of God, that In the case of Istiya . goes beyond natural disposition or innate and intellectual terms. In the fol­ lowing paragraphs, we will discuss how Vaidyar employs Sufi metaphors - kh Shah’s piousness and the language of spirituality, emphasizing Istiya . (S.ala-h), worship (ibadah), patience (sabr), and humility toward God for the benefit of His mercy and grace that allowed him to reach seven mystical stations of spiritual experience, especially the highest degree of ma’rifa (gnostic knowledge) and attain kashf (Unveiling, a reality which refers to the privileged inner knowledge that mystics acquire through personal experience and direct vision of God) (KM, 33–36). - kh Shah and Ma’rifa, according to Vai­ The spiritual excellence of Istiya . dyar, has been inherited from his grandfather Muh.ammad Shah, popularly .. known as Kon.t.ot.t.i TannaI. or Faqir, who was born near Bombay on 6 June 1708 into a Sayyid family. After completing his primary education, he became a dervish. At Awrang, he was attracted by the mysticism of Karam Ali, who was a Sh-ı a as well as a Khalifa of the Qa-dir-ı order, and he initi­ ated Muh.ammad Shah into the order (MusaKut.t.i 1923, 2). After the death of Karam Ali, he became an ascetic, performed hajj, and visited various Islamic shrines. The legend says that Shah had dreamt of the Prophet Muhammad, who advised him to go to Malabar. He traveled through . Malabar, and many Mappilas accepted his discipleship, and he eventually settled in Kontotti . . .. around 1727. When Tipu Sultan conquered Malabar, several scholars accused Shah of heresy. Shah denied the allegations and identified himself as disciple belong to the orders of Shaykh Mu’-ı n al-Din . Chisti and Abdul Qadir J-ı la-n-ı (Moulavi and Kar-ı m 1978, 193). Tipu himself became a disciple and designated him as an Inamdar and granted him extensive tax-free lands. He was buried in a tomb near his hospice, and his successor Aftab Shah, eldest grandson of Muhammad Shah, started con­ . structing a shrine near his tomb following the Persian model called takiya- to observe urs festival in the mausoleum. Istiyakh Shah, the brother of Aftab . Shah, finished the construction of takiya and, according to Vaidyar, initiated a new practice of honoring Muhammad Shah through rendering Quranic . recitations during nightfall in his mausoleum. Shah’s successors remained in Kontotti, . . .. training disciples, and sent them as disciples to different parts of Malabar. After the death of Muhammad Shah, his successors generally . .. accepted the title Muhammad Shah Valiya Tann aI. . . Vaidyar remarked the wilayah (authority), ma’rifa and t.arıqah of Istiyakh Shah were inherited . from Muhammad Shah through the discipleship of the Afta-b Shah, who . qualified as an awliya- possessing the gnostic knowledge and hidden secrets of the universe (KM, 8–16).

Saints Textualized: “Friends of God” in 19th-Century Malabar 93 - kh Shah, ma’rifa, gnostic knowledge of God, described as In the case of Istiya . the highest knowledge to which the individual has access and the “higher reali­ ties,” maintains the mystical union between the divine and the saint. Regarding this, Vaidyar attempts to present his moral qualities, as a person of shar-ıʿah, whose mystical union with the divine was attained through various forms of selfstruggle, which led to restricting lust and the inclination of the carnal soul, such as austerity transcending the carnal dimension of his existence, thus obtaining God’s extraordinary proximity. The maʿrifa is an ultimate position attained by a saint by following a rigorous spiritual path or a series of “stations” and states through which the Sufi would come to union with God (Shah-Kazemi 2002, 155– 181). Vaidyar specified the four levels of the journey through the spiritual world and the qualities Shah possesses as the four levels of sharıʿah (the righteous path of Islam), t.arıqah (adherence to godliness and mental control from desires) and - (witnessing God’s revelation) and achieved ma’rifa. He stated: h.aqıqa Is.tiyakh Shah realized every unseen knowledge (ghaib) and spiritual mys­ - His religious piety is deeply embodied and shunned corrupt teries (asṟar). actions, thus controlling the ego-self, i.e., the nafs. He has traveled in the ship of the sacred law of Sharıʿah, in the ocean of the spiritual path of t.arı- and acquiring the qah, entering the precious pearl of the reality of h.aqıqa direct knowledge of ma’rifa. (KM, 90–95) - kh Shah and the divine Vaidyar maintained that the mystical union between Istiya . had been accomplished when Shah reached the highest degree of gnostic knowl­ edge by controlling the carnal soul/immoral self (am ‘marttenna nafs), that granted him the status of the “friend of God.” In the mala-, maʿrifa is mainly associated either with the potential spiritual guidance or the closeness of a saint to God, asserting the primacy of divine grace over the individual effort in the - kh Shah as a sacred radiance path of spiritual realization. Vaidyar described Istiya . (dınul viI.ak), a guiding light for the believers to emulate, who is embodied with kashf, the generic term for the suprarational vision of God in the world and the soul, a divine favor bestowed on him due to his proximity to Allah (cf. Heer 1961, 31). Maʿrifa and kashf are a reality which refers to the privileged inner knowledge that mystics acquire through personal experience and direct vision of God, which are essential epistemological principles in Sufism. Both the realities are important characteristic of being a saint. The presentation of kashf, according to Vaidyar, was gained through altered states of consciousness and ascetic exer­ cises of Sufi meditation (mura- qabah), such as austere worship, constant prayers, and fasting to induce mystical states. With the gaining of kashf, the saint was endowed with intercessory and supernatural powers, those of healing, controlling - kh Shah to spirits and other magical powers. In this sense, kashf allowed Istiya . become a mystical person, indicating the saint’s closeness to God as demon­ strated by the dispensation of barakah through the performance of kara-mat (Santiotis 2007, 29–51).

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7 Embodying Charisma: Tales of Kara-mat and Mappila Life At least since the seventeenth century, the veneration of awliya-ʾ in Malabar has been closely bound up with the narration of kara-mat, legendary accounts which affirm the miraculous powers of saints and their tangible actions. The mala-s highlighted the miracles of the saint during his lifetime. The virtue of miraculous powers in hagiography emerged as a space of sacredness that embodied the bar­ akah and sanctity of a saint, entirely relying on his prowess and blessings to such a degree that it began to displace the centrality of a Sufi’s direct communion with God. In this sense, the saint as a holy man, who earned the position as the “friend of God” based on his blessings and miracles, was expressed through the veneration of the saint’s power and miracles in popular religiosity. The veneration of saints primarily depends on the piety and moral uprightness of the holy man. However, his authority is fundamentally undergirded and socially vindicated through extraordinary miracles performed during his lifetime, and supernatural events that occur after his death in connection to him or his grave. A firm conviction that the dead are alive in the tomb, and can hear the living, is widespread in the Muslim world, and was strongly endorsed in the ma-las. Hence, the author of KM advised the Mappilas to visit the tomb of the saints with expectations and celebrate their birth and death anniversaries to heighten the grace of the saints through making vows (KM, 160–164). Writers of every single ma-la claimed that superhuman abilities in various forms manifested a saint’s proximity to the divine. The ma-la literature on the saints compiled by their disciples told stories of miracles that occurred during a saint’s lifetime or after his death. Every ma-la indicated the saint’s closeness to God as demonstrated by the dis­ pensation of barakah through the performance of kara-mat. The saint’s competence to perform miracles and the legendary account of these affirmed the miraculous powers of the saints, and their tangible actions on Earth became an “expression of the public piety of the communities which commissioned their composition and - kh Shah as the patron saint listened to their contents” (Head). KM honored Istiya . of the Mappilas through narrating how his miracles, described in the ma-las, were linked to protection, healing illness, and other socially relevant miracles for the daily existence of the ordinary people. Hence, it is necessary to do a context-sen­ sitive reading of these hagiographies, as directed by Zutschi. As she suggested, these texts cannot be overlooked merely as detailed biographical history; instead, they must be understood as community-inspired narrations of stories connecting them to the saintly generation (Zutshi 2014, 26). One of the most significant aspects of ma-la is the presentation of these holy men as healers. Most of the lit­ erature on South Asian Islam has remarked on the function of saints as spiritual leaders as well as “experts in the art of healing” who restore the sick to health, endorsing their sainthood (Lawrence 1980b, 119–134). During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Malabar witnessed a series of outbreaks of smallpox, cho­ lera, malaria, chickenpox, and plague. These diseases were identified in early administrative and colonial reports as one of the principal causes of death in Malabar and the neighboring princely states of Travancore and Cochin. Many

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tenants and laboring classes among the Mappilas who remained poor and strictly exploited by the feudal economy could not afford expensive medical treatment during the recurring onslaughts of epidemics, such as cholera and smallpox. Their mortality rate was high, and life expectancy was low. In this context, belief in the talismanic power of the saint provided them with relief. Hence, according to Safi , “hagiographies connect the saint to his community, and the audience of the myth (in a textual or performative context)” (2007, 267). The status of shaykhs and the reverence commanded by these figures were encouraged through demonstrating their powers in their respective hagiographies. . . Saintly healing of illness (rogam/vayya-yma/va-dam) and miracles regarding . .. the cure (poṟuppikkal) or relief of pain (salamat), distress ((et)anne ṟ/duritam) . and the evil eye (sihr/ hala-kk), became an essential aspect of popular piety. The authors of every ma-la emphasized with successive anecdotes the saints’ ability - kh Shah’s power of to heal numerous diseases. Thus, Vaidyar extolled Istiya . healing, either through touch or by religious formulae: He cured various chronic diseases muttering the opening chapter of the Quran, protected from the curse of the evil eye through dhikr, rescued - water, cured blindness several demonic possessions with ablution (Wud.uʾ) through caressing the eye, saved many who suffered from poisoning, pro­ vided remedy through medicinal herbs for glaucoma and conjunctivitis, and cured several throat ailments through rubbing, healed poisonous snakebites that caused permanent disabilities by providing sweets, and eased delivery pain by giving his bangle as an amulet. (KM, 184–190) He similarly narrated several anecdotes demonstrating the saint’s role as a divinely empowered agent who healed illness through the efficacy of prayer. - kh Shah’s instruction to recite Surah-al Fatiha, the According to Vaidyar, Istiya . opening chapter of the Quran, was intended for the fulfillment of desires, relief from distress and to cure diseases. The popular belief persisted among the Mappilas about the tremendous power attributed to a saint to cure diseases. Considered as alternative medicine, the divine touch or breath of a saint and visiting a tomb continue to be accepted as a method of healing illness. The description of saintly miracles was designed to attract the lay Mappilas to a saint rather than advocating them to pursue the more difficult path of the mystical dimension of Sufism, such as the constant struggle to control the nafs or spiritual training. For Mappilas, the memories of marvels in mala-s allowed - The memory of saints’ virtues and them to recognize the deeds of a walı. expectations of their miracles were central to their veneration, and the compo­ sition of hagiographic texts was a crucial step in the expression of saintly piety (Head 19). Hence, Hoffman-Ladd stated that the Sufi definition of sainthood might depend mainly on moral attributes; however, ordinary people know a saint by his or her ability to work miracles, disperse blessing, and function in an intercessory capacity for those in need (Hoffman-Ladd 1995, 90). The mala-s

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became the repository of solace for Mappila Muslims in times of hardship, diseases, and sorrows, and on such occasions they gathered in a highly pious atmosphere in a neat and clean space and recited them, aiming for immediate redemption from the plights and miseries they were facing. Most importantly, the poems themselves become repositories of the saint’s barakah, which can be accessed by reciting and recounting the saintly kara-mat.

8 Conclusion Vaidyar described his hagiography as a collective memory that became the prime catalyst for narrating miraculous accounts. These accounts identified the ma-la as a shared experience of memory with saints, their religious doctrine, and faith that were reported by the disciples, witnesses to those narratives and in popular memory. These memories were selected and reformulated depending on the expectations of the audience. Thus, a cultic persona was “constructed” through this memory of reclaiming and reconstructing an individual’s sainthood. This memory also kept the personal links with the dead shaykh, who can still intervene in the lives of his devotees through his barakah. Hence, hagiographic works served as lectiones which were read out on certain days, a practice of community’s recollection about holy men which was regularized in Mappila life, widening the scope of sainthood as “an ascribed status and a public marker of personal piety” (Rozehnal 2007, 41). Such hagio­ graphies exhibit two tendencies. The first tendency presents the saints as one of the sources of divine authority for ethical and spiritual conduct as well as a model exemplar of piety to be imitated by the reader. The primary concern of every ma-la is with the canonization, constructing sainthood and saintly cults through con­ ceptualizing wal-ı/awliya- and wila-yah. The second tendency indicates the saint’s clo­ seness to God, which permits the performance of kara-mat (miracles), demonstrated by narrating some lengthy story portraying the saint as a holy person and enacting his spiritual and moral qualities for the welfare of his fellow believers with his barakah. The memory of the saints contained in stories resembled the relics of a saint and made him alive in the community. These stories promoted a saintly devotion, stimulating Mappilas to recollect the actions of a saint, and endure hardships with the conviction that saintly protection was feasible through - Hence, the composition of hagiographies in the Muslim reading the malas. context equals that of official canonization in the Catholic one. The popular tradition of hagiography become a machinery of canonization, sanctifying the - became a single social process of sainthood in Islam. The saints and awliyaʾ saintliness, with the acceptance of venerating the memory of a pious indivi­ dual to full and formal canonization in the hagiography. In the mystical tra­ dition of Islam, as in Christianity, the spiritual powers of the dead saints became prominent. The construction of sainthood can thus be considered a posthumous phenomenon, expressed through their sovereignty of personified blessings and intercessions, spiritual excellence, and supernatural prowess. Robin Rinehart has described how the disciples or followers constructed and preserved memories of the saints’ life that lead to one’s recognition as a saint.

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According to her, “hagiographers serve as mediators between the saints and their followers through their texts, especially when the saint is no longer living” (Rine­ hart 1999, 12). She remarked that recollecting the kara-mat stories is to promote devotion and the hagiographies themselves serve as evidence of the hagiographer’s rhetorical strategies and that their strategies are governed by their first and fore­ most goal of inspiring devotion to the saint, thus constructing sanctity for saints. Furthermore, the narration of the lives of the saints through the stories in ma-la was not only aimed at ascribing holiness but also at exhibiting their virtue post­ humously, a devotional practice that described the resonance of virtue in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mappila life. Hence, the crucial role played by these stories lies in the way they socially constituted the saint as an arbiter of the hopes and tribulations of Muslims, rather than reflecting super­ stitious beliefs or providing monotonous entertainment. Hagiographical memories created a path for the transcendence of time and space/territories, and it preserved the memory of that particular saint by estab­ lishing a personal communion with them. Nile Green observed that these hagio­ graphies generated a feeling of having a conversation with saints after their death and the veracity of influencing an individual’s life after reciting the ma-la (Green, 2004, 139–141). These memories in ma-la destroy the time barrier between the lifetime of a saint and the temporal experience of an individual, continually remembering the saint and generating impulsive memory in the Mappila mindscape. This sense of enduring commemoration of the lives and spirituality of saints allowed the reader to transcend time, expecting saintly barakah to effect miracles in their daily life. The social reach of tales depended on how far the saintly life seeped into the mindscape of the readers or the audience. The authors themselves termed the ma-las as ne-rcca songs, highlighting the dimension of their vocal per­ formance and acknowledging the prominence of public reading. This Sufi genre encompassing saintly life persisted mostly in the verbal memory consummated into the day-to-day life of Mappilas. As Nile Green indicated, this interface between the living memory and presentation of the saints in ma-la text enhanced a social reality with fixed charismatic characters, confirming the saintly cult throughout the com­ munity (Green 2006). Saints became perennial figures in the historical memory through their ability to perform miracles. Mappilas constructed a community linked to saints that continued to live among them as memory, guiding them morally and protecting them. The saint’s presence in a physical form of memory was not much different from their textual representation among Mappilas.

References Primary Sources - . Press, 1909. Haji, Muhammad. Sayyid Alavi Ma-la (SAM). Ponnani: Manba-hul Ulum . . - la. Kondotti: MaI‘haṟu-I Ulu-m MusaKutti, Kundukadavil. Shah Sarguru Kashf Ma Press, 1923. . . .. . Vaidyar, Mo-yinkutt i . Kara mat Ma la (KM). Thalasseri: MaI ‘haṟuI Ulum Press, 1868. . . ..

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Secondary Sources Algar, Hamid. “The Naqshbandi Order: A Preliminary Study of its History and Sig­ nificance.” Studia Islamica, vol. 44, 1976, pp. 123–153. Bennett, Tony. “Texts, Readers, Reading Formations.” Bulletin of the Midwestern Modern Language Association, vol. 16, 1983, pp 3–17. Burke, Peter. “History as Social Memory.” In Memory: History, Culture, and the Mind, edited by Thomas Butler. London: Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp. 97–113. Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Cornell, Vincent J. Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010. Dale, Stephen and M. Gangadhara Menon. “Nerccas: Saint-Martyr Worship among the Muslims of Kerala.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 41, no. 3, 1978, pp. 523–538. Fawcett, F. “War Songs of the Mappilas of Malabar.” Indian Antiquary, vol. XXX, 1901, pp. 499–557. Green, Nile. “Emerging Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of South Asia: Between Texts, Territories and the Transcendent.” South Asia Research, vol. 24, no. 2, 2004, pp. 123–148. Green, Nile. Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan. New York: Routledge, 2006. Head, Thomas. Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Heer, N. “Sufi Psychological Treatise.” The Muslim World, vol. 51, no. 1, 1961, pp. 25–36. Heffernan, Thomas J. Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hirst, William and Manier, David. “Towards a Psychology of Collective Memory.” Memory, vol. 16, no. 3, 2008, pp. 183–200. Hoffman-Ladd, Valerie. Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. . . . . . Samskaravum [The Muslim Community and Its Karı-m, C. K. Muslim Samudayavum Culture]. Thiruvananthapuram: Charithram Publications, 1983. Kirk, Alan. “Social and Cultural Memory.” In Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Kirk, Alan and Thatcher, Tom (Eds.) Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Kugle, Scott. Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam. Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Kunhali, V. Sufism in Kerala. Calicut: Calicut University Press, 2004. Lawrence, Bruce. “The Chistiya of Sultanate India: A Case Study of Biographical Complexities in South Asian Islam.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 48, no. 3/4, 1980a, pp. 47–67. Lawrence, Bruce. “Healing Rituals among North Indian Chishti Saints of the Delhi Sultanate Period.” Studies in History of Medicine, vol. 4, 1980b, pp. 119–134. Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Melchert, Christopher. “Exaggerated Fear in the Early Islamic Renunciant Tradition.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 21, no. 3, 2011, pp. 283–300. . - MappiI Moulavi, C. N. Ahmed and Kar-ım, K. K. Abdul. Mahattaya .a Sahitya Para­ . mparyam [The Great Mappila Literary Tradition]. Calicut: Al-Huda Book Stall, 1978.

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Pinto, Paula G. “Performing Baraka-: Sainthood and Power in Syrian Sufism.” In On Archaeology of Sainthood and Local Spirituality in Islam: Past and Present Crossroads of Events and Ideas, edited by Georg Stauth. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2015. Renard, John. Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. Rinehart, Robin. One Lifetime, Many Lives: The Experience of Modern Hindu Hagio­ graphy. Atlanta, GA: Scholar Press, 1999. Rozehnal, Robert. Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty First Century Pakistan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Safi, Omid. “Bargaining with Baraka: Persian Sufism, “Mysticism,” and Pre‐Modern Politics.” The Muslim World, vol. 90, no. 3–4, 2007, pp. 259–288. Santiotis, Arthur. “Mystical Mastery: The Presentation of Kashf in Sufi Divination.” Asian Anthropology, vol. 6, no. 1, 2007, pp. 29–51. Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978. Shah-Kazemi, Reza. “The Notion and Significance of ‘Maʿrifa’ in Sufism.” Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 2002, pp. 155–181. Turner, Bryan S. “Introduction: The Price of Piety.” Contemporary Islam, vol. 2, 2008, pp 1–6. Werbner, Pnina. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of Global Sufi Cult. London: Hurst & Company, 2003. Zutshi, Chitralekha. Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies and the Historical Imagination. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.

6

My Memory Keeps Getting in the Way of Your History Memory as Counter-Historic Discourse in the Poems of Agha Shahid Ali Arnab Dasgupta and Swagata Singha Ray

1 Introduction The emotional effects of diasporic dislocation and relocation in the twentyfirst century have led many writers to recapture, in writing, family memories and stories, in order to rescue lost legacies, to restore connections suspended by time, place, and politics. In the case of diasporic poets like Agha Shahid Ali, who was severed from his homeland of Kashmir, a land suffering from violence, memory transfigured as narrative emerges as a counter-history to the discourse of violence through an aesthetics of reattachment. The relationship between power and literature, as a form of resistance, is of conflicts. While power seeks to distort the world, to refigure the past to fit its present needs, resistant art seeks to preserve memory. Shahid Ali is very much aware of the conflict between the personal memory and the official history. He writes in his famous poem “Farewell”, “My memory keeps getting in the way of your his­ tory” (Shahid Ali 2009, 145). The chapter will elaborate how in Shahid Ali’s poems the memory and desire for his homeland are repeatedly expressed through various reinventions, which he provided in the form of gazal. The chapter will also bring out elements of personal history and ideas in his poems which are counter-discursive to the epistemic violence which unfolded in his dear homeland, Kashmir. The chapter will discuss how the diasporic distance frames the poet’s image of homeland with a triad of “memory, nostalgia and longing”, as Avtar Brah points out, for diasporic peoples, the home is not merely a geographic space but is also: “the lived experience of a locality” (Brah 185). Memory establishes a bridge between the individual past and the collective past. The past continues in the present through the manifestation of memory and it “is merely a function and production of a continuous present and its discourses” (Hirsch and Smith 9). Memory has both spatial and temporal coordinates, as it hinges upon specific locations as well as on particular tem­ poralities. Thus, in memory studies, the idea of “site” has become a central thematic, which encapsulates the various events and experiences which com­ prises memory. Ann Rigney points out that “site”

DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-9

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[need] not always take the form of actual locations, but they have in common the fact that, by encapsulating multifarious experience in a limited repertoire of figures, they provide a placeholder for the exchange and transfer of memories among contemporaries and across generations. (345) These sites are not naturally occurring spaces, they emerge out process of selection, where some “figures of memory” are privileged over others. For those diasporic individuals who are displaced and continue to grapple with the ques­ tion of “what is home” due to spatial shifts, such memory sites provide the dislodged migrant with moorings to the homeland. Salman Rushdie writes regarding the sense of loss which the writer in exile experiences and their intense desire to forge connection with their “Imaginary Homelands”: “past is a country from which we all have immigrated … but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in intensified form” (Rushdie 12). As a writer in exile, Agha Shahid Ali con­ tinuously contests the sense of being “out-of-country” and “out-of-language” by investing his homeland of Kashmir as a site with mnemonic potential. “We shall meet again, in Srinagar”, exclaims Shahid Ali echoing the Russian poet Josip Mandelstam, who wrote in an untitled poem the following lines, “We shall meet again in Petersburg/as though we had buried the sun there” (Shahid Ali 2009, 171). Shahid Ali shadows Mandelstam and writes, “He reinvents Petersburg (I, Sri­ nagar), an imaginary homeland, filling it, closing it, shutting himself (myself) in it” (172). In Shahid Ali’s musings on Srinagar, it is a city eternally poised, as a metaphor of unfulfilled promise, a space of strife and struggle and of utmost desolation and of death. “Srinagar hunches like a wild cat: lonely sentries, wretched in bunkers at the city’s bridges, far from their homes in their plains, licensed to kill … while the Jhelum flows under them, sometimes with a dismembered body” (173–174). These memories of Srinagar and of Kashmir are in conflict with both the idyllic and mythical Kashmir in the “four-hundred-year-old songs of Habba Khatun” (172) and the official history sponsored by the Indian state. The narrative of normativity which the state circulates represses the tales of grief and suffering of the Kashmiris, bringing their memories in conflict with official historiography. Cognizant of this conflict of narrative of history, Ali writes, “From History tears learn a slanted understanding/ of the human face torn by blood’s bulletin of light” (363). Shahid Ali’s state of exile provided him with a unique sense of perceiving his home Kashmir, from a distance. Kashmir, of which Shahid Ali writes reminis­ cently, is a land of contrasts, while it is Humayun’s Paradise incarnate on Earth, it is a land caught in incessant political strife,, as Shahid Ali laments, “ Guns shoots star into the sky, the storm of constellations night after night, the infinite that rages on it” (172). In his musings on Kashmir both visions are accommodated with a critical understanding of the complex historical past of the land. However, Shahid Ali is not restricted by the site of Kashmir, in his poetic travels, he traverses literary as well as geographic terrain. It is an understanding of the land which folds within, the immediate as well as the distant.

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2 Collective Memory and Nostalgia Memories of personalities such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz and of Begum Akhtar flow in Shahid Ali’s poems, creating a collective memory which brings into play hundreds of years of history of the Indian sub-continent. For instance, when Shahid Ali memorializes Begum Akhtar on her death, he also remembers great shears of yesteryears in, “In Memory of Begum Akhtar”, recalling how the singer sang with a voice “seasoned with decades”, ghazals of “Ghalib, Mir, Faiz” “on a noteless raga” (Shahid Ali 2009, 54). The poem is an elegy as a sense of loss and nostalgia which is evoked through the figure of Begum Akhtar, Shahid Ali loved Begum Akhtar and he told writer Amitav Ghosh in Brooklyn that, as a teenager, he couldn’t bear to be away from Begum Akhtar. But the loss felt is not only a personal one but a sense of losing a collective cultural icon. As Bruce King points out, the death of Begum Akhtar conveys to Shahid Ali the decline of Urdu culture in post-Independence India, where ghazals remained the only mode through which the Urdu language and the unique Indian Islamic culture reached the masses. In his poem, “Thumri for Rasoolan Bai”, one can discern the urgency in Shahid Ali’s voice, as he tries to preserve her ghazals within himself, his way of sustaining the heritage and memory of the Indo-Islamic tradition and culture particular to North India, in face of riots and communal violence, The poem commemorates Rasoolan Bai’s voice in the stark contrast to the structural destruction of her house in Allahabad in the communal riots of 1969. As a poet in exile, Shahid Ali visualizes himself as an heir to her tradition and her memory. Rasoolan Bai was Muslim but her style of music was of the Banaras Hindu school, and it is this loss of cosmopolitan culture Shahid Ali laments. In the words of King, “One loss, one nostalgia, is that of the pre-partition north of India with its rich Muslim culture that had taken Indian roots and developed as Indian culture with shared sources” (King 5). Svetlana Boym opines in The Future of Nostalgia, “Nostalgia is not always about the past; it can be retrospective but also prospective”, thereby rendering “la nos­ talgie future” a universal exilic condition (Boym 2001, xvi). What separates Shahid Ali’s nostalgia for home from this kind of universal existential exile is that for the post-colonial migrant, “home” is “already a site of dispossession”, “under the imprint of colonial history” (Tageldin 2003, 233). Shahid Ali can never go home as the home has been changed, colonial rule and its aftermath in the form of the Par­ tition and the complex historical condition of his Kashmir have transformed his birthplace. As an exile from Kashmir, Shahid Ali “cannot go home again as … [he] and … [the home] have both changed” (King 263). The nightmare of history has inflicted so much violence on his beloved Kashmir, with every passing day there are fresh scars which render the city unrecognizable. The exodus of Kashmiri Pundits, the death and desolation in the capital Srinagar, the empty desolate houses make Kashmir a ‘country without a post-office”. In such a space where “Everything is finished, nothing remains”, the memory of its past remains to ensure that it is archived. “Memory … has no translation” (Shahid Ali 2009, 255) and yet the memory of pain, of those prosecuted and the suffering, has a collective resonance.

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3 Memory in Exile Shahid Ali writes about the memory of pain of Kashmir as a trans-cultural­ collective archive, which documents the insurgency-filled Kashmir of 1989, “when the stones were not far, signs of change/ everywhere”, along with the mythical pain of Radha waiting for Krishna, “Dark Krishna, don’t let your Radha die in the rain” (Shahid Ali 2009, 258) and Muhammad’s daughter Zainab bint Ali ’s lamentations at having lost her brother and two sons in the battle of Karbala “You wait, at the end of Memory, with what befell/ Zainab-/ from Karbala to Kufa to Damascus” (258). There is an element of incompre­ hensibility and impossibility of translation of memory due to continuous dis­ placement, but violence makes it imperative to engage in the act of translating memories. In Kashmir, Shahid Ali writes, “A mother dies. There’s a son’s execution/ On Memory’s mantle … all as never before, is nothing but transla­ tion” (258). This desire to archive memory of the suffering of thousands detained and tortured by the agents of oppression functions at a micro-personal level. Shahid Ali attempts to preserve memories of young men detained, killed in custody through the history of violence in Kashmir in “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”. The poem documents the tale of Rizwan, a Kashmiri youth who died in custody and his last words are “Don’t tell my father I have died” (179) and the poet follows him “through blood on the road” with “hun­ dreds of pairs of shoes the mourners left behind, as they ran from the funeral, victims of the firing” (179). In Shahid Ali’s poetry, along with a sense of dispossession, there is the con­ dition of relocation in a new country which instigates the memory to produce strange reflections of the homeland in the relocated space. The state of exile and the nostalgia it produces are potent and stirring motifs of modern culture, this may be because of the duality of existence which exilic condition produces. Edward Said writes in his famous essay, “Reflections on Exile”, “For an exile, habits of life, expression, or activity in the new environment inevitably occur against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and the old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally” (Said 191). This is evident in Shahid Ali’s poems, for instance, in “In Search of Evanescence”, where in an act of metacommentary he writes that “When on Route 80 in Ohio”, he came across an exit to Calcutta, a town with the same name as the Indian metropolis. This tempts him to write a poem so he could “say India always exists on the turnpikes of America” (Shahid Ali 2009, 123). The neo-colonial appropriation of the name of Calcutta to name a place in Ohio notwithstanding, the name of an Indian city triggers memories of his homeland for Shahid Ali. In his mind, the memory of the subcontinent comes to be superimposed on his present geo-political situation and thus India and America coexist for him. The distance from his homeland also provides him with an unique perception with which he views his homeland. Memory acts as a trans-cultural poetics aiding relocation. Memory also allows “re-homing” of the foreign and at the same time never allows the poet to settle in a home. In

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the poem, “Land”, Shahid Ali writes, “If home is found on both sides of the globe,/ home is of course here – and always a missed land” (347). Rushdie, an exile like Shahid Ali, wonders about the possibilities which an Indian writer in exile has while writing about India: “Can they do more than describe, from a distance, the world that they have left? Or does the distance open any other doors?” (Rushdie 38).

