Ijtihad'23

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 43 Partitioning of the Mind: Masculinity, Madness, and the Crisis of Identities in Partition Violence Deep Acharya Third year, Department of History Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi Abstract The Partition of India in 1947 has left a haunting imprint on the collective psyche of the people of South Asia. The psychological torment ‘men’ endured during their struggles of migration to make sense of their lost identities unleashed a wave of abominable violence. Drawing upon the works of Freud and Hegel on ‘unconscious’ and ‘madness’ and other theories of social psychology, the paper builds a theoretical framework to interlink the individual with the social in context of violence perpetuated during the Partition. The social component of identity, here, is understood through family, estate, religion and nation. The paper discusses the important socio-psychological dimensions of masculinity and identity, focussing on how migration divorced human beings (especially men) of their consciousness and evoked an urgent need for violence as an ‘escape’ from the abyss of desolation. It takes in consideration the already existing binary between ‘men’ and ‘women’, construing ‘men’ as aggressors and both ‘men’ and ‘women’ as victims of a very ‘masculine’ aggression. Introduction In 1947, freedom from colonial rule came at the irreparable cost of two nations of India and Pakistan being carved out of British India. There was the transfer of assets, capital, and other forms of military hardware and apparatus of statecraft. Originally, religious minorities on both sides were given a choice to migrate. The breakdown of law and order as well as widespread uncertainty for many who found themselves on the wrong side of the border allowed massacres to erupt which eventually led millions of people to be forcefully displaced. It is estimated by different statistical sources that ‘thousands of women were brutally raped, at least one million people were killed and ten to fifteen million people were forced to leave their homes as refugees.’1 1 Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998. Both the Indian and Pakistani governments rushed the process of fixating the borders even before gauging the human repercussions of the Partition. The two political regimes made use of fierce nationalist propaganda campaigns to tarnish the other side. The articulation of their national identities used trauma from wars of the past and became a precursor to communal tensions and chaos. The twonation theory posited by Muhammad Ali Jinnah was founded on the belief that Muslims were culturally and historically distinct and separate from the Hindus. The first part of the paper looks at the nature of violence during Partition through the works of Saadat Hasan Manto. The second section deals with the construction of masculinity, and how mass crises can propel men to commit crimes. The third draws upon the theories of Hegel and Freud

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 44 who tried to explain ‘madness’ and ‘neurosis.’ The latter part of the paper tries to bring a larger background of nationalism to the forefront. Revisiting Partition Violence: An Investigation into ‘Madness’ The Partition of British India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindumajority India initiated one of the greatest human exodus in the history of its kind. Within a year after boundaries were drawn, millions of people, especially religious minorities on both sides had migrated between India and Pakistan. The transfer of population was predominantly marked by slaughter, abuse, and political violence. The violent attacks on women and children were often orchestrated by men of other religious identities, with women also being an accomplice to the crimes.2 The Hindus, the Sikhs, and even the Muslims cited revenge as the fundamental explanation behind the attacks. Historical sources date the origin of systemic violence against women to March 1947, in Rawalpindi, where Sikh women fell prey to Muslim mobs.3 Sikh and Hindu villages were wiped out as thousands of people were killed, and forcibly converted, children were killed as collateral and countless women were raped and bludgeoned openly.4 To escape the brutalities of violence and conversion, many Sikh women committed suicide by jumping into wells. In organised raids, men 2 Ananya Jahanara Kabir, ‘"Double Violation? (Not) Talking about Sexual Violence in Contemporary South Asia," in Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives, eds. Sorcha Gunne and Zoe Brigley Thompson: Violence and Violation, 1st edition (Routledge, 2009), 149. 3 Giorgio Shani, Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age, 1. (London: Routledge, 2008). 4 Bina D’Costa, Nation building, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia (Routledge, 2013), 57. snatched women from refugee trains and killed anyone who resisted their attacks. It was recorded that the number of raped and abducted Muslim women was twice the number of Hindu and Sikh women who had been violated because of the organised perpetration of violence by armed jathas, 5 supported by the rulers of sixteen princely states of Punjab as they had long been preparing to expel the Muslims from East Punjab. Violence against women and children during the Partition was widespread, irrespective of geographical boundaries. On Direct Action Day, hundreds of women were kidnapped and murdered. Hindu women were raped and killed during the Noakhali massacre. Women in Bihar faced brutal suppression. A thousand of them were kidnapped from the Patna district. Muslim women in Patna and Jhajha committed mass suicide by jumping into wells.6 In November 1946, Muslim women in Garhmukteshwar were forced to strip and parade naked. They were brutally raped by Hindu gangs who later set them on fire. 7 Alok Bhalla revisits Manto’s stories as ‘terrifying chronicles of the damned who locate themselves in the middle of madness and crime,’ capable of nothing more than an endless cycle of mercurial and abominable violence where any human can transform 5 Barbara Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, 3rd ed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 226. 6 Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India, New Approaches to Asian History ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2-3. 7 Barney White-Spunner, Partition: The Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Pakistan in 1947 (London: Simon & Schuster, 2017) , 166.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 45 into a beast.8 In his tragic story Toba Tek Singh, Manto talks about a Sikh man, Bishan Singh, who resides in the Lahore Mental Hospital. When he is told that he is being shifted to India instead of allowing him to go back to Toba Tek Singh, his village in the Pakistani district of Panjab, Bishan Singh is left without an identity, slowly feeding himself to a devastating and desolate death, deserted in a ‘no man’s land’ between the bits of the newly formed regimes. His neologisms, melancholia, and ill-conceived fate became the factual imputations of the Partition of India.9 In another one of Manto’s stories, Khuda Ki Qasm (I swear by God), a Muslim woman frantically searches for her daughter who was abducted by Hindu mobs. She was described as in denial of her daughter’s death, wandering across North India, muttering incoherently, naked. Amidst these orchestrations of violence and anarchy, Manto expresses the hypocrisy behind the attitudes of men toward women. In one of his iconic works, “Khol do” (Open-Up), he talked about an old man, Sirajuddin, whose daughter Shakeen disappeared from a train transporting Muslim refugees across the Indian-Pakistan border. A band of young men came forward and vouched to look for the old man’s daughter. When they found his daughter, instead of returning her to safety, they gang-raped her. Through these incidents, Manto explained how partition turned men and their whole idea of identity, 8 Alok Bhalla , ed., Life and Works of Saadat Hasan Manto (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997). 9 Tahir Jokinen and Shershah Assadullah,"Saadat Hasan Manto, Partition, and Mental Illness through the Lens of Toba Tek Singh" Journal of Medical Humanities 43, no. 1 (March 2022): 89–94.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912- 019-09590-w. home and belonging from normal to barbaric, from simple to grotesque.10 The state of confusion people found themselves in, might have aroused from the political frenzy to associate oneself with either of the newly formed ‘national identities.’ Ultimately, the partition violence was not entirely about religious or cultural revenge, but about acquiring power to consolidate personal identities strongly linked to their nationhood.11 Masculinity, Control, and Power: Its Negotiations with Identity The most intimate principle of masculinity is to revel in the personal possession of power, status, and control. Historically, the conception of having the ‘authority’ to orchestrate power and ensure control constructed the most fundamental and actual identity of a ‘man.’ When a ‘man’ is divorced from his own possessions, incapacitated to wield power, there occurs a detachment of his own conscience from the personal identity of who he actually is, pushing him to ‘withdraw’ from his ‘sanity’ and face the absence of his possession of power by slipping into ‘madness.’12 Building upon Freud’s theory of Social Psychology, Erikson opined that ‘identity’ was ‘malleable’ and ‘ductile,’ in a sense, social, cultural, and national actors can influence it. Therefore, identity becomes not only personal but also social and 10 Kavita Daiya, Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013), 219-47. 11 George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010). 12 George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010).

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 46 political in nature.13 Indian Nationalism sprang from masculinised memory, humiliation and hope for a better future. In this process, women became symbols of ‘Mother-Nation’ and a site men can possess, violate and control. Relationship with land and territory is as important for the construction of masculinity as the control over women’s bodies.14 Through ‘territoriality’ or 'possession’ of spaces, ‘men’ realise the ability to harness the material and emotional power of their territory. When ‘men’ conquer or create territories, it gives meaning to the notions of ‘I’ and ‘them,’ and ‘mine’ and ‘theirs.’15 When ‘masculinity’ and the values that induct a ‘man’ are under imminent threat, he suffers a low valuation of reality and neglects the difference between reality and fantasy resulting in a separation from reality. Ownership of a tract of ‘land’ or ‘territoriality’ operates as a symbol of social power and positions for ‘men’ in institutions of authority and prestige. For instance, in an extremely stratified and fragmented society along the lines of caste and class, the social influence of a ‘man’ is dictated by his presence in a definite, and strictly-bound region that he owns.16 For a man, ‘home’ is anywhere he can exercise control and power. For example, members of the landowning class were infamous for the influence they exercised in their ‘homeland’ or in and around the ‘lands’ they owned. 13 Daniel Offer, "Identity: Youth and Crisis," Archives of General Psychiatry 21, no. 5 (1 November 1969): 635.https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1969.01740230123 023. 14 R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995). 15 Jan Penrose, "Nations, States and Homelands: Territory and Territoriality in Nationalist Thought." Nations and During the Partition, the abrupt transitions in the political power structures uprooted ‘men’ from their ‘homelands.’ The elimination of the sources men procured their power from, sources which founded the basis of their masculine identity rendered them blind to reason. They no longer knew who they were as with the separation from their lands, they lost their identities. When the ‘masculine’ identity of a ‘man’ is threatened due to a crisis, the innate and initial instinct is to operate on an offensive front to defend his identity. The urgency of proving one’s identity as a man during the Partition was such that to re-articulate control and inflict dominance, leading him to choose violence. Madness in Partition: Reflecting upon Freud and Hegel on the ‘Unconscious’ Hegel in his treatise “Insanity” articulates that madness is a state of fleeting withdrawal when the mind shuts up within itself and is no longer in contact with reality. Freud’s concept of neurosis is quite similar, where he denotes this particular state, as a “path of regression, repulsed by reality,” where the human mind draws satisfaction through ‘withdrawal’ from ego and its laws.17 However, there is a stronger connection between the ‘mad’ and ‘conscious being.’ For both Hegel and Freud, rationality and madness share some foundational structures. The most intimate desire of all minds is to invigorate and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (July 2002): 277–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8219.00051. 16 Mosse, The Image of Man. 17 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Place of publication not identified: Empire Books, 2011) pp. 1-5.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 47 reconcile unity between the outer world and the inner conscience, however, they are disturbed by the experience of contradiction and disarray. The process of ‘withdrawal’ into insanity is a transition into a pre-rational, pre-conscious stage of primordial psychological life, Hegel describes as the “life of feeling.”18 Hegel and Freud locate the ‘inception of insanity’ as a regression or withdrawal as a clinical response to the ‘conscious’ mind’s encounter with a terrible experience of pain. In this case, ‘madness’ becomes a therapeutic refuge, an effort to heal through a self-defensive action of retreat. Human cultures have different social mechanisms to articulate distinctive types of ‘madness’. ‘Escape’ for the human sub-conscience is a flight to a safe, comfortable space, free of the existing pain and captivity. By escaping into insanity, a person disposes of responsibility for everything, even their own existence, just to rid the situation of confusion, pain, and desolation. The inability to resist the existing circumstances– fear, loss of identities, and despair– people see no way out, and even if they can locate one, it seems rather too complex.19 They often turn towards a state of ‘madness,’ such as ‘not to be,’ ‘not to know,’ ‘not to feel,’ ‘not to do,’ or ‘not to live.’ They choose insanity to avoid the ‘sane’ choice they never had the position to make in the wake of circumstantial chaos. Madness or insanity here, thus, might be an 18 Daniel Berthold-Bond, Hegel’s Theory of Madness, SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 19 Berthold-Bond, Hegel’s Theory of Madness pp. 196- 201. 20 Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). easier way out in the absence of a person’s conscious forces to encounter their realities. Gyan Pandey in his essay “Community and Violence: Recalling Partition” (1977) writes that the ‘narrowness’ and ‘ambition’ of the two political authorities that dragged ‘ordinary’ human beings to war and brought them to the wake of devastation.20 Authors like Saadat Manto, Amrita Pritam, Chughtai, and Baldwin concluded that violence perhaps was more than a catharsis from the trauma that displacement caused them and a way to make sense of the chaos that they found themselves in the midst of.21 The characters in their work often are engulfed by madness to find order and rationalise their newly formed identities. To understand why men during the Partition committed brutal crimes and became perpetrators and victims of widespread insanity, it is crucial to note the political ambience created by the unorganised and haphazard execution of the Partition. Alongside the political climate, it is also essential to understand the importance of identity, and the underpinnings of identity in a citizen’s life.22 The division of 1947 was a segregation of people based on their religious identities, primarily between Hindus and Muslims. They did not understand whether they were Indians or Pakistanis, creating an incomprehensible re-questioning of identity and belonging to a nation. Pandey notes that the citizens were left with no official statements but just 21 Deepti Misri, "The Violence of Memory: Renarrating Partition Violence in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers," Meridians 11, no. 1 (1 September 2011): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.1.1. 22 Sanjeev Jain and Alok Sarin, eds., The Psychological Impact of the Partition of India (New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, 2018), 1-12.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 48 hearsay and rumours, living in ‘no man’s land’ with no State support or benefits. Such uncertainty soon coagulated into hysteria, where reason and the question of right or wrong became vague and citizens burst into violence, butchering each other in the quest for their identities. Moral Insanity and Crime as a Coping Mechanism For many citizens desperately trying to grasp the reality of a completely new world, the incomprehensibility and confusion exposed them to hysteric insanity to cope or escape what was occurring to them, which often authors mention while describing Partition violence. The citizens of India and Pakistan were made to revamp every aspect of their life after 15th August, 1947. Often perpetrators and victims of crimes belonged to the same religion. Moments of “evil passions” and the chaos were not entirely founded upon religious/ethnic hatred. Urvashi Butalia argued that women were abducted, raped, and killed by men of their race and religion, long before Partition, and during Partition such instances of violence became more frequent. 