Sexuality,

Obscenity,
Community
This page intentionally left blank
 Sexuality,
Obscenity, Community
Women, Muslims, and the
Hindu Public in Colonial India

CHARU GUPTA
*
SEXUALITY, OBSCENITY, COMMUNITY

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

...
List of Illustrations Vlll

Acknowledgements ix
Note on Translation, Transliteration Orthography, ...
and Referencing Methods Xlll

Abbreviations xiv

1 Introduction 1
Women, Caste, Class and Hindu Communalism
in UP

Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print

I. Colonial Perceptions of Obscenity
11. 'Obscenities' in Hindi Literature
11.1. The Indigenous Elite and Literary Concerns
11.2. 'Dirty' Literature: Contesting the Logic
of Morality?
111. Brahmacharya, Kaliyug and the Advertisement
of Aphrodisiacs

3 Sanitising Women's Social Spaces

I. Controls over Entertainment
11. The Dangers of Prostitutes: The Moral and Urban
Geographical Frameworks of Hindus
vi 1 Contents
4 Mapping the Domestic Domain
I. Unstable Sexualities: The Sexual Politics
of the Home
I. 1. Conjugality and Desire: The Power of Difference
1.2. Controversies Around Some Legislative Activities
on Hindu Marriage
1.3. Fashion, Clothes, Jewellery, Purdah
1.4. The Devar-Bhabhi Relationship
11. Education and the Fear of Reading: Stated Aims,
Unintended Consequences
111. Gender, Health and Medical Knowledge
111.1. From Traditional Dais to Trained Midwives
111.2, Child-Care, Women's Health and Indigenous
Practices
111.3. Plague and Women's Honour

5 The Icon of the Mother: Bharat Mata, Matri Bhasha

and Gau Mata
I. Mapping the MotherINation: The Bharat Mata
Temple at Banaras
11. Language Debates
11.1. Hindi as Mother
11.2. Lewd or Chaste, Feminine or Masculine?
111. The Cow as Mother

6 'Us' and 'Them': Anxious Hindu Masculinity

and the 'Other'
I. From Malabar to Malkanas: The Shuddhi and
Sangathan Movements
11. Evoking Hindu Male Prowess, Community
and Nation
111. Hindu Woman as Sister-in-Arms
IV. Conceiving the 'Other'
IV. 1. Approaching the Muslim Woman
 Contents I vii
IV.2. Abduction Campaigns and the Lustful
Muslim Male
V. Innovative Propaganda Manipulation
7 Hindu Women, Muslim Men
I. Regulating Women by Fracturing Shared Spaces
in Everyday Life
I. 1. Economic and Social Boycott
1.2. Attacking the Cult of Ghazi Mian
11. Hindu Wombs, Muslim Progeny: Shifting Debates
on Widow Remarriage
11.1. The 'Problem' of Widows' Sexuality
11.2. The Numbers Game
8 Some Conclusions and Beyond
Elopements and Conversions: The Recuperative
Possibilities of (1m)possible Love?
Appendix: BriefBackground of Some Hindi Writers and
Hindu Publicists
Glossary
Bibliography
1. Some Advertisements of Aphrodisiacs in
Newspapers and Magazines
2. Fashion, Swadeshi and Thrift
3. Bathing Ghats and Purdah
4. Railway Stations and Purdah
5. Devar and Bhavaj: Then and Now
6. Education and Women
7. Sangathan
8. Victimised Hindu Women and Muslim Eagerness
to Absorb Them
9. Pir Worship and Hindu Women
10. Hindu Widows and Conversions
I am writing this book in ~aradoxicaltimes: some of the most cre-
ative work on gender and history has been produced, and there
is simultaneously an onslaught on women and history by the Hindu
Right in present-day India. At such a moment, I wish to acknowledge
all those who sensitised me to gender and historical issues, and those
who contributed directly to this work.
The book is largely based on my doctoral thesis and I cannot even
begin to acknowledge its debt to my supervisor, Professor Peter Robb.
His integrity as a historian and, above all, as a human being, taught
me much about life and learning. H e was there at every stage, ques-
tioning and probing, nudging and guiding, offering a healing touch
at all crises.
A Commonwealth Scholarship from the Association of Common-
wealth Universities and the British Council enabled my thesis at the
School of Oriental and African Studies in London. A special thanks
to Motilal Nehru (Evening) College, University of Delhi, and to its
Principal, Dr Suresh Sharma, for granting me study leave. I thank
Professor Christopher Bayly and Professor Francis Robinson, who
were my examiners; their comments went a long way in helping me
transform the thesis into a book. Vasudha Dalmia's enthusiasm about
getting my work published filled me with fresh optimism. Mahesh
Rangarajan pushed me to finish the manuscript.
The staff of the National Archives of India, Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library, Central Secretariat Library and Manvari Lib-
rary (Delhi); Bharati Bhawan Library, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan
x 1 Acknowledgements
Library and Allahabad State Archives (Allahabad); Nagari Pracharini
Sabha Library and Varanasi State Archives (Banaras); and Uttar
Pradesh State Archives and CID Office (Lucknow) gave all possible
help in locating material. The Bharati Bhawan Library and the C I D
Office went out of their way with photocopying and candles when
there was no electricity in the summer months. It was a delight to
work in the India Office Library, the SOAS Library and the London
School of Economics Library. Short stints at the Centre for South
Asian Studies, Cambridge, and the Indian Institute Library, Oxford,
also proved useful. My thanks to Rupali Ghosh, Jayaji, Lionel Carter
and Mr Dogra for helping with material in these libraries.
In Allahabad, Roopa and Suneet proved wonderful hosts, pamper-
ing me with good food, warmth and comfort. Harimohandas Tandonji
gave me his precious time and showed me around the Bharati Bhawan
Library. Yadvendra, dear friend that he is, arranged excellent accom-
modation at Lucknow, just opposite the CID Office, making it
possible for me to work there long hours. Ram Advaniji was very
generous with help and support, offering many contacts. The Newal
Kishore Press of Lucknow, not in good shape at present, opened its
storehouse for me; this had copies of old pamphlets through which
I could rummage, and some ofwhich I could even buy. Ram Kripalji
and Mohan Prakash helped me with contacts and accommodation
in Banaras. Sudhakar Pandey offered all possible help at the Nagari
Pracharini Sabha Library. I remember with warmth my discussion
with Dudh Nath Chaturvediji (ex-Vice Chancellor, Kashi Vidyapeeth),
and D r Anand Krishna, who has immense knowledge of Banaras.
Prem Chowdhury, Francesca Orsini, David Arnold, Daud Ali,
Avril Powell, Pradip Datta, William Pinch, Amiya Sen, Ratna Kapur
and Julia Leslie offered critical and useful comments through emails,
discussions and seminars, and contributed to my learning. Particular
regards to D r Nandini Gooptu and Barbara Harriss White at Oxford.
As avisiting Fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House in 1996, and again
over my stay in Oxford during my doctoral research, they offered all
possible help. I gatefully recall the important pidelines and tips
given to me on Hindi sources and crucial inputs by Namvar Singh,
Manager Pandey, Rajendra Yadav and Ramesh Upadhyaya in Delhi.
Informal Gender Studies Groups, with which I was involved in
 Acknowledgements l xi
Delhi and SOAS, shared a passion and concern with gender, and I
discussed some of my inchoate ideas there. Drafts of Chapters 2, 6
and 7 were presented as separate papers at two South Asia history
seminars at SOAS in May '97 and February '99; at a Commonwealth
History Graduate Seminar on History, Literature and Colonialism
at Oxford in May '97; at a Conference on Ideas and Institutions in
~wentieth-century1ndia at Cambridge in November '98; at a Work-
shop on Literary Initiatives: Literature and Colonialism in India at
SOAS in November '99; at a Conference on Population, Birth Con-
trol and Reproductive Health in Late Colonial India at SOAS in
November '99; and at aseminar in the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library in September 2000. I am grateful to the participants for their
feedbackand criticisms. An earlier version ofchapter 6 was published
in Economic and Political Weekly in March '98: I am grateful to
Krishna Raj for his support. Parts of Chapter 2 and 7 have been pub-
lished in Indian Economic and Social History Review and South Asia
Research. Thanks to Dilip Menon and Stuart Blackburn for encour-
aging me to write in them.
How does one acknowledge the teachers who are my role models
and who have made me what I am today? Uma Chakravarty and
Sumit Sarkar not only taught me most ofwhat I know, they have also
inspired me with their commitment, work and activism. The works
of Tanika Sarkar and Gyan Pandey, and my interaction with them,
have also influenced me.
Words are insufficient to express my gratitude to and appreciation
of Jeremy Seabrook in London. H e proved a real friend, mitigating
my depressions, constantly cheering me up and, above all, going
through my work, offering insightful comments and editing it along-
side. I am indebted to Rupert Snell for his intkllectual generosity and
help, in particular with translations. My dear friends Nilanjan and
Geetanjali read substantial parts of the work, offering critical com-
ments, editing, and helping me to be brief. Kamlesh Bhai and Amit
offered me a family during my stay in London. Sanjukta and Shekhar
were friends who were there with me unquestioningly, sharing joys
and traumas, dreams and romances. Sarah, Anshu, Sonia, Rajit, San-
jam, Aditya, Ram, Derek, Kanchana, Anil, Sheeba, Jailaljee, Animesh,
Roma, Shivanandan and Hazel offered unstinting support at various
xii I Acknowledgements
stages in London and India. I shared brief moments with Sudhir
Chandra, but will always have very fond memories of him. A warm
thanks to Rukun, who was extremely generous as a publisher and gave
me much encouragement and help.
My family-mother, father, in-laws, Ritu and Diksha-were baf-
fled with the constant work I had to do, and at the same time took
a great sense of pride in me, enveloping me in their love. My son
Ishaan went through a period of childhood with his mother absent
for long durations. I can never compensate him for this but can pro-
mise it will not happen again. Mukul proved to be the best father and
husband, a remarkable friend and partner in these years. I can only
say that I will do the same for him some day. It is to him that this
book is dedicated.
H indi words are neither translated nor italicised in the text; most
are included in the glossary. Phrases and poems have been itali-
cised and translated in the text. I have not used diacritical marks but
have instead transliterated Hindi terms phonetically. The final 'a' has
occasionally been dropped, except in words familiar within English
usage or Indology, such as dharma, Vaishnava, Krishna, Kayastha,
and yavana. Certain words included in unabridged English dictionar-
ies, and the names of ~ r ~ a n i s a t i o ncastes
s, and deities, have not been
italicised. Translated titles of various Hindi tracts have been given in
the bibliography. They are not always exact translations: they state the
subject of the tract.
Spellings, especially of place names, have been standardised; mod-
ern spellings have been used. Thus, Banaras for Benaras, Allahabad
for Prayag, Kanpur for Cawnpore, and Mathura for Muttra, except
when these appear within quotes or in the actual title of, say, a
newspaper, an article or an organisation. When citing the place of
publication, modern spellings have mostly been used, though Kashi
and Prayag have been retained. In relation to some tracts, the name
of the publisher and the number of copies published have been given
in footnotes, whenever this seemed relevant.
All Vikram Samvat dates have been converted to Roman dates by
the standard method of deducting fifty-seven years. All references to
archival unpublished docun~entsstate the file number first, followed
by the year, then other details, and finally the department and
location.
A1WC All India Women's Conference
Deptt Department
EPW Economic and Political Weekly
GAD General Administration Department
Home Poll Home (Political) Department
IESHR The Indian Economic and Social History Review
IOL India Office Library and Records, London
JAS The journal of Asian Studies
Judl Judicial
MAS Modem Asian Studies
N A1 National Archives of India, New Delhi
NMML Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi
NNR Native Newspaper Reports of UP (also called Selections
ffom Vernacular Newspapers and Notes on the Press
for certain periods)
NWP The North Western Provinces and Oudh
(later known as the United Provinces)
PAI (Secret) Police Abstracts of Intelligence of
UP Government
Studies in History
 Abbreviations l xv
SPBP Statement of Particulars regarding Books and
Periodicals published in UP
UP The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (later
known as Uttar Pradesh)
UPSA Uttar I'radesh State Archives, Lucknow
SAR South Asia Research
For Mukul
T his book brings together two distinct issues, namely the recons-
truction of patriarchy in north India during the later colonial
period, and the emergence of aggressive forms of Hindu organisation
and ideology over the same period. While exploring this intersection
of gender with the assertion of Hindu cultural and political identities,
it focuses particularlyon UP in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.' It examines how the construction of a homogeneous
community identity'operated within and through a reworked and
updated patriarchy, whereby it became crucial to control Hindu
women. Anxieties around male sexuality and masculinity were a part
of this process, and the book explores these as well. It traces a nexus
of concerns around obscenity, sexuality and the 'other', showing how
the escalation of sexually repressive practices mingled with height-
ened communal mobilisation.
Issues around sexuality, though largely unresolved, have been hot-
ly debated. In relation to Western ~exuality,~ Foucault's influential
work argues that there was a propagation of disciplinary regimes, an
T h e concept of identity has been seen in this book not as an essentialist but
a strategic and positional one. See Stuart Hall, 'Who Needs "Identity"?', in Stuart
Hall and Paul d u Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London, 1996),
pp. 1-17. Gendered sites of identity politics have thus been examined not by
reifying identity but by seeing it as a continuous process subject to competing
forces. T h e attempts at forging a cohesive Hindu identity were made by privi-
leging unity over difference, by the constant containing or minimising of other
identities.
For an overview see Joseph Bristow, Sexuality (London, 1997).
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
2 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
intensification in the management and policing of sexuality in the
modern period, leading to distinctions ofbourgeois id en tit^.^ Histor-
ians contend, however, that in Victorian Britain there was no single
bourgeois code of morality but rather a constant struggle benveen
a number of competing tendencies.* The efficacy of disciplinary
power has also been questioned by pointing out that there was no final
triumph ofsexual puritanism in the nineteenth ~ e n t u r yWhile
. ~ draw-
ing considerably from F o u ~ a u l tfeminists
,~ have commented on his
insensitivity to issues of gender,7 race and col~nialism.~ Of Europe
it is also asserted that obscenity emerged as a distinct regulatory cate-
gory at this time, in part due to the rise of literacy, the spread of print
and a wider dissemination of written texts, and in part due to Victor-
ian notions of ~ h a s t i t y . ~
In India, feminists have ~ o i n t e dout that there has broadly been
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexualiy, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans.
Robert Hurley (New York, 1978), pp. 24-5, 145-6.
* Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexualily: Representations of Women in Victorian
Britain (Oxford, 1988), p. 5.
Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics andSociety: The Regulation ofSexualilysince 1800
(London, 1981), pp. 19-21.
Gayle Rubin, 'Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexualiry', in Carole S. Vance (ed.), P h u r e and Danger: Exploring Femak Sexu-
alily (London, 1984), pp. 293-301.
' Caroline Ramazanoglu (ed.), Up Againstfiucault: Explorations ofsome Ten-
sions Between Foucault and Feminism (London, 1993).
Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education ofDe~ire:Foucault's History ofSexu-
ality and tl~eColonial Order of Things (Durham, 1995).
Lynn Hunt, 'Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-
18001, in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The Inveiitiori of Pornography: Obscenily and the
Origins ofModernity, 1500-1800 (New York, 1993); Peter Michelson, Speaking
the Unspeakable: A I'oetics of Obscenily (Albany, 1993), p. 3; Brian McNair,
MediatedSex: Pornography and Postniodern Culture (London, 199G), pp. 42, 53.
T h e debate on obscenity has extended in recent years to pornography. Sharp lines
have been drawn between anti-pornography and anti-censorship feminists.
Catharine Mackinnon, in her powerful critique of pornography, claims that it
institutionalises the sexuality of male supremacy, fusing the eroticisation ofdomi-
nation and submission with the social construction ofmale and female: Catherine
A. MacKinnon, 'Pornography, Civil Rights and Speech', in Catherine I a i n (ed.),
Pornography: Women, Vioknce arid Civil Liberties (Oxford, 1992), p. 462;
 Introduction / 3
a 'conspiracy of silence' regarding se~uality.'~ Some recent happen-
ings have, however, brought the issue of obscenity to the forefront.
One of the main targets of the Hindu Right has been the represen-
tation of women in the arts and culture, where notions of obscenity1
chastity and traditionallmodern have come to be contested. Examples
include the condemnation of certain Hindi film songs like 'Choli ke
Pichhe Kya Hai' (What is Behind the Bodice), the attack on M.F.
Hussain for his portrayal of the goddess Saraswati in the nude,ll and
the objection by Bharatiya Janata Party members to the inclusion of
a representation of the bronze statue of the nude Yakshini or 'Dancing
Girl' from Mohenjo-daro in the 1997 annual diary of the Delhi Tour-
ism and Transportation Development Corporation. l 2

Catherine A. MacKinnon, Only Word (Cambridge, 1993). However, Judith

Butler questions the pervasive power of pornography. She builds a case for
performative contradiction, whereby utterances cannot be assigned a consensus
of meanings: Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New
York, 1997), pp. 71-102. Divisions often made between legitimate erotic art on
the one hand and obscene pornography on the other have been attacked, linking
pornography to debates on high and low culture: Pamela Church Gibson and
Roma Gibson (eds), Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power (London, 1993).
It has also been pointed out that distinctions need to be made between sexually
explicit representations and sexism. Consensual and coercive sex cannot be col-
lapsed: Feminists Against Censorship, Pornography and Feminism: The Care
Against Censorship (London, 1991); Jane Duncan (ed.), Between Speech and
Silence: Hate Speech, Pornography and the New South Afiica Uohannesburg,
1976). Some even say that pornography actually reflects male anxieties and fears:
Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh (eds), Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Porno-
graphic Debate (London, 1772). Moreover, it is argued that while women are
victims of violent crimes, the persistent foregrounding of pain and political cor-
rectness marginalises women's sexual pleasures and desires: Vance (ed.), P h u r e .
l o Mary E. John and Janaki Nair, 'A Question of Silence? An Introduction',
in Mary E. John and Janaki Nair (eds), A Question of Silence? The Sexual Eco-
nomies ofModern India (New Delhi, 1978), p. 1.
" Lyla Bavadam, 'In Defence of Freedom in Art: Against the Hindurva Attack
on M.F. Hussain', Frontline(l5 November 1996), pp. 4-9; Monica Juneja, 'Re-
claiming the Public Sphere: Hussain's Portrayal of Saraswati and Draupadi',
EPW 32, 4 (25 January 1997), pp. 155-7.
l 2 Rashme Sehgai and Narendra Panjwani, 'Is She Objectionable Because
She's Nude?', The Sunday Times oflndia Review (19 January 1797), p. 1.
4 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
The first half of this book explores the roots of the defence of mor-
ality. It examines how, in a specific colonial context, Hindu publicists
redefined certain sexually explicit representations of women, espe-
cially in literature, as well as women's participation in popular cul-
tural practices, in order to create an empowering modern Hindu
identity. Further, this book endorses the claims of feminist histor-
ians that the discursive management of female bodies was essential to
project a civilised and vibrant sectarian Hindu identity and a new
nation.I3 Rewriting patriarchal norms and enthroning community
demands through them overturned the liberal premise of social re-
form and the changes it proposed in the status of women.
The other half of the book opens up discussions on Hindu com-
munalism, hate speech and demonisations of the 'other', probing how
Hindu women were recast in communal identities in ingenious ways.
In the 1920s and 1930s, certain patterns of propaganda and identity
formation were established by Hindu publicists which are still cur-
rent in different forms, though no linear connections can be drawn
between then and now. However, some of the campaigns by the
Hindu Right today have a bearing on this work. For example, a
Vishwa Hindu Parishad pamphlet of 1990, brought out during the
Ramjanmabhoomi campaign, stated:
Ek Hindu ka Nara Hai-'Hum Do, Humare Do'
Jabki ek Muslim ka Nara Hai-'Hum Panch, Humare Pacchis:'*
(The family planning motto of a Hindu is: 'We Two [i.e. husband and
wife] and O u r Two [i.e. our two children].' While that of a Muslim is

'3 Tanika Sarkar, 'The Hindu Wife and the Hindu Nation: Domesticity and
Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Bengali, SH, 8, 2 (1992), pp. 213-35.
Sarkar highlights how AryanIHindu woman became a political resource for
Hindu chauvinism, defining her domestic roles in new precise and scientific ways
through new models of chastity and of the pativrata wife. Others too have signi-
fied the new lease of life to patriarchal practices under religious sanction in
colonial India. See Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 'Recasting Women: An
Introduction', in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women:
Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi, 1989): pp. 1-26.
l 4 Anon., Chetauani-2: Desh Khatre Mein (VHP, Delhi, 1990). In fact, a large
part of the popular mass media in India today has a symbiotic relationship with
the Hindu Right, and has to an extent provided the base images of the grammar
 Introduction 1 5
'We Five [i.e. the husband and his four wives] and O u r Twenty-five [i.e.
children]).
We shall see that similar stereotypes of Muslims as breeding in large
numbers, and constructed anxieties of their soon outnumbering
Hindus, were expressed much earlier.15
Extensive discussions have evolved around communalism in co-
lonial north India. Recent debates have ranged from assertions of
continuities between the pre-colonial and colonial periods'6 to sug-
gestions that communalism was largely a colonial construct." Some
have emphasised the primacy of high politics or native elites in deter-
mining its artic~lation,'~be it by Hindus" or Muslims.20Others have

of Hindu communalism. For a critique of the print media, see Charu and Mukul,
PrintMedia and Communalijm (Delhi, 1990); Charu Gupta and Mukul Sharma,
'Communal Constructions: Media Reality vs Real Reality', Race and Class, 38,
1 (1996), pp. 1-20.
l 5 These myths have persisted, though refuted by many studies which have
shown that Muslims are in fact less polygamous than Hindus and that Mus-
lims can never outnumber Hindus in India. For example, see Towards Equality:
Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (New Delhi, 1974); Sha.
Krishna-kumar, 'Canards on Muslims: Calling the Bluff on Communal Propa-
ganda', Frontline (12-25 October 1991), pp. 93-8; Abusaleh Shariff, 'Socio-
economic and Demographic Differentials between Hindus and Muslims in
India', E P K 30, 46 (18 November 1995), pp. 2947-53. For a broad critique
of the Hindu Right, seeTapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar
and Sambudha Sen, KhakiShorts andSafion Fkzgj: A Critique ofthe Hindu Right
(Delhi, 1993). Various democratic, left, dalit and women's movements in India
are also challenging the hierarchies and homogeneities favoured by the Hindu
Right.
l 6 C.A. Bayly, 'The Pre-History of "Communalism"? Religious Conflict in
India, 1700-186O1, MAS, 19, 2 (1985), pp. 177-203.
l 7 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North
India (Delhi, 1990).
l8 Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge,
1974); idem, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (New Delhi,
199 1); Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping
of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928 (Berkeley, 1991).
l 9 Ami ya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, 1872-1905: Some Essay in Inter-
pretation (Delhi, 1993); Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism
and Partition, 1932-47 (Cambridge, 1994).
20 P. Hardy, TheMuslims ofBritish India(Cambridge, 1972); Francis Robinson,
6 l Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
focused on the public arenas of religious activities and ritual celebra-
tions, with collective involvement in riots and ~ i o l e n c e . ~Though
'
various critiques have emerged,22 most studies show insensitivity
towards gender,23thereby not only leaving considerable areas in dark-
ness but also offering only a partial and perhaps distorted under-
standing of communalism. The prominence given to public riots and
violence, where women may often not be vital players, can take one
away from the day-to-day world of home and family, and from every-
day interaction in social, public and ritual spheres. Thus, while ex-
ploring the intertwining of gender and communal politics, this book
concentrates not so much on high moments of collective violence and
riots; rather, it locates the growth of Hindu communalism in every-
day sites and relationships through the prism of gender. Much of the
discourse of Hindu publicists had moorings in everyday events which
were equally significant markers of assertion and contestation. By
concentrating on gender, my attempt is to try and assemble a history
of Hindu community identity-formation that mapped a somewhat
different terrain, or, more precisely, to map the familiar territory dif-
ferently. This may allow a more nuanced picture of the complexities
of both Hindu patriarchies and communal assertions.
The interrelationship between gender and communalism has,
however, drawn a lot of attention recently, mostly concerning

Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of U P Muslims, 1860-1923

(1974, new paperback edn, Delhi, 1993); Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and
Communal Politics in India, 191628 (Delhi, 1979).
'' Sandria B. Freitag, Colkctiue Action and Communiry: Public Arena and the
Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley, 1989); Suranjan Das,
Communal Riots in Bengal: 1905-f7(Delhi, 1991); Veena Das (ed.), Mirrors of
Vioknce: Communities, Riots and Suruivors in South Asia (Delhi, 1990).
22 For an overview see Rosalind O'Hanlon, 'Historical Approaches to Commun-
alism: Perspectives from Western India', in Peter Robb (ed.), Society andIdeology:
Essays in Southhian History (Delhi, 1993), pp. 247-66; Peter van der Veer, Reli-
giow Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley, 1994); P.K. Datta,
Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Bengal (Delhi,
1999), pp. 1-21.
23 The significant exception being Datra, Carving Blocs, pp. 148-237.
 Introduction / 7
Partition2* and the Hindu Right's agenda.25Rich and insightful, be-
cause of the nature of the subject matter, the focus here too is mainly
on violence, large-scale recoveries of women, and their victimisation
or collusion in communal rhetoric. Less is said on the pre-1940 phase,
which can highlight persistence and changes. This also partially
explains why my work focuses on Hindu identity politics. The threat
from majority communalism is much more serious for women in
India today. My work locates their linkages in a colonial context. The
evidence also suggests that, in this period, especially from the 1920s,
it was Hindu publicists who deployed the woman's body to sharpen
communal boundaries in more aggressive ways than before.26
The centrality of gender in modern identity politics, be it funda-
mentalist, racial or nationalist has been emphasised across the globe.27
There has been an increasing regulation of female sexuality in order
24 Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India?
Partition (Delhi, 1998); U ~ a s hButalia,
i The Other Side o f Siknce: Voicesjam
the Partition of India (New Delhi, 1998).
25 Amrita Basu (ed.), Bulktin ofConcernedAsian Scholars, 25,4 ( 1 993);Kamla
Bhasin, Ritu Menon and Nighat Said Khan (eds), Against All Odds: Essays on
Women, Religion and Devebpmentfrom India andPakistan (Delhi, 1994);Tanika
Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia (eds), Women and the Hindu Right: A Colkction of
Essays (Delhi, 1995);Kumari Jayawardenaand Malathi de Alwis (eds),Embodied
Koknce: Communalising Women i Sexuulity in South Asia (Delhi, 1996);Patricia
Jeffery and Amrita Basu (eds), Appropriating Gender: Women; Activism and
Politicized Religion in South Asia (New York, 1998). Some articles in these focus
on Muslim communalism. Also see Zoya Hasan (ed.), Forgingldentities: Gender,
Communities and the State in India (Delhi, 1994).
26 See Charu Gupta, 'Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: Shuddhi
and Sangatban Movements in UP in the 1 920s1,EPW 33,13 (28 March 1998),
pp. 727-35; P.K. Datta, ' "Abductions" and the Constellation o f a Hindu Com-
munal Bloc in Bengal o f the 1920s1,SH, 14, 1 (1998),pp. 37-88. This is not
to undermine Muslim communalism which, however, has been extensively studi-
ed elsewhere. See Robinson, Separatism.
27 Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (eds), Woman-Nation-State (Basing-
stoke, 1989);Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam andtheState(London, 1991);
John S . Hawley (ed.), Fundamentalism and Gender (New York, 1994);Valentine
M . Moghadam (ed.), Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in
Muslim Societies (London, 1994).
8 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
to control women, justify domination and subordination, and up-
hold community 'honour'. This has been revealed in studies on
the construction of Sinhala Buddhist womanhood in Sri Lanka, in
a Bangladeshi village, in former Yugoslavia, in Iran.28 It has been
simultaneously stated that there is a fundamentalist conviction that
the family is the natural home of religion, and that self-sacrificing
wives and mothers are its exalted, pivotal guardian^.^' Crisis and
transition may bring about an exaggerated reliance on their role as a
refuge of the assaulted community identity.30 In UP, too, Hindu
identity politics needed to control women, both within the family and
in social and public arenas.
Women's sexuality and ethnicity are said to intersect significantly
with the reproductive functions of women. Women as bearers of the
children of an ethnic group are 'guardians' of the 'race', keeping eth-
nic boundaries intact, and demarcating the juncture between internal
cohesion and external differen~e.~' This aids the construction of the
'other', catering to a hysterical protective anxiety about numbers,
where the men and women of the 'other' are imagined as being more
sexually charged and more fertile-as blatantly revealed in Nazi Ger-
many.32 In present-day Europe, mothers outside majority ethnic

Kumari Jayawardena, 'Some Aspects of Religious and Cultural Identity and

the Construction of Sinhala Buddhist Womanhood', in Douglas Allen (ed.),
Religion and Political Conjlict in South Asia: India, Pakistan andSri Lanka (Delhi,
1993), pp. 161-80; Santi Rozario, Purity and Communal Boundaries: Women
and Social Change in a Bangladeshi Village (London, 1992), p. I; Dubravka
Zarkov, 'Gender, Orientalism and the History of Ethnic Hatred in the Former
Yugoslavia', in Helma Lutz, Ann Phoenix and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds), Crossfires
(London, 1995), pp. 105-20; Heideh Moghissi, Populism andFerninism in Iran:
Women > Struggle in a Male-defined Revolutiona~yMovement (New York, 1994),
pp. 21-2.
29 Randall Balmer, 'American Fundamentalism: The Ideal of Femininity', in
Hawley (ed.), Fundamentalism, pp. 47-62; Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fun-
damentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven, 1993), p.2.
30 Valentine M. Moghadarn (ed.), Identzty Politics and Women: Cultural Reas-
sertions and Feminisms in International Perspective (Boulder, 1993), pp. 16-1 9.
3 1 Fiona Wilson and Bodil Folke Frederiksen (eds), Ethnicity, Gender andthe
Subversion ofNationalism (London, 1995), p. 3.
32 Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan (eds), When
Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimarand Nazi Germany (New York, 1984);
 Introduction 1 9
groups are often seen as having too many children, and as placing
excessive demands upon state welfare.33The notion of 'otherness' is
linked to gender in other ways is well. The 'primitive other' is de-
monised as 'the rapist' who is supposedly attacking 'our' women, and
thereby justifying c ~ n f r o n t a t i o nThe
. ~ ~ 'mourning mother' and 'the
rape victim' are common symbolic constructs in fundamentalist,
nationalist and colonial rhetoric for wider m ~ b i l i s a t i o nIn
. ~ colonial
~
UP the reproductive functions of women, including widows, were
significantly tied to constructed anxieties about declining Hindu
numbers, simultaneously picturing the Muslim 'other' as rapist and
abductor.
Female icons, particularly of the mother as a national symbol, have
been shown to coexist uneasily with masculinist ideologies of the
nation, so that women occupy an unstable position within the ima-
gined community.36O n the other hand, it has been pointed out that
right-wing rhetoric often adopts a humanising language, not only
using women as symbols but also promising them agency and mean-
ing in order to make them collude with reactionary forces. This
literature urges us to reflect on the ambiguity of female agency.37A

Gisela Bock, 'Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory

Sterilisation and the State', Signs, 8, 3 (1983), pp. 400-21; Charu Gupta,
'Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany', E P K 26, 17 (1991), pp. WS-
40-8.
33 Ann Phoenix and Anne Woollett, 'Motherhood: Social Construction, Poli-
tics and Psychology', in A. Phoenix, A. Woollett and E. Lloyd (eds), Motherhood
Meanings, Practices andldeologies (London, 1991); Editorial, 'Thinking through
Ethnicities', Feminist Review, 45 (Autumn 1?93), pp. 1-3.
34 Vron Ware, Beyond the Pak: White Women, Racism and History (London,
1992), p.38; Leith Mullings, 'Ethnicity and Representation', in George Clement
Bond and Angela Gilliam (eds), Social Construction of the Past: Representation a
Power (London, 1994), pp. 25-8.
35 Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias, 'Introduction', in Yuval-Davis and
Anthias (eds), Woman, pp. 1-15.
36 Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger (eds),
Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992).
37 Editorial, Gender and History, 3, 3 (Autumn 1991), pp. 243-5; Nancy
Maclean, 'White Women and Klan Violence in the 1920s: Agency, Complicity
and the Politics of Women's History', Gender and History, 3 , 3 (Autumn 1991),
pp. 285-303.
10 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
good deal has also been written on the fundamentalist glorification
of the 'golden past' via ideal women, and a perceived decline on ac-
count of the corrupt influence of the 'other'.38 In my area of study
the icon of the mother was used in diverse ways to aid Hindu nation-
alist rhetoric. Moreover, while some women in UP endorsed and
participated in community assertions, many, in silent ways, were also
subverting the rhetoric of homogeneity through romance, elopement
and conversion. In their social activities too, women found ways to
sometimes sideline the image accorded to them in terms of pativrata.
Language, literature and print have been viewed as significant
means for contests over p ~ w e r , ~ > hpropagation
e ofdominant ideas,*O
and the fashioning of national,*l regional and community identities
in modern Europe, Asia and Africa. The basic material of this book,
which belongs within this general category, has been drawn from the
vast didactic literature, instruction manuals, semi-fictional and rnor-
ally edifying tracts, popular pamphlets, books, magazines and news-
papers in Hindi, written and published at this time. Deploying the
prisms ofgender, these publications fashioned a new collective Hindu
identity.42By the late-nineteenth and more so the early-twentieth
century, most Hindu publicists, campaigners and writers in UP chose
Hindi and not English or Urdu as their primary medium. These
38 See John S. Hawley and Wayne Proudfoot, 'Introduction', in Hawley (ed.),
Fundamentalism, pp. 30-2; Moghissi, Populism, pp. 59-62.
39 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and
Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, 1991); idem, The Fieldof Cultural Production:
Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge, 1993); Michel Foucault, The Order of
Things:An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, 1970); idem, The Archa-
eology of Knowledge, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, 1972).
40 Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Commu-
nications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 Vols (Cam-
bridge, 1979); L. Febvre and H.J. Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impart
ofprinting, 1450-1800, trans. D. Gerard (London, 1976).
41 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refictions on the Origins and
Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983).
42 Due to this reliance on the printed word mainly, the work is more urban-
based. It draws material from publications both in large cities like Lucknow,
Banaras, Kanpur, Allahabad and Agra, and in towns like Moradabad, Bareilly,
Saharanpur and Meerut. However, it occasionally refers to rural settings.
 Introduction 1 11
many Hindi publications were among the chief cultural resources for
reformers, caste associations, and neo-Hindu ideologues. The print
explosion gave a wide arena to such publicists, facilitating the pro-
duction of discourse as a commodity, and the public dissemination
and consumption of normative images and prescriptions ofbehaviour.
My work is thus m ~ s t l ~ c o n c e r n with
e d the rhetoric and represent-
ation of largely male Hindu publicists; but not exclusively so. It hints
at causes and consequences, though it offers no definite conclusions.
Representation is as significant as 'reality' or 'facts', which themselves
are problematically recorded. Representation implies what should be
rather than what actually is, a mapping of ideology rather than reality,
the process of becoming rather than being-all crucial for arguments
about identity and community mobilisation. It was through repre-
sentations, mainly in print, that stereotypes, images and rhetorical
structures were propagated.
I have used the term 'Hindu publicists' to signify those who used
the public media consciously or unconsciously to promulgate a parti-
cular 'Hindu' point of view, and who, through their activities and
writings, asserted community differences and communal antagon-
isms, though from different perspectives and standpoints.43 The
codes of behaviour suggested in their writings largely implied control
of women by men, and of lower castes by higher classes. However,
they inserted themselves into the public domain as the very voice of
the Hindu, as representing the popular objectives of all Hindus.
Several were influenced by or were members of the Arya Samaj,
including updeshaks and pracharaks. They encompassed a disparate
variety of reformers and revivalists, Sanatan Dharmists, Hindu Maha-
sabha activists, Hindi literati, Congress members, and spokespersons
of caste associations. Many were second-level reformers and rustic
authors in ambivalent relationships with each other. Largely middle
class,44though not exclusively so, these influential publicists did not

43 The book refers to writings of various castes, though it concentrates on up-

per and intermediate castes, and does not go too far into untouchable move-
ments, which represent a different dynamic.
44 In any case, the middle classes were large and heterogeneous, and in the
process of formation.
12 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
represent a homogeneous group or voice. At the same time, they took
it upon themselves to address matters which they perceived to be of
common public concern, affecting a vast majority of the people.
Their writings were theoretically accessible to all, even if their actual
dissemination was limited. They claimed to speak on behalf of the
rest of the province, and indeed the whole o f ~ n d i awhile , constructing
their dominant patterns of identity. They personified the cultural and
political climate and used ideas, genres and idioms that were current
and popular.
In many studies on colonial India, the emphasis is placed upon
the hegemonic function of colonial rule-which itself was internally
divided. The colonised here is usually responding to rather than ini-
tiating the i n t e r a ~ t i o nIn
. ~contrast,
~ I see indigenous voices as provid-
ing the starting point: power itself was contested; the Hindu middle
classes and caste reformers were constantly negotiating, with no neat
split between mastery and subordination. Further, I do not assume
that the earlier period had more flexible sexual and moral codes.
Rather, I am concerned with how Hindu publicists reconfigured
earlier patriarchal vocabularies and hierarchical norms within the
dislocations and possibilities created by a colonial context. At this
time the regulation of Hindu women was brought into greater pro-
minence, building on old material and introducing new means.
This is not to suggest only an increasing conformity and marginal-
isation of women's culture alongside modernity and colonialism, for
this was also a period when caste hierarchies and Hindu patriarchies
were qualified. Reforms, the national movement, education, and
women's presence in the public arena signalled new opportunities for
women, however limited they proved to be. Sexuality, pleasure and
love were expressed in diverse ways. Cheaply produced popular lite-
rature provided new mass entertainment. All this suggests a rich
variety of experiences and practices, indifferent to and sometimes
45 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalict Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse? (Delhi, 1986). For a critique, see Sumit Sarkar, 'Orientalism Revisit-
ed: Saidian Frameworks in the Writing of Modern Indian History', The Oxford
Literavy Review, 16, 1-2 (1994), pp. 205-24. Sarkar argues that colonial autho-
rities often accommodated and cooperated with local Indian patriarchies.
 Introduction / 13
even subverting the tyrannies of respectability and standardisation.
Like colonial rule, the discourse of Hindu publicists was never totally
hegemonic, which indicates the lack of finality and incompleteness
in Hindu identity formation. Liberal values developed side by side
with community assertions among the same class of people. Besides,
this desire for internal homogeneity-which Hindu identity politics
treated as foundational-was not a natural but a constructed form of
closure, leading to various tensions and gaps. A central endeavour in
this book is therefore simultaneously to move beyond the assumed
polarisation of identity politics and explore how disorder crept into
the moral order. The process of Hindu community identity forma-
tion was not simply supportive or oppositional, but partial, frag-
mented and contradictory. Once set in motion, the very same voca-
bulary and processes that were first employed to control women
acquired their own new dynamic in literature, popular culture, edu-
cation, health and communal divisions.

Women, Caste, Class,

and Hindu Communalism in UP
Several conflicts and divisions among Hindus centred around caste,
function and occupation. Alongside, there was at this time the
imagination of a new Hindu identity. Ideas about women proved to
be a source of broader Hindu unities as well as daily caste and religious
tensions. It was a period of turmoil in UP, with an admixture of
prosperity and decay, advantages and deprivation^.^^ The high, in-
termediate and low castes gained and lost under colonial rule in shift-
ing, contradictory ways.*' It was the newly empowered and the newly
46 William Hoey, A Monograph on Trade and Manufactures in Northern India
(Lucknow, 1880), p. 25; Nandini Gooptu, 'Caste and Labour: Untouchable
Social Movements in Urban U P in the Early Twentieth Century', in Peter Robb
(ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in India (Delhi, 1993),
pp. 277-98; Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi, 1997), pp. 358-90.
47 Scholars have argued that in British India notions of caste substantially
changed. Colonial administrators, ethnographic accounts and the census helped
in epitomising caste as the essence of Indian society. Attempts to describe, cate-
gorise and simplify the social complexity of local manners and customs ofvarious
14 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
suffering who helped in assertions of new kinds of Hindu religious
identities and patriarchies.
After 1857 there was a rapid expansion of improved means of orga-
nisation and communication, market production, law courts, English
education, libraries, and press and print in UP,48coinciding with the
emergence of a dynamic new middle class. Certain sections proved
upwardly mobile. New job openings and professions-law, teaching,
journalism-empowered the middle classes, which consisted largely
of upper and intermediary castes. Many of the pandits and traditional
literati became native informants on revenue and justice. By the end
of the nineteenth century a new group of landholders appeared in
many parts of the region.49These substantial gains enmeshed with
Western influences on lifestyles and with new criteria of propriety,
civilisation and modernisation, giving the upward a stake in the
defence of hierarchy.
The urban economy of UP saw considerable industrial expansion.
Between 1922 and 1927 the number of regulated factories in the

castes and jatis often led to the upholding of textual law, assisting in making so-
ciety more caste-bound and 'brahmanic' in character. See Bernard S. Cohn, An
Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi, 1987), pp. 224-54;
Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford, 1990), pp. 56-66; Nicholas B. Dirks,
The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, 1987);
idem, 'The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India', in H.L. Sene-
viratne (ed.), IdPntity, Consciousnessand the Past: Forging of Caste and Community
in India andSri Lanka (Delhi, 1997), pp. 120-35; Rosalind 0' Hanlon, 'Cul-
tures of Rule, Communities of Resistance: Gender, Discourse and Tradition in
Recent South Asian Historiographies', in Seneviratne (ed.), Identity, pp. 147-
76. However, the British were not the paramount agents for perpetuating
caste, which had much deeper roots as a social structure in India. Moreover,
Indian polemicists too identified caste as a topic of vital concern for the modern
nation. See William R. Pinch, Peasants andMonks in British India (Delhi, 1996),
pp. 17-20; Sarkar, Writing, pp. 3 58-90; Susan Bayly, Caste, Socieg and Politics
in India fiom the Eighteentl~Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge, 1993),
pp. 25-96, 144-86.
48 C.A. Bayly, Rukrs, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age
ofBritish Expansion, 177U-1870(Cambridge, 1983), p. 427-30; idem, Empire
and Ir~firmation:Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India,
178U-1870 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 338.
49 Cohn, Anthropologist, p. 384.
 Introduction 1 15
region rose from 255 to 354, an increase of 39%, and factory workers
rose from 72,545 to 88, 319, an increase of 22%.50 New jobs were
created in relatively respectable occupations, with lower castes being
appointed in railways, as manual servants of British families, as peons
in offices, as municipal sweepers and scavengers.There was increasing
migration, a weakening of hereditary employment, a loosening of
traditional caste ties, some extension of leisure time, and a simulta-
neous forging of new alliances which gave people a limited sense of
liberation and security.5' Sweepers, for example, felt more secure and
preferred municipal jobs to which no traditional stigma was attach-
ed.52There were examples of acquisition of wealth and status by
members of inferior castes like Chamars, Doms, Telis and Kalwars
on account of the development of leather, oil-seed and metal busi-
nesses. Chamars, significant in the economic hierarchy of UP,53
diversified into various jobs and some took to profitable trades-
becoming shoemakers or saddlers, and finding new avenues in large
tanneries, especially around Kanpur, with relatively higher wages.54
In Agra some families of the Chamar caste came to be accepted as
creditworthy merchants.55
Royal (Whitky) Commission of Labour in India, Evidence, Vol. III, Part I
[Includes UP] (London, 1931), p. 133. Capital was redirected largely from rural
areas to towns. Many industries processing agrarian products came now to be
concentrated in urban centres. Small scale industries saw remarkable expansion,
Report of the Department o f Industries in UP, 1935-36 (Allahabad, 1937).
5 1 Gooptu, 'Caste', pp. 278-9.
5 2 Ibid., pp. 2 9 5 4 .
53 O n the Charnars of UP, see G.W. Briggs, The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920);
Cohn, Anthropologist, pp. 255-319; Owen M . Lynch, The Politics of Untouch-
ability: Social Mobility and Social Change in a City of India (New York, 1969);
R.S. Khare, The Untouchableas HimseF Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism Among
the Lucknow Chamars (Cambridge, 1984).
54 H. G. Walton, A Monograph on Tanning and Working in Leather in UP
(Allahabad, 1903), pp. 25-8; E.A.H. Blunt, The Caste System ofNorthern India:
With Special Reference to UP (London, 1931), p. 237; E.A.H. Blunt (ed.), Social
Service in India: An Introduction to Some Social and Economic Problems of the
Indian People (London, 1938), p. 64; Briggs, Charnars, pp. 226-9; H.R. Nevill,
Catonpore: A Gazetteer, Vol. XIX of the District Gazetteers of UP (Allahabad,
1909), pp. 104, 117.
5 5 Bayly, Rulers, pp. 340, 445.
16 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Increasing opportunities and means, rising wealth, new ideas,
print media and the post, and a revival of old networks enabled the
forging of new internal alliances and ~ r ~ a n i s a t i o nMany
s . ~ ~caste asso-
ciations emerged from the 1880s, including those of the upper and
intermediate castes, with their own magazines and pamphlets dealing
with their aspirations and fears.57Even the relatively better-off castes
and jatis, such as Kayasthas, Khatris, Aganvals, Marwaris, Bais and
Orhs, started claiming higher (particularly Kshatriya) status, and
challenging or wanting a share in the power of upper castes in public
appointments and in political representatioa5*Some of the upwardly
mobile lower castes made the most forceful claims to higher status.
With the spread of education, the presence of lower caste groups in
political life grew and gave rise to caste spokespersons-part of a
vernacular reading public which could articulate caste demands.59
Through a proliferation ofcaste associations, journals and tracts, vari-
ous intermediate and Shudra castes made statements about their
56 Sarkar, Writing, pp. 358-90.
57 Kayasthas, Brahmins, Khatris, Jats, all had mouthpieces in UP. A list of
some journals with year of appearance, place, and founding editors, is: Kayastha
Samarhar, 1878, Allahabad, Dr Sachidanand Sinha; G n y a Kubj Prakarh, 1884,
Lucknow, Pt. Balbhadra Mishra; Khatri Hitkari, 1888, Mathura and Agra, Pt.
Ramnarayan; ]at Samachar, 1889, Agra, Kanhyalal Singh; Agarwal Upharak,
1887, Agra, Lala Kishanld; Kzyastha Punch, 1890, Allahabad; Brahman Samachar,
1890, Muzzaffarnagar, Pratap Narayan; Vaishya Hitkari, 1895, Meerut; Chatur-
uedi, 1895, Agra, Hiralal; Gaur Hithrak, 1876, Moradabad; Rajput, 1899,
Kashi.
Imtiaz Ahmad, 'Caste Mobility Movements in North India', IESHR, 8, 2
(1971), pp. 164-91; Lucy Carroll, 'Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society and
the Emergence of Caste(s) Associations', ]AS, 37, 2 (February 1978), pp. 233-
50; idem, 'Caste, Social Change, and the Social Scientist: A Note on the Ahistori-
cal Approach to Indian Social History', ]AS, 35, 1 (November 1975), pp. 63-
84. Also see Bharatendu Harishchandra, Agarwalon ki U ~ a t t(Banaras,
i 1918,
2nd edn); Thakur Deshraj, /at I d a s (Agra, 1934); Bhikari Das, Kayastha Varna
Nirnaya (Etawah, 1914); Bhagvan Vats Singh Rais, Bais Ktharriyatihas (Luck-
now, 1931); Lakshminarayan Singh and Bhagwati Prasad Singh (eds), OrhKrha-
tri' Chandrika (Hathras, 1936).
5 9 Censu~of In&, 1931, UP, Vol. XVIIZ, Part I, Report (Allahabad, 1933),
pp. 554-6.
'rights'.60 The population census was seen by many of these as a posit-
ive opportunity to assert caste aspirations and claim their rightful due
in a more forceful manner. Western claims and ethnographic studies
were constantly cited or refuted as part of their self-assertion. Statistics
and print were used to argue for new positions and preferential treat-
ment, alongside claims to a higher Kshatriya status, to posts in offices
and recognition in government ~ i r c l e s . ~ '
Meanwhile anxieties were btewing due to changes that signalled
decline or challenged orthodoxy, coupled with an economic situation
that became depressing. There were growing economic insecurities
for some: the colonial onslaught in UP posed a serious challenge to
many of the traditional occupations and dislocated existing social and
economic relations. Traditional sources of patronage were consider-
ably reduced, and adversity overtook a section of the population
formerly supported by a native court culture. With the introduction
of English and the proliferation of government schools62 there was
transformation in the social status ofsome Sanskrit pandits of Banaras
and their educational system. Many upper castes felt the need to
diversify and adapt to new opportunities. Kayasthas, traditionally in-
volved in clerical pursuits, faced competition and financial insecurity
with the growth of education and salaried jobs in government depart-
ments as this reduced the need for professional writers. Their con-
ferences often adopted resolutions about the need to break traditional

60 Kashiram Verma, Kurmi Krharriya Darpan (Lucknow, 1907); Dilip Singh

Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki jhakzk (Etawah, 1914); Kshatriya Bansidhar Varma,
Ishuaku Kul Kthatriya Vanshauafi (Aligarh, 1916); Angan La1 Agnihotri, Lodha
Rajput Mimansa (Bulandshahr, 1905); Cheda Lal, Koeri Mahte Kthatriyon ki
Vanshauali (Farukhabad, 19 19). Journals like &/war Kesari, Kurmi-Kshatriya
Diwakar and Yadavesh were published.
6 1 Jats demanded that they be permitted to wear the janeo in the Army: 2091
1918, GAD (UPSA); Mookhan Ram, a Hindu Rowani Kahar, and a daftari
in the Home Dept of the Government of India, submitted a petition for a change
of his name and caste in official records, asking that his caste be shown as
Chandravanshiya Kshatriya: 3 1511933, GAD (UPSA).
Nita Kumar, 'Sanskrit Pandits and Modernisation of Sanskrit Education in
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', in William Radice (ed.), Swami
Vivekananah and the Modernisation of Hinduism (Delhi, 1998), pp. 36-60.
18 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
occupational barriers." With a uniform currency and the decline in
the hundi business there was a reduction in the traditional function
of ~arrafs,~*who, by the 1920s, started investing extensively in indus-
tries.65
These problems were compounded by a general crisis of employ-
ment for the educated.66 A class of clerks with low salaries and low
status emerged, and this class felt the pressure of time and money.
Bemoaning a supposed loss of the golden age, a bleak mental land-
scape portrayed modern times as the age of decline, degradation,
epidemics, unhealthy bodies, adulterated ghee, and price rises. A
sense of calamity was built up around this era of Kaliyug, denoted by
loss of manliness, assertive lower castes and disorderly
Modern developments like the railways made it difficult to main-
tain caste boundaries and the stringency of food taboos-in terms
of kaccha and pakka68--offending orthodox Hindus.69 Demands
were raised for separate carriages and refreshment rooms for high-
caste H i n d u ~ . ' The
~ Arya Samaj, social reformers, nation-builders
and cultural revivalists, while upholding caste hierarchies, were also
making limited indigenous critiques of caste rigidities, linking this
critique to modernity, civilisation and nation-building." These

63 Lucy Carroll, 'Caste, Community and Caste($) Association: A Note on the

Organization of the Kayastha Conference and the Definition of a Kayastha
Community', Contribution to Rrian Studies, 10 (1977), pp. 3-24.
64 Hoe, Monograph, pp. 25-6.
65 Nandini Gooptu, 'The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early
Twentieth-century UP', MAS, 31, 4 (19997), pp. 882-3.
66 UP Unemployment (Sapru) Committee, 193.5, Report (Allahabad, 1936),
pp. 261-73.
67 Sarkar, Writing, pp. 186-21 5.
68 Blunt (ed.), Social pp. 58-61; idem, Caste, p. 332.
69 Bharatjiwan, 5 December 1898, NNR, 13 Dkcember 1898, p. 653; Bharat
Jiwan, 17 June 1907, NNR, 22 June 1907, p. 75 1; BharatJiwan, 6 January 1902,
NNR, 11 January 1902, p. 28.
70 Agra Akhbar, 20 December 1876, NNR, 23 December 1876, p. 747; Bharat
Jiwan, 2 June 1902, NNR, 7 June 1902, p. 378.
Susan Bayly, 'Hindu Modernisers and the "Public" Arena: Indigenous
Critiques of Caste in Colonial India', in Radice (ed.), Swami, pp. 93-137.
 Introduction 1 19
developments made the upper castes feel their control and status were
waning. The changes were often articulated in terms of a moral crisis.
Further economic dislocations resulted from growing land hunger,
agrarian depression, the progressive sub-divisions of land holdings,
evictions from land for various reasons, the impoverishment of an-
cestral holdings, and the decline of cottage industries in rural areas
because of increasing competition from organised i n d ~ s t r i e sMany
.~~
found their means of livelihood in jeopardy.73 There were unpre-
cedented forced migrations,74 largely of males, from rural to urban
centres, especially from the eastern districts to expanding commercial
towns like Kanpur, Allahabad and luck no^.'^ Migrations became
marked during the years of depression, and finding jobs became more
difficult and competitive.76 Substantial increases in the population of
UP, especially from the early twentieth century,77 multiplied pres-
sures on jobs and employment. By 1935 the problem of unemploy-
ment had become acute.78Further, the worlung of municipal acts and
72 Royal (Whitky) Commission, pp. 138-9. For changes in the rural economy
and conditions of the poor in UP, see A. Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a Northern
Indian State 1817-33 (Oxford, 1973); E. Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in
Northern India, Vol. I: UP undt-r British RulP, 1860-1300 (Berkeley, 1972);
S.N.A. Jafri, The History and Status of Landlords and Tenants in UP (Allahabad,
1931).
73 Gyanendra Pandey, 'Economic Dislocation in Nineteenth-century Eastern
UP: Some Implications of the Decline of Artisanal Industry in Colonial India',
in Peter Robb (ed.), Rural South Atia: Linkages, Change and Development (Lon-
don, 1983), pp. 89-1 29; C.A. Shilberrad, A Monograph on Cotton Fabrics Pro-
duced in NWP (Allahabad, 1898), p. 45.
74 While agricultural migration existed before, its context and nature changed
significantly at this time. With increasing saturation of land occupation, more
organised forms of migration, and an expanded demand for labour in towns, fact-
ories and mines, migration increased. With agrarian depression of the late 1920s,
migration accelerated further, Census, 1731, UP, pp. 127-8.
7 5 Gooptu, 'Urban', pp. 881-7; Pandey, Construction, pp. 78-9; Census,
1931, UP, pp. 127-8.
76 Chitra Joshi, 'Bonds of Community, Ties of Religion: Kanpur Textile
Workers in the Early Twentieth Century', IESHR, 2 2 , 3 (1985), pp. 261-2,265.
" Census, 1931, UP, p. 24.
UP Unemployment (Sapru) Committee, p. 27.
20 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
regulations revealed the intervention of colonial administration in
almost all occupations and the customary rights of various classes, at
least at the level of regulations. Various facets of everyday existence
became contentious, including what kind of food to sell and where
to sell it; where, when and how to bathe, wash and reside; and in mat-
ters relating to vehicles, streets, lights, drain, filth, prostitutes, noise,
and ~cavenging.'~
This admixture of ambitions and insecurities was reflected in and
coincided with the growth of Hindu revivalism and reformist rhetoric
which challenged certain tenets of Hindu praxis and belief while
reinforcingothers. Hindu publicists in UP, spanningmanycastes and
including the orthodox and reformers, combined a spread of scien-
tific modernism and the rearmament of social conservatism with new
methods of publicity and persuasion. Hinduism was 'unified' more
than ever before. The British aided these processes in terms ofcolonial
urban morphology, municipal laws, orientalising perceptions, mis-
sionary activities and the decennial census.80A context for Hindu re-
vival was the emergence of a vital Hindu mercantile culture in the
towns of north India in the early nineteenth century.*l Temples

79 For example, fines were to be imposed on sweepers if it was felt that slhe
was not performing her duty in a proper way and at reasonable intervals. Bathing
and washing were restricted to certain times and places. Licences were necessary
for the mandacture and sale of articles of food or drink: NWP Municipalities
Act, 1900 (Allahabad, 1901), pp. 37-8, 42, 49-50, 62. Domestic servants had
to be licensed and registered: 23911906, Municipal Dept (UPSA). It has been
argued that the imposition of order by the appropriation and control of space
was central to colonial authority as it existed in UP: Veena Talwar Oldenburg,
The Making of ColonialLucknow, 1 8 5 6 7 7 (Princeton, 1984). Moreover, the ur-
ban poor and lower castes were often seen as 'dirty', leading to overcrowding,
insanitation and filth in the cities, spelling further insecurity for them: Nandini
Gooptu, 'The "Problem" of the Urban Poor Policy and Discourse of Local Ad-
ministration: A Study of UP in the Interwar Period', EPW 31, 50 (14 December
1996), pp. 3245-54.
80 Romila Thapar, 'Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and
the Modern Search for a' Hindu Identity', MAS, 23, 2 (1989), p. 218.
si Bayly, Rukrs, pp. 180-1, 386-93; Sandria B. Freitag, 'Religious Rites and
Riots: From Community Identity to Communalism in North India, 1870-
1940', PhD thesis (University of California, Berkeley, 1980), pp. 16-33.
 Introduction / 2 1
mushroomed, novel processions appeared on the streets and the cow
attained a new prominence as the focus of Hindu c ~ m m u n i t y . ' ~
Vaishnava reforms took new contours and shapes in this period, stres-
sing higher caste status for many.lower castes, and evolving a more
aggressive H i n d ~ i s m . 'There
~ was a proliferation of religious rituals
and celebrations and the activities of the Arya Samaj, the Bharat
Dharma Mahamandal (the organised body of orthodox Hindus) and
the Hindu Sabha expanded considerably.84 Members of the ruling
Hindu aristocracy, landowners, priests and heads of Hindu societies
sustained the Bharat Dharma Mal~amandal.'~ Many Sanatan Dharma
Sabhas, gaushalas and schools were established. In Allahabad, for
example, the Prayag Hindu Samaj and the Madhya Hindu Samaj
were formed in the 1880s. These bodies helped upper-caste, middle-
class Hindus to organise and publish and use legal and other remedies
to defend a view of themselves and their religion which was both an-
cient and modern.
By the 1920s militant Hindu assertion reached new heights. There
were unprecedented communal clashes in UP. Christophe Jaffrelot
has stressed that Hindu nationalism was constructed as an ideology
between the 1870s and the 1920s, and that in the 1920s the doctrine
was crystalli~ed.~~ The growth of nationalism, both inside and outside
Congress, went hand in hand with the 'rediscovery' of Hindu (and
Muslim) cultural and religious values, acclaimed as at least equal to
those coming from the West. Religious reformism developed in tan-
dem with political nationalism and the strengthening of separate
identities. The membership of the Arya Samaj grew steadily in this
period. Whereas its members numbered only five per 10,000. of the
82 Katherine Prior, 'Making History: The State's Intervention in Urban, Reli-
gious Disputes in NWP in the Early Nineteenth Century', MAS, 27, 1 (1993),
p. 179.
83 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalisation of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harischandra and Nineteenth-century Banarar (Delhi, 1997); Pinch, Pearants.
Freitag, Collective.
8 5 Kenneth W. Jones, 'Two Sanatan Dhanna Leaders and Swami Vivekananda:
A Comparison', in Radice (ed.), Swami, pp. 224-43.
86 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics:
1925 to the 1990s (Delhi, 1996), pp. 11-79.
22 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
population in 1891, by 1921 they had increased to 45.87 Conflicts
between Sanatan Dharma and the Arya Samaj, so bitter at one time,
tended to subside and there was a broad reconciliation and common
ground between the two on certain issues, leading to a reduction in
the plurality of voices.88
Hindu assertions were aided by the growth of Muslim revivalism
in north India, especially from the nineteenth century. Accounts have
highlighted the fact that on account of various reasons, such as the
loss of state power by Muslim rulers and the divisive impact of colo-
nialism and Hindu revivalism, a substantial section of Muslim elites
made efforts to preserve Islam, to sustain and mobilise a Muslim
community, and that this led to separatist Muslim identity politics.89
Anxiety at the mass presence of Muslims in the Non-cooperation1
Khilafat movements increased the pressure on Hindus to organise on
a communal basis.
Among the middle classes there was an increasing scramble for
educational opportunities, government jobs and positions on muni-
cipal boards.90In some UP towns Muslims were relatively literate and
well e m p l ~ y e d , ~which
' led to a feeling among many upper-caste
Hindus that Muslims were usurping their jobs. The actual imple-
mentation of municipal acts was largely in Indian hands, increasing
the potential for tyrannies and rivalries between middle-class Hindus
and Muslims. Many Hindu lower castes also found it economically
advantageous to take to a rhetoric ofopposition against Muslims. The
percentage of Muslims in the population of urban UP was high in
relation to their total population, and they constituted a significant

Blunt, Caste, p. 331.

