Making and Breaking of Bengali Hindu Women: Placing Partition Memoirs by Bengali Hindu Women Against “Broto Katha”
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/ 135 Making and Breaking of Bengali Hindu Women: Placing Partition Memoirs by Bengali Hindu Women against “Broto Katha” PALLAB DAS I hen one looks at the word “woman” from the perspective of gender, it always Wcomes with some predefined notions, in most cases defined by the representatives of patriarchy, which also provides the whole thing with a flavour of social politics of gender. Even Tagore had to write that a “woman” is half her womanhood and half a man’s imagination. In her inaugural speech on 9th March 1989 at a seminar titled Indian Women: Myth and Reality, Ashapurna Devi says: “Women have always been misled by the imposed ideal of womanhood. Be it her gentle manners and natural tenderness, or her lack of physical strength, she has always found herself hidden behind a mist of illusions, fenced in on all sides and forced away from the real world into the seclusion of a helpless and dispossessed life. It is the unfair system that fostered the absurd notion - that she has no place in the world of work outside her home. Man is the maker of that world, and a woman’s duty is to make him a home.”1 At the advent of civilisation, the texture was essentially matriarchal. Probably the priority was given to the fertile nature of womanhood. Gradually with the growing complexity, the patriarchy took control over society and the first thing it did was to prove its rival gender subordinate. This hypothesis falls fine with almost every civilisation in the world, including India. To confirm the superiority of the “man” they very cunningly defined religion and gendered its concepts in favour of them. From the Christian Bible to Hindu scriptures - every religious text shows women as subordinate and unfortunately opiumed by religion. The society accepts these gendered narratives as words from Gods, therefore, truth. For Bengali Hindu women the fact is no different. Even modern poet like Tagore could not go beyond its influence. For example, in Home and the World he shapes Bengali women as yet unready to face the world outside the threshold. Though against it we have his Labanya in Sesher Kobita, Tagore places her as exceptional, in other word, rare. In Dui Bigha Jomi he clearly conceives the Bengali women as an embodiment of softness and sweetness. While searching for the stereotype that the “Bengali Hindu Woman” is, one may easily search the religious scriptures and works of literature. But often the process ends incomplete with only the search covering the mainstream Hinduism that affects the Bengali social practices. Instead, this article tries to search for the stereotype in a long-neglected2 part of the socio-religious practice – namely the ‘Broto Katha’. Jnanendramohon Das in Bangala Bhashar Avbhidhan defines Broto as rules, discipline, and pious ritualistic ceremony to be performed regularly to achieve wealth and other mundane comforts. Madhuri Sarkar in her Broto: Samaj o Sanskriti (Broto: Society and Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 43.3 Autumn 2020 [Supplement 135-146] © 2020 Vishvanatha Kaviraja Institute, India 136 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS Culture) has preferred to relate it to English ‘ritual’ or ‘rite’ where she also defines them according to Standard Dictionary of English Language as “A prescribed form or method for performance of a religious or Solemn Ceremony”. In this essay the term Broto would be used in the sense Madhuri Sarkar has used it in her above-mentioned book.3 Broto Katha is the literature which validates the rituals. While worshipping involves a philosophy of higher standards, Broto(s), in most of the cases, are concerned with the fulfilment of mere mundane wishes. Rather I would like to say - momentary wishes. That’s why many of them can be observed at any time of the year depending on the desire of the individual. Thus religious scriptures explain the philosophy behind religion and Broto Katha or the literature of the Broto explains what rituals are to be performed and often they are validated by stories where such performances have resulted in magical results, often without explaining the reasons or philosophy behind that. The explanation for this may be found in the observations of Abanindranath Tagore. And this same observation has particularly fetched my interest in searching for Bengali Hindu woman stereotype in the Broto Katha(s) widely observed in Bengal. He observes in his famous book Banglar Broto that we bear a prejudice that these are invented by our ancestors to teach the women about religion and its rules. He thinks that this applies only for the Shastriyo (Scriptural) Broto4 and does not apply for Meyeli Broto5. They were regularly