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Home , Androcentrism, Gendercide, National identity, Religious nationalism, Sati (practice), Shakuntala (play)

Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 317–328, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd Pergamon Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/99 $–see front matter

PII S0277-5395(99)00033-3

WOMAN-AS-SYMBOL: THE INTERSECTIONS OF IDENTITY , , AND INDIAN

Shakuntala Rao Department of Communication, 101 Broad Street, State University of New York Plattsburgh, NY 12901, USA

Synopsis — The purpose of this article is to explore the connection between and . I provide a critique of Radhakrishnan and Chatterjee’s notion of the outer/inner dichot- omy of Indian nationalism by stating that , in postcolonial , has emerged as a discursive to- tality that has subsumed the politics of indigenous or inner identity more so than rhetoric of , tribal, gender, and class. I provide a groundwork for this debate via the writings of Nehru and Gandhi. I conclude, through an analysis of the practices of amniocentesis and , that women and their bodies have been used as representations of the conflicts surrounding national subjectivity. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The women’s question in India has been a dif- ing and emergence of the Indian sub- ferent one from the feminist struggles of the sumed the location and of the West (Chatterjee, 1990; Chatterjee, 1995; Lid- “.” Radhakrishnan (1992, p. 78) addresses dle & Joshi, 1985; Nandy, 1987; Pillai, 1996; the conjunction of the women’s question and Sangari & Vaid, 1990; , 1989; Spivak, 1990). nationalism in his now classic essay, “National- In India, during the independence movement, ism, Gender, and Narrative” by asking, “Why women were stepping out into a public world is it that nationalism achieves the ideological only for the nationalist cause, thereafter they effect of an inclusive and putatively macropolitical were to return home to their roles as mothers, discourse, whereas the women’s question—un- , and sisters. The English women leaving able to achieve its own autonomous macropo- their homes to work in factories, on the other litical identity—remains ghettoized within its hand, had long-term effect, which would shake specific and regional space? In other words, by unequal sexual arrangements both within the what natural or ideological imperative or his- home and outside of it. Chatterjee (1990, p. torical exigency does the politics of nationalism 233) points out that while women’s social and become the binding and overarching umbrella political position was under much debate and that subsumes other and different political scrutiny in early 19th-century India, by the end temporalities?”1 of that century it had disappeared completely Drawing on Chatterjee (1990) and Sangari from the public agenda. This occurred, he pos- and Vaid’s (1990) earlier work, Radhakrishnan its, because of the emergence of a competing, arrives at the idea of Indian nationalism as having more seemingly fundamental, discourse of na- a dichotomous origin. “Nationalist rhetoric,” he tionalism. The contextual rhetoric of the build- writes, “makes woman the pure and ahistorical signifier of inferiority” and the West—transcribed by its Enlightenment identity—remains the An earlier version of this article was presented at the Canadian “outer other” (Radhakrishnan, 1992, p. 80). Women’s Studies Annual Conference in Montreal, Quebec. I wish to thank Joseph Reinert and Marjorie Pryse for their By creating this duality Indian nationalism comments. I also thank James Der Derian in whose fails on both fronts: its external history re- political theory seminar this essay first began. mains hostage to the Enlightenment identity

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of the West and its inner “true” and “pure” sence gendered. In this sense the collective dis- self resorts to a “schizophrenic” and “misogy- course of nationalism, unable to subsume the nist” essentialist indigeniety. It is this outer/in- religious, is confronted with an equally univer- ner problematic with which postcolonial na- salizing category of . Radhakrish- tionalism constantly struggles: “the very mode nan’s extrapolation of the inner self of India as in which nationalism identifies its inner iden- merely a “reaction” against the Western ideol- tity privileges the externality of the West, and ogies denies the complexities of Indian politi- the so-called inner or true identity of the na- cal identity. India is no more conceived as tion takes the form of a mere strategic reaction merely a “modern” nation, as Radhakrishnan formation to or against interpellation by West- (1992) writes in his readings of Nehru’s autobi- ern ” (Radhakrishnan, 1992, pp. 84–85). ography, but also fundamentally a “Hindu” Chatterjee (1990, p. 238) argues that the nation. The recent successes of the militant outer/inner dichotomy of Indian nationalism Hindu political organization Bharatiya Janata has been establishing of a relationship between Party (BJP) in national elections and the sub- the spiritual (inner) and material (outer) worlds: sequent bulldozing of the mosque Babri Masjid one signifying the home and the East, the has placed religion on the forefront of national other world and the West. Like Radhakrish- identity politics.2 By ignoring the significance nan, Chatterjee, too, sees the distinction between of religion, not as a subspace but as a fully the inner and outer India as one in which the formed discursive totality that defines what he spiritual India has historically positioned itself terms as the inner self of Indian nationalism, as a reaction to the material West. He writes, Radhakrishnan fails to address the women’s question within contemporary India. As I dis- The discourse of nationalism shows that the cuss later, it becomes impossible to apply material/spiritual distinction was condensed Radhakrishnan’s analysis to an understanding into an analogous dichotomy: that between of the resurgence of the practice of Sati unless the outer and the inner. The material domain one also introduces religion as a narrative lies outside us—a mere external, which influ- structure within which the popularity of Sati ences us, conditions us, and to which we are can be best situated. forced to adjust. But ultimately it is unimpor- The centrality of the narrative of gender, tant. It is the spiritual which lies within, thus, becomes doubly displaced: once by na- which is our true self; it is that which is genu- tionalism in its purpose to integrate and secu- inely essential. (Chatterjee, 1990, p. 238) larize India as a modern nation and again by religion in order to re-construct India as a tra- This dichotomy and its explanatory develop- ditional Hindu nation. Both present them- ment in both Chatterjee and Radhakrishnan’s selves as universalizing totalities and, there- writings limits the multifariousness of Indian fore, are in constant conflict. It is the double political life today. While this dichotomy seems displacement of the women’s question and two to have operated in the formation and devel- of its postcolonial representations—amniocen- opment of 19th-century Indian nationalism, it tesis or sex-determination tests and Sati or cannot be used in explaining contemporary burning—which I explore in this article. trends in Indian national politics and the However, such an exploration also entails a women’s question. closer analysis of the context within which this I argue in this article that contemporary na- debate most often takes place. For Chatterjee tionalism no more subsumes, as Radhakrish- and Radhakrishnan (and many other postcolo- nan (1992) suggests, the many forms of “sub- nial writers3) the struggle to understand the in- spaces” such as “the ethnic, the religious, the ner/outer dichotomy that signifies Indian na- communal” (p. 85). In this respect, the recent tionalism is best situated in Nehru and powerful impact of on In- Gandhi’s writings. While and dian cultural politics cannot be ignored. What his national legacy has been well-established Radhakrishnan fails to acknowledge is that through lineage (42 of the 50 years since In- postcolonial nationalism reconfirms the “na- dia’s independence either Nehru, his daughter tive sense of identity” (p. 85), or what he calls Indira Gandhi, or his grandson Rajiv Gandhi the inner self, through an affirmative reimagin- have been the Prime Minister), M. K. Gandhi ing of religious identity which is also at its es- has been revered as the “father of the nation.”

