IN SEARCH OF OUR OTHER SELVES

Abstract

What does essentialism, any kind of essentialism, look like? Why do we want to resist it, make it our life’s business to resist it through our fiction, our poetry and lays, our criticism and the way we teach and read? All of us have known the temptation to stereotype tradition as the bogeyman and contemporary interpretations as resistances. This is why it is important to remember that those who retell “contemporary” versions of small and big traditions, individual and collective histories include those who distort the past or our joint legacies for their own political purposes. On the one hand, we have those who use tradition, history, culture only to perpetuate old stereotypes and create new ones; reinforce old exclusions and strengthen new ones. On the other hand, we have the heterogeneous collective of readers and writers we hope we belong to: those who expand the map of inclusions. Because this is a heterogeneous group, it becomes necessary also to initiate a challenge to resistances that are either incomplete or in danger of turning essentialist themselves.

Keywords:

• fundamentalisms
• stereotypes
• secular
• politics
• prejudices
• irrational

Notes

1 The two volumes of Towards Freedom by K.N. Pannikar and Sumit Sarkar were targeted by Hindu fundamentalist organizations objecting to their criticism of the role played by Hindu communalist organizations in the freedom movement and the highlighting of the movement’s secular nature. Commissioned by the Indian Council of Historical Research, and to be published by Oxford University Press, publication of Towards Freedom was suspended as a result of pressure from right‐wing Hindu fundamentalists; to date they have not been published.

2 Communal killings flared up in Gujarat in 2002 after the alleged burning of a railway coach at Godhra Railway Station, supposedly by Muslims. The occupants who perished in the fire were Hindus who were on their way to a pilgrimage. In retaliation, Muslims were systematically targeted by the majority community in Gujarat, i.e. the Hindus, with the active connivance of the state machinery. Five years on, there is still little evidence of rehabilitation of the victims or a restoration of trust among the communities.

3 See Outlook 21 Feb. 2000.

4 Shivaji was a 17th‐century Maratha chieftain who fought against Mughal power and created an independent kingdom. In the 1960s, a regional political party called the Shiv Sena appropriated Shivaji, first as an icon of regional aspirations and now as a militant Hindu totem.

5 The film Water was released in India in March 2007; it has not yet met with any significant resistance from Hindu fundamentalists. During the shooting of the film Hindu fundamentalists objected to the manner in which Hindu widows in Varanasi were being depicted and forced the shooting to be called off. It was subsequently shot elsewhere.

6 See “I Stand By My Words …”, Sunday Observer 23 Oct. 2005.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Githa Hariharan

Githa Hariharan grew up in Bombay and Manila. She continued her studies in the US and worked with public television there. Returning to India in 1979, she has worked in Bombay, Madras and New Delhi, initially as an editor in a publishing house, and later as a freelance. She is married with two sons, and lives in New Delhi. Githa Hariharan’s first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Since then, she has published a collection of stories, The Art of Dying (1993); three novels, The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), and In Times of Siege (2003); and a collection of stories for children, The Winning Team (2004). She has also edited A Southern Harvest, a volume of stories in English translation from four major South Indian languages, and co‐edited a collection of stories for Indian children, Sorry, Best Friend! Hariharan’s work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Urdu and Malayalam; her essays and fiction have also been included in several collections and anthologies, such as Salman Rushdie’s Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947–1997.