Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents 3
Editors
Sanjukta Dasgupta
Malashri Lal
The Sage Team: Sugata Ghosh, Janaki Srinivasan and Sanjeev Sharma
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Sanjukta Dasgupta and Malashri Lal
10
11
35
61
CHAPTER 3
Modern Families and Independent Living
Reflections on Contemporary Aging
Sarah Lamb
81
103
125
CHAPTER 6
Imagined Family
Pangs of Transition
Esha Dey
145
CHAPTER 7
The Politics of Home and Food in
Jhumpa Lahiris Interpreter of Maladies
Irma Maini
157
CHAPTER 8
Representation of the Family in
Marathi Autobiography Written by Dalit Women
Pushpa Bhave
164
CHAPTER 9
Real and Imagined Gujarati Families
Shifting Positionalities of Gender in Contemporary
Gujarati Womens Writings
Sutapa Chaudhuri
174
Contents 7
CHAPTER 10
Hypocrisy and Hollowness in the
Indian Joint Family System
A Study of Mahesh Dattanis Plays
Arpa Ghosh
188
CHAPTER 11
Reflections of Family and Women
in Telugu Literature
A Look at Womens Fiction
N. Venugopal Rao
203
CHAPTER 12
Globalization and Diasporic Family Dynamics
Reconciling the Old and the New
Mary Mathew
213
CHAPTER 13
Food, Family, Widowhood in
Ashapurna Devis Short Fiction
Naina Dey
221
CHAPTER 14
The Self and the Family in Telugu Womens Poetry
M. Sridhar and Alladi Uma
231
243
280
PART 5: MEMOIR
CHAPTER 17
Hunting for Fish
A Poem
Meena Alexander
295
CHAPTER 18
The Family
As I Saw it, as I See it
Vidya Bal
297
CHAPTER 19
Thoughts on Home
Nonda Chatterjee
309
CHAPTER 20
Looking Back
Shashi Deshpande
322
CHAPTER 21
Small-Scale Reflections on an Ancestral Home
Makarand Paranjape
331
CHAPTER 22
Indian Families in the World
Forty Years in Manitoba
Uma Parameswaran
339
Contents 9
PART 6: DIALOG
CHAPTER 23
A Dialog with Amartya Sen
Sanjukta Dasgupta and Malashri Lal
About the Editors and Contributors
Index
355
360
366
Acknowledgments
A number of the essays included here were published in the last four
issues of Families: A Journal of Representations (20022004). However,
on request, most of the contributors meticulously revised their essays.
We also wish to thank those who have written specifically for this
book, despite the constraints of time. We wish to acknowledge our
deep gratitude to all our distinguished contributors and the subject
experts who gave us advice. We must also mention that a Fulbright
Alumni Initiative Award (20012003) made possible the journal,
Families, which eventually led to this book. We thank the Womens
Studies & Development Centre of the University of Delhi for hosting
a seminar on Families in India and the USA, from which two invited
papers emerged. Our thanks are expressed to the Womens Studies
Research Centre, Calcutta University, where the Families project was
inaugurated, and the Department of English, University of Calcutta
for providing the impetus for much of the research. Our own families
have given us ideas and experience in handling the subject. We express
thanks to Anjan Dasgupta and Robey Lal in particular.
Introduction
Sanjukta Dasgupta and Malashri Lal
Societies change but there are limits to change. Certain traits which are
the product of centuries of conditioning, do not change, and it is these that
provide the distinctive cultural label to a people. Others can be diluted or
modified.
Pavan K. Varma, Being Indian, 2004
If there is one ism that governs Indian society and its institutions, it is
familyism.
Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, The Indians, 2007
I
It is indeed very hard to imagine an individual without a family or
at least a family address. Due to unusual circumstances those who
have been disassociated from their families in childhood and youth
have also tried to identify kinship bonds, often excavating lost roots
in order to re-locate themselves within familial structures. The security
of group identity and the fulfillment of a deep emotional need have
tended to be a source of familial power, trust and interdependence
through historical time. Anderson and Sabatellis definition of the
family is quite unsurpassed in this respect as the definition locates
the crucial roles and responsibilities of family members as a linked
entity, an interdependent group of individuals who have a shared
sense of history, experience, some degree of emotional bonding, and devise strategies for meeting the needs of individual members and the
Introduction 13
Introduction 15
due to the fact that family members have a dual identity as a member
of the family and as an individual person within the shared space.
Amartya Sen writes, Family arrangements are quintessential examples of such cooperative conflict. The special nature of family
lifeleading joint lives and sharing a homerequires that the
elements of conflict must not be explicitly emphasized. Indeed,
dwelling on conflicts rather than the familys unity tends to be seen
as aberrant behavior (Sen, 2005: 242). Films and fiction among other
literary and cultural genres have been able to delve into these tensions,
dualities and paradoxes that are integral to family dynamics and may
be looked upon as a rich resource for understanding family complexities.
Increasingly, however, it is becoming apparent that family studies
and comparative family studies is emerging as a crucial interdisciplinary field enabling academic cross-fertilization crucial for a
holistic understanding of the local and global shifts, fissures and
changes that re-define the importance of the family in the twenty
first century. As is obvious, our interest is to explore and expose the
modifications that the Indian family structure has undergone through
critiquing literary and cultural representations. The historian Rajat
Kanta Ray in his book Exploring Emotional History has identified that
the study of literature can be the best way to understand the collective
and individual mentality within a particular culture. This can be an
ideal project for the historian who would chart the emotional history
of a culture (Ray, 2001: 7). He further elaborates, A possible guide
for an expedition into the emotional history of a past culture would
be the contemporary writer and critic the poet and novelist must be
the historians companion in the journey ( ibid.: 7). Can we suggest
that literature read in this manner, in order to analyze the relationship
of the gendered personality in terms of the home and the world, the
public and the private and the inherent sexual economies can thus be
defined as interpersonal familial relationship studies?
It is this journey of exploration that we feel is crucial to the understanding of the transformations that are increasingly visible in twentyfirst century India. The paradigm shift in the upper-class, upper-caste
educated communities in the relationship between men and women
both at home and in the world has identifiable transformations in the
family structure of these social groups, and educated women belonging to these groups have enough enabling power to become active
agents of social change. Therefore, from the dependent women being
considered as the essential burden that society has to bear for its
collective self-sustenance, women in families are now able to sustain
II
The former President of India had addressed a group of Business
Management graduates from Wharton College in September 2004 and
among other observations about Indias growing economy and work
culture had also remarked, One of our strengths is our joint family
system. In this system a problem is no problem. In a nuclear family a
problem can destroy a family. However, this remark can be interpreted
as a metaphor for cultural inclusiveness and extended to the ideal
concept of vasudhaiva kutumbakum, the world as one family, without
supremacy of one over another, but a balance of power and agency
to all. This ideal condition, however, eludes the domestic space where
conflictual relation-ships are the cause of serious imbalances of power
within each family.
Introduction 17
The ancient myths and epics of India, the most well-known being
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, enshrine a vibrant tradition of
familial relationships, deeply meshed in complicated kinship bonds
between blood relations of a wide span of the extended family that
owes its affiliation to identifiable, and very often, caste, property and
inheritance-specific origins. Indian family trees are like the great
Indian banyan trees with branches, roots and shoots creating a sense
of extraordinary longevity and interdependence. There are gnarled
knots of interests, along with emotions and filial obligations. Since
the Vedic times the joint or extended familial tradition was patriarchal.
Polygamy and polyandry were in prevalence. It was in relatively
modern times that monogamy and the nuclear family became a way
of life in Indian society.
Though anthropological data traces the origin and growth of the
Indian family, it is, however, in literature and other cultural representations that the structural composition and the emotional tensions
that are an integral part of the family are scripted. The grand epics that
are invariably about the much glorified joint family system, are smeared
in fratricidal blood, psychological conflict and physical combat between wives, brothers, uncles, cousins, siblings and other members
of the extended families that revolve like satellites around the principal
patriarchal authorities granted power and prestige. Each family structure is unique while records of births, deaths and marriages create an
infinitely variable structure that can often challenge conforming statistics, though the structure itself is constantly under threat from a volatile
field of unequal power politics.
Social scientists have identified how the four crucial institutions,
the state, the market, the community/civil society and the family/
kinship structures, are implicated in the discourse of understanding
gender positions in India. The dualities and contradictions implied
within the domestic space often come under the scanner resulting in
the rejection of myths: Family and community are metaphors for
the most sacred and most natural of relationshipsbetween children
and parents, wife and husband, sister and brother, devotee and god.
These are the relationships which provide emotional security, material support, care, a sense of belonging, status, legitimacy and social
identity. Simultaneously, the concrete experiences of women, young
and old, reveal that the family, household and community have been,
and are, spheres of inequity, constraint, oppression, even violence, embodying interests and power relations differentiated by gender and
age (Kabeer, 1999: 49).
Introduction 19
III
This book is divided into six parts and twenty three chapters that
mark the evolution of the Indian family system through the colonial
times to the modern period. The British rule in India influenced both
the state apparatus and the cultural developments. As a result we
have positive records of schools being set up for female education,
sartorial sophistication in middle-class women adapting stitched
clothing such as blouses and petticoats, the abolition of the practice
of sati or widow immolation, interrogation of principles of selfeffacement on the part of women, questions about the basis of
domestic harmony and marital bliss. However, we also find negative
actions of the hegemonic state machinery in generating caste, class
and communal divisions. From the legacy of the colonial period,
post-independent India spawned numerous versions of cultural identity, showing up the complex intermixing that results from a protean
definition of nation and selfhood. The process of enquiry continues
till today as evidenced in the self-reflexivity that erupts at points of
communal violence or political rallying. Cultural documents respond
to these ground realities as many of the chapters in this volume illustrate.
The first part, Colonial Families: Re-visiting Tradition, looks into the
status of men and women within the customary Hindu family structure by addressing issues of belief systems and tracking the ripples of
change brought in through education and the nationalist movement.
One of the first texts that comes to the mind is of course the now
very well known first autobiography written by a woman, Amar Jiban
(My Life) by Rashsundari Devi, who lived from 1809 to 1896, and
published the first phase of her autobiography around the age of
sixty. Tanika Sarkar located the existence of about sixty five literary
texts by women writers of Bengal during the nineteenth century.
Rashsundari took great pains in order to become literate, learning
Introduction 21
the art of basic reading and writing through ingenuous strategies and
great secrecy. Her contribution to her marital home seemed to be
ceaseless hard labor in the kitchen, as home-cooked food by the wives
of the joint household was the required norm, in spite of there being
a number of servants to attend to various other menial jobs. Also,
multiple pregnancies and a high rate of infant mortality are all implied
in Rashsundaris statement that she had about ten or twelve children. Rashsundaris lament resonates as a collective lament of intelligent young women who had entered their marital homes as child
brides, and had been systematically denied education and any freedom
of choicesuch misery, only because one was a woman! We were
in any case imprisoned like thieves, and on top of that, reading was
yet another crime We suffered so much just to learn to read (Sarkar,
1999: 17172).
Interestingly, around the same time when Rashsundari had scripted
her autobiography with so much of hardship and inhibition, a younger
Marathi woman born in 1862, married at the age of eleven, lived
apart from her husband in her parental home till at the age of twenty
two when her husband, desirous of asserting his conjugal rights,
moved the Bombay High Court because his wife declined to co-habit
with him. A unique litigation process went on for a period of four
years, from 1884 to 1888. The Dadaji vs Rukhmabai case received overwhelming media attention, with the letters of Rukhmabai being published in The Times of India, in one of which, published on April 7,
1887, she directly addressed Queen Victoria as a colonized subject
and implored the Queens intervention so that the marriageable age
of Indian men and women were raised to 20 and 15, respectively
(Chandra, 1998: 217). Prior to this, Rukhmabai had published two
letters in 1885 using the pseudonym A Hindu Lady, which brought
to the fore the plight of child brides and young widows, who were
denied the advantage of education and freedom on the plea of samskar
and shastras. Rukhmabai was looked upon as an icon for the suffering
Indian women, while others saw personified in her their worst fears
about modernized women subverting family and society (ibid.: 1).
Chandra critiques the role of the British judiciary, which often seemed
to comply with indigenous customs and religious beliefs, it being
assumed that state interference in familial practices could lead to a
loss of faith in the good governance of the Queen on her colonized
subjects. Educated women within the family experienced a sense of
dual colonization, as national subjects and as subjects of the master
at home.
Introduction 23
Introduction 25
Introduction 27
Introduction 29
The next part in our book is called Memoir and captures reminiscences
of contemporary writers, activists, commentators as they negotiate
the times of change. This section represents many voices of many
authors from many locations. All the six authors are of Indian origin,
but while Meena Alexander and Uma Parameswaran write from the
USA and Canada respectively, the reminiscences of Nonda Chatterjee,
Makarand Paranjape and Shashi Deshpande highlight that the cultural
affiliations to ones own family and the familial social environment
leave an indelible impression on each individuals mind and also
influence ideas and lifestyle choices wherever in the world one may
be during the adult years. Alexander chose to send us the poem
Hunting for Fish, which we use as an epigraph to the section, for the
poem sets the mood for the journey down memory lane as five authors
look back to their years of nurturance.
Our prestigious sixth part, Chapter 23, Dialog, in which Professor
Amartya Sen responds to our questions is not only a validation of
our engagement and fitting finale to our endeavor to critique the transitions and transformations within the Indian family system as represented in literary and cultural texts, but it also makes us feel we have
indeed located a turning point in Indian culture in the twenty first
century. The contemporary family space of co-operative conflict
can be a space of dialog and arguments that will allow each member
to evolve without severance of familial bonds. This paradigmatic shift
in the definition of the middle-class Indian families is observed in
contemporary literature, popular culture, films and TV serials as never
before. The purpose of the book has been to register how traditional
familial structures are constantly being re-configured and in the process re-vitalized through the negotiation of the emerging dynamics.
Kinship bonds are strengthened, there is greater dignity about shared
References
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Vision to Everyday Family Practice, in Romila Thapar (ed.), IndiaAnother
Millennium. New Delhi: Viking.
Anderson, A. Stephen and Ronald M. Sabatelli. (1999). Family Interaction:
A Multigenerational Developmental Perspective. USA: Allyn & Bacon.
Beteille, Andre. (1999). The Family and the Reproduction of Inequality,
in Patricia Uberoi (ed.), Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Chandra, Sudhir. (1998). Enslaved Daughters. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Chen, Martha Alter. (2000). Widowhood in Rural India. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Dasgupta, Sanjukta (ed.). (20022004). Families: A Journal of Representations,
Vols 14.
Desai, N. and U. Thakkar. (2001). Women in Indian Society. Delhi: National
Book Trust.
Drze Jean and Amartya Sen. (1997). India Economic Development and Social
Opportunity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Doctorow, E.L. (1994). False Documents, in Jack London, Hemingway, and
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Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Introduction 31
Engels, Frederick. (1985). The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Forbes, Geraldine. (1996). Women in India. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press.
. (2005).Women in Colonial India. New Delhi: Chronicle Books.
Kabeer, Naila and Ramya Subrahmanian. (1999). Institutions, Relations and
Outcomes. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Kundera, Milan. (1998). Farewell Waltz. UK: Faber & Faber.
Nabar, Vrinda. (1995). Caste as Woman. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
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Economics. USA: Edward Elgar.
Rajan, Rajeshwari Sunder. (2000). Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence
India. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
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Sarkar, Tanika. (1999). Words to Win. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Thapar, Romila (ed.). (2000). IndiaAnother Millennium. New Delhi: Viking.
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Singh, Amita Tyagi and Patricia Uberoi. (1994). Learning to Adjust:
Conjugal Relations in Indian Popular Fiction, Indian Journal of Gender
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Uberoi, Patricia. (1999). Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
PART 1
COLONIAL FAMILIES:
RE-VISITING TRADITION
34 Judith E. Walsh
Chapter 1
As the Husband,
so the Wife
Old Patriarchy, New Patriarchy
and Misogyny in One Late
Nineteenth-Century Domestic
Science Manual
Judith E. Walsh
36 Judith E. Walsh
century. Here I want to discuss the mixture of old and new patriarchal
discourse in this text, a mixture common to the genre of womens
advice manuals in this period. And I want to outline the texts misogyny, a defining difference between it and other works in this genre.
This differenceand the absence from this text of imagined intimacy
and friendship between husband and wifecan help us understand
an important aspect of this genre as a whole.
Contested Ground
In the nineteenth century, the dominance of British power in India
imposed an alien culture on indigenous life ways. By the last decades
of the century, the penetration of that foreign culture was so profound
in urban centers like Calcutta, that the entire world of Hindu domestic
life and its most intimate relationships had become contested ground.
What relationship should exist between a husband and a wife, how a
mother should raise her children, even how kitchen spices should be
arranged on a storeroom wallall had become issues for debate and
contestation. In the reformulation of Hindu women and their worlds
that took place in this period, there was no area of domestic life so
trivial that it was not addressed, no family relationship so intimate or
spontaneous that its interactions were not the subject of rethinking
and reformulation.
It is within this context that Satyacaran Mitras book of advice for
women and at least twenty others came to be written. These texts were
how to do it booksguides to relations within extended families,
the rearing of children and the management of households. Addressed
to women, but written by men, they were often constructedas was
Strir Prati Svamir Upadeshin the form of a dialog between husband
and wife in which the husband instructed the wife on proper conduct.
They had titles like The Bengali Wife, A Husbands Advice to His
Wife, Lakshmi of the House and Conversations with the Wife.
The authors of these books were Western-educatedSatyacaran
Mitra himself wrote at least one book in Englishand the stated
purpose of their books was to provide materials through which women
might be taught to read and write. An additional (sometimes unstated)
purpose was to provide for the re-education of Bengali women in
ways which would help them adapt their lives to the changed conditions of life in British-ruled India. By 1884, the year in which Strir
Prati Svamir Upadesh was written, these manuals were sufficiently
numerous for one author to note: There is no lack of books for
women full of moral instructions (Raychaudhuri, 1887: 1). My own
list of these books numbers about twenty to twenty-five, most of them
published in the decade of the 1880s.
The Author
We know little about the life of the author of this text, Satyacaran
Mitra. Although he wrote at least eight books in his lifetime (eight
are listed in the catalogs of Kolkatas National Library) of which
four were works of fiction, his biography is not included in twentiethcentury biographical dictionaries. Of his seven Bengali works, four
focused on women. Strir Prati Svamir Upadesh was his earliest book.
It was followed by three works of fiction: Abala Bala in 1887 and two
others in 1892, Sahamarana and Bara Bau Ba Sudha Brksa.1 This last
book was Satyacarans most popular. It was issued five times, the last
in 1924.2
A Brahmo Text
Strir Prati Svamir Upadesh openly identifies itself with the leadership
and ideas of the religious reform society, the Brahmo Samaj.3 The
book begins with a short preface by Keshub Chunder Sen, a prominent
Brahmo leader, and contains exchanges such as the following (in a
chapter on literacy):
You know my friend Lavender, dont you? Shes
learned to read and write quite well. She writes her
husband a letter every day. And she says shell go with
her husband to the Brahmo Samaj.
Husband: Just look at that! You learn to read and write and youll
be like that too.4
Wife:
38 Judith E. Walsh
More than any other nineteenth-century group, Brahmos tended
to be identified with the social reform of womens conditions. Issues
like child marriage, widow remarriage, breaking of purdah, the education of womenall were associated with various sects of the
Brahmo Samaj and any writer advocating some or all of these ideas
was likely to be accused of being a Brahmo. While it is probable
that many, if not all, the authors of womens advice manuals were, in
fact, Brahmos, not all of them wished to acknowledge this identification. Authors such as Dhirendranath Pal (who wrote the most
popular and long-lived of all these manuals) or Girijaprasanna
Raychaudhuri (author of a manual called Griha Lakshmi) were at some
pains to obscureor even denythe reformist tendencies of their
books. In their books, references to Western sources or authors are
rare and reforms are more likely to be attributed to ancient indigenous customs than to foreign sources. Fine, says the wife in the midst
of one discussion in Griha Lakshmi, all your ideas are English. No,
go, no, replies the husband, this is our own native countrys view
(Raychaudhuri, 1887: 32).
Western Sources
In Satyacarans book, on the other hand, foreign, Western sources are
the preferred authorities, cited on all matters ranging from the virtue
of compassion [doya], to the definitions of various physical phenomena like electricity, earthquakes and rainbows. Thus, stories about
Sir Philip Sidney and Catherine the Great of Russia are told to illustrate
the virtue of compassion; events in England and Berlin are cited to
prove there is no such thing as ghosts and Aristotle is paraphrased
to teach the proper manner for sexual intercourse (Mitra, 1884: 2022;
2627; 96).
A special characteristic of this book are its chapters on scientific
subjects: What is a ghost?, About Sneezing and Lizards,
Rainbows, Lightning and Thunder, The Astonishing Creations
of God, among others. These chapters are meant to counter current superstitions with scientific explanations. The only indigenous
author regularly cited here is Akshay Kumar Dutt; excerpts from his
rationalist writings are frequent (ibid.: 6; 67; 87; 123). Otherwise, for
Satyacaran, Western sources are, by definition, scientific and rational;
indigenous sources (especially current customs) are superstitious and
40 Judith E. Walsh
The chapter goes on to define the rest of the days activities: cleaning
the house, smearing on oil and bathing, exercising in the garden, cooking and eating (Having chewed the food very slowly, you will swallow,
says the book), then rest, attentive studying and finally house cleaning
and cooking again (Mitra, 1884: 4046).
The chapters on moral conduct are simple and direct. Have you
ever eavesdropped on the room of anyone? the husband asks at the
beginning of a chapter on that topic. Yes, says the wife, a few
times, why? Very bad, says the husband. Dont do that kind of
thing again. Eavesdropping is very hateful behavior (ibid.: 36).
Similarly, lying is bad and telling the truth is good. Giving to
the poor is good as long as they deserve the help, but you should
never give alms to those who have the ability to preserve [their] health
by their labor (ibid.: 15). There is little equivocation in this book and
little subtlety. The author is as certain of the correctness of his moral
postures as he is of his scientific explanations.5
The most controversial topics are easily resolved. Within the compass of a single chapter, no matter what the subject, the wifes enthusiastic agreement is always achieved.
Husband: Did you listen? Will you tell any more lies?
Wife:
No, I will not tell any more lies (Mitra, 1884: 9).
or:
Husband: Do you understand why the book fell from the hand
to the floor?
Wife:
Yes. I understand (ibid.: 133).
Even on a topic as controversial as widow marriage, the wifes
initial protestations rapidly disappear. In the face of her husbands
suggestion that her just widowed sister be remarried, she says indignantly, Go, go, go from here! I dont like this. Making a joke at a
time of such sorrow? (ibid.: 120). A mere nine pages later she is completely convinced. Let it be, she says,
You dont have to say any more. I have understood quite well that widows
should be married. You will have to try for my sisters marriage (ibid.: 129).
The devoted wife [sati stri] recognizes that there is nothing else for
her in life but her husband.
42 Judith E. Walsh
the true wife [sati stri] places her life, youth, wealth [and] honor all in
the hands of her beloved husband. She knows her husband is her only
shelter, her husband is her only friend, her husband is the destroyer, creator
and preserver of her lifes good fortune (Pal, 1880: 91).
When the wife achieves her husbands happiness, she becomes every
woman to himand he loves her in return:
In the true wife [sati stri ] a mother can be seena sister can be seena
friend can be seenthe incomparable beautiful sight of Gods heaven
can be seen. For this reason I love the wife so much, for this reason, if a
wifes face seems to be a little sad, ones heart and soul become agitated
(ibid.: 92).
The mixture of old and new patriarchy in this book is at its most
curious where it allows the author to simultaneously argue for the
remarriage of widows (an important Brahmo principle) while still
glorifying, as a sati, the wife so devoted to her husband that she would
never remarry.
I am not saying that all widows should be married. I am speaking about
the marriage of widows who may possibly become adulteresses if their
marriages are not arranged and of widows who wish in their hearts to be
married (ibid.: 121).
44 Judith E. Walsh
husbands funeral pyre. The reform of womens social conditions
the education of women, the movement of women out of purdah,
the end of child marriage, the beginning of widow remarriageall
seem (to us in the twentieth century) to carry with them implications
of great equality with men, greater freedom for women within
society. Yet in this book the reform of womens conditions, the education of women, the breaking of superstitions, meeting with husbands before marriageall these social reforms are inextricably bound
to the greater development of womens ability to please their husbands.
Womens conditions will be reformed so that they may become more
truly satis, so that they can please their husbands hearts in ways more
appropriate to conditions in nineteenth-century, British-ruled Bengal.
The idea that the reform of womens conditions would provide the
foundation for the future happiness of husbands and families was
central to the manuals containing advice to women in this period.
We have seen in the quote with which this chapter opened that
Satyacaran believed that differences between husbands and wives were
attributable to womens lack of education. Other authors thought
the same. Husbands, wrote Dhirendranath Pal, should begin to educate their wives from the first day of marriage.
We will show gradually how the husband should behave and how he
should educate the wife [so that] she, being well educated can make the
husband and family members happy (Pal, 1880: 68).
Misogyny
The mixing of old and new patriarchal language and images in this
text and its eagerness to imagine husbands and wives in contexts freed
from some degree of extended family control are qualities shared by
this book with the genre as a whole. More problematic are this books
persistently misogynistic turns. At the heart of Satyacarans book is
an extremely negative image of women, what they are and what they
do. Women are ignorant, superstitious and uneducated; they are given
46 Judith E. Walsh
to bad habits such as lying and eavesdropping and are prone to uncontrollable vile appetites or sexual desires. Their foolish, ignorant
or uncontrolled actions can result in damage to their families or even
the deaths of their own children. As ignorant country women, they
raise their own children to believe in ghosts and support ignorant
customs like child marriage and the ban on widow remarriage. As
educated city women, they turn all housework over to servants and
sit around gossiping, doing wool work and reading novels (Gupta,
1884: 39).
Negativism towards women finds expression here not only in the
faults attributed to them or the bad things they do, but also as an
emotional tone which gives a surprisingly harsh quality to stories
used to illustrate didactic points. For instance, in discussing the need
for literacy, many authors make the same points: that women should
learn to read to learn about the world, to write letters to husbands
away from home or to become better mothers. Satyacarans book makes
all these points, but gives the last a particularly hard edge by telling
the following story. Do you want to hear, the husband asks, a
story about the level of understanding of one Auntie [khurima]?
Auntie had a little boy. His name was Hari. When Hari fell ill, the doctor
said to give him medicine one dose each hour from the medicine vial. But
each time Hari had to take the medicine, he made a huge fuss, so Auntie
had him take all the medicine at once. Because of that the boy died....
Later when I heard the news of Haris death, I wondered why womenfolk
dont learn to read and write (ibid.: 5).
Finally, there are some faults of women that can not be cured but must
be either controlled or lived with. In the later category is lack of beauty,
which in this book is also a quality for which women must accept
responsibility. In a chapter on Marriage the wife suggests that if a
woman is virtuous, then beauty is irrelevant. No one, the husband
disagrees, will ever be able to say I dont want beautytheres no
need for beauty.... (Gupta, 1885: 80).
Women are naturally the source of beauty.... Therefore it is very necessary
for women to be beautiful. If a woman is ugly, then she has fallen outside
of natural law to some degree. If one of your legs is lame, then necessarily
one has to agree that that lame leg has happened as a result of some sin
[dos]. Just so, if the nose is snub-nosed, if the eyes are two hollowsif the
forehead is high, in that case necessarily one has to agree that all those
faults [dos] have occurred as the result of some sin [dos] (ibid.: 81).
48 Judith E. Walsh
act of making love. This is a bad practice, says the husband, for two
reasons: first, because people cannot speak privately with each other
and second, because in many women the act of eavesdropping may
arouse vulgar tendencies.
Perhaps a wife is engaged in amorous conversation with her husband
or shes already quite maddened by passionate love makingmeanwhile
you, in your hiding place, are watching everything. The sight of all these
vulgar acts might strengthen your own sexual appetite and leave you
besides yourself with desire.
Do you want to hear, asks the husband, what disaster can occur
through eavesdropping? And then follows this story:
Husband: A sister was eavesdropping at her elder brothers door.
Inside the room, the brother and his wife were talking
amorously; the brother was beside himself with love,
embracing his wife and kissing her. Just as husband and
wife had progressed to making love, that wretched sister,
outside their door, was suddenly overwhelmed by her
desire for love. She did not remember that he was her
brotherand at such a time who, indeed, could think
clearly? The door to the brothers room was not locked
that day. Crazed and half naked, the sister rushed in
and embraced her brother, her own mothers child.
Under the bed there was a sword. The brother, blind with
rage at his sisters behavior, destroyed that sex maddened
creatures life with the sword (Gupta, 1885: 3738).
Oh! says the wife, I am getting very scared. I will never again
eavesdrop. You have seen, replies the husband, what the consequences of eavesdropping are.
Romantic Intimacy
Satyacarans misogynistic turns mark his book out from the others
of this genre. For although other authors believed along with him that
the lives and worlds of Bengali women needed reform and adaptation, nevertheless, the prevailing mood in other books is not at all
The fictional husband knows (or, at least, the author knows) that
however much he may talk, a wife can still choose not to hear.
