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Abstract
In this article, I trace appropriations of the Bengali bandit Devi Chaudhurani as she is transfigured within the Indian nationalist novel Devi Chaudhurani and the contemporary feminist street play Meye Dile Sajiye or Giving Away the Girl. These representations are characterized by an eclecticism and a hybridity that treat “the bandit” as a hermeneutical resource for rhetorical invention. Each representation draws its force from the tensions and incongruities it strategically manifests, playing with indigenous Indian and colonial notions of criminality in order to advance ideologically complex arguments about the social conditions for women and their roles in colonial and postcolonial society.
Earlier versions of this article have benefited greatly from comments offered by Erik Doxtader, Radha Hegde, Dhavan Shah, and Susan Zaeske, as well the anonymous reviewers for Quarterly Journal of Speech.
Earlier versions of this article have benefited greatly from comments offered by Erik Doxtader, Radha Hegde, Dhavan Shah, and Susan Zaeske, as well the anonymous reviewers for Quarterly Journal of Speech.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful for their thoughtful insights.
Notes
Earlier versions of this article have benefited greatly from comments offered by Erik Doxtader, Radha Hegde, Dhavan Shah, and Susan Zaeske, as well the anonymous reviewers for Quarterly Journal of Speech.
1. See Michel Leff's discussion of hermeneutical rhetoric: Michael Leff, “Hermeneutical Rhetoric,” in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael Hyde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
2. The notion of appropriation I advance here draws from Paul Ricoeur's work, where it is conceptualized as the process by which one makes one's own (eigon) what was initially other (fremd). Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
3. Brian Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
4. Tagore writes that literature is the playground where the artist can indulge in lila. “Literature is the realm of his unrestricted, strange, and vast play, lila.” Rabandranath Tagore, in Studies in Modern Indian Aesthetics, ed. Sudhirakumara Nandi (Simla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1975), 19.
5. Homi Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990); Arif Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1994): 328–56; Ella Shohat, “Notes on the Post-Colonial,” Social Text 31/32 (1992): 99–113.
6. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 21.
7. Thomas Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
8. Mary Garrett, “How Far We Have Come; How Far We Have To Go,” in Making and Unmaking the Prospects for Rhetoric, ed. Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate Publishers, 1997).
9. Yoshi Miike, “Theorizing Culture and Communication in the Asian Context: An Assumptive Foundation,” Intercultural Communication Studies 11 (2002): 1–21; Robert Oliver, Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1971); Raka Shome, “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An ‘Other’ View,” Communication Theory 6 (1996): 40–59; Raka Shome and Radha Hegde, “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” Communication Theory 12 (2002): 249–70; William Starosta, “Afrocentric Voice, White Noise,” Contemporary Psychology 46 (2001): 242–44. Katriel Tamar, Performing the Past: A Study of Israeli Settlement Museums (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).
10. Agehananda Bharati, “The Hindu Renaissance and Its Apologetic Patterns,” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (1970): 267–87.
11. Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse; Bharati, “The Hindu Renaissance.”
12. As Robert Oliver points out in Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1971), his ground-breaking text on Indian and Chinese rhetoric, texts dealing with questions of influence or invention have existed since classical Vedic times. However, until recently there was no separate study of rhetoric, at least as Western scholars have understood it. Indeed, philosophers made no strict demarcations between the fields of religion, philosophy, rhetoric, history, ethics, sociology, literature, and aesthetics.
13. Such methods of interpretation (pramanavicara) have always been a major intellectual activity, right from the Rg Veda itself. Of course, eclecticism has its own rich set of histories in the West as well. It is discussed and displayed in the work of Greek and Alexandrian philosophers such as Plutarch, Seneca, and Cicero, in the philosophies of Enlightenment scholars like Diderot, and by postmodern theorists in terms of pastiche. However, although the concept of eclecticism is broadly observable across many places and times, it would be a mistake to overlook the particular ways in which it has manifested in India.
14. Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse.
15. In “Hermeneutical Rhetoric,” Leff points out the importance of attending to how interpretive practices change in different historical moments and reflect divergence within rhetorical communities.
16. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
17. John Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 2.
18. Frank Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 71–72.
19. “Representation,” as I will be using the term here, refers to the social function of focusing the percipient's mind on something outside of the image, specifically the represented action or object. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1993).
20. Louis Nordstom, “Metaphor and Sunyata,” in East–West Dialogues in Aesthetics, ed. Kenneth Inada (Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 1979), 5.
21. Leff, “Hermeneutical Rhetoric.”
22. Anand Yang, Crime and Criminality in British India (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985).
23. Martine Van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
24. Sandria Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India,” Modern Asian Studies 25 (1991): 227–61.
25. Van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveler, 34.
26. Van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveler, 34.
27. Varis Shah, Hir Varis Shah, Poeme Pendjabi du XVIIIeme Siecle, trans. and ed. Denis Matringe (Pondichery, France: Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1988), S2.
28. David Shulman, “On South Indian Bandits and Kings,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 17 (1981): 282–306.
29. Van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveler, 20–21.
30. William Sleeman, Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by the Thugs with an Introduction and an Appendix Descriptive of the System Pursued by That Fraternity and of the Measures Which Have Been Adopted by the Supreme Government for Its Suppression (Calcutta, India: Military Orphan Press, 1836), 73. Devi (goddess) is the feminine form of Deva (god). When the word “Devi” is used alone it typically refers to the goddesses Durga, Uma, Parvati, or Kali, who represent varying aspects of one supreme power. Durga is a virginal warrior who protects humanity; Kali or Devi Uma is represented by aspects of death and destruction; and Parvati is defined by her wifely devotion to Shiva.
31. As Sleeman notes:
I have heard of only one woman who has gone herself on Thug expeditions, and that is the wife of Bukhtawur Jemadar, of the Soosea class of Thugs. She and her husband are still at large in the Jypore territory. She has often assisted her husband in strangling; and on one occasion strangled a man who had overpowered and stunned her husband. Mothers, I know, have often made their sons go on Thuggee when they would not otherwise have gone, and wives on some occasions their husbands; and I have heard of one woman in the Duckun who kept a small gang of thugs; but Bakhtawur's wife is the only woman that has, as far as I can learn, gone on a Thuggee herself.
Sleeman, Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary, 80.
32. An excellent example is Jean d'Thevenot's 1684 account:
They have another cunning trick also to catch travelers with. They send out a handsome woman upon the road, who with her hair disheveled seems to be in all tears, sighing and complaining of some misfortune she pretends has befallen her … but he has no sooner taken her up behind him on horseback, but she throws the snare about his neck and strangles him or at least stuns him, until the robbers (who lie hid) come running to her assistance and complete what she hath begun.
See Jean d'Thevenot, Voyages de Mr. de Thevenot, Contenant la Relation de l'Indostan des Nouveaux Moguls et des Autres Peuples et Pays des Indes (Paris, France: Biestkins, 1684), 369–7, quoted in Van Woerkens, The Strangled Traveler.
33. Lieutenant Brenan quoted in W. W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal 7 (1876): 155–61.
34. When Bhowani Pathak was killed in 1787 while operating the Bogra–Rangpur–Mymensingh area, seven boats with arms and ammunition were taken.
35. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal.
36. Zamindars, in pre-Mughal India, were hereditary landholders; however, zamindar later became a generic title, describing people with a variety of landholdings and rights, from peasant-proprietors to semi-independent chieftains.
37. Mike Dash, Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult (London: Granta Books, 2005).
38. In the Preface to Devi Chaudhurani, Chatterji writes:
Devi Chaudhurani … claims slender historical foundation. He who feels inclined to acquaint himself with that history may learn it from a perusal of the annals of Rangpore as embodied in A Statistical Account of Bengal compiled by Mr. Hunter and published by the government.
