Introduction: Modern Indian Materials

Part IV Introduction: Modern Indian Materials Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai or the purposes of this book, we define modem India as nineteenth- and twentieth Fcentury India. Two significant phenomena develop during this period-first, the minor homophobic voice that was largely ignored by mainstream society in precolonial India (see pp. II2.-13) becomes a dominant voice; and second, sexual love between women is de picted increasingly explicitly while such love between men is almost entirely silenced. Love between Women in Rekhti Poetry The history ofRekhti poetry (see p. 2.2.0) embodies both the last vestiges of medieval freedoms and the new voices of modernity. Rekhti is a kind of Urdu poetry written in the female voice by male poets, including some major poets, in Lucknow, capital of the princely state of Avadh, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Twentieth-century critics labeled Rekhti obscene for its explicit depiction of female sexuality, especially lesbian sexuality, and systemat ically eliminated it from the canon of published works of the poets concerned. T. Graham Bailey calls Rekhti the language of "women of no reputation" and the poetry "a debased form oflyric invented by a debased mind in a debased age."I AliJawad Zaidi says it catered to those "who sought decadent pleasures." He adds that though it is "vulgar" it pro vides insight into the "evils that feudal order bred in the lives of women."> Recent critics have 1. T. Graham Bailey, A History of Urdu Literature (I 928; Delhi: Sumit Publications, 1979), 56. 2. Ali Jawad Zaidi, A History of Urdu Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 122, 137. R. Vanita et al. (eds.), Same-Sex Love in India © Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai 2000 192 ~ Modern Indian Materials condemned it as misogynist: " aimed at entertaining its male audience by making gross fun of women, its enhanced appeal lying in that it also pretended to be a view from inside, in fact, the very objects of ridicule."3 These critics assume, without evidence, that Rekhti was never heard or read by women. They also assume that no man could ever be an intimate friend of women or take a sympa thetic view of sexual love between women. However, Bailey and Zaidi suggest that Rekhti poets picked up this language from "debased" women, by which they mean courtesans (tawai[s), who were the definers of culture in Lucknow at this time. The courtesan-poet net work was well established. As independent women, courtesans were free to associate with men socially, and they used to sing the compositions of the poets. Modern critics ignore the possibility that men could be intimate friends of homoeroti cally or bisexually inclined women. In Siraj Aurangabadi's poem Bustani-i Kbayal (see p. 169), the narrator, heartbroken over the loss of his male beloved, seeks solace in the com pany of courtesans who understand his plight and try to cheer him up.4 These women dancers are referred to as alryan (female friends of each other). The editor says that this word may connote that the women are rangin mijaz (of colorful temperament), a term often used to described homoerotic ally inclined men. S Veena Oldenberg has examined the close emotional relationships between courtesans who referred to themselves as cbapatbaz (given to sex between women) and also analy:z:ed their repertoire of satirical songs mocking mar riage and heterosexual relations.6 To dismiss Rekhti poetry a priori on the grounds that men can never be sympathetic to ro mantic or sexual attraction between women and can only ridicule or be titillated by it is to beg the question. Even if the representation of sex between women does titillate some men, that does not necessarily mean that it may not also titillate women. In any case, it is impossible to measure the effect of a poem on individual readers, male or female. If some are titillated, oth ers may be moved, and still others delighted. As we shall see, at least one male reader mistook Jan Saheb for a woman poet writing under a masculine pen-name (see p. 193). Another strategy used by critics to dismiss Rekhti poetry is comparing it unfavorably to the Urdu gbazal, saying that the ghazal depicts mystical love between ungendered persons, while Rekhti depicts sexual love between women, so Rekhti is degraded. We have demon strated that the gha:z:al often genders both lover and beloved as male, and also refers to explic- 3. C. M. Nairn and Carla Petievich, "Urdu in Lucknow/Lucknow in Urdu," in Violette Graffe, ed., Lucknow: Memories ofa City (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 17l. 4. Abdul Qadir Sarvari, ed., Kulliyat-i Siraj (Delhi: Qaumi Council Barai Farosh-i Urdu Zaban, 1998), 151-53. 5. Sarvari, Kulliyat-i Siraj, 151, fn. 2. 