Charu Gupta
University of Delhi, Department of History, Faculty Member
- Charu Gupta is Senior Professor in the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi. She ha... moreCharu Gupta is Senior Professor in the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi. She has been a Visiting Professor and ICCR Chair at the University of Vienna, a Visiting Faculty at the Yale University, the Washington University and the University of Hawaii. She has also been a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, the Social Science Research Council, New York, the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Thailand, the Wellcome Institute, London, and the University of Oxford. She is the author of Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Permanent Black, Delhi, 2001 & Palgrave, New York, 2002) (paperbacks 2005, 2008, 2012; kindle e-book 2013), and The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print (Permanent Black, India & University of Washington Press, 2016; paperback 2017). She is also the editor of Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism (Orient Blackswan, Delhi, 2012). She has published several papers in national-international journals on themes of sexualities, masculinities, caste and religious identities. She is presently working on life narratives in Hindi in early twentieth century north India.edit
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This collection of twelve essays foregrounds the conjunction of the social phenomenon called ‘caste’ with the genre of representation called ‘life narratives’. Life narratives have long been a constitutive archive and a performative mode... more
This collection of twelve essays foregrounds the conjunction of the social phenomenon called ‘caste’ with the genre of representation called ‘life narratives’. Life narratives have long been a constitutive archive and a performative mode for testifying to the breadth and ferocity of caste oppression and for articulating a language of caste dissent. Caste and Life Narratives covers a variety of modes of representing ‘actual lives’, in whole or in fragments – from autobiographies, and interviews to Facebook posts, biopics, and most tragically, a suicide note. It uses the notions of ‘Critical Caste Studies’, which is vitally animated by Dalit Studies, but is not coterminous with it. While acknowledging the unique status of Dalit and Dalitbahujan perspectives, it argues that caste is not the lived reality of Dalits alone and, accordingly, a critical study of caste cannot be solely their burden.
The collection is interdisciplinary, interlinguistic, intercultural, international, and comparative. It represents a range of disciplines, including art criticism, education, film studies, history, law, literary criticism, management studies, and sociology. It covers a diversity of languages, archives, regions, cultural traditions, genres, themes, identities and personae. Drawing from postcolonial, Dalit and Critical Caste Studies, it offers unique theoretical and methodological perspectives, provoking new ways of entering into the burgeoning study of caste.
The collection is interdisciplinary, interlinguistic, intercultural, international, and comparative. It represents a range of disciplines, including art criticism, education, film studies, history, law, literary criticism, management studies, and sociology. It covers a diversity of languages, archives, regions, cultural traditions, genres, themes, identities and personae. Drawing from postcolonial, Dalit and Critical Caste Studies, it offers unique theoretical and methodological perspectives, provoking new ways of entering into the burgeoning study of caste.
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Caste and gender are complex markers of difference, hierarchy, and inequality. They have rarely been addressed together in the context of colonial India. The Gender of Caste rethinks the history of caste from a gendered perspective by... more
Caste and gender are complex markers of difference, hierarchy, and inequality. They have rarely been addressed together in the context of colonial India. The Gender of Caste rethinks the history of caste from a gendered perspective by exploring its connections with print–public–popular culture.
Charu Gupta shows that the creation by elites of hegemonic print and literary practices involved the operation of caste and gender in tandem. Caste and gender constituted society in vital ways and caste was central to how gender was reproduced. Deriving her material from Uttar Pradesh a century ago, she shows that ideas about gender were critical to caste practices in relation to Dalits.
Historicizing several axes along which Dalits were represented—gender, caste, class, and community, she extends the preoccupations of Indian feminists and Dalit historians. Utilizing the lens of ‘representation’, she examines ideological discourses that constructed Dalits generally, and Dalit women specifically. Such constructions, she argues, suggest the implicit collusion of colonizers, nationalists, reformers, and Dalits themselves. She takes us through historical narratives that helped engender images of Dalits and ‘untouchable’ women, reifications which North Indians internalized and reproduced towards a cultural ‘common sense’ that persists into our own time.
This book questions both the presumptive ‘upper-casteness’ of feminist studies and the presumptive maleness of most Dalit studies of the colonial period. Dalit masculinity, remembrances of 1857, popular vocabularies and idioms, conversion anxieties, and the difficulties of indentured labour are among the many themes of this book—a major expansion of the field.
Charu Gupta shows that the creation by elites of hegemonic print and literary practices involved the operation of caste and gender in tandem. Caste and gender constituted society in vital ways and caste was central to how gender was reproduced. Deriving her material from Uttar Pradesh a century ago, she shows that ideas about gender were critical to caste practices in relation to Dalits.
Historicizing several axes along which Dalits were represented—gender, caste, class, and community, she extends the preoccupations of Indian feminists and Dalit historians. Utilizing the lens of ‘representation’, she examines ideological discourses that constructed Dalits generally, and Dalit women specifically. Such constructions, she argues, suggest the implicit collusion of colonizers, nationalists, reformers, and Dalits themselves. She takes us through historical narratives that helped engender images of Dalits and ‘untouchable’ women, reifications which North Indians internalized and reproduced towards a cultural ‘common sense’ that persists into our own time.
This book questions both the presumptive ‘upper-casteness’ of feminist studies and the presumptive maleness of most Dalit studies of the colonial period. Dalit masculinity, remembrances of 1857, popular vocabularies and idioms, conversion anxieties, and the difficulties of indentured labour are among the many themes of this book—a major expansion of the field.
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Research Interests:
"Drawing on contemporary critical theories and academic debates, Gendering Colonial India examines how notions of patriarchy were recast and challenged in colonial India between the early nineteenth and the first half of twentieth... more
"Drawing on contemporary critical theories and academic debates, Gendering Colonial India examines how notions of patriarchy were recast and challenged in colonial India between the early nineteenth and the first half of twentieth centuries. This definitive collection of essays analyses the close interaction between gender, caste and community identities.
