|
Pop arts edging out high
arts
by M.
L. Raina
Rethinking
Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in
Cultural Studies edited by Chandra Mukerji and
Michael Schudson. University of California Press,
Berkley. Pages viii+501. $19.95.
AN anthology on popular
culture and nothing by Vladimir Propp, Umberto
Eco, Yuri Lotman, Mikhail Bakhtin, Richard
Hoggart or John Cawletti! At first sight I am
tempted to dismiss it as yet another of those
elephantine academic tomes whose girth in terms
of pages is no substitute for genuine engaging
content. Yes, I am not swept off my feet as many
others would be today by the very mention of the
new cantphrases "popular culture" and
"cultural studies". Yet there is enough
in this volume to prompt reflection on these
subjects even though I would not be counted as a
drunken celebrant or an uncritical enthusiast for
everything "Popular".
Though Mukerji
and Schudson have not been able to define clearly
what popular culture is in their long free-fall
of an introduction, certain hints and suggestions
do emerge on close reading of the texts offered.
The introduction itself attempts the following
definition: "Popular culture refers to the
beliefs and practices, and the objects through
which they are organised, that are widely shared
among a population. These include folk beliefs,
practices and objects rooted in local traditions,
and mass beliefs, practices and objects generated
in political and commercial centres." The
rather fuzzy nature of this definition is evident
in the fact that it could also apply to mass
culture as understood by us in the present time.
Popular culture
studies have included such a large range of
issues (as evident in this anthology) and such an
array of methods that they have become diffuse
and baffling. It is one thing to say that popular
culture is the product of shared beliefs, but
quite another to ignore its homogenising effect
on the community which shares the beliefs.
Besides the line of demarcation between the
popular and mass cultures is vague and it is
difficult to predict at what stage the
"popular" becomes "mass".
Perhaps we might do well to remember that
"mass" culture is basically a
conformist product of the levelling force of
modern consumer economy and entertainment
industry, a point made clear by Adorno and
Horkheimer who regrettably do not figure in this
volume.
They have
insisted that "mass culture" which
substitutes traditional cultures of the past in
modern industrial society performs the function
of maintaining the status quo. Whereas many
adherents of popular culture believe in its
critical potential in relation to prevailing
assumptions (a view rather unconvincingly
advanced by Mary Douglas in her fascinating essay
on jokes in the present volume), Adorno, Marcuse
and the Frankfurt School generally hold
"high art" as the antidote to the
levelling process of mass culture, ignoring the
rather grey area which the editors of the present
anthology call "popular culture".
Calling mass
culture "the plastic surgery of the
prevailing economic system which carves all men
to one pattern", Horkheimer in a relatively
unknown essay of 1940, "Art and mass
culture" (none of the contributors to this
volume seems to have taken note of it), opposed
it to "genuine high culture" which
"preserves the utopia that evaporated from
religion". What this statement seems to
overlook particularly in the Indian
context is the fact that it is religion in
India which underpins the pacificatory role of
mass culture.
However hard you
look in the present anthology, you will be
disappointed at not being able to find a
clear-cut demarcation between "the
popular" and "the mass". Maybe the
distinction does not exist, really, or is present
in too attenuated a form to matter. At any rate,
some of the essays in the Mukerji-Schudson volume
strengthen this impression. Take the essay
"William Shakespeare and the American
people", a thorough and well-researched
piece on the reception of Shakespeare in America.
Lawrence Levine shows that initially the bard was
everybodys property. Shakespearean
presentations were given at big and small
playhouses across America and were enjoyed and
parodied in local variations (the best literary
parody occurring in "Huckleberry Fin").
The interesting
thing is that, like the original Elizabethan
theatre, the plays had something to offer to
every class of theatre-goer. As American society
became class-bound, cultural stratification also
took place, giving the bard a privileged status.
From a "popular artist" he became
"high culture". The filming of
Shakespeare by Hollywood (the most recent example
is the cycle-riding lovers in "Mid-Summer
Nights Dream", and the general
demythologisation in "Shakespeare in
Love") has once again blurred the line
between the high and the popular brand.
