“UNCHASTE” GODDESSES, TURBULENT WATERS: POSTCOLONIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE IN SOUTH ASIAN FICTION by Bijalpita Julie Banerjee Mehta A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Bijalpita Julie Banerjee Mehta 2010 ABSTRACT “UNCHASTE” GODDESSES, TURBULENT WATERS: POSTCOLONIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE IN SOUTH ASIAN FICTION Bijalpita Julie Banerjee Mehta Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Department of English University of Toronto This dissertation explores the presence of the divine feminine in Indic river myths of the Ganga, the Narmada, and the Meenachil as represented in the three novels: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It challenges masculinist nationalistic narratives, and identifies itself as a feminist revisionist work by strategically combining Indian debates on religious interpretations with Western phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspectives to open up productive lines of critical enquiry. I argue that the three postcolonial novelists under survey resurrect the power of the feminine by relocating this power in its manifestation as the turbulent and indomitable force of three river goddesses. In their myths of origin, the goddesses are “unchaste,” uncontainable, and ambiguous. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian patriarchy manipulated and coerced women for their political purposes. They denied ii female agency in order to promote a brand of nationalism bordering on religious zeal and subjugation through imposed paradigms of chastity. The patriarchy conflated the imaginary chastity of the mother goddess in her multiple manifestations--including but not limited to the River Ganga--with the exalted position forced upon the young Indian widow. Popular art of the colonial period in India dismantled the irrepressible sexual ambiguity of the divine feminine for the Indian population, and reinvented her as a chaste, mother figure (Bharat Mata, or Mother India), desexualized her, and held her up as an iconic, pervasive figurehead of the Motherland. Ironically though, the makeover of the uncontrollable, “chaotic” feminine into this shackled entity during and after the Indian freedom struggle is just the kind of ambiguity that appears in discourses of nation building. By reaffirming the archaic myths of the feminine, Ghosh, Mehta, and Roy dislodge the colonial project and the patriarchal Indian independence movement that sought to “chastise” the divine feminine. I suggest that in these three novels pre-colonial images of the river goddesses--presented in all their ambiguous, multiple, and fluid dimensions--are a challenge to the Indian nationalist project that represents the goddesses one dimensionally as an iconic figure, unifying the geo-body of India and symbolically projecting her as the pure, homogenous Bharat Mata. iii To my parents Dr. Tarun Banerjee and Dr. Anima Banerjee, and to my husband Harish, I dedicate this dissertation. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS One of the great privileges of undertaking this long and felicitous journey is meeting so many wise and compassionate souls on the way. And one of its greatest pleasures is to register the many debts of gratitude I owe. In the academy, I am most grateful to Professor Elizabeth Harvey who lit that spark to find the space of reinscription: to write this dissertation about river goddesses. I have no doubt that it is her remarkable alacrity and sharp editing of the SSHRC proposal that got me the SSHRC-Canada Graduate Scholarship. The generous funding allowed me to go on frequent archival visits to India and the United States, and made the river journeys possible. My heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Professor Chelva Kanaganyakam who was always there to fix the rudder whenever I needed his expertise, and steered me through some novel and choppy waters. He provided me a rich and discursive geography, and encouraged me to combine my lived experience as an author and literary reviewer with critical tools. I could not have found more insightful and caring criticism than what I received from my committee member Professor Victor Li, who gifted me many precious hours and countless cappuccinos as he sharpened my arguments and fashioned my prose, paying close attention to every word I wrote. Professor Ted Chamberlin was a gentle and masterful guide who provided deeply perceptive connections on both oral and written traditions and offered a global contextuality to literatures of resistance from Africa, First Nations Canada, and the Caribbean. The sustaining encouragement, valuable comments and suggestions about my ideas, and light-hearted admonishments I received from the Departmental