Stoi".

on Conternporary Sooth Asit

A joint publication series
with South Asian Stirdies Association (SASA)
&
South Asia Research Unit (SARU)
Curtin University of Technology
General Editors: Peter Reeves,
John
McGuire and
fim
Masselos
Series Editor: Howard Brasted
Other Ttles in this Series
John
McGuire, Peter Reeves and Howard Brasted (eds), Politics
of Violence: From Ayodhya to Behrampada (L996, Sage Publications,
New Delhi).
D.A. Low and Howard Brasted (eds), Freedom, Traltma, Continu-
ities : N orthern Indin and Independence (1998, Sage Publications, New
Delhi).
Siri Gamage and I.B. Watson (eds), Conflict and Community in
Contemporary Sri Inka: 'Purl of the East' or the
'Island of Tears' ? (1999
,
Sage Publicationb, New Delhi).
S"*.'rl Sit"s, S"tt itr"l AttitoJ.s
S"*nrliti"s, Masculitriti"r rrrJ C.rlhrr"
in South Asia
Eto,
Sanjay Srivastava
Series E;to,
Ho*rrJ BrasteJ
StoJi.. on Conternporary SootL Asa No. 4
New
SAGE PuLlications
D"lhi
'|
Thous.nJ O.Lr
o
Lo.rJo.t
82
<) SuJipta S"n
blood, and the tnstable association of national, imperialand racial
identities. I have tried to suggest in this essay that an important
way in
eightee
definiti
en Indians and Britons was a
Sest
*#-
as a figuref dispossession and marginality' In
fhis,
*:.T:tty
of colrial fnaia can U likened to the history of colonial Noill
America where, despite the long existence of a 'sexual ftontier'lo8
between colonists
"trd
Nutin" mericans, the idea of racial seg-
regation emerged triumphant despite
{l
ft" evidence pointing to
tn .rorrirrg of"racial boundaries. In order to locate this divide we
need attenve studies of the early years of the colonial encounter
in India when crucial links were stablished between the search
i"*"a"^"fistthorifllo-estic
oider, sexual moderation and
";Ui";.lsivityfnEipating
stable and enduring templates of
colonial selfhood.
108
I borow the term from Richard Godbeer's 'Eroticizing the Middle G^round:
Anglo-Indian Sexual Relations', in Martha Hodes (ed')' Sex' Looe' Race: Crossing
nonaores in North American Hisory (New York' New York University Press'
Controllitrg
th. G"tryn eJes
t9e9), p.92.
T'lrn Colonial Gaze n
f.
R. A"Lnrlng'"
HinJoo H"liJ.y
c
Z"hrJ Cl'"..
I
Edward Satd, Orientalism (New york,
Vinrage, 7979), p.7.
84 a ZaL CL.'JL,"'Y
Queeringf
the Travelogue
One of the many configurations
of this d'ominance emerges through
imperialism's
investment in patrr hy; specifically',
as- Edward
;;iJ-;;;"r
i" his discussic on Gustave Flaubert' the
masculinised
Occident strives to penetrate a feminised' fecund
ravel writers circulated colonialist
deviance.3 CertainlY
:i:.i"J"'ili:
cording sexual practices, or actively pursuing sexual encounters
in foreign lands:
the Orient was a place where one could look for sexual experience
unobtainable in Europe"" What [writers]
looked for often"'was
"
iff"r""a type of exuality, perhaps more libertine and less
guilt-ridden.a
Said's
Phrase,'different
Flaubert's relationshiP
discourse, 'a close analYsis of se
through much travel writing o"
t:
Near East' Since both Boone
ana Sid take the Middle Eat and the Maghreb as their examples
Cort.olling tLe Gany-edes I 85
of the Orient, the Indian subcontinent is left outside the purview
of their analyses. Two of the most prominent colonialist travel
writers of Lrdia, E. M. Forster (H|II of Dni) and
J.
R Ackerley
(Hindoo Holiday), practiced sexual relations with other men, and
their experience of the Indian Orient was filtered through their
own sexual identifications. The homoerotics of Ackerley's Hindoo
Holiday areless coded than Forster ' s HiII of Deal, which suppresses
homoerotic tensions. Ackerley's 'open secret', therefore, serves to
highlight all the more issues of power relations, difference and
representation in a colonial frame.
