Language and Body- Transactions in the Construction of Pain

Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain Author(s): Veena Das Source: Daedalus, Vol. 125, No. 1, Social Suffering (Winter, 1996), pp. 67-91 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027354 . Accessed: 18/05/2013 20:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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Das

Veena

in the

Language and Body: Transactions of Pain Construction

repeatedly

In

women

against

to

trying

in Indian which

pain through become textual bodies me.1

moment

was

nation One

of

not

the earliest

society, sciences

could

this pain is not the violence

scene

as a nation of

of

studies

a fratricidal

defenseless

the meaning(s) I find that the

on which

the

also

known

men,

social

of enormity of the birth of India

The

write

war

women,

gaze is written

of

violence

of languages at, touch, or often elude

in question. The very free from colonial domi

collective violence. unprecedented this violence had stated that history of such dimensions: old "Decrepit young

helpless

infants

children,

in arms

by the thousands were done to death byMuslim, Hindu and Sikh fanatics."2 scale

One

abduction

of

was of this violence the large signatures The earliest estimates rape of women. put the

the

and

figure of abducted women

from both sides of the border at close

to one

In the

hundred

thousand.

stituent

Assembly thousand thirty-three while

Muslims,

it was Hindu

the Pakistan

thousand Muslim women men.

in the Con debates legislative on December that stated, 15, 1949, or Sikh women had been abducted by Government

had

claimed

had been abducted by Hindu

that

fifty

or Sikh

the discourses of the State on analyzed as well as the composition abducted women and their recovery of want to I reenter in accounts voice the personal women.3 this by I have

scene

elsewhere

that has

been made

violence

and

gesture Veena

to ask how

of devastation

Das

loss.

should

inhabit

such

a world

the desolating of strange through experience as Cavell describes Emersonian this the Stanley

of approaching is Professor

one

the world

of Sociology

through

at the University

a kind

of mourning

of Delhi.

67

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for it.4

68

Veena Das In the work

in many it is the transactions of mourning societies in the gendered between and body, of division especially language recreates of which the and silence labor, by language antiphony in the face of tragic loss. It is not that in turning to these the world transactions some

answers on to find direct to the questions I expect to reenter of meaning, the problem but I do want I have engaged the texts with which earlier to make the on two questions:5 is it that the imaging 1) How deeper and

violence of

dialogue of the project of nationalism of women of bodies priation nationalism

could

as objects inscribed

2) Did of the world

India? post-Independence In forming these questions Cavell?the metaphor Stanley the two

between river

does

not

to include

the appro the desire for

on which

and a memory for the brutally in the re find a place forms of mourning in the discursive formations in, for instance,

be

future made? creation

came

in India

I am

borrowing

a metaphor from as a river that flows

of philosophy and the everyday. of the metaphysical The more two to ask which is shores of these

shores have

for its existence.6

important one appears I write, brutal rape violence,

as

But the

from

in which

the present position shore on which

distant

of women, the bodies

events

of

in and painful women of made

and abduction on of nationalist scriptions slogans is never certain whether of One the distance sudden appearances. is the is an optical for there these images illusion, tempta always to cast away these narratives, tion, as in family and nationalist some to distant from the shore of everyday experience images did to ask what this brutalization horizon. Yet, one must At the very least and nation. of self, community, the experiences constitute the (perhaps metaphysical) thresh these scenes of violence

unseen

old within which The loss

second

the scenes of ordinary life are lived.

shore

in the flow

is the near

of

one, on which life makes the

the experience of of women

voices

everyday In the genre of lamentation, in of mourning. the process "public" women their and through their bodies have control both through the for is articulated instance, body, by through language?grief hurt on oneself, of grievous the inner state,7 and is finally present Thus between the transactions body infliction

articulation

of

the world

in which

the

"objectifying" given a home and

and making in language. lead

language

strangeness

of

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to

an

the world

in the Construction

Transactions

by its non-inhabitability, by death, one can dwell again, in which into a world

can

revealed

69

of Pain be

transformed

in full awareness

of a

life that has to be lived in loss. This is one path towards healing? women

call

Was and

the power such healing simply see the two shores together

to endure.

a single frame. to take this image of healing and men it possible for women recreate died when the desire for nationalism and that which now we

And

within

into from colonial became metamorphosed autonomy subjugation violation?8 Could that which died be named, sexual acknowl one be condemned to dwell alone Or would edged, and mourned? and

in the

nameless

ruins

of memory,

as Lawrence

Langer

calls

them?9 Some

realities

to be fictionalized

need

before

they can be appre

hended. This is apparent in the weight of the distinction between in of the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary registers of the neces of Lacan, and in Castoriadis's formulation on of working of the for the the register imaginary

the three the work sity

itself.10 I shall allow myself of society three conceptualization or a to that theoretical the scenes, phantasms, provide scaffolding In these three scenes I call upon the words issues I address. of the the poet-novelist-essayist and Wittgenstein, philosopher Tagore, the

short

sponded Tagore sounds

story writer to the call of

and Manto and senses

Sadat

Hasan

the world

are

as persons re who Manto, in the register of the imaginary. to me for they answered in the

important to the scenes of the Indian languages because he showed the tation; Wittgenstein possibilities a rigorous nation of pain within grammar. philosophical

of devas of

imagi In plac and not

I can simultaneously be there ing their texts within mine, be there. I hope I shall be evoking these texts not in the manner of a thief who has stolen another voice but in the manner of one who to the words herself of this other.11 pawns I

The first scene is fromWittgenstein's on

the question

of how my

pain may

The Blue and Brown Books reside

in another

body:

In order to see that it is conceivable that one person should have one must in another examine what sorts of facts pain person's body, we call criteria for a pain being in a certain place... .Suppose I feel

