Abstract
The announcement of the new economic policy in 1991 pushed India into hitherto unchartered domains of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. Many literary writings by Indian women published in the 1990s and 2000s reflect the rupture of Nehruvian model of development as India entered and settled itself in the brave new world of globalisation. Reading Alka Saraogi’s Kali-katha: Via Bypass (1998), this article attempts to explore how women writers in the post-1991 era negotiated the category of nation and its concomitant identity politics when it was impinged on by the looming spectre of liberalisation and globalisation. When we place women’s writing at the interstices of gender, caste and class inequalities alongside the syndicated structures of nation and globalisation, we find how deeply it engages with the fundamental asymmetry of power relations in society. Kali-katha: Via Bypass attempts to trace the kind of changes that have been taking place since the onset of the 1990s, proposing a rethinking of the very terms in which the woman’s question has been framed in the post-independence years. Thereby, this text calls for revising the way we have been constructing our knowledge of the nation, especially its gendered contexts. Such an epistemological revision, however, would not preclude looking at the past, suggests the text.
The announcement of the new economic policy in 1991 pushed India into the hitherto unchartered domains of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. Many literary writings by women published in the 1990s and 2000s reflect the rupture of the Nehruvian model of development as India entered and settled itself in the brave new world of globalisation. This article explores how women writers in the post-1991 era negotiate the category of nation and its concomitant identity politics, under the looming spectre of liberalisation and globalisation. Saraogi’s Kali-katha: Via Bypass (1998) traces the nationalist and post-independence history of the nation, arriving at that juncture of the 1990s when liberalisation comes in, to suggest that there is a need to rethink the very terms in which the nation and the woman’s question have been framed so far. In fact, the woman’s question in India has always been constitutive of the numerous critical events and frames of significations pertaining to the systemic hierarchies and grids of the nation-state. It is all the more significant to engage with them due to the renewed strength that the Hindutva movement has recently gained, for it manifests itself in the form of imposing cultural codes, among others, on the bodies of women. Thus, Saraogi’s narrative exercise can be described as an effort in the direction of what Mary John calls ‘rescuing the notion of gender from its ritualistic incantations and making it really work for a more emancipatory and inclusive social order’ (1996, p. 3071). Moreover, the text gains particular relevance in current times when there is an urgent need to interrogate the political apathy towards women’s status and gender relations in the country, exemplified by the failure of the government to comply with some of the significant suggestions of the Justice Verma Committee (2013) 2 regarding legal responses to violence against women. The state, in fact, has not been able to deal with the deeper disparities in gender relations, thereby displaying a paternalistic attitude. 3 Thus, despite the fact that the political culture, social processes and ideological frames of reference have undergone significant change in the post-liberalisation era, it would be a fruitful exercise to look back at the evolution of responses to women’s issues in the past in order to assess the choices of the present and the hopes for the future.
This article is divided into three sections. The first section proposes the need to rewrite the history of the post-independence nation from a feminist perspective; the second section charts the convergences between liberalisation and right-wing fundamentalism; and the third section underscores how Saraogi’s task of rewriting history essentially becomes the task of re-examining the gendered contexts of the liberalised nation.
Nationalism to Liberalism: Rewriting History from a Feminist Perspective
Alka Saraogi was born in 1960 to a Marwari family in Calcutta. She engages with issues of migration, rootedness, displacement, history and memory in her narratives. In fact, they sensitively portray the inequities and abuse that the Marwari community has had to suffer in Kolkata due to being migrants/settlers. In this regard, she also explores the larger processes which facilitate the interlinking of an individual’s destiny with the destinies of society, community and the nation-state. Saraogi did her PhD in Hindi literature on the works of famous Hindi writer Raghuvir Sahay. Her first story titled Aap Ki Hasi (Your Laughter) (1991) was published in Varataman Sahitya. Her first collection of short stories Kahani ki Talash Mein (In Search of a Story) was published in 1996, followed by her first novel Kalikatha: Via Bypass in 1998. The novel was commended as a strong postcolonial text by academics and critics alike, bringing her unprecedented success and recognition as a writer. She received the Shrikant Verma award in 1998 and the Sahitya Akademi award in 2001 for Kali-katha. The novel straddles many generations to document Marwari history in Calcutta. Kishor Babu, the protagonist, experiences a significant change in his life and routine after he undergoes a bypass surgery. While he insists on wandering through the by-lanes of Calcutta after his surgery, his family sniffs an air of madness in this habit. They fail to understand why Kishor Babu, who was once a stern patriarch and clever business man, has resorted to aimlessly roaming around the city. Alternatively, Kishor Babu remembers his past and Marwari ancestry as he perambulates the city. In the process, he evokes the portraits of his friends Amolak and Shantanu, who were staunch supporters of Gandhian nationalism and Netaji’s militant nationalism, respectively. In so doing, he constantly judges the liberalised present of the 1990s through the prism of colonial and nationalist pasts. Thus, Saraogi paints an authentic portrait of Marwaris across generations, trying to come to terms with both their complicity in and resistance to the colonial networks of exploitation.