23 It shows how the violence against women during the Partition and narratives around it was used to stir a strong sense of national identity based on religion. It explains how men were not individuals but internalised gendered stereotypes of their religious community and new nation. Instead of violating women from the counter religion as a symbol of disrespect and dominance over it, men acted out 23 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, 1 (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books, 1998), 3-26. 24 Kavita Daiya,““Honourable Resolutions”: Gendered Violence, Ethnicity, and the Nation, ”Alternatives: Global, irrespective of the women’s religious identity. Their actions were fixated on the ‘performative expectations’ of their newly configured macho national identity that they considered very personal.24 Simply put, they thought that they must follow others of this identity in different acts of violence because it proves that they are inherent members of the new nation, either Pakistan or India. According to them, a rejection of compliance to these heinous acts of aggression and violence would mean disloyalty to one’s nation which they had so desperately tried to acquire, in the wake of displacement during the Partition. Sacrifice as Proof of Loyalty and National Identity Gyan Pandey in his work “Remembering Partition” argues that to be a true Muslim in India at the time of the Partition asked for people to be ready to lay down their lives for Pakistan. Any citizen who was unable to perform such a sacrifice for religion and nation was no Muslim at all, but a kafir or a renegade, or an infidel.25 With such immense pressure exerted by the government, it was only natural for people to bifurcate to a path of psychotic waywardness. Urvashi Butalia argues that for people to fulfil their duties as ‘ideal’ citizens or true nationalists constituting the freshly configured religious and national identities, they detached themselves from sanity and became a debacle in the name of humanity.26 In the escapades of the Partition, men became another member of the crowd, momentarily breaking away from reality to assert one’s own identity as Local, Political 27, no. 2 (April 2002): 219–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/030437540202700205. 25 Pandey, Remembering Partition. 26 Butalia, The Other Side of Silence.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 49 national and fundamental to the new political regimes. Practical people grasped for a way to comprehend the transitions taking place around them. However, it was the breakdown of ‘localised’ community identities and subsequent 'othering' of each other that gave people the agency to turn against their fellow neighbours. They orchestrated more performative violence that laid down the breeding grounds for the assertion of nationalistic identities where citizens used insanity as an explanation to understand the drastic changes. Conclusion The idea of madness and insanity during the times of Partition is multi-faceted where these states of mind were used as a means of catharsis and to find greater clarity to articulate one's newfound identities. At this juncture, it is very important to note that demonising either side as an aggressor during Partition is suppressing the real and multifaceted origins of Partition violence. Understanding Partition would require different methods of Analytic History which draw from cognitive psychology, anthropology, politics, behavioural economics, and other allied fields in Social Sciences and Humanities. While ‘insanity’ was seen as an escape to explore different aspects of one’s own identity, it brought notable changes in the lives of generations to follow and thus initiated progress.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 50 BIBLIOGRAPHY Berthold-Bond, Daniel. Hegel’s Theory of Madness. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Bhalla, Alok, eds. Life and Works of Saadat Hasan Manto. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997. Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998. Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Daiya, Kavita. "“Honourable Resolutions”: Gendered Violence, Ethnicity, and the Nation," Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27, no. 2 (April 2002): 219–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/030437540202700205. ———. Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013. D’Costa, Bina. Nation Building, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia. Place of publication not identified: Routledge, 2013. Freud, Sigmund. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Place of publication not identified: Empire Books, 2011. Jain, Sanjeev, and Alok Sarin, eds. The Psychological Impact of the Partition of India. New Delhi, India: SAGE Publications India, 2018. Jokinen, Tahir, and Shershah Assadullah. ‘Saadat Hasan Manto, Partition, and Mental Illness through the Lens of Toba Tek Singh." Journal of Medical Humanities 43, no. 1 (March 2022): 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-019-09590-w. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. ‘Double Violation? (Not) Talking about Sexual Violence in Contemporary South Asia." In Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation, edited by Sorcha Gunne and Zoe Brigley Thompson, 18. Routledge, 2009. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203479735-13/double-violationananya-jahanara-kabir. Metcalf, Barbara, and Thomas R. Metcalf. A Concise History of Modern India. 3rd ed. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 51 Misri, Deepti. "The Violence of Memory: Renarrating Partition Violence in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers." Meridians 11, no. 1 (1 September 2011): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.1.1. Mosse, George L. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010. Offer, Daniel. "Identity: Youth and Crisis." Archives of General Psychiatry 21, no. 5 (1 November 1969): 635. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1969.01740230123023. Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Penrose, Jan. "Nations, States and Homelands: Territory and Territoriality in Nationalist Thought." Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (July 2002): 277–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8219.00051. Shani, Giorgio. Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age. 1. London: Routledge, 2008. Talbot, Ian, and Gurharpal Singh. The Partition of India. New Approaches to Asian History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. White-Spunner, Barney. Partition: The Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Pakistan in 1947. London: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 52 Stories of Devotion, Marginalisation and Transgression: Tracing the Experiences of therī(s) and bhikkhunī(s) in Theravāda Buddhism Nivedita Mahapatra Second year, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi Abstract The oldest living school of Buddhism, Theravāda tradition still dominates the socio-religious lives of people in many Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, etc. Religious Studies is especially important when dealing with its impact on different categories of people in terms of class, caste, gender, etc. This paper aims to do so in the context of Theravada Buddhism. The focus of the paper is to delve into the lives of renunciant women or bhikkhunī(s) as they are known in Pali, the primary language of the Theravāda textual corpus, which also forms the primary source material for this research. The long chronological span of their evolution with multiple interpolations, diverse nature of their audience and authorship, as well as their significance in terms of respect and popularity that they still command within Buddhist societies in general and Theravāda societies in particular is what guided my choice of these texts as sources. The choice of Theravāda school in particular was also with a special purpose as not only is it the oldest extant tradition of Buddhism, but is also the tradition in which the Nun Order vanished in the previous millennium itself. The paper, therefore, not only tries to study the treatment of women in Theravāda from a historical lens but also tries to understand how these literatures, deemed so important by practitioners, continue to impact the lives of women — Nuns as well as laywomen in contemporary societies. Now, Lord, are women, having gone forth from home into homelessness in the dhamma and discipline proclaimed by the Truth-finder, able to realise the fruit of stream-attainment or the fruit of oncereturning or the fruit of non-returning or perfection? Women, Ānanda , having gone forth ... are able to realise ... perfection.1 Thus answered the Buddha, when Ānanda, one of his closest companions asked him about the ability of women to attain the state of awakening.2 The fact that Buddhism acknowledged women’s ability to attain spiritual awakening is quite 1 Horner, I.B. translated. The Book of Discipline (Vinaya Piṭaka), Vol. 5 Cullavagga (1952), (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 2001), p 354. 2 This dialogue is taken from the episode when Ānanda tries to convince the Buddha to accept the ordination of significant considering the socio-religious milieu it is located in. I Starting from the 6th century BCE, when the Buddha began preaching the dhamma, Buddhism has played a pivotal role in the socio-religious landscape of the subcontinent, later even extending to other Asian countries in the East and the Southeast. Most scholars working on the formative years of Buddhism3 believe that it was a period when patriarchal norms had started taking root. Scholars like Romila Thapar, Uma Chakravarti and Kumkum Roy amongst others have pointed out how the period saw important changes in the Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī after she was rejected by the latter multiple times without giving any reason. 3 According to Nancy Falk the ‘formative’ period or the ‘early’ period of Buddhism extends from the time of the Buddha (6th century BCE) to that of Asoka (3rd century BCE).

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 53 socio-political space a transition from the earlier tribal era and the introduction of new norms and conceptions regarding state and property ownership which can be evidenced from the Buddhist Genesis Myth. In the religious realm, this period saw the evolution of multiple schools of thought, most important and influential ones being those of the Ajivikas, Buddhists, Jainas and the Brahamanas. All the religious literature generally considered to be contemporary with this period contain passages that advocate or assume women's subordination to men, in both secular and religious realms.4 As Buddhist literature evolved over the centuries, spanning across various regions, sects and languages, it became impossible to define a single philosophy governing the question of women’s spirituality both in the context of lay women as well as alms women who renounced worldly life to join the Bhikkhunī Saṅgha — the Order of Nuns. It is important to note here that the rules that were to govern the lives of the bhikkhunī(s), did not accord them any kind of spiritual subordination. Many scholars have in fact argued for more equality amongst men and women in the early phase of Buddhism, than in the later periods when texts got compiled, sects divided, etc. This paper aims to look into the relative position and experiences of nuns as compared to their male counterparts and tries to analyse the various kinds of rules and restrictions that were imposed on them that subordinated them to the Order of Monks. These, although did not affect their spiritual 4 Kathryn Blackstone, Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therīgāthā, (2000), 9. 5 The compilation of the Piṭaka happened during the Buddhist Councils (Sutta and Vinaya Piṭaka was compiled at the First Buddhist Council while the Abhidhamma progress but most definitely had a huge impact on their position within the institution as well as the power they commanded within it, to the extent that the once vibrant nun community in Theravāda Buddhist countries went obsolete in the previous millennium leading to the present controversies on the legitimacy of the contemporary nun communities which are once again gaining prominence as a result of revivalist movements by individuals as well as organisations some of which are mentioned in the concluding section. The paper draws on three main kinds of sources. Firstly, the Pāli Canon (Tipiṭaka), which was produced within the monastic order and hence can be seen as sort of an official textual corpus of the tradition.5 compiled shortly after the demise of Buddha at the First Buddhist Council, Secondly, the Jātaka(s), which form an important part of Buddhist popular literature and are found scattered in numerous texts6 . Having evolved over time, with many of the characters and stories tracing their origins to pre-Buddhist stories and fables, they have been used to try to understand the general perception of women in the Buddhist society — both during the period of their composition as well as in present times given their huge popularity and wide circulation. Finally, the paper significantly draws upon the Therīgāthā — the only source whose authorship has been attributed to the subject of the paper themselves. These descriptions from the Therīgāthā and the Vinaya rules show how the experience of the women in Piṭaka was compiled a little later at the Third Buddhist Council). 6 Many of the Jātaka stories also find depiction in forms of art like murals, sculptures, etc. I shall however be focussing on the Pāli Jātaka(s) in this paper which have been taken from the Jātakatthavaṇṇanā.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 54 the Saṅgha were very different and unique as compared to that of the monks even in present day communities. Undertaking this study in the context of Theravāda Buddhism becomes particularly interesting given that the Nun Order in Theravāda Buddhism got lost at various points in the previous millennium itself.7 It is only the Nun communities of East Asia that are formally recognised within the Saṅgha, which form a part of the Mahāyāna tradition. Despite having nun communities in majority Theravāda Buddhist countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal, etc. who have been actively functioning and leading their lives following the Ten precepts of Vinaya (dasa sīla), they are still being denied legal recognition of their bhikkhunī status by the state.8 The focus of the paper is therefore to understand the status of the Nuns within Theravāda Buddhism, as evidenced from the various textual corpuses preserved within the tradition as well as try to understand how these the ideas and norms preserved within these texts have continued to affect women in contemporary Theravāda Buddhist societies. II Buddhist literature has multiple instances which can be collectively taken to reflect a general antagonistic attitude 7 Scholars date the disappearance of the Nun Ordination to around 11th century AD in Sri Lanka and a little later (around 13th century AD) in Thailand and Burma mostly attributing it to destruction of kingdoms and monastic communities. Nancy Falk however believes that the nuns’ fortunes started deteriorating in India from the 3rd century AD itself, the causative factors of which have a significant economic dimension as well. 8 There are different rules that are to be followed by the different levels of followers of Buddhism. Those who follow the Five Training Precepts are called upāsaka/upāsika (lay devotee). The Ten Training Precepts (dasa sīla) are of two kinds — the Ten Renunciant Training Precepts (pāvidi/pabbajā dasa sīla) which is towards women. Beginning from the very genesis of the Bhikkhunī Saṅgha, once the permission was granted to women to enter the Saṅgha they were strictly placed under the command and authority of the bhikkhu(s). As mentioned earlier, the entry of women into the Saṅgha was a struggle in itself as they were allowed only after Ānanda interceded on the behalf of Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī. 9 Then, Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī was made to accept eight pre-conditions in order for her ordination to be accepted in the Saṅgha. One of these pre-conditions was particularly offensive and discriminatory in nature which demanded that no matter how old or senior a bhikkhunī was she must rise up and salute the junior most of bhikkhu(s). Despite multiple protests, her requests for the rule of salutation to be based on seniority rather than on gender, were very firmly refused by the Buddha, on the ground that no other sect granted this privilege to women, and therefore the Buddhists could not do so either. Uma Chakravarti posits that this argument indicates how far Buddhism was willing to go in its view of change. While they may have been more progressive than the brāhmaṇa(s), they did not want to deviate from the position adopted by the wider culture of renouncers. drawn from the Vinaya Piṭaka and the Ten Householder Precepts (gahaṭṭha/gihi dasa sīla) which is derived from the Khuddaka Pātha. According to Nirmala Salgado most nuns follow the Ten Householder Precepts with only a minority of them (about 10%) following the Ten Renunciants Precepts. What Precepts are followed has a huge impact on the nomenclature of the renunciants and plays a decisive role in determining their identity and how they are recognised within the society. 