Vasudha Dalmia, 'The Modernity of Tradition: Harischandra of Banaras
and the Defence of Hindu Dharma', in Radice (ed.), Swami, pp. 77-92.
Robinson, Separatijm.
Francis Robinson, 'Municipal Government and Muslim Separatism in UP,
1883 to 1916', MAS, 7, 3 (1973), pp. 389-41.
" Census of India, 191 1, UP, Vol. XI/: Part I, Report (Allahabad, 1912),
p. 27; Censur, 1731, UP, p. 137; Raghuraj Gupta, Hindu-Muslim Relations
(Lucknow, 1976), pp. 24-9; Gopinath Srivastava, When Congrejj Rufed (Luck-
now, n.d.), pp. 101-3.
 Introduction 1 23
w~rkforce.'~There were increasing conflicts with Muslims in the
everyday realm even over menial jobs. Moreover, many lower Hindu
castes, who were trying to claim a higher status, also wanted to estab-
lish the purity of their blood by showing that their customs were
wholly 'Hindu', undiluted by external influence. T o overcome their
vulnerability, and as a means of self-assertion, a large number of peas-
ants and caste association^^^ and the urban Shudra poor" adopted the
language of Hindu masculinity and claims to kshatriyahood. Yadavs
cited the martial skills of Krishna to emphasise that they made
excellent soldier^.'^ There were aggressive, masculine displays and an
increasing participation of the lower castes in the public arena and
riots, aiding the expression of Hinduism as a martial religion.
In early-twentieth-century UP the spread of education among
women, new ideals of companionate and monogamous marriages,
and the increase in the number of households-seen as undermining
the joint familyN"--created a sense of disquiet and increased patriar-
chal insecurities. The beginning of the Non-cooperation/Khilafat
movement saw a remarkable increase in Hindu women's participa-
tion in 'public' activities and on the streets. An awareness ofwomen's
roles and rights was growing.'' Some women were becoming more
conscious of their interests through their caste associations and
" Census, 1931, UP, p. 422.
93 Pinch, Peasants, pp. 81-1 14.
94 Nandini Gooptu, 'The Political Culture of the Urban Poor: UP between
the two World Wars', unpublished PhD thesis (University of Cambridge, 1991),
pp. 130-74.
95 Nathuprasad Yadav, 'British Shasan Kal Mein Yadavon ki Fauji Unnati ka
Itihas', Yadavesh, 1, 2 (1935), pp. 21-8; Yadav, Ahir Itihas, pp. 61-4.
9"ensus, 1911, UP, p. 31.
'' A number ofstudies provide insights into this change in UP, and not merely
at the level of participation. See Urna Rao and Meera Devi, 'Glimpses: UP
Women's Response to Gandhi', Samya Shakti, 1 , 2 (1984), pp. 21-32; Poonam
Saxena, 'Won~en'sParticipation in the National Movement in UP', Manushi,
46 (1988), pp. 2-10. Hindi women's journals like Grihalakshmi, Srri Darpan,
Prabha and Chand supported the increasing women's presence in public
spheres: Vir Bharat Talwar, 'Feminist Consciousness in Women's Journals in
Hindi: 1910-20', in Sangari and Vaid (eds), Recasting, pp. 2 0 4 3 2 .
24 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
bodies, and extending their area of acti~ity.'~
Besides the urban parti-
cipation of women, the Avadh Kisan Movement led by Baba Ram-
chandra saw rural women increasingly involved." The customary
demarcation of gendered spaces became bridgeable.
These various opportunities and challenges had mixed gender
implications for Hindu publicists. Women were significant subjects
for their renewed emphasis on conservative, hierarchical, upper-caste
domination. Caste and gender inequalities could reinforce each other
in systematic ways, and women emerged as a powerful means of brah-
manical patriarchal attempts to hold power, consolidate social hier-
archies and express caste exclusivitie~.'~~
The reordering of household
and conjugality, the images of an idealised pativrata imbued with
reformist endeavour, and the increasing sexual disciplining and con-
trol over the woman's social movements helped maintain social
boundaries.lOlGendered language and customs relating to women
became critical to counter the claims of other castes for higher status.
Kumar Cheda Singh Varrna, a Rajput and barrister-at-law in Agra
and advocate of the Allahabad High Court, attacked the Khatri cus-
tom of hansa tamasha in which masks were worn and 'obscene' songs
sung on the death of a person.'02His influential book highlighted the

98 Khatris for example had a separate All India Women's Khatri Conference
from 1936 onwards, Report ofthe Alllndia Khatri Confeence, 18th Sejjion (Luck-
now, 1937),pp. 33-5. Kurrnis too formed their Mahila Parishad, Shivrarn Singh,
Kurmi kihatriya ltihas (Banaras, 1936), pp. 191-2.
" Kapil Kumar, 'Rural Women in Oudh 1917-47: Baba Ramchandra and
the Women's Question', in Sangari and Vaid (eds), Recasting, pp. 337-40;
Deepti Priya Mehrotra, 'Women's Participation in Peasant Movements: UP
1917-47', unpublished MPhil thesis (University of Delhi, 1986).
loo Rosalind O'Hanlon (ed.), A Comparison Between Women andMen: Tarabai
Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (Madras, 1994),
p. 3.
l o ' Sheo Dayal Sah Gupta, Sri Vaijhya Vamsa Vibhuhan (Sitapur, 1907),
pp. 128-39. For example, Brahmins urged their women not to go 'begging' and
singing songs in front of Baniya households, Gajadhar Prasad, Brahmankul Pari-
uartan (Allahabad, 191 I), pp. 3,8; Lala Mangtoo Ram, Brahman Sudhar (Ram-
garh, 1922), pp. 5, 8, 10.
Io2 Kumar Cheda Singh Varma, Kthatrzjasand Would-bekihatnyas (Allahabad,
1904). It was originally printed at the Pioneer Press and translated in Hindi in
 Introduction 1 25
'physical weakness' of Kayasthas who, he claimed, were good only for
inferior work as clerks. At another place he said: 'The use of the sur-
name Das is common with the Kayasthas and their feminine names,
without a single exception, terminate in Dasi.' The practice ofwidow
remarriage (dhrija or karao) and polyandry among the Jats were cited
as the main reasons for Jats not being Kshatriyas. Kurmis were attack-
ed for their lack of purdah.'03
Thus in UP, as elsewhere, women's roles affected the status of a
caste. Aganvals discriminated against the Agraharis because their
women served in shops. Khatiks were degraded as their women ped-
dled fruits on the street.lo4A certain section of Gujars was looked
down upon since their women sold butter and ghee. '05 Accordingly,
various intermediate and even lower castes started imposing restric-
tions on their women to improve their social status and strengthen
claims for upward mobility.106Some urban Chamars began putting
their wives under seclusion, proclaiming a new role for women in

1907, published by the Rajput Anglo-Oriental Press Agra, as Kthaniya aur

~ritram.Kthaniya.For more details, see Pinch, Peasants, p. 116. Similar trends
were visible elsewhere. Pandit Chotelal Sharma, a Brahmin and General Secret-
ary ofthe Hindu Dharma Varna Vyavastha Mandal, based in Jaipur, wrote many
books like Jati Anveshan Uaipur, 1928, 2nd edn) and Saptkhandi Jati Nirnaya
(Jaipur, 1923), ridiculing the claims of various castes for higher status, again
extensively focusing on women.
lo3 Varma, Kthatriyas, pp. 63, 84, 93-6, 98.
lo* Blunt, Caste, p. 241.
lo5 Census, 1911, U R p . 331.
'06 Gender has only recently emerged as an integral part of studies on inter-
mediate and lower castes. Various scholars have emphasised how women were
used to counter their social marginalisation. See Lynch, Politics; Cohn, Anthro-
pologist, pp. 255-98; Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, 'From Alienation to Integra-
tion: Changes in the Politics of Caste in Bengal, 1937-47', IESHR, 3 1 , 3 (1994),
pp. 349-91; Saurabh Dube Untouchabk Pasts: Religion, Identity and Power
among a CentralIndian Community, 1780-1350 (Albany, 1998). For views on
how women in turn asserted themselves, see Mary Searle-Chatterjee, ReversibL
Sex Roh: The Special Cme of Banaras Sweepers (Oxford, 198 1); P.G. Jogdand
(ed.), Dalit Women in India: Issues and Perrpectives (New Delhi, 1995); P.C. Jain,
Shashi Jain and Sudha Bhatnagar, Scheduk-d Caste Women (New Delhi, 1997);
Selvy Thiruchandran, Ideology, Cmte, Class and Gender (New Delhi, 1997).
26 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
their community.107The Khatiks of Lucknow asked their women to
sell only at shops.'0s Ahir men stopped their women from going and
selling milk.'09 Lower castes drew upon injunctions against all forms
of 'obscenity'. Among them, women again became subject to restric-
tions in relation to wage-earning.
Simultaneously, upper-caste reformers attempted to 'improve' the
popular cultural practices of the lower castes, especially as far as these
related to women, ostensibly to uplift and cleanse them of perceived
evils and lax moral standards. This had the effect of maintaining
upper-caste hegemony; upper-caste norms and ideals became further
embedded. An elitist, brahmanical dimension, with shared hostility
to a large part of the socially and culturally popular practices of the
masses, including those of women, also helped in creating unity be-
tween 'progressive' Hindu reformists and 'conservative' neo-tradi-
t i o n a l i ~ t s .Both
' ~ ~ Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharma were against 'bad
customs', such as the singing of obscene songs, women bathing semi-
nude at public ghats, and their participation in Holi, melas and the
theatre. Both saw these as examples of Hindu degeneracy.''' It is not
insignificant that many leading members of the Arya Samaj and
orthodox Hindu bodies were also active members of various caste as-
''*
sociations. Several upper- and lower-caste associations and Hindu
religious bodies adopted similar resolutions, though for their own
specific reasons and from diverse perspectives. Widow remarriage, re-
ducing of marriage expenses, stopping women from 'obscene' activi-
ties, limited education and selective purdah were on the agenda of
almost all. For some, these were ways to maintain their hierarchical
dominance or a means for unity; for others it signified material ad-
vancement or a way of countering social marginalisation. There were

lo' U.B.S. Raghuvanshi, Chanvar Puran (Aligarh, 19 16); Briggs, Chamars,

p. 47; Lynch, Politics, pp. 1 7 4 8 1 ; Cohn, Anthropologist, p. 272.
'Os Blunt, Caste, pp. 55-6; Census, 1911, UP, p. 332.
'09 Baldevsingh, Ahir Jati Mein 31 Rog (Shikohabad, 1924), p. 27.
' I 0 Bayly, Caste, pp. 159-60.
' I ' Jones, 'Two Sanatan', p. 234.
' I 2 For example, Baldeo Prasad, a leading Arya Samajist, was the Secretary of
the Reception Committee of the Bareilly Kayastha Conference in 1891: Carroll,
'Caste, Community', p. 8.
uneasy oscillations between aggressive assertions of hierarchy and
projects of limited and integrative reforms and co-options.
An imagination of Hindu unity through the superficial camouflag-
ing of deeper tensions was made further possible by giving shape to
differences with Muslims. Here gender again became a critical marker.
Prominent members of the Arya Samaj, who controlled many of the
important publishing houses as well as the newspapers being pub-
lished from UP in the early twentieth century, carried a massive cam-
paign against Muslims and Islam in print, extensively using gendered
imagery.'13 The growth of cow-protection movements and the advo-
cacy of standardised Hindi in preference to Urdu are well known.
However, we will also see how gender icons, particularly of the
mother, gave a special emotive appeal to these movements. Propa-
ganda campaigns against 'abductions' and conversions of Hindu
women by Muslim men, which were often imagined, and control over
women's reproductive capacities to enhance Hindu n ~ m b e r s , "all
~
provided further occasions for abstract unities and militant Hindu
articulations. Hindu campaigners urged Hindu women to break away
from 'everything' Muslim in the process ofattacking Muslim jobs and
their cultural idioms. This perhaps also gave them scope to negotiate
women's increasing participation to their advantage, as agents ofviol-
ence against Muslims. It was another way of ensuring old and conti-
nuing control.
Gender symbols and women's roles could draw from and appeal
to orthodox, traditionalist and reformist Hindus, and to the upper
and lower castes. From their different angles, they all looked at the
past as an age of glory and blamed the present for their declining
status. Women could prove a means to rework that imagined past and
assert a civilised national identity in the present. Women thus pro-
vided one of the glues-as well as a source of tension-for claims of
wider Hindu unity,'15 and in promoting an internal solidarity in
' I 3 For the escalation of Hindu comn~unalisn~ in the 1920s and the use of
print, see Chapter 6. For the growth of Hindi publications and the printing press
in UP, see Chapter 2.
Bais, Baic, pp. 81-2.
] I 5 Sukhnandan Prasad Dube, Chuachut ka Bhut (Lucknow, 1933, 4000
copies).
28 1 Sexualig, Obscenity, Community
heterogeneous urban surroundings. The control over social, religious,
material and public arenas of Hindu women provided a link between
the Hindu service communities (particularly Kayasthas and Khatris)
who were strong in the Arya Samaj; the ubiquitous communities of
local Brahmins and merchants (especially Marwaris) who tended to
a more orthodox form of revivalism; various intermediate and Shudra
caste associations and organisations (principallyAhirs, Kurmis, Gujars
and Khatiks) who were engaged in assertions of a higher Kshatriya
status for themselves, and even some untouchable castes (like Chamars)
who were simultaneously declaring separate identities from upper-
caste Hindus. From varying perceptions and dynamics, they could all
come together on the issue of their women. Seen from these different
perspectives, thus, women were crucial in forging a modern Hindu
identity and replenishing patriarchy.
Nevertheless, the collective religious identities and patriarchies
thus constructed were unstable. For example, the very pursuit of res-
pectability was a source of tension. Inter-caste marriages became a
thorny issue of contest. Some middle-class women found modified
or fresh avenues for everyday enjoyment even amidst the new regu-
lations on their behaviour, thereby qualifying patriarchal control. A
few women-lower castes, widows and prostitutes-in their con-
fined ways refused to be 'civilised' and upended conformity through
conversions, elopements, love or sexual pleasure.
T o examine these in detail, I later explore the moral panic that grip-
ped an aspiring section of Hindi writers, who attacked sexually ex-
plicit and 'obscene' representations of women in Hindi literature,
thus leading to a new literary canon. I also reflect upon the mass-
produced popular literature of the period which is unconcerned with
the emerging norms of chastity and dilutes standardisation. There
were concurrent debates around advertisements, and I look ar these
to examine anxieties about male sexuality. From this I extend into
debates on obscenity among the Hindu middle class and caste reform-
ers, whereby women's popular cultural practices were brought under
increasing scrutiny. Prostitutes were condemned for their visibility in
the cities; they were a disgrace to respectability. The idea is to show
 Introduction 1 29
how reconstituted conservative sexual moralities ensured respectabil-
ity and a civilised national identity for the Hindus.
The regulation of the sexuality of Hindu women within domes-
ticity, marriage, law, education and health is another area ofmy focus.
Hindu patriarchy was refurbished with new qualities at this time,
reforming the social and domestic arena of women while regulating
their sexuality. And yet, as we shall see, women found devices for
negotiation and assertion within these fields. Then there is the icon
of the mother, which breaks into a multiplicity ofnarratives of nation,
language and cow, these then being used as a source of nostalgia and
of political mobilisation in Hindu nationalist rhetoric.
The relationship between gender and Hindu communalism is
another large subject. Woman became a marker to shape differences
with Muslims, specifically in the 1920s and '30s, amidst the back-
ground of shuddhi and sangathan movements. I look at how Hindu
publicists broadcast a series of stereotypes and repetitive motifs
through a flurry of newspapers and pamphlet writings. Their signifi-
cance lay in the way they were able to compound and conflate images
of Hindutnasculinity, alleged abductions of Hindu women by lustful
Muslim men, and victimised and heroic Hindu women. I try to assess
how Hindu publicists were deeply troubled by fantasies about pos-
sible relations between Hindu women and Muslim men, reflected in
various campaigns attempting to draw sharper cleavages between
them. It was reflected also in attacks on shared culture, in the shifting
debates on widow remarriage, this being strengthened by increasing
anxieties over supposedly declining Hindu numbers. Finally, I look
at fears of elopement and the conversions of some Hindu women,
particularly widows, low-caste women and prostitutes. These pro-
vided a common reference point for all Hindus, including the lower
castes, leading to a sharper polarisation between communities.
Women were not only to be protected but also discipiined. This
book thus shows how the coercive and s~mbolicregulation ofwomen
ensured Hindu patriarchy and an empowering community identity
in colonial UP. It shows also that the production of such a regulative
order was diluted from within, making it somewhat fluid in practice.
I n the early twentieth century a moral panic of sorts gripped a
section of the British and Hindu middle classes, creating anxieties
regarding questions ofsexuality.' Hindi literature and advertisements
make this panic apparent. The creation of a 'civilised' and 'appropri-
ate' literature paves the way for a new kind of aesthetics, and for the
fashioning of a modern collective Hindu identity. At the same time,
the attempts to cleanse literature of all its perceived obscenities face
a serious challenge from more commercial forms of print litera-
ture. T h e sale of erotic, 'obscene' and semi-pornographic works, and
the publication of advertisements for aphrodisiacs, indicate an in-
creasingly popular demand which feed into female and male sexual
fantasies and desires. Such works reveal literary pluralities, and the
complex and contested terrain that was Hindi literature.
The first obscenity laws appeared in India in the late nineteenth
century. Sections 292, 293 and 294 of the Indian Penal Code were
explicitly designed for the prevention of any form of obscenity. They
were defined to include any visual or written material that was 'lasci-
vious or appealed to the prurient interest' or which had the 'effect of
It has been argued that in particular historical moments, widespread social
fears and anxieties may result in 'moral panics' around sexuality, especially among
the middle classes. See Stanley Cohen, Folk DevilsandMoralPanics: The Creation
of the M o d and Rockers (London, 1972), p. 9; Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and
Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since I800 (London, 1981), pp. 14, 92.
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 3 1
depraving or corrupting persons exposed to it'.2 Section 194 of the
Sea Customs Act and Section 3 of the Dramatic Performances Act
also made provisions against various forms ofobscenity. Further, Sec-
tion 20 of the Post Office Act, 1898, forbade the transmission of any
obscene article through the postal nenvork. At the international level,
British India signed an agreement for the suppression of obscene
publications in Paris on 4 May 1910.3 An international conference
in Geneva in 1923 resulted in the Obscene Publications Act, 1925,
in India.4 However, in spite of various rules, regulations and agree-
ments, the term obscenity has remained vague. It has often been used
to attack not only pornography, as it is often defined today, but also
in nineteenth-century England to outlaw publications on birth con-
trol. In colonial India, too, there was no clear definition of the term;
it could encompass a variety of meanings in common usage and de-
bates. Distinctions were often blurred, and extremelydivergent material
could be classified as obscene or indecent.
The case of the eighteenth-century Telugu poet and courtesan
Muddupalani, whose erotic epic Radhika Santwanam was repub-
lished in 19 11, has been highlighted. This classic work placed the
sensuality of Radha at its centre. The British soon banned this edition
on charges of obscenity, and a long controversy f ~ l l o w e dTharu
.~ and
Lalita emphasise the role played by the British, but the first vehement
criticism of the text came in 1887 from the Telegu social reformist,

The test was based on the famous English case of R.V. Hicklin, decided in
1868. The English authorities stated that the test of obscenity is 'whether the
tendency of the matter is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open
to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may
fall.' There was an intense debate among British officials from the 1870s on how
to interpret Section 292-what it covered and what was left out. For details see
229-32lJanuary 1890, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI); 457-8310ctober 1890,
Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
193-2041April 1913, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
57011323, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI); S.H.S. Gour, The PenalLaw ofIndia,
Vol. II (Delhi, 1980, 9th edn), p. 1996.
Susie Tharu and K. Lalita (eds), Women Writing in India: 600 BC to
the Present, Vol. I: 600 BC to the Early Twentieth Century (Delhi, 1391),
pp. 1-12, 1 1 6 2 0 .
32 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Kandukuri Veershalingam, who denounced the work for its crude
depictions o f s e ~Such
. ~ indigenous concern was not just a borrowing
of Victorian morality; indeed, British sensibilities were often shaped
by indigenous perceptions.' Second, Tharu and Lalita speculate that
'it is possible that the work became so controversial . . . principally
because it was written by a w ~ m a n ' However,
.~ charges of obscenity
cut across gender lines; many works which were to become equally
controversial were written by men, signifying that it was perhaps the
issue of obscenity that was central.
Any discussion on obscenity is closely linked with the debate on
elite and popular literature. Some scholars argue that in India new
elite literary sensibilities marginalised popular traditions, and that
print displaced performance. Standardised and sanitised literary norms
became a marker of modern national identity and culture for the edu-
cated middle clas~es.~ However, the strong continuity benveen the age
of the manuscript and that ofprint has been emphasised. Printed texts
could be transmitted in varied idioms--educational, oral and per-
formative; read and staged-ach offering different meanings.10 In
Ibid., pp. 2-3. Also see Manager Pandey, 'Ashlilta ke Bahane Nari ke Prashn
par Vichar', Hans (November-December 1994), p. 27.
' Eugene F. Irshick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-
1895 (Berkeley, 1994).
Tharu and Lalita, Women, p. 118.
Svati Joshi (ed.), Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, Histoy
(New Delhi, 1992); Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and
Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calrutta (Calcutta, 1989); idem, 'Margin-
alisation of Women's Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal', in
Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial
History (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 127-79; idem, 'Bogey of the Bawdy: Changing
Concept of “Obscenity" in Nineteenth Century Bengali Culture', E P K 22, 29
(18 July 1987), pp. 1197-1206; Tapati Roy, 'Disciplining the Printed Text:
Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance of Bengali Literature', in Partha Chatterjee
(ed.), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis,
19951, pp. 30-62.
l o Roger Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in
Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 1-
5; idem, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans. Lydia G.
Cochrane (Cambridge, 1988); idem, 'Publishing Drama in Early Modern
Europe', The Panizzi Lectures 1998, British Library (8-10 December 1998).
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 33
pre-revolutionary France the canon of great Enlightenment philoso-
phers like Voltaire and Rousseau was read only by a limited public.
T h e bestsellers of the time were-the forbidden, salacious and porno-
graphic books, sold clandestinely. "
In UP, print stimulated new expressions of vernacular literature.
Not only did oral-performative traditions, scribal cultures and spok-
en languages continue to hold sway, but also genres like nautankis and
sangits, qissas and kahanis. Languages like Braj and Avadhi adapted
themselves to the new commercial forms. Print gave them a wider dif-
fusion. It was an arena where printed, oral and visual media crisscros-
sed, leaving their imprint on each other.
A complementary line of analysis has drawn sharp distinctions
between high and low literature, between small popular presses and
writers, and big elite ones.12 The Hindu literati attempted to disci-
pline writing, but reading practices and the market led them to
borrow some popular elements in their work. It has been argued that
in early modern Europe the upper classes did not wholly withdraw
from common culture.13 Similarly, popular literature selectively ap-
propriated certain values of elite literature. It has also been suggested
that popular sex literature could sometimes be a medium through
which the dominant culture, under the guise of breaking taboos, actu-
ally reinforced them.14
There is a tendency to view popular culture uncritically as heal-
thy, sensual and subversive.I5 O n the other hand, it has also been
seen as a 'pornographic continuum' and 'violent titillation', a 'bom-
bardment' and 'infiltration', aiding rightwing men to assert their

" Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

(London, 1996).
l 2 Anindita Ghosh, 'Cheap Books, "Bad" Books: Contesting Print-Cultures
in Colonial Bengal', SAR 18, 2 (1998), pp. 173-94, draws a more sophisticated
analysis, but she too succumbs at times to mliking a sharp distinction between
respectable and popular presses.
l 3 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe (London, 1978).
l 4 Meryl Attman, 'Everything They Always Wanted You to Know: T h e Ideo-
logy of Popular Sex Literature', in Carole S. Vance (ed.), P h u r e and Danger:
Exploring Female Sexuality (London, 1984), pp. 115-30.
l 5 Banerjee, Parlour.
34 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
m a s c ~ l i n i t ~Such
. ' ~ 'all or nothing' readings deny contradictory
meanings, as popular culture and literature are by themselves neither
reactionary nor liberating. They do not simply reflect or create par-
ticular values. However, in specific historical moments, even when
falling under the dominance of patriarchy and male hegemony, they
can offer a variety of interpretations. In colonial UP too, popular
licentious literature helped at times in reconstitutingand delegitimating
conventional values. At the same time, the high Hindi literary canon
was itself not homogeneous.
Colonial perceptions of obscenity need to be understood, as d o
similar ideas within the literati. Commercially popular literature, spe-
cially 'dirty' books, are a fruitful source, as are notions ofbrahmacharya
and printed advertisements for aphrodisiacs. Questions of sexuality,
and how these too changed the moral contours of the period, are
better understood by a close look at this body of writing.

I. Colonial Perceptions of Obscenity

British perceptions of obscenity in India had complex origins. A
section of Orientalists had certain notions of romanticism and harped
on the myth of the golden age of the ancient IndianIHindu civilisation,
which was then usually portrayed as a victim of the coming of the
mu slim^.^' The Hindu past was often only selectively appreciated. A
higher place was accorded to the philosophical abstractions of Hindu
religion. However, its other aspects-such as erotic temple carvings,
'indecent' sexual portrayals in texts, and emotional bhakti cults-
were either ignored or understood as 'lower' and 'popular' forms of
religion which appealed to the magical and sensual mentality of the
common people.
Horace Hayman Wilson, the successor of Sir William Jones,
was girnly proper. H e shrank from all that was physical. He did not
l 6 Rustom Bharucha, In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary CulruralAcriv-
ism in India (Delhi, 1998).
For details see Urna Chakravarti, 'Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?:
Orienralisrn, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past', in Sangari and Vaid (eds),
Recasting, pp. 27-87.
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 35
expressly condemn the erotic element; he disregarded it. H e studied
all the Puranas but he curtly disapproved of those in which Indian
attitudes towards love and sex were boldly proclaimed: 'The great
mass of it is taken up with tiresome descriptions of Vrindavan and
Gokula, the dwellings of Krishna . . . and the love of the gopis and
of Radha towards him."'
Wilson published his views in 1840. Wilson and Griffith, in their
translation of the Rg Veda, revealed similar puritanical predilections.
In 1875 Sir Edwin Arnold translated Jayadeva's poems in Git Govind,
but the last canto was too much even for him and, 'in order to comply
with the canons of western propriety', he left it out.19
There were other reasons for disapproval towards certain sensual
elements in Indian sculpture, literature and art by some British offi-
cials. The apparent lack of 'scientific knowledge', 'reason' and 'de-
cency', with its emphasis on voluptuous detail, was d i s t a ~ t e f u lAs
.~~
late as 1933 Roger Fry objected to the intrusion of erotic represent-
ation into the aesthetic form in Indian art. It was 'primitive' on aes-
thetic grounds, discrepant with the ideas of post-Renaissance Europe:
T h e general aspect ofalmost all Indian works of art is intensely and acutely
distasteful to me. . . . T h e sensuality of the Indian artist is exceedingly
erotic-the leitmotiv of much of their sculpture is taken from the more
relaxed and abandoned poses of the female figure. A great deal of their
art, even their religious art, is definitely pornographic and although I have
no moral prejudices against that form ofexpression, it generally interferes
with aesthetic considerations by interposing a strong irrelevant interest
which tends to distract both the artist and the spectator from the essential
purposes of art."

Fry, as we now know, was gay, and in any case colonial perceptions
were not homogeneous. Woodroffe for example drew favourable

Is Quoted in Archer Papers, Mss. Eur. F. 2361107 (IOL).

'' Ibid.
20 Professor Westmacott wrote in 1864, 'There is no temptation to dwell at
length at the sculptor of Hindustan. . . [They] usually consist of monstrous
combinations of human and brute forms, repulsive from their ugliness and
outrageous defiance of rule and even possibility': Quoted in Archer Papers.
2' Ibid.
36 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
attention to what had been thought depraved-tantric practices and
beliefs. Have1 and George Birdwood admired Indian crafts. However,
these are only indirectly relevant here as they did not explicitly inter-
vene in subjects thought to be obscene.
In much of the missionary, ethnographic, recruitment and official
policy discourse Indian traditions and practices were denigrated as
barbaric, involving women in important ways.22Such writings then
went on to see Western knowledge as an enabling and civilisiq
agency for the improvement of natives. In UP, for example, a number
of tracts published by the North Indian Christian Tract and Book
Society, Allahabad, disapproved of many Hindu customs for their
obscenity. One such tract stated:
W e all know the kinds of evils and indecency prevalent during Holi.
However, ifthe Government puts a stop to these bad things, it is regarded
as an interference. . . . There are a large
- number of Hindu temples which
have such obscene portrayals that anyone seeing them would feel impure
and still people say that to go to such temples is a matter of religion. . . .
When Krishna committed all indecent things with gopis, was he not

William Crooke had an interesting note while talking of the marriage

songs of northern India: 'The Indian woman's bodice is in reality no
covering at all. It rudely shelters the breasts and leaves the stomach
exposed. But chiefly on account of its indecency it has been the sub-
ject of many praises in the compositions of authors and poets, who
only think of love in its meanest form."*
The weakness and depravity of Hindu women and their visibly low
status in contemporary Indian society were emphasised by many
22 Especially see James Mill, The History ofBritish India, Vol. I, with notes and
continuation by H. H. Wilson (London, 1858, 5th edn), pp. 310-15.
23 North Indian Christian Tract and Book Sociery, Hindu Dharma ke Phal
(Allahabad, 1905,2nd edn) pp. 26-7. Also see North Indian Christian Tract and
Book Society, Hinduon kiNirdhanra (Allahabad, 1909);A.C. Clayton, Preachers
in Print: An Outline of the Work of the Christian Literature Societyfor India (Lon-
don, 1911).
24 William Crooke, 'Marriage Songs in Northern India', Indian Antiquary, 55
(1926), p. 83 fn.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 37
observers. Sexual obsession was seen as one of the ~roblems.The
secluded zenana woman typified India's moral degeneracy. Not only
did she live a life of idleness in closed and unhealthy rooms, her entire
existence was seen as suffused with sensuality. The sexuality of the
Indian woman was in sharp contrast to that of the English woman
who, veiled in modesty, remained vigorous but delicate, active but
demure.25As one writer stated: 'The opinion is firmly established
throughout the whole of India, that women were only created for the
propagation of the species, and to satisfy men's desires. . . . Experi-
ence has taught that young Hindu women do not possess sufficient
firmness, and sufficient regard for their own honour, to resist the ar-
dent solicitations ofa seducer.'26From a different perspective, Katherine
Mayo attacked the excessive obscenity of many Indian religious
practices and attributed many of the country's problems to child
mothers rearing sickly idle sons in the midst of sexual obsession.
Obscenity and backwardness took on a more serious connotation
with notions of decadence and the lascivious lifestyle of medieval
Muslim rulers,27with attacks on 'degeneration' in religious practices
and literary forms in the medieval period. Several separate observa-
tions were often conflated to present an impression of pervasive obs-
cenity, particularly in medieval literature and culture. Vincent A.
Smith observed:
O n e of the best and most instructive of the old travellers was Monsieur
Jean de Thevenot, who visited India in 1GGG and 1667. . . . Writers on
Indian art have not yet noticed, as far as I am aware, his criticism of the
Agra and Delhi paintings, which I transcribe as being of considerable
interest: '. . . since those ofAgra are for the most part indecent, and repre-
sent lascivious postures, worse that those of Aretin, there are but few civil
Europeans who will buy them'. . . . When I examined hundreds of speci-
mens of Mughal and Indo-Mughal art three years ago, I found only
f o u r . . . which could be reproached for indecency. T h e wholesale accu-
sation of indecency brought against the artists of Agra, no doubt quite

25 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 107-9.

''Abbe J.A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, trans. Henry
K. Beauchamp (Oxford, 1906, 3rd edn), p. 207.
27 For details, see Chapter 6.
38 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
justified, has been a surprise to me. T h e explanation ofthe absence ofsuch
objectionable works from the London collections, must be . . . that 'civil',
or decent Europeans seldom bought the indecent paintings. . . .T h e lasci-
viousness of that school may be ascribed reasonably to the evil example
set by Shahjahan.28

It has been remarked that poetry was quite often singled out as a
source of the moral deficiency of Indians.*' Even writers like F.E.
Keay, who were otherwise full of praise for Hindi literature, could not
resist stating this about (especially) late medieval poetry: 'That litera-
ture of this kind has, however, a very dangerous tendency has too
often been shown. . . . Another thing to be noticed in Hindi poetry
is the limitation of the range of its subject matter. . . . There is indeed
a good deal of erotic poetry of a very unhealthy type.'30
The position of women was shown to have become degraded be-
cause of certain practices. In her monograph on the glorification of
Hindu women in ancient India, inspired by Max Miiller, Clarisse
Bader too associated the supposed decadence of Indian women with
the spread of eroticism, and with the growth of the sensuous Vaishnav
and Krishna cults. She argued that India was further corrupted by the
influence of Islam. Moral degradation was a direct result of the re-
placement of duty by passion.3'
Many Britons had clear notions of propriety and respectability.
Observations from different perspectives counterposed concepts of
'state' and 'civil society' to notions of vulgarity in aspects of Indian
religion, culture and literature, especially in medieval times. They re-
vealed an interest in demarcating what was obscene and what was
permissible in present-day civic order, showing not only their concern
with Victorian notions of sexual morality and chastity but also aes-
thetic tastes and anxieties over public health and decency.
28 Vincent A. Smith, 'Painting and Engraving in Agra and Delhi in 166G',
Indian Antiqualy, 43 (1914), p. 124. Smith refers to the same in his book, A
History ofFine Art in India and Ceylon: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
(Oxford, 191 I), p. 336.
29 Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conqu~st:Literary Study and British Rub in
India (New York, 1989), pp. 82-3.
30 F.E. Keay, A Hiscory ofHindi Literature (London, 1920), pp. 79-80, 102.
3 1 Quoted in Chakravarti, 'Whatever', pp. 44-6.
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 39

11. 'Obscenities' in Hindi Literature

There were parallel trends within contemporary indigenous assess-
ments, though for different reasons. The Hindi literary sphere not
only contested and selectively appropriated some of these observa-
tions, it also influenced and left its impact on colonial perceptions.

IZ. 1. The Indigenous Elite and Literary Concerns

A vocal and influential section of the Hindu middle-class literati of
UP was trying to fashion a new collective identity for itself, especially
from the late nineteenth century. The period saw a rapid development
ofpublic institutions, libraries, and print culture, with growing num-
bers of ~ u b l i s h i houses,
n~ presses, newspapers and books.32Saraswati,
a Hindi magazine, started from Allahabad in 1900, and its editor,
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, was to become extremely influential over
the next twenty years, adopting the role of educators of the Hindi
literati.33Educational institutions like the Kashi Vidyapeeth, Banaras
Hindu University (BHU) and Allahabad University argued for the
standardisation of syllabi and textbooks in schools and colleges.
Kamta Prasad Guru (1875-1947) wrote the first authoritative Hindi
grammar.34 Ramchandra Shukl, Professor of Hindi at BHU, com-
posed his landmark Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas in 1929. It was to become
a reference point for future generation^.^^ Literacy acquired new
meanings as it was linked more and more to employment in offices,
schools and print media. Various other magazines, journals and news-
papers like Chand and Abhyudaya became the means of journalistic,
32 C.A. Bayly, Empire andlnformation: Intelligence GatheringandSocial Com-
munication in India, 178&1870 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 338; idem, Rulprs,
Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Sociep in the Age of British Expansion,
1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 427-30.
33 Krishna Kumar, 'Quest for Self-Identity: Cultural Consciousness and
Education in the Hindi Region, 1880-19501, E P K 25, 23 (9 June 1990),
pp. 1247-55.
34 Nandi Bhatia, 'Twentieth Century Hindi Literature', in Nalini Natarajan
(ed.), Handbook of Twentieth Century Literatures of India (Westport, 1996),
pp. 137-8.
35 Kumar, 'Quest'.
40 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
literary and linguistic expression for assertions of self-identity by a
confident Hindu middle class, and for a growing Hindi public sphere
in the early twentieth century. Prose took over from poetry. Literary
creation became a more widespread activity and the impact of the
printed word extended beyond the literate level. The attempt made
by the Arya Samaj to use Hindi to develop the self-perception of a
Hindu community among urban educated groups made a significant
contribution to the association of Hindi with Hindu. These processes
aided the demarcation of the Hindi literary and linguistic canon in
syllabi, schoolbooks and university departments.
This important strand of Hindi literature was strategically tied to
the nation, and to the assertion of civilisation and pride. Endeavours
at linguistic standardisation were combined with attacks on any hint
of eroticism and obscenity in literature, these being seen as hallmarks
of a decadent, feminine and uncivilised culture. There was a growing
fear of romance, of sexual and bodily pleasure: these were seen as a
transgression of the ideals of the nation. The assertion of a nationalist
Hindu identity became associated with the formation of shared no-
tions of morality and respectability. In the process, tradition was
redefined to work out a new modernity.36 There was a deliberate
distancing from the 'uncomfortable' traditions of the past, and an at-
tempt was made to establish a monolithic, high textual cultural norm.
In this quest for a new and 'proper' Hindi literature, embodying new
aesthetic values, the image ofwomen in late medieval literature, par-
ticularly, was declared unfit for ~ u b l i cconsumption. In a large part
ofcanonised high Hindi literature, there was agradual shift in empha-
sis from the erotic and sexually active nayika and Radha of medieval
poetry to the chaste and virtuous Hindu wife and mother. This shift
from the sensual to the virtuous radically altered gender imagery, and
the woman was gradually transformed from a figure oferoticism, sex-
uality, excess and playfulness to a classic, calm and perfect figure in

36 This was visible in other regions as well. See Pragati Mohapatra, 'The Mak-
ing of a Cultural Identity: Language, Literature and Gender in Orissa in late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', unpublished PhD thesis (SOAS,
University of London, 1997).
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 4 1
most of 'high' literature. The assertion of a moral code in a canon of
literature became a national virtue.
For more than 300 years, from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth
century, Braj was a dominant vehicle for vernacular Hindi poetry.37
Most of this period is commonly known as Riti Kal,38 when pious
devotional poetry gradually gave way to riti verses. The deliciousness
of good riti poetry rested largely on the ambiguity of reference in-
herent in traditional poetic situations and characters. There had been
long-established conventions of shringar as embracing devotional
contexts within the Sanskrit tradition. Jayadeva's Git ~ o v i n dcom-
,
posed in the twelfth century, is one example of open eroticism and
intense passion, celebrating thelove between t ad ha and Krishna, and
expressing the complexities of divine and human love.39During Riti
Kal, this tradition was enhanced and shringar ras and nayak-nayika
bhed became the hallmarks of poetry. Radha here stands as a potent
symbol of every woman in love and is neither mother nor wife. The
sexuality of Radha and the nayika generally cannot be contained
within any rigid bounds of conventional propriety. She is mostly
described as parakiya and her unconventional love is privileged over
that of svakiya. There is an accumulation of sensual and voluptuous
37 For a basic study of Braj Bhasha see Rupert Snell, The Hindi Classical
Tradition: A Braj Bhasa Reader (London, 1991), pp. 29-36.
38 Some outstanding riti poets are Biharilal, Kesavdas, Matiram and Devdatta.
Biharilal (161747) was born in Gwalior, married and settled in Mathura and
was later attached to Mirza Raja Jaisingh ofArner. His Satsai (collection of ver-
ses) is full of eroticism and wit. Kesavdas (1555-1617) was born in a literary
family of Sanadhya Brahmins of Tehri Garhwal. H e was later attached to the
court ofOrchha and his best work is Rasikpriya. Matiram Tripathi was born near
Kanpur in 1616. Devdatta was born in a village of UP in 1673. His Prem
Chandrika is regarded as the last word on the treatment of love and an in-depth
study of the psychology of women. See Jagadish Gupta, Ritikalyn Sangraha
(Allahabad, 1961); K.P. Bahadur (trans.), TheRasikapriyaofKejhavadasa (Delhi,
1972); K.P. Bahadur (trans.), The Satsai of Biharilal (Delhi, 1990); Lala Bhag-
wandin, Bihari Bodhini (Kashi, 1925); Madan Gopal, Origins and Development
of Hindi/Urdu Literature (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 79-84.
39 Barbara S. Miller (ed.), Lovesongofthe Dark Lord: Jayadeva> Gitagovinda
(New York, 1977).
42 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
detail in this poetry. Radha and Krishna are often engaged in a dar-
ingly adulterous and incestuous relationship. It is even argued that
the gopis of Krishna were largely low caste, rural ad~lteresses.~~Such
poetry was influenced by Vaishnavism, but also followed certain
rhetorical and stylistic models which allowed the liberal use of Perso-
Arabic words and even folk elements, signifying a somewhat syncretic
culture composed of residual Vaishnav mysticism and the Muslim
Sufi ethos which combine to form a medieval high art tradition. This
poetry is a vast collection, but here I give two examples:
Wearied after climbing her breast-mountains, my glance went on, desir-
ing her mouth;
but couldn't move again, just lay there fallen into the cleft of her chins4'
And:
T h e embodiment of beauty,
young, intelligent,
graceful, lovely, brilliant-
thus is the nayika described by all.42
The nayika emerged as an allegorical motif. Laden with poetic meta-
phors, she remained the central aesthetic category of this literature.

Rakesh Gupta, 'The Nayaka-Nayika Bheda Sahitya of Hindi', Hindi

Review, 1, 9 (October 1956), 1, 12 Uanuary 1957) and 2, 3 (April 1957),
pp. 14-19, 20-5 and 102-9 respectively; idem, Scudies in Nayaka-Nayika-Bheda
(Aligarh, 1967); Usha Puri, Braj Bhasha fivya Mein Radha (Delhi, 1990);
Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya, History ofIndian Erotic Literature (New Delhi,
1975); A.W. Entwistle, Braj: Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage (Groningen, 1987),
pp. 48-97; Richard Barz, The Bhakti Sect of Valhbhacarya (Faizabad, 1976),
pp. 97-100; Sudhir Kakar, 'Erotic Fantasy: The Secret Passion of Radha and
Krishna', in Veena Das (ed.), The Word and the World: Fantasy, Symbol and
Record (Delhi, 1986), pp. 75-94; John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wuff (eds),
The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India (Berkeley, 1982); John S.
Hawley, 'Images of Gender in the Poetry of Krishna', in Caroline Walker
Bynum, Stevan Harrell and Paula Richman (eds), Gender and Religion: On the
Compkxity of Symbols (Boston, 1995), pp. 231-56.
Taken from Snell, Hindi, p. 135, verse from Biharilal's Satsai.
42 Taken from Karine Schomer, 'Where Have All the Radhas Gone? New
Images ofwornan in Modern Hindi Poetry', in Hawley and Wuff (eds), Divine,
p. 92.
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 43
The reception and critical treatment of sensuous themes in Hindi
literature has a long and varied history. However, from the late nine-
teenth century, in the wake of reformist puritanismaand the increasing
availability of such literature through print, the attack on sensual
poetry became more systematic and pervasive. The general image of
the period immediately preceding British rule was of chaos and
courtly decadence. Riti Kal was seen by most contemporary Hindi
writers as symbolic of that decay. Yuthika, a collection of essays ap-
proved for the BA examination of the BHU, connected the debauch-
ery and luxury of Muslim rule and its long-lasting aftermath to the
growth of such poetry.43Most Hindi writers drew a straight line be-
tween the degenerate state of women and the sensuous poetry of late
medieval times. Ramchandra Shukl linked the construction of such
poetry to a decline in Hindu masculinity and power.44 If the Hindu
nation had to invoke its masculine power, poetry charged with sexual
pleasure was the greatest deviation and threat. Thus, for Hindu male
prowess to assert itself, it was perceived as necessary to attack shrin-
gar ras. This also explains why Bhushan, the famous poet of this
period, who mainly wrote poems in vir ras highlighting the bravery
and chivalry of Rajputs and Marathas, was e ~ l o ~ i s eThe d . ~Hindi
~
Sahitya Sammelan, in fact, compiled a Bhushan Grantb~zvali.~~ Bhu-
shan's poem 'Shivraj Bhushan', written in praise of Shivaji, was the
most celebrated.
The most serious charge against shringar ras poetry, however, was
of obscenity, centring on the woman's body, made by an influential
section of Hindi writers. The process began in the late nineteenth
century with Bharatendu Harishchandra, though he could not en-
tirely rid himself from writing such compositions, showing the strong
influence of this literary t r a d i t i ~ n . ~However,
' slowly, not only such
4"am Bahori Shukl, 'Dwivedi Yug ki Kavita ki Pragati', in Ram Bahori Shukl
(ed.), Yuthika (Kanpur, 1936), pp. 101-2.
44 Ramchandra Shukl, HindiSahitya ka Itihas (Kashi, 1952, 8th edn), pp. 60,
240- 1.
45 Shukl, Hindi, 254-8.
46 Bhushan Grnnthavali, ed. Ram Naresh Tripathi (Allahabad, 1918).
47 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harischandra nnd Nineteenth-century Banaras (Delhi, 1997), p. 247.
44 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
poetry but even its language, Braj, came to be rejected for its rhetorical
and stylistic models. Poetry was to be cleansed of all Persian, Arabic
and Urdu words.48
At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the coming of the
Dwivedi period ofHindi literature, the revolt against Riti Kal became
sharper and systematic.49Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi placed the Riti Kal
poets, Dev, Bihari and Matiram, not only below Tulsi and Sur but
also below BharatenduesoRegarding nayika bhed, he wrote:
Similar to Hindi, languages like Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati have em-
erged from Sanskrit, but nowhere does the nayika dominate as much as
in Hindi . . . Let us see what is written in these books: examples of dirty
deeds of parakiya and prostitutes! Sinful conduct of unmarried girls!!
Meaningless babble of shameless and lewd women, who corrupt the
minds of men!!! . . . Somewhere some nayika is running in the dark on
the banks of the Yamuna, somewhere she is waiting in the moonlight for
her beloved . . . Can there be any greater power to destroy the moral con-
duct of our people? . . . I plead for an immediate stop to the composition
of such works and the proscription of those already existings1
Along with the sensuality, the objection here was to irregularity in
behaviour. One ofthe most famous poets of this period, Maithilisharan
Gupt, who has been labelled the 'Rashtra Kavi' (Nation's Poet), lam-
ented in his leading work Bharat Bharati, first published in 1912:
The literature of our community was filled with noble precepts,
but now we are just filled with lust and desire.
Shastrm, Ramayan and Mahabharat have been replaced by nayika
bhed . . .
Obscene literature is causing great harm to our character. . .
- -

Shringar ras has become the object of poetry. . .

