Conning the conmen: Intelligence and female desire in Dedh Ishqiya

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the ostensibly paradoxical relationship that exists between the theme of excessive love, as suggested by the title of Abhishek Chaubey's film Dedh Ishqiya (2014), and the actual representation of it in the movie, which is not only restrained and disproportionate, but is also looked at with suspicion and contempt. It examines the logic of this seeming contradiction through the other two related themes that Chaubey's chef-d'œuvre foregrounds, namely that of intelligence and female desire. The quest for financial autonomy that the female protagonists of the movie are involved in—a necessary pre-condition for leading independent lives—is so inextricably intertwined with manipulation, dexterity, and subterfuge, that any overt expression of homoerotic female desire can only jeopardize their existing possibilities of self-aggrandizement. The heteronormative arrangements of Begum Para's palace thus constitute the elaborate mise en scène, behind which female desire is enacted through a politics of intelligence, resourcefulness, discretion, and anonymity. Through this strategic negotiation, which is also a tactical necessity, the female protagonists are not only able to con the con men in the movie, but also imagine alternative subject positions that recognize the need for both pragmatism and expediency as well as deconstructing heteropatriarchal economies of desire.

KEYWORDS:

• Bollywood
• Dedh Ishqiya
• female desire
• homoeroticism
• lesbian love
• Fire

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Prof. M. Asaduddin and Prof. Baran Farooqi for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I am also thankful to the editor and reviewers of Journal of Lesbian Studies for their suggestions. A special thanks to Santosh Kumar Singh for engaging with successive versions. The responsibility for any error, however, remains entirely mine. This article is humbly dedicated to my late mother.

Notes

1. Alan Sinfield. (1992). Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

2. Some of the most popular as well as controversial films of mainstream Hindi cinema which are primarily concerned with this theme include Karan Razdan's Girlfriend (2004), Shrey Srivastava's Men Not Allowed (2006), and Margarita with a Straw (2014), a joint venture of Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar. In the diasporic and transnational context of India, Nisha Ganatra's Chutney Popcorn (1999), Pratibha Parmar's Nina's Heavenly Delights (2006), and Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen (2007) and I Can't Think Straight (2008) are substantial contributions to this ever-increasing repertoire. Here, one must also make a mention of regional films like Ligy Pullappally's Sancharram (The Journey, 2004), which radically challenge the conventional morality of perceived viewership.

3. For the kind of controversies that a representative film like Fire provoked, see Julie Marsh and Howard Brasted. (2002). “Fire, the BJP and Moral Society.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 25(3): 235–251; and Shohini Ghosh. (2010). Fire: A Queer Classic. Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press.

4. Brinda Bose. (2000). “The Desiring Subject: Female Pleasures and Feminist Resistance in Deepa Mehta's Fire.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 7(2): 249–262.

5. Mary E. John and Tejaswini Niranjana. (1999). “Mirror Politics: ‘Fire,’ Hindutva and Indian Culture.” Economic and Political Weekly 34(10/11): 581–584. There have, of course, been rebuttals and counter-claims to these analyses by other feminist critics, the most eminent of them being Ratna Kapur. See Ratna Kapur. (1999). “Cultural Politics of Fire.” Economic and Political Weekly 34(21): 1297–1299.

6. Akhil Katyal. (2013). “Laundebaazi.” Interventions 15(4): 474–493.

7. Laundebaaz is someone who has a habit for boys and an inclination to play with them.

8. Her entire property is mortgaged with a bank.

9. This element of economic independence has also been recognized by critics like Shamira A. Meghani, albeit in the context of Mehta's film: “The potential for lesbian desire to develop in and (re)organize the home space is as much an issue of economic independence as it is of tradition” (68). See Shamira A. Meghani. (2015). “Global Desires, Postcolonial Critique: Queer Women in Nation, Migration, and Diaspora.” In The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature, edited by Jodie Medd, 60–75. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

10. Gayatri Gopinath. (2005). Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

11. Sue Thornham. (1997). Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Theory. New York, NY: Arnold.

12. Navaneetha Mokkil. (2009). “Shifting Spaces, Frozen Frames: Trajectories of Queer Politics in Contemporary India.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10(1): 12–30. Mokkil's analysis, which recognizes the need to maintain a sense of contingency around the term “queer,” owes its origin to Judith Butler's postulations. For more on these postulations, see Judith Butler. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York, NY: Routledge, 228.

13. Abhishek Chaubey. (2014). Dedh Ishqiya. SE and VBP, directed by Abhishek Chaubey.

14. Shamira A. Meghani. (2009). “Articulating ‘Indianness’: Women-Centered Desire and the Parameters for Nationalism.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 13(1): 59–67. This point is significant because films like Dedh Ishqiya (2014), Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), and Nil Battey Sannata (2016) epitomize a further continuation of the irreversible trend inaugurated by movies like Kahaani (2012), Gulaab Gang (2014), and Queen (2014), all of which focus their “attention on the female character and its development” (107). See Sukanya Gupta. (2015). “Kahaani, Gulaab Gang and Queen: Remaking the Queens of Bollywood.” South Asian Popular Culture 13(2): 107–123. This unprecedented domination of women-centered films and scripts has also manifested itself through the several awards that the actresses of these films have won for their performances. For instance, Kangana Ranaut is the only actress after the legendary, versatile, and iconoclastic Shabana Azmi to have won back-to-back National Awards for her performances in Queen and Tanu Weds Manu Returns. Similarly, Vidya Balan is popularly referred to as the “fourth Khan” on account of her “hatke (unique) stardom” (394–409). See Nandana Bose. (2014). “‘Bollywood's Fourth Khan’: Deconstructing the ‘Hatke’ Stardom of Vidya Balan in Popular Hindi Cinema.” Celebrity Studies 5(4): 394–409. All of this only promises an even brighter future for women-centered films and scripts.