Literary criticism has paid very little attention to
J.
R. Ackerley,
a close frierrd of E. M. Forster. Ackerley was bom at the close of
the nineteenth century (1896) and wrote most of his non-fiction,
including Hindoo Holiday (1932), in the thirties. His only play,The
Prisoners of War (1925), details the relationships of two homosexual
couples after World War I, and was surprisingly successftil in
London's West End theatre district. He wrote two novels in the
1950s, based on his beloved Alsatian dog,
Queenie,
and his au-
tobiography, My Father and Myself (1968), was pubtished one year
after his death, in which he describes in detail his innumerable
Iiaisons with working class men against a backdrop of an ambiva-
lent relationship with his father.T The dearth of criticism on
Ackerley, especially on his travel-memoir, Hindoo Holiday, is sur-
prising, since it is only one of two such memoirs, and provides
an illustrative text for the intersection of postcolonialism and
queer theory. Even when Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick mentions
Ackerley in her seminalwork,Between Men,she cursorily sts him
alongside T. H. \/hite, Charles Kingsley, Havelock Ellis, T. E.
Lawrence and others as examples of 'English gentlemen'without
a'predetermined sexual trajectory'.8 Her second, and final, men-
tion of Ackerley again sets him against a list of others who
objectify 'proletarian men'.e However, Sedgwick's work does
provide a useful guide for elaborating on the function of the
4
Satd, op. cit.,
P.
790.
t
l*"pt'S""*,
'Vucution Cruises: Or, The Homoerotics of Orientalism" Publica-
tions of tltc Modern tongrig, Associntion of America' VoI' 110' No' 1 (1995)'
pp.89-1'07.
6
lbid., p.92'
7
The most extensive ana!is of
f.
R Ackerley's autobiography was provided by
Joseph Bristow, Effeminate Englanil (New Yor! Columbia University
press,
1995),
pp.7a53.
8
Eve Kosoky Sedgwic! Betwem Men: English Literature and Male Homosocinl
Desire (New York, Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 173.
e
Ibid., p. tz4.
8 a Z"LiJ Cl'."h"'Y
male homosocial continuum, even if it does not examine such
;y#.; *i.Lit Ackerley's writing' Christopher
L-"tl"'-
^.T!t
filing
pssion_theody bok to deal.exclusively
with colonialist
tro^"toti.s-producs
a very brief, reductive reading of
Ackerley's autobiography,
aligning the ego in Ackerley's writing
with a
iwhite
,r,u', t the un"onscious with a 'black man''
ionald Hyam refers to Ackerley in a footnote' as an example of
"
Errop"u:" who found his 'pederastic experiences' at the court
of u" ldi"" prince.lo On the other hand, David Bergman lumps
nndoo Holiday with all of Ackerley's other writings' im-fo-stn
,rfot tf,"t" a Jingular interpretation:
'all of Ackerley's work deals
w^ith the ,u-" obi"srive theme: losing the Ideal Friend.'11 Bergman
takesthefigureofthe,IdealFriend,fromAckerley,sautobiogra-
phy and iushates this ideal, then point-by-Pg1nJ
shoys the
"ut"n for the ideal, implying that the Jearch would logically end
at an incestuorrs .esolrrtion: Ackerley's own father as his ideal
friena. Unfortunately,
Bergman's own search for the-search-for-
the-Ideal-Friend
leaves ruir utin to the ambivalent workings-of
homoeroticism
itself in Ackerley's work, especially in Hindoo
Holiday. Perhaps more importantly, he fails to take into accornt
,tt"
""yi"g
cuitural resonnces betweenAckerley's
travel writing
and his autobiograPhical
work'
All in all, the ritics who do mention Ackerley refer mole often
to his autoiography
than to his travel memoirs' I propose that
a closer look at-A&eiley'sHindoo
Holidy wottld prove instructive
not only for its contriution to the small body of Engsh.travel
writit g t brdia, but also because of its production of a homo-
eroticied hdian Orient, viewed through the optic of middle class
English colonialist and racialist ideolgy in the early twentieth
";"'*ty
As such, Hindoo Hotiday yields a.text rife with the pres-
,rrr", t
Power
dialectics, coionialist
(sexual) anxieties and
orientalistuthority,
all three of which are interdependent'Ackerley
remains, throughout the text, in a superior position'
it F",.Sa]ri.P"
which invests him with the authority to speak on behalf ot the
'natives', while he implicitly wields
Power
ovet them' whom he
Controlling tL" G.n)'-"J"s o 87
finds both sinister and sexually attractive. While previous criti-
cism, such as Lane's, has focused on the psychodynamics of race
and homoeroticism, or in Bergman's case, biographical criticism,
I wish to examine the structural relations that inform the obser-
vations, delineation of relationships and projections in Ackerley's
travel joumal, keeping in sight the dynamics of homoeroticismin
this colonial encounter.
