What’s in a Name!
Bhasha Singh [This is an excerpt from Adrishya Bharat, (Invisible India) Penguin Books, 2012. Translation HUG] Dabbuwali (Bengal), Baaltiwali (Kanpur), Teenawali (Bihar), Kamaai-Ka-Kaam Karne wali (Large swathes of North India), Tokriwali (Haryana-Punjab), Thottikar (much of South India), Paki/Peeti (Odisha)—the more you travel, the more the variations. These names bear a direct connection to their work. These are not qualifiers that designate caste or creed. These are names of containers in which Dalit women (and a few men) from all over India scavenge, place and carry shit and other waste products with their own hands. These words that immediately bring a look of visceral disgust on to the faces of the civilized world, since the stigma embossed on them is centuries-old, actually name human beings of flesh and blood. Believe it or not. These words have become their identity and most of them have forgotten their given names. The households they work for have lost track of their names too. As if their very faces ought to give away their profession and social position. Narayan Amma spent 60 years of her life at Anandpur, Andhra Pradesh: the last time she heard her name being called was in the 1950s when she was an adolescent. Thereafter she was Thotame. The universal Thotame. Right from the early hours of the day till afternoon she cleans the dry latrines of her area, bare handed—with the constant buzzing of the all too known phrases, phrases that define her too: “Thotame, wipe this, scrub that. Double quick!”So, a major chunk of her life passed by nameless, until one morning, the activists began to call her by her name again. Amazing! It was she who led the movement for eradicating the dry shit-holes of her area and even during that ongoing struggle would no one call her Narayana Amma. When asked, Savitri, a neighbourhood woman who routinely used the latrines, replied pat: “What’s in a name? We all know her job!” Shanti in Kanpur has an identical tale to tell—the universal Baltiwali that she is. Heera from 24 Parganas in Bengal is the ever active Dabbuwali; Indira at Tonk in Rajasthan is quite naturally the local Tokriwali. With a slight awareness of such geographical variations that tell us remarkably similar stories, we may have a vague sense of how Invisible India functions, goes about its business day after day, generation past generation. These women are so mired in the endless cycles of caste maltreatment, physical exploitation and economic disparity that we do not even know where to begin. Where do we start? Even these women have no clue when and how they got into these exploitative cycles and of ways to come out of these patterns. The heavy baskets of dirt and shit—ah, to even contemplate quitting this job means revolting against the grim fixed orders and expectations of husbands and in-laws. Clearly caste and patriarchal hierarchies are responsible for making this profession perfectly fit for women (around 95-98% of the womenfolk constitute this profession). As I have said, the story is more or less the same around India. The pain too, is similar: “The man does not work. Is a drunkard. Abuses me physically. So, it is my shit-cleaning job that actually helps run the household. How shall we make two ends meet otherwise?” It is important to realize how the caste system works and patronizes a whole support system for running these households: a few rotis and some money could lead to some bonus if these women agree to help in disposing off dead animals or do menial, ad hoc jobs during the ‘rituals’ of birth, death and marriage in the locality. And yes, during festivals—may be some old torn clothes too for them. With a tacit understanding that during trying times they will get some odd help from the exploiters. The women have this impulse to run the family in a sound manner, a compulsion that the men folk often elude. This, the exploiters know very well and use the knowledge to wage a kind of psychological warfare quite astutely. Naturally, there are a good number of women around the nation who do not wish to come out of this abusive cycle. Ghulam Muhammad of Ujjain had to fight tooth and nail with his own mother and sister so that they may relinquish cleaning these dry-latrines once and for all. The old mother kept on arguing that this very profession had maintained generations in her household. So, it would be criminal to quit. Vimla, Kamaiwali for the past 25 years in the Aishbagh area of Lucknow was also not ready to give up her job so easily. The pretty looking Vimla was as enamoured of her beautiful jewellery as she was of her job. She felt she had always nurtured and children with this, her job. Her daughter got married by her kamai. And then, how much of life was still left for such momentous changes! Her husband, a serial gambler, works for the municipality and anyway wastes all his money in drinking binges. In our one hour of exchanges, she told me at least 4 times that since 1985 she had bought off the jajmani of the 25 households where she works in 2 thousand rupees by selling off all her jewellery. Her working households are mostly poor Muslim families. Vimla, working thus for decades, does not see her work as part of a throbbing hellhole. It is this mental slavery and cycle of domination that is at the bottom of these women getting invisiblized all around us. The men work for municipalities and so their salary is assured and is comparatively higher than what these women make within this informal sector. The informalization is important to note. Why do women get into cleaning dry latrines and manual scavenging? If you ask Bezwada Wilson of Safai Karmachari Andolan or Manjula Pradeep of Navsarjan or Srilata Swaminathan (CPIML) or even D. Raja (CPI)—all will give you more or less the same answer—that since these