In Strir Prati Svamir Upadesh such sweetness, romance and uncertainty are almost entirely absent. Instead we are given a robot-like
wife, parroting back her agreement with her husband. Even exchanges intended to be affectionate seem stiff and attenuated. I will
tell you one thing, says this wife after a lecture from her husband on
lying, tell me that you wont tell anyone else.
Husband: If its a subject to be discussed with others then I will,
otherwise why would I?
Wife:
Then let me say that ever since you started giving me
advice, I have developed such a feeling of devotion for
you.
Husband: Naturally, that would happen.... (Mitra, 1884: 11).
And he continues with his lecture.
That a sense of friendship or intimacy between husband and wife
are missing from this book might seem only natural given its didactic
purpose and its use of a dialog structure. But it is important to realize
that while authors in this genre use the dialog form for its enlarged
opportunities for delivering lectures, there is also another issue at
work here. In many advice manuals dialogs provide a space which
50 Judith E. Walsh
authors use to imagine and portray a relationship between husband
and wife that is defined by intimacy and friendship. We know from
many sources that foreign ideas of companionate marriages and
foreign images of the wife as a husbands helpmeetnot to mention
foreign ideas of romantic loveare immensely interesting and
attractive to Western educated Bengali men in this period. The dialog
structure gives advice manuals the space in which to imagine such
relationships. It opens up an imaginative space, occupied only by
husband and wife, which authors can then fill with fantasies of romance,
intimacy and friendship.
Conclusion
Nineteenth-century Bengali Hindu society had within it a hierarchy
based on age that affected young Bengali mens relations with their
52 Judith E. Walsh
wives. Young men in extended families suffered from this hierarchy
and sought to mitigate its effect on their lives through the creation of
more exclusive relations with their wives. Satyacarans book shares
this impulse with the authors of other manuals, and in this respect
his book helps us to understand an important aspect of this genre as
a whole.
That the motivations of men involved with the reform of womens
social conditions was not entirely, or perhaps even at all, altruistic is
not surprising. Men like Satyacaran wanted reform, not for the liberation of their wives, but in order to gain more control and influence
over them. Reform, for such men, meant the moving of wives away
from the controls of the extended family and the creation of women
who (at least in fantasy) would be almost entirely the creatures of
their husbands: their morality, conduct, attitudes and ideas adjusted to
their husbands; their aim in life, the satisfaction and pleasure of their
husband. The degree to which this dyadic relationship is to be totally dominated by the husband may be somewhat exaggerated in
Satyacarans book, but the impulse towards such a relationship is not
unique to it.
But where, in other advice manuals, the urge towards more dyadic
relationships is fused with an impulse towards more intimate conjugal
relationships, in Satyacarans book only the first is present. Satyacarans
misogyny keeps him from using the imaginative space of the dialog format to develop images of conjugal intimacy and friendship.
Their absence in his book is a defining difference between his work
and the genre of womens advice manuals in general. This difference
can help us to understand how profoundly this literature is being
shaped by two impulses: one, a desire for new patriarchal controls
over women in a context marked out from the extended familys
domain; and the second, a wish for friendship and intimacy (and
romantic love) within marriage relations. For while both old and new
patriarchal concepts shaped a substantial part of late nineteenthcentury discourse on Bengali women and their worlds, an equally
powerful theme in that discourse was the newly imagined (or perhaps
newly reimagined) idea of intimacy and friendship between husbands
and wives, men and women, in their shared domestic world.
Notes
1. Satyacaran Mitra, Abala Bala. [The Powerless Girl] (Calcutta, 1887).
A Tale of Fidelity and Love, says the Bengali Catalog.
Sahamarana [Self Immolation on the Husbands Funeral Pyre]
(Calcutta: Karttik Chandra Datta, 1892). Tale of a Sati burning herself
in the funeral pyre of her husband, says the Catalog editor.
Bara Bau Ba Sudha Brksa [The Eldest Daughter-in-law or the Sheltering
Tree] 2nd ed. (Calcutta: Manomohan Library, 1892); 4th edition, 1917;
5th edition 1924. A Sketch of Hindu Domestic Life, Bengali Catalog.
National Library. Author Catalog of Printed Books in Bengali Language,
Volume IV SZ. Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1963. 9091.
2. Satyacarans other works included a book of stories, Upanyasa Mala (Calcutta: Amritabal Ghosh, 1892) and three books on religion: Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa (Calcutta: Great Indian Press, 1897); Sree Sree Sanatan
Dharma or the Eternal Religion (Calcutta, Self-published: 1907); Brahmananda
Prasasti (Calcutta, Baranagar: Bhagavad-tattva Parisad, 1923).
3. The Brahmo Samaj was founded early in the nineteenth century as a religious reform society, initially aimed at the redefinition of Hindu theology.
As the society developed, Brahmos became known for their opposition
to many orthodox Hindu social and religious practices. Young Westerneducated Brahmos opposed what they considered idolatry in Hinduism
and as a result often refused to perform orthodox ceremonies, like the
shradh, or death ceremonies. The result was the ostracism of many
Brahmos from their caste communities and often their separation and
disinheritance from their families. The social ostracism of Brahmos in
the early years of the society was so severe, one historian has noted, that
not even servants would work for Brahmo families. As a result, during
the mid to late nineteenth-century Brahmos social and religious life
focused mostly on their own community; they had their own religious
beliefs and practices, their own social rituals and childrens marriages
tended to be arranged within the Brahmo community.
4. Mitra, Strir Prati, p. 4. Satyacaran shared with other Brahmos (including
Keshub Sen) an interest in the religious practices and experience of the
Hindu saint Ramakrishna and at the turn of the century he wrote, in
English, a book called Sree Sree Sanatan Dharma or the Eternal Religion
(Calcutta: 1907). In the 1920s he wrote in Bengali a biography of one of
Ramakrishnas disciplesBrahmananda Prasasti (Calcutta, Baranagar:
Bhagavad-tattva Parisad, 1923).
5. See, for instance, Mitras ideas on conception cited above or his belief
that if you cover your body with a blanket or silk cover at the time of a
thunderstorm you will have nothing to fear from electricity. Ibid., p. 74.
54 Judith E. Walsh
6. In the context of his continuing exploration of late nineteenth century
nationalist discourse, Partha Chatterjee has argued that the anti-colonial
nationalists replaced older indigenous (Hindu) patriarchal traditions with
a new patriarchy in this period.
The need to adjust to the new conditions had forced upon men a whole
series of changes in their dress, food habits, religious observances and
social relations. Each of these capitulations now had to be compensated for by an assertion of spiritual purity on the part of women.
They must not eat, drink or smoke in the same way as men; they must
continue the observance of religious rituals that men were finding
difficult to carry out; they must maintain the cohesiveness of family
life and solidarity with the kin to which men could not now devote
much attention.
This new patriarchy defined women as essentially different from men;
yet the difference still allowed for womens reform through education
and self-education as long as it was possible for women to do this without
jeopardizing her place at home. Reform of womens conditions and
the re-imagining of the domestic world, then, becomes part and parcel
of the new patriarchy. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993): 12830.
7. Ibid., pp. 12122. Satyacaran is not the only Brahmo author to believe a
wifes love for her husband ought to make remarriage an impossibility.
Dhirendranath Pal, in a manual that lasted through nine editions, makes
essentially the same argument. Widow marriage, he has the wife of his
book explain to a friend, is a bad practice because it increases the number
of women who want to get married at a time when the number of eligible
husbands is already scarce. Dont I feel sorry for the plight of the child
widow? the wife asks rhetorically, I do. But consider, dear, whether
she who has once known a husband would even be able to marry again?
If she would, it would be better for her marriage not to take place at
all. Rather, she should have recourse to the vows of a sannyasi, take up
the observance of dharma and do penance for her sins. Pal, Strir Sahit
Kathopakathan: 68.
8. The story of young Western educated boys tutoring (or failing to tutor)
their wives is one that appears in many contexts and in many regions in
India from the nineteenth century down to modern times. Gandhi himself
remembered his failure to teach his wife to read. Borthwick, Changing
Roles, p. 69; G. Morris Carstairs, The Twice Born (Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana Press, 1967), p. 296; M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, tr. M. Desai
(Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1957), p. 13.
9. How threatening this impulse towards more dyadic relationships was to
nineteenth century sensibilities may be judged from the frequency with
References
Advice Manuals
Anonymous. (1900). Ramani Aisarya. [The Glory of Woman] Vol. 2.
Calcutta: Navakumar Dutt.
Bandyopadhyaya, Candicaran. (1887). Ma O Chele. [Mother and Son].
Calcutta: Sahitya Sangsad.
Bandyopadhyaya, Harinarayan. (1887). Sisu Palan Sambandhe Pita Matar Prati
Upades [Advice to Parents Concerning the Rearing of Children].
Calcutta: G.P. Ray.
Bandyopadhyaya, K.C. (1897). Stri Siksha. [The Education of Woman].
Dacca: Bhanucandra Das.
Basu, Isancandra. (1885) [1291 (Bengali Date)]. Nari Niti. [Rules for
Women]. Calcutta: Gurudas Chattopadhyay.
. (1884). Stridiger Prati Upadesh. [Advice to Women] 3rd ed. Calcutta:
Victoria Press.
Biswas, Taraknath. (1887). Bangiya Mahila. [The Bengali Woman] 2nd ed.
Calcutta: Rajendralal Biswas.
56 Judith E. Walsh
Das, Benimadhab. (1889). Amader Jatiya Vigyan: Sahadharmini O Svami. [The
Science of Our Community: The Wife and the Husband]. Calcutta: B.C.
Sarkar.
Dasi, Nagendrabala Mustaphi. (1900). Nari Dharma. [Womans Dharma].
Calcutta: Self-published.
Dasi, Navinkali. (1883). Kumari Siksha. [The Education of a Girl].
Calcutta: Self-published.
Dutt, Umeshchandra. (1884). Nari Siksha. [Womans Education] 2nd ed.
Calcutta: A. Ghosh.
Gupta, Purnacandra. (1885). Bangali Bau. [The Bengali Wife]. Calcutta:
A.K. Banerji.
Majumdar, Jagachandra. (1871). Niti Garbha Prasuti Prasanga. [A Discussion
of the Rules for Women Who have Just Given Birth] 2nd ed. Calcutta:
N.P.
Majumdar, Mohinimohan. (1890). Parinay Samskara. [The Reform of
Marriage]. Calcutta: Self-published.
Majumdar, Pratapcandra. (1898). Stri Caritra. [Womans Charater] 2nd
ed. Calcutta: Self-published.
Mitra, Jayakrishna. (1890). Ramanir Kartavya. [The Duties of Women].
Calcutta: Giribala Mitra.
Mitra, Satyacaran. (1884). Strir Prati Svamir Upadesh. [A Husbands Advice
to His Wife]. Calcutta: Victoria Printing Works.
Mukhopadhyaya, Vipradas. (1891). Yubaka Yubati. [Young Men and Young
Women]. Calcutta: Manomohan Library.
Pal, Dhirendranath. (1880). Strir Sahit Kathopakathan. [Conversations with
the Wife]. Calcutta: Vaishnav Charan Vasak.
. (1884). Songini. [Companion]. Calcutta: Bengal Publishing
Company.
. (1909). The Hindu Science of Marriage. Calcutta: Jatin Pal.
. (1911). The Hindu Wife. Calcutta: Phanindra Nath Pal.
Raychaudhuri, Girijaprasanna. (1887). Griha Lakshmi. [The Lakshmi of
the House] 2nd ed. Calcutta: Gurudas Chatterji.
Sastri, Shivnath. (1885). Griha Dharma. [The Dharma of the Family].
Calcutta: Girish Chandra Ghosh.
Other Works
Basu, Isancandra. (1887). The English Works of Raja Rammohan Roy. Calcutta:
Jogendra Chandra.
Bengal Library. (18671914). Catalogue of Printed Books: Appendix to the
Calcutta Gazette. Calcutta: Bengal Government.
58 Judith E. Walsh
Walsh, Judith E. (2003). Whats Love Got to Do with It: Choosing Love or
Family in Late 19th Century India [online journal]. Project South Asia
(forthcoming January) [cited]. Available from http://www.mssc.edu/
projectsouthasia/tsa.
. (2004). Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men
Gave Them Advice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
. (2005). How to be a Goddess of Your Home: An Anthology of Bengali
Domestic Manuals. New Delhi: Yoda Press.
. (2005). A Brief History of India. New York: Facts on File.
PART 2
POSTCOLONIAL FAMILIES:
SOCIO-ECONOMIC
PERSPECTIVES
60 Mukul Mukherjee
Chapter 2
62 Mukul Mukherjee
family; for its manifestation has been in a state of flux, particularly in
the last few decades. The size, composition, living arrangements and
inherent values giving shape to human families continue to evolve, as
apparent in families based on consensual unions or same sex unions,
single parent units, female-headed households, etc., extending even
to alternative living arrangements such as the kibbutz. However, much
of the theorization centers around nuclear, co-resident families of
heterosexual couples where the family head is male, with dependent
wife and children.
Despite the profound changes brought in by industrialization and
urbanization in the past century, the family survives as the primary
institution of human society. This is because
z
z
z
z
64 Mukul Mukherjee
I
The Family/Household as a
Gendered Structure
Friedrich Engels was one of the earliest writers to draw attention to
womens status within the family, based upon Marxist concepts of
the material processes of production and reproduction (Engels, 1945).
In Engels view, marriage and children constituted the family as a set
of relationships. In this family a functional division of labor prevailed
between men and womenwhich Engels designated as a pure and
simple outgrowth of natureand in his words, each was master
of his or her own field of activity: the man in the forest, the woman
in the house. Gradually, as communities settled down and small
groups accumulated various types of wealth, the pre-existing egalitarian relations between men and women began to change and
womens rights as well as their domestic work in the household lost
significance: The administration in the household lost its public
character it became a private service. The wife became the first
domestic servant. Engels describes this transformation of womens
role and the disappearance of mother-right as the world-historical
defeat of the female sex. He also provides a praxis: The emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to
take part in production on a large, social scale, and when domestic
duties require their attention only to a minor degree. Scholars have
critiqued Engels approach, but his exposition served the important
purpose of highlighting the subordinate position of women within
the framework of the family (Geetha, 2002; Sacks, 1974).
In recent years the internal dynamics of the family have featured
significantly in the writings of Gary Becker, associated with the new
household economics and in the work of Amartya Sen (Becker, 1981;
Sen, 1990). While Becker almost wishes away uncomfortable issues
relating to gender equity by assuming an altruistic (male) household
head who maximizes family welfare through benevolent dictatorship (and thereby presumably protects womens interests), Sen
looks upon the household/family as a potentially turbulent site
where membersin their individual capacities as women and men
bargain for access to advantages (Kabeer, 1996: chapter 5). The family,
z
z
66 Mukul Mukherjee
way of state policy. However, it can also be looked upon as an artifact
of state: though people associate and live together in many different
ways, which of these associations will be given the epithet of family
is not decided only by the parties concerned. The state plays an important role in constituting the family by defining which groups of
people can count as families, by sanctioning marriage, divorce and
legitimacy, etc., as also rights and privileges of family members
(Nussbaum, 2000: 262).
So far as Indian households are concerned, we may note that
(a) the family continued to be the mainstay of the elderly right up to
the 1990snational-level surveys reveal that only about 2 percent
among aged men and 4 percent among aged women were found to
live alone or with people who were not relatives (Rajan and Kumar,
2003); (b) though different forms of nuclear family accounted for more
than half of the Indian households recorded in the 1991 census, there
was also a marked presence of joint families, accounting for about
one-fifth of the total (Gulati and Rajan, 1999); and (c) the patriarchal
nature of Indian society is reflected in the National Sample Survey
(NSS) finding that over 80 percent of 60plus men were reported as
heads of households in the 1990s, while the corresponding figure for
women was about 15 percent.1
II
Womens Agency in Decision-making
Keeping in mind these aspects of the family, then, we first consider
an important aspect of womens agency: her existence as an autonomous being and her capability of influencing the parameters of her
own life and the environment within which she functions. In other
words, agency is taken to represent a certain degree of power and as
such, womens autonomy becomes intertwined with their empowerment. As posited by Gita Sen and Srilatha Batliwala, empowerment
is the process by which the powerless gain greater control over the
circumstances of their lives and implies both control over resources
(physical, human, intellectual, financial) and over ideology (beliefs,
values, attitudes). They stress that it means not only greater extrinsic
control but also a growing intrinsic capabilitygreater self-confidence,
and an inner transformation of ones consciousness that enables one
z
z
68 Mukul Mukherjee
Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which considers five sets of numerical
indices for measuring womens autonomy and power within the household. These relate to economic decision-making authority (purchase
of food, household goods and jewelry; having a say in spending
household income); child-related decision-making authority (dealing
with childrens health and education); mobility (freedom to go unescorted beyond the village, to health centers, homes of relatives and
friends) and freedom from threat (fear of husband, being beaten by
husband). The study concludes that in particular contexts, tight controls are exerted on women in every sphere of their lives: their free
movement, their voice in family matters, their economic independence
and their relations with their husbands (Jejeebhoy, 2000). This is
in accord with the growing body of literature, both from within India
and abroad, that suggests that the extent to which women enjoy autonomy is powerfully shaped by social institutions of gender within a
community.
It is only with the publication of the report of the second National
Family Health Survey of India (NFHS 2, 199899) that we have access
to reliable information on at least certain aspects of decision-making
in Indian families, both at national and state levels (IIPS and ORC,
2000: Sections 3.6 and 3.8). This important survey was mainly devoted
to enquiry about womens health, fertility and family planning practices and covered about one lakh ever-married women aged 15 to 49,
spread over the length and breadth of India. An innovation introduced
in this survey is the module on womens autonomy, which explores
and presents data collected on decision-making as reported by women
Table 1 Ever-married women who are involved in household decision-making (%)
(All-India Figures)
U
HS+
86
59
60
85
49
50
86
47
50
83
61
62
47
35
26
21
27
22
46
35
74
55
53
81
III
Age and Erosion of Agency
A remarkable trend since Indias independence has been the increase
in life expectancy at birth (LEB)both for women and men. In 1951
the LEB of Indian women was only 32.5 years. Now both male and
female LEB have crossed 60 yearsestimated at 64 and 65 years
70 Mukul Mukherjee
respectively in the 2001 censusand these are expected to show a
steady rise in the coming decades. The elderly, that is, persons aged
60 years and above, now constitute about 7 percent each of the total
male and female population and this proportion too is expected to
rise in the not too distant future. According to the 1991 census, elderly
women outnumbered men belonging to the same age group, the
femalemale ratio of this segment being 1,075 as against the overall femalemale ratio (FMR) of 933 (Visaria, 2001). But as we shall
see presently, for women at least, a long lifespan has hardly been an
unmixed blessing; for aging seems to go hand in hand with loss of
agency and well-being.
Those who have read Dahan, the much acclaimed story written
by Suchitra Bhattacharya and recently made into a film, will recall
the grandmother Mrinalini, an aged and unusual widow. She is unusual because she has control over fixed deposits and can afford to
live a dignified and independent life on her own. Yet she tells her
granddaughter, For us, the whole of life is a prison. Only the jailor
changes. Sometimes father, at other times husband, or son. Or this
enclosed place. The stamp of love seals and imprisons us within the
home and family. Once the seal loosens and falls, this prison becomes
more fearful than the other (Sarbadhikari, 1999). Our regional literatures abound in moving images of women of advancing age, who
are lonely, oppressed, denigrated and victimized. With the growing
availability of demographic data in India, these facets of fiction are
gradually turning into grim realities. Much valuable information about
the elderly in India can be found in the reports of our recent population
censuses and the country-wide National Sample Surveys and National
Family Health Surveys carried out in the 1990s. The findings presented
in these reports help us to learn how, particularly for women, advancing age serves to compound vulnerability.
First, women face greater hardship on account of economic insecurity. The results of recent Rounds of National Sample Surveys
reveal that more than 70 percent of older women were totally dependent on others in the mid-1990s as compared to about 30 percent
of older men in the same situation. Only about one-fifth of older
women were found to be owning and managing property while
the comparable figure for their male compatriots was more than
60 percent. Among urban women in this age-group who had been employed, only a small percentage (15 percent ) received pension and
other post-retirement benefits. And finally, despite their advanced
72 Mukul Mukherjee
more attention than the less visible and quiet deprivation of millions.
These deprivations do not show up in economic and social statistics,
the standard household-level analysis tells very little about widows
and their well-being (Chen, 2000: 30). Jean Drze and Amartya Sen
remind us that the experience of losing ones spouse is, overwhelmingly, a womans experience. A widower not only has greater freedom
to remarry than his female counterpart, he also has more extensive
property rights, wider opportunities for remunerative employment,
and a more authoritative claim on economic support from children.
Had the living conditions of widowers been as precarious as those of
widows, it is likely that widowed persons would have attracted far
more attention (Drze and Sen, 1995: 173).
IV
Domestic Violence: Negation of
Womens Human Rights
We now come to our third chosen perspective: the family/household
as a site of violence perpetrated against women.
Perhaps the most painful devaluation of womens lives is reflected
in the physical and psychological violence that stalks them from cradle
to gravein situations of both war and peace:
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74 Mukul Mukherjee
the woman; or (b) harassment of the woman when such harassment
is with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet
any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on
account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such a
demand.) Though recognized as a significant development in confronting domestic violence, this legislation had its own limitations.
(For example, it did not ensure the aggrieved womans right to shelter
in her matrimonial home; nor did it provide for any compensation
for the injuries suffered by her.) After prolonged debates and mainly
on the basis of substantive suggestions advocated by womens organizations, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act came
into being in 2005. This new civil law focusing more on securing
womens rights considerably expands the ambit of relief and protection for victims of domestic violence. As such the Act covers not
only married women but also those who are in a live-in relationship
or are related by consanguinity and adoption; gives an aggrieved
woman the right to residence in her matrimonial home even if she
may not have property rights and provides for compensation for injuries (including emotional distress) caused by acts of domestic
violence. However, its actual efficacy is yet to be tested.
When we try to unravel the roots of this gender-based familial violence, we realize that violence has always been a tool for exercising
domination and appropriating control in different spheres of life. In
the domestic sphere too, violence becomes a means for domination
and controlof womens bodies, their labor, their assets and their
mobility, and on another plane, their emotions, ideas and attitudes.
According to one perceptive view, Far from being abnormal behavior,
the violence of men towards the women they live with should rather
be seen as an extreme form of normality, an exaggeration of how society expects men to behave it is concerned with wider issues to
do with power and equity and to do with how we perceive manhood
(Wilson, 2000: 26). An additional factor that fuels aggressive male
behavior within the home is the violence-prone environment prevailing in the wider society, aided and abetted by the consumerist
culture associated with globalization.
At least in the Indian context, several points have to be noted in
regard to domestic violence inflicted on women. First, statistics published by the National Crime Records Bureau show that during the
last few years, cruelty/torture of women by their husband and his relatives account for about one-thirdthat is, the highest proportion
of total crimes committed against women in India as a whole, rape
and abduction accounting for about one-tenth each and dowry death
for about 5 percent.3 Next is the tendency to justify and condone the
occurrence of such violence and thus mitigate criticism and punishment. To this end, while the battered women might be projected as
mentally ill or morally depraved, the men involved might be looked
upon as victims of poverty or an abusive environment or as driven by
drug abuse or alcoholism. There is also the tendency to exonerate
male offenders by taking advantage of legal loopholes. There are instances where the known perpetrators of violence against women
could not be punished because the case could not be proved beyond
reasonable doubt. (For example, in the well-known case of a Pune
housewife, where the husband was accused of murdering her, even
though he was convicted in the lower courts, it was decided that the
husbands guilt could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt as
the woman may well have committed suicide out of depression!
[Agnes, 1992].) It is not difficult to surmise that consciously or unconsciously, a certain philosophy is at work behind such lenient
approaches to this particular category of offence: that of protecting
the privacy of the home and protecting family honor.
Accounts of domestic violence in India mostly came from court
cases or anecdotal evidence and more recently, from small-scale
surveys/studies (Jejeebhoy, 1998; Visaria, 2000). For the first time, a
large body of national-level and state-level data related to domestic
violence against women has been compiled by the second National
Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 199698. Some of these data are
reproduced in Table 2. Several features stand out here. First, the survey
reports that at least one in five of all ever-married women above the
age of 15 years experienced physical violence and at least one in
nine experienced it in the 12 months preceding the survey. Second,
the beatings were typically inflicted by their husbands. Third, domestic
violence appears to be democraticin that it cuts across religion,
community, ruralurban divide, even womens employment status.
These findings, then, serve to expose the fallacies inherent in certain
commonly held beliefs:
z
z
z
z
76 Mukul Mukherjee
Table 2 Married womens experience of beatings/physical mistreatment
(All-India Figures)
Beaten Since Age 15 years
(%)
Beaten by Husband
(%)
Age
1519
2029
3039
4049
21
21
23
20
19
19
21
18
Religion
Hindu
Muslim
Christian
21.2
21.2
21.1
19.1
19.1
16.1
Social Group
SC
ST
OBC
Other
27
23
23
16
25
21
21
14
Residence
Rural
Urban
22.5
17
20
14
25.5
23.6
19
15
9
17
12
6
Wifes education
Illiterate
Literate, not completed
Middle School
Middle School completed
High School and above
to be beaten by her husband. Its the way things are. When you are
newly married, you are beaten for not bringing enough dowry; when
you give birth to your children, you are beaten for not producing a
male heir, or if you have already given him a son, for not producing
only sons. And then, when you have produced enough children, you
are beaten for losing your looks and youth (Davidar, 2002: 32).
The NFHS survey data, however, also indicate two other trends:
the incidence of domestic violence seems to fall appreciably if women
are educated beyond High School and it also tends to fall with a rise
in the standard of living. These findings have obvious implications
for strengthening womens agency and autonomy.
78 Mukul Mukherjee
enriching human lifebasically relate to expansion of peoples capacities and choices; their ability to exercise choice based on freedom
from hunger, want and deprivation; and the opportunity to participate in, or endorse, decision-making that affects their lives (UNDP,
1997: 33). An elaboration of these themes is beyond the scope of
this chapter; here we can only spell out certain priorities.
Obviously, we need greater involvement on the part of the state
and the civil society in working towards womens development, security and autonomy. We need more extensive and more effective gendersensitization on the part of those who make laws, those who interpret
them and those who enforce them. NGOs concerned with womens
issues have a very significant role in this regard. We also need a more
comprehensive database for reaching out to women who are trapped
in violence and elderly women and widowed women who are resourceless, so that due importance is accorded to them in public policy
and programs.
But ultimately, women themselves must learn to strengthen their
own capabilities in pursuit of agency and autonomy. Experience tells
us that capacity building for women begins from three crucial planks.
First and foremost is education, for education brings awareness of
ones surroundings and a better understanding of ones rights and
duties. The second is skill-building and economic self-reliance. For
women specially, freedom to act is linked vitally to their capacity to
be self-reliant with the help of their own knowledge, experience and
practical skills. The third imperative for agency is organization: getting
together and forging bonds so that their experiences can be shared,
their capabilities can be expanded and their wholesome influence
can be felt within the home and outside. Hopefully, this new millennium will see a new vigor in their journey towards agency and
autonomy.
Notes
1. National Sample Survey , 199394, as cited in Pravin Visaria, Demographics
of Ageing in India, EPW, 2001: 1971.
2. NSS 42nd Round (198687) and NSS 52nd Round (199596), as cited in
Visaria (2001).
3. See relevant Tables in Crime in India, 2002 and 2003, National Crime
Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India.
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Decade of Legislation, 198089, EPW, April 25.
Becker, Gary. (1981). A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Chen, Martha A. (2000). Perpetual Mourning: Widowhood in Rural India, as
cited in UN, The Worlds Women 2000, p. 30. New York.
Dave, Anjali and Gopika Solanki. (2001). Journey from Violence to Crime: A
Study of Domestic Violence in the City of Mumbai, Mumbai: TISS.
Davidar, David. (2002). The House of Blue Mangoes, p. 32. New Delhi: Viking
(Penguin Books).
Desai, Neera. (1995). Perceiving Family: Myth and Reality, paper presented at Workshop on Re-examining the Indian Family, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, July 79.
Drze, Jean and Amartya Sen. (1995). India: Economic Development and Social
Opportunity, p. 172. New Delhi: OUP.
Engels, Friedrich. (1945) (first published in 1884). Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State. Moscow: Progressive Publishers.
Ganesh, Kamala and Carla Risseeuw. (1993). Gender: Between the Family
and the State, EPW, October 23.
Geetha, V. (2002). Gender. Calcutta: Stree.
Govt. of India. (1974). Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status
of Women in India, p. 80. Delhi.
. (20022003). Crime in India. National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry
of Home Affairs, New Delhi.
Gulati, Leela and S. Irudaya Rajan. (1999). The Added Years: Elderly in
India and Kerala, EPW, October 30, Table 9.
Indian Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) Bombay and ORC Macro
(USA). (2000). National Family Health Survey: 199899India, (sections
3.6 and 3.8).