T o excite lasciviousness is the only business of poets,
even vir ras has changed into the battle of coition . .
Blessed be such poets, blessed be their
See Chapter 5.
49 Ramvilas Sharma, Mahauir Prasad Dwiuedi aur Hindi Naujagran (New
Delhi, 1977), pp. 273-7.
Harprakash Gaur, Saratwati aur Rarhtriya Jagran (New Delhi, 1983).
5 ' Mahauir Prasad Dwiuedi Rachnauali, Vol. 2, ed. and comp. Bharat Yayavar
(New Delhi, 1995), pp. 55-8.
52 Maithilisharan Gupt, Bharar Bharari Uhansi, 1937, 14th edn), pp. 120-1.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics i n Print / 45
H e goes on to give a clarion call:
Till when will you poets continue with hackneyed repetitions.
O h , do not sacrifice yourself while alive,
O n the hair, breasts and sidelong glances of women . . .
For long you have sung the tune of union and separation,
Now fill yourself with moral strength and endeavour.53
Pandit Badrinath Bhatt, later Professor of Hindi in Lucknow
University, wrote a comical play, Miss American, in which the central
character of Buharilal is caricatured as a poet who loves obscenity and
vulgarity. He is depicted as falling in love with a 'Miss American', the
epitome of the stereotypical Western woman. Links are drawn be-
tween Riti Kal and shringar ras on the one hand, and Western obs-
cenity and vulgarity on the other:
Buhari: These days our countrymen oppose all poems which have even
a slight hint of obscenity . . . I chink vulgarity is the life of poetry. . . .
Miss: You are absolutely correct . . . W e should definitely support shringar
ras...
Buhari: Even if I am unable to compose obscene verses myself, it gives
me great pleasure to recite those by earlier poets.
Miss: I cannot digest my food till I've seen some lewd pictures printed
in Paris, though the government is now tending to ban such things.
What a terrible move!
Buhari: You are indeed very romantic. These days our poets are even
criticising ancient painters and sculptors . . . I don't know how such
stupid poets have come into society . . . I challenge present-day Hindi
poets: they are not able to recognise l i t e r a r ~ r e . ~ ~
The play obviously ends with disastrous consequences for Buhari; he
is deprived of his wealth and self-respect. The play's sarcastic tone,
with Buhari equated almost to eunuchs, speaks volumes for the way
eroticism came to be viewed.55
Other established Hindi poets similarly attacked this literat~re.'~
53 Gupt, Bharat, pp. 170-1.
54 Badrinarh Bhatt, Miss Arntrican (Prayag, h 2 9 ) , pp. 44-50.
55 It may not be incidental that the character is named Buhari, reminding one
of the famous Riti Kal poet Bihari.
56 Shukl, Hindi,p. 241. Shukl alleged that many a poet, in delineating the
erotic emotion, stooped to the limit of obsceniry; and in doing so they reflected
46 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Vivid descriptions of female amorous gestures were seen as transgres-
sions of decency, as evidence of the disintegration of family values,
as repugnant to the refined tastes of modern Hindus. Sumitranandan
Pant, an important poet ofthe Chayavad period, tookon the riti poets
with an impassioned statement:
What was there for them to do? Stimulated by desire, their infinite power
of imagination spread like Draupadi's veil and coiled itself around the
nayika's every limb . : . their vision rarefied and ever in search of ras, tra-
velled only from the toe to the head. . . . What an all-embracing sensi-
bility! What astute genius! T o be able to see the whole universe in a single
limb! . . . As a result, the image ofthe Indian woman-devoted, steadfast,
chaste-became transformed into a riot of gaudy, sensual reflections, and
caught up in this maze, we were unable to see our simple, modest Sari
of old.57

Gayaprasad Shukl Snehi admonished his audience thus: 'Seeing your

continuous attachment to the youthful mugdha and your deep inte-
rest, in the parakiya, mother Saraswati, the goddess of learning, sheds
tears incessantly'.58 At the same time, Chayavadi poetry created its
own sensuous heroine, who was often closely aligned to prakrti. Even
this poetry was censored by magazines like Saraswati.
It also appears that obscenity was redefined by many literary
writers specifically to control certain female sexual identities. The
debate on obscenity was largely a debate on sex for pleasure and
recreation versus sex for reproduction. In the discourse of the nation,
non-reproductive and hedonistic sexual behaviour came under ex-
traordinary pressure, resulting in the near exclusion of all non-repro-
ductive sexuality. Thus Kalidas's Kumarsambhav was considered
'legitimate' in spite of its detailed erotic descriptions because the

the taste of patron lungs, whose lives, according to him, were void of all heroism.
Shyamsundardas, Hindi Sahitya (Allahabad, 1944), p. 313. He also said that the
depiction of immoral love was done to satisQ the libidinous activities of lungs
in medieval times.
57 Sumitranandan Pant, Pallav(Allahabad, 1926),pp. 9-13. Translarion from
Schorner, 'Where', pp. 97-8.
58 Quoted in Shrikrshnalal, Adhunik Hindi Sahitya ka Vikac (Allahabad,
1942), p. 1 14.
 RedefZning Obscenity and Aesthetics i n Print / 47
activities ultimately lead to the birth of a male child. As soon as sexual
descriptions celebrate desire and eroticism for their own sake, they
become unacceptable and obscene. There were attempts to construct
a body of 'classics' representing a glorious Hindu ancient past, in
which Kalidas and even Kamsutra could be embraced. But sexual
representations of the 'degenerate' late medieval period were unac-
ceptable for modern-day Hindi literary writings.
What happened to the imagery of Radha in this? She disappeared
almost completely from normative, standardised poetry.59This was
reflected especially in text-book literature. Thus for example Ganga
Prasad, Headmaster of the DAV School in Allahabad, and Dhirendra
Verma, Lecturer in Hindi at Allahabad University, compiled a Selec-
tion ofHindi Poems for the use of high school students in 1928. The
book was divided into typical groups, such as narrative, pathetic,
lyric, reflective, descriptive and patriotic. Its aim was stated as being
clearly to realise the pure spirit of poetry; there was not a single poem
on love or the sexuality of Radha, and none of the Riti Kal poets were
included.60
There was an interesting composition on Radha in this period
which reflects the shifting imagery. Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya,
popularly known as Harioudh, composed his famous poem, Priya-
pravas, which recounts the familiar story of Krishna's departure to
Mathura. However, the differences within it from erotic traditions
are glaring. The love between Radha and Krishna is extremely res-
trained, bound by propriety. Radha is exhorted to overcome her
selfish desire for union with Krishna and, instead, morally and ethi-
In' his correspondence with George A. Grierson,
cally serve h ~ m a n i t y . ~
Harioudh wrote about Priyapravax 'Though it deals with the well-
known incidents in the life of Shri Krishna, and of Radha, which
have been . . . narrated by more than one author, this book presents
them in a quite different light. I read in them the lessons and examples
of a practical life; of high, pure and moral love; of a sense of duty
59Schomer, 'Where'.
60Ganga Prasad and Dhirendra Verma, Selecrioni ofHindi Poems (Allahabad,
1928).
Ayodhya Singh Upadyaya 'Harioudh', Priyapravas (Banaras, 1941).
48 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
unsurpassed; examples which we can put before us, nay before the
whole world, with advantage.'62
In such poetry Radha is transformed from being a figure of in-
comparable joy into an incomparable bore. From a predominantly
aesthetic category, the image of woman becomes a stiflingly moral
one. Sensuousness, passion and emotion give way to concerns with
social depravity, reform, chastity and morality. Prose and poetry ac-
quire a new purpose. The pathos of child marriage and widowhood,
a glorification of motherhood and service to the nation, become fre-
quent motifs under the considerable influence of the Arya Samaj.
Virtuous women, struggling to devote themselves to lord and hus-
band against all pressures, become the new carriers of the cultural
authenticity and integrity of the Hindu nation. Women become para-
digms of marital duty; marriage itself comes to be primarily a devo-
tional, hierarchical relationship.
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi highlighted this respectable, ideal woman:
she wears a sari, puts on a bindi, and decorates herself with flowers.
She goes to the temple, prays for her husband, is educated, goes to
sabhya meetings and, upon coming back, wins the heart of her hus-
band.63 Gupt waxed lyrical:
A y kanya man k t i svapn mein bhi patijise,
bhinn usse phir jagat mein aur bhaj sakti kise?
(If an Aryan woman recognises someone as her husband even in her
dreams, she cannot ever think of worshipping anyone but him.)OL

The woman was invested with new values, at once nationalist and
Hindu. The dominant image ofwomen as sexual beings was reversed
and transformed into an ideology of female 'passionlessness', thereby
framing an oppositional womanhood against colonial designations of
derelict sexuality. The recast chaste wife was an emblem of feminin-
ity, purity and sublimated sexuality-which colonial discourse had
6Z Letter by Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya to Grierson, 25 May 1915, Azamgarh,
Linguistic Survey of India Records c. 1900-c. 1930, S/1/5/7 (IOL).
63 Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi Rarhnavali, Vol. 13, pp. 248-9. Also see Sridhar
Pathak, Manovinod (Banaras, 1917), p p 25-9.
" Maithilisharan Gupt, Rang Mein Bhang (Jhansi, 1927, 9th edn), p. 22.
 Redefining Obscenily and Aesthetics in Print / 49
denied Hindu society. The taboos on her behaviour were aimed to
enclose and discipline all female bodies, to ensure a new social and
moral hierarchy of power, to integrate chastity with middle-class
identity. Sexual thus came to be regarded with extreme sus-
picion and modern Hindu cultural discourse, even from its diverse
angles, converges on the gender question: there is now a clear demar-
cation between the aesthetic and the obscene, the ennobling and for-
bidden. However, this was not all. The feminine ideal did not merely
involve restraint and the suppression of pleasure. Rather, respectable
womanhood in the literary canon was actively defined around a no-
tion of pleasure that encompassed notions of self-sacrifice, 'positive'
missions, and the wider good. Aesthetics became an exercise in ethics.

11.2. 'Dirty ' Literature: Contesting the Logic

of Morality?
However, the 'canon' of Hindi literature was not entirely clear-cut.
There was avariety of aspirations, motivations and contexts of literary
production. Just as the devotional rasik movement increased in popu-
larity despite the attacks by puritanical apologists,65 so too popular
tastes and reading practices resisted and reinterpreted the high Hindi

65 The rasik-oriented bhakti is a part of the Ramanandi order. Ramanand has

been seen as the first major saint of northern India. The followers of rasik tradi-
tion pursue the path of 'devotional aestheticism' and form the largest part of
Ayodhya's Ramanandis. They reinterpret the relationship between Ram and Sita
in erotic terms, and adopt the persona of a handmaid to Sita. T o this end, Ram's
most devoted servant Hanuman, normally the paragon of masculine strength,
is recast as the leading girlfriend. Male devotionaliscs dress as women during tem-
ple worship. Devotionalism cannot be viewed as a negation of mainstream
Hinduism: it owes as much to permeation by hierarchical values as to resistance
against them. At the same time, it does offer a counterpoint other than the one
assigned by many modern, political interpretations of Hinduism by the Hindu
Right. For further details, see Peter van der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management
ofReligious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre (London,
1988), pp. 159-72; Philip Lutgendorf, The Life ofa Text: Performing the 'Ram-
charitmanas'of Tulsidas (Berkeley, 199 l), pp. 309-2 1; C.J. Fuller, The Camphor
Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (Princeton, 1992), pp. 155-69;
Bhagwati Prasad Sinha, Ram Bhakti mein Rasik Sampraday (Balrampur, 1957).
50 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
literary norm. Print facilitated the widespread production of ashlil
material as a commodity, and erotic consumerism became a part of
the publishing boom in UP, surreptitiously disturbing the domi-
nance of 'clean' literature. These different alternative genres-erotic
sex manuals, popular romances, entertaining songs, texts offering
advice on sexual relationships-were often indiscriminately conflated
by their critics: 'obscenity' could be a catch-all category. Some of these
books actually contested the terrain of 'obscenity'.
The commercial press developed slowly but steadily in UP, coin-
ciding with the rise of printed vernacular languages. It became a
means of disseminating and mediating Hindi literature indepen-
dently of the official channels, sites and practices sanctioned by
universities, government publications and elite literary circles. The
number of presses in UP had risen from 177 in 1878-9 to 568 in
1901-2 and 743 in 1925-6. The concentration in UP had initially
been on the publication of vernacular newspapers. Thus, 591 such
papers were ~ublishedin 1878-9 in UP, in comparison to just 26 in
Bengal. Bengal was dominant when it came to the production of
vernacular books, but by 1925-6 UP had surpassed it. There were
2,777 such books published in UP that year, in comparison to 2,543
in Bengal.66 The use of lithography was quite common and most
publishers of these books were also booksellers. In the 1860s and
1870s the largest number of presses in UP was found at Agra, follow-
ed by Bareilly, Kanpur, Banaras, Shahjahanpur, Roorkee and M e e r ~ t . ~ ~
However, Lucknow saw the growth of one of the oldest and most
reputed press, the Newal Kishore By the early twentieth

66 Statistics of British India for the Judicial and Administrative Departments

(Calcutta, 1879), pp. 48-9; Judicial and Administrative Statistics of British India
for 1701-2 and Preceding Years (Calcutta, 1903), p. 255; Statistica~Abstrartsfor
British Indiafiom 1916-17 to 1925-26 (Calcutta, 1927), p. 323.
67 'Reports on Native Presses in the NWP for 1862, 1863, 1864 and 1865',
Sekctions from the Records of the Government of India, 1847-1737, V123112 1,
Part 44, Article 1, p. 2 (IOL).
68 Uttar Pradesh, 9, 9 (February 1981) [Special issue on Munshi Newal
Kishore]; Syed Jalaluddin Haider, 'Munshi Nawal Kishore (1836-95): Mirror
of Urdu Printing in British India', Libri, 31, 3 (1981), pp. 227-37.
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 5 1
century Allahabad had taken over as the centre of publishing activ-
ity.69Most presses were small and survived by regularly churning out
almanacs, religious and mythological literature, poetry, sensational
novels and romances. They published accessible but badly printed
pamphlets and ephemeral literature on topical themes, available for
a few annas, written in colloquial language. Most of the romances and
poetry were initially written in Urdu and Persian. In 1862, out of the
14 vernacular romances published in UP, 9 were in Urdu, 2 in Persian
and only 3 in Hindi." M . Kempson, Director of Public Instruction
in U P at this time, commented on the considerable demand for such
love stories:

T h e general character of these stories is romantic in the extreme, and they

are here and there decked out with hyperbolical descriptions. . . . T h e de-
nouement is generally a protracted description of the marriage, and this
is not considered perfect, unless the reader is furnished with an insight
into the proceedings of the nuptial chamber, and with a peep behind the
veil. . . . When pictures accompany such books as these, the evil is
heightened, and the indecency presented in in most degrading aspect.71

However, very soon Hindi translations of Persian and Urdu poetical

works and romances became common. Thus in 1864-5 Kempson
remarked:

I am sorry to report the h c t that Hindi cranslarions of Mahomedan poetry

of the amatory kind are becoming popular. T h e increase in the number
of persons able to read their own vernaculars has created a demand for
books which illiterate and unprincipled printers meet with trash of this
description; and it is a melancholy reflection that the vernacular, which
we rake so much pains in utilizing as an organ of education in the masses,
should thus become a vehicle of i m m ~ r a l i t y . ' ~

Many of the Hindi writers ofcheap poems and romances cast their
'' Allahabad supplied 18 of the papers published in UP, Report on the Admi-
nistration o f UP, 1907-8 (Allahabad, 1908), p. 52.
70 'Reports', Sekctions, Part 44, Article 1, p. 5.
71 Ibid., p. 8.
72 Ibid., pp. 17-18.
52 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
style and language entirely in the Persian type,73because of their easy
appeal. Dilbahkzo, a Hindi book, was published by two different
presses in Agra in 1869. One edition printed 700 copies, priced at
1 anna each, and the other 1,500 copies at 9 pie. Kempson referred
to it as 'bazaar trash in the shape of ribald verses, some of them grossly
indecent. It is the stuff of this kind, which arms native opposition to
female education with its most powerful objection, and which poi-
sons the minds of the youths in large towns. For one who reads, there
are 100s [sic] who hear the libidinous suggestions and allusion^."^ In
the same year another book, Ras Prabodh, was a metrical Hindi
version of a well-known Sanskrit treatise on passions, which formed
a portion of the sahitya shastra. Nine passions, or moods, were des-
cribed in it, of which the first, love, occupied nearly the whole of the
book.75It was also feared that many press proprietors, pandering to
the 'licentious' tastes prevalent in society, would not reveal the names
of such publications in the list which they furnished to the govern-
ment. Many such books were surreptitiously printed and circulated.
In 1873 C.A. Elliot, Secretary to the Government of UP, remarked
that books of the 'very worst and most licentious class' could be ob-
tained in the region, though the number was limited at this time. It
was demanded that such books be marked objectionable and illegal,
and that the law for the registration of all presses, and of every printed
book and paper, be rigidly e n f ~ r c e d . ' ~
By 1868 publications in the Devanagri script began to grow, and
by 1925 Hindi newspapers, books, journals and periodicals far ex-
ceeded and surpassed those in By the early twentieth century
a wide-ranging variety of pulp and popular literature-semi-porno-
graphic sex manuals and romances in colloquial Hindi, thin tracts
73 'Books submitted to Government by Native Writers', Sekctions, V/23/129,
Vol. 3, Article 2, pp. 567.
74 'Report on Publications Registered at Curator's Office, Allahabad, during
1869', Sektions, V/23/129, Vol. 3, Article 15, p. 244.
75 'Report', Selections, Vol. 3, Article 15, p. 244.
76 'Reports1, Sekctions, Part 44, Article 1, pp. 17-18; 'Publications Registered
by the Curator of Government Books under Act XXV of 1867 during 1872',
Selections, V123/131, no. 6, Article 27, pp. 535-50.
77 Report on the Administration of UP, 1923-24 (Allahabad, 1724), p. 9 1.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 53
and small formats of songs and poems in Braj-flooded the market
in UP. It was reported in 1905-6: 'the original works of fiction gen-
erally display extravagance and want of taste, and often moral deprav-
i ~ . ' Again
7 ~ in 1909-10 it was said that metrical works had grown
in quantity and the subjects were largely erotic and immoral, while
poetry on social subjects frequPntly degenerated into pedantry and
platitude.79
Printed sex manuals in Hindi made up a genre that saw substantial
growth in early-twentieth-century UP. Aligarh and Moradabad ap-
pear to have been thriving centres of p ~ b l i c a t i o n .Here
~ ~ the lines
between sexual science, erotic art and obscenity were often blurred.
Many of them used a highly Sanskritised language and ran into num-
erous pages, signifying that they catered to an elite Hindu audience,
though this may also have been a means for escaping censure. At the
same time there were popular, thin, cheap versions written in collo-
quial Hindi. However, all of them claimed to have been inspired by
classical works on kamshastra and almost all stressed in their intro-
duction that they were not ashlil. The fear of being banned on charges
of obscenity was constantly referred to, and thus most such books
camouflaged themselves with the language of sexual science, claiming
their authenticity by highlighting the scientific 'facts' of sexual life.
Many claimed to be prescriptive texts essential for sexual compatibil-
ity and fulfilment. At the same time, to make their books attractive
for their audience, they stressed the erotic element--especially the
presence of colour pictures-in advertisements carried by prominent
papers and magazines. One such book, in a full-page advertisement
in the leading Hindi daily Vartman,warned unmarried brahmachari
boys to keep away but recommended itself to married women and
" Report on the Administration of UP, 1905-6 (Allahabad, 1907), p. 41.
79 Report on the Administration of UP, 1703-10 (Allahabad, 191 I), p. 5 1.
Kanhaiya L d Sharma, KokShastra athva Yauvan B i h (Moradakad, 1900);
Jaidev Nirbhay Ganesh (trans.), Ratimanjari (Moradabad, 1906); Mohan La1
Gupta, Kok Sugar (Aligarh, 1908,2nd edn); Ganga Prasad Gupt, Gupr Prachin
Kok Shastra (Aligarh, 1916, 2nd edn); Kanhaiya La1 Agarwal, Kamrahaya
(Allahabad, 1932); Jagannath Sharma Agnihotri, Asli Kok Shastra arthat Kam-
shastra ka VrihadGranth (Banaras, 1935,2nd edn); Ramchandra Vaidya Shastri,
Kamya Yogavafi (Aligarh, 1939).
54 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
men. It went on to say that it had attractive pictures which thrilled
the heart, and that it was full ofkam and ~ h r i n g a r .An
~ ' advertisement
for another book, claiming to cure gupt rog, professed the use of
Vedic and Unani methods and went on to describe the colour pictures
that it contained of the sexual organs of women, the parts helpful in
the formation of semen, loose breasts, healthy nipples, e t ~ . Another
~'
first established its 'scientific credentials' and then said it had colourful
and spicy photographs of women not only from India but also from
Africa, Germany, France, Italy and A~stralia.'~ It was reported that
many of these books adopted a semi-pornographic format.84Several
went into multiple impressions. Pyarelal Zamindar's Kok Shastra,
initially published in 1900, saw seven impressions by 1905, with
2000 copies per i m p r e s s i ~ nWritten
.~~ in relatively simple Hindi, the
book had titles like 'Javani-Divani' (Crazy Youthfulness) and was re-
ported to have been particularly popular among young boys.
Other books offered pure erotic pleasure. Chumban Mimansa,
published by S.S. Mehta and Brothers of Kashi, was the translation
of a Gujarati book describing the history, development and methods
of kissing. O n its cover it said it was meant only for private circula-
t i ~ nBabu
. ~ ~Haridas Vaidya translated Shringar Shatak, categorically
stating in the preface:
I am proud to say that I write all my books for second and third grade
citizens, since I am also one among them. . . . Pandit Mohanlal Nehru
of Prayag sees a lot of faults in my book, like the degeneration of

8' Vartman, 18 March 1925, p. 8, advertisement of Kamkah Rahmy4 pub-

lished by Hindi Sevasadan, Aligarh.
82 Vartman, 21 November 1938, p. 6, advertisement of Sachitr Cuptrog
Chikitsa by Vaidyabhushan Shyamlal, published by Hindustani Book Depot,
Aligarh.
83 Abhyudaya, 26 April 1924, p. 10, advertisement of Kam ratha Ratishmtra
Sachirr.
84 Report on the Administrarion of UP, 1724-25 (Allahabad, 1926), p. 112.
8 5 Pyarelal Zamindar, Kok Shmtra (Aligarh, 1905, 7th edn). In its introduc-
tion the author argued its own importance as a work to be read before marriage.
The author expressed his difficulty in writing such a book when the charge of
obscenity lurked at every corner: p. 6.
Channulal Dwivedi, Chumban Mimansa (Kashi, 1929).
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 5 5
women. . . . But in our Puranm and even in Ramcharitmanas, there are
many lines against women. . . . Should not the Hindus ask publishers of
these as well to burn their books? . . . If we are critics of women, why have
we written thousands of pages in her praise?87

There were other, slightly different genres which made eroticism

popular. In early-twentieth-century UP thin, cheaply-priced pam-
phlets of songs and satires in Braj geatly outnumbered those which
contained educational and reformist literature." Babu Baijnath Book-
seller of Banaras brought out innumerable such tracts, centring
around Holi songs and themes of Krishna and his gopis. Most of these
adopted a raslila format. Urdu and Persian poetry and phrases were
used freely in these. Largely designed for a popular audience, this
fictive literature dealt one way or other with sex, offered ephemeral
pleasure, and could be highly erotic.89Q~ssasand romances in Hindi
were printed in pamphlet form year after year in huge q ~ a n t i t i e s . ~ ~
A large number of sangits and nautankis have been traced in north
India, which, besides being performed, were published and widely
read.9' These pamphlets, though not especially innovative, extended
their consumption via print and in a sense replicated riti poetry,
though in a more popular form. They captured the contemporary
popular imagination and made profits for their publishers. Many
books and pamphlets went into multiple editions and impressions,
reflecting easy availability and increasing demand.
These 'obscene' pamphlets created fresh anxieties among British
Haridas Vaidya (trans.), Shringar Shatak (Mathura, 1933, 3rd edn).
" SPBP, 1900-30.
See Chapter 3. Also see Sham Sundar, joban ki Dhum [The Heat of
Youth-Erotic Songs] (Mathura, 1910), in SPBP, March 1910;Bhudeo Rasad
and Sheo Sharan, Rasiya Rasifun ki Bahar [The Pleasures ofMerry Beaus] (Agra,
1914), in SPBP, March 1915, p. 32; Kaviram, Aurar-Mard ka Jhagra [APorno-
graphical Poem] (Allahabad, 1921), in SPBP, March 1922, p. 62; Brijbasi Das,
Braj Bibs (Banaras, 1939); Bindeswari Prasad Tiwari, Chautal Champakali
(Gorakhpur, 1932, 3rd edn, 3,000 copies).
O' Frances W. Pritchett, Marvellous Encounters; Folk Romance in Urdu and
Hindi (New Delhi, 1985).
'' Kathryn Hansen, Ground for Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India
(Berkeley, 1992).
56 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
officials and Hindu moralists who felt they had a serious and dan-
gerous potential. The authors of these contemporary popular writings
had the advantage of mass print, photographic technology and a com-
mercial press. They could reproduce images, publish their books in
substantially large numbers, and ensure good sales; they were there-
fore bringing 'obscenity' from the 'court' to the 'masses', and they had
a higher visibility and reach than the Riti Kal poets had ever had.
Their market was not limited to the literati-who also bought them
despite the scriptures-but extended to an increasing class of func-
tionally literate people, including clerks, shopkeepers, traders and
students. Embracing the hugely commercial trajectory of the eroticised
spectacle, such literature could now be found in the newly emerging
book markets, local kiosks, and railway stations. These authors tested
the boundaries of decency and were thought incompatible with the
new ideals of nationhood and civilisation; they wrote what some
thought should remain unwritten. Shringar was acceptable if it be-
longed to a fantasy world, or if it was restricted to the elite. The trou-
ble with eroticism was that people in general wanted it and liked it,
and ir seemed to get everywhere. And the trouble with such mass
eroticism was its subversion of the usual rules of order and propriety.
The possibilities ofwider access to such sexually explicit literature
made the need for policing it more urgent. Grierson, while carrying
out his linguistic survey, wrote a confidential letter in 1925 wherein
he expressed concern over the widely published galaxy of erotic works
in UP:
Up to 1900, the existence of such books was known, but they were rare,
and impossible to get except through secret channels. They were printed
and sold simply for their indecent contents for young people whose tastes
went that way. . . . But now these books are openly advertised and pub-
lished, with full accounts of their contents, that leave no doubt as to their
nature."
The British took an increasingly interventionist posture towards
such material. They passed orders for the prevention of sale of 'ob-
jectionable' literature at bookstalls on railway platform^.'^ There was

92 66911925, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).

93 134/May 1917, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 57
confiscation of sexually explicit material in the form of books, pam-
phlets, magazines, ~ostcardsand pictures, combined with a regular
prosecution of presses, publishing houses and booksellers on charges
of obscenity. Bookstores weie often searched for licentious and sexu-
ally explicit material. A warning was issued to certain book depots not
to keep copies of K ~ r n s u t r aA. ~large
~ number of publications, coming
in from France and Germany to India, were legally banned.y5The
Association for Moral and Social Hygiene in India, founded initially
in England by Josephine Butler in 1870,was especially active in cam-
paigns against obscenity through its central organiser, Meliscent
Shephard, in India. These crusaders regulated representations of
sexuality and sex, often by censoring sexually oriented books, pam-
phlets and magazines.96
Popular and 'obscene' Hindi literature was criticised by various
indigenous constituencies, including 'respectable' literary circles,
women's associations, and Gandhi. In an editorial of Saraswati,
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi wrote:
'I wish also to write that these days the storehouse of Hindi is full of plays
and novels of magic, fantasy, detective works and love stories. This is not
at all beneficial for literature. Instead, lovers of Hindi should have the
courage to lift their pens to write on business, technology, chemistry, the
history of Europe and India, the nature and means of European progress,
etc. This would definitely benefit Hindi and lead to the elevation of the
character of its readers9'
Madhuri, a leading journal in early-twentieth-century UP, carried
an article specifically condemning works on eroticism and sexual
science:
The state of ratishastra and kamshastra is shining once again. . . . Even
if no other books sell, there is no dearth of the sale of such books. . . .
Young men feel excited just by the mention of secret organs. And if you
discuss 84 postures, 72 kisses, 128 types of embraces (and your language

94 139811922, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).

95 36111937, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI); 37211937, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI);
13111939, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).
96 83 111933, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI); 29/52/1937, Home Poll (NAI); 1361
1940, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).
" Editorial, Saraswati (November 1901).
58 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
is spicy and erotic), which young man will not read your book with deep
engrossment. . . . Is it necessary to reiterate that kamshastra was com-
posed at a time when there was an excessively luxurious orientation in
India, and in the end this only resulted in our enslave~nent!~~

The AIWC protested emphatically against the circulation of ob-

scene literature. This protest was particularly against small booftstall-
holders who sold such literature to students of both sexes. They urged
the British authorities to take drastic and immediate steps to stamp
out the Gandhi too condemned such 'filth in literature'.loO
Dirty books had certainly to be kept out of the hands of women. lo'
While many leading magazines and writers condemned such
works, to an extent they also compromised in the face of popular
demand and needs of the market. The discourse of literary middle-
class Hindus was not homogeneous and there was in fact much di-
versity in the literature they produced: there was constant resistance,
negotiation and accommodation even within the high literary sphere.
It was not just 'low' writers and small piesses that were writing and
publishing such books. Some books published even by the prestigious
Newal Kishore Press were declared objectionablPon moral grounds. lo2
For example, this press published Ragvinod, a collection of thumris,
ghazals and khayals, stating it was meant for the consumption of
krishnaras rasik men. lo3 Sheo Narayan Press, prestigious in Agra, was
publishing such books as early as the late nineteenth century: it pub-
lished pamphlets in Hindi styled 'amorous poems'. Rakshan fivita
was an 8-page pamphlet, priced at 3 pie per copy, with 2,100 copies
printed in its first edition. This was a passionate dialogue between
Krishna and Radha. There was also 'The Calendar of the Love-sick
Wards of Brindabun', which had verses about Krishna and his gopis

Anon., 'Rati-Shastra ka Prachar', Madburi, 3, 2 , 6 Uune 1925), pp. 847-

9.
99 @WC, Twelfth Session (Ahmedabad, 1937), p. 47.
loo M.K. Gandhi, 'Filth in Literature', Colkrted Works of Mahatma Gandhi,
I I Delhi, 1976), p. 407. Also see Gandhi, 'Speech at Akhil Bhara-
V O ~ . - W(New
tiya Sahirya Parishad', Colkcted, Vol. MI, p. 346.
l o ' See Chapter 4.
'02 'Report', Sekctions, Vol. 3 , Article 15, pp. 244-5.
Io3 Mahadev Shukl, Raguznod (Lucknow, 1889).
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 59
for each month of the Hindu year. Another called Hin Pumsh ki
Barah Masicontained 37 couplets on 'Twelve Months ofan Impotent
Man', in which the wife gave expression to complaints against her
impotent husband. These books and pamphlets actually worked
within the forms ofwell-established literary genres. However, regard-
ing their publication at this time, it was said:
T h e corrupt taste of the lower orders of the reading public in large towns
is thus ~ a i n f u lapparent,
l~ but it is even more sad to find a man of Sheo
Narayan's position and education lending his press equally with the low
Mahommedan publishers of Agra to pander to the vicious tendencies of
his fellow townsmen by giving currency to this unwholesome trash. . . .
That they command a large and ready sale is apparent from the number
of copies struck off in the Agra Presses.lo4

Ganga Pustakmala Karyalaya, one of the biggest and most prestigious

shops of Hindi books, located in Lucknow and with its own printing
and publishing house, kept the largest collection of books on rom-
ance, detective fiction, fantasy and magic, which were mostly pub-
lished by it, as was clear from its extensive advertisements in leading
magazines.'05 Madhuri regularly carried full-page advertisements
for sex manuals, along with those for aphrodisiac^.'^^
From another perspective, some of the reformers and established
publishing houses felt that the intricacies of sex and the erotic life of
conjugality needed to be discussed explicitly because sexual pleasure
was an important facet of modern married life. They wrote books and
articles which were not just instructive but also titillating. Santram,
an Arya Samajist and founder of the Jat Pat Torak Mandal, wrote an
article in 1924 in Madhuri in support of 'true' publications on sex-
ual science, which was also publicity material for sex manuals.'07 He
went on to write books like Vtvahit Prem and Rativikzs.'08Abhyudaya
lo* 'Report', Sektions, Vol. 3, Article 15, pp. 248.
Io5 Advertisement in Madhuri, 1, 1 (July 1922) and 4, 1, 1 (July 1925).
Io6 In fact, in the beginning ofthe very issue which had an article condemning
such publications, there was an advertisement of the book ChakrauartiKokshastra,
claiming to have 128 colour pictures: Madhuri, 3, 2, 6 (June 1925).
lo' Santram, 'Rati Rahasya', Madhuri, 3, 1, 5 (December 1924), pp. 601-5.
log Ramnarayan Tandon (ed.), Hindi Sevi Sansar, Vol. I (Lucknow, 195 1,
2nd edn), p. 307.
60 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Press published Kashmiri Kokshastra and criticised the government
for banning such books.109Chand Press published Dampatya jivan,
a book on kamshastra written by a woman who stated: 'Any book
written in Hindi is not judged by the importance of its topic or its
representative style but is always measured on the scale of morality
and virtue. . . . I must say that we have made the entry door of our
language extremely narrow, causing great harm in the present time."'O
Pandit Krishnakant Malaviya, nephew of Madan Mohan Malaviya
and sometimes referred to as 'Kumvar Kanhaiya' (Young Krishna) of
Allahabad, wrote controversial books on sexual relations which were
published by the prestigious Abhyudaya Press. In his Suhapat: Bahu-
rani ko Seekh, women were told of the ways in which they could
control their husbands-the work claimed to be a leading sex manual.
His Manorama ke Patra: Apne Premiyon ke Nam was written in a
titillating fashion, claiming on its cover that it was meant only for
husbands. The book attacked the puritanism of the West and stressed
sexual affinity between the married couple. It contained a series of
letters written by the married Manorama to her four ex-lovers. These
were expressions of the love and desires of Manorama, reflections on
the weaknesses and incapabilities of men, and suggestions on the ways
of leading a fulfilling erotic life."'
Many of the famous Hindi literary writers, such as Daniram Prem,
G. P. Sri~astava"~ and Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra' (1900-67)
took to writing sensational romantic fiction, one of the most popular
genres of the 1920s. Their stories and novels were torn between

lo' Banarsi La1 Verma, Kashmiri Kokshastra (Prayag, 1928).

"O Sushila Devi Nigam, Dampatya jivan (Allahabad, 1930), p. 2.
' I 1 K. K. Malaviya, Suhagrat: Bahurani ko Seekh (Prayag, 1930?);idem, Mano-
rama ke Patra: Apne Premiyon ke Narn (Prayag, 1927).
' I 2 G.P. Srivastava specialised in humour. Many of his stories, novels and plays
are replete with love, kisses and sex. T h e titles are catchy, promising light and
romantic entertainment in simple language. Some of his works include, Dil ki
Aag urfDiljalc ki Aah (Allahabad, 1936, 2nd edn), full of one-line punches on
romantic pleasure. Ganga-Jamni urfPrem Rahasya (Banaras, 1934, 2nd edn), a
collection of stories variously titled 'Prem Prastav', 'Prem Milan', 'Ball Dance',
and 'Sarfari Premika', promised mysteries of the worldly pleasures of love
(sansarik prem rahasya ka anand).
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 61
nationalist and moral concerns and pleas for social reform on the one
hand, and commercial interests, entertainment, emotional fantasies
and romance on the other. ~ g r a ' sChand Hasinon ki Khutut, was a
bestseller of 1927.'13 Some of the personal letters of confession pub-
lished in prestigious journals like Chand, often written by women,
also legitimised individual needs and desires, upholding a right to feel
and love.''*
The charge of obscenity was levelled most strongly against Ugra's
book Chakfet, published in 1927, which dealt with sodomy, sexual
acts between adult males and adolescent boys, and aspects of male
horno~exuality."~ Chaklet (i.e. 'Chocolate') was a collection of eight
short stories, variously titled 'He Sukumar' (Oh, Beautiful Youth),
'Vyabhichari Pyar' (Transgressive Love), 'Jail Mein' (In Jail), 'Hum
Fidaye Lackhnau' (I am a Fan of Lucknow), 'Kamariya Nagin si Bal
Khaye' (The Waist Twists like a Female Snake), etc. Written in a titil-
lating fashion, these stories were against sodomy and homosexuality
and ciaimed inspiration from real-life incidents. However, via the
processes they condemned they also acknowledged the prevalence of
such practices, especially in UP, where beautiful young boys were
called 'chocolate', 'pocket-book' and 'money-order'.'16 Chakfet claim-
ed that men were becoming more feminine."' It hinted at homo-
sexual tendencies between ~ r i s h n aand Arjun, Ram and Tulsidas and
Krishna and Surdas.l18 It proved a commercial sensation and within
six weeks of its appearance two impressions were sold out.119
The guardians of morality launched militant criticism against this
book, and through it against many writings, such as Ugra's Dilfi ka
Dalaf and books like Vjabhichari Mandir and Abalaon ka InsaJ120
For derails, see Chapter 6.
Francesca Orsini, 'The Hindi Public Sphere: 1920-40', unpublished PhD
thesis (SOAS, University of London, 1996).
Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra', Chakkt (Calcutta, 1953, 3rd edn, pub-
lished after 25 years).
""bid., pp. 56, 101, 125-35, 156.
' I 7 Ibid., p. 102.
Ibid., p. 76, 117.
' I 9 Ibid., cover.
I2O Sphurna Devi Abalaon ka Insaf (Chand Press, Allahabad, 1936,3rd edn).
62 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Such works were referred to as ghasleti sahitya and a movement
against this literature, known as ghasleti andolan, was sustained for
twelve years.'21 Banarsidas Chatuwedi, the editor of Virhal Bharat,
took the lead and was largely backed by the new Hindi loci of
authority-university departments, literary associations and impor-
tant journals. In UP, the magazines Chand and Sudha published
material against such literature, and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and
Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha adopted resolutions against these
books.122Gandhi initially wrote against Chaklet without reading
it, but later, after going through it, did not find it obscene. He wrote
a letter to this effect (which, however, was brought to light only in
1951).123
The point is, why did a book like Chaklet, which actually attacked
sodomy and homosexuality, lead to such a hysterical reaction? The
campaign against it was at once paternalist and moralist, and de-
ployed to 'protect' the public from 'unhealthy' influences. However,
its reach hints at there being something more volatile at stake than
the offence given to ideas of purity and respectability. Ugra wrote on
a taboo subject, an unmentionable act, and spoke the unspeakable.12*

T h e book explicitly stated that it was an attack on high-caste Hindu men,

especially of the Brahmin and Vaishya castes. In brief, the book stressed the
impact of the magazine Chand on the writer, where various women had con-
fessed their tragic stories, and which encouraged her to write this novel. It had
confessions by eight women, exposing the sexual misdeeds of upper-caste men
and making a case for widow remarriage. It was repeatedly emphasised that the
stories were based on true incidents, and that attempts had been made to keep
them away from obscenity, though some could not be avoided because of the
subject matter. While offering a strong indictment of upper-caste Hindu male
society, and belying myths of ideal Hindu families, it also highlighted women's
sexuality, desires and needs. At the same time, the book was written in a titillating
fashion and at times it is difficult to gauge its political and social location.
l Z 1 Ratnakar Pandey, Ugra aur Unka Sahitya (Varanasi, 1969), pp. 255-73;
Ugra, Chakkt, pp. 1-12.
l Z 2 Pandey, Ugra, pp. 260-6.
'23 Ugra, Chakkt, p. 1; Pandey, Ugra, pp. 271-2.
12* Sodomy and homosexuality have aroused hysterical reactions in various
other cultures and in different historical moments. See Stephen 0. Murray and
Will Roscoe (eds), Islamic Homosexuafities:Culture, History andLiterature (New
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 63
Critics claimed that the actual effect of Ugra's writings was to titillate
and excite his readers and thus to encourage, not discourage, homo-
sexual desire. l Z 5The colonial presence, the growing nationalist move-
ment, and the emerging high literary trends and their links with
Hindu identity gave the campaign a specific colour in north India.
The attack on Chaklet was also part of a nationalist critique, for the
de-gendered male was one stereotype of colonial domination. Chaklet
seemed to cast doubt on the stability of the heterosexual regime, on
procreative imperatives, on modern monogamous ideals of marriage.
It dared to mention the stigma and disgrace of effeminacy, of sexual
inversion in male behaviour which dominant traditions preferred
unmentioned.
Ancient texts and medieval court customs reveal a history ofhomo-
sexual relationships.126However, Chaklet highlighted the fact that
there were new institutions and sites for increasing male-male bond-
ings, such as schools, colleges, hostels, cinemas, theatres, social service
organisations, parks, clubs, fairs and jails.lZ7The Jails Inquiry Com-
mittee of UP expressed its worries over general association barracks;
besides the fear of plots and escapes, there were increasing concerns
over male sexual activities:
Closely connected with the improvements proposed is the question of
separation by night. In order to improve conditions it is to be considered
how far separation by night should be enforced to provide a suitable guard
against moral contamination. . . . There is further a very unsavoury side
to the general association barrack. . . . W e refer to offences punishable
under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. W e have evidence which
we accept that such offences are committed frequently inside the jails. . . .
While collecting evidence with regard ro a certain incident in which

York, 1997); Christopher Craft, Another Kind of Love: Mak Homosexual Desire
in English Discourse, 1850-1720 (Berkeley, 1934).
Ruth Vanita, 'The New Homophobia: Ugra's Chocolate', in Ruth Vanita
and Saleem Kidwai (eds), Same-Sex Love in India: Readingsfiom Literature and
History (New York, 2000), pp. 2 4 6 5 2 .
12' Giti Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India
(London, 1996); Vanita and Kidwai (eds), Same-Sex.
'27 Ugra, Chakkt, pp. 53-4, 87-95, 102, 125, 137.
64 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
reprehensible conduct was proved to have been committed inside a gene-
ral association barrack, one of the convicts, who admitted his complicity
in this conduct stated to the Committee: 'As to night rounds they give
no trouble. W e always know when they are coming and are back on our
berths before they arrive.'Iz8

We also get stray references to the formation of a Jigri Club and

another local club in Moradabad exclusively for men, organised by
'a band of pleasure-seeking loose young men'.129 The growth of
public libraries as meeting places for men and male migration may
have aided male friendships. Migration did not just disrupt the house-
hold patterns of women but of men as well. Housing in the city was
scarce and rents were high. Men on lower wages found it difficult to
take their wives with them and were forced to live in distant industrial
locations for long periods. Thus, in many of the industrial towns,
there was a huge numerical disparity between the sexes, especially
from the 1 9 2 0 ~ .In' ~a ~city like Kanpur, where about half the popu-
lation comprised immigrants, there were just 670 females per 1,000
males. Corresponding figures were 778 in Allahabad, 784 in Agra and
722 in Saharanpur.I3l This may have helped same-sex subcultures.
The Director of Public Health in UP remarked upon increasing cases
of venereal disease among workers due to 'adult relations of either sex'
and pervasive sexual immorality in bas ti^.'^^
T h e workman who has left his family behind often clubs together with
other workers, generally preferring relations, caste men, friends or men
from his own village or town. Denied the comforts of a regular family
life, the temptation to him to seek diversion after the day's work by re-
sorting to drink or drugs or to the bazaar is greater. His life becomes

12* UPJaiL Inquiry (Stuart) Committee, 1928-29, Report (Allahabad, 1929),

pp. 1 2 6 3 1 .
I z 9 Naiyar-i-Azam, 12 January 1907, NNR, 19 January 1907, p. 90.
130Censusof India, 1931, UP, Vol. xvlrl , Part I (Allahabad, 1933), pp. 138-
9.
13' Royal (W,hitky) Commission of Labour in India, Evidence, Vol. 111,Part I
(London, 1931), pp. 140-1, 155.
13' Ibid., p. 1 5 6
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 65
monotonous and unattractive . . . the effect on familydue to these lengthy
separations is quite undesirable and h a r m f ~ 1 . l ~ ~

Chaklet brought into public. view emergent urban male attach-

ments and alternative sexualities, posing a danger to 'civilisation' at
a time when the imagery of a strong, masculine Hindu male was a
concern of the nation. It opened an epistemological gap, a sort of
Freudian void in maleness itself.
The consequences of this conflict, which pitted critics against
popular literature, and by extension against entertaining fiction, was
a long-lasting rift in the Hindi literature that was enshrined in a large
part of the canon. Reading such books was considered a crime among
students, and critics made sure that they were never included in the
syllabus, indeed in the history of Hindi literature. But this literature
survived, thanks to its popularity. The conflict continued well over
the coming period and saw many debates in the 1940s as well--over
Jainendra Kumar's S ~ n i t a ,Yashpal's
'~~ Dada Comrade,135and Ismat
Chugtai's Lihaf136
T o cbmplicate the picture, popular literaturewas not a monolithic
categoj. There were popular works on mythological and historically
chaste wives; figures like Savitri, Sita, Sukanya, Gandhari and Damyanti
occupyied prized places'37 within a whole genre of conduct

'33 Ibid., p. 144.

13* Jainendra Kumar, Sunita (Delhi, 1935).
135 See Madhulika Pathak, Yashpal ke Katha Sahitya mein Kam, Prem aur
Pariuar (Bombay, 1992).
136 For the case launched against it, see Ismat Chugtai, 'Ek Mukadme ki
Dastan', trans. Javed Iqbal, Hans, 11, 4 (November 1996), pp. 29-34.
13' For example, see Chandrabali Mishra, Adarsh Hindu Nari(Banaras, 1930);
Lalita Prasad Sharma, Bharatvarsha ki Sacchi Deuiyan (Bareilly, 1923, 5th edn);
Yashoda Devi, Saccha Pati Prem (Allahabad, 1910).
' 3 8 Janardan Joshi, Grh Prabandh Shastra (Prayag, 1918, 2nd edn); Ganga
Prasad Upadhyaya, Mahila Vyavahar Chandrika (Prayag, 1928); Gupt 'Pagal',
Grhini Bhushan (Kashi, 192 1,2nd edn); Jivaram Kapur Khatri, Stri Dharnla Sar
(Mathura, 1892). A similar point has been made in the context of late-nine-
teenth-century Bengal: Tanika Sarkar, 'Hindu Conjugality and Nationalism in
Late Nineteenth Century Bengal', in Jasodhara Bagchi (ed.), Indian Women:
66 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
which aided the new moral literature.I3' Many of these can be classi-
fied with various Christian missionary tracts which appeared around
the same time. 140
Print opened vast avenues with contradictory messages and mean-
ings. It was not easy to make sexual pleasure a victim of the moral
panic. O n the other hand even male sexual fantasies and desires were
a challenge to the moral-aesthetic literary categories of the period.
This came out sharply in advertisements.

111. Brahmacharya, Kaliyug and the Advertisement

of Aphrodisiacs
Feminist studies have highlighted the threat and fear that female sexu-
ality has posed to patriarchal societies. Scholars of the Indian colonial
context have studied conjugality, emphasising how female sexuality
was redefined and constrained in this period.'41 It has been argued
that the chastity of the Hindu woman, within an uncompromising
monogamy, became central to claims of nationh00d.l~~ It has also
been stressed that the woman represented an inner spiritual being who
had to preserve the Hindu family because the man had already suc-
cumbed to Western colonial power in the material realm.143

Myth and R e a l i ~(Hyderabad, 1995), pp. 98-1 15. Sarkar shows how there was
a thorough pedagogisation of even the minute, mundane details ofdomestic life,
from diet, furniture or sanitation habits to the reorganisation ofleisure and fami-
lial relationships. Ordinary social commonsense was itselfelevated to a systematic
syllabus.
'39 See Chapter 4.
I 4 O For example, the Christian Vernacular Education Society, Allahabad,
regularly published Ratanmala, a reading book for women, advising them on the
domestic management and training of children. (1869, 1st edn). I saw continu-
ous reprints of it, with slight modifications.
I*' Sarkar, 'Hindu Conjugality'.
14* Ibid. Also see Tanika Sarkar, 'Scandal in High Places: Discourses on the
Chaste Hindu Woman in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal', in Meenak-
shi Thapan (ed.), Embodiment: Essays on Gender and Identity (Delhi, 1997),
pp. 35-73.
143 Ibid. Also see Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial
and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi, 1994).
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 67
T o shift the focus somewhat: writers and critics have examined is-
sues of masculinity through an analysis of colonial discourse, by
looking at the dichotomies of manly British and effeminate colonial
subjects.'44 Beyond the rubric of colonial masculinity, it is necessary
to problematise notions of Hindu male sexuality by examining the
strain to which it was put. Though the fear of unregulated female
sexuality was great, male sexuality also had to be controlled; sexual
mores applied to men as well. The fact seems to be that the Hindu
male was not absolved of the burden of preserving virtue within the
Hindu family. This becomes apparent if we look at the shifting terms
of discourse on brahmacharya, and analyse advertisements for aph-
rodisiacs. Published in large numbers at this time, these provide an
interesting study of male anxieties and desires in colonial India.
Brahmacharya has long been one of the core doctrines of Hindu
dharma. Hindu tradition emphasised the preservation of semen as
essential for male empowerment and energy.'45 At the same time,
there is a history of sexual celebration within Hinduism; in brief,
sensuality and celibacy coexist in a religion which is well acknow-
ledged for its ability to accommodate such heterogeneity and contra-
diction. Within this, the image of the brahmachari remains the ideal
and a high cultural value is placed on sexual continence. In the colo-
nial period this ideal of brahmacharya was infused with new meanings
and transformed into a modern discourse.
It has been shown how brahmacharya operates among the wrestl-
ers of north India. The power of sex is supposedly turned away, in
the akharas, from the chaos of passion into disciplined masculine
strength.'46More recently, Alter has examined the medical mechanics
144 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (Delhi, 1983); Mrinalini Sinha, Colo-
niaf Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman 'and the Effeminate Bengali' in the Late
Nineteenth Centuly (Manchester, 1995).
145 Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa; Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and
Religious Experience (Chicago, 198 1); Sudhir Kakar, Intimate Relations: Explor-
ing Indian Sexuality (New Delhi, 1989).
'46 Joseph S. Alter, The Wrestkri Body: Identity and Ideology in North India
(Delhi, 1993); idem, 'Celibacy, Sexuality and rheTransformation of Gender into
Nationalism in North India',jAS, 53, 1 (February 1994), pp. 45-66; idem, 'The
Celibate Wrestler: Sexual Chaos, Embodied Balance and Competitive Politics
68 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
of being and becoming a brahmachari through modern yoga and
naturopathy. He argues that the discourse of sex, semen and health
is conceived in terms of embodied truth. H e suggests a difference be-
tween a 'psychological' Western selfand a 'somatic' non-Western col-
lectivity.I4' Celibacy and self-control are viewed as most important
requirements for achieving body discipline, and female desire and
sexuality as the greatest e ~ i 1 .Vivekananda's
l~~ call to sexual abstinence
for building a nation of heroes gave brahmacharya renewed meaning
in the colonial period.I4' Gandhi applied a related though somewhat
different concept of brahmacharya. He believed that stored-up semen
was the source of splendid energy in the male body,I5O but he turned
brahmacharya into a discourse which went parallel to ideas on the
integrity of the nation. The nation required an end of wasteful ex-
penditure of time and energy, and this included the pleasures of sex.
Gandhi discussed sexuality almost entirely from the masculine point
of view, seeing women as passive victims of a male sexual urge.l5I
In the early twentieth century brahmacharya came to be linked to
sewa samitis and social service.152Many Hindu publicists, Sanatan

in North India', in Patricia Uberoi (ed.), Social Reform, Sexuality and the State
(New Delhi, 199G), pp. 109-31.
14' Joseph S. Alter, 'Seminal Truth: A Modern Science of Male Celibacy in
North India', Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 11, 3 (1997), pp. 275-98.
14' Alter, 'Seminal'.
149 Indira Chowdhury Sengupta, The FrailHero and Virile History: Gender and
the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi, 1998), pp. 120-49.
'5O M.K.Gandhi, Brahmacharya aur Atm Sanyam (Banaras, 1934,2nd edn);
idem, Brahmacharya ke Anubhav (Prayag, 1932).
l5' Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi i
Political Discourse (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 172-206; Madhu Kishwar, 'Gandhi
on Women', EPK 20, 40 (5 October 1985), pp. 1691-1702 and 20, 41
(12 October 1985), pp. 1753-58; M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story
of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1929); Kakar, Intimate, pp. 85-128;
Richard Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston, 1989);
Pat Caplan, 'Celibacy as a Solution? Mahatma Gandhi and Brahmacharya',
in Pat Caplan (ed.), The Cultural Construction of Sexuality (London, 1987),
pp. 270-95.
l5* Carey A. Watt, 'Education for National Efficiency: Constructive Nation-
alism in North India, 1909-16', MAS, 31, 2 (1997), pp. 339-74.
 Redefining Obscenity andAesthetics in Print / 69
Dharmists and Arya Samajists eulogised it. Through their educa-
tional bodies, such as the gurukuls, brahmacharya and semen-control
were linked closely to pedagogy.'53 In their arguments and publica-
tions this was no longer just a moral doctrine of self-discipline. Their
modern discourse intertwined eugenics, childbirth, and a scientific
'rationality'. Healthy bodies ensured strong Hindu men who, in turn,
were indispensable to a modern masculine nation. Brahmacharya
became closely tied to the fears and hopes of modern times. The
pervasive anxieties and tensions of the age of Kaliyug were perceived
as systematically undermining a healthy way oflife: Hindu males were
losing their physical and mental ~ i ~ 0 u rIn. the
l ~ prescriptive
~ litera-
ture of brahmacharya, too, it was believed that unbridled sexual desire
had become an obsession in contemporary times, and this was fatal
for the Hindu nation. Certain evils of modern society, e.g. cinemas,
theatres, novels, and an immoral and unhealthy lifestyle were seen as
making young men more susceptible to the new consuming passions
of entertainment and pleasure. Brahmacharya thus became a building
block for claims to social and political power, cultural identity, and
a 'scientific' way oflife. Other moral reformers and medical practition-
ers added to this discourse of celibacy.
Print brought a flood of cheap self-help guides on brahmacharya.
Age-old instructions were repeatedly stressed and infused with mod-
ern definitions. The Hindu male was inundated with treatises on
brahrna~harya,'~~ against masturbation and for the preservation of

'53 Durgadutc Pant, Brahmmharyopdesh (Haridwar, 1908); Ram Deva, 'The

Claims of the Gurukula on the Civilized World', in Prospectus of the Gurukul
Kangri Mahavidyalaya (Haridwar, 191 1); Sewa Ram, The Aims, Ideals and Need
of the Gurukula Vishwavidyalaya (Bijnor, 1914); Gurukul Kangri, Gurukul
Vishwavidyalaya Kangri Haridwar ki Niyamavali tatha Bhin-bhin Vidyalya
Mahavidyalayon ki Pathvidhi (Haridwar, 1924); Yoganand, Brahmacharya par
Maharshi Dayanand (Lucknow, n.d.); Bharat Dharrna Maharnandal, Brahma-
chayashram (Kashi, n.d.).
154 Surnit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi, 1997), pp. 1 8 6 2 1 5 , 282-
357, has explored the multiplestrands that Kaliyugentailed in the late nineteenth
century.
I S 5 Suryabali Singh, Brahmacharya ki Mahima (Banaras, 1928); Gaurdas
Maharaj, Brahmachari Bano (Agra, 1928); Goswami Brijnath Sharrna (cornp.),
70 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
semen.'56 T h e gurukul prospectus stressed complete brahmacharya
till the age of twenty-five, and remarked o n present woes:
Adulterous tendencies . . . have been refined and exalted by beingcharac-
terised as 'sowing wild oats', 'free love'. . . . The supreme need of the age
is therefore moral self-control. . . The system of education must be
radically changed if society is to be rescued from dissolution, decompo-
sition and disintegration. . . . The Gurukul at Kangri is the first earnest
attempt made in this age to revive dharma and train students on spiritual
lines. . . . We all know that youngsters, hardly out of their teens, read
stupid novels, instinct with an immoral tone and catch-penny newspapers
full of slapdash [material]. . . . This state of affairs is impossible in the
Gurukul. . . . Students . . . are permitted to read only such portions of a
newspaper article as . . . are in harmony with the ingredients which go to
form their mental structure and intellectual ~ p b u i l d i n ~ . ' ~ '
Instructions to the H i n d u male were endless. H e was to make all-
o u t efforts to control his sexual urge from a very young age. Hast
maithun, svapn dosh, guda maithun, homosexuality and fornication
were all encompassed as the major evils of male sexuality. Anything
seen as involving orgasms and emissions was taboo, and seen as lead-
ing to disease. Semen was the essence of life and its discharge was a
loss of vital energy, regardless of how it happened. T o ensure male
purity, to see that not a drop of precious semen fell waste upon barren
soil, the Hindu male was drilled into keeping rein over his fantasies,
passions and imagination. H e was to desist from masturbation com-
pletely. H e was asked to keep his heart and mind at peace, it being
fondly supposed that these results would be achieved by abstinence.
All descriptions of women and any desire to touch them had to be
shunned. M a n was never to sit alone with woman, nor even sit where
woman had sat before. M a n was not to wear bright and dark clothes.