The Politics of Shaming
Manash Bhattacharjee As the 5th annual gay parade in Delhi walked the streets with colourful pride on 25th November, 2012, I remembered the outrageously disturbing story two years back, which shook every gender sensitive conscience: the alleged suicide of Dr Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras. The possibility of Dr. Siras committing suicide didn’t hold much conviction in the face of everyone’s disbelieving shock upon receiving the news. Those who were empathetically in touch with the AMU professor claimed he was happy about the Allahabad High Court’s decision to stay his suspension. Dr. Siras was also quoted as saying he wanted to go to America, where he would be allowed to live freely as a gay man. He wanted to spend the rest of his life fighting for gay rights. It’s tragic he had to fight the first battle, without luck, for his own life. The Question of Evidence: If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary. ~ Mark Twain The police and others said it couldn’t be murder as the doors were locked from inside. As if locked doors were such a conclusive clue. The farce of prima facie evidence had always sought to transform countless murders into suicides. Suicide is the official euphemism for murder in India. It has become the most convenient cover-up story. What comes readily to the investigating police officer’s lips is “suicide” whereas the most obvious possibilities of deliberate poisoning or other subtle ways of stage-setting a murder as suicide doesn’t seem to occur to the qualified gentleman. Such a defensive strategy raises more suspicion than hope. Worse is the tacit assumption that suicide is an angst-ridden private act whereas the reasons behind even legitimate suicide cases are socially instigated. The Question of Shame: Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame, shame, shame – that is the history of man! ~ Nietzsche The lure of shaming others publicly now has a lethal weapon: the spy-camera. The spy-camera, used to shame something ethically private before the eyes of the public, gets into a dangerously unrestricted territory of manipulation. It ends up being a bizarre syndrome where neo-perverts exploit others for money or revenge. The film LSD showcased how women are used as tools into unknowingly performing sexual acts before a hidden camera for the sake of profit. Other people are made victims of hate because of their queer sexual identity. Their sexual practices are termed ‘immoral’ by the moral police who comprise religiously conservative, heterosexual goons. This psyche was exemplified by those students who surreptitiously filmed Dr. Siras’s consensual sexual act. As if Dr. Siras being gay posed a threat to the paranoid norms of the hyper-masculine, heterosexual brigade. They decided to strike back at the professor with a fascist mindset. It was a premeditated act by the students in the name of stirring up an utterly reactionary public scandal. They saw themselves as representatives of the entire heterosexual community’s moralistic concerns. This seemed to legitimise their act. They gave the impression, as if acting in the larger interest kept them outside charges of private motivations. But what is most private is the pleasure involved in shaming. The pleasure of shaming occurs in the individual, even though it is shared in the larger realm of public consumption. The pleasure of shaming comes from the desire to humiliate. Humiliation is instigated by the breakdown of erotic and altruistic ties among human beings. In such an exceptional situation, hate wages war against shame. Shame is the irreducible, ethical essence of a human being. Humiliation is aimed at the dis-possession of the other’s shame. But it includes the violator’s shamelessness. Shamelessness is the most consciously violent mode of terrorising shame. It can be best defined in modern times as possessed rationality. Humiliation is the most venomous form of shamelessness, while erotic shame, always exposed to the possibilities of assault, is the most vulnerable part of our solitude. Kafka had painfully discovered “the violation of solitude”(to use Milan Kundera’s phrase), chased by the state’s secret police. Dr. Siras had discovered a similar kind of violation in the shape of a bunch of heterosexual moralisers hell-bent on exposing his private life to public gaze in the name of social duty. What is common in both cases is the desire to humiliate the victim and try and ensure that “the shame of it must outlive him”, to quote the last line of The Trial. The Question of Justice: Murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of law-abiding citizens. ~ Emmanuel Teney The question of justice takes on a different dimension after the victim’s death. It shifts the whole responsibility to the public who are concerned about the victim receiving justice at the hands of the state. Dr. Siras symbolised a collective cause – of gay rights and a respectful place for sexual minorities in Indian society. The question of justice in Dr. Siras’s case encompassed a larger justice which is awaited in favour of the gay cause in India. Emmanuel Teney seems to tell us, we cannot make easy distinctions between criminals and law-abiders. People follow