4 Distance and Exile In the case of Shahid Ali, the distance from his homeland does open up new vistas of perception, particularly his use of ghazal brings the beauty of grief, of entropy, of exile and allows him to tell of things that generally do not hold together. The ghazals of Shahid Ali become a metaphor or form of desolation which one can experience only as an exile, just like Mahmaud Darwish did, Shahid Ali channels through his ghazals various images of his homeland to sense its beauty. Distance from his homeland from Kashmir also allows him to inculcate a tricultural nostalgia as Bruce King observes: Agha Shahid Ali is one of the few Indian Muslim English-language poets, one of the few English-language poets from Kashmir and now that he is long resident in the United States, one of the New American multicultural poets. Trilingual, tricultural, he is product of many of the events … why Ali is conscious of exile of the way, especially in India language and culture cause separations, differences, there is also awareness that multiculturalism, change, difference, loss and nostalgia are common to the human conditions. (King 2) In his poems, such as “Note Autobiographical 1 and 2”, “Introducing” and “Bones”, Shahid Ali unlocks his “mad heart” and writes about personal memory of his childhood days, a past spent in secular pursuit of scientific understanding of the world around. For instance, his memory of a conversation with his grandmother in “Note Autobiographical 2” points towards his secular and humanist nature, where he asked his grandma, “Is God a Muslim?” and she replies “Kafir! You’re no good.” He also remembers that his father quoted Freud and Marx and that no one taught him the Koran (Shahid Ali 2009, n.p.). In “Return to Harmony 3”, he presents his nostalgia for a house (his father’s house called Harmony 3) which was an “amalgamation of various ideas and beliefs”. As Manan Kapoor points out, “His father’s socialist thought and the ideas of German thinkers had a massive impact on Shahid’s understanding of religion.” So did his mother’s trans-cultural Ganga- Yamuna tehzib of Luck­ now, whom he fondly remembers in the poem through the medium of the house: “And there in black and white my mother, eighteen years old, a year before she came a bride to these Harmonies, so unforgivenly poor and so unforgivenly beautiful …” (Shahid Ali 2009, 201).

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Many of Shahid Ali’s ghazals are in fragmented form and speak of frag­ mented experiences, in which various cultures conflict and consequently are organized into meaningful structures. In his ghazals personal memories and images of various spaces and people appear in montage form and give the reader a sense of delving deep into the mind and reminiscences of the poet: But the phone rings here in Amherst: “Your grandmother is dying. Our village is across the bridge over the flood channel, the bridge named for Majhoor.” “There is no such village!” “She had a terrible fall. There is a curfew everywhere. We have no way to bring her back. There is panic on the roads. Our neighbors have died.” (Shahid Ali 2009, 229) This thematic of pain and suffering – personal and collective – is a constant trope in Shahid Ali’s poems and part of his lived experience as an exile, one which he suffers more acutely from a distance. The state of exile is a modernday reality. Said observed that our age “with its modern warfare, imperialism, and the quasi-theological ambitions of totalitarian rulers—is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration” (Said 193). Shahid Ali, the poet in exile, understood the power of literature as a marker of memory which can resist the epistemic violence of historical forgetting. Hence, in his poetry, one can locate the urgency to register the mundane, the everyday, the suppo­ sedly inconsequential and homely affairs of the world. The relationship between power and literature as a form of resistance is of conflicts, while power seeks to distort the world, refigure the past to fit the present needs, but art seeks to preserve memory. “The struggle of man against power”, Milan Kundera observes, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting” (Kundera 1). Shahid Ali is very much aware of the conflict between personal memory and the official history. He writes in his famous poem “Farewell”, “My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You won’t forgive me” (Shahid Ali 2009, 142). As a poet in exile, Ali is haunted by a dual vision where the self which lives in the present and in exile also recognizes being haunted by the other that yearns for the fulfilling emotion experience of the native land. These two selves are in con­ stant dialogue with each other and yet they cannot mingle, “If only somehow you could have been mine, what would not have been possible in the world?” (177). Abin Chakraborty correctly points out that “Agha Shahid Ali’s nostalgia neither operates on the basis of an atavistic celebration of the past nor does it foreground essentialist identities into which individuals may be neatly packed as commodities in a supermarket” (Chakraborty 57). While writing of a fractured space, such as Kashmir, where years of violence, terrorism and forced migration have created seemingly unfathomable chasms between different communities, Ali does not fail to see possibilities of peaceful co-existence. For he can visualize a future of peaceful recognitions, “In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections” (Shahid Ali 2009, 176).

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Diasporas are subjected to identity-based politics and anxieties. Migrations have their own peculiar effect in situating the migrants in a space which con­ stantly questions their identity. Though they become a part of the demos with time and acquire political rights, for the migrant it is nearly impossible to be assimilated into the ethnos of the host country. For this very reason, Salman Rushdie opines that the migrant continuously seeks the “imaginary homelands” (Rushdie 10). “Imaginary homelands”, the hybrid space, may not provide a physical space of confinement but a migrant identity may discover a lost wholeness, as such as space allows the mooring of the self. Such an imagined space often forms a part of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry. In Shahid Ali’s poems written before the start of the insurgency in Kashmir in the decade of the 1980s, one can identify the pain of separation, even in poems where the political vio­ lence is not registered “Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox, my home a neat four by six inches.” He also notes nostalgically that “This is home. And this is the closest I’ll ever be to home” (Shahid Ali 2009, 29).

5 Postcard from the Past Shahid Ali evokes his physical and emotional distance from Kashmir, through the evocative metaphor of the “postcard” that arrives in his American mailbox from Kashmir, bringing along with it various snippets of memory. This tour­ istic token of the postcard which is received by the diasporic Kashmiri, makes him realize “[t]his is home. And this is the closest/ … [he’ll] ever be to home”. Such tokens are instances of “intimate exchanges with the land”, and “ receipt of such a postcard alienates further, even as it evokes … alienation [that] already preceded it” (Nelson 6). This disconnection from the home and the unfeasibility of recovery are extenuated by Shahid Ali’s declaration that “the colors won’t be so brilliant/ the Jhelum’s waters so clean/ so ultramarine” if and when he returns to his homeland. The poet’s reminiscence in comparison to the luminous colours of the postcard, is like a “black/ and white”, “undeve­ loped”, “negative”, blurred and obscured, as it is “a little out of focus”. His monochrome memory underlines the separation that exists between the post­ card and its receiver and the gleaming clarity of the Jhelum’s waters, back in Kashmir. Shahid Ali’s postcard, just like Rushdie’s “broken mirror” is a meta­ phor for memory and how temporal and spatial distance affects the perception of homeland. Shahid Ali’s last collection of poems, Rooms Are Never Finished, published before his untimely death, is a mnemonic archive which he gives the form of ghazals. The collection can be read as a journey – a journey he takes to bury his mother. In this collection of poems, he makes a conscious poetic effort to search for a site to situate his memories of a lifetime and harks back to his beloved Kashmir time and again. In the poem entitled, “Memory”, which is a poetic transcription of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s famous ghazal Dust-e-Tanhai, he seems to have personified Kashmir as beloved from whom he is being separated, and only the memory of the beloved homeland serves as the therapeutic agent,

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providing some relief from the pangs of separation from it: ”Memory is placed its hand so on Time’s face, touched it so caressingly that although it’s still our parting’s morning, it’s as if night’s come, bringing you to my bare arms” (Shahid Ali 2003, 27). The personal memory and universal history mix in Shahid Ali’s ruminations. In his poem, “Lenox Hill”, for instance, the poet remembers his mother’s pas­ sing, and this personal memory is mediated by the historical archive of the Hun king Mihiragula’s expedition with war elephants in the Pir Panjal Range, and his delight at their cries of anguish when they fell off the cliff, which his mother recalls after her surgery in Lenox Hill Hospital (Shahid Ali 2003, 11). In the same Lenox Hill Hospital in Amherst where the poet’s mother sleeps on her bed, the poet summons the cliffs of Kashmir across 15 centuries, he remembers how he was dressed as Krishna by his mother, the mnemonic, the universal, the historical all converge at the point of grief for Shahid Ali as he writes to his mother in his poem, “ Mother, they asked me, So how’s the writing? I answered My mother is my poem” (12). This attempt at a poetic chronicle of life finds its most beautiful and poignant expression in Shahid Ali’s “I Dream I am at the Ghats of the Only World”, a poem in which Shahid Ali expresses his own life in the form of a ghazal. It forms the central part of Rooms Are Never Finished, as an autobiographical Künstlerroman in verse form in which the poet not only writes about his life but also about his journey as a poet and the influence of various artists on his poetic development, including the American poet James Merrill, who had a profound influence on his poetic form as well as Begum Akhtar. The poem begins with mourning and an eulogy to Begum Akhtar, his beloved muse. He writes, “A night of ghazals comes to an end” with the death of Begum Akhtar (Shahid Ali 2003, 76). Shahid Ali’s admiration for Begum Akhtar stems from a deep sense of love for the ghazal form and as he did in his earlier poem, “In Memory of Begum Akhtar”, he portrays mourning through embodiment of the ghazal itself. In his memorial essay on Agha Shahid Ali, “‘The ghat of the only world’: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn” (2002) novelist Amitav Ghosh points out that: Of the many ‘good things’ in which Shahid took pleasure, none was more dear to him than the music of Begum Akhtar. He had met the great ghazal singer when he was in his teens, through a friend, and she had become an abiding presence and influence in his life. In his apartment there were several shrinelike niches that were filled with pictures of the people he worshipped: Begum Akhtar was one of these, along with his father, his mother and James Merrill. (Ghosh 317)

6 The Loved One Always Leaves The poem, “ I Dream I Am at the Ghats of the Only World”, can be read as one such poetic shrine where Shahid Ali memorializes the people he loved. He remembers Eqbal Ahmed,1 Pakistani political thinker and a proponent of

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Kashmiriyat, with whom shared the pangs of being an exile and the zealous anti-war ideology, and he writes, “by which mirror Eqbal, in his undertone, still plots to end all human pain? When my mother died, he had wept so far away in Pakistan” (Shahid Ali 2003, 76). He then writes about the American poet James Merrill, who had profoundly influenced his poetic development as a writer of ghazals in English. Shahid Ali, through his mnemonic versification, portrays the mentor and mentee relationship he shared with Merrill: “before his untimely death, James Merrill requested that a copy of A Scattering of Salts, now his last book, to be sent to you with compliments” (Shahid Ali 77). Jason Schneiderman notes that in the poem, “I Dream I Am at the Ghats of the Only World”, “Merrill’s voice appears in all capital letters, the same tech­ nique used to indicate communication through the Ouija board in Sandover.2 Merrill guides Shahid in coping with both his mother’s and his own mortality” (Schneiderman 11). Shahid Ali chooses Merrill to be his guide and philosopher on his journey of life, Merrill becomes his Virgil. Rooms Are Never Finished is a poetic meditation on loss and mourning, and in the central poem of the col­ lection “ I Dream I Am at the Ghats of the Only World”, the readers would expect Merrill’s voice to arrive with a degree of comfort and hope in the form of news of reincarnation. However, “Merrill’s voice arrives with no comfort based in the afterlife” (Schneiderman n.p.). “SHAHID, HUSH. THIS IS ME, JAMES. THE LOVED ONE ALWAYS LEAVES” (Shahid Ali 2003, 82). What Merrill’s voice rather offers to Shahid Ali is a comfort in knowing the universal nature of loss and suffering and the transient nature of life. His words convey to him the truth, that losing people on the way is part of life and per­ haps their memory is the only talisman which can provide solace in moments of immense loss and distress.

7 Conclusion As pointed out by the diasporic critic Avtar Brah in her book, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identites, for diasporic people, the home is not merely a geographic space but is also: the lived experience of a locality. It sounds and smells, its heat and dust, balming summer evenings, or the excitement of the first snowfall, shivering winter evenings, somber grey skies in the middle of the day … all this as mediated by historically specific everyday of social relations. (Brah 189) Shahid Ali as a diasporic poet manages to register the very soul of Kashmir by writing about his lived experience. In his poems, Shahid Ali, through evocation of memory as a transcultural trope, recovers the site of Kashmir, replete with not only his own lived experiences of childhood and youth but also with the collective consciousness of a whole community. Memory also acquires a

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capacity to keep alive the existence of a community whose history has been one of violence and displacement. The personal, the intimate, the marginalized and the dispossessed are all memorialized in the poems which provide a counter-discursive narrative to emerge by valorizing memory over official historiography.

Notes 1 Eqbal Ahmed was a Pakistani political thinker who was known for his deliberations on the Palestine issue and the Kashmir conflict. Agha Shahid Ali shared a deep per­ sonal bond with him. 2 James Merrill used this style in his epic poem, “The Changing Light at Sandover”, to denote conversations with spirits called on the Ouija board. The lines of the poem by Shahid Ali pay homage to both Merrill as well as his poetic style and creativity.

References Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books, 2001.

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Routledge, 2005.

Chakraborty, Abin. “Beyond Borders, Nations, and Exclusivist Identities: Agha Shahid

Ali’s Poetics of Plurality”. In Mad Heart Be Brave: Essays on the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, edited by Kazim Ali. University of Michigan Press, 2017, pp. 55–70. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.9493485.8. Ghosh, Amitav. “‘The Ghat of the Only World’: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn”. Post­ colonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy 5(3) (2002): 311–323. Hirsch, Marianne, and Valerie Smith. “Feminism and Cultural Memory: An Introduc­ tion”. Signs, 28(1) (2002): 1–19. King, Bruce. “Agha Shahid Ali’s Tricultural Nostalgia”. Journal of South Asian Litera­ ture 29(2) (1994): 1–20. Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Knopf, 1980. Nelson, Matthew. “Agha Shahid Ali and the Phenomenology of Postcolonial Nostalgia”. Interventions 22(7) (2020): 933–950. Rigney, Ann. Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics. de Gruyter, 2009. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. Random House, 2012. Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. Granta Books, 2013. Schneiderman, Jason. “The Loved One Always Leaves: The Poetic Friendship of Agha Shahid Ali and James Merrill”. The American Poetry Review 43(5) (2014): 11–12. Shahid. Ali, Agha. Rooms Are Never Finished: Poems. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. Shahid Ali, Agha. The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems. W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. Tageldin, Shaden M. “Reversing the Sentence of Impossible Nostalgia: The Poetics of Postcolonial Migration in Sakinna Bouk and Agha Shahid Ali”. Comparative Litera­ ture Studies 40 (2003): 232–264.

Part III

Electronic Culture and Memory Markers

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Mayurakshi A River to Live By Saurabh Bhattacharyya

1 The Narrative and the Name The story of the film Mayurakshi centers round Sushobhan, who is suffering from acute dementia. As the film progresses, we move with the life of the protagonist Aryaneel, Sushobhan’s son, deeply concerned about his father’s deteriorating mental health, visiting doctors and then at one point even trying to find Mayur­ akshi, the person whom his father was extremely eager to meet. Sushobhan not only wants to meet Mayurakshi, he has a firm belief that the presence of Mayur­ akshi is almost an antidote to the suffering and emotional trauma his son is going through. Indeed, Aryaneel is single now, twice divorced, suffering financial con­ straints and Sushobhan can almost instinctively realize, despite his senility, that his émigré son is not at his best. The film continues registering, though in a strictly linear narrative, the interplay between the real world and the world of the memory of the ailing father until the protagonist gets to know that the girl the father was talking about is presently happily settled with her own family. Aryaneel decides not to disrupt the status quo, lies to his father that Mayurakshi has died in a street accident he himself eye-witnessed, and abruptly leaves for Dehradun to meet his son before leaving the country. To the viewer who watches the film, bearing in mind its Bengali middle-class setting, the figure of Mayurakshi, along with all the registers it carries, brings out an essential discourse much derived from common memory. “Mayurakshi,” the word, literally means peacock-eyed in Sanskrit and has an aura of romantic beauty associated with the name. Besides being a wonderfully sounding meta­ phor in Sanskrit, Mayurakshi is also the name of a major river that flows through two states of eastern India, Jharkhand and West Bengal. It gets its name from its appearance in the summer season where the water almost becomes as clear as a bird’s eyes. In Indian ethnography, major rivers are the lifeline not only of the people who live in their basin but are also repositories of regional and racial cultural ethos. Narratives with the names of rivers are quite common. Ritiwik Ghatak’s film, Subarnarekha (1965) or even Titas Ekti Nadir Nam (1973), which is itself an adaptation of a classic novel written by Adwaita Mallabardhan, are glaring examples of Bengali canonical New Wave cinema named after rivers. In all these films and in other narratives, like Bibhuti Bhusan DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-11

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Bandopadhyay’s novel Ichamati (1950), the river is symbolic of many reviving aspects of life. The sustaining aspect of the river is another feature that the eponymous character carries with it.

2 Memory and Mayurakshi Sushobhan lives in the world of memory and music. He feels at certain moments of life one needs the presence of background music. In the film, one can find a constant metaphor at work between the two worlds: the world of music and memory. Memory and music coalesce together to create what may be called the psychic reality for the ailing professor. He is fond of listening to songs and the snippets of songs that the audience overhears, all played on the radio, are enough to suggest the role of the memory at play in his mind. But even this amalgam of music and memory fails to sustain him. He needs the lifegiving river, as it were. Sushobhan is in urgent need of the care and compa­ nionship that Aryaneel could have given him had he stayed in the country. For that matter, as said above, Aryaneel’s life is also immensely complex and despite Sushobhan’s debilitating mental condition, the father is also able to understand the dire distress that Aryaneel is in and it is with this aim that he suggests that the failed marital life of Aryaneel can only be revived if he marries Mayurakshi. Mayurakshi thus becomes the last resort, so to say, of the family. Sushobhan talks about returning library books which have never been bor­ rowed, cannot remember the brand of the coffee he had savoured last month, asks his attendants to send for Mayurakshi after the university classes as if she is one of his regular students and he was still working as a faculty in the uni­ versity college he taught in, while none of the attendants have the slightest inkling about who Mayurakshi really is. But all they realize is that, in Sushob­ han’s opinion, she has the power to revive everything, the forgetting father, the broken Aryaneel and everything that is lost and gone. To Sushobhan, it is she who can set the order right, revive the universe. Mayurakshi is the messiah, the rejuvenating river, who exists in Sushobhan’s memory. However, he is not alone in the quest for the girl. Somehow Sushobhan is capable of persuading Aryaneel to undertake the quest and the son tries to trace Mayurakshi whom he had once known as his father’s student. The officials from the college library direct him to the home of the somewhat depressed retired college librarian who is grieving the death of his granddaughter in a recent incidence of political violence. This librarian, an elderly man, knew Sushobhan and Mayurakshi quite well when they were at the college. Even he appears to be Mayurakshi’s spell. It is he who, for the first and only time in the film, compares Mayurakshi to the river by her name. To him. she was as chaste as the transparent river. But he also adds that the river swells enormously, during the monsoon, causing violent storms in its wake. Thus, the image of Mayurakshi has been to some extent objectified as it passes from individual memory to the universal one. We can see that both Sushobhan and his librarian colleague almost have the same idea of the girl. The only difference is perhaps

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the fact that, while to Sushobhan the figure of the girl has a redemptive aspect, to the retired librarian, she is simply a rare embodiment of innocence. In their subjective reality, Mayurakshi is the archetypal mother figure whose healing touch will cure all ills, like that of the river, appreciate all feelings and remove all obstacles. When Aryaneel traces and goes to the house Mayurakshi lived in, he is greeted there by a disabled lady who, like the librarian, is full of nothing but praise for her. The unnamed lady tells us how Mayurakshi had cured her of her debilitating illness and how, we do not know why, Mayurakshi was rather absurdly banished from the family to fend for herself. The woman also gives Aryaneel Mayurakshi’s present address and, quite crucially, informs him that Mayurakshi used to fancy him. But, at this point, contrary to our expectation, Aryaneel gives up the search.

3 Mayurakshi and the Mother Archetype This eulogy of the redemptive feminine figure of Mayurakshi, however, rings many bells when it comes to the canonical tradition of Bengali New Wave cinema. In film after film, Ritwik Ghatak has eulogized women in the figure of the archetypal feminine that remains in the collective memory of the people of Bengal. While it is a typical element of Ghatak’s vision, the same image of the sacrificing selfless woman as the mother can be seen in the films of many film­ makers from Bengal, including the most internationally celebrated among them, Satyajit Ray. We will look at a few instances of how in the films of both Ghatak and Ray, the image of the redemptive feminine in Bengali consciousness comes to play a definitive role. In Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara (The CloudCapped Star) (1960), for instance, a daughter of a refugee family becomes the only member of it earning money and overworks herself to a premature death from tuberculosis. Ghatak represents the figure of the protagonist Nita as a typical sacrificial symbol of motherhood who goes through all suffering and finally perishes for others. In Satyajit Ray’s film, Mahanagar (The Big City) (1963), made a few years after Meghe Dhaka Tara, we see how the middle-class woman overcomes all the restraints of home and her office to achieve indepen­ dence in her way of dealing with life. There the protagonist Arati is also a savior for her family though complications incessantly batter her as a con­ sequence of going out to work. It was not usual for her class of married women to do so; but she initially takes the decision and sticks to it basically to help her husband economically, who is, once more, the single earning member of the family. In both these cases, we see that they perform the roles of emancipator, both to their own peril in some way or the other. Incidentally, the name Arati in Bengali has the connotation of a ritual adoration before a divinity. Arati, incidentally, is not just a saving grace for her family. Her work broadens her perspective about family as, risking her job, she fights with her boss for the rights of one of her Anglo-Indian colleagues who was actually being removed from the job in order to offer Arati a better position. Thus, Mayurakshi

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apparently belongs in the line of a huge plethora of films that eulogize the sacrificing mother archetype in Bengali cinema. Writing about the mythical archetype in Ghatak’s work, Dipayan Mukher­ jee in “The Epic Vision and the Crisis of Partition in Ritwik Ghatak’s Films” (2015) points out that one of the main ways that the world of the mythical stereotype works in Ghatak’s films is by invoking the figure of the archetypal mother consciousness, which has typically been called the Great Mother Archetype in Jungian terms. He believes that, through his journey into the mythical archetype, Ghatak institutes a compromise with the loss of a nation, a culture and a people which has been most conspicuously laid bare in the trope of partition, which is a recurrent theme in his films. The “symbolic­ imaginative outlook” (Mukherjee 027), as Mukherjee calls it, borrowing the first part of the phrase from Jung, becomes a kind of analeptic stance which predicates a negotiation with a history and a culture which are fast dis­ appearing. Thus the home that Ghatak wants to go back to has very little chance of being in reality; it is, according to Mukherjee, an imaginary home­ land which has no actuality. This idea of the homeland has similar associa­ tions with the mother in Bengali culture, the evasive shelter which revives the self, offering one the much needed shelter from all the tribulations of life. One can recall in this context that the adoration of the mother archetype is an integral part of the Bengali culture. It is evident in the number of goddesses adored throughout the year which far surpasses that of the gods in the ritua­ listic practices in Bengali culture. One of the greatest Bengali festivals, the Durga Puja, is a veneration of the mother goddess and it is generally done with grand idols molded from the clay from the nearby large river and immersed back in it after the adoration is over. Thus, the mother archetype is a typically pivotal aspect of the Bengali culture and it is variously represented in the world of Bengali films, most strengthening its efficacy and valorizing it like those of Ghatak, others often adopting it to subvert it. Likewise, in Mayurakshi, the figure of Mayurakshi has been eulogized too much in such idyllic terms to be real in the full sense of the word. The information that we are given about the Mayurakshi of the present tells us how she is much more mature and has seen much of the world compared to her earlier avatar. Thus, when Aryaneel decides to kill the Mayurakshi who lives in Sushobhan’s memory, he kills an imaginary being who has already become extinct. He is motivated by an impulse to refuse to subscribe to the analeptic tendencies that surround the figure of the mythical stereotype. There must be another very closely connected reason behind Aryaneel’s final act of telling Sushobhan that he was an eyewitness to Mayurakshi’s death. Practitioners of Memory Studies tell us that total recall is just an impossibility in practical terms and every act of recollecting is also creative in this sense. Memory, or rather recollection, is thus also considered to be a creative process, a process that has forgetfulness as its very essential component. Writing about the essential distinction between Memory and History, Pierre Nora notes:

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Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived. (8) One of the many aspects of Memory Studies is the fact that it does not rely so much on the memory that is recalled or rather its part but also on that which is left out and erased. Therefore, there is all the time a politics of erasure and of privileging in the way our memory works and we recall our experiences. In the way the sequence works in which the memory functions, encoding, consolida­ tion and retrieval, encoding and decoding happen simultaneously as well as the act of erasure and the strategic silences. The mother archetypes in Bengali films are similarly significant in what they ignore. The representation of the mother archetype in Ghatak, however, does not ignore the personal suffering of the woman concerned who actually becomes a representative, as said earlier, of Mother India. When we analyze the film, Meghe Dhaka Tara in this context, Nita’s personal cravings of being a part of a loving family, which does not suffer from internal politics and mutual exploitation for the sake of its eco­ nomic sustenance, is considered when, in the final scene Nita shouts out, “Brother, I wanted to live.” Mukherjee tells us how in the final iconic shot, Nita’s strong desire to live, counterpoised with her imminent death, reverses the traditional saga of sadness of the girl of the family in leaving her home and going to her in-laws’ house after marriage into that of a girl who is even unable to marry because she has to support her family who are utterly dependent on her (Mukherjee 027). Aryaneel evidently did not want to rely on the privileging that the accounts of Mayurakshi perform in the memory of Sushobhan and the other people who give him vital information about the girl, but all those representations are one-dimensional. All the eulogies of Mayurakshi that we find are memories of the denied, marginalized and disabled people which are actually something which does not in any way represent an understanding of reality. His experience of life tells him that such a perspective is only biased and defective. By killing the Mayurakshi in Sushobhan’s mind, he sets free the girl from the confines of biased memories of some disabled, impaired beings.

4 The Mother Archetype in Canonical Bengali Cinema In fact, the film in the category of New Wave Bengali Cinema that shows the impact of the mother archetype most conspicuously is the 1974 auto­ biographical film Jukti Takko Aar Gappo, (Reason, Debate and a Story), Ghatak’s last film. As Mukherjee rightly notes, there is a female character in the film called Bongobala and she is a refugee from East Pakistan. In this, as well, Ghatak uses the devices of long close-up and local dialect to conjure up the image of the mother goddess who is as innocent in her purity, as she is pow­ erful in her ability to sanctify (028). In the film, she doubles as the spirit of

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Bengal (029) which could not be given anything in return despite her deepest sacrifice for her children. Her children have failed her. In fact, what Mukherjee does not mention here is that Ghatak uses a song by Tagore “Keno Cheye Acho Go Ma mukhopane” (Why are you staring at my face, mother?).1 This particular song was printed in an anthology called Kadi O Komal by Tagore, as a poem called Bongo Bhumir Proti (Towards the Land of Bengal), when he particularly wanted to stress the denial that Mother Bengal has gone through because of her prodigal and wayward sons. Nevertheless the film, Jukti Tokko Aar Goppo ends with a different note, in which the leftist guerrilla fighters of the ultra-left Maoist movement in contemporary Bengal come together with the mother archetype to create a new idea of a nation built on communism. However, about Bongobala in Jukti Takko Aar Gappo we know nothing except her destitution at the hands of the forces of the non-left political establishment. There is a significant erasure of Bongobala’s past, present and future except for the fact that she is once again a replica of neglected motherhood that is never given what she actually deserves in return for her sacrifices. In Mayurakshi, however, the element of privileging occurs in Sushobhan’s memory in which Mayurakshi is seen in no other dimension than that of a girl who is completely good, almost to the point of becoming unreal. The same version is asserted in the account of the slightly deranged librarian and the invalid woman whom Aryaneel meets in order to trace Mayurakshi’s present address. Worthy of note here is the fact that the perspective of Mayurakshi as completely and utterly good and as the redemptive woman, like the regenerative river, comes to us from characters who are basically either physically or psychologically marginalized. These are the characters who have seen Mayurakshi, characters who remember her motherly benevolent self, but remembering is a dubious, selective process always determined by a cognitive bias. In Aryaneel’s memory, Mayurakshi indeed exists, but we are not given anything about Aryaneel’s previous relationship with Mayurakshi, we are only told from another marginalized perspective that she had developed a fascination, perhaps one-sided, toward him. The way he responded to this information clearly shows that he reciprocated no such feeling toward Mayurakshi. Mayurakshi is thus unreal in Sushobhan’s memory and in the memory of others who provide such glorified accounts of her. This clearly reveals that the element of privileging is dif­ ferent here based on the individual needs and it is perhaps because of this that Aryaneel does not go back to Mayurakshi. The Mayurakshi who has been living in the professor’s mind is a fictional one, something created by the subjective self. It has nothing to do with the girl in actual terms. Earlier we made a passing reference to Satyajit Ray and his film Mahanagar while discussing the image of the redemptive woman in it. In fact, the figure of the female archetype who offers respite to the characters that surround her is recurrent in his films; but the naturalistic mode of representation characteristic of Ray precludes the eulogy of these characters in such stark terms. The best way to understand the use of such images in Ray is perhaps to look at the films that have been collectively termed “The Calcutta Trilogy.” In almost every film of the Calcutta Trilogy, in Pratidwandi (The Adversary) (1970), Seemabaddha (Company Limited) (1971) and Jana Aranya

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(The Middleman) (1976), we find a female figure who, albeit not as dominant and powerful as might be termed the mother archetype, plays the role of a sustainer in the bleak world the central character inhabits. In the first film of the trilogy, Ray depicts the life of a medical college dropout in Siddhartha as he moves through the tangled maze of contemporary Calcutta to manage to get a job, facing harrowing interviews and situations in which his belief in humanity is constantly being threatened. Despite the ruthlessness of the world around him, Siddhartha makes friends with a girl called Keya who seems to be the only source of companionship for Siddhartha in a con­ tinuously degenerating world of social and familial relationships. Finally, as Sid­ dhartha has to leave the urban metropolis and take up the job of a salesman in a remote village, he writes a letter to Keya affirming their relationship. The film ends with a note of the interpersonal relationship compensating the loss of Siddhartha’s dreams. The next film, Seemabaddha is a radically different one as it tells how the life of a corporate executive becomes tarnished by corruption in his bid to climb up the corporate ladder. The image of the mother archetype is difficult to feature in this ruthless world. But Ray presents a character, in the form of the sister-in-law of the protagonist, who fully understands his anguish, dilemma and guilt. Tutul, the sister-in-law, has an understanding presence for the protagonist Shyama­ lendu; she is a place where he can reveal his burden of guilt. The third of our cases is the elder sister-in-law of the protagonist Somnath in Jana Aranya, sig­ nificantly named Kamala (after the Hindu goddess of wealth, Laxmi) the, so to speak, angel in the house who, again is a character who provides some emo­ tional sustenance to the protagonist when he finds his value system crumbling in the ruthless world of business competition as he has to pimp his close friend’s sister in order to secure a business contract. As mentioned above, none of these characters can qualify for the mother archetype and Ray was perhaps con­ sciously avoiding any such representation. But all these characters do have the potential for the redemptive feminine, the woman as a regenerative figure, as it were, something that has always been a part of the Indian culture. Perhaps the film in which Ray’s representation of the woman comes closest to the image of the mother archetype is the last one scripted by him. In this film, called Uttoran (The Broken Journey) (1994), directed by his son Sandip, the story is one of the experiences of a doctor as he chances to find on his long drive to a conference a terminally ill man being treated by a witch doctor in an impoverished village. Shooing away the witch doctor, the doctor takes care of the man but is unable to save his life. But the character that draws his admiration, along with the audience’s, is that of the daughter of the ailing peasant who, despite all the limitations of her subsistence-level background, represents the ideal of the self-sacrificing womanhood that will do any­ thing to sustain the life around her. Her name is, quite significantly, Manashi, (meaning, the imaginary), something that reminds us of Tagore’s poem of the same name where he equates the imaginative ideal of poetry with that of the eternal femi­ nine. This again is not what might be called the mother archetype and neither Tagore nor Ray can be claimed to use this in the works discussed above, still it comes closer to the idea of the idealized representation of the woman as the sustainer through difficult times.

