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ABSTRACT
This article explores the vocabulary used for shame in a children’s periodical from Lahore, in colonial North India. Following decades of reconfigurations of norms of behaviour and of akhlaq (moral, ethical) literature, Phūl (‘Flower’) was one of the first periodicals for children, and one with the longest run. Using emotions, it aimed to entertain as much as to educate the young Urdu-reading public. Thanks to a careful examination of every weekly number through the year 1910 – the first full year of publication –, the objective is to highlight the various meanings and uses of shame in early twentieth-century Urdu children’s literature. In Phūl, shame was consistently expressed by the term sharm, with only rare exceptions. This conspicuously contrasts with the resort to diverse terms for contemporary representations of community shame and dishonour in the male public sphere since the late nineteenth century. Through typical animal stories, moral tales and illustrations, this article highlights how contributors used shame to monitor children’s emotions and behaviour. Despite its striking homogeneity of vocabulary, however, sharm involved a full palette of nuances, from the isolating emotion elicited by transgression (the ‘blackness’ of shame) to the very condition of respect, without which social cohesion was impossible. I argue that, crucial for the enculturation of morality, good manners, and gendered expectations, sharm was more semantically capacious than what we label as shame in English, notably by encompassing aspects which some, in Ruth Benedict’s and Eric R. Dodds’ steps, have associated to a different and sometimes opposite concept: guilt.
Note on transcription
I have only transliterated the words that are directly quoted from the original language and the titles of literary works. Names and ‘common’ Urdu words have not been transliterated with diacritics (ex. sharif/ashraf, akhlaq, etc.). I have followed the Library of Congress transliteration tables for each language here cited (e.g. in Arabic titles, the waw is noted w while in Persian and Urdu it is transliterated v). The izafat in Persian works is noted -i but I have preferred the -e in Urdu.
Acknowledgment
I would like to express my great appreciation to Margrit Pernau, Joel Lee and Francis Robinson for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. I am particularly grateful to the two anonymous reviewers whose valuable remarks have enabled me to ground further the argument. Finally, I have had the opportunity to present this work at the CEIAS and Sorbonne University, Aix-Marseille University, and Ghent University, and I wish to extend my thanks to fellow colleagues for their constructive suggestions and for their support at various stages of this research. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the work of the Endangered Archives Programme and the Mushfiq Khwaja Library and Research Centre (Karachi), I also thank them for the permission to reproduce images from the periodical.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For instance Scheff, “Shame and Conformity,” 395–7.
2. Among many others: Elias, The Civilizing Process; Cairns, Aidõs; Kaster, Emotion, Restraint, and Community; and Leys, From Guilt to Shame.
3. I‘m following Gayatri Reddy in her stance that the translation of ‘izzat as respect (rather than honour) is more inclusive (Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 40).
4. Jeffery, Frogs in a well; and Grima, The Performance of Emotions.
5. Metcalf, Perfecting Women; Minault, Secluded Scholars; and Khoja-Moolji, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl.
6. Gupte, “The Concept of Honour,” 73.
7. Dirks, The Hollow Crown, 5.
8. Walsh, How to be, 1.
9. See for example the Urdu poem ‘Naqqārah-e Islām,’ verse 35 which mocked Aligarh’s redefinitions of respectability, mentioning dress and ways of relieving oneself. Oudh Punch, 5 April 1888. See Tignol, “Genealogy, Authority.”
10. Tignol, “The Muslims of Northern India”; and Oesterheld, “Campaigning for a community.”
11. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India, 3 and 22.
12. Ibid., 2 and 19.
13. “Acchā laṛkā kaun hai?” Phūl, 4, 22 January 1910, 44.
14. Pernau, Emotions and Modernity, 136.
15. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
16. Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions; Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere; Gould, Hindu Nationalism; Nijhawan, Women and Girls; Robinson, “Islam and the Impact of Print”; Stark, An Empire of Books; Perkins, “From the Mehfil”; Anderson, Imagined Communities.
17. Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 138–149.
18. Minault, “Sayyid Mumtaz ‘Ali and Tahzib,” 193.
19. Minault, “Women’s Magazines in Urdu.”
20. Pernau, Emotions and modernity.
21. See Cairns, Aidõs, 7.
22. Shweder, “Toward a Deep Cultural Psychology,” 1117.
23. See Cairns, Aidõs; and Pernau, “Introduction.”
24. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities.
25. Cairns, Aidõs, 10.
26. Eitler, Olsen, and Jensen, “Introduction,” 2.
27. Nijhawan, “Hindi Children’s Journals,” 3723. See also the remarks in Nazir Ahmad’s introduction to The Penitence of Nasooh, 9: “Rearing of children, the subject of this book, comes under concern for humanity and securing what is good for mankind, and is required of every individual according to his capability. The negligence with which our countrymen treat this duty is the real cause of the decline in this country.”
