Caste based reservation is meant to ensure fair representation to all caste communities in civic sphere.
The demand for OBC status by the Patels in Gujarat has brought the issue of caste-based reservation to the fore and the otherwise not so faint anti-reservation murmurs are now being further amplified to demand total abolition of caste-based reservation in education and government jobs. Simultaneously there are several myths and false information being circulated on social media to intensify this demand, overlooking the affirmative principles of justice that reservation aims to serve. Before arriving at any impulsive conclusions, one needs to take cognizance of the socio-historical context of Indian society in order to understand the necessity of caste-based reservation.
Contrary to popular misconception, reservation is not a policy that was introduced post- 1947; it existed in various forms even during British rule. The earliest implementation of reservations were carried out by social reformers like Jyotirao Phule and Shahu Maharaj for free education to non-Brahmin students in 1891 and 1901 respectively. In 1932, the British government announced separate electorates for the Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and Dalits in British India. The Dalits, i.e. depressed classes, were assigned a number of seats to be filled by election from special constituencies in which only voters belonging to the depressed classes could vote. This move was supported by many leaders among the marginalized communities, most notably by Dr. Ambedkar. M.K. Gandhi feared separate electors for Dalits since that would fracture the Hindu majority he was trying to manufacture. Hence he opposed it, and threatened to end his life in protest by resorting to an indefinite hunger strike. In an agreement that has come to be known as the Poona Pact, Ambedkar succumbed to Gandhi’s arm-twisting and agreed to have a single Hindu electorate, on the condition that Dalits would have seats reserved within it.
A major step in post-1947 India was the implementation of recommendations made by the Mandal Commission in 1989 to consider the question of reservations and quotas to redress caste discrimination. The commission eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine backwardness. According to the provisions made by Mandal commission, members of lower castes (SCs, STs and Non-creamy layer OBCs) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them to 50%. These recommendations were implemented in 1989 by the then Janata Party government which received harsh criticism, mostly from upper caste communities, that continues till date. One of the myth that is being circulated is that the reservation policy that was introduced after India became a republic were meant to continue only for ten years. This is not entirely true. The ten year period for reservations was only for political reservations, ie in houses of the parliament and state assemblies. The reservations in jobs and educational institutes do not have a specified time limit.
Caste identity has historically deprived the possibility of economic and social mobility to those born in the lower ranks of caste hierarchy. Traditionally, avenues of education were available to a few upper caste communities and thus they were ahead of others in upward mobility. This disproportionate access to minimum educational facilities across the country continues today, holding back students belonging to dalit bahujan background from acquiring knowledge and other skills. Those criticizing caste-based reservations, mainly the upper castes, often ignore the hurdles of social mobility that lower caste communities have to face every day. There have been instances reported wherein upper caste teachers have refused to even check notebooks of dalit students. Not to mention the discouragement and humiliation dalit-bahujan students face in educational institutions, regardless of one’s economic status. In such scenario, the argument that merit or economic backwardness should be given preference over caste is rendered irrelevant.
It is important to note that caste-based reservation is not the only form of reservation in India. There is provision for reservations for person with disabilities, wards of freedom fighters/NRIs/Army personnel, single girl child etc. In many ways, there is already provision for class-based reservation. But these forms of reservation never receive the severe criticism which caste-based reservation does. It affirms that the problem upper castes have is not with reservations as such but with being deprived of their entitlements and privileges. This is exemplified in the case of Patels. Patels are a land-owning, affluent and a dominant community in Gujarat today. They do not have the disempowered status of most of the communities in the Mandal Commission list and are fairly represented in institutions of power. Thus their demand for inclusion in the OBC is unjustified, much like the Jats of Haryana and Marathas of Maharashtra.
Inequality is at the very foundation of India’s social structure, and remains so even today. The argument by anti-reservation lobbies that abolishing reservation will bring in an equal footing for all holds no ground. In fact, it is only by ensuring reservations for the marginalized that we can aim for a society that is less exclusionary. Upper castes form a minor portion of India’s total population numerically but continue to dominate all spaces in the public and civic sphere. Caste based reservation is a way to flatten this dominance of upper castes by ensuring better representation of all communities, and hence should be unstintingly supported.
(First published in The Goan Everyday dated 15th September 2015)
Well-known writer B. M. Purandare (also known as Babasaheb Purandare) was recently given the Maharashtra Bhushan award by the government of Maharashtra for his work in popularising the life and times of Shivaji Bhosale, the Maratha king. Purandare’s writings on Shivaji are widely circulated in Maharashtra and elsewhere but many scholars have criticised his work for lacking academic rigour and objectivity. He is often charged with appropriating Shivaji as a saffron messiah to suit a pro-Hindutva narrative and fostering hatred against Muslims in Maharashtra.
Purandare portrays Shivaji as Go-Brahman Pratipalak (Guardian of Cows and Brahmins) and perpetuates the myth that Shivaji was an avatar of Lord Shiva who was meant to save the Hindu religion from the tyrannical rule of Muslims. There have been alternate narratives on Shivaji which challenge this such as “A Ballad of Raja Chattrapati Shivaji Bhosale“, written by Jyotiba Phule. Phule’s ballad presents Shivaji as the leader of the lower castes and attributes his achievements to the strength and skill of his shudra and ati-shudra armies. More recently, Rajkumar Tangade and Sambhaji Bhagat revived Phule’s lineage of thoughts through their play Shivaji Underground in Bhimnagar Mohalla in which they present Shivaji as a leader who did not discriminate among his subjects on the basis of caste and religion while debunking several myths created in process of Shivaji’s appropriation by Marathas and Brahmins.
Purandare’s work does come across as an almost fictionalised account of Shivaji’s life, rather than a rational way of reimagining the historical past. For instance, he writes that while being pregnant with Shivaji, Jijabai’s cravings during pregnancy were to scale the walls of forts, wear armour and go to war (Raja Shiva Chatrapati, p. 81-82). Purandare’s followers defend such stories by arguing that these are literary devices employed by the writer to heighten the readers’ experience. This may well be the case, but what it also does is to turn Shivaji into a mythical character; in turn, this denies the reader’s ability to connect with Shivaji on a human level. Also, using literary tropes to heighten the reading experience is fine, but it becomes a problem when the readers start believing these versions as “history”.
Purandare’s project of mythologizing Shivaji continued through the staging of the play Janata Raja, a magnum opus based on Shivaji’s life. The script for the performance was derived from Purandare’s writings and hence retained his problematic approaches to narrating history. Janata Raja was performed in Goa too by Ponda-based collective Vijayadurga Sanskrutik Mandal in 2002. It is important to note that this performance was not an ordinary proscenium stage play but a spectacle that employed huge sets, stage gimmicks, and mobs as theatrical devices to create an overwhelming impact on the audience. Spectacle performance was a genre that was greatly used by Fascist regimes in inter-war Europe. A number of scholarly works have pointed out that the effect of the spectacular is that it creates conditions that make reason subservient to passion.