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Both of them have impressed equally their in- a passive capacity in which one does not have fluence on Indian nationalism in different the subjective power to cast oneself. While a ways. In order to understand the narrative of nation could represent itself as woman, for ex- gender in postcolonial India, therefore, also ample, in Nehru’s (1946) constant reference to requires a rereading of Nehru and Gandhi’s India as Bharat Mata or Mother India, women national politics within the rhetorical parame- within the nation could not represent them- ters of gender and religious identity—an anal- selves, their own identity, or their Indianess. A ysis that is largely absent from Chatterjee and comparable analysis is made by Gilroy (1987) Radhakrishnan’s essays. In fact, both Chatter- who conceptualizes British as imagin- jee and Radhakrishnan, in their efforts to ing race as an agency through which national praise Gandhi (who Radhakrishnan, 1992, p. crises are effectively negotiated, but black peo- 88 says could invigorate the “real India”) and ple are never agents of these negotiations. The critique Nehru, fail to accurately read either of construction of women in terms of specified the national leaders positions on gender or re- roles, models, images, and labels occurs in dis- ligion. course in response to social imperatives in Anderson (1983) has most closely traced terms of the universal and abstract rhetoric of the roots of nationalism, nation, and nation- “Woman,” “Women,” or as in this case, the ness as a formation that has sociocultural “Indian Woman.” As Sangari and Vaid (1990) meaning and a formal universality in the mod- have pointed out, “womanhood is often part of ern world. In this sense one must belong to a an asserted or desired, not an actual cultural nation, as one belongs to a race or gender, continuity” (p. 2). where the particularity of identity is mani- Representationally and alternately women fested in one’s citizenship. Anderson empha- become “passive” symbols of different totali- sizes the idea of the nation as an “imagined” ties: within the discourse of tradition/religion political community that creates a desire for they become the symbol of “sacrifice” (as a among its members. He writes, “It is Sati, an unhappy widow voluntarily jumping imagined because the members of even the into the funereal of her deceased hus- smallest nation will never know most of their band) and the symbol of “progress” within the fellow members, meet them, or even hear of discourse of modern nationalism (by adopting them, yet in the minds of each lives the image amniocentesis and having the power to control of their communion” (Anderson, 1983, p. 63). her reproductive rights through sex-determi- If one is to take Anderson’s working definition nation tests and ). One signifies obedi- of nation as having sociocultural roots, one ence and tradition, the other signifies libera- must also ask if this imagining is gendered. As tion and . These are passive symbols Pratt (1991, p. 582) has pointed out, Ander- because they require the woman to remain son’s use of the “language of fraternity and voiceless, discourseless, and displaced from comradeship” to capture the idea of the mod- the constitutive processes of the symbol-mak- ern nation as an imagined community “dis- ing. It is her death and annihilation that makes plays the of modern national her an active subject (after committing Sati she imagining.” The absence of gender in Ander- becomes the personification of a goddess who son’s speculation of the rise and growth of the is feared for having acquired supernatural modern nation cannot simply be explained by powers). This move from being a passive to an arguing that women “don’t fit” the descriptors active representation requires the abandon- of the imagined community. Rather, the na- ment of the woman’s body, suggesting a physi- tion by definition situates or produces women cal absence of the woman from the symboliz- in permanent instability with respect to the ing process. One could be at the center of a imagined community. Ray (1994) suggests discourse, as Pillai (1992, p. 11) describes in that, “women inhabitants of were her critique of postcolonial writers’ use of the never invited to imagine themselves as part of word center, without having the power to de- the horizontal brotherhood” (p. 97). fine one’s centrality within the of that Yet women were part of an active imagina- narrative. Using the location politics of the In- tion in which they became symbolic represen- dian woman as an example, Pillai problema- tations of the nation. While “imagining” con- tizes the politics of center: one could be at the notes an active verb, being “imagined” represents center of a representation but yet not partici-