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70

Veena Das

a pain which on the evidence of the pain alone, e.g. with closed eyes, I should call a pain in my left hand. Someone asks me to touch the I do so and looking around spot with my right hand. painful hand_This be would perceive that I am touching my neighbor's in another's

pain felt

In this movement

body.12

"I am in pain" the sentence bodies, move I out of an inex which may through and suffocation of my pain. This does not mean pressible privacy uses the route of a philosophi that I am understood. Wittgenstein to say that this is not an indicative cal grammar al statement, one. it have the formal It of is the may appearance though begin becomes

between

the conduit

a

language

case, inner

it is not

in this rendering, is not that game. Pain, or an communication that marks inexpressible something destroys a in language. exit from one's existence it makes claim Instead, be given or denied. In for acknowledgment, which may asking of

ning

either to an

a referential

statement

that

is simply

pointing

object. for me

in drawing the scene of the as the bodying creates of pain, Wittgenstein forth language pathos to out is my pain?in Where of words. the you point touching it is?found location of that pain?has my pointing finger?there (our pain) can inhabit, at least for that your body, which my pain What

moment

is fascinating

when

I close my

for the

is that

eyes

if the touch your hand? And is always of pain short of falling is this not the sense of disappoint

and

language inexpressibility then my need for its plenitude, ment that human beings have with

themselves and the language is given to them? But also, does the whole task of becoming a re even not involve of human, human, becoming perversely sense to of if is the loss when this (even sponse language rage) that

seems to fail?Wittgenstein's seems

example of my pain inhabiting your

to me

to suggest that the repre either the institution body in imagination but is not experi sentation of shared pain exists case one would in which is hooked rather say that language enced, to that the world of the expe pain. Or, alternately, inadequately rience pain mar

of the possibility of pain cries out for this response in your body and that the philosophical could reside to that call. is an answer of pain

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that my gram

Transactions

in the Construction

of Pain

71

II The

scene

second

is from Rabindranath

of Tagore. A pr?figuration into the project of nationalism is found Ghore Baire, and Char Adhyaya. novels?Gora,

of sexuality

the investment in three

important to simply draw Iwant (Home and the World)?a

out certain

Here

movement

Swadeshi the

self

that

that has

reads

itself

novel

that

the British

as if it were

the story

is well

through

the

Raj. struggle in language. It is this frozen self a script. It produces a magnification and sexuality, and in Tagore's read

the images of both nation of such magnified ing it is the pursuit concreteness blind towards the unique of suffering. experience The story of Ghore Baire

Baire of

is to free

The

against frozen become

of

to relate

from Ghore passages is set in the context

one images that can make to the of being and hence

known.

interspersed

The

accounts

narrative

device

is

of the three main

characters: Nikhil, the local zamindar who is bound to his praja (subjects who include both Hindus and Muslims) by ties of pa tronage

and

love; his wife

Bimala

whose

to Sandip and then returns to Nikhil; fiery

nationalist

metaphors

from

revolutionary. each character.

I shall

desire moves

from Nikhil

and his friend Sandip, the reproduce

only

some

root

Bimala When

inspired by Sandip's passionate speech in favor of the Swadeshi which she has heard with other women from behind movement, the curtains, Bimala to serve food tells her husband that she wishes to Sandip with her own hands the mediation of (i.e., not through a servant). a woman a man to can a food be Serving very by sensuous between the maternal and the sexual in gesture, hovering is the first time Bimala will enter any male imagery. This Bengali

presence women

that of her husband, to convention, for according except of the feudal household do not step outside the women's

arena.

I shall speak the truth. That

has not God made me day I felt?why as this let the unbelievably great day dawns, beautiful-Today men of the nation see in its women?the form of the goddess (the one who holds the earth)_Will Jagaddhatri Sandip be able to see that awakened power of the country inme? Or will he think that

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72

Veena Das I am an ordinary

woman,

the wife who

merely

lives in his friend's

house?

Sandip of her image in Sandip's de eyes that Bimala magnification an I sires will find chord. But before describe that, it is answering to constructs himself. The ask how line, important Sandip opening is enlightening: the reader first hears the voice of Sandip, when The

I reflect, is that Sandip? Am I simply I read my own account, in language? Am I just a book constructed of flesh and

When

constructed

blood? And

then responding to the desire for the magnification

image a desire,

of Bimala however,

that would which

with

the

merge image is read as a need?Sandip

of the

of the nation? continues:

Unless they can behold the nation with their own eyes, our people will will not awaken. The nation needs the icon of a goddess_It not do if we construct the icon. It is the icons that have been into the transmitted by tradition that will have to be transformed in our is deeply transcribed icons of our nation. The path of worship that path we

country?traversing stream

towards

the

shall have

to direct

the devotional

nation.

I I saw Bimala, I said that god(dess) for whose worship When thousand have come to the earth after a hundred yugas, till s (he) in her with revealed her form to me, till then could I have believed all my body and soul? If I had not been able to behold you, then I could not have seen the whole country as one, this I have told you this. It is very difficult many times. I do not know if you understand to explain that the gods in their heaven remain invisible, only in the world And

of death

as reported

do they show speech

themselves.

in Bimala's

story:

the whole Sandip got up and said, man reaches such a state when in your comes to be concentrated in one small place.13 Here world see salon I have seen my world revealed-1 you-After worship matram Not mantra vande has formula) you my (sacred changed. ing the but vande priyam the nation as mother) (Iworship (Iworship the nation as the nation as beloved), vande mohinim (I worship protects us.. .the beloved destroys us. enticing one). The mother Beautiful

is that destruction.

You

hear

the tinkling

of the bells

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of

Transactions

in the Construction

of Pain

73

of death. This delicate, luminous, fruit bearing, the one mountains14?this earth of Bengal?you have the Malay by its in of in the the eyes altered fraction of a your devotee image an in second [lit. the blinking of (the enticing eye]. You, oh Mohini to took to entice the demons one, a female form that god Vishnu come with your vessel of poison?I have shall drink poison)?you either die after drinking this poison or shall become the one who has that dance

cooled

conquered

death.