9 She is believed to be Buddha's maternal aunt who was also his step-mother who fostered him after the death of his birth mother. She is also known to be the first woman to seek ordination.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 55 Coming to the specific case of Theravāda, there are numerous instances in the textual corpus preserved within the tradition that show how the religious ethos of the corresponding periods10 shaped the attitude towards women in society and probably vice-versa. Monks, a woman, even when going along, will stop to entice the heart of a man, whether standing, sitting, lying down, laughing, speaking, singing, weeping, stricken, or dying, she will stop to entice the heart of a man. Monks, if it is right to say of anything, “this is wholly a snare of Māra,” then it is right to say this of womankind, “this is wholly a snare of Māra.”11 This verse has been taken from the Aṅguttara Nikāya of the Sutta Piṭaka which is said to contain the teachings of the Buddha or his closest companions and thus are deemed important by Buddhists even today. Such a negative attitude towards women is very clearly reflected in the Jātaka(s), another important text in Theravāda tradition. Simply defined, a Jātaka is a story relating an episode in a past birth of the Buddha. Jātaka(s), defined in this manner are found throughout the texts of the early Buddhist schools as well as in commentaries and later compositions and compilations.12 Jātaka texts and stories remain especially popular in Theravāda Buddhist countries as demonstrated by their frequent illustration in temples, as well as their presence in sermons, children’s story 10 The origin of the tradition can be traced to the split that took place at the Second Buddhist Council dividing the Buddhists into Sthavīravādins and Mahāsāṅghikas. The Sthaviravadins later became the Theravāda school. 11 Aṅguttara Nikāya in Sutta Piṭaka as cited by Kathryn R. Blackstone in Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therīgāthā, 2000, 62-63. 12 Jātaka Stories in Theravāda Buddhism: Narrating the Bodhisatta Path, 2010, 2 books, plays, television programmes, theatre, dance and poetry.13 A sex composed of wickedness and guile, Unknowable, uncertain as the path Of fishes in the water, — womankind Hold the truth for falsehood, falsehood for truth! As greedily as cows seek pastures new, Women, unsated, yearn for mate on mate. As sand unstable, cruel as the snake, Women know all things; naught from them is hid!14 The verses mentioned above from the Aṇḍabhūta-Jātaka reflect the general attitude towards women in the Jātakatthavaṇṇanā. The Jātaka(s) contain several stories where women are depicted as wicked, vile and deceitful creatures, committing sins and seducing men. The Aṇḍabhūta-Jātaka, 15 for example, tells a story of the ‘innate’ wickedness of women, where a girl, birthed to live in isolation, is brought by women from infancy without ever seeing any other man but her husband. Yet, she cheats on her husband and attempts to hurt him with her lover. Similarly, the Asātamanta-Jātaka, 16 which talks about how an old, blind woman attempts to kill her dutiful son in order to facilitate her intrigue with a youth.17 An interesting point can be noted from the Mahānāradakassapa Jātaka, where the beautiful, wise and intelligent Princess Rūjā while explaining the theory of karma affecting future births recalls her own 13 Jātaka Stories in Theravāda Buddhism, 2. 14 Cowell, The Jātakas, Vol.1, 155. 15 Cowell, The Jātakas, Vol.1, Jātaka no. 62, 151-55. 16 Cowell, The Jātakas, Vol.1, Jātaka no. 61, 147-51 - Some other such Jātaka(s) with a clear antagonistic attitude towards women are the Takka Jātaka (no. 63); Durājāna Jātaka (no. 64); Mudulakkhaṇa Jātaka (no. 66), etc.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 56 previous births. There she attributes her birth as a woman to the last level of consequences that she has to face for committing the sin of corrupting other men’s wives in one of her former births. In this story, despite being born as a princess and possessing great wisdom and virtue, she still sees her birth as a result of her past evil deeds and states that only after this birth will she overcome the effect of evil karma and her good karma will come to fruition; henceforth she will only be born amongst gods or men. At least two clear ideas are conveyed — birth as a woman is seen as a result of immoral actions in previous births and hence deemed unfortunate; there is an aspiration to achieve male birth in next life as that is seen as a consequence of meritorious deeds. As established these texts despite corresponding to specific time periods in his studies on contemporary Theravāda society show that this view still pervades among people. Perdita Hutson in her interviews conducted in the rural society of Sri Lanka and published in a chapter titled ‘But it is a privilege to be born a man: A Legacy of Social Constraints’, mentions how many women remain convinced that they are born as women as they had sinned a thousand times in some previous life— I would rather have been a man; to be born a woman is a sin. I am a Buddhist, and to be born a man is a privilege. Those who have done good things — or have not done bad things — will have an 18 Perdita Hutson, Third World Women Speak Out: Interviews in Six Countries on Change, Development, and Basic Needs (New York: Praeger, 1979), 48. 19 In Theravāda Buddhism, the term Bodhisatta is used to refer to the Buddha in his previous births. This is a term with slightly different meanings in Theravāda and Mahāyāna forms. According to Appleton, the presence of this character is one of the common features of all Jātaka opportunity to be born men. If men's and women's education is equal, there are no differences, really — I know that whatever a man can do, a woman can also — but it is still a privilege to be born a man.18 The Jātaka(s) convey another significant point. An interesting trend seen in all the Jātaka stories by many scholars is that the bodhisatta19 may be a common man, or even an animal but never a woman. This implies that women can achieve the state of awakening (arahatship) but can never attain the state of ultimate perfection (Buddhahood). Rita M. Gross believes that to see more affinity between male humans and male animals than between female and male human beings is a harsh manifestation of androcentric consciousness in which, more than is usually the case even for androcentrism, women are seen as outside the norm, as a foreign object but not a human subject.20 Naomi Appleton argues that the tradition that explicitly excludes women from the bodhisatta path belongs to the commentarial layer of the text, and is consequently later than the collection of stories, therefore arguing that these stories influenced the tradition of excluding women, rather than vice versa.21 This exclusion of women from the bodhisatta path and the idea that female birth is the result of bad karma has had serious repercussions for the spiritual stories which gives them the definition of being the birth stories of Buddha. 20 Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), 43. 21 Naomi Appleton. “In the Footsteps of the Buddha? Women and the Bodhisatta Path in Theravāda Buddhism.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27, no. 1 (2011), 41.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 57 aspirations of Buddhist women in South and Southeast Asia countries even today. It is therefore within such a tradition that we need to locate the entire phenomenon of women renouncing their worldly lives in favour of monastic life — their reasons, motivations, and finally the life that lay ahead for them. III A glimpse into the thoughts of some of the earliest nuns can be found in the Therīgāthā. Preserved within the Theravāda tradition, it forms a part of the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Sutta Piṭaka. The circumstances which led women to join the Saṅgha has been an important issue in the modern scholarly discourse surrounding Buddhist nuns. I.B. Horner, in her work Women Under Primitive Buddhism published in 1930 argued that there is little to suggest that the personal charm of Gotama drew women to join the Saṅgha. According to her, it was the “passion for Release (mokṣa, mokkha), very great in those times and as widespread as India itself, which largely drew women forward. Freedom was the prize which some of them hoped to win.” 22 Arvind Sharma in his study pointed out that a conversion to Buddhism could come about in two ways: a therī could either be drawn towards Buddhism by what she found compelling in it or she could be moved towards it by forces operating within her personal and social situation.23 A 22 I.B. Horner. Women Under Primitive Buddhism: Laywomen and Almswomen (New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1930), 96-97. 23 Arvind Sharma, ‘How and Why did the Women in Ancient India Become Buddhist Nuns?’ Sociological Analysis 38, no. 3 (1977), 241. 24 Most of this information is found in the ParamatthaDīpanī, the 5th/6th century CE commentary of deep analysis of the background of the different therīs in the Therīgāthā reveals the varied circumstances under which different women took up this path. While for some like Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī whose ordination founded the Order of the Nuns, the influence of the Buddha was important, while others like Bhaddā, Kundalakesā, Nunduttarā were converted by elder monks. For some, like in the case of Vāsitthi, the experience of extreme grief (dukkha) due to the death of her son provoked her conversion into Buddhism. 24 These are the cases where the conversion was induced by the influence of the Buddha, the Saṅgha or the Dhamma that was preached. However, the most recurring cause that we see in the Therīgāthā was to gain freedom from a wide range of problems faced by the women in the society of the time including conjugal disharmony, domestic discord or as Uma Chakravarti points out to gain freedom from three things — pestle, mortar, and her hunchbacked Lord.25 However an important question to ask is how far they got liberated from these social issues after entering this new community. IV It must be emphasised that Buddhism never discriminated against women in spiritual matters. The eight special rules that the nuns were made to accept presented no inherent barrier to women's spiritual development. They mandated institutional Dhammapala, in which he prefixes a narrative story to the verses uttered by the nuns thus giving a background context to them and hence also giving some insight into the circumstances in which these women must have taken up this path. 25 Uma Chakravarti, ‘The Rise of Buddhism as Experienced by Women.’ Manushi, no. 8 (1984), 6.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 58 subordination, not spiritual subordination, a point still made by defenders of contemporary Theravāda forms of male dominance.26 Scholars like Rita Gross argue that the monastic code dealt with women and men in remarkably similar ways: they lived similar lifestyles, did the same practices, and even looked alike, both having shaved heads and identical robes.27 It is however important to note that the Vinaya Piṭaka has numerous rules imposed on nuns which are not imposed on the monks. For example, it is ruled that, “whatever nun should among the villages alone, or should go to the other side of a river alone, or should be away for a night alone, or should stay behind a group alone, that nun also has fallen into a matter that is an offence at once, entailing a formal meeting of the Order involving being sent away.”28 However, we do not find similar restrictions in the case of monks. Scholars have also drawn attention to the monastic codes that disallowed monks to ask nuns to perform household services. This might be in reference to the Rules of Forfeiture (Nissaggiya), which prohibits a monk from ordering a nun to wash, dye or beat his soiled robes as it would involve an offence of wrongdoing followed by the forfeiture of the robe. However, a closer reading of the translation by I.B. Horner points out a particular exception to this rule — There is no offence when a female relation is washing it, if a woman assistant who is not a relation is (helping); if she washes it unasked; if he makes her wash an unused one; if he makes her wash another requisite, except the robe; if is (washed) by a female probationer, by a female novice; 26 Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy, 37. 27 Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy, 37. 28 I.B. Horner, trans., The Book of Discipline (Vinaya Piṭaka), Vol. 3, Suttavibhaṅga (1942), 2004 edition, 189. if he is mad, if he is the first wrongdoer.29 Nancy Falk, in her study of the Vinaya Piṭaka, has pointed out how some of the rules that were designed to benefit the nuns actually worked against them in the long term. For example, due to the strict observance of the rule celibacy, mostly monks and nuns functioned as their own teachers respectively. However, as the transmission of the teaching for most part remained with the men who travelled with Buddha, nuns were also allowed to receive instruction from the monks. This rule, according to Falk, initially meant to benefit women, ultimately worked to their disadvantage as the corresponding allowance was not granted. Additionally, the fact that nuns could not admonish the monks meant that women never became important teachers of the community at large, even though they made significant progress themselves and often taught other women. This also had a significant economic dimension — since they did not become major teachers, well known and important to lay donors, they did not attract the same level of economic support as did the monks. In Falk’s analysis, it is the combination of these factors that led to the weakening and the ultimate disappearance of the Order of Nuns from many parts of the Buddhist world. V The past few years have seen a revival of the Nun Ordination within the Theravāda tradition. The contemporary revivalist movement can be traced back to the 29 I.B. Horner, translated, The Book of Discipline (Vinaya Piṭaka), Vol. 2, Suttavibhaṅga (1940), 2004 edition, 34-35 -What constitutes a ‘relation’ in this case remains undefined.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 59 ordination of 10 Sri Lankan women in Sarnath in 1996. In this context, the role of organisations like The International Association of Buddhist Women, otherwise known as Sakyadhita, meaning ‘Daughters of the Buddha’ in Pali, has been crucial. Among its primary objectives is “to work for gender equity in Buddhist education, training institutional structures, and ordination.”30 The revival of this tradition has also been a challenge in most of the countries due to the legal issues posed by the State. It is still illegal in Thailand for a woman to be completely ordained due to the Sangha Act, 1928. This regulation forbade Thai monks to ordain women as sāmaṇerī, sikkhamānā or bhikkhunī. This was challenged when Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, a Thai scholar of Buddhism, was first ordained as a sāmaṇerī in 2001 and again after two years took Higher Ordination and became Bhikkhunī 30 ‘About Us’, Sakyadhita: International Association of Buddhist Women, https://www.sakyadhita.org/about. 31 Over the years many of the advocates of the revival of the bhikkhuni ordination have pointed out the direct relationship between low status of women in Thai Dhammanandā. The debate between the traditional Theravadins, monks, Buddhologists, feminists as well as numerous thinkers and academic scholars still persists regarding the legality of the revival of the Nun Ordination. It must however be noted that this revival of the Nun Ordination is important not just from the vantage point of women’s spirituality but also the status of women in Buddhist societies in general. This has been illustrated by Dr. Emma Tomalin, working on the intersections of gender and religion has pointed out in the case of Thailand how the low status of women in Thai Buddhism is closely related to the inferior status of women in Thai society31 and how bhikkhuni movements to reintroduce bhikkhuni ordination has an impact on women empowerment in general. Buddhism and the inferior status of women in Thai society which increases their vulnerability to domestic abuse, sexual violence and other forms of oppression

