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Durham Research Online Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 11 January 2019 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Mirza, M. (2015) An all-weather, all-terrain ghter' : Subaltern resistance, survival and death in Mohammed Hanif's Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.', Journal of commonwealth literature., 50 (2). pp. 150-163. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989414537287 Publisher's copyright statement: Mirza, M (2014). 'An all-weather, all-terrain ghter': Subaltern resistance, survival and death in Mohammed Hanif's Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 50(2): 150163. Copyright c The Author(s) 2014. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. 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Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk ‘An all-weather, all-terrain fighter’: Subaltern resistance, survival and death in Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti The eponymous protagonist of Mohammed Hanif’s latest novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011) is a lower-class, untouchable Christian woman in contemporary Pakistan. Despite her determined efforts to survive and escape her subalternity, she dies a brutal premature death following which her father Joseph makes a claim for her sainthood thereby inviting a reflection on whether Alice’s demise is being romanticised not only within the narrative by Joseph, but also by the text. Indeed, literary works and writings by subaltern studies historians often do tend to romanticise the dead subaltern, or ‘necroidealise’ as Victor Li calls it, so that he or she emerges as an ‘exemplary, heroic symbol of resistance’ (2009: 276). It is in death that the ‘utopian promise of an alternative lifeworld finds its final affirmation and guarantee’, necessitating a disjunction between the ‘ambiguity of struggle’ of the living subaltern and the idealised heroism of its dead counterpart (Li, 2009: 275- 276). In this article I will analyse the depiction of Alice’s multilayered subalternity and the strategies of survival that she chooses to deploy, as well as the representation of her death, to demonstrate that Hanif’s novel is an unequivocal rejection of the idealisation/idolisation of both the living and the dead subaltern. The many subalternities of Alice Bhatti Ranajit Guha (1982: vii) has defined the term ‘subaltern’ as ‘a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society, whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender or any other way’. Being a Catholic, the central character of Hanif’s novel is ‘subordinated’ by her minority religion in a Muslim-majority country where, as the author brings to the fore (and not without a touch of humour), religious intolerance is on the rise and free speech increasingly constrained. Alice’s father observes, for instance, that there was a time in his life when he could have stood at a street corner and launched a tirade against camels (which evoke Saudia Arabia, the birthplace of Islam) to publically decry their ugliness without fear of retribution but ‘these days you never know’ (45). 1 Furthermore, Alice belongs to the ‘Choohra’ or untouchable (dalit) caste whose members are converts from Hinduism and who constitute ninety to ninety-five per cent of the Pakistani Christian community today (Koepping, 2011: 25). Hanif’s novel is a vivid demonstration of how notions of untouchability and ritual pollution (having to do with the symbolic rather than physical impurity of the lowest-castes) are alive in Pakistan, even when the official discourse insists that these are foreign, Hindu and therefore unIslamic practices.2 In reality, untouchable converts face discrimination not only from Muslims but also ‘upper-caste’ Christians, thereby seriously complicating the idea of solidarity based on religious affiliation as a mode of resistance. No wonder then, if Alice ‘had always felt ambivalent about faith-based camaraderie’, never buying into ‘we- are-all-His-sheep-type sentiments’ (201). Being a junior nurse, she is also at the bottom of the ladder in the medical profession and often has to endure the contempt of mostly male senior surgeons who are accustomed to treating nurses like ‘garbage bins in uniforms’ (175). But Alice’s biggest daily challenges are a consequence of her being a lower-class female in the bustling city of Karachi. She even comes to perceive her physical attractiveness as a ‘curse’ since it makes her more vulnerable to unwanted male attention (94). She cannot afford a private vehicle and hence is deprived of the relative protection from sexual harassment that comes with it: Alice is compelled to walk in bazaars, travel in buses and thus spends the greater part of her day in public spaces where prevails a culture of sexism and almost ‘endemic misogyny’ (East, 2011). Indeed, ‘lewd gestures, whispered suggestions, uninvited hands on her bottom are all part of Alice Bhatti’s daily existence’ (9). She is also aware of the double standards that characterize the treatment of untouchable women by upper-caste men: while deemed ‘impure’ for purposes of social interaction, Choohra women are nonetheless touched, groped and molested sexually by them. Thus, ironically, the sole advantage that could have possibly stemmed from her lower-caste, untouchable status is denied to Alice: She can live with being an untouchable, but she desperately hopes for the only privilege that comes with being one. That people won’t touch her without her explicit permission. But the same people who wouldn’t drink from a tap that she has touched have no problem casually poking their elbows into her breast or contorting their own bodies to rub against her heathen bottom. (95) Hanif’s novel forcefully demonstrates that untouchability brings no advantages to the subaltern woman and it is ‘always a curse, never a protection’ (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 11). As Mendelsohn and Vicziany (1998: 11) point out, ‘evidence from our own time’ indicates that the sexual exploitation of untouchable women by high-caste men in India has been ‘habitual’ rather than ‘merely occasional’: paradoxically the untouchable woman is ‘never so degraded’ or ‘ritually polluted as to be sexually unapproachable’. I would argue that this habitual sexual exploitation of untouchable women by upper-caste men, whether in India or in Pakistan, also seems to suggest that the sexual act with an untouchable woman, forced or otherwise, is considered so unimportant, so socially inconsequential that it does not represent a challenge to, or violation of, the mores of ritual pollution. Unlike Alice’s father who appears to celebrate his marginality, (as we will see later in the article), this representation of untouchability in the text indicates that Hanif romanticises neither the subaltern status of the Chooras nor the quotidian ordeal faced by them, especially as women. Resisting and Surviving Subalternity The novel highlights not only Alice’s consciousness of her socially constructed subalternity but also the strategies that she deploys to survive under hostile conditions. She understands that in a patriarchal society the notion of male honour and dignity is inextricably tied in with the woman’s body resulting in it being commodified and making it particularly vulnerable to physical violence: Suspicious husband, brother protecting his honour, father protecting his honour, jilted lover avenging his honour, feuding farmers settling their water disputes, moneylenders collecting their interest: most of life’s arguments, it seemed, got settled by doing various things to a woman’s body. A woman was something you could get as loose change in a deal made on a street corner. (96) One of the ways in which Alice attempts to counter her vulnerability as a woman is to devise a ‘doctrine’ (9), an extensive survival guide of sorts, to avoid becoming yet another victim in a city where not a day goes by when a woman is not ‘shot or hacked, strangled or suffocated, poisoned or burnt, hanged or buried alive’ (97). She is resolved not to become the sort of woman who becomes a victim of male violence and in a bid to avoid becoming that type of woman, she closely monitors her gait and her clothing so as to maintain ‘a nondescript exterior’ (98). She ‘avoids eye contact’, ‘sidesteps even when she sees a boy half her age walking towards her’ and perfects ‘no-touch’ social interaction (99). She is particularly vigilant about her use of language, speaking in ‘practised, precise sentences so that she is not misunderstood’: She chooses her words carefully, and if someone addresses her in Punjabi, she answers in Urdu, because an exchange in her mother tongue might be considered a promise of intimacy. She uses English for medical terms only, because she feels if she uses a word of English in her conversation she might be considered a bit forward. (98- 99) These extensive precautions which encompass every aspect of her being and conduct may indicate that Alice perceives violence against women, in one way or another, as stemming from the victim’s own behaviour or perhaps an inability of the victim to monitor her comportment and public persona.
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