The other
example comes from Janice Radways essay on
womens romances. She asks the question as
to which women read romances and why, and answers
with a neat topology of readers response to
"popular culture". Like Mary Douglas,
she claims that romances offered to women not
only an escape from the oppression of their daily
lives, but also a way of protest against being
neglected in patriarchy. The reception of B.R.
Chopras the Mahabharath is an instance
nearer home which suggests that high art and
popular culture are not entirely related to class
stratification alone.
Though
anthropologists and sociologists in this
collection (Bourdieu is an exception) would not
agree, there must be some intrinsic aesthetic
character to the spectacle, or a text which
appeals above class barriers. It is this aspect
of popular culture that has been neglected by
many contributors to this hefty volume. I am not
suggesting that popular and high arts share the
same aesthetic value. What I am saying is that
there is an aesthetic component in each which
draws varying degrees of response from different
audiences.
In an otherwise
appealing eassy on the Balinese cockfight
("Deep play" in the present volume),
veteran anthropologist Clifford Geertz makes a
somewhat far-fetched claim that what the
cockfight does to its audiences in Bali is what
"King Lear" and "Crime
& Punishment" do to people
"with other temperaments and other
conventions". Provocative as the comparison
is, Geertz totally forgets the complex aesthetic
values of "King Lear" and "Crime
& Punishment" which cannot be explained
by conventions and temperaments alone.
One way of
suggesting the relative aesthetic value of
popular culture is that it does not require an
intellectual response that the complexity of
value in high culture does. Its value is related
to the "formulaic" character of its
offerings. In popular culture (here again no hard
and fast demarcation between popular and mass
culture can be drawn), as Vladimir Propp has
observed, narratives are constructed according to
a formula and do not admit of much variation.
In the Indian
context, they are dictated by didactic and openly
moralistic purpose. Hence the ease with which the
less literate audiences respond to them, as the
romance and crime and punishment formulas in the
Hindi cinema clearly indicate.
Popular and
mass-consumption genres are structures of
expectation which is constantly fulfilled in our
response. In our valuation of films like Dr. No
and Frankensten or of the raucous pop music, we
are actuated more by our desires and fantasies
than by a willed effort of intellection which is
required to fathom the complexity of a genuinely
and aesthetically satisfying artifact. What
Lionel Trilling long ago called "the
difficult and complexity" of response is
true more of the so-called high culture that of
popular or mass culture.
The fixed nature
of formulaic genres such as the detective novel, masala
movie or the several varieties of rap or bhangra
rolls keep expectation static and do not disturb
our accepted beliefs. What are damned as
expressions of elite culture constantly displace
our generic expectations (even when they draw
upon folk or popular motifs). These are genuinely
negative in the sense in which Marcuse and Adorno
use the term.
It is always
useful to keep Adornos admonition in mind
while on the subject of "high" and
"popular" culture: "A successful
work of art... is one which expresses the idea of
harmony negatively by embodying the
contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its
innermost structure." In Walter
Benjamins phrase, the so called
"high" art has "aura", that
stamp of authenticity which comes from the
refusal to simplify, to reconcile. Kafka would
call such art a "pick-axe that breaks the
frozen ice of our souls". The "decay of
the aura" Benjamin ascribes to the necessity
forced by technology to convert art into
mass-produced commodities.
Here I must
modify my stance somewhat. Carnival, sadly absent
in this anthology, does play a subversive role is
dissolving social hierarchy. Tamasha, lavni
and the Kashmiri band pather, among other
expressions, play a disrupting role. Festivity,
games, jokes and amusements may be "an
experience of the instance" as Goethe said,
but they fill a social function namely, to
flatten out social differences.
They offer a stylised meditation on self and the
Other, carrying multiple, indeed protean
metaphoric possibilities. They perform what
modern anthropoligists call "rites of
reversal" suggesting the impermanence of
absolutist stances. But they are exceptions to
the general notion of popular cultural forms as
largely reinforcing existing conventions and
practices. They lack the tendency to devalue
unitary descriptions of self which is necessary
for "negative" interventions in the
social process.