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pate in the construction of that representation. dernity, technology, and progress. Particularly Both discourses of nationalism use women as impressed with postwar developments in the central symbols in their efforts at representing , Nehru foresaw India’s future in modern and Hindu identity. It is these two rapid industrialization and growth, strategies symbolic uses of women in the establishment he later pursued during his tenure as Prime of Indian that I will later dis- Minister. Committed to progress, Nehru saw cuss. Here it is important to elaborate on the the colonial period as a phase of “arrest” fol- thoughts about the women’s question and reli- lowing which India was to reembark on the gion of two “great leaders of 20th century In- journey toward its “natural course” in which it dia” (Radhakrishnan, 1992, p. 88) who have would eventually “highly evolve as a nation” had the most influence on how the debates (Nehru, 1946, p. 521). Unable to comprehend about Indian nationalism have progressed. the religious and gender elements in Indian The following analysis will be confined to politics—which Gandhi understood much Gandhi and Nehru’s understanding of the reli- more deeply—Nehru wished to establish a na- gious and women’s question in India, and, sub- tionalism based on “equal opportunity” for sequently to show how Radhakrishnan and people of every “backward groups [sic], race, others have failed to explore those elements. and creed” (Nehru, 1946, p. 533). For him, technological advance inherently implied a no- tion of equality in which “adult men and NEHRU AND GANDHI women” would have equal access to the “fruits While never addressing women’s issues di- of progress” and “a sense of dignity and self rectly, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Min- reliance” (p. 531). ister of free India, wrote about both religion After independence, his belief in equality and nationalism. While acknowledging the led Nehru to introduce and pass the controver- role religion plays in and frequently sial 1955 Hindu Marriage Act and 1956 Hindu wrestling with the question of “what is reli- Succession Act in Parliament. Both these laws gion?” Nehru’s sketchings of India reflect his allowed for the first time Hindu women to in- deep dislike of religion. Raised in an upper herit property and to seek divorce or separa- caste wealthy family that sent him to Harrow tion from their husbands (Raj, 1991; Shastri, and Cambridge for education, Nehru’s outlook 1990). By doing this, Nehru not only risked on life was vastly influenced by his 7 years in alienating a large section of male Hindu vot- England. In his own words: ers, but also seriously conflicted with the then Indian President Rajendra Prasad (Tully & India must lessen her religiosity and turn to Masani, 1990). For Nehru’s vision of a West- science. She must get rid of the exclusiveness ern-style democracy and modernization to suc- in thought and social habit which has be- ceed, seemed imminent and he come life a prison for her, stunting her spirit himself sought paths for such opportunities. and preventing growth. The day-to-day reli- Historically, many progressive gender laws gion of the orthodox Hindu is more con- have remained unimplemented in India where cerned with what to eat and what not to eat, nationalism, and nationalist leaders like Ne- who to eat with and from whom to keep hru, had failed to take into account religious away, than with spiritual values. This out- as a departure point from the sym- look has to change completely, for it is bolic politics of nation-building. Unable to ar- wholly opposed to modern conditions and ticulate the centrality of religion and gender, the democratic ideal. (Nehru, 1946, p. 520) Nehru’s vision of equality headed toward fail- ure in postcolonial India. The material reality Angered by Gandhi’s constant references to of culture absorbed the arrival of technology in religious discourse Nehru writes in his autobi- India’s move toward modernity, but this absorp- ography (1936, p. 176), “I felt angry with him tion was marked by disarray. As Radhakrishnan [Gandhi] at his religious and sentimental ap- (1992) notes, “the nationalist subject marks proach to a political question, and his frequent the space of a constitutive representational de- references to God in connection with it. What bacle” when it is torn by modernity’s vision to a terrible example to set!”. Nehru envisioned a change and tradition’s vision to remain static nation whose foundations were rooted in mo- (p. 85). While Nehru helped that