The issue here isn’t just that of honouring Purandare with a state award, but the larger concerns of history writing in post-colonial spaces such as India. History, in such spaces, shares a curious relationship with the nation-building process as it favours monolithic narratives of pre-colonial pasts. Historical narratives that conform to this nationalist agenda are given preference through state apparatuses, such as school textbooks and state- sponsored events – (Shiv Jayanti ceremonies in this case). The act of conferring Purandare with the state award is a move to further legitimise his pro-Hindutva portrayal of Shivaji while systematically blurring the visibility for narratives that challenge the underlying brahminical hegemony in history- writing.
In India, this kind of privileging of particular historical discourses is not a new phenomenon. To sustain India’s image as a “Hindu” nation, discourses that talk about Islamicate, European or Graeco-Buddhist influences on the subcontinent are often pushed into oblivion or perceived as threats to the “idea of India”. Purandare’s writing reeks of Hindutva pride and contempt for Muslims, often taking readers’ attention away from the relatively egalitarian principles by which Shivaji ruled his subjects. Purandare’s Go-Brahman Pratipalak image of Shivaji has been favoured by political outfits such as Shiv Sena and BJP to spew hatred against minorities. For a long time, Brahmins and Marathas of Maharashtra have appropriated Shivaji to suit their politics, often maintaining silence over his shudra roots.
Shivaji is a key figure to understand subaltern identity politics, not just in Maharashtra but also in Goa as he enjoys immense popularity among Goan Hindu bahujans. Hence a nuanced understanding of Shivaji’s life is needed instead of such uncritical celebrations of Purandare’s work which give a skewed understanding of Shivaji. One should be suspicious such histories as they are often just a tiny part of the whole story. These selectively written and propagated histories are the foundations on which the edifices of the nation are built which need to be shaken so that alternate histories oppressed by those serving nationalist interests can claim space and gain visibility. People like Purandare are but the guardians of this fragile edifice and their masquerading as “historians” need to be critically questioned instead of being taken at face value.
FORCE is a collective of parents of schoolchildren in Goa who want the state government to formalise the grants to English medium primary schools through an act of legislature. The collective seems to be the target of misguided criticism in Goa for past couple of weeks. In response to their protests for demanding grants, the Bhartiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) organised a rally in Panjim to “show the strength of majority to the minority”. Given that the demands emanating from FORCE cuts across the lines of religion, caste and class, the vocabulary in which BBSM has been targeting the FORCE members has a disturbing communal tone.
There are certain fundamental issues pertaining to the Medium of Instruction (MoI) agitation that we often take for granted but need to be critically examined, the foremost being the idea of a mother tongue itself. In their book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987), French philosophers Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guttari argue that “there is no mother tongue, only a power takeover by a dominant language within a political multiplicity”. Now let us examine this statement in the context of Goa. The official language of Goa, according to the Official Language Act passed in 1987, is Konkani written in Devanagari script which asserts that it is the “mother tongue” of Goans. The other languages that Goans use are Romi Konkani, Marathi, Portuguese, Dakkhani Urdu, and English. In fact, the use of Romi Konkani and Marathi in Goa exceeds that of Nagari Konkani by a substantial margin. This argument could be validated by the recent shutdown of the only Nagari Konkani newspaper Sunaparant, which according to many, was struggling to sell even 300 copies a day. So, when you have these languages being used in a remarkable abundance, one must question why Nagari Konkani is made the sole official language of the state. Nagari Konkani has a distinct feature of being the dialect spoken primarily by the Saraswats in Goa. Thus the power takeover, as Deleuze & Guttari suggest, is that of this upper caste group which wants to assert their version of language as the official version, coercing the rest of the masses into believing that it’s a vehicle of Goan identity. Catholics in Goa do not use this Nagari version of Konkani, both in terms of writing and reading. Neither does the average Hindu bahujan who identifies more with Marathi because of their historic opposition to Nagari Konkani. This allows us to conclude that Nagari Konkani is more foreign to a large section of Goans than English, as far as usage is concerned.
BBSM seems to suggest that it is only Catholic parents that want their wards to learn English while Hindus are all for regional languages. This is not entirely true. There’s a sizeable population of Hindus (both Bahujans and elites) who want their wards to study not only in English medium schools, but in “Convent” schools specifically. Hence, giving the MoI issue a communal angle is a desperate attempt by BBSM to gain political mileage. The desire to have one’s child train in an English medium school is a post-globalisation aspiration of the rising middle class so that they can grab the opportunities offered by the neo-liberal economy. Its validity or futility could vary depending on one’s subjective opinion, but many see English as an egalitarian and neutral ground which would help them break away from their traditional class/caste backgrounds and claim space in the globalised world.
The Goan bahujan are not alone in this demand, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar himself referred to English as the milk of the lioness and said that only those who drink it will roar. Contemporary dalit thinker, Chandrabhan Prasad too, relentlessly argues that English is the key for emancipation for the marginalised communities. The demand for grants to English medium schools comes from the dalit bahujan section of Goan society, both Catholic and Hindu, and hence the state must pay heed to them. Traditionally denied education by the dominant brahminical socio-political setup, it was only with the arrival of western modernity via colonialism that these marginalised sections could gain an access to education.
The elites in Goa on the other hand have had cultural and economic capital to send their wards to privately-run English medium schools for decades now and some of them are BBSM sympathisers today. In light of this ironic situation, one needs to ask why only bahujans must carry the burden of culture and nativism, while the elites can be as “western” as they wish to and still be regarded as guardians of culture.
Also, a closer look at the BBSM politics will indicate that though the BBSM members are mobilised under the banner of safeguarding Bhartiya Bhasha, they are, in fact, desperate to ensure the hegemony of Nagari Konkani in Goa. During the official language agitation, the Nagari camp used Romi Konkani supporters as footsoldiers but eventually cheated them by denying any recognition to Romi Konkani. Now they have turned to Marathiwadis for help on communal and nationalist grounds, as they perfectly know mobilising Hindu massess solely for the cause of Nagari Konkani is nearly impossible. During the official language movement, people who supported Marathi were asked to leave Goa and settle in Maharashtra. Now, people who are demanding English as MoI are being asked to settle in Portugal. Unpacking both the situations will tell us that, in either of the cases, interests of only one particular group are being safeguarded. Nagari Konkani is perennially on its deathbed and periodically requires bahujan blood to revive itself. Sometimes Hindu, sometimes Catholic!
Hence, any alliance with the Nagari camp would sound a death knell for Goan Bahujans. We have witnessed that during the official language movement it was the Catholic bahujan which suffered major amount of loss and marginalisation. In an ideal scenario, the brahminical coterie of Nagari Konkani should be kept at farthest distance possible as it is responsible for the systematic intellectual and cultural massacre of two generations of Goan Bahujans (both Catholics and Hindus). In a mission to impose Nagari Konkani over the next 50 years, Uday Bhembre, with a straight face will tell you that the further massacre of the subsequent generations of Bahujans will be a collateral damage. It is this nefarious project that FORCE is poised to challenge. Unlike the way it is being portrayed, FORCE does not represent only Catholics. But what it definitely represents are the aspirations of Goan bahujan masses.
