Of
Alladin's Lamp
And Tigers & Elephants
Defining Trajectories, Hybridities, Pluralities, Bi Unity,
Bi Polarity, Living Cultures, Cross Cultural Transgressions,
Mythic Cultures, Histories, Time, Fractures, Ruptures, Transmissions,
Transmutations, Gender Bending, Androgyne, Religion Bending,
Orientalism, Diaspora, Ethnicity, Partition, Cultural Dialogues,
Multicultural, Transcendental Wisdom, New Ageism.
Dr. Alka Pande
"This is indeed India; the land of
dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty,
of splendor and rags, of palaces
and hovels, of famine and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers
and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a
thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions
and
two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of
human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother
of tradition, whose yesterday bear date with the moldering
antiquities of rest of nation - the one sole country under
the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for
alien
prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise
and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that
all men
desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would
no give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the
globe combined."
Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Contemporary India
is a country dotted with paradoxes where tradition and modernity,
urban and rural, margi and desi (1) coexist.
India finds itself in the postmodern construct without having
lived through the western process of modernization. Modernity
is a part of the Indian tradition and thus what is traditional
in India, is in may ways post modern. From the ancient to
the modern, from modern to post modern and issues of post
colonialism
are enveloped in the inherent duality and polarity of multi-cultural,
multi-traditional India. In painting and sculpture there
is an underlying thread of continuity with fractures and
ruptures
at moments in history. Post colonial India brought with is
its own neurosis and with contemporary art geographical spaces
are changing, artist were moving from India to the west and
now there is a return of the Diaspora.
This bi-unity, bi-polarity
that exists in India's living,
breathing, tangible, creative contemporary culture is enriched
by the myths, hierarchies, genealogy, the fractured and ruptured,
interrupted history of India. A nation is usually an amalgam
of mythic cultures built in the minds of its citizens which
finds expression through its artistic endeavour. The concept
of hegemony is one introduced at several points in Indian
history, with the Greek invasion of Punjab 325 BC, Arab invasion
of
Sindh 747 AD and then with the imperial domination by the
Mughals in the 15th century was formalised by the British.
It is only
in the eve of modernism that there was a resurfacing of the
multidimensional but in a quirky way, because they, the many
India's were put to the service of creating the idea
of India as one, diverse but one.
I will speak neither from
the site of art practice nor from the production of art but
more through the inherent duality,
the bi-polarity of our culture – which again is inherent.
Infact it was this bi-polarity, which was not really understood
by our colonial masters, thus the emergence of the Idea of
India. Which India do we address? North India, South India,
Urban India, Metro India, Rural India, Folk India, Tribal
India, there are many Indias in the Idea of India.
Cross cultural
transgressions have existed from the 15th century, from time
of the Mughals in India, where though
within the
social and cultural life norms of living were adapted and
assimilated, there was a beginning and formalisation of a
homogenous style
in architecture and painting. But a homogenisation which
could pass for cultural hegemony was introduced by the British.
From
the 18th century, what has been acknowledged as good taste
has been defined in relation to the West, either as a point
of reference or a point of departure. Acceptance of good,
bad and ugly continues to be defined by the west. In contemporary
visual culture artists born and brought up in England have
settled in India, creating a reverse validation. Political
events have marked the last two centuries with large-scale
displacements leading to a surge in the exploration of ethnicity,
roots, nostalgia and individual and social memories.
Economics,
as in all other areas, has a large part to play in the shaping
of cultures and their path forward. Sources
of funding decide the production and consumption of art and
since in India the big money is to be made on the international
market, artists are either choosing to work in a style acceptable
and attractive to the western eye or those artists are gaining
international recognition whose art fits within the accepted
norms of Euro-American taste. In India we can now identify
a bevy of Biennale and Triennale artists who fit the niche
of Asian artists without being overtly exotic and revivalist.
This is the area where the cultural hegemony of the west
sits heavy and for me this is depressing, non-creative – that
continuous search for the validation and affirmation from
the west.
In the 19th century, India was at the forefront of photographic
development. The major preoccupations and achievements of
19th-century Indian photography: the early amateurs who first
introduced
the medium; the documentation of India's architectural and
ethnic diversity. Indians were fast to learn the new technology
of photography when it was brought to their country in the
1840s. When they did so, they brought with them a long tradition
of image making and presentation from their own (and varied)
Indian arts.
When Judith M Guttman published her pioneering
work 'Through Indian Eyes; 19th and Early 20th century photography
from
India' in 1982, she sought to argue for the existence of
a peculiarly
'Indian' style of photography, based on the tradition of
miniature portrait painting. Her suggestion has been criticised
for its
simplistic approach - and in particular because few of the
photographers had trained to be miniature painters or worked
in a way that showed a deep understanding of such art. It
is perhaps also difficult to see the coherent approach in
the
pictures of Indian photographers that her argument suggests.
Many pictures, despite her contention that "Indian photographs
do not have vanishing points" show a clear perspective
that differs little if at all from those produced by their
European counterparts. Photographing architecture for example
they produced pictures that shared the same characteristics.