Kali-katha: Via Bypass opens up multiple conjunctures pertaining to the issues of tradition-modernity, individual-society and community-nation, deploying a feminist praxis. The evolution of the protagonist Kishor Babu traces the evolution of the nation, beginning with the varied facets of the anti-colonial nationalist movement, such as Gandhi’s non-violent movement, Subhash Chandra Bose’s militant nationalism, the nationalism of the right-wing party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and their respective contributions to the nation in the making. This is followed by an exploration of the Nehruvian tryst with development until the era of liberalisation and post liberalisation. However, the story of the nation as told in this text primarily focuses on the ‘bypassed’ nature of contemporary political-economic choices that have relegated gender concerns to the margins of the state apparatus.
Young Kishor’s mother aptly brings out the importance of reframing our relations to history, and of discerning the role of the past in the making of the contemporary nation. She refers to the way their Marwari ancestors had forged connections with the British during the Raj to further their own interests, often at the cost of other sections of society. ‘But why do we need to hide or wipe out the past or to feel ashamed of it? If you don’t like anything, stay away from it. But can you erase the past or that which has already happened?’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 26). Thus, the narrative consciously connects itself to the meta-narrative of the state, scrutinising the exclusions, subjugations and delegitimisations that have occurred in the process of nation building.
Kishor Babu’s wife might hide her husband’s critical musings, written out on a piece of paper, within the folds of her sari, yet they peep through the folds. Kishor Babu’s state of mind after the bypass surgery is a watershed in his life, letting him and the readers turn around, perceive and, awaken themselves to alternative ways of existence suppressed by regimented masculinist norms. His journey from being the ‘monarch of all I survey’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 10) to a tramp gallivanting across streets is important precisely because it opens up space for interrogating the teleological, linear and hegemonic narrative of the nation-state. It is at this time that Kishor Babu returns to the histories of his family, ancestors and other ancillary characters. ‘According to the narrator, [Ramvilas’] story is a marginal story. But surveying the streets after the bypass surgery Kishor’s standards have changed’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 27). He also surveys the diaries, memoirs of his great-grandfather to excavate diverse identities and histories of his Marwari ancestors who had been migrants to Calcutta. Thus, the minor stories of insignificant individuals are equally important, more so as they make visible the repressive strategies and practices of official histories. Moreover, there is a need to foreground feminist historiography as feminists have done by labouring to expose the different ways and forms in which systematic marginalisation takes place not only of women but of other sections of society.
More to the point, the evolution of time post-independence, is witnessed in Kishor Babu’s sojourns at his north and south Calcutta homes, respectively. Considering that the north of Calcutta is generally associated with poverty and the south with prosperity, Kishor Babu’s relocation registers not only the trends that led to the emergence of what John terms ‘patterns of mobility across class fractions’ (2002, p. 363), but also people’s efforts to gain prosperity and retain their hold over stability, howsoever precarious it might be. However, the insistence on vaguely remembering his stay at the north Calcutta home as just ‘somewhere in the north’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 8) indicates the colonial hangover that inevitably made south Calcutta the place of privilege, and also indicts the insidious workings of the liberalised economy that produce the category of the upwardly mobile middle class consumer. The national imagination could no longer be restricted to what Satish Deshpande terms the ‘patriotic production of Nehruvian socialism’ (1993, p. 25) as it gave way to a liberalised economy in 1991. Kishor Babu’s wife laments the new discourse of material power:
[I]s there only one reason for the son to get worried? Market has come up with the latest and new models of cars. Wherever one sees, people own such expensive cars. Maruti-800 is a middle class car. How he wishes to get a big car like Opel or Ford, only then one could live happily. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 111)
These words indicate a growing trend of consumerism as a consequence of the transformed economic ethos, characterised by the surge of the private sector and dominance of consumer goods. Moreover, they reflect how the systemic nodes of the contemporary economy are closely tied with the contingencies of the world market as well as how such contingencies affect the everyday lives of people.