Nikhil In an argument

with

Sandip:

to serve my country but not to worship I am willing it. To offer to else that which be is should anyone except worship worshipped to destroy it. In an argument with Sandip in Sandip's voice): speech

on

the nation

as an

icon

(as reported

But all this is very difficult to explain to Nikhil. Truth is now like a prejudice in his mind. As if there is a special substance called truth. I have said to him often that where falsity is truth there falsehood alone is truth. That falsehood shall be superior to truth. Those who can think of the icon of the nation as a truth, that icon will do the work of truth. We as a people cannot visualize the idea of a nation ease but we

can see the icon as the nation easily. When all this to accomplish known then those who want the project of will have to work with this understanding. nationalism, Nikhil suddenly got very agitated and said, you have lost the power to serve the truth, therefore you want a sacred formula to for hundreds of years the drop from the skies. This is why when work of the nation has remained undone, you now want to make the nation into a god so that you can stretch your palms in suppli cation and receive a blessing as if by magic. with

is well

And finally in accepting his defeat in that his wife Bimala

saw him

Sandip,

but

as a diminished

refusing

to accept

I shall have to Today I am greedy. outside. woman created by the perfect) as my mental

and beloved

to in comparison being as this the extinguishing of the self: human

see myself and Bimala completely from the to enjoy that Tilottama I wanted (a mythic gods so that every particle of her being was creation. The Bimala who had an external

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74

Veena Das

had become a pretext for that. But Bimala iswhat she is? not is no reason for me?there she does have to become Tilottama for that. am just a contingency in I have understood this clearly?I Today Bimala's whole life. That person with whom Bimala's being can that person is Sandip. But itwould be a great lie if Iwere to merge, was not simply a I am nothing for my manhood say that it means existence

means An

the women

to capture

of the interior.

Interlude that run through these for a tentative

The movements

three voices may

be brought Each of together.

at this moment

together the two men

found

have

their destruction

weaving in Bimala,

but

in differ

the idea that he was

ent ways. Sandip began his account by voicing no a existence who had just script?someone

of language. outside to him, which of authenticity that is permitted to a has turned away from him, she responds have you got several Babu, "Sandip by saying an in your exercise book?so you can produce

In the only moment comes when Bimala plea written

passionate speeches

one

own

is finally in in Bimala's exists only in the reflection speech?he over a an or not veil inner life draw His do words falsify language. to hide the fact that there is no are indeed functioning it?they is a search for an icon, inner life to hide. His search for the nation a the of image in which his desire for the other is for magnification appropriate confirmed

occasion?"

for each

lack of individual self may I would

desire.

certain

idea of

have

been

kinds

of

in a mirror

revealed

Rabindranath compares

Sandip's

fear

be hidden by a collectivization to draw

an analogy with identities whose

tempted in folklore, that they cast

ghosts the fact

of the are

no

But reflection. by a in voice of the who schoolmaster, appears himself, an him to the new moon (amavasyar chand)?simply

absence.

As

distinctions of beloved

image to inflict

all kinds

worshipped of violence

and

a magnified becomes the nation in the abstract, it becomes possible on all those who resist this or who

for icons al The desire enlarged. equally images, as an absent object to be made magically visible The in this magnified investment sexuality. potential a in this construction. The story ends with is written

create

counter

lows

the nation

an through for violence

dissolve

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in the Construction

Transactions communal

that

carnage

the

reader

does

not

last exchange

of

at directly but as itwere, frame, waiting that has been propounded.

Bimala

intimacies,

75

gaze

that is happening the immediate outside as the double of the nationalist ideology seem to have won Nikhil since Bimala may in their

of Pain

returns falls

to him.

on his

feet

But and

begs him to let her worship him. Is this traditional slippage be tween husband and god not what he has tried to resist in their all

along? identification

all it is not

Iwho

is the realization

not

this try to stop her from "Who am I to stop her?after any more: am the recipient of this worship." Nikhil's defeat in tradition that the everyday life embodied lives

relationship disastrous

He

does

as much

as god) as the new in the worship of icons (the husband is trying to bring that Sandip (nation as god). We see Nikhil us from into the heart of the carnage, away riding himself either as a sacrificial victim or as a martyr offering (but transformations

never

as such)?the of the image very magnification being named of nation and the investment of sexual desire in it has made it into a monster. as We the voice of the schoolteacher tells only know, is being us, that it will not do for him not to go there, for what done to the women is unspeakable. Towards the end he is brought a in The news, has back, says the person who injured, carriage.

rescued him, is not good. We do not know if he will live or die. Tagore does not permit himself a closure. Nikhil is the truth seeker who can find comfort neither in the psychological clich?s of tradition

(husband

sees

is god), of violence

nor

of modernity in both. Tradition

the potential women and permits

(nation iswhat

is god). He diminishes

a subtle to be perpetrated violence everyday once them. when comments Bimala that women's upon Thus, hearts are ungenerous, small, Nikhil replies, "yes, like the feet of women Chinese to grow." that are tied and never allowed In the a nation of building the image is not diminished, means Its are dramatization that bodies of women enlarged. for the cause as nationalism violently appropriated gives birth to its double?communalism. so that the nation If one deified women

modern

project

but

could be imagined as the beloved, the other makes visible the dark side of this project by making the bodies of women the surfaces on which Body collective

their and

text of

the nation both

language desire and collective

is written.15

function

here

death meet.

as simulacrums Nikhil,

the truth

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in which seeker,

Veena Das

76

in an offer himself who must image of the martyr so of and that the magnified demons mode images gods a chance to be humanized I is think this the task have again. nature sets of this the unfinished his reader?to hear story, Tagore and modernity. of tradition of the projects the transformations the

prefigures unheroic

Ill The

third

to evoke

a story

is from

Sadat

by

entitled "Khol Do," which I first analyzed in 1986.16

Hassan Manto The

I want

phantasm

is the Partition of India and the riots, though we setting at the violence directly. An aged father and his daughter

gaze a journey

from one

cannot

destination,

take

reaching his He goes berserk find his daughter. are across some young men who

side of the border

the father

to the other.

never

On

comes for her. He searching to help trace lost relatives. He tells them about acting as volunteers to help. and urges them to find her. They promise his daughter

The young men find Sakina, the daughter, hiding in a forest half crazed with fear. They reassure her by telling her how they had met her father. She climbs into the jeepwith them. One of them, seeing

(veil),

duppata

she

embarrassed

how

gives

her

his

is because so jacket

she

does

that

she

not can

have cover

her her

breasts.

We

see a clinic.

next

stretcher.

A

near

dead

body

The

on a is being brought It is his the corpse.

father, recognizes Sarajjudin, to the doctor's cham he follows the stretcher Numbly daughter. to to the stifling heat in the room, the doctor ber. Reacting points and says "khol do" the window it"). ("open towards in the dead body. The hands move is a movement There the tape of the salwar

(trouser)

and

fumble

to unloosen

it.Old Sarajjudin shouts in joy "my daughter is alive?my ter is alive."

