THE DISCURSIVE FORMATION OF SEXUAL SUBJECTS: SEXUAL MORALITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN KERALAM Ph.D. Thesis submitted to MANIPAL UNIVERSITY by RAJEEV KUMARAMKANDATH CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY (Affiliated to Manipal University) BANGALORE - 560004 May 2013 Bangalore 10 April 2013 Declaration I, Rajeev Kumaramkandath, do hereby declare that this thesis entitled The Discursive Formation of Sexual Subjects: Sexual Morality and Homosexuality in Keralam contains original research work done by me in fulfilment of the requirements for my Ph.D. Degree in Cultural Studies from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and that this report has not previously formed the basis for the award of any degree or diploma in this or any other institution. This work has not been sent anywhere for publication or presentation purpose. Rajeev Kumaramkandath ii Bangalore 10 April 2013 Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (Affiliated to Manipal University) 'Pramoda', Flat No-302, 70/1, Surveyor Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore-560 004 Certificate Certified that this thesis entitled The Discursive Formation of Sexual Subjects: Sexual Morality and Homosexuality in Keralam is a record of bonafide study and research carried out by Mr. Rajeev Kumaramkandath under my supervision and guidance. The report has not been submitted by him for any award of degree or diploma in this or in any other university. Dr. Sitharamam Kakarala (Supervisor) Dr. Rochelle Pinto (Member, Ph.D Committee) Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Director) iii To Vijayalakshmi K, my mother & Bindu P Verghese, my lifemate for their struggles that kept me alive iv Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Section I Shaping Desire in the Modern Way: Registers in History Chapter 1 Blueprints of Progress, Prescriptions for ‘Revival’: Body and Self in Early Malayalam Magazines 46 Chapter 2 The Making of Thathrikkutty: Smarthavicharam, Sexual Morality and More 90 Section II Re-forming the Hegemonies: Postcoloniality, Sexual Morality and Homosexuality Chapter 3 (Hetero) Sexual Excess: Social Realism in Mid Twentieth Century 172 Chapter 4 Canons of Desire: Sexual Morality and Homosexuality in 21st century Keralam 249 Conclusion Modernity, Sexual Morality: Knowledge Networks and Genealogies of Desire 290 References 300 v Acknowledgements This project has had several ups and downs from its very early days. If it was not for the help and generosity of several people it wouldn’t have materialised in its current form. I sincerely owe a great deal of gratitude to all of them. I am extremely grateful to Sitharamam Kakarala, my supervisor, for allowing me to work in my comfort zone and to take all the freedom required while working on this thesis. His occasional but strong interventions were crucial in all the turns the project took from the moment it was conceptualised. I also remain thankful to Rochelle Pinto, the second reader of this thesis, for my intellectual exchanges with her had a remarkable impact in shaping the arguments that this thesis foreground. I am indebted to the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore where this project was initially conceptualized. S V Srinivas, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Vivek Dhareswar and Mrinalini Sebastian all actively participated in the initial discussions of this thesis. The PhD coursework at CSCS was the most significant event ever occurred in my intellectual life. I am also thankful to them for bearing with me unconditionally during the days when I was silent and couldn’t manage to respond to the sudden flow of ideas and insights. I would like to thank Anup Dhar, Lakshmi Arya and Radhika for the insights they shared with me during our conversations at the centre. My conversation with Nivedita Menon at JNU in the beginning was quite insightful which helped considerably in shaping the final project. I am also thankful to Sujith, Nitya Vasudevan, Geetanjali Sreekantan, Meera Moorkoth, Dunkin Jalki, Girija K.P, Aswin Kumar, Teena Antony, Bitasta Das and Sana Das at CSCS for their constructive feedbacks. Two fellowship projects helped me both financially and to discuss my project on academic forums outside India: GEXcel – sponsored by the Swedish Research Foundation and jointly vi organized by Orebro university and Linkoping university in Sweden and Sephis – The South- South Exchange Programme for the Study of the History of Development. The conversations with Saskia Wieringa, Horacio Sivori, Sanjay Srivasthava at Sephis, and Anna Jónasdóttir and Michael Kimmel at GEXcel inspired me to expand my intellectual horizons. Though harsh, David Bond’s comments were immensely useful while revising some of my earlier drafts. Parvathy was another person who helped me to deal with the