Session 181: A Subalternist Interrogation of the "Public" in Colonial Western India

Organizer: Aparna Devare, American University

Chair and Discussant: Jayant Lele, Queen’s University, Ontario

Keywords: subaltern, public sphere, colonial, western India, gender, history.

This panel explores attempts at constituting nationalist publics in colonial western India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While nationalist Indian elites were increasingly captivated by colonialist notions of ‘public’ and ‘private,’ and upper caste notions of ‘ideal womanhood’ coalesced with Victorian ones, subaltern standpoints challenged such imaginings and provided alternate notions of publics that centered on community, gender, and history. Each paper in this panel focuses on subaltern standpoints that articulated different visions of the public/private distinction, community, sexuality, history and identity. Ashwini Tambe’s paper addresses Gandhi’s objection to prostitutes’ participation in the nationalist movement in his attempt to define moral hygiene, while looking at how these women often resisted such standards; Shefali Chandra’s paper focuses on the ‘reform’ of women by English-educated Indian men in the private realm, particularly in teaching English, as an extension of colonial relations of subordination, exercised through new forms of native patriarchy. Aparna Devare’s paper reads Jyotiba Phule’s mythological use of history, as a deliberate strategy of countering modern history as a ‘scientific,’ ‘objective’ enterprise, which was increasingly being adopted by the Marathi elite, Brahmans in particular. Finally, Shruti Tambe’s paper questions the public/private dichotomy in much nationalist thought, through a feminist reading of ovee, Marathi women’s oral songs, noting that they provide a critical assessment of colonialism and nationalism while articulating alternate notions of community and history.

Gandhi’s Fallen Sisters: Moral Hygiene in Public Sphere Participation

Ashwini Tambe, Georgetown University

Among the vast numbers of women drawn in by Gandhi’s call to action were courtesans and prostitutes who sought to contribute to the freedom struggle. In this paper, I examine Gandhi’s response to these less-than-welcome Congress campaigners. Not surprisingly, the public participation of women in nationalist campaigning was predicated on their adherence to strict standards of sexual purity, and Gandhi discouraged the involvement of "fallen sisters" unless they gave up all links with their profession. Yet in some cases, women defied this rule and continued to campaign. Through an analysis of a variety of Gandhi’s writings and correspondence on the topic of prostitution, I illustrate the nationalist constituting of the ideal woman, and how it was resisted. I argue that Gandhi’s objections to prostitutes’ participation in the nationalist movement illustrate both his well-known struggle with sexuality as well as the limits of his acceptance of figures from lower social strata.

Of Mimicry and Wo/men

Shefali Chandra, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This paper will examine the structures of ambivalence and desire that sustained the introduction of English education to colonial India. Situated specifically in the western Indian cities of Bombay and Poona, it will examine the process by which some of the first English-educated ‘native’ men sought to teach English to their wives and daughters at home. Initiating the pedagogic transfer at home involved bringing the language of colonial mastery and public commercial authority into the newly-fashioned space of bourgeois domesticity and privacy. Invariably in fact, the home schooling of Indian women took place not only at home, but also at night and in the privacy of the bedroom. Here I argue that teaching women English extended the possibilities of mimicry of English culture, a process that created not exact copies of the original "English speaking Englishmen" but rather, impersonators who performed the contradictions of cultural power in their speech and words. One of the most complex acts of mimicry can be elicited from the extension of the English language and its related structures of expression, by way of native patriarchy, into the apparently private and spiritual space of Indian womanhood. I believe this process sheds light on the chain of desire encoded in the culture of the British colonial history, the psychological authority claimed by a new native patriarchy, and the manner in which colonial and postcolonial subjects were taught that English was the language to desire as well as the most satisfying route through which to express and experience new forms of permissible desire.

Mythologizing the Past: Jyotiba Phule and the "Limits" of History

Aparna Devare, American University

Most scholarship on Jyotiba Phule views him as a critic of Brahmanical versions of history, while being one of the first in colonial India to write alternate histories from below. They argue that despite his lack of ‘scientific rigor,’ his reading of the past must be considered ‘legitimate history.’ However in this paper, I read Phule’s extensive use of Hindu myths and his complete indifference to the ‘scientific’ bases of history-writing as a deliberate strategy to counter modern notions of history, not coincidentally which were being rapidly internalized by Brahmans in his time. It was western-educated Marathi Brahmans who were at the forefront of promoting the modern historical enterprise, which they saw in Nicholas Dirks terms as a ‘sign of the modern.’ Despite Phule’s often uncritical adulation of the colonizers and his fascination for a modern historical discourse, as exhibited in his interest in rationalizing and secularizing the past, he remained skeptical of modern ‘scientific’ history, based on evidence and ‘objective’ truths. Phule’s historicizing Hindu myths was also a conscious mythologizing of history, indicating his skepticism toward the modern concept of history, even while he was greatly influenced by it.

Beyond the "Private": Marathi Women’s Oral Traditions, 1910–1960

Shruti Tambe, St. Miras College, Pune, India

In the last one-hundred-and-fifty years, Marathi women’s oral songs have been recorded in many collections. In this paper, I examine a genre of women’s oral songs called ovee which engaged with processes ranging from personal/familial to socio-political. In doing so, I deconstruct the history of collections and commentaries on Marathi oral forms. The archived collections of ovee composed in the 20th century display the biases of the collectors and editors. Until the 1970s, the discourse of loksahitya assumed that women composed ovee in their ‘free’ time, which implies that the composers came from a class affording leisure; the documented ovees were presumed to be a reflection of women’s lives within the family. Contrary to the prevalent discourses on women’s oral traditions in Maharashtra, I claim that these songs are not solely creations of women imprisoned within the confines of the house. I seek to rescue women’s oral songs from the narrow confines of familial ideology and highlight women’s opinions and representations of the private and the public sphere. Ovee composers came from diverse backgrounds in terms of caste, class, and geographical location, and had differential access and exposure to capitalism and modernity. Citing examples of specific ovees, I show how important historical processes such as colonialism, nationalism, and deindustrialization were absorbed and commented upon in these songs.