Adams and Eves at the Eden Gardens: Women Cricket Spectators and the Conflict of Feminine Subjectivity in Calcutta, 1920–1970

Abstract

This article explores how cricket-watching women in Calcutta have been historically portrayed in vernacular literature and newspaper columns. It begins by providing an historical background of women's presence in sport grounds, describing mainly the construction of Victorian ideals of the women-sport relationship. It locates women cricket spectators in two historical phases: before the 1950s, that is, at a time when gender boundaries were comparatively tightly defined and in the 1950s to ’60s, namely, when women's agency became a topic of intense discussion. While dealing with the colonial period, it contextualises the reactions to cricket-watching Bengali women in light of the colonial ideologies of domestic womanhood. Further moving on, it traces the subsequent depictions of women spectators, analysing the lampoons and debates around spectatorship. By doing so, the study hopes to locate the shifts in representations of femininity within the news media and in cricket books to understand, in a broader context, the changing gender relations and consumer culture in Bengali society.

Keywords:

• cricket
• women spectators
• sport writing
• representation
• social control

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr Radhika Singha and Dr M.S.S. Pandian, my M.Phil. supervisors, for the countless suggestions and corrections without which this article would not have materialised. I thank Dr Susan Bandy for reading it so carefully and making some very useful comments. Thanks to the interviewees, especially Soumyen Mallick. No expression can adequately acknowledge the debt to Manikarnika Dutta, one of the contemporary female spectators at the Eden Gardens, who procured the out of print books of Sankariprasad Basu and supported me in more ways than I can remember.

Notes

1. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Mahilader Cricket Preeti’ (‘Women's Love of Cricket’), 118.

2. Basu, Cricket Omnibus I, 419.

3. Notable among the studies are Malcolm and Velija, ‘Female Cricketers and Male Preserves’; and Velija and Malcolm, ‘“Look it's a Girl”’.

4. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 12.

5. Borthwick, Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849–1905, 5–59.

6. Some good studies to have addressed this gendering of sport include Aitchison, Sport and Gender Identities; Hargreaves, Heroines of Sport; and Hartmann-Tews and G. Pfister, Sport and Women: Social Issues in International Perspective.

7. The Reading Mercury reported on 26 July 1745 a match contested between ‘eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white’.

8. Odendaal, ‘“Neither Cricketers Nor Ladies”’, 117.

9. Odendaal, ‘“Neither Cricketers Nor Ladies”’, 116.

10. Hargreaves, ‘The Victorian Cult of the Family and the Early Years of Female Sports’, 73.

11. Birley, A Social History of English Cricket; and Williams, Cricket and Race.

12. McCrone, Playing the Game, 142–143.

13. Ryan, The Making of New Zealand Cricket 1832–1914, 21.

14. Majumdar and Bandyopadhyay, ‘From Recreation to Competition’, 137.

15. Docker, History of Indian Cricket, 8–9.

16. The Statesman, 19 November 1936, 12.

17. The Rays are one of the most famous families who have contributed significantly to Calcutta's cultural heritage. Upendra Kishore Ray Choudhury was a notable author and held patents for a number of important innovations in print technology. His son Sukumar Ray was a celebrated children's author, and his son, Satyajit Ray, probably the most internationally acclaimed filmmaker from India. Saradaranjan Ray, called the ‘W. G. Grace of Bengal’ for physical similarity, was the first Indian college principal to promote sport as a part of the curriculum. His brother Kuladaranjan Ray was a leading Indian cricketer in his time. They are the most prominent among other family members.

18. Basu, ‘Not Out’, 99.

19. Johnson, Three Years in Calcutta, cited in Majumdar, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom, 144.

20. Basu, ‘Not Out’, 100.

21. Ibid.

22. She could have been the first female cricket analyst in India had microphone been invented and sport editors commissioned women to write on cricket!

23. Basu, ‘Not Out’, 101.

24. Nabaneeta Dev Sen remarked that if a female writer tried to venture out of her family life into territories regarded as male, every obstacle would be placed to block her path. See Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing in India, 206.

25. Mazumdar, A Pattern of Life, 111–13.

26. Hutheesing, ‘The Modern Girl’, The Statesman, 21 Jan 1940, 6.

27. Bose, ‘Sons of the Nation’.

28. Sarkar, ‘Rhetoric against Age of Consent’, 1870.

29. Banerjee, ‘Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India’, 462.

30. Banerjee, ‘Fleshing Out Mandira’, 481.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 481–482.

33. Ibid.

34. The sari is the traditional outer garment worn by middle-aged and elderly women in most of India.

35. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 175.