problem of language in the early stages of my academic writing. Simon T. D read the drafts carefully and helped me to identify several missing elements that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Nagaraj, the dynamic administrative officer at the centre, has helped me in different ways on different occasions. I thank Maheswari, Pushpa, Padma and Vijayalakshmi at the CSCS library and Bharathi and Nagesh in the administrative section for their kind cooperation. I would like to express my thanks to the staff members of the following libraries and archives: State archives at Thiruvanathapuram, Kozhikkode and Ernakulam, Sahitya Academy at Thrissur, Appan Thamburan Smaraka Granthasala at Thrissur, CDS Library at Thiruvanathapuram, archives at the United Theolegical College in Bangalore and Library at Orebro university in Sweden. My family has remained the most important element in throughout the making of this thesis. My mother for her affection and encouragement, my late father whose memories always inspire me, Bindu for allowing me to share my joys and tears with her, Sajuettan and Sreeyechi for remaining supportive and helpful despite the world of differences, Mummy for her care and affection, Papa who left this world when I was just about to submit this thesis, Unni (Bini) and Pradeep for their emotional support, Babuettan (Sreekumar) and Preji edathy for their live presence in my life. And finally to Nabhas and Natasha who make me happy even when I have nothing to give them. vii Introduction It seems to me that an important part of a radical postmodern project is deconstructing not only binary metaphors but also the means by which the production of the political, cultural and social is achieved, and to what effect. Warner 1993, 169 The thesis attempts to analyse the configuration of sexual morality as a central element of discourses of modernity in Keralam in South India. It attempts to explore multiple sites where questions of body, desire and sexual pleasure were openly debated in the modern history of Keralam. Later the thesis will combine this with a critical ethnography of clandestine same sex intimacies in the contemporary. It will show that tension about (hetero) sexual morality is a central feature of postcolonial modernities where they are very often linked with questions of national progress. Knowledge produced in history, its circulation through various networks and re-presentations of social memories reproduce this excessive focus on questions of body. The close links between notions of civilized sexual appetite and notions of social progress, foregrounded by colonial/postcolonial discourses of modernity, have been critical in framing the contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality. The thesis will begin from reform discourses of morality and non-normative sex in the Malayali public sphere during colonial period. The significant changes in the way sexual morality was contested in the post 1940s and how the earlier debates, concerns, tensions and 1 even images revisit the contemporary are then analysed. Despite shifts and discontinuities in this space the thesis will attempt to show how debates about morality are also always debates about becoming modern and progressive. This frame, it will be argued, has a predominant role in rendering all other forms of sexuality as non-normative and deviant. The thesis further maps this to contemporary male to male relations and practices, and observes how subjects in subversive, albeit hidden, relations borrow from the same terminologies that are inherent constituents of this frame in the public realm. The production of this thesis is located amidst surging narratives of liberal sexuality. In India the emergence of economic liberalism has caused radical changes in the way sex is understood and debated in the public sphere. Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam characterize this random unfolding of links between economies of desire and the shifts that mark the period from the late 1980s as “unshackling the imagination” (Menon and Nigam 2007, 85). Narratives of same sex desire and intimacies are no longer considered strange in the public realm; sexuality debates in India have taken radical turns ever since individual right became the central foci of such debates1. However this thesis will attempt to show how sexuality debates have remained the nerve centre of modernity in Keralam. Thus it is precisely the historicity and the cultural situatedness of these debates that will be analysed here. In the last chapter I will also discuss about the relevance of local discourses of sexuality especially in the context of local being predominantly understood in current academia as shaped by global and transnational discourses. 1 See Narrain and Bhan (2005) to understand the extent to which rights discourse have transformed