Humanities Underground

Corporeal Punishment, English & Homosocial Tactility

Niladri R. Chatterjee         There is a story I had once heard somewhere about a Western woman visiting Calcutta.  This was her second visit.  The first visit was in the 1970s when she was a teenager.  The next was in the 21st century when she was in her late thirties.  After going around the city for a few days, on her second visit, she asked her Bengali friends, “Aren’t there any gays in Calcutta anymore?”  The friends were puzzled and asked her to explain her question. She said, “Well, the last time I was here, I often saw men walking down the street holding hands. Surely they were gay. Why don’t I see such gay couples around anymore?”  There are several ways in which one can read the story. But its most accessible reading would be as an example of cultural incomprehension. Because in her native culture two men holding hands could univocally mean that they were in a homosexual relationship, she had assumed that manual tactility between men in all societies can mean only one thing. She was the native of a society where English was the most commonly spoken language.  The story has stayed with me all these years because somewhere in that story I detected a relationship between language/ culture and the body which I thought intriguing. Looking at myself I find that my reduced use of English is inversely proportional to the increase in my sense of security. When I was younger I spoke in English far more than I do now. I was also aware of the reason for this. I felt English was a language which was protecting me from visceral emotional self-exposure. I felt English was a mask which would de-emotionalize even an emotional statement that I may make. I felt protected by the language. This protection also brought in its wake a certain emotional frigidity and unavailability that I acquired which can be used to explain that when I was younger I was far lonelier than I am now, when I do not speak English as much as I used to. This paper is an attempt at exploring how and why the male body in Bengal functions in a certain way when the owner of that body speaks in his native tongue and in quite another way when he speaks in English. I have often noticed that there is a marked difference between the way men in Bengal who speak English think of their bodies and the way those who do not speak English think or do not think of theirs.  The holding of hands becomes the touchstone method of telling apart those who do not speak English from those who do.  I have repeatedly observed that those men who are obviously employed in blue collar professions, or are even daily wage earners, and therefore almost certainly not in possession of English, show a far greater level of tactility among themselves than those who are white collar workers and are not entirely unlettered in English. Men or boys who do not speak English embrace each other a lot more, even kiss each other on the cheek far more frequently than those who can speak English. In fact, in my own English-speaking circle of friends I have noticed a particular horror of physical contact among male friends, and an inversely proportional lack of corporeal self-consciousness among those who do not speak English. Is it a mere coincidence? Would it be entirely erroneous to speculate whether the English language in any way straitjackets the male body and prohibits same-sex tactility beyond the ‘firm’ handshake? Is the firmness of the handshake an indicator and a performance of hegemonic masculinity? Is the handshake the only kind of same-sex tactility that has been sanctioned and approved as a physical gesture that carries no risk of endangering the heteronormativity of a patriarchal society? English was formally introduced as the preferred language of instruction, business and government in Bengal in the later part of the 18th century, Calcutta having been settled by the East India Company towards the end of the 17th century. Lord Macaulay’s notorious Minute on Indian Education was written in 1835.  As Gauri Vishwathan says, English education was introduced to solve the conflict between the proselytising goal of the missionaries and the policy of religious neutrality adopted by the British Government (Vishwanathan 38). So, as I say elsewhere, English and Christianity were being discreetly conflated by smuggling in Christianity under the cover of English literature (Chatterjee 38-9). Foucault tells us that in the 19th century in the West in general and in England in particular the human body, and especially the male body was being pathologized, sexualized, classified and medicojuridically disciplined, with active support from Christianity.  There are two famous instances of homosocial tactility in the Bible and both carry negative valence. Judas identifies Christ for the Roman police by kissing him. Thomas doubts the reality of Christ’s resurrection by inserting a finger into one of the wounds received by Christ on the cross. There is only one instance of homosocial tactility in the Bible with positive valence.  This is that of St. John the Beloved – not to be confused with St. John the Baptist – who was in the habit of rest his head on Christ’s shoulder.  There are statues in Germany dating from 1300 where this instance of homosocial tactility in the Bible is iconised.  The fact that these statues are not very well known points to the marginalisation of positive homosocial tactility in the Bible.  The only way in which the story of John the Beloved resting his head on Christ’s chest has travelled into English literature is through its homosexualization by Christopher Marlowe when he declared that John the Beloved had a homosexual relationship with Christ.  So, that apparently asexual and positive instance of Biblical homosocial tactility was appropriated by Marlowe and therefore reinserted into the criminalising Christian discourse on homosexuality.  Therefore all the three instances of