UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Gender, Genre, and the Idea of Indian Literature: The Short Story in Hindi and Tamil, 1950- 1970 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79x8g0k0 Author Mani, Preetha Laxmi Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Gender, Genre, and the Idea of Indian Literature: The Short Story in Hindi and Tamil, 1950-1970 by Preetha Laxmi Mani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Vasudha Dalmia, Co-Chair Professor George Hart, Co-Chair Professor Paola Bacchetta Professor Raka Ray Spring 2012 Abstract Gender, Genre, and the Idea of Indian Literature: The Short Story in Hindi and Tamil, 1950-1970 by Preetha Laxmi Mani Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Professor Vasudha Dalmia, Co-Chair Professor George Hart, Co-Chair In the wake of Indian Independence, the short story emerged as the most active genre in both Hindi and Tamil literature, establishing new representations of selfhood and citizenship that would shape popular expression across India for decades to come. This is evidenced by increased circulation of short stories in post-Independence magazines and their continued study as part of the Hindi and Tamil literary canons. These short stories thus provide an important window into the cultural production of enduring paradigms of Indian modernity and citizenship in the context of national efforts to create an all-Indian identity after decolonization. My dissertation is motivated by an interest in explaining how post-Independence Hindi and Tamil short stories mobilize and construct representations of the “Indian citizen,” locating them within a regionally specific cultural context, as well as the broader imaginings of a modern India. I ask: what was literature’s role in establishing universal understandings of the Indian citizen in the postcolonial moment? I address this question through an analysis of tropes of the feminine ideal in the state, public, and literary spheres in North and South India to illustrate the relationship between these tropes and popular understandings of the Indian citizen-subject. Focusing on the short stories and critical and biographical writing by canonical post-Independence Hindi and Tamil authors, I juxtapose the tropes of the feminine ideal they invoke with those generated by state discourses on law and policy, as well as public debates surrounding them. Through this juxtaposition, I show that the same tropes – such as the widow, the virgin, the concubine, and the good wife – carry saliency in all three spheres (state, public, and literary). In this way, tropes of the feminine ideal provide the platform for a cohesive articulation of modern Indian citizenship across these discursive arenas. Part I traces the colonial state’s fixation on defining and regulating the widow, the virgin, the concubine, and the good wife. I show how these historically specific legal categories become commonly used tropes for expressing Indian ways of being and that the liberal humanist freedoms the postcolonial state guarantees its citizens sometimes maintain and sometimes 1 rework these tropes’ colonial forms. I then demonstrate the ways in which the Hindi and Tamil literature draw from these very same tropes to articulate regional concerns in the terms of an all- Indian nationalism. Specifically, both literatures employ tropes of the feminine ideal to depict characters wrestling with changing gender norms, the position of the modern Indian woman, and the meaning of citizenship, thus giving Hindi and Tamil characters pan-Indian resonance. Despite their similarity in form, however, the manner in which Hindi and Tamil short stories supply these tropes with meaning reveals fundamentally distinct regional articulations between gender, caste, and religious structures, as well as divergent points of alignment and conflict with pan-Indian struggles for equality. This comparison reveals the heterogeneous perceptions of gendered subjectivity comprising postcolonial Indian citizenship, as well as the instability of the category of “Indian Literature.” Part II studies six canonical Hindi and Tamil writers. I detail these authors’ novel uses of existing tropes of the feminine ideal to rewrite characters’ relationships to desire and structures of caste, religion, and gender. Both literatures depict individuals who are produced by the coupling of individual choice with resistance to tradition, thereby connecting their characters to a broader liberal humanist national politics that emphasizes individual freedom. In the Hindi short story, this coupling takes form in the language of intellect and emotion—rationalizations, emotional turmoil, and alienation. By contrast, the Tamil short story expresses it in the language of the body —physical descriptions, bodily sensations, and sexual impulses. This comparison thus provides insight into the varied