Abstract
Analysis of the
Indian response to Deepa Mehta's Fire and the centrality of woman and
the heterosexual family in the national imaginary.
Keywords
Indian cinema,
Deepa Mehta, Fire, nationalism, lesbian representations, feminist media
studies, postcolonial theory, transnational studies, reception theory.
Title
Inflamed Passions: Fire, the Woman
Question, and the Policing of Cultural Borders
Author's Name
Sujata Moorti
Text of Essay
(1) Contemporary discussions of globalization
and the transnational circulation of cultural products are often marked by
celebratory exhortations of the imminent global village or by less optimistic
perspectives that present the Third World as beleaguered and besieged. Countering these perspectives, through an
examination of media commentary on the Canadian-Indian film Fire this
essay underscores the difficulties involved in transporting meaning across
cultural borders. Even as cross-border
flows have facilitated the movement of media products, I argue that
understandings of cultural artifacts are embedded in specific places and
locations. Examining Indian press
coverage of Fire I contend that the director's (authorial) intention to
draw attention to the oppressive conditions of Indian women's lives was
subverted by nationalist modes of thinking developed during colonialism, which
informed the most visible reaction to the film.
(2) The essay foregrounds the specific ways
in which discourses of sexuality are conjugated within local sites of
reception. For instance, the New York
Times' film critic dismissed Fire's narrative for espousing an
anachronistic seventies style feminism, while in India the movie was viewed as
a Trojan horse for radical Western feminism (Van Gelder, C16). These thumbnail
sketches summarize the argument I forward in this essay: the ways in which we
understand cultural products are deeply rooted in the historical conditions
that mark the locus of spectatorship and are not free-floating. Meanings are anchored to the site of reading
and I argue that global products are read still in the vernacular. Media responses to the film elucidate the
specific ways in which cultures of viewing are shaped by historical, economic,
and political processes that reiterate age-old ways of seeing which go against
the grain of globalization. This essay
highlights the need to examine the attenuated links between the moments of
production and consumption in the transnational flow of cultural products. Rather than facilitate the feeling of a
transcendent global village such cross-border traffic instead reifies
nation-specific modes of viewing, even as they hint at the possibility of
loosening the hyphen linking the nation-state.
(3) Several scholars have presented the
global-local relationship as a sharply oppositional one. For instance, editing a special edition of boundary
2 on globalization Arif Dirlik and Rob Wilson declare that "the global
deforms and molests the local" (8).
In this evocative sentence, the editors present the global as a stooge
for a malevolent transnational capitalism while the local or Third World is the
site of agency and resistance, the last bastion against global capital. Eschewing such a polarized vision I
illustrate through an examination of the responses to Fire that both the
terms global and local are conjunctural; their meanings are specific to the
site of enunciation and cannot be conceived as universal categories. Following Arjun Appadurai's caution this
paper rejects a static model of homogenization or resistance and instead uses
an interaction-based analysis, one that recognizes the traffic in ideas of
peoplehood and selfhood. Dirlik and
Wilson's formulation of the local as the site of agency and resistance begs
also the question, for whom? As this
essay illustrates local resistance to the global is manifested in a series of
practices that invoke religion to regulate women; control over female bodies
becomes a crucial strategy for rejecting the global. Issues pertaining to female identity,
sexuality and social location are repeatedly reworked in the context of global
flows. The female body, as my analysis
reveals, becomes a central site where discourses of power and regulation come
to bear.
(4) Viewing the film's reception through
newspaper reports and commentaries in this essay I explore the historically
conditioned contexts within which discourses of nation are produced,
circulated, and consumed. While I reveal
the generic conventions within which Fire's narrative operates,
specifically that of Bollywood cinema, the paper focuses on the social relations
and global flows that shape its viewing. (Mainstream Hindi movies are referred
to derogatorily as Bollywood products, the Indian version of Hollywood.) I point out the specific ways in which the
"local" frames understandings of both the global and the local. I scrutinize coverage in Indian national
newspapers such as the Hindu, the Hindustan Times, and the Deccan
Herald, and newsmagazines such as India Today and Outlook. These materials are accessible on the
internet and I obtained my primary data from the websites each of these
organizations maintains. While this
issue was covered extensively in the various regional language presses, I have
focused on English-language materials since these were most easily available in
the U.S.
A Fiery Reception
(5) In December 1998, a small group of
protesters halted the screening of the movie Fire in two Bombay
theatres. The following day a similar
group attacked a theatre in New Delhi.
In both cities, the protesters were primarily women affiliated with the
Shiv Sena, a Hindu fundamentalist organization with roots in the city of
Bombay. (In referring to Indian cities,
throughout this paper I have used older, more familiar names rather than the
revised names, such as Mumbai, which may be unfamiliar to U.S. readers.) They wore saffron-colored scarves to mark
their religious affiliation, bought tickets to the screening and once inside
the hall burnt posters, destroyed furniture and effectively banned a film that
had gained an audience primarily among women.
The protesters condemned the movie's portrayal of lesbian sexuality
claiming it was alien to Indian culture and an affront to its values. Further, they asserted the movie's storyline
would "spoil women" and lead to the collapse of marriage as an
institution. (The idiomatic phrase spoil
women refers to the corruption of the female psyche through processes of
westernization and modernization which would make her ineligible for the mantle
of Indian femininity.) The protests spread
to other parts of the country where theatre owners withdrew the film rather
than face the wrath of the religious right.
The only exception to this trend was in the city of Calcutta where
viewers shouted out the protesters and forced them to leave cinema halls. These violent responses were countered by
civil rights groups, women's groups and other organizations that rallied in
support of the screening of the film.
The ensuing debate foregrounded the film's representation of women and
sexual desire, the role of cinema in the articulation of a national culture,
and the limits of dissonance and debate within a liberal democratic framework.
(6) Popular opposition to cinematic
representations is not novel nor is it limited to India, but this particular
debate reveals the multiple and contradictory ways in which gender, sexuality
and religion intersect to produce discourses of national identity. Made by Indian-born Canadian director Deepa
Mehta the film's reception in India and other countries with sizable populations
of Indian origin reveals as well the imbrication of gender in local resistances
to the effects of globalization. (In
Singapore and Kenya, residents of Indian-origin were successful in banning Fire.) The film and its representations of women
became repositories for the anxieties accompanying economic and social
transformations enabled by the global flows of labor and capital.