the law to keep their own hegemonic interests intact. The law itself is a product of and run by the dominant class. It suits this class to be within law. But once the hegemonic order is threatened by people who challenge their social, cultural and sexual norms, the dominant class takes recourse to violence outside the law, in the name of another law. It is the notion of justice before justice – a pre-judicial justice, violently meted out by the moral vanguards of society. It challenges modern law and the foundation of its secular institutions. These institutions have to be predisposed in favour of the victimised crusaders and act against such criminal law-abiders. Or else these institutions of justice would be accused of being complicit in fostering pre-judice. Dr. Siras’s case was a reminder for the law to push its horizons further
On Space (s)
Ronojoy Sircar This screen is space. Moving in and out of this space, are these words as they are being written/read right here and now. These words form a direction. Not just a path, seeing that this is not a metaphor, but has begun to move beyond that. These words are signals; flares, shooting off into the night sky. This sky is space. Bodies within space Fig. 1. Klaus Rinke, Time-Space-Body and Action. There are two bodies. There is a clock. The viewer, forever entering the picture, finds him/herself locked out – at standstill, like the clock, like the bodies, caught in motion, caught in space. Fig. 2. Klaus Rinke, Vertical. There is no space, without time. The man’s held hands, hold time by its spine. He is tensed, for time constitutes tension. Time splitting space in two, is tension. The breath, held back, speaks in time of silences, in time with silence. Fig. 3. Geof Kern, Midtown Exit. A camera on an arch, balanced between the sky and the ground, looks on, along with the traffic below, as a man – possibly a salesman – floats across the Manhattan skyline forming questions, along his way, in minds, still caught between the cityscape – is he happy though? No faces were turned, but many were raised. Balloons, the color of the sky, in the colorlessness of this view, are transporting subversion of space into moments of suspension – of belief, and of laws. Fig. 4. Geof Kern, Untitled (man leap-frogging over another man). A man looks down, as another questions the importance of standing still, when standing still itself, is being within fingers distance from jumping over. These figures are rotating. This is but one frame, of reference. To catch a moment in space is after all, to capture it. Bodies without space Fig. 5. Helena Almeida, Voar (Fly). Balanced to fall, flight itself unhinges towards falling, connected only by the desire to fly. Truth speaks, at the moment of contact, revealing the ill kept secret – there was no flight, there was always flight. Slanted towards the ground the body learnt to fly. Fig. 6. Helena Almeida, Screen Inhabited. A blank slate and film stretched across its frames. There is no such thing as blank space. Moving towards the frames and ripping the illusion of space, in one steady movement captured in frames of collected moments, she walks away with her prize. The space refilling, appears the same, bridging the gap between longing and getting, and thus forever changed. This is a movement from within, to without. Fig. 7. Francesca Woodman, Then at one point I did not need to translate the notes; they went directly to my hands. The hands stretched out on the wall; create gaps, as the body attempts to submerge. Drowning is always an option. Fig. 8. Francesca Woodman, Untitled. Turning in circles, but losing sight of what’s spinning in reality – the body, or the space; differences ceasing to matter within the attempts to disappear – space becoming the body, the body moving towards becoming space. At the closing, the flares disappearing beyond the horizon of appearances – of contrasts – leave images lasting but a fraction as long as the flares themselves, thriving on the contrast created between light, and the darkness; the foreground, and its background; bodies, and space. The image fades, while these words continue to unfold (here in this moment) – recording space within memory. Memory is a space. ————- Images: Almeida, Helena. Screen Inhabited. 1976. Photograph. Private collection. Voar. Perf. Helena Almeida. Galeria Helga Avelar, Madrid. 2001. Performance. Kern, Geof. Midtown Exit. 1991. Photograph. Private collection. _________ Untitled (man leap-frogging over another man). 1999. Photograph. Private collection. Rinke, Klaus. Time-Space-Body and Action. 1972. Photograph. Gallery L’Attico, Rome __________ Vertical. 1972. Photograph. Private collection. Woodman, Francesca. Untitled. 1976. Photograph. Private collection. __________________ Then at one point I did not need to translate the notes; they went directly to my hands. 1976. Photograph. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California. —————— Ronojoy Sircar is in the MPhil programme in English at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
The Afterlife of a Certain Body