Kishor Babu’s son finally decides to buy a brand new car following his wife’s threat to commit suicide. This shows that along with newer choices offered by liberalisation, frustrations have also increased. Vijayan (2004) aptly points out that the reason for this scenario could be the rising expectations that have come with the choices. Vijayan goes a step further and describes how this era of private capital thrives on an ‘international as well as inter-class demonstration effect’ (2004, p. 375) to emphasise the exhibitionism attached to the choices of certain classes.
Saraogi’s post-liberalisation text is particularly aware of these nuances and the multiple layers of the historical narrative. However, it falls short of proposing a pragmatic response to contemporary happenings. Consider the aesthetic licence taken by Saraogi to propose a vision of the contemporary environmental destruction that suggests almost an apocalypse:
Whatever happened was unimaginable. Suddenly the balance between all the five elements was disturbed. Its implications were too visible to be neglected. All the plants and trees started to die and it was impossible to breathe. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 214)
This hyperbolic assessment of the situation, unfortunately, does not help in proposing a realistic solution to the problem. This is immediately followed in the text by an idealistic vision of environmental regeneration wherein production of all machines and gadgets ceases with immediate effect to regenerate the environment. ‘Since people were happy now in their villages, all migration stopped and cities no longer remained centres of power’ (ibid., p. 215). Saraogi’s employment of a story of doom, immediately followed by utopian restorative measures, suggests a sense of nostalgia for the state-centred welfarist measures of the Nehruvian planning era. However, as one knows, such an investment could be impracticable for the complex and stratified juncture of the present. Nevertheless, this engagement enables Saraogi to trace the inconsistencies between the 1940s and 1990s. She calls into question the de-centred, diffused and rhizomatic nature of globalisation, which claims to benefit every stratum of society. The encounter of the local with the global might empower local communities and marginalised interest groups in a token way, leading to a belief that they have a choice in transforming the limiting conditions of life. However, the marginalised groups, the poor and women, may not have the means and unmediated access in reality to this enabling side of globalisation. Grassroots globalisation (as proposed by Appadurai, 1996) and international NGOs operating in direct contact with the marginalised might paint a rosy picture of every section benefitting from globalisation. However, we cannot ignore the fact that economic production in the South has a direct relationship to what is required by the capitalist and neo-liberal structures in the North, which would always ensure reducing the concerns of the local at the economic periphery. Thus, Saraogi’s utopian solution does not go far in capturing the multiple marginalisations and exclusions that are the products of globalisation.