Haridwarasth RishikulBrahmacharyasrarn ki Niyamavali (Agra, 19 14); Pannalal

Sharrna, YuvaRakshak(Agra, n.d.); Lala Bhagwandin, Brahmacharya ki Vaigvanik
Vyakhya (Kashi, n.d.).
'51 Chirnrnanlala Vaishya, Virya Raksha(Meerur,1928,lOrh edn); Ganeshdutt
Sharrna Gaur 'Indra', Svapn Dosh Rakshak (Banaras, 1929);RarnchandraVaidya
Shasrri, Balopyogi Vzrya-Rahasya (Kanpur, n.d.).
15' Deva, 'Claims', pp. xiii-xx.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 7 1
Watching women dance, frequenting the theatre, raslila, nautanki
and cinema, listening to songs or music--especially those sung by
women during marriages-and reading novels related to romance
and shringar ras were all proscribed. Men were asked to s t ~ singing,
p
playing instruments and dancing. Contact and conversations with
lower-caste and lower-class women were prohibited. He was not to
ride on horses or camels: presumably these activities would stimulate
his manhood. He was not to eat spicy food, not to dream of women,
and not to employ language or expression which might increase sexual
desire. He was to even give up wearing shoes, carrying an umbrella,
using scented unguents and flowers, and sleeping on a soft bed.158
These instructions on behalf of sexual death took on complemen-
tary and complex forms after marriage, and now the tasks for the
Hindu male to control his body became even more difficult. Gandhi,
like the Vatican, emphasised that sex within marriage should be con-
fined to the act of procreation.'5g Much of the prescriptive and
reformist literature provided elaborate outlines on sleeping arrange-
ments between husband and wife.lGOLove, represented by such
legendary lovers as Laila-Majnu and ~ i r i - ~ a r h a was
d , described as
wasteful and meaningless. The discourse of brahmacharya was thus
qualified within conjugal relations, involving a movement from com-
plete celibacy to sexual abstinence and restraint. The wider interests
not only of the solidarity of the joint family but also claims to
nationhood required both chastity in the woman and sexual contain-
ment of the male. This was also a period when a new ideal and moral
code was emerging, which stressed middle-class monogamous mar-
riages and companionship.'G1In the past, though the Hindu woman
I S s Kangri, GurukuL pp. 1,lO-11; Anon., 'Brahrnacharyal, GurukuiSamachar,
2, 9-10 (April-May 1910), pp. 24-5; Anon., 'Navyuvakon ka Kartavya', Kush-
waha Kthatriya Mitra, 15, 1 (January 1928), pp. 3-8; Vaishya, Vitya,pp. 25-
46; Indra, Svapn, pp. 5-10; Singh, Brahmacharya, pp. 9-1 1 , 88-90; Maharaj,
Brahmachari, pp. 11-12.
lS9 Caplan, 'Celibacy'.
'"See Chapter 4.
IG' Patricia Uberoi, 'Introduction: Problematising Social Reform, Engaging
Sexuality, Interrogating the State', in Uberoi (ed.), Social pp. ix-xxvi; Sarkar,
'Hindu'.
7 2 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
was bound by rules of chastity, the Hindu male had had the leverage
to express sexual desire through a plurality of relationships, including
those with courtesans and prostitutes. Now the conceptual and insti-
tutionalised separation of the roles of wife and courtesan came under
challenge. The Hindu male was increasingly being restrained and
could not as freely go to a prostitute, nor vary his amorous relation-
ships as he once had. He was asked to praciise an uncompromising
monogamy.
By contrast, advertisements for aphrodisiacs were printed in large
numbers in 'respectable' newspapers and magazines, especially from
the early twentieth century. Given the times, when new concepts of
brahmacharya were evolving and changing to serve new purposes,
advertisements such as these, which whetted the fantasies of Hindu
males by offering a pleasure as divine as unattainable, proved extreme-
ly popular.162Though traditional aphrodisiacs had thrilled Indian
lovers for centuries, printed as advertisements they literally took on
new contours and shapes. Advertisements transformed the secrets of
sex into a public spectacle. They brought aphrodisiacs into the open
market; low prices made them accessible to the general public. Many
traditional remedies could now be sold in attractive packages. A
number of quacks and companies were floated, freely publishing their
advertisements everywhere and every day, largely catering to male
consumers, actively selling invigorating and vitalising medicines.
B. Pandey of Shivram Aushadhalay in Allahabad, in his advertise-
ment of 'Kamdev Vati', claimed his powders gave immense physical
power, increased the formation ofsemen, made it thicker, and would
benefit even old men.lG3Advertisements for 'Madan Manjari' and

I G 2 T h e publication of advertisements in colonial India has not been subject

to systematic study. It has been pointed out that a study ofthe beginning ofprint
advertisements provides a lively and provocative instrument in reveeling the rise
of consumerism, the emergence of a materially defined cultural ideal, and the
transformation of society. Advertisements are historical documents which help
us explore cultural ideals. They indirectly and unconsciously shape as well as
reflect popular perceptions: Lori Anne Loeb, Consuming Angelr: Advertising and
Victorian Women (New York, 1 994), pp. iii-viii.
'63 Abhyudayn, 1 1 April 1925, p. 36. Such advertisements appeared almost
every day in all the leading newspapers and magazines of UP. Advertisement of
 Redejning Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print 1 73
'Kamratan Goliyan' declared cures for impotence, premature ejacul-
ation and nocturnal emissions, enabling the enjoyment of an im-
proved sex life.'64 These advertisements occupied large spaces: on a
single page of Vartman of 6 August 1938 there were five such adver-
tisements. Kailash and Company of Kanpur and Vaidyaratan Satyadevji
of Rupvilas Company at Etawah advertised extensively for their
'Kailash Viryavrij Churn' and 'Kamsundari Vati'. They offered rerne-
dies for laziness in seven days, restoring the man to his full power and
glory, ensuring that he was instantly attracted to his kamini. 'Tila
Mastana', another aphrodisiac, was said to have a lightning effect on
the body.165'Shiv Mohini Surati' claimed refreshment of mind and
body.lG6Another advertisement, for 'Mohini', claimed that those
who divined its secret would compel their sweethearts to present
themselves within eleven days.lG7Dr S.K. Burman and Sitaram
Vaidya of Calcutta advertised extensively in UP'S newspapers and
magazines, again promising abundant energy and the enjoyment of
life at its fullest. With their medicines even the weakest and the oldest
man would relish the pleasures of life.'68Almost all such pills extens-
ively deployed words like kam, with various suffixes, and other erotic
titles; these served nicely to attract people, making sex a spectacle and
commodity.
For the companies, doctors, vaids, halums and quacks, advertise-
ments provided the quickest way to popularise their products. Motivat-
ed by profit, advertisers adopted an aggressive marketing technique.
Whereas money had to be specifically invested by consumers when
buying 'obscene' books and these were also more embarrassingly 'visi-
ble', aphrodisiac advertisements were a happier avenue as they could
be inserted in 'respectable' and 'high class' newspapers and books, and
thus be 'hidden'. They supplied easy information, intruding into

R.L. Burman and Co. of Mathura, for example, was published in Saraswari
I'rakash, 17 October 1891, NNR 22 October 1891, p. 722.
IG4 Abhyudaya, 20 January 1923, pp. G and 10 respectively.
IG5 Vartman, 6 August 1938, p. 8.
Vartman, 24 January 1925, p. 4.
IG7 Anis-i-Hind 9 November 1898, NNR, 15 November 1898, p. 601.
IG8 Vartman, 22 January 1925, p. 4; Madhuri, 3, 2-6.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 75
v
r

B,-
r*

IW*

WFPi
W
'4F: m)
-, -,
~l-rgm*iMidpdmM
t l m 4 0 ~ a 1)m ~

4
gF(*~oTrn~rnmmm
4
3trpa*M*p*mrn
amh81*-1)m
76 / Sexuality,Obscenity, Community
Redefining Obscenity andAesthetirs in Print 1 77
78 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 79
homes and catching the attention of readers and consumers. The
advertisers had a ready mass market as they seem to have ~erceived
the real and imagined anxieties of the man on the street-such as loss
of vigour, impotence and premature ejaculation-in a more realistic
fashion than did brahmacharya manuals and professional doctors.
They knew what would sell, and to boost sales they preyed especially
on weak, nervous and debilitated men, promising them sexual heights
with a little ~racticalmagic, and a restoration of health and vigour
within weeks. Advertisements of 'Kamratan Goliyan' and 'Kamsundari
Vati' said feebleness had increased manifold and their pills would cure
impotence, and ensure a wonderful sex life. In the real world, the
Indian male had felt a real loss of material power: in such a situation
these advertisements offered a fantasy realm of compensation for their
supposed loss of masculinity. These advertisements did not just
celebrate male sexuality, they can also be viewed as desperate attempts
to allay fears of effeminacy and impotence. This partially explains
why the lion, widely recopised as a symbol of British masculinity,
was an icon frequently used in aphrodisiac advertisements at this
time, showing the animal's subjugation by the virile Indian male.lb9
At the same time, even as these advertisements implicitly chal-
lenged the moral rhetoric of sex, they also adopted it-to some extent.
While using male sexual fantasy to sell their products, they sometimes
moulded their language to moral perceptions. Occasionally they even
issued warnings against the perils of over-indulgence in physical plea-
sure. There was thus a convergence and divergence of beliefs in safe
and good sex.
The advertisements opened a new public space for sexual informa-
tion. They were seen as signifying a general breakdown of sexual
moralityand posing serious threats not only to notions ofbrahmacharya
but to civilisation itself. Their tremendous visibility and use of pic-
turesque language created a moral panic which made it hard for many
British and Hindus. The British government mounted a campaign
and expressed its desire 'to take action to purify the tone of adver-
tisements in the public press'.'70 The use of 'obscene' language, taken
lb9 Leader, 8 January 191 1, p. 5; Leader, 10 January 191 1, p. 10. See Illusrra-
rion 1.
1 7 4 4 l J u n e 191 1, B, Home Poll (NAI).
80 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
as a sign of moral corruption, illicit intercourse and unclean thought,
combined with fears of public health and eugenic.arguments, and
these were the usual reasons cited to justify their banning. The Cal-
cutta Missionary Conference submitted a memorial to the Viceroy
and Governor-General of India in 1890 which stated 'that your mem-
orialists, as persons deeply interested in the moral welfare of the peo-
ple of the country, have frequent cause to deplore the publication or
circulation of advertisements of a corrupt and degrading kind.'171
Many newspaper editors in UP were prosecuted and convicted for
publishing obscene advertisements for aphrodisiac^.'^^ In 1890, when
several editors of Moradabad were convicted and fined on the charge,
some of them resolved to submit a memorial to the local government
with a view to discover what comprised 'obscene'. They argued that
the advertisements were not published to encourage immorality or
outrage the public decency but were intended for the public good.
'Obscene' words, after all, were to be found even in legal and medical
works.173Again, after two years, certain editors in Agra protested
against government action on such advertisements printed in their
papers.174Some newspapers, on the other hand, supported action
against such advertisements. They agreed they were obscene and re-
duced the prestige of the press,175and urged the government to also
punish men who issued such n 0 t i ~ e s . Some
I ~ ~ were more timid and
warned 'sellers of medicines for diseases effecting the organs of gene-
ration of men and women' against sending advertisements to editors
for publication in, or circulation with, their papers. They asked their
staff to be on their guard before publishing such advertisement^."^
For many Hindu ~ubliciststhe advertisements reflected fears of

I7l 229-32lJanuary 1890, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI).

17* Koh-i-NUT,25 February 1888, NNR, 28 February 1888, p. 154.
Dabir-i-Hind 10 January 1890, NNR, 20 January 1890, p. 32.
23m May
17* ~ a s i m - i - ~ ~ , 1892, NNR, 25 May 1892, p. 184; Colonel, 1
January 1893, NNR, 11 January 1893, p. 19.
175 Bharat Jiwan, 16 May 1892, p. 6.
Bharatjiwan, 30 May 1892, p. 6; Bharat;liwan, 22 August 1892, p. 4.
17' Anjuman-i-Hind, 21 May 1892, NNR, 25 May 1892, p. 184; Sararwati
Prakash, May 1892, Karnamah, 25 May 1892 and Akbar-i-Imamiah, 23 May
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 8 1
unbridled sexual collapse in the age of Kaliyug, and revealed the limits
inherent in sexual discipline. he; made a mockery of brahmacharya.
Though these advertisements upheld strong patriarchal notions, they
were at the same time a challenge to the moral order of that very same
patriarchy. They were icons of a world of deviant sexuality, of dis-
order, of the potential loss of rational Hindu male self-control. The
'good' brahmachari could be controlled whereas 'bad' male desire was
beyond control. Thus there arose a discourse of fear and condemna-
tion. An article in Gurukula Samachar entitled 'Vigyapan' (Adver-
tisements) began by emphasising how aphrodisiac advertisements
were an important source of money for newspapers and for compa-
nies selling such medicines, but that this money was earned by selling
dirt and not by good means.''* It said further:
By reading such sexually arousing advertisements, women of decent
households are filled with shame, and children wonder about this pleasure
of the' night. . . .All feel like reading quality newspapers, but how can one
know that they are filled with poison instead of nectar? . . . If readers
glance at the names of medicines in these advertisements designed to
arouse curiosity, they realise they are filled with the juice and love of sens-
uous pleasure and a luxurious life. . . . These advertisements in reputed
papers are a disgrace to civilisation and make man a slave of his genitals,
tempting him with promises of no exhaustion. . . . O n the one hand, the
flow of education is increasing: Gurukuls and Rishikuls are opening up
and innovative methods of brahmacharya are being propagated. . . . It is
a state offence to publish obscene books. O n the other hand, many are
publishing and distributing such obscene advertisements, bringing the
country to the brink of disaster. . . . Forget about buying such newspa-
pers, they should not even be touched. . . . These various temptations are
destroying brahmacharya.
The article ended with appeals to newspapers and government to im-
mediately stop such advertisements. The AIWC adopted a resolution

1892, all in NNR, 1 June 1892, p. 194; Riyaz-ul-Akhbar, 16 June 1892, NNR,
22 June 1892, p. 221; Prayag Samachar, 25 January 1894.
Anon., 'Vigyapan', Gurukul Samachar, 2, 9-1 0 (April-May 1910),
pp. 27-32.
'71 Ibid., pp. 28-31.
82 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
urging the government to censor all journals and newspapers that
published obscene and outrageous advertisements: these were intol-
erable to any civilised nation.'" Gandhi urged newspaper proprietors
to institute rigid censorship against such advertisements and to
'accept only healthy ones'. 'I
But the problem was that advertisements for aphrodisiacs were a
source of revenue for a press short of resources. Markets have their
own logic. Several newspaper editors who were otherwise staunch
supporters of the Hindu cause defended such advertisements. And so,
in spite of the concerted campaign against them, manufacturers of
aphrodisiacs continued to find ways to market their products.
Masculinity has multiple meanings: brahmacharya stressed one
kind while the advertisements stressed another. Both dealt with im-
potence and the crisis of Hindu male identity, yet they were pulling
in opposite directions. One argued containment, the other celebrated
sex. The brahmachari Hindu male preserved his power for the nation;
the one in the advertisements used it for 'selfish' sexual fulfilment.
Masculinity was asserted in one by the containment of semen, in the
other by its release. Both upheld patriarchal notions--one by mar-
ginalising women, the other by overpowering them.
A documentary film, Father, Son and Holy War, made by Anand
Patwardhan in the 1990s, and one of its persuasive analyses, both
describe a volatile intersection between male sexuality, patriarchy,
and the militant politics of Hindutva.ls2 At one point in the film, an
aphrodisiac selier's sales pitch rhapsodising semen 'shooting like an
arrow from a bow' is juxtaposed with an iconic arrow glistening in
the night sky of a Shiv Sena rally. Conversely, puritanical images
which repress male sexuality and celebrate brahmacharya equal-
ly form part of the discourse of such Hindu publicists. Male sexual

180AIWC,Twelfth, pp. 47, 186.

18' Gandhi, 'Exercise the Copyright', Colk-cted, Vol. xxx pp. 172-3. Also see
Gandhi, 'Obscene Advertisements', Colkcfed, Vol. L X ~ V ,pp. 29-30; Gandhi,
'How to Stop Obscene Advertisements', Colkcted Vol. L x r v , pp. 153-4.
I E 2 Rustom Bharucha, 'Dismantling Men: Crisis of Male Identity in "Father,
Son and Holy War" ', EPW 30, 26 (1 July 1995), pp. 1610-16; idem, I n the
Name, pp. 140-60.
 Redefining Obscenity and Aesthetics in Print / 83
promiscuity is central to the maintenance of a patriarchal and right-
wing culture, even as it is often stigmatised and opposed by those very
forces. Hindu publicists are remarkably elastic in deploying images.
Male sexuality too was an arena of contest for Hindus in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cooked up notions on
the decline in Hindu numbers,lg3 new definitions of conjugal rela-
tions, the challenges of the nationalist movement, the moral panic of
Kaliyug, the popular demands of the market-all aided the tension
posited between modern notions of brahmacharya and such adver-
tisements, and contributed to the questioning of male as much as
female sexuality.

Hindu moralists wished to establish their identity and a civilised

modern nation by propagating a particular kind ofliterature, distanc-
ing themselves from notions of obscenity and sexual pleasure. There
was unease in relation to shringar ras in the late medieval elite lite-
rature, and even more so in relation to an eclectic print culture and
popular publishing, these being seen as providing eroticism to the
masses. Control and order were necessary for 'good' and 'useful'
literature, for the moral authority of an aspiring Hindi literati and a
Hindu nationalist identity. Literary ethics was lir~kedto the morality
of the nation. In the bulk, these 'high' literary trends were successful.
Salacious works were no longer considered a part of literary culture.
Textbook Hindi literature of the Dwivedi period, specifically, was
largely aimed at creating a new aesthetic taste wherein the chastity of
the Hindu woman was an essential element.
This literature was important and influential, but naturally it did
not occupy the whole field of social identities. The picture is more
con~plexif one looks at other Hindi publications. The bulk of these
were indifferent to sanitised literary taste and nation-building. What
actually sold in the market and brought profits were a vast variety of
Ig3 See Chapter 7.
84 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
sex manuals, romances, songs and advertisements. Old forms--erotic
Braj Bhasha songs, qissas, nautankis and sangits-were printed in
huge quantities. New commercial genres such as romantic novels and
thrillers provided entertainment and even dealt with taboo subjects.
Advertisements catered to sexual anxieties. Sex manuals adapted a
'scientific' garb while offering titillation. This literature was not on
the margins, it was at the centre of an emerging subculture where
patriarchal and moralistic notions were partly reconstructed and part-
ly contested. A simple distinction between high and low, elite and
popular, does not take us very far. There were reformers who thought
sexual fulfilment essential in marriage; moreover the writers and read-
ership of erotic material were themselves part of the Hindu middle
class. The 'high' sanitised literature had only a limited readership.
There has been a more or less timeless abundance of risque! verses,
songs, saws and galis among Hindi-speaking communities. There
were popular genres like the nautanki in north India. Too nebulous
and yet too universal to be called a 'tradition', still less part of any
canon, this popular oral arena became another sphere of regulation
by Hindu publicists. Its special aim was, as we shall soon see, to con-
trol and regulate women.
M oving from the debates around obscenity, and high and low
culture within print-which was accessible to a relatively small
percentage of the population-let us look now at popular culture,
oral narratives and the wider public and social spaces of women in
this period. Here too the attempt to cleanse culture of perceived
obscenities occupied centre stage. There were debates on theatre and
the cinema, on women's songs, and on women's participation in Holi
and fairs. Critics sought to restrict certain areas of leisure and recre-
ation, especially of women and lower castes, and turn them into a
'refined', banal structure. With this reordering of entertainment, a
traditional moral conservatism was reconstituted. At the same time,
some of these attempts remained at the level of rhetoric and had a
limited impact on the ground. This is reflected by the survival of
many social practices, though in a substantially changed form.
Then there is the question of prostitutes in the urban areas of UP.
Looking at their lives enables us to explore how cultural values were
redefined in specific geographical locations. There were regular at-
tempts to undermine and expel prostitutes from municipal limits, to
ensure new norms of appropriate social conduct in respectable and
civilised areas. Here too there were uneasy oscillations, and women
tried to rework their own spaces.

I. Controls Over Entertainment

In her study on the leisure activities of the artisans of Banaras, Nita
Kumar regrets confining herself to males. She says women were
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
86 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
entirely excluded from the world of public life and popular culture,
and their sphere of entertainment was completely separate from that
of men.' Women had their social and cultural world, though this
could occasionally commingle with that of men. Amusements, per-
formances and festivals were closely woven into the fabric of daily life,
and these also provided arenas of sociability across gender.2 Women
in UP had limited scope for fun and leisure, but they did share in mar-
riages, festivals and religious practices, these providing them a diver-
sion from incessant routine. Obviously, much of this womanly sphere
was not confined to an inner spiritual or private domain. It was part
of neighbourhood life and social gatherings in villages, markets and
towns, and could sometimes be a public ~pectacle.~
S.W. Fallon's extensive dictionary celebrated the separate private
space of women while noting distinct features of zenani boli in the
North Western Provinces.* His narrative seems exaggerated and rom-
anticised as he gives a wholly separate space to women's voices; he also
offers a particular view of language-that it grew in pure forms, iso-
lated and within demarcated places. This does not seem altogether
credible. It seems much more true to assert that there were overlap-
ping and coexisting dialects: women's language was not confined to
the zenana, but escaped into social events and popular songs.
Moreover, women were pivotal to the rendition of imaginative
narratives. In north India, as elsewhere, they dominated the worl'd of
singing joyous and sad songs,5 not always outside the hearing of men.

' Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Banarm: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880-
1986 (Princeton, 1988), pp. 9, 62.
Thus for example, Holi saw the participation of women along with men.
O n other occasions, like fairs and women could be seen participating
alongside men.
In this chapter the focus is only on some cultural spheres. Women visiting
pirs, pilgrimages and bathing ghats, travelling by trains, their sexual and other
relationships, and their reading of novels have been dealt with in later chapters.
S.W. Fallon, New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras, 1879), p. iii.
Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature, Vol. I??, 1800-1910:
Western Impact, Indian Response (Delhi, 1991), p. 110. Das points out how a
great corpus of all kinds of songs was created partly, if not entirely, by women,
and it was they who mainly preserved and transmitted this corpus.
 Sanicising Women i Social Spaces / 87
These songs often articulated their desires and sorrow^.^ They were
not only a form of ~ r i v a t eleisure but were a public extension of wo-
men's culture. Women sang kajalis, raginis and lavni. Kajalis were a
favourite among UP'S women, many of them composed and sung by
the women themselves. They were chanted duringvarious melas, such
as 'Kajarihya ka Mela', 'Thunmunia ka Mela' and 'Raat ka Mela'.'
Women learnt these songs from their mothers, their sisters, their
friends, while cooking, washing and stitching, maintaining and trans-
mitting them over generations.8
Particularly popular was the singing of jocular wedding songs,
known as garis or galis. They were sung mainly by the bride's side,
chiefly addressing the groom and his family. Some of these garis ridi-
culed the husband, the mother-in-law, and the existing hierarchy of
familial relationships, and they were provocative and illicit. The devar
was enticed by the bhabhi to come and sleep on her bed.9 Newly-wed
girls were advised to dictate terms in the sasural so that the sas and
the nanad remained at their command, and so that the jeth fetched
the water. The groom's family was abused and the sexual proclivities
of the groom's mother were joked about.1°
Just as women's language and songs spilled out into a mixed and
public arena, so too did upper-caste women themselves occasionally
escape seclusion. Most notably, they participated in popular melas.
For example, within the district of Bulandshahar, fairs were held at
many places: at Pacheta a fair was held in honour of an Ahir saint.
It lasted two days, during which about 15,000 Chamars and Lod-
has assembled to fulfil their vows at the tomb of the saint. Sterile
women propitiated the saint. At Muhana in Sikandrabad, on the
seventeenth day of the months of Baisakh, Bhadon and Magh, about

'Fallon, New, esp. pp. 1, 5, 9. 984, 1210; idem, A Dictionary of Hindus-

tani Proverbs (Banaras, 1886), pp. 299-320.
' Badri Narayan Chaudhari, Kajali Kautuhal (Mirzapur, 1913), pp. 1-10.
For some such songs and their study, see Sahab Lai Srivastava, Folk Culture
and Oral Trdition: A Comparative S d y of Regions in Rajastban and Eatern UP
(New Delhi, 1974); K.P. Bahadur, Folk Tabs o f U P (New Delhi, 1972); Ved
Prakash Vatuk (ed.), Stuu'ies in Indian Folk Traditions (New Delhi, 1979).
For details of the devar-bhabhi relationship, see Chapter 4.
'O Anon., Gali Sangrah: Fourth Series (Lucknow, 1917).
88 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
10,000 women of all castes assembled to worship the idol of Burha
Babu, who was supposed to be the guardian of women and children,
especially protecting them against diseases of the skin. And at Mawai,
near Khurja, a fair was held on the eighth day of Chait every year in
honour of Shitala. About 10,000 women assembled on the occasion:
few men visited this fair."
Besides these religious fairs, fairs were held for pure fun and plea-
sure. Here too women were to be found in circumstances which ap-
peared to defy social norms. According to an account by a native
Christian of UP, Hindu women were more fond of attending fairs
than men; for men, especially Muslims, mainly went to such melas
to gaze at Hindu women of all manner of beauty, in dresses of every
approved colour. The women who appeared in these fairs wore no
screen to conceal themselves from the public gaze.12 The Burhwa
Mangal fair at Banaras, being one of this type, was particularly popu-
lar. It was a river festival which combined boating, festivity and
music. It was held for three days with eclat every year during the
month of Chait. During the day people went in crowds to a place cal-
led Durga Kund. Strolling actors disguised as religious mendicants,
or as individuals of inferior caste, both male and female, mingled with
the crowd and diverted them with songs, dancing and buffoonery.
Sometimes different parties competed against each other in impro-
vised poetry contests. In the evening hundreds of boats were deco-
rated, and music, singing, dancing and other rejoicing went on for
days. This fair had been held regularly since the 1790s.I3The Nau-
chandi fair, held annually in Meerut at the end of March or the

' I Kuwar Lachman Singh (Deputy Collector), HistoricalandStatisticalMem-

oir ofZikz Buhndshahar (Allahabad, 1874), pp. 101-2. Regarding the attack on
women visiting fairs, held in honour of various pirs, see Chapter 7.
l 2 Ishuree Dass (A Native Christian), Domestic Manners and Customs of the
Hindoos of Northern India (or more strictly s19eaking, of NWP of India) (Banaras,
1860), pp. 88-9.
13Account based on Diana L. Eck, Banaras: City of Light (London, 1983),
p. 278; Bharat Jiwan, 13 April 1891; John Murdoch, Hindu andMuhammadan
Festivals [Compiled from Wilson, Wilkins, Crooke, Sell, Hughes and Other
Writers] (London, 1904), p. 43; Kumar, Artisans, pp. 126-31.
 Sanitising Women i Social Spaces / 89
beginning of April, was another big mela visited by all ranks, includ-
ing shopkeepers and exhibitors from across the country.I4
One of the most popular festivals in U P was Holi,15 especially
favoured by the lower castes, and saw a large participation of women.
Local legends and epitaphs influenced its form in different locali-
ties.'' A popular basis for the festival rested on the legend of a female
demon, named Holaka, who was addicted to a daily meal of children.
A sadhu, when comforting a woman whose grandchild was to be
sacrificed, advised that a sufficient measure ofabuse and foul language
would subdue Holaka. The old woman followed this advice. She
prompted such a torrent of abuse and obscene expression from vari-
ous children that Holaka fell dead on the spot and the children made
a bonfire of her remains. There were other variations on the Holaka
legend. In one of these, Prahlad, a devotee of Ram, sits with his aunt
Holaka on a fire. While he emerges unscathed, Holaka is destroyed.
According to this version, people rejoiced on the occasion and sang
vulgar songs.about Holaka." It was thus believed that the singing of
vulgar songs during Holi kept evil spirits away.
Respectable women may have remained in semi-seclusion in these
public events, but they did not always do so, and even when they did,
they clearly beheld a wider world which took account of them and
their concerns. The singing of licentious songs, the abuse thrown by
women at men, and the reciting of sakhis highlighting women's
desires were all a vital part of Holi in UP. The famous Rangila Holi

H.R. Nevill, Meerut: A Gazetteer, Vol. IV of the District Gazetteers of UP

(Lucknow, 1922), p. 274.
l 5 F.S. Growse, Mathura: A District Memoir (1882, rpt. New Delhi, 1979);
W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, Vol. I I (Wesc-
minster, 1896), pp. 3 13-18.
I GPrabhudayal Mittal, Braj ka Sanskrit; Itiixz (Delhi, 1966), pp. 234-8.
I' H.R. Roe, Guide to Muhammadan and Hindu Festivalr and Fasts in UP
(Allahabad, 1925), p. 20; Das:, L)omestic, p. 107; Adityaprasad Singh and Ram-
prasad Singh, Hindu Parva Prakash (Prayag, 1934), p. 91; Shiclasahai, Hindu
Tyohnrnn ka ltihas (Allahabad, 1927,2nd edn), pp. 98-100. The Jain Martandya
gives a comp!;tely different version of the story, where Holaka is depicted as a
wido\.:, attracted to a prince. She has illicit relations with him and then dies: quoc-
r d in Anon., Holi ya Dhund (Kota, 1924), pp. 7-9.
90 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
of Barsana saw a sham fight between men from the neighbouring vil-
lage of Nandgaon and Barsana women-the wives of the Gosains of
the temple of Larli Ji. The women were armed with long heavy bam-
boos with which they dealt their opponents many shrewd blows on
the head and shoulders. l 8 Further, humorous and ironic changes
between women and men, bhabhi and devar, were a source of much
laughter and delight during Holi.
Other public leisure activities available to women were folk plays,
variously called svang, sangit or nautanki, and Parsi theatre compa-
nies that became widespread in UP. By the early twentieth century
nautankis became the most popular form of entertainment in north
India. Plays by Parsi dramatic companies played to full
houses for months together in UP towns. Though it was men who
largely frequented the plays, women also sometimes went to them.19
Cinema too had made its appearance and now slowly started spread-
ing in UP.
Particularly from the late nineteenth century, these forms of enter-
tainment and the social space and territory of women attracted the
attention of social reformers, urban intellectuals, emerging middle
classes and caste associations. They started advocating reforms and
changes in social and customary behaviour, especially ofwomen and
the lower castes. It is difficult to ascertain how much of this arose ex-
clusively at this time, but it became more regular from the nineteenth
century. Scholars have noted the attacks on popular culture and an
emerging puritanism in the colonial period.20 Emerging moralist
l8 Growse, Mathara, p. 92.
"The most comprehensive work on nautanki has been done by Kathryn
Hansen, Grounds for Play: The Nautanki Theatre o f North India (Berkeley,
1992); idem, 'Sultana the Dacoit and Harishchandra: Two Popular rama as of
the Nautanki Tradition ofNorth India', MAS, 17, 2 (1983), pp. 313-31; idem,
'The Birth of Hindi Drama in Banaras: 1868-85', in Sandria B. Freitag (ed.),
Culture and Power in Banaras: Communiry, Perfarmance and Environment,
180G1980 (Delhi, 1989), pp. 62-92. For the history of nautanki, also see
Ramnarayan Agarwal, Sangit(Delhi, 1976);Indra Sharrna'Varij', SwangNautanki
(New Delhi, 1984).
20 Surnanta Banerjee, 'Marginalisation ofwomen's Popular Culture in Nine-
teenth-Century Bengal', in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recarting
Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 130-2.
 Sanitising Women ? Social Spaces / 9 1
streaks in the portrayal of women have been noted in the visual
iconography of colonial Bengal,21 as have reformist attacks on the
popular culture of Banaras--on Ramlila, Nakkatyya, Holi and Burhwa
Mangal.22The opposition of the educated middle class to nautanki
has been analysed.23Such reformist endeavours had an affinity with
a Hindu nationalist civilising rhetoric.
Most of these critic-reformers spoke from a high-caste, 'respect-
able' perspective, requesting educated Hindus to take the lead in
reforms. They were concerned on the one hand with women's bodies
and chastity, and on the other with a distancing from and a simul-
taneous reforming of the lower castes. Condemnation was concomi-
tant with the protection of women and lower castes from their own
propensity towards all forms of lewdness. Both concerns were linked
to a civilisational discourse, critical to respectability and refinement,
which sought to remove all hint of perceived vulgarities in culture.
Any celebration of women's sexuality was thought of as harmful to
the new nationalist order. Hindu reformist rhetoric drew a straight
line linking obscene songs and festivals, and an uncultured, inferior,
immoral society.
These trends were not limited to the high castes: many interme-
diary caste associations adopted resolutions boycotting those norms
which were perceived as making them inferior. As I said earlier, this
was a period of considerable upward caste mobility, combining
claims to higher social status with the acquisition of wealth and eco-
nomic power. Many inferior castes of UP, to legitimise such claims,
were compelled to remodel their culture, leisure and entertainment.
The conduct of their women loomed large in this context, renewing
means and motives for the assertion of moral codes. Thus, for differ-
ent reasons and from diverse perspectives, representative bodies of
lower, intermediary and upper Hindu castes adopted similar resolu-
tions. There were reformist motives and campaigns in UP, specifically
'' Ratnabali Chattopadhyay and Tapati Guha Thakurta, 'The Woman Per-
ceived: T h e Changing Visual Iconography of the Colonial and Nationalist Period
in Bengal', in Jashodhara Bagchi (ed.), Indian Women:MythandReality (Hydera-
bad, 19951, pp. 147-67.
** Kumar, Artisans, pp. 138-9, 176-9, 190-3
23 Hansen. Ground.
92 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
in relation to songs sung by women as well as their participation in
fairs and Holi, their visits to theatre and cinema.
Garis sung in marriages were seen as particularly corrupting, inde-
cent and unworthy, especially for 'proper', high-caste, middle-class
Hindu women. These songs spoke that which.should not be spoken
by women and made women seem uncontrollable. Publicists there-
fore attempted to stifle these voices by branding the songs as 'bure'
and 'gande', and their singers as loud, bawdy and frivolous. As early
as 1874, Balabodhini, Harishchandra's journal for women, con-
demned these practices, specially their public display:
T h e sign of high-caste women is that-forget about singing, they do not
even allow their voices to enter a man's ears. Such singing is extremely
derogatory because it is full of ras and shringar. T h e narrative is mostly
such as brings evil desires to the heart and to sing or listen to them is ex-
tremely brash . . . T h e galis sung on marriages in many households are
worse still. It is so shameful to recite or listen to sexual utterances in front
of a mother, father, brother and other relatives.'*
The Jain Gazette regretted that Hindu women, especially among
Marwaris, were in the habit of singing the most obscene songs at
marriages and other such festive occasions, and using terms which
even dancing girls would not utter in public. It urged Hindus to
immediately abandon such reprehensible practices.25
These objections continued well into the twentieth century. It was
argued that garis were not just obscene, they were an insult to the
community, they disrupted familial relationships and heightened
sexual desire. Maithlisharan Gupt, the leading Hindi writer, wrorr.
Rakhti yahi gun ki ve gande git gana jantin,
k u ~ sheel,
; laja U J satnay kuch bhi nahin ve mantin.
Hanste hue hum bhi aho! ve git sunte sab kahin,
rodan karo he bhaiyon!yeh bant hasne ki nahin.
(The only talent these women have is to sing dirty songs. They d o not
consider their family, honour or chastity at such times. W e too laugh as

**Anon., 'Gyawahan Adhyaya: Gane Bajane Adi Vyavaharon Ke Vishaya

Mein', Balabodhini, 2, 8 (August 1875), pp. 59-60.
2 5 Jain Gazette, 1 Augusr 1898, NNR, 10 August 1898, p. 426.
 Sanitising Women i Social Spaces 1 93
we listen to such songs. Weep 0 Brothers, for this is no laughing mat-
ter.")

Women were constantly reprimanded for transgressing respectable

boundaries through their songs. It was said that because of such songs
many high-caste women had abandoned their homes and married
into low-caste household^.^^ This fear of women challenging hier-
archical familial relationships required vigilant control for there was
an association between women singingsuch garis and confrontational
behaviour and aggression. It was thus the duty of every educated girl
to help eradicate such songs and not mix with those who sang them.28
Manvaris and Khatris were particularly active in this campaign.
The Khatri Hitkari Sabha of Agra published a pamphlet urging
Khatri women not to sing sithnis and galis at marriages for it was a
sign of stupidity, shamelessness and uncultured behaviour. In fact,
'civilised' women were not to sing even 'ordinary' and simple songs.29
Khatri Hitkari was glad to notice that customs such as singing ob-
scene songs at weddings were fast being abolished among the Khatris,
and it hoped other communities would follow suit.30The Aganval
association said: 'At times of joy and sadness, singing of galis stops
immediately, though women can go on singingdecent songs. At times
of marriages, women sing obscene songs which should now stop im-
mediatel~.'~' Many of the intermediate and even lower-caste associa-
tions repeated such instructions, including the Ahirs and the J a t ~ . ~ ~
2"aithilisharan Gupt, Bharat Bharti Uhansi, 1937, 14th edn), p. 136.
27 Anon., Gande Mahikz Giton ka Asar (Allahabad, 1923), pp. 7-8; Lakshmi
Narayan 'Saroj', Nari Shiksha Darpan (Banaras, 1929), p. 28.
"Anon., 'Gan Vidya', Kanya Manoranjan, 1, 6 (March 1914), p. 205.
"Jivaram Kapur Khatri, Stri Dharma Sar (Mathura, 1892), pp. 17-18.
30 Khatri Hitkari, January 1907, NNR, 2 February 1907, p. 152. I t is relevant
here to note that even the public display of grief by women, known as syapa, was
particularly opposed by the Khatris as an evil and a bad custom: Editor, 'Khatri
Conference', Chand, 2 , 4 (August 1924), pp. 291-3; ReportoftheAflIndia Khatri
Confirenre, 18th Session (Lucknow, 1937), p. 34.
" Basdeo Sharma (ed.), Agarwal Jati Prabandh (Agra, 19 16), p. 9. Also see,
Sanatan Jatiya Sabha ki Dwitiya Varshik Report (Agra, 1895), pp. 5 and 17.
32 Ganeshi Lal, Kachhwaha lati Uddhar ki Sirhi (Agra, 1916), pp. 11-15;
Chaudhry Ghisaram, Bhajan Jar fihatriya Jari Sudhar aur Jat Utpatti (Meerut,
94 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Not only were women's songs to be regulated and sanitised, the
proper and correct ones were now to be defined and prescribed by
men. 'The material that one gets in women's groups is so obscene and
corrupt that no decent and civilised society wants to listen to such
songs', said one-'And so, here is a compilation of songs which wo-
men can recite on various occasion^.'^^ When this collection of songs
for women called Gram Gitanjali was published, notable leaders
and writers expressed their support. Sampurnanand (the education
minister), Rajendra Prasad, Bhagwandas Nirala, Makhanlal Chaturvedi
and Ramnaresh Tripathi were all of the opinion that most songs sung
by women were vulgar and cheap, and that these alternative songs
were urgently needed. Dr Bhagwandas felt there was as much differ-
ence between the songs contained in the new anthology and those
sung by women as between light and darkness. The former were
couched in simple language, contained clean feelings, and appealed
to high ideals; the latter comprised dirty words and evoked licentious
desires. Rajendra Prasad prayed to women of all households to adopt
these new songs.34
It was now almost anti-nationalist on the part of women to sing
obscene songs. The songs in Gram Gitanjali would lead to pure
national feelings in place of the prevalent impurity. This was linked
to the concept of a positive role for women and the usefulness of cer-
tain kinds of songs in the nationalist struggle. The famous writer
Ramnaresh Tripathi wrote the 'Introduction' to this new book. H e
said that women had insufficient national feelings and were thus in-
capable of composing such songs themselves. Until they could, they
should accept this gift from a man.35 The book was also seen as a

1920, 2nd edn), pp. 83-97; Baijnathprasad Yadav, Ahir jati ki Niyamavali
(Banaras, 1927), pp. G, 10-13; Anon., 'Stri Dharm', KalwarXthatriyaMitra, 18,
9 (September, 1922), p. 193.
33 Bhagwan Singh, Mahila Git (Prayag, 1933), p. 3.
j4 Kavivar 'Chanchrik', Gram Gitnnjali (Gorakhpur, 1938,3rd edn), pp. 'k'-

'gh'.
35 Ramnaresh Tripathi, 'Introduction', in Chanchrik, Gram Gitanjali, p. 4.
Tripathi made an effort, through the famous magazine Chan& to get women to
send ancient songs sung by them on various occasions. Many women, in
response, sent dadras, thumris and ghazals. Tripathi felt sad to note that such
 Sanitising Women > Social Spaces / 9 5
means to reform rites of passage and improve syllabi. The author him-
self appealed to district and municipal boards to make the book a part
of the curriculum in girls' schools. He also felt it should be gifted to
all Hindu women at the time of marriage.36 The book contained
'Vivah ke Git' (Marriage Songs), 'Adarsh Gari' (Ideal Gari), with
titles like 'Adarsh Grihani Kartavya' (Duties of an Ideal Housewife),
and 'Muhjor Striyon ka Roznamacha' (Daily Noise of Brash Wo-
men).37In the process, women's songs were converted into an advice
manual for national uplift. T o claim serious intent and the authority
of the national movement, it was necessary that trivial songs be re-
placed by adarsh git,38 sung by women in service to the nation.39
Other prescriptive songs for women appeared. The new emphasis
was on accomplishments, which had to be encouraged but not exhi-
bited. One song went:
Dekho Lqja ke & v a n mein tum mukhra . . .
pativrata ki orho chunariya, sheel ka nainon mein ho kajra.
(See your face in the mirror of modesty. Wear the veil of chastity and mark
your eyes with the kohl of decency.*')

And:
Behanon, buri kitab kabhi na parha karo,
kisson se sadu door hi pyari raha karo,
bharat ki deviyon ki kahani kaha karo.
(Sisters, never read a bad book. Stay away from popular texts my dears.
Narrate the stories of India's great women.*')

lowly songs had been sent: Ramnaresh Tripathi, 'Mangal Git', letter in Chand
(January 1928), pp. 4 1 4 1 6 .
36Chanchrik, Gram, p. 12.
37 Chanchrik, Gram, pp. 99-1 10, 191-212.
38 Chanchrik, Gram, pp. 1 5 4 7 3 .
3' Most song-books for women were filled, with songs that had a strong
nationalist fervour, especially from the 1920s. Many promoted charkha and
khadi: Chanchrik, Gram; Singh, Mahik Brahmashankar Mathur 'Anand', Stri
Git Prakash (Kanpur, 1927); Baburam Bajpei, Stri Gayan Prakash (Lucknow,
1933).
40Anand, Stri, p. 5.
*' Ibid., p. 11.
96 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Yet another song, written like a sermon, said:
Nachna uchit nu nachuana, nu byahon mein gali gana . . .
kabhi mat dekho sajni ras, krishna sakhiyon ka vividh vilas.
(It is not right to dance or set others dancing, or to sing galis in marriages.
Dear women-friends, never watch the dance-drama or the playful frolics
of Krishna and gopis.42)
The Burhwa Mangal fair disappeared almost completely by the
1920s.~ While
~ the decline of Hindu princely culture, the withdrawal
of royal patronage and economic hardship were significant reasons
for its disappearance, the fair had been under growing attack since
the late nineteenth century, from organisations like the Banaras
Temperance Association, for its carnivalesque style and revelry.44The
withdrawal of patronage by rais was a significant factor in its decline
but the role of redefined gender codes and moralities needs stressing.4s
A tract published at this time, in the form of a court case, urged Hin-
dus not to participate in the fair and specifically to stop their women
doing so. The judge argued that Banaras was the biggest pilgrimage
centre of Hindus and it was shameful for such a dirty fair to be held
at such a place.46
O n e particular tract, titled Mekz Ghumni, went into many impres-
sions. It was printed by various publishers and accredited to different
or anonymous authors. However, it was the same collection of poems
with slight modifications in titles and words. All versions vociferously
dissuaded women from visiting fairs and claimed that those who did
were prostitutes and sensuous creatures with no qualms or morals.47

42 Bajpei, Stri, p. 5.
43 Eck, Banarm, p. 278; Kumar, Artijans, p. 127.
44 Bharat Jiwan, 28 March 1892.
45 Kumar, Articani, p. 130.
46 Durga Prasad Gupt, Ek Raat ki Vardat (Banaras, 1929, 2nd edn).
47 1 came across four different copies of this tract: Bhagawat Prasad, Mela
Ghumni (Muzzaffarpur, 1925);Anon., Mela Ghumni Bhanvarva (Bharti Book-
depot, Banaras, 1923);Gopaldas Tandon, Mekz Ghumni (Babu Baijnath Prasad
Bookseller, Banaras, 1931); Anon., Navin Mela Ghumni (Bhargav Pustakalay,
Banaras, 1931).
 Sanitising Women 2 Social Spaces / 97
Fairs were identified as laces where Hindu women were molested
and abducted.48
Not all fairs were targeted in the same way. Some were subject to
efforts at regulation and cleansing. Lala Baijnath of Agra, one of the
secretaries of the All India Hindu Sabha, wrote at length to define
what he considered to be the scope and organisation of the Hindu
Sabha. H e declared that the proper regulation of Hindu fairs and
festivals, so as to make them a source of religious instruction to the
masses, was to be one of the main ends of the Hindu Sabha.49The
Gurukul Mela, held in 1910, was greatly praised as a place of meeting
for 'bal brahmacharis' (young brahmacharis) and 'Arya griha devis'
(Aryan household goddesses). The word 'mela' wzs acclaimed for
connoting sweetness and power, a capacity for rejuvenating people,
but in a very specific context and only in a special way.50
Holi was the festival that especially attracted the attention of
Hindu reformers, who expressed their contempt for the form it had
taken in recent times. The views of missionaries and the colonial state,
- with those of reformer^.^' John Mur-
in this matter, often converged
doch, the evangelical missionary, was disgusted with the obscenity in
the festival and blamed men for targeting people of respectability, and
females with gross expressions and rough usage.52Amidst such views,
the authorities tried to accommodate the continuous demands-
made by Hindu publicists to the local administration and the mu-
nicipal corporation-to intervene in perceived obscenities during the
festival. In this endeavour what became more significant was 'how
Holi should be' rather than 'how Holi is'. And it was to be of the kind
based on the model of Hindu publicists.
In a treatise on Hindu festivals, published by the famous Chand
Press of Allahabad, the writer determined the criterion of civilisation
in festivities through the mirror of other countries. Holi sent the
48Ediror, 'Prayag ka Magh Mela', Kurmi Kthatrija Diwakar, 2, 2 (April
19261, p. 3.
49 Leader, 16 July 191 1.
50 Anon., 'Gurukul Mela', Gurukul Samachar, 2, 5 (1910), p. 11.
5' Growse, Mathura, pp. 72, 74, 98.
5 2 Murdoch, Hindu, pp. 35-6.
98 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
worst possible message to outsiders on the state of the country. More-
over, images of uncivilised modernity and civilised tradition seem to
have combined only within India's culture:
Today, too communities that are uncivilised, celebrate such festivals.
Nations that are civilised today, celebrated similar festivals when they
were uncivilised. In England, France, Germany and Belgium, 6 January
was celebrated as the Festival of Fools. . . . In England and Scotland, in
December end, King- of Misrule was elected, who was also called Abbot
of Unreason. . . . Women dressed as men and men as women and they
both clung to each other while singing and dancing. . . . The most dirty
songs were sung on such occasions and obscene scenes enacted. . . . But
this was the situation of these countries before the eighteenth century. . . .
In all uncivilised and uncultured societies of the world, such vulgar and
disdainful practices were to be found. . . . Many festivals of the West were
as indecent as Holi. . . . The difference between them and us is that obs-
cenity prevailed in other countries when they were uncivilised, but it is
veryshameful that we practice this obscene festival when weclaim not only
to be civifised but also the children ofsaints. . . . However loudly we claim
to be civilised, in the eyes of the world and indeed in reality we will remain
uncivilised and degraded till we continue with this.53 (emphasis mine)
Another tract on festivals expressed this sadness: 'On that [Holi] day
when people shelve their modesty, and passionately shower a torrent
of abuse and obscene songs on each other, the pure and clean hearts
of our future generation are stained with contaminated feelings.'54
Various Hindi newspapers were disgusted with the festival, and
every year, at Holi, published articles, editorials and reports attacking
its alleged obscenities, public displays of unseemly behaviour, and the
participation in these of women and lower castes.55An editorial in
53 Shitlasahai, Hindu, pp. 101-5.
5* Singh and Singh, Hindu, p. 95.
5 5 Kaui Vachan Sudha, 22March 1871, NNR, 25 March 1871, p. 129;Afmora
Akhbar, 14 March 1887, NNR, 22 March 1887, p. 191; Bharat jiwan, 3 March
1890; Bharat Jiwan, 7 March 1892; Abhyudaya, 12 February 1907; Aduocate,
17 February 1907, NNR, 23 February 1907, p. 225; Indian Daily Tebgraph,
3 March 1908, NNR, 7 March 1908, p. 241; Central Hindu Colkgc Magazine,
April 1901 ; Central Hindu Colkgc Magazine, April 1909; Indian Peopk, 11
March 1909, NNR, 13 March 1909, p. 209.
 Sanitising Women j Social Spaces / 99
one newspaper noted regretfully that obscene songs, disgraceful ac-
tions and foul language continued unabated in connection with the
celebration of Holi. It pointed out that the licence allowed while the
ceremony lasted aroused the worst passions of the human heart and
altogether banished the spiritual aspect of the festival.56Holi debased
Hinduism and was a disgrace to religion.57
T o redeem Hindu religion and the civilised nation the festival was
vilified, largely by identifying it with lower castes and women. This
proved an effective weapon in showing the contempt of upper-caste
educated Hindus towards the lowly, the uneducated and the ill-bred.
The point was repeatedly driven home: it was the lower castes who
were squarely responsible for the sexual irregularities, lewd revelry and
excesses of H ~ l iUnder
. ~ ~ the influence of the Arya Samaj and Chris-
tianity, Chamars were made to feel ashamed of 'grosser' elements in
their customs.59 Manvaris were also partially blamed.60
All respectable women were asked to keep away from the festival,
those who did not were severely condemned for uttering obscenities
and taking part in loathsornes~an~s.~' Since the reformers were trying
to establish that the festival was limited to the uncivilised and lower
castes, some of the lower castes also started condemning the festival
in their quest for upward mobility, as proof that they were no less
civilised than the educated upper castes. They too blamed their wo-
men. A tract of the Ahirs said one of the most improper customs
among them was the indecent festival of Holi. The women were con-
demned for forgetting their modesty and singing cheap songs, the
impact of which was felt in the remaining eleven months.62

56 Citizen, 22 March 1908, NNR, 28 March 1908, p. 305.

57 Prayag Samachar, 18 January 1900, NNR, 6 February 1900, p. 56.
58 Shitlasahai, Hindu, p. 100; Singh and Singh, Hind% pp. 91 and 95; G.W.
Briggs, The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920), p. 118.
59 Briggs, Chamars, pp. 235-6.
Bharat jiwan, 3 March 1890, p. 3.
Mahendulal Garg, Kalavati Shiksha (Prayag, 1930), p. 37.
" Chaudhary Baldevsingh Updeshak (comp.), Ahirjati ke Liye Char Nuskhe
(Allahabad, 1923), p. 43. Similar views were expressed by the Kalwar caste
reformers: Ranvirsingh Jhiriwala, 'Holi ka Sandesha', Xlfwar Kesari, 1, 1 (1 923),
100 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
The denunciation was complemented by an agenda for the recon-
struction of the festival. Publicists addressed mainly the educated,
high-caste Hindus on the one hand, and the government on the
other-these were perceived to be civilised, to have the skills and abil-
ity to cleanse Holi. Reformers urged prominent Hindu men of learn-
ing to come forward for the task in large numbers and hold meetings
to condemn the objectionable practices.6"t was claimed with pride
thac there was a growing feeling among educated Hindus against such
abominations and that they had increasingly began paying attention
to reforming the festivaL6*A Social Conference at Lucknow in 1908
condemned the moral degradation during H ~ l iA. successful
~ ~ effort
was made in Allahabad the same year to check ribaldry at Holi. A
devoted band of educated Hindus collected around Pandit Ramakant
Malaviya and Purushottam Das Tandon and celebrated the festival
in the supposedly orthodox spiritual manner. Promoters of this
movement were lauded in the press.66
Newspapers joined the chorus, pressing the state government,
municipal corporations and commissioners of UP to intervene and
stop 'filthy' songs sung during the festival, which maligned the popu-
lar basis of the Hindu religion.67The government did not interfere

pp. 22-4; Parmeshwari Dayalsingh 'Sada', 'Holi', Kalwar Kesari, 1, 12 (1923),

p. 717.
63 Singh and Singh, Hindu, p. 96; Oudh Akhhar, 22 March 1910, NNR
Samrat, 27 March 19 10, N N R
64 Garg, Kalavati, p. 97; Murdoch, Hindu, p. 43; Prayclg Samachar, 18 Janu-
ary 1900.
6 5 Indian Daib Telegraph, 3 March 1908, NNR, 7 March 1908, p. 241.
66 Citizen, 26 March 1908, NNR, 28 March 1908, p. 305.
67 Indu Prakash (quoted in Murdoch, Hindu, p. 94) said that committees
ought to be formed at every place for putting down the evil, by prosecuting those
who used obscene language in public on the occasion. Kavi Vachan Sudha (22
March 187 I, NNR, 25 March 1871, p. 129) requested that Section 294, Indian
Penal Code, should be strongly implemented to stop obscenities in the festival.
Bhnrntjiwan (3 March 1890, p. 3) urged local authorities to develop an efficient
police organisation to stop uncivilised behaviour, including at the time of Holi.
I'rayag Samachar (1 8 January 1900, NNR, 6 February 1900, p. 56) urged the
government to prohibit the custom ofsinging vulgar songs during Holi. Advocate
(17 February 1907, NNR, 23 February 1907, p. 255) said that the government
 Sanitising Women ? Social Spaces / 10 1
for most of the nineteenth century, but finally it succumbed to upper-
caste pressure and, in order to appease opinion, prohibited what it
thought was objectionable by a public law.68In 1892 the Magistrate
of Banaras forbade obscene language in public streets at the Holi
festivaLG9Colonial conception and actions in such matters were not
only sometimes reluctant but also moulded by high-caste Indians.
The year 191 1 saw a major controversy erupt around Holi at
Allahabad. A meeting was held at Pandit Motilal Nehru's residence
demanding police action in preventing obscenities. Educated and
'respectable' bodies ofAllahabad presented a petition to M r Hopkins,
Magistrate of the city, to forbid the singing of obscene songs on the
streets. Many welcomed this.70 However, there were some who op-
posed police intervention, fearing a misuse of power.71 The Leader
carried a letter by one Pratap Bahadur who requested the Collector
of Allahabad to reject the petition for police interference on the
grounds that it would play havoc with the masses.72A petition was
also drawn to counteract the one submitted to M r H ~ ~ k i nThe s.~~
opponents argued that cleansing Holi had to be done by the indig-
enous educated elite themselves, who should organise meetings in
every quarter to celebrate Holi in its true form by reciting the story
of Prahlad and solemnising a model H 0 1 i . ~These
~ different attitudes

could safely prevent the singing of obscene songs on all public streets, and that
public opinion would support the action of the government. The same news-
paper (28 February 1909, NNR, 6 March 1909, p. 195) carried a long letter
signed by one 'BNG', urging the government to come to the assistance of respect-
able society by enforcing provisions of the law against revellers at Holi, and stres-
sed the necessity for social reform. Prayag Samachar (20 March 1910) asked the
District Magistrate of Allahabad to proclaim by beat of drum that any person
found singing obscene songs on public roads on Holi would be punished.
" Sass, Domestic, p. 107.
" Bbarat Jiwan, 7 March 1892.
70 For example, Leader, 10 March 191 1, published the full text ofthe petition,
and largely supported it.
'' Abhyudqa, 12 March 191 1, NNR, 18 March 191 1, p. 227.
7 2 Leader, 15 March 191 1, NNR, 18 March 191 1, p. 227.
73 Leader, 10 March 19 1 1.
74 Abhyudaya, 12 March 191 1 and Independent, 13 March 191 1, both in
NNR, 18 March 191 1, p. 227.
102 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
to state intervention indicate attempts on the one hand to gain res-
pectability in relation to the English ruling classes, and on the other
to stress an indigenous reformist impulse. While the two groups pro-
pounded different methods, what united them was their condemna-
tion of 'obscene' and 'immoral' songs in public places.
While there were a few voices which went so far as to urge a ban
on the festi~al,'~ most stressed reforms and fundamental change. An
alternative Holi was proposed, and to a limited extent this was suc-
cessful. The recitation of kathzs, contemporary educational bhajans
and prabhati kirtans were urged instead of obscene songs and absurd
kabirs. Instead of mimicry, parody, jokes and fun, the performance
of good and clean historical plays was advocated to bring the lower
castes and women upon the righteous path and improve their char-
a ~ t e r . 'It~was acause related to social ~ u r i t ~ . ~ ~ T hSamaj
eAr~ started
a
the practice of a havan, giving speeches, and singing bhajans on the
occasion in U P . 7 8 T h ipurified
~ Holi ensured that Hindu religion was
not polluted. Women, particularly, were told to celebrate this 'Pavitra
Holi', obey their husbands in celebrating the festival, and sing no ob-
scene songs. The very composition of Holi songs was to be drastically
altered,79 affirming refined manners and high culture.80 Appeals to
reason and logic combined with a reconstituted tradition, legitimising
a new model of Holi.
Reformist polemic of the late nineteenth century condemned
other cultural forms as well. It pushed the theatre to the margins of

