University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 7-2015 Dramatizing Power and Resistance: Images of Women in Pakistani and Indian Alternative Theater Sobia Mubarak University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Mubarak, Sobia, "Dramatizing Power and Resistance: Images of Women in Pakistani and Indian Alternative Theater" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1206. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1206 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Dramatizing Power and Resistance: Images of Women in Pakistani and Indian Alternative Theater A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies by Sobia Mubarak University of the Punjab Bachelor of Arts, 1988 University of the Punjab Master of Arts in English Literature, 1992 Government College University M.Phil. in English Literature, 2007 July 2015 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. __________________________ Dr. M. Keith Booker Dissertation Director __________________________ _______________________ Dr. Les Wade Dr. Susan Marren Committee Member Committee Member Abstract This dissertation analyzes Pakistani and Indian plays that illustrate the nexus of power relations that operate in Pakistan and India to disempower women and the way women resist by creating dialogic spaces or fissures in the exploitative system. I have selected plays by Ajoka Theater in Pakistan and plays dealing with the similar thematic concerns by notable Indian playwrights to explore common grounds and points of departure. I have chosen four images of women depicting diverse modes of oppression associated with women’s bodies that are dealt with in these plays. Chapter 1 will examine Barri/The Acquittal by Ajoka theater, and Mother of 1084 by Mahaswata Devi, depicting women as victims of state violence during their incarceration. While chapter 2 underscores the issue of women trafficking and commodification of their bodies as a form of modern day slavery. I argue that women’s bodies are harnessed and controlled by patriarchal forces that coalesce with capitalist system. When their voices remain unheard, the female protagonists in the plays, Dukhini by Ajoka, Kamla by Vijay Tendulkar, and Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan, chronicle their resistance through their bodies in distinct ways. While chapter 3 examines that female agency in Pakistan and India is either negotiated through motherhood or through an absence of motherhood. The figure of the mother without child in these plays ranges from the harrowing circumstances of a woman who loses or relinquishes custody of a biological child (Bayen) to the traumatic state of a woman who miscarries/ undergoes an abortion (Barri/The Acquittal and Silence!) or one who never becomes pregnant (Kala Meda Bhes/ Black is my Robe). Chapter 4 illustrates the perception of performing or dancing women as the cultural or societal Other in Pakistan and India. My major objective is to illustrate changes in ideological discourses concerning this issue as the societies along both sides of the border developed after independence. I have examined Tripurari Sharma’s Azizun Nisa and Ajoka Theater’s Aik Thee Nani/ A Granny for All Seasons to elaborate this theme. While evaluating the dramatic techniques, themes and female protagonists of the plays, I have used feminist critical perspectives, also keeping in view, feminist theater traditions. Thus, the dramatic texts included in this study, explain the power relations and female subjectivity in Pakistani and Indian societies, and reveal the way women employ subtle and overt ways of resistance and attempt to subvert the power structure. ©2015 by Sobia Mubarak Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………............................ 1 Chapter 1……………………………………………………………………………………….29 Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………………………….75 Chapter 3 ……………………………………………………………………………………111 Chapter4………………………………………………………………………………………151 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………193 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………...199 1 Introduction It’s all right, daughter, after all we are prisoners, even prisoners of laughter and merrymaking, why do you bother with them? I remember my father used to stop us from laughing at home, he said that the angels of goodness turn away from a house where they hear the sound of young girls laughing and satan enters the house instead. (Barri/The Acquittal, 70) I am Fatima. The bastard, Bachoo, the pimp, locked me in and has gone looking for customers. I have come by jumping the wall. (Dukhini/Woman of Sorrow, 197) Look. Ditta needs a woman badly and you need an ox equally badly. If you let go of one wife and give her to Ditta, he will be too happy to exchange her with his ox. (Kala Meda Bhes/Black is my Robe, 168) It is all right by your culture if boys sing and dance. What is wrong with girls doing the same? Why are you people such hypocrites? (Aik Thi Nani/ A Granny for All Seasons, 134) I begin this dissertation with these images that reflect the institutional power relations that characterize and circumscribe the lives of women in Pakistan and India. These dramatic images elucidate with piquancy the edifice of the world which is supported by inegalitarian structures, and in Mohanty’s words, “a world transversed with intersecting lines of power and resistance” (Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism 2). This dissertation is an attempt at examining plays by Ajoka theater and some Indian playwrights that highlight the ‘politics of the female body,’ also demonstrating the way disenfranchised women take control of their bodies and resist oppression. Women are incarcerated, sold out as commodities, bartered and displaced for being and not- being mothers, and are calumniated for being performers in Pakistan and India, and the 2 texts I have chosen to examine, portray these images powerfully. Furthermore my purpose for choosing this geographical terrain, that is, Pakistan and India, is twofold. Firstly, both countries assert a kind of solidarity despite their differences at multiple levels, secondly, Pakistani theater can be considered an offshoot of the kind of theater that had flourished in India before the colonial rule began. I have multiple aims in this study, given my comparative scope and selection of plays that I deem as cultural products. I regard cultural productions, as active agents of social change. I wish to make a broad- based audience aware of this literature, and to enhance the contribution of Pakistani dramatists in the field of world drama. Overall, this study aims to discover areas of solidarity by analyzing a shared cultural and colonial history, and by probing and sharing resistance strategies employed by women in their ongoing struggle against systems of control and domination. Additionally, this study is an attempt to locate affinities as well as alterities in the theater practices of the two countries, and my aim is to show how Indian or Pakistani theater depicts the culture or social conditions of the region. I have examined the way female characters are portrayed and projected on stage, and inquired whether they have agency and the will to resist to totalising structures of power or they are just passive and silent sufferers; whether they are delineated in a positive light or portrayed as avenging, monster figures. Are these plays using indigenous theatrical traditions or borrowed Western forms? What local, indigenous techniques are being employed and why, and how far these forms are successful in conveying the message of the playwright/practitioner? In addition to illustrating the social, historical, and cultural 3 conditions of the subcontinent that have shaped the drama on both sides of the border, my objective has been to trace the way the image of woman on stage has evolved. Power is as complex a phenomenon as gender is, and the relationship between the two is a contentious one. From Foucault, Lukes, Bourdieu and Giddens to a plethora of feminists, the notion of power has remained a focal point of debates and still no consensus has been formulated. However, many feminist scholars assume that “theories of power tend to be silent when it comes to the subject of gender” (Davis 67). It goes beyond the scope of this study to analyze and critique all the theories of power conceptualized by different scholars but, Giddens’ conception of power, as both “constraining as well as enabling,” is more relevant to my dissertation. According to Giddens, investigating power also involves uncovering “dialectic of control,” which will be the focus of this study (qtd in Davis 73). Thus, I investigate the “dialectic of control” that deprives women of their subjectivity and agency and compels them to lead fragmented lives, but it is enabling in the sense that women choose to resist and this is what the plays in this study illustrate. In the subcontinent, patriarchal order intersects with religion and politics to maintain the status quo, marginalizing women. Religion is and has remained