Babyji - Part II

I don’t think I’ve been very fair in my comments on the book. Just saying something equivalent to “I like it” is hardly literary criticism. In my defence, of course, that was not what I was trying to do with that post, but if taken as criticism, it amounts to the worst possible kind.

So, one way among many in which the text works:

In those few crucial moments of decision in the novel, Anamika (the 16 year old protagonist) attributes her attraction towards women to something genetic, something natural. This works because it dislodges what the socio-cultural order dictates: being compulsorily heterosexual. Homosexuality has no scope within the prevalent moral universe, its justification must then lie outside morality, in something purer – science, biology, genetics or whatever else it gets called. One particular order (science, genetics, etc) gets elevated over another (the moral universe which prohibits homosexuality) in order to critique the latter. But if left simply to this, a huge problem with respect to agency arises: If Anamika can not help but be attracted to Tripta, Rani and Sheela because of her genes, what sort of choice does this leave her with regard to control over her sexuality?

From the norms of morality to the norms of science: If Anamika only just switches loyalties from one to another, her own role and agency throughout would seem to become questionable. And yet, this is not what happens. The justification for homosexuality is attributed to something congenital/ inherent but only so far as it helps critique conventional morality. A ‘scientific’ explanation is never allowed to take a stronghold in itself. It is used only as a tool. The second excerpt in the previous post, for example, illustrates this:

“Science had told us this century that nothing was certain.” [emphasis added]

Science is represented as something relative, temporal rather than absolute truth or pure knowledge. The elevated status allotted to science earlier is found to be a ploy – strategically used to extract a space for homosexuality enabling Anamika to retain her agency. This is something which makes her actions, because they presuppose choice and will, all the more radical and transgressive.

49th Carnival of Feminists...

...up here. Worth a look. More about the Feminist Carnivals here.

Feminism and Nationalist Politics

Much of feminist theorising in India, with its insistence on historically locating various feminist movements, has felt the need to examine the nature of women’s movements during the struggle for independence from British imperialist rule. What has also, most pertinently, been taken into account has been its relation to the prevalent Indian nationalist discourse.

Sarojni Naidu in the midst of a very active and organised All India Women’s Conference in Mumbai in 1930 declares in her presidential address: “I am not a feminist”, and later that:

“We must have no mutual conflict in our homes or abroad. We must transcend differences. We must rise above nationalism, above religion, above sex.” [Quoted in Maitrayee Chaudhuri’s Introduction to Feminism in India]

‘Feminism’ with its obvious western associations had no place in the vocabulary of contemporary nationalist politics. In the agenda of nationalist rhetoric, internal differences are subsumed in the interest of the “larger picture” which the narrative of the ‘Nation’ forefronts.

Of course, it was not as if “the woman’s question” (to use a very loose term) was not being debated. It was, but solely in the context of the struggle for Independence. Women came out into the public space; participated in marches, protests; formed all-women organisations, etc – but all towards the collective goal of achieving Independence. This was somewhat similar to several other movements by underprivileged sections of society whose “cause” was integrated into the nationalist framework.

Among the loudest contemporary voices protesting against such a political schema was Rabindranath Tagore. Though Tagore’s focus was largely on class and caste, and not gender issues, he is important for this argument too. A freedom movement, according to Tagore, that seeks to gloss over internal differences; that does not specifically address the issues of the underprivileged; that imposes the construct of a ‘Nation’ over diverse social, linguistic and cultural groups; can only be a failure, even if it does achieve independence.

Tagore’s warning does not seem to be very irrelevant. For even though, after the Independence in 1947, women were granted suffrage along with men, debates about ‘the women’s question’ had disappeared from the public space in the decades that followed. Several very significant and related questions, which accompanied a lot of women’s suffrage movements around the world could not be raised. The collective energy that had been amassed during the freedom struggle and channelled towards that end was diffused through a paternalistic granting of the right to vote.