The

As I understood

doctor

is drenched

(lit. open)

daugh

in sweat.

this story in 1986,1

saw Sakina condemned to

as a living death. The normality has been destroyed, of language command. can hear words "other" the Sakina conveying only to language for has been documented relation Such a fractured it is the ordinari for whom of prolonged survivors violence, many ness of language them from the rest of the world. that divides the non-world father cannot noted that even Sakina's comprehend

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I

in the Construction

Transactions into which

she has been

the body as a sign of the doctor death. Only can

plunged, life whereas

for he mistakes in truth

as the off-the-center

77

of Pain the movement

in

it is the sign of her living in the story character

the true horror.

register

I think there is one last movement that I deeper meditation, not then comprehend. In giving the shout of joy and saying is alive," the father does not speak here in person "my daughter context In the societal of this period, alized voices of tradition. and honor the literary when ideas of purity populated densely On

did

as well

narratives,

as family

and political

narratives,

so that fathers

willed their daughters to die for family honor rather than livewith bodies that had been violated by other men, this father wills his daughter

to live even

proclaim In the

her brutal

as parts violation.

of her body

can do nothing

else but

terms set by the example from The Blue and Brown one may ask if the pain of the female body so violated can Books, a transaction live in a male body. One can read inManto between

death and life, body and speech, in the figures of the daughter and at least, the daughter is speech of the father, an in existence she find his may utterance, alive, though only a home his utterance he creates and for her mutilated through of accounts self. Compare this with violated hundreds purporting the

father.

In the

and

on direct

inwhich the archetypal motif was experience to her her home after been way parents' finding having are to and and rape you told, subjected plunder, being "why if you were here?it would have been better dead." As I have to be based

of a girl

as often such rejections may not have occurred argued elsewhere, as they were to in But have narratives. the alleged happened in such of belief narrative truths the daugh widespread sacrificing ter to maintain the unsullied purity and honor of the family attests to the power was

around without and

of this myth. To be masculine when death was all to be able to hand death to your violated daughter obliterate for the concreteness any desire flinching?to

uniqueness

family

yard.17

of

this

human

In the background

once played being who of such stories, a single

in your sentence

of joy uttered by old Sarajjudin transforms themeaning of being a father. In Tagore's reading as a linguistic himself

of Sandip, he was of constituting capable InManto, clich?. the sentence, "my daugh

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78

Veena Das

ter is alive," is like Wittgenstein's, "I am in pain." the formal appearance of an indicative statement,

it has Although it is to beseech

the daughter to find a way to live in the speech of the father. And not at the moment it happens when her dishonor is hidden from the eyes of the world but at the moment when her body proclaims sentence not its end. is the beginning it. This of a relationship, At

this moment

ment. labor

I have

the glimpse of a later argu in the gendered division of to ritually it is the task of men

I want

to present elsewhere that

written

in the work

of mourning, a body for the dead person and to find a place in the cosmos a very difficult one for the is always for the dead. This task, which as even become of the when members mourner, may repulsive, create

state that in the cases live on cremation sect, who grounds, or violent someone has died an unnatural death, they have so as to to consume free the dead person parts of the dead body

Aghori when

from living the fate of a homeless ghost. I wonder terrifying the daughter whom dead. And socially

performed ship with away

as

that

of

task

this

assume

accepting other fathers instead

that

reliving lost object and reinvesting as a kind of relationship of healing

healing from the

the may

if Sarajjudin

tortured have

relation simply

cast

images of simplified or decathecting desire we need to think it elsewhere, of

the

a trauma with

death.

IV of used the idea of the ethics has recently Serematakis to describe rituals. She the structure of Greek mourning antiphony and corpo between shows how the interaction acoustic, linguistic,

Nadia

real orientations distinguishes embodied pearance'

definition gives a public a it from "bad death":

or 'ap and the presence in 'screaming' and lamenting construct The silent kin the death.' of 'good {fanerosi)

kin support. Silence here

death is the asocial 'bad death' without connotes women

of witness."18

the absence to "witness"

death

the rendering of this death. What physical women death?

have The

to a "good death" and "The acoustics of death

been classic

and

Thus, to convert

role of special into speech.19 In seen as is always

it is the silence

issue by Serematakis, death to the work of mourning when happens a to social and condemned abducted, raped,

ritualistic

solution

in this case

is for the

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social

in the Construction

Transactions

of Pain

79

body to cut itself completely off from the polluted individual. This is objectified

and made

the performance of symbolic as the for the "dead" person, devices by such ritualistic to stand for the person who of a pot that comes has

mourning breaking

present

by

socially died but is physically alive. This is the sentiment underly I described earlier of kinsmen ing the stories refusing women or violated; or of men had been abducted who

their kinship obligations or wife

sister

rather

than

to accept construing

in terms of the obligation to kill a beloved let her

fall

into

the hands

of men

of

the

Such women who were violated and rejected community. a zone to two be be said between rather may deaths, occupying than between life and death. Let us take a step backwards towards in everyday life as it occurs in the case of "normal" mourning other

itwas

and ask whether

deaths

possible

to deploy

the cultural

codes

to represent the kind of social death that I have described. It does seem

not

an

easy matter

to

transform

these

"bad

deaths"

into

deaths."

"good In an women tives,

I described the division of labor between paper, mourners and men, between and close rela professional in giving structure to the work kin and affines and between earlier

in Punjabi families.20 It is through the ritual work

of mourning

mourners of the performed by the professional (usually women caste Barber who have very specialized roles in the death rituals) can glean in the form of a portrait. We that grief was objectified accounts women from descriptions in several that would given form

a circle

around

the dead

in circular body and move and inflicting injuries upon

forms, all their own

the time beating their breasts tear at their clothes In the frenzy of this "grief" they would and their hair, improvising various mourning laments to make the loss that has occurred and utterable. would public give the They to the women lead in the mourning laments who were closely

bodies.

related

to the dead

articulate what the person. The laments would now bereaved. for each person, to The address was to own to as as the living, and their well person, bodies,

loss has meant the dead

to the gods. I give a brief example of each kind of address: (To the dead (mere lal)?you

your eyes just once my beloved son)?Open jewel have never stalled any request Imade of you.