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would allow women latitude within the social nant message is that of suffering as purifying, and political structure, conversely, these laws even inevitable for a woman. (p. 398) remained unimplemented and separated from the social practices they were meant to change. By naturalizing these symbols as part of Hindu Unlike Nehru, Gandhi was much more at- religion and of Hindu tradition Gandhi fixes tuned with where he women’s suffering as a symbolic condition identified the inevitable overlaps of the two through their overdetermined roles as mothers narratives. Gandhi (1955) writes, “Politics di- and wives (i.e., social roles instituted through vorced from religion has absolutely no mean- marriage). The question of women’s emanci- ing” (p. 122). A foremost visionary of his time, pation becomes irrelevant here, except in its Gandhi saw women as central to the emerging symbolic use to achieve swaraj. Within the pa- discourse of swaraj or freedom. While Nehru rameters of the traditional family, Gandhi thought that scientific and modern advance- failed to see women’s emancipation. He ments would lead to equality for women, Gan- writes: dhi reinvented specific mythological and reli- gious characters who embodied the I tried to show them [women] they were not virtues he thought necessary to fight for the slaves either to their husbands or parents. nationalist cause. Katrak (1992, p. 398) con- But the trouble was that some could not re- vincingly argues that, “female sexuality was es- sist their husbands. The remedy is in the sentialized through Gandhi’s appeals to the fe- hands of women themselves. If they will only male virtues: chastity, purity, self-sacrifice, learn to say ‘no’ to their husbands when they suffering. Gandhi’s female strength was Drau- approach them carnally all will be well. I padi, not the militant Rani of Jhansi who, have been able to teach women who have dressed like a led her troops in a battle come in contact with me how to resist their against the British. is the more ap- husbands. The real problem is that many do propriate, feminine courage which, in the face not want to resist. (Gandhi, 1947, p. 23) of imminent dishonor, calls upon Lord for help.” Gandhi’s Satyagraha and Swadeshi With no real sense of women’s sexual lives, he movements allowed women to participate in makes their domesticity a matter of abstinence the public sphere, but it did not allow women and noncooperation, themes he adopts for the to organize and transform the religious and so- national movement. Yet he does not recognize cial roots of their . It is clear from the limits of women’s power within the family Gandhi’s writings that he was not able to see and the kinds of reprisals they face for saying the use of his religious symbolizing of women “no.” More than a little naively he muses, “If a as depoliticized agencies of national liberation. says to her husband, ‘no, I do not want it,’ By using examples of mythical women such as he will make no trouble” (Gandhi, 1947, p. 24). , Draupadi, and Savitri, Gandhi evoked a Nehru and Gandhi’s rhetoric present oppo- notion of nonviolent suffering with which he sitional views of nationalism and women’s identified the Indian national movement. But emancipation. Nehru viewed Western moder- he failed to see the paradoxical oppression of nity and technology as a way of achieving gen- the religious symbols he was using: Sita and der equality. But this path was problematic Savitri are controlled representations of fe- from its very inception: It ignored religion and male sexualities whose roles are predeter- gender as fundamental to social organization. mined through their associations with strong In fact, Nehru hoped that technology would husbands. Katrak (1992) continues: conquer these “ and ” that plagued the nation. Women would only bene- fit from the alluring capacity of progress to The subconscious hold of socialization pat- change their “historical condition” (Nehru, terns inculcated in girls through the popular 1936, p. 81). The discourse of modernity and mythological stories of the ever suffering modern nation in Nehru’s writings ignored Sita as virtuous wife, or the all-sacrificing other and competing discourses, such as reli- Savitri who rescues her husband from death gion, caste, and gender. For him technology are all part of the preparation for suffering in and progress, in effect, would create the space the roles of wives and mothers. The domi- for women and backward to achieve

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equality but their condition did not, in and by For Radhakrishnan (1992) the “subaltern va- themselves, deserve critical attention. Gandhi lence” of Gandhi, along with its “moral force,” sought a different vision of freedom. For him, makes him a leader who wants to “. . . empower religion, caste, and gender were inseparable the people in a way that will enable him to lead from nation-building and the success of the na- themselves” (p. 89). In his efforts to arrive at the tional movement was dependent on resistance dichotomy of Indian nationalism, Radhakrish- through the deeply Hindu concept of nan wants to provide a reading of Gandhi that or . He fully articulated the cen- disregards the influence of Hindu scriptures on trality of religion in Indian life by proclaiming Gandhi’s understanding of identity politics. In several “vows,” many of which he derived doing so, Radhakrishnan does not connect from his close readings of Hindu scriptures, for Gandhi, Nehru, or Indian nationalist politics example, his vows of celibacy, control of pal- to the women’s question. However, if Gandhi ate, and education through the vernaculars is to signify the “true leader” who experienced (Gandhi, 1938, 1939). Gandhi saw the base of “real India” and could bring out the national the movement in India’s villages and, unlike consciousness of its masses, he cannot be posi- Nehru, was able to energize them into unified tioned outside of the semantics of his religion, rebellion. However, Gandhi’s championing of and, as an effect, gendered location. Gandhi, the subaltern valence (women, Harijans, peas- therefore, cannot be understood outside of his ants, tribals), while locating their politics as complete immersion within a Hindu religiosity.4 central to the narrativizing of the nation, did so Hence, in one sense, Nehru and Gandhi in terms of the rhetoric of a traditional and shared a common ground: They both displaced mythologized Hinduism or the “pure Hindu” women from the totality of women’s experi- as he referred to it (Gandhi, 1954, p. 11). ences at home and in the public sphere accord- While strongly deriding the existing caste sys- ing them, instead, a voiceless but symbolic tem Gandhi adopted the name Harijans space. The outer/inner dichotomy is then signi- (God’s people) for the untouchables. As some fied by the outer as modern India (i.e., Nehru’s Harijan (or or oppressed as they like to vision of nationalism) and inner as religious refer to themselves today) leaders have argued India (i.e., Gandhi’s vision). The conflict and in their criticisms of Gandhi, by giving them choice in Third World nationalism was be- the name Harijan, he “. . . stood us apart even tween, as Radhakrishnan (1992) explains, “be- if the caste system were today dismantled” ing themselves” and “being modern nations” (Prakash, 1994, p. 33). Similarly dedicated to (p. 84). Neither Gandhi’s nor Nehru’s vision women’s emancipation Gandhi failed to locate prevailed in postcolonial India: The construct their oppression within the family and reli- of the inner India and Hinduism shifted from gious structure, instead focusing his attention Gandhi’s nonviolent and androgynous vision on the sacrifice of their lives—and particularly to a more aggressive and masculine identity their sexuality—to the cause of the nation. where women now, more than ever, embodied In critiquing Nehru, Radhakrishnan sees subordination through deeply essentialized and Gandhi’s vision of India as both different and mythologized feminine qualities. Indigeniety radical. He writes: as religiosity was in constant conflict with mo- dernity and women were agencies of both Gandhi’s advocacy of the people carries with these discourses. It is this double displacement it their full moral force. His model of inde- of the women’s question and its symbolic rep- pendent India makes the people the teach- resentations that I now explore. ers, and leaders such as himself become the pupils. Hence Gandhi’s stern refusal of AMNIOCENTESIS: SYMBOL OF progress as an end in itself, and his rejection MODERNITY/SATI: SYMBOL of all indices of growth and prosperity devel- OF RELIGION oped in the West. Hence, too, his insistence on decentralization, simple modes of produc- In a newspaper interview, a Bombay obstetri- tion, the ethic of self-sufficiency, and his cian is recently cited as saying: moral indictment of capital, accumulation, greed, and the systemic proliferation of want I am not saying female feticide should be and desire. (Radhakrishnan, 1992, p. 89) practiced. I’m saying it is a decision to be