Jejeebhoy, Shireen J. (1998). Wife-beating in Rural India: A Husbands
Right?, EPW, April 11, pp. 85562.
. (2000). Womens Autonomy in Rural India: Its Dimensions, Determinants and the Influence of Context in Harriet B. Presser and Gita
Sen (eds), Womens Empowerment and Demographic Processes: Moving Beyond
Cairo. New Delhi: OUP.
Kabeer, Naila. (1996). Reversed Realities: Women and Development. New Delhi:
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Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardner (eds), Visibility and Power: Essays on
Women in Society and Development, p. 107 ff. New York: OUP.
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Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan.
Morgan, David. (1999). Gendering the Household, in Linda Mckee and
others (eds), Gender, Power and the Household. London: Macmillan.
Nussbaum, Martha. (2000). Women and Development: The Capabilities Approach,
p. 262. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Pant, Mandakini. (2000). Intra-household Allocation Patterns: A Study in
Female Autonomy, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, JanuaryJune.
Rajan S. Irudaya and Sanjay Kumar. (2003). Living Arrangements among
the Elderly in India, EPW, January 4, Table 7.
Rothschild, Constantina. (1982). Female Power, Autonomy and Demographic Change, in R. Anker and others (eds), Womens Role and Population
Trends in the Third World, p. 128. London: Croom Helm.
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EPW, October 30.
Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.
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New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Sen, Amartya. (1983) Economics and the Family, Asian Development Review,
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From Darkness to Light, Stories of Oppression, Exploitation, Reaction, Resistance and Choice, p. 26. Calcutta.
Chapter 3
Old age homes are not a concept of our country. These days, we are
throwing away our culture. The U.S. is the richest nation in the world and
therefore has won us over. Now we, too, are only after material wealth as
a nation and have become very unhappy.
Ranjan Banerjee, old-age-home resident and retired psychiatrist,
Kolkata (Calcutta), India
In Europe, it may be normal that children leave home. But in our society,
we have roots, and suddenly, all these families have started sending their
children abroad; the children lose contact with their past; they forget to
come home.
Jayaraj, director of Karunam (Pathos), a film depicting an elderly couples
vain wait for the return of their son, who has settled in the U.S.; Kerala, India
Old age is a gift from God when spent in dignity, as in this country. I
prefer an independent life. I like to live on my own instead of living with
relatives. I am happy now.
Gopal Singh, aged 72, immigrant from the Punjab; Fremont, California
82 Sarah Lamb
These quotations speak to some of the potent meanings centered on
aging for contemporary cosmopolitan Indians.1 Over recent years,
Indians among the middle and upper classes have been participating
in profound shifts in the ways they are structuring family life and its
generational and gendered relationships. In some respects, these shifts
are similar to others occurring around the globe in cosmopolitan circles, in which dual-career nuclear families are becoming increasingly
prevalent, and kin pursuing global professional markets are widely
scattered across nations and the world. Amidst such broad social and
economic processes, aging itself takes on profoundly new forms and
meanings.
This chapter explores the ways many in India and among the Indian
diaspora are crafting and experiencing new forms of aging, as they
confrontboth embracing and critiquingprocesses they associate
with modern and global living. The central social transformation
examined here is a shift away from the intergenerational family as
the key site of aging and elder care, to an increasing reliance on individual selves, private institutions and the state. Such emerging novel
modes of aging and family are taken by Indians, at home and abroad,
to represent a profound transformationa transformation involving
not only aging per se, but also core cultural and moral visions surrounding family, gender, personhood, and the very identity of India
as a nation and culture.
As an anthropologist, I spent my first years studying aging in
what many urban Indians consider a traditional context, among
familiesmany of them joint and multigenerationalin a village
setting in the Birbhum District of West Bengal (Lamb, 1993: 2000).
I next began researching aging, gender and families among the rapidly
growing South Asian Indian population in the United States (Lamb,
2002; 2007). I was struck that although senior Indian parents are
migrating to the United States with the express purpose of being with
their U.S.-settled children, many end up turning to non-family institutionssuch as community senior centers and state welfare programs
for the agedfor much material and social support, not infrequently
even setting up their own independent households. When returning
to India to do fieldwork in 2003, 2004 and 2006, I was struck, too, by
the burgeoning of non-family modes of practicing aging in urban
India, most notably the surge of old age homes along with private
organizations devoted to providing services to elderly living alone.
84 Sarah Lamb
and again as at the root of changes in the joint family. One is that
women now, compared to those a generation earlier, are much more
likely to be older at marriage, to be more highly educated, and to be
workingmeaning that, in general, daughters-in-law today have more
voice, authority, and agency than their mothers-in-law did, and are
often not as disposed as their predecessors were to serve, defer to and
live with their husbands parents. A second phenomenon is that many,
even most (according to prevailing estimations), parents among
the elite classes in India have children living and pursuing professions
in distant cities, across India and abroad. Third, the general milieu
of globalization, Westernization and the modern has intensified over recent years in India, bringing with it a whole host of related
ideologies and social forms, such as (according to widespread discourses): individualism, materialism, consumerism, self-centredness,
a freedom from traditional rules and mores, gendered and aged
egalitarianism, nuclear families, small flats, a pervasive lack of time,
and old age homes. Such forces and discourses are particularly salient
within middle- and upper-class urban families and much less so for
the rural and urban poor. Old age homes, for instance, are still almost
non-existent within both rural and urban poor communities. Further,
the elderly urban poor tend to blame any lack of care from their
children on long-standing poverty rather than on anything to do with
modernity.
Now, it must be noted that discourses of the breakdown of the
joint family are not radically new. For instance, Lawrence Cohens
No Aging in India: Alzheimers, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things
found that in the 1980s and 1990s, the dominant narrative used by
Indian gerontologists and others to explain the contemporary predicaments of aging was that of the decline of the joint family under the
force of the four zationsmodernization, industrialization, urbanization, and Westernization. Ethnographies of social-cultural life in
India have also long portrayed tales of generational conflicts, small
households, and the like.3
What do seem to be new are the markedly unique forms that certain non-traditional-joint-family-based modes of aging are taking
in contemporary India, especially the surge of formal institutions of
extra-family aging, such as old age homes and organizations offering
surrogate sons for hire. Also important, I suggest, is the fact that
not all tales of extra-family aging center on the bad family (Cohen,
1998) or, that is, on modern degeneration. Rather, many of those I have
met living in old age homes and independent households quite extol
their circumstances and were the ones purposefully to craft their extrafamily late lives. Others are indeed more miserable, as they deplore
their conditions and tell of a profound shockproclaiming that they
never in earlier years could have even imagined living apart from children and family in old age. It is to these emerging forms of family
and aging, and the richly complex and varied perspectives of those
experiencing them that I now turn.
86 Sarah Lamb
All meals are provided, including morning and afternoon tea,
served either in common dining rooms or at bedside for those less
mobile and in homes lacking space. Numerous institutions offer a
choice between vegetarian and non-vegetarian diets, appealing especially to many upper-caste widows who, in Bengal, are widely expected to observe strict vegetarianism (avoiding not only meat, fish
and eggs, but also garlic and onions). However, not all homes prepare
separate vegetarian meals, so quite a few widowed residents tell (some
complaining, other accepting, still others seemingly pleased) of how
they have had to forego all such order and rules. In some of the fancier
homes, residents have set up small kitchenettes in their rooms, with
refrigerator, hot plate, and a few supplies for making tea and snacks
for themselves and guests.
Residents clothes are washed, rooms cleaned, and tea punctually
brought; and in fact one of the distinct advantages of old-age-home
living, many say, is that older people no longer have to manage their
own servants. Even most ordinary middle-class households in India
maintain servants to help with household chores, something that
requires money, just as residing in an old age home does (for instance,
in Kolkata in 2006 a full-time cook, house-cleaner and attendant
might be paid about Rs 2,0003,000 a month, and a full-time driver
Rs 3,000 a month). Peppering Indian newspapers over recent years
are also stories of aged persons being tricked, robbed and even murdered by domestic workers, contributing to a widespread sense that it
is inappropriate and even dangerous for elders to live on their own
(e.g., Times News Network, 2005). Some old-age-home residents also
tell of how bored and irritated they had become listening to their
servants monotonous stories over and over again, as they had become
increasingly homebound in their older years.
Weekly or bi-weekly doctor visits are provided, although if one
becomes very ill or disabled, the family or individual must generally
pay additionally for a private nurses care, or else the old person is
sent to a hospital or back to his or her kin. (But, for some of these
residents, where are close and willing kin?) Minimal formal activities are planned, and residents spend their time reading, chatting,
simply sitting, playing cards, knitting, writing journals and letters,
having tea, watching television, going on morning walks, taking a
stroll to a nearby market, and (in the fancier ones) attending occasional
cultural programs and functions. Female residents might also help
88 Sarah Lamb
part of a radical transformation of fundamental Indian values, the
family and aging; because in these homes, aging takes place outside
of the family.
Solitary Living
A second trend in Indian cosmopolitan aging is that many seniors
are now living alone (in Bengali, ekala or eka), with just a spouse,
or as a widowed single with a live-in servant, or entirely on their
own. This is an arrangement that some say they enjoy and is working
just fine for them. However, both elders and the public widely tell of
living alone as unthinkable earlier, unnatural, very Western,
and distinctly modern.
Saptaparni, a middle-class apartment complex in South Kolkata,
began several decades ago largely as a residence for whole families
who had migrated from East Bengal at the time of Partition. The
flats felt small compared to the spaciousness of ancestral homes and
village lands, but families were comfortably crowded together, perhaps
three brothers, their wives and children in a 3 bedroom flat. Now,
elder Saptaparni residents say, brothers found material success and
left, and the children grew up and moved on, very often abroad. Describing her building in the complex, Jethima commented, 14 flats
14 people. Saptaparni itself is now an old age home! Sitting and
speaking with her, I am struck by the quietness. I can hear clearly the
hum of the refrigerator, a clock ticking, the lonely call of a kokil bird
near sunset, distant honking cars.
A new industry of extra-family aging is emergingNGOs, clubs
and small businessesto offer social, emotional and practical support
for such cosmopolitan elderly who live alone. One private couple in
the Delhi suburbs, Mr and Mrs Saksena, have for instance started a
business to look in on the senior parents of NRI (non-resident Indian)
children. It is the children who are the paying clients (at $5 or about
Rs 225 an hour); for Mr and Mrs Saksena follow a policy where we
recover our charges from our clients [the NRI children] and never
from the elderly. They visit the senior parents as friends of their
son/daughter overseas. Their motto is to do whatever we are asked
90 Sarah Lamb
meetings in temples), but more formal senior citizens clubs have
recently been fast springing uppromoting things like active/productive aging; independence; peer-socializing; volunteerism; hobbies;
age-specific magazines, health and beauty products; spiritual education; and political awareness (of having distinct rights as a group).
Significantly, most single elders with children do spend a great
deal of time and emotional energy thinking of and maintaining ties
with their dearly loved descendantsfor instance, by displaying their
photos proudly and extolling their careers; setting up e-mail and video
conferencing; and traveling regularly to childrens homes. One retired
Bengali gentleman, who lives alone with his wife in a modern Kolkata
apartment complex while their only son works as a professor in the
United States, articulated ardently to me, speaking here in English of
parents emotional ties with children living abroad: For Bengalis,
out of sight is not out of mind! Out of sight is very much in mind!
Nonetheless, the myriad processes of forging ahead late in life apart
from children, end up entailing the cultivation of a profoundly new
and much more individualistic way of being.
In America, this and other narratives tell that much of what elders
imagine they would have received from their children, in terms of
both material and emotional support, gets displaced onto individual
selves (e.g., preparing ones own tea) and the state. True, most adult
children in Indian American families do provide a substantial degree
of material and social support for the elderly parents they bring over
from India. Of the thirty-two immigrant seniors I have researched
most closely, for instance, twenty-one (or about two-thirds) live in
the homes of their adult children, where they are provided shelter
and food (or at least food supplies), and generally some spending
money. Those who do not live with their children tend at least to
receive quite a lot of material support from them, such as money
92 Sarah Lamb
deposited regularly in a bank account, the gift of a car, medical expenses paid, and air tickets to and from India purchased. Children
further almost always provide forms of social supportescorting their
parents to doctors appointments, cooking at least occasional meals,
and taking them on weekend excursions to Indian friends homes,
Hindu temples or restaurants.
However, seniors end up taking on things like cooking, scrounging for leftovers in the refrigerator, making their own cups of tea,
vacuuming. All this can be particularly difficult, especially for senior
men. And, of course, not only are children short of time and unavailable, but there are no servants in America.
Further, the U.S. government ends up taking over much of the
responsibility of providing material and social support for these senior
immigrantsin the form of Supplemental Security Income (SSI)aged welfare benefits,9 Medicare (health care for the aged), statesubsidized senior apartments (which some move into), senior bus
passes and escort services, discounted lunches and gatherings at senior
centers, and the likeresulting in a whole new configuration of the
social-moral relationship between old people, families, and the state.
At first many find perplexing American expectations that the state,
rather than the family, will support the elderly. Vitalbhai Gujar, a
Gujarati immigrant in his seventies who had come to the U.S. about
ten years earlier to join his only son and daughter-in-law, queried,
Why is [the government] defining me as indigent [and thus eligible
for welfare?], when I live in my sons home? Gujar went on, though:
If the American government defines things this way, and if we are
living in America, then why not accept? He, in fact, did receive aged
welfare benefits monthly, which he used mainly for pocket money.
Still, he maintained some misgivings:
Have you heard of the buro ashram? old age home? Seniors from India
are using the U.S. government like an old age home. They come here,
and the U.S. government takes care of all medical expenses, food. [I asked,
Do you think thats wrong?] Yes! And its bad for families, too. My son
is not taking on his responsibility of caring for me! And then their children
are not learning from themthey think just that the government should
do it. Theyre forgetting the Indian system.
Older Indians also tend to find the American suburbs where their
children live to be terribly quiet and empty, lacking all the thronging
94 Sarah Lamb
Reflections
So, what do people make of these new modes of agingthis shifting
of aging from the realm of the family to institutions and independent
selves? This is a topic that is prominent in the public dialog among
cosmopolitan Indians right now. Everyone has something to say on
the subject, and the Sunday papers and magazines are filled with editorials, stories, and poems about old age homes, and the plight of
elderly parents with NRI or otherwise absent kids. No one uniform
picture emerges; one witnesses in this complex, richly layered dialog
the highly ambivalent, multivocal project of working out a meaningful
modernity.
Indian gerontologists frequently advocate in recent writings such a
development of individual self-sufficiency and institutional (nonfamily) means of elder support, often presenting traditional familycentered modes of aging as backward. The recent book Indias
Elderly: Burden or Challenge? recommends, for instance, that the Indian
government should support old age homes and pension plans, and
that aging individuals should cultivate a dependence on the self
through savings, exercise, and an open-mindedness about living in
old age homesas one can no longer count on (and should no longer
count on, if one is modern and educated) children in old age. Gerontologist Shovana Narayana comments: The self-sufficiency of the
elderly is a very healthy trend.... The problem lies in the rural mindset
where people consider their children as a support system for their old
age (in Gupta, 2001, italics added).
Media representations, though, tend to be less sanguine, portraying
todays modern Indian elders as pathetic victims, powerlessly trapped
in old age homes and isolated apartments as if in jail, their stories
peppered with what sound like urban legends. For example, one newspaper article reads: The old couple is even forced [by their children]
to go without food, unless they do odd jobs in the house (Ghosh,
1999). Or another: Delhis seniors have come to dread their own
children, who in their greed for money and ancestral property are
terrorizing their aged parents (Shakeel, 1999). One common story
line is that of old persons suicide due to loneliness, such as this
one titled Death from loneliness at 80. One mans only sonan
Indian Institute of Technology graduatehas settled in the United
States. The old father jumped off the landing between the 8th and
9th floors, ending a solitary existence.... Neighbors said the loneliness
was probably too much for the octogenarian to bear, a condition not
uncommon in a city from which the young who will take care of the
old are increasingly [going abroad for better] opportunities (The
Telegraph, 2003).
Another, from a cover story for The Hindu Sunday magazine titled
Homes of the Future?, reads:
Shunned by those whom they breastfed, whose midnight tantrums they
endured, whose mess they cleaned without ever covering the nose with
eau de cologne-swabbed towel, whom they perched on their shoulders
and with whom they played and sang, ... the ignored aged have no choice
now but to exist in the cages of old age homes. The decision of their children or kin to dump them in an old age home is replayed again and again
in their head, like a squealing track on a damaged disk.... The homes
across the nation, where the aged are dumped, are often worse than a sty
where overcrowding and grunts are common (Ghosh, 1998).
We are confronted here with chaos, disarray, a terrible failed reciprocity, a sinking into an amoral animalistic stateone that implicates
not only the family but the nation as a whole.
A few positive media representations of contemporary old age can
nonetheless be found. In a special issue of the magazine Sananda, for
instance, an article on old age homes, briddhashram, opens cheerfully:
Does your son or daughter live abroad? Does your son live separately after marriage or is he forced to stay separately under pressure
of employment? Hence do you feel yourself lonely? Just forget
about this thought. Homes for the aged are senior citizen friendly
(Bandyopadhyay and Hajari, 2003: 44).
Most of the directors and founders of aging institutions whom I
have had contact with likewise present their projects with pride and a
sense of altruism. They see themselves as stepping in to serve the
elderly (when others do not), and/or as helping to bring Indian society
to a practical, realistic, modern planewhere there are other options besides family (which often no longer really works best, they
argue) as a site for aging.
In making such arguments, most proprietors speak respectfully and
very often affectionately of the elders they serve. I came across, however, one highly disgruntled director of an old age home nestled in a
peripheral suburban village region outside Kolkatawho seemed
96 Sarah Lamb
terribly annoyed by his job, and who poured forth a diatribe against
the irritating seniors of his home (while continually ordering more
cups of tea for us both, so enjoying the opportunity finally to have an
interested, listening ear for his complaints). To this director, Dr Roy,
true, old age homes are a valuable tool or solution in modern society.
But, this is not because modern children are flawed. It is because
Bengali society has finally come to a more enlightened place where
elder respect is no longer compulsory when the elders are not deserving of respect. Why old age homes now? he responded to my
query. Because before, no matter how much quarreling and inconvenience ( jhogra, asubiddha) there was at home, the kids could not
kick their parents out. He told a story of one mother who had three
sons. She told everyone, Oh, my sons are all bad, and thats why I
have to come to the home. Now, the director said, One son could
be bad; maybe two sons could be bad; but how could three sons be
bad? So, who is badtell me?... These old people are so irritating (eto
biraktakar, na?); you wouldnt be able to understand! These days old
age homes are necessary, he went on, because if we didnt have
them, where else could they [the old people] go? Theres nowhere
else.... We have to put up with them, but the families no longer do.
On their part, some seniors do deplore such contemporary modes
of aging. Many in old age homes speak nostalgically of missing their
kin terribly, and tell of how in earlier times old people always lived
and died right with their families. Ranjan Banerjee, a retired psychiatrist living in one of the more exclusive Kolkata old age homes, reflected thoughtfully about how old age homes are not at all only about
a new form of aging, but also about much broaderregrettable
social, cultural and national transformations. He told me:
Old age homes are not a concept of our country. These days, we are
throwing away our culture. The U.S. is the richest nation in the world and
therefore has won us over. Now we, too, are only after material wealth as
a nation and have become very unhappy. Some are here [in the old age
home] because their families dumped them here, and there are others
whose children are living abroad and can easily afford the money. But
old age homes are not our way of life. My parents died right with us.... I
have a granddaughter and my world revolves around her. I miss her so
much when I dont see her for a few days [he paused, with glistening
eyes]. Here [in the old age home], there is a little hardship regarding food
and all, but thats OK. I have time to read and such. The real hardship
comes from missing loved family, like my granddaughter.... We as a nation
Other elder residents of old age homes and solitary apartments, however, present themselves as quite resourceful and even optimistic in
dealing with modern social changes. My sense is that many would
have liked to have retained much of the past; but since the past is
gone, they work creatively to carve out a new life and mode of aging
in the present. Quite a few living in old age homes were themselves
the ones to decide firmly on their own that they would be moving
inclipping out newspaper advertisements (which some still carefully
save and pull out with pride), making enquiries on their own, and
then moving in (often while their families protested, they almost uniformly feel obliged to saybecause it is painful, and stigmatizing, to
admit that ones family doesnt want one). And then they tell of getting
adjusted to the new way of life, making friends among peers, playing
cards, sewing, chatting as they fall asleep (for those who live dormitory
style), speaking of each other as their new families.
Let them [i.e., ones sons and daughters-in-law] live happily; let
us live happily. Let them live in peace, let us live in peace, is a common
refrain. Small disagreements with co-residents and staff of an old
age home do not hurt nearly as much as those with kin. Contrary to
earlier times when young women entered their in-laws homes as
submissive boumas, this is now the era of the daughter-in-law
with daughters-in-law older and less pliable at marriage, and often
earning their own authority-bestowing incomes. Rather than struggle
with such independent daughters-in-law or live under their rule, many
older women say they find it more comfortable, for both themselves
and their juniors, to live on their own. When Bengalis live together,
there is much jhamela [hassle, trouble], you know, one resident remarked, after she and some of her dormitory-mates had been chatting
in a lightly critical yet not fully revealing manner about their daughtersin-law. Its because of this old age home that we are surviving,
added her roommate.
Those without sons are also often very relieved and delighted to
find an alternative way to live. For instance, Dipti Mitra told me compellingly, with enthusiasm:
98 Sarah Lamb
How am I doing? Ill tell you. I am very happy here. Im very much at
peace; very happy.... You see, I have only daughters, no sons; and, you
know, we cant live with our daughters. If I were with my daughter, in
someone elses house, I couldnt hold my head up high. If I needed
something, I couldnt ask. I would just have to lie in bed and wait. Here,
I can live independently (svadhin-bhabe), and I can ask for whatever I need
with my head held high. I dont have to feel uncomfortable speaking up
and asking for anything. They are here to serve me. And I have
companions here at all times, so I never feel lonely.... I am very happy
here, very happy and at peace.10
success]; and (4) women who live dormitory style [often thriving on
the constant companionship, speaking of each other as like sisters or
childhood girlfriends].
Some elders who praise old age homes or the dividing of the generations into separate apartments acknowledge, as well, that the past
itself was not all as rosy as many people now make it out to be; and
that of course generational tensions existed then, too; and that joint
families used particularly to be difficult for young women and
daughters-in-law, who had subserviently to serve their elders while
foregoing the pursuit of higher education and rewarding work.
Conclusion
We see here that the working out of aging in cosmopolitan India entails not only new ways of thinking about old age per se. It also involves
profound reconfigurations of the proper social-moral relationship
between individuals, genders, families, and the state; and the very
shape and aims of the human life course.
In closing, I would like to suggest that we are witnessing here emerging forms of family and aging that are not tied specifically to India or
diasporic Indians, or to any single national-cultural place (although
regarded by many as originally emanating from the West). Such
forms of aging and family are in significant respects developing globally across the worlds cosmopolitan centers, characterized broadly
by features such as urban and transnational migration, ideologies of
gendered and aged egalitarianism, nuclear families, 24 7 work lives,
individual self-sufficiency, dependence (when necessary) on private
institutions and on the state rather than on kin, and a consumerism
that stresses the pursuit of personal value through commodities and
modern technologies.
Yet, as Indians grapple with such forms of aging, family, gender
and society, they do so in ways that engage intimately both with these
more globally dispersed social forms, and with their own complex
and diverse traditions, lifeways, values, and interpretive lenses. In
their richly multivalent narratives, emerging modes of aging and
family work in some ways as fundamental signs of social degeneracy,
and in others as intrinsic parts of a valuedrational, cosmopolitan,
and, in significant part, uniquely Indianmodernity.
Notes
1. The research on which this article was based was generously supported
by a postdoctoral fellowship in Sociocultural Gerontology at the University of California, San Francisco, a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research
Abroad Fellowship, and by two Mazer Awards and one Norman Fund
Award for Faculty Research at Brandeis University.
2. Fieldwork in the U.S. among Indian Americans took place intensely during
19931995 and when possible (primarily over summers) since that time.
For this current project, fieldwork in India took place over a total of six
months, largely in Kolkata, in 2003, 2004 and 2006. Most conversations
with those in West Bengal, India were in Bengali; translations are my
own. In the U.S., I spoke with most people in English. To protect privacy,
the names used are pseudonyms, except for those in the public eye (such
as directors of major organizations), when they have requested that I use
their real names.
3. For instance, see Wadley (1994, 2002) for discussions of family types in
Karimpur, North India from 1925 through 1998. Over this period, nuclear
families were consistently the largest group (2002: 19).
4. From 20042006, I was able to locate 71 old age homes in the Kolkata
area (visiting 27 of these personally and contacting the others by phone
and letters). HelpAge Indias (soon-to-be-updated) 2002 guide to old age
homes lists 800 across Indias urban centers (HelpAge India 2002; see
also Sawhney 2003).
5. In the Kolkata region, few among the very wealthy are at this point turning
to old age homes, for they have more other options open to them, such as
the financial capacity to maintain their own private homes with plentiful
servants, even in the absence of children. There are just a few old age
homes run by charitable organizations that offer accommodations to the
poor. Some of these receive some partial funding from the Government
of India.
6. From 20032006, I interviewed 90 old-age-home residents in the Kolkata
environs. Of these, 32 had sons and daughters-in-law living right in the
Kolkata region, 27 had no children at all (18 of these had never married),
18 had children all living abroad, 12 had only daughters, and one had
just a single unmarried son. It is significant to note that most Indians feel
it strongly inappropriate to live in a married daughters home (although
such attitudes are changing somewhat due to various factors, probably
the most significant being that more daughters are earning their own
incomes).
7. Classical Hindu texts divide the life course into four major stages: that of
student, householder, forest-dweller and renunciant. During the forestdweller (vanaprastha) and renunciant (sannyasi) life phases, the older person
References
Altman, Dennis. (2001). Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization
of Gay Identities, in John C. Hawley, (ed.), Post-Colonial, Queer: Theoretical
Intersections, pp. 1941. New York: State University of New York Press.
. (2002). Global Sex. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Bandyopadhyay, Kinsuk and Dipanwita Hajari. (2003). Briddha Baba Mayer
Samasya (The Problem of Aging Parents). Sananda, February 1, 3946.
Cohen, Lawrence. (1998). No Aging in India: Alzheimers, the Bad Family, and
Other Modern Things. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ghosh, Deepshikha. (1999). Search for New Horizons after 60. The
Statesman, April 22.
Ghosh, Gautam. (1998). Homes of the Future? The Hindu, October 18.
Gupta, Aparna. (2001). To Light Up that Wrinkled Face. The Asian Age,
October 2.
HelpAge India. (2002). Directory of Old Age Homes in India 2002. (First edition
published in 1995.) New Delhi: HelpAge India.
Lamb, Sarah. (1993). Growing in the Net of Maya: Persons, Gender and Life Processes in a Bengali Society. Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology Department,
University of Chicago.
. (2000). White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North
India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chapter 4
I
Communitarianism in Practice
Tribal/indigenous social life is organized around communitarian
precepts. In order to understand the implications of communitarian
influences one must go back to the earlier term collectivism. The
most common usage of collectivism refers to any political or socioeconomic theory or practice that encourages communal or state
ownership and control of the means of production and distribution.
The collectivist principle, particularly its economic form, relates very
well to the precepts that guide community life in indigenous communities. The principle emphasizes that market relationships are
competitive and also tend to be divisive; they also undermine the communal bonds that are necessary between individuals if they are to
cope with misfortunes to which all are in principle vulnerable. The
indigenous view of welfare matches the communitarian view; that is,
an expression of common values that bind individuals in contrast to
the individualist notions of welfare derived from the theory of citizenship. In other words, claims to welfare resources are simply an extension of the legal and political rights that are consistent with the theory
of citizenship. So the deprivation-alleviating institutions and policies
rest on the individualistic principles of reciprocal obligations attendant
on citizenship. Communitarian principles, on the other hand, have
since the 1960s propagated a vision of a social order that foster intimate communal bonds. It was the communitarian exponent Amitai
Etzioni who linked the rampant moral disorder of western societies
to the excessive freedom given to individuals and the moral decline
of the family. Broadly, communitarian principles favor a social order
in which the community defines the social order or the common good
and persuades its members to act towards it (Etzioni, 1998).
Indigenous communities in India, in this case the Nagas, have embedded in them the principles defined above. The governing idea is
that human beings are by nature social beings. Human persons in
society, made up of strangers with a common interest, are different
from human persons in community, which is made up of persons
related through a common life. Diversity may exist among the community but unity or a feeling of oneness prevails in the long run.
M. Rongsen, defining the tribal attributes in general, rightly says that
the tribal members are a well-knit unit with strong social cohesion,
holding fast to the values of their community and solidarity and are
capable of strong corporate actions (Rongsen, 1999: 36).
Shimray defines the communitarian context of the Nagas further:
Naga individuals know no other life except that of community life.
They work in groups, eat in groups, and sleep in groups. There is neither
individual house nor building, no individual cultivation or harvest, nor
feast of merit, by individual alone all things are done in groups in the
full presence of the community. The individual has no place apart from
the community. There was no place for idle men in Naga community.