This volume brings out various regional complexities and lively public debates on social reforms for women and their impact on issues like sati, widow remarriage, domesticity, sexuality and education. It shows how women emerged as both objects and subjects of popular discourse and discussions. Simultaneously, the essays engage with concerns around masculinity, inter-caste intimacies and communal identities.
The debates found multifaceted expression in an emerging dynamic popular-public sphere and also in a flourishing vernacular print culture. These in turn served as powerful tools for propagating dominant ideas about women and for fashioning national, regional and community identities.
The three primary texts translated by J. Devika, Anshu Malhotra and Charu Gupta bring out the relationship, most often fraught, between popular literature, reforms and women.
With contributions from both established and emerging feminist historians, this book will be an indispensible read for students and scholars of modern Indian history, colonialism, nationalism, gender studies and popular culture.
"
This volume brings out various regional complexities and lively public debates on social reforms for women and their impact on issues like sati, widow remarriage, domesticity, sexuality and education. It shows how women emerged as both objects and subjects of popular discourse and discussions. Simultaneously, the essays engage with concerns around masculinity, inter-caste intimacies and communal identities.
The debates found multifaceted expression in an emerging dynamic popular-public sphere and also in a flourishing vernacular print culture. These in turn served as powerful tools for propagating dominant ideas about women and for fashioning national, regional and community identities.
The three primary texts translated by J. Devika, Anshu Malhotra and Charu Gupta bring out the relationship, most often fraught, between popular literature, reforms and women.
With contributions from both established and emerging feminist historians, this book will be an indispensible read for students and scholars of modern Indian history, colonialism, nationalism, gender studies and popular culture.
"
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"Today, disputes in South Asia are not only about soldiers and wars; they have permeated daily lives and suffused border areas, where the majority of casualties are ordinary people like coastal fisherfolk. Maritime borders are... more
"Today, disputes in South Asia are not only about soldiers and wars; they have permeated daily lives and suffused border areas, where the majority of casualties are ordinary people like coastal fisherfolk. Maritime borders are increasingly protected and monitored not to deter naval armies or impose tariffs on sea trade, but to confront a perceived invasion of the “undesirable” fishermen. This book is about the troubled and tragic journeys and livelihood insecurities of coastal fisherfolk arrested and jailed by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for having entered each other’s territorial waters. These fisherfolk are victims of defined and undefined boundaries in the seas, and increasing conflicts over renewable resources. While reflecting on national anxieties and the deleterious politics of boundaries, the book reveals how these fisherfolk mark ambiguous spaces creating alternative maps and a new world of “debordering”.
These conflicts have been objects of everyday news, but never a subject of serious study. A first of its kind, the present book breaks new ground by examining the journeys of these fisherfolk and coastal conflicts in South Asia from several overlapping but distinct perspectives: declining sea resources, security and border anxieties, suffering of the fisherfolk, their ambiguous identities and transnational movements. In being fisherfolk-centric, the book marginalizes the concerns of the state from the perspective of security, questions its very basis and argues for a shift in its perspective.
This book will interest those in the disciplines of history, sociology, political science, defence security studies and development economics. It will also be of interest to NGOs, fisherfolk organizations, and to those concerned with issues of nationalism, marginalized populations and international borders.
"
These conflicts have been objects of everyday news, but never a subject of serious study. A first of its kind, the present book breaks new ground by examining the journeys of these fisherfolk and coastal conflicts in South Asia from several overlapping but distinct perspectives: declining sea resources, security and border anxieties, suffering of the fisherfolk, their ambiguous identities and transnational movements. In being fisherfolk-centric, the book marginalizes the concerns of the state from the perspective of security, questions its very basis and argues for a shift in its perspective.
This book will interest those in the disciplines of history, sociology, political science, defence security studies and development economics. It will also be of interest to NGOs, fisherfolk organizations, and to those concerned with issues of nationalism, marginalized populations and international borders.
"
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This paper introduces a special section comprising eight papers that delve into complex geographies of communal identities in modern South Asia. It situates these papers at a significant intersection of spatial histories and historical... more
This paper introduces a special section comprising eight papers
that delve into complex geographies of communal identities in
modern South Asia. It situates these papers at a significant intersection
of spatial histories and historical geographies of the region,
with a focus on exploring the intricate relationship between community
and religious identity on the one hand, and space and scale
on the other. We take a broad view of communal geographies,
reconsidering spatiality through community histories that encompass
diverse contexts such as local mohallas and national statistics,
rural and urban settings, and secular and religious spaces. It illustrates
how religious communities have mapped their identities
onto everyday arenas like borders, gurdwaras, homes, markets,
mosques, shops, streets and temples. Drawing from various disciplinary
and theoretical perspectives and employing methodologies
ranging from archival research to oral history and ethnography, this
special section expands our understanding of how social practices
and religious interactions leave their footprints on geography.
that delve into complex geographies of communal identities in
modern South Asia. It situates these papers at a significant intersection
of spatial histories and historical geographies of the region,
with a focus on exploring the intricate relationship between community
and religious identity on the one hand, and space and scale
on the other. We take a broad view of communal geographies,
reconsidering spatiality through community histories that encompass
diverse contexts such as local mohallas and national statistics,
rural and urban settings, and secular and religious spaces. It illustrates
how religious communities have mapped their identities
onto everyday arenas like borders, gurdwaras, homes, markets,
mosques, shops, streets and temples. Drawing from various disciplinary
and theoretical perspectives and employing methodologies
ranging from archival research to oral history and ethnography, this
special section expands our understanding of how social practices
and religious interactions leave their footprints on geography.
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This article delves into the connections between disease, contagion, caste, gender and religion in colonial North India. It looks at the 'Untouchable' not just as a figure or a category but as a concept that is utilised by dominant... more
This article delves into the connections between disease, contagion, caste, gender and religion in colonial North India. It looks at the 'Untouchable' not just as a figure or a category but as a concept that is utilised by dominant sections to deal with disease, contact zones and social distancing in society. The article focuses on select perceptions in popular Hindi print culture of the early twentieth century, which normalised exclusionary terms to reaffirm the nation's well-being. Through representations of four figures-the Dalit (with a specific focus on Dalit women), the servant, the sex worker and the Muslim male-all considered 'Untouchable' in different senses, the article highlights how these figures embody the 'Other' through idioms of stigma and hygiene.