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made by the woman. You are heaping on Indian market. This would make it possible poor rural women even more problems by for these clinics to go into even rural areas forbidding this. (Hale, 1994, p. 9) and provide female feticide as an option to poor families at a much lower cost: presently The comments from this urban doctor come at the test costs $10 and the abortion $5 (Hale, a time when the Indian government is trying to 1994, p. 3). curb an abortion epidemic of female fetuses. In some ways Nehru’s vision had come true. In many Indian cities, there are signs hanging Technology and population control have come from small, makeshift clinics that ask, “Beta or to represent modernity and progress. Modern Beti (Son or Daughter)? Spend Rs. 500 now, India has presented itself in the international save Rs. 500,000 later.” These clinics provide scene as an industrialized power capable of amniocentesis or sex-determination and ultra- outstanding contributions in the field of engi- sound tests that allow the doctor to determine neering and technology. With the passage of the gender of the fetus. As Sarkar and Butalia the liberal 1971 Medical Termination of Preg- (1995, pp. 8–9) point out, since the introduc- nancy Act, women gained the power to control tion of this technology in the early 1980s, the their reproductive rights. This modernity, sep- number of have quadrupled and arated from the women’s question and reli- 99% of the abortions take place when the fetus gion, fulfilled a narrow purpose. As amniocen- is suspected to be female. The sign’s crude tesis has proven, technology recirculated a claim “Spend Rs. 500 now, save Rs. 500,000 deeper crisis. Women continued to have higher later,” promises a quick abortion—often pro- death rate, lower life expectancy, lower liter- vided at the same location—and will save the acy, and lower levels of employment (Karle- family from large when the daughter kar, 1994; Mosse, 1993; Warren, 1985). Instead reaches a marriageable age (Crossette, 1991, p. of social equality between men and women, as 1). Most of the reported 150,000 abortions that Nehru had hoped, technology in contrast re- have taken place between 1978 to 1993 have established a materially unequal system em- been performed on women who are from var- bedded in the face of a “free” nation. As na- ied classes and backgrounds and often irre- tional subjects women became symbols of spective of their health conditions (Sarkar & progress where they, like their Western com- Butalia, 1995, pp. 8–9). In July 1994, after pres- patriots, had the power and choice to control sures from various women’s groups and an their reproductive rights and as progressive alarming drop in the gender ratio, the Indian women they accepted new technologies of government banned amniocentesis for sex- change. On the other hand, this choice became determination purposes. The law punishes profoundly misogynist in its practice. Unlike in both the woman taking the test and the doctor the modern nations of the West, which used by imposing fines of up to $320. The tests re- the ultrasound tests to determine the mother main legal for women over the age of 35, while and the child’s health, in modern India amnio- the law makes no provision, as some women’s centesis and abortions were used primarily to organizations had suggested, to develop a reg- destroy female fetuses. The Indian govern- istry of the ultrasound equipment that would ment admitted that surveys show that more allow the government to keep track of these than 80% of the ultrasound tests in India are clinics. Like many other progressive laws, for conducted only for sex-determination pur- example, the Sati Prevention Act and the poses (Jeffrey & Jeffrey, 1993; Rothman, 1986; Anti- Legislation, many feminists antic- Sen & Grown, 1987). One must be very careful ipate that this law, too, will remain unenforced in using the term choice within the boundaries (Karlekar, 1994). While making amniocente- of this practice. The classical notion of choice sis illegal for sex-determination purposes, the implies the power of the woman, on her own state acknowledges its use as a new and mod- free will, to decide to terminate her pregnancy. ern technology. Recently General Electric was With amniocentesis, the woman becomes en- approved by the government to become the tangled in several subjective faces of choice: largest U.S. investor in India and it is now tar- the most common scenario is one in which she geting the market for diagnostic medical may not have any other option or “choice” but equipment, including a lightweight portable to have the test and abort, since having one or ultrasound unit especially designed for the another daughter may not allow her to return

