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Abstract
This essay offers a reading of advertisements of wearable technologies, or prostheses, designed to enhance sexual pleasure and physical health in Tibbi Dunya Lahore, an Urdu-language medical periodical. It contrasts the conception of the body implicit in these advertisements with that of earlier medieval and early modern discourses on sex. This juxtaposition of historically disparate discourses renders visible the colonial transformations of sexual subjectivity that Urdu print advertising presents. By juxtaposing these medical advertisements with earlier medico-moral discourses, one can see a shift away from technologies of the self, directed at managing the interiority of desire, towards the consumption of ‘small technologies’ that exteriorise pleasure. This material suggests not only the mutual implication of ars erotica and scientia sexualis, but also the subversion of both by the commodification of pleasure.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ishita Pande for inviting me to the ‘Sex in Translation in Post/Colonial India: Vernacular Archives and Global Itineraries’ workshop at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada, where I presented an early draft of this essay, and for her close reading of an earlier draft of this piece. I would also like to thank the workshop participants for their generous comments, especially Charu Gupta, Anjali Arondekar, Rachel Berger and Asiya Alam. I am grateful to Samira Sheikh, Hasan Siddiqui and Shireen Hamza too for offering feedback on an earlier version of this essay. I would also like to thank the two anonymous South Asia reviewers for their comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Mehrchand Seghal (ed.), Tibbi Dunya Lahore, Vol. 1 (Lahore: Divan Printing Press, 1936). For its start date, see Asad Faisal Faruqi, Hindustan Men Urdu Tibbi Sahafat Aghaz Wa Irtiqa (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim Educational Press, 2011), p. 313.
2. For an ‘overview’ of these institutions, see Seema Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600–1900 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007); and Guy Attewell, Refiguring Unani Tibb (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007).
3. Douglas E. Haynes, ‘Selling Masculinity: Advertisements for Sex Tonics and the Making of Modern Conjugality in Western India, 1900–1945’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 35, no. 4 (2012), pp. 787–831; Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), pp. 68–85; Madhuri Sharma, ‘Creating a Consumer: Exploring Medical Advertisements in Colonial India’, in Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison (eds), The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 213–28; Maarten Bode, Taking Traditional Knowledge to the Market: The Modern Image of the Ayurvedic and Unani Industry, 1980–2000 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2008), pp. 105–18; Rachel Berger, Ayurveda Made Modern: Political Histories of Indigenous Medicine in North India, 1900–1955 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 75–105; Projit Bihari Mukharji, Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print, and Daktari Medicine (London: Anthem Press, 2009), pp. 100–4; and Shinjini Das, Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India: Family, Market, and Homeopathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 114–54.
4. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, pp. 1–66.
5. Haynes, ‘Selling Masculinity’, pp. 803–16.
6. Berger, Ayurveda Made Modern, pp. 75–105.
7. Geeta Patel, Risky Bodies and Techno-Intimacy (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2016), pp. 4–5; and Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, Arnold I. Davidson (ed.) (New York: Picador, 2005), pp. 491–505.
8. David Arnold and Erich deWald, ‘Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia: An Introduction’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 46, no. 1 (2012), pp. 1–17.
9. David Arnold, Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 16–17.
10. Projit Bihari Mukharji, Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 77–115.
11. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Colonial Times: Clocks and Kali-Yuga’, in Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 10–38; and Ishita Pande, ‘Time for Sex: The Education of Desire and the Conduct of Childhood in Global/Hindu Sexology’, in Veronika Fuechtner et al. (eds), A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), pp. 279–301.
12. Patel, Risky Bodies and Techno-Intimacy, pp. 4–5.
13. I have tried to avoid the romantic deployment of prosthesis as a metaphor as criticised in Vivian Sobchack, ‘A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality’, in Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra (eds), The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 17–43.
14. Howard H.-H. Chiang, ‘Double Alterity and the Global Historiography of Sexuality: China, Europe and The Emergence of Sexuality as a Global Possibility’, in e-pisteme, Vol. 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 33–52.
15. On a framework for thinking of this hybridity, see Speziale’s discussion of translation: Fabrizio Speziale, ‘Introduction’, in Culture persane et médecine ayurvédique en asie du sud (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 1–18; and Margrit Pernau, ‘The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History’, in Paragrana, Vol. 18, no. 1 (2009), pp. 107–18.
