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There is a single thread that binds memories, existence and language.

This thread, overlapping


and often juxtaposed in somewhat asymmetrical way, helps us perceive the world as it is. In a
sense, our words construct our world. So, any act of remembrance has to go through a process of
inter-personal communication mediated through a language. Thus our notion of perceived self,
our thoughts, our remembrances, all pass through this process of signification. Thus to
understand the self we also need to understand how language construct the self consciously and
unconsciously, through myriad processes. But neither language nor memories, nor our perceived
self is a continuous and unmediated development. The relation between the signifier and
signified needs to be unearthed through an interpretive statement often called commentary1. Thus
in a sense when we try to remember an event of the past or a distant memory, we are not exactly
remembering the past but rather the moment when we remembered the past more accurately.
Also, the domain of remembrance not only consist of an objective memory, which is expected to
be accounted in an autobiography, but also the subjective perception of the person at the time of
the remembrance but also how we perceive the memory at the time of remembrance. What we
perceive as our memory may be a culmination of what we know, what we think we know, what
we perceive of our knowledge and what we perceive of our perception. Thus, remembrance and
language, both are performative in nature. And not always are we conscious of our performance.
It is in this light, that we can understand how write about ourselves, how can we understand the
genre of autobiography? Is factuality a parameter or the parameter to judge an autobiography?

Hayden white had busted the myth of the difference between fact and fiction because in a sense
every text every text follows a narrative pattern, choose a particular rhetoric to express itself and
has a target audience in mind for which to write. There are many questions that may emerge
from the discussion- to what extent our audience, our memories and our perceived self, or an
urge to represent a particular version of self color our vision? Can the self exist in isolation or is
it closely related to the social context in which a text is written. So how an autobiography can be
used by the historians to study the society? Generally we assume memory as factual or subjective
details of the self but isnt the analogies we utilize to express those trends also a form of
remembrance. Which narrative pattern is suitable for which story is also an accumulated
experience. When Piro utilized the analogy of Ramayana to describe her abduction and
emancipation, she is utilizing the knowledge of the mythologies that is pervasive in the everyday
domain; similar remembrance trope can be seen in her use of narrative similar to that of heer
ranjha. There are certain ways through which memories are not only molded but also
constructed as we see in the context of how the Gulabdasis chose to commemorate Gulabdas
after his death. Hagiographies of many of these saints often try to fill the obscurities of details by
utilizing certain narrative tradition and turning them into collective memory through constant
performances. Microhistory has emerged as a new historiographical shift in the way history
was perceived in the academic circles. Piros story is not just her story but also represent the

1
Michel Foucault has defined this relation in the introduction of Birth of the Clinic and further elaborated in The
Order of Things
story of the society of 18th-19th century Punjab, it charts out the religious trajectory of the period
and how deras represent these intersecting points of religiosity. At the same time, it represents
voice of a women, which occurs so rarely in such profound manner at this point of time. The
very idea that her voice appears in the form of a text is very significant because writing not only
gives a name to an hitherto anonymous voice, it also provides the text and the author an element
of posterity. And thus it becomes a significant tool to study larger structures through these minor
narratives.