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This essay focuses on the autobiographical writings of Swami Satyadev 'Parivrajak' (1879-1961), a prolific Hindi writer, and a charismatic modern-day worldly political ascetic in the early twentieth-century north India. It discusses three... more
This essay focuses on the autobiographical writings of Swami Satyadev 'Parivrajak' (1879-1961), a prolific Hindi writer, and a charismatic modern-day worldly political ascetic in the early twentieth-century north India. It discusses three central pillars of his ineradicably political autobiography: first, the performance of an exemplary celibate Hindu masculinity; second, the conceptualization of a segmented and exclusionary freedom, unencumbered by the presence of Muslims; and third, his deep antagonism towards Gandhi, and defence of his assassination. Taken together, his autobiography is a critical contribution to the intellectual history and genealogy of sectarian Hindi-Hindu literature, while also showcasing cultivated precursors of a modern, monolithic and militant Hindu nation.
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This essay examines varied perceptions of Christian missionaries, upper-caste Hindu reformers, and Dalits regarding religious conversions to Christianity, particularly by Dalit women, in colonial India. Simultaneously, it also converses... more
This essay examines varied perceptions of Christian missionaries, upper-caste Hindu reformers, and Dalits regarding religious conversions to Christianity, particularly by Dalit women, in colonial India. Simultaneously, it also converses with some of the works on US Christianity, to reflect on how transnational studies can enrich our understanding about religion in the Americas and expand our archival arenas. In the process, the essay contemplates a counter-history of Christianity through intersecting metaphors of sentiment, vernacular, gender, and sartorial desires. 1
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Satyabhakta's engagements with communist politics, the Hindi print public sphere, and workers' movements in the Gangetic heartland often intermeshed caste, gender, and nationalism, with an indigenous communism. Signifying a strand of the... more
Satyabhakta's engagements with communist politics, the Hindi print public sphere, and workers' movements in the Gangetic heartland often intermeshed caste, gender, and nationalism, with an indigenous communism. Signifying a strand of the Hindi literary project, he represents some of the suppressed traditions of left dissent, and takes us back to debates between internationalism and nationalism, materialism and spiritualism, class and caste. Even if his ideas were, at times, amateur, they provide us with the everyday lived realities of communist lives, and utopian dreams of equality, which need to be taken into account and historicised seriously.
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In the north India of 1920s-30s, many first-generation anticolonial communists and Left intellectuals did not see any contradiction in reliance upon religion, ethical traditions and morality in a search for vocabularies of dignity,... more
In the north India of 1920s-30s, many first-generation anticolonial communists and Left intellectuals did not see any contradiction in reliance upon religion, ethical traditions and morality in a search for vocabularies of dignity, equality, just polity and social liberation. Through select writings in Hindi of Satyabhakta (1897-85), an almost forgotten figure in histories of communism in India, this article focuses on the entanglement between religion and communism as a way of thinking about the Left in India, and the problems and possibilities of such imaginings. Steeped in a north Indian Hindi literary print public sphere, such figures illuminated a distinctly Hindu and Indian path towards communism, making it more relatable to a Hindi-Hindu audience. The article draws attention to Satyabhakta's layered engagements with utopian political desires, which, in envisaging an egalitarian future, wove Hindu faith-based ethical morality, apocalyptic predictions and notions of a romantic Ram Rajya, with decolonisation, anti-capitalism and aesthetic communist visions of equality. Even while precarious and problematic, such imaginations underline hidden plural histories of communism and, at the same time, trouble atheist, secular communists as well as the proponents of Hindutva.
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This article centres on the Hindi sexology writings of a woman, Yashoda Devi, and a Shudra, Santram B.A. In the context of an efflorescence of vernacular sexology literature in early twentiethcentury North India, it explicates how their... more
This article centres on the Hindi sexology writings of a woman,
Yashoda Devi, and a Shudra, Santram B.A. In the context of an
efflorescence of vernacular sexology literature in early twentiethcentury
North India, it explicates how their writings moved along
different registers, whereby they envisaged a heterosexual ethics
that relied on utopian and dystopian descriptions of modernity.
Sexology in Hindi, particularly when construed from the margins,
reified, constructed, destabilised and questioned sexual norms.
The article argues that while largely operating within reformist
sexology frames, their writings at times punctured dominant
upper-caste, male-centric authority and created frictions in normative
equations. Together, their writings contribute significantly to
creating a vernacular archive of sexual sciences in India.
Yashoda Devi, and a Shudra, Santram B.A. In the context of an
efflorescence of vernacular sexology literature in early twentiethcentury
North India, it explicates how their writings moved along
different registers, whereby they envisaged a heterosexual ethics
that relied on utopian and dystopian descriptions of modernity.
Sexology in Hindi, particularly when construed from the margins,
reified, constructed, destabilised and questioned sexual norms.
The article argues that while largely operating within reformist
sexology frames, their writings at times punctured dominant
upper-caste, male-centric authority and created frictions in normative
equations. Together, their writings contribute significantly to
creating a vernacular archive of sexual sciences in India.
