Modesty in a Global Age: Women’S Sartorial Practices As Markers of India’S Modernity and Tradition
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MODESTY IN A GLOBAL AGE: WOMEN’S SARTORIAL PRACTICES AS MARKERS OF INDIA’S MODERNITY AND TRADITION A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School Of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Jennifer Lynn Koester May 2015 Copyright © 2015 Jennifer Lynn Koester ABSTRACT This thesis explores modesty as an index of modernity and tradition, and globalization and nationalism in North India and how modesty complicates these dichotomies. It begins by examining the changes that the definition of modesty underwent during the Indian national period under British colonial rule. The focus then shifts to the legacy of these changes and the further changes produced by the current era of neoliberal policies, religious nationalism, and the expansion of globalization into Indian cultural, economic, and political life and discourse. To explore the way the definition of what is modest has undergone transformation in these different periods and the cultural and political significances of these shifts, I consider women’s sartorial practices. The second half of the thesis investigates the links between women’s sartorial practices, definitions of national and Western values, practices, and identities by North Indian actors, women’s symbolic representation through dress (and other behaviors and practices signified by dress) of these particular understandings of the Indian nation and the West. The thesis concludes by considering the explicit connections that women establish between modest apparel and personal security in public spaces with respect to their roles as representatives of the nation. Finally, I explore how different spaces, like the NGO space, produce different discourses for appropriate sartorial practices and modest dressing that allow for some experimentation, while also reinforcing neoliberal conceptions of appropriate sartorial practice. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Jennifer L. Koester is an M.A. Candidate in Asian Studies at Cornell University. After completing the M.A. in Asian Studies Spring 2015, she will pursue a PhD in Anthropology at Boston University. She received a B.A. in Anthropology with High Honors and a B.A. Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from Dartmouth College in 2012. iv For Aaron v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Einaudi Center and the South Asia Program at Cornell University for funding my language study in the Summer of 2014 through a Fellowship for Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS). By their doing so, I had the opportunity to further formulate my ideas and gain additional insights and experience, some of which is included directly in this thesis. I am also very grateful to the American Institute of India Studies, for accepting me as a student and teaching me Hindi, which made the experience possible and valuable. I would also like to thank the Claire Garber Goodman Fund through the Dartmouth Anthropology Department and the Raynolds International Expedition Grant through the Dean of Faculty at Dartmouth College for their financial support of my undergraduate research. That research provided me with the experience and research that raised many of the questions I begin to explore here and provided a wealth of research from which to directly draw in this thesis. I am appreciative of the support from the NGO, in Summer 2011, that I worked with as an undergraduate. The staff, volunteers (both from India and abroad), and clients of the NGO were all very supportive of my research, which would not have been possible without their help. I am also very grateful for the support, interest, and valuable feedback I have received from my committee members, Daniel Gold and Kathryn March, at Cornell University. I have learned a great deal from my opportunity to work with them during my time at Cornell. I am further thankful for the South Asia Program’s funding of my two years at Cornell University through the FLAS fellowship and which made my completion of a M.A. in Asian Studies possible. Finally, many, many thanks to my family and friends for encouraging and supporting my academic and personal goals. I am lucky to have had such wonderful people supporting me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Women as Representative of the Nation: National, Pre-Independence Era 1 Chapter 2: Women as Representative of the Nation: Modern Era ....................................... 8 Chapter 3: Changing Conceptions of Modesty .......................................................................... 19 Chapter 4: Gender-Based Violence in the Public Sphere ...................................................... 28 Chapter 5: Dressing for Safety ....................................................................................................... 44 Conclusion: Experimentation ......................................................................................................... 57 APPENDIX: ............................................................................................................................................ 65 WORKS CITED ...................................................................................................................................... 75 Koester 1 Chapter 1: Women as Representative of the Nation: National, Pre-Independence Era Introduction Women and the dress they wear are often tied directly to nation and the values of the nation (Walsh 2004:43): “Chapkis (1988) says that women’s bodies are often the repository for “tradition”; when “traditional” dress is worn by women, it can be seen as an attempt to preserve or recreate a real or imagined past” (Bridgwood 1995:30). The creating of traditional, national dress was particularly salient for colonial nations: “In parts of Asia (such as India)…nationalists rejected Western dress as a symbol of foreign political and cultural domination and fashioned, in opposition to it, neo-traditional dress to express the moral dignity and cultural soul of the oppressed nation” (Peleggi 2007:66). In India women and women’s dress demonstrated that soul. Producing and editing Indian dress qualifies as one of the “occasions when people become conscious of citizenship as such [that] remain associated with symbols and semi-ritual practices (for instance, elections), most of which are historically novel and largely invented: flags, images, ceremonies and music” (Hobsbawm 1983:12). By delineating a national dress, early nationalists created a consciousness of being Indian. In colonial India, elite women were often called on to represent a traditional and authentic notion of Indian identity despite the huge changes wrought on Indian daily life by colonization (Chatterjee 1995; Chatterjee 1990). During the colonial period, elite women’s behavior and representation of femininity were very significant for the nascent national movement: “concepts of femininity in the context of colonial India became inseparable from a politics of cultural authenticity, preservation, and Indian identity itself” (Handa 2003:67). Women were the representatives of the spiritual core of the particularly Indian nation and they Koester 2 had to represent the nation’s spiritual purity through clothing1 that protected and preserved that purity while also demonstrating adherence to a particular conception of Indian identity. Women wearing dress that is considered modest, respectable, and appropriate by their observers legitimates the communities they come from, one of which is the national community. The wearing of such dress demonstrates to members and potential members the values the community upholds. The British, like Indians, thought that a woman’s status and behavior reflected directly on the moral character of the nation (Chatterjee 1995). The British judged Indian culture by the status of women in India. The British decried numerous practices, most particularly sati, as oppressive of women. These types of practices and subsequent British allegations that Indian women were downtrodden contributed to the British imperialist conclusion that women in India and by extension, Indian society needed to be reformed (Chatterjee 1995). Women, by performing a respectable and modest Indian identity, sartorially testified to India’s civilized nature. Women’s clothing was made even more significant because of the status of men and men’s clothing. Walsh writes: Partha Chatterjee and Tanika Sarkar have both suggested, in different contexts, that it was precisely because Westernized Bengali men had already yielded so much of their cultural autonomy to the structures and demands of life in British India that they were so desperate to preserve the integrity of indigenous home and family life. Women would maintain, Chatterjee argues, their Hindu identity in matters of religion and dress precisely because men had been unable to do so (Walsh 2004:45). Walsh (2004) concludes that men’s adoption of British clothing and “foreign habits of daily dress [w]as a signifier for humiliation and degradation” (Walsh 2004:35). Some men had to wear British clothing in many workplaces and social contexts. They could not represent the emerging 1 In this use of clothing, I am referring to more than a single item of dress. Koester 3 Indian nation or the home (Walsh; Chatterjee 1995; Chatterjee