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Such a representation is, however, embedded in the Bengali culture itself and perhaps the most representative of the post-Renaissance culture is Tagore’s idea of womanhood as what he calls the Kalyani (the benevolent). In Personality: Lectures Delivered in America (1917), Tagore points out that The ideal of stability is deeply cherished in Woman’s Nature. She is never in love with merely going on, shooting wanton arrows of curiosity into the heart of darkness. All her forces instinctively work to bring things to the shape of fulness (sic). For that is the law of life. In life’s movement though nothing is final yet every step has its rhythm of completeness. (171) This clearly asserts the sustaining quality of women in the family and society. Moreover, later in the same essay, Tagore goes on to say: Woman is endowed with the passive qualities of chastity, modesty, devotion and power of self-sacrifice in a greater measure than man is. It is the passive quality of nature which turns its monster forces into perfect creations of beauty—taming the wild elements into the delicacy of ten­ derness fit for the service of life. This passive quality has given women that large and deep placidity which is so necessary for the healing and nourishing and storing of life. (173) Tagore is talking about the woman in the family and her role, once again, as a sustainer. This in fact is the dominant representation of the woman in Tagore and as we find, in the films we have discussed earlier.

5 Mother Archetype, Mayurakshi and the Way Memory Works Memory in Mayurakshi plays the role of an unreliable narrator. The recogni­ tion of the fact that memory is an active process and the politics of privileging is in fact invariably present in it casts doubt on the efficacy of memory itself. As Mark Freeman observes: The recognition of this simple and seemingly indisputable fact has become something of a double-edged sword in the conceptualization of memory. On the one hand, it has vastly expanded the field of memory studies: memory, far from being the mere videotape-like replica of the personal past it was often assumed it to be, has emerged instead as a richly textured, multivocal text, as potentially relevant to the literary critic or the cultural historian as to the psychologist. On the other hand, however, the widespread recognition of the reconstructive nature of memory has destabilized the idea of memory itself. (263)

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It is the memory that takes up a particular image of femininity privileging all the time its image as the redemptive stereotype. It is a memory which looks upon Mayurakshi purely as a serving soul and not as one who is capable of having any other dimension of life. Aryaneel’s refusal to call on Mayurakshi and to kill her in Sushobhan’s memory is a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that Mayurakshi cannot be only considered someone who can only serve the people who come to depend on her. She has other dimensions as well. She should be left alone rather than being reinstated in the role of a woman who knows nothing but to serve with the benevolence of the mother goddess. If Ghatak’s films, Meghe Dhaka Tara or Jukti Tokko Aar Golpo, dominantly remind us of the mother archetype and the role that they play in the home, hearth, society and the nation, if Ray’s representation of womanhood is pre­ ferential in the sense that it carries Tagore’s idea of the woman being Kalyani (the benevolent one), then Mayurakshi, with a name that bears the redemptive connotation of a transparent river, is a modern assessment of the same old stereotype. It not only uses the stereotype, but also contests its efficacy.

6 Conclusion: Bringing the Different Tributaries Together Thus, Mayurakshi, the imagined absent heroine of Atanu Ghose’s eponymous film is never present in it in physical terms but has multiple metaphorical levels of existence. She is a figment of the memory, always recreated by the subjective self. She is the only source of support and cure for Sushobhan and the figure that he falls back upon in his senile life. She is the one who, according to Sus­ hobhan, can cure even Aryaneel of his problems and lead him to a meaningful, fuller life. She comes back from Aryaneel’s memory as well when in a state of desperation Aryaneel goes to all possible places searching for her. Despite the fact that he finds her nowhere and her figure remains equally evasive, Aryaneel gathers sufficient information about her to know that she is in her own family, leading her own life. In the process of the search, Mayurakshi is eulogized to the extreme, making her equivalent to the mother archetype so widely prevalent in Bengali culture. Like most of her predecessors, she represents the regenerative aspect of the eternal feminine widely celebrated in Bengali ethos as a divine mother and the mother archetype, the self-sacrificing woman in the family pic­ tured in different forms in different cultural expressions, making use of the archetype in collective racial memory. Mayurakshi bears a long legacy. She is the Nita in Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara who has to die of tuberculosis to save her family from hunger. She is the Arati in Satyajit Ray’s film, Mahanagar, who has to go through infinite turmoil just to go out to work in order to fend for her family particularly after her husband loses his clerking job at the bank. She becomes the sole means of support for the family but that does not prevent her from standing up for the Anglo-Indian colleague whom her employer wanted to sack, ironically to favor Arati. She is the Bongobala in Ghatak’s Jukti Takko Aar Golpo, a refugee Bengali woman, innocent, pure and helpless, almost lifted from the pages of a short story

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of Sadat Hasan Manto, as it were. Like the nation tormented apart by partition, she is also torn apart by hunger and fear, by the spectacle of violence and by the irresponsibility of the authority that should have played its role to protect her but has actually orphaned her. She is silently looking at our face, expecting a return for her earlier benevolence. She is the Keya (significantly, the name of a fragrant flower) who comes to Siddhartha’s rescue in his flight from the dull drudgery of a useless, uncongenial life in Pratidwandhi. She is the Tutul for Shyamalendu in Seemabaddha, the beautiful sister-in-law who alone can realize the burden of his guilt as he manipulates a factory union strike in order to save the face of his com­ pany and gets rewarded for it. In Jana Aranya, she is another sister-in-law, this time older. Named after the Mother Goddess Laxmi, she stands as the only site of emotional shelter for the protagonist Somnath. She is the Manashi in Uttoron, who has the healing touch that can cure the present of its ailments. Mayurakshi, the eponymous character in the film, not only comes from a long tradition of archetypal representations in a similar vein, but also has her name­ sake in a river that flows through parts of Bengal and its name is due to the observation that it had such clear water that it resembled in its crystal-like transparency the eye of a peacock. There is a general tendency to name women according to the beauty of their eyes in traditional Indian culture but the name Mayurakshi goes even further than that in its associations. The reference to the river is deliberately explored in the film to bring in another cultural stereotype: the river of rejuvenation. Like all races that grew up by rivers, the Bengali typi­ cally keep rivers in high regard, considering them a site for ritual ablution and associating them with an element of purity. The river is also regarded as a mother goddess bearing its name and religious iconography represents her as a benevolent goddess riding a mythical aquatic animal. A similar goddess-like association is made with the figure of Mayurakshi by characters like Sushobhan in the film, so as to further eulogize her as an embodiment of purity and redemption in modern life where everything seems to be falling apart. Mayurak­ shi, like the river of her name, is both gentle and powerful. The river is quiet and serene in its flow for the rest of the year, just as the aged librarian describes Mayurakshi to be in the film, but in the monsoon, when it rains incessantly in Bengal, it floods its banks. Like this deceptive river, the character of Mayurakshi described by her eulogizers in the film is gentle in her role as a restorer or a care­ giver, but immensely powerful in helping such individuals as Sushobhan and Aryaneel, or even the bereaved librarian and the physically challenged mysterious woman who informs Aryaneel of Mayurakshi’s present whereabouts. However, the idea of the redemptive flow of the river as the flow of life that is represented in the figure of Mayurakshi largely exists in the infirm mind of Sushobhan, drawing upon his even more infirm memory. Others who acknowledge her ability as such are either emotionally or physically challenged. This is when Aryaneel, very near his self-imposed goal of finding Mayurakshi, realizes this. Right at the beginning, he took the time to accept the redemptive aspect of Mayurakshi. Then at one point he seriously involves himself in the pursuit of finding her, more from his sense of duty toward his father than for

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any personal conviction. He felt that the only way he could bring some solace to his senile father was by finding Mayurakshi. But the fact that Aryaneel quits his pursuit so near his goal, followed by his final act of deceit in which he virtually flees from his father, informing him in a lie about Mayurakshi’s death, adds an element of obscurity to his character. Why does he give up? This is never explicitly explained. Maybe he realized that it would be too much to expect so much from her. Maybe he realized that these representations of Mayurakshi as the redemptive feminine are only one-sided appreciations of her character, denying her the entity of a full individual. It could also be that having been on the receiving end of two broken marriages, he did not want to further complicate matters by bringing her into his life, once he knew that Mayurakshi was attracted to him when he knew her in the college. However, it could also be because he realized that Mayurakshi, the life-giving river-like woman, only resides in some memories where she should be allowed to rest at ease.

Note 1 Translation mine.

References Freeman, Mark. “Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative.” In Memory: Histories, The­ ories, Debates. Edited by Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, pp. 263–277. Mukherjee, Dipayan. “The Epic Vision and the Crisis of Partition in Ritwik Ghatak’s Films.” Criterion, vol. 6, no. VI, 2015, pp. 26–32. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, Spring, no. 26, 1989, 7–24. Tagore, Rabindranath. “Bongo Bhumir Proti”. In Kodi O Komol. Edited by Asutosh Choudhuri. Calcutta: People’s Library, 1886, p. 249.

Films Jana Aranya (The Middleman). Directed by Satyajit Ray. R.D. Banshal & Co, 1976. Jukti Tokko Aar Goppo (Reason, Debate and a Story). Directed by Ritwik Ghatak. Rita Productions, Ritwik Ghatak, 1974. Mahanagar (The Big City). Directed by Satyajit Ray. R.D. Banshal & Co, 1963. Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star). Directed by Ritwik Ghatak. Chitrakalpa, 1960. Pratidwandi (The Adversary). Directed by Satyajit Ray. Priya Films, 1970. Seemabaddha (Company Limited). Directed by Satyajit Ray. Chitranjali, 1971. Uttoran (The Broken Journey). Directed by Sandip Ray, scriptwriter: Satyajit Ray. NFDC, 1994.

8

Mnemonic Reimaginations Situating the Anglo-Indian Literary, Lived, and Spatial Representations in Post-Colonial Kerala Aiswarya Sanath and Manoj Parameswaran

1 Introduction Kerala, a land whose very borders have been written and rewritten by countless pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial invasions and migrations, has also been home to the Europeans. The material and political extensions of the European arrival have found their resonance in the literary, linguistic, and socio-cultural verbalizations of the land. The centuries-long engagement of the Europeans in India has ushered in a contested history marked with registers of loss, colonial subjugation, and cultural integration. This chapter brings into scholarly inves­ tigation the distinctive Anglo-Indian1 identity in post-colonial Kerala based on the theoretical and interpretative framework provided by Memory Studies. The European arrivals in Kerala commenced with Vasco Da Gama reaching the shores of Calicut on 20 May 1498. Over the next few centuries, Kerala was visited by Dutch and the British as well. The Anglo-Indian community is formed from the intermingling of the colonial invaders with the locals and its subsequent miscegenation. These invasions have been the significant con­ stituents of Kerala’s modernity and its rich cultural heritage. Studies spanning over seven decades have actively investigated the social and cultural marginality of Anglo-Indians (Gist 1967), heterogeneous Anglo-Indian identity (Caplan 1995), the social trajectory of Luso-Indians in Kerala (Dias 2009), conceptualizations of home, identity and nationality for Anglo-Indians (Blunt 2002), representations of Anglo-Indians in post-colonial literature (D’Cruz 2007), and the Anglo-Indian identity in India and diaspora (Andrews and Raj 2021). However, in the academic discourses, there has been a sig­ nificant lack in addressing the memorialization of the Anglo-Indians in Kerala, notably the manner and method in which the post-colonial state has approa­ ched the collective memories of the community. The chapter with its intention of tracing the mnemonic markers and lived narratives of the Anglo-Indian community in Kerala combines the tools of close reading and ethnography. The two novels selected for analysis, Requiem for the Living and Litanies of Dutch Battery, are studied to offer a critical reading of the Anglo-Indian lived expressions. The data that informs this chapter is also derived from an extensive ethnographic research conducted in various AngloDOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-12

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Indian settlements, such as Kannur(Cannanore), Kozhikode (Calicut), Ernakulam (Kochi), Kollam (Quilon), and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum).2

2 What if Gama Had Never Come? Locating the Anglo-Indian Literary Expressions The literary landscape of Kerala offers a disconcerting and peculiar amalgama­ tion of varied spatial and temporal planes. Here, images, sensory perceptions, motifs, anecdotes, myths and superstitions from the past are synthesized with the present tangible realities and revise future experiences. This temporal blending is reflective of its post-colonial framework and post-modern sensi­ bilities. Literary critics often regard the fictional landscape of Kerala as an archive of post-modern, eco-feminist and Marxist alliances and tendencies. The iconoclastic works grounded in the land’s political culture have always defied classist tendencies. The writers fictionalized the convoluted inner world of the characters laced with existentialist tendencies, often embracing new genres and contemporary intertextualities. In the texts considered for the study, the authors, by adopting a magic realistic framework, attempt to recount the Anglo-Indian experiences of Kerala, and also challenge the glorification of Kerala’s rich and chequered cultural past and heritage. In Johny Miranda’s Requiem for the Living, cultural memories,3 lived his­ tories, the everyday life experiences and social mores of the Paranki community in Kerala are fictionalized through the character of Osha Pereira (the creolized variant of the Portuguese name José). Cultural memory can be conceived as the past being encrypted in certain “texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, and objects” (Assmann and Czaplicka 128). Osha’s constant remembering and for­ getting of certain episodic memories4 in his life become the conflicted site through which the author narrates the transnational, porous, and intergenera­ tional history of the Portuguese creole community (Parankis, also known as Topaees, Firangees) in Kerala. The short novella, originally published in Malayalam under the title Jeevichirikkunavarku Vendiyulla Oppees, was translated into English by Sajai Jose in 2010, and it thus subsequently retrieved the fictive work from relative obscurity. The text in its entirety introduces the rather contested past of the minority community in the coastal regions of Kerala, whose interconnected and axio­ matic roots can be traced to the early fifteenth-century European invasion by charting a fictive affective memoryscape. The narrative arc of the novella, as well as the community, relies on the personal memory of Osha, “his all-seeing, unblinking – at times morbid fish eyes” (Miranda, Translator’s Note xvii). At the crux of the novella lies the protagonist’s identity crisis, symbolized by his relentless search for Chaavi (the gold key). Even when Osha and his family are plagued by family crises such as – Osha’s mother eloping with his sister’s lover and his subsequent rejection of his mother, his sister being mentally deranged and suffering an unwanted pregnancy, his father murdering his pregnant sister on the altar of the church while the whole community witnesses the event –

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Osha is preoccupied with his search, “the very purpose of my travels had been reduced to search for the lock of that Chaavi …” (Miranda 20). Therefore, the Chaavi is also a metaphor for the collective identity crisis that is experienced by the community. The Paranki community “a minority within a minority” (Devika xxv) has been subjugated and banished to the cultural backyard by the upper-caste and upper-class Hindu dominant society in Kerala. The degenera­ tion and identity crisis are experienced by the members of the community at all levels – individual, social, familial and religious – and can be documented in Osha’s earliest recollections of his father: So what if we call ourselves Parankis and have these surnames, none of us know English, nor have trousers or coats or shoes. Dark skin, rough, shrun­ ken cheeks, bloated eyelids, centipede moustache, baldness, rotten teeth, pot belly, and dwarfish build, these are the common features of the men in our family. When the coastal people – the lowest of low in wealth, education, caste, and living standards – were converted, all that they were given were some four hundred surnames. Yours too are among those, this venom was injected into us by none other than some suited-booted English-speaking Parankis. Paranki scums, with only surnames to show for themselves! (Miranda 13) As Osha notes, the Paranki community in Kerala did not experience upward social mobility like the rest of the Anglo-Indians,5 they had inherited some mere incorrigible surnames and an inseparable collective identity crisis. This collec­ tive self-hood crisis is reflected in the novella by Osha’s search for Chaavi, which in many ways, he believes will provide the community with an identity consolidation and formation. The Chaavi often gave him a harbour to which he could anchor his collective identity, “Somehow, I had come to believe that it was the Chaavi that had kept me from going insane” (Miranda 35). The out­ siders cannot understand this search – noticeably Jacinta, his wife, considers the Chaavi to have only a material significance and even pawns the Chaavi to a bidder. Thus, the act of writing the novel by Miranda, with a purposeful retelling of the Paranki community with a certain construction and reconstruc­ tion of cultural memories, enables them to move from fragmented identities to subjectivities with an assured agency. The work can be perceived as a “fiction of memory”6 because it is based upon cultural markers and remembered acts to chart the collective identity of the com­ munity and answer the question, “who are we?” (Neumann 334). In Requiem for the Living, the Church is a living component, often dictating the life trajectories of its members, and it acts as a metaphor and metonymy for the transmission of cultural memory across generations and spatial-temporal boundaries. Many theo­ reticians of memory studies who have contributed extensively to the deliberation surrounding the role of memory in religious discourses have remarked that, “there is no religion devoid of social or cultural memory” (Sakaranho 23). In the text, the

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Church acts as a medium for memory transmission which is often carried through the process of remembering and forgetting: It was a custom for the whole family to go together for the Arthungal Church festival every year. After crossing the river by country boat, we then walked along the beach. Setting out in the evening, people walked all night, chattering, singing, praying, eating, drinking, laughing, and playing along the way, reaching Arthungal as dawn breaks in the east. (Miranda 3) The text which consciously shies away from being an anthropological doc­ umentation of the community in many ways narrates the sartorial, cultural, linguistic, and ritualistic peculiarities of the community and thereby ques­ tions the scholarly and popular tradition of treating Anglo-Indians as a monolithic, and a homogeneous identity. In Osho’s earliest reminiscences of his cultural past, he remarks: Though we were Parankis, the men in our family weren’t the kind who wore trousers. Instead, they wore the mundu and the half-sleeved shirt called kammeesa. The earlier generations used to wear broad waistbands as well, into which they would tuck betel leaves, tobacco, and lime to make their chewing mixture. (Miranda 2) Thus, the text is embedded with many cultural, affective memory markers of the Paranki community and thereby it attempts to archive “an unique way of living and speaking that is lost” (xii). This documentation is possible through the mechanisms of memory transmission, such as the intergenerational trans­ mission of familial and collective memories, individual episodic memories, and rendition of cultural memories. In Litanies of Dutch Battery, N.S. Madhavan astutely couples fantastical and magical realistic elements to trace the socio-cultural landscape of Lanthan Bath­ ery (Dutch Battery) and narrates the history of Kerala from a feudal state to its early encounters with democracy and welfare communist principles. Edwina Theresa Irene Maria Anne Margarita Jessica (affectionately called Jessica) is the inheritor of the stories that have been brought to the island by sea and storm alike and “the manner in which stories were made in Lanthan Bathery: by the sense of touch” (Madhavan 4) Through Edwina and her personal memories, the author recounts the cultural everyday lived histories and collective memories of the Paranki community in Lanthan Bathery in the early 1950s. Jessica charts the rhizomatic root of her “Paranki” community thus: Near Parangi Chapel lived the descendants of the children the Portuguese had fathered from local women. They were called Parangis, meaning Por­ tuguese. During their rule the British ordered that Eurasians could not be

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Aiswarya Sanath and Manoj Parameswaran called anything other than ‘Anglo-Indian’. So, by the stroke of a pen, all Parangis became the children of the English. Yet the folks of the Lanthan Bathery stuck to ‘Parangi’ disregarding the canons. (Madhavan 37)

She thus signals to us to consider the varied identities and subjectivities that come under the all-inclusive term of being an “Anglo-Indian”, and in Requiem for the Living, we find a deliberate distancing from the western markers and traditions exemplified by Jumanae Mammanji and Osha’s mother devoutly following many Hindu ritualistic traditions and even the father’s rebellious outburst of calling Jesus, “Jooda Kazhuvery”. They did not express any explicit affinity for their European ancestors and didn’t engage with the notion of returning to their “homeland”. In Litanies of the Dutch Battery, the community finds their western history and alliance with the European invaders as a blessing, a marker through which they can rescue themselves from the caste-based oppression meted out to them by the upper-caste Hindu community. Edwin Chettan alludes to the significance of their distinctively traceable foreign ancestors to Appan (Valia Asari) in the novel: What if Gama had never come? Imagine our plight. We would have been picking weeds out of the farms belonging to upper-caste Hindus. And in the evening we would have gulped watery rice, poured them into our areca­ barkhat, wiped our drooling mouths and gone back to our shacks. We needed to carry a yardstick to measure the distance we had to keep from those upper-caste lords. Sixty-four feet – an inch shy was enough for the Nairs to thrash you. But now? Are we not living in style, munching on raw plantain fritters, listening to Jeevitha Nauka songs and, to top everything off, sipping Triple X rum? (62–63) The communicative memories7 of a community are often transmitted through linguistic registers. Portuguese linguistic variables have also heavily influenced the Portuguese Creole community, particularly the Paranki community, and have found their way into the Malayalam language and culture. In the text too, one discerns the influx of Portuguese words into the everyday language, We always sat on the floor for our meals … until the Portuguese gave us pinjanam and koppa, so that we could carry our food anywhere and eat. We always wrote sitting on the floor until we had our foreign words mesha and kasera; they straightened our spine. (118) Both the texts perceive the cultural memories of the Paranki community in Kerala, memories that are moulded by European migration and colonialism, and memories that are also marked by the community’s subsequent distancing

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from the European alliances. Like the “amniotic water” (4) that surrounds the islands in both texts, it is the European ancestry that provides them with their distinctive identity, sustenance and a future. These cultural memories of the European invasion have subsequently shaped their collective identity as a com­ munity. As Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka argue in their seminal text, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity”, The objective manifestations of cultural memory are defined through a kind of identificatory determination in a positive (‘We are this”) or in a negative (“That’s our opposite”) sense … The supply of knowledge in the cultural memory is characterized by sharp distinctions made between those who belong and those who do not, i.e. between what appertains to oneself and what is foreign. (130) These cultural memories identified by their linguistic, sartorial, and socio-poli­ tical distinctiveness provide the community with a framework for collective identity formation. These fictive works exemplify a state of in-betweenness, a fluid dynamic identity at a personal and collective level, and for all these rea­ sons and more, the works deserve our constant and vigorous academic engage­ ment and attention.

3 Lived Experiences and Personal Remembrance The idea of home as embodied by the community is varied in many ways, often having a reciprocal relationship with the socio-cultural history and trajectory of the various sects between Anglo-Indian communities in Kerala (Portuguese, Dutch and British origins). Maya Gomez, hailing from a prominent Luso-Indian family in Trivandrum, reflects on her notion of homeland. We came across Maya Gomez through a newspaper article8 that narrates the festivities sur­ rounding Christmas at St. Anne’s Forane Church in Pettah, Thir­ uvananthapuram. She says: But if you actually look at the Anglo-Indian community, ideally, they should be the British descent community who, like you said, would have felt the need to leave the country … leave, go back to the homeland after Indepen­ dence. But the Portuguese descent people never had that problem because this was always their place, they didn’t have that thing that they had to leave somewhere or anything like that. The Portuguese descent Malayalees were very much Malayalees. Although for better prospects, right from my great­ grandfather’s generations they were travelling to either Africa, East Africa, which were all under the British protectorate at that time. They were all colonies of the British and the Portuguese, you know, Mozambique and Malawi, they were going there and working on tea estates.9

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Kevin Davies, a resident of Convent Road in Kozhikode, has a contrasting notion to Gomez’s about “home” and belonging to the post-colonial state: For us, the community gives us the feeling of home. After independence some families migrated to Australia, Canada and the UK and we were able to feel at home there … That’s mainly because of the vibrant community life that we have. Home is where we are staying, wherever we go.10 As the testimonials suggest, the members do not subscribe to an absolutist notion of “belonging”. The Portuguese creole community (Luso-Indians), owing to their centuries-long association with Kerala and the resulting miscegenation, views Kerala as their “home”. The Anglo-Indians with British ancestry, find their “home” and belonging within the community itself and the multitude of cultural practices of the community. The comparatively brief stay of the British in Kerala might be one of the reasons for their desire to return to Britain; their cultural roots weren’t as well established as the Portuguese. An extensive study of the Anglo-Indian community’s varied cultural mar­ kers and social customs in Kerala offers us a nuanced and rich perspective on the heterogeneous amalgamated subjectivities embedded within the umbrella term of being an Anglo-Indian. Lambert D’Costa, a resilient old gentleman in his eighties living in the coastal town of Burnacherry (Burnshire), Kannur, who is an active member of the Union of Anglo-Indian Associations, reflects on how the western influences gradually eclipsed the distinctive Portuguese way of living: The first thing that I remember about my childhood is that my grandparents used to speak in Portuguese between themselves and also to their three chil­ dren. However, the knowledge of this language was not passed on to the next generation with the fear that it would confuse us. Until my childhood, tradi­ tions were kept up well. Now it’s all been diluted. I remember my childhood days when my great-grandmother was still alive. I was lucky to have very vivid childhood memories. She was keeping up all the traditions … after a generation or so, things changed.11 William Lawson, a British descendant Anglo-Indian, living in a two-storied house near Parade Ground, Fort Kochi, reminisces about the revelries at home during the weekend during his teenage years: We used to have big parties and dance events called balls at our homes. Our ladies used to make our own special dishes and we all have drinks and dance together, etc. We had roast beef, crumb chomps, and railway mutton curry. Even Portuguese descent families used to attend it. We used to invite all of them to it. It used to be a spectacle of an event for others as well. Nowadays such things don’t happen that well.12

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The cultural memories of the Anglo-Indians in Kerala are punctured with eli­ sions and absences; the British invasion in the 1850s relegated the Portuguese and Dutch customs and traditions to the margins and has unconsciously homogenized the assorted Anglo-Indian identity.

4 Spatial Mnemonic Assemblages of the Anglo-Indian Community in Kerala The earliest Anglo-Indian settlements were mostly found along the coast of Kerala, particularly the port cities of Kozhikode, Kannur, Kochi, Kollam, and Thiruvananthapuram.13 The settlements were established at these centres owing to ease of trade and commercial activities. Anglo-Indian communities through­ out the state of Kerala centred their socio-cultural life and identity around the churches and other places of worship; and later established schools for their children (Dias 2009). In Kannur, the Anglo-Indian buildings lining the city are public memorials through which cultural and collective transmission of memories occur across generations. The Holy Trinity Church, which is now a cathedral (named after an old myth of the miraculous escape of a ship with Portuguese sailors from a rough unwelcoming sea) is a religious and cultural centre for the 60 families that reside in its parish. Michael D’Cruz, a devoted follower of the church narrates his familial and religious memories: Our grandparents told us about the story of this church, built by the sailors as a token of gratitude … and we still carry on the tradition and memory of the same and pray here regularly. This story, in a way, connects all of us to our past.14 St Michael’s European School (now renamed St Michael’s Anglo-Indian School) and St Teresa’s European School (now renamed St Teresa’s Anglo-Indian School), which are major educational centres in Kannur were founded by the erstwhile Portuguese rulers. Kozhikode, a historically significant place when charting the colonial history of India, is marked by varied buildings which are mnemonic assemblages of the Anglo-Indian memories. The forts and churches built by the Anglo-Indians in Calicut play an active role in the formation of their cultural memories. The “Matri Dei Cathedral”, a tall white edifice at the heart of the city, built with the “patronage of Zamorin and pastored by the Jesuits” (Dias 243), has been providing solace to more than a hundred Anglo-Indian families settled around it. The twin schools founded by the Anglo-Indians: St Joseph’s Anglo-Indian Girls’ Higher Secondary School and St Joseph’s Boys’ Higher Secondary School, still foster and enhance the pedagogical environment in Kozhikode. Kochi, a land that has been sewn together by multiple migrations spanning centuries, has also been a host to its European invaders. Anglo-Indian buildings like Bastion Bungalow, St. Francis Church, Santa Cruz Cathedral Basilica,

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David Hall, and Dutch Cemetery proclaim the vestiges of an often-ignored colonial past. Apart from being major tourist attractions and revenue-generat­ ing centres, these spaces also engage in collective memory and identity con­ solidation for the descendants of European settlers. The Bastion Bungalow, built by the Dutch amidst the ruins of Fort Immanuel (which was built by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century) was recently declared a protected monument by the State Archaeology Department. Since Independence, this building has been the official residence of the Sub-Collector, Kochi. Louis Hickman, living a lonely life at Fort Kochi, vividly remembers the weekly balls at the Lotus Club: Those days, we used to meet our friends and girlfriends there and we danced together. It used to be a weekend routine for us. But nowadays since a lot of them have moved to other countries, it is really difficult for young men and women to make friends or partners. The parties and balls have almost become a thing of the past. Many of them have married out­ side the community as well.15 Thangasseri, a coastal town in Kollam and home to the ruins of St Thomas Fort, erected by the Portuguese in 1517 (later demolished by the Dutch), was one of the earliest trading centres for Europeans in India. The Infant Jesus Cathedral and two of the oldest schools in Kerala (Mount Carmel Convent Anglo-Indian School, and the Infant Jesus Anglo-Indian School), have been major binding forces for the community formation and everyday lives for the few Anglo-Indian families living there. One of the few remaining members of the community, Anthony Dias, told us: You can see these houses. They are easily distinguished by the typical European architectural patterns. There were a number of Anglo-Indians here. Both the Portuguese and British descendants. Once upon a time most of the people who we used to see on these streets used to speak good English and dressed in western style. But most of the families have left Thangasseri to Australia, Canada, etc. in search of better jobs and a new life.16 St Anne’s Forane Church, once a thriving centre of the Anglo-Indian commu­ nity, is the oldest church in Trivandrum. Maya Gomez, our interviewee in Trivandrum, spoke proudly about the contribution of Anglo-Indians to the city building and the making of Trivandrum in the twentieth century: The earlier form of the Trivandrum club, which is one of the main clubs in the city, was initially created and owned by one of my forefathers in memory of his wife, and was later handed over to the then-King. They used to be respected by and in really good relationships with the royal family and the British as well. A vast area of land for the Techno Park was gen­ erously donated by one of the Anglo-Indian families in Trivandrum.17

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The Anjengo Fort in the suburbs of Thiruvananthapuram is considered one of the significant bastions of the European invasion. It was one of the first per­ manent British settlements in Kerala. The British soldiers who were posted at the fort later married local women and settled in various parts of the city and a few Anglo-Indian families reside near the fort even today.