16. Afaf Lutfi Sayyid-Marsot (ed.), Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1979); Devin J. Stewart, ‘Sex and Sexuality’, in Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼan (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2001) [http://dx.doi.org.proxy.uchicago.edu/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQSIM_00381, accessed 8 Mar. 2018]; and Al-Ghazali, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of Al-Ghazali’s Book on the Etiquette of Marriage from the Ihya, Madelain Farah (ed.) (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984).
17. Al-Ghazali, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam, p. 107.
18. Ibid., p. 108. On other forms of pleasuring, such as the permissibility of masturbation for men in some jurisprudential schools, see James A. Bellamy, ‘Sex and Society in Islamic Popular Literature’, in Afaf Lutfi Sayyid-Marsot (ed.), Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1979), pp. 34–5.
19. Asma Barlas, ‘Believing Women’ in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 152–66.
20. Ahmed Ragab, ‘One, Two, or Many Sexes: Sex Differentiation in Medieval Islamicate Medical Thought’, in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 24, no. 3 (2015), p. 440.
21. Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), pp. 44–5; and Nahyan Fancy, Science and Religion in Mamluk Egypt: Ibn Al-Nafis, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 75–88.
22. See the introduction and appendices in Nasiruddin Tusi, The Sultan’s Sex Potions: Arab Aphrodisiacs in the Middle Ages, Daniel L. Newman (trans.) (London: Saqi, 2014); and Patrick Franke, ‘Before Scientia Sexualis in Islamic Culture: ’Ilm Al Bah between Erotology, Medicine and Pornography’, in Social Identities, Vol. 18, no. 2 (2012), pp. 161–73.
23. See Jim Colville, ‘Introduction’, in Umar ibn Muhammad Nafzawi, The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight, Jim Colville (ed.) (London: Kegan Paul, 1999), pp. vii–xiii.
24. Nafzawi, The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight, pp. 63–5.
25. On the courtesan, see Sarah Waheed, ‘Women of “Ill Repute”: Ethics and Urdu Literature in Colonial India’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 48, no. 4 (2014), pp. 986–1023.
26. See Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008), pp. 291–7; and Abdul Bari, ‘Hakim Muhammad Akbar Arzani’, in Studies in History of Medicine and Science, Vol. 18, no. 1 (2002), pp. 17–34.
27. Imma Ramos, ‘“Private Pleasures” of the Mughal Empire’, in Art History, Vol. 37, no. 3 (2014), pp. 417–8; and Katherine Butler Schofield, ‘The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, c. 1556–1748’, in Gender & History, Vol. 24, no. 1 (2012), pp. 150–71.
28. Susanne Kurz, ‘Lazzat Al-Nisa’, in F. Speziale and C.W. Ernst (eds), Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (2018) [http://www.perso-indica.net/work/kokasastra_%28laddat_al-nisa%29, accessed 3 May 2020].
29. C.M. Naim, ‘Transvestic Words? The Rekhti in Urdu’, in The Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 16 (2001), pp. 3–26; and Carla Petievich, ‘Rekhti: Impersonating the Feminine in Urdu Poetry’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 24, no. supp001 (2001), pp. 75–90. See also Ruth Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhtī Poetry in India, 1780–1870 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
30. On women and Muslim social reform, see Asiya Alam, ‘Polygyny, Family and Sharafat: Discourses amongst North Indian Muslims, circa 1870–1918’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 45, no. 3 (2011), pp. 1–38.
31. Syed Akbar Hyder, ‘From Despair to Divinity: Legacies of Sadat Hasan Manto and Yas Yaganah Changezi’, in Syed Akbar Hyder et al. (eds), Hidden Histories: Religion and Reform in South Asia (Delhi: Primus Books, 2018), pp. 191–223.
32. For an overview of Urdu medical periodical publishing, see Sabrina Datoo, ‘The Madrasa Tibbiya and the Reform of Avicennian Medicine in Colonial India, c. 1889–1930’, unpublished dissertation, Department of History, University of Chicago, IL, USA, 2020, pp. 135–76.