Srirupa Prasad The news of Ajmal Kasab’s execution was sudden. Like everyone, I too was stunned. Despite my being aware of the obvious. But what disturbed me deeply was the affective spectacle that was created by mainstream media—the news bites, images, and words. It was to make the most of the first big opportunity of a ‘terrorist’ being brought to justice. The Indian public had to be made aware that Kasab had finally paid his dues. The cheer and jeer following his death were creepy and unsettling, be it in the newspaper images or fervent posts on Facebook. Here was a nation all fired up and ready to let the world know that terrorists deserve death, because with death comes closure. There have been a few thoughtful and stirring pieces questioning this burst of collective celebration of Kasab’s death. But they were just a handful. I wondered what it was all about. Where did such passionate hatred and jubilation come from that made rejoicing someone’s death in the most public way (even when he has committed the most heinous crime) kosher and almost a moral necessity that day? While Kasab’s body remained ‘unclaimed’, for the Indian media this heightened moment had to be ‘claimed’ and made into a throbbing, emotional drama. I tried to make sense of this sad and brutal ‘claiming’ of Kasab’s body by the mainstream Indian media. After all, such triumphant celebration is not an uncommon phenomenon, thanks to present-day global media. But there was something distinct about the urgency with which mainstream Indian media tried to exact Kasab’s body. It seems India is finally mastering the language of a hyper-vigilante counter-terrorism and moral guardianship that accompanies it. Like the United States, it has ably moved into this role as the nation’s defender against a new kind of enemy. An enemy who is at once highly mobile and multiple- an organization of global reach or a rogue state. The enemy is also highly strategic and frightfully well-organized. So nations like the U.S. and India are on the path of a ‘global’ war on terrorism. Strikingly similar are some of the rites of passage that allow nations to become part of this consortium of “the willing”. For example, anniversaries of terrorist attacks are claiming and attaining a sacral, diurnal dimension: days to be memorialized. Likewise, old-new words/phrases are turning into motifs, becoming part of our everyday consciousness and public discourse: from ‘terrorist’, ‘jihadist’ to phrases like ‘nation under threat’. While counter-terrorism experts would shudder at the thought of these highly charged words being used loosely, for the public there is an overarching moral clarity that effortlessly fuses these differences to create this visceral condemnation for the enemy. The nature of the passionate jubilation that took place after Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab’s was hanged, took me by surprise as much as the suddenness with which his execution was announced. Nobody had the faintest idea that this ‘lone gunman’ would be executed so hastily within two weeks of President Pranab Mukherjee’s rejection of Kasab’s clemency plea. But such a triumphant commemoration usually concludes such dramas of modern statehood. What I was really not prepared for was the gradual unfolding of it in the mainstream media and its changing colors and mood as more information filtered in. I guess for the media too it was a bombshell. The first news bite was short and to the point and Hindustan Times reported it in a big bold letters but without any other frills. But then within a very short time almost all the major national dailies just burst with energy as if trying to win a race of who could cover Kasab’s death in the most macabre way. There was a surge of photographs of people rejoicing the moment in all possible ways. Policemen, politicians, and the aam janta, not to mention the kin of the victims’ distributed sweets, burnt effigies of Kasab and speeches were made. Emotions flowed while the nation won a major victory in the war on terror. What was really disconcerting was not so much the deafening celebration of Kasab’s death by the public and the media. There was similar rejoice when Saddam Hussein was put to death or Osama Bin Laden was killed. And of course mainstream media in the U.S. was similarly sensational in its reporting of both. But there is a difference. While there was a scramble over how much detail each cable channel could deliver for the hungry public, be it in the case of either Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, I felt there was something curiously distinct about the way in which the Indian media covered Ajmal Kasab’s execution. To my mind that had to do with the fact that after four years, the killing spree of Kasab and the terror he unleashed had shrunk into the figure of this ‘lone gunman’ who remained isolated and powerless in an Indian prison. There was almost a ‘need’ for the mainstream press to re-visit and re-create every part of that entire saga, from the ‘26/11 attack’ to Kasab’s petition for mercy and finally its rejection. Kasab was no Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden for that matter, in his stature as a perpetrator of terror and violence. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and Osama Bin Laden evil personified. At one point Hindustan Times even used the word ‘butcher’ to describe Kasab’s crime. There was definitely a need to re-create a Kasab who was a heartless killer. A second reason I presume has to do with the peculiar nature of capital punishment in India. Retaining capital punishment is based on a rather fanciful and inconsistent justification that it is used on ‘rarest of rare’ occasions. But Shivam Vij argues on the basis of a report published by PUCL and Amnesty International (an extensive study of judgments between 1950-2008) that there is a marked degree of arbitrariness to the extent that it amounts to a “lethal lottery”. With very few legal safeguards, there is