The communist principle, i.e., he/she who does no work, neither shall
he/she eat, is a Naga principle too. All must work and participate in
community work. (1985: 121)
II
Psychosomatic Problems Among
Children, Drugs, Aids and
Political Strife
The regrettable offshoots of the socio-political upheavals in Naga
society have been brought to light lately. Family structure has been
affected in several ways. However, the most severe effects have come
upon the very young, that is, the pre-primary and primary school
children. The effects on the adolescents and young adults, though
severe, are the result of conscious choice, but in the case of the younger
children an unconscious absorption of attributes negating healthy
growth is observable. We discuss the psychosomatic behavioral aberrations in the case of the very young children and conscious drug
abuse in the case of adolescents. Both symptoms are alarmingly on
the rise and has become a cause for concern.
The growth and development of the child in a proper environment
is a major concern to Naga families in the current context. The prolonged political instability resulting from insurgency has deeply
affected family lives. A survey work done among school children of
the Ao tribe shows behavioral disorders afflicting many children. It
is common knowledge that all children display degrees of aggressive
as well as defiant behavior. Yet, the study shows, at least three out of
five Ao Naga children increasingly are showing such behavioral traits.
This might be the result of socio-political instability in the region.
The parents of such children feel that the reasons for such disorders
are environmental, both external and internal; that is, the psychological stress visible among the adults undergoing prolonged sociopolitical strife affects the home and the children in various ways
(Moakala, 1995: 58).
Among the findings are that greater involvement of the family
and to a large extent the church ( since 98 percent of the Nagas are
Christians) might bring stability in the lives of the young. The problem
is quite serious in certain areas, particularly when behavioral deviance
is accompanied by substance abuse. Surveys reveal the vastness of the
problems in setting up the right infrastructure with the church in
the lead and in molding the children in a proper upbringing. The feeling
strongly expressed is that the role of the church in child-development
has a great potential not only for the development of children but
also in contributing to a richer and fuller development of the society
in general.
Teenagers and young adults, on the other hand, are consciously
becoming victims of another menace, drug abuse. Findings from various surveys reveal the shocking truth that boys and girls aged 1225
have increasingly become victims of drug abuse in North-East India.
While the problem is rampant throughout this area, Nagaland till
date seems to have the largest number of addicts. Rough estimates of
on the children and youth, who take to drugs and alcoholism, and
resort to violence as a method of empowerment.
The prolonged state of unrest has created a disposition of depression, sarcasm and gloom that has spread throughout the Naga society,
as people lose confidence and faith in leadership in the political,
ecclesiastical, civic, and bureaucratic arenas.
It is in such a scenario that the women have taken over the attempts
at reconstructing society. Surprisingly, the Naga women who were
traditionally type-cast either as passive victims or as active collaborators in conflict, have revealed greater strength and acumen than
the men in facing the crises afflicting their society, whether in the
religious, administrative or political spheres.
III
Naga Womens Organizations and the
NMA as Extended Familial Set-Ups
After years of intervention in issues that confront their society today,
the women are in the forefront. Over the years, they formed associations
to voice concerns and to mobilise their community. The traditional
intervention of Naga women in cases of inter-tribal violence gradually
evolved into social activism manifest in the Naga Mothers Association
(NMA), which was formed in 1984. NMAs major contribution has
been in keeping open the channels of communication between warring factions and across communities, in defusing tensions and in
paving the way for reconciliation. Taking up issues such as alcohol
and drug abuse, NMA initiated campaigns for peace and opposition
to violence, and intervened between the Armed Forces and the militants.
While these women also aspire for Naga nationalism, along with the
men, they look for alternate methods of negotiation that would not
involve bloodshed and societal misery. Womens innovative campaigns
have gradually found acceptability and has become indispensable in
Naga civil society, especially after the ceasefire of 1997.
The Naga women have used the language (or concept) of motherhood to acquire the status necessary for intervention. This method
has its strengths since it evokes emotions linked to life and birth, and
IV
Naga Women and the Family,
Traditional and Modern
As is apparent from the above, Naga women play crucial roles in
reconstructing the social system on the basis of human values and
participation. We need to understand the passion behind these
womens interventions in the society. This passion and commitment
is that of the mother confronting disarray in her family.
Naga society traditionally has followed a patriarchal system and
the father is the acknowledged head of the household. However, the
mother has no lesser role to play in the family. In fact, the Naga social
ethos is always based on community participation irrespective of
gender and the traditional tribal notions of equality prevail. Even
though the Naga mother occupies an important place in the society,
the traditional culture and customs expect women to be obedient
and humble and to perform the role of wife, mother, child bearer,
food producer and household manager. The children are their sole
responsibility. They have also to provide care to the sick, cook, store
food, and look after the domestic cattle. Weaving and knitting of
Naga traditional clothes are one of their important activities. Besides
all this, they have to earn. The young girls usually work collectively
in cloth workers guilds. In the olden days Illiki (Morung or
Dormitory) was the place where such weaving knowledge and skills
were imparted to each and every individual. Such spirit of collectiveness helped to develop new skills essential to face future life.
The mothers role and their contributions in society are oriented
towards sustenance. This is because the mothers association with
the social ethos begins in the family. Through her maintenance of the
family, the Naga society believes it can sustain its customs and values.
Through the mother of the household the children imbibe the social
etiquette and moral conduct of the society, which keeps it in continuity. Her life, however, remains a juggling act as she tries to fit in a
range of tasks and responsibilities in the changing scenario.
Under the impact of Christianity, penetration of education, and
urbanization, considerable changes have occurred, yet traditional
norms prevail in the family. For instance, in the bygone days intervillage head hunting expeditions were very common. When men
departed to wage wars, women took the responsibility of giving provision and supplies to the warriors. The successful warriors who were
able to bring back the enemys head earned honor and received high
social status in the village. Even though this honor was an exclusive
male preserve, yet women had their own share of honor, acting as
peace-makers. During the head hunting days, the women played a
vital role in saving the lives of their men. They acted as ambassadors
who would volunteer to act as a mediator between the warring villages. These women enjoyed full diplomatic immunity. Nobody could
lay hands on them. They were called the peace-makers, the torch
bearers of peace, of the Naga inter-village head hunting wars. They
boldly entered the battlefields, intervened, and stopped the fight between two warring villages. The contemporary womens role and intervention in conflict resolution is a continuation of this traditional role.
Among most of the Nagas, marriage occurs by mutual consent of
the boy and the girl after they reach adulthood. The newly wed couple
is helped by the boys family to settle down, the father gives the son
his share of inheritance, and this is how from the very beginning of
their life a couple lives independently. The husband is the head of
commonly held, in which each male member has his share; customarily, there is prohibition on selling this land. However, each individual
also has his own earned land, which he can sell or purchase. In
this exchange the male is expected to consult his wife. Although the
wife is traditionally debarred from being a member of the putu menden
(village council), yet, for any important issue where the husband
has to make a public statement in the putu menden, the wife is always
behind the husband to help mold his public stance so that the decisions
are ultimately in favor of the Naga people as a whole and not the
family alone. The vital role played by the women behind successful
men is more than ever exemplified in Naga society (Mehrotra, 1992).
Men are totally dependent on their womenfolk for the household
work but for fieldwork the wife works alongside her husband, and in
their journeys to and from the field, she walks in front of the man as
this ensures her safety. Women enjoy certain unique privileges and
rights in Naga society. For instance, one of the privileges accorded to
a woman is the right to retain her own title after marriage; this means
that her fathers title can be used even after the marriage. This is one
of the distinct characteristics of the culture prevalent especially among
the Ao Nagas (Talitemjen and Lanunungsang , 2005: 217).
Women were given equal opportunity for basic non-formal education; they were particularly trained in the arts and culture as well
as in history. Except for certain sacred rites and rituals performed by
priests alone, womens full participation was essential in all public
functions. During the rendering of traditional songs and dances
womens presence was indispensable (p. 218). For instance, the traditional tug-of-war held by the Ao Nagas during the Moats festival
(festival of thanksgiving and prayers for a bountiful harvest) even
today is impossible without womens participation. No responsive
song between men and women can be sung without women, since
men cannot play the roles of women. Only a woman responding to
her counterpart can sing the Ao love songs. Moreover, women folk
normally initiate the farm songs and the men folk follow them. The
institutions like Tski (womens dormitory) and Elangtsr are absolutely meant for women and the men folk have no role in them.
Besides these, there are other organizations meant exclusively for
women, such as the Wats Rogo Mungdang, and the Ao Baptist Tetsr
Mungdang (ibid.: 222).
These details emphasize the specific womens role in Naga familial
set-up. Motherhood becomes an essential duty, and more value is
Notes
1. The 16 major tribes in Nagaland today are: Angami, Ao, Chakhesang,
Chang, Khiamniungan, Kachari, Konyak, Kuki, Lotha, Phom, Pochury,
Rengma, Sangtam, Sumi, Yimchungru and Zeliang.
2. Warnings were issued at first, but if the offenders persisted in drug abuse,
their ears were pierced and a lock hung from the same as an earring.
These were unlocked in the presence of others within church premises.
References
Angami, Neichu. (1994). Flame of Love, in The Scribe, March.
Basu Mallick, Sanjay. (1991). The Integrity of the Variegated Creation: A
Tribal Point of View, in Religion and Society, Vol. XXXVI.
Etzioni, Amitai. (1998). The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a
Democratic Society. New York: Basic Books.
Hnuni, R.L. (1997). Vision for Women in North East India, in Journal of
Tribal Studies, Vol. I, No. 1, December.
Jamir, Limatila. (1995). A Christian Response to the Problem of Drug Abuse among
the Ao Naga Youth: A Study in Social Analysis. Kolkata: Bishops College.
Madan, Gurmukh Ram. (1966). Indian Social Problems: Social Disorganization
and Reconstruction. New Delhi: Allied India.
Moakala. (1995). The Role of the Church in Child Development Among the Ao
Tribes of Nagaland. Kolkata: Bishops College.
Mehrotra, Nilika. (1992). Angami Naga Women: Some Reflections on Their
Status, in Subhadra Mitra Channa (ed.), Nagaland: A Contemporary Ethnography. New Delhi: Cosmo.
Nagaland State Aids Control Society. (2004). Surveillance Report, August.
NMA. (1992). Naga Mothers Association, pamphlet.
. (1994) August 24, NMA Circular, to all Mothers/Women Leaders.
. (1998). 6th General Assembly, September 1516, Dimapur, Nagaland.
PART 3
LITERARY
REPRESENTATIONS
Chapter 5
in relation to her male relatives: first her father, then her husband,
and finally her sons. Manu groups women with Shudras (lower castes),
to whom education was denied. Women as wives were not allowed
access to education and fine arts. They were only to be slaves to men,
and had the sole purpose of procreation and catering to the needs of
the husband and his family. Sudhir Kakar in Feminine Identity discusses this prevalent idea of wifehood or Sati Sabitri Parampara or the
patibrata image as he writes that the notion of a good wife was closely
bound up with the concept of a good woman. He explains by
quoting Manu:
Though destitute of virtue or seeking pleasure elsewhere or devoid of
good qualities, yet a husband be constantly worshipped as a god by a
faithful wife and by violating her duty towards her husband, a wife is
disgraced in this world, after death she enters the womb of a jackal and is
tormented by the punishment of her sin (Kakar, 1988: 62).
Such law texts and social texts like the Grihashutras along with the
scriptures in the Atharva Veda (c. 600 BC), the Brahmanas (c. 1500
1300 BC) and the Upanishads (c. 13001000 BC) begin to view women
as the inferior gender whose only true value lay in being vehicles fit
for bearing sons. It is from this time onwards that women were beginning to be considered generally impure and hence were debarred from
all religious activities. From the male gaze, women continued to be
romanticized as a submissive Sita or an exploited Draupadi to
fit into the patibrata image in society. The resistance to the laws and
patriarchal dominance has been voiced through religious movements
like the Buddhism, Jainism and Bhakti movements. In literature such
resistance to patriarchal control has been manifest in the songs and
poems sung by women in the early ages.1 But the revolt against the
power structures was not commensurate with the repressive pressures
and women continued to be exploited through child marriage, Sati,
widowhood and Devdasi.
With British colonization in India gradually taking its firm foothold
in the eighteenth century, the socio-economic structure of the country
suffered a severe setback. The Permanent Settlement Act of 1793
empowered the zamindars, who were initially tax collectors, with
the right to evict the peasants for not paying revenues. This led to
rapid evictions of peasants, who were unable to pay taxes and were
compelled to accede to the sexploitation of women of their household
Women in Family
A family could be patriarchal, matriarchal and egalitarian. While the
former two categories could be the case for joint families or households, egalitarianism is a possibility in nuclear families or among the
members of the joint family sharing common interests and status
under a common leadership. The point of view of some Western
scholars like Louis Wirth (1938) has been that joint families in India
have retarded the countrys economic growth. And with rapid urbanization the joint family households have paved way for nuclear
families. As T.N. Madan argues, the structural fallacy that nuclear
families promote modernization and joint families backwardness is
typically a Westerners short-sightedness (Madan, 1993: 41718). The
nature of changes in Indian family structures could be due to a host
Saturday is the day when Pitus father comes from the town to spend
the weekend with his family. The smoke from the kitchen roof indicates the preparation to receive the bread-earner. The food ingredients
are stocked and stored throughout the week for the days festivity.
The family, which consists of the widowed mother, wife and daughter
Pitu, does everything possible to cheer up the atmosphere, notwithstanding their poverty. They attempt to reassure Pankaj that what he
provides for the family meets their requirements perfectly. Pankaj too
lies to them about his well-being in the town in order to appease their
anxiety about him. The child is puzzled in this adult game of happy
lies. So she puts a question to her father, Baba, are you a poor man?
In spite of Pankajs strained endeavors to maintain a clean shirt and
trousers and to hide his worn out boots in a dark corner, he is not able
to fool his daughters eyes. So he is compelled to take resort to lies
again, which the child finds difficult to believe.
You ask me about my torn shoes? Where is the time to get a new pair? Do
I have time to visit shops? Every Sunday, I am with you. The Saturdays
Sundays are spent here and rest of the week in the office. When to buy?
Though the fact is, I always have money on me with the intentions of
getting a new pair.
As the family gather close together in the evening, their faces are lit
up with a strange sense of joy and peace. Pitu looks from her father
to mother to fathom the mystery of such happiness. Her mother
assures her that her father is not a poor man. He is a Samrat. Pitus
friends taunts about their poverty and her mother having no gold on
her body seem to be washed away by a sudden rush of emotions
which sweep over her. She tries to grasp and treasure the beauty of
the moment with her child-mind.
As the earliest comprehensive analysis of marital adjustment by
Burgess and Cotrell revealed (Burgess, 1979), good adjustment between
the couples depended on social background and personality factors.
In spite of the economic constraints, the family behavior reveals their
mutual respect and sensitive understanding of their predicament. The
economic condition may trouble Pitu and create awareness about
her parents and their sacrifice, but it does not make her insecure in the
affection she receives from her parents or in their affection for one
another. The cultural background of the family is evident from their
sensitive dealings with their economic problems and it promises for
Pitu a better understanding and handling of her future. Poverty usually
tears families apart and destroys the emotive capacity in the couples
for responding to one another with finer feelings. The reader of Pautraboron and Stanodayini will immediately understand the cultural
difference between the two households. Pankajs family may be poor,
but it has a cultural background and has been able to retain its values
in the face of adverse times. In Mahasweta Devis story, the values
are subject to convenience. So Kangalicharan can happily thrive on
Jashodas profession and yet be suspicious about his wifes attentions
to Nabin. Class distinctions, in the case of these two stories, are not
merely based on economic conditions and caste differences. The difference depends on the more complicated processes involved in the evolution
of a culture and in determining the family and social behavior.
A song from Tagore, gives words to this emotion: Dolao amar hriday,
tomar aapan hater dole. This subtle touch by the writer, where the
classical tunes weave into words from a Rabindrasangeet based on
malhar moods, beautifully depicts Apalas fine musical sensibility
which shapes her personality and her sensitive being. Unlike, Sunanda,
in the writers shorter fiction Ashon, Apala has no musician father
who is unable to find an adequate suitor for his sensitive daughter.
Apala is married off like another woman to a respectable middleclass family. Her husband appreciates her music, but is unable to reach
her soul. Apala is a dutiful wife, mothers children and abides by all
the norms of family respectability without grudge. She loses her
scholarship to Soham, her childhood friend, as she cannot avail of it
because of her marriage to Shibnath at a crucial juncture in her career.
No one in her own family, including her Jethamoshai or her brother,
understands how much that scholarship must have meant to her. But
the society allocates different status to men and women. So Soham
avails of the scholarship with much guilt and pain, for he is Apalas
friend and perhaps her soul mate in music. Apala, who is definitely
not a feminist by any standards, does not think twice about coming
to Sohams aid in times of his acute psychological and economic
crisis, right before her marriage. The norms of the middle class respectability do not in this context create confusion in her mind, for her
relationship with Soham is above such considerations. She cures
Soham of his mental illness through her music and her understanding.
Her marriage does not trouble Soham, for he is certain that Shibnath
will never know Apala as he can. Mere chemistry is not the binding
factor for these two personalities. For when Soham mistakes Apala
for Mitul, the woman who attracted him much, in one of his frenzied
moments, Apala can discern that it is the body which he has mistaken,
not her surely. Soham too rationalizes later:
He has never seen Apu differently as a woman. Apu is his most precious,
his closest friend. This is about Apu, the person. But her music unsettles
him somewhere. If he cannot contribute his music to Apus he suffers
from the torment of eternal separation from her.
make her mad and she feels like a murderer harming her own offspring
in his vulnerability. The story is steeped in Indian cultural tradition.
The wife by willfully getting herself wet flouts the norms of respectability. The husband cannot or does not attempt to understand her
action on a humanitarian plane. He can only see her as a woman, his
wife and his possession, which he can command, insult and treat her
as he wants to.
Among Indian English fictions there are quite a few instances of
Susan Gubars mad women in the attic, like, Maya in Anita Desais
Cry, the Peacock (1963). The story explores the deranged consciousness
of a wife in her loneliness. In Desais Voices in the City (1965), Monisha,
the wife, chooses suicide in her isolation, unable to cope with her
situation. In her third novel, where the husband in not as authoritarian
as in Mazha, the wife still suffers from emotional incompatibility. But
instead of choosing suicide or madness, like in Desais earlier two
fictions, Sita, in Where Shall we go this Summer? (1975) tries to come to
terms with life. One could contrast Shashi Deshpandes The Dark Holds
No Terrors (1980) or The Binding Vine (1993) with Desais women characters to point out that Desais women are actually a generation behind
and that times have changed. Sarita in Deshpandes The Dark Holds
No Terrors is a career woman who has the courage to fight the mental
battle to secure her own identity and space beyond the constraints of
a painfully oppressive marital relationship. The other novel, The
Binding Vine, takes up the issue of marital rape and rape otherwise to
highlight womens torture and sexual exploitation in the interior space
as well as in the outer space. The physical torture leaves a gaping psychic wound that could be healed with womens understanding of
womens miseries. The women in Deshpandes novels hence do not
succumb to patriarchal tortures, rather they have the capacity to analyze the nature of their pain to come to a decision about their lives
and they emerge as survivors with the will to reinvent their lives.
The stories in The Intrusion and Other Stories (1993) include certain
painful moments in a womans life demanding instant decisions. The
Intrusion is about a newly wed womans first sexual experience with
her husband, who abuses her in her sleep, thus causing eternal rupture
in their relationship. The private space of the womans body and the
mind are intruded upon, which could have been willingly shared with
love and understanding. An Anecdote to Boredom reveals the crushing
impact of routine life, where the husband and the wife relationship
becomes a mere habit with each another. The monotony makes the
wife look for appreciation as a person and as a woman from another
Ram when she is asked to go through the agnipariksha for the second
time to prove her chastity. For instance, when Lakshman comes to
her with Rams message, she conveys her rejection of her husband in
the following words: Tell the King on my behalf, that even after
finding me pure after the fire ordeal he had in your presence, now
you have chosen to leave me because of public slander. Do you think
it is befitting the noble family in which you were born? (Kalidasa,
Raghuvansha: 1416). Sita in this address raises two pertinent questions about RamRam as the King and Ram as her husband. He has
failed to protect the family honor by making Sita an object for public
consideration and he has failed in Sitas image of him as her husband.
However, the popular imagination does not consider these subtle implications incipient in Sitas rejection. It is happy to hail Sita for dignified
rejection and does not consider her act as that of self-annihilation in
shame and acute frustration. The society condemns Ram for his insensitivity, but continues to slander its women in private and in public
spheres of life. It is this social hypocrisy which needs to be unveiled,
explored and corrected with better understanding of gender relationships within married couples and among members in the family. The
living identities, signifying the cultural codes or values that one is born
into and the acquired ones, with experiences though interactions or
marriage, have resulted in multi-layered identities in the game of role
playing in life. If it is important for the Indian woman to understand
her roles in family and society, it is equally important for the men too
to understand their roles in homemaking and in society. The struggle
for the Indian woman is to balance the desire for self-expression with
the roles at home and to embrace all aspects of womanhood. For
emancipation, the Indian woman does not have to look to the West
for its solutions. Solutions lie in analyzing the cultural constructs and
in humanizing the Devis that the Hindus worship while they torture
their women either by the social customs of dowry, bride burning,
etc., or by oppressing them mentally with the assumption of a husbands right to dominate over his wifes body and mind. Modernization is a complex process, which depends on socio-economic and
psychic factors inter-dependent on one another. Just as there were
Satis, there were also Kumaris and Kanyas in ancient Hindu society.
Kumaris were unmarried women who were different from the viragos
in the Western society. Kanyas were swasthas, which means whole,
self-illuminated or independent. With the passage of time these two
categories were absolutely done away with and the sati tradition prevailed which directly undercut the merging of the masculinefeminine
Sunder Rajan goes on to elaborate that in the epic, Draupadis vulnerability lay in her compulsive polyandry. But the popular culture
ignored this often and pointed to her habitual pride, mockery and
assertiveness for which she is blameworthy and is subject to a chastening ordeal. Just as Sunder Rajan condemns this social attitude
in the essay, she is also unable to sympathize with the women organizations or feminists who following the myth of the female goddess (Kali, for example) as avengers, establish the wrong of womens
violation and institutes justice in an unjust world. She is in favor of
the structural understanding of violence and possibilities of collective protest within the framework of law, civil society, and a radical
interrogation of social responsibility for violence against women.
Legal and civil measures like marriage and reformative acts, dowry
boycotts, coownership rights by wives, and the analysis of Roop
Kanwars case relating to bride burning, are desirable and necessary
actions within the governmental framework. But the social psychology
that is so ingrained in the prevailing ideology about women for generations cannot be forced into transformation overnight by legal and
civil measures. The change has to come from within and herein lies
the responsibility of the Indian woman to relocate her identities and
earn for herself respectability in the private as well as the public spheres
of life. Instead of feeding the demands of the persisting popular culture, she has to seek her identity in merging her roles as a mother, wife,
daughter, etc., in the family without subjugation of the self. A frustrated
and a deprived wife cannot contribute much to her family. Such an
understanding of the self and recognition of the same by her family
members can hold the promise of a harmonious family structure and
a balanced community living in the future.
Notes
Acknowledgement: For Mahasweta Devis story, I have relied on Gayatri
Chakravortys translation of Breast Stories (Calcutta: Seagull, 1998). Ashapurna
Devis story Pautraboron is from the collection Shera Lekhikar Shera Galpo, edited
by Bani Basu and Arun Mukhopadhyay, (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh Publishers, 2001). The quotes from the above text and from Bani Basus Gandharbi
(Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1993) are my translations from the original texts.
1. The songs of the theris and women weavers in the medieval ages and
later the women singers in the Bhakti movements. See Susie Tharu and
K. Lalitha, (ed.). Women Writing in India, Vol. 1, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
2. Gerald Leslie and Sheila K. Korman in The Family in Social Context, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989) defines the family of orientation as
that a nuclear family composed of the self, siblings and parents. The family
of procreation is the family composed of the in-laws, spouse and children.
The two families often intersect for socio-economic reasons. In Mahasweta
Devis story, the Halder household as a joint family contains many families
of Orientation and Procreation.
References
Basu, Bani. (1993). Gandharbi. Calcutta: Ananda Publishers.
Basu Bani and Arun Mukhopadhyay (ed.). (2001). Shera Lekhikar Shera Galpo.
Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh Publishers.
Beteille, Andre. (1993). The Family and the Reproduction of Inequality,
in Patricia Uberoi (ed.) Family, Kinship And Marriage in India, pp. 43551.
Burgess, Robert L. and Ted L. Huston. (1979). Social Exchange in Developing
Relationships. New York: Academic Press.
Chakravarti, Uma. (1981). Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi? in
Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essay in
Colonial History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Chakravorty, Gayatri (trans). (1998). Breast Stories. Calcutta: Seagull.
Kakar, Sudhir. (1988). Feminine Identity in India, in Rehana Ghadially
(ed.), Women in Indian Society: A Reader, p. 62. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Kalidasa, Raghuvansha, pp. 1416.
Kapadia, K.M. (1955). Marriage and Family in India. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Komter, A. (1989). Hidden Power in Marriage, in Gender and Society, 3(2):
187216.
Leslie, Gerald and Sheila K. Korman. (1989). The Family in Social Context.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Madan, T.N. (1993). The Hindu Family and Development, in Patricia
Uberoi (ed.), Family, Kinship And Marriage in India, p. 416. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Nandy, Ashis. (1998). Woman versus Womanliness in India, in Exiled At
Home, p. 42. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
RoyChoudhuri, Subir and Abhijit Sen (eds). (2001). Jyotirmoy Debir Rachana
Sankolon, Vol. 1, pp. 26163. Calcutta: Deys Publication.
Saraswati, Dayananda. (1915). Satyarth Prakash, trans. by Chiranjan
Bharadvaja, p. 32. Agra: Arya Pratinidhi Shabha.
Sen, Amartya. (1993). Economics and Family, in Patricia Uberoi (ed.),
Family, Kinship And Marriage in India, p. 452. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sunder Rajan, Rajeshwari (ed.). (1999). The Story of Draupadis Disrobing:
Meanings for Our Times, in Signposts. Gender Issues in Post-Independence
India, pp. 34546. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalitha (eds). (1997). Women Writing in India, Vol. 1.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Thomas, P. (1964). Indian Women Through the Ages, p. 20. Bombay: Asia
Publishing House.
Uberoi, Patricia. (1999). Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Wirth, Louis. Urbanism as a Way of Life, American Journal of Sociology,
44 (10).
Chapter 6
Imagined Family
Pangs of Transition
Esha Dey
sons, appreciation from parents-in-law, and so on. There were also verse
tales with moralsusually showing how to be a good homemaker
but preserved in Lakkhir Panchali (or a narrative song dedicated to
the goddess of wealth). These compositions orally transmitted through
generations immortalize the social mores of a time bygone but still
going on. This traditional pattern is holistically maintained in the major
corpus of medieval literature (Mangal Kavyas), all written by men.
Our first major woman writer Chandrabati laid the foundation of
womans writing in Bengali with its typical featurean awareness of
contemporary reality outside the four walls. In the ballad Sundari
Malua she depicts the plight of a family originating in the arbitrary
land revenue system of the Muslim rule, which facilitated the sexual
tyranny of the Muslim officials, who could and did send the wife of
the defaulter to a special prison. The Hindu patriarchy, far from defending the hapless victim, more than matched the Muslim oppression
by enforcing a sadistic codethe stained woman must be banished.
In the background of the sixteenth century, it is remarkable that
Chandrabatis village women, including Maluas mother-in-law, stand
by her in her days of sufferinga fact all the more poignant because
she has to die in any case. There is no deus ex machina at the climax,
no happy endingwhich we always find in contemporary Mangal
Kavyas by men. Maluas husband incidentally remains throughout a
mute spectator of his wifes suffering, conspicuous in his passivity.
Family has already taken a deadly beating; man can no longer be the
protector nor the provider. It appears as though with the political and
the military defeat of the Hindus, family starts losing the balance between the respective spheres of man and woman and their individual
apportioned duties and rights.
For the woman writer today the recognizable succession starts with
Swarnakumari Devi, whose fiction covered a large stretch of space
and time and in which men and women through interaction among
themselves and relationship with the world try to establish bonds in
response to the changing external world. Strangely enough, the narrative of the family, where human relations take precedence over the
matters of state and which may shift and change often irrespective
even of the economic reality, was perfected by a male writer Saratchandra. His unique lyrical genius, combined with minute observation
of social manners as well as domestic rituals and broad-based humanism for the victim, both male and female but particularly the latter,
influenced a long succession of writers many of whom were major
elder brothers residing in north Kolkata, a locality at present considered a bastion of orthodoxy, completely disapproves of his affair
with Maitreyi. Alienated from family, Amal all the more clings to
Maitreyi, whose self-sufficiency, command over her environment, and
understanding of his character create in him an aspiration towards a
larger-than-life self-image. The absence of a regular family is compensated in a peculiar yet typical manner. In Bhubaneswar he starts
a Bengali Club as a cultural organization, a practice common with
Bengalis outside Bengal all over the world. Amal becomes the grand
patriarch of an extended family composed of Bengali inhabitants
posted there for temporary periods, all birds of passage. Like a guardian
elder brother he looks after the well being of the members of the club,
finding accommodation for the new arrivals, getting their children
admitted in English medium schools, and keeping their often ambitious and highly-qualified wives suitably occupied. He is everybodys
Amaldaa, acting virtually as the head of a Hindu undivided family.