While I have
dwelt at some length on the deficiencies of this
anthology, I must not ignore some of the essays
that certainly are useful in their own right
Natalie Zemon Daviss essay on the growth of
literacy in France, John Bergers revealing
essay on the oddities of shifting the dress code
among different classes, Roy Rosenbergs
valuable piece on the growth of the saloons
these are delightful to read and think over. They
encompass larger fields of social and cultural
concern than the narrow provenance of the
anthology warrants.
In the final
analysis, this anthology provokes questions that
it fails to resolve. As a student of literature I
should like to raise a final point which has
bothered me in reading the partisans of popular
culture. There is no dearth of material on the
popular culture sources of some great canonical
writers. In my particular area I have read a
great deal on the popular bases of Shakespeare,
Dickens, Joyce, Eliot and others.
Post-modernist
apologists for Salman Rushdie have proclaimed
from the roof-tops that he is the product of the
"popular arts" revival in our time. My
question to them is: in spite of your exertions,
why is it that barring Shakespeare and Dickens,
many of them are read and evaluated by only elite
readers? As one who taught Joyce for many years,
I have not been able to answer the puzzle. Are
the popular culture aficinados listening?
|
|
From Beijing with faith
by
Kishwar A. Shirali
Beijing!
UN Fourth World Conference on Women by Anita
Anand with Gauri Salvi. WFS(Womens Feature
Service), New Delhi. Pages 268. Price not given.
WITH a loaf of bread and a
bottle of water, a wizened Kinkri Devi came to
the HP High Court and obtained a stay order. Her
goats were being starved. The Sirmour pastures
were being swallowed by limestone quarries. The
contractors threatened a handful of bones that
was Kinkri and could have easily crushed her
under their truck tyres. Kinkri was undaunted.
A frail
41-year-old Rajasthani rural sathin Bhanwari Bai
was gangraped by high caste elders of the Gujjar
community. Her crimes: she had informed and
brought the authorities to the marriage of a
one-year-old girl child.
Shanti, a
project activist of single women in a Delhi slum,
having made a long journey from being a widow
refusing a Rajasthani brother-in-laws chuda
(like Punjabi chaddar) and caring
for a large family by breaking stones, could hold
her own with much elan and bonhomie on
womens issues and the feminist agenda with
many conference-savvy women.
A group of
Japanese women were handing out leaflets
apologising for their countrys role in
"comfort women" from Korea and Thailand
(a form of forced prostitution) during World War
II.
A group of women
from India and Pakistan walked for friendship.
Some women from Israel and Palestine sat across
the same table exchanging experiences of violence
and seeking peace.
Some of us
conveyed the love and greetings to women from
Tibet sent by their Tibetan sisters in India.
Colourful big
African sisters sold their handcrafts. Slender
Chinese women sold silk screen prints of white
cranes among gnarled pines. White women rode on
hired bikes, while others trudged in rain from
workshop to workshop.
Books and
posters and cards were exchanged. Powerful street
plays, song and dance sprouted everywhere,
celebrating diversity in different hues and
tones.
Kinkri and some
of us scooped live fish from tanks and fried them
whole for dinner with a glass of cheap beer.
Cycle rickshaws took us to the back lanes of
Beijing palaces with washed clothes hanging out
on the side of the street. Cycle
"rehris" with a rug to sit on was our
conveyance in Huairou, the NGO conference site,
when buses were not available. Calculators helped
bargain with rickshaw-wallahs and roadside trades
people, emphasising our country, "We
Indians".
Smartly made-up
Chinese women engaged in recording the
proceedings, directing, organising, and
translating papers projected the image of modern
China; in the countryside were the traditional
blue pants and blouse people.
Unlike India
there were no crows, no dogs and no stray cows.
These were some
of the faces of the Beijing womens
conference. As a participant from HP state,
working in a mental health NGO, we had organised
state-level and national-level workshops, also
some at Huairou. These workshops had thrown up
the tragic story of a deprived woman living out
of a tin trunk in a hill town. In Gujarat a poor
childless father had sought a child vowing to the
gods that he would not dress the child. A girl
was born and the father died. So the now grown-up
woman lives naked in the dark.