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 60 BIBLIOGRAPHY Appleton, Naomi. “In the Footsteps of the Buddha? Women and the Bodhisatta Path in Theravāda Buddhism.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27, no. 1 (2011): 33–51. https://doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.27.1.33. — Jātaka Stories in Theravāda Buddhism: Narrating the Bodhisatta Path. UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010. Ashiwa, Yoshiko. ‘The Revival of Nun Ordination of the Theravada Tradition in Sri Lanka: A Landscape of the Culture in the Contemporary World.’ Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 46, no. 1 (2015): 19–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43610995. Blackstone, Kathryn R. Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therīgāthā. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2000. Bhikkhu Analayo. ‘The Theravada Vinaya and bhikkhunī Ordination.’ Chakravarti, Uma. ‘The Rise of Buddhism as Experienced by Women.’ Manushi, no. 8 (1984): 6-10. https://www.academia.edu/21775763/1984._The_Rise_of_Buddhism_as_experienced_by_ women._Manushi_No._8. — Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1996. Cowell, E.B. translated. The Jātaka(s) or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births Volumes 1-6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dutt, Nalinaksha. Buddhist Sects in India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1978. Falk, Nancy Auer. ‘The Case of Vanishing the Nuns: The Fruits of Ambivalence in Ancient India.’ In Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures, edited by Nancy Auer Falk and Rita Gross, 207-224. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980. Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Gombrich, Richard F. Theravāda Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benaras to Modern Colombo. (2nd edition). Oxon: Routledge Publishers, 2006. Gross, Rita M. Buddhism Beyond Gender: Liberation from Attachment to Identity. Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2018. —Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 61 Hallisey, Charles. Poems of the First Buddhist Women: A Translation of the Therīgāthā. London: Murty Classical Library of India, Harvard University Press, 2021. Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Horner, I.B. Horner, I.B. translated. The Book of Discipline (Vinaya Piṭaka) Volumes 1-6. UK: The Pali Text Society, . —Women Under Primitive Buddhism: Laywomen and Almswomen. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Indological Publishers and Booksellers, 1930. Hutson, Perdita. Third World Women Speak Out: Interviews in Six Countries on Change, Development, and Basic Needs. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979. Tomalin, Emma. “The Thai Bhikkhuni Movement and Women’s Empowerment.” Gender and Development 14, no. 3 (2006): 385–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20461161. Salgado, Nirmala S. ‘Tradition: Nuns and “Theravāda” in Sri Lanka.’ In Routledge Handbook of Theravāda Buddhism, edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz and Ashley Thompson, 99-113. Oxon: Routledge Publishers, 2022. — “Religious Identities of Buddhist Nuns: Training Precepts, Renunciant Attire, and Nomenclature in Theravāda Buddhism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72, no. 4 (2004): 935–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005934. Sharma, Arvind. ‘How and Why did the Women in Ancient India Become Buddhist Nuns?’ Sociological Analysis 38, no. 3 (1977): 239-251. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3709804. Yuchi, Kajiyama. ‘Women in Buddhism’. The Eastern Buddhist 15, no. 2 (1982): 53-70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44361658. ‘About Us’, Sakyadhita: International Association of Buddhist Women, https://www.sakyadhita.org/about.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 62 Subaltern Shakespeare: Acting, Adapting and Appropriating Shakespeare in Colonial and Post-Colonial Bengal Pratyusha Chakrabarti Second Year, Department of History St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi Abstract Whether through a sonnet, or a visit to the theatre, through an oft-quoted proverb or simply the school syllabus, the colonial and postcolonial urban, literate Indian cannot shy away from Shakespeare. This essay seeks to examine the various plays, performances and (re)productions of Shakespeare in colonial and postcolonial Bengal, querying the various ways in which a frontispiece of colonialism is adapted to the needs of the colonised. In order to accomplish the same, the essay looks at Bhantumoti Chittobilash, an adaption of Merchant of Venice by Hurro Chunder Ghose, Amarendranath Dutt’s Horiraj, Girish Chandra Ghosh’s Macbeth, Rabindranath Tagore’s ambivalent, yet admiring attitude towards Shakespeare, Utpal Dutt’s productions of Shakespeare including jatra adaptations, Asit Basu’s Kolkatar Hamlet, as well as Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear. In doing so, this essay seeks to examine the transformations undergone by Shakespearean classics under various social and political circumstances within the context of colonial and postcolonial Bengal, using the theoretical frameworks proposed by scholars such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi K. Bhaba, Georges Gurvitch and Jean Duvignaud. Therefore, the essay seeks to examine how the postcolonial transgresses the boundaries of coloniality and therein performs its subversion. Shakespeare occupies centre stage in the urban, literate, colonial and postcolonial Indian consciousness. It is an integral part of the tapestry of our chosen modes of entertainment - literature, music, film or theatre - which reflects our lives and the contemporary society in myriad ways. Through a framework of colonial and postcolonial asymmetric intellectual and ideological ignorance and mimicry, ambivalence and hybridity as established by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Homi K. Bhaba respectively, this essay seeks to examine various case studies of performances and productions of Shakespearean works in colonial and postcolonial Bengal, having first established, in brief, a link between theatre and the social life of individuals. This essay thus attempts to highlight how the inherent ambivalence of post/colonial existence is reflected in the theatrical, cinematic and ideological expressions of the time, as evident from the various ways of approaching that which is quintessentially colonial - Shakespeare. Sociologists such as Georges Gurvitch and Jean Duvignaud have drawn attention to the similarities and dissimilarities between theatre and everyday forms of social interaction. Social ceremonies as seemingly mundane as paper presentations, trials and trade union meetings involve elements of theatricality. Further, all individuals perform several social roles in their daily lives that change and evolve with respect to the space they occupy at the moment. Gurvitch identifies several moments of affinity between theatre and society wherein the actors play social roles with respect to one another, as do the characters they portray; the social context

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 63 of the play intrudes onto the stage and the audience marks another social aspect of the theatre.1 However, Duvignaud, in identifying social life as a ‘spontaneous theatre’ brings to light how theatre sublimates and postpones actions while ceremonies intervene in real life. Herein, theatre, being performed in a carefully demarcated space, can demonstrate the ‘basic problems affecting the life of a man’ i.e., struggle against constraints, spontaneous expression of self and crucially, realisation of his freedom. 2 This relationship between the theatrical and social life is significantly complicated given that this paper is concerned with a colonial and postcolonial context. The social functioning of the colonial and postcolonial subject is overshadowed by the spectre of the metropole, no less evident in the subject this essay is concerned with - subaltern adaptations of Shakespeare. The metropole makes its presence felt, as Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts, even in everyday habits of thought.3 This invariably finds reflection in the theatrical practice of the time. Further, interactions between the metropole and the colony/post colony are inevitably characterised by what Chakrabarty terms the ‘problem of asymmetric ignorance’ wherein the intellectual currents of the metropole are 1 Georges Gurvitch, ‘The Sociology of the Theatre’, in Sociology of Literature and Drama, ed. Elizabeth Burns and Tom Burns (Penguin, 1973), 71–74. 2 Jean Duvignaud, ‘The Theatre in Society: The Society in the Theatre’, in Sociology of Literature and Drama, ed. Elizabeth Burns and Tom Burns (Penguin, 1973), 82–92. 3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton Studies in Culture, Power, History (Princeton (N.J.): Princeton university press, 2007). 4 Chakrabarty. 5 Scholars such as Gauri Vishwanathan have drawn attention to the introduction of Shakespeare as a pedagogic enterprise. However, this essay focuses on the performances of Shakespeare and hence considers the use referenced in the ideological and intellectual formulations arising from a postcolonial context but a reciprocation of the same is not seen.4 Such a phenomenon makes itself evident in multiple instances throughout this paper, in Shakespeare being seen as a dramatic ideal that colonial and postcolonial dramatists not only aspire towards, but try to imitate, adapt and mimic.5 Frantz Fanon famously postulated that a schism develops between ‘black skin’ and the ‘white mask’ where the colonised loses contact with their roots in an attempt to emulate their perceived superiors.6 Partha Chatterjee also draws attention to the ‘ideological sieve’ that filtered colonial ideas7 - thus ensuring their final product was not a mere emulation but a translation. Significantly, in mimicking the colonising ‘superior’, Homi K. Bhaba argues, the colonised represents another view which disavows their external reality, rearticulating it through their desires. Aspects that are colonial become ‘partobjects of presence’. This mimicry serves at once to acknowledge the colonised aspirations towards becoming the colonial whilst challenging the authority of the colonial therein.8 Therefore, the visibility of the colonial presence, even in its apparent mimesis, is problematised, as is the of Shakespeare in schools etc. as beyond its scope. See also: “Jyotsna Singh, ‘Different Shakespeares: The Bard in Colonial/Postcolonial India’, Theatre Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1989): 445–58, https://doi.org/10.2307/3208007.Singh. 6 Ania Loomba, ‘Local-Manufacture Made-in-India Othello Fellows’: Issues of Race, Hybridity and Location’, in Post-Colonial Shakespeares, 1st Edition (Routledge, 1998), 143–64. 7 Loomba, 146. 8 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, in Postcolonial Studies, ed. Pramod K. Nayar (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016), 53–59, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119118589.ch3.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 64 authority implicit in the colonial presence.9 Adaptations and reinterpretations of Shakespeare by the colonised and the postcolonial, hence, qualify within this matrix of mimicry where they serve as attempts to change the extant world despite appearing to conform to its general ideological hierarchisation.10 The liminality, hybridity and ambivalence of the colonial and postcolonial mind, this essay posits, is visibilised in the various case studies taken up in the paragraphs below. One of the initial case studies of Shakespeare being translated for performance within the colonial framework in 19th century Calcutta is Hurro Chunder Ghose’s Bhanumoti Chittobilash (c. 1850). In the very preface, he notes the need to adapt the play as a ‘Bengali natuck’ so as to ‘suit the native taste’ and not merely translate it.11 Despite the ambitions of introducing Shakespearean aesthetics to a Bengali audience, the act begins with an ode to Saraswati, shortly followed by the entry of the nartaki. 12 Not only is Shylock the Jew changed to Shylock the baniya (‘translating’ the connotations of belonging to a mercantile community), but eleven songs as well as elements from classical Sanskrit theatre such as the Sutradhar has been introduced. Of special interest might be the use of very indigenous superstitions or omens in the play to portend inauspicious events such as the howling of 9 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817’, Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (October 1985): 144–65, https://doi.org/10.1086/448325. 10 Martin Orkin and Ania Loomba, ‘Introduction: Shakespeare and the Post-Colonial Question’, in PostColonial Shakespeares, 1st Edition (Routledge, n.d.), 3. 11 Hurro Chunder Ghose, ‘Preface’, in Bhanumoti Chittobilash (Purnochandrodoy Press, 1853). 12 Ghose, 1-3. 13 Sandip Debnath and Sayantan Roy Moulik, ‘Murmuring Your Praise’: Shakespearean Echoes in Early Bengali Drama’, in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring jackals or twitching of the eye et cetera.13 Significantly, the more romantic attributes of the play are emphasised.14 Shakespeare, thus, already had a prominent presence among the indigenous intelligentsia. This is further evidenced by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1875 essay “Shakuntala, Miranda ebong Desdemona” where even Kalidas’ iconic heroine Shakuntala does not escape comparison and fails to be as spontaneous as Miranda or, interestingly, as pativrata as Desdemona.15 Two other prominent instances of ‘Indian’ performances of Shakespeare in colonial Calcutta may be juxtaposed with each other as a ‘faithful’ and ‘unfaithful’ adaptation respectively: Girish Chandra Ghosh’s Macbeth (1893) and Amarendranath Dutta’s Horiraj (1896). Ghose’s production, it is generally presumed, was more ‘faithful’ to the original, being performed by actors wearing English costumes but was a failure at the box office. As Sarkar points out, however, this was not an act of imitation (anukaran) but rather, translation (anuvad) as several important changes were made in the process of adaptation such as Neptune becoming Varun and all references to Scotland being replaced (usually by Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, ed. Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf (Sage, 2016), 159. 14 Abhilash Dey, ‘The Tradition of Bengallie Natuck and Hurro Chunder Ghose’s Bhanumati Chittobilash’, Research Journal of English Language and Literature 1, no. 4 (2016). 15 Shormishtha Panja, ‘To Confine the Illimitable’: Visual and Verbal Narratives in Two Bengali Retellings of Shakespeare’, in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, ed. Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf (Sage, 2016), 30.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 65 janmabhumi).16 Dutta met with more success, and his Horiraj is replete with instances of hybridity, most evident from the ‘Bengalisation’ of all titular characters. The setting for Horiraj is, interestingly, Kashmir. Further, Hamlet’s character greatly loses his ‘greyness’ leading to interesting situations such as Hamlet’s confrontation with Sreelekha (Getrude) - he forgives her. She must, however, beg forgiveness of Goddess Kali.17 A distinct ambivalence with regard to the Bard of Avon may be traced in the works of Rabindranath Tagore. Given his provenance, Shakespeare was an integral part of his introduction to English literature and the influence thereof is evident in many of his earlier dramatic works, especially Raja o Rani (1889) and Visarjan (1890), which are tragedies written in the Shakespearean format of five acts. As Chakravarty asserts, Tagore acknowledges the Shakespearean drama as always being “our dramatic model”.18 In a volume celebrating the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, Tagore had contributed a poem wherein he writes, “therefore at this moment, after the end of centuries, the palm groves by the Indian sea raise their tremulous branches to the sky murmuring your praise.”19 Of note is the use of the term biswokobi - poet of the world/universal poet (translation mine) - to address Shakespeare in the Bengali iteration of the same poem, 16 Abhishek Sarkar, ‘Girish Chandra’s Macbeth: Colonial Modernity and the Poetics of Translation’, International Journal of Bengal Studies 2–3 (2012): 270–76. 17 Abhishek Sarkar, ‘Hariraj and Haider: Popular Entertainment and the Nation in Two Indian Adaptations of Hamlet’, Literature Compass 14, no. 11 (November 2017), https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12412. 18 Chakravarty Radha, ‘Shakespeare and Tagore: A Fraught Relationship’, in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, ed. Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf (Sage, 2016), 209. effectively sealing the notion of asymmetric ignorance where the poet of the metropole becomes the poet of the world.20 Tagore’s views on Shakespeare, however, noticeably change over time. In Rangamancha (1902), Tagore critiques the materialistic nature of European productions and their insistence on elaborate props and sets.21 He undertakes an analysis of Shakespeare that may be termed ‘eco-critical’ since it focuses on the inherent ‘gulf between nature and human nature’. In fact, Tagore attributes the aforementioned gulf to the ‘tradition of his race and time’ - ascribing an ignorance to the metropolitan as a member of the periphery. The usual problem of asymmetric ignorance is interestingly subverted in Tagore’s essay, where he draws attention to the changed attitudes of later poets such as the Romantics - a shift he ascribes to the ‘influence of the newly discovered philosophy of India’. Therefore, while accepting Shakespeare’s greatness as a poet or dramatist and tracing a similar vein of discontent with the artificiality of life at the king’s court in the works of both Shakespeare and Kalidasa, he praises the latter for recognising the healing power of nature that the former fails to accomplish.22 Shakespeare formed an integral part of Utpal Dutta’s education and the initial part of his career as a thespian, of which a significant part was spent in Geoffrey 19 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Shakespeare’, in A Book of Homage to Shakespeare: To Commemorate the Three Hundredth Year of Shakespeare’s Death MCMXVI, ed. Israel Gollancz (Oxford University Press, 1916). 20 Tagore, 320. 21 Radha, ‘Shakespeare and Tagore: A Fraught Relationship’, 210. 22 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Creative Ideal’, in Creative Unity (Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1922).

