The paper explores the memory of violence in the context of 1960s Naxalbari andolan of Bengal, a radical leftist movement. Drawing on historiographic, popular and personal memoirs, it explores, first, the ways in which practices of remembering (and forgetting) mobilize a heroic identity that is put into the service of a revolutionary violence. Public and personal forms of remembrance are grounded on a transformation of the trauma of violence into the triumph of martyrdom. Endemic to such a ‘sacrificial memory’ is the normalization of violence, and an inability to mourn.

Secondly, the paper considers the different forms of violence that structure the memory of Naxalbari, and how the idealization of some forms of violence (righteous, revolutionary, ‘good’) rests on the ‘forgetting’ of others. This split between forms of violence is one that takes place along the lines of gender. Acts of sexual violence committed against women by male activists are paradigmatic of a form of violence that requires forgetting. The fantasy of revolution can only be sustained by holding apart different forms of violence (political, sexual, everyday); and by idealizing some and repudiating others. This paper is particularly concerned with those pasts that are actively disavowed and eventually forgotten, and with those individuals, primarily women who bear this cost, this burden of forgetting.

Rina Williams, University of Virginia

The contention that identities are socially constructed is widely espoused across the social sciences. Yet much empirical work needs to be done to show, in concrete historical detail, how exactly identities are constructed, in interaction with each other, across different spatial and temporal contexts. This paper examines how religious, gender, and national identities were constructed in postcolonial India over time, by comparing legislative debates over the personal laws in the 1950s and 1980s. Family laws in India ("personal laws") are governed by an individual’s religion, and encompass multiple forms of identity: they can be constructed as an issue of women’s rights; national unity; or minority rights and religious freedom.

In the 1950s, when Hindu personal law was reformed, progressives defined the issue in terms of Indian national identity, while conservatives defined it in terms of preserving Hindu socio-religious tradition. In the 1980s, attempts to reform Muslim personal law failed. In this period, Muslim conservatives and progressives alike defined the issue in terms of protecting Islamic religious tenets. The study reaches two central conclusions. First, in both time periods, progressives and conservatives across religions used gender arguments extensively, but subordinated gender to either national or religious identities. Even more critically, gender was constitutive of how national and religious identities were discursively constructed in both eras. Second, in both periods, the state played a central role in institutionalizing constructions of nationalism (in the 1950s) and religion (in the 1980s) that subordinated gender, but at the same time were themselves highly gendered constructions.

Pamela Lothspeich, Michigan State University

When Maithilisharan Gupta published his "neo-epic" poem Jayadrath-vadh (The Slaying of Jayadrath) in 1910, he ushered in a vogue for mythological reworkings in Hindi literature.  A similar turn toward Hindu India’s epic past is also evident in the performing arts of the nationalist period, particularly the commercial Parsi theater and early film industry.  Composed in imitation of a classical Sanskrit narrative style and in highly Sanskritized Hindi, Gupta’s poem tells the story of one of the most dramatic episodes from the great war of the Mahabharat, Arjun’s killing of Jayadrath, the Kaurav ally largely responsible for the unjust death of Arjun’s young son Abhimanyu.  I read Gupta’s poem against the Abhimanyu-Jayadrath episode as found in the Sanskrit Mahabharat to illustrate how Gupta both modernizes the poem and imbues it with nationalist ideology.  Like the many other literary treatments of the Abhimanyu-Jayadrath cycle, The Slaying of Jayadrath seemingly casts Abhimanyu as a freedom fighter battling an imperial goliath.  Drawing on the work of Anthony D. Smith and Partha Chatterjee with respect to ethnic identity and nationalism, I argue that The Slaying of Jayadrath and the many reworkings of Hindu epic and mythic narratives from the late colonial period should be read as an assertion of national identity, or in Benedict Anderson’s words, of an imagined community.  But more than recuperating a heroic past to legitimate calls for national integrity and autonomy, I contend that such literature must also be read as protest literature, for it often reveals allegories of anti-imperialism.

A Tale of Two Eids: Defining the Boundaries of Islamic Community in North India

Jacqueline Fewkes, Honors College, Florida Atlantic University

In December 2000 the Muslim community of Ladakh celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr twice, an anomalous situation which evoked dismay and confusion from holiday celebrants. This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the bifurcation of the 2000 Eid celebration to examine the causes of controversy.

The celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr is an Islamic practice defined by guidelines which are followed widely within the world Muslim community and promote a sense of a global Muslim identity for many participants. Yet this ethnographic example illustrates that these same rules also emphasize the importance and centrality of local community. In this particular case Ladakh’s status as a border region in South Asia, both politically and culturally, has complicated the distinction between local and non-local communities. A series of interviews with the Muslim religious leaders and community members of Ladakh revealed an ongoing debate within the public sphere about the nature of boundaries within Islamic communities, from both a geographic and chronological perspective.

For participants the political and social context of these decisions does not make them less orthodox as Islamic practices; they recognize many aspects of Islamic law and tradition which address the complex relationship between the need for a unified Muslim community and recognition of the particular social and cultural settings for Islamic practices.