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Drawing on fragmentary examples from women's histories in colonial India, this paper underlines the problems and possibilities in historiographies of modern India. Feminist scholars argue that the three terms-women, gender and sex-have... more
Drawing on fragmentary examples from women's histories in colonial India, this paper underlines the problems and possibilities in historiographies of modern India. Feminist scholars argue that the three terms-women, gender and sex-have often been used interchangeably. However, the commonsensical term woman is neither a natural category (of non-men) nor a homogeneous community (of sisterhood), for there are historically many ways of being a woman in different times. Further, gender is not merely a natural or biological identity of a person. It is a historical , social and political construction of how to be a man or a woman. Even sex is no longer seen as the biological ground upon which gender is constructed, as sexualities too are socially produced and regulated by dominant discourses, which establish one kind of sexuality as normal and relegate others into the domain of deviance, perversion or criminality. Through selective readings from discourses around women's education and conceptualisation of the modern women in colonial India, the paper reflects on how a gender-sensitive perspective produces a more complex and textured view of historical processes. While patriarchies were recast in more powerful, though subtle ways, they were also subverted, or at least questioned, in colonial India. Feminist historians have underlined the fact that both social reforms and nationalism have had an ambiguous relationship with the gender question. It is also not enough to say that while men fought for Indian independence, women also did. Nor is it sufficient to argue that Indian women have been 'hidden from history' and must now be made visible by remembering their contributions. In order to grasp the role of gender in history adequately, we need to understand the gendering of history itself. It was thus argued in the pioneering anthology Recasting Women that reforms actually re-imprisoned modern women into new cages of male desires. 1 However, much recent work has complicated this argument by recognising the potentialities and possibilities of reformist and nationalist endeavours. After all, this was also a period when caste hierarchies and patriarchies were interrogated and qualified to an extent. Often unintentionally, the changes instituted in these times also paved 1 Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Delhi, 1989. Studies in People's History, 7, 2 (2020): 192-204
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This article focuses on vernacular travel writings on America and Europe by Swami Satyadev ‘Parivrajak’ (1879–1961), one of the first persons to systematically write travelogues in Hindi. I argue that Parivrajak’s travel literature was... more
This article focuses on vernacular travel writings on America and
Europe by Swami Satyadev ‘Parivrajak’ (1879–1961), one of the
first persons to systematically write travelogues in Hindi. I argue
that Parivrajak’s travel literature was part of a colonised nation’s
attempt to reclaim a space of freedom, forged through the carving
of ‘perfect masculine bodies’, which embodied his ideals of
beauty and pleasure. It was a performative, political act that
inscribed gendered landscapes with a dialogue between East and
West, slavery and freedom. The Hindu male’s subaltern masculinity
had to be overcome through diverse means, all of which
metaphorically interacted to shape Parivrajak’s writings.
Europe by Swami Satyadev ‘Parivrajak’ (1879–1961), one of the
first persons to systematically write travelogues in Hindi. I argue
that Parivrajak’s travel literature was part of a colonised nation’s
attempt to reclaim a space of freedom, forged through the carving
of ‘perfect masculine bodies’, which embodied his ideals of
beauty and pleasure. It was a performative, political act that
inscribed gendered landscapes with a dialogue between East and
West, slavery and freedom. The Hindu male’s subaltern masculinity
had to be overcome through diverse means, all of which
metaphorically interacted to shape Parivrajak’s writings.
Research Interests:
This collection brings together nine essays, accompanied by nine short translations, that redraw the boundaries of literary histories both temporally and spatially. The essays, rooted in the humanities and informed by interdisciplinary... more
This collection brings together nine essays, accompanied by nine
short translations, that redraw the boundaries of literary histories
both temporally and spatially. The essays, rooted in the humanities
and informed by interdisciplinary area studies, explore multiple
linkages between forms of print culture, linguistic identities
and diverse vernacular literary spaces in colonial and post-colonial
South Asia. The essays and translations foreground complex and
politicised expressions of gender and genre in fictional and nonfictional
print materials and thus draw meaningful connections
between the vernacular and literature, the everyday and the marginals,
and gender and sentiment. Collectively, they expand vernacular
literary archives, canons and genealogies, and push us to
theorise the nature of writing in South Asia.
short translations, that redraw the boundaries of literary histories
both temporally and spatially. The essays, rooted in the humanities
and informed by interdisciplinary area studies, explore multiple
linkages between forms of print culture, linguistic identities
and diverse vernacular literary spaces in colonial and post-colonial
South Asia. The essays and translations foreground complex and
politicised expressions of gender and genre in fictional and nonfictional
print materials and thus draw meaningful connections
between the vernacular and literature, the everyday and the marginals,
and gender and sentiment. Collectively, they expand vernacular
literary archives, canons and genealogies, and push us to
theorise the nature of writing in South Asia.
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This essay presents a social history of power relations between domestic workers and their employers by examining the representations of servants in a wide array of Hindi print literature, including didactic manuals, popular magazines,... more
This essay presents a social history of power relations between domestic workers and their employers by examining the representations of servants in a wide array of Hindi print literature, including didactic manuals, popular magazines, reformist writings and cartoons, in the early twentieth-century North India. Exploring possibilities within repertoires of representation, it navigates how a contentious discourse around servant and employer developed in the Hindi print sphere. The essay links the portrayal of servants with changing class, caste and religious dynamics, in which print intersected with material circumstances to shape the hierarchical relationship between servants and employers. While imaging 'ideal' servants, the Hindi vernacular was also infused with their negative counterparts and anxieties around personal interactions between mistresses and servants, taking its cue from quotidian life and caste–community relations of the time. Increasing assertion by Dalits and growing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims left its imprints on portrayals of subordinate-caste and Muslim servants by dominant castes and classes. The vernacular straddled these domains of distance/desire and hate/love in the servant–employer relationship.
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Santram (1887-1998), a veteran Hindi writer and radical caste social reformer from Punjab, started writing in1912, and published more than 80 books, including his memoir ‘Mere Jivan ke Anubhav’ (Experience of My Life). Member of the Arya... more
Santram (1887-1998), a veteran Hindi writer and radical caste social reformer from Punjab, started writing in1912, and published more than 80 books, including his memoir ‘Mere Jivan ke Anubhav’ (Experience of My Life). Member of the Arya Samaj, he founded the ‘Jat Pat Torak Mandal’ (Organization to Break Caste) in 1922. In spite of the huge repertoire of his writings, he has been marginalized in academic scholarship, which has tended to focus on ‘star’ caste radicals like Jotiba Phule, B.R. Ambedkar and Periyar. While belonging to the Shudra caste, unlike these pioneering personalities, Santram perceived caste reform within the paradigm of Hinduism, while offering a trenchant critique of caste from within.