(7) Newspapers and newsmagazines devoted a
lot of space to the controversy surrounding Fire. While the majority of the news articles and
journalistic accounts focused on the protests conducted against the film, the
opinion pieces and editorial columns tended to espouse support for it. The multivalent reception of Fire in
India is most usefully seen as an arena wherein a number of discourses around
femininity, sexuality and modern nationalism intersect and feed on each
other. The various articles and
commentaries presented radically polarized understandings of the function of
cinema and of Fire's representations of middle-class Indian women. These responses can be understood only in the
context of the difficult shifts and uneasy negotiations that mark the
construction of modern India; the different valences accorded to gender,
sexuality and religion in competing definitions of Indianness. Above all, they expose the centrality of the
female figure in imaginings of the Indian nation. Sorting through these divergent responses
helps us understand the ideological investments that have accumulated around
the articulation of the female subject and the location of sexuality in
discourses of Indian identity, and, in general, discussions of
nationalism. An analysis of the
para-texts surrounding Fire reveals as well the irritated position
diasporic cinema occupies in definitions of national identity or national
culture.
(8) The controversy over Fire occurred
at a historical moment when Indian woman was being reconstituted as a diacritic
of Hindu nationalism, a specific religious nationalism. When the Hindu fundamentalist party, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), took over the national government its members
attempted to resituate women within the structures of the patriarchal
family. At the same time, politicians
sought to institute an affirmative action program that would ensure women
comprised at least a third of elected officials at all levels of
representation. On first glance these
appear to be contradictory gestures, but, in fact, they permit the Hindu
parties to present a "modern" face and simultaneously lay claim to
being the guardian of tradition. As in
the nationalist movement of the early twentieth century protesting British
colonial rule, in the political arena enabled by the rise of religious
fundamentalism woman has emerged once again as a contested symbol central to
the articulation of Indian identity (see Chatterjee; Vaid and Sangari). The policing and containment of female
sexuality have become central elements in these imaginations of nation and
national identity. Through an
examination of the various debates that exploded around the screening of Fire
I explore the manner in which homosexuality and women's assertion of sexual
desire come to signify the endangered purity of the Indian nation. Although I have singled out this instance for
analysis, within India, the social construction of gender and compulsory
heterosexuality occur quietly at quotidian sites where politics and religion
intersect.
(9) Akhil Gupta has theorized that newspaper
reports are a discursive form through which daily life is narrativized and
collectivities imagined. I examine
English-language newspapers and news magazines as constituting a "zone of
public debate" in which journalists, politicians, women activists and
community leaders formulated specific discourses about homosexuality, gender,
community and nation. The print media
challenged and reinforced emergent cultural and political perceptions of a
global threat to Indian social structures.
The perspectives presented reveal crucial questions about national
identity, who belongs, who does not belong, and what characteristics are
considered indigenous and which ones alien.
In what follows I first describe the film and some of the play it makes
with notions of femininity and tradition.
Through an examination of newspaper and print media reports I then
describe the rhetorical tropes and representational strategies adopted by those
who protested against and those who supported the screening of the film. I unravel the politics engendered by their
arguments, their conceptions of the Indian state, and their incorporation of a
specific brand of woman within the body politic. I juxtapose these commentaries against the
silences that invariably accompany the objectification of women that has become
an essential trope of mainstream Indian cinema.
Finally, I point out the spaces made available by the debates presented
in the public sphere of print media and the discourses that were marginalized.
Rewriting Tradition
(10)
Fire is the first part of a trilogy Mehta has
conceived to offer a gendered view of the social transformations effected in
India during the twentieth century. The
second movie in this trilogy is Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking
India, and was released in 1999. It
deals with the partition of the subcontinent following British withdrawal in
1947. Water, the third movie,
travels further back in time to the 1920s and has not been completed at the
time of this writing. The Hindu right
has opposed the shooting of the film in India.
(11)
Fire is about middle class arranged marriages
and the persistence of joint family establishments in cramped urban
apartments. Set in contemporary New
Delhi, its protagonist Radha, played by Shabana Azmi, is married to Ashok. When the story begins the childless couple
has been married for over fifteen years.
Radha runs the family take-out business, she is the primary caregiver of
her stroke-ridden mother-in-law and stoically bears the stigma of her
infertility. She epitomizes the
"traditional" Indian woman, duty bound and subsuming her
individuality to the needs of the family.
Ashok has shifted his attention from his family to his spiritual guru,
attends to him and practices celibacy.
In a move reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi's experiments with celibacy,
Ashok insists that Radha share his bed so he can test his capacity for sexual
restraint.
(12)
Into
this unhappy family enters Sita, the new bride of Ashok's younger brother,
Jatin. It becomes very clear early in
the film that although Jatin has agreed to the arranged marriage with Sita he
is still in love with his Chinese girlfriend.
Jatin abandons his bride for his girlfriend and leaves Sita to negotiate
her position within the joint family set-up.
Sita is the antithesis of Radha; in an interview Mehta describes her as
"modern India, desiring independence over tradition" (Sidhwa,
77). Gradually, the two women, who have
been abandoned by their husbands for different reasons, forge a deep emotional
bond, which evolves into a sexual relationship.
Ashok stumbles upon the two women in bed after he learns of their
relationship from a disgruntled servant.
The movie ends with the two women opting to leave their married home,
but not before Radha chooses to explain her choice to Ashok. While the husband and wife conduct a heated
discussion in the kitchen a fire erupts and Ashok decides to rescue his invalid
mother rather than help Radha, who is caught in the flames. She saves herself and leaves the home to join
her lover, Sita.
(13)
A
winner of fourteen international awards, Fire was first screened in
India in 1997 at two international film festivals. It was hailed by diverse responses; while
some were enraged by its portrayal of lesbian sexuality others praised its
presentation of a woman-centered narrative.
Before its theatrical release in November 1998, Fire was approved
by the Central Board of Film Certification, commonly addressed as the censor
board. (No film can publicly be screened
in India unless it carries a certificate issue by the censor board.) It received an "A" (adults only) certificate;
the Board did not require any cuts but recommended that one of the female protagonist's
name be changed from Sita to Nita. The
original version of the film is in English but in India this was supplemented
with a dubbed Hindi version. With the
name change suggested by the censor board both versions were screened in major
metropolitan cities for three weeks before protesters halted its
screening. Theatre owners averred that
the film ran to full houses and was patronized primarily by young urban women
before they were forced to withdraw it.
Press reports suggest that women's groups in Bombay organized special
women-only screenings to facilitate its viewership among females, since the
average cinema viewer in India is male.
(14)
At
first glance, Fire is a flawed but compelling movie that draws attention
to the oppressive conditions of married women's lives in arranged
marriages. It reveals poignantly the
woman's perspective of being caught between desire and an oppressive
tradition. It delineates the everyday struggles
Indian women face when they try to work within the structures of the joint
family. Mehta's film also captures the
anxieties that accompany the changes occurring in the bourgeois Indian family
as middle class women are interpellated within the flow of a global market
economy. Foregrounding the gendered
processes of modernity, the movie presents middle-class mundane life as both
stifling and marked with possibilities.
