That Tree is a Myth
Pranabendu Dasgupta Charred Wood piece Whose stench do you carry along, charred wood piece? Is it my body of that prior birth that gutted my Hindu motherland? Am I not still alive in this birth—wherefore this smokescreen? I am not dead, charred wood piece, no? Not yet vamoosed in human suspicion-bile? See how I can feel love, still I do. Still I can sprint straight onto that gaping field there Ah, smouldering wood piece dear, why often do you reek so downright stark? ………. Yo-Yo Now at hand, now shifting Faith, funds, libido, politics Quite secure strings on my palm, fingertips But strange now hops, skips apace Now at hand. Eludes again. Thus things go on. Suppose I fail to stick with the tension Every shred falls off then. Strings entangle: all these fun stuff Goes haywire, what are mine Faith, funds, libido, politics. ………. Relationships Do not quite feel like going anywhere these days Resentment, humiliation, jealousy, disregard Who do I turn to? 15 years past that buddy who would give away his soul Freely, in daily restaurant sessions Now thinks nothing save writing novels Novels? So famous everyone, hectic Have turned into ants for vocation—all No, do not quite feel like going anywhere these days. But sometimes, from that double-decker bus I spy Young things, brightly dressed, walking past the plaza Laughter, pure animation, exchanging lightning glances—love and kill (as if a sprightly stream dashes past two stilly hills) I wish I could get down to the road and announce: “Listen, I do not know any one of you, still how so much I love you from afar Would you care to take me with you for a while?” ………. The Tree All of them ganged up to hack down that tree Once, twice, a third time…countless Hew after hew, slash next slash Now peeling off, grazing the crust The birds nesting inside, scampered off to the sky The whole forest resounded with those thumping hatchets But after chopping for the whole day When the tree unmoved stood its ground Exasperated they said: The tree actually isn’t there, you know The whole thing about the tree is a myth. ………. Mute Textile Plant Unspeaking textile plant, how long will this go on? So much work is left undone, fabric amassed Dumped beneath your feet Will you not match thread to thread, sketch patterns once again? Have you thought about how many remain exposed, bare If you do not clothe them? Unless you deliver designs, no floral blouse on our pretty maid. These broken, hushed pieces of fabric. Ah, meaningless, garbage all otherwise. Unspeaking textile plant, like a teleprinter speak up now Like a gushing spring, surge yourself into work. Pranabendu Dasgupta died in 2007. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Letter to H.B.N. Shetty
5, Residency Bungalow Camp Baroda Date: 7 July 1972 Shri H. B. N. Shetty Director of Industries and Commerce Chepauk Madras Dear Shri Shetty I have Mr. G. N. Raghavan’s letter No. 162821/HCA3/69 dated 20 February 1972 referring to a proposal to upgrade the sculpture-training centre at Mahabalipuram into a College of Traditional Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. I am sorry I have taken a long time to give you my opinion and that you had to send me a reminder. I have, unfortunately, been either heavily preoccupied or indisposed, by turns, in the last few months and so could not give the proposal the attention it deserved. To have an institution to teach traditional arts inclusive of sculpture and architecture is a commendable idea. When the traditional social and economic structure that sustained these arts is breaking down and is unable to support the old craft-apprentice system, this is the only alternative to extend their life. But the structure of such an institution needs mature consideration; to give new life to these arts as I shall explain later, we need a special kind of institution. We are not the first to discover the present plight of traditional arts. More than a century ago, when Jamshedji Jeejibhoy visualized an art school in Bombay (and made a handsome endowment towards its institution) or Mr. Hunter thought of an art institution in Madras, they were acutely aware of this predicament and the institutions they planned had the sustenance and strengthening of the traditional arts as their avowed objective. But it is common knowledge today that these institutions did not shape up as they wanted; in the way they grew, they kept only the most cursory contact with the traditional arts, and more often than not, worked counter-purpose to them. This was certainly not due to lack of wisdom or goodwill on the part of the early planners nor due to their ignorance of the problem, but, rather, due to the special characteristics of the new society and the institutions it threw up. The new educational institutions (for us, those teaching art) catered, on the one hand, to the needs and tastes of the new society (in art, the demand for engravers, photographers, portraitists, monumental sculptors, graphic