There are pictures by Indian photographers from exactly the
same viewpoints as those by earlier British photographers
such as John Murray.
Even in the pictures of people, whether
individual portraits or groups, there appears to be little
difference in terms
of composition. Many pictures of the time were taken with
the
subjects looking to camera, with significant objects on the
ground between them and the camera, and with a suitable backdrop.
The Indian photographer, Raja Deen Dayal, who began his career
as an architectural photographer, took some of the best group
pictures of nineteenth century India, both of native Indians
and of the British rulers. Being the `Court Photographer'
of Nizam of Hyderabad. Raja Deen Dayal's clientele consisted
of
the Royals, the British and the Brown Sahibs. He prepared
albums, then and now, the most sought after because they
contain the
perfect balance between the exotic and the romantic, the
beautiful and the bizarre that makes India gorgeously Indian.
The
contemporary photographer using the iconography of everyday
Indian life works within the "decisive moment" (coined
by Bresson) of street photography, frames the seemingly banal,
the lucky finds, the neglected, and the accidental occurrence
photographs and the textual fragments he pulls together which
are then recontextualized so as to stress the fact that though
of the same cultural, political, social context we are infact
seeing the Other. Photography is very much the handmaiden
of cultural hegemony where the genre of photographers like
Nan
Goldin documentary photography, multiple imagery have become
the new bench marks for Indian photographers.
Popular culture
borrows freely and en masse from the street. Cinema is the
ideal signifier of current social trends. The
film industry in India is the largest in the world, in terms
of the massive numbers of film that are produced annually.
And they are now gaining international recognition with Lagaan being nominated for an Oscar. The multiple genres: Partition
in 1942 Love Story and Train to Pakistan; Saffronisation,
politics of crime and right wind politics in Dev; Homosexuality
in Fire,
Bombay Boys and Girlfriend; Diaspora and identity, belonging
and ethnicity in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kal
Ho Na Ho. Indian Cinema I think is finding its own unique voice
and
may perhaps be the reverse of the flow cultural hegemony.
Though
the international Indian community is globally wide flung
and diverse, they all maintain some sort of tenuous
link with the ‘motherland'. The most likely candidate
for a force of bonding would be, of all things, the Hindi
feature film, a phenomenon unique to the Indian Diaspora:
what Hollywood
is to Western Europe, the Bombay Hollywood ("Bollywood")
is to the Middle East and East Africa. The Diaspora is never
far from Bollywood's horizon.
To explain the presence and
yet the celebration of the Derridian difference with what
is contemporary India – I would
take the concept of the Androgyne in Indian art, thought
and literature but today the foregrounding is being done
through
visual culture. For my doctoral thesis I researched on the
Ardhanarisvara, the god who is half woman. The accepted norms
of understanding masculinity and femininity and their subsequent
stereotyping were the fructification of centuries of genotyping
that have dictated the socio-cultural rubric of human existence.
The complexities of gender cannot be ignored, particularly
in today's society where the Masculine and the Feminine are
no longer fixed, unchallenged categories.
In this paper I
shall address the concept of androgyny which has been an
acknowledged category in India from the ancient
times, stemming from the Vedas, the very basis of Indian
thought. Androgynity is being transferred, transmuted into
contemporary
culture. With people now being termed, for instance metrosexual,
it is the ‘becoming', man to woman and woman
to man that force us to question and re-question what is
so often
taken for granted. I shall explore the development and the
dynamics of this concept from the sacred to the profane,
from the philosophical to the physiological, from the constructed
to the living. It deals with gender and identity.
An androgyne
is not defined within the strict limitations of his or her
sexual preferences but rather through the deconstruction
and destruction of socially accepted assigned roles and modes
of behavior. D.H. Lawrence identified the trend towards gender
blurring in his essay Cocksure Women and Hensure Men. The
societal
acceptance of cross-dressing, transvestites, gender bending,
androgynous existences and the representation of the ‘other'
are reflections of our ‘now'. The fountainhead of
androgyne philosophical construct, the Ardhanarishvara imagery
has anthromorphological
manifestations in the iconography of Indian, Mesopotamian,
Chinese and other ancient cultures. The mythographic dimensions
of this deity are related to magical androgyny, particularly
within the context of Indian magic and myth, especially in
relation to appropriate forms of sadhana, the means for realisation,
for magical manifestation. Alain Danielou, in Gods of Love
and Ecstasy, notes that homosexuals, hermaphrodites and transvestites
can be considered sacred beings in the image of the Ardhanarishvara.
In
Wendy O Flaherty's opinion, within the purview of Indian
myths and legends there is no difficulty about 'men becoming
women', but there are problems when women become men, save
in the iconography of the Goddess Kali/Durga. In this context,
for me there is a huge difference between assuming a mythical
posture of androgyny, and the playful transgression and
blurring of sex-roles which occur in contemporary sub-cultures.
Ardhnarishvara
as a physical representation appears to be an unacceptable
form. It is an unbelievable human proposition.
Can two sexes be conjoined in one and still be 'normal'?
No!
Because practically, the viable existence of one emphatically
negates the other. The image of Ardhnarishvara in the
traditional discourse goes beyond gender, beyond identity.