75 Ramlal Khubchand (trans.), Hindu Dharma ki Prashnottari (Lucknow,

1921), p. 105.
76 Singh and Singh, Hindu, p. 96; Swami Sivananda, Hindu FmtsandFestivals
and Their Phifusophy(Rishikesh, 1947), p. 32; Ramshankar Shukl Prayag, 'Holi
ke Uddeshya', Agarwal Hitaishi, 1, 8 (1925), pp. 2-5; Hukmadevi, Mahikz
Manoranjak Prashnavali, Vol. 1 1 (Lucknow, 1932), pp. 153-4; Lalmani Sharma,
'Holi aur Basanr', Brahman Sarvasva, 2, 13 (February, 1916), p. 68.
77 Advocate, 17 February 1907, NNR, 23 February 1907, p. 255.
7s Garg, Kalavati, p. 97.
79 Rameshar Sahai Bhargav, Pavitra Holi (Bulandshahr, 1925); Chanchrik,
Gram, p. 177; Nirbal (cornp.), Holi ki Rakh (Banaras, 1922,3rd edn), Introduc-
tion and p. 16; Kamalnath Aganval (cornp.), Pavitra Holi (n.p., 1940), p. 1.
Sivananda, Hindu, p. 32.
 Sanitising Women > Social Spaces / 103
respectability. Dayanand Saraswati was quite explicit in his writings
about the evils ofdramatic performan~es.~' Bharatendu Harishchandra
declared most kinds ofpopular theatre 'depraved' and lacking in thea-
tricality. Educated opinion in Banaras was largely disparaging to-
wards the Parsi theatre.82 Balkrishna Bhatt, editor of Hindi Pradip,
blamed the Parsi theatre for depriving India of its Hindu identity and
inculcating Hindus with erotic desires instead.83The press regularly
complained of the evil and immoral effects of drama.84 The Parsi
theatre was blamed for depriving people of hard-earned money and
impoverishing the The increasing importance attached to
thrift aided the denunciation of popular culture.
In the early twentieth century the cinema too was condemned.
Many films passed by the Bombay Censor Board were declared 'un-
certified' in UP. Films like Strange Interlude and Passion were ban-
ned on charges of ' o b ~ c e n i t y ' In
. ~ ~a survey conducted by the Indian
Cinematograph Committee in 1927-8, most of the sample popula-
tion quest.ioned, including in UP, opposed bathing scenes, short
skirts, kissing and embracing--on account of their 'demoralising'
effect^!^' The conference of UP Varnashram Swarajya Sangh held at
Jhansi in April 1935 passed a resolution against the exhibition of ob-
jectionable films.88The Hindu Mahasabha wanted its representatives
to be nominated to the Censor Board of each province to ensure a
proper scrutiny of films, in order that they did not corrupt the morals
of Hindu boys and girls.89

Ved Prakash Vatuk and Sylvia Vatuk, 'The Ethnography of Sang, A North
Indian Folk Opera', in Vatuk (ed.), Studies, p. 30.
82 Hansen, 'Birth', pp. 77, 86.
83 Balkrishna Bhatt, Hindi Pradip (September-December 1903).
Robilkhand Punch, 9 February 1890, NNR, 24 February 1890, p. 116.
8 5 Azad 25 March 1892, NNR, 31 March 1892, p. 1 10; Nizam-ul-Mulk,
31 December 1891, NNR, 7 January 1892, p. 6.
863~811925,Box 149, GAD (UPSA); 6411932-3, Box 125 (Varanasi Re-
gional Archives).
" Indian Cinematograph (Rangacbariar) Committee, 1927-28, Evidence,
Vol. I I (Calcutta, 1928), pp. 362-5, 497-505.
9011935, Home Poll (NAI).
89 C-311934-6, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha Papers (NMML).
104 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
These trends were not limited to UP. B. M . Malabari, the great
reformer from Bombay, called the festival of Holi the 'unholy Holi'.
H e was disturbed not only by the way that the Manvaris of Bombay
used filthy epithets, cast wanton glances, and made obscene gestures
towards their women, but also by the way the equally shameless
women rewarded men in the same coin, and enjoyed it Digambar
Jain Mitra Mandal of Kota called Holi the most shameful custom as
it destroyed pure thoughts and vitiated brahmacharya. Women were
prone to revealing their whole body in the festival, leading to trans-
gressions and adultery." In Bombay a Holika Sammelan Sabha was
established which attempted to purify HoIi.'* In Punjab an attempt
was made to substitute Holi with 'Pavitra H ~ l i ' . ~ ~
An interesting tract published from Bhiwani, Haryana, addressed
mainly to Manvaris, came out forcefully against women's songs:
Make Saraswati reside in your house and not a bhand or a prostitute . . . If
you do not sing dirty songs in your homes and girls do not listen to such
songs, their character can never be dirty. . . . If you claim to be of high
status and family, rhen do not allow your women to sing dirty
songs . . . These songs are a path to hell . . . Children are stopping their
mothers from singing such songs . . . Aganval Mahasabha everywhere
should definitely note the following: (1) O u r devis should not sing dirty
songs at any moment. (2) Teach new bhajans in your households aimed
at the progress of country, family and community. (3) If Brahminis sing
dirty songs, do not let them do so in your homes. (4) At all times clean
songs should be sung. (5) If a woman sings such dirty songs, she should
immediately stop on the command of a swayamsevak. (6) It is primarily
the duty of men to ensure that dirty songs are not sung as many women
are not aware that such songs have been banned.'*
These were attempts to reorder the daily life and recreation of
women, largely by male Hindu publicists, in view of their concerns
"B.M. Malabari, Gzrjarat and Gujaratis: Pictures ofMen and Manners takerr
from Life (London, 1882), pp. 350-1.
" Anon., Holi ya, pp. 1-6.
92 Garg, Kalavati, p. 97.
93 Murdoch, Hindu, p. 43.
"Melaram Vaisya, Gande Gir Bahishkar (Bhiwani, 1932, 2nd edn),
pp. 1-9.
 Sanitising Women 2 Social Spaces / 105
for upward mobility and family, caste and community honour. The
challenge to a Hindu civilising mission and nationalist agenda, posed
via such assertions by deviant women, had to be met. Since women
were seen as aligning themselves against good taste, proper behaviour
and sexual morality, there was a devaluation of women's entertain-
ment. Women were perceived not as preservers of the cultural and
spiritual sphere but rather as the main threat on account of their lack
of loyalty to definitions of civilisation. Respectability could only be
achieved by discipliningand cleansing this cultural world o f ~ o m e n . ~ ~
Hindu reformers had to draw away not only from the obscene and
the sexual but also from the popular and the frivolous as a part of the
serious business of nationalist struggle and civilised norms. They
sought to modify the leisure activities and social behaviour ofwomen
as well as the institutions that gave expression to such behaviour.
Endeavours such as these reflected anxieties within the Hindu re-
formist agenda: they were now attempting to extend their jurisdiction
by entering arenas of social life that were seen as beyond their pale.
Such cultural proselytisingserved as a new measure of the changing
social boundaries ofthe time, stratifying leisure activities into physical
spaces, types, and images. In their public utterances, many commu-
nity and caste reformers adopted a holy rhetoric. However, reform
movements often fail and are not identical with dorninan~e.~' Popu-
lar booklets of Holi songs in Braj continued to hold sway well into
the 1940s. They were thin tracts, cheaply priced, which did not go
into the debates surrounding the festival. Their continuous demand

9 5 It has been argued in a different context that civilisation is an ideological

category that operates to maintain and legitimate social distinctions and the
allocation of power in the name of 'taste'. T h e denial of lower, coarse, venal-
in a word, nhtural enjoyment-which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture,
implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the
sublimated and refined pleasures forever closed to the profine. See Pierre Bour-
dieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique oftheJudgement o f 7;2ste,trans. Richard Nice
(London, 1984), p. 7.
"There is an assumption in some of the writings mentioned earlier, that wo-
men's popular cultural spaces were relegated to the peripheries, and in fact
ultimately banished from the domain of modernity. See specially Banerjee, 'Mar-
ginalisation'. Also see Chapter 2 for more detail.
106 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
in the market ensured regular printings.97Print, as remarked earlier,
gave such books limitless patronage.
The need for constant reiterations of how women 'ought to be-
have' implied the potential or actual recalcitrance ofwomen. When-
ever Holi drew near, similar arguments were made and numerous
caste associations adopted resolutions against women's songs, indi-
cating that these practices continued.98 The nautanki akharas of
Hathras entered their most prolific period around 1890, just as the
reformist agenda began to reach western UP. Nautanki and the Parsi
theatre continued to flourish, and their audiences did not necessari-
ly exclude aspirants to middle-class status acting in defiance of the
reformers' dictates." One can go a step further and argue that, if any-
thing, tensions engendered by these puritanical endeavours stimu-
lated an even greater need for popular cultural expression. These were
areas which provided small daily evasions, beyond the reach of con-
trolling forces. Many of these traditions have continued to the present
day, though their forms may have changed. Moreover, women have
invented forms of self-expression which further their interests by cre-
ating new cultural spaces.
This brings me to the work of certain anthropologists who have
looked at women's popular culture in post-independence India. The
attempts at cleansing Holi may have had a limited, short-term impact,
but the festival's inherently playful character and widespread invita-
tion seem to have diminished very little. McKim Marriott shows that
even during weddings there are little outbreaks of 'Holi playing',
where men from the groom's side are dared to enter the women's
97 Such publications were appearing in large numbers, mainly from two
publishing houses in Banaras, i.e. Bhargav Pustakalaya and Babu Baijnath Prasad
Bookseller. All of them were compilations of Holi songs in Braj Bhasha and ap-
pear to have been very popular, as their numbers were huge. See for example,
Anon., Holi Madhur Murli (Kashi, 1932); Anon., Holi Hridzy H u h (Kashi,
1932); Babu Prahlad Das (cornp.), Holi Rasbhari (Banaras, 1927); Babu Devi
Charangupt, Braj ki Holi (Kanpur, 1934).
98 Thus, for example, with the growing communal atmosphere, there were
serious riots around Holi, especially from the 1920s.This seems to require a book
in itself and I do not have the space to go into it.
" Hansen, Grounds, p. 254.
 Sanitising Women > Social Spaces 1 107
courtyard of the bride's side. They are then playfully beaten with rol-
ling pins and soaked with coloured water for their boldness. The festi-
val itself sees privileged attacks by women upon men, and the boldest
beaters in this veiled battalion are often the wives of farmers, low-caste
field labourers, artisans or menials, and the concubines and maids of
the victims. Marriott argues that the idiom of Holi differs from that
of ordinary life, both by explicitly dramatising specific sexual rela-
tionships that otherwise would not be expressed, and in reversing the
differences of power that conventionally prevail between women and
men. Other festivals seem to express and support the proper struc-
tures of patriarchy in the family, of elaborately stratified relations
among the castes, and of dominance by landowners in the village gen-
erally.'OOAs another scholar puts it: 'If Hindu culture ordinarily puts
a premium on the unassertiveness in women, on Holi the reverse is
entirely appropriate. Likewise, if Hindu culture ordinarily proscribes
open displays of sexuality, on Holi sexuality is one of the dominant
and most obvious motifs of the day. There is a clear sense of reversal
in the festi~al.''~' Holi continues to be associated with a world turned
upside down, a ritual inversion of space, a sexual assertion by women.
Yet other scholars have focused on women's oral traditions and
their use of language in contemporary rural Uttar Pradesh and
Rajasthan.'02 Their work suggests the continuous use of garis. They
argue that many of these songs contain muted models of female assert-
iveness and are a locus of potentially subversive speech. Borrowing
from the formulations of James Scott, they see in the voices of these
women 'everyday forms of resistance', and 'hidden transcripts' of
challenge to dominance.lo3It has also been argued that though many
loo McKim Marriott, 'The Feast of Love', in Milton Singer (ed.), Krithna:
Myths, Rites, and AttitudPs (Honolulu, 1966), pp. 200-12.
' O ' Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Mi&
India (Ithaca, 1996), pp. 51-2.
'02 Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold, Listen to the Heroni
Words (Berkeley, 1994). Also see Gloria Goodwin Raheja, 'Women's Speech
Genres: Kinship and Contradiction', in Nita Kurnar (ed.), Wonzen as Subjects:
South Asian Histories (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 49-80.
'03 Raheja and Gold, Listen, p. 1. They are of course referring to the classic
works of James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
108 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
of the women's songs may contain elements of conservatism, cultur-
ally the very act of singing collectively reflects women's identity and
pride. '04
These works have provided important insights into the continu-
ation of popular cultural spaces among women which call into ques-
tion claims about the marginalisation of women's popular culture,
revealing contradictions between motivation and experience. At the
same time, one must be careful not to exaggerate this space. As Chap-
ter 2 suggests, popular culture may contain elements of misogyny, or
ambivalent attitudes which can at once signify social protest and
social control; the perpetuation of dominant values as well as its criti-
que; consent and r e s i ~ t a n c e .The
' ~ ~ vitality and resilience of popular
culture lies in its ability to satisfy the need for leisure and sociability,
transcending reformist endeavours. Sources of pleasure for women,
regardless of politics, continue to operate as survival strategies.

11. T h e Dangers of Prostitutes: The Moral and Urban

Geographical Frameworks of Hindus
Besides attempts to regulate these arenas of women, the presence of
prostitutes in social and urban areas of UP constituted another eye-
sore for reformists. They made considerable endeavours to cleanse
municipal towns of prostitutes. Most studies, novels and writings
on the condition of prostitutes in UP in the eighteenth and early-
nineteenth century have been confined to Awadh, with Lucknow at

(New Haven, 1985) and idem, Domination and t t ~ eArts of Resistance: Hidden
Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).
lo* Susan Gal, 'Between Speech and Silence: The Problematics of Research
on Language and Gender', in Micaela di Leonardo (ed.), Gender at the Crossrod
of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley, 1991),
pp. 175-203, argues that resistance found in women's linguistic genres is often
contradictory and ambiguous; but this heterogeneity within women's speech
practices does not prevent them from becoming sites of struggles about kinship,
gender definitions and power.
' 0 5 Steven L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europefiom the
Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984); John Storey, Cultural
Studies and the Study of Popular Culture (Edinburgh, 1996).
 Sanitising Womeni Social Spaces 1 109
its centre. Though many build a romanticised, nostalgic picture of
courtesan culture in Nawabi Lucknow and the Awadh of Wajid Ali
Shah, or alternatively dismiss it as the zenith of a decadent culture,
we do have significant insights into the lives of prostitutes.106Some
were a part of the high court culture and closely allied to regimes of
pleasure and power. They were among the chief entertainers and
cultural status symbols for the elite. Working mainly under the public
male gaze, they commanded respect in the court and in society.'07
Common prostitutes were also viewed as a means of puribing towns,
maintaining the moral order, and as outlets for men's sexual drive.
There were hierarchies within prostitutes, dividing them into tawaif,
thakahi, randi and khangi.lo8 However, they were a part of society,
of life, and were largely accepted and tolerated by people. They parti-
cipated in cultural, religious and social functions. This acceptance of
them, within a space inhabited by many others, underwent crucial
changes at this time.
The position of the prostitute became increasingly precarious after
1857. Recent studies have explored this by examining the relationship
between soldiers, venereal disease, brothels, prostitutes and the em-
pire.''? They have highlighted the increasing concern of British
' O G Especially useful are Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa, IJmrao ]an Xda:
trans. Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini (Hyderabad, 1987); Hasan Shah,
Nashtar or The Nautch Girl, trans. Qurratulain Hyder (Delhi, 1992); Abdul
Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The LastPhaseofan Oriental Culture, trans. and ed. H.S.
Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (London, 1975); Amir Hasan, Palace Culture of
Luckmow (Delhi, 1983), esp. pp. 107-25; idem, Vanishing Culture of Lucknow
(Delhi, 1990).
Mildred Archer, 'The Social History of the Nautch Girl', The Saturday
Book (1962), pp. 243-53.
lo' Tawaifs were usually high-class singer-entertainers, catering to the highest
elite of the land. The others mainly provided sexual services: Veena Talwar
Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow 185677 (Princeton, 1984),
pp. 132-6.
lo' Pioneering has been the work of Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sexand Class
under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics, 173.7-1905 (Lon-
don, 1980), esp. pp. 20-1, 41-3. Also see Philippa Levine, 'Venereal Disease,
Prostitution and the Politics of Empire: The Case of British India', journal of
the Hisrovy ofSexuality, 4, 4 (1994), pp. 579-602; idem, 'Re-reading the 1890s:
1 10 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
officials to ensure 'healthy' sex for its soldiers, especially after the sup-
pression of the revolt. A large number of prostitutes operated outside
the cantonment areas, were largely unregistered, and posed a threat
to British order. A detailed system was therefore worked out for regis-
tering prostitutes, inspecting them, and detaining them in hospitals
if they contracted venereal disease. For this purpose La1 Bazaars (Red
Light Streets) were established as brothel areas in regimented canton-
ments, Contagious Diseases Acts passed, and lock hospitals set up."'
The shifting terrain ofold courtesans in post-Mutiny Nawabi Lucknow
has been linked to British policies and legislation concerned with
regulating, sanitising and cleaning the city.''' Simultaneously, there

Venereal Disease as "Constitutional Crisis" in Britain and British India', JAS, 55,
3 (1996), pp. 585-612; Antoinette Burton, Burden of History:British Feminists,
Indian Women and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (Chapel Hill, 1994); Judy
Whitehead, 'Bodies Clean and Unclean: Prostitution, Sanitary Legislation and
Respectable Femininity in Colonial North India', Gender History, 7 (1995),
pp. 41-63; Douglas M. Peers, 'Soldiers, Surgeons and the Campaigns to Combat
Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Colonial India, 1805-60', MedicalHistory, 42,
2 (1998), pp. 137-60.
"O Ibid.
"I Oldenburg, Colonial, pp. 132-42. She complements her work with a
study which views Lucknow's courtesans as subversive agents with decision-mak-
ing abilities; in the process she challenges studies which see prostitutes as mere
'victims': Veena Talwar Oldenburg, 'Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the
Courtesans of Lucknow', in Douglas E. Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds), Con-
testing Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia (Delhi,
1391), pp. 23-61. At a general level, some feminists have been arguing this posi-
tion persuasively: see Ellen Carol Dubois and Linda Gordon, 'Seeking Ecstasy
on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth Century Feminist Sexual
Thought', in Carole S. Vance (ed.), Pkarure and Danger: Exploring Femak Srm-
ality (London, 1984), pp. 33-5. However, it has been recently argued that
though Oldenburg dislocates the consistently exaggerated notion of the prosti-
tute as always a victim who is forced into the trade out of financial needs, and
hence requiring protection, she also goes off to another extreme, of seeing the
prostitute as an agent in total command of her position. Such views fail to see
that prostitutes are necessarily and complexly related both to patriarchy and to
women as a class: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, 'The Prostitution Question(s):
(Female) Agency, Sexuality and Work', in Ratna Kapur (ed.), Feminist Terrains
 Sanitising Women i Social Spaces / 1 1 1
was a decline in court patronage as the old urban aristocracy slowly
lost its power and wealth. Courtesans now found themselves mostly
inhabiting the same public space and bazaar as regular prostitutes.
New clients had to be found, and the new urban elite and British
soldiers became their chief sources of income.'12 Prostitutes were in
these ways being increasingly pushed into a strictly defined and nar-
row space. Stripped of all emotional and intellectual functions, they
now had the exclusive role of specialists in sexual entertainment.l13
Increasing economic insecurity, the scarcity ofjobs and the sidelining
ofwomen's labour in many areas swelled the number of prostitutes,''*
at the same time making the profession competitive. Many lower
caste/class women, such as milk-sellers, coolie women and vegetable
sellers, took to the profession either part-time or full-time. The in-
crease in urban space, and the shifting of areas of operation for some
prostitutes from court to city, made them more conspicuous in the
bazaars.
However, the studies mentioned above implicitly associate the
changing problem of prostitution solely with British power and
colonial structure.'15 In the process they fail to acknowledge, much
less analyse, the conservative sexual politics and the new moral code
of indigenous patriarchal nationalism and revivalist/reformist move-
ments of the period-which had an equally profound impact on at-
titudes towards prostitutes. The fact is that the upper castes and
the middle classes, and sometimes others, adopted an ambiguous
position, often complicit with British attitudes, even when they

in Legal Domains: Interdisciplinary Essays on Women and Law in India (Delhi,

1996), p. 129.
' I 2 Nasim-i-Agra, 7 May 1892, NNR, 12 May 1892, p. 169.
' I 3 Sumanta Banerjee, 'The "Beshya" and the "Babu": The Prostitute and Her
Clientele in Nineteenth Century Bengal', EPW 28, 45 (6 November, 1993),
p. 2461.
' I 4 Oudh Akhbar, 6August 1876, NNR; Hamdard 1 September 1890, NNR,
8 September 1890, p. 584.
''5Also for example see Kokila Dang, 'Prostitutes, Patrons and the State:
Nineteenth Century Awadh', Social Scientist, 21, 9-1 1 (September-November
1993), pp. 173-96.
112 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
challenged imperial power.l16 British officials often learnt from the
demands posed by these middle classes, who also wanted their
respectable areas clean from all 'filth'.
Though the Hindu and Muslim middle classes stood together in
the campaign to marginalise prostitutes, the Hindu campaign had
additional dimensions. The language adopted to oust prostitutes
from the main city was similar to that deployed against Muslim
butchers and their shops in many of the central markets. Both were
perceived as the 'other', as immoral, to be kept on the fringes of so-
ciety. Both were dirty, therefore disorderly and transgressive.'17 For
Hindu bourgeois ethics an attack on prostitutes and the courtesan
culture of the pre-colonial period became another way of condemn-
ing the supposed decadence and sexual lewdness of Muslim kings,
especially of the late medieval period. Many British officials shared
this view. They deployed the existence of courtesans to discredit a
section of the nobility, and also as a part of their excuse to annex
Awadh. The Hindu middle classes were also developing new tastes
in lifestyle, and definitions of entertainment were changing. There
were new ideals of marriage, with an emphasis on monogamy, and
the wife was now to be a true, multifaceted companion. The patron-
age of ~rostituteswas no longer a sign of ~ r e s t i ~The
e . prostitute be-
came the cause of the very evil she was supposed to contain, resulting
in her social condemnation. She came to be viewed, at best, as a
necessary evil who had to be shown her proper place and geographical
limits. Middle-class Hindus engaged in a dialect of morality and
sexuality, disease and cleanliness, and a displacement of this 'other'.
The attitude did sometimes combine with a view of reform that car-
ried sympathy for the underdog, and this is reflected largely in social-
documentary novels and stories of the ~ e r i o dBut
. here too there was
"'The pioneering work of Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian
Society: Women, Class and State (Cambridge, 1980), is interesting precisely be-
cause it does not have one voice. Rather, it reveals the contradictions and similar-
ities in various voices of the state, prostitutes, middle classes, feminists and the
Church.
'I7 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts ofPollution
and Taboo (1 966, rpt., London, 1994), pp. 2-3, draws an effective connection
between dirt and disorder.
 Sanitising Women ? Social Spaces / 1 13
an ambiguity and the prostitute was certainly denied any voice of her
own.'18
My concern here is to locate some of these terrains mainly through
Hindu male voices and power structures that operated within the
colonised realm. The Hindu ~ublicists'campaign against the pros-
titutes (and not so much against the institution of prostitution itself)
involved two kinds of displacement. At one level, the prostitute was
displaced from the moral ethics of the times, condemned as the cause
of all evil. At another, she was displaced from the municipal city and
confined to a zone of the 'other'. She was displaced in the new urban
geography, a public space of civic polity, which sought to enshrine
exclusive values of cleanliness and civilisation.
While interrogating the changing rhetoric and relationship be-
tween prostitutes and Hindus, I also wish to take on recent arguments
about open and public spaces and their relationship to filth and gar-
bage.'I9 Dipesh Chakrabarty, in a persuasive essay, associates notions
of cleanliness, garbage and public order with the language of modern-
ity and civic consciousness. H e goes on to argue that public 'chaos'
was a feature of the outside and makes an oppositional distinction
between this and the cleanliness inside, within the home. Both the
imperialist and nationalist reactions sought to make the bazaar, the
street, the mela-in short the world outside-benign, regulated spa-
ces, clean and healthy, incapable of producing either disease or
disorder. Sudipta Kaviraj extends some of these arguments, reflecting
on the dissonance between the two ways of the rich and the poor-

''' Here prostitutes were frequently portrayed as victims of male desire,

deserving society's compassion. Prernchand, for example, was a master of such
narratives, but such stories often ended in a tragedy. See Charu Gupta, 'Portrayal
of Women in Premchand's Stories: A Critique', Social Scientist, 19, 5-6 (May-
June 1991), pp. 99-100. Most accounts were also unable to accept a sexually
deviantlcharged woman. Even the best of the sympathetic descriptions could see
such women as worthy only of improvement. T h e general condemnation and
marginalisation of the prostitute outweighed such writings.
' I 9 Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'Open SpacelPublic Place: Garbage, Modernity and
India', SouthAsia, 14, 1 (l991), pp. 15-31; Sudipta Kaviraj, 'Filth and the Public
Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta', Public Culture, 10, 1
(Fall 1997), pp. 83-1 13.
114 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the contest between a bourgeois order of the middle class and those
who flout its rules-resulting in different concepts of public space.
Kaviraj also emphasises that the street is the outside, the exterior,
which is abandoned to its intrinsic disorderliness by many Indians,
leading to different notions of social space for different classes. My
effort is both to extend the arguments made by Chakrabarty and Kavi-
raj, as well as question them.
While both draw a distinction between the inside and the outside,
I think they underplay the selective and contestory notions of clean-
liness and order shown by themiddle classes and the nationalists, both
inside and outside, in private and public. Thus, while the Hindu mid-
dle class could argue for ousting prostitutes and butchers, deploying
arguments in favour of public order and cleanliness, they could at the
same time ridicule notions of public health and cleanliness when it
came to plague perceptions and going on pilgrimages. Arguments and
values of modernity, civilisation, cleanliness and purity were selec-
tively appropriated by the dominant Hindu castes and classes to put
pressure on local governments and municipal corporations. They
were used not only to mark the urban poor,I2O but also the 'other'-
and this 'other' could be a part of the very same middle class. It has
been argued that the dichotomy of cleanlunclean, orderedldisordered
is directly related to the social organisation of space.Iz1 But these
boundaries, in our context, became sharper by heightening an aware-
ness of identity and difference. A transition had to be made not just
from the primitive to the civilised, but also by widening the gap
between 'them' and 'us', be it the urban poor, prostitutes or Muslim
butchers. Perceived sexual infection from and religious impurities
within these groups led to a campaign for the cleansing of entire
segments of society from certain boundaries and bodies in order to
achieve physical and moral purity.
There were also apparent economic reasons for the antagonism
against prostitutes. Not only did the rich courtesan signiG the lifestyle
Iz0 Nandini Gooptu, 'The "Problem" of the Urban Poor Policy and Discourse
of Local Adrninisrrarion: A Study of UP in rhe Inrenvar Period', EPX 31, 50
(14 December 1996), pp. 3245-54.
12' Douglas, Purity, pp. 2 - 4 , 35, 41.
 Sanitising Women 1Social Spaces 1 11 5
of the old Lucknow aristocracy, which came to be condemned, she
was also mostly unaffordable by the emerging middle classes.'22The
Arya Samaj and various caste Gsociations adopted resolutions against
dances by prostitutes during marriages and social ceremonies. Eco-
nomic insecurities were combined with a reformist rhetoric of thrift
and prostitutes identified as a malignant sign of the loss ofwealth and
wasteful expenditure. 123 In any case the display ofwealth, though now
available only to a few prostitutes, was an affront to the new urban
elite. Sundar, a well-to-do dancing girl ofAligarh, occasionally drove
in a carriage escorted by four sawars. This was considered distasteful
by the middle classes. The District Magistrate prosecuted Sundar for
insolent behaviour. She appealed to the High Court and got a deci-
sion in her favour. This appears to have made the magistrate and the
city's local elite terribly angry.'24 The editor of a Meerut newspaper
disapproved of permission granted to the prostitutes of Meerut to
drive publicly in their carriages during the Nauchandi fair. He consi-
dered. this inconsistent with morality and ci~i1isation.l~~
In the vernacular press the prostitute became a yardstick to mea-
sure every manner of evil within contemporary society. She was
thought a social evil that surpassed all others, the chiefest cause and
symptom of immorality and vice. The presence of prostitutes in the
most frequented and populous quarters of cities was seen as among
the principal causes for the ruin and demoralisation among innocent,
young, affluent men; they caused such men to squander their money
and property and neglect their wives.126Contact with prostitutes was
''* Sanjay Joshi, 'Empowerment and Identity: 'l'he Middle Class and Hindu
Communalism in Colonial Lucknow, 1880-1930', unpublished PhD thesis
(University of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 8 6 9 3 .
Iz3 She0 Dayal Sah Gupta, Sri Vaishya Vamsa Vibhushan (Sitapur, 1907),
p. 139; Sharma (ed.), Agarwal p. 21; Ghisaram, Bhajan, pp. 88, 91, 94;
Lal, Kachhwaha, pp. 1 6 1 5 ; Baldevsingh, Ahirjati Mein 31 Rog (Shikohabad,
1924), pp. 29, 38; Chhuttanlal Swami, Arya Samaj Ke Upkar (Meerut, 1918),
pp 65.
''* Anis-i-Hind, 7 December 1898, NNR, 13 December 1898, p. 653.
lZ5 Shahna-i-Hind 16 March 1908, NN& 28 March 1908, p. 307.
IzG HamJard, 1 September 1890, NNR, 8 September 1890, p. 584; Nuru-
i-Anwar, 1 November 1890, NNR, 4 November 1890, p. 710; Nasim-i-Agra,
11 6 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
regarded as the reason for a decline in the virtues of respectable, home-
ly women.127Prostitutes were blamed for the rise in crime because
their houses were seen as providing shelter to bad character^.'^^ Their
presence was considered worse than obscene books; literature could
at worst affect the morals of the reading public, prostitutes spelt
disaster for people in general. They were blamed for the rise in vene-
real disease, for overcrowding, for declining sanitary conditions in
cities.12' They were repeatedly told they were dirty, that they were
symbols of shame for the community and the nation. Babu Biresh-
war Sanyal, editor of Nasim-i-Agra, carried on a virulent campaign
against prostitutes. H e was at a loss to understand why the govern-
ment did not stop prostitutes sitting openly upon their balconies, and
at conspicuous places in bazaars, soliciting customers, even while it
had thought fit to prohibit the publication and sale of indecent pic-
tures and b 0 0 k s . l ~Many
~ other objections similarly focused on the
monopoly of urban spaces by these public women.131 Prostitutes,
openly roaming the streets, were a scandal because they publicly
flaunted sexuality.
City streets became shop-windows from which all signs of sexual-
immoral display had to be cleansed to maintain health and res-
pectability and control vice. Here the views of the colonial govern-
ment meshed neatly with those of the Hindu publicists. Municipal
departments in the towns of UP were increasingly concerned with

7 May 1892, NNR, 12 May 1892, p. 169; PrayagSamachar, 19 May 1892, NNR,
25 May 1892, p. 185; Cawnpore Gazette, 23 September 1892, NNR, 28 Sep-
tember 1892, p. 359.
'21 Prayag Samachar, 31 December 1891.
Iz8 Agra Akhbar, 14 May 1900, NNR, 22 May 1900, p. 259. Vanijya Sukh-
dayak, November 1907, NNR, 7 December 1907, p. 1366, held prostitution to
be responsible for a number of murders in the locality.
I z 9 Nuru-i-Anwnr, 1 November 1890, NNR, 4 November 1890, p. 710; Pra-
yagSamachar, 31 December 1891; Mohini, 3 February 1904, NNR, 13 February
1904, p. 56.
I3O Nmim-i-Agra, 30 June 1900, NNR, 3 July 1900, p. 338; Nasim-i-Agra,
30 July 1892, NNR, 3 August 1892, p. 284. Also see, Nuru-i-Anwar, 1 Novem-
ber 1890, NNR, 4 November 1890, p. 710; I'ocket Akhbar, November 1905,
NNR, 16 December 1905, p. 426.
13' Naiyar-i-Azam, 12 June 1907, NNR, 15 June 1907, p. 719.
 Sanitising Women i Social Spaces 1 1 17
maintaining public order in the city.132Extensive bylaws were drafted
to regulate laces of ~ u b l i centertainment, including the time at
which such entertainment had to end, how many people could
attend, and how much noise they could make.133Municipal rules
often upheld the shifting of prostitutes to remote areas and ~rohibited
the establishment of brothels in any place not set apart for such
purposes.134The middle classes of UP, too, continually appealed for
special laws to expel prostitutes from thoroughfares and compel them
to live in settlements set apart, away from municipal centres.135It was
pointed out that in civilised towns like Bombay and Lahore prosti-
tutes lived in specified areas outside the towns, where they could be
under constant police vigilance, and UP'S towns must follow their
e ~ a m - p l e . 'Municipal
~~ boards were often lauded if they drafted
specific rules for this purpose;'37 alternatively they were rebuked
when they showed leniency towards prostitutes by allowing them to
13' Oldenburg, Colonial, pp. 75-95.
133 498, Box 90 (Varanasi Regional Archives); 101, Box 78 (Varanasi Regio-
nal Archives).
13* For example, rules framed by the local government ofAgra forbade prosti-
tutes and eunuchs to frequent public streets as this might prove unpleasant to
respectable persons: Praja Hitkarak, 23 March 1890, NNR, 3 1 March 1890,
p. 197. The Municipal Board, Banaras, ruled in 1898 that a professional prosti-
tute, or any other woman of loose character, living within the municipal limits,
at whose house bad characters assembled to the annoyance of her respectable
neighbours, would be called upon to vacate her house: Raf;-ul-Akhbar, 18 April
1898, NNR, 27 April 1898, p. 226. Similar provisions were introduced in the
new Municipal Bill at Lucknow in the same year. The Bill was warmly supported:
Hindustani, 3 August 1898, NNR, 10 August 1898, p. 423.
' 3 5 Mutkz-i-Nur, 25 July 1876, NNR, 29 July 1876, p. 382; Oudh Akhbar,
6 August 1876; Nasim-i-Agra, 7 May 1892, NNf?, 12 May 1892, p. 169.
13' Prayag Samachar, 19 May 1892, NNR, 25 May 1892, p. 185; Agra Akh-
bar, 14 May 1900, NNR, 22 May 1900, p. 259.
13' Bharat]iwan, 27 June 1892, p. 6 lauded the order passed by the Aligarh
Municipality forbidding prostitutes to sit on their balconies. Hamid-ul-Akhbar,
31 August 1892, NNR, 7 September 1892, p. 329 did the same and urged the
Moradabad Municipal Board to immediately follow suit. Nasim-i-Ap, 30 Sep-
tember 1900, NNR, 9 October 1900, p. 509, lauded the powers conferred on
the Agra Municipality to remove prostitutes, living in the bazaars amidst respect-
able persons, to some other locality, where they may not so easily demoralise the
youth of the towns. It hoped the government would implement the laws strictly.
1 18 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
live in town centres and respectable neighbourh~ods.'~~ The editor
of Independent took strong exception when certain prostitutes of
Allahabad were allowed to vote in the election for municipal com-
missioners. 13'
Strikingly, almost the same language of morality, purity, sanita-
tion, civilisation and religion was deployed against meat-shops and
Muslim butchers. Many Hindus objected to the sale of meat and fish
at a central market in Jhansi in 189 1 and submitted a petition to the
municipal board, asking for the removal of such ~ t a l 1 s . lIn~ ~1892
Hindus objected to the presence of butchers in the principal streets
of Moradabad on sanitary grounds.141The town witnessed bitter
conflict on this question, with the sanitary commissioners and mu-
nicipal corporations constantly changing their stances according to
the pressure of Hindus or Muslims.142In 1913, when the municipal
board of Allahabad sanctioned a plot of intra-municipal nazul land
as a meat market at Katra, the Hindu residents were up in arms.143
A protest memorial was submitted to the Lieutenant Governor, ar-
guing that government buildings and the houses of respectable Hin-,
dus would surround the market and that the squabbles of lowly
people haggling for bargains would disturb the quiet of the neigh-
bourhood. It was also said that the locality contained several temples
and was inhabited by many vegetarians, and the removal of butchers
was imperative to prevent their houses and temples from being

13' Nuru-i-Anwar, 1 November 1890, NNR, 4 November 1890, p. 710;

Nasim-i-Agra, 30 July 1892, NNR, 3 August 1892, p. 284; Cawnpore Gazette,
23 September 1892, NNR, 28 September 1892, p. 359, rebuked the Municipal
Board of Kanpur for allowing prostitutes to live in the centre of the town.
13!'Independent,30 December 1912.
I4O Nasim-i-Agra, 30 July 1891, NNR, 5 August 1891, p. 553; Nasim-i-Agra,
23 September 1891, NNR, 1 October 1891, p. 678.
14' Rahbar, 8 July 1892, NNR, 27 July 1892, p. 273.
14* Rahbar, 24 July 1892, NNR, 27 July 1872, p. 273; Shrarah, 7 and 21
September 1900, NNR, p. 526; Naiyar-i-Azum, 26 September 1900, NNR, 9
October 1900, p. 509; Naiyar-i-hm, 26 October 19004 Sanatan Dharm
Paraka, October 1700; Rahbar, 16 November 1700, NNR, 20 November 1900,
p. 572.
'4369/1913, Box 102, Municipal Deptt (UPSA).
 Sanitising Women ? Social Spaces / 119
polluted and their religious feelings from being ~ 0 u n d e d . The l~~
Muslim butcher, like the prostitute, was the dirty 'other'.
The contempt for the prostitute by the Hindu middle classes
eilcompassed singers and dancers, more so if they were Muslim. They
were seen as representatives of a particular culture now defined as
offensive. The definition of prostitute was very easily extended in such
cases. This came out in a blatant manner in the UP Exhibition, the
first of its kind in UP, organised by the government at Allahabad in
19 10-1 1. Several leading citizens of Allahabad were involved in its
preparation.'45 The three-month exhibition was billed as a sort of
paradise on earth, the show of the century.'46 In the entertainment
provided every evening, the legendary Gauhar Jan of Calcutta, a
dancer and leading exponent of thumri and khayal, was invited to
perform. She was one of the first Indian artists to have been invited
to record her voice by the Gramophone Company in 1902.14' How-
ever, many leading Hindu males were soon outraged at her inclusion
in the exhibition and, weekafter week, letters condemning it appeared
in the newspapers. The protest was made on the grounds that it of-
fended public morality and decency.148It was injurious to the social
and moral progress of the people of the provinces and respectable
families could not allow their wives, sons and daughters to witness
it.149It was inconceivable that Gauhar Jan, now being debased into

'44 Leader, 21 September 1912; Leader, 25 July 1913.

145 Official Handbook, UP Exhibition, Allahabad, 1910-11 (Allahabad,
191 1, 2nd edn); Committee of the Exhibition, Sanyukr Prant ki Pradarshini
(Allahabad, 191 I), p. 1.
146 Handbook, UP, esp. pp. 4 6 , 255. Advertisements of ir were carried in
all the leading newspapers of UP.
14' For details on Gauhar Jan, see H.P. Krishna Rao, 'My Name is Gauhar
Jan', Indian Music Circk, 2, 1, 15 (1 912). I am grateful to Partha Dutta for this
reference. Also see Batuk Diwan, 'The Darling Songstress', The Independent
(18 January 1993); Shanta Serbjeet Singh, 'My Name is Gauhar Jan', The
Hindustan Times 'I 0 July 1995); Pran Nevile, Nautch Girls of India: Dancers,
Singers, Pkzymates (New Delhi, 1996), p. 137; Hasan, Vanishing, p. 114.
'48 Advocate, 8 December 1910; Letter by an Indian, Leader, 18 January 191 1,
p. 6.
14Windustani,20 February 191 1, NNR, 25 February 191 I, p. 167; Saddharm
120 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
a common prostitute by the perception of Hindu publicists, and
more so a Muslim, could represent all that was 'true', 'good' and
'beautiful' in Indian culture and c i ~ i l i s a t i o n . Her
' ~ ~ performance was
seen as defiling the sanctity of the exhibition.151 Editors and letter-
writers condemned the government for inviting her and strongly
urged 'responsible' and 'respectable' members of the exhibition com-
mittee to cancel the engagement.'52 However, their campaign could
not undermine the popularity of Gauhar Jan, who continued to draw
large crowds and proved the most profitable investment of the whole
exhibition. Fabulous prices were paid for admission to her show,
tickets sold at three or four times their value, and still hundreds had
to be turned back disappointed for lack of accommodation.153This
also signifies the limits of these publicists' voices, bringing us back
to the point made earlier that motivations and intentions do not
imply actual change.
How did prostitutes respond to this state imposition of defined
spaces and its endorsement by the middle classes? The most telling
case is a formal protest lodged by a number of prostitutes of Agra to
the municipal board in 1917. Draft bylaws regarding the residence
of prostitutes were proposed by the board in that year. These prohib-
ited them from residing in large parts of the municipal bounds on
the grounds that only respectable residents lived there.15*The board
received more than a hundred objections, mainly from prostitutes.155
T h e main points of protest were that it was a direct interference in
their private lives; that it was a misuse of the powers entrusted to the
municipal boards; that the board had no authority to fix a small area

Pracharak, 28 December 1910, NNR, 7 January 19 11, p. 15; Musajr, 27 January

1911, NNR, 4 February 1911, p. 99.
'50Letter by Satish Chandra Banerji (Public Women at U P Exhibition),
Leader, 21 January 191 1, p. 5.
'5l Saddharm Pracharak, 28 December 1910, NNR, 7 January 1911, p. 15.
152 Anand, 8 December 1910, NNA, Advocate, 8 December 1910.
153 Leader, 20 January 191 1, p. 8.
15*64 H,Box 512, Municipal (Block) Deptt (UPSA) ['Bylaws relating to
Prostitutes'].
I55Ibid.
 Sanitising Women 2 Social Spaces / 12 1
for prostitutes; that it was a violation of the general rule allowing peo-
ple to reside where they chose; that it was a direct attack on their chief
source of income (i.e. singing); that it would compel them to lead a
still worse and more immoral life in order to earn their livelihood;
that they had been living in Saib-ki-Bazaar, Kinari Bazaar, Cashmere
Bazaar and close by for hundreds of years and, in some cases, had
acquired valuable property which would be extremely difficult to
leave; that the other side of the river (where their new residence was
proposed) was most unsafe; that there had been no cases of breach
of peace in their houses; that the move would actually afford greater
facility to young men, whom it intended to protect, as there would
be no danger of exposure or disgrace in the new area; that it would
be difficult for the board to prove whether a particular woman were
a public prostitute or a private one or only a singing and dancing
girl. 156 However, overwhelming support for the proposal was received
from many noted citizens of Agra, mainly the merchants and shop-
keepers of various bazaars, who got together to submit petitions of
support.15' Finally, the bylaws were passed and many other muni-
cipalities-at Khurja, Rurki, Banaras, etc.--followed suit, giving
details of areas from which prostitutes and brothels were to be
e x ~ 1 u d e d .A
l ~ reordering
~ and restructuring of the city was taking
place, affecting not just British residential areas but many other
localities.
The fact that prostitutes were pushed to the peripheries while
prostitution was not done away with-in fact the number of pros-
titutes continued to grow-brings to mind Foucault's analysis that
power works to produce a multiplicity of female sexualities which,
in turn, work insidiously to maintain the social order.15' The dis-
placement of the prostitute worked to ensure the parameters of
viewable, acceptable behaviour in respectable and civilised areas. At
the same time, the prostitute could continue her business at the
lS6 Ibid.
'SI Ibid.
158 Ibid.
59 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans.
Robert Hurley (New York, 1978), p. 98.
122 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
margins-precisely to ensure the continuation of that same 'civilised'
order. She was a threat to civilisation and at the same time ensured
its sanctity by operating outside the i o r m , hidden from respectabil-
ity. If there were any liberating aspects in the discourses on prosti-
tutes-aspects which showed a concern for her-they were over-
whelmed by the repressive tendencies of an authoritarian morality,
social purity and civilisation which gave unlimited scope to state
jurisdiction while providing the Hindu middle classes a moral and
civilisational edge. Public condemnation of the prostitute ensured
respectability for Hindus.
C onstructions of sexuality, educational reform, thrift, child care
and household management were of grave social concern and
scientific investigation in UP in the late-nineteenth and early- twen-
tieth centuries. The reforming endeavour included attempts to forge
an ideology of respectable middle-class and upper-caste Hindu domest-
icity. ~ e c e nstudies
t stress that the real battle for an ideal womanhood
during colonialism was waged within the home. The domestic do-
main was the inner core of national culture, a private and separate
sphere where it was possible for the Hindu male to impose his power
and control. This was in contrast with the world outside, the material
or public world, where the West had proved its superiority and made
the colonised acknowledge it. The Hindu woman was the harbinger
of the spiritual essence of the home, which became an essential marker
of cultural identity.' However, though the domestic sphere was cru-
c6l for Hindu assertiveness, Hindu publicists d o not seem to have
imagined the 'separate spheres' identified by historians. The spheres
appear heterogeneous and internally inconsistent in everyday spatial
and political practices. The emphasis on a new ideal of womanhood
operated at all scales and on all fronts, making such neat divisions un-
tenable. Private issues were discussed in public, and publicists ope-
rated in the public domain, intervening in the law, the marketplace,
the railway station, the press and print, attempting, as we have seen,
'Parrha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories (Delhi, 1994), pp. 120-1.
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
124 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
to reform both the 'private' and the ' p ~ b l i c .Whether
'~ in the home
or outside, the discursive management of female bodies was essential
to project a civilised and sectarian Hindu identity and a new nation.
The defence of Hindu domesticity went hand in hand with control
and conflict over the more reified domains of women.
Patriarchal oppression took new shapes through reworked models
of chastity and of the pativrata wife. Women became symbols for
restoring the prestige of the Hindu household, and thereby of the
Hindu nation. At the same time, the prescriptions of Hindu reform-
ers and revivalists were at times fragile. The Hindu nationalist effort
was often extremely tense, resulting in unintended consequences, in
c o n t r a d i ~ t o r ~ a ambivalent
nd situations. T o highlight theendeavours
of Hindu publicists in the domestic sphere, I look at three areas: sexu-
ality, education, and health.

I. Unstable Sexualities: T h e Sexual Politics of

the Home
Sexual life and conjugality have drawn the attention of several his-
t o r i a n ~A
. ~discourse of heroic masculinity and controlled sexuality
has been related to assertions of colonial superiority, in contrast with
the supposedly uncontrolled sexual desires of the 'native'. The cult
of domesticity was an indispensable element of the imperial enter-
prise. It has been claimed that various colonial laws centring around
women and marriage led to new patriarchies and social disciplines.*

* It is difficult even to ascertain if Indians had acknowledged Western supe-

riority in the public domain and vice versa in the private sphere. T o take another
example, the public matter of caste was pre-eminently concerned with private
issues of family, marriage, menstruation and household management. Jurgen
Habermas, The Structural Tranformation of the Public Sphere: A n Inquiry into
a Category ofBourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (London, 1989) sees his
model as specifically Western, deriving from Greek, Roman and then Christian
notions of household and family, as reflected in law, government, economic man-
agement, humanist individualism and romantic imagination.
'Mary John and Janaki Nair (eds), A Question ofSiknce? TheSexualEconomies
ofModem India (New Delhi, 1998); Patricia Uberoi (ed.), Social Refirm, Sexu-
ality and the State (New Delhi, 1996).
*Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Cob-
nial Contest(New York, 1995), pp. 1-4; Ann Laura Stoler, Raceandthe Education
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 125
However, such explanations tend to ignore the fact that the colonial
structure of power compromised with, indeed learnt much from,
indigenous patriarchy and upper-caste norms and practices which, in
certain areas of life, retained considerable hegemony.5
In the various debates on sexuality, conjugality, marriage and fami-
ly, though there was a constant tussle between Sanatan Dharmists,
neo-Brahmanic ideologues and orthodox Hindu revivalists on the
one hand, and Arya Samajists and liberal reformers on the other, they
seem to reach an uncomfortable compromise by the 1920s. Both
functioned within a broad nationalist agenda of asserting a middle-
class and upper-caste Hindu identity, imbibing new meanings into
hierarchies of gender within the home. In fact, Arya Samajists and
Sanatan Dharmists were remarkably similar when it came to the rela-
tionship they sought between 'correct' gender identity and sexual rela-
tionships. In a way they were both in collusion with imperial power
even when they challenged Western knowledge.

/. I . Conjugalig and Desire: The Power

of Dzfference
Marriage was seen as the most important social and economic insti-
tution of the family, within which individual needs and desires were
secondary. It was not merely a civil contract but a religious tie for life.
Any attack on the aims and ideals of marriage was seen as immoral
and wrong. Love was unstable and temporary, marriage gave it dign-
ity. A new 'civic morality' within the home gained ascendancy and
power. 'Grhasth Ashram' was applauded as i t was a practice that fed
the ~ t h e r s Marriage
.~ formed the family and families formed the
future citizens of the nation. Thus marriage was empowered with a
moral vision, providing sustenance for the national movement and

ofDesire:Foucault>Histo~yofSexualityand the Colnnial Order of Things (Durham,

19951, pp. 1-54.
Tanika Sarkar, 'Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason
and Death of a Child-Wife', EPK 28, 36 (4 September 1993), p. 1869.
Keshavkumar Thakur, Vivah aur Prem (Allahabad, 1930, 2nd edn, 2000
copies); Saumendra Narh Kerati, 'Grhasrhashram', Kurmi Kthatriya Diwakar, 4,
3 (May 1928), pp. 6-8.
126 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
for distinct identities. The ideal of monogamous and companionable
marriage was valorised more than ever.7 The family internalised,
monitored and institutionalised sex within marriage and saw that it
was performed in the correct place and at the proper time.
The self-disciplining, regulating and monitoring of the sexual
body would influence the nation. In the process, male sexuality came
under considerable strain even as the burden of control was made to
rest more on the woman. Belief in the constant, natural and transcen-
dent difference between the bodies and sexual urges of women and
men accentuated the power of the husband over the wife, whereby
the man could escape with many 'wrongs' but the woman could not.
These differences were repeatedly stressed in the didactic literature of
the times. Within an idealised notion lay the roots ofoppression. Wo-
men were seen as the centre of the family. Just as a state has two major
departments, home and foreign, the business of man is with the world
outside, and that of the woman inside.' The familiarity of the concept
of pativrata, the ideal wife,9 allowed for its success, though it was
redefined and refurbished with new qualities. The work of man was
to produce, of the woman to preserve. Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi
wrote: 'If some law-knowing woman tells her husband-listen, your
rights and mine are equal-I am free and so are you: One day 1'11 cook
and clean the house, and one day you. One day 1'11 take care of you,
one day you of me. O r suppose she says: I refuse to produce a child-
tell me what would such freedom result in?"'
Social conditioning was combined with biological arguments to
' Yashoda Devi, Dampatya Prem aur Ritikriya ka Gupt Rahasya (Allahabad,
1933), p. 510.
Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya (Headmaster, DAV School), Mahikz Vyavahar
Chandrika (Prayag, 1928), p.3.
'To remind women constantly of the ideal Hindu wife, mythicallhistorical
stories were constantly published of Sita, Savitri and the like. See Chandrabali
Mishra, Adarsh Hindu Nari (Banaras, 1930); Yashoda Devi, Saccha Pati Prem
(Allahabad, 1910); Gopal Devi, Divya Deviyan (Prayag, 1926).
'O Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi Rachnavali, Val. Z ed. and comp. Bharat Yayavar
(New Delhi, 1995), p. 145. Also see Ramnath Seth, 'Striyon Mein Ashanti ka
Karan', Stri Darpan, 29, 1 Uuly 1923), p. 328; Purshottam, Stri Bhushan (Bana-
ras, 1932), p. 351.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 127
maintain hierarchies of gender within the home, where a multipur-
pose idea of service was stressed." The deterioration of Man did not
cause much harm to society, but that of Woman led to the collapse
of family, community and society.I2 The difference was seen some-
what ludicrously even within the sexual act: 'In the natural sexual act
of procreation, the responsibility of the man is for ten minutes, while
that of the woman for ten months. When nature itself has kept this
difference of ten minutes and ten months, how can anyone suggest
the responsibilities of woman and man are the same?'13
An essentialist argument was also brought into play, whereby male
and female natures were seen as forever different and unchanging.
The husband was aggressive, forceful and promiscuous; the wife was
nurturing and maternal. The onus to control the male's potentially
rampant urges rested mainly on her.'* The aim of sex was seen as
three-fold-producing a child, social welfare, and individual devel-
~ p m e n t . Lust
' ~ was not the only form of enjoyment: religious and
moral exchanges between husband and wife were to form an impor-
tant source ofgratification. Permissible sex between husband and wife
within monogamous married life was an issue which also constantly
taxed writers of prescriptive texts.16 The limits of marital sex were
defined in detail, with the emphasis on continence rather than erotic
pleasure. There were repeated warnings against the dangers of indul-
ging in one's 'baser instincts'. Sleeping together on the same bed
resulted in a constant desire for sex, affecting health and beauty. Part-
ners had better sleep in different places. After marriage, the first inter-
'' Gupt 'Pagal', Grhini Bhwhan (Kashi, 1921, 2nd edn), p. 2.
Yashoda Devi, Adarsh Pati-Patni aur Santati Sudhar (Allahabad, 1924,2nd
edn), p. 3; Kannornal, Mahila Sudhar (Agra, 1923), p. 25; Anon., 'Grh Karya
Shiksha', Kanya Sarvasva, 1, 11 (1914), p. 335.
l 3 Ka~nornal,Mahila, p. 34.
l 4 Yashoda Devi, Dampati Arogyata jivanshastra (Allahabad, 1927), pp. 16,
25; Thakur, Vivah, pp. 7, 47-8.
l 5 Thakur Vijaybahadur Singh, Dampatya Shastra (Prayag, 1933), p. 124;
Brijrnohan Mihir, Dampati firtavya Shastra (Prayag, n.d.).
'"ugal Kishore Mukhtar, I4vah ka Uddeshya (Agra, 1922, 2nd edn), Huk-
kadevi, 'Hurnari Durbalta Ka Mukhya Karan', Stri Datpan, 18, 1 (January
1918), pp. 11-16.
128 l Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
course with avirgin woman had best impregnate her at once, and after
that sex had ideally to be avoided. The prescribed interval between
each sexual act varied. Some stressed once a year, others once in six
months, but almost none advocated it more than once a month. l7 The
concern with sex and marriage was manifest in the sphere of law as
well, where extensive debates took place on conjugal rights, the age
of consent for sex, and inter-caste marriages.