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Veena Das

80

to take the dead body of her husband to not let the fire touch him?I fold my could never bear the heat.

(To the men who are going the cremation ground)?Do hands

before

you?he

you made (To one's own body)?Are when you see this calamity?

of stone that you do not break

is a referring to the fact that the goddess goddess, call yourself of a dead son)?You is by the mother virgin?address were just jealous of the good fortune of my bahu? a goddess?you because you have your had to make her a widow son's wife?you are a call yourself a goddess?you self never found a husband?you (To the family

demoness.

I could

give

how women than callous, mortals. They rather within,

on in the laments, of blasphemy examples are rather the that idea rage against just beings, gods of the happiness small-minded play with beings who extensive

to bear pain that have their bodies rage against in the face of such tragedy. But than just disintegrate soon also have a dialogical laments since the mourning element, to get on with this by the counsel other women begin to punctuate to the most affected of living and by assurances the work deeply

iswith them. It is not that the support of the community as seen the represen that shall pass. Indeed, that grief is something as bodily is that it is metonymically tation of grief experienced as one this will that female and the carry pain within body pain

mourners

forever.

A mimesis

is certainly

between

established

body

of the collectivity

guage but it is through the work

and

lan

that this

A mourn symptom. happens bears Danforth recorded rural Greece from lament by Loring ing as in families:21 same laments the mourning the Punjabi grammar rather

than at the level of

individual

My child, where can I put the ponos I feel for you? If I toss it by the road side, those who pass will take it. If I throw it in a tree, the little birds will take it. Iwill take it in my heart so that it will take root there Iwalk. So that itwill cause me ponos while me as I stand. So that it will kill So, in a sense, both as surface witness

it is the objectification as well and as depth,

to the loss that death

has

inflicted.

of grief on the body as in language, that According

taken bears

to Serematakis,

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Transactions

that can make

it is this witnessing even convert

a bad

and

of Pain

in the Construction

death

81

the performance of death public own a good In my death.

into

experience, the question of how good death and bad death is to be defined shall

by the act of witnessing return to it later. excess

The

infliction

of speech harm on

of

of men.

in terms of the public domain in the case of death they become mute.

the house, all the preparations, of

the dead

the corpse

I

the theatrical

stands

In the course

dominate but

and

and

one,

complicated

in the mourning laments the body by the women

to the behavior

contrast

is a more

of everyday over the control

in stark life men

speech, is in the corpse

While

including the bathing and dressing

are performed Women body, by the women. not to the dead leave them. person imploring

cling to It is the

men who have to disengage the dead body from the weeping

and

to carry it on their shoulders to the cremation women, It is they who and to give the sacred fire to the dead person. on the fourth the bones the ritual of day and perform

wailing ghats, gather

these into the sacred river. For immersing ten to thirteen days, the dead person hovers

a period between

from ranging the living and

the dead in the form of a ghost, and it is through the gift of a body ritually created for him or her by the chief mourner (usually the husband

or son)

that

the ghost

finally

becomes

an ancestor.

Thus,

ifwomen perform the task of bearing witness to the grief and the loss that death has inflicted (otherwise people will saywas it a dog or cat that died, one woman it is men who must told me), ritually so that the dead can find a home.22 create all the conditions

But if the good death is defined by the bearing of witness on the so that grief can move between the body and can as as that be well the articulated, speech publicly performance of rituals for the dead so that they do not have to wander in the

part

of women

world of the living as ghosts, how is bad death to be represented? In a sense,

every

death,

except

that of a very

old person,

intro

duces disorder in personal and social life. But in the flow of everyday life this is understood to be caused by events beyond the one of the the living community. Indeed, underlying of mourning rituals is to absolve the living of responsibil A common refrain in mourning ity for the death that has occurred. cause of the death is to say that the ostensible laments (for instance a particular to is the for death do its ap disease) pretext only

control

of

tensions

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Veena Das

82

job. Of course, when action of others, then of the situation will definition

pointed willful

of mourning

All

is seen

death

a great tension come to prevail

to be caused prevails

by the as to what

through

the control

laments.

the normal flow of life is seen as

this is reversed when

In that case women of men. bear witness by the violence disrupted a new to this disorder construction of speech and silence. A by a mourning woman to me recalled lament that witnessed the

defeat of the Sikhs at the hands of the British troops in the Anglo Sikh wars: crowns

on the heads

of the young wives? of the mothers? flowing laps The swagger of sisters protected by brothers? a out moment? in Wiped Oh, from seven seas across came the white man The

The

on

She went

to say that although

possible for thewomen in war.

The men

had

everything

was

to fight.

wiped

out

it was

to wail since their men had died heroically

died

as husbands,

sons,

in

But

and brothers.

the case of all that died in the Partition, there was nothing but inflicted the men who silence?for not only strange men but also men to an elaboration of this statement It is an amplification that an me to for get possible women themselves.

I have

such

violence

on women

were

known

and deeply loved.23 It is is devoted. that the next section was never it constructed?for of

exegesis

such

statements

from

the

V

In the literary imagination in India, the violence of the Partition in a manner of women desire on the bodies inscribing in In the mythic that we have not yet understood. imagination on war was or the in inscribed defeat India, victory ultimately

was

about

bodies Gandhari all whose

of women.

texts

on

of laments (mourning vilap or of Mandodari in the Ramayana, in the Mahabharata are literary classics. kin were slain in the epic battles) The

the

transformation is a metaphoric the violence in everyday life. Yet,

This

the metamorphosis

it achieved

death of the role of witnessing was in of the Partition unique

between

the

idea of appropriating

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in the Construction

Transactions a territory

as nation As we

territory.

of Pain

83

the body of the women appropriating a pr?figuration of this is found earlier,

as

and

saw

in

of the idea of the magnification of the image of Tagore's rendering sexu its draws the which from of nation, energy image magnified this image of sexuality and its intimate connection ality. However, with

the project

Indian the The

not only a genealogy in the an important narrative trope in of the violation of the project of the Empire. innocent white woman who was brutally raped

of nationalism but

imagination,

representation image of the

itwas

has

also

narrative sepoys was an important trope for estab by the barbaric the barbaric in character of the natives the first 1857, when lishing rebellion the British took place. against large-scale Jenny Sharpe has analyzed the image of helpless women and children being cut as to pieces the "truth" of the sepoys by leering establishing en As she says, "Commissioners and magistrates "mutiny."24 trusted

with

systematic else. The

investigating rape, mutilation

official

stories

tional

reports,

had

already

sadistic fiends, and Nana crime unforgivable hibits a predictable she writes

that

rumors

the

could

no

at Cawnpore came too late,

however, done their work.