Through the life of Santram, this paper will attempt to illuminate a social history of caste in north India. It will examine Santram’s accounts of the caste self, social reform and nation, and the stories he told others about himself, his life, and his anti-caste thought. His narratives not only show how his life was marked by caste, but also tell us as much about the private and the public, the self and nation, the individual and the community, the intimate and the social. His writings effortlessly moved between these worlds, offering us a glimpse of Santam the individual, the anti-caste reformer and the family man. They were as much social caste histories of his times, as they were reflections of the caste self. The paper will argue that Santam’s encounters in society helped shape a counter-narrative of caste, symbolized in the ‘Jat Pat Torak Mandal’. It will underline that the interplay of self, caste and Hinduism in his writings defies any neat readings, and cannot be bound by rubrics of glorification or demolition. His thought not only reflects the mutable positions on caste, but also reveals paradoxical ways in which reformers were caught amidst destabilizing changes in colonial India. While Santram has remained on the margins of academic scholarship, his life narrative produced multiple meanings of caste, where on the one hand, he became a staunch advocate of inter-caste marriages, and on the other, he enacted a language of caste reform and respectability, with ambiguous implications. It is this contradictory straddling that makes his life narrative both a complex and politicized form of resistance and critique of caste, while simultaneously appearing as an account of accepted caste models and messages.
Through the life of Santram, this paper will attempt to illuminate a social history of caste in north India. It will examine Santram’s accounts of the caste self, social reform and nation, and the stories he told others about himself, his life, and his anti-caste thought. His narratives not only show how his life was marked by caste, but also tell us as much about the private and the public, the self and nation, the individual and the community, the intimate and the social. His writings effortlessly moved between these worlds, offering us a glimpse of Santam the individual, the anti-caste reformer and the family man. They were as much social caste histories of his times, as they were reflections of the caste self. The paper will argue that Santam’s encounters in society helped shape a counter-narrative of caste, symbolized in the ‘Jat Pat Torak Mandal’. It will underline that the interplay of self, caste and Hinduism in his writings defies any neat readings, and cannot be bound by rubrics of glorification or demolition. His thought not only reflects the mutable positions on caste, but also reveals paradoxical ways in which reformers were caught amidst destabilizing changes in colonial India. While Santram has remained on the margins of academic scholarship, his life narrative produced multiple meanings of caste, where on the one hand, he became a staunch advocate of inter-caste marriages, and on the other, he enacted a language of caste reform and respectability, with ambiguous implications. It is this contradictory straddling that makes his life narrative both a complex and politicized form of resistance and critique of caste, while simultaneously appearing as an account of accepted caste models and messages.
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The unprecedented victory of the Bhartiya Janata Party (henceforth BJP) in 2014 has left scholars and analysts grappling to uncover its multifaceted layers. If corruption of UPA II, the corporate parading of " development, " and the... more
The unprecedented victory of the Bhartiya Janata Party (henceforth BJP) in 2014 has left scholars and analysts grappling to uncover its multifaceted layers. If corruption of UPA II, the corporate parading of " development, " and the overpowering Modi largely marked 2014, it was also the year of a perceptible shift to the Right, with politicized Hindutva's socio-religious cries against " love jihad " and for ghar vāpasī (return to home). The unabashed political use of Hindu religious symbols in the communal riots of Muzaffarnagar saw an overt and widespread manifestation of such idioms. It has been noted that one of the critical aspects of the 2014 elections was " that for the very first time in the history of our Republic, a political party explicitly based on religious identity… secured more than 50% of the seats in our Parliament. " 1 Immediately after the general elections of 2014, a section of confident and elated Hindutvavadis felt they could play communal politics in much more aggressive ways by deploying such metaphors, which became particularly visible in the context of the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh (henceforth UP), held immediately after the general elections. " Love jihad " was alleged to be a movement aimed at forcibly converting vulnerable Hindu women to Islam through trickery and marriage. Ghar vāpasī signaled a synchronized vocabulary of anti-conversion by the BJP and of reconversion by the VHP and Dharm Jagran Samiti, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (henceforth RSS). This essay examines the larger politics of such constructed campaigns. It highlights how both these movements were charged with a moral and communal fervor, adopting an unrestrained anti-Christianity and anti-Islam polemic, and implicitly attempting to influence the larger politics and elections of 2014. At the same time, the outcome of the UP by-elections reflected that such idioms did not particularly transform into an electoral success. It may also be argued that the corporate media and big capitalists, while Right and conservative in their economic outlook, as well as all-out supporters of the " developmental " model of Modi, were uncomfortable with cries of " love jihad " and ghar vāpasī, seeing them as the antithesis of development paradigms. It has thus been stated that the BJP's success in the 2014 elections had less to do with the victory of Hindutva, and more to do with weak economic growth and unemployment, alongside the corruption and rudderless quality of the incumbent 1 Krishna, " A Chronicle of an Event Foretold? "
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Extending the paradigms of subaltern studies, this paper takes up three disparate sites -- didactic Hindi literature, conversions and army discourses -- to provide a perspective on the disjunctive forms of representation that signified... more
Extending the paradigms of subaltern studies, this paper takes up three disparate sites -- didactic Hindi literature, conversions and army discourses -- to provide a perspective on the disjunctive forms of representation that signified Dalit bodies in colonial north India. Through different arenas it shows how representations constituted, and were reflective of, the power relationships between upper and lower castes, in which the former reinstated their dominance. At the same time, the paper challenges straight jacketed links between representation and domination by expanding its archival arenas, and argues that Dalit bodies were not just screens on which high castes and colonial authorities projected their own caste, racial and gender anxieties. Rather, Dalits too represented themselves in different ways, conceiving a gendered sense of self in social, religious, public and political spaces. Such contested practices of representations produced creaks and dislocations in dominant embodiments.