An Australian
teenager said she had to sleep with her father
who blackmailed her before paying alimony to her
poor unemployed mother.
Disclosure of
all this and more was made possible by a
coordination unit set up in Delhi by the UNand
donor agencies to ensure maximum participation of
women from all countries, disciplines, groups and
classes. For the first time, grassroots level
women were an important part of the
deliberations. Women struggling to find a voice,
came together in the Fourth UNWorld Conference on
Women; the largest of the century with official
representatives from 189 countries and about
40,000 NGO representatives.
The NGO forum
emerged from being a rebel camp outside the UNto
a legitimate partner of the UN. Political
modalities also changed from confrontation to
lobbying.
Thousands of
workshops and panels were held in those 10 days,
where women debated, networked, shaped
strategies, shared their experiences and views in
wet September of 1995.
The Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action was
comprehensive, aiming for quality, development
and peace, acknowledging the diversity of
communities, religious and indigenous rights and
the uneven progress in empowerment and increasing
poverty. The aim was to promote people-centred,
sustainable development, gender-sensitive
policies and access to education, economic
growth, self-help, health, especially control
over ones fertility.The meet demanded equal
participation of women in government and
decision-making processes.
The other areas
of concern were violence, domestic and social,
physical and sexual abuse and trafficking, care
of girl child, legal aid, counselling,
rehabilitation and shelter. It noted that in
armed conflicts and ethnic cleansing women and
children became victims of rape and deprivation.
The women could have a say in the economy and
decision-making, in environment management and
use of natural resources. The role of media in
reframing attitudes and lobbying, what the media
said and didnt was also discussed.
Sharply
contrasting reports from the North and the South
brought about a better understanding of the
womens issues, which surely concern men as
well. An understanding of the historical,
socio-economic and political processes are
insightfully woven into the locally situated
analyses. It is womens understanding of
women involved and committed.
And now beyond
Beijing! In Himachal women entering the
panchayats are being trained in legal matters,
womens issues and rights by the NGO, Sutra.
Girls and women are participating in child and
reproductive health and nutrition programmes,
work against HIV/AIDS, mental health environment
and alternative natural resources schemes.
Other states
also have womens projects. Serious
womens magazines have appeared in regional
languages, notably Uttara in Hindi from Nainital.
The ongoing national level struggle for 33 per
cent women representation in Parliament reflects
the power equation at various levels, gender
being the subtlest.
By and large,
this is the picture even in the North, given the
fact of the not-so-subtle backlash seen all
around. However, Beijing did give women a voice
and visibility and even perhaps momentary
success.
Beijing! needs
to be read by all those concerned about the
legacy our society wants to leave for the future.
|
|
Many sources of threats to
national security
by
Rajendra Nath
Regional
Security in South Asia edited by Nancy Jetly.
Lancer Books, New Delhi. Pages 515. Rs 750.
MANY pluralistic societies
in South Asia are facing the challenge of
identity and viability as nation-states, while
the region itself is facing serious internal
challenges to its security. The South Asian
countries are also confronted with growing civil
strife and ethnic conflicts. The groundswell of
religious fanaticism has acquired alarming
proportions in recent years. The growth of
militancy and secessionism poses a serious threat
to the national security of some countries like
India and Sri Lanka.
It is now
accepted by manythinkers that the greater the
vulnerability of a state from within, the more
serious are the threats to its security, both
external and internal. At times, the internal
threats may jeopardise a states security
more critically than an external one. This is
particularly so if outside powers intervene on
political, economic, military and sometimes on
dubious humanitarian grounds.
South Asian
countries have not only to look after their
territorial integrity but also have to create
stable structures which can accommodate a
bewildering range of ethnic, linguistic and
religious groups, often in the face of
secessionist movements. Besides, the
internationalisation of secessionist movements
adds to the problem.
The book
"Regional Security of South Asia"
contains essays by distinguished scholars from
within and outside South Asia who deal with the
various aspects of the security problem.
Altogether, the essays present an in-depth
analysis of some of the major issues of internal
security which concern the whole region.