(An edited version of this article was published in The Goan Everyday editorial on 16th August 2015. I would like to thank Jason, Amita, Albertina, Dale, Bene and Vishwesh for their insights and feedback on this article and also Kurt Bento for publishing this on the editorial page of The Goan.)
Attempts to rewrite, and often overwrite, historical narratives have to be always critically examined. This critical examination is especially important in times when people learn their history through mediums which are motivated by agendas of various hues and colours. In light of this context, Vande Mataram, a play that was recently staged in Goa must necessarily be understood in the context of the India’s current socio-political environment.
Vande Mataram, a play performed by Goa based cultural outfit Krutarth, claims to celebrate the revolutionaries who resorted to arms for India’s independence movement, since school textbooks and dominant historical discourses have been allegedly unjust to them. There is good reason to believe that the desire to stage a play having dangerous nationalist tones is not innocent given the antecedents of this group. Some years back, the same set of people under a different banner, were instrumental in staging a performance of the play Jaanata Raja. This latter play written by the Pune based writer Babasaheb Purandare, achieved notoriety for positing Shivaji, an iconic historical figure, as a reincarnation of Shiva and a saviour of the Hindu religion. Jaanata Raja was unmistakably a project to appropriate Shivaji by the Hindu Right. Hence, there is good reason to be critical when the same set of people stage a play championing the militants who formed part of India’s anti-colonial struggle. Also, like Jaanata Raja, Vande Mataram too is not an ordinary proscenium play but a spectacle that employs huge sets, stage gimmicks, large mobs etc. used as theatrical devices to create an impact on the audience. Spectacle performance was a genre that was heavily used by Fascist regimes in inter-war Europe. A number of scholarly works have pointed out that the effect of the spectacular is that it creates conditions that make reason subservient to passion. It is for this reason that one should always be alert to the use of the spectacular.
The play begins with showcasing how ‘Indian’ society was content and free before the arrival of British. The narrative suggests that it was only after the East India Company pitched their tent in Calcutta that the people of the land were deprived of their freedom. This assumption is fundamentally flawed as it totally neglects the modes of oppression existent in pre-colonial India, predominantly the caste system. Those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy were treated and discriminated in most heinous ways and deprived of their basic needs such as water and food. Knowledge acquisition and economic avenues were concentrated in the hands of a few dominant castes. As the English songwriter Billy Bragg famously said, “Freedom is merely a privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all”, freedom was indeed a privilege available to only a chosen few in pre-colonial India. Sadly it is only those chosen few who have had tools and avenues to write about the “history” of India’s freedom struggle.
Interestingly, the play does mention caste system as one of the evils that affected the Indian society. Somewhere in the middle of the play, actors portraying Mahatma Phule and Savitribai hurriedly make an entry on stage to eradicate caste along with other evils such as Sati, female illiteracy and widow tonsure. The list of reformers who tried to eradicate these social evils during British India is read out which includes Phule, Shahu, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Annie Besant. Conveniently ‘forgotten’ in that list is the name of Dr. Ambedkar. Perhaps Dr. Ambedkar would have been partly happy not to find his name alongside that of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Annie Besant for their problematic views on caste, especially the ways they both imagined to eradicate caste discrimination. However, it is surely a sacrilege to not mention him in a historical narrative that claims to be concerned with India’s Independence movement. The conscious semiotic choices made by the makers of the performance, for example, having a Muslim character appear in mobs at regular intervals, to not come across as a propagandist Hindu narrative of Indian independence falls flat with this careful exclusion of Ambedkar.
The aversion towards recognising the role of Dalits in the Indian Independence movement is not a new phenomenon. The revolutionaries that the performance mentions have always been part of dominant historical narratives. Names like Mangal Pandey, Anant Kanhere, Vasudev Phadke find a mention in text books because the writers of these same books have never been unjust to upper caste revolutionaries. It is names like Jhalkaribai, Gangu Baba, and Avanti Bai that never find a mention in mainstream historical discourses. Ambedkar is not just an individual but exemplifies the entire Dalit consciousness that launched a strong rebellion against the Indian society that was infested with the rot of caste system. That he chose thoughts as his weapons makes him no less a revolutionary. But then, failing to mention him shouldn’t be surprising. Brahmins sunk in their Hindutva arrogance would never even utter Ambedkar’s name, let alone give him his due credit for an inclusive imagination of India.
The play celebrates those who resorted to armed struggle for achieving independence and at various junctures shows an apparent revulsion towards people like Gandhi who resorted to non-violent means to achieve freedom. That it essentially celebrates violence is as problematic as its reductive positioning of armed struggle vis-à-vis non-violence. Also, this positioning could be further complicated in the contemporary times when the people of Kashmir and the North Eastern regions of the country have resorted to armed struggle to separate themselves from the hegemonic Indian state and its army. If violence against the colonial state is celebrated, how is it, then, that people who take part in these “freedom” struggles against a state that they see as colonial are judged terrorists and not patriots?
The answer to this question is that the dominant imagination in the country sees India as the land of Hindus. Any individual or a movement trying to disrupt this imagination is labelled anti national, maoist, naxalite or terrorist. As and when this Hindu imagination is disturbed, discourses are manufactured and theories are spun to normalise this imagination through various networks. Performances like Vande Mataram are part of these normalisation scheme that want to restore this imagination by carefully side-lining contributions of people and systematically erasing discourses that essentially challenge this very imagination.
(This article was first published in Round Table India, dated 3rd April 2015)
The libtard sickular filmmakers in Versova are at it again. Their hatred for Hindu Culture has been always evident from their unwanted and immoral films that have sex scenes and regressive ideas such as woman emancipation, caste eradication etc. The latest one in that league is this film called Masaan, written by a guy called Varun Grover (who’s also been performing a show called Democracy ki Aisi Taisi, ever since our honourable PM Narendra Modi came to power.) Ironically, he studied at Banaras Hindu University but was involved in theatre group there so must be a jholakurta type commie. There is no source I can cite (fuck you Rajiv Malhotra for having forced us into these useless academic routines) about the director Neeraj Ghaywan about being an anti-national but he’s from Hyderabad which always has been a breeding ground for anti Akhand Hindutva nation. He recently opposed appointment of Gajendra Chauhan and supported the naxalites at FTII. But their personal linkages with these naxalite outfits is not as shocking as the film itself and the imagery that Masaan tries to plant into the innocent viewers in India.