1.2. Controversies Around Some Legislative Activities

on Hindu Marriage
The biggest controversy concerned the indissoluble Hindu child mar-
riage. Before 1860, there was no legal prohibition against a man hav-
ing intercourse with a child wife, nor was there any legal minimum
to the age of marriage. The Indian Penal Code of 1860 included for
the first time, a definition of rape as the act of a husband who consum-
mated his marriage before the wife was ten years old.18 It took almost
seventy years to raise this age to fourteen, and to fix aiminimum age
of marriage. Many historical accounts trace the journey from Section
375 of the IPC to the passing of the Sarda Act (Child Marriage Rest-
raint Act) in 1929." Some of the arguments raised in opposition to

"Madanla1 Khemka, Stri Shastra (Banaras, 1734), p. 72; Baijnath Lala,

Dharma Shiksha(Meerut, 1710), p. 72; Thakur, Vivah, pp. 40-2; Keshavkumar
Thakur, Grhasth Jivan (Prayag, 1732), p. 36; Devi, Dampatya, pp. 147-87;
Hanuman Prasad Sharma, Sukhi Grhini (Banaras, 1731), p. 30; Chimmanlala
Vaishya, Viva Raksha (Meerut, 1928, 10th edn), pp. 65-84.
Is Age of Consent uoshi) Committee, 1928-29, Report (Calcutta, 1927) (hence-
forth, Consent, Report), p. 9.
l 7 Especially see Geraldine Forbes, 'Women and Moderniry: The Issue of
Child Marriage in India', Women > Studies International Quarterly, 2, 4 (1979),
pp. 407-1 9; Barbara N. Ramusack, 'Women's Organizations and Social Change:
T h e Age-of-Marriage Issue in India', in Naomi Black and Ann Baker Cottrell
(eds), Women a n d World Change: Equity Issues in Development (Beverly Hills,
1781), pp. 200-1; M. Kosambi, 'Girl-Brides and Sociological Change: Age of
Consent Bill (1871) Controversy', E P K 26,31-2 (1771), pp. 1857-68; Padma
A. McGinn, 'The Age of Consent Act (1 871) Reconsidered: Women's Perspect-
ives and Participation in Child Marriage Controversy in India', SAR, 12, 2
(November 1992), pp. 100-18; Sarkar, 'Rhetoric', pp. 1867-78; Mrinalini
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 129
such legislation, especially by revivalist-nationalist and orthodox sec-
tions of Hindu ~ublicistsin UP, are relevant here. Such arguments
revealed the oppressive and aggressive nature of Hindu patriarchy but
were camouflaged in a language of love, duty and 'women's best inte-
rests'. They provided new signposts for separate religious and com-
munity identities, using the body of the Hindu woman in ingenious
ways.
Certain provisions of Section 260, Code of Civil Procedure, 1882,
introduced by colonial law, related to the execution of decrees for the
restitution of conjugal rights and suits for the recovery of a wife. It
enabled husbands to use threats of imprisonment to force their reluc-
tant wives to live with them. Under this was fought the famous Rukh-
mabai case. In 1884, Dadaji Bhikaji filed a suit for restitution of
conjugal rights over his wife. However, Rukhmabai, his wife, who was
an educated girl from a lowly carpenter caste of Maharashtra, refused
her husband's claim, on grounds of his poverty, uneducated status,
consumptive nature and most important, her lack of consent to the
marriage when she was only eleven years old and the fact that it had
not been consummated. Rukhmabai was ready to undergo imprison-
ment rather than live with her husband. This then led to debates
around the inrroduction of divorce, and around doing away with the
restitution of conjugal rights in favour of husbands or at least with
imprisonment for wives in such suits, especially in the case of child
wives.20
In UP, conservative Hindus opposed change as subversive of the
cohesive structure of the Hindu family that would weaken the bonds

Sinha, ColonialMasculiniry, pp. 138-72; Janaki Nair, Women and Law in Colo-
nial India: A Social History (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 71-84; Judy Whitehead,
'Modernising the Motherhood Archerype: Public Health Models and the Child
Marriage Restraint Act of 1929', in Uberoi (ed.), Social pp. 187-200; Geraldine
Forbes, Women in Modern India (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 83-90.
20 See Sudhir Chandra, 'Rukhmabai: Debate over Woman's Right to Her Per-
son', EPW (2 November 1996), pp. 2937-47; idem, Enslaved Daughters: Colo-
nialism, Law and Women i Rights (Delhi, 1998); Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting
Histoly: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (New Delhi, 1998); 189-921
June 1887, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
130 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
of love between husbands and wives. They clung to the idea of
imprisonment as a deterrent to prevent Hindu women from deserting
their husbands.21Pandit Jagan Nath, a vakil from Agra, said: 'I have
never known a chaste Indian wife refusing of her own free will to go
and live with her husband. . . .The fear of imprisonment makes many
young wives return to their allegiance and duty, and ultimately live
a happy life, instead of a corrupt one, which they are very likely to
follow if allowed to remain separate.'22
Coercion and control over women by seduction or fear was an
important aspect in the arguments of conservative Hindus. The Bha-
rat Varshya National Association of Aligarh appointed a select com-
mittee to go into the various terms of reference of the 1882 Code.
Vehemently opposing any change in the law, it argued that it would
introduce divorce amongst Hindus; it would lead to further legisla-
tion on the subject of early marriage; it would attack Hindu manners,
customs and religious right; it would make marriage purely a civil
contract; and it would be undesirable for the good of women them-
selves.23
Orthodox Hindus had constantly opposed British interference in
the personal laws of Hindus. However, at this moment they upheld
the colonial law, signifying that they were not averse to invoking such
law when it was seen as strengthening patriarchy. Lakshmi Narayana
Vyasa, President, Hindu Samaj, Allahabad, expressed the opinion of
the Samaj:
Under Hindu kings enough power was exercised by individuals for the
coercion of disobedient and wayward wives. . . . [But] the power of curb-
ing the spirit of a recalcitrant wife is now entirely in the hands of the law

Bharat Bandhu, 17 February 1888, NNR, 1888, p. 155. Opinions of such

kind were expressed by various individuals and in meetings held in various parts
of UP. A public meeting was held on 21 July 1887, presided over by Rai Durga
Prasad Bahadur, opposing any change. In Agra, Gorakhpur, Basri and Kumaun,
opinion favoured leaving the law as it was. Sheo Narayan, Secretary, Municipal
Board, Agra, Magistrates of Meerut, Bulandshahar and Aligarh, and many others
endorsed the existing provisions, 410-715IMay 1890, Judl, A, Home Deptt
(NAI). In this, especially see File 519 for UP, pp. 20, 34-5, 38-9, 41, 54, 66.
'' Ibid., pp. 40-1.
23 Ibid., pp. 52-4.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 131
courts. T h e people, therefore, expect that the Legislature should vest such
penal powers in the hands of the Judges that would keep erring wives in
fear of the law and discourage them from defying the Judge's decree. Any
relaxation in the rigour of the existing law will only slacken the bonds of
society.24

Others who opposed imprisonment did so chiefly on two grounds.

First, that the old rules, whereby the woman was bodily handed over
to the husband upon his application, should be restored. Second, that
imprisonment would not give the anticipated outcome, for no re-
spectable Hindu would take back an imprisoned woman.25 Impris-
onment, however, continued to be a legally permitted method to
enforce the restitution of conjugal rights until 1 9 2 3 . ~ ~
More important was the debate foregrounding the issue of infant
marriage. A series of tragedies occurred in Bengal, including the death
of ten-year-old Phulmoni due to injuries sustained during sexual
intercourse with her 35-year-old husband, Hari Mohan Maity. Cam-
paigners like Malabari renewed their efforts to raise the age of con-
sent.27He made a successful tour in UP and addressed meetings at
24 Ibid., p. 67. In fact, 3 women were imprisoned to enforce that law in 1892
and 2 were jailed in 1893 in UP: Priyam Singh, 'Women, Law and Criminal Jus-
tice in North India: A Historical View', Bulktin of ConcernedAsian Scholars, 28,
1 (19961, p. 29.
25 In Badaun, many Hindus expressed such opinions. The Arya Samaj took
a slightly different position. Aspecial meeting was held of the Bareilly Arya Samaj
on 27 and 3 1 July 1887. Extensively quoting evidence from Vedas and Shastras,
the meeting underlined that the husband must be constantly revered as a god
by a virtuous wife and that Hindu law did not recognise dissolution of marriage.
The meeting ultimately resolved that the decrees for restitution of conjugal rights
should not be made enforceable for six months and, after that, non-compliance
on the part of a Hindu woman should be seen as misconduct, leading to no claim
for maintenance or property: 519/May 1890, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI),
pp. 22-7.
Z6 Nair, Women, p. 75.
27 Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India [Being a Collection of
Opinions, For and Against, Received by B.M. Malabari, from Representative
Hindu Gentlemen and Official and Other Authorities] (Bombay, 1887). A richly
detailed account of this and related issues over women's rights can be found in
Tanika Sarkar, Hindu W z f , Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural
Nationalism (New Delhi, 2001).
132 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Allahabad, Lucknow, Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Mathura and Banaras
in 1886.28In 189 1, under pressure from such reformists, the govern-
ment raised the age of consent for a wife to twelve years. This was
accomplished in the face of desperate resistance, most vociferous in
Calcutta, but not leaving UP untouched. Papers like Bharatjiwan
from Banaras took a lead in this campaign.
Revivalists constantly attempted to downplay or distract attention
from the horrors of infant marriage. One argument was that the 1891
Act violated Hindu customs as it interfered with the garbhdan cere-
mony. This was tantamount to a sin. They argued that the British
had promised no interference in the personal beliefs of Indian~.~'The
Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, the Hindu Samaj of Allahabad, the
Vidya Vardhini Sabha and the Dharma Sabha at Farukhabad, the
Saraswat-Khatri Unnatti Karni Sabha of Kanpur and the Brahmins
of Agra adopted resolutions to this effect.30Public meetings against
the Act were held at Banaras, Agra, Mathura, Khandwa, Vrindaban,
Moradabad, Jhansi and Kanpur.31 Comparisons with the abolition
of sati were dismissed, saying that sati was never enjoined by religion,
applied in rare cases, and involved the loss of life; whereas the age of
consent affected every man and cohabitation rarely resulted in in-

Several women doctors had exposed the grievous consequences re-

sulting from early consummation and the poor health of children

28 Lala Baijnath, Social Reformfor NWP: Proceedings ofPublic Meetings, with

Two Papers and a Preface (Bombay, 1886), pp. 1-31.
29 Bharat]iwan, 19 January 1891, p. 3.
30 Hindustan, 27 January 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, pp. 85-6; Prayag
Sarnacl)ar, 26 January 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, p. 86; Hindustan, NNR,
10 February 1891, p. 105; Cawnpore Gazette, 1 March 1891, NNR, 10 March
1891, p. 174.
3 i BharatJiwan, 26 January 189 1, p. 3; Nasim-i-Agra, 7 February 189 1, NNR,
10 February 1891, p. 105; Subodh Sindhu, 11 February 1891, NNR, 17 February
1891, p. 121; Cawnpore Gaztte, 23 February 1891, NNR, 3 March 1891,
p. 157; Hindustan, 26 February 1891, NNR, 3 March 1891, p. 157.
32 Tolflah-i-Hind, 27 January 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, p. 84; Oudh
Akhhar, 2 March 189 1, NNR, 3 March 189 1, pp. 154-5; Tuli-i-Hind, 8 Feb-
ruary 1891, NNR, 3 March 1891, p. 156.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 133
born to child-mothers.33 Such doctors were ridiculed. It was argued
that if government made laws by heeding the opinion of doctors, it
would soon have to interfere with religious customs such as bathing
early in the morning in the cold season at ghats, maintaining long-
drawn-out fasts, and so on.34 Further, women doctors had no access
to the houses of respectable people, and if the registers of hospitals
sometimes showed the death of girls from ill usage by men, those girls
were likely to have been prostitutes.35 By implication, the death of
prostitutes by ill usage was immaterial, if not an altogether good
thing. The age of consent had been customarily agreed for unmarried
girls because it would protect them from immature prostitution and
rape by strangers.36 It was also argued that the criminal statistics for
England showed there were forty cases of assault on women in a pcpu-
lation of 35 million, while only two cases had occurred in India with
a population of 260 million. This showed that Indians treated their
women much better than did the Engli~h.~'
Climatic and 'rational' arguments were advanced to counter eu-
genicist contentions on weak progeny and death due to early mar-
riages. It was argued that a 16-year-old Hindu woman who had al-
ready given birth to two sons and had only one meal a day was
stronger than any 25-year-old European unmarried woman. And if
deaths were so common from the effects of cohabitation at an early
age, how could India boast a population of 260 million. Could the
Sikh, the Rohilla and the Gurkha soldiers, all offspring of so-called
child-mothers, be considered weak and degenerate?38There could be
no declared uniform age for puberty;39 India was proud of its ins-
tances of nine-year-old girls delivering children.40 Another Hindu

33 155-91February 189 1, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).

34 Almora Akhbar, 19 January 1891, NNR, 27 January 189 1, p. 54.
35 BharatJiwan, 9 February 1891, p. 3.
36 har rat ~ i w a n ,26 January 1891, p. 3; Bharat Jiwan, 23 March 1891,
pp. 8-9; Nyaya Sudha, 28 January, 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, p. 84.
37 Bharat Jiwan, 9 February 1891, p. 3.
38 Bharat Jiwari, 23 February 1891, pp. 4-5.
39 Bharat Jiwan, 2 F e b r u a t l 8 9 1 , pp. 3-4; BharatJiwan, 16 March 1891,
p. 3.
40 Akhbar-i-Akzm, 27 January 1.891, NNR, 3 February 1891, pp. 81-2; Oudh
134 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
male asserted: 'India is a hot country. Our girls enter the period of
youth early. Western countries are cold. Their girls mature late. T o
bring the customs of cold countries into hot ones is absolutely against
intelligence, experience and vision. . . . T o keep girls unmarried till
they reach their youth in India would increase fears of their mental
impurity.'4' Ironically, when it came to sexual life after marriage it
was often argued that men had uncontrollable urges and it was the
woman's responsibi!ity to control these. Regarding the age ofconsent,
precisely the opposite argument was given-that women had greater
sexual urges and therefore it was imperative to have them married as
soon as they started menstruating.
Women were stated to be better off with the present system,
warmly appreciated as the gender which bestowed love and security.
The Bill was said to harm those very people whom it proposed to
protect. Young brides had more time to adjust to the joint family.
Laws would hamper the sexual desire of a married woman, and the
age limit would prevent her from expressing it.42Arguments about
shame and honour were put forward: no respectable woman would
agree to be medically examined to determine sexual penetration.
Women would be dragged into making 'shameful' statements during
trials over the age of consent, leading to public disgrace for themselves
and their families: women would rather die.43Wives would live in
deplorable conditions if their husbands had to spend a long term in
jail, and they would be worse than widows, being denied the pleasures
of married life in spite of having a husband. It would be difficult to

Akb~bar,2 1 February 1891, NNR, 24 February 1891, p. 137; Bharat Jiwan,

23 February 1891, pp. 4 5 .
Kannornal, Mahila, pp. 15-16. Also see Pagal, Grhini, p. 2.
42 Oudh Punch, 19 February 1891, NNR, 24 February 1891, p. 135; Bharat
jiwan, 9 March 1891, p. 4.
43 Bharat Jiwan, 19 January 1891, p. 3; Najmu-1-Akhbar, 24 January 1891,
NNR, 3 February 1891, p. 80; Nairang, 2 February 1891, NNR, 10 February
1891, p. 102; BharatBandhu, 6 February 1891, NNR, 10 February 1891, p. 104;
Bharat jiwan, 2 February 1891, pp. 3-4; Hindustan, 7 February 1891, NNR,
10 February 1891, p. 104.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 135
preserve their chastity for so long.44In relation to the restoration of
conjugal rights, thevery same forces upheld imprisonment for women;
when it came to the man being jailed for a conjugal offence, the rhe-
toric was turned upside down. A woman refusing to go to her hus-
band had to be jailed to bring eider to society; a husband jailed for
raping his child-wife would disrupt that order.
The reformist argument was more defensive, the revivalists having
set the terms of the debate. But there were loopholes even in the re-
formist logic. They stressed that, if certain changes were needed, they
had to come from within;45 that an offending husband should be
liable to a charge smaller than rape, and to less rigorous imprison-
~ n e n t . ~ ~ T harguments
eir were connected to notions biological, physi-
cal, bodily and eugenicist, and, unlike those of their opponents, rarely
referred to the needs and desires of women.
Even after the passing of the Bill, girls' families were afraid to press
charges. In 1891, only two cases were reported in UP.47In 1892-3,
again, just two cases were reported. In Agra a child-wife, after being
raped by her husband Nanhe on 13 June 1892, was admitted into
a hospital, where she remained until her death on 11 October. Her
husband was tried for the offence and sentenced to two years' impri-
sonment. The Commissioner of the Agra division reported that the
sympathies of the public were with the offender.48
Voices of protest by Hindu revivalists continued long after the
passing of the Bill, though they never again reached the peak of 189 1.
A Hindi translation of Charu Chandra Mitra's English essay in
support of the orthodox Hindu marriage ritual was first printed in
Malyada, and then reprinted as a Besides the earlier con-

44 Akhbar-i-Ahm, 27 January 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, pp. 81-2; Anju-

man-i-Hind, 7 February 1891, NNR, I0 February 1891, p. 102; Hindustani,
18 February 1891, NNR,24 February 1891, p. 135.
4 5 Prayag Samachar, 26 January 1891, NNR, 3 February 1891, pp. 80-1.
46 Hindustan, 5 and 6 March 1891, NNR, 10 March 1891, pp. 170-1.
1892, Judi, A, Home ~ e ~ (NAI).
47 2 7 8 - 9 1 / ~ u l ~ ; t
48 187-96IAugusr 1893, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
4%Bamukund Vajpei, Hindu Vzvah (Lucknow, 1919).
136 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
tentions, it was also argued that it was wrong to say early marriages
hampered education, for many of those who did best in examinations
were married students. Delay in marriages would increase the number
of illegitimate children, as was happening in Westeril societies. Early
marriages were another way to increase Hindu numbers, as compared
with chose of Muslims.5o
In 1921 Bakshi Sohan La1 brought forward another bill to raise
the age of consent from 12 to 14.51It was defeated on its second hear-
ing. H . S. Gour revived it in 1923.52The number of cases of convic-
tions for rape on girls between the ages of 10 and 12 years during
1921-3 in UP' was 128, far exceeding any other province. Bombay
came second with 63 cases, Punjab third with 57 cases.53There was
a strong humanitarian streak in bringing forward these bills, though
arguments in their support centred on eugenics and strong progeny.
Again, though most agreed that in non-marital cases and in those of
rape by a stranger the age of consent should be raised, in the case of
marital relations it was a different matter. One of the UP judges was
of the opinion that it was monstrous and repugnant to Indian notions
to treat the husband and the stranger alike in cases of rape.54 Orga-
nisations like Sri Bharat Dharma Mahamandal continued to cam-
paign against such b i l l ~ . 5The
~ government too was not very eager
about major amendments. However, such arguments were, this time,
confronted by a more vocal and organised group ofwomen. T o some
extent, advances in education and the women's movement also
brought about a change in practice.56
Fresh ground was broken in this debate by Harbilas Sarda in 1927,
who pointed out that the consent of the child-wife was not enough;
he proposed the fixing of a minimum age for marriage. Months of
50 Ibid., pp. 5-6, 8, 12-13, 1 5 , 26-7, 34.
5' 67211922, Judl, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
5 2 41611924, Judl, Home Deptt (NAI).
S3 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
5 5 It was an all-India Association representing the orthodox community of
Hindus, with 700 branches and affiliated institutions in India and abroad and
with its headquarters at Banaras, 60111926, Public, Home Deptt (NAI).
56This has been extensively covered. Specially see Ramusack, 'Women's
Organizations1.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 137
debate in the legislative assembly followed, with various disagree-
m e n t ~Madan
. ~ ~ Mohan Malaviya led the campaign against the pro-
posal, voicing the opinion of Hindu orthodoxy. An Age of Consent
Committee was set up on behalfof the Indian legislature. It submitted
its voluminous report and evidence from various provinces, running
to ten This was a landmark enquiry, though it had certain
limitations such as the fact that most female witnesses came from
educated sections, and that no purdah parties were sent to UP.59The
report admitted that there were more cases of infringement of the law
of consent in marital cases than those that came before the courts.60
The Bill was ultimately passed in 1929, fixing the minimum age
of marriage at fourteen. There was opposition and tracts were pub-
lished against it, suggesting ways to overcome or break this law.61But
this time the support was more organised, and the AIWC took a lead
in gathering support.62 Simultaneously, the government was ex-
tremely cautious. A 'very secret' letter written by the chief secretary
to the government of UP, on the eve of the enforcement of the Act,
stated:
District Magistrates should be warned to deal very cautiously with com-
plaints filed under the Act, and to follow the preliminary procedure laid
down without undue haste. They [Government of India] are of the opi-
nion that as a general proposition until experience has been gained to the
effect of the Act, only nominal sentences should be imposed in cases of
conviction and that, if possible, sentence of imprisonment should be avoi-
ded.63

It is ironic that the Bill actually precipitated a large number of early

57 Legishtiue Assembly Debates, Oficiaf Report, 11.: 62 (15 September 1927).
5s Consent, Report and Age of Consent uoshi) Committee, 1928-29, Euidence,
Vof. I-IX (Calcutta, 1929). Out of this, Vols VIII and IXcontained oral evid-
ence and written statements from UP.
5"onsent, Report, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 17.
" Chetrarn Tripathi, Sarda Kanoon Aur Sanatati Dharrna (Kashi, 1929);
Munnilal Sahu Vaishya, Baf Viuah Nishedh Kanoon (Banaras, 1929); Indumati
Devi, 'Sarda Bill', Arya Mahila, 12, 9 (December 1929), pp. 690-3.
"AParna Basu and Rharati Ray, Women? Strugqk: A Hi~toryof the AIWC,
1927-90 (Delhi, 1990), pp. 42-6.
63 48211929, Box 209, Judl (Civil) Deptt (UPSA).
138 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
marriages throughout the province,64 and the Act remained a dead
letter in practical terms. A summary of reports received from commis-
sioners and district officers of UP on the working- of the Act revealed
that most were not aware of it or thought it could be disregarded.65
Still, passing- it was a victory for the women's movement.
Another controversial legislation was the Special Marriage Act.
The Special Marriage - Act of 1872 was fairly radical because it ruled
out caste and religious barriers to marriage, prohibited polygamy and
legalised divorce. However, its jurisdiction was limited to those who
did not profess any of the recognised religions of India." In 191 1,
Bhupendra Nath Basu proposed to extend the provisions of the Act
to all H i n d ~ s . ~
The
' .
proposal
.
shook the very foundations of Hindu
religious and community identity. It represented new forms of judi-
cial intervention based on individual as opposed to social or commu-
- -

nity 'rights'. However, rulings relating to inter-caste marriages often

showed a counter-tendency-of creating more defined communities
by defending their 'primordial' customs. here was thus the case of
Padam Kumari us. Suraj Kumari, in which the UP High Court at
Allahabad held: 'Whatever may have been the case in ancient times,
and whatever may be the law in other parts of India, at the present
day a marriage between a Brahman and a Chhattri is not a lawful mar-
riage in these Provinces, and the issue of such a marriage is not legi-
timate.'6s
The new proposal gave scope for such marriages to happen; under
ordinary circumstances, such a marriage would have resulted in the
couples' being outcaste, their marriage being disregarded, and their
children being illegitimate." Given the strong caste and community
ties, a very small minority would benefit by it, but even its mere pas-
sing was seen as a threat. Arguments were given in opposition to the

64 Ibid.
65296/1930, Box 213, Judl (Civil) Deptt (UPSA).
66Charles H. Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform
(Princeton, 1964), pp. 91-4; Nair, Women, pp. 184-5.
67 IlFebruary 1911, Judl, Deposit, Home Deptt (NAI).
68 Padam Kun~arivs. Suraj Kumari, Indian Law Reports, Allahaba4 Vol. 28
(Allahabad, 1906), p. 458.
69 1241191 1, Box 45, Judl (Civil) Deptt (UPSA).
 Mapping the Domestic Domain I 139
Bill-that it was detrimental to the sacramental character of the
Hindu religion and marriage ceremony; that it would create problems
for inheritance and s u c c e ~ s i o nMeetings
.~~ were held and resolutions
passed to endorse such views.71
However, at the core of the. opposition were fears of inter-caste
marriages polluting the 'pure blood' of upper-caste Hindus,72and of
inter-religious marriages challenging the cohesiveness of Hindu com-
m ~ n i t y Kirti
. ~ ~ Sah Bahadur, Raja of Garhwal state, put it bluntly:
'The second objection appears far more formidable to me. If the bill,
as it stands, is passed into law there will be nothing to prevent a Hindu
marrying a Muhammadan wife or a high class Brahman from mar-
rying a low caste Shudra woman; but such marriages cannot possibly
be regarded as valid under Hindu law.'74
Some reformers, like C.Y. Chintamani, president of the Fifth UP
Social Conference, pointed out that such a bill was necessary for the
removal of caste barriers.75These voices were hopelessly outnumber-
ed, revealing the unrepresentative character of the liberal reformers,
and the bill could not be passed. The opposition revealed an incon-
sistency, as it applied miscegenation arguments to liaisons between
castes, while at the same time professing one 'Hindu' identity. Even
branches of the Arya Samaj took public positions against the bill.'"
It was maintained that there was no need of exogamy as each Hindu
caste and the community as a whole contained a sufficient number
of males and female^.'^ It was contended that the Hindu race could
70Abhyudaya, 30 July 1911, NNR, 4 August 1911, p. 709; Abhyudaya, 6
August 1911, NNR, 11 August 1911, p. 733; Abhyudaya, 10August 191 1, NNR,
18 August 191 1, p. 756.
7 1 Ameeting was held at Banaras on 5 July 191 1, protesting against the bill:
Trishul 5 July 191 1, NNR, 14 July 191 1, p. 627. A drafi memorial in opposition
co che bill was published: Abhyudaya, 30 July 191 1, NNR, 4 August 191 1,
p. 709.
72 Abhyudaya, 10 August 191 1, NNR, 18 August 191 1, p. 756.
73 17lNovember 1911, Judl, B, Home Deptt (NAI).
74 1241191 1, Box 45, Judl (Civil) Deptt (UPSA).
75 85IJuly 1911, Judl, B, Home Deptt (NAI).
'' 1241191 1, Box 45, Judl (Civil) Deptt (UPSA); 132lNovember 191 1, Judl,
B, Home Deptt (NAI).
77 Mashriq, 22 August 191 1, NNR, 1 September 191 1, p. 799.
140 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
not be improved or the Hindu nation made strong and muscular by
such promiscuous inter-caste marriages. They would result in the
birth of inferior children,78and were seen as fatal to Hinduism itself.
L. Stuart, Secretary to the Government in UP, also supported claims
against reform.79
Some scholars claim that legal interference by colonial authorities
was an important cause of nationalist dissent. This is not entirelycon-
vincing. The rejection ofcolonial interference in personal matters was
selective, and there were interesting ambivalences towards the colo-
nial law which resulted in different, even conflicting, statements by
similar people and organisations.
The debates around marriage and conjugal law were one manifes-
tation of concerns with women's sexuality. The sartorial styles of
Hindu women, their love of jewellery, their bathing semi-nude in
public ghats, and their veil were other markers of desire and its con-
trol. Considerations of nationalism and modernism gave new twists
to these emblems of identity.

L3. Fashion, Clothes, jewellery, Purdah

Clothes veil the body. They encode the game of modesty and sexual
explicitness, of the denial and celebration of pleasure. They mirror
social hierarchies, sexual divisions and moral b o ~ n d a r i e sClothing
.~~
played an active role in the construction of identities, families, castes
and regions in colonial India."
In UP, Hindu reformers attempted to define dress codes. There
was even a call from the All India Hindu Sabha to devise a national
dress for all Hindus, to distinguish them from other 'races'.82Cloth-
ing matters were especially directed at women. They were attacked

Leader, 21 December 191 1, NNR, 30 December 191 1, pp. 1144-5.

79 132lNovember 1911, Judl, B, Home Deptt (NAI).
Efrat Tseelon, The Masque of Femininiy: The Presentation of Women in
Eveyday Life (London, 1995), pp. 14, 125. Also see Jane Gaines and Charlotte
Herzog (eds), Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York. 1990).
Emma Tarlo, ClothingMatters:Dress and/&ntiy in India (London, 1996),
pp. 23-127. Also see Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge:
The British in India (Princeton, 1996), pp. 106-62.
Leader, 17 May 1911, NNR, 26 May 1911, p. 441.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 14 1
for their love of jewellery and fashion, seen as evidence of women's
inherent frivolity, as conspicuous consumption and an irrational aes-
thetic, as a marker of their pleasures, passions and desires. Women
were believed to be susceptible to new fashions by dressing in thin,
fancy and tight clothes, leaving their bodies exposed.83 Fashion was
identified with an enslavement to Western goods and norms, sexual
promiscuity, and the break up of the joint family.84
Jewellery was a traditional store of wealth against hardship. It
formed the most important part of stri dhan, over which women had
limited control, and which could be an independent resource for
them: it was attacked on various grounds. Increases in the number
of the poor allied with economic insecurities bolstered arguments
against fashion and j e w e l l e ~ y .Kaliyug,
~~ or the modern/colonial
world, was depicted as a world of calamity, with no money, impure
ghee, adulterated food, famine, and weak children. At such times, a
woman's indulgence in artificial decorations to her body, her frivo-
lous expenditure of hard-earned money, were castigated as foolish.
Opposition to middle-class Hindu women's desire for new fash-
ions and clothes also related to swadeshi notions favouring the boy-
cott of foreign goods. Powder from Paris, soap from Italy, toothpaste
from London and thin saris from Manchester were shown to be items
in women's wardrobes and were vigorously ~ o n d e m n e d In . ~ ~the
1920s Gandhi called for women to give up their love of jewellery and
donate the money saved to the national cause. Thrift, favoured as a
modern bourgeois value, meant jewellery was wasteful expenditure.
Various caste associations passed resolutions to reduce marriage ex-
penditure. Ironically, British values were sometimes imitated in this
matter. O n the science of household-management, one writer asked
why Europeans had more money, power and intelligence than Hin-
s3 Jyotirmayi Thakur, A&rsh Patni (Allahabad, 1935), p. 14.
'* Goswami Lakshmanacharya, Bhithari Bhavishya (Allahabad, 1909), pp. 2-
3 , 92.
85Mahender, 'Ab Sudhar Kaise Ho?', Chaturuedi, 1, 7 (1915), pp. 8-9;
Chandrikanarayan Sharma (Registered Vaid), Manavotpacti Vigyan,Part1 (Kashi,
1938), p. 234; Thakur, Adarsh, p. 15.
" Babu Sitaram, 'Hurnari Striyon ka Rahan Sahan', AgarwalHitaishi(l925?),
pp. 34-5.
142 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
dus. His answer was that it was because they used their brains on
behalf of thrift.87 Colonial rule was largely blamed for present-day
evils, increasing the need for swadeshi and donations, but the Euro-
pean ideal of thrift was to be duplicated.
There was a contradiction within this condemnation of women.
The clothing styles of most Hindu women were upheld as having
largely escaped the tainting influence of the West. These assertions
became a form of social control and social organisation, and dress a
mechanism of inclusion as well as exclusion, a marker to differentiate
between Hindu, Muslim and European women. While men had
abandoned their pagri and dhoti and taken to European clothes,
mostly as work uniforms, it was their duty to see that their women
did not follow suit. Dressed in indigenous styles, women were seen
as having retained the customs, manners and prestige of the Hindma*
Women's clothing was a cultural message to the West. Hindu reform-
ers thus had to introduce changes and new norms ofdress, i.e. by mak-
ing clothes longer and thicker, leaving no part of the body, including
the navel, exposed. These immediately became 'indigenous' and
' t r a d i t i ~ n a l ' It
. ~has
~ been argued that hemlines started dropping with
the fervour of the nationalist movement.90 Hindu nationalists at-
tached a moral value to modest clothing. The moralism of dress and
fashion reform was no less than an attempt to abolish fashion itself.
Women were to dress with grim respectability and decency, with no
hint of sexual allure. A woman's fully draped figure served the ideo-
logical needs of the times.91Dressed simply, she represented a hope
for the nation, revering degenerate past values while participating in
modern mass movement^.^^
Purdah was precarious. It was a symbol of the honour and prestige
Janardan Joshi, Grh Prabandh Shaswa (Prayag, 1918, 2nd edn), pp. 1-5,
8, 62-3, 74.
8a Kannomal, Mahila, pp. 31-2.
a9Anon., 'Vastron ki Vyavastha Mein', Balabodhini (January 1876), p. 4;
Anon., 'Grha~thchar~a', Chaturvedi, 2, 4 (1916), pp. 18-19; Ramtej Pandey,
Nari Dharma Shasrra (Kashi, 193l), pp. 56, 377.
90 Fred Davis, Farhion, Culture and Idpntity (Chicago, 1992), p. 81.
91 This ties with attacks on 'obscenity' and a civilisational discourse, stressed
in Chapter 2.
92 In the nineteenth century, many places witnessed organised movements for
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 143
of the middle-classlupper-caste Hindu household and was sometimes
even adopted by intermediate castes to elevate their status. It was a
comment on the sexual ~romiscuityand danger of unbridled or avail-
able women and the unreliability of men. At the same time, it was
one of the most revealing indications of the status of women. For the
British it was a clear symbol of the decadence of Indian civilisation,
of the low status and 'unhealthy' conditions of women.93
The Hindu reformers of UP moved on a pendulum where, on the
one hand, they opposed purdah, and on the other supported it select-
ively and highlighted lajja as the biggest adornment for Hindu
women. Some supported it openly, as a weapon against the evils of
the West. The irreligious and immoral tendency of the present age
was pointed out, making the continuance of the purdah system neces-
. ~ ~aur Saheb was a 'true' story depicting the troubles of an
~ a r yMem
Indian couple who adopt European ways of living and thinking.
Based in Allahabad, Narayan Swarup is, in this story, very fond of
wearing ~ n ~ l i ' clothes
sh and is a leading member of the Social Reform
Committee. He is vociferously opposed to purdah and advocates full
freedom for women, beginning with his wife Sushila. He asks her to
wear 'rnem' clothes, which she does with extreme reluctance. They
go to a theatre, where they are separated, and after great difficulties
come together again. The wife goes on to give a talk to her husband,
highlighting the value of lajja and how giving up purdah can lead to
civilisational crisis. Narayan quits the Reform Committee and be-
comes a changed person.95
More widespread was a selective condemnation of purdah where
more important than the unveiling of women was the question of

dress reform, for different reasons. See Elizabeth Wilson, 'All the Rage', and Sera-
fina K. Bathrick, 'The Female Colossus: The Body as Fagade and Threshold',
both in Gaines and Herzog (eds), Fabrications, pp. 28-38 and 79-133 respect-
ively.
93 Lord Meston, Nationhoodfor India (London, 1931), pp. 52-3; Percival C.
Scott O'Connor, The Indian Countryside: A Cakndar and Diary--Description
and Travel, UP (London, 1908).
94 Cawnpore Gazette, 1January 1908, NNR, 11 January 1908, p. 51; Kannomal,
Mahila, p. 22.
" Rukmani Devi, Mem aur Saheb (Banaras, 1919), pp. 1-32.
144 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Mapping the Domestic Domain / 145
146 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
unveiling for whom, where and how. Many women writers and jour-
nals were faced with this incongruity. The discourse on purdah
amongst Hindu reformers highlighted it as a problem that resulted
from Muslim rule and became widespread for two reasons, namely
the unhealthy impact of Muslim customs, and as a weapon to shield
Hindu women from being attacked by bestial Muslim males.96More
important was how to negotiate this in the present context, when one
had to appear reformist, progressive and an upholder of household
values and culture all at the same time. There were many who high-
lighted the evils of purdah in a perplexing manner. An article stated
that lajja was the most important jewellery for women, and it had two
younger sisters-sushilta and sehanshilta. But actual purdah could
lead to problems. The article cited a 'true' story in which two brides,
one a Kshatriya and the other a Brahmin, were inter-changed un-
knowingly due to purdah!" Another suggested that the veil should
not to be a foot long but just two inches, whereby it would increase
the beauty of the woman tenfold.98
purdah was not opposed universally. With the greater access of
women to public places, a selective appearance of purdah was thought
necessary-at railway stations, public ghats and roads, and in inter-
actions with shopkeepers and other such men." The arguments hint-
ed at worries about women's behaviour, movement and relationships
outside the household. With the development of railways and im-
proved communications, the number of pilgrims increased dramati-
all^.'^^ However, the Arya Samaj and certain reformers declared pil-
grimage centres as dens of evil, where women, particularly widows,
were constantly violated. Pandas and mahants were seen as symbols
of the degradation of Hinduism.'O1 This was combined with patri-
"For details see Chapter G.
97Anon., 'Lajja', KanyaManoranjan, 2 , 8 (May 1915), pp. 212-13. Also see,
Iridiarr People, 25 April, 1909, NNR, 7 May 1909, p. 351.
98 Pandey, Nari, pp. 122-3.
99Anon., 'Grhasthcharya', p. 20; Lakshmi Narayan 'Saroj', Nari Shiksha
Darpan (Banaras, 1929), p. 21.
l o o L.S.S. O'Malley, Popular Hinduism: The Religion of the Mmser (Cam-
bridge, 1935), pp. 238-42.
l o ' Anon, 'Mahanton ke Vyabhichar', Chand, 2 , 2 , 4 (August 1924), pp. 302-
4.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 147
archal worries about women going on pilgrimages. lo2 One writer said:
'It is my experience that, in households where women maintain pur-
dah from members within the house, when they go to ghats and
pilgrimages they open their big mouths and talk for hours with pan-
das and mahants."03
Women bathing semi-nude in public ghats were signs of shame,
of being uncivilised, of licensed misdoings in an open space.lo4This
was the antithesis of purdah. An article in Stri Darpan, a women's
magazine from Kanpur, said:
These days women have constructed completely opposite meanings of
purdah. As soon as they enter their homes, they pull a yard-long veil, and
when they go out to fairs, they leave their face,totally uncovered. Singing
obscene songs, they walk on the streets at the time of marriages. In such
situations can they be thought ofas purdah-bearers just because their faces
are covered? . . . Then again in the month of Kartik, they take baths in
rivers, where thousands of people see them. Then they do not feel at all
ashamed. . . True purdah is that which existed between Sita and
Lakshman.lo5

Public ghats were often depicted as places of excessive hooliganism

with respectable Hindu women. Their breasts were tugged, their
jewellery stolen, and low-caste Hindus, Muslims and native police
officials ogled them. Ganga snan (bathing in the Ganges) was thus
to be done keeping in mind certain values and not when wearing thin,
transparent saris.lo6The need for separate ghats was debated and the

lo2 Tanika Sarkar, 'Scandal in High Places: Discourses on the Chaste Hindu
Woman in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal', in Meenakshi Thapan (ed.), Em-
bodiment: Essays on Gender and Identity (Delhi, 1997), pp. 35-73.
lo' Pagal, Grhini, pp. 15-16.
Io4Anon., 'Striyon ka Nagn Snan', Madhuri, 1, 2, 1 (January 1923), pp. 53-
4; Kanauj Punch, 1 August 1892, NNR, 3 August 1892, p. 284.
Io5 Shakunrala Devi Gupta, 'Purdah', Stri Darpan, 29, 1 (July 1923), pp. 346-
7.
Io6 Rup Narayan Tiwari (Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, UP), Ganga Snan (Kanpur,
1923), pp. 8-9,31-2; KhichriSamnchar, 6 September 1890, NNR, 8 September
1890, p. 584; Ram Pataka, 1 December 1893, NNR, p. 548; Prayag Samachar,
23 January 1902, NNR, 1 February 1902, p. 77; Rohifkhand Gazette, 16 Sep-
tember 1902, NNR, 27 September, 1902, p. 595; Swarajya, 4April 1908, NNR,
18 April 1908, p. 354.
148 / Sexuality, Obsceniry, Community

Illustration 3. Bathing Ghats and Purdah

 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 149

Hail Mother Ganga !

Whatever one might say in writing,

it is indeed a paradox of destiny !

At home there is purdah,

and such a state outside !!

Source for Illustration 3: Vyanga Chitravali (Allahabad, 1930). It

was a selected collection of cartoons depicting the social evils of
Indian society, and was published by the famous Chand press.
Many of the pictures were also published in various issues of Chand
magazine, the most famous women's Hindi monthly, with 15,000
copies published every month in 1930.
150 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
importance of purdah in such places was highlighted.''' Missionary
criticism of the sexualised nature of various Hindu practices added
to this concern.
For the Hindus of UP, modern developments like the railways108
were both a boon and a curse. Railways made going on pilgrimages
much easier, provided new avenues of employment for many of the
lower castes, and made the population more mobile. Simultaneously,
they were potent symbols of modernisation and implicitly opposed
to the traditional culture and religion of H i n d ~ i s m . " For
~ many
orthodox Hindus, they signified a break in caste barriers, increased
mobility for women, male-female contact, and a world turned upside
down. Such developments led to a set of new anxieties around caste
and religious exclusivities, and purity and pollution, which were ex-
pressed in repeated demands for separate carriages and for purdah in
public spaces for 'respectable' Hindu women. Travel on railways was
used to argue for extending the existing purdah to the new situation,
and simultaneously to enlarge its practice so that it could be applied
as a norm to all women travelling by rail."'
The discourses on purdah were ambiguous and the opposition to
purdah could never become entirely effective. It paralleled other at-
tempts to control and isolate women and at the same time support

lo' The issue of constructing separate bathing ghats for women had come up
in Banaras many times but was rejected mostly on grounds of expenditure.
Zenana ghats constructed at Mirzapur and Mathura were also not very successful:
3111 1211869, Bundle 6, Judl Deptt (Allahabad Regional Archives).
'08There were no railways in India in 1850. But within the next fifty years,
an extensive network developed: Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the hj,
185&1900 (Delhi, 1995), p. 1.
lo' J.N. Westwood, Railways of India (London, 1974), pp. 3 6 4 0 .
'I0 Bharatjiwan, 5 December 1898, NNR, 13 December 1898, p. 653; Agra
Akhhar, 20 December 1876, NNR, 23 December 1876, p. 747; Hindustan,
9 May 1889, NNR, 15 May 1889, pp. 300-1; Anis-i-Hind, 9 December 1893,
NNR, 1893, p. 551; Rohilkhatid Gazette, 1 February 1902, NNR, 8 February
1902, p. 96; Mohini, 2 November 1902, NNR, 15 November 1902, p. 693;
Rohilkhand Gazette, 8 September 1905, NNR, 16 September 1905, p. 308;
Hindustani, 20 September 1905, NNR, 23 September 1905, p. 314; Sar Punch,
1 August 1910, NNR, 1910.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 1 5 1
reforms in order to appear civilised. Thus, selective purdah was shown
as being good for women. Worries about modern developments, i.e.
markets, railways, pilgrimages, etc. becoming sites for the 'exposure'
of respectable women, indicated the problems of completely doing
away with purdah. This led to discerning condemnation as well as
endorsement of purdah. Selective purdah in public places was seen
as necessary, even within the home, and where this was impossible,
certain relationships between women and men had to be monitored.
One such relationship, a cause of some concern for Hindu moralists,
was that between devar and bhabhi.

L 4 The Devar-Bhabhi Rehtion~h$

In UP, as elsewhere, devar-bhabhi relationships have provoked many
responses and meanings and have been a subject ofstories, songs, pro-
verbs and jokes."' The newly married woman, a new entrant to a
joint-family household, finds in her devar the one person with whom
she is not in an unequal power relationship. The devar's status as
brotherlson makes him the 'natural' recipient of the bhabhi's physical
and emotional affections. He is the only male member of the house-
hold with whom she can talk freely. There were proverbs about this
relationship in eastern UP-Abra ki joru, sab ki bhaujai (The poor
man's wife is everyone's sister-in-law),l12 and, Burbak ki joru, sab ki
bhaujai ( A fool's wife is everyone's sister-in-law). l3 They reveal the
way a bhabhi was seen, as someone with whom one could easily flirt.
Many folk songs ostensibly uphold family values, but also implicit

' ' I The ideal in most of north India has been the relationship benveen Sita
and Lakshman, where Lakshman, when asked to recognise Sita's ring when she
is abducted, is unable to do so, as he had only looked at his bhabhi's feet. How-
ever, there are strong undercurrents in this relationship which have also been
much highlighted. Tagore wrote on this theme, suggesting the eroticism inher-
ent in the forbidden crossing of boundaries, where the woman often becomes too
close to her brother-in-law. In Haryana, a widow was often made to marry her
younger brother-in-law: Prem Chowdhry, The Veikd Women: Sh~ftingGender
Equations in Rural Havana, 1880-1990 (Delhi, 1994).
S.W. Fallon, A Dictionaty of Hindustani Proverbs (Banaras, 1886), p. 1.
' I 3 Ibid., p. 48.
1 52 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Mapping the Domestic Domain / 153
>
2 ci
.G
Pa'
05
C 1=
11
Kt
154 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
in them are the pleasures of illicit liaisons between a devar and bhabhi.
Undercurrents of such relationships led to exaggerated fears and the
condemnation of any hint of extramarital inclinations.
T h e Hindu joint family considerably restricted the social interac-
tion between husband and wife. It has been argued that this was func-
tionally a traditional operating principle to preserve the extended
Hindu family.'14 Increasing male migration at this time, especially in
eastern UP, widened the spatial gaps in local families and households,
leading to new kinds of crises. The resulting separations caused emo-
tional stress and hardship for women. The joint family was ruptured
and women were frequently forced to live in oppressive households,
without their husbands. Male migration increased the responsibilities
ofwomen. Many folk songs of UP in this period talk of the migration
of males and women's loneliness. The poet Bihari Thakur's Bidesiya,
a lament for the loved one who has gone 'abroad', became very popu-
lar throughout the region.'15 Thus a folk-song in eastern UP ran:
Ser gohunua baras din khaibain, bar& din khaibain,
piya ke jaye na debayin ho.
Rakhaiben ankhiyan ke hajuravan,
piya ke jaye na debayin ho.
(One seer of wheat I will eat for a year, but I will not allow my husband
to go. I will keep him before my eyes and will not let him
Loneliness probably led many women to seek solace in other
relationships, and the chances of getting close to their younger
brother-in-law were high. In urban areas, education and reformist
rhetoric increased the opportunities for women to move around in
the household. They may have found in such extramarital relation-
ships a degree of solace and escape from everyday drudgery. The
devar-bhabhi attraction seems to have been fairly common and it was

'I4Neera Desai, Women in Modern India (Bombay, 1957).

'I5 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North
India (Delhi, 1990), pp. 78-9.
' I 6 Sahab La1 Srivastava, Folk Cultureand Oral Tradition: A ComparativeStudy
ofRegionr in Rzjasthan andEastern UP (New Delhi, 1974),p. 28. Also see Fallon,
Dictionary, p. 34.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 155
one of the ways in which women undercut their stated pativrata
images. Preservers of a straitlaced Hindu family wanted particularly
to put a stop to this. Munshi Jivaram Kapur Khatri, with the aid of
the Khatri Hitkari Sabha of Agia, wrote a book delineating 'correct'
spaces and relations for women, asking them to avoid in particular
talking with their devar. If this proved impossible, only the bare
minimum ought to bespoken, with no laughter and eyes downcast.'"
Since migration led to long intervals during which the woman was
away from her husband, it was imperative to regulate the way she
lived. She was not to wear beautiful clothes, not to eat hot food, not
to talk to, laugh with, or touch any other man even by chance. A
woman who looked and admired another man when her husband was
away was seen as 'ugly' and 'dark' with a 'twisted face'.'Is
Chand, the most celebrated magazine in UP, carried a series of car-
toons on this theme, launching a moral crusade against the 'misdeeds'
of devar-bhabhi relations and other illicit sexualities. That such rela-
tionships were becoming common may be assumed from the insis-
tence upon their prohibition.
More than anything else, there was in the relationship between
devar and bhabhi an element of light-hearted exchange and fun, an
exhilarated and unrestrained sense of joy and a certain emotional
dependence. This was different from the restrained relationship the
woman shared with her husband. It was lamented that Hindu women
were defying the shastras and openly flirting with their d e v a r ~ . " ~
While such liaisons are clearly condemned, the same material can be
read in other ways. It hints at how women were sometimes subverting
expected behaviour and the dominance of husbands, how they were
creating their own spaces for leisure and pleasure. Some critics were
forced to recognise women's need for more space, resulting in the
acceptance of certain relationships. A book called Striyon ke Rishte

"'Jivaram Kapur Khatri, Stri Dharma Sar (Mathura, 1892). Kannomal,

Mahila, p. 33 opposes the interaction of women with any male other than the
husband. Also see Pandey, Nari, pp. 375-6.
Yashoda Devi, Pati Bhakti ki Shakti Arthat Pati ki M a y a h (Allahabad,
1925), pp. 31-8.
'"Saroj, Nari, pp. 26-7; Devi, Pati Bhakti, pp. 32, 36.
156 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

Illustration 5. Devar and Bhavaj: Then and Now

 Mapping the Domestic Domain I 157

Though his heart is pure, still Lakshman walks with

his eyes downcast !
* * *
Every particle of his heart is filled with worship of his
elder brother and sister-in-law!!
* * *
He is very careful that he does not step over the feet
of Sita !
* * *
Great is such a younger brother, great is his respect
for elders !!
158 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 159

Why does the devar show

such a dirty picture to his bhavaj ?
* * *
The aim is to raise evil thoughts,
as otherwise it would be an insult !
* * *
As soon as the elder brother's face is turned,
a nice scheme is worked out !
* * *
What better use of
such a good opportunity ?
160 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

m-'rm;r-m

* m 2

But in today's society,

n ~
h - wm
---
?amNrn-rn!
~
m !!

this is the story in every household !

The devar keeps combing and counting
the hairs on his bhavaj's head !
Do not spread amorous desires
by keeping such traditions !
Otherwise this vast society will
never walk on the path of progress !!
-Anandiprasad Srivastava
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 161
had a theme, 'Striyon ke Purush Mitra' (Women's Men-friends),
which said that husband and wife were friends first. And just as
women had girlfriends, they could have boyfriends as well, so long
as their intentions were 'pure'.'20 The very suggestion represented a
dramatic step forward.
It was felt that a certain amount of education would help build
ideal wives and mothers. Missionary activities and colonial endeavours
in this regard made education a leading concern among Hindu re-
formists. The problem was that education also opened up new vistas
for women.

11. Education and the Fear of Reading: Stated Aims,

Unintended Consequences
In early-nineteenth-century UP there was hardly any worthwhile
school for women. Women's education was informal, mostly at
home, which they received from senior family members and some-
times from a semi-professional teacher such as a panditayani.I2' The
first efforts at providing formal education to Hindu women were
made by Christian missionaries. They highlighted the degraded and
neglected state of the females of India, who they perceived as bearing
the greatest burden of heathenism. Zenana quarters were depicted as
the darkest, dirtiest and most wretched of places. Efforts were made
to improve matters through zenana missions, seen as the first impulse
to the liberation of womanhood and civilisation in the East.122It was

120Vishwa Prakash, Striyon ke Rishte (Prayag, 1935), pp. 73-4, pp. 112-13.
Also see Thakur, Viva/), p. 112, who argues that it is necessary to give women
some space to meet and laugh with other men, for it functions as a safety valve
in the preservation of the family structure.
12' Nita Kumar, 'Orange for the Girls, or, the Half-Known Story of the
Education ofGirls in Twentieth Century Banaras', in Nita Kumar (ed.), Women
us Subjects: South Asian Histories (New Delhi, 1974), p. 212.
W. Hooper, Christian Doctrine in Contrast with Hinduism and Islam: Zn-
tendedfot Young Missior~ariesin North India (London, 1887); A.M. Robinson
(cornp.), Weaving Patternsfor Eterniry: The Wonderfitl Story of C.E. Z.M.S Indus-
trial Missions (London, n.d.); Agnes Johnson (cornp.), About Signs Following:
The Work of C.E.Z. H.S(London, n.d.); North Indian Christian Tract and Book
162 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
stated: 'In the dreary, monotonous life of the zenana, one sees no
books, writing materials, fancy work-nothing in fact of the innu-
merable traces of civilisation which are scattered around the boudoirs
of English ladies."23 These women had to be reached by any means:
If secluded from men they must be reached by women; and if the ordained
missionary is prevented proclaiming in their ears the glad tidings of
salvation, then sister missionaries must be sent, with the Word in their
hands and on their lips, to tell it out to these sorrowful ones that there
is no real hindrance, but life and salvation is free, absolutely free, to them
also.124

Hindu reformers, however, were extremely wary of any form of

missionary or Western education, especially for women. There was
the threat of inter-caste mixing, of women turning into 'mems' due
to English teaching,125of the entry of missionary women into homes
through zenana missions,126and of Christian proselytisation under
the garb of education.12' Isolated cases of the conversion of Hindu
women evoked a near-hysterical response, even when such conver-
sions were unforced and voluntary. In 1898 a case was reported
whereby a missionary lady, who used to teach a Kayastha girl at
Allahabad, advised her to leave home and convert, and the girl

Society, Hindu Dharma ke Phal (Allahabad, 1905, 2nd edn), p. 15; H. Lloyd,
Hindu Women: with Glimpses into their Life and Zenanas (London, 1882),
pp. 1-47; Raj Bahadur Sharma, Christian Missions in North India 1813-1913:
A Case S t d y ofMeerut Division and Dehradun District (Delhi, 1988), pp. 95-
6, 124-5; Priscilla Chapman, Hindoo Femak Education (London, 1839), pp. 28-
30; Iswar Saran, 'The Education of our Women-A Great Social Problem',
Kayastha Samachar, 4, 6 (December 1901), p. 490.
'23 Emma Raymond Pitman, Indian Zenana Missions: Their Need, Origin,
Objects, Agents, Modes of Working and Results (London, n.d.), p. 27.
12* Lloyd, Hindu, p. 47.
1 2 5 Bharat Jiwan, 1 l April, 1892, p. 4.
I z 6 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 8 July 1870, NNR, 1870, p. 270; PrayagSamachar,
14 April 1898, NNR, 27 April 1898, p. 228; Hindi Pradip, January-April 1909,
NNR, 9 July 1909, p. 230.
I2'.~nnie Besant, The Education of Indian Girls (Banaras, 1904), p. 1; Saran,
'Education', p. 490; Pratap, 26 September 1914, NNR, 31 October 1914,
p. 1168.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 163
consented. Family interference, in the nick of time, prevented this.lZ8
The mission, in some senses, challenged Indian religions and social
institutions more than the empire.12?
N o education could be useful at the cost of family values and the
disruption of gender hierarchies at home. O n behalf of Hindu men,
a paper said:

W e wish our women to be educated. But ifeducation means letting them

loose to mix with whom they please; if it means that as they rise in learn-
ing, they shall deteriorate in morals; if it means the loss of our honour
and the invasion of the privacy of our homes;-we prefer our honour to
the education of our women, even though we may be called obstinate,
and prejudiced, and wrong headed.130

The disastrous consequences of modern, Western education on

men were stressed,I3' and it was to be ensured that the same did not
happen to women: 'Dear brothers, just think what might be the
impact of such education on the hearts of our young girls, who must
be the housewives and lights of our homes in another 6-7 years? It
would be such a disaster for our dear homely women, on whose
shoulders and strength even in this terrible Kaliyug, our tattered

Prayag Samachar, 28 April 1898 and 5 May 1898, NNR, I1 May 1898,
p. 254. In 1902, ladies of the American Zenana Mission at Allahabad 'enticed'
a woman whom they were teaching, who was the sister of one Babu Chandra
Kant Bose, an orthodox Bengali: Oudh Samachar, 14 November 1902, NNR,
22 November 1902, p. 707. Enraged by their efforts, he started a girl's school
'to prevent simple, unwary Hindu girls from coming under the baneful influence
of missionary ladies': Prayag Samachar, 3 July 1904, NNR, 9 July 1904, p. 230.
In 1907, a Hindu girl was 'abducted' in Allahabad by a lady of the London
Mission Bible Women's Training Institution, leading to agitation in many verna-
cular newspapers: Ablyudaya, 30 July 1907 and Atya Mina, 1 August 1907, both
in NNR, 3 August 1907, p. 926.
12' Antony Copley, Religions in Conflict: ia'eology, Cultural Contact and Con-
version in Late-Colonial India (Delhi, 1997), p. 6.
I3O Aligarh Institute Gazette, 8 July 1870, NNR, 1870, p. 271.
13' Ikbal Kishen Shargha, The Moral Education of Indians (Bareilly, 1908?),
p. 13. Also see Purshottam, Stri, pp. 2 1 6 1 8 ; Hari Rarnchandra Diwakar, 'Bhar-
tiya Striyon ka Vishwavidyalaya', Saraswati, 17, 2, 4 (October 1916), p. 220;
Samrat, 2 September 1909, NNR, I0 September 1909.
164 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

The God-like husband has himself made tea for his wife.
She has to give an important lecture on 'family happiness'
at Minto Park. The tea has been delayed by five minutes,
because of which she is scolding her husband.
Illustration 6. Education and Women
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 165

The wife is writing a terrific note on the present state of

women and the god-like husband is looking after the child
outside! Whoever laughs on seeing this natural scene,
may God give him such a firebrand wife !!
Source for illustration 6: Vyanga Chitravali (Allahabad, 1930).
166 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
religion stands on its only foot."32 It was reported in 1909 that, at
many places in UP, after an initial and possibly artificial enthusiasm,
reaction was setting in against female education. Education was
supported publicly but opposed privately. Stagnation was reported
in Banaras, indifference in Allahabad, retrogression in Gorakhpur,
and actual hostility in luck no^.'^^
Yet U P Hindus wanted to prove they were civilised and respect-
able. Education for women was a moral imperative for a middle-class
Hindu identity and civilisation, and a national investment to domes-
ticate the woman and assign to her a more enlightened and compan-
ionable role in marriage. Ignorant women were not conducive to hap-
py Hindu homes; but neither were 'over-educated' ones. Women
symbolised all that was wrong with the system, its backwardness and
disorder, and at the same time they were the core of family life; they
also contained all that was worth preserving."4 Bishan Narayan Dar,
a famous lawyer of UP, said: 'With female education will come not
only domestic peace and harmony, but a new source of pleasures,
pleasures which men derive from female society will be opened, en-
nobled and purified, and feminine tenderness and sympathy, under
the guidance of enlightened reason, will become one of the most
potent instruments of social a m e l i ~ r a t i o n . " ~ ~
Thus UP Hindus had to promote an education that would com-
bine ideal/traditional/Aryan women with modernity/civilisation/
Western knowledge, a happy combination of Eastern and Western
c ~ 1 t u r e .They
l ~ ~ had to beat the system by adapting it to what they
valued, by enthusing it with idealism. Madan Mohan Malaviya ar-
gued that women's education must combine the best characteristics

132 Bharat Jiwan, 18 April 1892, p. 3.

Report on the Working of the Local and District Boards in UP, 1309-10
(Allahabad, 191 l), p. 5.
13*A similar attempt was made by Muslim reformers: see Gail Minault,
SecludedScholars: Women> Education andMuslim SocialReform in Colonial India
(Delhi, 1998).
135 Bishan Narayan Dar, Signs ofthe Times (Lucknow, 1895), p. 62. Also see
Ramdevi, 'Stri Shiksha', Kayastha Mahila Hitaishi, 1, 9 (1918), pp. 15-19;
Maheshwari, October 1898, NNR, 12 October 1898, p. 543.
136 Saran, 'Education', pp. 490-6; Purshottam Das Tandon, 'Stri Shiksha ki
Riti par vichar', Grhakzk~hmi,7, 3 (May-June 1916), pp. 11 1-13.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 167
of the women of the past and present, so that women would be quali-
fied by education and training to play their full part in building the
new India of the future.I37 Within this lay a major contradiction: be-
tween the traditional ideal of Indian womanhood and the modern
ideals of education-which were the promotion of independence of
thought and the spirit of inquiry.L38It has been argued that the system
failed to put the Aryan-modern-educated mother synthesis into prac-
tice. This was due to the logistical problem of having to retain the
basic government syllabus to get government aid, while simultaneo-
usly introducing 'indigenous' subjects to breed a new generation of
Aryan mothers. This placed a double burden on students. Most of
the time, the indigenous subjects failed to become popular. Pedagogy
failed because there was a failure to reconcile 'traditional' Hinduism
with modern living, civilisation and techn01ogy.l~~ However, the
weakness of this argument lies in underestimating the power of
Hinduism to mould itself to 'modern' means. It draws too clear a
distinction between government syllabi and the ideals of Aryan
womanhood; many of the officials, the authors of recommended text-
books, and those who designed official syllabi were influenced by
similar ideals.
UP was among the most backward provinces with regard to wo-
men's education. It was hampered by purdah, early marriage, and the
lack of economic incentive.140 In 1860-1 there were 15 schools for
girls with 260 pupils.14'However, the number of girls within formal

13' Malaviya's speech at BHU in 1929, quoted in Purshottarn, Stri, p. 2.