5 Anglo-Indian Subjectivities in a Post-Colonial State “Politics of Memory” as a concept deliberates on the question of “who allows whom to remember what and why2 (Confino 86). Acknowledging and accept­ ing the flaccidity of memory, this theory deals with institutional modalities and ways of dealing with violence and the memory of it. The politics of memory often views memory construction as a rearrangement of collective memory to serve and promote greater and grander official narratives. It prods us to realize and critically analyse the nexus between power, politics, and its influence in the construction of memory. Richard Ned Lebow, characterizes “institutional memory” as such: “efforts by political elites, their supporters, and their opponents to construct meanings of the past and propagate them more widely or impose them on other members of society” (23). Assmann discerns “politics of memory2 under the purview of the broader term of collective memory. Assmann remarks that political memory is designed and preserved by external representations and it is transmitted through generations (Assmann and Czaplicka 109). In the national memory mapping of India, there’s a conspicuous absence of the collective memories of the Anglo-Indian community. Arthur Wilson, an Anglo-Indian from Trivandrum, notes the absence of Anglo-Indian history in popular historiography, “We don’t see anything that’s related to our culture and history in the school text books or any messages for national integration promoted by the government. There is a feeling of under-representation of our community.” The perspective offered by the politics of memory aids us in acknowledging and theorizing the above-mentioned argument. The history of post-colonial India would be incomplete without recognizing the contribution of the Anglo-Indian community in nation-building. The com­ munity had made indelible marks in various spheres of national importance. Yet, from the interviews we perceive the marginalization of the community and the collective anxieties regarding the same. This anxiety stems from crucial policy decisions by the central governments in post-colonial India: (1) with­ drawal of the Anglo-Indian nomination to the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies of the states;18 and (2) biased enumeration of data regarding the Anglo-Indian population. Their concerns were expressed along these lines: Withdrawal of nomination definitely affects the community. It’s not just about empowerment. It’s also about representation. It is our desire that the community is represented in legislative assemblies and the parliament. When the reservation was clubbed with Latin Catholics, the advantages to

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By excluding Anglo-Indians as a category in the census, the state in a way willingly conceals a culturally distinct and historically significant community in India. This has to be read along with the marginalization of other minority communities as well. While constructing the history and modern identity of Kerala, Devika argues, “Kerala’s connections with ancient Rome, the Arab world, and Europe are emphasised, for instance, over its connections with its close neighbour, Sri Lanka, and the South-East Asian world in general” (129). Furthermore, the evidence gathered from the testimonials postulates that in addition to the visible selective cosmopolitanism which has historically discredited the liminal Paranki identity within the Anglo-Indian memory sphere, the state had only expressed interest in conserving the revenue-generating heritage and historical sites of the Anglo-Indian community. Thus, the interventions of the post-colonial state with the Anglo-Indian culturescape have been ambiguous.

6 Conclusion A thorough analysis of the literary, spatial, and lived Anglo-Indian expressions, therefore, reveals that their identity is an ever-evolving flux anchored by the dual notions of belonging and other-ing simultaneously. Osha’s never-ending search for Chaavi in Requiem for the Living is essentially the community’s quest for a collective uniform identity. The oral testimonials and the literary analysis recorded here encapsulate the prominence of the Church in their lives; it is a centrifugal force that mediates and negotiates their everyday lived realities. Additionally, the textual and non-textual representations exemplify that the caste system is deeply embedded within the community; its clutches have prominently marked the social interactions of the community despite their affinity towards western values, markers, and significations. As the study progresses, one could discern the collective identity of the Anglo-Indian community in crisis in a rapidly transforming society character­ ized by its post-colonial attributions. The fictive works in consideration chal­ lenge the popular representation of Anglo-Indian identities and thereby demand our attention to the layered differences within the minority community. In the absence of a traditional institutional archive documenting the personal histories of the Anglo-Indian community, the literary depictions act as a source to study their collective history. Conceptions of home by the Anglo-Indian community are constructed through an affective network of feelings, and are often attached to physical spaces, cultural habits, and social customs. “Home” is an active choice exercised by its members, and it is embedded within the community,

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independent of its locale. The nostalgia experienced by the members towards the homeland is reaffirming and positive (Blunt 2002), enabling them to partake in cultural activities and everyday interactions within the larger society. The spatial articulations and settlements in Kerala are increasingly disappearing. The remaining vestiges of the transnational history are being commercialized by the state in a utilitarian manner as well. It painfully reflects their dwindling status in post-colonial Kerala. The withdrawal of the Anglo-Indian nomination to the legislative assemblies of the states and the Parliament can be perceived as a recent act of apathy by the majoritarian government towards the already disempowered community. The arguments put forward by the study are indi­ cative of a visible civilizational loss, and attempts like these hope to aid the community in cultural revival.

Notes 1 Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution states: An Anglo-Indian means a person whose father or any other of whose male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territories of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not there for temporary purpose only. 2 The names of the places are used interchangeably throughout the text.

3 According to Assmann and Czaplicka,

Cultural memory is characterized by its distance from the everyday. Distance from every day (transcendence) marks its temporal horizon. Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing of time. These fixed points are fateful events of the past, whose memory is maintained through cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional communication (recitation, practice, observance). (129) 4 “Episodic Memory enables a person to remember personally experienced events as such. That is, it makes it possible for a person to be consciously aware of an earlier experience in a certain situation at a certain time” (Tulving 67). 5 As J. Devika notes in her essay entitled “Cochin Creole and the Perils of Casteist Cosmopolitanism: Reading Requiem for the Living”, the Parankis are perceived to belong to a lower caste status compared to the Syrian Christians because they have blended more into the Latin Catholics (132). 6 The term “fictions of memory” refers to two narrative schema employed in fiction. First, it refers to texts which allude to the workings of memory. Second, it refers to stories that individuals or groups tell to answer the questions of past. 7 Communicative memory is present in everyday life. “Communicative memories are socially mediated, based in a group, and transmitted across a community by means of everyday communication. They have limited temporal horizon from 80 to 100 years” (Manier and Hirst 254). 8 See: https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/Food/christmas-is-family-time-when -kinship-ties-are-renewed-and-rejuvenated-for-the-year-ahead/article6722693.ece 9 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 10 Interview by the authors in August 2021.

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11 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 12 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 13 Anglo-Indian settlements can also be found in Koratty (Thrissur), Kayamkulam, Chirayinkil, Kalamassery, Varapuzha, and other places along the coast of Kochi. 14 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 15 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 16 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 17 Interview by the authors in August 2021. 18 The seats were abolished according to the 126th Constitutional Amendment Act. See: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/parliament-approves-10-year-exten sion-to-sc-st-reservation-anglo-indian-nomination-dropped/article30289758.ece 19 Interview by the authors in August 2021.

References Andrews, Robyn and Merin Raj. Anglo-Indian Identity: Past and Present, in India and the Diaspora. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Assmann, Jan, and John Czaplicka. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity”. New German Critique, no. 65. 1995. p. 125. https://doi.org/10.2307/488538. Blunt, Alison. “‘Land of Our Mothers’: Home, Identity, and Nationality for Anglo‐ Indians in British India, 1919–1947”. History Workshop Journal. vol. 54, no. 1. 2002. pp. 49–72. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/54.1.49. Caplan, Lionel. “Creole World, Purist Rhetoric: Anglo-Indian Cultural Debates in Colonial and Contemporary Madras”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. vol. 1, no. 4. 1995. pp. 743–762. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034959. Confino, Alon. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method”. The American Historical Review. vol. 102, no. 5. 1997. p. 1386. doi:10.2307/2171069. D’Cruz, Glenn. “Anglo-Indians in Hollywood, Bollywood and Arthouse Cinema”. Journal of Intercultural Studies. vol. 28, no. 1. 2007. pp. 55–68. https://doi.org/10. 1080/07256860601082939. Devika, J. “Cochin Creole and the Perils of Casteist Cosmopolitanism: Reading Requiem for the Living”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. vol. 51, no. 1. 2016. pp. 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989414563150. Dias, C. “Social History of Luso-Indians in Kerala”. PhD thesis, University of Calicut, 2009. Gist, Noel P. “Cultural versus Social Marginality: The Anglo-Indian Case”. Phylon (1960–). vol. 28, no. 4. 1967, pp. 361–375. https://doi.org/10.2307/274288. Lebow, Ned Richard. “The Memory of Politics in Post-War Europe”. In The Politics of Memory in Post-War Europe. Edited by Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner and Claudio Fogu. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Madhavan, N. S. Litanies of Dutch Battery. Translated by Rajesh Rajamohan. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2010. Manier, David and Hirst, William. “A Cognitive Taxonomy of Collective Memories”. In Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Edited by. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nunning. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 253–262. Miranda, Johny. Jeevichirikkunnavarkku Vendiyulla Oppees = Requiem for the Living. Translated by Sajai Jose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Neumann, Birgit. ‘The Literary Representations of Memory”. In Cultural Memory Stu­ dies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nunning. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 333–345.

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Sakaranho, T. “Religion and the Study of Social Memory”. Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion, vol. 47, no. 2. 2011. doi:10.33356/temenos.5151. Tulving, Endel. “What Is Episodic Memory?” Current Directions in Psychological Sci­ ence, vol. 2, no. 3. 1993, pp. 67–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182204.

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Traumatic Memory and a Child’s Cry in the Film Guilty Mousumi Sen

1 Introduction Films are one of the best mediums to deal with the kind of genres that are mostly taken to be taboo topics or have been shoved under the carpet. If we look at the importance that Bollywood (the Hindi film industry, based in Mumbai) has given to most kinds of entertainment, very few directors came forward to forget or not pay much attention to television rating points (TRP), tried to represent the real scenario to us by taking the risk of coming out of the shell that means traditional movie-making. Most filmmakers lack that rigorous approach. These days, we can find numerous films based on the theme of rape, sexual violence, sexual harass­ ment, rape manipulation, victim-blaming, etc. One recent addition to this list is the film, Guilty, released in 2020 and directed by Ruchi Narain. Cinema serves as a shield or security for viewing the dreadful sights of actual horror, violence, and cruelty without us actually experiencing the physical pain. As such, film plays the role of a powerful and liberating media. It provides the opportunity to contort or deform the horror it mirrors and to some extent influ­ ence the discussion about vicious events in real life. This chapter examines these functions of cinema within the vortex: trauma, violence, rape, and self. Trauma is found in all genres and everywhere. Traumatic stories are present in various cine­ matic genres, augmenting them with horrific narratives. In this chapter, “horror” refers to the intense feelings of shock, disgust, and fear that are connected with “trauma” and the film Guilty represents it as a significant moment.

2 Sexual Violence Cases in India If we delve deeply into early psychoanalytic theories of rape that came to pro­ minence in the twentieth century, we find that rape was earlier considered an act of sex and not violence. Rapists were viewed not as criminals but rather as psychologically deviant people. Earlier the major areas of focus were castration anxiety, poor parenting, repressed homosexual feelings or inclinations, lacking social skills, and being sexually insatiable or sexually starved. Earlier women were conceived to be lacking a sexual nature; however, this mindset disappeared in the twentieth century as women were considered sexual DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-13

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beings with their desires. But this emerging view contributed to the belief that women themselves are the reason for any misfortune happening to them. So, it is claimed that if a woman is raped, she must have “asked for it” – this leads us to the conclusion that in these rape incidents, women may not be the main reason but she is also a complementary partner. Even the victim’s sexual history justifies whether she can be called innocent or someone who lured the rapist into doing the act. The burden falls on the victim rather than on the perpe­ trator. The occurrence of cases of sexual violence against women is greater in male-dominated societies where patriarchal ideologies always are powerful. With a gruesome history of violence against women, India remained among the top positions in this type of society. The number of cases registered of crimes related to violence inflicted upon women in India increased rapidly, from 67,072 in 1989 to 84,000 cases in 1993. With the blend of music and facial expression, and close-up shots of the protagonist’s face, the non-identifiable traces of “trauma” are reversed into the cultural coding and become easy for the audi­ ences to comprehend and digest. The function of a film is to decode the trau­ matic experiences which haunt the characters. Though it is not the ultimate aim, the film tries to depict the trauma. Film stores, plays, and replays trau­ matic experiences again and again and becomes a “cultural container.” It pro­ cesses and transforms these energies into a complex subject. A new altered shape can be given and transposition of “trauma” into a stage of distortion can be encountered. Trauma does not lose its form, or figure, and becomes easily decipherable. Numerous complex tools have become instrumental in the rise of sexual violence in India. Feminist media scholars are of the view that popular cinema plays a noteworthy role in shaping the notions or mindset around gender iden­ tities and gender-specific roles within the Indian context. One of the dominant mediums in India is cinema because of the huge size and diversity of the indi­ genous film industry. The Indian film industry produces a large number of films annually. There is perfect synchronicity in the number of films produced and film consumption in almost all age groups, socio-cultural backgrounds, and geographical locations in India. Going to the cinema is a ritual and is popular among the Indian population. The significance of sexual representation in motion pictures is very relevant to the audiences in India because nowhere else in any other medium are the issues of sexuality discussed. Most feminist scholars are concerned that popular films in India very often project women in a stereotypical position of sub­ ordination – the acceptance of sexual violence as a common part of relation­ ships with men. Rather, critics point out that Indian cinema has rigorously glorified men’s abuse of women, showing women in a submissive position. Even the issue of Eve teasing is worth mentioning, where earlier the hero is shown in a macho and tough position which upsets the heroine but somehow these inci­ dents foster a relationship. Audiences may be influenced by this and Eve teasing is common in real life. A few Indian films even intermingle violence and

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sexuality together and forceful physical aggression becomes legitimate and “normal” on the periphery of popular cinema. The inclusion of rape scenes in films and television series arouses a feeling of empathy from the audience while the traumatized protagonist’s face is being represented in a state of distress. The close-up shots of bruises and violent proof on the protagonist’s body parts may invoke a feeling of terror and disgust in the audience. The film techniques used to portray a rape scene, and assault incidents affect the viewers subconsciously; people’s conceptualization of sexual violence scenes and their subsequent effects might influence the ways in which salient and memorable ideas play a part in reciprocating individual and cultural memory. The prevalence of rape scenes and their trauma become a stigma and proof of burden as a form of evidence of rape. The film Guilty dealt with a plethora of societal issues like rape, class con­ flict, sexual harassment, and victim-blaming together. The heroine of this film has suffered some childhood trauma that is revealed as the story progresses. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), trauma is an “emotional response to a terrible event like a car accident, rape or natural dis­ aster.” Children are more likely to be victims of such “trauma” as their brains are still developing, so they are vulnerable to it. This results in an effect on children’s long-term emotional development, mental health, physical health, and behavior. This cinema is intrinsically tied to the traumatic wounds. It has the ability to present the wounds visually, through expressions in fragments, and flashbacks. Traumatic memory or energy not only can be found in films’ experience, even the audience themselves can connect to this major aspect. Psychic trauma is caused when an individual loses his or her conscious ability to integrate an experience within a narrative or when an extremely violent situation occurs and they somehow repress those memories but those memories remain ubiquitous throughout their life. “Trauma” seems something which cannot be represented or spoken about. Those traumatic memories inherently lead to a subsequent phase of vulnerability and result in panic attacks and hysteria.

3 The Plotline The film Guilty is an internet film and it was released in 2020 on Netflix. The setting of the film is St. Martis College in India. Most of the scenes were shot on the college campus. From the beginning to the end, the film successfully presents the scenes of an urban college campus of Delhi University. In the opening scene, the characters, who are the college band members, are shown practicing and talking to each other about the #Me Too movement and, in the meantime, the lead singer of the band, VJ is being #Me Too-ed by another female student named Tanu Kumar. Tanu is a small-town girl and a scholar­ ship student. VJ, aka Vijay Pratap Singh, is the son of an influential politician and heart-throb of the college with his charming personality and well-built body. His girlfriend and the main character in the film is Nanki Dutta, the

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songwriter and lyricist of the college band, a role played by Kiara Advani. She appears in the film sporting various tattoos, ripped jeans and T-shirts, and a bold attitude, and she aspires to go abroad for higher studies. Tanu Kumar accused VJ of raping her one year prior at a Valentine’s Day party. Being a web film, the filmmakers took the opportunity to represent an uncensored, wild and raucous party where kids are shown smoking weed, taking drugs, and drinking alcohol. These scenes often are censored in mainstream films, hence it is a noteworthy representation altogether. This is the positive side of looking at it. After this, an investigation is made by a lawyer hired by VJ’s parents who is astounded to find after multiple interviews with VJ and his friends, interview­ ing them one by one, that everyone attests in favor of VJ and they all claim that there was no rape, Tanu supposedly lured Vijay into having sex. But after the consummation, as VJ refuses to break up with Nanki and make Tanu his girl­ friend, this upset her. She held a grudge against him and took her revenge by posting on social media about her rape which is nothing but a false claim. Tanu was from Dhanbad, a small town in India. She was known for her hostel fights and her loud fashion style. She was a “scholarship kid” who did not fit into the elite English medium trope, almost everyone in the college kept a distance from her. Thus she sometimes used to indulge in verbal brawls. One day, Nanki confronted her and they started a physical fight which ended with Nanki’s sus­ pension. She openly states her sexual desires toward VJ. She even earned the label of “slut.” Another hypocrisy of society is presented here. Lack of sexual desire is only applicable to women, they have no right to be vocal about their sexual needs, otherwise, they will be classified as a woman of low character. VJ, on being accused of the rape, admits that there was a sexual encounter between him and Tanu but it was consensual. He even claimed, “Why would I rape her? I have a girlfriend.” Even VJ’s friend supports him by a character assassination of Tanu, saying, “Sir woh to Randi hain/She is a whore.” No one believes her. Most of the Bollywood cinema films represents victims as voiceless, “guilty” of what happens to them. But in this movie Tanu is seen fighting, coming out for a rally procession. She makes a strong statement by doing so. She did not hide and stay in her shell. This is an important message for women’s empowerment where women should not feel themselves to be the reason for rape and violence, or the one who is victimized should be ashamed of such actions. As she stood up for herself, a lot of students gave her support. The whole rape incident divided the college into two different groups: one group of students who had believed Tanu and supported her, while the other group had a completely different view of VJ as innocent and they accused Tanu of framing VJ to take revenge on him as he rejected her as his girlfriend even after having con­ sensual intercourse. All the events shook Nanki, VJ’s girlfriend, to the core. She was clueless about everything and did not understand who to believe. As the film progresses, we see the peeling of Nanki’s character layer by layer. This film is not solely about rape survivors but rather focuses on Nanki’s internalized distrust of the loud and shameless women like Tanu who proclaim their trauma. Society often believes in a particular person’s liking and disliking

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by judging him or her based on preconceived notions. Society makes a judgment of a character based on a person’s background and his or her outgoing approach. Society rather stresses how a woman dresses as an indication of the person’s character. Hypocritical society assumes that bold dressing means her rape survival story may not be true. In the film Guilty, Nanki’s personal opi­ nion regarding Tanu, her dislike of Tanu from the very beginning of the film made her think of Tanu Kumar as a dishonest person full of lies. She believed her boyfriend to be innocent and doubted he could be a rapist. The main plotline revolves around Tanu’s rape and how the authority took no legal action. Even though she went to a senior female professor and asked her to take her to the hospital, the professor did not listen. Instead, she informed the college authority and the influential parents of VJ, the principal, and others were called. They offered her money to be silent. The next day she reported the crime and made a police statement but no action was taken on her behalf and money became the major trope in victim silencing. This is one such harsh truth where influential people take advantage of women and in return offer them money to stay silent. Besides this, some secrets surrounding the lead character Nanki are revealed. Every tattoo she had on her body, the ripped dresses looked bold and brazen on the surface. She seems cool and shows her wild side but underneath, she is very gentle and fragile. This image of tattoos and bold dressing act as her shield against society, a disguise to cover her inse­ curities and to present herself as strong and fearless.

4 The #Me Too Movement and Its Visual Representation in Bollywood The film Guilty is largely based on the #Me Too movement, a social movement with different international and local names, against sexual abuse and sexual harassment where women publicize allegations of sexual crime. The phrase “Me too” was first used by Tarana Burke in 2006, a sexual assault activist and survivor, on social media. In 2017, this hashtag found global exposure. The movement went viral in a short period when an American actress accused an American film producer. The use of the #Me Too hashtags on social media spread rapidly in India. Sexual harassment is commonly known as Eve teasing in India, which is not the perfect term to use. It is, to some extent, misleading and rather presents it as a less serious issue. This also reminds us of the horror of the Delhi gang rape, i.e., the Nirbhaya Case in 2012. This violent rape inci­ dent made India the talking point of the whole world. At the #Me Too move­ ment’s onset, Indian women were given lessons in workplace rights and safe reporting, and the men were taught about the scope of the problem. Delhi is recognized as the “Rape Capital” of India. While the #Me Too movement has brought major convictions in the US, India also largely followed its path. However, leaving a few cases aside, nearly all the accused went back to their work. Some of the accusers also went back to work. Some of the accused spoke against the accusations and spouted their ingrained misogyny and patriarchal mindset. This environment has been created

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in the film Guilty which is centered around an alleged rape incident in a pres­ tigious college of Delhi University, in the national capital of New Delhi. The first five minutes are joking about the #Me Too movement, slut-shaming, and placing women in rigorously subordinate positions.

5 In Search of a Safe Space The classic Bengali song by Rabindranath Tagore, “Ekla Chalo Re”/“Walk alone,” is symbolic here. This phrase is tattooed on Nanki’s chest in the Bengali alphabet. Nanki lives in a college hostel and her local guardian is Professor Roy, who is also her doctor. She never mentions her home, nor does she like it when others mention “home.” Home is the only place or personal space where everyone feels safe. In Nanki’s case, things are differ­ ent and rather ambiguous. Home fails to provide safety, comfort, and space for her. This leads us to certain loopholes in Nanki’s life, home is a “trigger place” for her. Something uncanny or terrible must have happened to her that resulted in her attitude and might be the reason for her trauma. Some flashbacks and fragments of memory bring back all the memories that are yet to be revealed. Mr. Roy called her a “problem child,” this may be some mere phrase or statement on his part but still the reasons behind that name form a whole long story. While searching for the truth about Tanu’s rape, Nanki had some flash­ backs of Valentine’s night when she finds traces of blood on Tanu’s hand and she saw KP, another band member, puking in the grass. She is eager to know the exact details of the incident. The whole movie can also be taken as a brawl between two girls over a man. When Tanu returns, Nanki loses her temper and slaps her in front of everyone, and states, “You raped him.” Nanki’s mindset about men was strong enough and in a conversation with Danish, she said, “You know how men are,” which means men are the ones who cannot control their minds, so women need to be careful before taking any step. This mindset did not come out of nowhere but the reason behind it is vast as her mind was completely manipulated. The first half of the film tends to place Tanu in the wrong light. It helps the director to keep the secret intact and the excitement alive in the audience. By doing this, Ruchi Narain and his production can speak about and represent the victim-blaming culture in Indian society which puts women in the firing line. The culture of silence drives the men to cover up each other’s guilt and leads women to tear each other apart. The culture of slut-shaming drives women to act against women. Nanki’s feminist sensibility evaporates in a moment when we let ourselves listen to Tanu’s side of the story. It is a slice of the post-#Me Too world, the heinous reality of the crimes against women. The film reveals the guilt of people in a dominant position, how they project their power to do what they like and use mere excuses to express their deeply misogynistic views.

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6 Memory, Repression and Its Visual Representation The process of filmmaking is a sort of reconstruction. There is an obsession with memory in filmmaking. Recent theories of trauma and memory stress the impossible manner of representation of trauma and emphasize the traumatic memory itself and the pain connected to it. The rape scenes in a film are por­ trayed in front of the audience as a traumatic event. The effect of these events in a film is brief, they make the movie viewing powerful in comparison to the intellectual exercise of the mind. The trauma that results from the cinematic representation of rape focuses more on the concept of cultural memory which helps the audience come to the place where the individual and the society come together. The rape scene inclusion completely alters our judgment and under­ standing of the prominence of the shift from trauma studies to memory studies alongside social media activism, such as the #Me Too movement. Sarah Projansky in her book. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture, argues that “rape narratives [in the film] help organize, understand and even arguably produce the social world; they help structure social understandings of complex phenomena such as gender, race, class and nation” (2001, 7), even though we see the film as the genre least discussed within scholarly literature, regarding rape issues. Visual media and dis­ courses about trauma have a symbiotic relationship because the way “a memory” is repressed by media and institutions could be actualized by individual experience, as remembrance of a certain community of the past they shared. Regardless of the matter, in a fictional film, there is a conflict in the mind of the feminists who have on one hand a desire to represent it in a discursive manner in a need to challenge it. “Repression” is taken to be one of the haunting concepts in psychology. It is when something shocking happens and the mind pushes it into an inaccessible corner. But at times, the shoved memory emerges into consciousness. If we are talking about the foundation stone in the structure of psychoanalysis, it is worth mentioning repression. In recent studies, we have had various news of repression of childhood sexual abuse for many years. In the Indian context, if we look at the data, then we find most of the women were sexually abused in their earlier years and those pieces of memories still haunt them. Though it is convenient to say that, these days, people question the authenticity of those memories which were still in the dark, repressed for years. It is not that some­ one is deliberately lying about it, memories might be false sometimes. Although lying is not impossible, rather psychotherapists who questioned victims about it have been charmed and impressed with the intensity of the terror and honest approach to it, the rage, guilt, and the depression that come from the incident, and the behavioral dysfunction accompanying the awareness of abuse. There are no less than two ways that false memories can occur. According to Ganaway (1989), because of internal and external excess, false memories emerge. Our mind always tends to evade the pain and to make the horrific childhood experience more tolerable, the internal drive tries to repress an

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abusive memory and create a screen that is perhaps more prosaic. The confus­ ing experience and feelings could be created with the less relatively clear-cut distinction between good and evil, this helps to create a fantastic abuse memory. The main material for the false memories could be taken from the personalities that children encounter in literary works, TV serials, and films. They try to connect their experiences with a fictional story.

7 Trauma and Childhood Memory Our memory repeats to us what we haven’t yet come to terms with, what still haunts us. (Erikson 458) In medical terms, “trauma” refers to the drifting of the substances of the body – or, persistently now, to the matters of the mind – its outcome is in a wound or injury or some other trouble. It is an incident growing or happening inside, rather it breaks the inner peace of mind and occupies the interior thoughts of a person, and results in damage and disruption in the mind. Trauma usually does not mean the injury or the effect but rather points out the reason behind it. The blow that inflicted certain events and provokes the dis­ turbance in the state of mind. In clinical terms or daily conversations, the dif­ ference between these two branches is blurred. So, trauma is not any stress or blow that can produce disordered behaviors and feelings, but it is more like a condition or state that is produced because of the stress or blow by a certain event at a certain age in one’s life. Trauma involves symptoms, such as becoming nervous or restless activity, scrutinizing the world for signals of danger, blowing up into wild indignation, reacting with a start to everyday sights and sounds, but also includes a numbed, blank background of depression, a feeling of restlessness, a loss of general bodily activities and closing off of the spirit as the mind tries to dodge and protect itself from further harm. Trauma revolves around its uninterrupted reliving in flashbacks, hallucinations, daydreams, nightmares, and any attempt to find out similar events. Panic attacks are a mental state of an intense feeling of distress or fear that something awful is going to happen. They are a simple reaction against the body’s response to fear. In a supposed threat approaching, our body responds, defends itself, and fights back until the danger is past. When not in actual danger, our body still behaves and reacts as if it is. Panic attacks are a natural reaction to experiences of sexual violence and trauma. Either an emotional crisis or a traumatic event can lead to this state, without any warning. It becomes a reason for excessive stress and anxiety. It can be associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Rape trauma is the psychological trauma experienced by a rape victim that includes disruptions to normal physical, emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal behavior.