The Convergence of Liberalisation, Nation and the Right-Wing
Post-surgery, Kishor Babu’s political consciousness approximates, according to the so-called normative standards, to ‘political madness’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 110). People including his wife cannot understand why he cuts particular news items from newspapers and categorises them under different sections. However, this very attempt at categorisation suggests Kishor Babu’s willingness to make sense of and confront the extant power structures, or to use Kumkum Sangari’s words, ‘a new transnational regrouping of patriarchies’ (2002, p. 154). These structures subsume a host of issues ranging from politics, corruption, war, hunger, poverty, nuclear weaponisation, popular culture, beauty contests and so on and so forth and instantiate the asymmetry of power relations that feeds into the evolution of masculinist hegemonies across the world. This structural patriarchy embedded in politics and economics performs a dual function as it not only dovetails with the interests of multinational corporations, but also calls for the cultural and moral regeneration of the nation. Saraogi exposes the cultural obsession with what Kaviraj calls ‘ideological indigenism’ (as cited in Kaviraj, 2010, p. 268) beneath the veneer of development and progress through Amolak’s death that occurs during the Babri Masjid demolition drive at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. The death poignantly reveals the consequences of religious fanaticism, which establishes its victory at the cost of the religious symbol of a minority community. Moreover, the close-knit power structures of the right-wing spatially align themselves with the logic of the nation and also invest this spatiality with certain essential characteristics. To exemplify, Ayodhya becomes Ram’s one and only birth place, the reclamation of which would ensure that Muslims in contemporary India continue to find themselves in the position of a disempowered minority. ‘They went to the Babri Masjid that day and some of the boys helped in demolishing the Masjid while the police looked on. They were victorious’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 161). In fact, it is not for nothing that the Sanskrit teacher had visited Kishor Babu a few years back to ask for his contribution to the much politicised yajna that was conducted by the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) from 1983 onwards, as a prelude to reclaiming spatial control over the Babri Masjid. 4 This episode in the text reiterates that such efforts constitute the nucleus of the right-wing imaginary, wherein places of Hindu worship and allied rituals are constructed as essential to establish the internal consistency of the dominant religion’s majoritarian identity politics. However, an insistence on such warped ideas of essence fails to recognise what Deshpande calls the ‘continuities between the normal and pathological’ (2000, p. 1999) versions of communalism and social exclusions, insidiously hitting at the foundations of the independent nation-state. 5
To give a further example, the Sanskrit teacher takes immense pride in showcasing Swami Sahajanand’s photograph that was published in the Frontline magazine soon after the Babri Masjid demolition drive: ‘A sanyasi stood on the ground with a microphone, exhorting a group of young men’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 160) to demolish the Babri Masjid. However, both the teacher’s pride and the Swami’s exhortation are actually symbolic of the Hindutva appropriation of an abstract, universal Hindu citizen of India. The incident also problematises the dichotomous constructions of the ‘naturalised’ Hindu citizen and the ‘outsider’ minority community to underscore the argument that essence-based identity could take us nowhere. Amolak resists the demolition by calling on the mob to stop. Thus, Amolak’s resistance against such aggression suggests an understanding of the embeddedness of communal concerns in the everyday life of the nation. It also exposes the communal, caste–class and gendered biases inherent in the construction of the pristine borders of the nation-state, wherein ‘people’s commitment to one inevitably translates into hatred for another’ (ibid., p. 164).
More to the point, the flip-side of such cultivations of territorial identity is that they are open to appropriation within the overall framework of globalisation. Media and MNCs attempt to domesticate the extant spatial and symbolic constituencies, serving them as exotica to both local and global consumers. Thus, concepts like national freedom are deterritorialised and separated from their grave political context and given mythical implications. As freedom now entails the newly acquired significance of owning the key to a luxury car, Kishor Babu laments ‘Can we get freedom simply through a key? Had it been so, why were people forced to sacrifice their precious lives’ (ibid., p. 197). He refuses to accept the reordering of perceptions that is a consequence of the growth and spread of the media and the market-oriented economy. What is particularly disturbing for him is that the idea of citizenship is articulated within the new circuits of communication, which deploys what Rajagopal calls ‘spectacles of consumption’ (2002, p. 66) to convey larger narratives of political mobilisation. Thus, Kishor Babu’s smashing of the television screen marks his resistance to the ‘vulgar’ (ibid., p. 205) appropriation of the freedom ideal by a cold drink manufacturing company:
One of the world’s largest cold drink company had advertised in Parliament by exhibiting a 50-foot long bottle made of brass. Cold drinks would be served to all and the bottle shall be placed as a memorial, commemorating the 50 years of Indian independence. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 206)
The incident reflects the convergence of economic liberalisation with edifices of political power. Through the cold drink advertisement in Parliament as a metaphor of this convergence Saraogi exposes the cultural, ethical and social costs the nation has to pay, over a period of time, across shifting political registers and historical transformations.
