Book review: Prem Chowdhry,Gender,Power and Identity: Essays on Masculinities in Rural North India

In Gender, Power and Identity: Essays on Masculinities in Rural North India, Prem Chowdhry traces a history of gender relations in pre-colonial times that were defined by consent in marriage as well as sexual liaison. All the essays were published between the period 2005–2015, although they have been reworked with instances of captivating oral traditions from Haryana—a region studied by the author over the years.

She presents evidence that indicate the prevalence of gender-equal choice. Both women and men made choices driven by the demand of labour to make the unproductive Haryana terrain yield agriculture and animal husbandry produce. This changed when the British army and government services such as the postal departments, schools and so on offered jobs to loyalists. As a result, they got concessions and positions that fostered inequality and insubordination. These changed masculine behaviour, and there was an increase in violence in gender relations. The book traces the history of masculinity from the time of undivided Punjab to the establishment of Haryana through details of verdicts given by rural authorities vested in the khap or traditional panchayat. Khap has existed through the ages, and, even today, it undermines the current ruling statutory power system. The verdicts passed quoted in the book are a grim reminder of the disdain towards the democratic constitutional framework.

The highlight of Gender, Power and Identity is a humorously presented in-depth family history of the author; it is a methodological delight. A cultural context of rural North India is depicted in two essays that trace ideological constructs of patriarchal assertion. Chowdhury also traces alternatives and the wind of change through different historic periods. Masculinized hegemony is dismissed through the mood and messaging of women’s cultural expression. Three folk songs sung by married women are reproduced in the essay titled ‘Popular Perceptions of Masculinity’. In their search for better male virility, women boldly sing of their aspirations of seeking lovers from among outliers like fakirs, performers and lower-caste men. Men, according to Chowdhry, tried to control this contestation of power but failed in their attempts. This failure to subvert opens the pathway to gender democracy. The challenge women pose to the sexual adequacy of the male, his ability to provide an adequate income, is always within the hearing distance of men and boys. Their insecurity leads them to seek refuge in body building and indulging in substance abuse. A few like the author’s father, Hardwari Lal, educated themselves to set patterns of alternative behaviour.

The geography of masculinities is explained in this book, with an interesting analysis of the retention of shift in power to khap panchayat formed by older upper caste men. Khap power was consolidated during the period when lower caste men got government jobs due to affirmative action and young men occupied the formal or the gram panchayat. In the chapter that places the ‘Crises of Masculinities in Haryana’, the loss of male control over their own destiny is discussed. With the declining sex ratio in the region, fewer number of females per males and the latter’s joblessness, led to an increasing number of single men. These contexts are analysed by the author to examine the positions taken by the khap panchayat. As younger men moved into gram panchayats, the older generation addressed their crisis of masculinity by safeguarding village norms through cultural and customary law. The khap remains the final authority in formalizing conjugal relationships.

Essays explain the complexity and contradictions in cultural norms by a cross referencing of khap and police cases that were reported in the national and vernacular presses. While some women of Haryana registered dissent with silent support from their men, not all those born or married into the region have had much success in this respect. The author quotes information through interviews to analyse an accepted norm—the practice of buying brides from far off states by lower caste men. These men flaunt the price they could afford. This norm marginalized not only the bride but also the man who married her. The in-marrying woman was often made to stay in agricultural fields, away from the family home of her husband and did not mix with the locals due to language and class. She is reminded of the price paid for her to drill-in her bondage; she has to stay on until the price for freedom can be paid back. The apparent social and physical exploitation of women in such marriages is inevitable, but the Haryana Commission for Women saw no human right violation in the issue of buying girls and women as brides for sexual and exploitative labour.

In the self-curated design of the book cover that is a painting by the author, lived experiences of a number of informants active in civil society, media and the academia have been depicted: A man holding a bamboo staff depicts his combative stature though his expression does not give away emotion, not even through his eyes that seem paralyzed in a puzzled perpetuity. This puzzle is explained by the author in an essay discussed below.

Industrialization brought pliable migrants to work, taking away employment from aggressive locals. The aged and unemployed men not only lost work opportunities due to them being reserved for lower castes but also their women now eloped with the upwardly mobile. The need to control marital and even sexual liaison led to a crisis faced by men. A women bore the brunt of transgression of caste boundaries—severe punishment even with death—whereas the man was valorised for the number of murders to his credit using a range of weapons. Men also had sanction to buy brides from poor families from other states, even at the cost of going down in the social ladder of the rural hierarchy, but women had no such recourse.

The concluding essay on the ‘Contradictions in Masculinities’, a reworked piece, exposes the conveniences of connivance with khap, in its extrajudicial and unconstitutional perpetuity. The hope for dissent is visible in making women members of khap to uphold a united caste biradari or community image, required to keep the rural economy afloat. Thus, the show of caste unity does smother any dissent especially when the written law fails to protect the victims of masculinities. An unpublished chapter on ‘Alternatives Present to the Militarized Masculinities’ in the post-independence era is most interesting as it depicts the power of individual hard work to break the futility of cultivating Haryana’s barren wasteland. While some men went away from land-based work to jobs outside Haryana, others like Hardwari Lal and his daughter challenged the existing norms. The option to strengthen the possibility of a way forward is always a choice to be made. It is thus fortuitous to record opportunities to grow, to dissent so as to nurture emerging normative behaviours.

Since the essays are placed within the historical formation of trends to record social change together case law, this book will be used by inquisitive lawyers. With its analysis of khap panchayats and practices of safeguarding honour, the book will interest social work scholars as well. Gender relations courses could use Gender, Power and Identity: Essays on Masculinities in Rural North India as a text to understand the emergence of a North Indian masculine discourse. All in all, a very important contributions to gender relations in a particularly reactionary segment of North Indian society.