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Abstract
In Hinduism, sindoor is a symbol of a married woman’s chastity, love and fidelity towards her husband. This potent mark inscribed on the forehead and in the parting of a woman’s hair serves as a reminder of her heterosexual identity, unavailability to other men, and the ownership of her body by her husband. Problematising how this heteropatriarchal imperative has complicated the bodily boundaries between the personal, social and cultural, this article explores the religious, nationalist and transnational politics of the appropriation of sindoor. The article analyses literary texts, Indian cinema classics and advertisements to critically explore how the sindoor mark is constituted by a complex interplay of race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, caste and nationality, inviting one to collaborate in the perpetuation of the doing and undoing of feminism.
Acknowledgements
I extend my gratitude to the three anonymous peer reviewers, to the editor Kama Maclean, and to the editorial board of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies for their helpful feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) (dir. Satyajit Ray, prod. NFDC, 1984).
2. In keeping with the Victorian morality model, upper-class elite women were not allowed to venture into public places in colonial India. Radha Kumar explains how Kashibai Kanitkar and Anandibai Joshi were stoned for wearing shoes and carrying umbrellas and walking in the streets, as if usurping male authority. See Radha Kumar, The History of Doing (New York/New Delhi: Verso, 1993), p. 32.
3. Bindi originates from the word bindú, meaning dot or point. A Bindi made of sindoor is only worn by married Hindu women.
4. The Swadeshi (‘swa’ means self and ‘desh’ means country) Movement as an economic strategy in the Indian Independence movement was meant to drive away British colonial power and is credited with giving birth to the spirit of nationalism. Though the Swadeshi Movement brought women out of purdah, it is critiqued for giving women a marginal position in the public space.
5. Ashis Nandy, The Savage Freud (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 237–66.
6. Chidananda Das Gupta, The Cinema of Satyajit Ray (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1994), p. 67.
7. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, rev. ed., 1999), pp. 833–44.
8. Shoma A. Chatterji, Woman at the Window: The Material Universe of Rabindranath Tagore through the Eyes of Satyajit Ray (New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017). See also Charulata (The Lonely Wife) (dir. Satyajit Ray, prod. R.D. Bansal, 1964).
9. The absence of female protagonists in Ray’s children’s movies and in the detective book series called The Complete Adventures of Feluda discredits him as a feminist. See Aparna Sen’s interview on how she and Ray differ in their views on adultery, while examining Ray’s Pikoo (1980) and Sen’s Paroma (1985), in Nandita Dutta, ‘Does Women’s Liberation Mean Adultery? How Aparna Sen Differed from Satyajit Ray’, The Print [https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/does-womens-liberation-mean-adultery-how-aparna-sen-differed-from-satyajit-ray/265463/, accessed 21 July 2019].
10. Nandy, The Savage Freud, p. 244.
11. Under the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act, marriage between cousins is seen as illegal and incestuous, with the exception of such marriages that are permitted by regional customs.
12. Carol P. Christ, ‘Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later’, in Feminist Theology, Vol. 20, no. 3 (2012), pp. 242–55 (246).
13. Ibid., p. 251.
14. Hindutva is a political movement aiming to target state control in the name of self-defined Hinduism primarily practised by political organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). See Taslima Nasrin, ‘sindoor Khela, the Celebration of Patriarchy’, FreeThoughtBlogs [https://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2013/10/15/sindoor-khela-the-celebration-of-patriarchy/, accessed 19 Aug. 2019].
15. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Reflections on Birati Rape Cases: Gender Ideology in Bengal’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 26, no. 5 (Feb. 1991), pp. 215–8.
16. Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2012), p. 133.
17. The term was used during an intellectual movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason, but rejected the belief in a supernatural deity.
18. Kevin Kruse, One Nation under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
19. Rebecca Mead, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding (New York: Penguin Books, 2008).
20. Meryem Ouedghiri, ‘Writing Women’s Bodies on the Palimpsest of Islamic History: Fatima Mernissi and Assia Djebar’, in Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 14, no. 1 (2002), pp. 41–64.
21. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 19.
22. Masaba Gupta is the daughter of West Indies cricketer Vivian Richards and Hindi film actress Neena Gupta, who is often credited with changing the face of Indian feminism in cinema.
23. ‘Celebrating Womanhood, Masaba Gupta Launches a Collection on Sindoor’, Zoom TV Digital (8 April 2018) [https://www.timesnownews.com/entertainment/fashion/article/celebrating-womanhood-masaba-gupta-launches-a-collection-on-sindoor/215131, accessed 19 June 2019].
24. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, ‘Is the Hindu Goddess a Feminist?’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 33, no. 44 (1998), pp. 41–64.
25. Smriti Irani, Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Pratibha Patil are some Indian politicians who have embraced their sindoor identity as part of their political ideologies.