Professor Nancy Jetly of JNU has edited this
book.
The views
expressed by some of the authors are worth
quoting to give the reader some idea of the
contents of the book. Muchkund Dubey, a former
foreign secretary and now professor in JNU, in
his paper on "Dynamics of security in South
Asia", has covered, among other points, the
long-term implications of the influx of
Bangladeshi migrants. "This puts a perpetual
strain on the Indian economy and becomes a source
of social tension and violence in the adjoining
districts of India. In the extreme form, it may
be left with no options but to forcibly push back
the illegal migrants. This may escalate into an
inter-state conflict and even war," he
states.
Mubasir Hasan,
former Finance Minister of Pakistan, has
concluded his paper by stating, "In order to
reduce the levels of sectarian and communal
violence and violence committed by one state over
another, the hydra-headed monster of
nationalism shall have to be
dethroned from its high pedestal. Love of its
citizens for ones state, for its armed
might, its honour, its destiny, its unique
personality, its superiority over other nations
has to be replaced by a patriotism which serves
as a vehicle of peace and humanism."
Prof Bhupinder
Brar of Punjab University says, "In sum,
organisations are justified not because they
claim to represent regions, nations or ethnic
groups but because they fulfil human needs. And
human beings are organised not only ethnically or
territorially. Peoples security lies in
finding less divisive alternative forms of human
organisations. The paradigm of civil society
provides a model of such organisations. What we
need ultimately is a universal civil society, of
which South Asia civil societies will be a
part."
Prof Mukherjee
of JNU in his paper considers underdevelopment,
poverty and imbalances in development in South
Asia as major causes of conflict in South Asia.
While discussing Sri Lanka, he has stated that,
"In matters relating to employment, the
Tamils felt discriminated against..., the Tamil
leaders claimed that of the 1,40,000 jobs offered
by the Government in 1978, less than 1,000 went
to the Tamils. The Tamils recruitment to the
general clerical services declined from about
40.7 per cent in 1949 to 5.4 per cent in
1978-81."
Prof Anwar
Hussain of Dhaka University has highlighted
ethnic dissonance as an important factor in the
internal security of a country. He states that
"ethnic conflict is neither inevitable nor
eternal". He adds that "ethnic conflict
is not necessarily ethnic in nature". He
recommends that propaganda of ethnic groups must
be contained as a first step while strict control
is required regarding the import or smuggling of
arms. "Insurgency must be tackled well in
the earlier stages," something which the
India should pay special attention to.
Prof Sahadevan
of JNU refers to the internationalisation of
ethnic conflict. According to him, "Limited
support by a patron to a weak adversary makes
little impact on the conflict process. At the
same time, all possible tangible support is
available only to an adversary who is sure to win
its conflict goals." Indian leaders and
intellectuals would do well to remember it while
tackling the insurgency or proxy war in J&K.
Air Commodore
Jasjit Singh has written about cross-border
terrorism in South Asia. According to him, the
classical Clausewitzean concept of regular (state
to state) war as an instrument of policy now
includes armed violence and irregular war as the
continuation of politics by other means. The
phenomenal spread of small arms has made these
weapons more easily accessible for cross-border
terrorism, particularly when rich or powerful
countries take sides in arming trans-border
militants. The most extensive support to
transnational terrorism in South Asia has come
from Pakistan which has pursued terrorism as an
extension of politics by other means.
In 1989, the
then army chief of Pakistan, Gen Aslam Beg, had
stated that Pakistan had lost the earlier
attempts to take Kashmir by force because
Pakistan had no strategic vision, something he
claimed had been rectified now. Senior Pakistani
army officers believe that it would be possible
to pursue irregular warfare to take Kashmir under
a nuclear umbrella.
As regards,
availability of weapons, a former head of the ISI
has stated that it still has access to three
million packed and greased Kalashnikov rifles,
besides a large amount of ammunition. So Pakistan
is in a position to continue its proxy war in
J&K for a considerable period, as funds are
being made available by rich Muslim countries.