Kishor Babu’s wanderings on the Calcutta streets are made with an eye for detail. The post-bypass surgery phase in his life is significant for more than one reason. It links the nationalist phase of his youth to the modern, consumption-oriented era of liberalisation, enabling Kishor Babu to dwell on and interrogate the shortcuts chosen by the political and cultural economy of the nation. He is also equipped with a critical self-reflective stance, facilitating his engagement with the implications of his merchant class choices vis-a-vis the socio-political and economic processes in colonial and post-colonial India. Consequently, it alerts the reader to the way in which different layers of history could be excavated. When Kishor Babu decides to stay home and not use any product of foreign origin, or made in collaboration with foreign companies, he seems to be reverting to the swadeshi ideal propagated in the early 20th century to confront the colonial power. However, can one find remnants of viability in the swadeshi protest now? Perhaps, yes. In his youth, Kishor had not paid heed to the call of swadeshi. In fact his uncle’s firm had been instrumental in supplying army uniforms, blankets and other provisions to the British during the Second World War (1939–45). What makes him return, years later, to the ideal of swadeshi? Does it hold the same cultural power and motivation it had earlier? Saraogi’s narrative goes beyond addressing this concern merely in the light of the past. The so-called development rhetoric deployed in the 1990s, the government’s efforts to project a highly modernist image of the ruling party and the calls of ‘India Shining’ are fundamentally and ethically opposed to the ideal of swadeshi. In fact, Kishor Babu is appalled to realise that the values upheld by contemporary public life are devoid of a remembrance of the times of struggle against British rule. His disappointment plumbs new depths when he learns how Gandhi and his ideas on swadeshi, truth and passive resistance have been reduced to mere rhetoric. Their symbolism has been appropriated into the new vocabulary of corruption:
Everyone wants a solid bribe these days. The mills demand a fixed percentage of money … they say it would not be less than twenty ‘Gandhi’.
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(ibid., p. 194)
Thus, Saraogi categorically condemns the workings of contemporary political and economic processes, whose operational structures are as biased, exclusive and hierarchical as the right-wing ideology. This dovetails with the larger critique of the patriarchal alliances that are complementary to the obscurantist structures of the state—the Hindu Right on the one hand and capitalism and globalisation on the other, constituting interlocking networks of power, oppression and exploitation that mutually reinforce and assist each other. Here, a brief yet emotive recalling of the Partition violence highlights the larger impacts of political injustice, social exclusion, and economic deprivation on the lives of the people, even after 50 years of independence. Kishor Babu asserts:
Even today, none of the problems have been resolved. The Partition … could not give anything. What kind of war can one declare against one’s own people? To consider them enemies, spending millions of money to store weapons, prepare the Army seems unpalatable when, even today, lepers, beggars, children and women roam on the streets of Calcutta, driven by hunger and poverty. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 176)
Thus, it is demonstrated that the opening of the gates of the national economy to global capital did not do much to lessen the miseries that have continued from the early years of independence. Instead, the interface between caste and class, minority issues, sectarianism, regionalism and issues of communal discord has severely affected the everyday experience of citizenship in the contemporary nation-state.
The ‘Glocal’ Nation: Mapping its Gendered Contexts
Saraogi’s narrative suggests that the everyday preponderance of masculinities at the level of micropolitics could enable a viable examination of women’s marginalised status within the patriarchal macropolitics of the state and its institutions. The author declares, ‘alongside the country getting its independence, Kishor Babu … howsoever far it was possible, ruled over people’s lives according to his whims and fancies’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 110), subtly suggesting the generation of private masculinities to suit what Vijayan calls the ‘continued masculinisation of political power on the one hand, and technological power on the other …’ (2004, p. 373). During this time, Kishor Babu also spends his resources to renovate the south Calcutta home, giving it a modern facade, incorporating the latest designs, shutter windows and so on. Suitable measures are taken to insulate the home from external influences so that ‘the poor Bengalis living close by could not even have a glimpse into what was happening inside his home’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 57). The apparent insularity of the private sphere, emerging from the masculinist tendency to retain power in one’s own hands highlights the institutional organisation of economic capacities, as well as an exclusive concern with the patriarchal vision of the nation-state in the years immediately following independence.
The image of the ‘producer patriot’ (Deshpande, 1993, p. 27) who worked for the nation was perceived in gendered terms, excluding women from the rhetoric of production, rendering their labour and work invisible. In fact, women’s rights activists and feminists in the country have suggested that it is pertinent to focus on the problem of the invisibility of working women as well as women’s work in the discourse on gendered contexts.