(15)
Fire can best be described as a melodrama,
one that turns a horrified gaze on the Indian family. It draws upon popular religious epics to
highlight the specific ways in which "tradition" structures everyday
life. Specifically, the film draws upon
the epic narrative Ramayana.
Although there exist a number of different versions of this narrative,
Mehta references the one that has been popularized in Bollywood cinema and the
eponymous television series. The epic is
about the life of King Rama and the various trials he undergoes before he is
able to rule over his kingdom. Central
to the narrative is the abduction of his wife, Sita, by the King of Lanka,
Ravana, and Rama's successful but harrowing rescue mission. The narrative emphasizes that although Ravana
kidnaps Sita he does not molest her.
When the triumphant couple, Rama and Sita, return to their kingdom some
of the subjects challenge their queen's purity--and consequent worthiness to
remain queen--until she has undergone an ordeal by fire. Rama accedes to his subjects' wishes and Sita
participates in the agnipariksha from which she emerges unscathed,
proving her chastity. The citizenry
however remain skeptical and Rama banishes Sita from his kingdom. In Bollywood, Sita is held up as the ideal of
Indian femininity and the so-called chastity test has been variously deployed
by cinema makers, often uncritically.
(16)
It
is this trial by fire, agnipariksha, that Mehta refers to in Fire. Religion and religious epics function as
heuristic devices through which the concept of tradition is mobilized. At three different moments, twice
theatrically and once performatively, the film draws attention to the chastity
test Indian women are expected to meet.
Indian women are depicted as wholly determined by the weight of an
oppressive tradition; their activities are regulated and policed
constantly. Despite the heavy handed
criticism of tradition and the chastity test, Fire points out that a bad
marriage need no longer be a tragic event for women, the female protagonists
reject the rules of a ritual bound society to seek autonomy. It also foregrounds questions of female
desire outside patriarchal scaffolding.
Through its explicit portrayal of lesbian sexuality the storyline
reveals the underbelly of Indian society and the possibilities available for
agency and the expression of female sexual desire. I use the word lesbian cautiously to indicate
female same sex desire. Evelyn Blackwood
and Saskia Wieringa acknowledge the misrecognition and (western) ethnocentrism
that the use of the term occasions.
"Making lesbian a global category is problematic because it imposes
the Eurocentric term 'lesbian', a term usually used to refer to a fixed sexual
identity, on practices are relationships that may have very different meanings
and expectations in other cultures" (19).
Nevertheless, they suggest its use to signify women's same sex eroticism
as distinctly different from men's and because it inherently demands a
recognition of women's differences. I
use the term lesbian in this essay in the same spirit.
(17)
The
narrative structure of the film elaborates on the thematics of love as a
relation of mutuality which is in conflict with the compulsions of the
institution of arranged marriage.
Overall, Fire offers simplistically sexual expression as the
vehicle of female liberation. Feminist
scholars have long been divided over the deployment of sexuality as a mode of
female agency (e.g., Vance; Valverde).
While some believe that female sexuality can indeed emancipate women
providing them the same freedoms accorded to men in patriarchal society, others
argue that this could in fact further curtail women's bodies. In Fire Mehta presents lesbian desire
as a simple choice exercised by two women rather than as a gesture that has
important consequences on individual lives and social structures. Indeed, rather than contest existing social
structures, the two lovers seek refuge in a Muslim shrine. Fleeing from Hindu patriarchy the two turn to
another religious institution rather than seek out a secular space. It is questionable whether any religious
organization would offer these two women sanctuary, but Mehta opts to present a
rosy, happy-ever-after ending that papers over the social conditions that
render lesbians invisible in India. Her
narrative suggests that lesbian desire can offer women avenues outside
oppressive patriarchal structures.
Cartography of Desire
(18)
The
film replicates narrative strategies that are commonplace in mainstream Indian
cinema and reworks them; its unique features are its explicit portrayal of
lesbian desire and the identity of one of its protagonists, Shabana Azmi, who
plays Radha. I will first address the
narrative features Fire shares with Bollywood cinema and those that set
it apart.
(19)
Sudhir
Kakar points out that in mainstream Indian movies, "family relationships,
their ramifications and consequences are central to the plot" (91). Similarly, the narrative in Fire centers
on the (in)stability of the family.
Through a focus on issues pertaining to the domestic arena and kinship
relations the narrative unravels the crisis within the middle class family and
offers a tenuous resolution. In Hindi
cinema, the figure of the woman is often cast as posing a threat to the unity
of the middle class family, as exemplified in Mother India. In Fire the character of Sita is
presented as introducing alien values which lead to an unresolvable crisis of
the family. It must be noted that the
husbands' behaviors are not cast as disruptive and destabilizing of the family
order, instead they are seen as normal.
According to Chidananda Das Gupta, Bollywood cinema upholds the status
quo, "pray to God, love your parents, live for your husband . . . and
everything will be perfect" (40).
These themes are addressed in Fire only to be cast aside
decisively by its female protagonists.
Rather than uphold the institution of heterosexual marriage the film
configures it as a central site of women's oppression. According to a writer in the English daily
the Hindu, "the loud message that comes through in the film is the
loneliness of women within the institution of marriage, the inequality of
patriarchy that gives men the right to seek their salvation in another woman or
in God and the impotence of men when women decide to take hold of their lives
and look for love, compassion and companionship elsewhere" (Kapur, 26).
(20)
The
conflict of values between tradition and modernity is another well-visited
theme in mainstream cinema. "The
binary modernity/tradition, whether it is employed to indicate conflict or
complementarity, amounts to an explanation, `a conceptual or belief system'
which regulates thinking about the modern Indian social formation. This binary also figures centrally, both
thematically and as an on-going device, in popular film narratives . . . the
explanatory scheme in question functions as a disavowal of modernity"
(Prasad, 7-8). Fire thematizes
this issue as well as revealing the tug of war between family affiliations and
the individual's desire for freedom and independence. However, offering a female point of view of
arranged marriages, it rejects traditional values to embrace the modern concept
of foregrounding the desire of the individual over the well being of the
community.
(21)
Fire's focus on female protagonists and the
presentation of a social problem resonate with characteristics thematized in
alternative Indian cinema. The women may
destabilize the family and the traditional order but they are not presented as
villains. Instead, they are depicted as
heroic for affirming sexual and social relations based on individual
happiness. As I have already pointed out,
in mainstream cinema, the woman has a very clearly delineated role to perform
within a marriage. If for any reason she
deviates from it, she is seen as betraying her biological role and she is
expected to pay the price in humiliation and defeat. Suicide or a conveniently accidental death
has always been the solution for uncomfortable situations involving women. Fire
rejects this plotline and offers a tentative "happy ending." Further, women in mainstream cinema are
seldom depicted as understanding or supporting of each other. While male camaraderie has been celebrated,
women are often depicted as "each others' worst persecutors"
(Vasudev, 103). In Fire not only
do the female protagonists fall in love with each other their relationship from
the beginning is depicted as supportive.