The author makes a pertinent point when he states
that "the weapons and equipment of
terrorists are almost inevitably superior to
those of the security forces, providing the
terrorists with a tactical advantage." This
situation must be rectified quickly if India has
to win the proxy war in J&K.
Prof Jayanta
Kumar Ray of the University of Calcutta has
written about the indigenous people of Bangladesh
who have been treated in a cruel manner by the
Pakistan government since 1947. His paper deals
with tribals of Chittagong Hill Tracts and the
plains of Bangladesh. He states that in 1947
non-Muslims formed 97.2 per cent of the total
population of the Chittagong Hill Tracts".
Since then, there has been consistent atrocities
by Muslim settlers and soldiers. Hundreds of them
have been killed.
The Bangladesh
government has used the armed forces to carry out
largescale resettlement of Muslims from the
plains in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This has
resulted in an ethnocide. Consequently the
non-Muslim population which was less than 3 per
cent in 1947 is now over 48.5 per cent. The
condition of non-Muslim tribals in the plains of
Bangladesh is just as bad.
|
|
Men are not essential
here
by
Surinder S. Jodhka
Female-Headed
Households in Patriarchal Society: A Sociological
Study by Ranjay Vardhan. Indian Publishing
Distributors, Delhi. Pages 192. Rs 350.
IN much of the
conventional sociological research and official
surveys, the family and the household are treated
as the primary units of the social system.
Interestingly such an understanding of human
society is not common to all social sciences. For
example, in the "liberal" political
theory and in mainstream
"neo-classical" economics, it is the
human individual, and not the family, that gets
viewed as constituting the basic unit of the
political and the economic systems. Though they
recognise the significance of institutions and
structures, their analyses invariably begin with
the individual.
Despite the
apparent advantages of such a bias in
sociological analysis, the preference for
institutions, such as family or household over
the individual is not free from problems. Such an
approach tends to assume that the family and the
household were the naturally given structures and
were universal in nature. By implication,
sociological concepts and methods of research
invariably end up working within the dominant
ideological parameters of the given social
system.
One of the most
obvious examples of this is the manner in which
the category "head of the household"
(HOH) has been used in empirical researches.
Until recently, the HOH was always assumed to be
the male elder of the house and was treated as
the sole knowledgeable spokesperson for the
household. Even in official surveys and
programmes, it was the HOH who was expected to
provide all information about the household and
was viewed as the potential beneficiary of
development schemes. As a consequence,
sociological researches and official surveys
invariably ended up providing a male-centred
picture of reality a picture based on the
way men viewed the household and society.
It was only in
the late 1970s when strong womens movements
emerged all over the world that things began to
change. women participating in these movements
argued that in much of the existing social
scientific research there was no recognition of
gender which, they argued was an important
dimension of social reality. They also argued
that categories like household and the
accompanying assumption of the head of the
household always being a man contributed to such
a "gender-blindness" of social
scientific researches and official surveys.
It was around
this time that social scientists and woman
activists argued that a good number of households
were in fact being run by women. As the author of
the book being reviewed shows, according to
available estimates, nearly 25 to 33 per cent of
all households in the world are headed by women.
Though the proportion of such households has been
reported to be low in India (around 10 per cent,
according to a sample survey carried out in
1981), the number was surely on the rise. It was
only in 1991 that a question on the sex of the
HOH was added in the schedule of the Indian
census. The final tables of the 1991 census on
the subject had not yet been released when the
author was finalising his study. The proportion
of such households is believed to be on the rise
everywhere.
The number of
female-headed households was on the rise in the
West because of the declining significance of the
institution of family. Divorce rates have been
increasing at an alarming rate and the number of
single parents has gone up considerably. So much
so that even being an unmarried mother does not
invoke strong negative reaction from society any
longer.
The causes for
the increase in female-headed households in the
developing countries of the Third World were
different. The socio-economic changes taking
place in these societies were transforming almost
every aspect of social life. The processes of
industrialisation and urbanisation were leading
to large-scale migration and movement of the
population. People were moving from villages to
cities, from small towns to bigger towns and from
less developed regions to the more developed
regions. As demographers have shown, people
initially migrate selectively. While men go to
the city for better employment, women are left
behind to take care of the household and the
land.