Masaan means crematorium. The film is set in contemporary Banaras. The sickular libtard khangressi filmmakers want to subtly convey that Banaras has become a crematorium post Modi’s victory from that constituency. Why didn’t they make this film in Amethi, Rae Bareilly or Italy for that matter? There’s a credible source who told me that this film is funded by Ford Foundation to malign the pristine image of India. They say this film is shot in Banras but don’t show any of the holy ghats nor anyone doing Puja and Aarti. Instead, in the opening scene of the film, a boy is doing Devi. I mean, why would you have a film about Banaras opening with a sex scene, with a character who’s named Devi? My hindu sentiments have been tantalised..errr…hurt. Also, they’ve maligned the image of Brahmin girls by showing her engaging in illicit relation with a Bania. The character of Mr. Pathak is very problematically portrayed (but good they used a Brahmin actor to portray Brahmin character. Credit where due!). They show him engaged in immoral activities like gambling, corruption, allowing his daughter to decide her future etc.
The other story in the film is fundamentally flawed given that it shows intercaste relationship between Deepak and Shaalu. Shaalu, a hindu girl from a respectable family, is shown to like urdu shayari written by muslim poets. How can they allow this on screen? How did Pahalaj NIhlani pass this film for censor? It also shows disintegration of Hindu culture by portraying Deepak who’s moving away from his traditional occupation to city after getting a better job. This might send a wrong message to lower caste youths in this country. If all of them move to cities by getting educated and good jobs, who will burn our pyres, till our land and moreover, maintain the village culture and tradition? This is what that British confidante Ambedkar wanted his people to do. Masaan is just an extension of that thought and hence a threat to Hindu nation. If they make a sequel to Masaan, they might even profess conversion and criticise Ghar wapasi.
Both the protagonist of the film, Devi and Deepak, move to Allahabad for better prospects, leaving Banaras. This shows a city developed by Mughal rulers is better than one originally developed and brought up on hindu ideology and culture. Another credible source told me that part of the film’s funding came from Pakistan. This just proves the point. This film has won standing ovation and some award at a film festival in France. This is not surprising as the western world has always looked down upon India as they know that we were far superior to them, and much of our vedic knowledge was created in Banaras. A film which shows dark realities of such a great and holy place is bound to strike a chord with these western audiences. And these people in Europe will like any film which has sex scenes in it (Gandu, for ex).
Masaan is an anti-national, anti Modi and anti Gajendra Chauhan film that portrays a very ugly picture of Banaras by telling ordinary stories of ordinary people. Banaras is about safeguarding great hindu tradition which the film says has been shaken by advent of modernity and industrialisation. This film also pays their tribute to India’s colonial masters by having railway pass through every now and then, and even a song about railways. I think this is essential on maker’s part so that the film becomes a strong contender for Oscars. This film might do good collection at Box office but will seriously hamper tourism industry in India as it maligns image of India’s greatest tourist destination, Banaras. Hence, in the interest of nation, I think this film needs to be banned.
It’s been a month now that I am back to Goa from Delhi for summer vacations. Nothing much to do in Goa apart from meeting friends for beer but I am not complaning! :p I’ve been catching up on reading and watching films, doing some archival work for the upcoming dissertation (but that’s at a pace slower than that of snail’s) and daydreaming. I so wanted to stay back in Delhi for cultural studies reading group but the heat in Delhi this time is just unbearable. Not much writing has happened though which is scary.
It was a great year at AUD and joining there was the best decision I ever took. It has its problems but I love the vibe and SCCE has the most amazing faculty on campus. It’s such a relief not to answer exams anymore.
The university reopens in August and there’s still a month of vacation remaining but I am already bored. Looking forward for the Hyderabad trip in July for ISTR conference.
In 1790, Immanuel Kant wrote his third critique, Critique of Power of Judgement, completing his trilogy after Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason. Kant’s third critique, Critique of Power of Judgement, is considered to be a foundational reading for anyone concerned with art criticism. Almost two centuries later, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu released La Distinction: Critique sociale du judgement, translated into English as Distinction by Richard Nice. Bourdieu had compiled a massive ethnographic study relating aesthetic experience and taste in culture to socioeconomic status. Both these text, are extremely crucial in understanding the theorisation of aesthetic experiences and Bourdieu’s work could be seen as arguing for structural determinism as against the universally subjective agency proposed by Kant.
In Critique, Kant’s focus lies on the accessing of the beautiful via pure judgments of taste transcendent of sensual, social, or moral being. Bourdieu expresses doubts about Kant’s claims of beauty, and counters that Kant’s judgment of taste is only a manoeuvring for status by acting as though one’s tastes have some sublimated, elevated character.
According to Kant, beauty is felt when a purposiveness is felt in the representation of an object, in a subjective and yet universally valid manner that excludes interest. Kant begins the Analytic of the Beautiful, the first section of the third Critique, by emphasizing the subjective nature of judgments of taste. He says
In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but rather relate it by means of the imagination (perhaps combined with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The judgment of taste is therefore not a cognitive judgment, hence not a logical one, but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective.
Kant invokes the idea of “agreeable” to posit the idea of beauty as universal. Judgments of beauty demand that one to express his judgement with a universal tone, considering that given the right environment, each human being could not possibly disagree. To him, expressing that something is beautiful is nonsense. He writes that “the maxim of the power of judgment is to think in the position of everyone else”.
But this notion of moving towards a universally acceptable understanding of beauty raises many questions. It does not take into considerations the social and cultural aspects in these agencies of judgement are shaped and nurtured. Hence it becomes important to look at the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s La Distinction: Critique sociale du judgement, or Distinction. Bourdieu had compiled a massive ethnographic survey to correlate aesthetic experience and taste in culture to socioeconomic environment.
In its entirety, Distinction explores this possibility of social domination through the use of pure judgments of taste and argues to refute Kant’s model of taste in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Distinction presents an ethnographic study of 1960’s France that details how cultural practices stem from and reify social realities. Bourdieu uses his standard model of lived experience consisting of interaction between habitus, or the socially and historically generated principle that guides our practices and choices of objects of consumption that in turn generate influential social structures, and field, the environment in which habitus works.
Distinction views taste as a social phenomenon, correlated to different categories of agencies with specific social origins and trajectories inextricably embedded in a larger social framework. Taste serves as an indicator of these positions within social structures. Take for example case of Rain, a natural phenomenon celebrated by many artists trying to articulate its beauty through poetry, paintings, music etc. A dalit poet, Sambhaji Bhagat, has a very interesting counter argument to this when he says only those find rain as romantic who do not live under leaky roofs. Here, one’s judgement of beauty of rain is directly linked with his or her socioeconomic status and not in just pure sensual experience of it.
Bourdieu engages with Kant in the Distinction’s postscript. The postscript’s title-“Towards a ‘Vulgar’ Critique of “Pure’ Critiques”-advocates for the ‘vulgar’ critique integral in sociological analysis of the ‘pure’ territories of aesthetics, taste, and beauty. Bourdieu argues that Kant constitutes the subject of the aesthetics-oriented philosopher as “the universal subject of aesthetic experience-Kant’s analysis of the judgment of taste finds its real basis in a set of aesthetic principles which are the universalization of the dispositions associated with a particular social and economic condition.