performed even before the Hinduism or any religious scriptures of it existed. This observation by Abanindranath has inspired me to search what the Shastriyo Broto and its literature tells about Bengali Hindu women and what the Meyeli Broto has to say regarding the same. A section of this essay is dedicated to my findings that came out of a thorough study of the Broto and Broto Katha. It will also give focus on the male-female or masculine-feminine binary that comes out from it while it is studied and explained from the perspective of gender narratives. The next section is dedicated to the breaking of this stereotype. In this respect, I find a very interesting dichotomy that runs through the Bengali socio-political and religious construction. In one hand Bengal has given birth to woman prodigies like Rani Rashmoni, Dr Kadambini Ganguly, Sarojini Naidu, Matangini Hazra and Preetilata Waddedar. On the other hand, we have domesticated our Goddess Durga in the attire of a housewife busy with the family consisting of an addicted husband and four children; as if to confirm that whatever bravery a woman manifests, her ultimate place in the family is that of a wife or a mother. Although there are exceptions, at intervals the society craves for the stereotype. Such is that craving that the largest celebrated festival of the Bengalis cannot ignore the influence of it. But my reading of Bengali literature and my understanding of Bengali social history suggest that a major shift had affected the construction of Bengali Hindu woman stereotype during and after the Partition of 1947. Women in a large scale started coming out of the domestic periphery claiming their share in the domains which previously was meant for the men only and a new gender binary was taking shape. This was no more exceptional but new-normal6. This was even more prominent in the narratives by the Bengali Hindu women of that specific piece of time. The present essay focuses on how the Broto Katha has helped in forming a stereotype and how these Partition narratives by Bengali Hindu women help to break the same. II Before lurking into the domain of Broto Katha to search for the Bengali Hindu Women stereotype, let me clear some facts about it to avoid misconception. Madhuri Sarkar in her book has related Broto Katha to ‘rituals’ or ‘rites’. And such rites can be found in Making and Breaking of Bengali Hindu Women / 137 peoples of different religions and these rituals are ancient than the religion they believe in and in some cases have evolved socially to be included in the religion. Such rituals are not exclusive of Hinduism but may be found in believers of Islam and even in Mexico, where the society is Christian. In the Sundarbans both the Hindus and the Muslims observe the Broto of Bon Bibi. The Bengali Hindus observe the Satyanarayan Broto which is originally the worship of Satyapir. Asan Bibi’s Broto is also observed by the Hindus. (Banglar Broto, 24) The Lakshmi Puja Broto which the Bengali Hindu women observe every Thursday is an amalgamation of the Aryan and the Non- Aryan cultural practices. The same kind of rituals can be found in Mexico. The women in unkempt hair perform the ritual. The expectation is same – material and agricultural wealth.7 Thus these rituals are not exclusive parts of one’s religious belief but are reflections of the mundane desires of human society. In course of history, they have been influenced and moulded by religion and mundane desires have taken shapes of Gods or Goddesses. My objective primarily is to seek a gendered perspective to look at the nature of those ‘desires’. And here I shall take into consideration those Broto(s) which are mainly observed by Bengali women who are believers of Hinduism. An interesting fact reflects when one looks at the classifications of the Broto Katha. According to Abanindranath, these are of two types – ‘Shastriyo’ (Scriptural) and Meyeli. (Banglar Broto, 05) ‘Shastriyo’ Broto can be observed by both men and women. ‘Meyeli’ Broto are for women and are to be strictly observed by women. Thus according to this classification, there is no Broto for the men specifically. And as we know, in conservative Bengali Hindu Society women take active parts in such ritualistic celebrations and men remain aloof. The scenario can be well understood from the depiction of the observation of Gajan or Charak by a ‘babu’8 in 19th Century Calcutta in Hutom Pyanchar Naksha by Kaliprasanna Singha. The book depicts the Calcutta culture of that period. In the very first chapter, Singha describes the Charak in Calcutta of his time and narrates how the babu is annoyed as he has to do his part in the ritual, while he is all set to go out and spend the night at the ‘kotha’ of his mistress. And his wives are tensed and eager to avoid any imperfection in the observation of the rituals.