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Religious conversions by Dalits in colonial India have largely been examined as mass movements to Christianity, with an implicit focus on men. However, why did Dalit women convert? Were they just guided by their men, family, and... more
Religious conversions by Dalits in colonial India have largely been examined as mass movements to Christianity, with an implicit focus on men. However, why did Dalit women convert? Were they just guided by their men, family, and community? This paper explores the interrelationship between caste and gender in Dalit conversions
afresh through the use of popular print culture, vernacular missionary literature, writings of Hindu publicists and caste ideologues, cartoons, and police reports from colonial north India. It particularly looks at the two sites of clothing and romance to mark representations
of mass and individual conversions to Christianity and Islam. Through them, it reads conversions by Dalit women as acts that embodied a language of intimate rights, and were accounts of resistant materialities. These simultaneously produced deep
anxieties and everyday violence among ideologues of the Arya Samaj and other such groups, where there was both an erasure and a representational heightening of Dalit female desire. However, they also provide one with avenues to recover in part Dalit women’s aspirations in this period.
afresh through the use of popular print culture, vernacular missionary literature, writings of Hindu publicists and caste ideologues, cartoons, and police reports from colonial north India. It particularly looks at the two sites of clothing and romance to mark representations
of mass and individual conversions to Christianity and Islam. Through them, it reads conversions by Dalit women as acts that embodied a language of intimate rights, and were accounts of resistant materialities. These simultaneously produced deep
anxieties and everyday violence among ideologues of the Arya Samaj and other such groups, where there was both an erasure and a representational heightening of Dalit female desire. However, they also provide one with avenues to recover in part Dalit women’s aspirations in this period.
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The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men's engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The... more
The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men's engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The chapters in this collection respond to two broad thematic concerns: theoretical implications of men producing feminist knowledge and the history of men's participation in feminist endeavours. The volume also explores the undocumented contributions of men to three domains of feminist activity: institutionalization of feminism in the academy, social movements aimed at gender justice, and male writings on gender and sexuality. Delving into an important yet overlooked aspect of the social sciences, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, masculinity studies, modern Indian history, sociology, and social anthropology. Romit Chowdhury is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are in feminist studies, urban sociology, ethnography, and cultural studies. He has published on masculinity in the contexts of men's rights movements, feminist methodology, urban sociability, male feminism, sexual violence, and care-giving. He held a visiting position at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, for three months in 2016. Zaid Al Baset is Assistant Professor of Sociology in St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. His research interests are in feminist studies, sexuality studies and sociology of religion. He has published on queer identities in India. He has co-edited a special issue of Economic and Political Weekly on the theme of men and feminism in India (2015). He was a DAAD PhD fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Göttingen (October to December 2016).
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The prostitute has been central to umpteen sophisticated feminist academic works on sexuality in colonial India. Covering the devadasis (temple dancers) of Tanjore, the erudite tawai'fs (courtesans) of Lucknow, the kalavants (artists) of... more
The prostitute has been central to umpteen sophisticated feminist academic works on sexuality in colonial India. Covering the devadasis (temple dancers) of Tanjore, the erudite tawai'fs (courtesans) of Lucknow, the kalavants (artists) of Maharashtra, the monogamous concubines, the nautch girls, the bazaar and cantonment sex workers, and ranging from venereal disease to soldiers, legal criminality to literary victimhood, Victorian prudery to urban Indian reformism, these studies have highlighted that the regulation of deviant female sexuality in pre-colonial times was ambiguous, while colonialism signalled increasing surveillance and disciplining. One would have thus thought that the subject and the figure of prostitute was pretty much exhausted. It goes to the credit of Durba Mitra that she not only holds her ground, but brings new insights and depth to sexuality studies by looking at the prostitute not just as a figure and a category, but a concept, which according to her is the primary grid to foundationally think and write about modern Indian society and the making of disciplinary knowledge. It is this layered and wider meaning that gives Indian Sex Life its freshness, intensity and academic depth. The book derives its title 'from a popular genre of social scientific texts produced in early twentieth century' that linked control of women's sexuality 'to the evolutionary progress of Indian society' (p. 2). Based largely on Bengal, and spanning the century from mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, the book is an intellectual and social history of sexuality in colonial India, and the shame and stigma associated with women's sexual desires. It analyses how European scholars, British officials and elite Indian male intellectuals, with their transregional networks, utilised new fields of knowledge of society to make normative and 'scientific' claims about deviant female sexuality.