With these themes Mehta joins several Indian women filmmakers, such as
Aparna Sen, who have redrawn the field of the visible by addressing the subject
of the female sexual desire, soliciting the female spectator, and initiating a
dialogue that points toward the articulation of a postcolonial sexual identity
for Indian women.
Scrambling the Old Order
(22)
Fire may develop themes that have already
been explored elsewhere, nevertheless it presents a narrative that transgresses
on many levels. It foregrounds the
economy of female libidinal desire and the limited space for its expression
within the patriarchal structure of arranged marriages. This is constituted through a series of
narrative devices which I discuss below.
(23)
Mehta
has deliberately selected the names of her protagonists as Radha and Sita. In mainstream cinema these names are invoked
to connote wifely chastity and subordination; they refer to a spectrum of
archetypes of ideal femininity in Indian culture. Both names encode numerous cultural values
inscribed in ancient texts and scriptures.
They represent all that is ostensibly pure, chaste, and self-sacrificing
about Indian wives. In particular, Sita
is used to represent the "perfect woman, the perfect wife, acquiescing
unquestioningly to her husband's rejection of her" (Vasudev, 98). The film uses these signifiers to
"transgress nearly every sexual, cultural, and familial norm that
constitutes India as it is imagined" (Kapur, 26). Nevertheless, the presence of these names
reveals the weight of tradition that continues to shape everyday women's lives. Further, in the movie's adaptation of the
trial by fire, it is the figure of Radha rather than Sita who has to undergo
the ordeal, signaling that everywoman in India is expected to conform to this
ideal. This scene underscores the
oppressive nature of arranged marriages.
By allowing the women to emerge unscathed form the fire and consider
options outside of marriage the film overturns the celebration of female
chastity.
(24)
As I
have mentioned already, in a contrived conclusion, Fire ends with the
two lovers seeking refuge in a Muslim shrine.
Its disavowal of the traditional order is decisive but not unique. Previously Azmi has undertaken roles where
she abandons her husband and unhappy marriage only to return to her father's
home. What makes this movie unusual is
its presentation of female sexual desire.
In depicting the topography and vicissitudes of desire the movie offers
female same sex relations as a viable alternative. This is the central target of the various
protests directed at Fire.
(25)
Ironically,
Mehta has repeatedly refused to characterize her film as one about lesbian
sexuality, instead she claims it is about female characters "needing to be
alive." She has asserted before and
after the protests that her film is about desire and control, the choices
people make, and the oppressive nature of religion and cultural traditions in
India. She specifies that the
"lesbian angle" functions only as a "symbol of an extreme
situation" (Sidhwa, 77).
I
really thought this work was about choices.
It also tries to define the place of women in patriarchal society, which
is caught between a seemingly modern and economically thriving existence on the
one hand, and traditional, outdated values on the other hand. There is a real conflict here. The people who zip around in fancy cars and
have access to all that is current find that this lifestyle contradicts age-old
customs, which has fewer takers even within their society, let alone the larger
one . . . Most specifically, I wanted to explore the place of women in Indian
society. It is undoubtedly male
dominated, where a woman is a mother, a daughter, a sister, or a wife, but
never a woman (for herself). (qtd. in Bhaskaran, 10).
(26)
Some
women's organizations in India as well as feminists and gay/lesbian activists
have contested Mehta's disavowal of the queer subject. Not only have they objected to the film's
facile depiction of lesbian sexuality as "an option forced by conjugal
neglect," they point out that Mehta herself coopts the queer subject for
narrative purposes marginalizing the significance of such visibility and
representation. They point out that Fire's
presentation of lesbian identity is not politicized but presented as a
lifestyle choice. In an interview with
the Manchester Guardian, the movie's protagonist, Azmi, has described
the film as significant precisely because of its exploration of lesbian
sexuality. She explains that her initial
reluctance to undertake the role was spurred by the repercussions it could have
on her cinematic career within India.
These issues are marginalized in Mehta's repeated assertions that the
film is not about lesbianism. I discuss
the consequences of this silencing gesture later.
(27)
In
addition to its exploration of female sexual desire Azmi's presence in the film
was a contributory factor to the virulent attacks. Azmi is currently one of twelve members
nominated to the upper-house of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha. She was selected for her contributions to
Indian cinema, the arts and her activism on behalf of Bombay's slum
dwellers. She has acted in over 110
films, including nine international projects.
During her 25-year career Azmi has emerged as an actor who is
representative of the changing image of the heroine on the Indian screen. She has acted in both commercial and
alternative cinema and is associated with portraying a woman's point of
view. Outside films, she has worked in
regional theatre companies and participated in hunger strikes to facilitate
better living conditions for Bombay's slum dwellers. The BBC refers to her as the Vanessa Redgrave
of India, an intelligent, articulate actor-activist. Her image on-screen and off-screen has
increasingly become that of a person who transgresses female gender norms and
has yet gained social and political power.
Above all, she is a Muslim and this feature came in for particular
criticism during the protests. Opposers
of the film sought her ouster from Parliament claiming that she had besmirched
the dignity of Indian women.
Specifically, they attributed her Muslim identity to her participation
in this "insult to Indian women."
In these attacks, Indian identity was conflated with Hindu identity
eliding the multiplicity of religions that comprise the population. Further, Muslims were specifically cast as
un-Indian and as marking the limit point of Indian female identity.
The Whole World is Watching
(28)
It
is important to note that the movie did not ignite spontaneous opposition when
it was screened in India. That the first
protests were aired only three weeks after its release is significant. It indicates that the opposition to the movie
was orchestrated to mobilize a political constituency. In both Bombay and New Delhi protesters
informed news media of their intentions and waited until the arrival of
television camera crew before vandalizing the theatres, several media
columnists have pointed out. Although
the protesters may have sought media attention they did not define their
arguments against the movie very coherently.
(29)
Initially
the protesters focused on Fire's depiction of female sexual desire and
women's exercise of choice. They
asserted that these portrayals would "spoil women" by introducing
them to ideas alien to Indian culture.
For instance, Meena Kulkarni, the leader of the protesters in Bombay,
claimed that the "majority of women in our society do not even know about
lesbianism. Why expose them to
it?" Similarly, a BJP leader
stated, "Any rational being will concede that homosexuality is unnatural .
. . all this is part of the current trend for `modernisation,' `globalisation,'
and `emancipation'." This
presentation of homosexuality as a western phenomenon is not isolated to
India. The ex-presidents of Malaysia,
Singapore and Indonesia have asserted that their countries are characterized by
"Asian" values, in which the patriarchal (heterosexual) family and
state have priority over individual rights (Blackwood and Wieringa, 27). In the Fire debate protesters
collapsed arguments supporting the institution of the heterosexual family with
the continued well being of the nation state.