artists and the like) and, on the other, evolved a discipline that would equip a practitioner to meet the growing needs of a growing society, broad and general, with an elastic standard of excellence, not pointed and definite as in the traditional arts, whose purposes and methods were more specific. (For instance, it would be easier for one to assess the performance of a traditional art trainee—his terms being small and specific—than that of his modern counterpart in an art school.) But no modern academic institution can escape this tendency towards generalization if only for the fact that its graduates are unsure of the employment situation they are finally going into. So, though I deplore the fact that our present colleges of art do not have a living contact with traditional arts (much to the detriment of both), I am afraid the setting up of ‘colleges’ of traditional arts will not save the situation either. It could be argued that the employment situation that these craft trainees are going into is not so indefinite as I think, the threads of traditional culture still persist in our changing society, that people are still god-fearing and pious and need temples, viharas, ritual chariots and like, if only on a smaller scale. It could also be said, with great justification, that the artists and architects of new schools are unable to meet this need (and, if we can judge by the renovations of the gopurams of the Kapaliswara temple in Mylapore and the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, are incompetent and tasteless besides.) But to think of a ‘college’ and destroy its special character—it will turn out graduates like the other colleges do, 30 to 40 every year, who may not find enough work of the kind they are trained for and perhaps end up as petty modellers in museum workshops or in workshops of curio-fakers—a most unattractive prospect. And if, eventually, more of its graduates go into these latter employments, it will adjust its teaching programme to meet this end. It will, in short, share the fate of the Ayurvedic colleges; intended though it may be to sustain and preserve the purity of the traditional arts, it will only result in hybridizing them and watering them down. This is not to be construed as my being against the setting up of an institution to teach traditional arts and professional status similar to that of a college. Far from it. My opinion is: an independent institution to teach traditional arts, if it is to be effective, has to be visualized on different lines from a normal college. To outline it briefly: —it should start as a master-craftsmen’s guild, preferably state-supported with enough professional work on hand; —its educational functions should be related to productive functions; —it should be restrictive in its student intake; —it should keep the master craftsman-apprentice relationship intact in its teaching system; —it should implement a course of the ‘conservatorial’ type (not the time-bound college type), sending out a practitioner with a professional certificate only when he has a high degree of competence and independence, in both theory and practice; —it should be centred around a research department that probes into the rationale of the traditional arts, comparing their various iconographical divisions (as the present day stapathis, for all the hoary texts they hold on to, will be practitioners in the Nayak or the Vijaynagar manners, and the education of the apprentices should cover a larger spectrum of the traditional arts and present each form in its contextual propriety); —it should have an area of environmental study (for a piece of sculpture or architecture does not become great by its iconographical precision but by its subtle responsiveness to the environment, both in design and visual content). Then
Reflections on “Being Queer” in Kolkata
Niharika Banerjea “To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love in particular, in India today is simultaneously an act of political assertion, of celebration, of defiance and of fear” (Narrain and Bhan 2005, 2). Recent work exploring same-sex experiences in India emphasizes that lesbian and feminist causes must work together to respond to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. This position raises several issues, among which the tenuous nature of same-sex experiences and the ongoing need seek a collective, critical community are abiding concerns. There is little published writing around queer middle-class women from India that takes reflexivity seriously as a method. Therefore my short essay takes the form of a series of self-reflective fragments that illustratethose moments of communitythat I experienced with women who self-identify as ‘samakami’. ‘Samakami’ is a Bengali term meaning same-sex desiring person. Rather than conceiving of community as a monolithic empirical unit of analysis “as points of arrival for our research agendas” (Green 2002, 521), I approach the term as emerging