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Research Interests: History and Dalit studies
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The synchronised vocabulary of anticonversion by the BJP and that of reconversion by the VHP and Dharm Jagran Samiti, an RSS affiliate, reveals the intimate relationship between the two. Anticonversion and reconversion are two sides of... more
The synchronised vocabulary of anticonversion by the BJP and that of reconversion by the VHP and Dharm Jagran Samiti, an RSS affiliate, reveals the intimate relationship between the two. Anticonversion and reconversion are two sides of the same coin. Even though the Dharm Jagran Samiti has dropped its plan to " reconvert " Christians and Muslims in Aligarh on December 25, the day has strategic significance. Christmas Day has acquired a different meaning for the Hindutva brigade — the birth anniversaries of Madan Mohan Malaviya, one of the stalwarts of the Hindu Mahasabha, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the eminent BJP leader. Equally critically, on December 23, 1926, Swami Shraddhanand, the leading ideologue of the shuddhi campaign (a Hindu movement in the late 19th and 20th centuries to reclaim those who had converted from Hinduism to other religions) was assassinated by a Muslim fanatic, and on December 25, a condolence motion was moved at the Guwahati session of the Congress. The twin strategies of anticonversion and ghar wapsi have a long history. As part of their community and nationmaking rhetoric, the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha launched the programme of shuddhi on a large scale in Uttar Pradesh in 1923. Various scholars have pointed to the communal character of the movement. A note prepared by the criminal investigation department at that time stated that though the movement had older origins, " its application to mass rather than individual conversion gave it a special prominence ". Shuddhi came to be touted as a movement to reclaim " victims " and protect the " faithful ". Reconversion attempts have since been a part of the agenda of various Hindutva outfits, and the present assertions should be seen in that context. The combination of anticonversion rhetoric with ghar wapsi powerfully invokes metaphors of exile and home. Ghar wapsi is flaunted as a return to the authentic origin, the abode of birth. It produces and enforces notions of a primordial religious identity, whereby all are declared Hindus. The shift from the whole world to the Hindu nation is swift, as ghar wapsi denationalises Islam and Christianity, facilitating their othering. Anticonversion combined with ghar wapsi signals for the Hindu Right a shift from anti national to national, exile to home, forced to voluntary, people to citizens, constructed to original, unnatural to natural, outsider to insider. One of the leading lights of the Arya Samaj in UP in the 1920s and 1930s, Ganga Prasad Upadhyay, wrote Humare Bichure Bhai (Our Lost Brothers) in 1923, in which it was claimed that the Malkana Rajputs of western UP, whom the Arya Samaj was trying to " reconvert " , were returning to their roots. Thus he wrote: " Pyare bhai hain Malkane, uchh vansh ke hain ujiyare, Arjun, Bhim, Karn ke pyare (Malkanas are our dear brothers. Luminaries of high birth, they are dear to Arjun, Bhim and Karn). " Urging the reconversion of Dalits, another reformist poem in 1933 said: " Aapke bhai jo ban baithe hain IsaiyaMussalmaan, unko vaidik dharm ka amrit pilao Hinduon… kho chuke ho apni gaflat mein hazaron lal tum, ab luteron se na apna ghar lutao Hinduon (Your brothers who have become ChristiansMuslims, Hindus, make them drink the nectar of Vedic religion… Due to your negligence you have lost thousands of sons, now do not let the robbers steal from your home). " However, the claim of " home " was powerfully challenged by various anticaste ideologues, like Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar, and in UP by Achutanand, Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu and Swami Bodhananda. They rejected Vedic Hinduism and constructed a pre Aryan identity of Dalits as the original inhabitants — Adi Hindus — of India. They claimed that they had prior rights over its land and territory, and that there was a glorious history of Adi Hindu monarchy without caste, which was destroyed by Brahmanical Hinduism. They further stated that Dalits had been conquered by uppercaste Hindus through chicanery. This put a serious question mark over the supposed primordial Hindu religious identity of India's inhabitants. Related to this is another paradox in the Print
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is identifiably Muslim and Pakistani, and his self is not contained within a Hindu paradigm or world. Pakistani actor Fawad Khan has become a fascinating icon, the new heartthrob for Indian girls and women. Zindagi, an Indian... more
is identifiably Muslim and Pakistani, and his self is not contained within a Hindu paradigm or world. Pakistani actor Fawad Khan has become a fascinating icon, the new heartthrob for Indian girls and women. Zindagi, an Indian entertainment television channel launched four months ago, broadcasts serials from Pakistan. Khan has emerged as its central idiom — besides having looks to die for and undeniable charm, he portrays a sensitive and mature lover and husband in the serials Zindagi Gulzar Hai and Humsafar. Recently, he made his Bollywood debut in Khoobsurat. Describing the movie, Shobhaa De says: " So, who is the real 'khoobsurat' in the movie… Any guesses? You've got it! It's a slim, bearded bloke from across the border… He's as yummy as those irresistible Lahori kebabs, and desi ladies want him. " Khan's religious and national identity is not hidden or muted; it is explicit and out there. But Indian women, most of them Hindu, are totally unconcerned with that. While the " love jihad " hysterics are crying themselves hoarse, Indian girls do not care if Khan is a Muslim or a Pakistani. Instead, they dream of having someone like him in their lives to love. This reveals a religious and national liminality that can stump the hysteria over the constructed bogey of love jihad. The representation of Fawad Khan and the construction of love jihad are part of fictive imaginations, though in very different ways. They undercut each other, reflecting women's desires on the one hand and Hindu male fears on the other. One contests power, the other attempts to reinstate it. The love jihad campaign exposes how Hindu women are central symbols of the Hindutva body politic. Hindutva's cry for segregation denies free movement to Hindu women, using the threat of physical, emotional and religious harm to women's bodies as weapons of social control. Women are thus told that interreligious marriages are undesirable for their own good. Hindu women who indulge in interreligious romances or marriages are depicted as dangerous to the construct of the Hindu nation. But their love for Khan is one of the many vehicles by which such constructed " dangers " are displaced. Through their dreams of and desires for him, women discursively bridge the conventional physical and psychological distance between Hindu/ Muslim and Indian/ Pakistani. These women signify a religious and sexual mobility. In their own way, such women are not only refusing their " proper " sexual and religious roles, they are apathetic to the delusional constructions of the " evil " Muslim male. As Janaki Nair states, " Indian women have taken control of their lives at a much faster pace than expected " , and they are " no longer passive bearers of caste, religious, ethnic or other meaning — but the makers of meaning ". This phenomenon of Fawad Khan highlights additional dimensions. His imagery pitches the sensitive Muslim against the " monstrous " Muslim. Khan as a Muslim male idol defies stereotypes of Muslim men or any negativepositive binaries. His allure not only undermines the hysteria against the " violent " Muslim, his portrayal as a hero and perfect husband material resists the myth of the Muslim as the rapist. That image is replaced here with a perceptive, almost vulnerable, Muslim male. While discourses of religious " othering " and hatred have persisted and gained a new lease of life with the political ascent of the Hindu right, our love for Khan is an instance that shows that such divisions have also become muddier and more fluid as a section of Indian women discard binary categories and fixed identities. The juxtaposition of the phenomenon of Khan's popularity with the love jihad campaign announces, through its ambivalent convergences and divergences between religion and gender, that the insistedupon superiority of Hindu men is itself an elaborate Print