Chair Professor Alan Bewell ensured completion on time. Writing about the work of any living author is difficult--especially so when each of the three explored in this project--Amitav Ghosh, Gita Mehta, and Arundhati Roy--is a an activist (whether implicit or explicit), and also a Booker prize nominee or awardee. So my debt to them is substantial for the time they indulged me with interviews over the years when I was a literary reviewer in Singapore (long before the dissertation was planned). Pico Iyer’s intellectual mentorship and Meira Chand’s unflagging encouragement were sources of great succour. I owe thanks to my fellow travellers: Smita Kothari, who shared many interesting perspectives on Jainism; Maithili Thayanithy for helping with translations from Sanskrit to English; Prasad Bidaye for sharing many thoughts and providing mirthful banter; and Irmgard Mulvany, a great sounding board for my ideas, who helped with German translations. I was most fortunate to have library resources made available to me with ease and efficiency by some wonderful staff at Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, the National Library Kolkata, and the Perry-Castaneda Library at the University of Texas at Austin. The easy access to books at Mills Library at McMaster University made it a pleasurable destination when I wanted a change from Toronto. I also acknowledge with thanks the Ontario Government Scholarship which allowed me to spend the summer of 2007 at the Perry-Castaneda Library in Austin. Without the largesse of the Dr. David Chu grant, the Asian Institute Travel Grant v Acknowledgments continued from empathetic and generous facilitators Eileen Lam and Professor Joe Wong, the Mary H. Beatty grant, and the School of Graduate Studies funds at the University of Toronto, it would have been impossible to complete this ambitious, transcontinental study. I am deeply grateful to Chancellor Emerita Senator Vivienne Poy for the endowed instructorship for the course “Asian Cultures in Canada” under the Canadian Studies Programme at University College, University of Toronto. Teaching this course through the years of my doctoral programme kept me engaged with issues of female sexual agency as well as social justice, among Asian diasporic youth and writers. For the opportunity, collegiality and camaraderie at University College, I sincerely thank Professor Mark Cheetham, Professor Emily Gilbert, Professor Sylvia Bashevkin, and Khamla Sengthavy. My students have added many new perspectives during classroom discussions, and in the course of my writing about evolving feminine agency I have been inspired by the views of Eunice Chow, Anne Gnanatheepan, Debbie Wong, Parthiban Manoharan, Tickalyn Martin, Manpreet Dhillon, Mishal Cazmi, Lisa Chen, Jee Hyun Kim, Nivethika Thambithurai, Shifana Khan, Jasmin Olarte and many other bright minds. At my home Department of English, Sangeeta Panjwani, Clare Orchard, Cecilia Martino, and Tanuja Persaud were angels of efficiency. I would like to thank our friends Nirvick and Keya Majoomdar, and Brian and Breda Bates who endlessly supported me and helped in so many ways. My exceptional parents Professors Tarun and Anima Banerjee instilled an early interest in me about the connectivity of disciplines and bequeathed me a feminist vision. They lived a life of transformability as pragmatic medical specialists and spiritual people. And they always made time for my incessant questions about the ambiguous status of women in Indian culture and never shied away from fielding penetrating questions. My brother Ranjan Banerjee kept me fiscally afloat with many air-tickets to India, and kept my spirits up with incessant phone calls and visits from Washington, D.C. My sister-in-law Carmen’s positive thinking was instrumental in providing me nurture. I gratefully acknowledge my uncle Tamal and aunt Tripti Banerjee for their help with Sanskrit translations, and their pragmatic encouragement. Many thanks to my brother-in- law Vinod Mehta for keeping me well supplied with his Outlook India magazine, which was my palpable connection to the ever-evolving Indian political and cultural scene, and sisters-in-law Sumita and Anjana who provided long distance affection and encouragement. Professors Saibal Sen Gupta and Mrinal Sen Gupta provided advice and suggestions. Finally, this dissertation is as much my journey as it is my partner Harish’s, who lived, breathed and wrestled with the ideas in this dissertation ever since we stood on the thousand lingams on the bed of the Stung Kbal Spean River in Cambodia. He was “self” and “other” in the reading and editing stages of this work. To him I owe the delight of a remarkable journey. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements v Introduction Drowning