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By doing so, one could perceive the incongruities inherent in the thrust on becoming an ideal woman donning various familial roles as it betrays the patriarchal underpinnings of society and nation that have continued to exploit women’s labour to maintain the boundaries between the ideal woman and the bad women,
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so to say. In the context of Kali-katha, we realise how domestic labour becomes a site for exercising control over women’s labour and bodies. Shanta’s status as a widow makes her vulnerable as her labour is conveniently deployed by the family, disabling her so that she cannot ‘exercise any bargaining power over the value of her labour’ (quoted in Gopal, 2013, p. 92). Her education is rendered useless, she is termed ‘outdated’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 61) and Kishor Babu’s masculinist pride does not let him acknowledge that his first encounter with poetry and literature had happened because of her (‘She had chosen select poems and given him to read’ (ibid., p. 60)). Kishor Babu’s double standards come out as he calls her shameless for wearing a bright-coloured sari during one of the get-togethers with his friends at home. The gradual process whereby Shanta is made to believe that she has lost her mind is very similar to how Kishor Babu’s wife trains herself to keep quiet and not express her views in front of people,
What could she say to others? She would immediately fall from grace if she would say anything worthless. At first she stopped saying things out loud and later she stopped even thinking anything worth saying. She was quiet inside, and quiet outside. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 58)
Mary John concisely captures the overlaps among the nation, its commitments to development and gender issues in the following words: ‘The debates around sexual division of labour, the household, problems of underestimation and criticisms of women’s work meshed directly with and in fact actively reconstituted the prevailing conceptions of India’s national identity and the primacy accorded to development’ (1996, p. 3074). It was clear now that the fruits of independence had not been distributed equally. Progress, modernity and development were to be qualified as they were conceptualised within a patriarchal rubric, and only a minority comprising upper caste and upper/middle class women, were actually able to place their vision on the table. Unfortunately, their complacency following the passage of the Hindu Code Bill could not awaken them to what John calls the ‘systemic relations of inequality’ (John, 1996, p. 3071) and patriarchal assumptions underlying the development rhetoric. 9 In such a scenario, there could have been no scope for women like Kishor Babu’s wife and Shanta to even think of an intellectual and political engagement with their subordination. Here, Saraogi employs feminist historical praxis to chart a subtle trajectory of sorts, attempting to understand how issues pertaining to gender sensitisation and gender biases have unfolded and what could be their implications for the reconstitution of femininities and masculinities in the post-independence context. Here it is important to know how Kishor Babu negotiates this new phase in his life, wherein he learns to perceive alternative marginal realities. For example, he wonders for the first time why Shiv Babu, working in his office for the past 20 years, has had his lunch at one of the street food joints. Perhaps his wife had been ill. But does he have a wife in the first place? To his dismay, Kishor Babu does not know. We realise that he is gradually getting sensitised to the invisible productive contribution(s) of women to maintain the wellbeing of the family. However, their work is routinely rendered insignificant and it is assumed that they have ‘nothing to do.’ The post-surgery phase in his life enables him to confront assumptions he had hitherto taken for granted, given his masculinist pride. The socio-reformist drive in the early 20th century had initially bound him in a very peculiar tussle between tradition and modernity. He wanted to question everything, so much so that at one point in time he even wanted to get Shanta married off to someone else so that she would not suffer the low status of widowhood. Why did Kishor Babu give in to the call of tradition eventually? Why did Kishor Babu turn into a stern patriarch who did not even let his daughters complete their education and instead got them married? There was a mismatch between the radical proposition of the 1940s, which insisted that the nation could be independent only when its women were empowered, and the conservative attitude towards women in development in the post-independence era. This mismatch became evident in the shortcomings of the Women in Development agenda as the policymakers focused on speaking about women as a universal category only and not understanding gender relations within its class and caste contexts. In fact, the myopic development vision of policymakers also fell short of recognising that the stratified structures relegate women to the tender mercies of entrenched patriarchies. 10
In fact, Saraogi’s unnerving narrative exposes such institutional and ideological biases, reflecting the peculiar choices made by both men and women in the contemporary expanding, competitive economic processes within the parallel financial constraints. One of the disturbing implications of such financial constraints (coupled with a striving for upward social mobility) is the misuse of available technologies, resulting in, among other things, a ‘spreading aversion to daughters’ (John, Kaur, Palriwala, & Raju, 2009, p. 17). Though female foeticide is punishable under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act 1994 (amended 2003), it has been manoeuvred to facilitate sex-selective techniques, resulting in the worsening of female-male sex ratios. 11 Kishore Babu’s eldest daughter aborts the female foetus because she and her husband did not want yet another girl child after having two daughters. It was not a question of affording another girl or a third child but a choice to abort the third female child. The couple had opted for the use of techniques for sex selection to achieve the birth of a boy: ‘They had spent thousands of money, underwent regular sonography, taken medicines and injections but couldn’t get any positive results’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 180) … In a society where preference for a male child is rampant, especially in urban areas (John et al., 2009, p. 17), this episode suggests that the upward mobility that many families attained post-liberalisation has not discouraged them from shedding the practice of female foeticide. It is particularly unsettling to realise that women are equally responsible for creating the ideal family. Kishor Babu is told that since ‘it was the third abortion case, there was risk involved’ (ibid., p. 182), revealing how, for his daughter, abortion is seen as yet another mode of contraception.