Kant is unable to give fair account to the social and the historical in our aesthetic experiences. His account gives does not give any importance to the social factors that impacts our judgments. Kant’s emphasis on the importance of subjective emotional response to aesthetics is interesting, but his account of the mechanics of such responses and their implicative depiction of a subjectivity disconnected from social reality during these moments of aesthetic experience seems inaccurate and seems like he is dismissive of the social and historical factors of subjective response.
There is no fixed rule proposing that the Kantian notion of being will produce exactly the same results in every subject, and it gives some space for being skeptical of utopian ideal in which Kant is imagining to propose that all subjects will arrive at same conclusions. Also, if according to Kant, saying that “this is beautiful for me” is nonsensical, it becomes a problematic argument. That implies we will have to communicate with everyone about our encounters of experiencing beauty. But if the experience of the beauty is so conclusive bereft of any doubts according to Kant, then why should one even bother to obtain a confirmation? The judgment of taste does not necessarily has to be spoken about. Kant indirectly assumes that we all must talk about beauty. In this argument too, it looks like Kant is not considering the societal mechanisms responsible behind engaging into communication with other subjects.
It is really difficult to take a position here on both the sides. Both approaches of looking at taste and notion of beauty in an epistemological lens and its relevance in current understanding and formation of taste within subjects. Even Distinction leaves much room to raise doubts and problematize the postulates put forward by Bourdieu which in certain aspects appear reductive but that’s not the focus of this exercise. We may at certain moments believe whole heartedly to have experienced a Kantian sort of beauty, and we may find ourselves being critical towards that that very experience later on, seeing the ways in which larger social and historical forces have led us in thought to certain conclusions. The meaning of such an experience may be slightly flawed and no longer totally sure of itself. One should also not deny the importance of critical thinking, and the ways by which acts of critique provide an equally fulfilling experience. At the same time, an experience of beauty can unsettle any dominant notion or understanding of critique.
Past few days have been really busy as our new Marathi play, Jatharaanal, enters final leg of rehearsals. A satirical critic of totalitarian state where the king turns into a cannibal, this play is an exciting project to work on since it is a musical we are doing after a very long time. There is a qawwali that has been written which echoes the protagonist’s dilemma to choose between knife and alcohol while the lyrics plays on some interesting pun on the word “Suraa” which means both, knife and alcohol, in Marathi. Towards the end of it, the Qawwal urges everyone to choose “Sur” (Music) over both the “Suraa” as that has a bigger capacity to heal.
The attack on the school in Peshawar has numbed everyone beyond limits. While people wrote very emotional messages on Facebook (and even diplomatic advices to Pakistan), I didn’t feel the urgency to respond to it mainly because I was not able to articulate my feelings. I just felt scared and incapable. The emotional outpour is more because it is children who were killed. What bothers me is this killing and wiping off innocence from our lives while we are living in times when we need it the most. Children seem to embody that innocence that we all yearn for and we must hold onto it as much as we can.
There is some apparent connection I am trying to find between the qawwali from the play and my concern with incidents like Peshawar. I think Music, like innocence, is one answer to counter hatred and we need more of it. Because as Bard said, Music is the food of love and we must play on.
Against Interpretation, an essay by Susan Sontag that appeared in 1964 and which was later published into a collection of her writings, is one of the most important and influential texts on art criticism. Sontag, a cultural critic and scholar, through this essay heavily criticised the intellectual taming of the arts that was on rise during that time. “Against Interpretation” was a polemic against one reductive way of art criticism of treating a work as if it were equivalent to the account that could be given of its “meaning.” She thought this practice seemed misguided and corrupted our direct appreciation of a work’s “thingness.” Instead of relying so much on questions about what elements in a work of art mean, she considered it was important to rely more on questions about how they function-concretely, sensuously, and formally-in the work.
Sontag’s essay came in a very specific historical time when “Conceptual art” was all the rage in 60s. Conceptual art usually was supplemented with theoretical explanation about the artwork. If the viewer did not get the “meaning”, he or she would rather refer to the catalogue or be relied upon critics for their account of interpretation of the artwork. Sontag seems to attack this very situation where a critic in the guise of interpreter or one who reveals the “true” meaning of the art is given undue importance. She held a position that a critic’s job is not to interpret the artwork for others but to tell them what it is. She thought interpreting artworks for “true” meaning would be the overstepping of critic’s role.
The early Greek theories about art being mimesis and representation of reality is where she points the origin of a situation where emerged a need to justify art. The value of art to human life was being questioned by Plato. Sontag writes
[A]ll Western consciousness of and reflection upon art have remained within the confines staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation. It is through this theory that art as such – above and beyond given works of art – becomes problematic, in need of defense. And it is the defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call “form” is separated off from something we have learned to call “content,” and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory.
Though the Greek theories of art being mimesis and imitation now seem to be dated in favour of art being subjective expression of one’s self, the dichotomy of form and content still persists. There is an apparent separation of form and content in artworks and is often treated and dealt with separately. The dominance of content over form is such that the artworks are more discussed for its content over its formal elements. The separation of content and forms makes artworks deductible to a statement or an argument which is the very notion Sontag is trying to critic heavily.
Sontag seems to be against only certain kind of interpretation. In an interview with Evan Chans, she said she is not against interpretation as such, because all thinking is interpretation. Rather she is against reductive interpretation and the making of cheap equivalences. She is against rules of interpretations and the practise of using an interpretative grid over and over to “decode” disparate works of art. For her, interpretation is not in the terms of Nietzscheian sense where Nietzsche says there are no facts, only interpretations but she is rather dismissing the allegorical or metaphorical matching of art works. She says
Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don’t you see that X is really – or, really means – A? That Y is really B? That Z is really C?
This reductive way of interpreting was not only a fad of sixties but largely dominates the criticism discourse in current times too. Almost a half century later since the essay came out, the fanatical project of interpreting artworks is proliferating uncontrollably.
Interpretation ie reading the subtexts into an artwork, according to Sontag, came in a specific historical time period post scientific enlightenment. The power of myth (and hence religion and God) was weakening as against to reasoning and rational thinking. A new reading of ancient texts was felt necessary to make them relevant in post scientific enlightenment era. This led to summoning of new interpretations of these texts to reconcile the texts with modern demands. Further quoting Sontag,
The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.
Though she locates the origin of interpretation as we know it in this certain historical time, she is quick to mention that interpretation in our times is even more complex. There is an open contempt for appearances in this sort of interpretative exercise. She says “the modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.” Such interpretations are done on grids of modern doctrines. Sontag cites two examples of these prescriptive interpretative grids: Freudianism and Marxism. She quotes a Freudian reading of a scene in Bergman’s The Silence –a tank rumbling down an empty street as a phallic symbol– as an example of a critic relying on “content” (a tank in an empty street), but stripped of the filmic context: “Taken as a brute object, as an immediate sensory equivalent for the mysterious abrupt armoured happenings going on inside the hotel, that sequence with the tank is the most striking moment in the film. Those who reach for a Freudian interpretation of the tank are only expressing their lack of response to what is there on the screen.” For Sontag this is “an overt contempt for appearances.” The appearances are what is seen and heard on the screen and what should be described by the critic, and they should be supported by extra-filmic evidence only when textual evidence supports it.