In a hyperbolic statement Kulkarni asserted that "If women's
physical needs get fulfilled through lesbian acts, the institution of marriage
will collapse, reproduction of human beings will collapse." And, by extension, so would India. These declarations reveal the central role
assigned to women in conceptions of the Indian state; they are reduced to their
biological function of reproducers of the nation. (The religious right has been persistent in
its opposition to "lesbianism."
For instance, condemning the 1985 Nairobi women's conference the BJP
women's wing asserted that the "demand for legal sanction of lesbianism is
too vulgar and irrelevant in the Indian context" (Kapur and Cossman,
110).) Underlying these statements is the
religious right's anxiety that the majority Hindu population will be
over-ridden by the minority non-Hindu populations. It is significant that women are mobilized to
shore up the patriarchal family and to reassert male control over female
sexuality. The religious right's
arguments suggest that women's subjugation to male authority is an
"Indian" trait that should not be abandoned. Homosexuality, particularly lesbianism, was
presented as foreign and unpatriotic.
Whereas Fire positions arranged marriage as an inimical site for
women and offers the arena outside the middle-class home as a safe space,
protesters reclaimed the family and the home as safe spaces and through their
actions cast the public arena as dangerous for women. Paradoxically, the women of the religious
right took to the streets to assert the sanctity and validity of the
patriarchal family.
(30)
In
the days after the protests, people who opposed the film developed a broader
base for their objections, primarily by raising the issue of western imperialism. They argued that the protesters were
responding to a public outcry against moral degeneration and the "growing
influence of western culture."
Everything that is considered objectionable in society was labeled
western and antithetical to indigenous culture.
Mehta's status as a Canadian resident and the film's disavowal of
traditional norms were used to mark the product as western. Implicitly, "Indian culture" was
evoked as a sign of resistance to the hegemonic ambitions of the West, which under
the guise of globalism is invading and polluting the Indian middle-class
mind. These statements collapse the
differences that comprise India into a unitary "Indian" culture that
must be defended from the incursions of the West. As Ashis Nandy points out, in these
discourses the West is an ideological construct and does not refer to a
geographical or temporal entity; it signifies a psychological, economic and
cultural category. This opposition to
the West has been codified in mainstream Indian cinema very crudely. According to Rosie Thomas, a chaste and
pristine India is constructed routinely by opposing it to a decadent,
licentious and immoral West, with the film's villains sporting invariably a
cluster of signifiers of `westernization': whiskey bottles, bikini-clad
escorts, or foreign limousines.
(31)
The
protesters opposed Fire because it does not offer the West as Other, but
presents Indian tradition as the object of its horrified gaze. The movie's condemnation of tradition allowed
the protesters to cast Mehta and Fire as representative of the
West. The anti-Western arguments
promulgated by the protesters underscore the anxieties that have coalesced
around the economic and cultural transformations that have occurred as India
has engaged more actively in global trade.
Women, particularly middle-class women, are no longer isolated to the
domestic arena, they are participating actively in the public arena of paid
labor and have felt the effects of Structural Adjustment Programs. Nevertheless, the protests against Fire
are not primarily about women "but about what constitutes authentic
cultural tradition" (Mani, 118).
Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger in The Invention of Tradition
demonstrate brilliantly that traditions which appear ancient are of quite
recent origin. They are invented through
a "set of practices, of a ritual or symbolic nature which seek to
inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition which
automatically implies continuity with a suitable historic past" (10). The Hindu right's invocation of tradition in
their protests refers to a seemingly stable constellation of ideas and images
that refer to a golden age of Hinduism.
The unquestioned acceptance of these rituals and symbols as tradition
indicates the resonance these ideas have gained with the middle class. In the decade since the rise of the BJP, the
Hindu right has consolidated this concept of tradition and successfully
mobilized a constituency around it.
Significantly, woman was the flashpoint around which the specter of an
endangered nation is raised and consolidated.
The Hindu nationalism advocated by the religious right as an antidote to
globalization configured an imagined community that is restricted to a section
of the populace; adherence to its "Hindu" gender codes becomes a
necessary criterion for citizenship.
(32)
The
objections to Fire's "vulgar and obscene" portrayal of women
and the incursion of western values are reminiscent of themes developed during
the nationalist struggle against British colonial rule. During the nineteenth century, the British
focused on patriarchal practices that oppressed Indian women. In Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's felicitous
phrase, white men justified imperialism as an attempt to rescue brown women
from brown men. In response, Indian
nationalists suggested a series of legal reforms even as they pointed out that
the practices singled out by the British for opprobrium, such as child marriage
and widow immolation, were extreme aspects of Brahmanical patriarchy (the realm
of Indian élites). Indian nationalists
argued that Hinduism was not oppressive to women, rather by turning to a golden
past they could counter that it indeed provided empowering spaces for women. In the debates over Fire we see once
again woman presented as the signifier of a pure, authentic India and the
repository of cultural values; she is the site of past freedom and future
nationhood. She has to be shored against
threats from evil forces, of internal and external origins. This perceived threat explains the anxieties
expressed by the protesters; if Indian women were contaminated by non-Hindu
ideas they would become reluctant to fulfill their traditional duties of wife
and mother. In the rhetoric of the religious right pleasure, desire, and rights
are aligned together as the other of motherhood and tradition.
(33)
The
tropes deployed by the religious right and the narrative function of woman in
these discourses seem to share similarities with colonial arguments, but in
other respects they are radically different.
During colonialism the binary opposition between tradition and modernity
functioned to justify western intervention.
In colonial discourses modernity was a trope signifying the West,
progress, civilization and democracy.
Tradition was the other, an exoticized culture bearing the burden of
repressive practices. In the opposition
to Fire I have enumerated the religious right reverse the terms of these
familiar discourses to justify local resistance to globalization. Now, tradition is invoked to signify civilization
and morality while the West is associated with an oppressive culture. These discourses highlight the politics of
enunciation (Grewal and Kaplan, 5-11).
Global flows are characterized here as a one-way process, with India
being inundated by a behemoth, ill defined West. The "isolationist" policy
encapsulated in the protests reflects the religious right's fears that India's
national and cultural borders are porous.
The religious right casts the Hindu population as being under siege from
within and without (Basu, 104-24).
(34)
Based
on the objections raised by the protesters the national government resubmitted
the film to the Central Board of Film Certification for reappraisal. At this time the arguments made against Fire
shifted dramatically. Where once
protesters objected to its presentation of alien values, the grounds for
objection shifted to the terrain of religion.