33. See the advertisements in the Majalla-e tibbiya for a traditional preparation, ma’ al-lahm `anbari, which was used in the treatment of impotence; Majalla-e tibbiya (Delhi, Feb. 1906), p. 3. See also the Hindustani Dawakhana home remedy guide: Hakim Ajmal Khan, ‘Nuqsan-e bah’, Haziq (Delhi: Hindustani Dawakhana, 1918), p. 101, and compare advertisements throughout Hamdard-e sehat (Delhi, 1935). The titles of books advertised in this period, such as Shabab awar (Youth Restoring) and Jinsi marz aur unka ilaj (Sexual Diseases and Their Treatment), indicate the shift to more explicit language. For the 1920s and 1930s, see advertisements in Mushir al-atibba (Lahore, various years).
34. See the strengthening electrical belt advertised in 1905 in Ranabir Ray Choudhury, Early Calcutta Advertisements 1875–1925 (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications Ltd, 1992), p. 471. In Urdu, the earliest electrical treatment for sexual function I have seen was in 1929: ‘Barqi 'Ilaj’, in Mushir al-atibba, Vol. 8, no. 2 (1929), p. 14.
35. Kate Fisher and Jana Funke, ‘The Age of Attraction: Age, Gender and the History of Modern Male Homosexuality’, in Gender & History, Vol. 31, no. 2 (2019), pp. 266–83.
36. Mehrchand Seghal, ‘Breast Tone’, in Tibbi Dunya Lahore, Vol. 1, no. 10 (1936), p. 32. The kit cost 12 rupees 2 annas.
37. On Urdu poetics and the conventions of the ghazal, see Frances Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and S.R. Faruqi, ‘Conventions of Love, Love of Conventions: Urdu Love Poetry in the Eighteenth Century’, in Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 14 (1999), pp. 3–32; revised version [http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/srf/srf_conventions_of_love.pdf, accessed 18 Oct. 2020]. On the pre-colonial figure of the active beloved, see this Faruqi’s revised version, pp. 18–23.
38. Tibbi Dunya Lahore (April 1937), p. 20. For the censorious attitude to the bodice amongst British observers, see Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, p. 36; and for praise of it, see Petievich, ‘Rekhti’, p. 80.
39. Tibbi Dunya Lahore (April 1937), p. 13.
40. Muhammad Akbar Arzani, Tibb-e akbari (Bombay, 1863), p. 281.
41. Majmu‘a mizan al-tibb urdu, Muhammad Abdalhakim (trans.) (Lucknow: Nami Press, 1910), p. 144.
42. Ibid.
43. ‘Tandrusti khubsurati aur jawani ko ta hayat qaim rakhne ka aala’, in Tibbi Dunya Lahore, Vol. 1 (May 1936); see the eight-page insert between pages 24 and 25.
44. For English-language advertisements, see Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria’, the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 105–6.
45. Veronika Fuechtner et al. (eds), A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), pp. 1–29; and Arnold, Everyday Technology, pp. 3–15.
46. ‘Tandrusti khubsurati aur jawani ko ta hayat qaim rakhne ka aala’, in Tibbi Dunya Lahore (May 1936), advertising supplement, p. 5.
47. See the 1920 advertisements for the ‘Hamilton Beach Type C Vibrator’ in Hallie Lieberman, Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017).
48. Pande, ‘Time for Sex’, pp. 295–7.
49. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm, pp. 48–110.
50. Majalla-e tibbiya notes a case in which a hakim was advised to employ the help of a ‘clever dai’ to conduct an internal examination; see Majalla-e tibbiya (May 1906), p. 39.
51. Naim, ‘Transvestic Words?’, p. 10. It is not clear to me when or how women’s autoeroticism emerged into modern Urdu medical discourse.
52. Ishita Pande, Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 170–2.
53. An editorial from 1909 explains this trend: see Hakim Muhammad Firozuddin, ‘Risala-e hikmat ka dusra daur’, in Risala-e hikmat lahore, Vol. 2, nos. 11–12 (1909), pp. 4–7.
54. No author, ‘Jalq-masturbation’, in Hamdard Nojawanan (Delhi, n.d., likely mid to late 1930s), p. 7. This is a printed booklet I found at Hakim Zillurrahman’s Ibn Sina Library in Aligarh. It was missing its cover and the first four pages. It seems to be a special publication of the Hamdard Dawakhana in Delhi, publishers of the periodical Hamdard-e Sehat (established 1931). Its focus is health problems of young men.