Literature and Cultural Activism in Post-Emergency
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FORGING SECULAR PUBLICS: LITERATURE AND CULTURAL ACTIVISM IN POST- EMERGENCY INDIA By ANURADHA RAMANUJAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 1 Copyright 2006 by Anuradha Ramanujan 2 For my parents Chitra Ramanujan and Ranga Ramanujan, and Gidnu 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would not have completed this project without the unfailing support and generosity of my director, Malini J. Schueller. Her intellectual rigor, professionalism, patience and compassion have kept me motivated and on track and taught me important life lessons. I have gained immeasurably from her faith in my abilities as a scholar, and her steady personal and professional guidance. I owe much to Pamela Gilbert for her sustained enthusiasm for my project, optimistic spirit, incredible promptness in responding to every e-mail and paper I ever sent her, and for her sheer brilliance as a teacher. In addition to bringing a South Asianist historian’s critical eye to my work, Swapna Banerjee been a friend and mentor. I have benefited greatly from her extensive editorial skills and tireless revision of my early attempts at grant writing. Leah Rosenberg’s meticulous commentary on my drafts, her always precise and perceptive questions, and overall empathy have been crucial in shaping this dissertation. Mark Thurner’s persistent conceptual and methodological critique of my project has, I hope, helped me become a more scrupulous and self-reflexive writer. To my teachers at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Meenakshi Mukherjee, GJV Prasad and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, whose commitment to students and to a socially engaged pedagogy were instrumental in molding my subjectivity as a researcher and teacher, I owe respect and appreciation. For financial support that facilitated this project, I am indebted to the University of Florida for the Alumni Fellowship and the Ruth McQuown award, and the Taraknath Das Foundation for a timely grant. I thank the American Association of University Women for their generous International Fellowship. And, I am grateful to the governing body of Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, for giving me leave to pursue a doctoral degree in Florida. 4 Special thanks go to Kathy Williams of the English department for painstakingly processing all my paperwork, to Pat Bartlett for her detailed editorial comments, to Ken Booth and his ever helpful team in the ETD lab, and to Maud Fraser and Amisha Sharma at the UF International Center. This has been a difficult year, fraught with unforeseen problems and setbacks that I could not have survived but for the solidarity of friends, in the United States and India. I especially thank Bharati Kasibhatla, with whom I have had the longest conversations and downed the most caffeine on midnight ‘breaks’ from term paper and dissertation writing, for her thoughtfulness, humor, and for her unwavering emotional and practical support through the long years of this PhD. I thank Madhura Bandyopadhyaya, Kanika Batra, Renuka Bisht, Sharmain Van Blommestein, Sangeeta Mediratta, Mansi Parekh and Adnan Sabuwala, my community of fellow graduate students in Gainesville and elsewhere, for assistance on countless occasions; and Sarah Cervone, Rebecca Dettorre, Robin Dinning, Karmen Wall and Ann Welch for their warmth and for introducing me to their furry companions. In my professional world in Delhi, I owe a debt of gratitude to Vani Subbanna and Jitender Gill for advice and support on my messy ‘leave situation’ and Swati Pal and Rita Sinha for their concern and for sticking their necks out for me. I lack the words to adequately express my deep affection and gratitude for my parents. Their extraordinary love, strength, inspiration, and immense personal sacrifices ensured that my academic pursuits were not disrupted at any stage. The PhD may be a milestone in my professional life but it means significantly more to them. This dissertation is, therefore, jointly dedicated to my mother and father and to Gidnu, the orange and white tabby who keeps them sane. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................10 2 POLITICAL FICTIONS: THE ‘EMERGENCY’ REVISITED.............................................32 Introduction.............................................................................................................................32 A Fine Balance: Coalition Politics and the Rhetoric of Development ...................................38 The Making of ‘Mother India’................................................................................................41 Sampoorna Kranti: The Doctrine of ‘Total Revolution’........................................................47 Literary Imaginings: O.V. Vijayan and Rohinton Mistry.......................................................52 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................69 3 NEGOTIATING COMMUNALIZED SPACES: PERFORMING TRADITIONS...............71 Introduction.............................................................................................................................71 Is there a Secular Muslim in India? ........................................................................................73 Gender and Community..........................................................................................................79 Theorizing the ‘Past’...............................................................................................................82 Basava and the Virashaiva Movement ...................................................................................85 Tale Danda and Mahachaitra: A Reading...............................................................................87 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................98 4 CASTE IN A SECULAR IMAGINARY: REPRESENTATION AND THE POLITICS OF DALIT IDENTITY.........................................................................................................101 Introduction...........................................................................................................................101 Representing the Nation’s Disenfranchised: Mahasweta, Puran Sahay and Pirtha..............110 A Movement in Search of Direction: Routes and Escape Routes ........................................118 The Subaltern, the Text and the Critic: Reading Phoolan Devi ...........................................133 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................143 5 SECULARIZING FEMINISM(S): SEXUALITY, PERFORMANCE, AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN INDIA ...................................................................................................144 Introduction...........................................................................................................................144 Sachetana: Feminist Mobilization through Theater.............................................................148 “Making Heroes and Heroines of Assassins and Lesbians”.................................................160 CALERI: Toward an Intersectionality Critique ...................................................................166 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................178 6 6 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................181 LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................................187 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................197 7 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy FORGING SECULAR PUBLICS: LITERATURE AND CULTURAL ACTIVISM IN POST- EMERGENCY INDIA By Anuradha Ramanujan December 2006 Chair: Malini J. Schueller Major Department: English This dissertation examines the contested literary and cultural domains surrounding the meanings of secularism as a political doctrine, and the secular as a cultural ethic and practice in contemporary India. Drawing upon and extending a substantial and richly textured body of multidisciplinary scholarship that emerged as a response to the disturbing Hindu nationalist upsurge in Indian political and cultural life in the final decades of the twentieth century, I identify, in the gender-, caste- and class-based struggles of those on the margins of the nation, useful resources for rethinking secularism. Furthermore, I show how critically reconfiguring the secular as a means of social justice for the marginalized offers possibilities for refashioning, through heterogeneous and fluid imaginings, dominant discourses of the national and of the nation-as-home. Interpolating