Yet with Maitreyi, who is practically a wife to him in every way,
he fails in family roles both as a father-figure to her child and as a surrogate son to her parents. He constantly plays the young adolescent
lover trying to dazzle her with a show of powerarranging parties,
picnics, Bengali cultural events like Bijaya Sammilani or Poila Baishakh
and mega functions with Bollywood stars, carefully dovetailed with
Maitreyis weekends and holidays. Gradually he ceases to be her
partner in happiness and sorrow and becomes just her relaxation and
enjoyment. His deep sense of inadequacy, arising as much from unsatisfactory sex and forced separation as from his difference in class
and caste background, bursts out in occasional defiant acts of onenight-stands, which leave Maitreyi secretly devastated. The complexities of sub nationalist politics in Orissa coupled with his own
unscrupulous rush towards prominence destroy his larger-than-life
existence in Bhubaneswar. Transferred to Mumbai and caught in a
vigilance enquiry, he falls seriously ill. As he is fighting in various
fronts, Maitreyi contracts companionship marriage with an elderly
widower, a member of the governing body of her school who has all
along been a sympathetic friend and a willing guardian to her son.
Bereft of Maitreyi and the Bengali Club, Amal becomes a real orphan
and loses mental balance. At a psychiatric clinic in Kolkata where his
brothers admit him for treatment, a young research worker makes
him narrate his life story and in the process of remembrance realizes
where things have gone wrong. Finally healed and master of himself,
References
Dey, Esha. (1995). The Women Novelists of Bengal (18551905), in R.K. Dhawan
(ed.), Indian Women Novelists, Set III Vol. 7. New Delhi: Prestige.
. (1996). An Authentic Voice: Ashapurna Devi (19041995), Indian
Literature, JanFeb.
. (199697). Pargachha, in Parichay, NovemberJanuary, Calcutta.
. (1997). Soti, Binodini ebong aami (novel). Calcutta Nabapatra Prakashan.
. (1999). Putlir Katha (novel). Kolkata: Proma Prakashani.
. (2002). Thikaanaa (novel). Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh Publishers.
. (2004). Aker Por Ak (novel). Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh Publishers.
. (2004). Grihini, in Hyena (collection of stories). Kolkata: Proma
Prakashani.
. (2004). Ato Tuku Swargo, in Shesh Bangali (collection of stories).
Kolkata: Nabapatra Prakashan.
. (2004). Ekaal, in Shesh Bangali (collection of stories). Kolkata:
Nabapatra Prakashan.
. (2004). Ekjon Bhalo Swamir Jibne Ekti Raat, in Shesh Bangali
(collection of stories). Kolkata: Nabapatra Prakashan.
. (2004). Layla, in Shesh Bangali (collection of stories). Kolkata:
Nabapatra Prakashan.
Tharu S. and K. Lalita (ed.). (1995). Women Writing in India, Vol. I. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Chapter 7
Images of food have functioned in many different and often contradictory ways in literary works, particularly in writing by women. Food
is seen as a cultural signifier that could be a source of empowerment
and control on the one hand and of powerlessness and domination
on the other, of bonding as well as of separation, of a form of resistance to assimilation and at the same time a nostalgic longing for a
lost world; in short it could define ones identity in both positive and
negative, complex and complicated ways. In Jhumpa Lahiris Pulitzer
prize-winning collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies, the
images of purchasing, preparing, serving, and eating food perform in
much the same way as listed above; however, her use of alimentary
imagery becomes further problematized in these stories when seen
At home one had to just raise ones voice a bit, or express grief
or joy of any kind, and one whole neighborhood and half of another
would come to share the news, to help with arrangements (Lahiri,
1999: 116). Granted her image of life back home is uncritical but it
is only an image. However, in the process of remembering she is
inevitably creating what Salman Rushdie calls an Imaginary Homeland, one that is made up of fragments and shards of memory, which
is simultaneously rich with imaginative possibilities. Though Rushdie
uses that phrase in reference to writers, Mrs Sen too is creating her
narrative, not through writing but through the food she prepares,
cooks, serves, and eats. This is a space she can call her own; here she
gains agency and can assert her identity. On an emotional and
psychological level she connects with her maternal ancestors and
her cultural traditions even as she alters, modifies, or adds to their
narrative.
Two things bring Mrs Sen the greatest joy: a letter from India and
fresh whole fish, even though she complains that the fish tastes nothing
like the fish in India. Frustrated at not being able to get fresh whole
fish in the supermarket though she could choose from thirty-two types
of cat food, Mrs Sen finds a fish market on the beach several miles
from her apartment and insists her husband drive her there to pick up
fresh fish. She is most animated and alive in the fish-store, laughing and chatting with the man behind the counter. Once home, she
inspects her treasures as she lovingly stroked the tails, [and]
prodded the bellies (ibid.: 127). Thus, for Mrs Sen, preparing and
cooking food is more than just a daily routine; it becomes a sensual
experience, an emotionally charged activity as eating food is for
some people.
Apart from cooking, Mrs Sen loves feeding others. The first thing
she gives Eliot as he gets off the school bus is a sandwich bag with
peeled wedges of an orange or salted peanuts to munch on their two
minute walk to the apartment. Each evening she insists on serving
Eliots mother something to eat and drink, a glass of bright pink
yogurt with rose syrup, breaded mincemeat with raisins, a bowl of
semolina halvah (ibid.: 118). Eliots mother, who had confessed to
Eliot that she didnt like Mrs Sens food, would take one obligatory
sip or bite, say it was delicious, and get ready to leave. If feeding is
psychologically the locus of love, aggression, pleasure, anxiety,
frustration and desire for control (ibid.), as critic Sarah Sceats suggests, then Eliots mothers rejection of Mrs Sens food is a rejection
Bangladeshi refugees for whose sake she says she is eating candy.
Later when Lilias parents hear from Mr Pirzada that his family had
survived the war and that they are all fine, Lilia throws away the rest
of the candy for now she believes there was no need to eat a candy
for their sake. The connection between eating and emotions has been
well established but Lahiris light touch, particularly in relation to
young Lilias actions, adds another nuance to it. Apart from fulfilling
some sort of emotional vacuum in Lilia, the daily ritual of eating
candy also helps to bring some sort of order to her confused thoughts
about people she does not quite understand.
Jhumpa Lahiris varied use of the culinary metaphor in her stories
understates the fact that the preparation and consumption of food
has multiple and complex meanings. By decoding the discourse of
food, we can begin to understand the way that the politics of food
permeates every aspect of our lives. Critic Sarah Sceats in an article
about women, power, and food asserts, Every meal incorporates
political, cultural, personal, and psychological ingredients (1996:
125). Perhaps we dont need to decipher every meal within those
contexts, but the multifaceted images of food in literature sure give
us plenty to chew on.
References
Brown, Linda Keller and Kay Mussell, (eds). (1984). Introduction in Ethnic
and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Douglas, Mary. (1972). Deciphering a Meal, Daedalus, 101(1): 6181.
Goldman, Anne. (1992). I Yam What I Yam: Cooking, Culture, and Colonialism, in Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (eds), De/Colonizing the Subject:
The Politics of Gender in Womens Autobiography, pp. 16995. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. (1999). Interpreter of Maladies: Stories. New York: Houghton
Mifflin.
Rushdie, Salman. (1991). Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981
1991. London: Granta Books.
Sceats, Sarah. (1996). Eating the Evidence: Women, Power, and Food, in
Sarah Sceats and Gail Cunningham (eds), Image and Power: Women in
Fiction in the Twentieth Century, pp. 11726. New York: Longman.
Visner, Margaret. (1998). Food and Culture: Interconnections, Social
Research, 66(1): 11730.
Chapter 8
Representation of the
Family in Marathi
Autobiography Written
by Dalit Women
Pushpa Bhave
References
Chodorow, Nancy J. (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis
and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley University of California Press.
Gusdorf, Georges. (1980). Conditions and Limits of Autobiography, in
James Olney (ed.), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, p. 39.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Misch, Georg. (1950). History of Autobiography in Antiquity. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Marathi Works
Amarsheikh, Mallika. (1984). Mala Udhvasta Vhaychai. Mumbai: Majestic.
Dalwai, Mehrunissa. Me Bharun Pawle.
Gabit, Najubai. Ador (the first autobiography by a tribal).
Kamble, Baby. Jina Amucha. Pune: Rachana.
Kamble, Shantabai. Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha. Mumbai: Purva.
Chapter 9
Family/Freedom:
The Debate Rages
Gujarati women writers have contested both the control and the
connotations of conformity to societal norms that the term family
conjures. Family is the integral part of a Gujarati womans experience;
it is the primary cultural space available to her. She is not only conditioned to perceive the family as her protective shell, but is also tutored
into being the protector of the unit, thus reinforcing and perpetuating
its traditions, authority, frames and structures. For women, family
thus becomes a site for struggle where they have expectations of security and mutuality yet experience denial, fragmentation, subordination
and consequently, alienation. Interestingly, in Gujarati womens
writings we repeatedly find the untying of the marriage knot, a retracing of the sacred seven steps (Saptapadi), a breakdown of the marriage structure, and consequently, a disintegration of the conventional
family system. Interestingly, the freedom to take boundless steps/
flight in the sky, a symbol that is recurrently encountered in these
writings, comes only after the erasure of the erstwhile family structures. In these writings, the symbolic dissolution of the bondage that
the traditional family represents opens up alternate choices and modes
of life for both women and men. To give voice to their silence and
suppressed desires, they start looking for alternatives as they hope to
live life differently. The women in these writings are striving against
the socially-imposed ideological bondage of subordination: from
darkness they are moving towards light, from confinement to freedom, from alienation to mutuality. In short stories such as Kundanika
Kapadias Nyay, the story of a woman who chooses to walk out of
her marriage as a rebellion against her domineering husband, Sarojini
Mehtas Dukh ke Sukh (Suffering or Happiness) where an ordinary
woman through sheer hard work and grit establishes a hotel business
after her husband deserts her, we find marriages dissolving, families
collapsing and women emerging unscathed. The stories of the heroine
in Kapadias Punaragaman (The Return), or Vasudha/Vyomesh,
Vasanti/Satish in her Saat Paglan Akashman or Makrand/Mamta in
Ila Arab Mehtas Vistaar, all tell the same story of disintegration and
self-construction. In Chaka Chakini Adhunik Bodhkatha (A Modern
or Seven Steps in the Sky (1994), presents the story of Vasudha, who
after 32 years of being an obedient and dutiful wife and an ever sacrificing, ever solicitous mother, dares to challenge her husbands authoritarian attitudes and leaves her sheltered existence, the security of
marriage and family, in search of an individual identity of her own.
She says: I dont want to die fulfilling others expectations. I want to
live a life that satisfies me. I want to live true to myself, to my thoughts
and my feelings. I dont want to be an ideal wife; I want to be a real
woman. (Kapadia 1994: 3). Vasudha rejects the socially sanctioned
security pegged by familial relationships and finds her way to freedom,
growth and self-fulfillment in an alternate way of lifethe life in a
commune, a utopian community based on sharing and respect for
one anothera new extended family as it were, called Anandagram,
literally, the abode of happiness. It is in Anandagram, significantly,
that Vasudha the new woman finally meets her soulmate, her emotional and spiritual counterpart, the new man Adityathe sun, radiating
light and warmth to disperse the dark loneliness that has engulfed
Vasudha; together they dare to dream of a new future in the vast
open spaces in the mighty Himalayas. The note of protest against
womens existing position in society is found in Ila Arab Mehtas
Batris Putlini Vedana (1982). It portrays womens struggle against
injustice done to them and their attempt to establish their own
identities. The protagonist Anuradha, who has just published a novel
about the fascination of a young widow for a man, feels suppressed
by her husband who is offended about the way Anuradha deals with
a tabooed subject. At the end of the novel, Anuradha says neither
Goddess nor Giantess; let us remain as women. Both Saat Paglan
Akashman and Batris Putlini Vedana, though centered on single female
characters, present womens anger against male chauvinism and assert
womens creative identity as they come out from their passive, limited
lives to actively fight for their rights and equality.
joy in flying on ones own wings, these women step out of the
threshold of their homes, leaving behind the comfort and the false
sense of security of the warm nest. Instead of a life of trauma, forced
guilt, rejection and indifference at every level within their own homes,
they choose a life of freedom where they can retain their self-respect
and live as desirous, autonomous, integrated beings in their own right.
Instead of submitting and adhering to the patriarchal dictates that
see women as dutiful homemakers, women like Pratiti destroy their
homesthe cocoons of illusion that have bound them in a guarded,
shielded and confined lifeand emerged as self-conscious, sentient
butterflies, ready for a boundless flight to freedom.
Contemporary women writers in Gujarat are not only projecting
the concept of a new womanmature, confident, and individualistic;
integrated in themselves and whole, who function as individuals
with self-aware, assertive identities, capable of living life on their own
termsbut are also trying to promote the concept of the new man.
In contemporary Gujarati womens writings, men are increasingly
portrayed as alter egos to women. These new men are necessary to
build the concept of a synergistic society that these writers wish
to project. The idea of the new man that emerges from these writings
goes against the traditional portrayal of men either as the all powerful,
brave and strong bread-winning patriarch of the family, or the insensitive, uncaring, chauvinistic egotist. These new men are conceived
as partners to the new women. They are egalitarian, sensitive, understanding and supportive. They leave the insensitive lordly men behind
and become soulmates to their female counterparts as they are
sensitive, understanding, and even with a touch of the feminine. As
equals they become collaborators in the social change. This egalitarian
trend indicates a change in the definition and portrayal of gender
relationships in contemporary Gujarati womens writings in which,
from a relationship of alienation and intransitivity, women and men
journey towards a much better understanding of a mutual relationship.
Men like Sambal in Saroj Pathaks Saugandh, the unknown man
on a wheel chair who gives a new lease of life to Sushi in Varsha Adaljas
Chandrannu Ajwalu, or men in the utopian commune where Vasudha
in Kundanika Kapadias Saat Paglan Akashman, finally reaches selfactualizationSwarup, Gaganendra, Aditya, Agnivesh, Vinod believe
in equal partnership with women. They believe that, as Swarup says
in Saat Paglan Akashman, women have to free themselves from the
bondage of their femininity and men from the bondage of their
References
Amin, Amina. (2001). From Stereotype to Individual: Women in Womens
Short Fiction in Gujarati, in Jain and Singh (eds) Indian Feminisms. New
Delhi: Creative Books.
Amin, Amina and Manju Varma. (2002). Trans.: New Horizons in Womens
Writing: A Selection of Gujarati Short Stories. Gujarat Sahitya Academy,
Gandhinagar.
Dalal, Anila. (2001). Changing Profile of Women in Gujarati Fiction, in
Jain and Singh (eds). Indian Feminisms. New Delhi: Creative Books.
Dasgupta, Sanjukta (ed.). (2003). Families, Vol. 1, No. 2, Feb. Kolkata.
Desai, Neera and Usha Thakkar. (2001). Women in Indian Society. National
Book Trust, New Delhi.
Jhaveri, Manshuklal. (1978). History of Gujarati Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi.
Kapadia, Kundanika. (1994). Seven Steps in the Sky. Trans. Kunjbala and
William Anthony, Navbharat Sahitya Mandir, Ahmedabad.
Meghani, Jhaver Chand. (2003). A Ruby Shattered. Trans. Vinod Meghani,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.
Mehta, Dhirendra Mehta. (1983). Dishantar. Bhavnagar: Prasar.
Tharu and Lalita (ed.). (1993). Women Writing in India, Vol. 2. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Tripathi, Govardhanram. (1994). Saraswatichandra. Trans. Padmasingh
Sharma Kamlesh. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Chapter 10
Bravely Fought the Queen (BFQ; Dattani, 2000), a problem play about
the darkness and iniquity at the core of the Indian joint family, by
Mahesh Dattani has recently been incorporated in the undergraduate
honors syllabus of the University of Calcutta. Teaching the play to a
group of twenty-year-olds in a girls college in Kolkata is in itself an
eye-opener. The play invites group-discussions in an unprecedented
manner generating questions and comments galore about the themes
and symbols used by Dattani to comment on the texture and truth
of Indian upper middle-class life. Not that other plays by time-honored
playwrights commanding pride of place in the university syllabus are
bereft of symbolism. But the immediacy and contemporaneity of the
Indian context and the can of worms Bravely Fought the Queen opens
with respect to the Indian family, is something students spontaneously
respond to. Dattani stimulates student curiosity and observational
skills in a manner Macbeths witches and Loukas cigarette (Bernard
Shaws Arms and the Man) have been unable to do in a long time.
When encouraged to share their experiences of the joint family,
students, at first reticent, soon overcome their shyness, and give
instances from family life (their own and things they have seen and
heard in the neighborhood) which make it amply clear that Dattani
has touched a chord in their hearts.
The joint family system with its undergirding of parental authority
and control has long been the mainstay of the Indian way of life.
Dattani pits the traditional sociological institution against IndianEnglish, a language that is a major component of his drama. The use
of English in Dattanis plays is felicitous, since in almost all his plays
he brings together characters of disparate provincial and linguistic
identities. In Bravely Fought the Queen a South Indian couple is brought
up face to face with a north Indian family. In Dance like a Man the
daughters fianc belongs to a different community and hence communicating in English is natural under the circumstances. In Tara
the brother Chandan leaves India for a foreign destination, and when
he recounts his past, the use of English, a language that has long become his own, is necessary. In all these plays the use of English, cutting
across community and family barriers, with its underlying associations
of a liberal, globalized culture, elicits subversive disclosures about the
hypocrisy and double standards of the Indian family.
Exchanges with my students motivated me to examine core family
issues dealt by Dattani in his plays. My students pointed out to me
how the issues of unjust treatment of the girl child (Tara), parental
opposition and scorn at the choice of an unconventional profession
like dancing by the son of the family (Dance like a Man [Dattani, 2005]),
molestation of a child in the hands of elderly male relatives (Thirty
Days in September [TDS]), closet homosexuality (On a Muggy Night in
Mumbai [OMNM] and Bravely Fought the Queen) and domestic violence,
marital infidelity and closet alcoholism (Bravely Fought the Queen) are
an integral part of Indian metropolitan family life, cutting across provincial and class divides. Dattanis English plays gain a peculiar social relevance in the contemporary Indian context as hypocrisy and
duplicity of the city-bred middle and upper-middle class is the major
theme of his plays. Dattanis language is the language of the upwardly
mobile, culturally flexible Indian who while striving towards a certain social status is yet unable to overcome his bigotry and emotional
blindness with respect to basic behavioral and moral codes of conduct.
What appeals to students is Dattanis sophisticated handling of moral
Baas bed-ridden presence in the upper reaches of the stage is a significant depiction of the devious working of power in a joint-family.
Baas counterparts in other Dattani plays are Shanta, the indifferent
mother of a sexually abused child (Thirty Days in September), and
Roopa (Tara), who deliberately destroys her daughters life in a blind
bid to give undue preference to her son. These women see themselves
Physically Baa is the most decrepit member of the Trivedi family, yet
as a node of financial and negative psychic power she is the most potent
figure dominating the rest of the family. Tara and Chandans mother
Roopa in Dattanis play Tara (2000) is an even more disturbing example
of a woman acting as betrayer of her own sex to facilitate male preeminence in the Indian family. At the end of the play Tara and Chandan
are informed by Patel their father that in their infancy Tara and
Chandan as Siamese twins had three legs among them. The third leg
received its blood supply from Taras body and at the moment of surgery would have benefited Tara if it had been left attached to her torso.
But in a bid to place her son Chandan in an advantageous position in
the male-dominated world, Roopa, accompanied by her influential
politician-father, bribed the highly qualified pediatrician to cut the
leg from Taras torso and graft it on Chandans torso. Patel recounts
the crime committed against his daughter Tara so many years ago:
Patel: I came to know of his [the surgeons] intention of starting a large
nursing homethe largest in Bangalore. He had acquired three acres of
prime landin the heart of the citythe largest in Bangalore. A few
The betrayed Tara withers away and dies realizing that the enemy of
the girl-child does not exist outside but within the parameters of the
joint-family. Taras story, that of flagrant discrimination against
the girl-child, is a paradigm cutting across the class and provincial divide
of the heterogeneous matrix that is India. The findings of a net survey of the male/female ratio of Indian children are disturbing:
An abnormally high death rate of little girls as contrasted to the death
rates of little boys causing a low and declining female/male ratio in a
whole population is called fatal daughter syndrome. Fatal daughter
syndrome is a socially derived phenomenon within human families reducing the number of daughters and increasing the proportion of sons.
Families close to the apex of the status hierarchy are more likely to exhibit
fatal daughter syndrome than families lower in the hierarchy.
Source: http://www.jadski.com/kerala/a6familialism.htm.
Other major evils faced by the woman are social prejudice against
non-conforming professions like dancing and the girl-childs molestation in the hands of trusted and respected relatives. In Dance like a
Man (Dattani, 2000), Jairaj points out how his danseuse-wife received
an indecent proposal from a male relative who regarded her as easy
game because of her profession.
Jairaj to Ratna: What did you want me to do?... Look the other way while
your uncle asked you to go to bed with him? Do you think your
uncle made such interesting proposals to all his nieces? No! That would
be a great sin. But you were different. You were meant for entertainment
(Dattani, 2000: 410).
Jairajs bitterness stems from the lack of family support and understanding regarding dance as a profession that haunts him and his
wife Ratna all their lives. Thirty Days in September (Dattani, 2005) is a
play entirely devoted to a discussion and analysis of the social evil of
child molestation and its repercussions on the girl-victim. The passive/
almost acquiescent stance of the victims mother is a significant comment on the dubious role played by the so-called educated middleclass woman in aiding and abetting crimes perpetrated against the
girl-child stemming from feelings of fear and helplessness.
The Naz foundation argued that due to fear of police action, consenting adult males having sexual relations were not coming out,
thereby hampering medical intervention. The governments reiteration
of the law comes during a time of hesitant moves by Indian gays to
venture out of their closet existence.
Such intolerance and social blindness cause men like Nitin and
Bunny to lead double lives.
Jiten and Nitin (Bravely Fought the Queen) are products and victims
of a perverted matrishakti or maternalism practiced by their mother
Baa, who exercises a lot of power on her sons by virtue of the torture
she suffered at the hands of her husband. The power of the matrishakti
is unique to Indian tradition. The paternalistic religions of Christianity
and Islam have no scope for such power. Women in the Hindu religion
are elevated to the status of matridevi or the mother-goddess (Durga,
Kali, Jagadambha and Yashoda). The position of the mother of robust
sons is therefore a coveted one in the joint-family system and is often
earned at great personal cost.
Alka: You can win so easily with me because you have two sons to protect
you.
Baa: Yes! I have been blessed with two sons. I thank God.
Power in the hands of benighted, ill-educated women like Baa is often abusedto blackmail and misguide sons and ironically to fortify
male domination by torturing subordinate women in the family. Baa
abuses her power over her sons to turn Jiten into a male chauvinist
wife-beater and Nitin into an effeminate coward by petting him excessively. Baas bedroom occupies an interesting suspended space in the
upper reaches of the stage emphasizing the factors of mind-bend and
maternalism. For all her debilitating illness, Baa holds the strings
of the family. She has transferred her property in Dakshas (Dollys
spastic childs) name so that the Trivedis stay together come what
may. The space given over to Baas bedroom is therefore a terrifying,
unnerving space radiating negative energies whereas by rights it should
be giving off a positive, synergizing aura. The brothers, while taking
it out on their wives, are typically submissive sons, honoring and flattering their mother. Jitens suppressed rage against his mother, who
is indirectly responsible for the birth of his spastic daughter, is vented
in his ghastly murder of the beggar-woman squatting outside his home
moments after he witnesses Dollys spastic dance.
Sridhar: Hes [Jiten] running the car over a beggar woman! Over and
over!.... He is still at it! God! Stop it! Stop it! Stop! ... Hes killed her!
(ibid.: 313)
When Sridhar, the educated employee, points out that the entire campaign is impracticable and offensive, Jiten stubbornly maintains that
it is men who buy lingerie for their women. (One womans response
to the proposed advertisement campaign is: No woman waits for
her husband to arrive to change into a frilly overpriced nighties
and jump into bed. If thats what lights his fire, Id sooner buy an
extinguisher (ibid.: 279).
Jiten: Men would want to buy it for their women! Thats our market.
Men. Men would want their women dressed up like that. And they have the
buying power. Yes! So theres no point in asking a group of screwed-up
Note
1. In Bengal Ashapurna Devi is regarded as a pioneer figure in uncovering
the domestic politics and injustice that vitiated the lives of married women
in the nineteenth century in her trilogy Pratham Pratishruti, Subarnalata,
and Bakulkatha.
References
Dhar, Subir. (2005). Where There is a Will and Bravely Fought the Queen:
The Drama of Mahesh Dattani, in R.K. Dhawan & Tanu Pant (eds),
The Plays of Mahesh Dattani, A Critical Response, pp. 8283. New Delhi:
Prestige Books.
Dattani, Mahesh. (2000). Collected Plays. New Delhi: Penguin.
. (2005). Collected Plays: Volume Two. New Delhi: Penguin.
Directory, March 20, 2000. (Downloaded from the net)
International Herald Tribune [France] (2003). September 20.
Internet survey on Familialism available at http://www.jadski.com/kerala/
a6familialism.htm, last accessed on July 11, 2007.
Chapter 11
Introduction
One of the remarkable characteristics of modern Telugu literature
has been its sensitivity towards gender issues both in the private and
public spheres. The pioneer of modern Telugu literature, Kandukuri
Veeresalingam (18481919), spent all his life on the improvement of
womans status in society and his writings cover almost all contemporary aspects of the gender questiongirl childs education, child
marriage, widow remarriage, and gender equality. His path-breaking
efforts were continued and widened by several of his followers
including Gurajada Appa Rao (18611915), who penned important
books like the drama Kanyasulkam (first edition 1892 and second edition
1909), which dealt with bridal price, among other things, and several
Context
There has been a controversy on the first modern short story in Telugu.
While the accepted literary history conferred that place on Diddubatu
Different Dimensions
On the whole the Telugu short story reflected five major dimensions
with regard to the theme of family and womans role in it. The dimensions are:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
These five dimensions cannot be placed in watertight compartments. There have been overlaps and deficiencies. Similarly the phases
of the different portrayals cannot be strictly explained chronologically
as there have been overruns and anachronistic expressions. However,
it is possible to discern a broad pattern over long spans of time. While
the first three dimensions existed simultaneously for over seven decades, the fourth and the fifth gained powerful expression during the
last two to three decades. Even today one can find all the elements in
the current short stories with varied emphasis.
Harmonious Family
During the first phase all the attention was on maintaining harmony
within the family. Writers were glorifying the supposed happiness
within the family and idealizing the role of woman (read sacrifice
and subjugation of woman) in maintaining a good family. In fact,
women seemed to be elevated from the earlier position of silence
and invisibility to that of active participation, but within the family,
and for the sake of husband and family only. Even the earliest appeals
for womans education can now be analyzed as attempts to sustain
this harmony, among other things. One could also argue that the desire
for womans education emerged as a possible safety valve to check
the domestic conflicts arising out of modern life as well as an acceptance of the rising aspirations among women.
Though there are a number of literary pieces written on the theme
of womans education by both women and men, including Veeresalingams Rajasekhara Charitra, it would be instructive to look closely
at Streevidya. Written by a great woman who achieved a lot within a
short span of thirty years of her life, the story argues in favor of
womans education, through the husbands perspective. The essentially
patriarchal viewpoint of the husband advocates womans education
on various grounds that support and strengthen family structure.
When the wife objects to getting educated as she is already burdened
with domestic chores, the husband responds saying, I am not suggesting you stop other works. Household chores are inevitable for
women. Instead of wasting your time in talking to neighbors after
your work, it would be better to study. He also says, In the world,
wife should always help her husband. Unless she gets educated, she
cannot fulfill her duty completely.
The supposed inevitability of womans responsibility regarding
domestic functions, the contemptuous tone against the womens
gathering and chatting, and education as source of help for husband
these were the views of educated middle-class men in propagating
womens education a century ago. Acchamamba, a woman of extraordinary insight in her times, was also inadvertently expressing the
same views. The views show that womens education, the major theme
of womans emancipation in those days, had more stress on strengthening family rather than on facilitating womans creativity, independence and individuality. One need not go into the works by men
to prove this point. It seems that in those days it was generally accepted
that the lack of education on the part of woman was a factor for
disharmony in family and womans education was presented as a
remedy to overcome this and bind family together.