Thirdly, how can we construct the literary and linguistic domain of these texts? Autobiography,
like any other text, follows a narrative tradition. How the author does uses the narrative patterns
to mould the story in a particular direction? When we construct And finally, how can we
understand memories that form the crux of an autobiography, as evolving and changing
perception of self written from a point of view and at a particular point of time, or can memories
be adjusted, contextualized and molded according to the conveniences or the perception of the
author. An autobiography is after all story of the author and thus may witness selection of facts
and omission of certain other. Can memory also be manipulated, not necessarily in the realm of
consciousness of self but rather how others perceive them. Here, we move to the discourse of the
guru who, through their multiplicity of identities, transcendent and uncontainable agency, moves
from an existentialist domain to the domain of power. How these performance of assertion of
these identities helps in expanding this power of the guru and how this power helps in furthering
these identities is an important question to look out for. These multiplicities of identity become
evident in different ways in textual and performative tradition, for example in the case of Piro
and her association with the Gulabdasi sect, her identities keeps on shifting with the narratives.
Her multiple identities as a prostitute, lower caste, muslim, women and later a member of the
sect come across in her narrative. It becomes very important how gender, class, caste etc become
a component in this power relation and how this discourse simultaneously becomes an exegesis
of the sect she is representing. Julia Leslie points out the unequal distribution of power are often
garbed in the rhetoric of inherent nature of women, encapsulated through myths2. Thus it also
becomes important how alternative myths and analogies are either constructed or molded in the
new settings to offset this lopsided distribution of power3. Thus the author not just constructs
themselves but also their settings. In the case of Piro, we see the brothel and the dera from her
eyes. Her analogy of Ramayana colors a particular picture of people around her. Even in the case
of mary mccarthy, her description of her childhood pictures her aunt and uncle in a particular
way. Mahatma Gandhis autobiography My Experiments with Truth is an important example of
how a text can be used to evoke sympathy for the protagonist even in morally ambiguous
situation. Rhetoric is utilized in such a manner that evokes favorable emotions for the
author/protagonist. Thus for a protagonist often antagonist forces are also constructed which can
vary from people to conditions. But this narrative is by no means. If the same story is to be

2
Julia Leslie, Myth and Myth Making: Continuous evolution in Indian Tradition, 1996
3
Sudhir Kakar, ibid
narrated by people other than the author, the narrative will be vastly different using the similar
set of facts. Also, the same story told by same person at different points of time will be very
different. Mary mccarthy found her writings of 1943 ridiculous and embarrassing when they
came in published form in 1957. When Sartre is writing his autobiography, we get a sense that
the existentialist Sartre overpowers the person Sartre who is writing his story. Sartre is not
merely writing his childhood experiences, he is simultaneously analyzing it. Here the antagonists
are not people to be precise but the bourgeoisie environment which shaped his existence as a
fake performance that he ought to perform in the domain of family and society. Erikson points
out that an autobiography is a mediation between the creation of an idealised self and the
awareness of one's non existent self". Rather than looking at it as exclusively fact or fiction we
should rather try to understand the psychic, linguistic and literary aspect of writing these texts.
Also how a reader perceives an autobiography also marks great effect in the way these texta are
crafted. There are two somewhat contrary developments that go simultaneously in writing of
these texts. Firstly, author through the power of words and through obtaining a voice via his
writing separates itself from the milieu and the readers to whom he is addressing the text, but at
the same time the reception of his text depends upon how relatable their text is to the author
which allows the reader to emphatize with the author and feel closer to the feelings he generates.
This same notion can on a larger scale be applied on the gurus who obtain their aura from
separating themselves from the milieu but at the same time by attaining spiritual transcendental
attributes he tries to embody symbolically, as asserted by Coleman, the soul of his or her
devotees. As Van der Leeuw for example points out that power belongs to both subjective and
objective aspects of religion which can be impersonal, potent as well as dangerous in nature.
The person in power is revealed by an act of distinguishing which establishes the authority of
the person to disemminate the discourse. This is what Clifford Geertz defines as " a system of
symbols to establish powerful, pervasive and long lasting moods and motivations in men by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with
such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic". Copeman
through the idea of "relative speculation" asserts how guru and devotees converge to give
multifarious attributes to the guru accentuated by the devotees. Hence this performative
aspect of guru formation is as vital as text formation in the sense it appears that this process is
unidirectional from author to reader, from guru to disciple but actually it is reciprocal in nature
the dynamics of which needs to be kept in mind in our analysis.

Bibliography

1. Malhotra, Anshu; Piro and the Gulabdasis; Oxford University Press, 2017

2. Eakin, Jaun Paul; Fictions In Autobiography : Studies in the Art of Self-Invention , Princeton
University, 1988
3. Copeman, Jacob & Ikegame Aye; The guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary perspectives,
Rutledge, 2002

4.Leslie, Julia(ed.); Myth and Myth making: Continuous evolution in Indian tradition, Curzon

Press, 1996

5. Orlson, Carl; Indian Ascetics: power, violence And play, Oxford university press, 2015

6. Frazier, Jessica; The continuum companion to Hindu studies, Continuum international group

of publishing, 2011

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