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In 1896, Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychiatrist, published “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” This paper explains how Freud believes his female patients’ neurosis, which he labels hysteria, is the result of sexual abuse as chil­ dren. Freud called the concept of physical symptoms resulting from childhood trauma, hysterical conversion. Freud hypothesized that to cure hysteria, the patient must relive the experiences through imagination in the most vivid form while under light hypnosis. However, Freud later changed his theory. His new theory claimed that his patients imagined the instances of sexual abuse, which were instead repressed childhood fantasies. In 1905, Freud retracted the theory of hysteria resulting from repressed childhood fantasies, Freud was also one of the first noted psychiatrists to attribute hysteria to men. He diagnosed himself with hysteria, writing that he feared his work exacerbated his condition. Throughout the film, Nanki has been repressing her fragility and dark child­ hood but “It’s always there” as “Our memory repeats to us what we haven’t yet come to terms with, what still haunts us,” so she tries to submerge herself in the world of creativity to escape harsh reality and create a “space” in the artistic world of her own. Mr. Roy, her doctor, fooled her into feeling those experiences were a blessing or “life force” to motivate her to write beautiful lyrics. Mr. Roy remained instrumental in her counseling. He made her feel “she had a sexual vibe” although she was only a teenager of 13 years. It is quite common in India for teenagers to be sexually molested anywhere and every­ where. She has become hysterical and is getting panic attacks on public trans­ port as she gets flashbacks of the night Tanu was raped. Though the film deals with Tanu’s rape on the surface level, but thematically it is threaded with a child’s cry and traumatic memories of rape in childhood become important. Traumatic memory, in this film, ensures social control and possibilities are explored implicitly in society. Trauma has been a popular literary analytical tool since the 1980s to break through and transform isolation. Many new directors are coming and attempting to represent sexual violence and its con­ sequences through their films. Films can increase awareness of a social problem and they can guide us to see the effects on society as people might not be likely to confront the reality of society. The film comes to play a noteworthy role in transforming society. Survivors tend not to disclose the issue of sexual violence because in Indian legal testimony the rape cases are predicated on comprehensive language, coherent questioning, narrative structure linearity, evidence, and also the rape myth too, which includes victim-blaming tactics and societal belief of facts about the misinformation of rape. The search for the absolute truth is still in a dominant position in the legal issues, followed by the truth of the events in testimonies about sexual violence. The survivors think about the effects of trauma and rape culture dominating society. In a court, defense lawyers often make use of the trauma of the survivor and try to discredit the survivor’s tes­ timony. Society is always searching for witnesses to the rape incident, though most rapes happen without any witness. The cinematic representation affects the audience greatly. They tend to watch the rape scene as a spectacle and

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become a voyeur. They believe the survivor, not because she is testifying or making some remarks, but rather because they witnessed the foregrounding of the rape scene. Here popular culture might become rigorous in its representa­ tion of the rape scene as a spectacle for the viewers, the nude body, cleavage shots, and buttocks – these scenes may titillate the viewers and the female body becomes sensually viewed. Thus, the fetishization of the acts of violence gra­ phically, using trauma as material on screen, perpetuates the discourse and subversive position of women who may allow these acts to persist. In a scene in Guilty, Nanki is shown entering the boys’ hostel and going into the room of Vijay Pratap, her boyfriend, where Tanu was raped. She mentioned to the lawyer Danish that she saw traces of blood on Tanu’s hand which everyone is trying to hide in the case details. Blood became an important trope regarding the rape incident in Nanki’s mind. Later as the film unfolds, we rea­ lize the blood she was talking about is nothing but the result of her hallucina­ tion. There can be another possibility, it might be some fragmented pieces of her childhood trauma memory which reappears occasionally. After entering the hostel room of VJ, she goes to the bed and starts slashing the blanket with a knife in search of blood. She again hallucinates blood on the bed, in the mean­ time, the hostel warden has come and found Nanki in a violent position, com­ pletely lost and distressed. This whole sequence reminds the audience of Nanki’s turmoil and conflicts within herself. She always takes pills for panic attacks, these are symbols of her ill state. Some thoughts always pop up into her mind and make her sick and violent at times. The ending of the film carries a strong message. When Nanki finds out the truth about Tanu’s rape from Danish, she is shattered. She runs after Tanu, who is going to the railway station, to stop Tanu from leaving. She then states that she wants Tanu to speak up against VJ the next day on the occasion of Annual Day. On that day Tanu appears wearing a bold dress again. Girls in the crowd remark, “Yeh Abhi Bhi Lise kapde pehenti hain/She still wears that type of clothes” – a remark showing the character judgment of the girl, as our society posits and makes certain opinions about a woman regarding her choice of outfit. While VJ was performing, Tanu starts speaking and Nanki gives her support. KP, the band member who was the eyewitness to the rape of Tanu, did not want to say anything earlier as VJ was his friend. Nanki asked him to speak out, saying, “meri baat koi nehi manga… /Nobody will trust my words” and pushed him to speak up for the girl who was wrongly judged based on her dress and ambitions to become famous. Nanki made a sarcastic comment about society which believes men are uncontrollable, so women need to be careful regarding their way of life. Then she started speaking about her trauma in front of everyone and said, “Is there anyone who would want to hear me?” Then Tanu holds her hand to give her mental support. This whole interaction bears out the strong message of rape, childhood trauma effects, and victim silen­ cing. This brings out the need for sisterhood among women. Kaplan and Wang (2004) argue that “trauma intensifies the urgency of resymbolization and reveals the bankruptcy of the prior symbolization … may provide opportunities to tap into the driving force that enables new symbolic

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expression” (14). Traumatic memory is unconscious, conscious, and cultural and is a product of visual media and trauma, a product of events and effects. It is never exclusively personal, but also cultural, social, and political.

8 Conclusion The main aim of this chapter is to widen the space for the debate on the various ways of articulating, staging, representing, and criticizing “trauma” through films. It also questions the age-old views of society regarding the violence inflicted on women. This film importantly questions the issues of sexual vio­ lence and shows women in a bright and fresh light and empowered in terms of a spiritual, economic, or psychological position. From time immemorial stories and fables have been used to influence people and now that responsibility has been taken up by the cinema. It is one of the most effective mediums to portray strong influential leading ladies on screen. Not only does it play an important role in shaping the personalities of women around the world. The sole respon­ sibility is the director’s to portray the characters in a way that can make the world better. The film Guilty gives us two rape survivors- Tanu and Nanki, who finally break the shackles of society and share their secrets. This might help real-life rape survivors find a dim light to come out of the closet and not be “guilty” of what happened to them. This way, cinema can be proved to be a helpful voice in women’s empowerment around the world. It clearly shows empowerment and speaking related to one’s will and determination. Cinema thus not only entertains the audience but also makes the audience aware of society’s mishaps. It also shows new ways to incorporate facts, and the real-life situations in front of us and help us keep the bleakness out of our lives.

References Erikson, Kai. “Notes on Trauma and Community.” Psychoanalysis, Culture and Trauma. vol. 48, no. 4, 1991, pp. 455–472. Freud, Sigmund. “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–74). Vol. 3, translated and edited by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1896, pp. 189–221. Ganaway, G. K. “Historical Versus Narrative Truth: Clarifying the Role of Exogenous Trauma in the Etiology of MPD and Its Variants.” Dissociation: Progress in the Dis­ sociative Disorders, 2(4), 1989. 205–220. Kaplan, E.Ann and Ban Wang. Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations. Hong Kong:Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Projansky, Sarah. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. New York:New York University Press, 2001.

Further Reading Banyard, L. Victoria. “Trauma and Memory.” PTSD Research Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 4, 2000.

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Elm, Michael., et al. The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema: Violence, Void, and Visuali­ sation. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Foster, John. “Memory and Film.” In Image, Culture and the Media, Universidad ComplutenseMadrid. 2008. Unpublished. Grainge, Paul. Memory and Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Kidwai, Damien and Meraj Ahmed. “Portrayal of Empowered Women in Movies around the Major World-Cinemas.” Paper presented at the Conference on Women Studies and Social Sciences, March2016. Loftus, F. Elizabeth. “The Reality of Repressed Memories.” American Psychologist, May 1993. McPhail, Beverly A. “Feminist Framework Plus: Knitting Feminist Theories of Rape Etiology into a Comprehensive Model.” Trauma, Violence, and Abuse. vol. 17, no. 3, 2016, pp. 314–329. doi:10.1177/152738075584367. Rose, Kate. “Sexual Violence Traumatic Memory, and Speculative Fiction as Action.” Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence. vol. 5, no. 1, 2020. Spallacci, Amanda. “Representing Rape Trauma in Film: Moving Beyond the Event.” MDPI, January 9, 2019.

Part IV

Digital Culture and Memory Markers

10 Gender, Partition and Memory Case Studies in Micro-Heritage and Identity Meghamala Ghosh and Sarasi Ganguly

1 Introduction We first talked to our source in 2020 during the pandemic when she told us about her grandmother, Anjali Debi, who at that time was suffering from a prolonged bout of dementia. She often talked about the mumbles and screams that Anjali Debi would let out, night after night, the names of unknown people rushing out of her mouth like an unsteady mountain stream. In 2021, when Anjali Debi died, we decided to gather her story up and tie it into neat bundles, which could then be read by others, serving as a testimony for all the women who lived in the torment of their minds but could never set their stories free. When we finally sat down to accomplish this daunting task, we realised that there was nothing neat about her story, that there were cracks at the seams, metaphors and the continuous mention of the sentence “তখন তো আর জানতাম না” which can be translated to “I did not know it then”. Over the years of telling the story of her running away to Kolkata from Bangladesh during the Bengal Partition of 1947, her granddaughter recalls how often she started the story with this sentence and ended it with “তারপর তো আর এটা নিয়ে কথা হয়নি” which can be translated into “later, we did not talk about it”. This raises certain key issues which we plan to focus on in this chapter. Anjali Debi had been forced to acknowledge and learn about what “actually” took place through a historical and political lens. Even with this knowledge, the question still remains whether she could recover her “Self” or the “identity” of when she “did not know”. She is both the narrator of the story (Anjali Debi when she knows) and the subject of the story (Anjali Debi when she did not know), leading to a split in her memory and her identity, something that she could never reconcile. According to Christa Wolf, “the memory of ourselves … and … the voice that assumes the task of telling it” (King 3) has been identified in narrative theory and in Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, what has not been identified, and which we plan to elucidate in our chapter, is the link between the fractured selves of most trauma survivors. For Anjali Debi, it is a gold coin that her father had sent to Kolkata back when none of them knew exactly what was going to happen to them, but had an inkling of what might. She wore it as a DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-15

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ring, till the day she died, whence it passed on to her granddaughter. It served as a reminder of her “Self” before the Partition, painful and reassuring at the same time. Lyotard suggests through his concept of the Nachträglichkeit that “the search for lost time can only be interminable” the “immemorial” is “always” “present” “but never here-now, always torn apart in the time of con­ sciousness, of chronology, between a too-early and a too-late” (King 5). In his chapter, “National Memory and Where to Find It”, James V. Wertsch (2017) writes that using cultural tools to remember and understand the past is destined to both limit and empower our understanding. This is especially true of national narratives and memory. These cultural tools are not the sole mechan­ istic determinants of human thinking and discourse. The focus should instead be on which cultural tools are provided to the members of a particular mne­ monic community, how they become instrumental in the creation of collective memory and then, ultimately, how national collective memory is forged. Wertsch also contends that the debates surrounding national memory do not usually revolve around facts or dates, but instead result from the emphasis a particular mnemonic community gives to one event over others and their refusal to look at the “real” reason. Cultural tools, as mentioned above, are therefore fundamental in shaping the discourse of a mnemonic community and effectively also alienating them from other mnemonic communities at the same time. To prove his point, Wertsch provides the example of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia (two differ­ ent mnemonic communities) and their take on the reasons behind escalating tension. While focusing on national memory and the corresponding collective narratives that are spun, Wertsch’s chapter forgets that mnemonic communities are heterogeneous, thereby neglecting the role gender plays in the creation of memories and the collective tools at disposal. This critical omission is picked up by Urvashi Butalia in her (1998) book, The Other Side of Silence, where she talks about the half-said sentences and the lack of a space of her own where the woman of the house could sit and talk about her individual experience without the spectre of the men hanging over her shoulder, constantly criticising, com­ menting and correcting. Butalia raises the question: “Is there a thing, then, as a gendered telling of Partition?” (Butalia 16). This chapter aims to provide an answer to that question through the micro-heritage pieces archived and the case study of Anjali Debi, as already introduced. In “The Aetiology of Hysteria”, Freud (1896) talks about how memory is similar to an archaeological site and how “the fact that the scenes are uncov­ ered in a reversed chronological order … justifies our comparison of the work with the excavation of a stratified ruined site” (198). Ludwig Wittgenstein develops this concept further in his ([1958] 1967) book Philosophical Investiga­ tions. Why is his treatment of memory valuable here? This is because he ques­ tions the idea that Freud’s digging metaphor insists upon. According to Wittgenstein, memory is not only a storehouse. He writes:

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Memory can be compared with a storehouse only so far as it fulfils the same purpose. Where it doesn’t, we couldn’t say whether the things stored up may not constantly change their nature and so couldn’t be stored at all. (Stern 204) Wittgenstein provides numerous examples to support his theory. One particular example is significant to the argument of this chapter. Wittgenstein writes: “For a moment I meant to …” (165). He explains that, for a moment, the subject remembers a particular feeling and an inner experience precisely and then the “inner experience” of intending disappears, only to be replaced by thoughts, movements, feelings and connections with other events. In all cases, the job of the analyst is much easier than that of the one who remembers because remembering is not always a reverse reconstruction process. It is also most definitely not a storehouse of memories all the time in which the excavation takes place. It is a constantly shifting room of mirrors inside a funhouse, a tunnel that adds lanes every now and then, with new emotions emerging each time the gates are opened. For this, the key becomes important, but it can only work if the person who remembers wants to remember, or is asked to remember. Freud’s theory of repression is a paradox; he says that the memory that is repressed is “at once inaccessible and preserved” (Freud 65). This chapter tends to agree with what Wittgenstein suggests instead, “It is as if one had altered the adjustment of a microscope. One did not see before what is now in focus” (Wittgenstein 165). For Indian women who experienced the trauma of the Bengal Partitions of 1947 and 1971, the key is always there, waiting to open the gates, but, like their bodies, neither is the key their own nor is the repression. The repression in India becomes a part of national memory, not just individual memory. It is also not alone in repressing the memories and the women who have them. In the hierarchy of remembering, it is namely the event, the memory and the narration of the memory, Indian women have been cheated in the third step. There has been repression, both individual and community-based, the lack of oral or written narratives in archival format from the survivors themselves, the lack of trauma analysts, and the intense need to bury the past and the “anomaly” that is associated with women and their bodies. The creation of “false memories”1 is a concept that is well known in Memory Studies. These memories are often the distorted or fabricated recollections of events that serve as a buffer between the trauma and the survivor who wants to repress it. In India, however, after talk­ ing to and reading the accounts of several women who were survivors of the Partitions, what we realised was that false memories could be individually as well as collectively created as tools of repression, the first type being an anchor for the survivor and the second being a socio-political tool to repress the memories and oppress the women who would dare to speak of them, the lastditch attempt to keep them forcibly in the stage where “they did not know”, although the survivors themselves “do know”. In this chapter, we plan to focus on the event (the Partition of Bengal of 1947), the memory (individual, collective and national), its key (tangible or

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intangible, symbolic or not), and the narrative (written), that we as analysts will try to do justice to (through the case study mentioned at the beginning of the introduction). While doing so, we also intend to delve into the ideas of gender, nation and identity with a primary focus on micro-heritage and identity building.

2 What Is Micro-Heritage? The field of Heritage Studies principally defines heritage as any kind of “legacy” that is identified by an individual or a society. These include constructions with historical contexts as well as objects that can be used as narratives of a time period. The landscape of Heritage Studies as an interdisciplinary field has been changing exponentially over the past few decades. Heritage Studies are classified into two main branches: Tangible and Intangible Heritage. Discussing these branches in detail can help us to understand how micro-heritage is approached as a combination of both. According to UNESCO (2003), the two types of heritage can be defined as follows: Tangible Heritage/Tangible Cultural Heritage : Consisting of physical artefacts that can be produced as a piece of objective evidence. These are objects that are “maintained and transmitted intergenerationally in a society”. These artefacts consist of a wide range of objects, from paint­ ings and furniture to regular household items that were of importance. In the larger sense of macro-heritage, tangible heritage consists of the monuments and preserved objects in a museum or gallery that are recog­ nised widely by the public. Intangible Heritage/Intangible Cultural Heritage: What we understand as intangible cultural heritage are the “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills”. Any kind of intangible heritage can help identify cul­ tural spaces and communities and identities of certain cultural groups and the traditions that are representative of them. The identification of these groups and their culture is the first step toward their preservation. Constructions and large-scale sites that have been either excavated or identified by heritage organisations can be assigned the term “macro-heritage”. These are pieces of evidence of cultural heritage which are markers of a community of a specific historical landscape. On the other hand, there is an evidence-based cultural heritage that is of a more individual and personal nature. Things that are specifically identified with a person, family, or locality can be called “micro­ heritage”. As the name suggests, micro-heritage takes a narrower approach to the study of heritage and culture. It is more focused on drawing the lines between individuals and societies, the perception of one person or family instead of the larger crowd. This is why micro-heritage has a different approach to preservation and documentation. Bringing the specimens of cultural heritage together with the intangible can be the best way to understand the micro-heri­ tage of an individual or pertaining to a specific timeline.

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3 Using Social Media as a Tool for Heritage Outreach Social media is increasingly being used as a tool by conservation enthusiasts to archive tangible heritage and reach a larger audience than ever before. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down museums and other heritage exhi­ bitions, several amateur heritage enthusiasts across the world had started their own outreach projects via social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and so on. These social media-based heritage archiving and outreach pages have been able to dismiss the idea of “Photography Not Permitted” that had been a part and parcel of traditional museums. Although several museums still do not flagrantly promote photography inside their premises, the trend seems to be changing. In research conducted on the Brooklyn Museum by Elena Villaespesa and Sara Wowkowych, they used statistical data and surveys to go through the stories of museum visits that people upload on social media sites like Instagram and Snapchat. While these stories are ephemeral (they disappear in 24 hours), the authors have argued that the story feature has become instru­ mental in creating dialogue between the tangible object, its intangible memory and the visitor. Documenting the feeling, sharing the experience and triggering the process of identity creation are a stepping stone towards popularising heritage outreach and getting people (especially Generation Z) to participate in the process of curation and engagement with the past. The ephemerality of social media, however, is not that big a problem for those who are concerned with the archiving and storytelling and not just the viewing and engaging. This is because the posts made by amateur as well as professional heritage archive enthusiasts are usually in the grid post format which are not ephemeral and will continue to remain in the social media cloud as long as the post or the social media account is not deleted by the creators of the account. In fact, social media provides micro-heritage (personal and family history) archiving and out­ reach as the means to gather stories from places and people that otherwise would be inaccessible. In their article, Villaespesa and Wowkowych place emphasis on the reason why visitors choose to use ephemeral platforms. These include “convenience, conversation and interaction” (10). Moreover, as we have earlier established, museums conserve macro-heritage pieces or tangible memory that have to do more with grandeur and national memory than individual memory. Building a museum from scratch is a lofty goal that requires a large amount of funding, something that is usually impossible without capitalist or national support. Creating websites might appear free but the domain name usually has to be bought (and they do not come cheap). Therefore, for budding heritage enthu­ siasts or those who are academics invested in memory studies, the option that emerges as the most viable and communicative mode of storytelling is social media, which allows personalisation of the page, archives that are saved auto­ matically and an open interface where contributors and other enthusiasts can reach out.

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Pages such as Madras Inherited, The Hyderabadi Boy, The Memory Gazette, and so on can continue functioning only because social media allows free communication between the heritage enthusiast, the contributor and the viewer. Using The Memory Gazette and its archived micro-heritage artefacts in this chapter was a conscious decision that had to do with two main points: (1) the page is owned and managed by the authors of this chapter and they have the requisite copyrights and written permissions to use the heritage pieces discussed in this chapter; and (2) although heritage enthusiasts from across India have several pages dedicated to outreach and archiving, there are very few that deal with micro-heritage or small tangible objects that form a huge part of individual, community and gender-based memory. The idea of ephemeral memory and social media can be later developed further via surveys conducted on the travelling DAG Museum and the heritage revolution it created when it set up camp in the Old Currency Building of Kolkata, India.

4 Gender, Micro-Heritage and Identity Urvashi Butalia in The Other Side of Silence raises a question that we mean to tackle in this chapter. While conducting interviews with Partition survivors, she recognised a certain pattern when it came to women and memories, or at least the part they were keen to talk about. While the men were more concerned about their political, religious and national identity, women went back over and over again to the smaller details of the events that led up to and transpired during the Partition. This does not mean that women were completely unaware of their political, religious or national identities, especially during the time of turmoil. It just means that there is a need to conduct a gendered reading of memory and heritage and find what makes the micro details all the more important in the identity construction of what it means to be a woman in South Asia. Why are micro-heritage and personal memory more important to the woman and her identity? Women have always been associated with the ghar (household) and everything that goes along with it. As a result, the household plays an instrumental role in shaping their identity. The household becomes the cul­ tural tool that shapes the individual identity of the woman and makes her a part of the mnemonic community to which she belongs. The household is also a pertinent tool which ensures that the factors making up the identity of a mnemonic community also are transmitted through the woman. This is reflected in the choice of heirlooms given to women and the micro-heritage pieces they carried across the borders during the Partition. In agreement with Partho Chatterjee’s idea that the woman became a vehicle for the containment and propagation of the tenets of what constituted the identity of a mnemonic community, the micro-heritage pieces discussed next will try to answer the question posed in the first part of this section.

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Inside the house, women can mainly be found in the kitchen or the thakur ghar. This has always been symbolic of their place in the identity creation of the mnemonic community to which they belonged. The story of the Bhatta­ charya Durga idol from Bangladesh (Figure 10.1) begins with how, during the Partition of 1947, the Bhattacharya family, who lived in East Pakistan, had to leave behind their home, their ecological and historical roots and travel across the border to India amidst communal clashes. Apart from a few other necessary items, the only article with links to the family heritage that they carried to India was an antique Durga idol. It was taken to the jetty by the women of the family as they all sailed off for India. This is pertinent because (1) the heirloom chosen to be carried to the new residential space is a religious idol that serves as a cultural tool to assert the identity (religious and cultural) of the mnemonic community to which the family belonged; and (2) the passage of the Durga idol

Figure 10.1 Antique Durga idol from Bhattacharya, Arijit

Source: The Memory Gazette, “Bhattacharya Durga idol family heirloom”.

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to India via the women of the family indicates that women play the role of carriers of the cultural influences of a particular community, especially when there is a migration. It is the cultural and religious identity (via women, their bodies and their memories) that must be protected and carried to the new home in order to make sure that the family identity and, in turn, the collective iden­ tity of the mnemonic group do not change . The next articles that will be focused on are the pieces of generational jewellery passed down to the late Kalyani Chatterjee. Married at the tender age of 11 and stepping into the shoes of the eldest bride in a traditional and prominent Bengali household, she did not understand when she went from a young girl to household head in a matter of days. Her mother-in-law taught her how to read, encouraged her to write every day and the young girl always wore a pair of armlets that had been gifted to her by her father. The mere fact that she was “allowed” to read and write while also simulta­ neously performing the duties of the household is often interpreted as aiding in the identity formation of the woman, when in fact it is an underhand strategy to curb the agency of the woman. Being allowed by the household to study and have certain freedoms is a cultural tool that pulls the wool over the eyes of women who then start “to ignore the areas in which they are actually exploited or discriminated against” (hooks 5). This once again shapes the individual identity of the woman according to the identity requirements of the mnemonic community that she belongs to. Kalyani Chatterjee was given “permission” to read and she was given the agency to do as she pleased with her jewellery, provided that she stayed within the limits set by her family and the mnemonic community she lived in. Ulti­ mately, as long as Kalyani Chatterjee toed the line set by the patriarchal authorities (the household), she could have her heirlooms (Figures 10.2 and 10.3) and her “carefully measured freedom”.2

5 Gender, Trauma and the Partition Just as the discourse of modernity suggests the denial of all other discourses and “perspectives of time and space” (Didur 130), the “national discourses” which developed after3 the Bengal Partition of 1947 suggested the denial of the “ambivalences, contradictions, the use of force and the tragedies and the iro­ nies” (Didur 130) that were also very much a part of the nation-building pro­ cess. In the case of the gendered historiographical reconstruction in India, there was no denying that violence inflicted on women was a part of canonical nation-building history. What happened was that it was reshaped to blend seamlessly into a record given by the traumatised women (who had become informants by then) to allow “us” to be comfortable in remembering what happened and move on. During the Partition of 1947, the Indian Government passed a resolution stating that:

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Figure 10.2 Antique armlets from Ganguly, Jaba

Source: The Memory Gazette, “Kalyani Chatterjee’s armlets” .

Figure 10.3 Antique armlets from Ganguly, Jaba

Source: The Memory Gazette. “Kalyani Chatterjee’s armlets”.

The immediate problem is to produce a sense of security and rehabilitate homes and villages which have been broken up and destroyed. Women who have been abducted and forcibly married must be restored to their homes.

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Meghamala Ghosh and Sarasi Ganguly Mass conversions which have taken place forcibly have no significance or validity and the people affected by them should be given every opportunity to return to their homes and the life of their choice. (Didur 131)

This resolution is ironic in the sense that the Indian government is talking about people having their “choice”, on one hand, and women having to be “restored”, on the other. The patriarchal notions behind this have already been pointed out by well-known feminist researchers like Das, Menon and Butalia. In the Organizer magazine of 14 August 1947, the Partition was depicted graphically through an illustration of the map of the country, with a woman lying on it, her limb cut off and severed, with Nehru holding the bloody knife responsible for doing the severing. During the interviews with female survivors of the Partition, Gyanendra Pandey shed light on a very interesting event that can still be seen in almost all Indian families today. When he posed questions to the female members of a Sikh family he interviewed, the Mother of the family (conveniently, she is always addressed as that, not by her actual name) kept on turning to her sons for advice or redirecting the question to them. The Abduc­ ted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Bill of 1949 is similarly discriminatory, with tribunals being set up to determine the nationalities of boys below the age of 16 and girls of whatever age, bestowing to women the lifelong curse of being objects in the hands of the State, the Home and the World. All these narratives together serve to show the patriarchal restraints on women in India. However, a deeper look also throws light on the fact, as Deepika Bahri suggests, that, for the woman, the “experience of personal vio­ lation is either a contract of silence or a reference so oblique as to be little more than metaphoric abstractions” (Didur 135). This brings up the question as to what makes it so in the first place. Why were the women relegated to the position of lesser citizens, even though they had been promised and given equal voting rights to the men of India? Why did the women not want to speak of what happened to them? All this has not only to do with the patriarchal national state which took upon itself the duty to stamp nationality on every woman who had been displaced, thereby moulding their memories and identity according to their own needs, and according to what the State wanted to pre­ serve as national or community memory, but also to do with two major con­ tributory factors that we would like to point out. The first comes from the interview conducted by Gyanendra Pandey that has been mentioned above. When the Mother of the family is asked a question, she redirects it to her sons or the other male members of the family, even though they do want her to answer. Besides the approval-seeking tendency that this action illustrates, it also points out something deeper. Her inability to answer questions about the ordeal that she went through also highlights the “lack of a language”4 to describe that ordeal in the first place. Physical usurpation of women’s bodies to suppress them is not the only way to silence women. In “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through”, Freud

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talks about the concept of repression in memory studies and neurosis as being a state in which the patient always talks about the “forgotten” things in relation to what they do remember: “As a matter of fact I’ve always known it, only I’ve never thought of it” (Freud 148–149). The idea of repression is not so much that the subject does not remember the traumatic event at all, but that they do, in dissociated metaphorical or violent images, as something their psyche does not want to remember. This sometimes leads to the formation of false memories or false narratives. False memories are not a means to recuperate “the violence or atrocity into a chronological sequence which negates the disruptive effect of that violence” (King 24), but a means to store that memory. False narratives are not lies or incoherent mumblings, but ways of preserving the truth till the subject is ready to dig it up again. The creation of false narratives is, however, not just limited to the realm of individual memory. On the community level, false nar­ ratives are created to operate with the power of suggestion. In the case of India, as the individual woman creates one false memory to recuperate and remember the ordeal, society creates several more for her.

6 A Case Study Sometimes, the recuperating memory gets entwined with what is commonly called a key. This key can be multiple things, both tangible and intangible. The key is also the means for the subject to remember their Self or their identity from before the event, although they will never be able to get back to that state of innocence through ignorance ever again. This key, however, cannot be something that is impersonal, it must be something that belongs to the com­ munity or the nation or to the people around the subject. In short, the key cannot be a part of the macro-heritage (monuments, shrines, etc.). The key has to, therefore, be a part of the micro-heritage, preferably something connecting the subject to the family, or to her identity from before. The following case study is the account of Smt. Anjali Acharjee, who, along with her family, fled Bangladesh by ferry during the communal and gendered violence that erupted during the Bengal Partition of 1947. Since she suffered from dementia and died in 2020, before we could interview her, the account has been narrated as heard from her by her granddaughter, Smt. Priyadarshini Ganguly. This case study will be narrated in four distinct parts: the event, the memory, the key and the analysis (which is just a possible interpretation of the memories that have been narrated to us and are open for both discussion and reinterpretation).

7 The Event All discussions about the event that led to this case study will be ineffectual without mentioning the events surrounding the Partition of Bengal of 1947. After two centuries of British rule in India, when the colonial powers finally left, there was a gaping hole in the country they were leaving behind. As the

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Indian freedom movement from different communities and the mass population continued in full swing, the British took a series of hasty decisions in the con­ secutive years of 1946–1947. The question of partition was raised when the Hindu and Muslim representative organisations contemplated the future of India based on religion and how the communities would be living once the colonial powers left. Both sides had an agenda of their own, but no amount of preparation was enough for what followed in the next few months. The horrific memory of the Calcutta Hindu-Muslim riots (Direct Action Day, 1946) was still fresh in the minds of people when the British announced their decision to divide India along the lines of religion. This strengthened the roots of communal violence among neighbouring communities which had lived in peaceful close proximity for centuries, in spite of their differences. The responsibility of drawing the lines of India’s partition fell upon Sir Cyril Rad­ cliffe who rushed through the process of redrawing a part of South Asia within a month. Soon, parts of Punjab and Bengal were no longer parts of the same nation but divided up into West and East Pakistan (now, Bangladesh). The new nation of Pakistan was set to be a homeland for Muslims, as India would be for the Hindu majority. What was left out in the decision was the few million people who were forced to migrate from their ancestral lands – Hindu, Sikh and Muslims – to a foreign land with an uncertain means of survival. Once the Partition plan was finalised and both nations were to be declared independent in August of 1947, one of the greatest migrations of South Asian history started taking shape. Thousands of people had to board overcrowded trains, buses and trucks to cross the newly drawn-up “borders” to settle in the country of their religion. Some were not fortunate enough to find transport and started their journey on foot. Sectarian violence followed throughout the subcontinent, resulting in a massacre and outright violation of basic human rights, with Punjab and Bengal becoming the epicentres. An estimate put the number of refugees of either side as 15 million, setting up camps across India, trying to hold on to their families and lives. Millions more were displaced and some never made it across the border. There are eye-witness accounts of public dis­ memberment, sexual assaults and other gruesome instances that define to what extent the sectarian violence escalated. By 1948, the situation of migration was claimed to be under control. But the numbers of lives lost, deaths due to violence, starvation and diseases were never recounted as an exact number. One could only hope that this incident would not be repeated in their lifetime, but the future had something else in store. Less than two decades later, the Partition of 1947 took a new face with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. A similar situation regarding the linguistic and regional divide emerged as the people of East Pakistan demanded their freedom from West Pakistan. What followed was the second wave of Partition in South Asia and the creation of the independent nation of Bangladesh. With at least six million people being displaced from their homeland, the refugee crisis continued in India, resulting in a few thousand more deaths. All that remains testimony to this time as one of the greatest crises of human history are eye-witness

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accounts, official records and scattered families who carry the trauma of that time with them to this day. Smt. Anjali Acharjee fled what is now known as Bangladesh along with her family at the age of 6 or 7, along with her father and some other members of her family, including her siblings. Learning through the grapevine about the communal and gendered violence that would soon be taking place, Smt. Acharjee’s father had sent a gold coin and some money to a relative who lived in Kolkata for safekeeping, till they were able to make it there. As the violence broke out in clusters all over Bangladesh, the Acharjee family knew they had to leave soon. With just the clothes on their back and a silver platter, they crossed the bamboo forest behind their house in the pitch black night to reach the ferry, ignoring the fire, the burning houses and the screams that pierced the night air around them. Once at the ferry, her father had to broker a deal with the guard there, just to get on to the ferry and then subsequently to a life of instability and ironically, safety. The silver platter was given to the guard in exchange for their lives, which were still precarious on an overloaded boat that was sailing blindly\into the night, fleeing away from home.