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home to her husband. As is also the case, her hru’s grandson Rajiv Gandhi came to power in choice may be pretextually based on her own the Congress party and won the national elec- belief that women are less important or valu- tions, the BJP had established itself as a pow- able to society, a belief that is, in turn, erful political force with an overtly religious grounded in her subjective conditions, which agenda. Congress subsequently banned the have been oppressive. Thus, the act of choice more militant branch of BJP, the Vishwa becomes reflective of the woman’s own repres- Hindu Parishad (VHP), whose rhetoric had sive sociocultural experiences and fears that, if become aggressively more anti-Muslim. Even born, another woman would only suffer the though VHP and BJP were historically critical way she has. of Gandhi’s philosophy of tolerance and non- The nationalist discourse of progress could now violence (it was a member of a nationalist safely—if not legally—eliminate the women’s Hindu party, Nathuram Godse, who eventu- question by eliminating women themselves. ally assassinated Gandhi), the BJP and Gandhi One could go so far as to say that the umbrella probably shared the most common philoso- rhetoric of nationalism not only subsumed the phies about the women’s question. While most women’s question but made an affirmative ef- of Gandhi’s ideas about religious nationalism fort to transcend it. Women’s acceptance of (for example, the early calls of the first and modern technology made them popular sym- moderate president of BJP, Atal Behari Vaj- bols of national progress, but women’s roles payee, to accept “Gandhian Socialism”) have were limited to representations and agencies been abandoned, reinterpreting and relocating of modernity. The symbolic reality of “women- tradition remained an obsession for as-agency” of modernity was vastly separate nationalists as it did for Gandhi. The locus of from the material reality of “women-as-mod- their relocation is, however, radically different ern” subjects. I bear in mind Rajan’s (1992, p. with the exception of the women’s question. 118) distinction between “real” and “imag- They both used women as central symbolic ined” women, one bearing the pain of patriar- representations of particular religiosities and chy and the other deified for being the body by identifying the essential over- that tragically and silently accepts pain. For laps of the two discourses.6 women, as modern subjects, the choice of ac- While amniocentesis had been the symbol cepting this technology would not be as coer- for women’s progress in integrating technol- cive as it is. As agencies of modernity, how- ogy and modernity to their lives, Sati had been ever, this technology simultaneously symbolized the symbolic representation of women in reli- their liberation and shackling. Modernity al- gion. Strongly opposed to the practice of Sati, lowed the woman, for the first time, the possi- Gandhi viewed it as a needless sacrifice. If Sati bility of knowing her own and the baby’s was the embodiment of purity and virtue what health and yet the modern technology forces good would it do, he wrote (Gandhi, 1955, p. her to kill the same fetus. The use of amnio- 125), in the nationalist cause if it was achieved centesis proved that the influence of religious or realized by dying? While opposed to sui- patriarchy, which modernists like Nehru tried cide—which is where pro-Sati advocates often to avoid, cannot but enter an analysis of tech- situate their arguments—Gandhi failed to see nology in postcolonial . Women’s eman- the problematics of Satihood, which he himself cipation in postcolonial India did not succeed advocated. He wrote,”Satihood is purity” because the modern state failed to critique the (Gandhi, 1931, p. 3). Sita, Gandhi’s favorite cultural grounds upon which technology was heroine from the epic , was a chaste introduced, instead hoping that technology and virtuous woman who committed Sati at would change religiosity. the end of the tale to prove her undying devo- Accepting the tenets of a modern nation tion for her husband . While criticizing has led to a disjuncture between local, re- widow self-immolation on one hand, Gandhi gional, and subaltern politics with national pol- embraced representations of heroic women as itics.5 The marginalization of religion in the In- those who signified suffering and devotion dian nationalism of Nehru and especially his through death and pain. His heroines were not obsession with the liberal-elitist narrative of those who resisted oppression and sought to the West ignored religion’s deep-rooted influ- escape the mutilation of burning. Sita, like the ence on Indian subjectivity. By the time Ne- Sati, is a passive symbol of spectacle. A contra-