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 66 Kendall’s troupe, Shakespeareana. This enterprise of performing Shakespeare is seen by scholars such as Tapati Guha as mere mimicry.23 While a postcolonial subject performing Shakespeare in itself carries connotations of hybridity, this essay seeks to emphasise both Dutt’s blatant and unabashed politicisation of Shakespeare and his adaptation of Shakespeare to the jatra medium. With regard to the former, Dutt published a seminal monograph entitled Shakespeyarer Samaj-Chetona (Shakespeare’s Social Consciousness) wherein he staunchly criticises what he believes to be a critical denial of social commentary in Shakespeare and a lack of analysis of the same. Accordingly, he advocates the use of a Sewellian framework to locate instances where Shakespeare expresses his own ideology or thought by identifying ideas that recur in his work.24 In line with the belief in the politics intrinsic to Shakespeare's works, Dutt reinvented Julius Caesar shortly after the end of World War II where Mark Antony was a fascist orator.25 Interestingly, when Dutt reformatted the Little Theatre Group to a Bengali theatre production format, committed to “revolutionary struggle”, many of the actors, whom Rustom Bharucha terms “British in their education and culture yet Indian in their status”, could not “betray the class of their origin” and hence, left the group, albeit amicably.26 The Little Theatre Group, in its new avatar, 23 Rosa M. García-Periago, ‘The Re-Birth of Shakespeare in India: Celebrating and Indianizing the Bard in 1964’, Sederi, no. 22 (2012): 61, https://doi.org/10.34136/sederi.2012.3. 24 Utpal Dutta, Shakespeyarer Samaj-Chetona (M.C. Sarkar and Sons Private Limited, 1980), 61. 25 Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 51. sought to approach the masses with productions of classic theatre that they might not have access to otherwise, which included a production of Macbeth using the translation by Jyotinindranath Sengupta which went on tour across rural Bengal. Significantly, however, this production did not follow the conventions of the proscenium - rather, Dutt adapted it into the jatra style.27 In this context, Dutt’s productions of Romeo and Juliet, first as a proscenium play and then as a jatra, makes for a fascinating juxtaposition. In his proscenium production, first performed to celebrate Shakespeare’s quatercentenary, he used his own translation of Romeo and Juliet and, according to Gutpa, “recreate[d] as closely as possible the ambience of the original Elizabethan playhouse within the restricted proscenium”. In contrast to the Friar in the original play, Dutt’s Friar runs away during the climax to emphasise his ordinariness and hopelessness in the face of the capitalist society. Unlike the colonial adaptations of Shakespeare discussed in the essay, Dutt did not indigenise the costumes, names of characters et cetera, believing intrinsically in the universal effectiveness of playwrights such as Shakespeare and Brecht even to a rural, largely illiterate audience.28 Further, Dutt uses Western classical music, especially that of Tchaikovsky to introduce an Italian flavour 26 Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 61. 27 Jatra refers to a popular folk theatre form from Bengal. Initially almost an entirely rural phenomenon, jatra also developed urban recensions. Performed on makeshift stages with limited props, costumes etc. Jatra is often seen in opposition to proscenium theatre, which is formalised urban theatre using theatre stages built for the purpose. 28 Tapati Gupta, ‘From Proscenium to Paddy Fields: Utpal Dutt’s Shakespeare Jatra’, 1st Ed. (Routledge, 2009), 5.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 67 to the production.29 On the other hand, in his jatra adaptation of the play, Bhuli Nai Priyo, he chose to indianise the names albeit retaining the original storyline. He also chose to portray the Montagues as Hindu and the Capulets as Muslim in an interesting instance of translation, reminiscent of Ghose’s baniya Shylock. Indian costumes were used, as were indigenous references to historical figures such as Chengiz Khan and Timur.30 As Gupta highlights, Dutt believed that Shakespeare must be associated with life - not only that of Elizabethan England, or the leisured class in India - but that of the ordinary people.31 Interestingly, Bharucha argues that Dutt’s reinterpretation of Macbeth as a jatra might have been closer to the Elizabethan performances of the same.32 While this may be read as a coincidental comment, it could also be seen as yet another instance of the problem of asymmetric ignorance. Dutt returned to Shakespeare throughout his career, approaching the Bard in various ways. His penchant for a political reading of Shakespeare, however, remained a constant as is evidenced by the fact that he chose to stage Macbeth as a protest against the Emergency declared in 1975.33 Continuing with the politicisation of Shakespeare, Asit Bose’s 1973 play, Kolkatar Hamlet is set in a Calcutta torn apart by the Naxalite movement. Throughout the text, there are multiple instances of a universalisation of Hamlet - 29 Gupta, 7-8. 30 Gupta, 13-15. 31 Gupta, 6. 32 Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, 63. 33 Asit Biswas, ‘From Page to Stage and Screen: A Comparative Study in Indigenization of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, Journal of People’s History and Culture 1, no. 2 (2016): 55. a character likens the city to Denmark, and posits that “Claudiuses are spread across all times and spaces”.34 In fact, despite outright references to Shakespeare’s text and the resurrection of the character of Hamlet himself on stage, the play also commits an act of translation where there is a reference to the story of Abhimanyu, compounded by the notion of the Naxal youth, as ‘Indian’ equivalents to Hamlet - the universal figure of a boy unjustly killed. The play also serves to elucidate the notion of asymmetric ignorance in the repeated references to texts from the metropole such as Cyrano de Bergerac and Caldero, apart from Shakespeare. Paromita Chakravarti argues that, in Bose’s play, Calcutta “claims and indigenizes Hamlet”.35 However, this essay argues that to state that the original Shakespeare is as ‘roguish’ as the colloquial, slang-ridden Bangla spoken in Kolkatar Hamlet, ends up requesting the sanction of the metropole for political violence in the postcolony. In order to be universal, Rituparno Ghosh’s Last Lear is an English language film - a fact that by itself compounds the ‘ambivalence’ of a postcolonial film director. Albeit drawing on Utpal Dutt’s play Aajker Shahjahan, Ghosh’s film looks at the remnants of English theatre through a lens of intense nostalgia, especially evident in the notion of an ageing Indian actor, Harish ‘Harry’ Mishra who idealises Shakespeare.36 Of further interest is that the Last Lear is an Indian film with a veteran 34 Paromita Chakravarti, ‘Urban Histories and Vernacular Shakespeares in Bengal Kolkatar Hamlet, Hemlat and Hamlet 2011’, in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, ed. Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf (Sage, 2016), 45. 35 Chakravarti, 45–47. 36Chakravarti, ‘Urban Histories and Vernacular Shakespeares in Bengal Kolkatar’.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 68 Bollywood star, Amitabh Bacchan attempting to communicate a distaste for other ‘Indianisations’ or ‘Bollywoodisations’ of Shakespeare.37 This is especially significant given that Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2005) by Vishal Bharadwaj have already demonstrated that Shakespeare can indeed be adapted to an Indian setting, albeit rooted in its own ambivalence. Even more interestingly, the protagonist of Aajker Shahjahan is comfortable reciting Shakespeare not only in the original English, but also his mother tongue, Bangla. Further, unlike the gentrified Harry, he is located firmly within the context of a Bengali indigenisation of Shakespeare as prompted by Dutt - fully cognisant of his liminality and the political implications thereof. This leads Chakravarti to posit that the Last Lear does not renegotiate Shakespeare, but recanonises it.38 In this essay’s analysis of various translations, adaptations and performances of the works of Shakespeare in colonial and postcolonial Bengal, no clear format for indigenising or ‘Bengalising’ Shakespeare can be identified. While the colonial productions of Hurro Chunder Ghose and Amarendranath Dutt not only translate, but transplant the plays, that of Girish Chandra Ghose’s attempts to remain more faithful to the original, albeit in Bengali. Tagore idolises Shakespeare as a dramatic ideal and yet, critiques his attempts to bend nature to his will in an act of subversive ecocriticism. Utpal Dutt, both in the proscenium and jatra forms, sees Shakespeare as inherently political, as does Asit Bose. Rituparno Ghose, in the alternative medium of cinema, frames the universal, English stage in a nostalgic light, bemoaning the fading away of ‘true’ Shakespeare productions. Running parallel to these manifestations of social life in performance and media, the intelligentsia conform to the notion of asymmetric ignorance, paying homage to the metropole as the source of knowledge, and inevitably thus, of power. However, in their mimicry of that which is colonial - Shakespeare - the colonised or the postcolonial does not fracture between their actuality and their aspired reality, but rather, occupies the schism itself. In their indigenisation of Shakespeare, whether through a translation into Bengali, adaptation into a jatra or even a complete renaming of characters and commerce-driven reformatting of plot points, the subaltern subject also ends up subverting Shakespeare. 37 Paromita Chakravarti, ‘Interrogating “Bollywood Shakespeare”: Reading Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear’, in Bollywood Shakespeares, ed. Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375568_7. 38 Chakravarti, 133.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY Bhabha, Homi K. ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’. In Postcolonial Studies, edited by Pramod K. Nayar, 53–59. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119118589.ch3. ———. ‘Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817’. Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (October 1985): 144–65. https://doi.org/10.1086/448325. Bharucha, Rustom. Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theater of Bengal. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983. Biswas, Asit. ‘From Page to Stage and Screen: A Comparative Study in Indigenization of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth’. Journal of People’s History and Culture 1, no. 2 (2016): 55. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton Studies in Culture, Power, History. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton university press, 2007. Chakravarti, Paromita. ‘Interrogating “Bollywood Shakespeare”: Reading Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear’. In Bollywood Shakespeares, edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia, 127–45. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375568_7. ———. ‘Urban Histories and Vernacular Shakespeares in Bengal Kolkatar Hamlet, Hemlat and Hamlet 2011’. In Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, edited by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf, 41–60. Sage, 2016. Debnath, Sandip, and Sayantan Roy Moulik. ‘Murmuring Your Praise’: Shakespearean Echoes in Early Bengali Drama’. In Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, edited by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf, 151-165. Sage, 2016. Dey, Abhilash. ‘The Tradition of Bengallie Natuck and Hurro Chunder Ghose’s Bhanumati Chittobilash’. Research Journal of English Language and Literature 1, no. 4 (2016). Dutta, Utpal. Shakespeyarer Samaj-Chetona. M.C. Sarkar and Sons Private Limited, 1980. Duvignaud, Jean. ‘The Theatre in Society: The Society in the Theatre’. In Sociology of Literature and Drama, edited by Elizabeth Burns and Tom Burns, 82–92. Penguin, 1973.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 70 García-Periago, Rosa M. ‘The Re-Birth of Shakespeare in India: Celebrating and Indianizing the Bard in 1964’. Sederi, no. 22 (2012): 51–68. https://doi.org/10.34136/sederi.2012.3. Ghose, Hurro Chunder. ‘Preface’. In Bhanumoti Chittobilash. Purnochandrodoy Press, 1853. Gupta, Tapati. ‘From Proscenium to Paddy Fields: Utpal Dutt’s Shakespeare Jatra’, 1st Edition., 13–18. Routledge, 2009. Gurvitch, Georges. ‘The Sociology of the Theatre’. In Sociology of Literature and Drama, edited by Elizabeth Burns and Tom Burns, 71–74. Penguin, 1973. Loomba, Ania. ‘Local-Manufacture Made-in-India Othello Fellows’: Issues of Race, Hybridity and Location’. In Post-Colonial Shakespeares, 1st Edition., 143–64. Routledge, 1998. Orkin, Martin, and Ania Loomba. ‘Introduction: Shakespeare and the Post-Colonial Question’. In Post-Colonial Shakespeares, 1st Edition., 1-25. Routledge, n.d. Panja, Shormishtha. ‘To Confine the Illimitable: Visual and Verbal Narratives in Two Bengali Retellings of Shakespeare, Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures}, edited by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf, 25-40. Sage, 2016. Radha, Chakravarty. ‘Shakespeare and Tagore: A Fraught Relationship’. In Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, edited by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf, 207-217. Sage, 2016. Sarkar, Abhishek. ‘Girish Chandra’s Macbeth: Colonial Modernity and the Poetics of Translation’. International Journal of Bengal Studies 2–3 (2012): 270–76. ———. ‘Hariraj and Haider: Popular Entertainment and the Nation in Two Indian Adaptations of Hamlet’. Literature Compass 14, no. 11 (November 2017). https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12412. Singh, Jyotsna. ‘Different Shakespeares: The Bard in Colonial/Postcolonial India’. Theatre Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1989): 445–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/3208007. Tagore, Rabindranath. ‘Shakespeare’. In A Book of Homage to Shakespeare: To Commemorate the Three Hundredth Year of Shakespeare’s Death MCMXVI, edited by Israel Gollancz. Oxford University Press, 1916. ———. ‘The Creative Ideal’. In Creative Unity. Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1922.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 71 A Perusal of Kishori Lal’s Work on The Mughal Harem Arya Mishra and Sumedha Das Second year, Department of History Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi Abstract It is no lie that women have been considerably subjugated and the man-made borders suffused with patriarchal tenets have left no stone unturned in playing a formative part in deciding the transgressive and accommodative activities of women irrespective of any period. The notion of Mughal imperial women as birds in gilded cages has become an entrenched concept portraying their stagnant world of pleasure, inactivity and hinting at complete subjugation. The Occidentalist characterisation of the harem as a sequestered space for women both physically and emotionally, based on accounts of European travellers like Niccolo Manucci and Francois Bernier has impeded our holistic perception of the harem and its inhabitants. Despite these Eurocentric narratives, recent research by Ruby Lal on the Mughal harem provides insight into a dynamic space abounding in productivity, creativity, innovation and talent. This paper focuses on the time frame of the Greater Mughals, particularly Babur to Aurangzeb (1526-1707) where harem as a border is seemingly transgressed by Mughal women in political, economic, sexual and spiritual arenas further weakening the case of rigidity and impermeability of borders. This has been mainly done by reinterpreting Kishori Lal’s work in the light of later findings and the current context of borders and transgressions. Keywords: Harem, Border, Transgressions, Dynamic Review of the Historiography on the Mughal Harem The extant corpus of literature on the Mughals dominantly focuses upon the politico-economic aspects of the empire and has, in a way, neglected the social domain and issues of gender relations. Historians like Ram Nath describe the etymology of harem as having been derived from the Arabic harem (literally, something sacred or forbidden); or Persian harem (sanctuary). Sanskrit ‘harmya’ also means palace. It denoted seraglio, or the secluded 1 R. Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526-1803 A.D.) (New Delhi: Rupa & Company, 2005), 2. 2 Kishori S. Lal, The Mughal Harem, (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988), 19. part of the palace or residence reserved for the ladies of the Muslim household.1 As per Kishori Saran Lal, “The term ‘Mughal harem’ conjures up a vision of a sequestered place ensconcing beautiful female forms in mysterious magnificence.”2 J.F. Richards asserts that “ideally the harem provided a respite, a retreat for the noblemen and his closest male relatives - a retreat of grace, beauty and order designed to refresh the males of the household.”3 Ellison Banks Findley supports this stereotypical definition of the harem and 3 John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 63.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 72 maintains that the purpose of the harem was to find a productive, satisfying place in the society where pleasure (in all its forms) was the main competitive commodity was a substantial task and the presence of women improved this business.4 Ruby Lal challenges the former ideas and argues that initial domesticity in Mughal imperial spheres was never stringently administered. It was marked by remarkable fluidity and intersectionality between the public and the private domains.5 The authors of this paper concur with Ruby Lal in this claim and aim to establish the dynamism of the Mughal harem and the thriving nature of the political space in itself consisting of several power hierarchies, the transgressive nature of its inmates when a strict boundary was sought to be imposed and the subsequent implications it had in political, economic and private realms. The Harems of Babur and Humayun Both Babur and Humayun’s harems were not very big. By all computation, the harems of Babur and Humayun did not comprise more than two hundred members each. Their peripatetic lifestyle, unstable political careers and perennial struggle potentially restricted their pursuit of pleasure and the number of marriages they undertook as opposed to a settled and institutionalised harem of Akbar.6 The bevy of women (wives and concubines) of either Babur or Humayun, who travelled and lived with him in camps under extremely difficult and impoverished 4 Ellison B. Findly, Nur Jahan, Empress of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89. 5 Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3. conditions, was not, technically, a harem. It was neither an institution nor an organised house, with its own rules and norms, and a hierarchy of officials to manage it.7 In Babur’s harem, deference to elder women was a constant. In the Humayunama, sisters take the place of precedence in the harem. For instance, after Babur had established his kingdom in Hindustan, he invited his aunts, begums and Khanums from Kabul to Agra while during Humayun’s reign, he was extremely attached to his sisters according to Gulbadan’s account. During the reign of these two emperors, there were no inhibitions or undue restrictions about parda in the harem.8 This symbolises the pre-institutionalised conditions of the harem where physically, women and harem were not supposed to be absolutely sequestered. Institutionalisation of the Harem under Akbar Institutionalisation, systematisation and administration of the harem was established and streamlined under Akbar. It ran on a fixed budget and was supervised by a strict official hierarchy. Mundane routine was rigorously regulated to facilitate better implementation of administrative measures. Akbar’s harem ensured inviolable purda and seclusion of the women which entailed the sanctity of the harem as a private space for the exclusive satisfaction of the king. 9 The orthodox injunction to restrict marriages to four niqahs was completely neglected and marriages were contracted freely since the Mughal king was law unto 6 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 20. 