Sahib was

of desecrating

understanding 'one of the most

find

torture

and

Rebels

evidence

of

or anyplace as the sensa were

seen

as

especially vilified for the

Barr ex English womanhood. massacre of the Cawnpore when revered

of Victorian

institutions,

the English lady,was slaughtered, defiled and brought low.'When the massacre

as the destruction is reported of an insti that the sacred image of English womanhood has tution, we know outlived the story of women's lives."25 of two strands. Thus, we have the interweaving First, the idea women must to death, which that bear witness in the is found classical into

of women

Indian

the notion

literature that

and

the woman's

the everyday body must

life, gets be made

transformed to bear

of

its possession from a narrative

the

strand seems to signs by the enemy. The second come at the time of the mutiny trope established that equates the violation of the nation with the violation of its women. It is not clear whether riots the nationalist during slogans were on women, the most horrific physically imprinted although are stories about such violations believed.26 What is commonly clear is that at least one hundred thousand women from both sides of the border were abducted and raped. The figures given forcibly

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84

Veena Das

in the Legislative the Constituent Assembly during in 1949 bates confirm this. It also affirmed that women

were

who

paniment Family women

their honor.

Such

while family narratives, abductors and returned

women

other

new

religion ever find

a place

in the

frequently women's When of

literary bodies

the Partition

were

sacrificial

in the homes

in these

and Lahore.27

recovered

or who

families

lives

of processions with the accom

to kill their compelled are beatified deaths in

were

who

to their

and made

disorder

organized like Amritsar

stripped in cities jeering crowds on men who narratives abound of

to save

hardly

were

naked

de

Assembly

narratives,

from

their to the

converted

of their abductors although

occur

they

representations. were made the passive witnesses in this manner, how did women

of

the

mourn

the loss of self and theworld? It is in considering this question that we

in the transactions reversals between startling body and In the of normal harm is process grievous mourning, language. women on own their while the acoustic inflicted and bodies, by codes make the loss public laments. by the mourning linguistic find

When I found

asking women a zone of

to narrate silence

their

around

of experiences the event. This

the Partition was

silence

that was general either by the use of language achieved and meta so as to but that evaded of any events phoric specific description or of the the their capture experience, by describing particularity events but the actual of abduction leaving experience surrounding It was

and

rape unstated. in such Partition covered woman

with

terms

white

common as rivers

shrouds

remember

would

right

to describe

the violence

of blood unto of

flowing the horizon. but

and

of the the earth

Sometimes

a

as one woman

images fleeing, were to remember. it was dangerous These memories me, to poison that makes the inside of the woman sometimes compared

warned

dissolve, as a solid is dissolved in a powerful liquid (andar hi andar rahi h ai). At other times a woman would ghulja a discarded in which exercise book the accounts body, ships were kept?the none of the metaphors used of poisonous the repository give expression This code of back

to their

a parchment to describe

say that she is like of past relation of losses. At any rate, the self that had become

knowledge

emphasized

the need

to this hidden silence

families

knowledge. women who had been brought protected the efforts of the military evacuation through

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to

Transactions

in the Construction

recovered they were or who had been married

abductors, since the violation ship and affinity Rather than bearing witness public. to, the metaphor subjected and keeping the poison drinking been

body ismade within And

from

after

authorities

85

of Pain

the homes

of

their

norms of kin by stretching of their bodies was never made to the disorder

that they had was of a woman that they used itwithin her: "Just as a woman's

so that she can hide the faults of her husband deep

so she can drink

the stance of silence." all pain?take and Kamla Bhasin told Ritu Menon (cited

her, as one woman

is always used?" Or, as was is a woman?she told "what earlier), to me, in a woman's is there to be proud "what body?everyday it is polluted The sliding of the representa by being consumed."

tions of the female body between everyday life into the body that had

become

events

of

the

container

the Partition into

of

perhaps

the poisonous helped women

their

lives. everyday between speech and silence so is the between relation here,

experiences Just as the relation act of witnessing depth of the body.

of the knowledge to assimilate their is reversed

in the

the surface

and

In the fantasy of men, the inscription of nation to alist slogans on the bodies of women live India, Long (Victory or of their bodies (This thing, Pakistan), possession proclaiming a future memory create mal?is ours), would by loot?ye never be able to forget which men of the other community would as territory that the women had already been claimed and occu men. women were on The of other bodies the surfaces pied by this

texts were

which

But women

to be written

and read?icons

of the new

nations.

agency by using meta a it home of pain, giving just as a child phors pregnancy?hiding in the woman's is given a home Kriesteva's of body. description but I am not there?may also be used to pregnancy?it happens act of remembering But the subsequent describe such violence. only

through

this passivity

converted

into

own experience the woman's dis to the depth of the body. The only the child, which the woman will be able to

the body makes the surface

from

place being is that unlike difference

this holding of the pain inside must never be movement to depth from surface also into transforms agency. passivity It was again Sadat Hasan Manto who was able to give literary

offer

allowed

to the husband, to be born.

expression

to this.

This

In his

story Fundanen

(Pompoms),

a woman

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is

86

Veena Das

in front sitting but like many compositions,

of a mirror. strings its phonetic

of

Her is completely speech nonsense in rhymes used are like theatrical properties between

representations. Interspersed sentences lables are meaningful

with

that brought her from one woman is drawing grotesque in the mirror. these only She

The

registering that body women

had

was

the second within

is appropriate for the time, to grow two stomachs?one to be able

for them

themselves.