15. Vijay Mishra. (2009). “Spectres of Sentimentality: The Bollywood Film.” Textual Practice 23(3): 439–462. Dedh Ishqiya almost acts as a counter-narrative to Maneesh Sharma's Ladies vs Ricky Bahl (2011), a film which, for all its compelling and experimental narrative strategies, makes a final return towards sentimentality and melodrama for the concluding sections of the plot.

16. Navaneetha Mokkil. (2009). “Shifting Spaces, Frozen Frames: Trajectories of Queer Politics in Contemporary India.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10(1): 12–30.

17. Samuel Z. Klausner. (1961). “Sex Life in Islam.” In The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Behaviour, edited by A. Ellis and A. Abarbanel, 545–557. New York, NY: Hawthorn Books. One is invariably reminded here of Shrilal Shukla's chef-d'œuvre Raag Darbari (1968) because, like Dedh Ishqiya, the novel situates its critique within the language of “tolerant jocularity,” and yet manages to puncture “the complacencies and the assumptions of both Ranganath [here Khalu and Babban] and the reader [the audience in this case]” (273). See Shailendra Kumar Singh. (2016). “Demystifying the Sanctity of the Village Council: ‘Ghareeb ki Haye’ as a Counter-Narrative to ‘Panch Parmeshwar.’” In Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations, edited by M. Asaduddin, 258–280. London, UK: Routledge.

18. Gayatri Gopinath. (2005). Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

19. Gayatri Gopinath. (2005). Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

20. Gayatri Gopinath. (2005). Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

21. Brinda Bose. (2000). “The Desiring Subject: Female Pleasures and Feminist Resistance in Deepa Mehta's Fire.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 7(2): 249–262.

22. Deepa Mehta. (1996). Fire. VHS, directed by Deepa Mehta.

23. John Rawls. (1999). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (first published 1971).

24. I have also argued on similar lines, in the context of Premchand's short story, “Panch Parmeshwar” (The Holy Panchayat, 1916). See Shailendra Kumar Singh. (2016). “Demystifying the Sanctity of the Village Council: ‘Ghareeb ki Haye’ as a Counter-Narrative to ‘Panch Parmeshwar.’” In Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations, edited by M. Asaduddin, 258–280. London, UK: Routledge.

25. For more on the oppositional as well as compatible nature of relationship that exists between morality and self-interest, see Paul Bloomfield. (2008). “Introduction.” In Morality and Self-Interest, edited by Paul Bloomfield, 3–9. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

26. As Meghani puts it: “Attention to the quotidian courses of power can therefore help us see the circumscription of desire beyond questions of tradition and modernity” (73). See Shamira A. Meghani. (2015). “Global Desires, Postcolonial Critique: Queer Women in Nation, Migration, and Diaspora.” In The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature, edited by Jodie Medd, 60–75. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. While examining the radicalism of films like Fire and Dedh Ishqiya, one should also bear in mind the kind of representations of female desire that are taking place beyond the diasporic and transnational context of India. For instance, Brigitte Lewis perceptively points out, “[T]he lesbian in popular culture is usually mad, criminal, or she's really, actually, heterosexual. Think Charlize Theron's stunning portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wournos in Monster, the crim[e]s we all love to watch in Prisoner, Wentworth and Orange is the New Black, and the ‘queer woman turned straight’ in The Kids Are Alright and Chasing Amy,” Brigitte Lewis. (2016). “Mad, Criminal or Straight: Female Desire in Film and TV.” SBS, Feb 24. http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/sexuality/article/2016/02/24/mad-criminal-or-straight-female-desire-film-and-tv. Both Fire as well as Dedh Ishqiya are far removed from these formulaic categories.

27. Abhishek Chaubey. (2014). Dedh Ishqiya. SE and VBP, directed by Abhishek Chaubey. Translation mine.

28. Abhishek Chaubey. (2014). Dedh Ishqiya. SE and VBP, directed by Abhishek Chaubey.

29. Abhishek Chaubey. (2014). Dedh Ishqiya. SE and VBP, directed by Abhishek Chaubey. Translation mine.

30. Esther D. Rothblum and Lynne A. Bond. (1996). “Introduction: Approaches to the Prevention of Heterosexism and Homophobia.” In Preventing Heterosexism and Homophobia, edited by Esther D. Rothblum and Lynne A. Bond, ix–xix. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

31. Esther D. Rothblum and Lynne A. Bond. (1996). “Introduction: Approaches to the Prevention of Heterosexism and Homophobia.” In Preventing Heterosexism and Homophobia, edited by Esther D. Rothblum and Lynne A. Bond, ix–xix. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

32. Kenneth Thompson and Anita Sharma. (1998). “Secularization, Moral Regulation and the Mass Media.” British Journal of Sociology 49(3): 434–455.

33. Richard Stivers. (2000). “Visual Morality and Tradition: Society's New Norms.” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 20(1): 29–34.

34. Pawan Singh. (2016). “Between Legal Recognition and Moral Policing: Mapping the Queer Subject in India.” Journal of Homosexuality 63(3): 416–425.

35. Shamira A. Meghani. (2009). “Articulating ‘Indianness’: Women-Centered Desire and the Parameters for Nationalism.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 13(1): 59–67.

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Shailendra Kumar Singh

Shailendra Kumar Singh is pursuing his PhD from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, and has a Master's in English Literature from Hindu College, University of Delhi. He is the youngest recipient of the Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize for the best published academic paper in India, 2016–2017, awarded by the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. His research interests include gender studies, Indian literature in English translation, eighteenth-century literature, and Premchand's literary corpus.