8 The Memory Smt. Anjali was probably not asked much about the memories she had of leaving her home behind and running away in the dead of night to save her life. Being a young child at that time, she did not quite grasp exactly what was taking place around her. However, years later, while recounting the memories as oral narratives to her grandchildren, Smt. Anjali would use the medium of bedtime stories to dig out her memories of the Partition. In her oral narrative, she would usually lay stress on two distinct events: the first having to do with rows of people (mostly women) being lined up and men with swords standing in front of them and the second being the image of a tiger that had appeared in front of her family as they were hurrying through the bamboo forest. The rest are visual images of violence, slaughter, and auditory images of screams that she used to talk about in different ways each night. Once Smt. Anjali developed dementia, her granddaughter, who would occasionally sleep beside her, recounts how she would scream out the names of people they had never heard of, amidst the ever-present idea of “আমি কি তখন জানতাম এরকম হবে? (How would I know then that this would happen?)”.

9 The Key Amidst all the memories that Smt. Anjali had, there was frequent mention of the gold coin that her father had sent to Kolkata before the riots broke out in Bangladesh. This gold coin was untainted, in a sense reminiscent of the time when Smt. Anjali did not know, and of her Self, that was before the trauma. This gold coin was converted into a ring (Figure 10.4) that her granddaughter wanted us to archive on The Memory Gazette. Till her last breath, Smt. Anjali

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Figure 10.4 Anjali Acharjee’s heirloom ring from Ganguly, Priyadarshini Source: The Memory Gazette, “Acharjee Family Heritage Jewellery”.

did not part with the ring, even though there was a bitter struggle that she had with her brothers to keep it. It reminded her of her life before the Partition, of her dreams (she wanted to study, but the societal false narrative that was dis­ cussed in Section 5.“Gender, Trauma and the Partition” and the growing pov­ erty that the family had to face as refugees in Kolkata did not allow her to remain unmarried for long) and of someone she left behind. Micro-heritage as parts of history is overlooked because the stories are not known, because the recuperative memories surrounding trauma are either never recovered or deliberately never allowed to be said out loud, because they are of the ghar (home), the erstwhile domain of the woman, because they are silenced, usurped and not given any language to be narrated in, and because bodily lan­ guage is also taken away, much like Bikash Bhattacharjee’s Doll series where he paints macabre dolls in places where they are not supposed to be. Although these dolls have usually been associated with the political ruin that followed the Naxalite Movement that started in the early 1970s in Bengal, they do point out the woman (the doll) being a political tool, her body, her memories and her life used by the nation and the society as a medium of creating identities.

10 The Analysis As mentioned above, the analysis is not a stagnant pool, but an ocean where all tributaries and distributaries are welcome. The memory of the traumatic event as narrated by the source has several metaphorical allusions and more images than words. The repeated mention of the darkness and the claustrophobia is a direct portrayal of the subject’s mental condition, and so is the conjuring of the tiger. In all the stories that the subject narrated to the source, the tiger was always mentioned. However, the appearance of a tiger in East Pakistan in the late 1940s, amidst rows and rows of houses burning and people making a huge

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racket is pretty near impossible. This presents a distinct possibility- that the memory of the tiger is a recuperative memory that is there to store the real memory wrapped under layers. A small child, running away from home in the dark of night, would consider any armed man as dangerous as a tiger. The ana­ lysis also extends to the subject’s future dementia diagnosis and how her split psyche alternated between the subject who knew and the one who did not, all through her life, trapping her in limbo, unable to ever completely move on. Societal false narratives also did not allow her to mourn her first death (the death of the one who did not know) as she was thrust into being the ideal woman so that her father could get her married, her refugee status notwithstanding.

11 Conclusion When we consider individual heritage, the definition can be opened up for spec­ ulation. What is perceived as heritage for one person might not be so for another. The tangible and intangible pieces of heritage and memory that people carry with them are fairly varied. But one of the main objectives of micro-heritage is defining the collective memory of a generation. In an event like the Partition of India, things that people carried with them through the darkest times of their life became evi­ dence of that memory. A single piece of paper, old utensils from an old kitchen or, for someone else, a grand old house that they find their way back to – memories come in different shapes and sizes for all. The final aim of our micro-heritage documentation project is to preserve all those stories that do not find an outlet but are so very important to define the history of a place and time. Memory Studies is a comparatively lesser-known discipline which lacks real stories and contemporary evidence that give a full picture of a time that was. Lack of research, concrete evidence, refusal by prospective subjects to narrate their story, societal pressure – there are so many obstacles when it comes to finding, listening, documenting and archiving memory in the form of microheritage, especially when the subject is a woman belonging to a patriarchal society. It becomes an even more uphill task when trauma gets thrown into the mix because the pathways become murky, contradictions envelope the recon­ struction of memories, society-fed lies become supreme and somewhere along the way the metaphors and images become so enmeshed with the Lacanian Real that language is not enough to convey or make sense of where the event ends and the memory starts. Even with all these critical handicaps, micro-heritage is a rich dungeon (not castle) of memories and stories, which, if excavated prop­ erly, can serve as a highly efficient way to help subjects, especially traumatised women, to regain their Self or their identity, fractured as it might be.

Notes 1 According to M.F. Mendez and I.A. Fras (2010) in their article, “The False Memory Syndrome: Experimental Studies and Comparison to Confabulations”, “false mem­ ories” remain a source of great confusion for psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists

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and scholars of memory studies alike. “False memories” have been controversial since the time of Freud and they continue to be so. A broadly accepted experimental para­ digm to measure “false memory” is the Deese/Roedinger-McDermott system, popu­ larly known as the DRM paradigm. The recent results from the DRM studies reveal certain pertinent facts that could be the reason behind false memories. Out of the six that Mendez and Fras mention in their article, the reasons behind “false memory” that appear pertinent to this chapter are: (1) self-relevance measures including auto­ biographical information and items related to survival; (2) emotional-facilitation from events, pictures, and words in normal and stress situations; and (3) suggestibility or the ability to plant or indoctrinate false memories, such as in false confessions or overheard rumours. For further information, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/a rticles/PMC3143501/. 2 In the first chapter of her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks offers a distinct idea of “carefully measured freedom” where she writes: under capitalism, patriarchy is structured so that sexism restricts women’s beha­ vior in some realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other spheres. The absence of extreme restrictions leads many women to ignore the areas in which they are exploited or discriminated against. (5) 3 For more information on the different kinds of “national discourses” that developed in colonial India, see Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947. 4 This “lack of language” brings us to the term “différance” that Derrida coined in an attempt to show that “presence” is always different from itself and in deferment from itself, that is, nothing in this world is ever completely present. Everything has a side left to explore, a hidden part, an excess that is beyond grasp, something that Butalia had referred to as “half-said” when she wrote about how her interviews with female Partition survivors differed from male ones. For more information on “différance”, see Watkin (2017). https://christopherwatkin.com/2017/02/27/explaining-derrida-with-dia grams-1-differance/.

References Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Chatterjee, Partha. “Women and the Nation: The Nation and its Peasants”. In The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Prin­ ceton University Press, 1993, pp. 135–158. Didur, Jill. “At a Loss for Words: Reading the Silence in South Asian Women’s Partition Narratives”. Unsettling Partition: Literature, Gender, Memory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Freud, Sigmund. “The Aetiology of Hysteria”. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–74). Vol. 3, translated and edited by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1896, pp. 189–221. Freud, Sigmund. “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through”. In The Standard Edi­ tion of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–74). Vol. 12, trans­ lated and edited by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1914, pp. 145–156. Freud, Sigmund. “Repression”. In The Pelican Freud Library (1973–85). Vol. 11, translated and edited by James Strachey and Alix Strachey. London: Penguin, 1915, pp. 149–158.

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hooks, bell. “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory”. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press, 1984. King, Nicola. Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self. Edinburgh: Edin­ burgh University Press, 2004. Mendez, M.F. and I.A. Fras. “The False Memory Syndrome: Experimental Studies and Comparison to Confabulations”. Medical Hypothesis. 21 December 2010. Online. Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India: 1885–1947. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989. Stern, David G. “Models of Memory: Wittgenstein and Cognitive Science”. Philosophical Psychology, vol. 4, no. 2. 1991. 203–218. UNESCO. “Tangible and Intangible Heritage”. Riches Resources Project, 27 November 2003. https://resources.riches-project.eu/glossary/tangible-and-intangible-cultural-herita ge/. (accessed 23 August 2021). Villaespesa, Elena and Sara Wowkowych. “Ephemeral Storytelling with Social Media: Snapchat and Instagram Stories at the Brooklyn Museum”. In Social Media+Society. 21 February 2020. Online. Watkin, Christopher. “Explaining Derrida with Diagrams 1: Différance”. 27 February 2017. https://christopherwatkin.com/2017/02/27/explaining-derrida-with-diagrams-1-dif ferance /. (accessed 28 May 2021). Wertsch, James V. “National Memory and Where to Find It.” In Handbook of Culture and Memory. Edited by Brady Wagoner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190230814.003.0012, Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. 2nd edn. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., [1958] 1967.

11 The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting The Plurality of Subjectivity in Memories of “Desh” Debarati Chakraborty 1 Introduction During the past few decades, a huge and ever-increasing body of discursive works has been devoted to the understanding of the newly created borders of the Indian subcontinent post-1947. Over these years, thousands of docu­ ments regarding the Partition have been archived, especially the interviews of the people who were directly affected by it. Memory, when formed in words, can either be spoken or in a written format. It is necessary to state that it is through these narratives, which are selective in nature and vary with gender, class, and caste of the narrator, that we can find several stories that will in turn make up what is known as “unofficial” history or a “par­ allel” history. From the wide range of Partition literature, the area of my focus is Bengal and the memories of the émigrés from East Pakistan (and not Bangladesh). What is said and not said, what one chooses to write and suppress, how nostalgia is reflected and how trauma has been dealt with will be the areas of my focus. In this chapter, I intend to make a compara­ tive study of the politics of remembering and forgetting with reference to selected oral narratives vis-à-vis written narratives and oral history’s rela­ tionship to historical documentation and archival materials available in Bangla in the aftermath of the Partition of India (1947–1971), focusing on the memories of the “desh” (“country” or “native place”) that the victims of the Partition left behind. The “official” history is that which conforms to and confirms what needs to be told and archived for posterity. Much is said here, but most of it is suppressed – those facts that can prove to be hindrances in the smooth running of the newly formed state. Perhaps the only way to access these unspoken histories is by listening to the experiences of the people who have witnessed this juncture of history and geography and were a part of it. Yet it is necessary to state that the relationship between memory and history has always been an unstable one – more so perhaps than the historians have acknowledged.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-16

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2 On Memory and History A lot of theorization has been done so far in academia in order to differentiate or familiarize memory and history. As Pierre Nora argues: “History is perpe­ tually suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to suppress and destroy it … History’s goal and ambition is not to exalt but to annihilate what has in reality taken place” (Nora, 1989). This annihilation of reality is what makes history (that is, the official history) incomplete. Whereas history conveys to us what we should know, memory, on the other hand, conveys what we do not know, but need to know. So much about memory is spoken of because so little of it is left. Pierre Nora further states: Memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition. Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past. Memory, insofar as it is affective and magical, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nour­ ishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic – responsive to each avenue of conveyance or phenomenal screen, to every censorship or projection. History, because it is an intellectual and secular production, calls for analysis and criticism. (Nora, 1989) Theories aside, we can say that memory is that which official history is not, it is a parallel history, a history that is unofficial, something neither written nor archived, yet living especially in the minds of the people, accessible to only a few. Again, official memory is only one of many memories. More often than not, the displaced people’s narratives straddle borders even as their memories keep crossing and re-crossing the border in a curious mix of acceptance and the afterlife of the Partition, moreover, memory has cross-border commonalities even while there are differences. There is a curious and interesting interrelationship between history, memory, and fiction. When memory becomes history and history becomes fiction or memory as depicted in fiction is a case worth cultivating, where voices and silences play an integral part in the construction. As Pierre Nora suggests: Memory has never known more than two forms of legitimacy: historical and literary. These have run parallel to each other but until now always separately. At present the boundary between the two is blurring; following closely upon the successive deaths of memory-history and memory-fiction,

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Two aspects of Partition memory that generally are reflected in fiction are nostalgia and trauma. The identity of the self of the affected too is created by shared trauma and nostalgia. As Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin point out, the Partition is unique for the literary outpouring that it occasioned. They agree with Jason Francisco that underlining the difficulty experienced in assimilating the barbarity and viciousness of the Partition into normal life is the essential problem of writing the Partition as the human experience it was (Menon and Bhasin 2000, 7). The memory must be juxtaposed with creative literature because the latter too embodies the triumph and the trauma of actual men and women and not some political leaders. Both memoirs and fiction together articulate the totality of experience by combining the creative and confessional modes of expression (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003, 10). The wealth of writing on the political aspects of the Partition, however, hides other aspects of history on which historians and others have long remained silent. These are the experiences of the people – women, children, men, people differentiated by class and caste, by religion – who lived through the time. Until recently, we have known little about what the experience of the Partition meant for those who lived through it, how they put their lives back together again, and how they coped with the loss, the trauma, and the grief. This is the silence that Urvashi Butalia calls the “underside” of the his­ tory of the Partition (Butalia 2001, 209). She further states that the “under­ side” of the history of the Partition, that is, its human dimensions, its many hidden histories, is “not a silence of simple historiographical neglect”, rather, it is, according to her: a silence because Partition represents, for historians as well as others, a trauma of such deep dimensions, that it has needed nearly half a century for Indians to acquire some distance, and begin the process of coming to terms with it. (209) Perhaps, by acquiring this distance and coming to terms with the past, at present, more than 75 years after the Partition, we can access what can be called firstperson narratives of that period. It is with the help of these narratives that some­ thing is made visible that previously has been rendered invisible by the already collected pieces of literature – ordinary people’s experience and negotiation of the Partition, an alternative to the selective remembrance of communal organizations that silence social experiences and narratives incompatible with their ideological representations and conceal the plurality of people’s subjectivity. However, one must keep in mind the pitfalls of using oral narratives which depend largely on memory. As Jayanti Basu points out, “Memory is a kind of record that may well

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be distorted dynamically, in terms of both retention and recollection, and also be reconstructed afresh” (2013, xxvi). “Partition is difficult to forget but dangerous to remember”, Krishna Sobti once famously declared. That perhaps explains the reluctance of the historians in South Asia to embark on the social and oral history of one of the greatest social dislocations of the past century. While there have been many books looking at the diplomacy and high politics of the Partition, and the numerous biographies of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, and Mountbatten, it is only very recently that studies have appeared drawing on the testimony of those who lived through the mayhem and examining the local pressures and tensions which contributed to the appalling spiral of violence (Whitehead 1999).

3 Collecting Oral Narratives and Digitization: The Making of an Archive “I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, mini­ mizes, glorifies and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”1 It was a fascinating experience to travel through the districts of West Bengal for fieldwork, collecting the oral narratives. As a student of literature, who had no earlier experience in interviewing people, I had to brace myself for this experi­ ence. It was a part of a digital archiving project called “Remembering the Native Place: A Nucleus of Social Memory among the People Displaced by Partition of India (1947)”.2 As a field investigator, I travelled through the dis­ tricts of North 24 Parganas, Nadia, Hooghly, and areas of Northern Bengal such as Alipurduar and Coochbehar. As a part of the interview procedure, a questionnaire was prepared, and people who had crossed the border to come from the eastern side to the western side before 1971 in order to build a new home, to start life again from scratch, with little or no financial or psychologi­ cal support from the ever-suspicious host society, were contacted and were encouraged to talk on the basis of these questions. The focus was on how these respondents remember their “desh”. Here, I am consciously keeping the term “desh” as it is – roughly translated, the word means the “native place” in Eng­ lish, but this word, in Bangla contains a wealth of connotations which is very difficult, if not impossible, to translate into English. While interviewing, I found out that it is not always possible for people remembering the past to be com­ pletely in tune with the line of questioning that the interviewer insists upon. People tend to deviate from saying what they want to. Rather, they are cajoled into talking about the things that the interviewer wishes to hear. Therefore, among the selected memories, we get even more selective accounts from the respondents.

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As we know, the Partition brought with it an uprooting – not only from a secure past but also from a stable community living and it went hand in hand with Independence. In the process of building a new nation, which is in itself a “refugee-generating process”,3 new nations tend to leave a huge number of people stranded in a geographical area, a place where for generations these people have lived. These people can no longer call this country their own, and are faced with a choice “to seek refuge somewhere else or to remain where they are as second-class citizens. Many are forced across frontiers and become refu­ gees or asylum-seekers in other nations.”4 The definition of “refugee” itself was revised in July 1951, and the state kept using and redefining various categories such as “migrant”, “victim”, “refugee”, “displaced person” and “citizen” to impose its newly acquired sovereignty.5 It is this condition of being “bastuhara” (homeless) and post-displacement, being rendered as an “udbastu” (someone who has been extricated from his/her home) or “sharanarthi” (someone seeking refuge or protection from a higher power) that generates a gigantic scale of insecurity and anxiety, on both a physical level and a psychological level.6 These issues form the nodes of memory – they operate to shape and narrate the experience of leaving an old home and setting up a new home. During the interview procedure, it was a conscious decision not to use the term “udbastu” or “refugee”, thereby wanting to discern whether the respondent will­ ingly used the term “refugee” or not, the term being a very sensitive one. This was due to the fact that the term “refugee” was, more often than not, used in a derogatory sense by the ever-suspicious host society. And then again, there was the matter of this coinage where the state was conflicted over the definition of “refugee” and “displaced person”. And what was important in this scenario is the declaration one made on deciding whether or not one intended to return to the place that they had left behind. It must also be kept in mind that the refugee had to provide, other than the proof of several important documents, the proof of victimhood.7 The respondent, therefore, sometimes willingly refused to use the term “refugee”, stating the fact that he or she (most of the time, a male) was not a refugee, and that he or she came before the Partition.

4 “Desh” in Oral and Written Narratives It should be remembered that the words “nation” and “desh” are not inter­ changeable. The Bengali word “desh”, whose exact translation is very difficult, tries to bring out the idea of what can be loosely termed as the “native place”. It is not to be confused with the imagined category of the nation, but something closer to one’s heart, something akin to home, to be remembered fondly, everpresent in one’s memory. Anasua Basu Raychaudhury explains it beautifully: The nation … may be a product of imagination, but desh is a concrete but distant reality for the uprooted people as it remains encapsulated in their past. The nation may be placed against a time and space, but desh, for these refugees, existed at a certain moment and in a distinct space

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associated with their childhood and younger days, their friends and playing fields, their village and para, their riverside walk and natmandirs (where the worship of Hindu idols used to take place). (Basu Raychaudhury, 2004) Let us now see how the memory of the “desh” is constructed in the minds of the émigrés. Here, as oral narratives, I have taken into account the interviews of some of the respondents of the archival project whom I interviewed, and as written narratives, two memoirs – Sunanda Sikdar’s Dayamoyeer Katha (2008) and Adhir Biswas’s Aamra to Ekhon Indiyay (2005). In Dayamoyeer Katha, the narrator takes us to the Mymensingh district of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the 1950s. The uniqueness of Day­ amoyeer Katha lies in the fact that the entire narrative is heard through the voice of a little village girl, not yet 10. In a Muslim-dominated district, the Dighpayet village, on the banks of the River Banshi in the Jamalpur sub­ division, had a Hindu majority. The landed upper-class Hindu gentry were gradually selling their belongings and headed for what they called “Hin­ dusthan” (not Bharat or India). Dayamoyee stayed back with her widowed aunt (her father’s sister) when her parents moved to West Bengal (since both were teachers, it was comparatively easier for them to get a transfer) at her aunt’s insistence. The aunt refused to leave her ancestral home, the “bhi­ teymaati” and professed to oversee the family’s belongings and its gradually declining business of jute manufacture. This information, incidentally, is very important, since the jute industry thrived in the undivided Bengal before the Partition. The industry faced a severe blow after the Partition since most of the raw materials came from the areas which now were in East Pakistan and most of the factories which used jute as raw materials were in West Bengal. But many people were not as fortunate as Dayamoyee’s family. Animabala Roy, one of the respondents I interviewed, is one of those people. Coming from the same subdivision as Dayamoyee, her family neither had much to boast of nor could they take anything of material value with them when they migrated to the western part of the newly created border. She had never received a con­ ventional education and is now a BPL (Below Poverty Line)8 cardholder. She used to work as a cook in other people’s houses to feed her family. She came to India from Mymensingh district in East Bengal in 1947, right after the Partition. Although a person of upper caste, she belongs to a financially depressed class, the only earning member of the family being her son, who is a hawker. To her, her “desh” is her “desher bari”, where her world comprised the five rooms and the “pukur ghat” of her in-laws’ household. She starts off with the story of the elder sister-in-law (“boro ja”), with whom she used to spend most of her days in her “desh”. She was married at a very young age and does not remember her paternal place. She only remembers that it was a village called Aattara, in Narayangunj, Dhaka district. Her “desh”, as she states, is her “shoshur bari” (father-in-law’s house). She remembers:

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Debarati Chakraborty Graamtar naam Barhatta Panchmukhi, Netrokona subdivision. Boro bari chilo. Khub boro bari. Paanchkhana ghor.Derta ghore aamra roisi.Ekta bichalir ghor. Aar oi dike chilo gorur ghor. Ekta paater – oi paat bandhe je sei paater ghor, ranna korsi ektay – dheki ghor chilo – dhaan-taan shiddho koira shukaisi, tarpordhan bhansi – amio, amar jao korto. 9 [The name of our village was Barhatta Paanchmukhi, Netrokona sub­ division. We had a big house, a very big house. Five rooms. We all lived in one and a half rooms, one room was to keep the fodder for the cow. And on the other side, there was the cowshed. One room was for storing jute. We cooked in one room. There was a room where the dheki 10 was kept, we used to boil the paddy and dry it, then ground them on the dheki. Both I and my sister-in-law used to do this work.]

For an octogenarian like Shantilata Bhattacharjee, a resident of the Bijaynagar colony11 of Naihati, the idea of “desh” is again something different, yet similar. She constantly oscillates between her baperbari (her father’s house), mamarbari (her maternal uncle’s house, or her mother’s house before marriage), and shoshurbari (literally, her father-in-law’s house) when describing her “desh”. Is it because of her old age when memory is playing tricks with her that she fails to remember with clarity her native place and is thus re-constructing an ima­ ginary “desh” which is made up of all three places? Or is it because, being a woman, she has no house or even “desh” to call her own at all, and, therefore, takes into account all her memories of remembered places to create her own “desh”? This is worth thinking about, and hopefully will be done in the future. If Dayamoyeer Katha is narrated by a child, the narrator of the other text, Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, is a child gradually growing up to be a mature adult, and as the narrative proceeds, one finds that the voice of the child is mediated by the voice of the man he has grown up to be. The narrative is a collection of a series of events, most of the time in a non-linear fashion as if the memories of the past are wrung from the heart, without any conscious consideration on the part of the writer. Not a compact narrative like Dayamoyeer Katha, Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, however, manages to give the readers a brief glimpse of the past, what was left behind, what still haunts the memory, and therefore, needs to be spoken about.

5 Are Reminiscences Gendered? We presume that the recollections of an upper-class, upper-caste Hindu woman are bound to be different from that of the recollections of a Hindu man of lower class and caste. Dayamoyeer Katha and Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay bear out this assumption. Most of Dayamoyee’s family had already settled in West Bengal, and perhaps comfortably so, while she was in the village in Mymen­ singh with her aunt. Perhaps this was her reason for not being matter-of-fact about her imminent displacement, which, despite her age, she sensed. The nar­ rator of Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, on the other hand, had a certain kind of

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resigned acceptance of the fact that his family were soon to go to India and start life again from scratch. While reading the two narratives, the readers tend to find that both writers, now mature enough to look into the past objectively, have both similarities and differences in their reminiscences – not only what they remember, but also the way in which they do so. The first thing that the narrator of Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay remembers about the land that he has left behind is the flying of the kites in his village when he was a little boy. Keen on outdoor activities, the little boy still remembers the names of several kinds of kites that he used to fly. The public sphere of life is given prominence, more than the private sphere. Can it be concluded that in a little boy’s memory, the outdoor life is given more prominence than the indoor life? That the memory of the left behind “native place”, for a boy, is the memory of the outdoor life that he used to enjoy? Is the remembrance of a boy dominated by the outside world, the friends, and the games he used to play? One is not sure. Dayamoyee’s remembrances are influenced by the way she, as a girl in a sheltered household, is brought up in the kind guardianship of the neighbours. On the other hand, the little narrator of Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay is given freer rein. It might be because he is a boy that he did not experience the restrictions that Dayamoyee had to face. Again, it can also be because he belonged to such a family where circumstances forced him to accompany his father to the nearby market to sell grass and bring back some food that is good for his ailing mother, that the little boy had more than his fair share of the beginnings of the public life at a very early stage in his life. It is seen in the narrative that the first recollection of the village where the little boy used to live was through the game of flying kites. Snippets of memories of the long-left-behind land come and go in flashes. As if thinking about them is something which one has no time for but, still, one cannot do without them. Consciously, the narrator knows that the memories are of no use in the harsh reality of the day-to-day struggle of life, but deep down in the unconscious, he knows better. Memories plague him, as well as soothe him in his dull and drab life in “India”. Unlike Dayamoyeer Katha, where the narrator consciously deals with her childhood memories of her native village, we can see that in Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, the recollections are not a part of some spontaneous process. Instead, one feels as if the reminiscences are wrenched out from one’s mind – the memories which were consciously buried for quite some time come to the sur­ face due to some external causes. The narrator in Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay is very honest about their position in East Pakistan, they have no agricultural lands, no ponds (the possessions which were taken for granted in any village gentry), and no objects that could have been boasted about later. The only thing that they had was their ancestral home – the “bhiteymati”, which was always in dire need of repair. He states: “Dhanjomi chhilona, pukur chhilona. Chhilona kichhui. Ektukhani bhiteymati!” [No paddy fields, no ponds, we had nothing. Just the land where our house stood]. The same sentiment is echoed by a respondent whom I interviewed for the digital archive – he is Narayan Acharya. A carpenter by profession,

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Narayanbabu now lives in the Chittaranjan colony at Alipurduar, West Bengal. Coming from the village of Hatpakiya which is in the Mymensingh district of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he too, is brutally honest about his family’s possessions in the village he came from. Sneering at the often-quoted sentiment of the “refugee” population hailing from East Pakistan, who claim to be from zamindar (landlord) families with vast lands and innumerable ponds, Narayan Acharya says: Jomijoma? Heigula byakkha koirya labh nai … jomijoma kisui painai … barir jomijoma chhilo. Dui bigha chhilo. Gacchhgacchhali chhilo. Aam, kanthal … aamader pukur chhilona – mithya kotha boilya labh nai. [Land? There is nothing to explain. We had no land of our own, only the area around our house. Two bighas. We had trees – mango, jackfruit trees … we had no ponds of our own, there is no need of lying, [saying] about it.] It is this honest depiction of the facts, devoid of any trace of self-pity, which makes both the oral and the written narrative even more heart-rendering. Although later we find that the young boy from Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay takes refuge in lies when asked by other boys about his home in East Pakistan, by that time the reader, unerringly, knows the truth and can sense the young boy’s helplessness and thereby, his motive, behind the deceit. Memory is manu­ factured here. Hence, a genre like autobiography or a memoir is needed as a form of telling the truth as well as showing the reasons for the fabrication of imaginary property or even good times. In these two narratives, one by a woman and the other by a man, both coming from different classes and caste, we find that the variation in their background has made their reminiscences differ from each other. Therefore, we find that memory and its nature differ with the social positions that the narra­ tors came from. For Dayamoyee, who was comfortably off, her childhood memories are very vividly remembered and are remembered with care, whereas for the narrator of Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, memories are painful and best buried deep in the heart. Whereas Dayamoyee’s memories are mostly of her home and village, Dighpayet in the Mymensingh district in East Pakistan, in Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, we find that to the narrator, the remembrances of the “native village” come in flashes – only when he is forced to remember, due to external causes, does his home he left behind swim up in his mind. Both the narrators tell what they choose to tell, thereby leaving ample opportunity for the readers to contemplate what remains unsaid, what they choose not to tell. The past meets the present through these narratives – those memories which needed to be spoken about to purge oneself. The narratives manage to give the readers a brief glimpse of the past, what was left behind, what still haunts the memory, and therefore, needs to be spoken about, just like Dayamoyee’s recollection of the past which erupts in the form of an outburst when her Majam dada dies, and her past identity, which she had vowed not to speak

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about, finds a way to express itself in the form of memories. But the fact that their tales are told, after nearly four decades, is something commendable, since very few examples of this genre of writing were available in Bangla after the Partition. It provides an insight into the lives that were changed because of the demarcation of the borders, in their own words. This is the other aspect of history on which historians and others have long remained silent. The experi­ ences of the people – women, children, men, people differentiated by class and caste, by religion – who lived through the turbulent times, after so many dec­ ades, have now found a voice. The Partition, now, can be seen through the eyes and the experiences of the people whose lives were changed by it, in the aftermath.

6 Conclusion Ranajit Guha once said that memory is by nature forged – as time passes, the memory of any individual can be tampered with (Ghosh 2008, 17). Truth is prone to be buried under the burden of deliberate amnesia, where one chooses to remember what one wants. This is necessary to retain one’s sanity. Memory is a form of consolation, but for those who are unable to come to terms with it, memory can also be a form of terror. Memory is an archive where there are selected elements stored according to the importance and point of view of the individual. Therefore, it is prone to be partial. Both Dayamoyeer Katha and Amra to Ekhon Indiyay – the memoirs which, by dint of choosing the generic type that insists on disclosing the “actual fact” – the truth that “happened”, is, therefore, something that the author might believe to have happened. The nar­ ratives that come to us are, therefore, by nature, selective. The memories are manufactured. The narrators remember only what they want to remember – but that is again not the complete truth-telling on the part of the narrator. Truth is there, not created or artificial, but something that had actually happened. But it is not completely revealed in front of the readers. It becomes then the task of the reader to read the truth through the web of the told and the untold, the way in which these are constructed and deployed according to generic demands. Memory and the nature of memory differ according to the different social positions that the narrators come from. In the two first-person narratives, that is, Sunanda Sikdar’s Dayamoyeer Katha and Adhir Biswas’s Aamra to Ekhan Indiyay, the first by a woman and the other by a man, the narrators come from different classes and caste. We find that the variation in their background has made their reminiscences totally different from each other. The modes of telling vary according to the gender, class, and caste of the narrator. We find out in the course of our discussion the importance of the “truth” – especially where there are claims, as in the case of the memoirs, where, by dint of choosing this par­ ticular genre, the authors are under the obligation to tell the “truth”. Whereas in the case of the novels, where there are no such “truth” claims, we get a pic­ ture of what might have happened to different people. Also, we find memories specific to childhood: we find in Dayamoyeer Katha and Aamra to Ekhan

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Indiyay as well as Epar Ganga Opar Ganga and Arjun, good memories of the village, along with the neighbours, and several other things, juxtaposed with the memories of horror. This mixture marks childhood. From the fiction and the memoirs, we, the readers, gradually tend to piece together a picture of what happened during the time of the Partition. The official history, that is the his­ tory that conforms to and confirms what needs to be told and archived for posterity, tells us a few known, and sometimes not so known tales that the citizens of the state need to know to feel part of the society, with collective concerns and even collective memories. Pierre Nora refers to Maurice Halb­ wachs and affirms that [M]emory is by nature multiple and yet specific; collective, plural, and yet individual. History on the other hand, belongs to everyone, yet no one, whence its claim to universal authority. Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images and objects; history binds itself strictly to tem­ poral continuities, to progressions and relations between things. Memory is absolute, while history can only conceive the relative. (Nora 1989) Much is said in memoirs and novels, but most of it is unsaid and suppressed. But we do tend to retrieve these untold and suppressed stories to be able to get a complete picture of that historical conjuncture. Urvashi Butalia thinks that, where Partition history is concerned, there is a contradiction in the history that we know and that we learn, and the history that the people remember (Butalia 2001, 348). Many historians have pointed out how selective amnesia and memory are at the root of the relationship between people and their history. Butalia further states that historiography as a technique attempts to “dissipate amnesia and collective memory” (348). Such historiography is itself selective, in its illumination of certain aspects of the past. One should listen carefully with an open mind to memory, both in oral format and in the written format, as well as literature, either in the form of memoirs or fiction.