According to Sontag, real art has capacity to make us nervous. It has power to “affect” through its form and appearance. Interpreting art for its subtext and content is like taming the art work and making it more comfortable. There are two main points Sontag is making. One is that we should not rely on apriori interpretative grids (Freudian, Marxist, Psychoanalytical, etc.) to “excavate” meanings indiscriminately, and in the process reduce every work to the same story (an Oedipal journey, a class struggle, etc.). In other words, the interpretation should not take the place of the experience of art. Secondly, we should never interpret a work based only on its content. Or put more reasonably, the better interpretations are the ones that take into account aspects of form, style, history, and aesthetics. There is nothing wrong as such with ‘content-based’ analysis, and some of it can be very revealing about how a film may relate to external social, political, or cultural factors. But there is little in such an analysis to distinguish the film from a book, play, or television show. Content-only analysis nullifies medium differences.
She says that it doesn’t matter if the artists want their artworks to be interpreted or not. We can’t be absolutely sure that whatever we’ve interpreted is the final reading of the artwork and hence doing so doesn’t make any sense. In his non-verbal play titled “Hour we knew nothing of each other”, Peter Handke sketches about 450 characters he sees from a rooftop of a café and just writes about their appearances as they walk past his sight. When the play is staged, there are actors wearing different costumes and walking sequentially from one end of the stage to another. There is no communication between them and hence no apparent way of guessing who these characters are or what are they upto. The audience could ascribe as many narratives possible to these characters. There isn’t any grand narrative to the play but a possibility of multiple sub-narratives. This play could be considered as classic example where one cannot separate content and form since both are fused together so well that they become inseparable.
Sontag cites example of Kafka and how his work has been “interpreted” as a statement about modern man’s alienation from meaning or from God, or as an allegory of psychopathology. She warns us to refrain from doing this kind of reductive criticism.
Does that mean Sontag leaves no room for symbolism in an art work? She’d say it would be foolish thought to take a brute object and make it as a sensory equivalent of something else citing example of scene from Bergman’s film. Not all apples present in artworks symbolise genesis! Reaching to such conclusions, according to Sontag, is expressing one’s lack to respond sensuously to what is displayed.
In a film by Satyajit Ray, there was a shot where a road is show in perspective with streetlamps running parallel to the road. One of the streetlamp was off while all others were lit. Film scholar Satish Bahadur went on to praise this shot in the context of the narrative of the film at a length. When Ray was asked about this, he coldly replied that the lamp just happened to go off during the shooting. The overzealous need for interpretation could lead to such meaningless conclusions and Sontag wants us to resist from doing that.
Sontag optimistically denotes that interpretation does not always prevail and some movements in art making have originated as a response to this interpretative mode of criticism. She gives examples of two such movements in (then) modern painting ie Abstract Art and pop art. She writes
Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since there is no content, there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so “what it is,” it, too, ends by being uninterpretable.
The absence of content leaves no scope for interpretation in abstract painting while pop art uses content in a very different context, often problematizing it’s meaning so to speak. These movements are the escape routes artists have found for themselves to escape from this bloated interpretative criticism. Even in the case of programmatic Avant-gardism, she notes that by experimenting form at the expense of content, artists are trying to put up a defense against the infestation of art by interpreters but also wary of it perpetuating the illusion of distinction between form and content which she is trying to nullify. She says, another way to elude this army of interpreters by making works which address the audience directly for what they are instead of concealing meanings into some allegorical elements in the work.
Cinema, for Sontag, has been successful in achieving this elusion but we need to note that she is writing this in sixties. The situation in film criticism could be very different in current times. She credits newness of cinema as the prime factor that it has not been “overrun” by interpreters. Also its formal complexities that includes technical elements such as camera angles, edit cuts, sound design etc. make a very unique language of forms. But in current times, films too have been infested with the army of overzealous interpretations. Apart from the Ray’s example cited above, a recent Indian film that has caught attention of the “critics” is Haider by Vishal Bhardwaj, a film set in backdrop of insurgent Kashmir and adapted from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
What kind of criticism is Sontag expecting then? She states out clearly that art criticism should serve the work of art not usurp its place. One needs to give more attention to form in art. Sontag contemplates two proposals, reactionary and the other being proactive. The reactionary proposal has to do with art that demotes content- based interpretation by taking its own structure of formal elements to be its subject matter. This is reactive, in Sontag’s view, because the concept “form” is tied dialectically to the concept “content” in such a way that emphasis on the form in hopes of weakening the content is bound to complicate both. The proactive approach, according to her, is to elude the interpreters as mentioned above by making art works that will directly speak for themselves through their absolute formal structure, thereby not leaving any scope for interpretations.
Through this essay, Sontag makes us all aware of how the “art” of interpretation (or excavation in her terms) can be fraught with indecipherable jargon and dull, repetitive readings. But interpretation also exists on the ‘surface’ for anyone willing to take the time to see, hear, feel, and describe. The call is to fall back on sensual reception of artworks instead of cognitive understandings of art based on prescribed hermeneutic grids. Though her immediate concern is to dismiss such criticism, she also draws our attention to a bigger problem that we as society are slowly heading towards. She writes
Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life – its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness – conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed.
The excess of information available is making us less sharp day by day, more so now as compared to the times in sixties when Sontag wrote this. With the proliferation of technology we use to outsource our lives, our capacity to use our basic senses could be put at stake. According to Sontag, reception of arts might be one of the few avenues where we could apply our senses to get affected and we should not let that go by such hermeneutic reception of it. What is at stake, according to her, is nothing less than a mode of worldly experience. For, awareness of art is as much a primary mode of experience in the world as is anything else. Hence, when she ends the essay with “In place for hermeneutics, we need erotics for art”, it’s not merely a conclusive note but more of a slogan Sontag is giving us and asking us to fall back on our sensory experience of the world.
As the first semester draws to a close, I was taking a stock of events and experiences that I’ve had since I first moved to the city of Delhi in August. The one striking experience that had me moved and thinking was when I attended the Muharram procession, just across our university campus on Hamilton Road, as a part of our history and historiography course. The question that was posed to us by our teacher and which still continues to bother me is how do we approach writing about rituals like Ashura? This one question has opened up some more questions and possibilities and in this essay I will try to address some of them.
Muharram processions is not an easy sight to be a part of. The self-flagellating Shia men and kids injuring their bodies and unescapable sight of blood is an uncomforting spectacle. Also, one would find herself or himself between those gathered to participate the procession, often weeping and crying as they mourn the death of Hussain and martyrs of the battle of Karbala.