13* Malvika Karlekar, 'Women's Nature and the Access to Education', in
Karuna Chanana (ed.), Socialisation, Education and Women: Explorations in
Gender ldentiv (New Delhi, 1988), pp. 129-65.
139 Kurnar, 'Orange', pp. 21 1-31; Nita Kurnar, 'Religion and Ritual in Indian
Schools: Banaras from the 1880s to the 1940s', in Nigel Crook (ed.), The Trans-
mission of Knowledge in South Asia: Essays on Education, Religion, History and
PoLitics (Delhi, 1996), pp. 135-54.
I4OKaruna Chanana, 'Social Change or Social Reform: The Education of
Women in Pre-independence India', in Chanana (ed.), Socialisation, pp. 109-
10; Kurnar, 'Orange', p. 213; Indian Peopk, 25 September 1904, NNR, 1 Octo-
ber 1904, p. 339.
'*IAnnual Report on the Progress ofEducation in NWP,1 8 6 0 6 I (Allahabad,
1862), p. 34.
168 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
education in UP increased remarkably. In 1886-7, their number was
13,116, a leap ofmore than 500 percent. By 19 16-17 it had increased
to 70,712. This included public (university, secondary and primary)
schools and private (advanced and elementary) i n ~ t i t u t i 0 n s . lBy
~~
1937-8 this had risen to 1,44,998, with the largest increase being
among high-caste Hindu girls. Some kind of schooling became an
accepted part of an urban middle-class girl's life.143
Two lines of effort were made by Hindus. One was the Arya Samaj
schools, many of which conformed to government codes and regu-
lations; and the second was the evolution of schools with neo-Hindu-
ism as their base, largely following a Sanatan Dharma In the
first category, the most important was the Kanya Gurukul at Dehra-
dun,145plus others like the Arya Kanya Pathshala at Hardoi, the
Kanya Pathshala at Meerut and the Vedic Kanya Pathshala at Ghazia-
bad. In the second category, the most important was Annie Bes-
ant's school for Hindu girls at Banaras, this being a part of the Hindu
Central College. Almost all the girls of this school were Brahmins.
However, from a purely educational point of view the school was
'distinctly d i ~ a p p o i n t i n g . ' ~ ~ ~
Hindus evolved an indigenous method of education for women,
different from that for men, and from perceived Western paradigms
of education: the needs were stated to be different. Annie Besant
declared:

14* Statistics of British Indiafor 1907-8 and Preceding Years, Part VII, Educa-
tion (Calcutta, 1909), pp. 16-17; Statistics of British India, Vol. I/: Education,
1919-20 (Calcutta, 1921), p. 238.
143 General Report on Public Instruction in UP, year ending 31 March 1938
(Allahabad, 1939), pp. 34, 36.
'44 General Report on Public Instruction in UP, year ending 31 March 1910
(Allahabad, 191 1); Minna. G. Cowan, The Education of the Women of India
(Edinburgh, 1912), pp. 129-45.
145 Arya Samajists made special efforts to impart women a specific kind ofedu-
cation. T h e Kanya Mahavidyalaya at Jalandhar was one of their most successful
attempts: Madhu Kishwar, 'Arya Samaj and Women's Education: Kanya Maha-
vidyalaya, Jalandhar', E P Y 21, 17 (26 April 1986), pp. WS-9-24.
'46Cowan, Education, p. 134. Besides these, the most important was the
Crosthwaite High School for university and intermediate girls' education at
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 169
T h e national movement for girls'
- education must be on national lines:
it must accept the general Hindu conceptions of women's place in the
national life, not the dwarfed modern view but the ancient ideal . . . It
cannot see in her the rival and competitor of man in all forms of outside
and public employment, as woman, under different economic conditions,
is toming to be, more and more, in the W e s t . . . India needs nobly
trained wives and mothers, wise and tender rulers of the household, edu-
cated teachers of the young, helpful counsellors of their husbands, skilled
nurses of the sick, rather than girl graduates, educated for the learned
professions.14'
Many British officials, quite wary of the women's movement in
their own country, looked at this ideal with warm appreciation, and
there was a ~rofessedconservatism in their views. H.B. Butler, who
was then the Director of Education, stressed that the education of
girls should not seek to imitate that which is suitable for boys, nor
should it be dominated by examination^.'^^ Mackenzie, Director of
Public Instruction in UP, emphasised that they did not want Indian
girls to be more or less copies of Indian boys, nor did they want them
to be copies of Western girls. H e highlighted the need to develop a
curriculum for girls which would bring out the best traits of Indian
womanhood.149I t was perceived that the Hindu world would lose
much of its fascination and charm if, instead of a rehabilitation of the
ancient ideals ofwomanhood, the modern type were to develop mere-
ly as a denationalised caricature.150The ideals of women's education
upheld by Christian missionaries in UP were not too dissimilar from
the ones propagated by Hindus themselves, except for their religious
teaching. It was remarked:
A girls' school is not worth its existence that does not profess ro teach the
Accomplishments! . . . T h e durzi at the door is a reproach to the home,

Allahabad, which followed a government code. Isabella Thoburn College in

Lucknow had Christian girl-students largely: Cowan, Education, pp. 135-8.
14' Besant, Education, p. 2.
148 Butler Papers, Mss. Eur. F. 116147, 68 (IOL).
Stated in Shyamkumar, Striyon kt=Liye Prithak Sahiiya kiAvashyakta (Agra,
1935), p. 88.
Cowan, Education, p. 21.
170 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
if his presence is an index ofthe unwillingness or the inability of its young
lady inmates to do their own tailoring. . . Sick nursing in its first aids
would be a congenial art, and one that might be easily taught to the elder
girls. Domestic economy applied to house-keeping. will be invaluable to
those who should take in hand the management of their own homes and
control their household affairs . . . Many a young lady who is an angel
out of doors is a vixen at home, only because she was not trained to
unselfishness and control with her associates at s ~ h o o l . ' ~ '

One reason given for the failure of female education in UP was the
unsuitability of the curriculum. The public instruction department
generally held that in the case of female education too much arith-
metic was taught, and that some instruction of domestic science was
necessary. In 1915, therefore, a committee was formed to revise the
vernacular curriculum for girls. Its recommendations consisted chiefly
in a simplification of the arithmetic course and the introduction of
domestic science as a compulsory subject in the lower middle classes. 152
Further, though great concern was shown for women's education, the
government was actually unwilling to spend any substantial sum
upon it, and there was a serious lack of resources and trained female
teachers. In comparison, boys' schools were better equipped and
better staffed.153
The insidious impact of educated women taking to Western ways
was feared by Hindus:
In those schools where English education is given, girls get used to
fashionable ways of living. . . . T o promote simplicity among Hindu girls
and to avoid the impact of English education, religious education should
be specially given to them. . . . Today in most ofthe English girls' schools,
girls of all religions and caste study together. Christian, Muslim and

15' Joseph Carroll, Our Missionary Life in India (Allahabad, 191 7 ) ,pp. 335-
40.
15' General Report on Public Instruction in UP, year ending 3 1 March 1720
(Allahabad, 1920), p. 82.
'53 Prirna,y Educationfor Every Boy and Girlin UP(Allahabad, 1928),pp. 25-
6; Report on the Working of the Local and District Board in UP, 1901-2 (Allaha-
bad, 1303),p. 3; General Report on Public Instruction in UP,year ending31 March
1938 (Allahabad, 1939), pp. 34, 41'.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 171
Hindu girls intermingle, and this has a very negative impact on Hindu
women. Christian girls say 'good-morning', wear jumpers and frocks
instead of saris, and wear hats on heads, and high sandals. . . . Hindu
families send their girls for education and not to become mems. . . . I am
saying all this to stress that Hindu, Christian and Muslim girls should
study separately. This should especially be enforced in boarding houses.'54

Ancient India was depicted as a period replete with educated women:

a model to be fol10wed.l~~ At many places-in fiction, prescriptive
texts, essays-comparisons were drawn between two types ofwomen,
and at all times the educated, ideal Hindu wife emerged the winner
while those educated in Western ways and via English education em-
erged as completely inane.'56 The Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha
asked women to throw away English novels and instead read books
like Hindu Grhasthi, Adarsh Dampati and Sati Charitr Sangraha.I5'
Religious and moral education was considered the most important
pursuit for women and included a study of the Mahabharat, Ramayan
and the Manusmriti. This was to be combined with scientific educa-
tion of a specific kind. Women were to be trained in domestic scien-
ces, including sanitary laws, home nursing, the value of food-stuffs,
household management, the keeping of basic accounts, hygiene,
cooking and sewing.158It was important for women to study in Hindi

1 5 4 Shrimati Shukl, 'Striyan aur Shiksha', Bharatendu (October 1928),

pp. 59-43.
'55 Krishnakumari, Bharat ki Vidushi Nariyan (Lucknow, 1925); Ramdevi,
'Stri', p. 15.
156Upendranath 'Ashq', Swarg ki Jhahk (Allahabad, 1939). This was a satire
on the fashionable demand for highly educated wives, who, however, do not
prove themselves conducive to marital bliss. The disillusioned hero finally mar-
ries someone less educated.
15' Mehta Lajjaram Sharma, Adarsh Hindu (Prayag, 1928), pp. 72-88.
15?Mahendulal Garg, Kahvati Shiksha (Prayag, 1930), p. 122; Saroj, Nari,
pp. 9-1 1; Anon., 'Stri Shiksha', GurukulSamachar, 2, 9-.lo (April-May 1910),
pp. 2 1-3; Sharkeshwari Agha, SomeAspectsofthe Education of Women in LIP with
a Foreword by C. Y. Chintamani(Allahabad, 1933), pp. 6-1 1; Besant, Education,
pp. 3-4; Thakur, Adarsh, pp. 7-8; Yashoda Devi, Pativrata Dharma Mala
(Allahabad, 1926), p. 47; Udainarayan Singh, 'Stri Shiksha', Kurmi Krhatriya
Diwakar, I, 7 (September 1925), pp. 9-1 1; Hindustan, 22 January 1902, NNR,
172 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
alone, and to largely discard English and even Urdu.159Most impor-
tant, their literary knowledge had to be adequate so that women could
'listen with intelligent pleasure to the reading of her husband as he
enjoys the masterpieces of the great writers' (emphasis mine). lbOEdu-
cation for women was necessary because wives inspired or retarded
husbands; just as mothers made or marred the child.161It was remark-
ed: 'Our home is our school, and the mistress of the house is esta-
blished there like a Saraswati, to impart us education . . . Home is
a temple, in which various religious duties are performed. Home is
like a small state, whose ruler is the woman and the subject are her
children . . . Actually the mother can easily teach what the big edu-
cationists of Oxford and Cambridge cannot even teach after years of
e d ~ c a t i o n . "Nowhere
~~ was education endowed such moral fervour,
such a pure character and virtuous flavour.lG3
At the Kanya Gurukul in Dehradun only women teachers were
employed and girls wore only khadi clothes. Special attention was
paid to drafting a distinct syllabus for girls. Just as men had to be
taught the sciences to fight the battle of life, so women had to be
taught religious literature to fulfil their special mission of love with-
in the home. They needed merely a basic practical knowledge of
mathematics to keep minimal accounts, some knowledge of science
to prevent mothers narrating ghost stories to their children, and a
comprehensive knowledge of 'history'-as much as would tell them
about Sita and the mythical past.164
Hierarchies of information, knowledge and a curriculum were
thus constructed, legitimised and maintained with the advocacy

25 January 1902, p. 55. Hindusran Review, June 191 1, NNR, 14 July 1911,
pp. 620-1.
I 5 V 0 r language debates, see chapter 5.
I6O Besant, Education, p. 5.
16' Rarnkrishna, Stri Shiksha (Allahabad, 1874), p. 32; Devi, Pativrata, p. 3;
Hansdas Shastri, 'Stri Shiksha', Kurmi Kthatriya Diwakar, 4, 7 (September
1928), pp. 15-17; Primary Education, pp. 23-4.
I G 2 Bishambhar Prakash, Nari Updesh (Meerut, 1912), pp. 1 6 1 7 .
IG3 Thakur, Adarsh, pp. 1-4.
'64 Kanhaiya Lal, Rashtriya Shiksha ka Itihasaur Uski VartmanAvastha (Kashi,
1929), pp. 90-1, 133-42.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 173
of separate schools and a different education for women and men.165
Segregations were created: woman represented the heart and emo-
tions while man was the brain and intellect. Masculine spaces
contained socially valued knowledge on theology, law and medi-
cine, feminine spaces contained devalued knowledge on child-care,
cooking and cleaning. The literature for women was consciously
didactic.
T o stop here would be to emphasise only the limits to the edu-
cational avenues of women and the function of education in the
subordination of women.166A study of women's education would be
incomplete if it drew no attention to levels other than the formal
script. Certain upper-caste widows of Banaras, it has been shown,
used education to reject stereotypes of widowhood and managed to
manipulate models of asceticism to carve out a space for them-
selves.16' Scholars have also shown how Hindu middle-class women
increasingly began to participate and become visible in the public
realm of print culture from the early twentieth century in UP. Wo-
men's magazines, the periodical press and women writers were mov-
ing and negotiating in a public sphere and had to be constrained in
their use of language and the values they propounded. Thus, the
representational practices of that culture were cast in a reformist
mould. Women's journals became agents of transmission ofa middle-
class code of conduct, though under the mantle of a progressive ori-
entation in relation to women. However, though they accepted some
of the structuring principles to be found among male reformers, they
also translated and negotiated others in order to argue for a voice of
their own in family and educational life, thereby posing some sort of
challenge to patriarchy.'68 It has been argued that letters written in
165 Purshottan~,Stri, pp. 350-1; Sharma, Sukhi, pp. 7-9; Pagal, Grhini,
pp. 4-6.
IGG Most works tend to highlight this aspect, see Chanana (ed.), Socialisation.
lG7 Nita Kumar, 'Widows, Education and Social Change in Twentieth Cen-
tury Banaras', E P R 26, 17 (27 April, 199 l), pp. WS-19-25; Kumar, 'Orange',
pp. 21 1-32.
IG8Vir Bharar Talwar, 'Feminist Consciousness in Women's Journals in
Hindi: 19 10-20', in Kunlkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women:
Essays in Color~ialHistoy (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 204-32; Francesca Orsini,
174 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
various women's magazines, especially Chand, allowed space for soli-
darity in a covert and tentative way.'69 This issue can be elaborated.
People could limit and frame syllabi, they could order prescriptive
texts, but once women were educated it was difficult to control what
they read and the uses to which they put their knowledge. Education
was conducted in relatively public spaces, but reading was largely a
private act, offering greater scope for negotiation.'70 Women were
also 'reading against the grain' and even gaining access to 'trash'
material. They were quite possibly reading and enjoying erotic novels,
detective fiction, love stories, plays, svangs, nautankis and books of
songs. Unmarried educated girls were even reading birth manuals.
Such books were rather popular among educated women and had a
definite market.'" Though educated women were less likely to buy
such books in bazaars, which were mainly frequented by men, there
is no doubt these books were accessible to them. Yashoda Devi, a
leading ayurvedic doctor ofAllahabad, and writer of more than forty
prescriptive books, lamented:

I am fully aware that in the trunks of all educated women are kept at least
one or two such novels. . . If I had written such novels, I would have
gathered a lot of money . . . People say it was these novels that encouraged
Hindi reading, especially among women. . . . Every day women write
letters to me, demanding spicy novels . . . They returned my books on
nitishastra and dharmashastra. . . N o one asked for books on religious

'The Hindi Public Sphere: 1920-401, unpublished PhD thesis (SOAS, Univer-
sity of London, 1996), pp. 158-210. For Muslim women, see Minault, Secluded.
IG9 Orsini, 'Hindi', passim.
Roger Chartier, 'General Introduction', in R. Chartier (ed.), The Culture
of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G.
Cochrane (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1-5, 156. Chartier shows how festive, ritual,
cultic and pedagogic uses of print literature were by definition collective. At the
same time, he argues that books were often read in private within the home, and
could portray erotic scenes unimaginable in public art or publicly displayed
liturgical texts.
"I For the reading habits of women, see Thakur, Adarsh, p. 9; Upadhyaya,
Mabikz, p. 27; Shyamkumar, Smiyon, pp. 98-9; Purshottam, Stri, pp. 218-19;
G. P. Khanna, 'Stri Shiksha', Stri Darpan, 33, 4 (April 1925), p. 84. For names
of such books and their description, see Chapter 2.
 Mapping the Domestic D o m a i n 1 175
education or household management . . . For two-three years I sent my
books on women's education to the Magh Mela on the banks of the
Triveni. T h e women who came to purchase books went away after seeing
my stall. They named juicy novels and used to demand them specifically,
as well as the likes ofAlbela Gauiyaand GhazaiSangraha. Shops that sold
such useless novels reported brisk sales."*

These novels were ~ e r h a pless

s taxing and more readable, although
they too often upheld patriarchal notions. Moral stigmas were less
attached to women here and romances usually relied on sensation,
sexual excitement and titillation. The works of Janice Radway, Lynn
Pearce and other such have highlighted the practice and importance
of reading ostensibly sexist and misogynist texts against the grain: dif-
ferent ways of reading can grasp the same material diffe~-entl~."~
However, more important than what women were making of these
novels was the very act of reading them-that itself had a subversive
potential.
The fear of reading women led to the activity being persistently
brought under the scrutiny of Hindu publicists and becoming a target
of suspicions and inquisitions. The possible autonomy of the woman's
mind was a dreadful idea. As early as 1864-5 M. Kempson, the Direc-
tor of Public Instruction of UP, while condemning the translation
of Urdu and Persian romantic works into Hindi, remarked: 'A Hindi
version of the M a s n a v i of Mir Hasan was lately put into my hands
by a native gentleman, with whom I had been conversing on the pre-
sent movement in favour of Female Education, with the remark that
if such books were allowed to find their way into houses where the
females could read, the effects would be most mischievous."74 An-
other forum denounced female education on the grounds that once
Devi, Dampati, pp. 5-7.
ani ice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular
Literature (London, 1984), pp. 7-1 1; Lynne Pearce, Feminism and the Politics
ofReading(London, 1997),pp. 1-12; Kate FLint, TheFemak Reader, 1837-1914
(Oxford, 1993), p. 10; Fania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced
Fantaies for Women (New York, 1982).
17* 'Reports on Native Presses in the NWP for 1862, 1863, 1864 and 1865',
Selections from the Records of the Government of India, 1849-1937, V/23/121,
Part 44, Article 1, p. 18 (IOL).
176 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
women could read and write there would be nothing to prevent them
reading works of a debased n a t ~ r e . "There
~ was a grave distrust of
novels, seen as the most intoxicating of all books:'76 that they would
contaminate women, generating corrupt ideas and romantic intri-
gue."' T h e education of women had to be theological and '~lean'.'7~
Premsagar, a book of love stories between Radha and Krishna, commis-
sioned by the British as a text at Fort William College for Company
functionaries, was thought a destructive book and indicated the alarm
at any form oferotic literature reaching the hands of Hindu women. 179
Arguments about progress were used to camouflage this concern.
Education for women thus raised both hopes and insecurities among
Hindus: it was aimed at making women good wives, good mothers,
good Hindus, but it had the potential to make them bad wives, etc.
too. This dichotomy moved nationalists and reformists to emphasise
the necessity of education and, in the same breath, set its limits.
Meanwhile women created their own space by reading what gave
them pleasure, not just prescribed texts and behaviour manuals.

111. Gender, Health and Medical Knowledge

Influenced largely by the writings of Foucault,180historians have
drawn attention to the assertion of disciplinary authority and power
'75 Sahif, 26 July 1907, NNR, 3 August 1907.
Ramkrishna, Stri, pp. 31-2; Ratna Devi, 'Pustakein Parhne se Labh', Stri
Darpan, 29, 4 (October 1923), pp. 507-9; Rampiyari, 'Sabhyata', Kanya Sar-
vasva, 1, 10 (1914), pp. 315-17.
177Upadhyaya,Mahi& p. 27; Thakur, Adarsh, p. 10.
'78 Shyamkumar, Striyon, pp. 98-9; Onkarnath Vajpayee, 'Editorial', Kanya
Manoranjan, 1, 1 (1913), p. 30.
17'Mariola Offredi, 'The Search for National Identity as Reflected in the
Hindi Press', in Mariola Offredi (ed.), Literature, Language and the Media in
India: l'roceedings ofthe I Ith European Conferenceon South Asian Studies, Amster-
dam 1990, Panel 13 (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 2 2 6 7 .
Michel Foucault, Power-Knowledge:Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-77, trans. Colin Gordon (Brighton, 1980), pp. 1 6 6 7 7 ; idem, The Birth
ofthe Clinic: An Archaeology ofMedicd Perception, trans. Alan Sheridan (London,
1973); idem, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(Harmondsworth, 1979); idem, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the
Human Sciences (London, 1970).
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 177
by the colonial state over the body of the colonised through the use
of Western, modern, scientific, medical kn~wledge.'~' Some regard
the advance of bio-medicine as emblematic of modernity. 18' At the
same time, Western medical science was a domain of endorsement,
accommodation, appropriation and r e ~ i s t a n c e for
' ~ ~Hindu nation-
alists, and here gender politics played a crucial role. Through a study
of certain sectors, i.e. midwives; child and health care within the
home; a woman ayurveda practitioner; and a plague riot, I attempt
to examine how Hindus, women and men, elites and subalterns nego-
tiated this terrain.

III. 1. From Traditional Dais to Trained Midwives

In pre-colonial north India pregnancy and childbirth were controlled
by dais. Birth was seen as polluting and impure. Thus, midwifery was
practised largely by lower-caste Hindu and Muslim women, espe-
cially Chamar women.'84 The profession was often hereditary. Many
traditional midwives worked very hard, received a meagre pay, and
had to perform menial tasks. lg5
There has been a tendency in some writings to uncritically cele-
brate traditional medical practices, including midwifery. One such
study makes a strong case for 'natural' childbirth and argues that
many of the traditional dais emphasised co-operation with the female
Is' David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disea~e
in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley, 1993); idem, 'Introduction: Disease,
Medicine and Empire', in David Arnold (ed.), Imperial Medicine and Indigenous
Societies (Manchester, 1988), pp. 1-26.
'82 Roy Porter (ed.), Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions ofMedicine in
Pre-Industrial Society (Cambridge, 1985).
'83 Arnold, Colonizing, pp. 7-10.
' 8 4 G . ~Briggs,
. The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920), pp. 24-6, 53-4; E.A.H.
Rlunt, The Caste System of Northern India: With Special Reference to UP (London,
1931), p. 242.
Is5 Margaret I. Balfour and Ruth Young, The WorkofMedical Women in India
(London, 1929), pp. 126-7; Geraldine Forbes, 'Managing Midwifery in India',
in Dagmar Engels and Shula Marks (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State
and Sociery in Africa and India (London, 1994), pp. 154-5; K. 0. Vaughan,
'Should the Dai be Trained or Superseded?', Journalofthe Association ofMedical
Women in India, 5, 9 (February 1916), p. 14.
178 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
body rather than its control and management. The dai symbolises
rites exclusive to women, involving non-Sanskritic ritual perform-
ance.Is6 Instead of romanticising 'natural' childbirth, it may be more
useful to focus on how criticism of the dai was an attempt to build
hierarchies of gender, caste and class, with shifting divisions of power
and knowledge.
The widespread application of Western medicine to Indians, with
the state's backing, did not start much before the 1870s, the excep-
tions being the army, prisons, brothels and i n o c u l a t i ~ n .Even
' ~ ~ then,
little attention was paid to women's health care.lS9In January 1876
Miss Elizabeth Bielby arrived in Lucknow. She had some medical
training and opened a dispensary, and later a small hospital. She left
Lucknow in 1881 and carried with her images of the ignorance and
prejudice of Indian women, their lack of proper instruments, help
and knowledge.'" The Countess of Dufferin's Fund, formed in
1885, brought Western medical care to more Indian women.191The
UP Branch of the All-India Lady Chelmsford League for Maternity
and Child Welfare work was inaugurated in December 1922.19*
Traditional knowledge was confronted by modern medicine over
childbirth, and women's influence by professional science. The 'medi-
calisation' of childbirth, 'hospitalisation' of delivery, and attempts to
condemn and displace traditional midwives were visible in Europe
Is6 Janet Chawla, Child-Bearing and Cukure-Women-Centred Revisioning of
the Traditional Midwife: The Dai as a Ritual Practitioner (New Delhi, 1994),
pp. 2-3, 80-2.
Is' Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Andrew Lyon, Labour Pains and Labour
Power: Women and Childbearing in India (London, 1989), p. vii.
O n medical controls over brothels and prostitutes, see Chapter 3.
Is' Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Prevent-
ive Medicine, 1859-1914 (New Delhi, 1994), p. 91; Arnold, Colonizing,
pp. 254-5.
Balfour and Young, Medical, pp. 19-20.
19' Ibid., pp. 33-53; Forbes, 'Managing', p. 159. O n Dufferin's fund, see
Maneesha Lal, 'The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The
Countess-of-Dufferin's Fund, 1885-88', Bulletin of the History ofMedicine, 68,
1 (19941, pp. 29-66.
I" F~fir-Sixth Annual Report of the Director ofPublic Health of UP (Allahabad,
1924), p. 29; Harrison, Public, pp. 90-1.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 179
too around this time.193Colonial involvement and Hindu commun-
ity concerns gave these another political spin. Western medical dis-
course saw the dai as the chief problem, blaming her for high infant
mortality and poor hygiene.19*Official records emphasised her lack
of intelligence, dirty habits and inability to learn new 1neth0ds.l~~
These were attitudes reflected in the censuses of UP, which became
an important means to publicise and give wider authority to medical
and cultural opinion. The 191 1 Report connected the infant mort-
aliry rate chiefly to childbirth, and while pointing to its causes said:
'The f rst and chief is unskilful midwifery. The midwife is some low-
caste woman. . . . Her methods are primitive, her knowledge next to
nothing; she is unclean in her person and her instruments, and she
knows nothing whatever of antiseptics."9GThe 1921 Report contin-
ued to emphasise a link between infant mortality and midwifery: 'Part
of this [female] mortality is probably attributable to insanitary meth-
ods of midwifery. That such methods are prevalent and are fatal to
a large number of mothers at childbirth is invariably asserted by com-
petent obsewers.'l9' It was repeatedly stressed through statistics that
the infint mortality rate was much lower in cases performed by train-
ed staff and midwives.198

i93 Wendy Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France, Louise
Bourgeois (Exeter, 1996); D. Armstrong, Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical
Knowledge in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1983); L. Doyal, S.
Rowbotham and A. Scott (eds), Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of
Women Healers (London, 1976); Ludmilla Jardanova, Sexual Ksions: Images of
Gender in Science and Medicine Between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(New York, 1989); Charlotte G. Borst, Catching Babies: The Professionalization
of Childbirth, 1870-1720 (Cambridge, 1995).
19* Dagrnar Engels, Btyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890-1737 (Delhi,
1996), p. 129; Arnold, Colonizing, pp. 257-9.
I" Forbes, 'Managing', pp. 163-8; Roger Jeffery, The Politics of Health in
India (Berkeley, 1988), p. 49; even a somewhat sympathetic account in Balfour
and Young could not help but say, 'The problem was (and still to a large extent
is!) the indigenous midwife': Balfour and Young, Medical p. 126.
l Y 6 Census of India, 171 1, UP, Vol. W , Part I (Allahabad, 1912), p. 193.
"' Census of India, 1721, UP, Vol. WI, Part I (Allahabad, 1923), p. 87.
I" For example see Sixty-ThirdAnnual Report of the Director of Public Health
of UP (Allahabad, 1931), p. 48.
180 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
At the same time, colonial policy fluctuated between trying to dis-
card dais entirely in favour of modern midwives, as well as retain an
indigenous agency. Along with condemnation of the traditional dais,
great effort was made to train them, to give them a standardised for-
mat, to develop them as 'professionalised' practitioners, and to instil
in them a distinct and exclusive body of Western kn0w1edge.l~~ The
civil surgeon at Bareilly, where one of the first official trainings of
midwives took place, favoured it because it might help reduce infan-
t i ~ i d e . ~This
" was because dais were often seen as having a hand in
female infanti~ide.~" It has been noticed that midwives were part of
a range of informal agents used by the British in early-nineteenth-
century north India.202With the entry ofvoluntary organisations, the
training of midwives received a further boost, especially in the major
urban centres of UP. In 1924,42 dais received lectures in Allahabad,
and in the same year it was reported that the 'scheme for training of
a superior class of midwives', introduced at Gorakhpur, Fyzabad,
Meerut, Aligarh, Allahabad, Banaras, Kanpur and Agra, was making
steady progress.203
Before 19 14, Western notions ofmedicine and hygiene made little
impact on the vast majority of UP. Going to the hospital was consi-
dered degrading by many of the middle classes.204Trained midwives

"9Balfour and Young, Medical, p. 38; Forbes, 'Managing', pp. 168-72;

Vaughan, 'Should', pp. 14-18; M.I. Balfour, 'The Training of Dais', Journalof
the Association ofMedical Women in India, 5, 9 (February 1916), pp. 19-24.
loo Jeffery, Politics, p. 91.
Sekctionsfiom the Records of Government, AWP, Vol. 11 (Allahabad, 1866),
pp. 51-2; 27-28IAugust 1877, Police, A, Home Deptt (NAI). I have not exa-
mined female infanticide, on which there are some useful studies. See Lalitha
Panigrahi, British Social Policy and Femak Infanticide in India (New Delhi,
1972); Kanci Pakrasi, Femak Infanticide in India (Calcutta, 1970); Radhika
Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi,
1998), pp. 130-7.
202 C.A. Bayly, Empire andlnformation: Intelligence Ga~herin~andSocial Com-
munication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 54, 164-5, 177.
lo3Fzh-Seventh Report of rhe Director of Public Healtb of UP (Allahabad,
1925), pp. 36, 38.
Arnold, Cohnizing p. 258.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 181
and European women doctors were scarce and expensive. It was com-
plained in 1890 that the Lady Dufferin Fund, chiefly intended for
the benefit of middle-class native women, had not proved very useful.
Women could not send for a European 'lady doctor' to their houses
in time of need for they could not afford to pay her heavy fee, nor
could they humiliate themselves so far as to go to a female hospital
for delivery.205It was reported that the attitude of the lady doctor at
Bareilly hospital was harsh and unsympathetic towards Indian women,
and that she invariably demanded a prohibitive fee to visit native
ladies at their
The new nationalist Hindu elites and reformers endorsed and in-
corporated the ideas of Western science and medicine on the low-
caste, indigenous dai. Western criticisms were accepted as indicating
the necessity for reform and disciplining the old knowledge into an
authoritative discourse. A critique of the dai was consonant with the
idea of all that was 'modern'-scientific, rational and new-which
were seen as the of civilisation and prestige by the Hindu
middle classes. The 1934 resolution of the AIWC called for legisla-
tion requiring the compulsory registration of all dais and midwives.207
This revealed that reformist middle-class women had given their con-
sent to the superiority of Western medicine and hygiene. It also
signified a stand against lower-caste women for it was they who were
largely engaged in this profession.208
Hindu 'enlightened' middle-class reformers tried to show up the
dai as an evil and dangerous witch within an otherwise progressive
India. They tried to eradicate or reform her medical practices, which
were seen as based on non-scientific religious beliefs and popular
superstition. The dai appeared e~peciall~suspect because her territory
was the intimate and tightly-knit circle of women-at least in the
imagination of her detractors. The fact that the dai was usually of
a lower caste was further used to build the fear of her being morally
and sexually polluting, of doubtful decency, and of being dirty and
205 Oudh Punch, 20 November 1890, NNR, 30 December 1890, p. 856.
206 Robilkhand Gazette, 1 April 1904, NNR, 9 April 1904, p. 131.
207 AIWC, Annual Report (Calcutta, 1934), p. 150.
208 Forbes, 'Managing', p. 152.
182 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
unsanitary. The Hindustan stated that women, during- their con-
finement, were usually at the mercy of so-called midwives of the
Chamar caste. Such women were largely untrained in midwifery and
dirty in their habits.*09
Hindu reformers emphasised the need for 'respectable' women,
especially widows of 'good' families, to enter the profession of mid-
wifery. They were asked to undertake proper and systematic training
in medical colleges and hospitals. The dai had to be well educated and
possess a proper license through the municipality or government hos-
pital.210By the early twentieth century certain urban middle-class
families started seeking the help of professional female doctors and
trained mid wive^.^" In the 1920s female doctors of UP beganvisiting
some purdahnashin and other women in their homes.212The UP
branch of the All-India Maternity and Child Welfare League became
active in big towns. Its staff in Allahabad city attended and conducted
1194 labour czses and paid 1 1,505 visits to patient homes in 1924.213
In 1933 the total number of cases conducted by maternity and child
staff had risen to 33,037.214These activities signified a greater recep-
tivity towards trained midwives by the middle classes in urban areas
of UP. It appears that by the 1920s a section of the urban middle class
was adopting Western medical means as an expression and endorse-
ment of their own strength, not weakness.
Yet, there was an ovenvhelmingly middle-class, urban bias in the
reach of Western medical practices, which were largely limited to the
big towns of UP. The implementation of medical efforts was con-
stantly hindered by a lack of vision and money. A scheme drawn up
in 1929 for providing maternity aid in the rural areas of UP could

Hindustan, 12 December 1900, NNh!, 18 December 1900, p. 614.

2 1 0 Dr Prasadilal Jha, 'Achchi Daiyon ki Avashyakta', Stri Darpan, 29, 3
(September 1923), pp. 476-8; Ishwardutt Sharma, 'Atm-tyag', Saraswati, 17,2,
3 (September 1916), p. 182.
' I 1 Forbes, 'Managing', p. 169-71.
2 1 2 Jeffety, Politics, p. 89.
2 1 3 Fzfiy-Seventh Report ofthe Director of Public Health of UP (Allahabad,
19251, p. 36.
Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the DirectorofPublic Health of UP (Allahabad,
19341, p. 43.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 183
not be introduced because of financial stringency. Even in the urban
areas there was a constant shortage of funds, and the UP Maternity
and .Child Welfare League complained of great difficulty in get-
ting adequate grants from district and municipal boards. In the same
year the grant for training midwives was reduced from Rs 21,600 to
Rs 13,892.?15Thus the overall number of employed medical women
and trained midwives continued to remain small.216As late as 1933
there were only 234 trained daislassistant midwives in the rural and
urban areas of UP,217suggesting that, for a large section of the popu-
lation, the traditional dai was still the only choice during childbirth.
Trained midwives continued to be expensive and came with many
conditions. E.H. Wyatt, acertified midwife in UP, wrote a handbook
on maternity in 1918 which said that a good English trained matern-
ity nurse had to be engaged at least six months in advance. Her fees
were generally Rs 8 or 9 a day for simple childbirth, plus expenses,
which included money for a dhobi and She also demanded
a lot of preparation beforehand, being unwilling to perform all the
diverse and menial functions that a traditional dai dide219
It has been suggested that the various schemes in place were not
designed to train the dai but to replace her completely.220But it was
remarked in 1916: 'It is too much to hope that the Indian dai may
be superseded in the same way [as in England], and that a better class
of Indian women will be induced to train, and that registration and
examination of all dais will be compulsory.'221I suggest it was under-
stood that it was impossible to completely replace the dai, and she
was never abolished. Rather, there was a changed division of power
whereby the urban upper castes and middle classes shunned her

' I 5 Sixty- ThirdAnnual Report of the Director f l u b lic Health ofUP (Allahabad,
1931), pp. 46-7.
' I 6 Balfour and Young, Medical, p. 168; Jeffery, Politics, p. 91.
'" Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the Director ofPublic Health of UP (Allahabad,
1934), Appendix C, pp. 46A-47A.
* I 8 E.H. Wyatt, Materniry: A Simple Book for Mothers and Materniry Nurses
in India (Allahabad, 1918), pp. 5-10.
'I9 Wyatt, Maternity, pp. 11-28.
'lo Forbes, 'Managing', pp. 167, 171.
'" Vaughan, 'Should', p. 18.
184 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
services, thus asserting their superiority. The colonial and nationalist
elites were engaged in a cultural dialogue, exchanging privileged
constructions of knowledge to devalue or discipline the traditional
dai, taking greater recourse to trained midwives and hospitals.
At the same time the disciplining was not smooth and was fractur-
ed to some extent by women themselves as well as by the dais, who
resisted Western medicine to a considerable degree-though there
were slight changes in the later phase. In 1869 the superintendent of
dispensaries at Bareilly spoke of the 'great difficulty' he and his staff
had in persuading women to attend dispensaries.222As late as 191 1
Major H. Austen Smith, civil surgeon ofAgra, said that the warning
against the dai had been of no avail and had failed to have much im-
pact on the population.223Most traditional dais were openly hostile
to training and licensing, and resisted efforts to render them 'harm-
less'.224Britishers lamented that the situation was much worse in the
north;225very few dais here completed their training.226An exasper-
ated Margaret Balfour said:
N o one knows better than myself the difficulties of training indigenous
dais. First, their ignorance, which makes them believe they have nothing
to learn. Then their prejudice against European methods; the apathy of
their patients, who desire nothing better than they are getting; the fact
that most dais are old and cannot take in new ideas even if they could.
They are independent women . . . There is no doubt that other women,
not of the dai caste, can be more satisfactorily trained . . . They have less
prejudice, can be secured younger, and not being independent of their
teachers are obedient and anxious to please.227

In 1923 the failure of being able to train the indigenous dai was
recognised in UP.228In 1934 it was again reported: 'The indigenous

222Quoted in Harrison, Public, p. 89.

223 Census, 1911, UP, p. 199.
224 Balfour and Young, Medical, pp. 130-5; Forbes, 'Managing', p. 168.
225 Balfour and Young, Medical, p. 135.
226 Jeffery, Politics, p. 92.
227 Balfour, 'Training', p. 19.
22s A.W.R. Cochrane, Triennial Report of Civil Hospitals and Dispen~ariesof
UP, years 1920, 1921 and 1922 (Allahabad, 1923), p. 9.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 185
dais maintain their stolid indifference towards child welfare workers,
do not take to them easily and continue to retain their monopoly of
the work. Every possible endeavour is being made to win their confi-
dence and co-operation. The qualified midwives have instructions to
be very courteous and tactful in their dealings with them.'229Clearly,
the dai was uncontrollable, unmanageable and had a mind ofher own.
In 188 1, of the 60,069 women shown in the professional classes in
UP, the largest number was that of traditional dais, i.e. 25,419.230In
19 11 women still outnumbered men in the medical occupations, i.e.
1553 women to every I000 male workers, and this was mainly on ac-
count of traditional midwives.231Alongside, many Chamar midwives
started demanding payments in cash and a fee for services perform-
ed.232Dais survived colonial efforts to an extent, mostly in rural areas,
and continued to engage in an occupation that was independent of
their male relatives.
Binaries of tradition and modernity, religion and science, female-
centred versus male-centred birth-these do not take us very far.
More fruitful would be to explore the ways in which the medical
discourses of the British as well as the Hindu middle classes increas-
ingly attempted to introduce 'professionalisation' and standardisation
through the interventions ofscience. Hierarchies of birthing, medical
practices, and maternity were the necessary by-products of such ef-
forts. But women did not always easily embrace all aspects of bio-
medical birthing practices. It was difficult to bring the maternal body
under constant surveillance.

111.2. Child-Care, Women ? Health a n d

Indigenous Practices
At one level, the concerns of the Hindu middle class and biomedical
agendas overlapped. The modern middle-class woman was to ensure
227 Sixty-SixtJ~Annual Report of the Director ofPcrblic Health of UP (Allahabad,
1934), p. 44.
230 Edmund White, Report on the Census of NWP, Preliminary Dissertation
(Allahabad, 1882), p. 1 13.
2 3 1 Census, 1911, UP, p . 402.
232 Briggs, Chamars, p p . 54, 65.
186 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the health of the Hindu nation by scientific management within the
household. Domestic space was disciplined by cleanliness and tidy-
ing. Time was rationalised and thrift, budgeting, providence and
temperance e m ~ h a s i s e dModern
. ~ ~ ~ and scientific methods ofdomes-
tic organisation and cooking were stressed with the assertion that the
British had taught these values.234However, they were moulded to
contemporary indigenous needs in vernacular medical books which
combined hygiene with morality and ethics.
Advice on care of the body, menstruation, neo-natal care, child-
birth, care of the new-born, breast-feeding, child-rearing and 'correct'
medical treatment of the ill within the home permeated a whole genre
of conduct books.235For example, a book entitled Stri Subodhini,
published by the famous Newal Kishore Press, contained topics like
protection of the womb, women's health and diseases, the education
of dais, medical care, and treatment of illnesses of household mem-
b e r ~ . Middle-class
*~~ women participated actively in discussing these
subjects, helping the regulation of domestic practices and asserting
the power of the middle-class Hindu household. At the same time it
was they who also ultimately shouldered the blame for dirty and
disorderly households, filthy children, the lack of nutritious food. In
the process, their assertion of differentiation from lower castes and
classes became crucial: 'The neighbourhood of our houses should
always be those of cultured and rich people, belonging to good fami-
lies. I t is dirty and unhygienic to have near you people of lower castes,
character and b e h a v i o ~ r . ' ~ ~ '
Mothering and child-care became an arena of 'rationality' and
constant advice for women. It has been argued that pregnancy, breast-
feeding and early infant care are determined not only by culture but
233 Leader, 5 January 1939, p. 5; Sharma, Manavotpatti, pp. 232-4; Yashoda
Devi, Kanya Kartavya (Allahabad, 1925), pp. 8-10; 52-4; Jyotirrnayi Thakur,
Gharelu Vigyan (Prayag, 1932).
234 ~ o s h i ,Grh, pp. 1-5.
2 3 j Kanya Sarvasva, a journal for young girls edited by Yashoda Devi, had a
regular column on household cleanliness called 'Grh Svachata', and others like
'Sharirik Shastra' and 'Pakshiksha', I, 2 (19'13),pp. 91-3; I, 3 (1913), pp. 113-
14; 1, 4 (1913), pp. 143-4; 3.1 (1915), pp. 89-92, 93-4.
2" Babu Sannulal G u p t Girdavar, Stri Subodhini (Lucknow, 1922).
237 Thakur, Grhasth, pp. 70-1.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 187
also by power.238 In UP, modernising maternity and disciplining
mother love was highlighted to establish the class and caste status of
Hindus. Balabodhini, a journal for women, begun in 1874 by Haris-
~ h a n d r a almost
, ~ ~ ~ regularly carried a column called 'Shishupalan',
which dealt with issues such as children's education, when to bathe,
how to cook and take care of the household, and the ideal lifestyle
during pregnancy.240Santan Shastra, a detailed book on child-care,
dealt with birth, disease, food, and the health of the child and was
addressed to the mother. The mother-child relationship was to have
no emotional autonomy. The book tried to ensure that babies, who
were all assumed to be male, were disciplined and fed at regular inter-
vals. It even approved of keeping a dhai, a surrogate mother or wet
nurse, by middle-class Hindu women.241However, wet nursing was
seen as both convenient and dangerous. A lower-caste or 'loose' wet
nurse stood for disorder and immorality, polluting the homes of
middle-class mothers. Thus explicit instructions were given regarding
what kind they should be: 'The wet nurse should be from the same
caste and class as that of the child. . . . She should be healthy, strong
and well built. She should be decent and of virtuous character. . . .
Her breasts should be large and sound. . . . Her milk must have ade-
quate nutritional value.'242In short, the wet nurse was the cow inside
the house.
In the process of reforming and disciplining households, indi-
genous medical traditions were revived and r e c o n s t i t ~ t e dThese
.~~~
could take complex forms when a woman formulated them. Yashoda

23s Margaret Jolly, 'Introduction', in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds),
Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial experiences in Asia and the
Pacific (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1-2.
*"Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harischandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras (Delhi, 1997), p. 245.
240 'Shishupalan', Bahbodhini, 1,2-3 (March 1874), pp. 14,32; (June 1874),
pp. 61-5.
24' Ganeshdutt Sharma Gaur 'Indra', Santan Shastra (Allahabad, 1928, 2nd
edn), pp. 489-91.
242 Indra, Santan, p. 491.
243 K.N. Panikkar, 'Indigenous Medicine and Cultural Hegemony: A Study
of the Revitalisation Movement in Keralam', SH, 8, 2 (1992), pp. 288-95;
Brahmananda Gupta, 'Indigenous Medicine in Nineteenth and Twentieth
188 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Devi of Allahabad was a famous ayurvedic practitioner at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century.244Though ayurvedic training was tech-
nically closed to women practitioners as it was largely in Sanskrit,245
Yashoda Devi had received an education and training in ayurveda
from her father and, at the young age ofsixteen, began active practice:
she established her Stri Aushadhalaya at Allahabad around 1908; she
was a prolific writer who wrote more than forty books, not only on
health and sex but also on the different aspects ~ f w o m e nShe
. ~ had
~~
her own printing and publishing house, known as Devi Pustakalaya,
and advertised her various books extensively in her own publications,
as well as in leading journals and newspapers.247She started occa-
sional magazines like G n y a Sawasva and Stridhama Shikshak.
Yashoda Devi moved in a relatively new territory. There was at this
time hardly a dispensary based on indigenous belief systems which
catered exclusively to women in India.248It was difficult for pur-
dahnashin women to go to male practitioners,249there were limits to
their access to cash and legitimate reasons for leaving home,250and
there was still much bias against Western medical systems. Thus
Yashoda Devi fulfilled two much-felt needs-being a woman and the

Century Bengal', in Charles Leslie (ed.), Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative

Study (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 368-78.
244 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: ScienceandtheImagination ofModern India
(Princeton, 1999), pp. 148-54.
245 Charles Leslie, 'Introduction', in Leslie (a), Atian, p. 3.
24G Material on Yashoda Devi has been gathered mainly from book; written
by her, referred to extensively in this chapter. Besides the ones mentioned, there
were others like Nari-Niti Shiksha (Allahabad, 1910); Grhini Kartavya Shastra
Arogyashastra Arthat Pakshastra (Allahabad, 1932, 5th edn); Arogya Vidhan
Grhini hrtauya Shastra (Allahabad, 1924); Pati Prem Patrika Arthat Pati-Pami
ka I'atra Vyauahar(Allahabad, 1925, 3rdedn); NariDharmashastra Grh-Prabandh
Shiksha (Allahabad, 1931); Adnrsh Balika-Bhai Bahina (Allahabad, 1932); Nari
Shnrir Vigyan Stri Chikitsa Sagar (Allahabad, 1938).
247 I came across many advertisements of her medical dispensary and books
in leading journals like Chandand Madhuri. Also see back page of Devi, Kanya.
'** Devi, Adarsh Pati-Patni, pp. 89-93.
249 266-711872, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI); Balfour and Young, Mediral
pp. 3 4 5 .
250 Jeffery, Politics, p. 48.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 1 89
practitioner of an indigenous medical system. A huge number of
women came to her with personal physical problems and she received
innumerable letters from all over India. She was so popular that letters
would reach her just addressed to 'Devi, Allahabad'.25' Her fame
spread to far-offplaces like Africa and Fiji. She had a rest house where
women from remote areas could stay.252She said that only an Indian
woman, specialising in an indigenous medical system like ayurveda,
was capable of understanding and curing the diseases of Indian wo-
men.253Though she specialised in curing women's illnesses, especially
their sexual problems, she also had cures for male illnesses. She had
created a list of more than forty questions for men; she asked women
to persuade suffering husbands to answer these and write to her. She
assured them secrecy.254She claimed to provide a cure for barrenness
and menstrual pains, she had medicines for hair and face care.255
Most of her books were prescriptive texts on the domestic life of
middle-class Hindu women. The books were charged with an indig-
enous moral fervour and codified b e h a v i o ~ r Her
. ~ ~ manuals
~ were
precise and detailed. Her books titled Dampati Arogyatajivanshastra
and Dampatya Prem Aur Ratikriya ka Gupt Rahasya, of 324 and 520
pages respectively, talked of various cases she had come across in her
career. For example, she talked of an eighteen-year-old woman whose
husband wanted sex every day. When she was away or menstruating,
he masturbated rather excessively. Yashoda Devi warned against this
on scientific and moral grounds.257Her books discussed other ail-
ments too, informing women how to recognise 'pure' semen,258the
ideal time to have sex,259how many times to have sex, how to produce

251 Devi, Nari Dharmashastra, p. last.

252 Devi, Dampati, pp.1-4, 7; Devi, Adarsh Pati-Patni, pp. 89-93.
253 Devi, Adarsh Pati-Patni, p. 91.
254 Devi, Grhini, pp. last 4.
'j5 Devi, Nari Dhavmashastru, p. last.

256Atvarious places, I have cited her works. For example, see the sections on
conjugality and education in this chapter. Here I have focussed upon her medical
works.
'j7 Devi, Dampati, pp. 16-25.

258 Ibid., p. 77.

259 Devi, Damparya, pp. 149-87
190 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
a healthy the problems of masturbation-for all these she of-
fered various nuskhe or prescript!ons. Grhini Karta yashastra Arogya-
shastra Athat Pakshastra was a manual on Indian cookery providing
recipes of healthy food for children, old people and the sick.
Yashoda Devi, and perhaps other women pra;titioners ofayurveda,
had entered the domain of male practitioners, covertly contesting
male control over the discipline and offering alternatives to hospitals
and dispensaries. As a moral sexologist Yashoda Devi moved in a ne-
bulous territory, conforming to new modes of public health, hygiene
and medical science while moulding modern values to Hindu systems
and needs. She offered indigenous methods for regulating the bodies
of Hindu women, and to some extent of men, keeping in mind the
requirements of the home and the nation. She indicated that middle-
class women could play a critical role in the consolidation of Hindu
middle-class dominance.