Perhaps what sets Hindoo Holiday apart from other travel jour-
nals is that it is a record of the observations of colonial life by an
'English tutor', whose authority is implicit in his role. Ackerley's
visit to India was prompted by E. M. Forster who suggested that
Ackerley visit rdia for a change of scenery since Forster's friend,
the Maharajah of Chhatarpur, was offering a position for 'a
companion secietary' or a tutor.l2 Ackerley writes in the opening
'Explanation:'
He wanted someone to love him-His Highness, I mean; that was
his real need, I think. He alleged other reasons, of course-an
English private secretary, a tutor for his son.t3
Whatever the Maharajah's motives, Ackerley's excursion into
India is validated through the guise of tutorship, or at least
through the position of a private secretary. In either case, the
implications forAckerley's place in India remain the same: a tutor
and an English private secretary would both be positioned so as
to simultaneously allow access to the 'inner spaces' of the native
world, and also to be outside of that world altogether. Further-
more, since tutors and secretaries were-in colonialist tradition-
generally men working with and for men, Ackerley's joumal is,
at its inception, partaking of a structure that allows knowledge to
be circulated only between men, serving to cement bonds between
men.
However, Ackerley is never fully assimilated into the Indian
homosocial order because he is both an outsider and an insider;
although he is in the service of the Maharajah, it is clear that he
retains the more powerful position of a colonial Sahib. Ackerley
12
Neville Braybrooke (.), The Ackerley kfers (Nau Yok, Hacout Brace
fovanovich, 1975), p. 25.
13
J.R.
Ackerley, Hindoo Hoiday: An lndian
lournal
(New York, Poseidon, 2nd edn
1990), p.7.
88 I Z.hid CL"'Jh.ry
assurnes the role of the tutor in his attemPts to answer Maharajah's
questions regarding relationships, metaphysics and religion
('Cupidity. IVhat does it mean?'; 'Is there an Absolute? Is there a
God? Is there a futue life?')-in fact, the Maharajah admits that
he looks upon Ackerley as a 'kind of weenrd
[sic]'14
and that he
likes Europeans 'because he
[a
European] is so wisdom
[sic].'ls
\/hile Ackerley acts as a tutor to the Maharajah (he never does
meet the Maharajah's son), his joumal is meant to teach the
westem reader about India. Periodically-rather, randomly-
Ackerley adopts an informative, pseudo-anthropological stance,
detailing Hindu customs and religious beliefs; in short, to bring
the Indian Orient'home'to the English reader. AlthoughAckerley
adds in the explanation that his knowledge of India 'is not exhaus-
tive', the 'anthropological' passages nevertheless retain m au-
thoritative veneer through their very referencing of anthropological
discourse. That is, the intrusion of anthropology into the loose
travel narrative bolsters the truth-content of both that narrative
and, reflexively, of the pseudo-scientific
Passages
themselves.
Moreovet Ackerley's assumption of authority-as evident in his
facile assirnilation into the role of one who is'so wisdom', and the
authoritative tone of his 'anthropological' passages-is a ftrnction
of his colonialist, middle class, Englishbackground.I am alluding
here to Said's elaboration of the fundamental arrangement of
Occidental knowledge-production that takes the Orient as its
subject:
For if it is true that no production of knowledge in the human
sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author's involvement as a
human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true
that for a European or American studying the Orient there can be
no disclaiming the main circumstances of ftrb actuality: that he
comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as
an individual second.l
Since, in the case of the empire, political borndaries (English/
Indian, coloniser/colonised, powerful/powerless, civilised/
uncivilised) are so highly charged and patrolled at a very material
Controlling the Gan)-eJes O 89
level,17 and since the efstence of the empire itself rests upon a
recognition of these important distinctions, Ackerley's role in
Chhatarpur is foremost a political one, and lis'positional superi-
ority' consciously and unconsciously pervades his observationsf
thoughts and writing.