26. The Hindu goddess Lakshmi is always attired in red, denoting wealth, chastity, prosperity, vitality and domestic happiness.
27. Barbara A. Holdrege, ‘What Have Brahmins to Do with Rabbis? Embodied Communities and Paradigms of Religious Tradition’, in Shofar, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1999), pp. 23–50.
28. Barbara A. Holdrege, ‘Body Connections: Hindu Discourses of the Body and the Study of Religion’, in International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 2, no. 3 (Dec. 1998), pp. 341–86.
29. ‘#NoConditionsApply’, The Times of India (1 Nov. 2017) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvo4c6CqvX4, accessed 18 Mar. 2019].
30. The Purusha-Prakriti analogy is discussed in detail in Samkhya philosophy.
31. Leela Dube, ‘Seed and Earth: The Symbolism of Biological Reproduction and Sexual Relations of Production’, in Leela Dube (ed.), Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, rev. ed., 1986), pp. 22–53.
32. Iravati Karve, Kinship Organization in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968), p. 358.
33. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988).
34. Ibid., pp. 39–40.
35. David Smith, ‘Aspects of the Interrelationship of Divine and Human Bodies in Hinduism’, in Religion, Vol. 19, no. 3 (1989), pp. 211–9.
36. See Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995), pp. 181–215.
37. Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 143.
38. In 1828, Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj, a monotheistic organisation influenced by Christianity and Islam, to create a new Hindu religious philosophy during the Bengal Renaissance. The Brahmo Samaj does not worship any incarnation, nor does it accept the authority of the Vedas, and it also does not insist on the belief in karma and the caste system.
39. Tanika Sarkar and Tapan Raychaudhuri have argued that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s preoccupation with the dogmatic reconstruction of Hinduism as a dominant power in defeating the Muslims was a direct result of his interaction with Reverend Hastie of the General Assembly, who brutally criticised Hinduism. Chatterjee’s novels such as Durgeshnandini, Mrinalini, Anandamath and Sitaram depict an aggressive Hindu nationalist flavour by juxtaposing the Hindu–Muslim cultural dichotomy. See Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation; and Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered; Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
40. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation, p. 186.
41. Pyarelal Nayyar, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. 1, Book 2 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2nd ed., 1966), pp. 91–2. See also Anasua Basu Raychaudhury, ‘Nostalgia of “Desh”, Memories of Partition’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 39, no. 52 (Dec. 2004), pp. 5653–60.
42. For more on the visual politics of the embodiment of the Mother India persona and the history of cartography, see Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Durham, NC/ London: Duke University Press, 2010).
43. See Nivedita Menon, ‘Indian Feminists, “India’s Daughter”, and Sexual Violence: The Issues at Stake’, Kafila (8 Mar. 2015) [https://kafila.online/2015/03/08/indian-feminists-indias-daughter-and-sexual-violence-the-issues-at-stake/, accessed 12 Mar. 2016].
44. India's Daughter (dir. Leslee Udwin, prod. Assassin Films and Tathagat Films, 2015).
45. The Indian government blocked the broadcast of Udwin’s documentary by obtaining a court order on 4 Mar. 2015.
46. Mahatma Gandhi vehemently criticised Mayo’s book and many Indian intellectuals labelled Mayo a racist and imperialist. The book was burned along with Mayo’s effigy. In reply to Mayo, Dhan Gopal Mukerji wrote the book A Son of Mother India Answers (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1928). Mukerji argued that Mayo had selected isolated and even false cases in order to misrepresent India. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1927).
47. Zareer Masani, ‘The Saffron Censorship that Governs India: Why National Pride and Religious Sentiment Trump Freedom of Expression’, Independent (26 Mar. 2015) [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-saffron-censorship-that-governs-india-why-national-pride-and-religious-sentiment-trump-freedom-10137186.html, accessed 27 Mar. 2016].
48. See Kamla Bhasin, Ritu Menon and Nighat Said Khan, Against All Odds: Essays on Women, Religion and Development from India and Pakistan (New Delhi: Kali, 1994); see also Sikata Banerjee, Make Me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism in India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).
49. Kavita Krishnan, ‘Nirbhaya Film: Solidarity Is What We Want, Not a Civilising Mission’, DailyO (3 May 2015) [https://www.dailyo.in/politics/kavita-krishnan-nirbhaya-december-16-indias-daughter-leslee-udwin-mukesh-singh-bbc/story/1/2347.html, accessed 9 Aug. 2015].
50. Krupa Shandilya, ‘Nirbhaya’s Body: The Politics of Protest in the Aftermath of the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape’, in Gender & History, Vol. 27, no. 2 (Aug. 2015), pp. 465–86.
51. Kumar, The History of Doing, p. 2.
52. See also Ania Loomba, Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India (London/New York: Routledge, 2019). Loomba examines the revolutionary political subjectivities of women such as Bina Das, Pritilata Waddedar, Ushabai Dange, Manikuntala Sen, Sheila Didi and Godavari Paruleker, among others, who were involved in militant and nationalist underground movements from the late 1920s to the 1960s.