Then there were
also cases of divorce, separation and widowhood.
In the changing social norms, community
structures have weakened and families are
increasingly becoming nuclearised. A divorced or
widowed woman is no longer absorbed by "the
nearest kith and kin" of her family. Some
educated women could also find employment outside
the home and are able to take up the
responsibility of running the household. However,
the overall structure of society continues to be
heavily biased against women, particularly in
countries like India. When they enter the public
sphere, women often face many problems since the
public sphere has always been a monopoly of the
men.
Ranjay
Vardhans study attempts to identify the
problems faced by such women in their day-to-day
life. He surveyed 307 female-headed households
from three different localities of Chandigarh. A
large majority of women heading their households
in Chandigarh were widows (60 per cent) and
separated/divorced (15 per cent) women. There
were also some who had never married (around 13
per cent) and were taking care of their
households.
The picture that
the author presents is rather depressing.
According to him, these women not only face many
hardships while trying to earn a living and
taking care of their households, they also have
to constantly encounter social prejudice and
discrimination. A female-headed household,
somehow not seen as a normal thing. More than
two-thirds of them felt that they were being
treated with insolence by society. When the
researcher asked them about what possible
measures would they want society and the State to
initiate for the welfare of the female-headed
households, more than 32 per cent of them just
wanted a change in the societal attitude towards
them.
However, despite
such findings, the author himself seems to work
with a framework that fails to go beyond the
male-centric notion of society. He treats them as
"victims" and "vulnerable".
He goes to the extent of saying that normally all
women needed "to live under the protection
and care of men" (p 106). Being single and
without men is what, according to the author, is
the cause of all their problems. He adds,
"By virtue of their being single, they
lacked the protection of a man and sometimes of a
family, and, therefore were vulnerable to
exploitation".
This is despite
the fact that as many as 20 per cent of his
respondents did not consider male presence
necessary for the household! Such constructs tend
to only reinforce what the author himself wishes
to change, the patriarchal social structure.
|
|
The other famous Majithia
by
Himmat Singh Gill
Sir
Sundar SinghMajithia and His Relevance in Sikh
Politics by Gurnam Singh Rekhi. Har-Anand
Publications, New Delhi. Pages 244. Rs 495.
THIS thought-provoking account
of him is in fact a history of the Sikhs from the
dying decades of the 19th century to about the
middle of the next, bringing to the centre-stage
the persistent and tireless efforts of the Sardar
Sahib in improving education, agriculture,
employment and religious reforms.
Gurnam Singh
Rekhi, a postgraduate in history from Punjabi
University, Patiala, has done well to string
together rich material on the life and times of
this soft-spoken intellectual who rose to be the
first secretary of the Chief Khalsa Diwan at
Amritsar in 1902, established the Central Khalsa
Orphanage and Blind Ashram in the same city, and
later on became the chief driving force behind
the setting up of the All-India Sikh Educational
Conference to promote literacy and education
among the Sikh masses.
Sundar
Singhs role in the establishment of the
famous Khalsa College at Amritsar, and unknown to
many, his keen interest in pushing forward work
on the Bhakra Dam across the Sutlej alongwith the
ongoing Thal project across the Chenab river in
1924 (many erroneously still feel that the Bhakra
dam was Nehrus idea) marked him out as not
only the farsighted Revenue Minister of undivided
Punjab but also an able administrator of his
times.
Opinion is,
however, clearly divided on what the Sikhs
themselves thought of Sundar Singh and his role
and relevance in Sikh politics.The differences of
opinion on the future of the Sikhs between the
Chief Khalsa Diwan which Sundar Singh
represented, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak
Committee and the Akali party, led to a new
equation among the leaders.
One of
Majithias "friends", Sewa Ram
Singh, when requested to contribute money to the
Khalsa orphanage at Amritsar had this to say:
"As to my joining the band of 40 personal
friends of yours, I wonder if such a status could
be purchased by a payment of Rs 500 to a fund,
which is meant to liquidate a debt that should
never have been incurred. I believe we have had
enough in the Chief Khalsa Diwan rather than
calling upon personal friends to contribute to
such funds."