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diction that emerges over and over again in sati are purportedly on the side of ‘tradition’: Gandhi’s nationalist and nonviolent strategy is for them sati is a venerated ritual so that the about women’s position within the patriarchal ban on sati and its celebration pits the state family structure where the performance of Sati against the community, the colonial or west- takes place. It is often the woman’s and the de- ernized rulers and elites against the ‘native’ ceased husband’s parents and family members Indian subject. The negative identity of ‘mo- who force the widow to enter into the pyre. dernity’—as an elite, high bourgeois and While Karlekar (1995) suggests that for “him alienated ‘westernization’—can be and is, by [Gandhi] women and not men were the more the same token, thrust upon those who take honorable and admirable sex is clear from his the stand of opposing sati. (Rajan, 1992, p. 17) own efforts at becoming as much like a woman as he possibly could,” (p. 60) Gandhi’s empha- The conflict between modernity and tradition- sis on woman’s capacity for suffering and his ality makes the act of Sati the agency through unproblematic assertion of woman’s centrality which the postcolonial culture attempts to resolve within the domestic sphere suggests Gandhi’s the crisis of national identity. Radhakrishnan’s ambiguity toward the women’s question. outer/inner duality of nationalism or Rajan’s Unlike Gandhi’s tacit acceptance, several problematized separation between modern/ BJP leaders have actively supported Sati and tradition must locate the popularity of Sati in a some, joining hands with the Sankaracharya of tradition specifically coded to reflect the patri- Puri (who is also known as Swami Niranjan archal religiosity of Hinduism or . The Dev Teerth and is a prominent Hindu leader), inner identity is not merely, as Radhakrishnan have supported its legalization.7 For them (1992) asserts, a reaction formation against the Hindu nationalism could be established and outer, but derives its validity from the reimag- made popular only if the iconography of Hin- ined, reconstructed, and rewritten pre-colonial duism could be made visible, for example, the and pre-modern (p. 85). The arguments in fa- powerful image of the willing woman seated vor of Sati’s legalization are often surrounded by on the pyre next to her deceased husband the need to overturn a stipulation imposed ready for her sacrifice. In order for Hindu na- upon “us” (Hindu women/Hindu people) by tionalists to reject the modernity of culture im- the colonialists, and also because Hindu scrip- posed by the secular state it must return or re- tures and mythologies have always spoken fa- construct the roots of a precolonial indigeniety vorably of this practice. The popularity of Sati where Sati was an act of glory. Several authors then becomes manifested in a nativist revival- have argued that this historical construction of ism that not only reacts against the Western the “precolonial indigeniety” by the BJP/VHP subject of Enlightenment but also attempts to is based on specific colonial experiences which appropriate Hindu and Vedic teleology. Mani privilege certain kinds of narratives, for exam- (1987, p. 56) has demonstrated for us that this ple, Brahmanic and Male over others (Chat- reinvention of Hinduism is not new. In fact, terjee, 1994; Gopal, 1991; Inden, 1990). Chat- Mani argues, colonial interpreters, progressive terjee (1995, p. 126) suggests that in fact the elites, and conservative natives had always fo- idea that Indian nationalism is synonymous cused their arguments about Sati not primarily with Hindu nationalism is not the vestige of on women’s condition, but on what constitutes some premodern religious conception but rather authentic cultural tradition. “Brahmanic scrip- it is entirely, “modern, historicist, and political.” tures,” Mani (1987) writes, “were increasingly In September 1987, the death of 18-year-old seen to be the locus of this authenticity so that, Roop Kanwar in Deorala, , brought for example, the legislate prohibition of Sati Sati back into the popular consciousness becomes a question of scriptural interpretation” (Narasimhan, 1990). Describing Kanwar as (p. 66). These specific texts were considered Sati and explaining the reemergence of the prescriptive texts that contained rules of social phenomena, Rajan writes: behavior even though, according to Mani (1987), the evidence of this assertion was problematic. The issue of sati in India today resolved itself Mazumdar (1994) adds, “For the better part of into a series of binary oppositions subsumed the history of the subcontinent there had been into the larger categories, ‘tradition’ and no uniform religious identity readily identifiable ‘modernity.’ Defenders or sympathizers with as Hindu” (p. 248). It was only with British co-

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lonialism that the first formulation of national alist politics by reminding readers of the spec- identity emerged. But in postindependence In- tacle (Sati) or paining (amniocentesis/abortion) dia, for BJP and other neoconservative forces, of women’s bodies. In either of these cases, the and its ban on Sati has become a disturbing implication is that the national de- momentary aberration that India must discard bate about Indian culture (authentic/modern, in order to reconstruct itself as a Hindu nation. traditional/modern, religious/secular, spiritual/ The concept of nation, thus, becomes con- material) make women, and primarily their structed not only as a strategic reaction against bodies, the agency through which these de- colonial oppression, but also as a method of re- bates are contested and resolved. asserting an invented or imagined religiosity, Finally, the essential dichotomies in which that is, religion is no more a subspace that Indian national identity has been presented modern nationalism is able to subsume. may not be sufficient to explain the rise of The high visibility of Roop Kanwar’s Sati in Hindu nationalism, Sati, and amniocentesis. the media and the ensuing discussion about The outer/inner dualism does not address widow self-immolation, mostly in English news- other, often competing, ideological forma- papers and journals in India and among West- tions. Chatterjee (1990) himself acknowledges ern academics, brought another issue to light. this when he writes, “A renewal of the struggle According to Nandy (1994), it was the clear for the equality and freedom of women must disjuncture between rural (people of Deorala include within it a struggle against the false es- specifically) and urban India, in which the cel- sentialisms of home/world, spiritual/material, ebration of Sati by so many thousands seemed feminine/masculine propagated by nationalist simply perplexing for the urban bourgeoisie ” (p. 252). and profoundly worrying to the extent that “it had to be simply and loudly rejected” (p. 132). CONCLUSION The nonmodern sectors of Indian society who viewed Sati as a religious phenomena had been My purpose in this article has been threefold. instinctively rejected by the upper bourgeoisie; First, I provide a critique of Chatterjee and for them Sati connoted everything that was ir- Radhakrishnan’s notion of the outer/inner di- rational, backward, archaic, and corrupt. chotomy of Indian nationalism. While the The central question about women’s subjec- outer vision of India has remained hostage to tivity, however, remains problematic. Nandy’s Western factors of reason and coercion, the in- criticisms are fair to the extent that he finds ner vision has not been simply a rejection of the Westernized middle class in India as in- the outer, as Radhakrishnan (1992) claims, but comprehending to the religious elements that also a deliberate construction of a pure indige- dictate the nonmodern Indian subject’s re- neity. This reconstruction has required and re- sponse to the performance of Sati. On the sulted in the cooptation of religiosity and Hin- other hand, the performance of amniocentesis/ duism as a way to resist the secular, modern, abortion, which is primarily an Indian middle- and Western subjectivity. In fact, religion, in class phenomena, has evaded the kind of scru- postcolonial India, has emerged as a discursive tiny Kanwar’s Sati received. (Nandy, 1994, totality that has subsumed the politics of indig- makes a similar comparison with the increas- enous identity (more so than other rhetoric of ing dowry deaths in Delhi.) However, in his ef- caste, tribal, gender, class, etc). While the insti- forts to critique the varied responses of Indian tutional agencies of modernity forces the In- intellectuals, Nandy falls into the classic binar- dian state to constantly play “catch-up” with ism of modernism and religious traditionalism. the West, the inner India seeks religion as its Veena Talwar Oldenburg (1995) notes in her route to resistance. The two are in constant critique of Nandy that he mistakenly con- struggle and create conditions of violence, co- cludes that “Sati was an uncontested and time- ercion, and denaturalization in their efforts to less element in an equally timeless Indian cul- control the politics of location. Unable to ture” (p. 162). In that sense, Nandy, perhaps “speak” of its own condition, radically effected inadvertently, becomes one of the traditional- by colonialism, rapid industrialization, and ists who romanticizes an authentic Indianness. growing changes in the environment, the na- I think feminists like Talwar Oldenburg are tional subjectivity develops a conflictual reso- trying to point to the gendering of the nation- lution to its identity: if the modern nation can