Now the religious right asserted that the film could be screened if the
female protagonists' names were altered to reflect a Muslim identity (Shabana
and Saira). The debate about
homosexuality and its location within India were marginalized to focus on
religion; protesters now pointed out that the film was an affront to
"Hindu" values. The film's use
of the names Radha and Sita had offended the religious sentiments of
Indians. These arguments which
emphasized religious affiliation articulated a national identity where only
Hindus were recognized. They made clear
the religious codes embedded in imaginings of the Indian nation: who is Indian,
who can represent India and the role of religion in the secular national
project. As Zakia Pathak and Saswati
Sengupta point out, "Hinduism is not a religion with a founder or
ecclesiastical organization with sects . . . Rather it exists as a mosaic of
cults, sects and deities, the juxtaposition of which is often for
sociopolitical needs" (567). In the
arguments forwarded by the religious right Hindu identity was linked
inextricably to very specific conceptions of national identity. The protesters produced a totalizing
discourse wherein a "native" subject is recast as alien. In their definitions, the borders of the
imagined community of India expands to include all Hindus, scattered in the
diaspora, and yet shrinks to keep out Indians who are not Hindu, especially
Muslims and lesbians. The religious
right is the savior protecting India from a myriad threats, not the
villain. The nationalism they promote
rests not so much on the glories of Hinduism but on a hatred of Muslims and
other religious minorities (Ram, 1567-69).
(35)
Subsequently,
the Central Board of Film Certification reapproved the film and it was
re-released in major cities without much ado on 20 December 1998. Although the censor board had demanded no
changes, in Bombay, where the protests originated and the Shiv Sena dominate,
the names of both female protagonists were deleted.
In the Shadow of Terror
(36)
Objections
to the protests against Fire were immediate, vigorous and numerous. Civil rights organizations, cultural bodies
and women's groups united to offer a range of arguments for the continued
screening of the film. While the
protesters against the film had presented their arguments primarily from the
streets, the supporters aired their voices in institutionalized sites of
democratic processes. (An exception to
this trend was the candlelight vigil organized in New Delhi by feminist
organizations.) Some launched a legal
action against the informal ban, others wrote columns in newspapers and
newsmagazines, and still others held speak-out rallies on college
campuses. Their arguments can be
classified broadly as three-fold: demanding freedom of expression as an
integral component of a democratic civil society, reimplacing the secular
impulses of Indian nationalism, and the assertion of homosexuality as an Indian
phenomenon. While those who protested
the film presented the West and forces of westernization as problematic
features, those who supported its screening resorted to a language of universal
rights, one that has been developed primarily in the geographic West and is
associated with it. Fire's
supporters distanced themselves from the religious right rhetoric that
conflated Indianness with Hinduism, the language of their support though was
replete with references to fascism and specified different uses of religion to
assert a secular national identity.
(37)
The
majority of supporters framed their arguments broadly within the demand of
freedom of expression. They asserted
that since the censor board had approved the film it should be screened without
hindrance. The religious right, they
accused, was deploying a paternalistic attitude in determining what Indians
could view; the street protests had denied Indians the right to choose. They cast the protesters deprecatingly as the
thought police; the self-appointed gendarmes of cultural values, or saviors of
Hindu dharma. They accused the religious
right of conducting a cultural imperialism.
The violent protests against Fire were depicted as another
attempt by the religious right to assert their brand of cultural hegemony over
India, a "terror raj".
Borrowing plotlines from the movies, a writer in the Hindu
characterized the protesters as "characters in a C-grade formula film, in
which local toughs, backed by strong political interests, terrorise people into
submission" ("Sena", 11).
(38)
These
arguments assert the need for an open civil society in democratic states. "After all freedom of expression is the
heartbeat of a democratic society," one writer proclaimed (Thapar). Similarly, politicians eager to gain
electoral mileage from the issue claimed that "no civilised society would
gag freedom of expression." They
demanded a "space for a rational debate on contentious points of
view." In these discussions
parallels were drawn between Hitler's Germany and an India governed by the
religious right. Supporters contested
the religious right's attempt to position the majority Hindu population as a
beleaguered group. Instead they deployed
the instance to mark the outer limits of religion's presence in democracy; they
insisted religious affiliations could be permitted only as long as they were
presented as secular and could permit the maintenance of a multicultural
society. Interestingly amidst this
rhetoric of the marketplace of ideas none of the writers challenged the
paternalistic role of the censor board or its relevance. Their demands were primarily for a modulated
freedom of expression, once the Central Board of Film Certification had
approved a film Indians should be free to watch it.
(39)
The
majority of these arguments were made in the pages of national newspapers. The only exception to this was the poster
campaign mobilized in Bombay by a motley group of citizens. Conducted covertly with anonymous posters
pasted late at night to avoid the might of the local Shiv Sena these discourses
moved beyond Fire to address issues pertaining to individual rights and
freedom. Repeatedly these supporters
made links with broader notions of universal rights and the protests against Fire
were just one among several instances of the religious right's violation of
basic civil rights.
(40)
Feminists
were the most vocal in pointing out the hypocrisy of the religious right's
actions. They pointed out that the
objectification of women in mainstream Indian cinema was routinely overlooked
but the depiction of women making choices was deemed unacceptable. "If the dignity of Indian womanhood had
really concerned the Sena's roughnecks who protested against Fire, their
attention would have been drawn first to the macho, gender-biased drivel that
is often churned out by Bollywood and other Indian commercial cinema
centres" (Sharma, 27). An editorial
in the Times of India argued similarly that the religious right was not
perturbed by the everyday oppression of Indian women, indeed they sanctioned it
but they contested Fire which pointed out "real"
problems. Indian men not "alien
values" were the implacable predators of women, it asserted
("Preying", 11). In these arguments
discourses of nation and belonging are returned to the symbolic realm to
articulate a broad definition of identity politics.
(41)
From
these media discourses it is difficult to ascertain whether feminists and those
who supported the screening of the film were effective in altering the terms in
which the film was received and understood.
In the interests of objectivity, journalists and editorial writers
"balanced" feminist re-readings of the film with the objections made
by the religious right. Consequently,
the broader critique feminists launched against Bollywood's misogynistic
representations slides out of view.
(42)
Finally,
a large section of those who supported the film pointed out that the religious
right was factually erroneous in presenting homosexuality as a western
phenomenon. (Ironically, Bombay, where
the protests started, is considered the gay capital of India.) They referred to the Kama Sutra, the
sculptures and friezes at Khajuraho and Konarak to validate their claim that
same sex relations had existed in the South Asian subcontinent. These writers tapped into history to present
a golden age of sexual tolerance in India, they attempted to recover a past in
which they could secure and fix homosexual identity as indigenous to India and
Hinduism. The nationalism they promote
sets up the religious right as other, a disruptive presence threatening the
stability of the nation.