Other apparent factors of disharmony like suspicious character of
women, another woman in the life of the husband, conflicts between
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, step-mothers indifference and at
times hostile attitude toward step-children, and womans dissatisfaction on shortage of money, jewels, sarees or cosmetics, also formed
part of the early short stories. These factors were considered evils
among fussy women. In fact, the major element in the stereotype of
woman is her fussy and quarrelsome nature. Leaving aside all the
real reasons for domestic disharmony, the popular misconception
was that women were to blame for having such qualities. Most of the
literature echoed this. Either complete stories were woven around
each of these factors or the issues became discursive and minor but
substantiating parts in a larger story. However, one should note that
all these issues were considered with a prejudice against woman and
her innate nature, and the literature wanted to preach good sense
to women. The sermonizing attitude was a common denominator,
irrespective of whether the story was written by a man or a woman.
Uncharted Fields
The next phase has brought in non-family woman into the center
stage of the short story. Though Telugu literature has known nonfamily women since the days of Madhuravani (in Kanyasulkam) of
Gurajada Appa Rao, till the 1990s the only non-family woman type
recognized was the prostitute. The last decade changed this perception
and the single woman professional and the separated woman living
independently, two single women living together without any family
bonds, and women in an armed guerrilla squad have come to become
protagonists of short stories. In the meanwhile, some of the perceptive
short story writers introduced newer elements with regard to the status
of women within the family.
Volga, a prominent figure in the current phase, had covered almost
all aspects of gender discrimination and thirst for equality in her short
story collections Prayogam and Rajakeeya Kathalu as well as in novels.
Kuppili Padmas collections Muktha (1997) and Saalabhanjika (2001)
have a number of stories on single women. The new type of woman
also has her share of existential problems within her nest and in the
outside world. Saalabhanjika speaks of three different professional
women and one of the women teaches another on the role of woman
in the emerging profession of glamor dolls. The globalization process and the rise of the new economy where glamor and showbiz are
the key words have turned women into decorative pieces used for
business promotion. The society and family have an ambivalent attitude towards these new womenrespect and awe at their incomes
and status and sneer at their compromises. The story captured the
tensions involved in this new existence.
What will happen to the old-aged woman if her family gets destroyed? Even as the old-age homes mushroom in Telugu society,
where the rich and capable lodge their old-aged parents, how do the
children look at their old-age mothers? This aspect demonstrates the
hypocrisy involved in a family. The son would like to protect his nuclear family and property on the one hand and questions or abandons
his filial duty on the mother. Thus the modern man is both reinforcing
and destroying the structure of family simultaneously. This is not a
simple moral or social question but there are factors of larger political
economy behind this dual attitude. K. Ramalakshmis story A Typical
Son (Rao, 2000) is an example of this crisis.
The family, as it exists today, coupled with the so-called modernization and imperialist medicine, is reducing the status of woman to
a well-oiled machine and at the same time posing as crediting her
with a lot of power and conferring the status of Super Mom on her.
P. Satyavathis Super Mom Syndrome (2003) is a powerful portrayal of
these double standards. The story not only reflects the suffocation
and trauma in a family structure but also the pharmaceutical multinational corporations machinations in dumping harmful medicines
on third world women. The women short story writers have also identified the role of consumerism in aggravating the domestic tensions and
Muraleevaallamma by Ranganayakamma is an example of this trend.
Another powerful portrayal of familys stifling pressure on women
is with regard to alienation suffered by women. The Marxian analysis
of labor alienation could well be applied to the estrangement of a
woman within a family. As Marx spoke of four levels of alienation
from the labor process, from the product of labor, from fellow laborers
and from human essencewomen in the family institution also face
similar alienation. P. Satyavathis Illalakagaane (1995) is an effective
portrayal of these alienations. The protagonist woman in the story forgets her name in the course of giving herself completely to her family.
Conclusion
With this broad overview, which has a wide scope of developing into
a full-fledged monograph, one can identify various themes that reflected and analyzed the predicament of woman within and outside
family. The short stories not only diagnosed the social maladies but
also tried to prescribe possible remedies. These stories are, at the same
time, both posing problems and suggesting solutions and thereby enriching our understanding of social dynamics, particularly with regard
to the gender question.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the seminar on
Representation of the Family in Telugu and Urdu Womens Writing, held in
References
Alladi, Uma and M. Sridhar (eds). (2001). Ayoni and Other Stories. New Delhi:
Stree Katha.
Kannabiran, Kalpana, Volga and Vasantha Kannabiran (eds). (1995).
Sarihaddululeni SandhyaluFeminist Raajakeeyaalu, Kaaryaachaana,
Prasnalu. Hyderabad: Sweccha Prachuranalu.
Kuppili, Padma. (1997). Muktha. Hyderabad: Maatha Publications.
. (2001). Saalabhanjika. Hyderabad: Maatha Publications.
Malladi, Subbamma. (1985). Andhra Pradeshlo MahilodyamamMahila
Sanghaalu (18601983). Hyderabad: Prajaswamya Prachuranalu.
Murthy, Satyanarayana, Polapragada. (1999). Telugu Kathanika. Hyderabad:
Telugu Academy.
Ranganayakamma. (2004). Muraleevaallamma, in Amnaaki Adivaram
Leda?. Hyderabad: Sweet Home Publications.
Rao, Bhargavi (ed.). (2000). Noorella PantaRachayitrula Katha Sankalanam.
Bangalore: Prism Books.
Rao, Chekuri Rama. (2001). Sahitya Mahilavaranam. Hyderabad: Sweccha
Prachuranalu.
Satyavathi, P. (1995). Illalakagaane. Vijayawada: Self-published.
. (2003). Mantranagari. Vijayawada: self-published.
Syamala, Gogu. (2003). NallapodduDalita Streela Sahityam, 19212002.
Hyderabad: Hyderabad Book Trust.
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalitha (eds). (1991/1993). Womens Writing in India
(Two Volumes). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Vidmahe, Katyayani, Jyothi Rani and Shobha. (1994). Mahila Janajeevana
SamasyaluMoolaala Anveshana. Warangal: Society for Womens Studies
and Development.
Volga. (1992). Rajakeeya Kathalu. Hyderabad: Sweccha Prachuranalu.
. (1995). Prayogam. Hyderabad: Maanavi Prachuranalu.
. (2002). Palikinchaku Mouna Mridangaalanu. Hyderabad: Sweccha
Prachuranalu.
Chapter 12
Globalization and
Diasporic Family
Dynamics
Reconciling the Old and the New
Mary Mathew
References
Anderson, Benedict. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism. London: New Left Books.
Appadurai, Arjun. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global
Economy, Public Culture, 2 (Spring): 124.
Bhabha, Homi. (1990). Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins
of the Modern Nation, in Homi Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration,
pp. 291322. London: Routledge.
Chua, C.L. (1992). Passages from India: Migrating to America in the Fiction
of V.S. Naipaul and Bharati Mukherjee, in Emanuel S. Nelson (ed.),
Rewording the Literature of the Indian Diaspora, pp. 5162. Connecticut:
Greenwood Press.
Dabydeen, Cyril. (1977). Distances. n.p.: Fiddlehead.
Derrida, Jacques. (1976). Of Grammatology, Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gellner, Ernest. (1983). Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca. New York: Cornell
University Press.
Ganesan, Indira. (1990). The Journey. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gezari, Janet. (1992). Charlotte Bront and Defensive Conduct: The Author and
the Body at Risk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ghosh, Amitav. (1989). The Shadow Lines. New York: Viking Penguin.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. (1979). The Mad Woman in the Attic:
The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Hejmadi, Padma. (1985). Birthday Deathday and Other Stories. London:
Womens Press.
Chapter 13
I write what I seenone else could sum up so simply and aptly the
nature of Ashapurna Devis works as the author herself. Indeed,
Ashapurna Devi was never swayed by the political turmoil of her age
(which was perhaps not possible because of her conservative background), nor did she attempt to preach a code of conduct in her writings. Hers was the age of science and technology, of the two world
wars, of Owen and Eliot and Joyce and Lawrence, of such eminent
Bengali littrateurs as Premendra Mitra, Jibanananda Das, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Manik
Bandyopadhyay, Dhurjatiprashad and others. But far from the
madding crowd, it was the Bengali middle/lower-middle class family
that she could observe without inhibitions from the boundaries of
her own little world; this family formed the core of her works. The
author has remarked:
Society and literature are interdependent. If the writer becomes wayward,
he loses all rights. He must know that his works have relevance. And that
he has a responsibility towards society. The writer must show the way to
ascension, not simply write by instinct.1
Here Ashapurna Devi follows convention in portraying the complexities of the mother and daughter-in-law relationshipa feature
one may find in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (I cite Tagores Chokher Bali, where Rajlaxmi
is dissatisfied with her daughter-in-laws immaturity and lassitude).
The story is obviously not concerned about the more recent social
evils such as dowry deaths or divorce. The theme here is more downto-earth-concerning a seemingly uninteresting and commonplace tale
of two women trying to possess a man, namely, the hapless son and
husband Bimalendu. The post-Independence setting too reveals the
simplicity and mundaneness of a typical Bengali rural household,
with neighbors and relatives popping in and out at opportune moments and making apparently casual yet deliberately calculated
responses to add to the authenticity of the story itself. All the characters, except Bimalendu, are women with little or no formal education, luxuriantly indulging themselves in senseless gossip. The concept
of the nuclear family, which had already invaded the city as an inevitable outcome of the partition, has still not found its ground here
and thus one finds the eldest of the Lahiri wives on one of her
rounds of the neighborhood, while Jayabatis small family seems
somewhat incongruous in this well-knit society. The only connection
with the city seems to be through Bimalendu, who gets the privilege
of higher education in Calcutta, and in this Bimalendu seems to be
the representative of the average middle-class Bengali male on whom
rely the women of the family (as has been his fathers case before
him). Moreover, Jayabati is a widowand we can assume a figure
wearing a plain white saree who must not draw the alpana, for a
widowed woman is an inauspicious person, a lost womanall
of which are significant for they reveal a rural Hindu society of
more than fifty years ago wanting in progressive social forces and
in the moral qualities so essential in social development. Also, with
the use of words as guchchir, dakho dikin, and so on, the author intensifies
the genuineness of her characters within the specified setting.
In her chapter entitled Mothers, Mothers-in-law and Motherhood in
Modern Bengali Short Stories by Women Writers (Families, vol. 3), Tapati
Gupta opines that in the light of patriarchal demands and domination,
for most women motherhood and the status that comes with it
are perhaps the only gift they enjoy from the family legacy. Conversely, as Gupta says, The gift also involves [the woman] in sacrifices
she is sanctioned to make and which she considers as part of her
In Chchinnamasta, however, Jayabati appears to have been comparatively better off than most of her female counterparts as she has not
only enjoyed the companionship of a liberal husband when he was
alive but was a partner to his tiniest confidences. This is perhaps why
she initially thinks of being a mentor to her newly married daughterin-law rather than being the latters rival. It is evidently Pratibhas
misbehavior that embitters their relationship.
But despite all adherence to conventionality in setting and character
portrayal, the unconventionality of Ashapurna Devis treatment of
her central character lies in Bimalendus death and Jayabatis response
to it. Jayabatis changing frame of mind as shown before and after
Pratibhas arrival is nothing new considering that such feminine
conflicts are common in Indian households. Nevertheless, Jayabatis
disillusionment is significant. One notices that before Pratibha arrives
Jayabati reminisces on the golden days of her past:
Even when her son was a mere boy, she would spend nights talking and
dreaming of his marriage. The two saw no end to their aspirations
whenever their thoughts centered round their son. But Debnath simply
departed putting an end to all hopes, leaving her alone to bear the joyless,
mundane burdens of this world.4
And such memories form the basis of her dreams of the future:
Imagination cannot be reined, and thus it flows unlimited in the shape of
dreams and blissful desires around that beauteous form. It grows on the
soil of ones own bitter experiences and the self-confidence which emerges
as the outcome. She will show those who have earned the epithet of dominating mother-in-laws how to treat anothers daughter as ones own.5
Thus, initially emotionally dependent on his mother, Bimalendu develops antipathy towards Jayabati soon after marriage and once even
blurts out: You are becoming so narrow-minded. Surprising! Finally,
the eldest of the Lahiri wives provides that additional impetus required
to set Jayabatis wounded pride aflame:
Dear, dear, but your Bimal is as good as gold. Doesnt he say anything?
Even gold turns into iron if the goldsmith is unscrupulous, sister!
Heaven only knows! What an evil day! What a pity, not five or seven
sons but one, and the wife comes and leads him astray. So much suffering
for a nice woman like you!8
Gradually, the values of tenderness, softness, self-sacrifice and nonviolencevalues that are supposed to be inherent in motherhood
are shed by such repeated onslaughts and both Jayabati and Pratibha
engage themselves in shameless mud-slinging.
However, the extreme form of humiliation comes when Pratibha
ridicules Jayabatis preference for vegetables:
What stuns Jayabati is not the suddenness of the attack but the validity of the fact that forms the basis of Pratibhas onslaught. Indeed,
relatives and neighbors were not unaware of Jayabatis weakness for
vegetables and the arrow finally hits its mark. Here I would like
to mention that the vegetables become a sort of metaphor for
Jayabatis status as a widow who must abstain from taking meat or
fish (both of which incidentally, are expensive and thus heavy on the
family budget); and therefore, her desire for the edible greenery that
grows in profusion in the backyard cannot be validly criticized. Moreover, the vegetables signify the disparity in the marital status of the
two women and later the deliberate emphasis laid on the widows
fare of potherbs and lentils by Jayabati becomes relevant in the light
of Pratibhas misfortunes. In her chapter (cited earlier), Tapati Gupta
further reiterates the cause behind the marginalization of the Hindu
Bengali widow:
A false halo is painted around womans sexuality by the metaphoric
castration of the Bengali widowher shaved head and white attire, her
spartan meals. These are actually devices that enable society to shirk its
economic and moral responsibility of maintaining the widow in conditions
of material comfort. It also mythifies the curse of sterility by constant
reminders of the importance of the socially acceptable male partner in
generative relationship.10
Nevertheless, the event which takes place in between the above mentioned incident and Bimalendus accident is that of Jayabati confining
herself in the prayer rooman event that despite its insignificance
has aroused much curiosity in readers and critics alike because of what
follows. The author never makes it known what exactly Jayabati, with
her wounded pride, had prayed forDid she desire that the lord
Madhusudan punish Pratibha herself ? Or did she wish for the traitor
Bimalendus death, which would be a fitting punishment for Pratibhas
misdemeanor? And more importantly, does Bimalendu die because
his mother wanted him to? Referring to another story Aayojan by
Ashapurna, where the grandfather prays for his grandsons death,
not because he hated the child, but because he sought to satisfy his
The woman who had found her powers being gradually usurped by
another secretly rejoices when she finds the disputed territory (her
own son) destroyed (however premature and terrible his death may
have been), for it has left her rival destitute. And thus, Jayabati becomes
the Chchinnamastathe woman who gets consumed by her own passions and becomes metaphorically the cause of her own destruction
through the actual death of her only son: Other than the black circles
under the eyes and the slight raising of the cheek-bones, there were
no obvious signs of change.14
Ashapurna Devis prime objective was to portray her characters,
especially her women, in the light of their relationships with the world
around them. They are not paragons of unsurpassable beauty or
virtue, nor are they consciously aware of their own powers or limitations as one finds in the British writer Fay Weldons novels. Also,
while Weldons women seem to be perennially at war with the maledominated world outside their own limited spheres, Ashapurna Devis
women are domestic, apparently docile, and even try their best to
stick to social norms. Still, there are instances when they emerge more
powerful in their passions and sacrifice, selfishness and even passivity,
unlike the men who seem somewhat ineffective, even helpless (as in
Shab Dik Bajay Rekhe). In fact, through characters like Jayabati and
Praxis (in Weldons novel of the same name), who live out roles they
have sold themselves including the fulfilling of other peoples
needs, both authors overturn in exaggerated and emblematic
fashion the contradictions inherent in the demands that society imposes upon women. Beside Ashapurna, a number of Indian writers
have tried to dispel the notion of the idealized stereotypical concepts
of motherhood and widowhood revealing the hollowness of social
strictures and feminine virtues. Thus the grandmother/mother-inlaw in Chhabi Basus Meyemanush (Woman) leaves her sons home
to live with her childhood friend, the old widower from Karmatar.
On the other hand, Telegu writer Chalam, in Vitantuvu (Widow),
depicts a widow who decides to bear the child of a man without
caring for the repercussions. Another Telegu writer Kodavtiganti
Kutumbarao, in Pempudu Talli (Foster Mother), also deals with the
yearnings of a young widow who develops a physical relationship
with her adopted son. Hindi author Premchand (who wrote immediately prior to Ashapurna Devi) has, however, idealized women, even
the usually dreaded mother-in-law of Indian folklore; and one comes
across stories such as Widow with Sons, in which the newly widowed
Phulmati finds herself gradually losing control over her household
and dying a terrible, lonely death.
There is, however, no justification in assuming that the women
control their own fates. In Bimalendus death, Jayabati is as much
the victim as her daughter-in-law. Pratibhas reactions to her husbands
demise are never presented in the story. But we are confronted with a
new entityindefinable and malignant as the terrible Chchinnamasta
(for the mother with all her softer instincts had died with her sons
death)who feels no sympathy for the bereaved wife but like the
madwoman in the attic, exults in her own destruction and in the
worlds.
Glossary
ChchinnamastaAccording to ancient Hindu mythology Parvati,
Shivas consort, wished to go to her father Dakshas house, where a
yajna was about to be performed. When Shiva refused to give his
consent, the enraged Parvati began to manifest herself in ten different
forms, each as awesome as the other. Shiva, terrified and amazed,
gave his consent. Chchinnamasta (also called Chandika) was the
fifth manifestation and the most terrible of all. In her the goddess is
seen stark naked, bathed in her own blood, holding her severed head
Notes
1. Ashapurna Devir Chchotogalpo Sankalan, National Book Trust, India, xi,
1999.
2. Sanjukta Dasgupta (ed.). (2004). Families: A Journal of Representations,
Vol. 3, 73. Kolkata: Blue Pencil Publishing Editorial & Consultancy
Services Pvt. Ltd.
3. Ibid.: 7374.
4. Ashapurna Devi. Chchinnamasta (from Ashapurna Devir Chchotogalpo
Sankalan), National Book Trust, India, p. 160, 1999.
5. Ibid.: 161.
6. Ibid.: 162.
7. Sanjukta Dasgupta (ed.), Families: A Journal of Representations, Vol. 3,
p. 74.
8. Ashapurna Devi, Chchinnamasta (from Ashapurna Devir Chchotogalpo
Sankalan), National Book Trust, India, p. 167, 1999.
9. Ibid.: 16869.
10. Sanjukta Dasgupta, ed., Families, Vol. 3, p. 79.
11. Ashapurna Devir Chchotogalpo Sankalan, National Book Trust, India, xviii,
1999.
12. Ashapurna Devi, Chchinnamasta (from Ashapurna Devir Chchotogalpo
Sankalan), National Book Trust, India, p. 171, 1999.
13. Ibid.: 170.
14. Ibid.: 171.
(All translations from the original Bengali sources are by Naina Dey).
Chapter 14
It is significant to note that this early poem deals sensitively with the
plight of the widow, though it may appear to be reiterating the need
for protection in a womans life and may also be consistent with the
thought of the times. But how does one respond to a poem like Manis
Ainaa (But), where she bemoans the plight of children and the house
when even the mother becomes independent and takes up a job? Let
us look at the following lines:
Who will set right the house?
Wife, husband, children, guests
Love is the affectionate union of give and take
the golden nest where hearts have a healthy growth
the refuge of civilization for generations together
Each becomes a loner with her own existence
Who are they helping by taking up jobs?
(Devi and Rao, 2001: 100)
There are some poems in this collection too that question the stereotypical portrayals of women. Poems by Vani Rangarao, Kondepudi
Nirmala, Savitri, Vasanta Kannabiran and S. Jaya have a clear feminist
focus. Kondepudi Nirmalas Nannalni Konali Ratenta? (We have to
Buy Fathers, Whats the Price?), with its biting sarcasm, hits out on
the social structure, which pays importance to fathers:
It seems the respectable ones are born only to their fathers!
We are born from our mothers womb
Not only mainstream middleclass Telugu women writers but also Dalit
and Muslim-minority women writers have been voicing their protest against the stranglehold of institutions both without and within,
within being the institution of the family. It is heartening to note that
Mudra, which came out eight years after Neelimeghalu, takes this into
account and includes a poem each of Shajahana and Challapalli
Swarupa Rani, powerful voices, one representing the Muslim-minority
womans voice and the other the Dalit womans voice. In Qabaddar
(Beware), Shajahana unveils the horrors of the married life of a
Muslim girl:
We are absolutely worthless
in herds as lumps of flesh
wearing cloaks over our minds as we do over our bodies
we are like bats dragging on our colourless tasteless odourless lives
Even as we are aware that our husbands are only temporary
for they throw meher at our faces and change wives
we decorate
our sacrificial dupattas with sequins of smiles.
(Sridhar and Uma, 2000: 101)
The tone of the opening lines itself suggests that while the poet
describes the condition as it exists in a Muslim household she is not
the one to take it lying down. There is already an indication of the
refusal to adhere to these prescriptions. So it is no wonder that the
poem ends on a note of defiance:
I am tearing the cage-like purdah outright
I am not scared even if I am branded a kafir
These hands that have held your feet
these hands that have embraced you
these very hands
are closing their fists
for having continued to live with you even when I didnt like it
We too are thinking.
(Sridhar and Uma, 2000: 102)
What is surprising though in this collection is the relatively insufficient attention to the questions of the self and the family, questions
that seem inevitable to a discussion of the woman. Is this a case of
deliberate neglect by the editors (though their introduction as well as
a small section of the poems testify to their awareness of these questions) or an indirect acceptance on their part of the assumption that
a womans position is more or less secure in the institution of the
family?
How do we read a poem like Jogini by Ch. Usha Rani? It condemns
the powerful societal forces that perpetrate the jogini system where
the joginis are forced to live the life of permanent brides. It ends
with a voice of revolt: For the awareness that begins with me alone/
she [Ellammavva] ushers in the looks that will make me break out
(Devi and Rao, 2001: 191). When Usha Rani writes: Saying Ill fall
at your feet, master! Well lick and wipe your chappals/We are permanent brides who are not given the traditional send-off (ibid.: 190),
she is of course questioning both the stranglehold of customs and
the rich landlords. But there seems to be in this poem a lurking desire
for being a bride (not a permanent bride) who will be given a send-off
by her parents, a bride who will be given away. Isnt this in some
sense a validation of the marriage rituals, of the power hierarchy
Notes
1. This chapter was presented in a seminar on the Representation of the Family
in Telugu and Urdu Womens Writing, held at IACIS (now IUCIS),
Hyderabad on July 27, 2002.
2. The first feminist anthology in Telugu, Guri Choosi Pade Pata (The Song
That Is Sung as You Target), was published by Tripuraneni Srinivas in
1990. Neelimeghalu contains almost all the poems in this anthology.
3. An anthology of Telugu Dalit womens writing was published since this
chapter was written. Titled Nallapoddu (Dark Sunrise), this anthology
traces the tradition of Dalit womens writing since 1921. We have looked
at the poems represented in this anthology to see if they would make a
References
Devi, Sheela Subhadra and Bhargavi Rao (eds). (2001). Mudra: Vanitala
Kavitalu. Bangalore: Prism Books Pvt. Ltd.
Neelimeghalu: Streevada Kavita Sankalanam. (1993). Hyderabad: Swechcha
Prachuranalu.
Ramarao, C. and Arlene Zide. (1993). Trans. Dacoits, in Arlene Zide (ed.),
In Their Own Voice: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women
Poets, p. 208. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Sarma, Indraganti Srikanta (ed.) (1999). Yuvanunchi Yuvadaakaa: Kavita
Sankalanam 19361996. N.p.: A. JoVi. Bho. Prachuranalu.
Sridhar, M. and Alladi Uma. (2000). Trans. Beware, Indian Literature, 200,
pp. 10102.
PART 4
CULTURAL
REPRESENTATIONS
Chapter 15
Background
One of the greatest impacts of urbanization and modernization in
India has been on the family. This much-revered social institution,
once considered as stable as it was sacrosanct, is now under threat,
not only through its disintegration and fragmentation, but perhaps
much more, by its very definition. The basic definition of family as
the basic social unit is changing every minute across the world, even
in closeted societies where women are conditioned by restrictions on
every kind of mobility within and without the family. The family is
in crisis all over the world. The core of the complexity is sometimes
placed at the door of the modern woman torn between the double
bind of work and familyjuggling responsibility, time and energy
between the two all the time. Sometimes, the reason for the crisis is
said to be a redefining of family valuesthe choice of men and
women to remain single, leading to a further fragmentation of the
(ii)
his films define in minute detail the everyday activities of family life.
This includes the ordinary ways in which families eat together (Asookh,
Utsab, Titli), enjoy leisure activities (Titli, Bariwalli, Chokher Bali), and
care for each other (Asookh, Dahan, Shubho Muhurat), which are not
trivial but things that really matter to families.
Stated simply, Rituparnos celluloid family could be defined as a
radical family in emotional and psychological terms, even where the
family apparently seems to be quite conventional in its structure and
its composition. The house/apartment/mansion that the member/s
of the family inhabit in each film evolves into a character unto itself,
and does not remain confined merely to being defined as the physical
framework and environment within which the human characters
negotiate their terms of changing interaction. This chapter seeks to
explore the celluloid family presented by Rituparno Ghosh in five
filmsUnishe April, Dahan, Asookh, Bariwalli and Utsab.
Unishe April
The timeframe is caught within a single day and night, the 19th of
April, and the film borrows its title from this day. It is the death anniversary of Aditis father, who died when she was a small girl of maybe
ten. When the film opens with a flashback to the fathers death and
then zooms into the present, we find that Sarojini has just received a
prestigious award for her singular contribution to the art of classical
dance. The news of the award sets in motion a chain of events that
finally lead to a confrontation between the mother and the daughter,
distanced through what, on the surface, appears to be a clash of values
but which has snowballed over time basically from a slow and sure
breakdown in communication. Aditis consciousness is made up of
memories of a dead father, his identity, his pain, and his alienation
from his celebrity wife reflected as a kind of picture puzzle through
various pieces of flashbacks from her point of view. Sarojini, on the
other hand, has created her own space through her dance recitals;
she is now focused on her dance classes, which she holds in her own
house. She is aware of the alienation from her own flesh and blood,
Aditi. She tries to build bridges. But her celebrity status comes in the
Dahan
Dahan (Crossfire) opens with a voice-over of one of the two women
who form the center of the narrative. This female voice, which is
used as a framing device in this circularly structured film, destabilizes,
at the very outset, the popular practice of using a male voice-over
and thus registering the authority of the male. The female voice functions here, unlike in dominant cinema, in relationship to one of the
justly proud of their brave daughter, trouble raises its ugly head when
the court case against the molesters begins. As the film comes to a
close and Jhinuk is preparing for her marriage, she is dogged by doubts
about getting married to a man who is pressurizing her to back out of
the court case because it is directly linked to his transfer and promotion. This, even before he has become her husband.
Romitas marital family is an extended one, with husband, his
parents, his older brother and his wife. Her in-laws seem sympathetic
towards her to begin with. But they stop her from identifying her
molesters in court. She tries to call up Jhinuk, who she hardly knows,
but hangs up the phone when Jhinuk picks it up. Her husbands
sympathy soon turns to anger when his office colleagues tease him
and question him about the difference between molestation and rape.
So, Romitas family too, as her elder sister-in-law informs her one
day, is not the well knit, structured and composed family it appears
to be. Trina is in love with the main molester, the son of a powerful
and influential father who can pull enough strings to get his son out
of the jam. Her parents are very happy about her choice and the
newspaper headlines about the molestation do not change their perceptions about him in any way. But, much to the shock of her parents,
Trina staunchly refuses to go ahead with the engagement. Is Trinas
parental family, then, a fragmented one? Romita decides to take a
break and fly off to her older sister in Canada, not sure about whether
she will or will not come back. Jhinuks steps are slow, heavy and
faltering, as she walks wearily out of the old peoples home towards
the fenced gate of her grandmothers old age home.
The anguish and pain of the three women, Romita, Jhinuk and
Trina are captured through subtly lit close-ups while the expressive
faces of the actresses do the rest. Though Romita is beautiful, (an
award-worthy performance by Rituparna Sengupta), Ghosh strips her
of glamour after the molestation as she tries to cope with herself
within her bedroom. Jhinuks cross-examination by the defence lawyer
is intercut with her serious illness in bed, the mosquito curtain offering
a false veil of security. Questions keep nagging us. What is the difference between molestation by outsiders and marital rape of the wife
by the husband? What kind of family would one call it when a
molested wife is raped by her own husband in anger and frustration
as a sort of punishment dealt out to her in the full knowledge that she
Asookh
Asookh deals with the two things Rituparno is famous forthe
loneliness of the individual, and the fragmenting of relationships in
a post-modern situation. Asookh is like a sequel to Unishe April with
the relationship reversed. In Unishe April, the mother was a danseuse,
a public figure, and the daughter was an ordinary doctor. Their
relationship is constantly under a cloud of misunderstanding created
out of communication gaps, some circumstantial, some destined. In
Asookh, the schism is between a daughter, Rohini, a renowned film
star and her father Sudhamoy, who is unwillingly forced to depend
on his daughters earnings. Ghosh calls it his personal tribute to parenthood, to the unit made up of father and mother. Modern life distances us from our own parents to a considerable extent. I have tried
to show this through Asookh. I am more interested in the subterranean
layers of such relationships. Be it between mother and daughter,
(Unishe April), be it between two young women bound only by the
commonness of their gender (Dahan), be it between two unrelated
men and women (Bariwalli) or be it between a father and his daughter
(Asookh). Through this fatherdaughter schism, he tried to explore
how our mental states are vitiated by circumstances beyond our control, leading to a loss of faith. But being an optimist to the core, he
finally comes to terms with the fact that there is still hope for a
restoration of the lost faith, leading to a liberation of the human spirit.