7 Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India, 18. 8 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 22. 9 Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India, 24.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 73 himself. Akbar raised Mughal kingship to a divine status and therefore, marriage was conferred with a special sanctity. Consequently, the harem became a thoroughly organised and mythified imperial institution rather than an ordinary home for the ladies. Nobody was allowed to either remarry or take divorce. Akbar and his successors continued to respect the senior ladies and shower affection on the junior ones. One of the most striking practices of his rule was that the First Lady of the Realm was not the Empress Consort but the royal mother or the royal sister. A great influence was exercised by Akbar’s senior consort, Sultan Salima Begum, on the imperial household. In the polygamous Mughal household, besides the biological mother, there were a number of foster mothers who breastfed and nurtured the young king during the real mother’s absence. They were frequently ladies of rank and were called “Anagas”. Maham Anaga was the most significant foster mother in Akbar’s court and wielded considerable political influence. Often, the rapacious nature of the sons (kokas) and the husbands (Atkas) of the Anagas created political problems and the Anagas themselves generated tensions in the harem due to their personal vendettas. Yet, all the kings unquestioningly respected the Anagas which implied women could acquire and exercise political power though in indirect terms.10 Concubinage was very common among Mughal royalty and nobility. Concubines were not expected to be ever faithful to their lovers.11 It can be tentatively surmised that concubines did enjoy a certain degree of political and sexual independence. From the above discussion, we can deduce that formalisation of Akbar’s harem was 10 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 24. 11 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 29. isolating it from its socio-political ambience and therefore attempts at transgression commenced only to grow exponentially in later times. Nur Jahan: The Privileged Transgressor Nur Jahan, formerly Mehr-un-Nisa, married Jahangir in 1611, when she was thirty-four and Jahangir was forty-two. KS Lal writes, “Della Valle records bazaar gossip when he says, “He(Jahangir) would have carried her(Nur Mahall) in to his harem…and kept her there like one of his other concubines, but (she)refused to go into his palace…saying that she had been the wife of an honourable captain and daughter of an honourable father, and should never wrong her own honour, nor that of her father and (former) husband….(but)he might take her for his lawful wife… and on this condition, she was at his service….Love returning to make impetuous assaults on the king’s heart….at length he determined to receive heer for his lawful wife and queen above all the rest”.12 Viewing this in retrospect, this seems to be an instance of upfront transgression, as she vehemently defied the monarch’s advances. She ruled the Mughal empire in Jahangir’s stead for 11 years from 1616- 1627. K.S.Lal and R.Nath’s historiography tend to vilify Nur Jahan and portray her as an “exceedingly charming lady” who enticed Jahangir sexually and paved her way to power through a potentially deranged emperor. We disagree with this blanket generalisation of Nur Jahan’s influence since her politico-economic influence exceeded the narrow definition of an “enchantress”. Without being an extremely wise political strategist and farsighted decision-maker, she couldn’t 12 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 72.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 74 have efficiently ruled the Mughal court and harem for eleven years. KS Lal argues that “The very nature of the regime in mediaeval India was familial.” Findly marginally differs from KS Lal while emphasising Nur Jhan’s role in augmenting her family’s already substantial fortunes.13 Findly mentions a few instances that clearly portray how Nur Jahan was crossing the boundaries and dissolving the so-called ‘borders.’ She says that, “Nur Jahan approved all orders (farmans) and grants of appointment that went out under the king's name, ordering her own name, "Nur Jahan, the Queen Begam," to be jointly attached to the imperial signature” She controlled all promotions and demotions that were issued from the royal government. She habitually sat at the balcony of her palace (jharoka) receiving petitions from nobles and was a lenient and sympathetic judge to those who sought protection under her. She assessed and approved the credentials of all visitors who came to court. She engaged in international diplomacy with high-placed women of other countries.”14 Nur Jahan’s foothold was strong not only in the political domain but also economically. She had a plethora of unaccountable treasures coming in via her jagirs, gifts from Indian rajas and foreign merchants, duties on merchandise and foreign trade. She put her seal on all grants of land "conferred upon any woman," and took special interest in orphan girls, promoting many of them through generous dowries in marriage. She had coins struck in her name, which bore the twelve signs of the zodiac.15 She utilised her fortunes in constructing magnificent buildings. An additional source of income was through 13 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 80. 14 Findly, Nur Jahan, Empress of Mughal India, 46. 15 Findly, Nur Jahan, Empress of Mughal India, 46. trade and commerce. As Lal puts it, “She maintained a number of shops and carried on foreign trade mainly in indigo and embroidered cloth. Her commercial enterprises brought her immense profits.” 16 As per Jahangir’s personal accounts, she had considerable expertise in big game shooting and bested the Mughal nobility clearly showing how she was way ahead of her times.17 Nur Jahan as a lady of allencompassing talents sought to transgress the conventionally defined role of a woman in the initially institutionalised Mughal Harem in which she succeeded to a great extent. Jahanara and Roshanara Begum Jahanara Begum assumed the position of the first lady of the Mughal seraglio after her mother Mumtaz Mahal, passed away and kept the emperor's private seal to affix the important documents for the next 30 years. One is led to believe from the accounts of Francois Bernier and Tavernier, Jahanara had an incestuous relationship with Shah Jahan. This has been much speculated on and seems to be ultimately inconclusive. Some historians like Vincent Smith believe this story while Richard Temple refuses to believe this. However, if we are to believe these incidents mentioned in the travel accounts, it seems to be a grave transgression of normative sexual boundaries. Jahanara was a woman of great riches and these were accumulated, as per Bernier, “by means of her large allowances and of the costly presents which flowed in from all quarters, in consideration of numberless negotiations entrusted to her sole management.” 18 Her finances were also augmented by her commercial enterprises. 16 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 73. 17 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 77. 18 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 95.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 75 She owned a number of ships and used to carry on trade on her own account. She contracted friendly commercial relations with the Dutch and the English and with their cooperation, carried on extensive commercial activities and made enormous profits. According to Manucci, “her annual income was 30 lakh rupees besides precious stones and jewels.”19 Jahanara was predominantly involved in Mughal politics. She supported Dara Shukoh during the succession struggle, in favour of maintaining stability of the Mughal state but bore no rancour towards Aurangzeb’s later actions. She tried to play the role of an arbitrator as the elder sister of both Dara and Aurangzeb. She accompanied Shah Jahan during his confinement at the Agra Fort and on his death and her subsequent return to Mughal court, Aurangzeb duly welcomed her in Delhi and she remained the First lady till her death. 20 The life that Jahanara led was certainly different from many other women of the harem. She was a woman who did not conform to the so called “defined roles for women” but rather believed in taking initiatives and power into her own hand, thus diluting the predetermined boundaries. Roshanara Begum, as opposed to Jahanara’s reconciliatory efforts, was involved in aggravating the Mughal succession war according to K.S.Lal. She was particularly aware of Mughal court intrigues and played a decisive role before as well as after Aurangzeb's accession to the throne. After Jahanara’s removal from the harem, Roshanara became much more influential in both the harem and the court yet she was not allowed to reside in a 19 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 95. 20 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 96-97. 21 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 99-100. private mansion, the privilege of which was allowed to Jahanara. During Aurangzeb’s brief illness, Roshanara promptly seized the Royal Seal and sided with his younger son Prince Azam. Tavernier, during his visit in India from 1641-44 called her the “Grand Begum” which testified to her constant influence at court. In 1699, Aurangzeb awarded her the title of “Shah Begum” and 5 lakhs in cash.21 Therefore, from their polychromatic lives, we can easily conclude that the legacy of respecting elder sisters in the harem continued and it potentially allowed the Mughal princesses enormous leeway and unusual liberty to interfere in politico-economic relations of the empire. Pursuit of Pleasure Modesty and chastity have always been integral parts of a woman’s supposed virtue and inherent patriarchy constantly reinforces restrictions of women’s access to pleasures, especially physical. K.S. Lal maintains that Mughal women were kept under “every conceivable restraint”.22 Harem-inmates were treated “as the personal property of the master. They had to live under strict surveillance and supervision. They were kept secluded from the company of men”.23 During the reigns of Babur and Huamyun, the women seemed to enjoy comparatively greater freedom, but from the time of Akbar strict purdah began to be enforced. The architectural structure of the harem ensconced the women and did not allow amorous rendezvous or effortless commute. Such restrictions guaranteed vengeful reactions among Mughal imperial women. In the polygamous Mughal political system, harem was leveraged by the women as a 22 Lal, The Mughal Harem,179. 23 Lal, The Mughal Harem, 179.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 76 vantage point for pursuit of pleasure rather than a restrictive space. Ordinarily, no man could approach the ladies in the harem barring their husbands and the doctors who feel their pulses. Since husbands were often unavailable and entangled in their own pursuits of pleasure, women sought surreptitious avenues of enjoyment within the harem. Hence, physicians were often utilised to satisfy a woman’s curiosity of intimacy, which Manucci testifies to.24 According to Thomas Coryat, objects that could potentially assist women’s quest for sexual gratification were disqualified from being brought within the harem’s premises like radish and cucumber, which is also corroborated by Manucci’s accounts. Badauni, who was a staunchly orthodox Muslim courtier of Akbar (also Akbar’s staunch critic), hints at the prevalence of sexual relationships among women in the harem. Ladies, especially the influential ones, cared little for such restrictions and consequently, rumours of trysts, incest and other debaucherous tales ran rife. Ladies bribed eunuchs to allow their favoured lovers into the harem and arranged elaborate rendezvous in the absence of their husbands taking advantage of dark nights and lax security.25 If we were to compare these times with the current ones, the overall perspective hasn’t changed yet. A woman’s worth still continues to be defined by her sexuality. Although we are opening up to such ideas now, however, back in the day, any deviant activities on the part of women are clear manifestations of transgressions, both to the Mughal harem that was a physical border as well as patriarchy which was a psychological one. It is worth mentioning 24 Lal, The Mughal Harem,180. 25 Lal, The Mughal Harem,184-187. 26 Lubna Irfan, “‘Third gender’ and ‘Service’ in Mughal Court and Harem”, Servants Pasts, last modified August 12 2019, https://servantspasts.wordpress.com/2019/08/12 that these barriers acted as impediments on the road to fulfilment and the Mughal women eliminated these boulders using their wit, tactic and above all, their everbrewing deep seated desires. Eunuchs - The Third Gender Eunuchs were also referred to as Khwajasaras, a Persian term denoting men whose genitals had been castrated. They were employed in the Mughal imperial court and household as slaves, servants and administrative officers. This void made them the perfect choice to guard the harem, a place where the women of the household lived. They were primarily responsible for screening the entrants to the harem and the items that could be allowed inside the harem. Though their “divergent sexuality” put them in an ambiguous position in the Mughal setup, they formed the chief link in exchanging information between the household and the court.26 Some of these eunuchs were held in high regard and earned the titles of Nazir, Aitbar and Aitmad that reflected the recognition of their loyalty and dedication towards their masters.27 However, this loyalty and service of the eunuchs was not absolute. As per Niccolo Manucci’s records, “women sought sexual services from the eunuchs who used their tongues and hands in the most licentious manner.” 28After careful examination, one can possibly say that the practice of ‘othering’ the eunuchs because of the absence of their ‘non-man’ nature and their psychological and physical valence could have triggered them into doing acts beyond their power. This could have led to breeding of feelings of animosity and revenge after /third-gender-and-service-in-mughal-court-and-harem/ 27 Irfan, “‘Third gender’ and ‘Service’ in Mughal Court and Harem.” Servants Pasts. 28 Irfan, “‘Third gender’ and ‘Service’ in Mughal Court and Harem.” Servants Pasts.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 77 suffering unjust treatment and persecution at the hands of the nobility and emperor. At one level, the eunuchs were exercising authority at their own level and defying the norms of comportment set by their masters. Conclusion Succinctly, Mughal harem is currently a concept enmeshed in layers of myth, gossip, secrets, rumours and malicious slander. Orientalist ideas of Asiatic despotism and Eurocentric theories of Mughal depravity portrayed harems as breeding grounds of idle jealousy, petty intrigues and insidious pleasure which went mostly unchallenged by Kishori Saran Lal. Yet, recent studies of Ruby Lal, Findly and Lubna Irfan reveal harem as a mammoth socio-economic organisation comprising the dwellings of productive, purposeful women and eunuchs. The authors of this paper endeavoured to re-interpret certain actions of certain women as transgressive behaviour and emphasise their agency in the Mughal harem contrary to K.S.Lal’s conception in the light of the current theme.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 78 BIBLIOGRAPHY Findly, Ellison B. Nur Jahan, Empress of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Irfan, Lubna. “'Third gender' and 'Service' in Mughal Court and Harem.” Servants Pasts, last modified August 12, 2019. https://servantspasts.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/third-genderand-service-in-mughal-court-and-harem/. Lal, Kishori S. The Mughal Harem. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988. Lal, Ruby. Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Nath, R. Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526-1803 A.D.). New Delhi, India: Rupa & Company, 2005. Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 79 The ‘Trickster’ of Bath’s Tale: Chaucer’s Woman Transgressing Boundaries Kumari Savita Second year, Department of History Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi Abstract Patriarchal categorisation of women, especially those who are demonised, was as prevalent in Mediaeval times as it is today. Literary works are important sources to reflect on the status of women, and counter-narratives in these literary works show us that resistance to dominant narratives was possible. Using The Wife of Bath's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer as a historical source to situate women and gender relations in a historical context can add new insights to feminist studies of Mediaeval England. The paper explores the personal agency of the Wife of Bath in a social world dominated by the clergy and the nobility Introduction History has unfolded several instances where behaviours of deviance, disobedience, and defiance by a social group have been translated into basic rights over a period of time. The mediaeval English society termed many such behaviours as ‘wrong’ which today seem to be right. Women were placed at the central stage of it. However, the predefined social norms of the society could not extinguish the spark of desires within a woman’s heart. These norms were created by patriarchal structures in which it was men who dominated and controlled. Women who disobeyed these norms and created an identity different from what was expected by the society were labelled as ‘mad’, ‘whore’, ‘trickster’ etcetera. and were often subject to punishments. The ‘trickster’ trope has been penned in mediaeval literature quite purposefully. Tricksters were expected to be cunning and deceptive. Mediaeval English literature has given birth to many such female characters with trickster archetypes. These women had grown from being dictated to by their fathers, brothers, or any other authoritative men to dictating other men, transgressing patriarchal boundaries. Mediaeval society had a tendency of suppressing and muting women’s voices and projecting their life as meaningless and insignificant. They made no decisions- not even for themselves- not even about their marriages. Chaucer’s Wife, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, has crossed this border to tell everyone that women, too, have voices- loud and bold. This paper questions whether the Wife of Bath was a trickster or not. The first section gives a literary and historical background to the tale by situating it in a larger context of Canterbury Tales. The rest of the paper analyses the character of the Wife in the context of a Mediaeval English society dominated by men belonging to the nobility and the clergy. The paper studies the socioeconomic status and the moral characteristics of the Wife of Bath. Background The Canterbury Tales is regarded as one of the most ambitious works of fiction ever conceived. Chaucer revolutionarily