H ; noo Hol i .oy, Desirin g G aze s, Positional AutLorities
The joumal opens with Ackerley's arrival in Chhatarpur, and his
introduction to the M'ilharajah. The subsequent entries describe
Ackerley's frequently bemused exchanges with the Maharajah
on their daily rides through the surrounding countryside. The
Maharajah is an odd mixture of childish whims, authoritative
opinions and homespun philosophy. I:r the course of the journal,
we are introduced to the other principal characters: Babaji Rao,
the devout Hindu secretary to the Maharajah who faces estential
angst for feeding his son chicken stock while the latter's health
was in a critical condition; the stubborn Dewan, or 'Prime Min-
ister', appointed by the Empire to oversee the Maharajah's state;
Abdul Ha Ackerley's Hindi tutor who persistently attempts to
improve his rank thlough Ackerley's influence as a 'Sahib'; and
Narayan, Sharma, Hashim and Habib, the servants who variously
become the objects of Ackerley's desire.
This objectification takes place within a specular dimension
where Ackerley's gaze binds 'native' identity to binary opposite:
sinister/ safe, invisible /visible, dirtylclean, ugly /beautifu l, edu-
cated/uneducated and simple/experienced. The binaries sinis-
terlsafe and visible/invisible are codependent, and point to
Ackerley's anxieties as a coloniser. He describes the guest house
waite Hashim, as'a queer, inscrutable man'who'seems vaguely
ta
Ackerley, op. cit., p.25.
ts
lbiil., p. 42.
t6
%id, op. cit., p. 42.
17
I am bracketing here the question of the ambivalence of colonial discourse, as
propounded by Homi Bhabha (see Bhabha, The Location of Culture
[New York,
Routledge, 1994]), mostly because this discussion in postcolonial studies has
emained at the level of the s).mbolic, with a corollary disregard for the material
effects of colonialism- I am nfluenced here by Pheng Cheah's critique of Bhabha
in Cosmopolitics (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp.290-328.
Furthermore, the Bhabhian colonial subject, though split and hybrid, is not only
universal but also problematically homogenous. See Ania Loomba, Colonialism/
Postcolonialism (Routledg, 7998), pp. 773-33.
90 a ZaL' Chu,'dl''.v
hostile': 'He is a little alarming. "
and since he walks withbare feet
I can't hear him
am frequently startled to find
him beside me
r''18 Hashim is sinister
because he is inv
man who cannot locate
him, and who unexpectedly
finds him close beside him' The
unseen, unheard,
'vagrrety h-ostile' native is a continual source of
"r,"i",y
fo, the coloniser. In Ackerley's case, however' the invisible
is furher linked with the erotic: after all, Hashim is 'rather
handsome in his blue-and-white
turban and his long close-fitting
blueuniformcoat,.lgTheclosetthatHashiminhabitsisthesame
wife as well
rleY's mind,
ed.
owing is
through the doors of a 'closet' that rests
hlm. The need to know the location of the
totheneed.toknowthecomplexitiesofcaste/reliSrousStructures,
as the joumal breaks unexpectedly into strictly informative prose
in which Ackerley begins t ehboiate on Hindu mythology or the
cietY. SuPerimPosing
the ePiste-
of the invisible native onto the
arriage comPlexities,
we find
ctic of surveillance
every observation
clear thatAckerleY
must, and will remain on the outside, and the sort of understand-

n" desires will always elude him; Lrdia and its people will
reirain
'a strange, wild country, " '
and strange' wild compan-
ions.'# In fact, ckerley's contact with Hindu taboo and ritual
.t.rrtut,ty leaves him in an 'inferior' position: when entering the
ftf"n"*a't room before the spectacl of the 'Gods" Ackerley is
told no to touch the Maharajuh b""u"t" he is 'holy'; Babaji Rao'
the Maharajah's secretary, leavesAckerley's
presence before drink-
ing water, io as to keep the water
'Pure'; Narayan' a servant'
,"rrr", to take a cigarete that has been in Ackerley's mouth'
Co.t.olli.g the G.tymeJes a 91
As a homosexual, furthermore, Ackerley himself is well-Versed
in the intricacies of the visible/invisible. Hashim, while repres'ent-
ing a mutinous threat, also remains for Ackerley the alluring, yet
hiden source of homoerotic tension. Ultimately, howevet the
binaries employed by Ackerley cannot hold-homoerotic acts are
both visible and invisible. From his experiences in London,21
the closet and the safe
:"'i"*ii11::i
observes'a long file of soldiers marching gaily along, and anothet
smalleq, more elaborate, design which was frequently repeated.
They were both sodomitic.'z The temple, as a public space, dis-
mantles the visible/invisible dichotomy which regulates western
notions of heterosexual, and especially homosexual, erotica. In
Chhokrapur, or'boy-town' (the city name chosenbyAckerley for
the purposes of his travel memoir),8 there is a distinct continuity
between the homosexual and the homosocial- Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick inBetween Men escrtbes 'homosocial' as 'social bonds
between persons of the same sex'; while 'homosocial' is derived
from 'homosexual', it also marks a difference from the homo-
sexual. 'To draw the "homosocial" back into the orbit of "desite",
of the potentially erotic, then, is to hypothesise the potential
unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homo-
sexual-a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is
$Sr
nd
ur/
18
Ackerley, oP. cit.,
P.28.
1e
lbid., p. 27 . Thereis a corurection to be made hee between colonial anxiety and
colonial sexual fantasY.
20
lbid., p. 785.
21
See Ackeriey's autobiography, My Fther and Myself (London, Pimlico, 1968)'
2
Ackerley, Hindoo Holiday, p. 18.

A-ll names, including'the name of the ciry Chhatarpur, were changed by
Ackerley wlnen Hindoo Holiday went to press, in orde to
Protect
the privacy of
the Maharajah.
2a
Sedgwic! op. cit., p.2.
2s
It is vital to keep in mind, at the outset, that my analysis takes as its assumption
lhat Hindoo Holiday is an emphatically'westem' text, constmcted by a European
r,hose observations of Irdia are filtered, structued and selectively defined
through his 'westem' positioning. Therefore, the application of Sedgwick's 'west-
ern' formulations of the hornosocial continuum in Ackerley's Chhokrapur is apt
and usefuI.
I
92 a Z^I'"' Ch""dh"Y
Most men that engage in homoerotic activity, including the
also married. While marriage secures
hrough the exchange of women,
,tt"
".oti.
investments. Lr a section of
Hindoo Holiday deleted from all editions,26 the continuity between
xual is strikinglY aPParent' In
,
a boY-servant, AckerleY
's 'valet', is not onlY the
Maharajah's lover, but that the Maharajah forces Sharma to have
sexual intercourse with the Maharani while he watches' and'
indeed, her son is Sharma's son, not the Maharajah's' While the
woman serves as an object of pleasure for both males-Sharma'
through genital contact, and the Maharaiah, because he likes to
watcli-sie remains a child-bearing vessel *nder the irnperative
toproducemales.Inthemeantimethetwomalesinherlifehave
,"j-,rtu. sexual intercourse with each other-the homosexual flows
inio the
rsa, without disruPtion'
The p
yet another illustration of this
continui
AckerleY to see the 'Gods"
pubescent boys, dramase through-danc-e and song stories from
hit.r mythtogy. Ackerley und the M-aharajah sit-in a small
chamber, 'Hit Hi=gho"ss's piivate closet',27 trnobserved by the rest
of the audience, and waich the show through a window' The
Maharajah oPenlY questions Acker
boy's beauty. The homoerotics of the
obvious in the Maharajah's quest to
and a later hint to Acierlethat some performances are naked'
Later, at another performance, Ackerley remarks, 'It was not' of
Controlling tLe Gan)'rnedes 'a- 93
course, a private Palace entertainment like the other I had seen,
for the women would never have been invited.'28 The private
Palace entertainment which parades homoerotics on a stage is
reserved only for men, to strengthen the bonds between them.
While watching the performance, the figure of the invisible, hand-
some servant reappears from the darkness of the Maharajah's
chamber:
From the shadows behind the chnrpai, where, unroticed by me, he
had been squatting, a white-turbaned servant rose and left the
chamber by the other door.... He was young and tall, with bony
hands and feet, but his face was strikingly handsome-fairer than
usual and lighted by large glowing dark eyes, which every now
and then rested curiously upon me.2e
The emergence of the handsome male (Sharma) from the shadows
gestures toward Ackerley's western imaginary, in which invisibil-
ity must regulate homoerotic desire. From this reassertion, at least
inAckerley's mind, of the visible/invisible dichotomy, to the openly
homoerotic interaction between the performance and the gaze of
the male audience, two continuities can be drawn: one from the
homosexual to the homosocial (the homoerotics serving to
strengthen male-male bonds while necessitating the effacement of
female presence), and another from Ackerley's gaze (which con-
structs through binaries) to the
Jr4aharajah's
gaze (which moves
fluidly from one side of the binary to the other, not asserting
either side of it), for which the emergence of the male servant from
the dark is of no surprise or corsequence. The tensions between
the two different gazes and Ackerley's position in the colonial
hierarchy come to the surface when the Maharajah asks the boy
servant to step into the light again so that Ackerley may inspect
him:
He... stood there facing me, motionless, expressionless, awaiting
my inspection. But I could't manage that-sitting there studying
him as though he were a slave; so I hurriedly murmured my
satisfactiorL and another motion of the royal hand restored him to
his shadows.
26
Apparently Chatto & windus, the original publishers of Hindoo Holiday, asked
ectlircy toimlt certain passages which may have.been considered libelous to
himself tr to others. Befor the cond edition was printed in 1951, Ackerley asked
torestoretheomissions,andthepublishersagreed,sinceAckerleyhadchanged
all names and the state of Chhaiarpur was by then: 'dissolved'. Howevet the
.*i"* .opi", of Hindoo Holiday wer simultaneously released with review copies
of Athur.Cunningham Lothian, s Kngdoms of Yesterday, in which Lothian re(ercd
io e.t.rt"y
"r,a
id"entified both the Maharajah and his state. since the Maharajah's
son was stlll alive, the publishers asked Ackerley to omit one particular page
-hi.h
qrr"rtiorr"d the sn's
Par$ntage,
while Lothian was told to omit all refer-
*."" to Ackerley. Ackerley;s 'missing page' was reprinted
^":h
!t-1t-T^T
"fp"ai"
tt
"
selction of hs letters (Se1
-Brybrooke'
op' cit'' pp' 10' 95' 133' 334)'
27
Ackerley, Hndoo Holidy.'
P.
32-
28
lbid., p. zo.
'
2e
Ibid., pp. 37-38.
30
lbid., p. 38.
\.
94 a Z^L Chuodhu'Y
ThepresentationofahandsomeboytoAckerley,sdesiringgaze
maks him acutely conscious of his own superior position as a
Sahib.Theanxietycausedbythiscrisis,precipitatedbyarecog-
nition of himself s a mastei of sorts, momentarily dispels desire
and the boy is immediately asked to recede'
[r order to allay the anxiety of such colonial self-recognition,
Ackerley tries to mark a difference between himself and other
English!eople in India: he pokes fun at the English living in the
gust house, and tries the sweetme ts and betel
iuice
shunned by
rost colonials. However, the inequality between himself and the
Indians, marked by his own racial makeup, follows him every-
where. Intentionafy going against the advice of Mrs' Montgom-
ery, an English .".i""=tot" te"iamg at th9
8!est
house' Ackerley
*tt, throgh Chhokrapur alone. Soon he becomes the object of
the colonise-d's gu"" as the townspeople stop their chores to stare
at him.
Now I ound myIf an object of curiosity"'I felt intmsive and
self-conscious irrmy English clothes, and omitted to return salutes
in case the saluters snould be encouraged to speak to me and I
should. not understand what they said'3l
The anxiety of his complicity mingles with the ever-present anxi-
ety of being attacked by the latives': 'I hurried along in a panic
' ' ' '
The streetbe.u*".turio*er
and narrower as I turned and turned'
until I felt I was back in the trenches, the houses upon either side
beingsomuchofthesamecolourandsubstanceas.therough
gror.-,a between.'32 He seems to be nrnning from an ine9af.able
o*d of Indians, and as the roads become narrower and he feels
more trapped, the association with warfare signals a willingness'
on his put, to fight back. His relationships with fndians are
infusedith arxiety and both conscious and unconscious antago-
nism, despite attempts to set himself apart from other English
colonials.
-Th"
ptotp".t of himself becoming the object
9f
yltin
(that is, an objct oi knowledge for the Indian) triggers Ackerley's
colonial defences.
Nevertheless,Ackerleytriestoinserthimselfintothelndian
spectrum of sexuality vi the Maharajah, whose polymorphous
Controlli.g tL" GtttY-"J"s
'
95
his dominant positioning and whose supposed inclusion
jn
the erotic indeies of Chhkrapur would 'equate' him with the
locals, fail. Ackerley's identity in Lrdia is defined by his dominant
positionaliry and the overarching structure of dominance
Per-
iades fris itrinting in unconscious ways. I:r describing Habib,
31
lbid., p. 16. Italics in original
32
Loc. cit..
33
Ibid., p. 32.
Y
Ibid., p. 46.
\
96 o Z"L Ch.'Jl'".y
another servant, Ackerley uses the language of animal psychol-
ogyi
Whenever I ran out of cigarettes ad drew attention to this, which
otherwise would not have been noticed, by placing the Gold Flake
tin in the centre of the verandah, it was always Habib who,
apparently suspecting some connection between the emptiness
and the exposure of the object, brought it back to me to elicit, by
gesture, the reason for its having been placed where he found it.3s
Habib, is like an animal which mustbe conditioned byAckerley,s
superior knowledge and position, through a system of stimuli and
response so that he can perform his duties and serve his role
competently. The condescending language which reduces Indians
to the status of animals is pervasive throughout the text 'Hashim
is easy to dismiss; one can do it with a nod, for he is accustomed
to Europeans,'% or 'Munshi is always the most moved, and indeed
seems endowed with a special faculty for sensing the approach
of his royal master.'37
Ackerley enjoys his position as the served superior-when
servants do not live up to his expectations, he shouts and bullies
them. His gifts of cigarettes to certain attractiye servants transcend
no barriers, but serve as baits. Ackerley's tex! therefore, presents
us with a study in ideological confinement.
foseph
Boone writes:
In narratives where the occidental traveller by virtue of his homo-
sexuality is already the othe, the presumed equioalence of Eastem
homosexuality and occidental personal liberation may disguise the
spectre of colonial privilege and exploitation encoded in the hier-
archy white man/brown boy.38
Although Boone focuses onwestem travellers to the Maghreb, the
implications of travel writing by western homosexuals travelling
in the East are equally relevant to
|.
R Ackerley. Asymmetrical
relations betweenAckerley and rdians are perhaps most evident
whm Ackerley initiates erotic physical contact with the
boy-servants. Such contact is always pre-codified in a colonial
framework. In a'dark roadway, overshadowed by trees',Ackerley
Cortrollirg tLe G.nym"de
"
) 97
too aware. Writing to E. M. Forsteq, Ackerley reflects:
It is the power of authority.. . . They are blindly obedient to it. They
prostrate their minds before it (as before all other manifestations
of power) whether it proceeds from their parents, their chief, or
the conquering European.ao
Aside from the condescending tone of voice, Ackerley confesses
to a full awareness of his own power over Indians.ai
35
Ackerley, ibid., p. 144.
36
lbid., p. s4.
37
lbid., p. 26.
38
Boone, op. cit., p. L04.
Rein{orcingf Structures: AppropriateJ Hornoerotics
The
J.
R Ackerley in the colonial
mac
ep the imperial system in place.
His
homoerotic relations witn the
boy-servants do not subvert the larger colonial structure or tran-
3e
Ackerley, Hndoo Holiday., p.278.