Tagore is omnipresent in the film. Rohini keeps on reciting Tagore
from memory. Her boyfriend quotes and sings lines from Tagore and
Rohini or her younger successor, a starlet, joins in. A large photograph
of Tagore adorns the wall behind her bed. But all this is just in audiovisual terms. The spirit of Tagore is conspicuously absent. Tagore,
who wrote where the mind is without fear and the head is held
high in Gitanjali, would never have agreed with the emotional uncertainty and insecurity that dogs every waking moment of Rohinis
life. This very often happens because she suffers from acute insomnia
and cannot sleep without a heavy dose of sleeping pills. She suffers
from dryness in her eyes and is forever using eye drops to moisturize
them. Like most female stars, she wears glasses in private and lenses
in public space. The contradiction is that, for one who dotes on Tagore,
to suspect her father for her mothers illness being diagnosed as a
case of possible immuno-deficiency syndrome, or to suspect her goodfor-nothing, unemployed, chain-smoking fianc of a secret liaison
with the starlet, is perhaps an insult to Tagores memory. Rohini perhaps would have been better off leaving the bearded fianc, who offers
a kind of moral support, which does nothing to resolve her fears. But
looked at in retrospect, perhaps it is Tagore who helped her out of
her conflict. Who knows?
Ghosh resolves her crises in the closure of the film. She asks forgiveness from her affectionate father for having dishonored him with her
suspicion, arrogance and rudeness. She learns to cope with her own
disloyalty in suspecting her fianc for his faithlessness. But all this is
quite unbelievable for an actress, a famous film star because her very
field of work spells out faithlessness at every step. It is a field where
morality is an empty word, a phonetic sound, and an arrange-ment
of alphabets that means nothing.
Based on Ghoshs own story, script and dialog, Asookh scores in
terms of the tightly knit script, and flesh-and-blood dialog. The interiors
conceptualized by Sudeshna Roy and the production design by Indranil
Ghosh are realistic too, bringing out the spaces explored through the
apartment where Rohini lives, through the make-up room where she
spends a lot of her time, her bedroom, which is dark and dull, and
the hospital where her mother lies ill. Debut-cinematographer Aveek
Mukherjees camerawork struggles with the darkness he has to deal
with, every step of the way. But there are sparks of brilliance, especially
in Rohinis bedroom and make-up room.
Ghosh builds up a collage of images portraying the family through
scenes drawn as if from real life. When the film opens, Rohinis proud
parents and the maid are watching a film starring Rohini on the small
screen. The family eats home-cooked food before the mother is moved
Bariwali
Based on a short story of the same name by Rituparno Ghosh himself,
who also wrote the script and dialog, Bariwali opens with the lines of
a ritualistic wedding song welcoming the bride into her new home.
The camera is fixed on the antiquated door of a large mansion. Slowly,
as the credits end, the monochrome turns to color, in soft hues of
brown, sienna and amber. The wedding song evolves into a leitmotif,
recurring now and then as the narrative unfolds. Bonolata was almost
married once. But her groom-to-be died of snakebite on the eve of
the wedding. Since then her life is one long, metaphorical journey
into nothingness, filled with dreams of the marriage that never
was. It is as if she carried a family curse that gave the men an early
death while condemning its last heir, Bonolata, to a life of isolation.
Bonolatas lonely nights are dotted with nightmares. She sometimes
sees herself as a bride, while at other times it is her maid Malati who
is in bridal attire. Red, the auspicious color for the Bengali bride,
dominates her dreamsthe bridal red of the sari and the veil, the red
of the sindoor as she dreams of a married Malati calling out to her,
the red paint splattered by Dipankar turning into blood splashing
into her face. In real life, the bland colors of gray and white and light
purple that she wears turn to bright yellows and greens when she
falls in love with Dipankar.
Utsab
In Utsab, Ghosh opens the narrative through the video camera of a
strapping young man, Joy, grandson of the matriarch, who lives alone
in a sprawling mansion. Joy uses his camera to make observations
on the house, the family and the festival. The Durga Pooja is the
peg on which the film hangs. Joy wants to become a filmmaker,
but has surrendered to his fathers wishes to do an MBA abroad. His
comments on the trivialities around the house are allegories that bring
alive his passion for films and filmmaking. I have heard these pooja
A Summing Up
One must draw attention to a strikingly unusual insight Ghosh offers,
through Unishe April, into the place the kitchen occupies in the minds
of two women. Surprisingly, it is the kitchen and all that goes into
the making of an impromptu meal in the middle of the night that
suddenly throw the doors and windows of communication wide open.
The mother and daughter are trapped in an openness they are not
prepared for but are forced to confront. I say surprisingly because
the kitchen does not form a part of their respective public or private
domains. The figurative cupboard, Aditi discovers, does not hide any
skeletons, but only the tragedy of a woman who was/is misunderstood
by her own daughter simply because she did not quite fit into the
Conclusion
The familys relationship to the physical spaces it occupies is less important than its relationship to the emotional spaces created, sustained
and destroyed between and among the members who constitute the
basic structure of the family in the first place. The members relationship to each other and among themselves has long been a focus of
literary, sociological, cinematic and historical discussion and debate.
The family mirrors society and society reflects the family, where both
are gendered in particular ways, especially within the patriarchal
paradigm we seem to function in. Countless treatises have been written
and archived and numerous seminars have addressed links between the different members of a single family and how these links
strengthen, or get loosened, or break, or re-join over time, subject to
socio-economic factors that are also in a constant state of flux. Gender
assumptions have been employed, either with a bias, or based on a
neutral hypothesis, to characterize these relationships and in the same
way, have used the family unit to construct gender. Often left out of
such discussions are the socio-economic spaces newly created under
the demands of these shifting paradigms of family space.
Critics since Virginia Woolf have explored the implications of a
room of ones own, dividing space into seemingly irreconcilable
feminine, domestic domains and masculine, public arenas. This
does not pertain any more, at least in the urban metros of Indian
homes where the extreme constrictions of space in a very physical
sense are taken for granted and without challenge because of sheer
lack of possible alternatives. But extremely limiting conditions of
physical space within the home can also create a threat by themselves
by throwing a sparring couple at each other again and again if only
by the sole reason of their not having a private space wherein they
might reflect and introspect on the reasons of the sustained conflict
between them.
Notes
1. Social Trends: A National Statistics Publication produced to high
professional standards set out in the National Statistics Code of Practice.
Published with the permission of the Controller of Her Majestys
Stationery Office (HMSO).
2. Every five years, Families and Work Institute conducts its National Study
of the Changing Workforce (NSCW), the only on-going study of the
U.S. workforce of its kind or scale. By surveying large, nationally representative samples of employed workers, the NSCW provides valuable,
timely information on the work and personal/family lives of the U.S.
workforce. It is the only study of its kind to provide 25-year comparisons,
from 1977 to 2002, of life on and off the job. The study is widely used
by policy makers, employers, the media, and all those interested in the
widespread impacts of the changing conditions of work and home life.
The 2002 reportHighlights of the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforceexamines five topics in depth:
z
z
z
z
z
References
A study entitled Family Stress and CopingA Decade in Review (Journal of
Marriage and the Family, No. 42, 1983).
Arendell, Terry J. (1987). Women and the Economics of Divorce in the
Contemporary United States, Signs, 13(1): 12135.
Coleman M. and H.L. Ganong. (1990). Remarriage and step-family research
in the 1980s: New Interest in an old family form, Journal of Marriage
and the Family, Vol. 52, pp. 92540.
Corsini, R.J. (1999). The Dictionary of Psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/
Mazel.
Dym, Barry. (1995). Readiness and Change in Couple Therapy, Basic Books.
Gupta, Smita. (1992). A Psycho-Social Study of School Students Coming from
Single-parent Homes in Relation to their Performance at School, M.Ed.
Dissertation, University of Mumbai.
Herzog, E. and C.E. Sudia. (1973). Fatherless HomesA Review of Research,
University of Chicago.
Morgan, David. (1990). Risk and Family Practices: Accounting for Change
and Fluidity in Family Life in E.B. Silva and C. Smart (eds), The New
Family, pp. 1330. London: Sage Publications.
Pringle, Mia, Kellmer. (1975). The Needs of Children, Hutchinson & Company,
London.
Chapter 16
The family has been one of the most important institutional pillars
in Indian society. Any art form of society is reflective of its culture.
The family has been a pivotal part of our artistic heritage and depicted
in great detail, right from the Epicsthe Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. So much so that centuries later the most popular art
form in India todaynamely, Hindi cinemastill draws inspiration
from them and churns out films of the family drama genre, albeit
with a few modern shades. So resilient is the institution of the family
that it has sustained the onslaught of technological revolutions, multinational companies, satellite television and the so-called shift to nuclear families, and constantly reinvented itself to sustain its position
as the cornerstone of Indian society. It comes as no surprise then that
television sets are bursting at the seams with family-based daily soapoperas, or Saas-bahu soaps as they are popularly known, and that the
biggest box-office hit of 2001 was the lavish family film Kabhie Khushi
Kabhie Gham. It would be prudent to point out at this juncture that
the families depicted in the Saas-bahu soaps as also in Kabhie Khushi
Kabhie Gham are a far cry from the families of our epics, fables and
folklore, which were not afflicted with the maladies of excessive wealth
and adultery!
The Impoverished
Poverty has all but vanished from the Hindi film scenario today. But
the trials and tribulations of an impoverished family were a familiar
theme in films in the 1950s and 1960s. The most memorable of these,
Mother India (1957), glorified woman as wife, as mother and as a
savior of honor. The film reflects the life of Indias poor peasant
families and their exploitation by feudal landlords. It is a remake of
director Mehboob Khans earlier film Aurat. Radha, played by
Nargis, became the screen icon of the eternally suffering mother who
is able to sacrifice her own son for the values she holds dear. Nirupa
Roy carried the torch from her, from the 1970s onwards, as mother
to Amitabh Bachchan, the angry young man.
That dharma must prevail over familial bonds is a perennially
favorite theme of Bollywood filmmakers. In Ganga Jamuna (1961),
two brothers are pitted against each other, one a policeman, the other
an outlaw. The policeman finally kills his fugitive older brother for the
sake of justice. Decades later, in Shakti (1982), a father (Dilip Kumar)
shoots his own son (Amitabh Bachchan) in the name of the law.
The predominant issue in this breed of the Indian family was
poverty, exploitation by the feudal lords and overcoming of hardships
to emerge triumphant. Sometimes there was no triumph. Do Bigha
Zameen (1953) tells of a dispossessed peasant who goes to the city
with his son to earn money to pay back a loan. He becomes a rickshawpuller while his son works as a shoeshine boy. Eventually he returns
to the village battered by the harshness of city life, only to find his
land taken over by a city developer.
It would be interesting to note that marital discord, adultery, generation gap or disintegration did not afflict the impoverished Indian
family, at least in mainstream Hindi Cinema. These issues were dealt
with in the so-called parallel cinema. I say so-called because I personally disagree with any art form being pigeonholed into categories
for the convenience of the media.
Nevertheless, it was around the 1980s that films depicting dysfunctional families in this economic background began to appear. Chakra
(1980) is about a widows efforts to save her son from the criminals
of the shantytown she lives in. She also has a lover, a truck-driver by
whom she becomes pregnant.
Govind Nihalanis Aakrosh (1980) is a hard-hitting film about the
frustration and helplessness of the tribals in India. Lahanya, played
by Om Puri, is arrested for murdering his wife in a drunken state.
Throughout the film, he maintains a silence, even to his defense lawyer
Naseeruddin Shah, who wants to help him. Through the course of
the film it is revealed that the wife was raped and murdered by local
bigwigs. In a shattering climax, Lahanya kills his sister, saving her
from the same fate that befell his wife.
In Rihaee (1990), director Aruna Raje makes an imaginative social
satire on the sterility of many marriages in rural India as the ablebodied men of the village migrate to the cities to work, leaving their
women behind and returning only for brief periods every two or three
years. In the interim arrives a raunchy young man, played by
Naseeruddin Shah, who has an affair with and impregnates one of
the women. The woman boldly faces her husband with the inevitable
in the climax of the film.
Films portraying women in a liberated light were made as early as
the 1930s. Duniya Na Mane (1937), made by V. Shantaram, is about a
young woman who has been tricked into marrying an old widower.
She registers her protest by refusing to consummate the marriage.
The widower passes from initial rage to frustration, ending in a sense
of guilt and eventual suicide. The film became a big box-office draw,
got rave reviews and aroused extreme reactions as well. Unfortunately,
such a bold stance was limited to just a handful of films.
The Feudals
The above-mentioned disorders have afflicted the feudal Indian family
incessantly over the years in our films. It is almost as if wealth brings
with it the freedom or misfortune, as some might believe, that go
against the accepted social and traditional norms. In this breed of
the Indian family, honor is still important but morals and values tend
to weaken. In Bimal Roys Devdas (1955), as in its previous and most
recent versions, the status of the family comes in the way of love.
This however, does not stop the protagonist from visiting a kotha,
which was perhaps looked upon as a status symbol. It also permits
an older man to marry a second time, a girl half his age and as old as
his daughter. The woman as usual is meant to continue in the tradition
of the submissive Indian girl with no protest, but for the symbolic oil
lamp that keeps the flame of her thwarted love still burning. This
subtle modification is only in the twentieth-century version directed
by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
But the women in Zamindar families are not always this submissiveParo does make a last-attempt dash to her mansion gates to
The Rich
In its post-liberalization, post-branding age, India is looking more
and more like a mini-Europe or the United States. People drink Pepsi,
eat at McDonalds, wear Tommy Hilfiger, Gap or Armani, live in outof-Manhattan lofts and go to school (even actors in their late 20s and
30s!) that appear to have materialized out of Beverly Hills! However,
the core of the film is still Indian. In fact, it could not be more traditional. The family is always sacred and so are the country and its
traditions. In 1989, the Indian joint family came to the fore in Maine
Pyaar Kiya. This breed of the rich family lives together, prays together
and even plays cricket and Antaakshari together. Through various
scenes and dialog it underlines the virtues of a good Indian wife
peeling peas being one of themand denounces women who work,
wear western clothes or have short hair. It professes that love can
only be fulfilled with the permission and approval of the parents.
Sacrificing love for the family has been a recurring theme in Hindi
films. What was spun in Kabhie Kabhie is taken a step further in Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), where Shahrukh Khan, the slick young
NRI, refuses to elope with his beloved Kajol and insists on winning
the approval of her family instead. This NRI family, even though it
has lived in England for over thirty years, still listens to Hindi film
songs but jives to rock-n-roll on the sly. The daughters are fluent in
bhajans as well as familiar with the various Indian rituals, especially
Karva Chauth, the perennial favorite in Hindi films. Rani Mukherjee
wears the skimpiest of clothes in Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai (1998) but
promptly sings Om Jai Jagdish Hare when dared to sing a Hindi song.
The truth is, the real Indian family is a little bit of all of the above.
It is traditional in its beliefs, yet constantly trying to walk the tightrope
between the parochial and the liberal. It is insular when it comes to
values and family norms and yet universal in matters of honor and
justice. It is vulnerable to the onslaught of urbanism and yet resilient
enough to remain the focal point of Indian society even in the twentyfirst century.
That our films, our television serials and our commercials still play
the family card to stir our emotions is testament to the everlasting
importance and strength of the Indian family.
Just as the five-spices powder or Garam Masala, as we know it,
adds flavor to Indian cooking, without which it would be bland, so
also the Indian family is a zesty combination of traditions, values,
maladies, weaknesses and above all, an innate strength to overcome
it all
One we will continue to savor on screen and off it
PART 5
MEMOIR
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
The Family
As I Saw it, as I See it
Vidya Bal
Departing from this norm, I decided that the editor would simply
convey his/her views, allowing the readers to read freely. This enabled
me not only to create a bond of mutual trust with readers but also to
facilitate a truly meaningful dialog with them. The results were not
forthcoming immediately. They came slowly but steadily. The stream
of letters candidly reflected readers confusion and dilemmas with
regard to the published literature in Miloon Saryajani. This positive
change in the attitude of readers encouraged me to take another step.
I always send personal replies to all my readers. Now I also started
selecting those letters which had some social relevance. Without disclosing the identity of the writer and with her/his prior permission I
started writing editorials on the issues raised by the letter-writers.
The title of my editorial column was Samvaad (Dialog). This gave
me rich returns. My level of understanding grew, the dimensions of
the magazine widened and a meaningful bond was created between the
readers and me.
The experiments coincided with my growth pangs. I started understanding the limitations of middle-class ideology; it started reflecting
in the magazine. The Stree magazine, despite its generally progressive
outlook, had confined itself to the idea of making the middle class
woman a better wife, a better mother and an ideal daughter. It tended
to reinforce the notion that middle-class women had no questions,
dilemmas in their lives. Stree did enrich to a certain extent the lives
of the middle-class women as it published articles ranging from flower
arrangement and recipes to politics, economic and social issues. But
for me this was insufficient. I was somebodys mother, daughter,
sister and wife; but I surely owe something to myself as a person, a
human being. Does one simply wish it away? Through my personal
experiences I had learnt that a woman was suppressed even in an apparently decent middle-class family. Coinciding with this crucial
juncture in my life, the International Year of Women was declared.
The Womens Decade followed. These developments emboldened
me to steer Stree gently towards the feminist thought, as I began arguing through its pages that besides being a mother, a wife and a
daughter, a woman was also an independent member of the family
and the society.
Every magazine automatically reflects the ideology of its editor.
Obviously the change in me also started reflecting in Stree. Without
hurting the sentiments of the readers, I successfully shut out, one by
one, the typically female columns on hair-styles, flower arrangements,
migrated to a foreign country. His mother has become old but the
bond between them has stayed intact. The lonely mother becomes ill.
The son becomes restless. His wife is relatively unconcerned and hence
reluctant to share his anxiety. He comes to India to nurse the mother
and returns after her health improves. After a few days, she again
becomes ill and subsequently dies. Meanwhile the wife also becomes
restless by the frequently recurring memories of her old parents.
Disturbed emotionally, she rushes to India to meet her parents. That
is where the story ends. The story beautifully portrays the emotional
bonds, with all their pulls and tensions, within a family in a peculiar
situation.
These are only a few noteworthy examples published in Stree and
Miloon Saryajani. Though set against a family backdrop, they boldly
comment upon the present family system, and hint at how it could or
should be. They found their way to Stree and Miloon Saryajani almost
naturally in view of the widely acknowledged progressive outlook of
these magazines. Elsewhere one is flooded with stories depicting a
status quoist attitude towards society and family.
Miloon Saryajani went a step ahead of Stree to propagate the freedom
of expression so far as feminist thought was concerned. One will
notice that, strictly grammatically, the title of the magazine (Women
Together) is female gender-specific although it does intend to embrace both genders among its readers and writers. So it could well
have been Miloon Saarejan (Everyone Together). My contention is
that for ages women have merged their gender identity with that of
men. They have had no reservations about being clubbed with men
when-ever the mixed group is referred to as Saarejan. Now it is
time for the men to make a reciprocal gesture.
I became an activist while working with Stree. I was already deep
into the womens movement when I launched Miloon Saryajani. I was
now well aware of the issues though I wouldnt say I had fully grasped
and digested its ideological base. I had begun deliberating upon
the concepts of gender equality, freedom, love, friendship, and a
non-hierarchical structure within a family and without. I had also
started practicing them as honestly as I could. Though I had not fully
understood the ideology of social reformers like Mahatma Phule,
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and Mahatma
Gandhi, I had begun realizing the significance of their contribution
to society. Miloon Saryajani was launched against this background.
My own experience as a journalist, the tremendous goodwill of
These quotes of creative women writers have been expressed in different languages. But I think they all speak with the same tongue about
our family life.
Chapter 19
Thoughts on
Home
Nonda Chatterjee
Or,
Ki jadu bangla gane,
Gaan geye danrh majhi taane
Geye gaan nache baul,
Gaan geye dhaan kate chasha
(What is the magic in a Bangla song,
That the boatman rows to this tune,
The itinerant dancer twirls to it,
The peasant sings as he harvests his paddy )
Tagore
Again,
Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day
American Lyric
This nostalgia for the eternal Eden, this longing for a spiritual identity
that appears as an amalgam of prosperity, hearts ease, happiness
and song, an imagined community, largely mythical, can be summed
up in one word, home, a place one can call ones own, which one
strives to reach and call ones own all through life, yet which, for most
of us, always seems to remain just out of reach till ones dying day.
It is significant that the three Indian songs were composed by people
who considered themselves dispossessed by foreign invaders who
had despoiled their precious land and deprived them of their identity,
and who longed not only to restore the land to its pristine glory but
also to regain their rightful place in it; whereas the American lyric
was composed by folk who had dispossessed others, destroyed a way
of life, a culture, and then were overcome by nostalgia for what they
had done away with. Both are constructs that owe more to emotion,
imagination and romanticism than a clear historical perspective. I can
clearly recall the euphoria that had Indians in its grip on August 14,
1947, when the leaders and masses were equally certain that the problems that had beleaguered the country through centuries would disappear like magic on the morrow, when India made her tryst with
destiny. It was short-lived, however, and the disenchantment that
had begun with the partition deepened steadily through the years,
and home remained as distant a concept as ever for the dispossessed
who flowed into India and continue to do so till date, and the people
who were in turn dispossessed by them in their own country, for land
and resources cannot be stretched beyond a limit. In short, the reality
could never catch up with the ideal, which was romantically conceived
and was therefore largely imaginary.
which mirrored Britain most closely were the hill stations like
Darjeeling, Simla, Nainital, and Mussoorie, where the natural landscape aided recreation or transcreation and the gardens with their
herbariums, vegetable gardens replete with tomato, asparagus, lettuce,
celery, rolling lawns with their mixed borders, English flowers, and
sweet-pea lattices, roses, and orchards where raspberry and blackberry
and creepers of strawberry vied with the mango and the lichee.
It was in his garden that the Englishman came into his own as did
his spouse, the memsahib, monarchs of all they surveyed. The
more ambitious went in for features like the serpentine with weeping willows, rockeries, sunken rose gardens, green and summer
houses, conservatories, lily pools. One hears of a railway officer, a
Mr Rutherford, who refused promotion for fifteen years, till he retired
from service so that in fact he could continue to live in the homegarden he had created in his official residence in Allahabad, and
who was so heartbroken at the prospect of returning to England, his
real home, that he spent his lifes savings to buy a cottage in the
hills in India, where he could begin all over again with his garden, his
concept of home! And he was not the only one; several English
families preferred to stay on in India after Independence, for the
spiritual transformation that had started unobtrusively had put down
such strong roots that they could not face the thought of leaving this
country. The British names on gate-posts in hill-stations and places
like Macluxigunj in Bihar bear mute testimony to this love of home
even today. Jim Corbett was heartbroken when he migrated to Kenya
and the bond he had built with India survives till date in his everpopular books and the National Park named after him.
But what of the brown sahib, the upper-class Indian educated in
public schools abroad or missionary schools in India, becoming
men on the playing fields of Oxford, Cambridge or even Sandhurst,
deeply steeped in Christian culture, the Victorian and Edwardian
social, political and scientific tradition, completely at home in the
language, history and literature of the colonizer? Who rode and played
tennis on terms just below equal with the Brits and were happy
doing so? Who wanted their wives to come out of purdah and participate in the social scene, much to the chagrin of their more conservative
elders? Where did they locate their identities and how did they deal
with the crisis that was created by the struggle for independence?
Which country would they call home? How would they fit into an
Indian India after 1947?
in it? By the way, I found the book very useful when preparing for my
Bachelor level examinations.
This crisis of home continued through the 1950s while India
bumbled her way towards political identity, directed by leaders who
were more at home in English than the national languages! Pundit
Nehru once came to our university to deliver the convocation address,
and it was clear that the prospect of speaking in Hindi for forty-five
minutes was an intimidating one for him. So when he asked us, rather
tremulously, what language we would like him to use, and we chorused
in one voice ENGLISH! the relief was so great that it hung almost
palpable in the pin-drop silence of the huge senate hall packed with
over a thousand students. Then he began to speak, and the wonderful
rhetoric and measured cadences that had mesmerized even the British
flowed in an enchanting stream for more than an hour, inspiring,
practical and meaningful, one of the more memorable experiences
of our student life. As we were coming down the stairs, still in a romantic daze after this wonderful speech, a snippet of conversation in
Hindi between two fellow students hailing from a nearby village,
dispelled much of the splendor and set us thinking.
First student: What on earth was the fellow talking about? Made no sense
to me at all. He sounded more like an Angrez ( British) than Indian.
Second student: Exactly. why have we elected one Angrez to replace
another? What will he do for us? Perhaps he is a British spy? (My
translation)
But I had also been told that my husbands home would henceforth
be my second home and that I must make every attempt to be and
make the other family members comfortable in it. That I must make
adjustments in small matters gladly, but not at the cost of my basic
values. That I was to influence and be influenced till a common
rostrum was found, acceptable to both sides. I had listened dutifully,
not quite realizing what a tall order it was for a girl in her early
twenties. Now this had come up an identity crisis of sorts, to use a
clichd term Quo Vadis?
Should I give in gracefully and call it a day? Or should I take a
stand and try to get my way, purely as a matter of principle? But then,
what of the togetherness that was the essence of a happy home?
Would that be torn beyond repair by my action? Was I mistaking
nostalgia and sentiment for ideology and allowing them to overrule
empathy and practical sense? As I debated these issues, I remembered
my mother-in-law telling me about Durga Pooja in her maternal
grandfathers house, when she was a child. They had been the local
Zamindars, and during the four days, from Saptami to Bijoya, the
entire village had participated in the festivities and been fed at the
great house four times a day. So much kichri had to be cooked that it
had to be stored in a room specially made for this purpose! And
because she was so beautiful, she had been chosen for the Kumari
Puja for three years, and dressed in resplendent red and gold, been
the cynosure of every eye. And now? She went like everyone else to
pay her respects in the local pandal where the rituals were never to
her satisfaction. Was this protest her way of preserving the culture
that had been and still was home to her?
Much time had passed, dusk was setting in, my hands and feet
were freezing, but I still sat on, unable to move. However, when I
heard my mother-in-laws anxious voice calling out to me again and
again and asking me to come home, I got up and rushed, unable to
see very clearly. Without a word she held out her arms and I ran into
them with a sense of comfort I had never experienced before with
her. Then she said, Come with me, I have a surprise for you. As we
neared the house, I was surprised to find every light blazing, and in
the verandah a welcoming committee that included not only the inmates but my parents and only sister, and inside, a tree loaded with
presents, and on the dining table the biggest and most succulent Xmas
pudding ever! My father had achieved this miracle by solemnly
explaining to my mother-in-law that though we were definitely not
Chapter 20
Looking Back
Shashi Deshpande
really penetrated; for, inside, the house was a whole world, with so
much happening that everything else was only a sideshow.
The house, called a wada, was a sprawling three-storied one, with
beautiful full-length arched windows with carved woodwork, huge
doors that were rarely closed and more staircases than even we children could count. Just when you thought you knew them all, you
would come across yet another hidden, rarely-used staircase. The
mammoth front door, closed only at night, had decorative brass knobs
and a large brass ring that operated as a knocker. The house had
three courtyards which provided light and ventilation to the rooms
overlooking them and to the passages alongside. There were many
rooms which remained dark and dingy though, like the storerooms,
or the small room where the women, after their morning chores were
over, napped or read the newspapers. But to me the most memorable
feature of the house, when I look back today, was the champa tree
which grew between the cattle shed and the back door (adjacent,
actually to the front door) of the house. It towered over the house,
but there were daring souls among the kids who clambered on the tin
roof of the cattle shed to pluck the heavenly fragrant flowers.
Why is the house insisting on intruding when Im trying to write
about the family? I guess the truth is that I cant separate them in my
mind. And they were, in some way, mirror images of each other. The
family was just as large, sprawling and complex as the house, and it
had, like the wada, both its sunny and dark rooms. As children, we
saw only the brightly lit rooms, though we did get occasional glimpses
of the dark hidden corners during times of crises, when conclaves
were held behind closed doors through which came raised voices
or, when there was a tragedy in the family and the women retired to
the dark rooms and spoke in hushed voices, their saris held to their
faces. A vague memory of the women sitting in a silent circle after
the untimely death of an aunts husband comes back to me almost
like a scene of mourning from a play.