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The late 19th and 20th centuries witnessed concerted efforts by Hindu middle class publicists to fashion a new social and moral ethos. In this deeply gendered project the Muslim played a central role as both a subject of anxiety and an... more
The late 19th and 20th centuries witnessed concerted efforts by Hindu middle class publicists to fashion a new social and moral ethos. In this deeply gendered project the Muslim played a central role as both a subject of anxiety and an object of envy. Consequently, there was a certain ambiguity in the masculine vision of the publicists. For some, collective Hindu nationalist identity was to be founded on disciplined masculinity and virtuous femininity. Against this, another impulse valourised a sexually charged masculinity, which ran counter to the idea of the disciplined celibate. These competing notions of masculinity were argued in a public sphere that was acutely fraught. Charu Gupta's book, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, is a laudable effort to grapple with the complexities of this collective Hindu project. The issues raised in the book are particularly significant in the contemporary Indian context. Some of the major developments of the last decade illustrate the thematic relevance of the book. In 1991 the government of India, following the imperatives of glo-balisation, set out to liberalise the economy. This was accompanied by an open-sky policy that initiated and accelerated the growth of satellite television in India. Due to its visibility and psychological force the cultural anxieties of the middle class began to be articulated through debates on the media and its effects. Urban India's moral panic revolves around several fears, notably the fear of the visual and its presumed capacity to 'cause de-viance', as well as the fear of losing control and thereby one's 'culture' and 'heritage'. Besides popular cinema, satellite television also brought more culturally unfamiliar visual fare to middle class homes in an unprecedented manner. In some ways, television had 'corrupted' the sanctum sanctorum of middle class existence – the family. These developments ran concurrently with the darkest phenomenon of the ninet-ies– the rise of the Hindu right. The advance of loud Hindu conservatism in India has been accompanied by an aggressive 'cultural nationalism' that projects a pure and originary concept of Hindu culture. The Hindu right bases its cultural vision on what it describes in its election manifesto as a " cultural heritage that is common to all regions, religions and languages and is a civilisat-ional entity ". Under this semi-mystical idealised Hindutva, which literally translated means " Hindu-ness " or " the essence of being Hindu " , the Hindu right has opposed satellite television because it promotes a promiscuous Western culture and threatens 'Indian valu-es'. The cycles of moral panic that marked the decade of the nineties, while being initiated by the Hindu right, were not exclusive to them. A spiral of physical, often violent attacks on certain kinds of cultural expression characterised the cultural interventions throughout the period. The attacks were aimed at images and representations (mostly of women's bodies) that were deemed to be " obscene " and " vulgar " or at those deemed to have " hurt the religious sentiments of the people ". The renowned painter MF Hussain was physically attacked for having painted Hindu goddesses in the nude and thereby having hurt religious sentiments. Hindu ideologues and their supporters invoke a nightmarish spectre of moral decay whose origins are 'foreign'. After the re lease of Deepa Mehta's film Fire about a lesbian relationship, BJP ideologue KR Malkani wrote that the film was a threat to the " very foundations of the institutions of marriage " and cautioned Indians against the " death wish that has gripped mi of Americans " and " all societies that go American " where " non-marriages, teenage mothers and single-parent families become common. Hindutva's rise to power and the recurring spirals of moral panic have complex connections and divergences. Charu Gupta's book is both timely and informative because it provides a historical backdrop to these events that we might mistakenly assume to be new developments that break with the past. The first half of the eight-chapter book explores the defence of " the roots of moralism ". Gupta reiterates the feminist position that the " dis-cursive management of female bodies " was essential to project a " civilised and vibrant, sectarian Hindu identity and a new nation ". The second half deals with the deployment of communal speech that attempted to demonise " the other
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Sexuality, Obscenity, Community : Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. By Charu Gupta. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 1. Movements for the protection of the cow and the promotion of Hindi are well-known aspects of the... more
Sexuality, Obscenity, Community : Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. By Charu Gupta. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 1. Movements for the protection of the cow and the promotion of Hindi are well-known aspects of the development of Hindu identity under colonial rule. Charu Gupta, in this well-developed and extremely provocative work, turns the reader's attention to the role of gender and sexuality issues in the construction of the ideal Hindu household and a definable identity for a Hindu community and nation. Following a paper trail of the emerging discourse of gender and sexuality in a great assortment of literature, ranging from sex manuals and advertisements for aphrodisiacs, to newspapers and archival material published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Gupta successfully shows how gender was central to the creation of a sexualized and communalized identity in colonial north India. 2. This book has much to offer on the issues of gender and Hindu identity, but will also be of interest to a variety of readers. Gupta explores a gorgeous expanse of subject matter. She includes information on colonial obscenity laws and the popularity of sensational romantic Hindi fiction. In a chapter titled " Sanitising Women's Social Spaces, " Gupta writes of Hindu publicist attempts to control the types of entertainment which could be enjoyed by Hindu women, including what songs women could sing, which performances they could attend, and how they could participate in certain festivals. There are discussions of the forced re-location of prostitutes in towns and cities, the fear of reading, gendered health and medical issues, elopements of Hindu women with Muslim men, and much more. Gupta's presentation of her wide-ranging research is a fascinating read and is relevant to studies of gender politics, formation of ethic identity, subaltern resistance, the history of Hindu and Muslim relations and others. 3. Gupta presents the scene of male Hindu publicists, working hard to shape and control the realities of sexual relations, the home, the community and the nation, and all the while watching each and every independent, unregulated move of women with suspicion. Playing upon
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Notwithstanding these criticisms and absences, it is beyond doubt that the editors and authors have done a very praiseworthy job, as their contributions clearly give an up-to-date picture on current Dalit discourses going on in Indian... more
Notwithstanding these criticisms and absences, it is beyond doubt that the editors and authors have done a very praiseworthy job, as their contributions clearly give an up-to-date picture on current Dalit discourses going on in Indian academia. Besides, all articles in the book are well referenced and have become a compendium of different approaches, various viewpoints and varied, rich source materials. Some authors have notably broken the precedence of accepting the policy of reservation or affirmative action without critical negotiations and have gone further in problematising the benefits and gains said to have been garnered from it. That topic would deserve attention for another, related overview study concerning 'caste' in India.