Goa needs much more work in the areas of gender and sexuality – Anjali Arondekar
Anjali Arondekar's work has drawn attention in academic circles for some time now, and Goa got a chance to listen to her during the December 2011 conference at the Goa University. With well-argued perspectives and deep scholarship, this Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, makes her point without mincing words on contentious issues relating to Goa. Dr Arondekar's research engages the poetics and politics of sexuality, colonialism and historiography, with a focus on South Asia. She has authored For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Duke University Press, 2009; Orient Blackswan, 2010), and is winner of the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in lesbian, gay, or queer studies in literature and cultural studies, Modern Language Association (MLA), 2010. Her second book-project, Margins of Desire: Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia, is a natural extension of her interest in the “figurations of sexuality, ethics and collectivity in colonial British and Portuguese India”, to use her words. Excerpts from an e-chat with FREDERICK NORONHA. Goa is often projected as a happy example of enlightened attitudes towards women compared to the rest of South Asia. Would you accept that logic? Yes and no. Why so? ---------------------------------------------------------- Yes, Goa (by comparison to say the state of Rajasthan, to take a clichéd Northern Indian example!) may indeed provide better political, social and economic opportunities for women. But such opportunities, as is the case everywhere in South Asia, have to be understood within interconnected contexts of caste, religion, class and of course language. Also, one should be wary of falling into the tourist stereotype of Goa being more progressive by virtue of its so-called Westernisation (read Christian presence!) and such. Goa does indeed have much to celebrate but much more work needs to be done in the areas of gender and sexuality. Briefly, how would you explain your own research, specially its connections with Goa? ---------------------------------------------------------- My research engages the history of colonial and post-colonial Goa from the vantage of sexuality. As we embark on a memorialization (albeit with some healthy historical skepticism) of the events pre and post 1961, I want to also recall (with similar skepticism) a different and equally compelling narrative of liberation. I want to turn to the liberation (cum grano, of course) of a devadasi community, the Gomantak Maratha Samaj and its burgeoning presence in the ranks of power, culture and capital in colonial and post-colonial Goa. A presence, I would point out, that is spectacularly absent in any account of Goa. Even as we speak of the enduring shadow of Portuguese colonialism and its aftermath, the history of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj provides an alternative relationship to the celebratory embrace of post-colonialism. In case your readers think I am about to embark on a diatribe against Brahmin despotism and their continued exploitation of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj, or lambast Goan scholars for ignoring such a robust history (all of which is true) let me clarify what I mean. Simply put, I’m interested in asking what is gained if we juxtapose the Samaj’s history alongside more established historiographies of Goa, and what is lost if we fail to do so. If I understand right, your thesis on the position of the 'devadasis' in Goan society, and what this work meant for them, quite goes against the received wisdom. How would you explain it briefly? ---------------------------------------------------------- I think my work on the Goan devadasis, specifically those who formed the early backbone of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj, continues the recuperative work being done on Devadasis across India – in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for example. But instead of merely celebrating Devadasis as lost repositories of arts and culture, I am equally interested in linking their presence of histories of capital, caste and most importantly sexuality. To put it more simply, can we think of Devadasis in other terms beyond their doomed attachment to sexuality? Despite the distance you're located at, you've engaged with Goan (including diaspora Goan issues) very closely. What would you see as the yet-to-be-researched issues dealing with women in Goa today? More historical work needs to be done on the role of gender in the emergence of Goa as a colonial and postcolonial state. How and why we have inherited the legal and social systems governing women’s lives today remains a relatively unchartered landscape, barring a few books here and there. Even as scholars rush to focus on the impact of globalization on Goa (the rise of the neo-colonial mining industry, for example), we need to understand how Goa became the geopolitical lynchpin of a massive Indian Ocean empire and what role gender played in that colonial production. So, for instance, family law in colonial British and Portuguese India was distinctly different and this continues to be the case today. How has this difference in law affected women’s legal and social status in contemporary Goa? If someone was writing a feminist history of Goa, its pre-colonial and colonial times, what would its synopsis read like? ---------------------------------------------------------- Your question assumes that a "feminist" history would automatically (and limitedly) center the experience of women! Instead, I'd urge you to think of feminist history as more of a lens into understanding different forms of disenfranchisement and their recursive forms within our past and present. So, a feminist approach to Goan pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial history would require us to think about which forms of inequity are carried over, reproduced or corrupted as we move from the colonial to the post-colonial moment. Thus, one serious concern I have is how the emergence of caste as a divisive element has continued to mar any serious solidarity across gender and class in Goa, both now and in the past. Women, particular in rural areas of Goa, bear the burden of such divisiveness through the increase in sexual violence, lack of public space and poor resources all around. How did colonialism afffect the situation of the Gomant Maratha Samaj in Goa? ---------------------------------------------------------- Portuguese colonialism affected members of GMS in mixed ways. On the one hand, the Portuguese state (as has been written about extensively) was particularly brutal in its attacks against practitioners of Hinduism -- a fact that is most evident in the infamous ransacking and looting of various sacred idols in temples. On the other hand, the Portuguese state (ironically under the Salazar regime) was also very supportive of the GMS's efforts to abolish the Shens tradition (that wed GMS women to deities) and rid the Mahajans of some of the control they had over the women in the Samaj. GMS archival records (and the GMS archive in Bombay and Panjim is enormous and dates back to the late 1890s) show that the Portuguese state provided some key financial support to the early reform efforts of the Samaj. Of course, it's important to locate such charitable gestures within a larger colonial structure of divide and rule -- supporting the GMS against Brahmin tryanny was clearly an instrumental act. Last but not least, many members of the GMS were actively involved in the liberation efforts and we have records (police, community and personal memoirs and such) that testify to the commitment of the GMS to Goan liberation. All this to say, there's no easy answer, and like all things historical, the response is always contingent and complicated! Please tell us a bit about yourself, your Goan (including diaspora) connections, and what feminism means to you (i.e. which of its many strands make the most sense). ---------------------------------------------------------- I grew up in Bombay (in Bandra and Girgaum – two heartlands of the Goan diaspora!). My family belongs to the Gomantak Maratha Samaj and I was fortunate to have benefitted from the Samaj's commitment to social reform and education. My mother is from the Goan branch of the Samaj, and my father, from the Maharashtra branch. I learnt my early lessons in feminism from the brave and often erased efforts of the many women who built the very structure of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj. Every building, every school, every single early reform effort that has today made the GMS a successful community was made possible by the economic and artistic contributions of countless women — not all of whom were famous or well-known. For me, feminism is about paying homage to such histories and being vigilant about all forms of social injustice. ---------------------------------------------------------- Contact for Dr Arondekar aaron...@ucsc.edu http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/7511128070/in/photostream This was first carried in The Navhind Times.