Notes 1 Rushdie (1981), .211. 2 The SEPHIS-funded project is called “Remembering the Native Place: A Nucleus of Social Memory among the People Displaced by Partition of India (1947)”, and is housed in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, as well as the Central Library, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. I am grateful to Jadavpur University and Professor Sudeshna Banerjee, Principal Investigator of the project, for granting me permission to use the materials in the archive in this chapter. 3 Zolberg (2007), 105.

4 Chatterji (2007), 105.

5 For further reading, see Haimanti Roy’s “Refugees and the Indian State” (2012), 183–219.

6 Choudhury (2014), 4.

7 Tiwari (2015).

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8 BPL or Below Poverty Line is used by the Government of India as an economic benchmark to indicate economic disadvantage. A card is issued to individuals as well as families who are in need of financial assistance and is issued by the Department of Food and Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Government of India. In May 2011, The Hindu reported that a person can be on the BPL list if the annual income is Rs. 27000. Available at: www.thehindu.com/news/national/you-will-bw-on-bpl-list-i f-your-annual-income-is-rs27000/article2035893.ece). (accessed 15 March 2017). 9 Translations from all the original Bengali texts are the author’s. 10 Dheki is a: husking pedal consisting of a solid wooden body with a rod or fulcrum fixed to its mouth, worked usually by women with their feet. Available at: http://a ccessibledictionary.gov.bd/bengali-to-english/?q=%E0%A6%A2%E0%A7%87%E0% A6%81%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF) (accessed 31 May 2022). 11 It should be noted that the meaning of “colony” in this sense is not that of a parti­ cular country subjecting and ruling over another country, with full political and socio-economic power over the “colonised”; here, “colony” refers to many refugee settlements in West Bengal, inhabited by people who crossed over from East Pakistan and later Bangladesh into India. The land or areas that these settlements occupied and inhabited were called colonies.

References Bagchi, Jashodhara and Subharanjan Dasgupta, eds. The Trauma and the Triumph. Kolkata: Stree, 2003. Basu, Jayanti. Reconstructing the Bengal Partition: The Psyche under a Different Violence. Kolkata: Samya, 2013. Basu Raychaudhury, Anasua. “Nostalgia of ‘Desh’: Memories of Partition”. Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 52, 2004, pp. 5653–5660. http://www.jstor.org/sta ble/4415984. Biswas, Adhir. Aamra to EkhanIndiyay. Kolkata: Gangchil, 2005. Butalia, Urvashi. “An Archive with a Difference: Partition Letters”. In The Partitions of Memory. Edited by Suvir Kaul. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001. Chatterji, Joya. The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Choudhury, Suranjana. “Pangs of Being Un-Homed: Engagements with ‘Displacement’ and ‘Relocation’ in Select Partition Narratives from Bengal”. The NEHU Journal, vol. XII, no. 1, 2014, p. 4. Ghosh, Semonti. “Deshbhager Itihasar Smiri-Bismriti”. In Deshbhag: Smritiaar Stabd­ hata. Edited by Semonti Ghosh. Kolkata: Gangchil, 2008. Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bhasin. “Speaking for Themselves”. In Borders and Boundaries. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2000. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”. Representations, no. 26. Special Issue: Memory and Counter Memory, 1989, pp. 7–24. http://links.jstor. org/sici?sici=0734-6018%28198921%290%3A26%3C7%3ABMAHLL%E2.0.C0%3B2-N Roy, Haimanti. “Refugees and the Indian State”. In Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refu­ gees, Citizens in India and Pakistan, 1947–1965. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 183–219. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. New York: Picador, 1981. Sikdar, Sunanda. Dayamoyeer Katha. Kolkata: Gangchil, 2008. Tiwari, Sudha. “Rethinking the Bengal Partition: Territories, Citizens, Identities”. Economic and Political Weekly. vol L, no. 38. September 19, 2015.

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Whitehead, Andrew. “Women at the Borders”.History Workshop Journal, no. 47. Spring, 1999, p. 308. Zolberg, Aristide R. “The Formation of New States as Refugee-Generating Process”. Annals vol. 467 (May 1983), cited by Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 105.

12 Meals and Migrations Sindhi Culinary Memories of the Partition Yash Gupta

1 Introduction The role of food as a potential marker of identity in transnational contexts has been the concern of diaspora studies since their emergence. While much has been written about the links between food and diaspora in relation to the “homeland”, there exists a conspicuous gap in its application to Sindhi Hindu experiences. Indeed, Sindhi Hindu culinary memories of pre-/post-Partition life neither resonate with the dominant Punjabi/Bengali narratives nor do they slot neatly into the current notions of diasporic restructuring of spatiality; requiring radical re-contextualisation of existing literature. Marked by multiple waves of migration, transnational Sindhi communities have rarely been academically approached as a linguistic and trade community. At this juncture, the culinary narratives of the Sindhi Hindu diaspora warrant further attention. Sébastia (4) suggests that food is implicated in how we conceptualise our individual and collective memory and identity. Quoting Guerrero, they continue, “Food in general, and traditional foods in particular, are … markers of social and cultural representations as varied as aesthetics, pleasure, ethics, memory, politics, lifestyle and well-being” (quoted in Sébastia 3). Holtzman (366) develops this further in the realm of ethnic and diasporic identity, suggesting that culinary mnemonics are simultaneous with the historical realisation of “culinary citizenships”, i.e., the legitimacy to claim certain positionalities born out of culinary knowledge (also see Sébastia 11). Multi-sensory and gustatory nostalgia may play an integral role in the everyday lives of displaced communities, where the same may be channelled through the imaginary of a “lost land” which can be resusci­ tated through the repetition of cooking practices. Within this context, this chapter focuses on the construction of multi-sited “homes” and contemporary belonging in the culinary discourses of Sindhi Hindu communities in the mid- to late-twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Specifically, the chapter explores the culinary “memories of Gemeinschaft” (Sutton, 2008, 170) of the Sindhi diaspora, with the aim of understanding the role food plays in the expression of the collective self. In doing so, I take the Partition of India (1947) to be pivotal in the creation of diasporic Sindhi identities. More particularly, I draw on traditions of National Studies in DOI: 10.4324/9781003350330-17

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understanding Sindhi “community” as a spatio-emotional aspiration. Abstracting from Hage (42), in this instance, Sindhis may be viewed as a de­ territorialised “nation” bound by a common predicament born out of prac­ tical concerns of identity. Considering the multi-migratory background, a single theory of dispersion neither encompasses the contexts of Sindhi migrations, nor takes into account the multiple frames of reference for Sindhi identities. Thus, rather than locating the diasporic space in the dichotomy between the “host” and the “home” land, as emphasised in the early theories on the subject (see, for instance, Safran, 1991), I characterise the Sindhi “homeland” as multi-sited, existing in spaces that might go beyond the Janmbhoomi (Sindh), Matrabhoomi (India), and Karmabhoomi (host land) (Panjwani, quoted in Falzon 92). In structuring my arguments, I attempt to parallel personal recollection with dominant flows of history, as articulated by the several texts considered. In cognisance of the lack of literature on the subject, this chapter synthesises three sources: (1) academic texts concerning food and memory; (2) online expressions related to Sindhi cuisine; and (3) seven in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with women from the Sindhi diaspora, along with minor personal communications with other members of the Indian Sindhi Hindu community. Theoretically, I draw on traditions of post-colonial literary and cultural studies, intersectional food studies, and diaspora studies, focusing on personal narratives as sources of interpretable knowledge. In approaching the data collected, I adopt critical and thematic discourse analysis, informed by a social constructivist lens. As a framework, critical discourse analysis evaluates implicit sentiments expressed in text/speech as ideological inferences. This is bolstered by thematic discourse analysis, whereby recurring patterns in speech are viewed as structural choices revelatory of social and individual leanings (Harju 134). Food is central to the construction of the past, and in linking it to the pre­ sent. However, I am aware that memory as a “subject” is neither stable nor ‘factual”. Memory is a deeply contested terrain open to forgetting, invention and appropriation. However, the past is constitutive of not only facts but also personal experiences, and the myriad ways in which we remember them. In my consideration of memory, thus, I take into account multiple processes, con­ sidering both literal and metaphorical conceptions of the term. I follow Sutton in evaluating food as a cultural artefact manifesting several forms of memory, where it allows us to negotiate the collective and the personal simultaneously (2008, 157–159). I contend that culinary experiences, when cast in the structure of memory, can help us to uncover associated factors such as childhood, rituals, relations, embodiment, and gender, among others. Thus, I take into account not only the narratives that are spun around food, but also the affective, com­ munal, and individual aspects of memory.

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2 Defining the Premise: Sindhi Hinduism and Diasporic Identity Before I proceed, I wish to clarify that till this juncture, my use of the term “Sindhi Hindu” has been with a precautionary intention. However, as one of the respondents notes, “We never use the term Sindhi Hindu” (Anshika Mot­ wani), rather referring to themselves simply as “Sindhis”. That the respon­ dents and online authors were Hindu was implied. Thus, in following the reference made by the respondents to common language, religion, food, and history, henceforth, I use the term ‘Sindhi” to refer to Sindhi Hindus and their experiences. I also find it prudent to further define the specific positionalities that I draw on, focusing upon the notions of ethnicity, diaspora, and culinary nostalgia concerning the Sindhi Hindu community. A central assumption of this chapter is that collectivity is varied in praxis and as “a system of values, norms and moral codes,” (A. P. Cohen, quoted in Pazo 149), it is complicated by the intersections of gender, movement, and politics. Con­ currently, I foreground a contested and constructed notion of a non-terri­ torial community that may inhabit single or multiple spaces to produce multi-sited homes. Sindhis, as contextualised in this chapter, constitute an ethnolinguistic dia­ sporic group characterised by their link to the geography of Sindh (in presentday Pakistan), and their language, namely Sindhi. According to Falzon, Sindhi Hindus constitute a translocal community historically engaged in long-distance economic exchange in over a hundred countries (1). Consequently, while the focus during this research has been the narratives of Sindhis of India, it is necessary to note that, given the history of the Sindhi community, the project will inadvertently acknowledge transnational realms. Since several Sindhis live in diasporas around the world, a study that does not acknowledge their trans­ national nature is bound to be incomplete. Yet, Sindhi identity formation is also deeply linked with the history of Sindh and the several thoughts that have persisted in its space. For several years leading to the Arab invasion of Sindh in AD 711, Sindh was dominantly Hindu, with a strong Buddhist presence. After the Arab takeover, Sindh was ruled by a series of Islamic dynasties, first, by the aforementioned Arabs till the sixteenth century, and then onwards by the Mughals (Falzon 43). In 1843, the region was annexed by the British Empire. By this point, Sindh had chan­ ged demographically, with a majority Muslim population, and one-fifth Hindu populace (Kumar and Kothari 774). With a long history of inter-religious influences, including its vicinity to Punjab, the root of Sikhism, Sindhi culture is distinctly eclectic in nature. Most particularly, Sindhi Hinduism is an amalgamation of different belief systems. Today, the majority of Sindhi Hindus are Nanak Panthis, thereby professing a following to the Guru Granth Sahib, along with avowing belief in Hindu divinity. This is complicated by varying, but decreasing degrees of Sufi practices, a legacy of pre-Partition experience (Falzon 4–5).

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Diasporic History According to Falzon, modern Sindhi identity is re/produced as a product of transpatiality born out of Sindhi diasporic pasts (6–7). Correspondingly, translocal Sindhi movement can be classified into three waves. The first wave of migration from Sindh, the Sindhworki migration, was a result of the indentured labour movement. Lasting from 1843 to the 1920s, this phase was a reaction to the British Imperial system’s response to the abolition of slavery. Migration during this phase was largely restricted to Hyderabadi merchants, who left Sindh in search of business opportunities, travelling as far as Panama and Sin­ gapore. These merchants were identified as Sindworkis, with their long-distance dealings being termed Sindwork (Falzon 6). The second wave, which I detail later, is mainly associated with the political and social strife of the 1947 Partition of India. During this period, Sindhi Hindus and Sikhs moved en masse to either India or to locations established through Sindwork. The third and current phase is characterised by the creation of the “Indian diaspora”. This phase constitutes a movement of individuals both from and back to the subcontinent, marked by a tension between freemarket migration and xenophobic tendencies (Falzon 6). As a result of this complex history marked by multiple migrations, Sindhis today constiture a global, yet fluid, community (Falzon 6). However, in classifying Sindhis as a diaspora, I understand the same to be contested. A notion of diaspora based solely on mapped geographies proves homogenising when approaching different contexts of movement. An uncritical application of the term can dehistoricize and erase crucial differences, such as those between voluntary trade diasporas (such as the third-wave Sindhi migrants), and diasporas coercively uprooted from their homes (such as the refugees of the Partition) (Falzon 3–4). This may be further complicated by the intergenerational change in belief of oneself as diasporic. In referring to Sindhis as a diaspora, therefore, I am aware of the fluidity that the term manifests. My usage, then, is geared to reference the rich literature surrounding the term. Most prominently, I invoke works that interpret diaspora as a product of dis­ persion from the homeland. Hage argues that the imaginary of the home persists as one of the foremost principles of the practical category of the nation as ethnicity (39; also see Brah 178). However, the home/land is not an explicit physical space, but rather a “structure of feelings, … [and] fragmentary images” (Hage 40). For Safran, a diaspora is prominently defined by the act of historical dispersion, a retention of the collective myth of the homeland as the true “home”, and a trial at return and restoration of the ancestral homeland, the process of which results in a collective ethno-communal-consciousness (83–84). Here, ‘return” is produced by the tension between displacement, and the physical, affectual, economic, and his­ torical links with the “home”. The several images of the imaginary coalesce, often contradictorily, to convey familiarity. Familiarity is integral to the conception of community, being predicated upon an assumed social network, thereby fuelling the aspirational and imagined nature of community.

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However, it would be erroneous to read the “homes” so produced as mono­ lithic and stable. The “home” is conceived variously among Sindhis in India, and thus also among Sindhis living in different parts of the world; the distinc­ tion between the two established by their physical/metaphorical links to India. This results in a multi-sited home, one which is not only limited to the Janmbhoomi (Sindh/birthplace), and Matrabhhomi (India/motherland), but also the Karmabhoomi (place of work/residence) (Falzon 92).

3 The Partition of India, Resettlement, and Food I provide here a very brief account of the Partition and its movement mainly from the perspective of the actions that occurred in India. However, migration during the Partition was manyfold and constituted movement in several direc­ tions. The categories of Janma- and Matra-Bhoomi became more evident pro­ minently after the Partition of India in 1947. The Partition, in brief, was the division of the erstwhile British colony of India into the Republic of India, and East and West Pakistan. Owing to its proximity to the Gujarati and Rajasthani border, Sindh was intimately affected by the event. Yet, unlike Punjabi and Bengali narratives, “violence was not constitutive of the Sindhi experience of Partition” (Kumar and Kothari 776). Kothari suggests that images of over­ crowded trains and Kafilas did not resonate with the Sindhi Partition experience (11). The same partially held, for not only were Sindhi Hindus a minority in Sindh, but their eclectic religious practice engendered relative flexibility in tra­ versing binarized religious discourses. Although tales of communal tension were/are an aspect of Sindhi memories of the Partition, they are dominantly characterised by the themes of transnationality, loss of home, and peace before the Partition (Kothari 12–13). Thoughts of eclectic fluidity backed the “nervous peace”(Bhavnani, quoted in Roychowdhury) that flooded Sindh, which was fairly quiet even on the eve of the Partition. Understanding prevailed that Sindhi Hindus would continue residing as they had, as a minority, for centuries. Initially, this held, with J.B. Kripalani, the then president of the Indian National Congress remarking, “There was only a slight exodus of the Hindus and Sikhs from Sindh … To whatever faith the Sindhis belonged, they were powerfully influenced by Sufi and Vedantic thoughts” (quoted in Kothari 13). Later, however, with communal violence spreading throughout the country, compounded by years of communal tensions created by the RSS, Muslim League, and other communally inclined political bodies, nonMuslim Sindhis too, became fearful of violent displacement. This was furthered by the ever-increasing flow of refugees from India, displacing the natives of Sindh. Consequently, and especially after the Karachi riots of 1948, Sindhi Hindus joined the mass exodus from Sindh, resulting in about 1,200,000 Sindhis migrating from Sindh (Kumar and Kothari 777). During the active process of migration, the Sharanarthis (refugees) negotiated the presence/absence of food and utensils in different ways. Ratna Motwani recounts her family carrying “Kitchen (ka saaman), aur kapda, baki sab chod ke

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aaye” [some kitchen utensils, and clothes, everything else was left behind], along with mithi roti and potato sabzis. In instances of food shortage, raw ingredients were bartered at train stations. Rather revealing is Ratna’s emphasis on both roti and Kapda, food and clothing, when the makaan, home, was endangered. Particularly, Ratna’s reference to bartan, utensils, is indicative of the importance of culinary materiality in diasporic processes. Sipri, the utensil that Ratna referred to, and this was done by all respondents, is a flat-bottomed vessel, often implicated in the incep­ tion of culinary authenticity in the narratives of the Bhopali Sindhi community. For my respondents, it provided “Alag hi taste" [a different taste] (Geeta Chhugani), thus, aiding in re-creating a tangible connection to the “home”. The desire for authenticity, remarks Parveen, may result in the obsessive utilisation of the same tool as that of pre-diasporic living. The repetition of procedures imparts authenticity to the nos­ talgia that surrounds the dish, along with creating temporal proximity between the “original” and the “re-creation” (Parveen 53). The home, as an ambiguous space, is manifested in objects that can claim genealogies to the original, here, the Sipri; by its existence and use in the primordial home. In moving from stable structures to refugee tents, the home was preserved in the form of mundane objects. Having crossed the newly established territories, several Sindhis were relegated to refugee camps, where “unko kutto ke saath bhi sona padha" [they had to sleep with dogs] (Geeta Chhugani). During this phase, food was made available through several government programmes and charities. As communities were being re­ built, generational wisdom grew along culinary lines, tempered by family struc­ tures that consisted of three to seven children, and accessibility. Accordingly, Savita Mowani recounted the following: “2 baccho ka muh aap shakkar se bhar sakte ho, aur paanch baccho ka murmure se” [you can feed two children with sugar, but can only fill the stomach of five with puffed rice]. In stark contrast to Savita’s anecdote rests her daughter-in-law’s reference to pre-Partition wisdom. Thus, quoting her elders, Amrita Motwani stated, “Vo sabzi hi kya jisme upar se tairta hua tel na dikhe, kya koi gareebo ke ghar ka khana hai?” [It is not a vege­ table, until one can see oil floating on the top! Is this food a poor man’s meal?] The departure expressed in culinary discourse is not only indicative of avail­ ability as a prominent theme in forced migrations but also of economic access as a dominant theme associated with Sindhiness both pre- and post-Partition. In parallel, several respondents including Amrita and Karishma, prided themselves on not noticing “any Sindhi begging”. Indeed, community sayings may trans­ form into sites of gendered becoming, where, in patriarchally framed dining tables, genders may come together to fuse traditional spheres, here economic and domestic functioning. This is cemented further by the position of papad, a roasted spiced flatbread, which continues to act as a liminal product negotiating normative gender spheres. Papad: Ulhasnagar as a Foodscape After the Partition, Bombay (now, Mumbai) and the camps in Ulhasnagar received the main wave of Sindhi refugees. Consequently, Bombay soon turned

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into the hub of Sindhi activity, which as Falzon suggests, continues as a “cul­ tural heart” for the diaspora. Sindhis maintain connections with Bombay through cultural praxis expressed in marriage ties, market ventures, and investment in religion and property (Falzon 64–65). From a culinary perspec­ tive, Ulhasnagar represents the process of reterritorialisation through mundan­ ity. Indeed, dispersion might be accompanied by the creation of foodscapes – streets, spaces, and hubs exemplified through “little Indias, Punjabs, and Sindhs” in different geographies. Similarly, over the course of Sindhi resettle­ ment, Ulhasnagar transformed into the centre of Papad trade globally. A roas­ ted spiced flatbread, the papad has had a long connection with the Sindhi community, permeating Sindhi social traditions and customs, including the practice of welcoming guests with papads, or drinking water after consuming one, lest the consumer falls sick. Right after the Partition, several Sindhis turned to entrepreneurial efforts to establish their new life. Women equally took part in this endeavour, “creatively [finding] ways to make money from their skills and labour, that was often focused in the domestic sphere” (Ramey, quoted in Makhijani), including making papads for sale. Eventually, the community began mass-producing the snack. With time, papads became a symbol of the community in the public and private spheres. Correspondingly, Amrita Motwani remarks, “Some of the things you can directly associate with Sindhis like papad.” Following the description, I propose the consideration of Ulhaasnagar as a foodscape, read as a strategy of superimposing imaginary spatiality over current space. According to Jagganath, foodscapes are the “spaces where you acquire food, prepare food, talk about food, or generally gather some sort of meaning from food” (107). While this is not meant to define Ulhasnagar as the only foodscape in the Sindhi imaginary, the centring of the space as a pivot for the production of nostalgia post-Partition provides it with relative analytical heft. The same also enables the creation of the “inherent” self, summed up in Makhijani’s conflation of the familiar crunch of the papad with an aspect “coded into his DNA”. Doing so, Makhijani marks inherent the position of the snack to Sindhiness, the key to which is recurring dispersal and convergence to the locations of “authenticity”. Thus, Nankani regards how even today, Sindhis all over the world, including their own family, flock to Ulhasnagar to purchase this “coveted thing” (quoted in Makhijani). This periodic return to Ulhasnagar constitutes almost a ‘pilgrimage”, establishing the individual Sindhi as a part of the cosmopolitan community. This is partly so, since the visitors may poten­ tially meet Sindhis belonging to different diasporic groups, and partly since the city itself symbolises Sindhi culinary materiality. However, it is critical to note that neither Bombay nor Ulhasnagar constitute the homeland in Sindhi ima­ ginary, for ‘Sindh” still persists as a dominant spatial reference. Rather, Bombay acts as a physical substitute, enacting the role of the homeland in compromised capacity, for, while not always physically located, Sindhi identity is implicated, both directly and indirectly, in its geography.

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The development of Bombay as a cultural hub is critical in the aforemen­ tioned Sindhi association with economic affluence, extended to include narra­ tives of self-dependence. This is expressly so, since unlike other notable groups who migrated to India, Sindhis were not allotted reserved spaces to resettle (Falzon 41). However, owing to their relatively higher rates of education, the resources carried after the movement, and earlier connection, Sindhis dispersed throughout the country. Several Sindhis began to reside in “colonies”, or col­ lectively owned societies. These areas acted as hubs of socio-economic, cultural, and religious expression, keeping all these aspects relatively isolated from external influences (Falzon 42). The same was spurred too by socio-religious dissonance for while Sindhi refugees “wanted to make the area’s customs their own … [their] customs weren’t very Hindu” (Gulbani, quoted in Jillani). Thus, marked by suspicion, the community opted for linguistic and religious assim­ ilation, and spatial isolation. A continuing practice, preference for colonies has distilled into culinary iso­ lation of the community, where Sindhi food can rarely be found outside these spaces. This was central to the glacial adoption of “Indian” food into the Sindhi repertoire, where minor change in cuisine was brought about by the increasing “cosmopolitanism” of recent generations, rather than circumstantial require­ ments (Savita Motwani). Hindu Assimilation and Food Suspicion and rejection also engendered assimilation, specifically religious assimilation, as a means of making “life viable” (Hage 6). This was realised dually: first, by the saffronisation of Sindhi Hinduism, and, second, through devotion to holy saints. As aforementioned, Sindhi Hinduism is eclectic in conception, combining varying strands of Sikhism, Hinduism, and Sufism. Yet, since the “Islamic heritage of Sufism remains fairly clear” (Ramey 31), Sindhi Hinduism has marked a distinct departure from its Sufi roots. The shift is underwritten by strengthening Islamophobia and Hindutva ideologies emanat­ ing from the Matrabhoomi, India. To situate themselves in these frameworks, contemporary Sindhi religious politics have progressively asserted claims to the “primordial nation”, through the geography of Sindh, treating it as the cradle of “Indian” civilisation and the root of the term “Hindu” (from Sindhu) (Shahriar et al. 30–31). Dominance of saffron names has been augmented by the rising devotion to holy individuals such as Guru Radha Saomi and Swami Chin­ mayananda among Sindhis markedly after the Partition. Central to several of their teachings have been ideas of vegetarianism, tolerance, and self-improve­ ment underpinned by Hindutvite messaging (Falzon 55). Re-articulation of religious identity has additionally been reflected in Sindhi eating practices, most dominantly in the growth of vegetarianism. Cyclically, Sindhi cuisine has steadily moved away from a non-vegetarian diet, for con­ sumption of meat (especially beef and mutton) are perceived as characteristic of Islam. Hence, once in India, several Sindhis “found that the food Sindhis grow

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up eating — bone marrow, liver, kidney — are unfamiliar to many other Hindu North Indians” (Jillani). This has condensed in the oft omission of non-vege­ tarian dishes from the repertoire of typical/traditional Sindhi dishes, especially in the narratives of second- and third-generation Sindhis. An aspect of active forgetting geared towards assimilation, the exclusion of mutton pakoras and Sabzi is equally important in the consideration of memory for “it is the very dishes that are not transmitted which help to create that identity” (Parveen 55). In essence, the pull of the Hindu Right has influenced not only memory recol­ lection but also how memory is passed down, and the manner in which food of the homeland might be perceived as ‘Hindu”. It is within this politics of collectivity, isolation, and assimilation that second- and third-generation Sindhis situate the assumption of collectivity, re-creating, if only implicitly, ideological and practical adjustments adopted by first-generation Sindhis.