There is no one particular way of approaching & engaging with rituals like Muharram. There are various nodes which can be picked up as an entry point of engagement. One could look at bodies, spectatorship, emotions, temporality and elements of the ritual such as space, time, aural and visual features. I will particularly focus on the element of emotion in Muharram as my point of departure and its connection with the aural and visual elements of the procession as well as the problem of temporality and history. The underlying line of inquiry in this exercise is to locate the factors that prompt the emotional display during Muharram.
History of Muharram and Ashura
Muharram commemorates the pitched battle (680 C.E.) of Karbala, in present day Iraq, which many now understand to have been a struggle over the political and spiritual leadership of Islam. […] To simplify, Husain, grandson of the Prophet, was slain by the henchmen of the Ummayad ruler Yazid, who’s [..] lavish and imperialist style of governance was, in the opinion of Husain and his followers, contrary to the egalitarian spirit of Islam. Shi’ahs dwell on the tragic martyrdom of a number of characters in their redactions of the story, including Ali Asghar and Ali Akbar, Husain’s sons; Abbas, Husain’s half-brother; Hur, who defected from the Ummayad army; and Qasim, son of Husain’s brother Hasan. Many believe that the Imams (spiritual leaders and successors to Muhammad) and martyrs of Karbala are present during Muharram and, like Sufi saints, intervene on behalf of the devout. Part of the ambivalence over Muharram stems from the fact that Husain’s martyrdom is considered a moral victory. Thus, for Shi’as Muslims, both mourning and celebration are deeply embedded in Muharram’s emotional fabric. (Wolf, 2000)
To show their allegiance to the slain martyrs, and to the principle of success ship that Hussain embodied, Shi’as retell the story of Husain’s martyrdom. They recall scenes from the battle using a variety of dramatic verbal genres, and participate in processions, carrying battle standards, tomb replicas and other icons of the Karbala story. (Wolf, 2003)
At the Muharram procession we were witness to, we saw three different groups, mourning the martyrdom in different styles. The first group involved middle aged men and some kids hitting their backs with sharp tools like blades, chains and knives. The second group had men hitting their forehead and loudly thumping their chest. The third group was a community of Shi’a students from Ladakh based in Delhi. They mourned by beating their chest and singing Nohas in chorus. Nohas are melancholic poems written to commemorate the martyrdom andvalour of Hussain ibn Ali and his comrades of the Karbala.
Performing the pain
Self Flagellating men as a part of mourning on Muharram Muharram (Kashmere Gate, Delhi 2014)
Men and women of all ages wept and cried to mourn the deaths of martyrs of the battle. The grief was apparent on the faces of men participating in the mourning display as well as those who had gathered to watch the procession. Observing this, one is confronted with a question what factors are stimulating these emotions? Weeping or crying is believed to be a very personal emotion and usually displayed in public. Also, crying for someone’s death also implies a personal connect between the person who is weeping and the deceased, perhaps shared time and space. But apart from a spiritual connect to Hussain, the ones present there had no direct connection in terms of shared time and space with him. How then the spectators could so profoundly express an emotion in memory of a figure whom they haven’t shared physical time and space or about an incident to which they themselves were not part of? It is not to say that it is impossible to cry or weep thinking about a person you have never met. In case of Muharram, the mediated affect could manifest through the aural and visual ambiance as well its temporal transcend and historical specificity which I shall discuss it later in this paper.
As I was interacting with a Shia friend of mine about the Muharram, she mentioned one important thing about the Shia community that the sentiment of mourning is much central to the Shia discourse for its historical significance. The identity of the Shia community is much strongly linked to the battle of Karbala and the events thereafter. All Shias believe that they are direct descendants of Husain and hence of Prophet Muhammad. Considering this, it almost becomes dutiful for devout Shias to express their grief during Muharram. It is with this sense of “duty” the performative aspect of mourning seeps in. But as discussed earlier, weeping would also need a personal stimulus. At this juncture, one is confronted with the idea of emotions during Ritual and ritualised emotions. In a paper titled “Performative tears– Emotions in Ritual and Ritualised emotions” by Axel Michaels, he distinguishes between the ritual crying and crying during the ritual.
[Crying during ritual] is perhaps evoked by rituals or given space within them as weeping is very often emotionally contagious, but remains subject to the individual’s choice or psychic disposition whether it happens or not. The ritual crying, on the other hand, […] follows […] five criteria of rituals; it is dependent on causal change (the death), it is stipulated, performed or staged in a prescribed form, publicly performed and staged, irrevocably marking the loss of the deceased. [..] [T]he weeping is not a spontaneous reaction to death and subject to individual feelings. It is a must and part of a symbolic performance in which solidarity is expressed. (Michaels, 2010)
But in a ritual like Muharram, it is hardly possible to differentiate whether the tears are real or not because often ritualised weeping may end in “real” weeping due to the stimulating effect of the situation. In spite of this fluid nature of emotional display, Michaels argues that the distinction between real tears and performative tears is not useless. He mentions
[R]itualized tears are as real as tears shed as an emotional response to an event. Assuming that they are not “real” presupposes a Western individualism and emotionalism that places individual and spontaneous emotions higher than formalised and ritualised emotions. […] [A] ritual is framed by the intentio solemnis (formally marking the beginning and end of emotional display) and other formal criteria. Tears within this frame are performative tears since their “intention” or cause is laid down or prearranged. They can be formally […] allowed by the community [and] nobody will then ask why a participant starts crying if tears are a “normal reaction” in this part of the ritual (Michaels, 2010).
Thus it can be hypothesised that though the tears are shed in the name of Hussain, there is a varying level of personal engagement and subjectivity involved within the participants of this ritual. This subjectivity can emerge from various points. To understand this subjective position in collective outburst of emotions, we could invoke Schechner’s idea of ritual where he says
Rituals are collective memories encoded into actions. Rituals help people deal with difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, hierarchies, and desires that trouble, exceed, or violate the norms of daily life.
In the context of Shia community, the fact that being a minority sect within Islam could also have possibly resulted in some bitter experiences they might have had in finding space for their sectarian pride in larger discourse of Islam. Especially in a country like India, where Muslim population itself is in minority, being a minority within a larger minority would mean being confronted with the added insecurities of the minority community. Mourning at Muharram could then as well can be looked at as a ritual in which these collective memories, experiences and insecurities get encoded into action i.e. mourning and act as a sort of catharsis for the Shia followers.
Affect during Ashura Procession
The affect infliction in Ashura procession happens through the aural and visual elements of the Ashura ritual. These elements of the performance are equally important to invoke the grief within the participants. By aural and visual elements, I am referring to the Nohas that are sung by the chorus, the sound produced by thumping the chest, the flagellated, weeping and bleeding bodies, the presence of blood etc. These could be considered as agencies that create the mediated affect as mentioned earlier.