ways of being within post-Independence India’s liberal humanist frame, rejecting the premise that liberal humanism represents a singular project. My research demonstrates the integral role of literature in shaping gendered inflections of democratic citizenship. It further illustrates how culturally specific representations of gendered subjectivity shape and sustain state discourses on citizenship. While scholarship on modern India has paid particular attention to the relationship between gender and nation, it has rarely examined cultural and state constructions of gender together. This has led to a tendency to read cultural formations of gender as either derivative of or separate from law and state policy. Building on feminist theory that sees the state and cultural spheres as linked, I show how gender formations move between geographical regions and discursive spheres. In the current global context in which gender is mobilized by both religious and secular nationalisms, this study underscores the continuing need for attention to the cultural mediums producing formations of gender. 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Note on Translation and Transliteration v Introduction: The Short Story and the Idea of Indian Literature 1 Nehru and the National Academy of Letters 5 The Nayi Kahani and the Cirukatai 14 Gender and the Story Form 18 The Idea of Indian Literature 22 The Writers and Structure of the Dissertation 26 Part I: The Making of the Feminine Ideal 31 1. The Widow, the Prostitute, the Virgin, and the Goodwife 32 The Either/Or of Indian Citizenship 35 Both Women and Men, Consent and Community 44 Legal Citizens and Literary Subjects 59 2. Literariness, the Short Story, and the Feminine Ideal 62 Indian Literature, Ideal Women, and the Making of Community 66 The Idealistically Real and Hindi Tropes of the Feminine Ideal 70 Tamil Newness and the New Woman 83 One Humanism is Not Like the Other 95 Part II: The Short Story and the Making of Indian Subjects 100 3. Parallel and Separate Worlds: How Yadav and Chellappa Theorize the Short Story 101 Newness and the Story Form 105 Parallel Worlds of Form and Sensibility 112 Good Stories and Goodwives 124 Literary Worlds Apart 141 4. The Feminine Ideal and the Newness of Human Desire: How Rakesh and Jeyakanthan Make Human Connection 144 Inertia and Indecision 146 The Self-Knowledge of Maturity 155 Why I Write, or the Nature of the Humanist Project 166 i Humanism as Resistance 172 5. Justice Talk and the Truth of Feminine Desire: How Bhandari and Chudamani Authorize Canonization 176 Desire, Justice, and the Feminine Ideal 181 The Truth About Feminine Desire 196 Human Connection and the Assumption of Authorship 199 Short Story Writing, Women’s Writing, and the Canon of Indian Literature 203 Concluding Remarks: The Idea of Indian Literature Revisited 209 Bibliography 214 Glossary 230 Appendix 234 ii Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to many people for their generosity, guidance, and patience during the last ten years that I have been undertaking this project. First and foremost, I am indebted to my committee members, who have kindheartedly and tirelessly encouraged me and whose teaching and scholarship have informed each word of this text. My co-chairs Vasudha Dalmia and George Hart have taught me how to approach the study of literature with openmindedness and intellectual rigor and have offered me unwavering support even in those moments when I believed I could not continue. Vasudha has fostered in me the firm commitment to the study of literary history that has shaped me into the scholar I am today, and George has helped me to hear and feel the sounds and textures of language and express them with eloquence in my writing and translation. Paola Bacchetta has given me the tools to understand and fight against structures of inequality and oppression through academic scholarship and teaching. Raka Ray has offered me critical insights at what seemed to me impossible impasses in this project by asking those difficult questions that enabled me to think through my arguments. Usha Jain and Kausalya Hart, my first language teachers at Berkeley, welcomed me despite my utter lack of training in Hindi and Tamil and have given me the surest of foundations from which to approach my lifelong study of these languages. Swami-ji, Neelam-ji, and Vidhu-ji in Jaipur and Dr. Bharathy, Mrs. Soundra Kohila, and Mrs. Jayanthi in Madurai have been the most rigorous, dedicated, and warm-hearted of language teachers, without whom I could never have dreamed of taking on such an in depth study in languages I did not already know. I continue to draw from the constant encouragement and enduring patience they showed me during my yearlong studies with them, which were unfailing even on those days when I gave into my own frustrations and disheartenment. My dear friends Kannan M. and Anupama K.