53. Mother India (dir. Mehboob Khan, prod. Mehboob Productions, 1957).
54. Vijay Misra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 86.
55. Rosie Thomas, ‘Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India’, in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 11, no. 3 (1989), pp. 11–30; see also Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).
56. Thomas, ‘Sanctity and Scandal’,, p. 16.
57. Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (dir. Abrar Alvi, prod. Guru Dutt Films, 1962); also see Bimal Mitra, Saheb Bibi Golam (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2004).
58. Devi (dir. Satyajit Ray, prod. Satyajit Ray Productions, 1962).
59. Fire (dir. Deepa Mehta, prod. Kaleidoscope Entertainment and Trial by Fire Films, 1996).
60. L.R. de Furtado, Three Painters (New Delhi: Dhoomimal Ramchand, 1960), p. 13.
61. See Margaret Gallagher, ‘Lipstick Imperialism and the New World Order: Women and Media at the Close of the Twentieth Century’, unpublished manuscript, Division for the Advancement of Women, Department of Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, United Nations, 1995.
62. In medieval Europe, images of devils brushing lipstick onto women’s lips symbolised evil power and lack of morality. See Sally Pointer, The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2005). On the British parliament passing a law condemning lipstick in the 1770s, see Meg Cohen Ragas and Karen Kozlowski, Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1998), p. 17.
63. The make-up artist Elizabeth Arden designed the first ‘Victory Red’ lipstick, commissioned by the American military during World War II, to match the red piping and chevrons on women’s military uniforms. See Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 149.
64. When Iranian women used lipstick to oppose the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was metaphorically called the ‘lipstick revolution’. See Azadeh Moaveni, Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).
65. Jasodhara Bagchi, ‘“May the Sindoor on the Lips Never Perish”: The “West” in Colonial Humour’, in B.C. Vijayasree (ed.), Writing the West, 1750–1947: Representations from Indian Languages (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, rev. ed., 2004), pp. 39–58.
66. The practice of women choosing their husbands from a group of prospective grooms in ancient India.
67. Bagchi, ‘“May the Sindoor on the Lips Never Perish”’, p. 41.
68. Ibid., pp. 41–2.
69. Ibid., p. 52.
70. Ibid.
71. The development of this school of thought goes back to George Herbert Mead (1934), who argues that the individual as a product of society is processed through interactions in which symbols become the primary mode of communication and collective experience. See R. LaRossa and D.C. Reitzes, ‘Symbolic Interactionism and Family Studies’, in P.G. Boss, W.J. Doherty, R. LaRossa, W.R. Schumm and S.K. Steinmetz (eds), Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach (New York: Plenum, rev. ed., 1993), pp. 135–63.
72. José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
73. Ibid., p. 4.
74. My heuristic knowledge about the cultural significance of sindoor is due to my Hindu Bengali cultural orientation. From my interaction with two Muslim domestic helpers in South Delhi, who had previously worked in a chaotic labour market, I came to know about their sindoor strategies in those worksites where women are often subjected to sexual abuse. Currently, as a Bengali immigrant professor in Minnesota, I personally know a Hindu Bengali student from Bangladesh who uses sindoor, not for religious purposes, but as a corporeal memorabilia enactment of her love for her husband who lives in Bangladesh. Like many Muslim women who have strategically embraced the hijab as a symbolic gesture, this student practises ‘sindoor feminism’ in the midst of white spectatorship.
75. In 2019, the newly elected Trinamool Congress member of parliament Nusrat Jahan in India was criticised by both Muslim clerics and Hindu conservatives for wearing sindoor during her oath-taking ceremony in parliament on 25 June. Jahan asserts that while her religion is Islam, nobody has the right to comment on her attire. See India Today Web Desk, ‘I Represent Inclusive India: Nusrat Jahan Slams Trolls for Sindoor Remarks’, 29 June 2019 [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/i-represent-inclusive-india-nusrat-jahan-slams-trolls-for-sindoor-remarks-1558813-2019-06-29, accessed 31 Aug. 2020]; see also the statement of Indian Muslim actress Sana Amin Sheikh in Safoora, ‘Wearing “Sindoor” Doesn’t Make Me Less of a Muslim: Sana Amin Sheikh of “Krishnadasi”’, 9 Aug. 2016 [http://www.siasat.com/news/wearing-sindoor-doesnt-make-me-less-muslim-sana-amin-sheikh-krishnadasi-998583/, accessed 31 Aug. 2020].
76. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), p. 2.
77. Sunaina Maira, ‘Temporary Tattoos: Indo-Chic Fantasies and Late Capitalist Orientalism’, in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Vol. 3, no. 1 (2002), pp. 134–60.