Bankim Chatterji, Devi Chaudhurani, trans. Subodh Chunder Mitter (Calcutta, India: Chuckervertty, 1946), xii.
39. Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
40. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation, 136.
41. Sangeeta Ray, En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 13.
42. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
43. Chatterji, The Nation and Its Fragments, 27.
44. Chatterji, The Nation and Its Fragments, 104.
45. Chatterji, The Nation and Its Fragments, 235.
46. Chatterji, The Nation and Its Fragments, 235.
47. Kathryn Hansen suggests a similar connection in her article, “The Virangana in North Indian History: Myth and Popular Culture,” Economic and Political Weekly, April 1988, 30.
48. Kathryn Hansen, “Heroic Modes of Women in Indian Myth, Ritual and History: The Tapasvini and the Virangana,” Annual Review of Women in World Religions 2 (1992): 1–62.
49. Hansen, “Virangana in North Indian,” 32.
50. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation.
51. Yvonne Haddad and Ellison Findly, Women, Religion, and Change (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).
52. I would like to thank Malini Bhattacharya for providing me with a full text version of the street play prior to its publication in other venues.
53. Malini Bhattacharya, Giving Away the Girl: And Other Plays (Calcutta, India: Seagull Books, 2003).
54. Eventually they expanded their consciousness-raising to include community education projects, film festivals, college seminars and workshops, and a published journal called Sachetana.
55. Bhattacharya, Giving Away the Girl.
56. The Dowry Prohibition Act was first passed in 1961 and later amended in 1984 and 1986. The act was designed to prohibit the giving or taking of dowry. Dowry in this legislation is defined as ‘‘any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly’’ by any party at the time of or after the marriage ceremony. Despite this legal effort, dowry practices persist. Moreover, when such dowry has been denied to the bridegroom's party, an increasing number of women have become the victims of ‘‘dowry death’’ where the bride is found dead under abnormal circumstances, often characterized by burns or bodily injury. (The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961: No. 28 of 61, May 20, 1961.)
57. Ann Grodzins Gold, “Gender and Illusion in a Rajastani Yogic Tradition,” in Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Frank Korom, and Margaret Mills (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 1991), 102–35; James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
58. Irene Frain, Phoolan (New Delhi, India: Roli Books, 1993).
59. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997).
60. Rajan, Real and Imagined Women, 14.
61. Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, 128.
62. My use of the term “emancipatory potential” comes from the work of Jack Zipes. See his book Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (New York: Metheun, 1983).
63. Again, to understand better the term “hermeneutical rhetoric,” as opposed to “rhetorical hermeneutics,” refer to Leff's seminal chapter, “Hermeneutical Rhetoric.”
64. See Paul Ricoeur's chapter ‘‘Rhetoric–Poetics–Hermeneutics,’’ in Walter Jost and Michael Hyde, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), as well as his book, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, trans. John Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987).
65. Shome, ‘‘Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon,’’ 44. The original idea appears in Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), xxiv.
66. See Bhabha, ‘‘DissemiNation’’; Dirlik, ‘‘The Postcolonial Aura’’; Lisa Lowe, ‘‘Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian-American Differences,’’ in Theorizing Diaspora, ed. Jana Braziel and Anita Mannur (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003); Arjun Appadurai, ‘‘Disjuncture and Difference in Global Cultural Economy,’’ Public Culture 2(2): 1–24.
67. See Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Theorizing Diaspora.
68. Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham, Race, Rhetoric, and the Postcolonial (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 18.
69. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 123.
70. See Caputo's discussion of radical hermeneutics in More Radical Hermeneutics.
71. Rajan, Real and Imagined Women, 14.
72. Jacques Ranciere, “Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization,” in The Identity in Question, ed. John Rajchman (New York: Routledge, 1995), 67.