(43)
The
selective deployment of the sexual history of Hinduism is not limited to this
controversy. In general, South Asia gays
and lesbians, especially those living in the diasporic communities of North
America and the U.K., have enlisted history -- personal, archaeological and
social -- in their struggle for representation and visibility. In her elegant film Khush, Pratibha
Parmar documents the presence of South Asian gays and lesbians in the
diaspora. She reveals the psychic exile
gays and lesbians experience in South Asian communities. Feeling "completely shunned" and
not allowed access to cultural events gays and lesbians have deployed history
to recover their existence in the subcontinent's past (Khush, 36). Even as he endorses these strategies of
self-representation and the politics underlying them, Nayan Shah cautions
against such a use of history. He suggests,
instead, a more self-conscious use of the past to buttress claims and identities
in the present. He warns that by reading
"too much of us today into the past.
We may trap ourselves in the need of a history to sanction our
existence" (113). The uses of
history have complicated assumptions about constructions of cultural identity;
they indicate the ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within
narratives of the past. Implicit in this
project of reclaiming history are the politics of knowledge and politics of
position. South Asian gays and lesbians,
both in the diaspora and in the subcontinent, try to articulate the past with
the contemporary moment to forge a global queer identity. These projects of reclamation should be
contextualized within the histories of oppression in patriarchal, normatively
heterosexual cultures as well as the racism which South Asians in the diaspora
experience. Within the Indian context,
gays and lesbians have turned to a Brahmanical history to seek visibility and
voice but they tend to ignore the specific ways in which this tradition has oppressed
women, people of lower castes and the poor.
Silenced Subject
(44)
The
contested terrain of national identity is the focus of the debates promoted by
the two sets of discourses set in motion by the opposers and supporters of the
film. Many of the concerns are developed
precisely because Fire was made by a non-resident Indian (NRI). In all aspects of its production and
reception Fire represents a global film.
Its actors and producers hail from different continents and it is the
specificity of Mehta's western locus of enunciation that has evoked the ire of
the religious right. Rather than present
a nostalgia for home, Mehta raises issues that criticize tradition. It is likely that if she had recuperated the
heterosexual family, Fire may not have drawn such criticism. Such a belief gains credence when we observe
the response to Bombay Boys, a film that touches on issues pertaining to
gay male identity and was screened at the same time. While there was some objection to the gay
themes developed in Bombay Boys it did not invoke the same kinds of
protests. The different reception
prompted by these movies that deal with transgressive subjects point out the
anxious modes of regulation that come to bear on the figure of the woman. It is not the presence of the queer subject
that appears threatening to national identity formation, it is the decentering
of the heterosexual family that is contested.
The discourses surrounding Fire reaffirm the centrality of woman
to the heterosexual family. Effectively,
they render to the margins the social, cultural and political space available
for the articulation of homosexual identity.
According to Rakesh Ratti, the topic of homosexuality has always been
rendered invisible in India. The debates
surrounding Fire may have started with the topic of homosexuality but
they reenact a similar elision. They
recenter the heterosexual family in definitions of Indian nationalism; even
those supporting the screening of the film contest rarely the normativity of
the heterosexual family.
(45)
It
is noteworthy that various media outlets devoted so much attention to the
debates surrounding Fire. The
airing of multiple viewpoints suggests that the print media functioned in this
instance as facilitating the public sphere Jürgen Habermas has identified as central to
democratic society. He defines the
public sphere as an arena where people meet as equals and debate issues of
common concern in a rational-critical manner and then guide the state. It is significant though that aspects of
discord and dissonance are highlighted in media coverage of this issue. A glaring absence is the public response to
the film. The majority of viewers
expressed neither shock nor horror. The
Indian viewing public did not recoil from the lesbian sexuality that was
portrayed in Fire. In fact when
Mehta participated in an online chat the overwhelming response she received was
positive ("Deepa Mehta chat").
(46)
Writing
after Fire was re-released in India, Madhu Kishwar offers a pungent
critique of the ideologies promoted by the protesters as well as Mehta's
depiction of the queer subject. As
someone who supported the screening of the film, Kishwar points out that there
exists no history of persecution of homosexuals. "In India, homosexuality has usually
been treated as one of the many expressions of human sexuality." As editor of Manushi, a feminist
magazine, she has repeatedly published authors such as Ismat Chugtai who have
dealt with the theme of same sex desire.
"We have faced no hostile criticism, nor upset readers. In fact, we received letters of appreciation
from both male and female readers," Kishwar asserts. In other instances too the Indian populace
has remained unperturbed when the topic of homosexuality has been raised. For instance in 1987, two policewomen in the
state of Madhya Pradesh got married in a public ceremony. The two women were supported by their
respective families and the national press rallied around their rights to
exercise sexual-marital choice. So,
while the film's protagonists point out that in Hindi "there exists no
word to describe us" (lesbians), Kishwar nevertheless asserts that Indian
languages and cultures are capable of expressing and coping with same sex
desire and homosexual identity.
(47)
The
media commentaries I have outlined so far ignored these precedents, the public
sphere they made available was partial and fragmented. The most striking feature about the public
sphere facilitated by the print media is its reliance on a discourse of compulsory
heterosexuality. Although Fire addresses
the queer subject a discussion of the status of lesbians in India is absent;
instead competing discourses tried to fix lesbian identity as either native or
alien. The social invisibility of gays
and lesbians was not addressed in the media commentaries I examined. Media discourses instead reproduced this
silencing; they emerged from and addressed a heterosexual perspective of
national identity.
(48)
Singling
out Mehta's treatment of homosexuality, Kishwar dismisses Fire as a
boring film, one that is immature and exploits the topic of lesbianism. In this she is joined by several Indian
women's organizations and gay/lesbian activists who objected to the film's
portrayal long before the controversy erupted (Popham). (Strikingly, there were
few objections to Mehta's depiction of same-sex desire in North America, indeed
Gloria Steinem hailed it as a landmark film.)
Once the protests were launched against Fire and its presentation
of lesbians was highlighted by the religious right, Mehta herself disingenuously
foregrounded her problematic presentation of same-sex desire. She continued to reiterate, however, that her
film was not about lesbians.
(49)
Despite
these elisions and glaring silences, the debates engendered by the screening of
Fire were indirectly productive in mobilizing gays and lesbians in
India. They have created a space in the
political and social arena where gays and lesbians could assert their rights
and make demands. Months after the
furious debates ebbed, lesbian organizations were establishing civil rights
campaigns around the country. They have
formed coalitions with feminist and left organizations to establish the
Campaign for Lesbian Rights with the express purpose of repealing anti-sodomy
laws (Bacchetta, 6).
(50)
Fire has functioned as a coming out narrative
on other levels too. The Indian women's
movement has had to confront its silence on the issue of gay and lesbian
rights. By highlighting the oppressive
power of compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal control over women's lives
and female bodies the debate has re-energized the women's movement. It has helped sensitize mainstream
organizations to these issues as well; for instance, left parties have had to
at least modulate their assertions that homosexuality is alien to India.