4 Post-Partition Remembrance: Religion, Community, and the Third Wave of Migration By the late twentieth century, Sindwork firms were drawing heavily on the Sindhi diasporas, bolstering the third wave of Sindhi migration. With decreas­ ing caution against heterogeneity, several young Sindhis began questioning the labelled isolation (Makhijani). Remembrance of the Partition can be situated not only within the bodies of first-generation survivors, but also their descen­ dants. Young posits that one cannot understand an event, except through the myriad manners in which it is inherited and shared (quoted in Butalia 14–15; also see Hirsch 105–106). It is here, at the intersection of second- and thirdgeneration survivors, whose reference I quote here as evidence, that I advocate for shifting subject identification in relation to the Sindhi community. As stated, the community has been predominantly approached as a linguistic and trade community. However, I argue that contemporary belonging among Sindhis is progressively being transacted on culinary grounds. Demonstratively, in terms of language and presentation, Sindhis have, as attested to by a very substantial body of works (David, 2015; Kothari, 2009; Kumar and Kothari, 2016; Makhi­ jani, 2018; Shahriar et al., 2014), observed “loss” and ‘deterioration”, with a rapidly shrinking speaker pool. Contrarily, food, through its perceived consistency, has proved integral in the contemporary constructions of Sindhi authenticity and identification. Culinary practices have been recreative of Billig’s banal nationalism, where they have kept community identification “near the surface of daily life” (Sutton 2001, 127). Movement, Marino argues, is marked by the loss of the routine structures of identity. Food, then, provides stability by referencing the centre of displacement, bolstering meaning-making in transitional and transnational contexts (5–6). Indeed, Jillani writes, “Like other Sindhi families who migrated during Partition, they did not give up their Sindh culinary traditions. In fact, Sindhis both in India and overseas predominantly cook Sindhi food at home.” In referencing

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continuity, Sindhi discourses centre not culinary stagnation, but rather a culinary genealogy that invokes the geography of Sindh. The same exists as an imaginary, for besides the variations constituted by each family, food naturally adapts to the locality where individuals settle. My focus, then, is not to trace the specificities of ingredients, or exact pro­ cesses, but how labels, emotions, and assumption of collectivity persist through the category of food. Sindhi food exists in a constant tension between adaptation, and the internal cultivation of knowledge that aids it in moving beyond immedi­ ate localities. Hence, Makhijani states, “ I have Sindhi friends who have grown up on nearly every continent … yet our culinary memories and practices are nearly identical.” An expression of similarity, regardless of its “truth” factor, indicates the creation of a common culinary identity. Reference to commonality through invocation of spatial terminology such as “Sindhi2 and “ancestral”, constitutes imaginary discursive boundaries around the culinary self. Affirmations linking spatiality and food to Sindhi identification can be ana­ logously noted in spaces beyond India, including Singapore: “Being Sindhi is about all our Sindhi food” (quoted in David 131); Sri Lanka: “[I] eat Sindhi food regularly” (quoted in David 131); and the United Kingdom: “When I think of my Sindhi identity, I mostly relate it to the food I had growing up” (Anshika Motwani). (For more instances, see David 2015). Karishma Motwani con­ solidates the links between Sindhiness, movement, and food when she remarks, “For a Sindhi, [sic] the food is the only identity … we have no other identity.” The designation of food as a means to re-create home and identity cannot be merely read as nostalgia. Rather, the gesture of routing the memory of the homeland through the practice of making specific dishes is revelatory of the affective nature of food (Mannur 13). Of importance here is also the juxtapo­ sition of “Sindhi” and “non-Sindhi food” (Anshika Motwani) as separate culinary domains. By branding the foods with geo-spatial labels, “typical Sindhi” assumes a definable Sindhiness which the food can manifest. The men­ tion of a culinary “indigenous genealogy” (Radhakrishnan 166) asserts a claim of distinctiveness in relation to the “host” community. The dichotomy of the Sindhi and the Indian thus establishes symbolic ethnic boundaries maintained through a standardised notion of “Sindhi cuisine”. The statements of second- and third-generation descendants, thus, foreground the tension between temporal distance and inherited proximity to defining events (here, the Partition), engenderings particular forms of memory which may high­ light ethnic names that may exist on the surface. In viewing the future as an expression of the aspirational nature of community, descendants’ adoption/rejec­ tion of culinary politics is actively involved in the redefinition of the collective self. The Female Body and the Continuation of Cuisine With the third wave of migration defining the current Sindhi diasporic experi­ ence, food and its continuation have been modified by the notions of utility, availability, and nostalgia. Anshika Motwani, who left Bhopal for Aurangabad,

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and later the UK to pursue her education, found solace in the succour of food. Community-building, for her, was transacted primarily along culinary lines, since Sindhi as a language had not been a prominent aspect of her life. She remembers meeting other Sindhis at her college, and their discussions often devolving into talks of “sai-bhaji, koki” (Anshika Motwani). Here, koki, a thick, almost biscuit-like flatbread metaphorises migration since “it can last for, like, 4–5 days without a refrigerator” (Anshika Motwani). She remembers car­ rying a pack of these to her hostel each time she returned home during breaks. While growing up, she was not particularly fond of koki, she often found her­ self skipping her college lunches to sit in her room, consuming memories. Anshika’s narratives centre culinary nostalgia, reflecting how food can become a tool for generating interpersonal connections and community. The act of carrying koki simultaneously taps into a transpatial system of care that links the home and the current location not only physically, but also emotionally and symbolically. Today, working in the UK, realising that she can no longer carry food, Anshika moved with a few recipes instead. Recipes form an integral part of female South Asian oral inheritance, capturing the processes of the homeland (Parveen 48). Yet, living in the UK, Anshika confesses that she finds it arduous to cook Indian and Sindhi cuisine, complicated by scarce access to her child­ hood ingredients and restaurants serving the same.. To satisfy her cravings, she often connects to her family on the phone, if only to hear what they had eaten that very day. In this way, Anshika’s reference to Ghar ka Khana (home food) pre-empts her desire to return home, assured that one day she will be able to re­ experience the food and family she grew up with, And if I wasn’t going back … then I would have not had that solace … this is why I think when people migrated, maybe from Pakistan to India, and that was a permanent shift … and if there was actually something like this, like a huge cultural change from Sindh to India, then that would have felt massive. (Anshika Motwani) Anshika’s statement is revelatory of the implications of the Partition on the conception of movement among younger generations. Much like how Sindwork established a point of reference for post-Partition movement, the Partition itself acts as an image for contemporary migration. This is not to suggest a homo­ geneous perception, but varied inculcations of inherited memory based on per­ sonal biographies. This individualisation may be tempered with practicality. In reference to food, thus, Anshika remarks, “I will as a grown-up probably make Koki or Sindhi Kadhi because I like those things, but I’ll probably stop making Bhori or Guradi and Dhodha because I am not a fan.” Here rests a critique of mono­ lithic views of culinary persistence. The continuation and future conceptualisa­ tion of culinary memory are deeply linked with individual choice. Choice also highlights the slippages between culinary labels and the processual reality of

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food, for “When I cook it (Sindhi Kadhi) for my kids, they will think it has no sabzis because I would put no sabzis in it” (Anshika Motwani). The mass migration of bodies across boundaries has weakened the associations between location and space. Yet, cyclically, it has emphasised a specific cultural for­ mulation of the “home” through varied cultural artefacts. In other words, the process of de-territorialisation has been equally followed by those of re-terri­ torialisation in view of one’s own viability of “home”. The processes of re-territorialisation and de-territorialisation are further implicated in gendered physicalities. Indeed, all the texts that fall under the purview of this study were voiced by female-identifying persons, reflecting the inherence of female genealogy in the transmission of food practices. Culinary processes are dual, for they constitute both a patriarchal imposition and an embodied and gatekeeping method of writing history (Mcintosh and Zey 132). This proposition is important, especially when considering the shifting geo­ graphies constant of the Sindhi diaspora, where, integral to Sindhi cosmopoli­ tanism, Falzon remarks, is the “circulation of women” (81) through marriage. While the details of the system are beyond the scope of this chapter, the movement of women across geographies manifests in the movement of culinary knowledge over spaces, specifically to the locality inhabited by their husbands. As keepers of culinary knowledge, the circulation of women also brings food, and especially its labels into a cosmopolitan system. The movement of indivi­ duals through marriage creates several variations of food as one shares and assimilates with various eating practices. I emphasise “knowledge” over praxis, particularly because with changing frameworks of femininity, assumptions of culinary practice are bound to homogenise and de-temporalise gendered bodies. Rather, feminine culinary knowledge is to be viewed as a socialised charge that realises culinary inheritance, even when it may not translate into practice. Highlighting Sindhi experiences reveals the myriad ways in which the “home” may distil, implicitly and explicitly, in the discourses of different generations. The name of home may both oscillate between and be inhabited by multiple spaces, here, those of India, Bombay, Sindh, Pakistan, and other spaces in which culinary memories may be created. The same may be influenced by one’s gendered and generational positionality. Perceiving food as an allegory of “home” in second- and third-generation narratives, then, is to inquire how memory might traverse bodies to be influenced by inherited concerns of assim­ ilation, adaptation, and personal choice in daily acts of consumption.

5 Conclusion Through this primary study, I attempt to explore the deep link that food shares with the people it nourishes. In paralleling culinary memory with the flows of history, I have tried to show how food allows one to traverse several spheres of knowledge. What I suggest is that akin to the movement of business links, food also traverses boundaries among the Sindhi diaspora, physically and meta­ phorically. The adoption of similar labels, names, and experiences foregrounds

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a politics of ethnic territorialisation where multiple homes might exist con­ current to the imaginary of the homeland. Concerns of assimilation, isolation, and culinary re-establishment as varied negotiations of identity relay how the “home” has been re-/established on multi­ ple occasions over the course of refugee settlement. The creation of a new home, however, does not foreclose the influence of the existing one. It is the convergence of these multi-sited homes that may lend uniformity to the Sindhi experience. This is perhaps most aptly summarised by Falzon when they propose: “The Sindhi diaspora is historicised and de-essentialised, particularly through an understanding of the development of Sindwork as a template and the post-Parti­ tion crystallisation of Sindhayat” (Falzon, 7) and that “a common diasporic experience can and does co-exist with distinctive trajectories of mobility” (Falzon, 7). Sindhayat gives credence to the label “Sindhi”, which did not constitute an identity label before the Partition. Sindhayat, thus, is a framework that rests firmly on the Sindhi self-cognisance of their diasporic history. The Sindhi diasporic consciousness in this regard is multiple, with several “cultural hearts” or centres holding equal symbolic importance as the “home­ land” (Falzon 90). It is the casting of the homeland through the “memories of Gemeinschaft” (Sutton 2008, 170), as an ideal past that can quite never be matched, that transforms it into an implicit and explicit reference point of identity. Borrowing from Hage, the aspirational nature of the homeland, makes possible the existence of the Sindhi Nation, for if the taste of the homeland cannot be re-created, then its aspiration can exist in perpetuity (42). Thus, it is not odd that despite the centrality of “home” and its nostalgia to Sindhi dis­ course, it is rarely formulated as a desire to ‘return to the homeland”. Sindhi culinary memories, when interpreted in the light of an idealised past, suggest that links with the homeland are not broken, but rather merely frac­ tured, and open to re-creation. The Partition does not mark a departure from the “home2 but paradoxically serves as a stage for claiming uniformity. Thus, while the experience of Sindhiness is specific to individual praxis, the history of displacement works to ground claims of “original genealogy2 by citing “factual evidence”. Sindhi experiences of the Partition indicate not only the centrality of meals to the Sindhiness, but also challenge notions of the “broken string” by complicating it through communal self-reflexivity. Consequently, the myth of the return, marks Safran, serves an eschatological purpose, allowing the diaspora to see themselves as such (94). Radhakrishnan contends that though the unchanging image of the homeland could prove pro­ blematic, it is essential as “a matter of choice by a people on behalf of their own authenticity” (166). Through the practice of eating, remarks Fischler, “Not only does the eater incorporate the properties of food, but, symmetrically, it can be said that the absorption of a food incorporates the eater into a culinary system and therefore into the group which practises it” (quoted in Marino 5). Specific is Fischler’s omission of concrete spatiality, for as evidenced by the Sindhi culinary memories, spaces can exist ambiguously, and be perceived as so, even when radically de-spatialised.

196

Yash Gupta

Moving 75 years from the initial beginning of the Partition, the question of continuity looms large. With several first-generation survivors unable to repro­ duce culinary memories of their childhood due to old age, what will happen to Sindhiness once grandmothers who chide their children for not drinking water after papad, and mothers who expect oil floating atop food, pass away? What will happen to the memories of Sindh, and how will the abstract of it evolve when physical bearings are detached? There is a long line that runs from the flames within the chulas of Sindh, the fires of the Partition, and the heat of the electric stoves, where the line meanders from here rests firmly in the Sindhiness inherited from one generation to the next.

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McIntosh, Alex, and Mary Zey. “Women as Gatekeepers”. In Food and Gender. Edited by Carole M. Counihan and Steven L. Kaplan. London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 132–153. Parveen, Razia. “Food to Remember: Culinary Practice and Diasporic Identity”. Oral History, vol. 44, no. 1, 2016, pp. 47–56. Pazo, Paula Torreiro. “Diasporic Tastescapes: Intersections of Food and Identity in Asian American Literature”. Thesis, Universidade da Coruña, 2014. Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalan. Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Ramey, S. Hindu, Sufi, or Sikh: Contested Practices and Identifications of Sindhi Hindus in India and … Beyond. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. Roychowdhury, Adrija. “Shortchanged by Partition, Why Sindhis Hold Karachi Especially Dear”. The Indian Express, 27 November 2020. Available at: indianexpress.com/article/ research/karachi-bakery-sweets-partition-sindh-sindhi-migration-7069175/. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return”. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 1991, pp. 83–99. doi:10.1353/dsp.1991.0004. Sébastia, Brigette. Eating Traditional Food: Politics, Identity and Practices. London: Routledge, 2018, pp. 1–19. Shahriar, Ambreen, et al. “Restraints on Language and Culture of Sindh: A Historical Perspective”. Grassroots, vol. XLVIII, no. 1, 2014, pp. 29–42. Sutton, D. “Whole Foods: Revitalization through Everyday Synesthetic Experience”. Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 25, no. 2, 2001, pp. 120–130. Sutton, D. “A Tale of Easter Ovens: Food and Collective Memory”. Social Research, vol. 75, no. 1, 2008, pp. 157–180.

Interviews Chhugani, Geeta. Personal interview. 5 March 2021. Chhugani, Phool, Personal interview. 5 March 2021. Motwani, Amrita. Personal interview. 1 March 2021. Motwani, Anshika. Personal interview. 2 March 2021. Motwani, Karishma. Personal interview. 5 March 2021. Motwani, Ratna. Personal interview. 5 March 2021. Motwani, Savita. Personal interview. 1 March 2021.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes. Aamra to Ekhon Indiyay (Biswas) 175–179 abhignāna (re-cognition enabled by memory) 76 Acharjee, Anjali (case study): analysis 166–167; event 163–165; key 165–166; memory 165 acknowledgements 77; academic voice 74–75; Baker’s tale 69–70; internal/ external emotions 72; marginalia 77–78; memory matters 72–74; narrative gifts 75–76; paratext 70–71; proclaiming one’s self 74; reading 71–72; rings 76 “Aetiology of Hysteria, The” (Freud) 146, 154 Ahi bhoomi (land of the ‘Ahi’) 53 Ahmed, Eqbal 107, 108 Aikant, Satish C. 45 al-Azīz, Ibn ‘Abd 84 Ali, Mawlawī 84 Aloysius, G. 30 American Psychological Association (APA) 140 Ananthankadu 59 Anglo-Indian community: in Kerala 124–125, 134–135; literary expressions 125–129; spatial mnemonic assemblages of 125–129; subjectivities in post-colonial state 133–134 Anjengo Fort 133 antique armlets from Ganguly, Jaba 161 Arabian Nights, The 4 Arabic-Malayalam literature 81; classification 82; Mappilas and 82–83 Arati 115, 121 Arcades Project, The (Benjamin) 78 Arjun 180 art and mechanical reproduction 7–8

Artificial Intelligence (AI) 15 Aryaneel 113–118, 121–123 Aryans 53 Ashraf, Muhammed Niyas 16 Assmann, Jan 24, 129 authorial personae 79 baaduli/hiccup 50n7 Bahri, Deepika 162 Baiderlu see Koti Chennaya Baidya Darshana: Sachitra Kathakosha (Kalmady and Perampalli) 28 Bairava (Jain king) 31–32 Bajuband: Garhwali Khuded Geet (Negi) 49 Ballala 25–27, 32 banal nationalism (Billig) 191 Bastion Bungalow 131–132 bastuhara (homeless) 174 Basu, Jayanti 172 Begum Akhtar 102, 107 Bell, Alice 13 Bengal Partition of 1947 160, 163–165; see also Acharjee, Anjali (case study) Benjamin, Walter 7, 8, 78, 79 Bennett, Tony 88 Bharatwan, Pritam 49 Bhasin, Kamla 172 Bhattacharjee, Bikash 166 Bhattacharjee, Shantilata 176 Bhattacharya Durga idol, Bangladesh 159–160, 159 Bhattacharyya, Saurabh 17 Bijalwan, Deepak 50n14 Biswas, Adhir 175, 179 Blake, William 78 Bocaccio 4 Bombay 188–190

Index Bongo Bhumir Proti (Towards the Land of Bengal) 118

Boym, Svetlana 102

Brah, Avtar 100, 108

Brahmins 57

Brodzki, Bella 63

“broken mirror” (Rushdie) 106

Browning, Robert 76

Burke, Tarana 142

Butalia, Urvashi 154, 158, 162, 172

Calcutta Hindu-Muslim riots 164

Calcutta Trilogy 118

Calicut 131

Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer) 4

Capila, Anjali 44

Carr, Nicholas 14

Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identites (Avtar Brah) 108

Chaavi (the gold key) 125–126

Chakraborty, Abin 105

Chakraborty, Debarati 18

Chandran, K. Narayana 16

Chatak, Govind 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50n2

Chatterjee, Kalyani 160

Chatterjee, Partho 158

Chaucer 4

childhood memory 145–148

Chinmayananda, Swami 190

cinema 8–9

Clanchy, M. T. 5

cloud computing 10

collective memory: and nostalgia 102;

sarppakaavu (Kerala) 61–63

communication 1–2, 11, 13

communicative memory 135n7

computer programs 9

Conceptualizing the Region (Aloysiu) 30

Connerton, Paul 24

Cornell, Vincent J. 85, 89

crimes 45

“Cultures of Memory and Text”

(Pennycook) 77

Czaplicka, John 129

Dallodi, Dejappa M. 28

dāna (donation) 76

Darwish, Mahmaud 104

Dasgupta, Arnab 17

Davies, Kevin 130

Dayamoyeer Katha (Sikdar) 175–176, 179

D’Costa, Lambert 130

Debi, Anjali 153

Decameron, The (Bocaccio) 4

199

Delhi 142

desh (country/native place): Aamra to Ekhon Indiyay (Biswas) 175–179; Dayamoyeer Katha (Sikdar) 175–176; described 174; memory of 175; in oral and written narratives 174–176 de-territorialisation 194

Deyi Baidedi 25

Dias, Anthony 132

diasporas 106

diasporic identity 186–187 digitality 9, 10, 13

digital media 9–10 digital migrants 10

digitization and oral narratives 173–174 Doniger, Wendy 76

Dust-e-Tanhai (Faiz Ahmed Faiz) 106–107 “Echoes from the Garhwal Hills”

(Aikant) 45

edifice-myths 24, 28–30; of garodis 31–35; sthalapurana 35–36 electricity 7

Eliot, T. S. 77

Environmental Information System of Kerala (ENVIS) 52, 64n1 Epar Ganga Opar Ganga 180

“Epic Vision and the Crisis of Partition

in Ritwik Ghatak’s Films, The”

(Mukherjee) 116

Erll, Astrid 2

Eve teasing 139, 142

exile: distance and 104–106; memory in 103–104 Faiz Ahmed Faiz 102, 106

false memories 144–145, 155, 163

false narratives 163, 167

Falzon, Mark-Anthony 185, 186, 189,

194, 195

“Farewell” (Shahid Ali) 100, 105

Fischler 195

folk songs see khuded geet food 184; female body and continuation of cuisine 192–194; Hindu assimilation and 190–191; India Partition/resettlement and 187–191; papad, Ulhasnagar as foodscape 188–190 frame narrative 4

Francisco, Jason 172

Freeman, Mark 120

Freud, Sigmund 63, 146, 162

Friends of God, in 19th-Century Malabar 81–97; karāmat and Mappila life, tales

200

Index

of 94–96; māla as manāqib 83–85; Mappilas and Arabic-Malayalam devotional literature 82–83; saint described 85–86; spiritual genealogy and excellence 90–93; wilāyah 86–90 Future of Nostalgia, The (Boym) 102

fyonli flower 41, 43, 49

Gallop, Jane 74–75

Gama, Vasco Da 124

Gandhi, Mahatma 173

Ganguly, Priyadarshini 163

Ganguly, Sarasi 18

Garhwali Lokgeet: Laghu Geet – Khand Ek (Chatak) 50n2 garodis: centres of power, conflict with 31–32; construction of 27, 28–29, 30; Parava’s mediumship of Koti Chennaya, at Anjaru 34; ‘upper’ deities, conflict with 32–35 Garodi Sthalapurana (edifice-myths) 28–30 gender 153–155; micro-heritage and identity 158–160; reminiscences 176–179; trauma and partition 160–163 Genette, Gérard 70

ghar ka khana (home food) 193

Ghatak, Ritwik 115–118, 121

ghazals 102, 104; Dust-e-Tanhai (Faiz

Ahmed Faiz) 106–107; Rooms Are

Never Finished (Shahid Ali) 106

Ghose, Atanu 121

Ghosh, Amitav 102, 107

Ghosh, Meghamala 18

ghughuti bird 50n6 “go digital” 15

Gomez, Maya 129, 132

Green, Nile 97

Guha, Ranajit 179

Guilty (Narain) 17, 138; memory/repression/

visual representation 144–145; #Me Too

Movement, in Bollywood 142–143;

plotline 140–142; safe space, search of

143; sexual violence cases in 138–140;

trauma and childhood memory 145–148

Gupta, Yash 18

hagiography 83–85, 96–97 Haji, Muhammad 91

Halbwachs, Maurice 15, 24

Hayles, N. Katherine 10

Heffernan, Thomas 85

heritage: defined 156; social media

157–158; types 156

Hickman, Louis 132

hilas bird 50n6

Hinduism, food and 190–191

Holtzman, Jon D. 183

Holy Trinity Church 131

Hyderabadi Boy, The 158

hypertext authoring programs 10

identity: diasporic 186–187; gender, micro-heritage and 158–160; Sindhi Hinduism and diasporic identity 185–187 “I Dream I Am at the Ghats of the Only World” (Shahid Ali) 107–108 imaginary homelands 106

intangible heritage/intangible cultural

heritage 156

Iṣtiyākh Shah 85, 87, 88, 90–93, 95

Jana Aranya (The Middleman)

118–119, 122

“Jane’s Story” (Gallop) 74

Jaynes, Julian 7

Jeevichirikkunavarku Vendiyulla Oppees

(Miranda) 125

Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 173

Jith, Aparna 16

Jose, Sajai 125

Joseph, Eve 77

Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Reason,

Debate and a Story; Ghatak) 117,

118, 121

Kadi O Komal (Tagore) 118

kafu bird 41, 50n7 Kalari, in Kerala 29

Kannur, Kerala 131

Kaplan, E. Ann 147

Kapoor, Manan 104

Karachi riots of 1948 187

karāmat (miracles) 84, 94–96 Karāmat Māla (KM) 81, 83, 87, 88, 90,

94–96

Karīṁ, C. K. 83 Kashmir 100–101; see also memory, as counter-historic discourses Kerala, Paranki community 125; see also Anglo-Indian community Kerala Charithram 53

khipu (recording device) 11

khuded geet (memorable songs related to the natal home) 16; crimes 45; described 39; history 42–48; mother vs. mother-in-law behaviors 44; parents 46–48; in present context 48–49; spring

Index season and nature as markers of memory 40–42; violence 48 King, Bruce 102, 104 King Lear (Shakespeare) 1 Kingsolver, Barbara 78 Kochi, Kerala 131–132 koki dish 193 Kollam, Kerala 131 Kothari, Rita 187 Koti Chennaya 23, 26, 35–36; edifice-myths, Garodi Sthalapurana 28–30; garodis 31–35; sites of memory 27–28; social to cultural memory, from 24–25; songlines of Tulu Land 30; statue in garodi at Kalmady 29; topographic sites 27–28; tuluva imaginary 25–27 Kozhikode, Kerala 131 Kripalani, J. B. 187 Kristeva, Julia 78 Kukreti, Satish Chandra 49 Kundera, Milan 105 language 10–15 Lawson, William 130 “Lenox Hill” (Shahid Ali) 107 Levinas, Emmanuel 71 lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) 27, 30 Litanies of Dutch Battery (Madhavan) 124, 127–128 macro-heritage 156 Madhavan, N. S. 127–128 Madras Inherited 158 Mahabharata 53 Mahanagar (The Big City, Ray) 115, 118 makaan (home) 188 māla (garland) 83–85 Malabar see Mappilas mālappāṭṭ see Mappilas manāqib (hagiography) 83–85 Mandelstam, Josip 101 mangal geet songs 44, 49n1 Mannarashala 56, 60–61 Mappilas 16–17; Arabic-Malayalam devotional literature and 82–83; described 81–82 marginalia: described 77; value 78; and waste 78 Mayurakshi: memory and 114–115; narrative and name 112–114; see also mother archetype McLuhan, Marshall 12 mechanical reproduction 7–8

201

media technology 9–15; humanity 3; St John’s Word to MS Word, evolution from 2–10 Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star, Ghatak) 115–117, 121 memory 10–15; childhood 145–148; collective 61–63, 102; communicative 135n7; described 155, 172–173; external resource 13; false 144–145, 155, 163; key 163; transactive 13–14; see also acknowledgements; Sindhi culinary memories of the Partition memory, as counter-historic discourses: collective memory and nostalgia 102; distance and exile 104–106; in exile 103–104; “I Dream I Am at the Ghats of the Only World” 107–108; in poems of Agha Shahid Ali 100–101, 108–109; postcards 106–107 Memory Gazette, The 158, 165 Menon, Ritu 162, 172 Merrill, James 107, 108 #Me Too movement 17, 140, 142–143 micro-heritage 166; described 156; gender and identity 158–160 migrants/migrations 106; see also Sindhworki migration Mihiragula, Hunking 107 Minh-ha, Trinh T. 75 Miranda, Johny 125 mnemonic reimaginations: Anglo-Indian literary expressions 125–129; lived experiences and personal remembrance 129–131; in post-colonial Kerala 124–125, 158–159; see also Anglo-Indian community mother archetype 115–117, 121–122; in canonical Bengali cinema 117–120; Mayurakshi and way memory works 120–121 Motwani, Amrita 188 Motwani, Anshika 192–194 Mountbatten, Louis 173 moving pictures/cinema 7, 8 Mowani, Savita 188 Muhammad, Mawlawī 84 Muhammad, Prophet 82, 86, 91 Mukherjee, Dipayan 116–118 Musk, Elon 1 Muslims, Mappilas see Mappilas mutton pakoras dish 191 Nachträglichkeit concept 154 Nagalokam (abode of serpents) 53

202

Index

Nagans see Nairs Nagapanchami 53

Nairs 54–55 Nalbantian, Suzanne 13

Narain, Ruchi 17, 138, 143

narrative gifts 75–76; dāna/donation 76; vidyā (learning) 75–76 narratives: digitization and oral 173–174;

false 163, 167; frame 4; societal

false 167

Nath tradition 43

Nautiyal, Vidyasagar 45, 50n12 Naxalite Movement 166

Negi, Mahipal Singh 49

Negi, Narendra Singh 49

Nehru, Jawaharlal 162, 173

Nirbhaya case 142

Nora, Pierre 27, 116, 171, 180

nostalgic songs of Garhwali married women see khuded geet (memorable songs related to the natal home) “Note Autobiographical 2” (Shahid Ali) 104

Ong, Walter J. 4, 5, 7

oral cultures 3

oral narratives and digitization 173–174

oral traditions 4

Other Backward Classes (OBC) 25

Other Side of Silence, The (Butalia) 154, 158

paddanas 25, 28, 29

paintings, traditional 4

Panchatantra story 4

Pandey, Gyanendra 162

panic attacks 145

papad (flatbread) 188–190 Parameswaran, Manoj 17

Paranki community 125–128 Parashuraman (Vishnu, God) 53, 56–57 paratext 70–71 Partition 172, 183; nostalgia and trauma

172; trauma/gender and 160–163; see

also Bengal Partition of 1947; politics of

remembering and forgetting, desh

Peng, Hua 80n2 Pennycook, Alastair 77

Personality: Lectures Delivered in America (Tagore) 120

Philosophical Investigations

(Wittgenstein) 154

photography 7–8 Pinto, Paula G. 89

Plato 5

Pokhriyal, Shiv Prasad 49

politics of remembering and forgetting, desh 170; Aamra to Ekhon Indiyay (Biswas) 175–179; Dayamoyeer Katha (Sikdar) 175–176; memory and history 171–173; oral narratives and digitization 173–174; reminiscences gendered 176–179 postcards 106–107 Powers of Horror (Kristeva) 78

Prachina Keralam 53

Pratidwandi (The Adversary) 118

pre-print culture 3

Price, Leah 79

print 6

printed text 6

Projansky, Sarah 144

psychic trauma 140

Pulluvanpaattum Nagaradhanayum 53

Pulluvar community 56, 57, 58

Radcliffe, Cyril 164

Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalan 195

rajan daiva (royal deities) 32–33 Rana, Meena 49

“Rape Capital” of India 142

rape/rapists 138–139, 145

Rasoolan Bai 102

Ray, Satyajit 115, 118, 119, 121

Ray, Swagata Singha 17

Raychaudhury, Anasua Basu 174–175 “Reflections on Exile” (Said) 103

refugee-generating process 174

“Remembering, Repeating and Working Through” (Freud) 162–163 reminiscences 176–179 Renard, John 85–86 repression 144, 155

Requiem for the Living (Miranda) 124,

125, 128, 134

re-territorialisation 194

“Return to Harmony 3” (Shahid Ali) 104

Rigney, Ann 100

Ring and the Book, The (Browning) 76

Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex

and Jewelry, The (Doniger) 76

rings 76

Rooms Are Never Finished (Shahid Ali) 106–108 roti and kapda (food and clothing) 188

Rushdie, Salman 2, 104, 106

sabzi dish 188, 191

sacred groves 51–52

Said, Edward 103

Index saints: described 85–86; memories of saintly life in vernacular hagiography 83–85 saint veneration see Mappilas Sanath, Aiswarya 17

Sanskrit 75

Saomi, Guru Radha 190

sarppakaavu, in Kerala 16; age-old practices of snake worship 63–64; Ananthankadu 59; collective memory 61–63; described 51–52; Mannarashala 60–61; meaning 52; and origin myth(s) of Kerala, link between 52; Parashuraman connection 56–57; place legends 57–59; sacred space and migrant Gods 61; serpent worship importance 53–56; three serpent worship centres 59–61 sarppakopam (inducing the anger of the

serpents) 54

Sayyid Alavi Māla (Haji) 91

Scattering of Salts, A (Merrill) 108

Schneiderman, Jason 108

Sébastia, Brigette 183

sectarian violence 164

Seemabaddha (Company Limited) 118, 119

Sen, Mousumi 17

serpent worship, in Kerala: Aayilyam day

of the Kanni month 60; Nairs 54–55;

Parashuraman 53; sacred groves 53–56;

sarppa aaradhana kendram 64n5;

sarppakopam 54; serpent idols 55;

snakes and sacred groves 54; Vettikode

59–60; worship by women and

marginalised communities 56

sexual harassment 142; see also Eve teasing sexual violence cases, in India: psychic

trauma 140; rape 138–139; rape scenes

in films and television series 140; rapists

138; sexual representation in motion

pictures 139; trauma 140

Shahid Ali, Agha see memory, as counter-historic discourses Shah, Iṣtiyākh 81

Shakespeare, William 1

sharanarthi (someone seeking refuge or

protection from a higher power) 174, 187

Sharma, Mamta 16

Shetty, Yogitha 15

Sikdar, Sunanda 175, 179

Sindhi culinary memories of the Partition 183–184, 194–196; India Partition/ resettlement/food 187–191; religion/

203

community/third wave of migration

191–194; Sindhi diasporic

consciousness 195; Sindhi Hinduism

and diasporic identity 185–187

Sindhiness 188, 189, 192, 195, 196

Sindhworki migration 186

sipri (utensi) 188

Soares, Julia S. 13

Sobti, Krishna 173

Social Frameworks of Memory, The (Halbwachs) 24

social media 157–158

societal false narratives 167

sthalapurana see edifice-myths

Storm, Benjamin C. 13

Sufi saints 81–83, 91

Sufism 83, 91, 93, 95, 190

Tagore, Rabindranath 118–121, 143

tangible heritage/tangible cultural

heritage 156

technology 2; see also media technology

television 9, 12

Terminator, The 15

Thangasseri town 132

Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 131

“Thumri for Rasoolan Bai”

(Shahid Ali) 102

Tilley, Christopher 30

Totem and Taboo (Freud) 63

transactive memory 13–14

trauma: and childhood memory 145–148;

defined 140; described 145; gender and

partition 160–163; symptoms 145

Travancore Devaswom Board 57

Travancore State Manual (Aiya) 57

Trivandrum city 132–133

udbastu (someone who has been

extricated from his/her home) 174

upper deities 32–35

Urton, Gary 11

Uruli kamazhthal ritual 61

Uttoran (The Broken Journey; Ray) 119

Vaidyar, Moyinkuṭṭ 81, 84, 85, 87, 91–93,

95, 96

Van Amsterdam 69–70

Vasuki (King of Serpents) 57

Vettikode, Kerala 59–60

vidyā (learning) 75

Villaespesa, Elena 157

violence 48, 100, 103, 105–106, 163–165;

see also sexual violence cases, in India

204

Index

visual communication 4–5

visual telling 4–5

visual traditions 4

walāya (closeness or friendship) 87

walī (friend of God) 86

wall art 4

Wang, Ban 147

Watching Rape: Film and Television in

Postfeminist Culture (Projansky) 144

Wegner, Daniel M. 13

Wertsch, James V. 154

wilāyah (guidance or intercession) 87

Williams, Raymond 9, 12

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 154, 155

Wolf, Christa 153

women 158–160; see also khuded geet (memorable songs related to the natal home) Wowkowych, Sara 157

writing skills 73

written knowledge 5–6