Nohas, poetry of lament describe the aftermaths of battle of Karbala and different episodes about it. Written in soulful Urdu, Nohas are set to mournful tunes and sung in a metronome like beat produced by loudly beating on chest, which is called maatam. A large chorus singing Nohas to this beat does sound haunting. This way of mourning i.e. beating the chest is interesting in the sense that the meaning generation in this form is embodied and converges in, on and through the body. It happens through performing the chest beating in conjunction with poetic recitation of Nohas and its virtual aestheticization to the point of becoming an art form. Maatam embodies the rhythmic character of the lament poetry and translates verbal performance into a type of a movement (Wolf, 2000).
The men inflicting injuries upon themselves could be looked at as devices used to invoke the motif of blood that was shed at the battle of Karbala. This could have deeper impact on the subconscious of the spectator and could be considered as one of the stimulus that is imperative to invoke grief. But this is a very primary hypothesis and the performance should be looked at in more focused to put forth some solid evidence for the same.
Performing History and temporality
The commemorations of Muharram begin on day one of Muharram and culminate on the tenth day which is known as Ashura. During this time, pious Shias observe mourning practices, dress and behave sombrely, and attend during gatherings at which the history of the Battle of Karbala is retold, often in conjunction with sermons teaching lessons to be learned from this history. Tenth day commemorations may include a passion play, processions, and various forms of lamentation, such as self-flagellation, the singing of nohas, the recitation of marsiyas and a ritualized form of mourning ie Maatam.
Though I have limited my observations to the processions on the tenth day ie Ashura, one needs to also look at the events that happen for the first nine days and lead up to the day of Ashura. These gatherings are called Majalis where the narrators reciteMarsiyas. Marsiya is form of prose poetry which is recited (as opposed to Noha which are usually sung, though both are forms of elegiac poetry) to narrate incidents about Karbala battle. They are narrated in a heightened manner to make the attendees feel the pain and suffering that the martyrs of Karbala and their families went through.
The affect on the audience parallels the shifts in tone of the reciter, with the lamentation rituals evoking intense crying and weeping. While all majalis include the lamentative narration of the […] the tragic events of Karbala, reciters […] will include as much detail of suffering as possible in this narration, to elicit maximum levels of emotion from the audience. (Deeb, 2005)
This sort of performance and invoking of history makes the Muharram as a site where the participants could experience temporality in terms of time. When the audience assumes an active role in enhancing the emotional feeling through collective mourning, a transcendence towards regret takes place. When participants are placed simultaneously in the performance of Ashura as well as on the plains of Karbala many centuries ago, an altered sense of temporality is experienced; the present is merged with the past in a unified moment of intensity.
Conclusion
The central point in my inquiry of Muharram has been to locate the source or the stimulus of emotions that the Shia attendees go through during the mourning phase of Muharram. It can be only deduced that there isn’t one source but various factor collectively responsible for the display of emotions. Lara Deeb mentions that the emotions surrounding Ashura commemorated express both grief and regret. Tears shed for the martyrs of Karbala are tears that are religiously commendable. It is believed that both evoking these tears and shedding them are acts that bring divine reward and that may increase one’s chances of entering heaven. Blood spilled in memory of the events of Karbala is similarly an embodied demonstration of grief and an empathetic expression of solidarity with the Imam’s pain and sorrow. It can also be an expression of regret or remorse. Some of those who perform the traditional style of maatamexplain that this demonstrates their regret for not being at Karbala with the Imam—a reference to those Shias who originally called on the Imam to come and lead their revolution, but who then failed to arrive at Karbala in time to either protect the Imam or stand and die with him (Deeb, 2005).
The fact that the mourning still continues in various forms and embodiment also highlights the relevance of the ritual for the community in contemporary times. Noted Islamic scholar Hamid Dabashi has argued that the central thematic of these mourning performances is the notion of Mazlummiyat. Mazlummiyat refers to the absence of justice towards Shias that signals the necessity of its presence. He writes
Shi’ism is a religion of protest. It can never succeed politically without failing morally. As a cosmic carnival of a constitutional injustice, taziyeh is the mourning of a loss that must always fail in its stated objective if it is to be successful. No mourning could or should ever be successful. The success of mourning is its failure. Mourning is successful only to the degree that it fails, acknowledging the enormity of the loss, the incomprehensible dimensions of the tragedy. The success of mourning means the eradication of the central trauma that has caused it, and no such eradication of a trauma definitive to a culture is possible-without nullifying that very culture. Shi’is are condemned/blessed forever to remember the central trauma of their history, but never so fully that they can then forget it. The act of remembrance will have to remain always incomplete-like a dream that keeps haunting a people, forcing them to try to remember it, but never successfully. In commemorating the death of a martyr, Shias are seeking to identify with absolute Otherness; with saintliness in the midst of sin and death at the moment of living; with dual, absolutely incongruent, Otherness; with the face and the body, miasmatic memory and creative incantation, of the saintly and the deceased. In that impossibility, mourning choreographed and staged, taziyeh is made possible (Dabashi, 2005).
We need to remember that Dabashi’s argument is rooted in the context of socio-political history of Iran and other Shia countries in Middle East such as Iraq & Lebanon. In Indian context, Shias being the minority within a minority could as well be looked at as a possible reason for denial of justice in an already congested and contested religious space. While Muharram becomes the remembrance of the events of Karbala, the thematic of Mazlummiyat also reflects the binary of oppressed and oppressor. The importance of commemorating it every year is better articulated by a woman Deeb interviewed in Lebanon. She said
In every era there is an oppressor and an oppressed. And this history always repeats itself, throughout all eras. Ashura reminds us of this, so we will never forget that there is a Yazid and a Husayn in every time, in every nation, in every government, and people should always have the spirit of revolution against oppression, in all its faces, no matter what its identity (Deeb, 2008)
Thus, as per the Shi’ite belief, the commemoration of Muharram is not just about mourning and remembrance but that of solidarity and an embodiment of spirit to fight against injustice.
Selected Bibliography
Wolf, Richard K. 2000. Embodiment and ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram drumming. Yearbook for Traditional Music 32: 81-116
Wolf, Richard Kent. “Return to Tears: Musical Mourning, Emotion, and Religious Reform in Two South Asian Minority Communities.” (2003).
Deeb, Lara. “Emulating and/or embodying the ideal: The gendering of temporal frameworks and Islamic role models in Shi ‘i Lebanon.” American Ethnologist 36.2 (2009): 242-257.
Deeb, Lara. “Living Ashura in Lebanon: mourning transformed to sacrifice.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25.1 (2005): 122-137.
Dabashi, Hamid. “Taziyeh as theatre of protest.” TDR/The Drama Review 49.4 (2005): 91-99.
Norton, Augustus Richard. “Ritual, Blood, and Shiite Identity: Ashura in Nabatiyya, Lebanon.” TDR/The Drama Review 49.4 (2005): 140-155.
Chelkowski, Peter J., ed. Eternal Performance: Taʻziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals. Seagull, 2010.