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 80 extended the boundaries of fiction through two main developments. First, by telling the stories in the fictional framework of the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The stories were linked in a manner that goes far enough to Boccaccio suggesting that Chaucer was interested in how people responded to fiction and how the reception of a story might be qualified by the person telling it. Second, the Tales were uniquely inclusive. They contained the small narrative forms of the period as if Chaucer deliberately experimented by bringing together distinct forms of narrative. There were confessions like that of the later form of the dramatic monologue in the prologues of the Wife of Bath.1 G.L. Kittredge regarded the structure of the Canterbury Tales as a ‘Human Comedy’ and identifies the Pilgrims as the dramatis personae. They entertained themselves with these stories they narrated with speeches that were longer than usual.2 These speeches were significant primarily because they illustrated the speakers’ character and opinions, and showed the relation of travellers to one another as the Pilgrimage progressed. Chaucer witnessed two distinct periods of English history between 1340 and 1400 (sixty years of his life). In his youth, he saw an uninterrupted series of victories and conquests with a patriotic exaltation that his country was experiencing for the first time. Chaucer, himself, took up arms at a very young age when the Black Prince triumphed at Poitiers. In the years that followed, there were rapid developments in the political arena under the monarchy of Edward III and later under the young 1 C. W. R. D. Moseley and Geoffrey Chaucer, Chaucer, the Pardoner’s Tale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989). 2G. L. Kittredge, ‘Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage’, Modern Philology 9, no. 4 (April 1912): 435–67, https://doi.org/10.1086/386872. Richard II. Chaucer was not a mere spectator of the traumatic circumstances that unfolded in front of him but also participated in military and diplomatic events. He was in close contact with the makers of history back then.3 One would be naturally inclined to think the accounts witnessed by Chaucer might have influenced or at least been mentioned in his lyrical documentation but he made no such references. The only hint he made was to the battlefields of the great national war, that too, casually was recorded in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. While describing the young pilgrim squire, he said: Had been somtyme in chivachye, In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Picardye, And born him wel, as of so litel space, In hope to stonden in his lady grace. Chaucer had been successful in mixing the expected and the unexpected, the conventional and the new, and the sincere and the ironic while composing for his audience. Donald Howard described the relationship between Chaucer and his audience as the “conspiratorial accord” believing that the reader must put himself in Chaucer’s frame of mind. Anne Middleton projected the existence of “public poetry” in Ricardian England and centred her work around Chaucer’s actual audience, for whom the poems were intended. She drew a type of poetry defined by a constant relationship between the speaker and the audience.4 Whether or not Chaucer’s poetry was ‘public’ to any extent depends upon the definition of ‘public’ and 3 Emile Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer, trans. Louis Lailavoix (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Digital Library, 2011). 4 Edmund Reiss, “Chaucer and His Audience”, The Chaucer Review 14, no. 4 (1980): 390–402.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 81 how different it was from ‘courtly’ during Chaucer’s time. There was an audience and a relationship between this audience and Chaucer but it is difficult to assess the nature of this relationship. Chaucer enjoyed his freedom when expressing his ideas to the audience even after being aware of the expectations that his audience had for him. In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer knew that his court audience knew what gentilesse was, he perverted it when the loathly lady lectured her knight-husband on the subject. The fact that the knight was being taught something that should have properly been at the heart of chivalry, and that the Wife made this virtue her means of gaining maistrie over him (as opposed to gentillesse), made the entire episode ironic and humorous.5 The Wife claimed not just for herself but all women the right to “maistrie” and “sovereynetee” in marriage. To do so, she articulated the discourse imparted to her by the “auctoritee” of anti-feminism.6 Is The Wife of Bath A Trickster? Lewis Hyde defined the trickster through his dual nature. According to Hyde, tricksters could be found at the boundaries of a space or world, erasing it, sometimes crossing it, but always.7 He called the trickster the god of the threshold. In this act of creating and blurring the line, the trickster also helped to make certain distinctions apparent which would previously be hidden from sight. Hyde 5 Reiss, “Chaucer and His Audience”, 390–402. 6 Anne McTaggart, ‘What Women Want? Mimesis and Gender in Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue and “Tale.”’, Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 19 (2012): 41–67. 7 Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). further observed that in many mythologies, gods lived on earth until the trickster caused them to rise into heaven. Thus, he appeared as an avenging angel. Trickster was believed to be the body of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.8 In the Middle Ages, one of the favourite themes for literature was the evils of matrimony. The clerical diatribes against women were in most cases meant seriously and were ill-natured to the last degree. The celibate clergy was still trying to revenge on Eve for her indiscretion in the Garden. They tried to achieve this by abusing her race. In mediaeval society, women were legally inferior to men. They were socially expected to be aware of their place and limits and be within them. Chaucer grabbed this opportunity to reverse the normal order and make the women establish their control over men, teaching them to not take their inferiority for granted.9 The Wife of Bath identified the stereotype of the mediaeval English society which she was built upon in these lines. She said: Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To women kyndely, whil that they may lyve. According to the stereotype it was in women’s nature to be deceitful, to experience sorrow, and to do back-breaking work. These were God-given traits. The mediaeval Church believed that Eve was the first cause of man’s sinfulness. Eve 8 Joseph Maurone, “The Trickster Icon and Objectivism”, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 3, no. 2 (n.d.): 229–58. 9 William E. Mead, ‘The Prologue of the Wife of Bath’s Tale’, PMLA 16, no. 3 (1901): 388, https://doi.org/10.2307/456482.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 82 rebelled against God by listening to the serpent and eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil before sharing it with Adam. Due to her deceitfulness, God condemned her to pain and sorrow. Adam was decreed to endure endless difficult work. They were both banished from paradise. This helps to explain the hostility expressed towards women and marriage throughout the Middle Ages. The Genesis narrative accompanied by other biblical passages enabled the male commentators to justify their hostile views.10 Eve herself was believed to be one of the foremost tricksters in Christianity. The paradise where ignorance was bliss, casted Adam and Eve out, separating humans from God.11 Eve was blamed entirely for this separation. The Wife of Bath’s Tale identified the mediaeval biblical stereotype but did not read merely as one of its examples. Chaucer had radically altered the function of the dialogues derived from the tradition of hostility to women. He gave the dialogue to a woman who did not believe that they hold any truthful existence. She attacked men with her words. The Wife of Bath was opinionated and resisted the traditional attitudes which are latent against Eve. She unashamedly deceived and schemed against men. She took pride in her capacity to dupe her husband and saw it as an essential part of a woman’s character. She mentioned this in the lines: For half so boldely kan ther no man Swere and lyen, as a womman kan The Wife could be identified as a trickster based on her revolutionary traits. 10 Peter Brown, Chaucer at Work: The Making of the Canterbury Tales (London ; New York: Longman, 1994). The prominent traits of the Wife of Bath’s character were making use of common sense and a preoccupation with sex. An important element evident in both prologue and tale was her desire to interpret life in terms of her values. She could be seen fitting into Hyde’s description of a trickster. She was crossing the mediaeval social boundary that made two distinctive worlds for women to exist. The prologue to the Wife of Bath talked immensely about suffering. The suffering was not experienced but rather caused by the Wife of Bath on her ‘unfortunate’ husband. The Wife of Bath claimed that men were forever preaching about the merits of patience and the advantages of having a patient and submissive wife. They should practise their preaching: Ye sholde been al pacient and meke, And han a sweete spiced conscience, Sith ye so preche of Jobes pacience. The Wife, in the prologue, also narrated her youthful exploits (or ‘tricks’) in her previous marriages. She gained a succession of husbands and their wealth. Marshall Leicester pointed out that in the prologue the Wife demonstrated herself as an example to prove through her experience the necessity of feminine maistrie. 12 There was a common notion of seeing a trickster as a bad person. Though the demonisation of trickster was not always correct. Radin mentioned how the Trickster “knows neither good nor evil, yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social…yet through his 11 Maurone, “The Trickster Icon and Objectivism,” 229- 58. 12 McTaggart, “What Women Want?,” 41-67.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 83 actions, all values come into being”.13 In the case of the Wife, we can say that Chaucer did not intend on making the Wife an evil character but revolutionary. We should be mindful while contextualising Chaucer’s time and its normative social conduct. The traders and craftsmen formed a prosperous and distinct sector which must have always existed but grew more in number now. The master craftsmen and substantial merchants were known as burgesses. They accumulated substantial wealth and occupied important posts by Chaucer’s time. The Wife of Bath belonged to this class of burgess and made her living as a weaver. She indicated in her Prologue that she had acquired considerable wealth either through her weaving or marriages or both. She had enough money to go on frequent pilgrimages.14 Chaucer provided an analogy to the mingling of liberal and condemnatory representations of new economic trends through the contradictory tendencies in the representation of the independence of the Wife of Bath both in the tale and in the prologue. The anti-feminist elements in the portrait of Wife of Bath suggesting her as a sexual threat to men might not indicate so much that Chaucer was anti-feminist as that his culture put no other language in his mouth to envisage a financially independent woman who enjoyed travel.15 The Wife’s commercial excellence was described in the following lines: Of clooth-making she hadde swiche an haunt, She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt. 13Maurone, “The Trickster Icon and Objectivism,” 229- 58. 14 Harriet Raghunathan, The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Delhi: Book Land Publishing, 2014). She was compared to the excellent clothmakers of Europe, the weavers of Ypres and Ghent. The cloth making was an international industry and was conducted by women. Women producers were dignified and credited for their significant place in the economic space. This points to the fact that spinning had become natural and desirable for women and was not merely seen as a demeaning punishment given by God. The Wife of Bath also showed her ability to analyse the profit and loss while acquiring her husband. She was drawn to those who were old and rich as they would be easy to master and most likely to die within a short time so she could inherit the wealth. This commercial attitude naturally given to the Wife of Bath by Chaucer eliminated the traditional and theological image of women’s work.16 The Wife showed resistance against the predetermined notions of society. The Wife’s questioning of the knight’s presumptions reflected that she held her own opinions and gave importance to logical reasoning developed through her experiences in life. She not only interpreted life in her terms but also casted an influence over her counterpart with her views and ideas- something that Mediaeval English society was not accustomed to.17 The knight of Arthur’s court could only see women through male cliches-nothing more than providers of sexual pleasure. He saw an unprotected young woman and raped her using his innate physical strength. When he faced the situation wherein, he was supposed to spend the night with an old, ugly woman, he recoiled in disgust. 15 Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer. 16 Brown, Chaucer at Work. 17 Reiss, ‘Chaucer and His Audience’.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 84 The old woman, however, pushed him to look inwards and maintain courtesy which he, as a knight, is expected to uphold. Once the knight understood and acknowledged his wife’s wisdom, a miracle happened. The Wife changed into the woman of his dreams. What the Wife of Bath is saying in her speech about nobility and gentilesse held grave significance as evidenced by the respectful references made to Dante and Boethius. She objected to the unquestioned assumption of the knight that “gentilesse follows from aristocratic birth”. Gentilesse must be constantly practised and reaffirmed through gentil i.e., virtuous, actions. Gentilesse was derived from God and had no association with social positions or status and could be possessed by both the poor and the rich.18 Tony Slade in his article Irony in The Wife of Bath’s Tale (1969) recalled the critics who paid attention to the characters and voices in the Wife of Bath.19 J.F. Roppolo particularly talked about the importance of the character of the knight while suggesting that the tale had more unity than discussed by some former critics. This was taken forward by F. G. Townsend who pointed out the significance of not just the knight but also of the illustrated character of Dame Alison. He suggested that the tale could not make sense without the realisation of the fact that it was Alison who was telling the story and formed the expression of her hopes and dreams. Townsend also opined that it was unfortunate that Chaucer’s use of the very common transformation motif had drawn attention to the tale and its analogues, and shadowed its real function which was to prolong the self-revelation of the Wife to the very end of the episode. Conclusion The Wife of Bath, therefore, portrayed herself as a revolutionary woman in the male-dominated Mediaeval society. She was seen travelling, working, controlling men and their wealth, and formulating her own opinions. She was manipulative and bold. The episodes described here promise that a new understanding can be developed by reconstructing the character of the Wife of Bath through the trickster archetype. The question of whether or not she could be called a trickster was an invitation for future literary scholars. This paper attempted to lay the groundwork for further discussions on whether the Wife was a trickster. If yes, how was she perceived by the women of Mediaeval society, and while being a trickster, did she become a heroic personality? 18 Brown, Chaucer at Work. 19 Tony Slade, ‘Irony in the Wife of Bath’s Tale’, in Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, vol. The Modern Language Review, 2 (Modern Humanities Research Association, 1969), 241–47.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Peter. Chaucer at Work: The Making of the Canterbury Tales. London ; New York: Longman, 1994. Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Kittredge, G. L. ‘Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage’. Modern Philology 9, no. 4 (April 1912): 435–67. https://doi.org/10.1086/386872. Legouis, Emile. Geoffrey Chaucer. Translated by Louis Lailavoix. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Digital Library, 2011. Maurone, Joseph. ‘The Trickster Icon and Objectivism’. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 3, no. 2 (n.d.): 229–58. McTaggart, Anne. ‘What Women Want? Mimesis and Gender in Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue and “Tale.”’ Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 19 (2012): 41–67. Mead, William E. ‘The Prologue of the Wife of Bath’s Tale’. PMLA 16, no. 3 (1901): 388. https://doi.org/10.2307/456482. Moseley, C. W. R. D., and Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer, the Pardoner’s Tale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989. Raghunathan, Harriet. The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Delhi:Book Land Publishing, 2014. Reiss, Edmund. ‘Chaucer and His Audience’. The Chaucer Review 14, no. 4 (1980): 390– 402. Slade, Tony. ‘Irony in the Wife of Bath’s Tale’. In Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, The Modern Language Review:241–47. 2. Modern Humanities Research Association, 1969.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 86 Transgressions in Matrimonial Intermediations of Colonial Bengal: Exploring the Means of Matchmaking Shreya Ghosh Third year, Department of History Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi Abstract Conjugality and determination of marriage partners have been a preponderant feature of the discourse on South Asian society. The dichotomy of love and arranged marriages being equated with modernity and traditionalism has long pervaded the psyche of the masses. However, this crucial decision has always been punctuated with evolving forms of intermediaries across regions, places and periods. Here, I take up the case of colonial Bengal where one witnesses the subtle transgressions of mechanisms through which conjugal aspirations and demands are raised, contested and negotiated in the marriage market, commencing from the traditional ghataks who served as distinguished genealogists and often acted as arbiters of disputes on social hierarchy. The normative secularized image of a coveted Bengali bride with downcast eyes and demure behaviour still succinctly pervaded the Bengali matrimonial etiquette with newer parameters like education, finances and status being more marked indicators of an ideal bridegroom. The rising centrality of money in these prospective conjugal matchmakings further emboldened class as a distinctive factor in such transactions. Amidst these kaleidoscopic changes in the matrimonial market, I intend to examine the shifts in the trajectories of these intermediaries in colonial Bengal with changing socio-economic milieu as factors such as caste, gender, print culture, and class. Further, I attempt to study if the traditional dichotomies of modernity and traditionalism are transgressed in matchmaking as the tropes of intermediation change and whether this amalgamation of factors play any role in affecting the agencies of the stakeholders concerned in obfuscating caste norms and dowry demands against the backdrop of changing socio-economic reform. Keywords: Matchmaking, Intermediaries, Household, Transgressions, Matrimony, Colonial Bengal I The fundamental preoccupation with determining matches for marriages has dominated the psyche of South Asian masses since ages. Coterminous with this, is the normative association of arranged marriage with the ‘traditional ideas of gender and cultural backwardness’ vis-à-vis love marriages which is perceived as a natural extension of choice, agency, progress and modernity. As Rochona Majumdar rightly remarks that “native 1 Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2009) 7-8. marriages came to be treated” as a “shibboleth of Indian tradition”,1 this polarised construction of love and arranged marriages has emboldened the traditional dichotomies of tradition and modernity, which however in actuality, were much more open and interactive domains against the social and economic milieu of the period. With the onslaught of the colonial rule and the increased urbanization of Calcutta, remarkable changes arose in the marriage market in Bengal necessitating the