4
Braybroo! op. cit., p.73.
al
This-is also apparent in Hindoo Holiday, when Ackerley visits a jail and feels
obliged to give each priatrner'equal attention', in case his'visit was as important
to them as are the visits of the Prince of wales on tours of inspection in England,.
(Ackerley, Hindoo Holiday,p. 43).
42
Sedgwick, op. cit., p,,2.
98 r Zal'id Cl'u"Jhu*
in westem society, if 'homophobia directed by menagainst men
is misogynistic, and
PerhaPS
transhistorically so',43 then it neces-
sarily iplies that male homosexuality is structurally counter-,
patrarchal. Thus, in Ackerley's England, with its disrupted
iromosocial continuum, homoeroticism
Proves
subversive, and
hence homosexual activity is criminalised. since the westem
imperial project is ensconced in heterosexist,
Patriarchal
frames,
homoerotcs would further serve to challenge the underpinnings
of colonialism. Yet this is not the case in Hindoo Holiday, in which
interracial homoerotics take place against the backdrop of (w!ite)
colonial rule upon an undisrupted homosocial continuum. While
Chhokrapur iJ pahiarchal, its homoerotics merely become yet
another ionfiguiation of a polymorphous sexuality-given the
fluidity betwen male homosocial and homoerotic bonds-rather
than a theat to patriarchy. Amongst the most effectual men of
Chhokrapuq, ,rr. ut the ivlaharajah, a classic Greek state is the
ideal, a stucture in which'institutionalised
social relations are...
carried out via v6sn'-1!at is, 'marriage, name, family, loyalty
to progenitors and to posterity' all depend on the use of women
by *"[ in a manner tht does not oppose the men's bonds to each
oiher.* In Chhokrapur, then, the Maharajah's homoerotic relation
with sharma does not upset societal orde, but perhaps enforces
it through an assertion of po*er and class relations, if it has any
effect at all.
\{hile it would aPPear that homoeroticism between a white
man and a 'tatiYe', given Western configurations of sexuality'
would potentially overthrow colonial boundaries, the encounter
between Ackerley and the eroticised figures of Chhokrapur suP-
presses structuai upheaval on both sides. While homoeroticism-
t..o-", a non-disruptive subset of Chhokrapur's sexual hlgr
naryAckerrey'sdorninantracialX.,5.1'Jtrf.j'*",:if,i
r otherwise-
positionalitY.
\{hile interracial homoeroticism does not subvert the structures
of Chhokrapu, it also does not undermine colonial hierarchies.
Theakical Tlransvestisrn in the
Parsi, Gujarati anJ Marathi
13
lbid., p. 20.
e
Ibid., p. 35.
Theahes (1850-L940)
o Kathrrn Hansen
f,
emaie impersonatiory the practice of men playing women's
I' roles, has a long history in South Asian theatre. ln Patanjali's
grammatical text, the Mahnbhasya (c. L50 e.c.), a male actor who
plays female roles is described as a bhrukumsa, one who 'flutters
his brows.'l The well known dramaturgical compendium of an-
cient India, the N atyasastra (c. 24 e.o.), mentions both men assum-
ing the female role, an impersonation te rmedrup anusarini (imitativ e)
and women taking on the male role.2 Female impersonation con-
tinues today in regional theatrical arts such as the Kathakali of
Kerala, the Ram Lila of Uttar Pradesh and numerous local and folk
forms.3 Howeve theatrical transvestism as a customary mode of
enacting female chaacters has vanished from the wban cultural
I
V Raghavan, 'Sanskrit Drama in Performance,' in Rachel Van M. Baumer and
James
R. Brandon (eds), Sanskrit Drama in Performance (Honoltlu, University Press
of Hawa, 1981), p. 13.
2
Cf. Natyasastra v,xx::37-32, cited in Syed
Jamil
Ahmed, 'Femae Performers in
the Indigenous Theatr of Bengal,' in Firdous Azim and Niaz Zaman (eds), lnfinite
Variety: Women in So/rety and Literature (Dhak, Dhaka University Press Limited,
7994), p.26s.
3
Jiwan
Pani, 'The Fer4aie lmpersonator in Tiaditional lndian Theae,' in Sangeet
Natak, Yol. a5
fuly-Spt.
7977), pp. 3742.