within the lived context of my interaction with same-sex desiring women in Kolkata. Kolkata The sights and sounds of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass-the main thoroughfare in the city-on a June morning in 2009 does indeed have clarity. As the taxi speeds down the road, the dense summer air envelopes the weather beaten and the freshly painted residential apartments, the one manned retail store, the mall and gently pushes the masses of people – sweaty, crisply dressed, – onto their daily destinations. The public transportation is once again so conspicuous by its packed compartments. The newly designed buses are a reminder of economic liberalization, of hope for a once dying city and fear for its future. In this tropical city there is indeed an air of expectancy. Kolkata today is the juxtaposition of a pre and post liberalized economy, in its physical structure as well as social fabric. For someone like me whose personal history is entangled with the city’s pre and post liberalization history, it may be rather difficult to recognize all the signs of degradation and rejuvenation. But one change is unmistakable. There is an air of affluence in the place and a pride about the affluence. It shows itself in a plethora of various types of cars on the roads, of new buildings, restaurants, and the neighborhood stores packed with goods meant for personal grooming and household improvement-previously unavailable to the inhabitants of this place and the nation. The happy middle-class heterosexual couples staring down from the billboards are the new drivers of this economy. In a largely Hindu nation where the ideal “Hindu-nationalist citizen-body rests on the exclusion of Others who embody, albeit differentially, improper gendering, sexuality, and nationalization” (Bacchetta 1999: 151), what meaning does community hold for same-sex desiring women in the city? I cannot take Kolkata for granted. The city is too complex, too dense to be entirely familiar. Then again the tenuous nature of same-sex relationships (Vanita and Kidwai 2001) makes it hard to imagine a gay space in the city, unlike many cities in the global north. Thus, I am not in search for an enclave, but for a meaningful community at the very heart of the city. Academy of Fine Arts 2nd July 2009. A large group of people outside the Academy complex, the cultural hub of Kolkata, carrying various banners and posters celebrating the de-criminalization of homosexuality in India. Something changed that day. The High Court of Delhi ruled that the provision in Section 377 of India’s Penal Code that criminalises private consensual sex between same-sex adults violates the country’s Constitution and international human rights conventions. A group of people long considered a moral hazard and previously deemed shameful in public discourse was on its way to become an object of public discussion about human rights in the world’s largest democracy. Was this that moment where same-sex desiring people could officially reach out to the contemporary Indian public without discrimination or was it just the beginning of a new phase in the struggle to de-stigmatize same-sex relationships in the nation? The gathering at the Academy was an appeal to community, or rather the promise of a community that refuses to remain non-existent within the folds of the city, loving, laughing and seeking to change the norms of social interaction right at its heart. This collective was not a fiction, but a reality that with all its territoriality and face-to-face interaction became a site for political re-imagining. But many of us were careful not to conceive of it as an essential foundation. For those who do not live their sexuality as a fixed form of identity, community as a foundational entity is meaningless. The appeal to community therefore was an appeal for living with difference. Living with difference is “another way of thinking how it is that ‘the more than oneness’ of sociality requires new ways of living” (Ahmed and Fortier 2003: 256). Sappho Sappho is part of a long history of same-sex, particularly, lesbian activism in India. It formed in 1999 to claim recognition for lesbians in Kolkata.The first floor of a two-storied modest house in a middle-class neighborhoodin southeast Kolkata serves as its office. This location had indeed surprised me the first day I visited it. As the taxi slowly but surely made its last turn and stopped short of my destination, I asked myself: “how has Sappho managed to survive in this neighborhood for such a long time”? The taxi could not enter the small by-lane, so I got down and walked the last few minutes. There were no signs to indicate the presence of the organization. Was it possible to exist in a modest middle class neighborhood such as this? Didn’t the neighbors say or ask anything? What did the neighbors think that the office was about? The nebulous character of same-sex experiences in the Indian context is well documented (Khanna 2005; Vanita 2001). There is often an absence of explicit words in Indian languages to denote same-sex desires and relationships. Same sex-sexualities are possible