111.3. Plague and Women? Honour

Hindu norms were also reinforced by the effective use of rumour and
propaganda against certain plague measures imposed by the colonial
authorities; gender politics again played a role. Outbreaks of plague
were repeatedly reported in colonial India and created conditions for
extensive government intervention in local health concerns. Plague,
even more than cholera and smallpox, marked an unprecedented as-
sault upon the body of the c ~ l o n i s e d . However,
~~' Hindu propagand-
ists used the regulations against plague to make another case on how
Western medicine impinged on the body of the Hindu woman, and
to argue for protection of her honour. T o an extent this issue brought
together Hindus and Muslims to oppose the intrusion into household
spaces and the physical examination ofwomen, especially in the late
nineteenth century.262
Ibid., pp. 351-6.
As argued by Arnold, Colonizing, pp. 200-39. On plague, also see Ian
Catanach, 'Plague and the Tensions of Empire', in Arnold (ed.), ImperiaC Har-
rison, Public, p. 133-8, 140-50, 183-8, 217-21.
'" Dubdaba-i-Quisari, 19 March 1898: NNR, 23 March 1898, p. 157; Al
Bushir, 16 April 1900, NNR, 24 April 1900, p. 186; Oudh Punch, 19 April 1900,
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 191
The plague regulations of 1897-8, and again of 1900, insisted
upon a medical examination and inspection of all female passengers
coming from plague-infected localities; orders were issued to similar
effect by the U P government. At the same time, the U P regulations
attempted to accommodate and reinforce, rather than undermine,
religious, class, caste and expectations and prejudices. They
supported separate and suitable accommodation for females. I t was
further stated that, in the case of females who by the custom of the
country did not appear in public, purdah should be strictly observed
both in removal to private or public hospital and during the stay there.
Purdahnashin would be examined only by a female doctor.263Yet
plague regulations led to rumours, which created anger and fear.264
Inoculation, search for plague patients in their homes, removal to the
plague hospital, forcible detention there for days, deaths, examination
in railway stations, bathing of passengers from infected areas with dis-
infectants, post-mortems on plague victims-these were some of the
common fears in UP.265There was a plague riot at Haridwar in April
1898, largely because of the suspicions and misgivings in the minds
of people regarding the plague measures.266
The interference with women's bodies was effectively used to give
an emotive appsal to anger against plague orders, linked as it was to

NNR, 24 April 1900, p. 187; Anjuman-i Hind 14 April 1900, NNR, 24 April
1900, p. 187; Prayag Samachar, 26 April 1900, NNR, I May 1900, p. 198; Hin-
dustani, 25 April 1900, NNR, 1 May 1900, p. 201.
263 320-621January 1898, Sanitary (Plague), Home Deptt (NAI); 67-9/June
1900, Sanitary (Plague), A, Home Deptt (NAI); 153lJune 1900, Sanitary
(Plague), A, Home Deptt (NAI); 486Cl1900, Box 105, GAD (UPSA). How-
ever, it appears that these regulations were often not implemented in practice.
264 244-52IJuly 1900, Sanitary (Plague), A, Home Deptt (NAI); Arnold,
Colonizing, pp. 2 11-39.
265 Rol~iikhandPunch, 30 January 1898, NNR, 2 February 1898, p. 61;
Nizam-ul-Mulk, 16 April 1900, NNR, 24 April 1900, p. 189; Shahna-i-Hind,
16 April 1900, NNR, 24 April 1900, p. 189; Cawvrpore Gazette, 1 May 1900,
NNR, 8 May 1900, p. 2 17; Bharat jiwan, 20 June 1898, NNR, 29 June 1898,
p. 347.
266 5211May 1898, Sanitary, Home Deprt (NAI); Sitara-i-Hind 12 April
1898, NNR, 20 April 1898, p. 210; Almora Akhbar, 23 April 1898, NNR, 27
April 1898, p. 225.
192 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
honour, purdah, domestic privacy, public examination, and forcible
removal to segregation camps and hospitals.267Within the toll of
death by plague in UP, women often outnumbered men, and this may
also have been due to resistance to being examined.268Excitement was
evoked not by the spread of plague but by the possibility of purdah
being violated. Fears were engendered by tales of abuse and rumours
about the unknown. There was a rumour repeated by thousands in
Lucknow in 1898 that a native police officer, travelling with his wife
by rail, freely offered himself to the doctor for medical examination
but refused it for his wife. Words were exchanged and the policeman
first shot the doctor and then himself.269A newspaper represented a
young girl bitterly complaining of plague rules to her mother and
sister. She did not know how to go to her husband's house in Patna,
as she was fearful of the examination on the way, and of being sent
to the plague hospital.270At a zenana fair at Fyzabad, rumour spread
that a lady doctor would be coming to perform plague inoculations
on purdahnashin women, causing panic and consternation among
women concerning their honour and safety.'"
In April 1900 a serious plague riot occurred at Kanpur lasting more
than fivedays. Crowds of people went to the plague camp, set it afire,
killed a police constable and severely wounded another. The army had
to be called. Ten people were killed. Shops were closed. It was re-
ported that Manvari merchants instigated the tumult and boycotting,
and that it all began with attempts to isolate a Hindu woman sus-
pected of being ill with plague.272Until 29 March of that year no case
of plague had been reported in Kanpur. O n that day a Mam-ari wo-

267 Arnold, Colonizing, pp. 213-14.

268 Census, 1.91 1, UP, pp. 43-4; Advocate, 12 June 1902, NNR, 14 June 1902,
p. 398.
269 Hindustani, 9 February 1898, NNR, 16 February 1898, p. 89.
270 Fitnah, 1 January 1898, republishes this from Al Punch, NNR, 5 January
1898, p. 9.
2 7 1 Oudh Punch, 23 June 1898, NNR, 29 June 1898, p. 348.
?'* 291-302lJune 1900, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI); 486Cl1900, Box
105, G A D (UPSA); Hindustan, 15 April 1900, NNR, 17 April 1900, p. 173.
Arnold, Colonizing, pp. 214, 219, 223, 235, 266.
 Mapping the Domestic Domain / 193
man named Janki, a resident of Patna, was brought to a dispensary
at Kanpur by her friend Manbhari, a well-to-do Bania widow, living
in the Mahesari mohalla in the heart of Kanpur. Janki had fallen ill
while staying in her friend's house and maybe had spent the night
there. Her case was diagnosed as plague and she was removed to the
plague hospital, where she died the next day. The medical authorities
considered the segregation of Manbhari necessary and directed that
she be sent to the plague camp, and her huge house was thoroughly
disinfected.273
The removal of Manbhari caused a lot of resentment. Though not
a purdahnashin in the strict sense of the word, she belonged to a rich
and respectable Bania family. Objections to her segregation were
made to the magistrate on 31 March by some Hindu members of the
municipality; but the magistrate declined to re-consider the orders on
the grounds that the woman was not p ~ r d a h n a s h i n Next
. ~ ~ ~day a
huge meeting was held, where several members of the municipal
board, many well-to-do residents, Manvaris, butchers, and Chamars
were prominent, and they agreed to sink their differences and unite
to resist the plague prevention measures.275Thus, in the discourse
around women's honour, an attempt was made to incorporate even
the lower castes. Hindu homes were like temples, and the operation
of plague rules by the entry of the foreigner was seen as a violation
of that pure space; from this the Hindu woman had to be particularly
protected.276Here there was a construction of tradition whereby a
Bania woman, who was not a purdahnashin, became a 'victim' be-
cause she was not treated as one. The Manvaris were in a sense de-
manding from the colonial authorities an extension of privileges
accorded to 'respectable' purdahnashin women. Such articulations
defined and redefined Hindus as well as their homes. The UP govern-
ment succumbed to the pressure, further modifiing its resolutions on
plague reforms. For example, they now permitted a dai to examine

273 271-3021June 1700, Public, A, Home Deprt (NAI).

274 Ibid.
275 Ibid.; Hindustan, 15 April 1900, NNR 17 April 1900, p. 173.
276 KaLidu, 2 June 1700, NNR 5 June 1900, p. 282.
1 94 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
women, made special rules for treatment of purdah and 'respectable'
women, and said that no person would be under obligation to submit
to European medical treatment.277
Plague anxieties and protests could thus also be used to assert and
extend Hindu patriarchal norms by invoking images of the invasion
of zenana premises and attacks on the honour of Hindu women. An
examination of women's bodies in public spaces, such as railway sta-
tions, added to the notion of violation. Hindu publicists were able
to contest, appropriate and reinterpret Western medical knowledge,
and were quick to d o these.

The notion ofa pativrata wife and an ideal woman functioned as ideo-
logical constructs in the period. Conjugal relations, concerns about
education and health, were imbued with new meanings t ~ ~ q f r o d u c e
and introduce gender hierarchies and patriarchal norms, ahd establish
Hindu identity. The modernisation of technologyand economy, new
laws, print, biomedicine and so on aided this fopmation. In the
process, it was largely a middle-class and upper-caste Hindu domestic
model that was constructed, thus attempting to 'colonise' the bodies
of Hindu women, both of their own class and of the lower classes and
castes. There were obvious tensions here with the lower castes, as was
revealed in debates around inter-caste marriagesand dais. However,
middle-class agendas were also sometimes able to provide linkages
across castes: intermediary and lower castes were being tied into high-
caste norms of the household as part of the construction of a Hindu
identity, as was evident in the case of plague.
However, the pativrata was not a self-contained category. While
there was some support from the women themselves for such an ideal,
it was less convincing as an explanation of their actual experiences.
Though there were constant attempts to sketch the middle-class

2772981June 1900, Sanitary, B, Home Deptt (NAI).

 Mapping the Domestic Domain 1 195
Hindu woman in a set framework, which had limited success, she too
was negotiating her formation by pedagogy. The domestic domain,
though severely monitored, was also an area of potential possibilities
and instabilities. These uncertain identities were reflected in women
travelling in trains, bathing in public ghats, relying on dais, sharing
moments of laughter and liminality with younger brothers-in-law,
reading 'dirty' books, and in many other situations signifying a physi-
cal, moral and cultural 'impurity'. These were arenas of enjoyment,
flirtation and covert sexual messages. Resistance and hegemony are
not immaculate conceptions. The forces ofcolonial hegemony, Hindu
patriarchal dominance, women's endorsement and subtle resistance-
none of these were impermeable or complete categories; there were
spaces for, as it were, a variety of penetrations. One has to be equally
wary of seductive notions of overall power and breathtaking resist-
ance.
Besides the pativrata wife, it was the iconisation of the Mother
which became a constant part of Hindu nationalist rhetoric. The
symbol of the Mother could be used in wider controversies of langu-
age, cow protection movements and nationalism. Let's look at some
of these.
 Chapter 5
The Icon of the Mother:
Bha ra t Ma ta, Ma tri Bhasha
and G ~ Mata
u

T he modern nation has often been explicitly imagined through

gendered metaphors, particularly of the female body. The many
faces of 'mother'-motherland, mother tongue, motherhood-have
'
proved particularly potent symbols.2 Several studies have examin-
ed this icon in colonial India, particularly B e r ~ ~ aThe
l . ~ maternal

I George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal

Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York, 1985); Andrew Parker et al., 'Introduc-
tion', in.Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger (eds),
Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992), pp. 5-12; Afsaheh Najmabadi,
'The Erotic Vatan (homeland) as Beloved and Mother: T o Love, T o Possess, and
T o Protect', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39, 3 (July 1997),
pp. 442-67; Barbara Einhorn, 'Introduction: Links across Difference, Gender,
Ethniciry and Nationalism', Women's Studies International Forum, 19, 112
(January-April 1996), pp. 1-3; Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London,
1997).
This is a common imagery deployed in many regions, especially in asser-
tions of nationalism. For example, see Obioma Nnaemeka (ed.), The Politics of
(M)Othering: Womanhood,Identity and Resistance in Afi-ican Literature (London,
1997); Saraswati Sunindyo, 'When the Earth is Female and the Nation is
Mother: Gender, the Armed Forces and Nationalism in Indonesia', Feminist
Review, 58 (Spring 1998), pp. 1-21; C. L. Innes, 'Virgin Territories and Mother-
lands: Colonial and Nationalist Representations of Africa and Ireland', Feminist
Review, 47 (Summer 1994), pp. 1-14.
' Tanika Sarkar, 'Nationalist Iconography: Image of Women in Nineteenth
Century Bengali Literature', EPW, 22, 47 (21 November 1987), pp. 2011-
15; Jasodhara Bagchi, 'Representing Nationalism: Ideology of Motherhood in
Colonial Rengal', E P K 25, 42-3 (20-27 October 1990), WS-65-71; Indira
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
 The Icon of the Mother 1 197
metaphor was not limited to representations of the nation. It extend-
ed to linguistics, which in turn strengthened regional as well as
national identities.* Less has been said on the ways in which this
phenomenon was expressed in other parts of the country, particularly
north India. Hindu publicists of UP worked the icon of the mother
into narratives of nation, language and cow, sharpening the contours
of community identity. Swami Shraddhanand stated:
T h e first step which I propose is to build one Hindu Rashtra Mandir in
at least every city and important town. . . . T h e Rashtra Mandir will be
in charge of the local Hindu Sabha. . . . While the sectarian Hindu
temples are dominated by their own individual deities, the Catholic
Hindu Mandir should be devoted to the worship of the three mother-
spirits: the Gau-mata, the Saraswati-mata and the Bhumi-mata. Let some
living cows be there to represent plenitude. Let 'Savitri' be inscribed over
the gate of the hall to remind every Hindu of his duty to expel all igno-
rance and let a life-like map of Mother-bharat be constructed in a promi-
nent place, giving all its characteristics in vivid colours so that every child
of the Matri-bhumi may daily bow before the Mother and renew his
pledge to restore her to the ancient pinnacle of glory from which she has
fallen!5

This symbolism was evoked largely to aid men in the service of the
nation. The emotional appeal of the symbol of the mother was com-
bined with modern scientific arguments and economic 'facts' about
the earth and the cow.

Chowdhury Sengupta, 'Mother India and Mother Victoria: Motherhood and

Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal', SAR, 12 (1992); Samita Sen,
'Motherhood and Mothercraft: Gender and Nationalism in Bengal', Gender and
Histoy, 5, 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 231-43; Sugata Bose, 'Nation as Mother:
Representations and Contestations ofC'India"in Bengali Literature and Culture',
in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (eds), Nationalism, Democracy and Development:
State and Politics in India (Delhi, 1997), pp. 50-75.
* Sumathi Ramaswamy, 'Enlgendering Language: The Poetics ofTamil Ident-
ity', Comparative Studies in Society and Histoty, 35, 4 (October 1993), pp. 683-
725; idem, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970
(Berkeley, 1997), pp. 97-1 14.
Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race (n.p.,
1926), pp. 140-1. The book ends with these lines.
198 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

I. Mapping the MotherINation: T h e Bharat Mata

Temple at Banaras
T h e identity of the country and the nation was often expressed and
represented in terms of devotion to the goddess Bharat Mata or
Mother India, who was inevitably Hindu. The cult was imbued with
moral fervour and in the process religious, cultural and aesthetic as-
pects were politicised. The ideology of motherhood could be specifical-
ly claimed as their own by the colonised and could help in emphasising
their selfhood. In the case of Bengal, Bharat Mata was often a cultural
artefact, or a distinct personality, represented in different situations
as a glorious figure of abundance; as the powerful mother Kali and
Durga, as destructive shakti; or as an enslaved, all-suffering figure, a
tearful victim and a frail widow.6
While such emblems can be seen in north India,' there was another
image in which the nation as mother took on the entity of a detailed
physical map, namely the Bharat Mata Temple, the first of its kind,
built at Banaras in the early twentieth century. One goes today to the
holy city of Banaras and sees in this temple not the anticipated altar,
shrines and images, nor the mother figure ofwoman shown in differ-
ent moods as reflecting the state of the nation, but instead, within its
spacious sanctuary, surrounded by brass railings, a huge relief map
of the country. Here Bharat Mata is not a distinct personality in her
own right but a metaphor for a fixed, bounded space. It is different
from the images one associates with a temple, or even of Bharat Mata.
How is one to interpret this phenomenon?
It has been argued that the drawing of modern and precise maps

Sarkar, 'Nationalist', pp. 201 1-15; Bose, 'Nation', pp. 50-75.

' For example, the cover of Saraswati, 2, 1 uuly 1938) had a picture called
'Bharat Mata', in which was shown a sad woman, who appeared a widow. She
wore no jewellery and had a son sitting on her lap and a daughter nearby, who
looked equally sad. A magazine contained an allegorical article in which India
was represented as a mother weeping over the loss of her once renowned children
and deploring their degradation: Vaundhara, May 1907, NNR, 1 June 1907,
p. 663. The statue of Bharat Mata as a symbol of love for country and unity was
incorporated in the Ramlila procession at,Allahabad from the early twentieth
century: Harimohandas Tandon, 'Ankahi Kahani Pajwa Ramlila Ki', in Mahant
 The Icon of the Mother 1 199
was an emblem of the rational and scientific nature of the West, a
working of power-knowledge by European powers and colonialism,
a ~ r e l u d eto possession, a tool for enabling mastery of the world. The
scientific map became a metonym for colonial m ~ d e r n i t yModern
.~
maps, in the period of the Enlightenment, were stripped of all ele-
ments of fantasy, religious belief, of the rich and sensuous spatial
stories in medieval cartography. Instead they became strictly func-
tional systems, with a factual ordering of space and mathematically
rigorous depiction^.^ Hindu nationalists, through a detailed and pre-
cise mapping of the nation in a temple with the emotive name of
Bharat Mata, were able to combine (or hybridise) science with emo-
tion and modernity with traditional belief.
Shivprasad Gupt, a staunch nationalist and wealthy person of
Banaras, built the Bharat Mata Temple. A Vaishya, he was initiated
into the Vallabh Sambraday at an early stage. Later he was attracted
towards the Arya Samaj, and in 1904 he became a member of the
Kashi Aganval Samaj. H e was close to Madan Mohan Malaviya and
Swami Shraddhanand. He was also the founder ofthe Kashi Vidyapeeth
at Banaras, and of the newspaper Aaj.1° He had a 'love for Hindutva,
Hindi and Bharat Mata'." It was his greatest desire and obsession that
people should worship the map of India as that of the motherland

Baba Hathiram, Pajwa Ramlikz Committee Smarika, No. I (Mahabad, 1980),

p. 19.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refictions on the Origins and
Spreadof Nationalism (London, 1983), pp. 163-85; Matthew H. Edney, Map-
ping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843
(Chicago, 1997).
David Harvey, The Condition off'ostmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins
of Cultural Cl~ange(Oxford, 1980), pp. 245-52.
'O For a sketch of his life, see Shivprasad Gupt, 'Sankshipt Atrnkatha', in
Rameshchandra Tiwari and Krishnanath (eds), &hi Vidyapeeth Hirak Jayanti
Abhinandan Granth (Varanasi, 1983), pp. 85-8; Vinaykumar Sarkar, 'Rastraratn
Shri Shivprasad Gupt' and Indr Vidyavachaspati, 'Swargiya Shivprasad Gupt',
in Krishnanath (ed.), Rashtraratn Shivprasad Gupt (Varanasi, 197 I), pp. 53-6 1
and 62-8 respectively.
I ' Interview with Dudh Nath Chaturvedi, ex Vice-Chancellor, Kashi Vidya-
peeth,.at Banaras on 18 February 1998.
200 / Sexuality; Obscenity, Community
or of the mother.'' The idea of a Bharat Mata Temple was born thus.
How should Bharat Mata be represented? The inspiration came from
a clay map of India drawn on the floor, in the widow's home of
Ghondo Keshav Karve at Pune. Shivprasad was motivated to create
a similar physical map of India at Banaras. He decided to use marble
for the image of janani janmabhumi.13
The foundation stone of the Bharat Mata Temple was laid at the
complex of Kashi Vidyapeeth in 1918. The sculptors, led by Durga
Prasad, were largely from Banaras and all were Hindus.14 The re-
sult was a majestic structure of one storey, built in stone. The marble
carving of the map of India, right at the centre of the temple, was ex-
tremely detailed and minute, drawing extensively from modern tech-
nologies of map-making. Gandhi inaugurated the temple in 1936.
Many leading personalities, includingAbdu1 Gaffar Khan and Sardar
Patel, were present at the time. l 5 In his speech on the occasion Gandhi
said: 'In this temple there are no statues of gods and goddesses. Here
there is only a map of India raised on marble. I hope that this temple
will take the form of a worldwide platform for all religions, along with
Harijans, and of all castes and beliefs, and it would contribute to feel-
ings of religious unity, peace and love in this ~ o u n t r ~ . ' ' ~
The temple was an attempt at creating a composite religious and
national identity and seen as a place where all-Hindus and Muslims,
high-caste and low-caste Hindus-could come and worship. An
inter-caste dining feast was organised, after giving Doms and Chamars
Sunlight soap to 'cleanse' themselves in the nearby well and then en-
ter the temple.'7 The temple ~ersonifieda symbol of pride, faith and
l 2 Interview with Sri Prakasa by H.D. Sharma on 18 December 1967, Oral
History Transcript, no. 103, p. 30 (NMML).
l 3 Shivprasad Gupt, 'Shri Bharat Mata Mandir', in Krishnanath (ed.),
Rasbtraratn, pp. 109-1 1. Parts published in Hindi Prarharak, 14, 11 (November
1936), pp. 229-31.
l 4 Names of sculptors mentioned inside the temple.
l 5 Photographs in Ravi Prakash Pandey (ed.), Mahatma GandbiiCrthi Kdya-
peetLKaustu6h Jayanti, Kawtubh Granth (Varanasi, 1996).
I G Mahatma Gandhi, 'Bharat Mata Mandir', in Tiwari and Krishnanath (eds),
Kmbi, p. 387.
I' Intcrview with Shyamdas Singh, at Banaras on 18 February 1998. He has
 The Icon of the Mother 1 20 1
confidence in Bharat, where all could express their loyalty and dedi-
cation to the nation in terms of devotion and sacrifice to the cause
of a sacred motherland. Inside was the poem 'Matri Mandir' by the
famous poet Maithlisaran Gupt, written specially for the temple:

Bharatmata ka yeh mandir, samta ka samvad yahan,

sabka shiv-ka$an yahan hai, paven sabhi prasad yahan . .
Sab tirthon ka ek tirth yeh, hriday pavitra bana lein hum,
ao yahan ajatshatru ban, sabko mitra bana lein hum.
(This is the temple of Bharat Mata, where equality speaks. It is auspicious
for all, and all receive blessing here. It is the epitome of all places of pil-
grimage. Let us purify our hearts. Like Ajatshatru, we should make every-
one our friends here.'')

Yet there was an overwhelming use of upper-caste Hindu symbols.

The newspaper Aaj produced a special edition on Bharat Mata for
the occasion and published poems eulogising a combination of
nationalist and Hindu images.'9 Another poem, written in praise of
the temple, said that after bathing in the Ganges and after a visit to
the Vjshwanath temple, a glimpse of the mother made the day com-
plete.20The temple had the hymn 'Vande Mataram' inscribed at its
gate. During its inauguration there was a havan, with offerings and
recitations from all four Vedas by eight orthodox Brahmin special-
ist~.~'
The iconic representation of Bharat Mata in the sculptural map
was modern and scientific, an artistic and devotional expression. It
has been argued that Bharat Mata pointed to a new political reality
of bourgeois nationalism, very different from the concept of Bhudevi

worked at the temple since 1968, and before him, his father and grandfather
looked after the temple. Today the temple is not really a place of worship and
has more of a historic value. Puja is held in the temple on 26 January and
15 August.
l 8 The poem is placed just inside the temple.
l 9 Aaj, 25 October 1936.
20 Kavivar 'Chanchrik', Gram Geetanjali (Gorakhpur, 1938,3rd edn), p. 26.
*' Gupt, 'Shri', p. 11 1; Gopal Shastri 'Darshan Keshari', 'Shri Shivprasad
Guptasy Krityani', in Tiwari and Krishnanath (eds), &hi, p. 101.
202 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
in medieval India.22Unlike Bengal, in the Bharat Mata Temple the
female figure representing Mother India was absent; instead she was
concretised as a political and geographical body. The map identified
Hindu nationalism with the land of India, imagined as a sacred
'mother'. A tradition of nationalism linked to a poetics of love and
longing was constructed.
This new Hindu-nationalist map drew from the technologies of
mathematical cartography. Its significance was not questioned by
Gupt or the chiefsculptors; they took it for granted and used it extens-
ively to show Bharat Mata as the geographical territory of India.23
This allegorical figuration of nation as mother portrayed cities, dis-
tricts, rivers and mountains, a sovereign territory with set boundaries.
Thus in his description of the temple Gupt's fundamental preoccu-
pation was the height and length of the map, the number of marble
pieces that went into its making, the markings of various countries
surrounding India, the measurements of places. The map was to aid
the study of the womb of the earth, India's geography and geology,
help in understanding the mystery of Indian culture, its development
and its special essence.24
Mother as map of the nation also served to suggest a loyal political
citizenry devoted in the service of the nation. The children of the
nation attained greater existence, personhood and identity via their
location within sacred boundaries. These dutiful children were male
Hindu sons ofthe nation, shown as constituting ideal Indians. In fact,
the conceptualisation of 'Indian' was one of the major currents in
Indian nationalist thought by the turn of the twentieth century, and
the ideological preoccupations of the Bharat Mata Temple gave him
a concrete presence. Shivprasad Gupt called his temple 'Shri Bharat-
mata Mandir'. Literally translated this is 'Mr Mother India Temple'.
The irony of the Mother as a body of male Hindus is unlikely to have
struck Shivprasad Gupt.25
22 Daud Ali, 'From Bhudevi to Bharatmata: Fragments in the History ofplace
and Patriarchy', unpublished paper.
23 Ali, 'Bhudevi'. Ali tries to problematise mathematical cartography, as other
scholars have done.
24 Gupt, 'Shri', pp. 109-1 1.
* 5 Gupt, 'Shri', p. 109.
 The Icon of the Mother 1 203
Mother as map was so all-encompassing and huge that all had to
submerge their separate identities in her presence. The political impli-
cations of worshipping India as a Hindu map were clear: sacredness
and political rhetoric were being fused towards a valorisation of patri-
archal Hinduism. While described as a place where all could come,
the hymn 'Vande Mataram' inscribed at its very gates defined national
and religious identity in terms of Hindu piety and activism.
This image of Mother India and the attendant discourse of spiri-
tuality grew so pervasive at this time in UP that even those political
leaders who opposed Hindu sectarianism resorted to using it. Such
uses may suggest that these were merely innocuous cultural and poli-
tical pieties. Yet the fact is that each such use had the potential to pro-
mote a singular Mother India and pride in India's 'superior' Hindu
cultural heritage.26 The Bharat Mata Temple can thus be seen as a
symbol of the deliberate confusion and conflation between Hindu/
IndianINation. Such an idea, it has been suggested, is anathema to
Muslims. It was certainly a way of alienating them by disregarding
Islam's anti-anthrop~morphism.~'
The Bharat Mata Temple of Banaras was conceived with 'noble'
sentiments and a spirit of nationalism, and claimed to be precise and
scientific. But the structure and the idea marked the inherent limit-
ations, ambiguities and contradictions of such imagery. Today, al-
most all schools run by the RSS have a map/figure/temple of Bharat
Mata within their complex.2s
11. Language Debates
Scholars have shown how, from the late nineteenth century especially,
language became, both among the Muslim gentry and the Hindu
26 Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus andthe Hindu NationalistMovernent
(Chicago, 1996), pp. 1 4 6 5 7 , 2 8 6 9 ; idem, 'Bharat Mata: Mother India and
her Militant Matriots', in John. S. Hawley and Donna M. Wuff (eds), Devi:
Goddesses ofIndia (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 250-80.
*' Surjit Hans, 'The Metaphysics of Militant Nationalism', in Alok Bhalla and
Sudhir Chandra (eds), Indian Responses to Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century
(New Delhi, 1993), p. 193.
2S Tanika Sarkar, 'Educating the Children of the Hindu Rashtra: Notes on
RSS Schools', in Praful Bidwai, Harbans Mukhia and Achin Vanaik (eds),
Religion, Religiosity and Communalism (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 237-48.
204 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
upper castes, a means and symbol of community-creation.29 The
Hindi movement is shown to have animated a Hindu communal
consciousness in pre-independence India.30 The assertion of Hindi
by the upper-caste Hindu literati was an attempt to assert a distinct
community identity and prepare themselves for a culturally hegemonic
role in the new nation.31The Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Banaras and
the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of Allahabad sought to Sanskritise
Hindi, removing Persio-Arabic words and marginalising spoken
forms of Hindi such as Avadhi and Braj.32
Hindi propagandists deployed potent gender symbols at this time.
Language was personified. It was not just Hindi as rnatri bhasha or
mother tongue that was important, gender icons were used to mark
out boundaries between Hindi'and Urdu and benveen Braj Bhasha
and Khari Boli, leading to an assertion of the Nagari script. Imagery
around the mother tongue was endowed with overt political mean-
ings, but it also revealed a tension. While Hindi was upheld as a res-
pectful female in opposition to Urdu, the 'femininity' of the language
roved a hindrance in debates between Braj and Khari: here feminin-
ity came to be equated with degeneration.
29 Suniti Kumar Chatterji, LanguagesandLiteraturesofModern India (Calcutta,
1963); Amrit Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development ofHindi-Urdu
(Delhi, 1984); Krishna Kumar, PoliticalAgenda ofEducation:AStudy ofcolonialist
and Nationalist Ideas (New Delhi, 1991); Christopher R. King, One Language,
Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth-Century North India (Bombay,
1994).
30 In the process King challenges the position ofArnrit Rai and the earlier one
of Suniti Kumar Chatterji, who consider Urdu a significant deviation in the
Indian language tradition, and regard it as divisive and parochial.
3' Kumar, Political pp. 125-7; idem, 'Hindu Revivalism and Education in
North-Central India', in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Funda-
mentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (Chi-
cago, 1993), pp. 5 3 6 5 7 .
32 King, One Language, pp. 33-41; Shitikanth Mishra, Khariboli ka Andolan
(Kashi, 1956); Naresh Prasad Bhokta, 'Marginalization of Popular Langua-
ges and Growth ofsectarian Education in Colonial India', in Sabyasachi Bhatta-
charya (ed.), The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on Education in India (New
Delhi, 1998), pp. 201-17; Mohammad Hasan, Thought Patterns ofNinrteenth-
Century Literature of North India (Pakistan, 1990).
 The Icon of the Mother / 205
II. I . Hindi as Mother
The Hindi language was personified as Mother Hindi. Poems were
written extolling her good qualities, depicting her as a mother, as a
powerful mother goddess, and as the hope and soul of India:
Hum hind tanya hain-hindi matu humari.
Bhasha hum jab ki ek maha hindi hai,
asha hum sab ki ek maha hindi hai. . . .
Bharat ki to bm pran yahi hindi hai.
(We are the sons of Hind-Hindi is our mother. O u r only language is
Hindi. O u r only hope is Hindi. This Hindi is the life of India.33)

Hindi was the pride of India:

Sab se saraf saloni, priya devnagari tu.
Sab hinduon ke shir ki, hai pujya pagri tu.
(My dear Devnagari, you are the simplest and the most lovely. You are
the revered turban on the heads of Hindus.'*)

The pathetic situation of Mother Language was simultaneously

lamented by leading writers like Maithlisaran Gupt and Mahavir
Prasad D ~ i v e d iIndifference
.~~ to Hindi was like refusing to acknowl-
edge one's own In his address given as Chairman of the
Thirteenth Hindi Sahitya Samrnelan in March 1923, Dwivedi said:
W h o is the mother of Hindi? . . . I just want to say that a person's mother
tongue is as important as his mother or motherland. O n e mother gives

33 Manoranjan Prasad, Rashtriya Murali (Kashi, 1922), p. 5 1. Also see Bharat

)wan, 28 March 1892, p. 3.
34 Jagannarayan Dev Sharma 'Pushkar', Hindu Gayan, Part I (Banaras, 1927).
35 Maithlisaran Gupt, Padya Prabandh, Part I (Prayag, 1912), pp. 6 6 8 ;
Mahavir Prmad Dwivedi Rachnaudi, Vol. 13, ed. and comp. Bharat Yayavar
(New Delhi, 1995), p. 53.
3G In the context of Tamil a similar point has been made: see Ramaswamy,
Passions. Oriya was also viewed as under threat in this period, not just from its
own degeneration, but also via external forces: Pragati Mohapatra, 'The Making
of a Cultural Identity: Language, Literature and Gender in Orissa in Late Nine-
teenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', unpublished PhD thesis (SOAS, Uni-
versity of London, 1997).
206 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
birth, the second gives a space for playing, wandering, and a worldly exist-
ence, and the third makes human life happy by giving the power to express
one's mental thoughts and impulses. D o we not owe any debt to such a
mother tongue? D o people not feel like shedding tears when seeing the
distress of such a mother tongue?37
The modern Hindi propounded by the likes of Dwivedi and
organisations like the Nagari Pracharini Sabha posed a further prob-
lem. This version lacked a known past; therefore links were estab-
lished with Sanskrit to lend it lustre. Hindi was declared the daughter
or ganddaughter of Sanskrit, which was seen as having united India
into a coherent entity, into one heart, in ancient times. Hindi was to
play the same role The Nagari Pracharini Sabha tried to show
that other languages, such as Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi, were the
sisters of Hindi, since it was assumed they had a common source in
Sanskrit. In fact they were all taken to be basically Hindi, attired in
various dresses.39Other north Indian languages were shown as dia-
lects of Khari Boli. The University of Allahabad was particularly act-
ive in the propagation of such ideas.40

Il.2. Lewd or Chaste, Feminine or Masculine?

It has been pointed out that Hindi and Urdu were represented as wo-
men: Hindi was the patient and respectable Hindu wife or a nurturing
Brahmin matron, while Urdu was nothing less than a heartless aristo-
cratic strumpet, a wanton Muslim prostitute.41In some plays, 'queen'
Devnagari was as much the image of the new middle-class Hindu
housewife as any queen; Begum Urdu was the unreformed, the un-
controlled woman.42
37 Mal~avirPrasad Dwivedi Rachnavali, Vol. 1, p. 65.
38 Chandrikaprasad Tripathi, 'Shikshalayon mein Hindi ke Dwara Shiksha
Dene ki Avashyakta', Saraswati, 17, 1 (July 1916), p. 55.
39 Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Hindi Kya Hai (Banaras, 1900), pp. 1-2.
40 Dhirendra Varma, Hindi Bhasha ka Itihas (Allahabad, 1933); Babu Ram
Saksena, Evolution of Avadhi ( A Branch of Hindi) (Allahabad, 1937).
4' King, One Language, pp. 135-7, 173.
42 Christopher R. King, 'Images of Virtue and Vice: The Hindi-Urdu Con-
troversy in Two Nineteenth-century Hindi Plays', in Kenneth W. Jones
(ed.), Religious Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Rtian Languages
 The Icon of the Mother / 207
Urdu was so bad and erotic that its knowledge had to be denied
to respectable Hindu women. For Harischandra there was little doubt
that Urdu was the language of dancing girls and prostitutes.43 The
important work of the Arya Samaj towards the education of girls bore
testimony to the fact that whereas boys' schools had facilities for the
teaching of Urdu, girls' schools provided for Hindi alone-a differ-
entiation consistent with the concept of women being emblematic of
the purity of Hindi society.44Mahadevi Verma, the great Chayavadi
poetess, also said that, in the private schools set up by Kayastha edu-
cational trusts and in government schools for girls attended by Kayas-
tha girls, women's education was conducted almost entirely through
the medium of Hindi and girls were not pushed to learn Urdu-as
boys were.45Women were seen as having no practical use for Urdu-
they were not seelung employment.46 Urdu, apart from being a
prostitute, therefore had no commercial value for women. Later, with
assertions that Urdu was Islamic, its appropriateness for Hindu wo-
men was further reduced.
Urdu was not only attacked because it was vulgar and like a prosti-
tute, but also because it was effeminate. Gyastha Samachar carried
on a debate at the height of the Hindi-Urdu controversy, deploying
gendered terms:
T h e entire range of Urdu poetry is characterised by an effeminacy as de-
grading to the intellect as is vice to a people, and if the truth must be told

(Albany, 1992), pp. 124-47. The two plays analysed here are Pandit Gauri Datta,
Nagari aur Urdu ka Swang (Meerut?, 1883-1900?) and Munshi Sohan Prasad,
Hindi aur Urdu Ki Larai (Gorakhpur, 1884). O f the latter, I saw a 2nd edn of
1929.
43 Vasudha Dalrnia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions.
44 Kumar, PoliticaL! p. 129; Krishna Kurnar, 'Quest for Self-identity: Cultural
Consciousness and Education in Hindi Region, 1880-1950', E P q 25, 23 (9
June 1990), p. 1248; Madhu Kishwar, 'Arya Sarnaj and Women's Education:
Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jalandhar', EPW 21, 17 (26 April 1986), WS-9-24.
4 5 Karine Schorner, Mahfidevi Varma andthe ChhayavadAge ofModern Hindi
Poetry (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 152-3.
4"atyavati Devi, 'Striyon ko Kaisi Shiksha aur Sahitya ki Avashyakta Hai',
Madk~uri,10, 1, 6 (January 1932), p. 788; Ved Prakash, April 1907, N N R 1 1
May 1907, p. 564.
208 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the effeminacy of Urdu poetry and songs has been in keeping with the
growing effeminacy of the people who had the keeping of Urdu literature.
T h e high-sounding and elaborate forms of expression in Urdu have be-
come almost a by-word and are a standing subject of amu~ernent.~'
While disagreeing with some of the arguments raised in this article,
a rejoinder agreed on the effeminate nature of Urdu, declaring it an
ungrateful daughter of Braj B h a ~ h a . * ~
T h e masters of Urdu were the descendants of those people whose langu-
age was Persian, and therefore they introduced in Urdu all the metres,
all the interesting and gaudy images, and the different kinds of styles
peculiar to Persian. And the wonder is that by their sweetness and beauty
they succeeded in ousting those ideas of Bhasha which were so indigenous
to the country; so much so indeed that the literary class, as well as the
common people, quite forgot the songs of the Koel (the Indian Cuckoo)
and the Papiha (the Sparrow-Hawk) and the scent of the Champa and
the Chameli (Jasmine) and began to sing the praises of Hazar and Bulbul
(Nightingale), Nasrin (Eglantine) and Sambul (Spikenard) which they
had never seen.*'

The writer argued that Urdu was incapable of giving expression to

Hindu ideas and aspiration^.^^ Raja Shivprasad, who was to become
a staunch supporter of the Nagari script, wrote: 'To read Persian is
to become Persianised, all our ideas become corrupt and our nation-
ality is lost. . . . All the evils which we find amongst us we are indebted
to our "beloved brethren" the Muhammadans. Manliness is the first
thing which they have entirely extinguished from the land.'51
New Hindi words had to be coined to do awaywith the Hindustani
words used daily. Urdu was made f u n of for its linguistic 'inadequa-
cies' and Nagari characters were declared clearer. Madan Mohan
47 N. Gupta, 'A National Literature for Hindustan', h y m t h a Samachar, 4,
1 (July 1901), pp. 25-6.
4s Manohar La1 Zutshi, 'A National Literature for Hindustan: A Rejoinder',
Kayastha Samachar, 4, G (December 1901), p. 501.
49 Zutshi, 'Rejoinder', p. 501.
50 Ibid., p. 504.
5 1 Shivprasad, Memorandum Court Character in the Upper Provinces oflndia
(Banaras, 1868), p. 1.
 The Icon of the Mother 1 209
Malaviya alleged that the Urdu script created more confusion than
~larity.5~ For example, it was said that the introduction of Nagari
would prevent the word chhadi (stick) being mistaken for chhuri
(knife) and the word kishti (boat) for the word kasbi ( p r o ~ t i t u t e ) . ~ ~
Saraswati, the most famous literary magazine of the period, com-
plained of the use of the word 'Musammat', commonly used as a pre-
fix to any woman's name in schools, universities and law courts at that
time. It was stated that while Hindu men had Hindi words like
'Babu', 'Munshi', 'Pandit' and 'Lala' constantly prefixed to their
names, there had been no equivalent Sanskrit or Hindi word com-
monly used as a prefix to female names. The magazine asked govern-
ment to use words like 'Shrimati' or 'Kumari' as a prefix to the names
of Hindu women.54
Hindi, however, was not a homogeneous language: it was riddled
with dialects, in fact. Which form of Hindi should prevail? By the
late nineteenth century, Khari Boli Hindi had won acceptance as a
vehicle of prose but not as an instrument of poetry, for which Braj
Bhashaivas still more ~ e l e b r a t e dWhat
. ~ ~ followed was an intense de-
bate, with vociferous proponents on both sides. Shitikanth Mishra,
in his landmark work, calls it a struggle of two periods-f ancient
idealistic religiosity identified with Braj Bhasha, and of modern real-
istic utility recognised through Khari B ~ l iIn. ~the ~ earlier phase of
these debates there were some supporters of Braj Bhasha, even among
the leading literary personalities. However, in the arguments that
followed there was a slow emergence of Khari Boli from a defensive
to an offensive position, leading to its eventual triumph.57
While various arguments were given for and against the two

5 2 M.M. Malaviya, Court Character andprimary Education in NWIJ(Allahabad,

1897).
53 Bharat Sudasha Pravartak, May-June 1900, NNR, 26 June 1900, p. 323.
54 Saraswati, 17, 2 (February 1916), p. 139.
55 G.A Grierson, The MoLrn Vernacular Literature ofHindutan (Calcurta,
1889), p. 107.
56 Mishra, Khariboli, p. 5.
57 For details of debate between Braj Bhasha and Khari Boli, see Mishra,
Khariboli King, One Language, pp. 33-7.
2 10 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
languages, what interests me here is the way gendered terminology
was deployed in different arguments around linguistic identities. We
have already seen how poetry dominated by nayika bhed had faced
charges of obscenity. The language of such poetry was also bound to
come under attack. Braj literature was identified with a poetic tradi-
tion focusing on the life and loves of Krishna and related erotic lite-
rature of dubious moral value, particularly unfit for consumption by
women. The process began with Bharatendu Harishchandra. Though
he composed many poems in Braj Bhasha, when it came to works on
and for women he preferred Khari Boli. He pioneered the Hindi
journal Balabodhini, which became the first women's journal in the
language. The subject matter was puritanically controlled: the con-
ventional Braj Bhasha, deployed so extensively in Harischandra's
other journals, was here entirely absent, being considered too erotic.
The older musical forms were similarly suspect for releasing erotic
energies.58
O n the other hand Khari Boli lacked such an erotic tradition and
could more easily become a vehicle of prose as well as nationalist
themes and ideas.59The journal Saraswati became the chief vehicle
for the propagation of such sentiments. A debate emerged in its pages
regarding the superiority of Khari Boli over Braj, with its editor
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi vociferously propagating Khari Boli, 'new'
Hindi and the Nagari script-both for prose and poetry.60
George A. Grierson was a staunch supporter of Braj and Avadhi
poetry, and of Hindi written in a simple style, without Sanskrit
words. He said: 'Sanskrit is a grandmother and Hindi is a grand-
daughter, and it does not lookwell when a granddaughter dresses her-
self in her grandmother's clothes.'61Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, how-
ever, carried on a regular correspondence with him, extolling the
58 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 247.
59 King, One Language.
Harprakash Gaur, Saraswati aur Rarhcriya Jagran (New Delhi, 1983);
Lalit Mohan Awasthi, Khari Boli Hindi Ra Samajik Itihas (Bombay, 1977),
pp. 243-4.
61 Letter by Grierson to Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya, 24 June 1915, Linguistic
Survey of India Records c.1900-c.1930, Sl11517 (IOL).
 The Icon of the Mother 1 21 1
virtues of Khari Boli Hindi poetry and the use of ~anskritisedHindi.
He attempted to convince him of their utility in the present day.62
In one of his letters Dwivedi wrote:
W e speak Hindi . . . and it is only right that we should write poetry in
the language which we speak. . . . T h e age of these [Surdas, Keshav,
Bihari] is past. W e must now adapt ourselves to the exigencies of current
times . . . It appears you are nor in touch with current Hindi literature . . . I
am confident that in about 20 years not a single stanza of poetry will be
composed in Braj Bhasha or Avadhi . . . I am sending you separately two
issues of Kanyakunj, a monthly magazine. Each contains a piece of poetry
[in Khari Boli] . . . I have received numerous letters, even from ladies, ap-
preciating these pieces.63
Eventually it was Dwivedi's prediction which proved correct. In the
Eleventh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan it was emphasised that Khari Boli
was much more dignified, not being tainted by luxurious eroticism.
Such erotic poems written in other languages had caused great harm
to society, and Khari Boli poets were aware that this was not the time
for such poetry.64 By the 1930s almost all 'high1 literary poetry came
to be composed in Khari 6oli. With the beginning of the Chhayavad
movement in Hindi literature, a series of highly talented poets
established Khari Boli as the medium of Hindi poetry once and for
a11.65
Supporters of Khari Boli drew astraight line between the sweetness
and melodiousness of Braj and femininity, malung it further unsuit-
able. Balkrishna Bhatt thought Braj Bhasha so feminine that it was
appropriate for no mood except shringar raseG6During the second
meeting of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, held at Allahabad in 19 1 1,
Pandit Badrinath Bhatt declared that the days of Khari Boli's rival
had passed. Replying those who extolled the superior qualities of Braj
62 Correspondence regarding Hindi Poetry, S/1/5/4.
63 Letter from Dwivedi to Grierson, 10 June 1907, Kanpur, S/1/5/4.
G4 Lakshmidhar Bajpei (ed.), E k a h h HindiSahityaSammeLzn, PartN (Prayag,
19261, p. 79.
" King, One Language, p. 36.
Dularelal Bhargav (ed.), Sahitya Sumcn [collection of Essays by the late
Balkrishna Bhatt] (Lucknow, 1937, 5th edn), p. 23.
2 12 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
he remarked caustically that, in an age when India needed men, the
excessive sweetness and melodiousness of Braj had turned Indians
ineo e ~ n u c h s . ~The
' old school of Braj Bhasha was identified with
emotion, which had feminine overtones; the new school of Khari Boli
was distinguished by reason, suggesting manly feelings.68
The equation between Khari Boli and masculinity has been lucidly
expressed. Scholars have stated that Khari Boli was first used in 1803
by the poet Lallulal in his work Premsagar, composed at Fort Wil-
liam6"ut why the name Khari Boli? Various views have been pro-
pounded on this; most of them equate the use of the term with bbur-
geois and masculine qualities. It was regarded as mardon ki boli (the
language of men)." Grahambeli even stated that 'khari' came from
'khara'i which meant standing erect. In this context, B.S. Pandit
identified the word 'thath' with an erection." In his work on Khari
Boli, Lalit Mohan Awasthi argues that behind the name Khari Boli
there was a clear reflection of bourgeois culture, its sense of pride and
superiority. Simultaneously, it was a masculine language, a tongue
which stood straight and upright." Ramnaresh Tripathi, while writ-
ing a satire on Khari Boli, said:
T h e thing is that in the poetry of Khari Boli all works are done while
standing, like to rise up, to run, to walk, to beat, to break, to crack, to
climb the height of success, to move forward, etc. There are no moods
like separation, beauty, laughter, pain, peace or wonder. There is a domi-
nation ofjust the four moods, of bravery, fearsomeness, rage and ugliness.
There is thus no scope in it to sit or lie down. In Khari Boli there is a
description of all things standing erect, hence its
This was a time when Khari Boli was still evolving and there was
constant search for new names and words. It was emphasised that it
would be better for such words to be in the masculine gender. Thus,
67 Quoted in King, One Language, p. 36.
" 81 11514.
6"LJsha Mathur, Khari Boli Vikm ke Arambhik Charan (Allahabad, 1990);
Mishra, Khariboli, p. 1.
70 Mishra, Khariboli, p. 5.
7 1 Quoted in Mishra, Khariboli, pp. 5-6.
72 Awasthi, Khari, pp. 5 - 6 .
73 Quoted in Mishra, Khariboli, p. 245.
 The Icon of the Mother / 2 13
in the Fifth Hindi Sahitya Sammelan at Lucknow it was argued that
though it was important to be aware of the masculine and feminine
gender in the Hindi language, it was equally crucial to use the
masculine gender in cases of doubt.
If new words are spoken in the feminine gender, then the masculinity of
our speech unnecessarily gets reduced and words signifying femininity get
increased. Ifthis continues then Hindi will soon be reduced to a language
ofwomen. In Lucknow words like motor and kamiz are used in the femi-
nine gender, which shows the delicate nature of people. However, the
days are past when delicacy was the identification of rich people . . . New
words . . . must be spoken in the masculine gender now.'"

Khari Boli thus introduced a symbolic order whereby the nation

was to be distinguished from a past in which the language of the erotic
and feminine was Braj. When the Malviya family started Abhyudaya
at Allahabad, which was to become the leading vernacular Hindi
newspaper of the time, Madan Mohan Malaviya justified its name by
saying that all the monthly magazines coming out at that time, such
as Sarmwati, Madhuri, Manomza, Prema and Prabha, had feminine
names. If one wanted to convey a new message, then a newspaper or
magazine had to choose a name suffused with manly strength and vir-
ilit~.'~
The use of gender icons and symbols in language debates revealed
an ambiguity and a paradox. While Hindi was identified as a mother
or a wife-and in that sense such language itself was female-the
spoken and written language had to be masculine. The gendering of
language thus used multiple arguments in different contexts, using
the female both to endorse and condemn, to appropriate and reject.

111. T h e Cow as Mother

The cow emerged as an enormously potent and sacred symbol of the
Hindu nation in our period and region: She had the potential to be
74 Pancham Hindi Sahirya Sarnmelan, Part I (Lucknow, 1928, 2nd edn),
p. 31.
75 Interview with Kshem Chandra Sumen by Hari Dev Sharma on 17 August
1971, Oral History Transcript, no. 210 (NMML).
2 14 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
represented as the mother of all Hindus, and of a Hindu identity and
nationality requiring protection from non-Hindus. The Cow-Protec-
tion Movement in north India between 1880 and 1920 has been
competently and extensively studied, with an-emphasis on the violent
agitations and riots around it, as well as its organisational aspects.76
It has been noted that there were two distinct phases in the agitation,
an earlier urban phase and a later rural ~ampaign.~' Further, it in-
volved astruggle not only over a 'sacred symbol' but also,.locally,over
'sacred spaces', and over occasions that were used to highlight the
issue.78
More recently there have been comments on the cow as the mother
of the Hindu nation, and links between the Hindu love for mother
cow, the protection of her body in brahmanical rituals, the cow
as a nurturing mother goddess, and the usefulness of her products.79
Locally ~roducedmass visual images played a crucial role in the

'' Anand A. Yang, 'Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Commun-
ity Mobilisation in the "Anti-Cow Killingn Riot of 1893', Comparative Studies
in Society and History, 2 2 , 4 (October 1980), pp. 576-96; Peter G. Robb, 'Offi-
cials and Non-officials as Leaders in Political Agitations: Shahabad 1917 and
Other Conspiracies', in B.N. Pandey (ed.), Leadership in South Asia (New Delhi,
1977), pp. 179-210; Peter Robb, 'The Challenge of Gau Mata: British Policy
and Religious Change in India, 1880-1916', MAS, 20, 2 (1986); G. Pandey,
'Rallying Round the Cow: Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpuri Region, c. 1888-
1917', in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern StudiesII: Writingson SouthAsian History
and Society (Delhi, 1983), pp. 60-129; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of
Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi, 1990), pp. 162-200; Sandria B.
Freitag, Colkctive Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of
Communalism in North India (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 148-74.
77 Sandria B. Freitag, 'Religious Rites and Riots: From Community Identity
to Communalism in North India, 1870-19401, PhD thesis (University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, 1980), pp. 126, 139.
78 Yang, 'Sacred', pp. 582-7.
79 Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India
(Berkeley, 1994), pp. 86-99. His treatment is effective in highlighting the gend-
ered imagery of the cow in general terms. Nevertheless, in the specific context
of the cow-protection movpments ofthis period, previous associations of the cow
with mother were continuously shifted or elaborated on.
 The Icon of the Mother / 2 15
organisation as well as the ideology of the cow-protection agitatiom80
In these the body of the cow was invested with the divine and she
herself became a proto-nation. This new space of the cow-nation em-
bodied a Hindu cosmology, with the sacred inscribed on her body.8'
In UP, as elsewhere, new sabhas and gaushalas sprang up in the
late nineteenth century, giving the movement a much more system-
atic form. Preachers and emissaries came to have a much wider influ-
ence. Improved communication and increases in the dissemination
of news gave a boost to the m ~ v e m e n t . ~The
' availability of print
made it easier to publish posters, distribute handbills, print poems,
sing bhajans and perform plays in praise of mother A news-
paper entitled Gausewak was regularly published at Banaras from the
1890s; another called Gaudhama Prakash was issued monthly at
Farrukhabad. A play in Hindi called Bharat-dimdima Natak, pub-
lished at Lucknow with copies sold at railway book-stalls, highlighted
the grievous condition of India owing to c ~ w - s l a u ~ h t ePictures
r . ~ ~ of
the cow were circulated and exhibited at meetings. One depicted a
cow in the act of being slaughtered by three Muslim butchers and was
titled 'The Present State'. Another exhibited a cow with every part
of her body made up of groups of Hindu deities and holy personages.
A calfwas at her udder and a woman sat before the calfholding a bowl,

Christopher Pinney, 'The Nation (Un)Pictured? Chrom~lithograph~ and

"Popular" Politics in India, 1878-1995', Criticallnquiry, 23 (Summer, 1997),
pp. 841-7; idem, 'Indian Magical Realism: Notes on Popular Visual Culture',
in Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash and Susie Tharu (eds), Subaltern Studies X
(Delhi, 1999), pp. 221-4, 230-3.
81 Pinney, 'Nation', pp. 841-7.
82 210-13 and 2 K.W.IDecember 1893, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
83 A number of handbills and pamphlets of this kind were published and
distributed in UP. Arnbika Dutt Vyas, Gausankat Drama, trans. Shiv Nandan
Sahai (Bankipore, 1886); Swami Alaram Sanyasi, Bhajan Gauraksha Updpsh
Manjari (Prayag, 1892); Badri Narayan, Bhajan ' Gauraksha Gopal Darpan
(Lucknow, 1917); Rameshwar Sharma, Gauraksha Pracbar Natak (Moradabad,
1919); Kriparam Mishra 'Manhar', Gauraksha Prakash (Moradabad, 1925);
Ramsharan, Hindu ki Gai (Banaras, 1927).
210-13 and 2 K.W./December 1893, Public, A, Home Deptt (NN).'
2 16 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
waiting her turn. The woman was labelled 'The Hindu'. Behind the
cow was a representation of Krishna labelled 'Dharmraj'. In front, a
monster assailed the cow with a drawn sword, entitled 'Kaliyug,
largely understood as typifying the Muslim community. While ex-
plaining the meaning of the picture, a Hindu remarked:
The Hindu must only take the cow's milk after the calf has been satisfied.
In the 'Dharmraj' of the Satyug no Hindu would kill a cow, but the Kali-
yug is bent upon.killing the cow and exterminating kine. Every man
drinks cow's milk. Just as he, as an infant, has drawn milk from his
mother, so the cow must be regarded as the universal mother, and so is
called 'Gao Mata'. It is matricide to kill a cow. Nay more, for as all the
gods dwell in the cow, to kill a cow is to insult every Hindu.85
The cow as universal mother has long had an emotional and reli-
gious appeal for Hindus and is associated with ritual. She is Karnadhenu
(the goddess who fulfills every wish) and Lakshmi (symbol of wealth
and good fortune).86In suggesting the killing of a cow was matricide,
the movement reached deeply into the Hindu psyche.87In appeals to
ban cow-killing at places like Mathura and Ayodhya, religious and
emotional arguments were extensively deployed. Mathura was seen
as the birthplace of Krishna, who was identified as Keeper and Pro-
tector of However, in the colonial context the supposed de-
cline of the cow populatiom was linked to a decline in the physical
strength of Hindus and to increasing child mortality, which were
equated with the collapse of the nation in Kaliyug. Kriparam Mishra,
general secretary of the Hindu Sabha and of the Garhwal Radha-
Krishna Gaushala, wrote: 'Today our mother cow is being slain by
the infidels in innumerable numbers. . . . Our helplessness, mental
weakness and physical impotence is explicitly telling us that among
the many reasons for such changes, the main one is the decline of cow
wealth.I8!'
" Ibid., also mentioned in 309-414lJanuary 1894, Public, B, Home Deptt
(NAI).
86 Veer, