A Frame of Intelligibility for Feminist History in India
Insights and Interventions is a collection of essays and narratives totaling 9 pieces of research and writing dedicated to pioneer feminist historian, Uma Chakravarti. Kumkum Roy’s introduction to this book provides the much-needed frame of intelligibility for understanding Chakravarti’s major works as well as numerous other scholarly works produced in the last few decades in mainstream Indian feminism. If works in this area have been less explicit about their methodologies or too jargonistic, Roy’s introduction makes up for them. Roy chronologically culls out Chakravarti’s arguments and her significant ideas with clarity. She points out through an analysis of The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism that “the picture that emerged was one of complexity if not troubling contradictions” and that Chakravarti “resisted the temptation to erase these and construct a more simple, comforting, if not populist understanding of a tradition…” (1) Roy points out that Chakravarti recognized that the relationship between Brahmanism, Buddhism and other renunciatory traditions “was not simply oppositional” and that there was dialogical relationship, with Buddhism attempting to “redefine the nature of the ‘true’ Brahman.” (3) That Chakravarti was “critical of regarding the [Buddhist] tradition as a primarily urban phenomenon” is noteworthy. (2)
Chakravarti’s work on Pandita Ramabai apart from taking up a whole host of other questions important to feminist history, also, writes Roy, analyses the “enormously complicated, difficult and uncertain worlds that stare in the face while attempting to visualize women’s agency.” (8) In Gendering Caste, Roy sees a “trenchant critique of the romanticized upper caste perspective” that caste was based “on relations of interdependence.” (10) Chakravarti’s understanding that compositions of the Bhakti saints fall short of structural critique are useful today, as they can be read in a whole new light depending on our understanding of caste as an institution and the role of bhakti in the Indian traditions. That she questioned “the tendency to valorize the pre-colonial” (10) and “consign the early centuries of history to the misty realms of myth and spirituality” indicates clearly, not only a stance that is current among historians, but also as to what epistemes and methodologies Chakravarti was responding to and hence what we must take her work as representing. (12) Roy’s introduction is a highly recommended piece of writing for young feminists and historians who seek to understand feminist concerns of the 70s and related decades.
The three parts of the book each have writings by scholars on various topics. In the first part, titled, “Debates,” V Geetha’s essay draws on Chakravarti’s Vedic-dasi essay and asks questions about the self-respecting women of Tamil Nadu who went missing soon after the political triumph of Dravidian nationalism. The first few sections of Geetha’s essay also recap Chakravarti’s contributions in so far as she calls “attention to the mediating role the historian plays in settling the terms of the relationship between past and present” especially in the context of “the nationalist obsession with the chaste, companionate and brave Hindu wife.” (26) Again, the contextualization allows the critical reader to articulate for a feminist project that goes beyond critiquing nationalist history. Geetha argues that the “Dravidian self-determination derived its truth claims” (34) from literature by constructing the earlier Sangam period as ideal and consequently during the DMK’s rule “…justice and injustice were defined in highly sexualized terms.” (35)
Contemporary Histories of Gender and Caste
Sharmila Rege’s “Women’s Studies since the 1990s…” is a brilliant essay that clearly lays out the beginnings of the discipline, charting the political and intellectual changes up to the latest University Grants Commission regulations that brought changes to its nature and functioning, while declarations are rife that higher education is in a state of crisis. The essay evaluates the various changes of the discipline and its relationship especially with activism, autonomous women’s organizations and other institutions in higher education. Considerable energy is spent learning the definitions of women’s studies over time. The delineation of how “empowerment” became a catchword as well as how the categories of caste, community and class enriched feminist discourse while challenging the reduction of equality to education, are truly valuable. Rege’s attention to the changing composition of students, researchers and teachers and her examination of differences in pedagogical practices such as those that explore “Phule-Ambedkarite feminist perspectives” while retaining an emphasis on “a culture of pedagogy based on truth-seeking” is commendable. “Conversations on Caste,” an essay by Rashmi Paliwal describes and conceptualizes her experiences with working on caste issues, with especial reference to the current working of notions of ritual pollution within the mid-day meal scheme in government schools. She records conventional attitudes about who should cook for whom play out in a world of cut-throat competition. Her ethnographic analysis shows a rare sensitivity that is not masked by political urgency or politically correct discourses. Her question whether her casteist interlocutor is given to the urge to “to grope for closure, to see if the world can make sense in a different way” has the potential to reopen the concept of culture in new ways. (84)
The second part of the book, titled “Narratives” presents three different stories by Bharati Jagannathan. Of these, the first two stories “Crime and Atonement” and “Nobody Must Know” appear to be somewhat ideological in comparison to the third, “The Goddess of Palai” which is an impressive and effective rendering of Draupadi’s story in a modern setting. This third story is recommended for use in class projects. The third of part of the book, titled, “Texts and Traditions,” begins with Naina Dayal’s longish essay on Valmiki’s Ramayana and its external and internal audiences. The essay comments on the transmission of the epic, its language and aesthetic style and analyses the varying importance of the Ashvamedha, to its many characters, a ritual sacrifice, during which the story of Ramayana is first performed by the young twin-sons of Rama, Lava and Kusha.
Ancient History Revisited
Meera Visvanathan’s “Comology and Critique” draws on Chakravarti’s work on Buddhism and traces the reference to Purusha Sukta’s myth of the four castes emerging from Purusha, in dharmashastras as well as Buddhist texts. However, the author uses the Buddhist critique of Hinduism as a sort of concluded argument. As we know, this is not the case, and scholars like Shankara presented further arguments in response to the content and tenor of Buddhist critiques. Without presenting the other side of the argument, the essay lacks what is needed to draw conclusions. Although well-written and persuasive, the assumption that Vedic assertions about the nature of the world as cosmos and their acceptance over time was indeed about reality, overlooks the possibility that the Vedic texts represent the cultural experiences of accomplished seers. Further, the nature of sacrifices is itself left untheorized, tilting the balance in favour of an anti-caste analysis, like that of Ambedkar’s, which is also cited by Visvanathan. A mere “sacrifice serves to link the realms of humans and gods” limits our understanding to aspects peculiar to the Semitic religions, while the Hindu textual traditions find themselves in a world inhabited by Gods and humans at the same time, within which, as the Purusha Sukta itself reveals that the sacrifice is a tool to create. (147) The quotation from Nasidiya Sukta (“…who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened”) prompts the reader to ask why a theory of the cosmos-myths cannot be evolved, keeping both positive-descriptions such as those found in the Purusha Sukta, later trajectories of Shakti-centrality, as well as the open-ended inquiries found in texts like the Nasidiya Sukta. (146) It is possibly only natural that positive-descriptions of one kind found credibility in dharmashastric texts that statedly sought to establish an orderly society. The spirit of inquiry and also arbitrariness, however, as any cursory reading would show is not entirely discarded in dharmashastric texts. Kumkum Roy’s essay, the last in the book, collects all the stories to do with friendship in the Jataka Tales. It performs one of the historian’s primary tasks: categorization. The essay is marginally analytical of the material recorded. On the whole, the essays in the book under review make for an informative and useful read for researchers in the field of South Asian history and feminism. It is recommended for teaching in courses under the rubric of Women and Hinduism and Feminist history.