28. Eitler, Olsen, and Jensen, “Introduction,” 5; and Pernau, “Asghari’s Piety,” 62.
29. Eitler, Olsen, and Jensen, “Introduction,” 8.
30. Powell, “Old Books in New Bindings,” 205.
31. A great number of Phūl volumes is held in the Abdul Majeed Khokhar Yadgar Library in Gujranwala, Pakistan, and has been digitized and is fully accessible online as part of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (https://doi.org/10.15130/EAP566).
32. Pernau, Emotions and Modernity, 135.
33. Minault, “Sayyid Mumtaz Ali and Huquq,” 147.
34. Minault, “Ali, Sayyid Mumtaz (1860–1935).”
35. See Ayubi, Gendered Morality, conclusion.
36. For example, Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics, 126–28.
37. Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, 50.
38. Ibid., 51 and 61.
39. Powell, “Old Books in New Bindings,” 201.
40. Subtelny, “A Late Medieval Persian Summa,” 609.
41. Hali, Majālis un-Nisā, 74 and 115.
42. Pandit Manphul to the Scientific Society, Lahore, 29 January 1864, quoted in Powell, “Old Books in New Bindings,” 209.
43. See Naim, “Prize-Winning Adab”; Powell, “Old Books in New Bindings,” 214. Among such titles, there were for instance: Tahẕīb ul-Aḵẖlāq-i Aryā Hind, yanī Hunūd (1890), Makārim ul-Aḵẖlāq (Virtues of Morals; 1891), Mahāsin ul-Aḵẖlāq (The Manifold Beauties of Morals; 1891), Talīm ul-Aḵẖlāq (Moral Education; 1892), and T’alīm ul-Ḵẖaṣāīl (Qualities of Character; 1892) (Hasan, A moral recknoning, 3); or several books titled Aḵẖlāq-i Muḥammadī (Ayubi, Gendered morality, chapter 1).
44. Ahmad, The Penitence of Nasooh, 134.
45. Ibid., 134 and 136.
46. Ibid., 138.
47. Bint-e Nazrul Baqar later married Sajjad Hyder Yildirim and was thereafter known as Nazar Sajjad Hyder. She came from a Shia family in Punjab. Supporter of the Aligarh movement and defender of girls’ rights and education, she founded the Anjuman Ḥāmī-e Talīm-e Nisvāṉ (Association for the support of women’s education). She was a prolific writer, contributing to the most popular periodicals of the time, Maḵẖzan (Lahore), Ḵẖātūn (Aligarh), ‘Iṣmat (Delhi), and Tahẕīb-un Nisvāṉ (Lahore) and composing popular novels. She was the mother of acclaimed Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder. See Alam, “Interrupted Stories”; Tharu and Lalita, Women Writing in India, 391.
48. Pernau, Emotions and modernity, 134.
49. Minault, “Sayyid Mumtaz Ali and Huquq.”
50. Lal, Coming of Age, 21.
51. Zaidi, Urdū meṉ baccoṉ kā adab, 37.
52. “Cup cāp laṛke,” Phūl, 7, 12 February 1910, 80.
53. News section, Phūl, 47, 19 November 1910, title page.
54. “Uṛnewālī machlī,” Phūl, 21, 21 May 1910, 248–9.
55. Devji, “India in the Muslim Imagination,” 3.
56. Ibid., 12.
57. Zaidi, “Contested Identities,” 17.
58. For instance, Cand Pand’s chapter on shamelessness termed beḥayāī (Ahmad, Cand Pand, 35) and Majālis un-Nisā’s description of women’s virtues ḥayā and ġhairat (Hali, Majālis un-Nisā, 32) or its illustration of Sayyid Abbas’ mother’s educational style with the resort to shaming (Hali, Majālis un-Nisā, 113): ‘if I still didn’t read it properly, she would mimic me and make me feel ashamed (ġhairat)’ (translation by Minault: Hali, Voices of Silence, 7th majlis, online version).
59. Ahmad, Farhang-e Āṣafiyah, 175.
60. Abu-Zahra, “On the Modesty of Women” quoted in Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, 107.
61. Some scholars have sought to distinguish the meanings of the terms ‘emotion’ (with its Urdu equivalent jaẕbah) and ‘feeling’ (eḥsās) by considering that their cognitive acts are different – a feeling would be the ability to feel, an impression, while emotion would be a conscious activity of ‘translation’ (see Traïni, ‘Des sentiments aux émotions’ and A. Blom, “Emotions and the micro-foundations”. Others have preferred to use them as synonyms (Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, 4–5). I here also use emotion and feeling interchangeably.
62. “Ġhuṣṣah,” Phūl, 52, 24 December 1910, 624.