Children accept families unthinkingly and so did I, in the early
years, take this family for granted; its size and the complexity of relationships within it seemed perfectly normal. It was much later that
I realized how unusual it was. Not because it was a joint family, which
was quite normal then, but because of how distinguished some of its
members were. The head of this family was my mothers father
Babasaheb, or Baba as he was called in the family. I heard very recently
from an uncle that he came from their village to Pune, his three
another specialized in ukhanas (poetic couplets, containing the husbands name, which the bride, and often other women too, had to
recite). But weddings brought out certain exclusions as well. The
wealthier ones and those with better positions were projected as the
face of the family, and their higher status recognized in many ways,
one of which was the silverware that VIPs ate out of. Even as a child,
I could feel the undercurrents of resentment, the sore feelings this
produced, which perhaps is why I cannot bear even to look at, leave
alone eat out of a silver plate! In general, however, the family hierarchy
was scrupulously observed, people ranked according to age and generation. I can vividly remember the ceremony, when each family gave
gifts to the bride/groom and parents, and how carefully the order of
seniority was followed! Im sure there was always some heart-burning,
but luckily children dont know these things.
Years later, I wrote in my first novel of women who had been addressed as Kaki, Mami, etc., for so long that no one knew their names.
In my mothers family too, all daughters-in-law became Vahini
(brothers wife). They were known as Vahini throughout their lives,
though the husbands name was sometimes added as an identifying
prefixAppas Vahini, and so on. Daughters-in-law had to be scrupulous about the way they addressed their in-laws. I remember how
strange my sister and I found it to be respectfully addressed by our
cousins wife, who was the mother of four, with a tai suffixed to our
names. We were her husbands sisters; so, never mind the fact that we
were just girls in short frocks, we had to be given our due respect! I
dont know whether this was part of all families, but I remember
how proud the family was that they gave their daughters-in-law an
honored place. (This was always said by the daughterswas it envy
that provoked the remark?) In turn, most daughters-in-law had a fierce
pride in the family.
Like all families of the time, this family too had its share of widows.
I came to know their stories much later; at the time, however, they
were just this Kaki and that Kaku, each having her place and role in
the life of the house. One of them, widowed at the age of eleven or
twelve, was, in spite of her ugly red sari and shaven head, a beautiful
woman, with liquid dark eyes and the slim legs of a model. There
was never any cruelty; in fact these women were much wanted. One
could be cynical and say that this was because they were workhorses;
but I know that there was a great deal of affection too. Which is why
it took me years to realize the tragedy of their lives. A woman who
and an old grand-uncle. But family feeling still existed, for when I
was to get married, the uncle who had separated from the family
long back offered my mother his bungalow for the wedding. The entire
wedding took place in his house, all the preparations were made in
the wada and everyone pitched in to help.
A few years after that, the third brother, Bapusaheb, died. So did
my uncle, who lived on the first floor. Bandicoots were running wild,
making huge tunnels in the walls at night and leaving piles of debris
in the morning. A decision was taken to sell the house. The story
goes that the Judge uncle stood there until the house was demolishedas if keeping it company to the last. It seemed that with the
death of the house, the family too had reached its end. People moved
away, and though most were in Mumbai and Pune, without the old
house there was no getting together. The judge uncle, who, after all
the four brothers died, became the family head, seemed to have inherited Babas role and kept in touch with everyone. Perhaps it helped
that he had married his own cousin, his aunts daughter, who had
lived in and known the wada. When he became the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, he invited the entire family to Delhi to participate
in his investiture. But distance and a lack of shared interests made for
a gradual and easy parting. The younger generation is, of course,
totally disinterested. Nevertheless those who had lived in the wada
together still have close bonds. The other day a cousin rang me up
and said her son was returning to Pune in a new job. But he wont
live with us, she said, adding, We have another flat on the floor
above ours, he will stay there. It was the we that caught my attention. I knew she was using the pronoun to include meit was our
flat. Just the way people had spoken in the days when they lived
together. Everything was ours, nothing was mine.
Strangely, I, who had never really lived in the wada, could not let
the house go. After it was demolished, it kept coming back to me in
my dreams. Night after night I saw it as it had been, inhabited, bustling
with people, I heard voices, I vaguely glimpsed faces, known and unknown. It was out of these dreams that my first novel Roots and
Shadows was born. Much of it came from my memories of the family
in Pune. In time, questions darkened some memories: Why were
womens lives lived so much in dark rooms? Why did an eleven-year
old have to live a life of deprivation because someone they called her
husband had died? And how was it that men could marry again
and yet againand have mistresses too after their wives died? The
Chapter 21
Small-Scale Reflections on
an Ancestral Home
Makarand Paranjape
down to eat. In those days, there was no dining table; we sat on the
floor on wooden pats. From this room, you descended three steps to
reach the smoky kitchen, with its wood stove. When there werent
too many people in the house, we ate in the kitchen. Children were
fed first. But among the adults, my grandfather always ate first, with
the other men, while the women ate later. The meals were delicious,
everything grown on our land including the rice and vegetables. Even
the rotis, I remember, were made from rice flour. We ate them
steaming, with dollops of butter.
From the kitchen, you went out to the backyard. This had the tulsi
vrindavan, a beautiful shrine with basil which was worshipped by the
women everyday. Further away, there was also a bath house built
around a well. Water was heated in brass boilers. The toilets were by
the wall, with straw buckets underneath. Most of us found them
hideous and frightening though now I see them as much more ecofriendly.
Upstairs, the house had one large and grand room called the diwan
khana. This was done up for special occasions but otherwise we simply
lounged around in it. It had chandeliers, mirrors, a large Ravi Varma
print of a girl on a swing, and solid granite flooring. It also had a
large and imposing safe, which was so exciting to open. Of course,
there was hardly any money in it. There were four or five bedrooms
around this main room.
There was one more floor, but it was totally out of bounds to children. I did go there to find an attic with all kinds of junk, truck axels,
tonga wheels, pumps and motors, large tin trunks, stacks of paper
and so on. It was in this stack that I saw the insurance policies of my
great-grandfather, a famous pleader and gentleman farmer. The company was Sun Life Insurance, incorporated in Toronto. I doubt
whether my grandfather got anything from these policies.
The journey from the country to the city is one of the quintessential
metaphors of Indian modernity. We all have memories of this move,
whether in our own generation or that of our immediate forbears.
Indeed, this is the theme of many a modern literary and cinematic
classic in India, for instance, Pather Panchali. Such a move is also
accompanied by the shedding of the extended and the beginnings of
a nuclear family.
I wrote about some these memories in a poem composed when I
was half-way across the world in another continent.
my father, uncle, and other members of the family paid the obligatory
visit. My grandfather was our main link with that house. He died at
85, fairly sturdy and active till the last two or three years of his life.
He was a good looking man, with an air of almost regal dignity to
him. He was also widely known and respected not just in Umbergaon,
but all over Western India, especially in family circles.
I still remember how we as children vied with one another to press
his feet when he returned from our farms. I was quite a cheeky
grandson, not at all intimidated by him. I asked him, Whom does
this benefit? You or me? He said, You. You will get punya by serving
me. I retorted, Or is that only a trick to extract service from others?
He smiled benevolently, but once or twice I did succeed in rattling
him. The family legend was that my grandmother died of repeated
child births. She had borne seven or eight children, of whom six
survived. Apparently, the doctor had warned my grandparents that
more children would pose a serious health hazard to her. In the family
circles, my grandmother, who died when my father was seven or eight,
was almost a saint. Her pictures were in the pooja room and elsewhere.
Everyone said what a lovely person she was, quiet, confident, dignified, and loving. My dad told me how she was the only one whod
loved him. He had tears in his eyes when he spoke of her: After she
left us, we grew up more or less on our own, tended to by aunts and
other relatives. Those were really bad times. The family fortunes were
on the decline. There were debts and litigations. One by one, we all
left Umbergaon to make our way in the world in Bombay, Baroda, or
elsewhere.
Having heard these stories, I once asked my grandfather why he
persisted in having so many children. He looked at me surprised and
annoyed. His usually magisterial demeanor now appeared creased.
He said, What do you mean? I replied, What about birth control?
He was taken aback, but replied, In those days, what did we know
about these things. I persisted, Then how about self-restraint? He
said, Easier said than done. The conversation ended abruptly, but I
never ceased entirely to feel that my grandmother was somehow a
victim of this mans lusts.
My grandfather was also a bit of a reader. Our house had all kinds
of English books. Usually they were popularor what used to be
popular in those days. Alexander Dumas in translation, for example,
or The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. I remember reading The
Count of Monte Cristo in one day, sitting up all night to finish it.
References
Paranjape, Makarand. (2001). My Buried Youth in Umbergaon, Used Book,
pp. 2527. New Delhi: Indialog.
Ramanujan, A.K. (1976). Small-scale Reflections on Great House, Ten
Twentieth-Century Indian Poets, pp. 10205. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Chapter 22
Indian Families in
the World
Forty Years in Manitoba
Uma Parameswaran
I come to this topic of Indian Diasporic Families Today from a nonacademic perspective. I am a writer and this chapter is about my
thoughts on Indian families in the diaspora. I am hardly qualified to
talk about Indian families in India. I grew up in India of the 1950s,
and have lived in Canada since 1966. My view is not only through a
diasporic lens but through the astigmatic lens of time. I am now where
I saw earlier immigrants as being when I first came to Canada, namely,
quite out of step with contemporary India. So, I shall confine myself
to the Indo-Canadian experience, with brief forays into reminiscences.
Some years ago, when I showed the script of my play Rootless but
Green Are the Boulevard Trees to a colleague in the Theater Department,
he said every scene was written very evocatively but in total he did
not know what to make of it since it did not have a major protagonist.
I explained to him that precisely was my point, that the whole family
is the protagonist, which is why each of the seven main characters in
the play occupies center stage for about an equal length of time.
Time was when we got our family identity by tracing our lineage
to one of the sages, and by being associated with some ancestral
village, or some sub-caste of a sub-caste. In other parts of India, the
family name was a clear signifier, but not in the south. A point about
my Tamil Nadu Brahmin sub-culture: traditionally, we had no surname as sucheach has his/her own given name as his/her last name
with two initials. The extended family shares the same first initial
(for the name of the village) and siblings share the same second initial
(for their fathers name) as well, thus compacting in the name itself
everything one needs to know about a persons identity and family.
In days of yore, we had sonorous, polysyllabic names for which one
needed long breathsTiruvenkateswaran, Vaitheeswaran, Parameswaran, Brigajambal, Mangayarkkarasinow you know why
pranayama was prescribed as a must for everyone childhood on.
Consider the hoary custom of preserving family lineage, which
can be seen at a traditional marriage ceremony where one can hear
Sanskrit mantras majestically enunciated by the priest as he leads the
bridegroom through his vows. Build your own example by inserting
long traditional names: I, (put in your favorite polysyllabic name
here), the son of (put in another good polysyllabic name here), and
grandson of (another and longer name here), great-grandson of (you
can put in one of the same names as above, since it was common to
name a son after a grandfather or great grandfather) of ABC gotra,
(and of the village of DEF in the district of GHI,) do promise etc.,
etc. Now, as anyone who has sat through a traditional ceremony of
marriage knows, these identifying tags are repeated many times over,
and it is small wonder that everyone agrees that though they might
not understand a word of the vows that are being taken (which is one
reason we so blithely enter the holy state of matrimony) it sounds
very impressive. Poetry scores over practicalities, and that is not such
a bad thing. It is said that James Joyce, psyching himself for his
morning hours at his writing desk, would read aloud what he had
written the previous day. His cleaning maid would stand by the door
and listen, because, she said, though she could not understand anything, it sounded like music.
For a member of the Indian diaspora, there are three families, the
first one in India, and the second and third outside India. The second
The family bonds that develop outside India, as I said, are with fellowdesis in this part of the world. The bond we desis feel in cyber-space
recognizes no national boundaries. I am on several internet discussion
groups, and it feels good to talk to people on the same wavelength; as
a writer. I feel I have a more discerning readership among the desis
south of the border or as far away as Europe and Australia than among
non-Indian fellow-Canadians. A.K. Ramanujan has a poem where
the persona tells his wife that there are things they cannot enjoy
together because they did not share the same family background and
childhood spaces. The shared space for members of first-generation
Now, with a population of at least ten thousand1 from the subcontinent in the city of Winnipeg, ones heritage language is still the
strongest bonding factor for the adults. Most recently, though, this
glue is in danger of drying out, and religion as a bonding factor is
getting stronger and stronger. The implications and deductions from
such observations need to be charted by sociologists, not by a writer
or literary critic that I am. However, it is clear that there is no unifying
factor that anchors the Indo-Canadian community.
While it seems that the intensity of family bonds is inversely
proportional to the number of people from India, there are two other
factors as to why this strong identification and empathy that the first
generation of Indian immigrants had for fellow immigrants and their
own families is weakening. One factor is that there is a divide between
new immigrants and those who came earlier. India has changed greatly
in the last thirty years, but we who came earlier remember only the
India in which we grew up, not even the one we left as an adult. I say
this in one of my first stories, The Door I Shut Behind Me (1967).
They spoke of old films, while Saigal sang on in the background. There
was deep nostalgia in the air. What astounded Chander was that they
spoke of a distant past. To some of them trams still trundled by on the
streets of Madras and Lala Amarnaths double century against Don
Bradmans eleven was still the greatest event in cricket history.
Namita, the main character in the novella, goes to the temple, thinking
she could get some help. She meets Charu, another abused woman,
who has this to say:
All these ladies, not one has any real empathy. Men are like that, they
said. Theyll come around, they said. Dont wash dirty linen in public
thats their favourite line. Which makes me wonder how many of them
are putting up with horse manure and not letting on.
Not one will help?
Not that I know of.
I came here thinking Id get some help from someone whod understand
our culture.
The C.B.C. (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has several documentaries on the oppression of South Asian Canadian women by
their in-laws. These are documented cases of dowry-oppression, of
murder while on a trip to India (taking the young woman to India to
kill her so they can return without a trace of their crime) or murder
Notes
1. The mini-census of 2005 records the population of the province as
1.2 million, of whom 670,000 live in Winnipeg. In the census of 2001,
there were 12,135 East Indians in Manitoba, 6,440 of whom were born
outside Canada, and 5,485 of whom are Sikhs, and 3,835 Hindus. Six
thousand said their heritage language is Punjabi, and 3,250 that it is Hindi.
It also records that there were 5,095 Muslims and 5,745 Buddhists. One
needs to note that not all of these people have come directly from India,
or are of South Asian origins. For comparison, note that there were 31,120
Filipinos in Winnipeg in 2001.
2. Raj Kumar Hans has written about the role of gurudwaras as cultural
sites in British Columbia (in Fractured Identity, 2003, 21733) and Harold
Coward about Diaspora practices of Hindus (in The South Asian Religious
Diaspora in Britain, Canada and the United States, 2000, 15172).
PART 6
DIALOG
Chapter 23
A Dialog with
Amartya Sen
Sanjukta Dasgupta
Malashri Lal
Questions from Malashri Lal and Sanjukta Dasgupta and answers from
Amartya Sen
In your chapter titled Women and Men in The Argumentative Indian you have made a categorical distinction
between well being and agency. Do you think it is
at all possible for the average Indian woman homemaker to become an active agent of social change?
There are many instances where we have come across
our students securing jobs in schools or colleges, who
are being coerced into surrendering their salary cheques
to their husbands for domestic peace and harmony.
Amartya Sen: The circumstances are often extremely adverse for the
exercise of agency by women, but nevertheless the answer to your question is, I think, yes. First, even when
the freedoms that a woman (or for that matter, a man)
can exercise to make deliberate decisions are constrained and even when the power to carry out those
decisions is also restricted, these freedoms and powers
Question 1:
Contributors
Alladi Uma and M. Sridhar teach English at the University of
Hyderabad. They have been working in the areas of Translation and
Comparative Literature. Their recent translations are Mohana! Oh
Mohana and Other Poems (Sahitya Akademi, 2005), Beware, The Cows
are Coming! (Sahitya Akademi, 2003), and Ayoni and Other Stories
(Katha, 2001). They have helped edit special volumes of Indian Literature and The Book Review on Contemporary Telugu Writing. They
were awarded the Rentala Memorial Award for 2005 for their contribution to translation of Telegu literature.
Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until recently
the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include Rationality and Freedom (2002), The Argumentative Indian (2005), and
Index
Aakrosh (film), 283
Aastha (film), 286
Aastha (old age home), Kolkata, 89
Aayojan, 226, 227
Abduction, 73, 75
absent father, phenomenon, 256
access, to housing by women, 69; to
money in rural areas, 69; to resources
by women, 66
Acchamamba, Bhandaru, 205
Adalja, Varsha, 180, 181, 185; women
characters in works of, 182
Adarsh Nari, women as emblems of, 175,
176, 177, 183
Adhav, Baba, 305
adoption, of children, 251
adultery, by women, 47
adulterous wife, 39
Advaitam, 234
advertisements, on television, 26, 27
Agarkar, Gopal Ganes, 303, 305
Agarwal, Bina, 12
age, and erosion of agency, 6972
aged women, illiteracy among, 71; living
in rural areas, 71; risk of death among,
71; widowhood among, 71
ageing, forms of, and family, 82, 99;
population in India, 82
agency, 23, 62; age and erosion of, 69
72; denial of, 24; women and, 6178,
355, 357
Agewell Foundation (NGO), New Delhi,
89
aggressive male behavior, within home, 74
Index 367
Anubhav (film), 286
Anurupa Devi, 148
Ao Baptist Tetsur Mungdang, in Nagaland,
119
Ao Nagas, 119; behavioural disorders
among children of, 107; women, relationship with family, 118
Aphale, Sunita, 301
Appa Rao, Gurajada, 203, 205, 210
Appadurai, Arjun, 213
Ardhanarishwara, concept of, 126
Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 110
Arth (film), 289
Ashapurna Devi, 24, 134, 142, 148, 201n,
226, 229; fictions of, 22130; novels
of, 191
Ashok Kumar, 286
Ashon, 136
Ashwanam, 237
Asookh (film), 261, 2679, 275
Assault, 73
Atharva Veda, on women, 127
Astitva (film), 286
Ato Tuku-Swargo, 156
Aum, as mystic logos, 126
Aurat (film), 282
authority, exercise of, 62; and power of
women, 67
autobiography(ical), as contested category,164; critics of, 166; history of,
165; studies,165; theory,167
autonomy, assault of womens, 67; of
women, 63, 66, 68
Avaiyar, 129
Avishkar (film), 286
Azmi, Shabana, 285
Babu, 312
Bachchan, Amitabh, 281, 282
bachelors quarters, of Naga/ Mizo communites, 106
Bage, Asha, 302
Bal, Vidya, 297
Balachander, K, 287
Bandipotlu, 232
Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan, 221
Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar, 221
Banerjee, Ranjan, 81, 96
Index 369
consumerism, 84, 246; role in domestic
tension, 211
Coolie (film), 287
Corbett, Jim, 313
Corsini, R.J., 254
counselors, for elderly, 89
cruelty, to women at home, 73
Cry the Peacock, 139
culture(al), 12; collusion, 216; generational divides in, between parents
and children in USA, 90; identity, of
immigrant families, 214; shock, 16
daasi, wife as, 177
Dabydeen, Cyril, 219
Dadaji vs. Rukhmabai, 21
Dahan, 70
Dahan (film), 261, 262, 2657
Dahar, narrative of, 275
Dalal, Bharti, 186
Dalit women, autobiography of, 164;
consciousness of, 1667
Dance like a Man, 189, 193
The Dark Dancer, 219
The Dark Holds No Terrors, 139
Darshak, Manubhai Pancholi, 176
Das, Jibananda, 221
Dasgupta, Sanjukta, 11, 355
Dattani, Mahesh, character portrayals in
plays of, 201; joint families in plays
of, 25; study of plays of, 188201
daughters, devaluation of, 65; economic
consequences of educating, 24851;
as economic liability, 251
daughters-in-law, era of, 97; honored
place for, 327; and mother-in-law and
sharing of the son, 24; voice and
authority of todays, 84
Davidar, David, 75
Death Be Not Proud, 325
Debi, 272
Debi, Jyotirmoy, 131, 132, 148
decimated family, in Rituparna Ghoshs
films, 26174
decision-making, exclusion of women
from, 778; power of women, 63,
209; womens agency in, 669
Deewar (film), 281
Index 371
fertility decline, 248
festivals, purpose of, 318
feudal Indian family, in Hindi cinema,
2846
fiction, English, 13; society, family and
self in, 12543; women as victims in
immigrant, 218
films, representation of families in, 26,
28
finance(ial), empowerment of women,
151; independence of women, 2478
Fire (film), 289
Forbes, Geraldine, 18
Forster, E.M., 218
Forever Banyan Tree, 342
freedom, family and, 17981
freedom for women, ideas of, 182
Friedman, Thomas L., 320
Gandharbi, 136
Gandhi, Mahatma, 54n, 303, 305; concept of Ramrajya of, 314
Gandharbi, 140
Ganeshan, Indira, 217
Ganga Jamuna (film), 282
Ganorkar, Prabha, 304
Gender,12; based-sharing of resources,
62; categories of, 178; discourse on,
180; equality, 30, 182; equity, 64;
importance of, in Gujarati families,
175; inequality, 223; issues in Telugu
literature, 203; justice, 30; patriarchal
notions of, 178; and personalities in
Gujarati womens writings, 174, 177;
portrayals, changing profile of, 181
4; position, 17; and power relations,
13; relations, 26; social construction
of, 14; stereotypes, 112
Gellner, Ernest, 214
Gerontologists, 84; on institutional
means of support to elders, 94
Ghar Ek Mandir (film), 287
Ghare Baire, 22
Ghosh, Amitav, 216
Ghosh, Arpa, 25, 188
Ghosh, Indranil, 269
Ghosh, Rituparno, 26; family in films of,
24376
Index 373
Kabhie Kabhie (film), 288
Kakar, Sudhir, 127
Kalidasa,150; women characters in plays
of, 129
Kalyug, 281
Kannabiran, Vasanta, 233, 235
Kanyasulkam, 203
Kapadia, Kundanika, 133, 179, 180, 183,
185
Kapoor, Shashi, 281
Karunam (film), 81
Katju, Justice M., 259
Kedaras, 316
Khabhie Khushi Khabhie Gham (film), 280,
290
Khan, Mansoor, 285
Khan, Mehboob, 282
Khan, Shahrukh, 288
Khandwala, Anjali, 178, 186
Khanna, Rajesh, 286
Khoon Bhari Maang (film), 288
Kibbutz, 62
kinship bonds, 17, 29
Kipling, R., 21415
Kohima Chamber of Commerce, 113
Kolkata, old age homes in, 85, 100n
Konni Padyalu, 235
Kripa Foundation, Mumbai, 113
Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai (film), 288
Kundera, Milan, 25, 158
Kutumbarao, Kodavganti, 229
labour, gendered division of, 186
Lagaan (film), 284
Lahri, Jhumpa, 15763
Lakkhir Panchali (song), 147
Lal, Malashri, 11, 355
Lal Patthar (film), 285
Lamb, Sarah, 23, 81
Lawrence, 221
Laws of Manu, on restriction on womens
freedom, 1267
Laxman rekha, 174
Layla, 155
Leelavati, 129
Lewis, 4
life expectancy, at birth (LEB), increase
in, 69
Index 375
Naga Hohos, 114
Naga Mothers Association (NMA), 104,
11016; formation of, 115; HIV/
AIDS Care Hospice, 115, 116; and
Naga womens organizations, 111
12; Youth and Womens Welfare
Organization, 116
Naga nationalism, 111
Naga Peoples Movement for Human
Rights, 116
Naga society, community participation
in, 106, 117; psychosomatic problems
among children, 10611
Naga Students Federation, 116
Nagaland, conflict between armed forces
and militants, 111; drug abuse in, 108;
HIV/AIDS cases in, 1089; underground groups in, 115
Nagaland Baptist Church Council
(NBCC), 110
Nagaland State Development of Health
Services, 109
Nagaland State AIDS Control Society
(NSACS), 110
Nagaland Weavers Association, 115
Naik, Chhaya, 306
Nair, Mira, 289
Nana Ranger Deen Guli (Bengali television
show), 28
Nandy, Ashis, 132, 225
Nannalni Konali Ratenta, 235
Narayan, Shovana, 94
Nari Samanta Manch, 298, 304
narratives, of elders, 83
National Crimes Records Bureau, report
on cruelty towards women, 74
National Family Health Survey (NFHS),
report of, 68; survey report on domestic violence against women, 75, 76, 77
National Sample Survey (NSS)data, on
aged women, 71
National Socialist Council of Nagalim,
112
Nationalism, 42, 129
nationalist movement, and change, 20;
spread of, 208; women in, 129
Nations and Nationalism, 214
native women, 45
Navasmriti, 234
Naxal movement, 149
Naz Foundation, 195
Needalu, 233
Needs of Children, 254
Neelimeghalu: Streevada Kavita Sankalanam,
231, 235
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 104
Neidonuo Angami, 104
Nelson, Emmanuels, 213
new patriarchy, and definition of
women, 54n
Nihalani, Govind, 283
Nikanth, Vidyagauri, 180
Nirmala, Kondepudi, 232, 235
Nirupama Devi, 148
Niyoga, 131
non-governmental organization (NGOs),
AIDS programme in Nagaland, 110;
old age homes run by, 85, 89; womens
approach to, 72
North Eastern States, drug abuse in,
1078
nuclear families, 16, 17, 66, 82, 246, 340;
and marital relationship, 150; urbanization and, 132
Nyay, 179, 183
old age homes, 81, 82, 84, 858; concept
of, 96; meals in, 86; in Telugu society,
210
On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, 189, 194, 199
oppression, of women, 22, 24
organization, 78
Owen, 221
Oza, Suhas, 178, 183
Padki, Sarita, 302
Padma, Kuppili, 205, 210
Pal, Dhirendranath, 36, 38, 40, 44, 49
parallel cinemas, 283
Parama, 273
Parameswaran, Uma, 29, 216
Paranjape, Makarand, 29, 331
Parameswaran, Uma, 339
parents/parental, authority and control
in joint families, 189; cruelty, in
Dattanis plays, 200; of NRI children,
care of, 889
Index 377
rituals, performance of, for a good husband, 146
romance, in fictions,13; Indian attitude
to, and family structure, 13; Western
view of, 13
romantic intimacy, 4850
Rongsen, M., 105
Roop Kanwar case, 143
Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees,
216, 339
Roots and Shadows, 329
rote-learning culture, 314
Rowbotham, Sheila, 166
Roy, Anuradha, 273
Roy, Bimal, 284
Roy, Nirupa, 282
Roy, Raja Rammohan, 128
Roy, Sudeshna, 269
rural mindset, and children as support
system, 94
rural women, domestic work by elderly,
71; study of, in Tamil Nadu, 68; in
rural Uttar Pradesh, 678
Rushdie, Salman, 158, 218, 340
Saalabhanjika, 205, 210
Saas-bahu soaps, on TV, 280, 290
Saat Paglan Akashman, 179, 180, 185, 186
Sahadharmini, Vedic principle of, 129
Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (film), 285
Samskar, 21
Saniya, 306
Sansar (film), 287
Sanyal, Sulekha, 148
Saptapadi, 179
Saptapari, old age home in Kolkata, 88
Sara Akaash (film), 286
Saraswati, 148
Saraswati Chandra, 175, 176
Saraswati, Dayanand, on motherhood,
130; on role of Indian women, 130
Saratchandra, 147
Sarika Pinjarastha, 183
Sarkar, Tanika, 20
Sarpa Parishvangam, 232
Sastry, Sripada Subrahmanya, 204
The Satanic Verses, 218
Sath-Sath, 298
Index 379
Telugu society, and literature, 204; gender
sensitive approach to, 204
Telugu women, self and family in poetries of, 2319
Thikkaanaa, 1524
Thirty Days in September, 189; child molestation in, 193
Tigers Daughter, 216
Tirachee, 233
tlawmgainha, spirit of, among Mizos,
106
Tou To Kevu Saru, 178, 186
Towards Equality, 18
tribal/indigenous life, 105
Tripathi, Gowardhanram, 175
Tski, Naga womens participation in,
119
A Typical Son, 210
Uberoi, Patricia, 14, 19, 23
Ughada Akash No Ek Tukdo, 178, 183
Uncle Monkey, 216
Unishe April (film), 261, 262, 2635, 274
5
United Nations Declaration on Elimination of Violence Against Women,
1993, 73
United Sates Bureau of Labor Statistics,
on earning by women, 252
United Nations Declaration of International Year of the Family, 1994, 12
United Sates, material and social support
to senior immigrants, 92; migration
to, 320
Upanayanam (thread ceremony), 336
Upanishads, on women, 127
upper-middle class, hypocrisy, 189, 190
urban areas, breakdown of joint families
in, 84
urban India, impact of socio-economic
changes on family values and relationship, 2458
urban lifestyles, 253
urban middle class, sociological study
of, 19
urban women, education and decisionmaking by, 69
urbanization, 84; impact on family, 243