The

side of the border on

speech

the fruits and

of violence

the distortion

of

sense.

seems

to make The language of pain could only deep a carnival of hysteria?the surface of the body becomes and the depth becomes the site for hysterical pregnan excess of hysteria all the phonetic that having language

body be a kind of

images cies?the

When Bimala said that Tagore's see the power in her, of the nation women one could in whom Manto's

apparent meanings. if Sandip could

destroys wondered

to the

her

designs body, a says she is designing in for those days, she says, was one and the normal

to bear

of

distortion

or musical

the strings of nonsense syl information such as precise

the bus number other.

incoherent, or musical

seems

to have

citizens

of

she she

see prefigured of that project of making the nation visible the completion by a of surrealist images. juxtaposition as autonomous from colonial So, if men emerged subjugation an

independent as monsters. What

then nation, kind of death

simulta they emerged rituals could have been

neously to be given a place in the for these wandering ghosts performed cosmos? We have to again turn to the register of the imaginary. this in his story "The City of Sorrow," Intizar Hussain described in which opens dead." manner died. to when

a conversation. The story three nameless men are having to "I have the first man say. I am saying, nothing a on the moves in form the then of The story dialogue

with

of his dying. One of his companions on he forced a man Did he die when

strip he

wife

sister

his saw

naked?

the

naked?

he

No, same man forcing alive. he remained

asks how

he actually of his sword

the point alive. Then perhaps to strip his old man another he was himself Then, when

remained

No, too he remained to strip his own sister naked? Then alive. Itwas only when his father gazed at his face and died that he heard are it is you who in his wife's voice the question, "don't you know

forced

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in the Construction

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of Pain

87

to and he realized that he had died. But he was condemned own went. him with wherever he his carry corpse to me that just as women It appears drank the pain so that life men so an could for unheroic continue, longed martyrdom by invite which could the evil back themselves and human upon they ize the enormous and sexuality. But it images of nation looming was not through the political discourse that this was achieved. The dead?"

in the Constituent

debates women

were

full of

the

the women who had recovering and returning "their" women Gandhi,

about

writing

on

Assembly of imagery

the

restoring abducted

been

to

back

issue from

abducted

and

honor

by side

the other

the Muslims.

of women

the exchange

of

national

Mahatma the exchange

of prisoners on the same page of his Delhi diary, said that it had pained him the Muslim tance. who

to learn that many Hindu men were reluctant so as a form He urged them to do

women.

Nehru

Jawaharlal were recovered

abductors.

In this

both

it was

sides,

its women, could wipe

and entire

urged to not

assumed

its honor

would

the slate clean

punish of

that once have and

of women

exchange the nation

been

leave

of repen to accept the women them for the sins of their

men

Hindu

discourse

to return

had

It was

restored.

the horrendous

from

claimed events

back

as

if you behind.

VI It was

on

the register of the imaginary that the question of what could constitute the passion of those who this occupied unspeak zone was given shape. The zone between able and unhearable the two

speech, that had claim main

for what been

the women

to occupy did not permit of any could be spoken against the wrong "right" words done them. Hence, Manto's Sakina can only pro

that

deaths

had

truth of this society by a mute hui (there was a movement jumbish

the terrible kuch

task of mourning by their presence.

for the men

was

repetition?mur in the corpse).

de The

to hear

to mold this silence, it of the father that his cry joyful daughter was alive. This being alive in the zone of the two deaths, and this witnessing of the truth of the women's is how violation, in this zone could be defined. Here the issue is not that mourning Hence

of an Antigone, mourning law of Creon,

proclaiming

the

for her dead brother in defiance of the that

the register

of

someone

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who

has

88

Veena Das

been

named

must

as Lacan

be preserved,

of Antigone's

interpretation

famous

us witness

makes

that

passage

it in his not

she would

have died for a husband or a child but that this concerned her born of the same father and the same mother brother, (the product of criminal desire and criminal Here it is the issue of knowledge).28 the women and men molding the poisonous drinking knowledge with silences of the women their words. Truth does not need here as Lacan would a the envelope of beauty have it, but rather it as Tagore's

of

renouncing

came

Nikhil

to state

it.

It is often considered the task of historiography that announce

silences

in the

heroic

the zones

of taboo.

something to speak and to give found this a very complicated use such imagery as breaking the silence, we our capacity to "unearth" hidden facts as a recover idea that we should the narratives of

voice

image of empowering to the voiceless. I have myself

task,

for when end

may

weapon. violence

by using Even the becomes

cannot

tives

we

language think of

problematic told unless we

be

that

a culture

the division

has of

as

of mourning could transforming

to break the

is even

There

work

we

when

I have

evolved.

labor

realize

see the relation

on which

in thinking

that

such

narra

between

pain and to it important in the and women

found

men

between

a model

be done

women

the

about

further

the relation

work

of

between

and the body. Following this manner pain, language, Wittgenstein, the puzzle of pain frees us from thinking of conceptualizing that statements cer about pain are in the nature of questions about Instead, we pain or that of others. for acknowledgment and recogni begin to think of pain as asking not is denial of the other's about the of the tion; pain failings intellect but the failings of the spirit. In the register of the imagi tainty

or doubt

over

our

own

not

for a home

in language in the body. It is not that there is a seamless between the distant continuity shore and the everyday the registers of the imagi shore, between the subtle transfor nary and the real, but one can only understand if one mations from one shore to the other, that go on as we move nary, the pain but also seeks

keeps

in mind

of

the other

only

asks

a home

the complex

relation

between

speaking

and hearing,

between building aworld that the living can inhabit with their loss and building aworld inwhich the dead can find a home. Itworries me

that

I have

been

unable

to name

that which

died when

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autono

in the Construction

Transactions mous

citizens

of

India were

as monsters.

born

simultaneously

as Manto,

it, such

themselves loss

of

touched

in

and died

madness

dream

radical

the

But

tried to

then I have to remind myself and others that those who name

89

of Pain

of

for the fierce regret transforming as in the political found those who India, while easily, speech con women on abducted in the Constituent debates Assembly, the violence honor when with tinue to talk about national dealing that women

have

to endure

had

in every

riot

communal

since

the

Partition.

ENDNOTES Tn thinking through some of the issues raised in this paper, Iwas greatly helped by an idyllic three day retreat at Kasauli. I thank Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram for

their warm

and

hospitality

conversations.

the marvelous

helped with some of the most difficult passages for which Without

Sanmay,

2G.D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning lished in 1951), 3. 3Veena

Das,

never

Iwould

though,

of

"Composition

have

had

Kumar

Shahani

I offer my gratitude. to write.

the courage

(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989; first pub Voice:

the Personal

Violence

and Migration,"

Stud

ies inHistory 7(1) (1991): 65-77; and Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthro pological Perspective on Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). 4Stanley

Cavell,

Philosophical

Passages:

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 5See especially

Veena

Das

Emerson,

Wittgenstein,

Austin,

Derrida

1995).

and Ashis

Nandy,

"Violence,

Victimhood

and

the Lan

guage of Silence," in The Word and the World: Fantasy, Symbol and Record (Delhi: Sage Publications, 1986); Das, "Composition of the Personal Voice"; and Das, India.