Even, if a daughter is allowed to be born even among rich families, discrimination in terms of providing them with quality education consistently appears as an issue. Though Kishor Babu finds the social and educational status of Marwari women to be quite dismal, he does not take any significant measures to engage with the asymmetry of gender relations in his community. His response is limited to displaying a patronising benevolence towards women, at most, discouraging his wife from wearing heavy jewellery and embroidered veils, or visiting temples for long hours in a day. He is actually quite conservative when it comes to empowering his daughters. The idea of mental freedom for women is quite unacceptable to him, ‘Girls who were educated beyond limits seemed masculine to him … their soft demeanour and polite conversation were likely to be affected’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 158). The reformist engagement with the extant gendered structure, or what Bourdieu terms habitus, 12 is limited to how one could ameliorate the perception of the external appearance of conservatism of the community.
This could be further understood in the light of the contemporary socio-economic factors, especially the ones pertaining to the ‘inter-generational transfer of resources’ (John et al., 2009, p. 18). 13 For instance, the societal perceptions of daughters being temporary members of the family, along with caste-kinship laws, undisputed patriliny and inheritance norms have not undergone a major change in the post-independence context. Consequently, these attitudes and beliefs have severely restricted the diversity of options available to women, rendering their autonomy suspect.
Kishor Babu warns his youngest daughter who wanted to pursue higher education in law, ‘Don’t ever set your foot in my house if you take admission in Law college’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 158). This incident enables one to discern the hollowness embedded in his desire when young to marry an educated woman wearing a red-bordered sari and singing Vande Mataram. In fact, he has not been able to break the linkages made during the nationalist period between the nation’s sovereignty and women’s purity, which continues to determine his understanding of women’s roles vis-a-vis the nation. His refusal to countenance the prospect of higher education for his daughter is a consequence of the ‘piece-meal reform strategies’ (John et al., 2009, p. 18) which alone were acceptable to the reformers. Perhaps this is the reason why women’s empowerment could not be perceived as integral to transformation in the gendered contexts of society and nation. Kishor Babu relates that Amolak’s mother was called a prostitute when she had participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement in the 1920s. This too reveals how women’s agency was circumscribed and that they were permitted to deploy their so-called feminine attributes of service, devotion, nurture and sacrifice without being equipped with the actual tools of confronting the colonial and nationalist constructions of gender roles.
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Amolak’s mother rightly says, ‘If women would want to do anything antithetical to the ossified conceptions of society, they would inevitably be termed amoral’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 71). This statement acquires gravity in the post-independence context, wherein a nation of consumers has contributed to refashioning the idea of the new woman. The onslaught of visual imagery, and advertisements specifically centred on
women’s bodies, offering corrective remedies to the issues pertaining to shape, size, height, skin colour and clothing style go a long way in creating the concept of an ideal Indian woman. These might have a long term effect on women’s perceptions of their own selves. (Thapan, 2007, p. 42)
For instance, the college-going daughter of Kishor Babu’s factory supervisor is seen buying clothes from the most expensive Mall, with her boyfriend’s money. Kishor Babu wonders, ‘how will she compensate for this? What will she tell her father? That why did she buy such expensive clothes?’ (ibid., p. 141). His ruminations hint at how the influences of peer group culture and global media often operate in opposition to the family preferences and social expectations of women, leading to warped constructions of women’s identity, as mentioned above. Additionally, flourishing ideas like life-style feminism have taken away the intensity of the advocacy for women’s rights and equality in the contemporary scenario. In most cases, it leads to a limited conception of women’s identity but in the garb of a ‘modern and liberated female identity’ (Thapan, 2007, p. 43).