36. Basu, ‘Eden-e Shiter Dupur’, 79.

37. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 150.

38. Those who understand Bengali please read the original four lines:

Himalaya-meshpal koriya nishesh/ Ek nari lomoboti poriache besh/ Onyo nari tapaswini pottimatro gaye/ Huhu shite hihi hasi thotete goraye. (Sankariprasad Basu, Anandabazar Patrika, 7 January 1967, 9)

39. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 149.

40. Anandabazar Patrika, 5 January 1967, 4.

41. Amrita, December 1969.

42. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Mahilader Cricket Preeti’, 118.

43. Ibid., 118.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 119.

46. Ibid.

47. Banerjee, ‘Fleshing Out Mandira’, 481.

48. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 155.

49. Ibid., 156.

50. Basu, ‘Sara Diner Khela’, 319.

51. Basu, Cricket Omnibus I, 418.

52. Ibid., 421–422.

53. Ibid., 422.

54. Basu, ‘Not Out’, 253.

55. Ibid., 349–350.

56. Dutta, Rupasi Eden-er Rupasi Cricket.

57. Sengupta, Mriga Nei Mrigaya.

58. Ajita Chakraborty, interview with author, 26 October 2011.

59. Ila Sinha, interview with author, 1 July 2011.

60. Bose, Akashe Cricket Bani, 2.

61. Roy, Bengali Women, 59.

62. Ibid., 69.

63. Ghosh, ‘Saptam Gulpo’, 40.

64. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 150.

65. Manjari Mukhopadhyay and Sanchari Roy, interviews with author, 30 June 2011.

66. Narayanan, ‘The Indian Spectator’, 205.

67. Ila Sinha, interviews with author, 3 August 2011.

68. Basu, Cricket Omnibus I, 421.

69. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India.

70. Chatterjee, Unfamiliar Relations, 5.

71. Soumyen Mullick, Achintya Sanyal and Swapan Nag, interviews with author, 30 June, 2011.

72. The public debates around the Hindu Succession Act of 1956, which empowered women by entitling them to claim divorce and inherit a part of paternal property, is a notable point in this discourse.

73. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 7.

74. Bannerji, Inventing Subjects, 126.

75. Bannerji, Inventing Subjects, 125–129.

76. In The Shadow Lines (originally published in 1988), Amitav Ghosh narrates the male tendency to draw a line to women's liberty in the 1960s rather precisely. This is how he describes the reaction to a man's objection to his niece's wish to dance at a nightclub even after having accompanied her all the way and buying drinks,

‘Listen, Ila’, Robi said, shaking his head. ‘You shouldn't have done what you did. You ought to know that; girls don't behave like that here’. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’, she spat at him. ‘What do you mean “girls”? I’ll do what I bloody well want, when I want and where’. ‘No you won't,’ he said. ‘Not if I'm around. Girls don't behave like that here’. (Ghosh, The Shadow Lines, 66)

77. Cited in Caudwell, ‘Femme-fatale: Re-thinking the Femme-inine’, 146.

78. Ibid.

79. Ananda Bazar Patrika, 31 January 1964, 1.

80. Dainik Basumati even sent a reporter to Sobers's hotel room to check what he was doing with Mahendroo. Sobers must have been a real gentleman, or the reporter would not have lived to send his correspondence. See Dainik Basumati, 7 January 1967, 8.

81. Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 156.

82. Not all of them had the right connections, as is evident from the story of the High Court judge's daughter.

83. Basu sympathises with a friend who annually spent a lot of money buying a ticket from the black market for his wife. See Basu, ‘Ramaniya Cricket’, 154.

84. The percentage for female literacy in West Bengal jumped from 20.79 in 1961 to 26.56 in 1971 and to 34.42 in 1981, while the male average grew from 47.69 to 57.03 in the 20 years. I could not track the gender breakdown of newspaper readership in that period, but considering literate people read newspapers, I presume the number of women now reading newspapers was significantly more than ever, and the press could not risk losing them as readers by publishing comical reports. See http://www.education.nic.in/cd50years/g/z/EI/0ZEI0401.htm (accessed 21 December 2011).

85. I have used Michel de Certeau's analysis of space as a practised place. See De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117–119.