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only repress the religious all will be well and if Indian Supreme Court, which had banned any efforts of the religious can repress Western subjectivity, demolition of the mosque 2 years earlier, it seemed that this act was to create a sense of Hindu nationalism the contradictions will be smoothed. I also whose main purpose was to disenfranchise the minority conclude that this dichotomy between inner/ Muslim population (Ahmad, 1994; Kothari, 1994). outer India might not be exhaustive enough to India’s political has vastly shifted since this encapsulate the multitude of identity conflicts event. In 1986, BJP had only two seats in Parliament. In in postcolonial India. the elections of 1991, they won 119, about 20% of the seats and in May 1996, BJP was allowed to form a coali- Second, I provide a groundwork for this de- tion government after winning 161 house seats (Gargan, bate via the writings of Nehru and Gandhi (as 1993; Jha, 1996). have Appadurai, 1993; Chatterjee, 1990; Kar- 3. For example, Appadurai (1993), Chatterjee (1995), lekar, 1995; Radhakrishnan, 1992, etc.), but have Jayawardena (1986), Karlekar (1995), and Sarkar and Butalia (1995). focused on how Nehru and Gandhi connected 4. The centrality of Hinduism in Gandhi’s own life is the religious and women’s question to national clearly explained by him in the essay title, “Why I am a politics. Radhakrishnan and others insists that Hindu” (Gandhi, 1939, p. 7). Gandhi, unlike Nehru, understood the politics 5. One cannot find a better example than the 1993 elec- of Indian nationalism because he understood tions in which several states and provinces were won by smaller coalitions, such as the one between Bahujan the primacy of the Indian masses (peasants, ru- Samaj party-Samjwadi Party who represent the interests ral, poor, untouchables) in the making of the of the minority Muslims and lower castes than the nation. However, my readings of Gandhi sug- national parties like Congress and BJP. In the 1996 gen- gest that while he understood the religious ele- eral elections, for the first time in India’s history, such a coalition of regional and minority parties, briefly ments of Indian political life well (it is in reli- formed a ruling government with a low-caste Prime gious terms that he understood the masses), he Minister, H. D. Dev Gowda (Rettie, 1993; Lev, 1996). was much more vague and ambiguous about 6. In making this connection, I must cautiously point to the women’s cultural and social location. readers that the vision of religious politics of Gandhi Finally, in conclusion, I have tried to ex- was fundamentally different from that of the BJP’s (see Karlekar, 1995). plore how the women’s question has been dis- 7. I specifically mean Vijayraje Scindia, the Maharani or placed by all actors (BJP, Nehru, Gandhi) of Queen of Gwalior in the state of Madhya Pradesh, who the national debate who have failed to realize has emerged as a powerful BJP leader and a Hindu that each aspect of the conflictual national for- nationalist. After the passing of the Sati Prevention Act in 1987, Scindia said, “A voluntary act of self-immola- mation is gendered. The women’s question is tion by a widow in dedication of her husband does not not “one” of the many perspectives that need constitute an offense” (Crossette, 1991, p. 1). attention or analysis, but, in contrast, no his- torical rethinking can take place without gen- der, or as Sangari and Vaid (1990, p. 2) sug- REFERENCES gest, there is no gender neutral method of Ahmad, Aijaz. (1994). Nation, community, violence. South criticism. I conclude that the practices of am- Asia Bulletin, 24, 24–34. niocentesis and Sati have merely pointed to Anderson, Benedict. 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