Though women seek to reformulate their relations with men, their efforts mainly subscribe to giving the impression of being liberated, yet remain connected to traditional norms and values. Therefore, it is essential to reform gender relations between women and men, and also between men and men in order to contest the patriarchal hegemony and institutions of inequality allied to patriarchy. For instance, Kishor Babu’s cousin Banwari is outcasted from the Marwari community for marrying a Bengali woman. He is excluded from the dominant order of Marwari patriarchy because he fails to live up to the communal norms of masculinity, adhered to by someone like Kishor Babu. This event invites us to perceive gendered contexts in terms of the masculinities circulating in such spaces as well. John captures this well by terming these spaces ‘relational wherein any form of exploitation or oppression suffered by women within the strictures of society calls for taking an account of the experiences of men as well’ (1996, p. 3076). Moreover, any attempt to reformulate the gendered habitus would necessarily call for reforming the caste–class and kinship stratifications which centre on and around the persisting structures of patriarchal, patrilineal and virilocal patterns.
The argument is further developed by Saraogi as she underscores the need to acknowledge the injustices of today, which disable women and marginalised sections of society in ways that do not allow them equal access to the available resources. In fact, gender hierarchies are an integral aspect of the structural hierarchies, which are bred by the absolute regimes of the nation state. They further tie up with globalisation, which thrives on the logic of open markets, unmindful of inequalities. Consequently, a deep chasm is created between those who can partake of the most expensive commodity culture and the ones who suffer in the throes of bone-grinding poverty. For instance, Kishor Babu is pained to realise that the nurse who had cared for him at hospital is so poor that she does not even have enough clothes for herself. Such narratives of poverty illustrate how socio-economic planning and policy measures only perceive poverty in terms of tangible indicators, oblivious to the gendered underpinning of the context that places the burden of poverty on women.
In fact, female headed households are the worst hit due to such policies, which are insufficiently sensitive to gender concerns. The exclusionary tendencies of the emergent social order have hastened the need to strain hard to listen to the multiple dimensions of poverty, which have affected women’s lives immensely, aptly illustrated by the question that the beggar girl asked her father years ago during the famine of 1943, ‘I don’t have any clothes to cover my body. How could I go out and beg?’ (Saraogi, 1998, p. 143). The discovery of her bloated dead body found floating in the lake by Lake Street rattles the reader, as it does young Kishor and Amolak. This episode can be considered symptomatic of the squalor that proliferated during the British Raj in general and the conscious siphoning off of resources from West Bengal to feed British troops, in particular. However, more peculiar and intriguing is Saraogi’s positioning of this episode in the text. Having built a backdrop of the disparate modes in which liberalisation affects lives, Saraogi effortlessly draws the reader to connect the episode with today’s state of affairs. The reader realises that the inequalities and injustices, especially in gendered contexts, are relentlessly perpetuated. Clearly, the stakes involved are too high for change to be welcomed. As Saraogi reflects:
Years later after the enemy exits, one realises that any renewed search for him would inevitably end up in reflecting our own selves in the mirror. Our dreams have blurred, so much so, no dream has remained intact. What is left is our hunger for increasing needs, desires and things, which to our dismay can no longer satisfy us. (Saraogi, 1998, p. 19)
The unending desire for power can metamorphose into newer political alignments and/ or power groupings centred around regimented group identities, of nuclear terrorism and accumulation of fatal weapons against humanity, and diplomatic warfare targeted at weakening nations from within. Saraogi makes it clear that the opening of the gates of national economy to MNC players was not an isolated phenomenon. The 1990s were about a multiplicity of emergent alignments and realignments, constituting the interface between caste and class, minority issues, sectarianism, regionalism and issues of communal discord. Thus, any reading based on an understanding of new forms of politicisation has to be alert to the complexities and contradictions involved therein. This article highlights such complexities through a close study of Kali-katha: Via Bypass, one of the seminal literary works in the post-liberalised era.