Sometimes Similar, Sometimes Dangerously Different: Exploring Resonance, Laminations and Subject-Formation in South India

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which particular individuals or groups are cast as problematically other at certain times by exploring the relationship between empathy and antipathy – identified as products of ‘resonance’, or a certain kind of responsiveness to embodied encounters with others and also to concerns, ideas and discourses that originate locally or from elsewhere. Consequent effects on subject-formation and affordances of social possibilities are explored through an intensive focus on one Muslim man. The notion of a ‘laminated subjectivity’ is presented and elucidated. The paper draws on ethnography conducted in a Tamil town and is set against the backdrop of Hindu–Muslim relations in India.

Keywords:

• Subjectivity
• resonance
• empathy
• antipathy
• India
• Hindus and Muslims

Acknowledgements

On the same day that I received notification of the acceptance of this paper, I also received the sad news that Mohammad had died. This paper is dedicated to him with gratitude and affection. My sincere thanks to the people of Pattamadai. My sincere thanks also to Michael Carrithers, Stef Jansen, Tony Simpson, Michelle Obeid and Atreyee Sen who kindly read versions of this paper and commented on it. My particular thanks to the Ethnos reviewers and Nils Bubandt for thoughtful and productive comments. I hope I have done them justice.

Notes

Rutherford's (2009) discussion of the relationship between sympathy and governance is also of interest in this regard.

He knew within minutes of meeting me that I was a Madras Brahmin.

Yellow is an auspicious colour for Hindus. The bag itself, though made from polyester, looks very like silk – considered fit for ritual use by Hindus (see Bayly 1986).

In other words, my religion over-codes yours. I am grateful to Michael Carrithers for pointing this out.

The exhibition was held between the 2nd and the 8th of January 2000. The invitation card was primarily written by the art gallery, Caché, based on materials provided by an NGO that worked in Pattamadai and organised the exhibition.

For an account of how Pattamadai mats came to be identified as traditional Indian craft objects, see Venkatesan (2009).

To put it very simply here, this politicisation of handmade and village manufactures was a response to Indian and some British concerns about the destruction of Indian manufactures, especially weaving, as a result of colonial economic practices including the flooding of India with factory-made products from Britain, see Bayly (1986).

We may also mobilise here Srinivas's (1966) term Sanskritisation, to describe the adoption of Brahmanical practices and consumption patterns by groups seeking to raise their own status. By courting Brahmin patronage, Mohammad may not only be trying to reach out to non-Brahmin Sanskritising groups, he may also be trying to tap into a larger trend of more and more ostentatious and luxurious consumption especially for weddings.

On 6 December 1992, ‘Hindu mobs’ inspired and organised by prominent Hindu supremacist organisations destroyed a mosque, the Babri Masjid, which had stood on its site in Ayodhya since 1530. Claiming that the mosque had been built on the deliberately destroyed ruins of a temple that marked the birthplace of the important Hindu god, Rama, these organisations desired the building of a temple on the site. They demanded that the state and Muslim populations of India should acknowledge the rightful ownership of Hindus to this site. Riots rocked the country and every year since then, the beginning of December has been treated by law enforcement agencies as an explosive time. Muslims are particularly vulnerable in this period.

Carrithers's notion of polytropy goes beyond another oft-used model in discussions of Indian religious practice: syncretism, which carries with it an assumption of a pure or orthodox practice that has become corrupted. Instead, ‘if we take polytropy as the norm … then we can see straightaway that any notionally pure form exists in an already crowded social world of alternatives’ (Carrithers 2000:836). The concept is suitable both for thinking about dissensions within the Muslim group about ‘corrupted practices’ (especially coming from reformist ideas) and about practices such as the one described above where women of a Muslim household send offerings to a temple.

Scholars who have what el-Zein (1977) terms a book view of Islam would be far happier and reassured to hear about the one member of this household for whom the offering to the shrine would have represented an incommensurable problem [the household's women did not tell him what they had done]. The same young man also objects to dua or blessings said over new possessions, e.g. clothing bought on the occasion of festivals on the grounds that this is an unIslamic practice. Again, members of his household including his wife wait for him to leave the house and then say dua.

See http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/feb/14blast.htm (accessed 22 March 2011). A number of members, including the founder, of the outlawed Islamist organisation Al Ummah were later convicted for their role in the bomb blasts.

Thus, the BJP leader and chief minister of Gujarat state's claim that ‘not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim’ (cited in Sundar 2004:154).

The articles in the special issue of Ethos (2004, 32(2)) on positioning and subjectivity were presented at the 2003 biennial conference of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Don Brenneis served as discussant.

As a craft producer, however, one may also be characterised as anachronistic, hide-bound, helpless and dependent. As manual workers most craft producing groups in India also occupy a low status compared to those who do not work with their hands.

This may not always work. Jhala (2006) writes of meeting a Muslim artisan cum trader in Gujarat who made figurines of Hindu gods but was afraid to say he made them, merely saying he sold them. He was afraid of negative repercussions if the Hindus who bought these figurines realised that they were made by a Muslim. However, unlike the weavers of Pattamadai, this man was not classified as a craft producer by the state or public sphere (on this, see Greenough 1995; also Venkatesan 2009).

Holland and Leander (2004) define a persona as ‘a culturally elaborated social identity that may be taken up by some as a personal identity’ (p. 128).