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 87 availability of authentic and reliable information regarding the marriageable stakeholders. In this context, the traditional intermediary of a ghatak (male)/ghataki (female) gave way to more commercialised and professional matrimonial advertisements and marriage bureaus. This, in turn led to an ‘objectification of men and women’ in the market with the rising centrality of money in all its operations that lower classes also sought to emulate. This analysis of the marriage market in colonial Bengal, thus, not only highlights the tropes of intermediation, class aspirations and transgressions in caste and gender norms, but the reinforced expectations of the spouses in question, the centrality of the conjugal unit to the extended family as a whole, thereby perpetuating the “subject of family romance in modern Bengali history.”2 However, patriarchy remains embedded in this debate, be it in the demands for domesticity circumscribed in the ‘modern’ print culture or in the differential rate of fees charged by the ‘traditional’ ghataks for brides than bridegrooms. Thus, foregrounded in capitalism and urbanization, I seek to analyse whether these transgressions in the matrimonial market really embody a “modernized woman” or is simply a “modern transmutation of an age-old custom” that demands equivalent levels of subservience and devotion in a peculiarly virilocal household. The main sources to reconstruct such an intimate history remain scattered among much of the “wedding trivia” of the period 2 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 12-14. 3Tapan Raychaudhuri, “Love in a Colonial Climate: Marriage, Sex and Romance in Nineteenth-Century like wedding invitations, newspapers, poems, jewellery catalogues, menu cards and some visual archives due to a sheer absence of official archive for Bengali marriages. The matrimonial advertisements that appeared in caste-association journals like Kayastha patrika, Kayastha Samaja, Prajapati, Ghatak, Jogi Sammelani besides other regular journals like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Bengal Times and Ananda Bazar Patrika are of relevance to this research. These highlight a change in the cultural space where “private concerns were immensely altered through interactions with developments in the ‘public sphere’.”3 For my analysis, I use Majumdar’s definition of “arranged marriages”, referring to virilocal marriages negotiated by patrilineal families of men and women with/without the consent of those getting married or according to certain communally sanctioned rules and rituals.4 II The period 1875-1940 in colonial Bengal was one in which Calcutta expanded into a modern metropolis with an upsurge in the number of schools, colleges, a marketplace culture and a thriving popular press. These changes had a dynamic effect on the everyday lives of the middle class or bhadralok which developed in Calcutta. This represents dynamic of contestation where the extended joint family as a symbol of Indian tradition collided with the European enlightened ideas of companionate love, individualcentric subject, nuclear family and rights. Indrani Chatterjee calls this the “democratization of the family”5 in India. Bengal” Modern Asian Studies 34 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 349-378. 4 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 5-6. 5 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 15.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 88 The nature of intermediation in matchmaking was premised on this “emergent and new individuality in Bengal” amidst this imbroglio of “defining ‘personal freedom’ in the question of norms of the extended family.”6 Majumdar argues that the institutional machinery of ghataks/ghatakis, not only arranged marriages but also acted as ‘social registers’ and ‘repositories of upper-caste social memory in Bengali society’. Thus, they occupied a preeminent role in high-caste Bengali society by functioning as genealogists who kept registers of marriages, important social events” besides cataloguing the position of the people in the caste hierarchy. S.N.Mukherjee has shown that in the 1760s and 1770s, the early merchants and bankers “established family deities, patronised Brahmans and ghataks”7 An instance of this possibility of upward mobility can be seen in the case of Nabakrishna Deb, a landlord who married his grandson Radhakanta Deb into a highcaste kulin8 Kayastha family. H.H.Risley in his ethnographical study of the Tribes and Castes of Bengal focuses on the dexterity of the three types of ghatkas in their remarkable memory of “repeating the names of all members of the main and collateral branches of the family” offhand.9 Thus, ghataks largely sustained the larger caste hierarchy of Bengal by acting as kulacharya or arbiters of the lineage, thereby commanding respect in the caste councils or the samajas.10 This ideally 6 Dipesh, Chakrabarty, “The Difference: Deferral of (A) r: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal” History Workshop 36 (Oxford University Press, 1993) 12. 7 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 26. 8 Originally, the term kulin was used to refer to elite Brahmans, who enjoyed superior ritual status. 9 H.H.Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Vol 1 (Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press, 1891). 10 Rochona Majumdar, “Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimonials, and the Marriage Market in demanded a thorough mastery of ancient manuscripts which was a privilege exclusive to the Brahmins which ‘preserved the social and ceremonial purity of each family belonging to it.’11 However, this stronghold of normative Bengali matrimony steadily receded into a position of disrepute and unreliability with increased urbanization in colonial Calcutta. This was accompanied with a structural transformation in the profession of ghatkali with the upsurge in the number of female negotiators or ghatakis in the domain. In this aspect the article “Bibahera Ghatkali” (Matchmaking in Marriage) published in the journal Prachar (1886) argued that this social milieu was strongly redolent of a space where women increasingly claimed spaces in the decision-making processes of the family including spending, clothing and social etiquette, which naturally extended to marriage. Thus, Majumdar aptly puts this “unwelcome feature” as a fallout of “women’s modernization and increasing specialization.”12 Meredith Borthwick opines that this rise of the ghataki was an acknowledgement of the influential role of women in arranging marriages which had crucial political, social and economic ramifications. Their easy access to the antahpura or the inner world facilitated their influence in using their persuasive powers to garner the consent of the female family members including the ginni(female head) of the household over the male ghatak.13 Colonial Calcutta, circa 1875-1940” The Journal of Asian Studies 63 4 (Association for Asian Studies, 2004) 911- 935. 11 Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Vol 1, 279. 12 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 29. 13 Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849-1905 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000) 45-47.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 89 III With the accelerated development of mofussil14 towns in the nineteenth century, as the bhadralok relocated their women to the urban centers; a group of leisured women restricted to the antahpura began to emerge . Hereby, the more rigid social life and the loose composition of social population prompted ghatakis to rise as a response to this urban development. However, this transgression of the profession by ghatakis led to the genealogists being increasingly marginalised as the more material and contractual aspects of the trade were favoured. With the supercession by the ghatakis, the recording of kulinpanjikas(family genealogies) which made them supreme arbiter of matrimonial relations was given away to petty discussions on “jewellery and other trivial matters.”15 The decline of genealogical expertise of the ghataks reduced the task of ghatkali to mere brokering of marriages disloocated from its structural importance and traditional prestige. The institution of ghatkali became increasingly conflicted due to its association with relentless mercenary instincts, social evils like polygamy, child marriage, abduction of young girls and brokering marriages of ‘fallen women’ under increased ostentations. Autobiographical literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are replete with instances of the mercenary incentives of the ‘predatory ghataks’ such as in the biography of Bengali writer, Sudakshina Sen, whose family enjoyed shastric injunction as kulins and hence 14 A mofussil refers to a provincial district, generally administratively between a village and a developed city. 15 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 30. became an easy target for ghataks. A similar feeling reverberated in Rashbihari Mukhopadhyay’s Sankhiptya Jibanbrittanta (A Brief Account of My Life). Santosh Kumar Mukherjee also notes the menace of ghataks where the parents of marriageable girls were duped into marriage with falsely identified people. He argues that these matchmakers were “not always honest people and made false statements for the sake of commission.”16 This thus fuelled the mistrust of the ghataks whose venal instincts and duplicity made the bhadralok more averse to its dominance. Capitalistic Calcutta responded to this aversion to ghatkali through print culture in the form of matrimonial advertisements and marriage bureaus, to create a free and open market for negotiation of matchmaking. Complementing this process, was this inreasing influence of astrology in the matrimonial market as is seen in the various types of marriage-related services brokered. Most of the caste journals like Prajapati, Ghatak, Jogi Sammelani, Anusandhan amongst many others highlighted the blight of the unreliable information regarding the prospects of the traditional ghataks and guaranteed confidentiality and accountability through their matrimonial columns. For instance, a matrimonial section was started in the journal Prajapati since 1909, titled Ghatak edited by Jnanendranath Kumar; which claimed honesty of its conduct and thorough scrutiny of its working. A separate periodical named Ghatak was started by Amulyacharan Mitra in 1927 which also offered services of its own association of 16 Santosh Kumar Mukherji, Jnanendra Nath Chakravarti, Prostitution in India (Calcutta: Das Gupta & Co, 1934) 197-198.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 90 matchmakers, the Ghatak Sangha at a prescribed rate of five rupees.17 Thus, by portraying a moral decline in the city, these capitalistic advertisements through their ‘economization on words’ further transcended the realm of the traditional ghataks/ghataks in arranged marriages though perusing their services associated with these bureaus as and when the need arose. Though the character of the business of matchmaking changed, the original nomenclature of the ghatak was retained even in the matrimonial journals while its scope and operational style were reconstituted. This highlights the centrality of their role though in an increasingly institutionalized and bureaucratized form. These “pithy capsules” of “extremely condensed information”18 gained precedence over the entrenched tradition of ghatkali mainly due to the changed meaning and significance of caste in the colonial society. There was an increasing fluidity among its sub-groups as seen in the encouragement of antarganik bibaha.19 Besides, newer parameters like education, family background and financial status emerged as the main criteria for prospective bridegrooms. People’s attitudes indicated a willingness among parents to transcend the caste subdivisions and as explicitly contained in several of these printed advertisements. For instance, the journal Kayastha Patrika in 1910 reported a matrimonial of an eleven-year-old daughter whose father was “willing to marry his daughter into any sreni.”20 These instances reflect the fact that internal caste subdivisions might have become relatively 17 Majumdar, “Looking for Brides and Grooms,” 919. 18 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 37. 19 Antarganik bibaha refers to marriages within the same caste-group but across its different sub-groups. indifferent as the numerous “caste associations” formed around this time promoted a “horizontal stretch” rather than a “vertical organization.” Matrimonials in these journals, thus, represented status aspirations of this new caste society, thereby the ghataks ceding its place to the former. The bhadralok henceforth mutated into a conglomerate of myriad castes identified with a ‘set of shared values.’ This transgression of intra-caste mixing was also reflected in the expansion of matrimonial advertisements from strictly caste journals to daily newspapers too like the Amrita Bazar Patrika. IV Did this new intermediation emancipate women from the normative patriarchy? What one strikingly finds, is the renewed perpetuation of the patriarchal expectations by focusing on a clear division between the sphere of the ‘home’ and the ‘world’ from these economized standardizations. While for men, participation in public life was valorised even as the Bengali middle-class reluctantly readjusted itself to the capitalistic discipline of the chakri21; for women, eligibility was still bent on the ideal of domesticity. The latter was premised on the idea of grihalakshmi which had acted as a “compensatory sphere of autonomy for the nationalists.”22 This new image of idealized Hinduism replaced rituals but promoted a new model of ‘aestheticized womanhood’, thereby newly imagining patriarchy through an emerging 20 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 37-38. 21The term chakri is the Bengali equivalent of a job; originally connoting clerkship positions. 22 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 214-36.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 91 colonial public sphere.23 Moreover, the education of the bride, her dexterity in “upto-date crafts” was emphasized, which adds up to the image of ‘trophy-wives’ amidst the Bengali bhadralok. Thus, the yearning for companionate conjugality which symbolized Victorian love, was amply reflected through these demands, of what I would term as a ‘refined domesticity.’ Archdeacon Bayly reciprocated this sentiment in his address to the Indian Reform Association when he proclaimed: There can be no real happiness in the family, no real home life, no real companionship between two so unequally mated, the intellectual man and the unintellectual woman. 24 Madhurima Mukhopadhyay in a more recent study on matrimonial intermediation between 2007 and 2009 has argued that even though social and technological changes in matchmaking led to the development of arranged love marriages, there were striking elements of continuity in them including caste, class configurations and gender stereotypes.25 The eligible traits for the prospective brides like labanyamayee (glowingly beautiful), sumukhosree (beautiful face), swasthobati (good-looking), griha-karme nipuna (adept at housewifery); while for men, suupayi (high-earning), supatra (eligible groom) and sudarshan (handsome); reflect remarkable resonance with the colonial period. Further the emphasis on ‘homely’ implying ‘domesticated’, ‘virginity’, precedence of ‘never married’ brides reflect the extant hangovers of traditional 23 Majumdar, “Looking for Brides and Grooms”, 925-26. 24 Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849-1905, 115. 25 Madhurima Mukhopadhyay, “Matchmakers and Intermediation: Marriage in Contemporary Kolkata” orthodoxy. Further, while bureaus made it compulsory for women to submit photographs, for men it was optional. Even the rate of fees for the ghataks was gendered with a relatively higher rate being charged for the daughter as it was perceived as a ‘social service’ to relieve the kanyadaygrasta fathers of the burden of their daughters. Further, the ‘parameter of beauty in a Bengali bride’ was based on the secularized image of Lakshmi which signified familial prosperity and clan well-being with ‘wide downcast eyes’ and ‘no deartih of modesty and decency’, in strict opposition to the kulata or the fallen woman. In fact, a book on naridharma prescribed the “most successful wife” as one who “combined education with skills in household tasks or grihakarya.” 26 For women exercising individual assertiveness, undesirable terms like beshya, boubabu, memsahib came to be used. Matrimonials thus embodied a ‘new Hindu patriarchy’ with the domestication in middle-class women being accompanied with increasing dowry demands. This deteriorated the ‘economic value’ of women focusing increasingly on money in Bengali marriages. Due to their exorbitant dowry-demands, there was a concomitant rise of advertisements for lending agencies and even demands for ‘domestic son-inlaws.’ Is the ‘nouveau intermediation’ equivalent to modernity? The newer marriage bureaus, though transgressing caste boundaries, were scathingly attacked for the ‘thingification of men and women’27 Economic and Political Weekly 3 Vol 47 (Economic and Political Weekly, 2012) 90. 26 Chakrabarty, The Difference: Deferral of (A) Colonial Modernity, 10. 27 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 50.

I j t i h a d V o l u m e 9 | 92 by the commercial culture with no consideration of their individual traits. The prices of the prospective brides and bridegrooms depended on multifaceted factors like his annual income, university degree, skin color, father’s income, supplementary skills like dancing amongst others. Appeals for financial help by the fathers of marriageable daughters came to be circulated through journals like the Amrita Bazar Patrika.28 One of the strongest critiques of the marriage market was Debendra Chandra Basu-Mallick who romantically rejected the social objectification of human beings where there was an absolute lack of altruism and interiority or sentiment. Majumdar remarks that these rising demands for dowry represented the route that ‘social morality had travelled.’29 Critiques of such mercenary endeavors were also expressed through bureaus like the Pana Nibarani Samiti and also through negotiation machinery through networks of family and friends. Thus, the invasion of money into the domestic sphere was seen as an erosion of bhadrata(gentility) of the middleclasses, contravening the spiritual principles of Indian matrimonny and created an intrusive capitalistic culture which encouraged competition and selfinterest. The extravagance of opulence in these weddings also adversely affected the charities of Calcutta as this also became a standard for emulation for the lower classes. The qualities of the brides that were advertised were those that could hasten the process of assimilation of the conjugal unit into the larger extended family. 28 For more details, see Majumdar, p.928-29 29 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, 49. V Lastly, I would like to conclude with a few remarks on the study of contemporary Bengali journals with special reference to the matrimonials in the journal Ananda Bazar Patrika. Through a brief overview of the matrimonials published in FebruaryMarch 2023, one finds a drastic perpetuation of the criteria of ‘homely’ for seeking eligible brides even in today’s times. However, there are increasing demands for ‘working women’ as brides or women with a certain degree of minimum educational qualifications which is often equivalent to masters or the doctorate level. This can be interpreted as an extension of aspirations for companionate marriages but can also be a newer perpetuation of the notion of ‘trophy-wives’ or be linked to economic stability. For seeking eligible grooms, we see a continuity of eligibility criteria in terms of a stable income, spatial location and occasional looks. Though an increasing fluidity in caste considerations can be observed, matrimonials are still strongly redolent of caste specificities at times, especially for kulin brahmin and kayastha castes. One also sees matrimonials for people with disabilities like autism which can be interpreted as an vital input while analysing the nature and demands of contemporary Bengali matchmaking. Hence, as to whether the boundaries of tradition were transgressed through this dynamics of intermediation, one can argue that arranged marriages reconstituted “modern constructs” in colonial Bengal in response to the economic structures of British colonialism. This ‘nouveau’ commercial culture did not unsettle the