6. Veena Talwar Oldenberg, "Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Luc know," in Graffe, ed., Lucknow, 136-54. Introduction ~ 193 itly sexual love (see pp. II9-12.2) But even if this were not so, the norms set up in one genre cannot be used to condemn poetry in another genre. Rekhti, unlike the gha:z;al, is written in colloquial, not Persiani:z;ed, Urdu and is heavily influenced by the traditions of heterosexual Hindi love poetry in the Reeti tradition, where love is explicitly sexual and the lovers are gen dered. Reeti poetry also came to be compared unfavorably to Bhakti poetry by modem Hindi literary critics, precisely because of its eroticism. Whatever the intentions of the authors, Rekhti poetry was not altogether removed from the lived reality of some women, as is indicated by its use of words such as chapatba:z;, which Oldenberg has found twentieth-century courtesans still using to refer to female same-sex ac tivity. Pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis, in his study of homosexuality worldwide, quoted a statement sent to him by an officer in the Indian Medical Service, which gave five Hindus tani words for homoerotic ally inclined women: dugana, zanakhe, sa'tar, chapathal, and chapat haz? Four of these words occur in Rekhti poetry (see p. 2.21 for elaborations). The officer went on to say that two women who lived together were referred to as "living apart," and gave examples of such women whom he had come across, including an inter-caste couple living in a town, a widow who had relations with her three maidservants, a couple in prison, and a pair of widowed sisters. Some of these women were said to practice tribadism (rubbing) and oth ers to use dildoes or phalli made of clay. The officer referred to the Hindu medical text which indicated that two women could produce a boneless child (see p. 26) and also referred to Rekhti poetry: "The act itself is called chapat or chapti, and the Hindustani poets, Na:z;ir, Ran gin,lan Saheb, treat of Lesbian love very extensively and sometimes very crudely. Jan Saheb, a woman poet, sings to the effect that intercourse with a woman by means of a phallus [dildo] is to be preferred to the satisfaction offered by a male lover" (208). Rekhti represents women clearly stating that they prefer women to men (see p. 224) when they have access to both. The preference for women is represented not as only sexual but also as emotional and romantic The erotic encounters in these poems are not presented as mim icking heterosexual lovemaking. Although the dildo is mentioned, there is greater emphasis on kissing, petting, passionate embraces, and clitoral stimulation. It is more than likely that courtesans provided the poets with details of their romances, which the poets then versified and recited to the women as well as in all-male gatherings. Whatever their sources, these male poets accurately portray sexual details in contrast to Western nineteenth-century fictions on lesbianism written by men-such as Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin (1836)-which pre tend ignorance regarding the details of lesbian lovemaking. In one poem, the poet Insha says that since the voice of the woman who loves women is being quenched, he has to speak for 7. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology ofSex (1900; New York: Random House, 1942), vol. 1,208-09. 194 ~ Modern Indian Materials her (see p. 228). The poets did indeed give sexual love between women a voice-they intro duced it into the realm ofliterary discourse from which it had been almost completely absent.8 Rekhti may have been labeled obscene partly because it emerged in Avadh, which was the last kingdom to be annexed by the East India Company before widespread rebellions broke out against the Company in 1857. Avadh was also the site of the stiffest resistance to colonial rule. Indian nationalists accepted British representation of Avadh culture as decadent. But Amresh Mishra argues that Avadh culture was the "last impulse of Asiatic modernity" before the im position of Western modernity.9 Aristocratic men of Avadh subverted the notions ofIndo-Persian masculinity they had in herited from Mughal high culture. The king Nawab Nasirudin Haider (1827-37) added his own religious innovations to those of his mother, who had maintained, in great style, eleven beautiful girls to represent the wives of the last eleven Shia Imams. Her son decided to adopt the female gender model to further these innovations. On the birth date of each Imam he would pretend to be a woman in childbirth. Other men imitated him, dressing and behaving like women during that period. IO British Victorian men viewed this kind of transgendered mas culinity as unmanly decadence." Empire and New Law Arguably, the crushing of the 1857 rebellion, followed by the official incorporation of India into the British Empire with Queen Victoria replacing the East India Company, signaled the violent end of medieval India.

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