There were
others like Ujjal Singh, a member of the
Legislative Council, who heaped praise on
Majithia. "Istill hope that you will not
allow the community to go wild or fall prey to
extremism and will give the benefit of your
guidance along the right channels." Some
differences arose between Majithia and Harbans
Singh Attari, but this stand-off was quickly
resolved it.
The fact
remains, however, that Majithia was a towering
personality who took up single-handedly with the
Governor-General of India the case for
reservation for Sikhs in the military and civil
services, had the Anand Marriage Act (which
sanctified marriage according to Sikh customs)
passed, successfully spearheaded the kirpan
movement to revoke the law forbidding the
carrying of kirpans by the Sikhs. and fearlessly
espoused the cause of agriculturists. "I am
myself a zamindar and very well know the
difficulties of the farmers...," he had once
said.
At another time
in a "personal letter" to Diwan N.
Gopalaswamy Iyenger, Prime Minister of Jammu and
Kashmir state, he complained about the low
percentage of the Sikhs in the state services. He
wrote: "If you permit me to say the Sikhs
being an important minority deserve some
weightage as has been granted to them in
Punjab..... the fact that the Sikhs were the
rulers of Punjab and Kashmir state before the
present government, gives them a stronger claim
for a suitable representation in the
services...."
These then are
some of the hallmarks of a cool and calculated
leader who fought for his community with the
power of the word and logic than the sword.
Educated, affluent and humble and yet a fighter
all the way. Apart from being a highly polished
administrator and politician, he stood firm even
against Gandhi by refusing his summons to come to
Delhi for an "all party Sikh conference
unless an invitation was extended to the Chief
Khalsa Diwan". Gandhi then instructed Dr
Ansari to "cordially invite" the Diwan.
Here is a classic case of a political leader who
never compromised his loyalty to his faith, his
people and his nation, and yet made the best use
of the system and the "firangi"
government in power to press his point. Though an
aristocrat, he shared food with the humblest, a
virtue that many of the Sikh and other political
heavyweights in the country today would do well
to emulate.
Sundar
Singhs father, Raja Surat Singh, was
removed to Benaras after the battle of Gujrat by
the British but was later allowed to return
because of his emotional attachment and concern
for the protection of Maharani Jindans
treasure, and additionally also as he
"wished to win the confidence of the
British" and be permitted to return to
Punjab to live in his village Majithia from which
his family and the Attariwala Sardars had been
exiled.
Sundar Singh was
of course, earthy and pragmatic when it came to
his own interests. He received the title deed for
the Dhumri estate located in Gorakhpur district
in UP from the British in 1933 on the death of
his father and elder brother Umrao Singh, and
succeeded in getting a railway station named
Sardar Nagar, established the Soraya Sugar Mills
in 1909, and was appointed the Honorary Munsif of
Gorakhpur in 1901.
A very pertinent
point stands out and this could be valid for any
community in India.It is that it is the already
affluent and moneyed who have a greater chance of
rising to the top in India both during the
British Raj and today. The Majithias were no
exception to this.
The second sad
reality is, and was, that it is very difficult to
fight a system and a government of the day for
long without inviting adverse attention from
those who are in power.
Rekhis is
a readable account, because it is a large slice
of recent Sikh history and the relentless and
well-directed efforts of a man who tried to shape
it till his demise in 1948. The founder of the
Punjab and Sind Bank, Khalsa Advocate newspaper,
president of the SGPC in 1920 and a member of the
Viceroys Legislative Council, Sundar
Singhs dauntless spirit and service to
Punjab would of course have made compulsive
reading and an engrossing biography at any time.
In the hands of
someone with a greater felicity of English this
saga of a great patriot and visionary could
easily have been turned into a memorable epic.
There is also
the occasional pontification and a set of
superlatives for the Majithia Sardar.
Yet if we
overlook some of these jarring notes, there is no
doubt that Gurnam Singh Rekhi has done service to
the Sikh community and Punjab in producing this
very inspiring account of a great Indian of the
20th century.
|
|