The Crisis of the Center
(51)
In
their presentation of the radically polarized views of the film, media
commentaries also failed to recognize the possibility that the protests
represented local resistance to globalization.
The arguments over national identity, who is Indian and who is not, or
what characteristics are Indian and which one are not, reveal a crisis. According to Kobena Mercer, "identity
only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed,
coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and
uncertainty" (34). In this instance
Fire in its authorship and conditions of production could easily be
identified as western and hence representative of global flows. On to Fire were displaced a range of
concerns and anxieties about the social and familial changes that have
accompanied recent economic processes.
Sociologist Veena Das sees the protests over the movie as part of a neo-swadeshi
trend, one that seeks to establish the pre-eminence of Indian products and has
led to the attack of vendors who sell foreign goods, such as Pepsi Cola and
Coca Cola. Unlike the bourgeoisie that
"aspires to the Cindy Crawford ethos of material prosperity," the
religious right has been in the vanguard of a "patriotic" preference
for indigenous goods over Western ones ("Line", 11).
(52)
Even
before Fire the religious right had been successful in banning the
broadcast of the Miss Universe beauty pageant and other fashion shows within
India (Nair, 26). We see in these
instances too that women's bodies are the primary sites where anxieties about
the influx of Western cultural influences are worked out. Scholars, such as K. N. Pannikar and Achin
Vanaik, who have examined the rise of the religious right in India and the
subsequent popularity of these "patriotic" gestures have pointed out
that their success is a response to the uneven integration of postcolonial
economies into a global capitalist system.
Economic changes, or in Pannikar's phrase the "pathology of
economic development," and the accompanying commodity fetishism have
resulted in a large disenfranchised segment of the population that is unable to
secure even the basic necessities of life.
The religious right with its aim to reclaim a mythic Hindu past has
secured support from this group by promising them benefits from a return to
traditional values. Often this has
translated into a regulation of women's mobility and sexuality. The responses to Fire could be seen as
symptomatic of larger geopolitical processes: cultural hangovers of the colonial
era have emerged as `new' sites of contestation in representational
practices. The colonial hangover can be
seen in two distinct areas: the role ascribed to religion in national identity
and the centrality of the female figure in discourses of Indian nationalism.
(53)
The
majority of the media commentaries presented the protests against Fire
as a manifestation of the "saffronization" of the secular democratic
nation and discussed the role of religion in democracy. The arguments presented by those who opposed
and supported the screening of the film lay claim to specific interpretations
of Hinduism and Indianness. Both sides
invented tradition to bolster their claims of authentically representing
national culture, they reframed the past with present knowledge. While the religious right claimed that Fire's
depiction of homosexuality affronted Hindus the film's supporters turned to a
definition of Hinduism which represented tolerance. The symbolic community each of them
identified as nation generated a different interpretation of India and Hindu
identity. As Stuart Hall points out,
national cultures construct identities by producing meanings about the nation:
these are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which
connect its present with its past, and images which are constructed of it. In this instance, those seeking the screening
of the film presented the intolerant attitude of the protesters as being
un-Indian and un-Hindu, the Indian identity they foregrounded was one that
valued tolerance and the assimilation of divergent views. During colonial rule, similarly, nationalist
leaders countered British definitions of primitive Hindus and barbaric Indian
traditions by laying claim to a golden age of tolerance. These arguments reveal the religious
discourses that underpin the secular democratic project in India and the limits
of such a civil society.
(54)
Similarly
the centrality of woman in these arguments underscore the gendered nature of
the imaginings of nation. The responses
to the movie underscore the colonial meanings of respectable sexuality and
femininity that continue to shape women's everyday lives. Woman becomes the repository of difference
and carries the mark of the authentic India; her body is the terrain where
contested definitions of national identity are worked out. The figure of woman is imbricated in the
terrain between modernity and tradition, carefully treading their boundary
lines. She can never be wholly located
in the arena of tradition lest India's image be cast as primitive, nor can she
be identified only with the modern (and hence become un-Indian). The Indian female subject has to belong to
both realms, carefully apportioning modern ideas with dollops of tradition. As Lata Mani has pointed out, the civilizing
processes of British colonialism in India generated specifically gendered forms
of colonial discourse within which the figure of the woman plays a key
role. Similarly, she figures in
religious right rhetoric as a symbol of tradition and continuity. "Women become emblematic of tradition
and the rewriting of tradition is largely conducted through debating the rights
and status of women in society" (Bhattacharya, 163-85). Those who supported the movie appropriated the
female body to narrate a trajectory of progress and modernization. Impelled by different understandings of the
global, both Mehta and the religious right opportunistically used the
representation of lesbian sexuality.
(55)
The
responses to the movie I have enumerated highlight the problematic cultural construction
of the female body as a gendered citizen.
The discussion reveals that female bodies are assigned cultural meanings
that affect the way females (heterosexual women, lesbians and transgendered
females) constitute their social relations.
My discussion reveals that female sexuality in India continues to be
addressed only within the immoral West/authentic Indian paradigm established
during colonialism. These arguments
construct monolithic notions of western and non-western subjects in binary opposition,
which cannot account for the complex and contradictory subject positions
underlying the debate. They also
disallow the links between patriarchies in contemporary and colonial India. Ironically, even as the debate over lesbian
presence in India raged, journalists reported the auctioning of women in the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh. While
some local women's organizations protested this practice and others expressed
shock and horror, this event elicited few responses from national organized
groups.
(56)
Fire and the controversy surrounding it
exemplify the eroticization of the public sphere in India. This instance highlights how the erotic
becomes the site where differences between India and the West are fetishized. In a series of complex and contradictory
maneuvers, Indian women are denied erotic desire as a mode of asserting agency
and autonomy even as the material realities of their lives are obscured in the
discussions that followed.
(57)
Rather
than facilitate a global-homogenous view of the world this instance illustrates
the specific ways in which the local asserts its primacy over the transnational
traffic of ideas and products. The
Indian reception of Fire was shaped by historical, economic and cultural
processes specific to the subcontinent. Understandings
of the global and the local, as I have illustrated, are shaped by a vernacular
nationalism that produces a problematic female subject. In such discourses homophobia is presented as
patriotism. Efforts to contest them have
had limited success. Even as both the
supporters of the film and protesters debated the nuances of nationalism what
remained left out is the material conditions of women's lives.
Acknowledgements
Usha
Zacharias has helped formulate central ideas in this paper and has been
painstakingly patient in reading several versions of it. Radha Hegde and Andrea Slane were generous
with their time and ideas. I would also
like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Anita Fellman for their comments and
suggestions.
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Contributor's Note
Sujata
Moorti teaches at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va. Her book Color of Rape: Gender and Race in
Television's Public Spheres is forthcoming.