Of Whistling, Chewing & Other Satanic Arts
[HUG reproduces the manifesto of The Society for the Suppression of Public Obscenity in India, an umbrella organization/lobby which sought to transform certain practices of everyday life in India in the late nineteenth century. The Society was formed in 1873. This excerpt is culled from Amrita Bazar Patrika, 8 Kartika 1280, 23 October, 1873, and has been cited in Gautam Bhadra’s 2011 book Neda Beltalaye Jaye Kawbar? ] Proceedings of the Obscene Society 1. All obscene books be suppressed except for those which are old; such books having been written in good old times must have by wear and tear lost much of their offensiveness. 2. All Modern Obscene books be suppressed. The President Raja Kalikrishna having proposed an amendment in favour of Sanskrit Slokas, the sacred garb of which covers all grossness, the amended resolution was carried out. 3. The Agencies and branch associations be established all over the land to see that (a) people live chastely, talk chastely; (b) amorous songs, blandishing smiles, love sighs, twisting of the moustaches, whistling, blackening the teeth, chewing the betel, play on the flute, combing the hair, wearing bordered clothes, looking for young females and other such satanic arts be suppressed; (c) domesticated animals, dogs, goats, pigeons, fowls, ducks in particular, be removed to a distance from human habitations and tended by eunuchs or persons with eyes covered and ears hermetically sealed, castrated animals excepted; (d) those who do not choose to part with their cattle &c, provide them with long coats in the case of male and flowing gowns in the case of female animals, till the mating season arrives when they be removed to animal zenanas; (e) frogs, flies, mosquitoes, lizards and birds in general, except the decent crows and ravens, that call up evil thoughts, in men and women by their obscene habits be destroyed or made His Honor’s short term prisoners. 4. That such words as may possibly give rise to amorous ideas in sensitive mind be forthwith suppressed. As for example, marriage, pregnancy, delivery, kiss, embrace, sex, generations, procreation, womb, heaving breast, luscious cheek, rosy lips, languishing eyes, male, female, he , she, man, woman, wife, husband, love not to speak of a thousand more obscene ones which decency prevents us from mentioning here. 5. That the cultivation of such fruits and flowers as brinjal, bananas, pomegranate, lotus, rose &c, be strictly prohibited in as much as they suggest obscene similies. 6. That since child bearing is a form of obscenity which is very prevalent in this country, government be requested to make some such law as to effectually put down this nasty practice. A member rose and proposed that that those who have been already guilty of giving birth to children serve penance by repentance or giving alms to Brahmins or donation to the Reform Association of India or reciting the names of the Peagumbers seven and seventy times each according to the light of his own shastras. The proposal was carried with deep sighs. 7. That as newly born babies are likely to convey obscene ideas even to the chasted mind, they be destroyed. A member reminded the society that there is a law prohibiting infanticide, whereupon it was resolved that Government be petitioned to repeal the law. 8. That men and women must not assemble together and go on pilgrimages or attend religious festivals. Exception: they might eat together or talk and amuse with one another provided they do so in good faith and are not Hindoos. 9. That dancing and use of thin clothes by females be strictly prohibited. Exceptions: Palka and quadrille dancing and other such dancings which amuse Europeans; ball dresses summer evening dresses &c. 10. That obscene publication in newspapers be prohibited. Such extracts in quasi religious newspapers as, “As extraordinary charge against a lady” (vide Indian Mirror, 3 Sept. 1873), “The first lady barrister’ (vide the same 9th Sept. 1873), “Influence of kisses’ (vide the same Oct 1, 1873), “Lady and her page’ (vide the same Oct. 9, 1873,) police cases involving rape &c, are excepted. 11. Proposed by Baboo Keshub Chandra Sen and seconded by Dr. Smith that the society should avoid fuss of every kind, that copies of resolutions be circulated throughout India, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America, and that impressive and eloquent lectures strongly condemning obscenity in every shape be delivered in India and England by persons able and willing to do so. (For details, refer to “The Society for the Suppression of Public Obscenity in India”, Alok Ray ed. Society in Dilemma, Nineteenth Century India, Riddhi: Calcutta, 1979; Robert Darnton “Literary Surveillance in the British Raj, Book History, 2001.) adminhumanitiesunderground.org