It is the
emergence of the idea of bisexuality which is present
in every human
being - the complimentalities of the male and the female,
which are inevitable. The image itself evokes wonder,
awe and the
adbhuta rasa. It is also a psychological, philosophical,
physiological and social construct. The making of the
mythical Ardhnarishvara
by traditional sthapatis and chitrakars reflects the
individual artist's own understanding, talent and personal
psyche.
The static image encapsulates the dynamism of the
man-woman continuum, where there is both emergence and
fusion. The visualisation of Ardhnarishvara transcends from
the
metaphysical
to the physical.
Such revolutionary ideas were so deified in the image
that it continues to fascinate and tantalise writers
and artists
alike. An enigma that alternately haunted and lured
practitioners and the practised through the ages, Ardhnarishvara
is
not simply a muse but a tangible reality. It flows
into the
'real' world
in the guise of transvestites, cross-dressers, transsexuals
and gays.
Cross-dressing is also highly erotic. In a
way, the illusion of cross-dressing is magic. The cross-dresser,
when dressed
in 'drag', becomes more than he or she was before,
and often feels more attractive in the guise of the
opposite
sex. The
very sensation of silk and nylon stockings for the
male, or slacks and tie for the female, creates an
erotic high
that
never diminishes.
There is a long-standing connection
between theatrical dance and cross-dressing. Cross-dressing
and dance
were used in
the worship of Dionysos in ancient Greece, and
a popular interpretation
of the Salome myth holds that Salome was male.
(In the Bible Salome is the 'daughter of Herodias', who
dances
for Herod.
Herodias is able to convince him to have John the
Baptist executed.) In modern culture this translates
into,
among other manifestations,
the drag show. This is also indicative of another
current long connected with cross-dressing - that
of the trickster.
Tricksters
from all ages and times, from Loki to Bugs Bunny,
are often shown using cross-dressing as a way of
getting
what they
want.
Judith Butler argues that gender itself is
performative: There is no original 'male' or 'masculine',
and
there is no original
'female' or 'feminine'. If there is no original
'male' or 'female', can there be an original
'heterosexuality' or 'homosexuality'?
Historically dance has
been a male preserve in India. Women from 'good' upper
class/caste families
did
not dance in
the public arena. A certain validation was
brought in by Rukmani
Devi Arundale herself a caste Brahmin, who
dared to transgress the social taboos with the setting
up of
Kalakshetra
in 1936. There has been a break in tradition
though, with
the power-packed
performances of Maya Krishna Rao who specialises
in the male role. Says she: 'The male role
in Kathakali is not
about
taking on maleness, but about creating a certain
kind
of energy in
the body and letting it course through your
veins. On that carriage of energy sits abhinaya, the
gesture, the
rasa
that makes it male rather than female . . .
the moment the knees
bend and the toes grip the ground, an energy
rushes feet upwards, through the legs, torso
and arms
and finally,
but most critically,
through the eyes. In fact, so much energy is
built in the body but only that much flows
out of the
tips of
the fingers,
the
soles of the feet, the pupils of the eyes.
In fact for me, it is at that moment when the eyes
widen.
It is the
special
quality of what the actor lets flow out and
how she lets it flow that makes the role male or
female.' This is
the moment
of the Becoming. The crossing of boundaries therefore comes
naturally to a performer who then, in the ultimate sense,
has no gender.
Can there be
a final model of masculinity or femininity or are these just
notional? The unbroken tradition of gender bending is part
and parcel of contemporary theatre practice. Also significant
is the application of contemporary theories of gender and
sexuality to canonical texts that has produced radical performances
which
challenge traditional interpretations of texts.
The concept
of androgyne is manifested in theatre along with the strategies
of 'camp' and 'drag'. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking
work Notes on 'Camp' in 1964 initiated a debate among theorists
for the appropriate classification of camp as an aesthetic
style. Judith Butler in Gender Trouble states that 'in imitating
gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of
gender itself'.
Fire (1998) directed by Deepa Mehta was a
bold cinematic effort at opening the discourse on same-sex
love between
women in
India. Despite the problematic sub-text of two heterosexual
women falling in love, the film nonetheless engendered great
debate within the lesbian community and the heterosexual
supremacists. Shabana Azmi, India's thinking 'actor' and
young activist,
Nandita Das gave credence to their respective roles as two
sisters-in-law. Living in an extended family and ignored
by their husbands, Deepa Mehta maintains ' . . . the film
explores
choices, desires and the psyche of people who are victims
of people who are victims of tradition . . . . '
Other contemporary
films like Bangalore based gay writer, Mahesh Dattani's Mango
Souffle, and his recent play, ‘Seven
Steps Around the Fire', have touched upon issues of
bisexuality and homosexuality, where a man and a woman ending
up at different
points of time having relationships with the same third person.
And
in this area again if Indian culture is reread sensitively
there can be a break down in the notion of cultural hegemony – whether
hegemony is power or co-operation, in this case we see co-operation. 1. The terms desi margi have been chosen from the
musical vocabulary. Desi means folk traditions transgressing
onto the nuances of
tribal iconography. Margi is a more formal, structured trajectory. |