'Like a dog'

A newspaper cartoon, published a couple of years before Independence*, seeks to represent the subservient position of the colonised mockingly observed by figures signifying British and American imperialism and (most significantly) an indigenous oppressive power group which aligns itself with them. Considerably, the state of subservience of the colonial people is represented through the figure of a dog: meek, enslaved, laughed at and deprived of basic human dignity. While the absolute aim of the nationalist movement must be independence, to not be independent citizens of a free nation, the picture seems to argue, is to not be human. It is to be dog-like.

This super-imposition on the image of the dog as a loss of everything that may be considered to be constitutive of a notion of humanity finds resonance across almost half a century on a different continent. In J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, the complexities of a post-Apartheid South Africa and the changing race relations are discussed through Lucy’s decision to give up her land to her former employee in exchange for his “protection”. The impulse behind the decision is brought out in the following exchange between David Lurie and Lucy:

" 'Yes, I agree, it is humiliating.[she says] But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.'

'Like a dog.'

'Yes, like a dog.' "

The reconfiguration of power in post-Apartheid South Africa involves, in the text, an ethic of divestment on the part of those who formerly enjoyed privilege. Once again the figure of the dog is used to invoke degradation and humiliation. To be dog-like in this case is once more entails a deprivation of basic human dignity: to start “with nothing”.**

However, despite the similarities in the connotation, the argumentative impulse behind the use of the image of the dog in both cases is contrasting. While in the first case the comparison with a dog is to highlight the prevalent state of marginalisation. The text assumes a privileging of that which constitutes as human over animality or, to be more specific, a dog-like status. It speaks of the injustice of such a subjection and voices a demand for independence and democracy. It speaks the language of rights. The second case, on the other hand, priviliges the dog-like status and talks of giving up rights: “To start at ground level.”

And yet perhaps the image of the dog seems to resonate with both, seems to willingly invite a conjunction. It perhaps seems to suggest that what is required ethically is work at both sides of the binary. A giving and taking at either end, both of which seem haunted by the image of the dog.

______________

*27 May 1945, The Hindustan Times. I found it in Thapar-Bjorkert, Suruchi. Women in the Indian Nationalist Movement. (2006)

** I am supposing provisionally a sort of gender neutrality in Lucy’s argument. Lucy’s refusal to file a complaint against her rapists and her decision to live with the family of one of them are undeniably and unmistakably hugely problematic – a result of imposing an argument of divestment not on a figure occupying the centre of power but the gendered margin. The act of humiliation here has been (just as with the ‘colonial people’ dog) something imposed, not an act of agency. This is opposed to Lurie’s own position as white upper class male to seek ‘disgrace’, implying an act of will.

Bhutto's Dead

Has the initial shock worn off? Not quite.

The media reactions are worth examining. After occurrences like the assassination of a political leader, what does the media do? Try to fit things into discursive model ‘stories’ already available.

There will be speculation about how exactly she may have died. (link, link, link)

Or gossip about who exactly is responsible. (link, link, link, link, link)

Or details about her funeral. (link, link, link)

Or glorifying accounts in her memory. (link, link, link)

So what does Bhutto’s death really mean? I don’t know. I reckon it’s too soon to accurately judge the ripple effects. But it does benefit to look into who directly or indirectly profits by it:

Musharraf? Because blaming it on “the terrorists” would seem to give him a justification about the Emergency slapped earlier; give him a basis to show how Pakistan is not yet ready for constitutional democracy?

Bush? Because it would become an excuse to show how the “war against terror” is still required; how the so-called "struggle against the forces of terror and extremism"must continue as it threatens democracies everywhere?

The logic of Nation-States everywhere? Because acts of terror, which constitute their existence, would appear to justify it?

It definitely does not benefit the people of that country. Or this. Or the rest of the world.

More on Nationalist Politics

It's quite amusing to stumble on to this only days after writing the last post. It illustrates the point I was trying to make about how a majoritarian nationalist rhetoric does not serve the concerns of underprivileged sections of society. I'm quoting in length Ania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism where she's dealing with an extract from a story by Mahasweta Devi:

"In a moving story 'Shishu' (Children), the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi describes how tribal peoples have literally and figuratively crippled in post-independence India. National ‘development’ has no space for tribal culture or beliefs, and the attitude of even the well-meaning government officer Mr. Singh, towards the tribal people replicates colonialist views of non-Western peoples- to him, they are mysterious, superstitious, uncivilised, backward. In other words they are like children who need to be brought in line with the rest of the country…At the chilling climax of the tale, we are brought face to face with these ‘children’ who thrust their starved bodies towards Mr. Singh, forcing the officer to recognise that they are not children at all but adult citizens of free India:

Fear - stark, unreasoning, naked fear - gripped him....Why were they naked? And why such long hair? Children, he had always heard of children, but how come that one had white hair? Why did the women - no, no, girls - have dangling, withered breasts? ... They cackled with savage and revengeful glee. Cackiling, they ran around him. they rubbed their organs against him and told him they were adult citizens of India. ... Singh's shadow covered their bodies. And the shadow brought the realisation home to him. They hated his height of five feet and nine inches. They hated the normal growth of their body. His normalcy was a crime they could not forgive. Singh's cerebral cells tried to register the logical explanation bt he failed to utter a single word. Why, why this revenge? He was just an ordinary Indian. He didn't have the stature of a healthy Russian, Canadian or American. He did not eat food that supplied enough calories for a human body. The World Health Organisation said that it was a crime to deny the human body of the right number of calories. ..."

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.