63. Pernau, Emotions and Modernity, 140.
64. Frevert, “Piggy’s Shame,” 134–5.
65. Shweder, “Toward a Deep Cultural Psychology,” 1124.
66. Nātya sāstra, VII, 58–59. See in Gosh, The Nātyasāstra.
67. On lajjā see for instance Bhawuk, “lajjA in Indian Psychology,” 113; and Shweder, “Toward a Deep Cultural Psychology,” 1124.
68. For instance “Saccā Naṣār,” Phūl, 18, 30 April 1910, 207: a young man ‘must’ have been ashamed of his suggestion to lie (sharmindah to bahut hī huā hogā).
69. ‘Javāb,’ Phūl, 48, 24 November 1910, 575–76.
70. Oesterheld, “Campaigning for a Community,” 48.
71. Minault, “I am a Ruby Wrapped,” 185.
72. See Aesop, Aesop’s Fables.
73. “Maṯlabī Aṣġhar,” Phūl, 33, 13 August 1910, 389–391.
74. Ibid., 390–1.
75. I thank Margrit Pernau for noticing this.
76. “Mujhe nah dekho,” Phūl, 11, 12 March 1910, 126–127.
77. Aitken, “Dark, Overwhelming, yet Joyful,” 157.
78. Ibid., 169.
79. Khan, Ajaib-o-Gharaib.
80. “Naqqal utārnī,” Phūl, 29, 16 July 1910, 340–342.
81. “Madrasah nā jānevālā laṛkā,” Phūl, 15, 9 April 1910, 169–171.
82. “Apnā hāl,” Phūl, 6, 5 February 1910, 3.
83. Pernau, “Asghari’s Piety,” 62.
84. Tisseron, “De la honte qui tue,” 10.
85. Ibid., 14.
86. Dawani, Practical Philosophy, 276.
87. Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics, 110.
88. Ibid., 167.
89. Frevert, “Piggy’s Shame,” 136.
90. Elias, The Civilizing Process.
91. “Bāp kī farmāṉ bardārī,” Phūl, 21, 21 May 1910, 242.
92. “Ḵẖudā ko nah bhūlo,” Phūl, 21, 21 May 1910, 249.
93. “Naqqal utārnī,” Phūl, 29, 16 July 1910, 340.
94. “Burī bāt hai,” Phūl, 31, 30 July 1910, 371.
95. “Maṯlabī Asġhar,” Phūl, 33, 13 August 1910, 389.
96. “Shauḵẖ Majīd,” Phūl, 38, 17 September 1910, 445.
97. “Burī bāt hai,” Phūl, 31, 30 July 1910, 371.
98. “Angrezī rāj kī barkateṉ,” Phūl, 8, 19 February 1910, 94–96.
99. “Mauzoṉ kā fāedah ab m’alūm huā,” Phūl, 10, 5 March 1910, 110–115.
100. “Sharīf badlah,” Phūl, 25, 18 June 1910, 290–292.
101. “Sharīr laṛkā,” Phūl, 19, 7 May 1910, 224–226.
102. Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (March 1843), Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), in Furet and Calvié, Marx and the French Revolution, 102. I thank Joel Lee for bringing this to my attention.
103. The boy is for instance shamed for not being able to write even his sister’s name, Ṣuġhra, right. “Javāb,” Phūl, 48, 24 November 1910, 575–6.
104. “Sacāī kā zor,” Phūl, 1, 1 January 1910, 6–7.
105. For instance in “Ḵẖudā ko nah bhūlo,” Phūl, 21, 21 May 1910, 249–250.
106. Cairns, Aidõs, 11.
107. Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics, 83.
108. Vaiz, Akhlak-i Muhsini, 18. See also the Persian reprint Vaiz, Aḵẖlāq-i Muḥsinī, 15–18.
109. Vaiz, Akhlak-i Muhsini, 18.
110. Dawani, Practical Philosophy, 73.
111. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Dodds, The Greeks and the irrational.
112. Cairns, Aidõs, 14.
113. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 223.
114. Lewis, Shame and Guilt, quoted in Cairns, Aidõs, 21
115. Lynd, On Shame 50, 208 and Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt 92, 134–5 quoted in Cairns, Aidõs, 23.
116. Tisseron, ‘De la honte qui tue,’ 9.
117. Cairns, Aidõs, 23. Emphasis mine.
118. Ibid., 23 and 32.
119. Creighton, “Revisiting Shame and Guilt,” 280 quoted in Fung, “Becoming a Moral Child,” 183.
120. “Jhūṭī sharm,” Phūl, 30, 23 July 1910, 359–60.
121. See for instance Nijhawan, Women and girls, 65, Hali, Majālis un-Nisā, 30 and 32; and Khoja-Moolji, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, 44.
122. News section, Phūl, 29, 16 July 1910, title page.
123. Zaidi, “Contested Identities.”
124. Oesterheld, “Campaigning for a Community,” 47.
125. Ibid., 54.