Critical

Events:

An

Anthropological

Perspective

on

Contemporary

6See Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises (Cam bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994) and Stanley Cavell, "Philosophy andModernity: The Case ofWittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations,'" paper presented to the seminar on Modernity Reconsidered at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, 26-29 April 1994. Cavell, elsewhere, describes the later thought ofWittgenstein as ".. .providing a theory of the drive to metaphysics and the possibility and necessity of skepticism?as much a phi losophy of metaphysics as it is a philosophy of the ordinary." Cavell, Philosophi cal Passages:

Wittgenstein,

Emerson,

Austin,

Derrida,

78.

7In the felicitous expression of Robert R. Desjerlais, Body and Emotion (Philadel phia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), grief is transformed into pain that clings to the body.

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90

Veena Das

8Ihave to refer back to the haunting images that Khwja Ahmad Abbas, to refer

used

writer,

on women.

to the atrocities

"Did

the English

the Urdu in our

whisper

ears that you may chop off the head of whichever Hindu you find, or that you must plunge a knife in the stomach of whichever Muslim you find? Did the En also

glish

us

educate

the art of

into

atrocities

committing

women

with

of other

religions right in the marketplace? Did they teach us to tattoo Pakistan and Jai Hind on the breasts and secret organs of women?" Khwja Ahmed Abbas, in Ramananda

"Prastavna,"

Sagar,

on Contemporary

Perspective

Conn.:

gaya

(Delhi:

Rakjamal

184.

India,

The

Testimonies: Holocaust Langer, Yale University 1991). Press,

9Lawrence

mar

insan

Aur

See also Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological

Prakashan, 1977, inHindi).

Ruins

(New

of Memory

Haven,

10C.Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). 11 On the concept of pawning of voice, see Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy. The Blue and Brown Books

12LudwigWittgenstein, 1958).

(London: Basil Blackwell,

13IfSandip sounds like a textbook, this is precisely what missed

completely

by

14A11these adjectives describe to describe

Bankimchandra

critics

the many

is intended. This point was

of Tagore.

and were

the goddess

given a different

life by

the nation.

15Itwould be obvious that my interpretation of this text differs considerably from the interpretation offered by Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), who argues that Tagore's women stand for an authentic, the culture

nationalism

that

on

him

offering

16This

1990),

in an

I cannot

Similarly,

Discourse?

nationalism

that Tagore's

is included

story

her worship.

A Derivative

Chatterji, Nationalism: Press,

and

hence

are

the defense

to both in response and an illegitimate colonialism on the colonial has a more image. Clearly Tagore sense of defeat when as evident to tradition inNikhil's Bimala

puts up is modeled

relation

complex insists

to tradition

relation

unencumbered

which

a derived

is simply of

anthology

stories

with

agree

(Delhi: Oxford

on

Partha

University

discourse.

the Partition

translated

by

Alok Bhalla, ed., Stories about the Partition of India, vols. I, II, III (Delhi: Indus 1994),

Publications,

but

there

are many

with

problems

the

translation

as I have

pointed out elsewhere. See Veena Das, Review of Stories about the Partition of India, vols. I, II, and III, ed. Alok Bhalla (Delhi: Indus Publications, 1994). 17Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. See my account of the narration by a man on how he had felt compelled to kill his

favorite

18Nadia

C.

Mani

Serematakis,

The

the other Last

modes

Word:

of dying

Women,

were

Death

too painful and Divination

for her. in Inner

University of Chicago Press, 1991), 101. (Chicago, 111.: L. Briggs,

19See also Charles Women's

because

sister

Ritual

Wailing:

can Anthropologist

"Personal Music

Sentiments and

Poetics

Voices and Polyphonic in a Collective Discourse,"

95 (4) (1993): 929-57.

This content downloaded from 96.234.245.114 on Sat, 18 May 2013 20:48:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

inWarao Ameri

in the Construction

Transactions

91

of Pain

20VeenaDas, "TheWork of Mourning: Death in a Punjabi Family," inMerry I. White and Susan Pollock, eds., The Cultural Transition: Human Experience and Social Transformation in the Third World (London: Routledge, 1986), 179 210. The

Danforth,

21Loring

Rituals

Death

Greece

of Rural

(Princeton,

Princeton

N.J.:

University Press, 1982). This is not to suggest any underlying similarity between the

frames

theoretical

by Danforth

used

and

also Margaret

See

Serematakis.

Allexiou, "Reappropriating Greek Sacrifice," journal ofModern Greek Studies 8 (1990): 97-123. 22For a detailed caste

and

of

discussion kinship

the structure

of

are utilized,

categories

these

rituals

see Veena

and

the manner Structure

Das,

in which and

Cogni

tion: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977), 5.

chap. 23Das,

of

"Composition

the Personal

Voice."

24Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 25Ibid.,

64.

"Prastavna"; 26Abbas, on Contemporary

Critical

and Das,

Events:

27Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Uruashi

Butalia,

Partition,"

Economic

ciation ofWomen

"Surviving paper Indian

State

"The Book

Agency

17 (1993): WS12-WS24;

Violence:

presented

tion," Economic and Political Weekly 28J. Lacan, Lacan,

On Women's Some

and Abduction

of

Ritu

the

Indian

Asso

and Kamla Bhasin, "Recov of Women

during

Parti

17 (1993):WS2-WS12.

in J. A. Miller, of Tragedy," ed., The Seminar of Jacques trans. Dennis Porter Norton &c Co, (London: 1992).

Essence VII,

India; during

on Women's

Reflections

at IV Conference

Studies, 1990; and Ritu Menon

Resistance.

ery, Rupture,

Perspective

Anthropological

Perspective on Contemporary

and Gender:

and Political Weekly

Bhasin,

of Partition,"

Experience

State

"Community,

and Kamla

Menon

An

India.

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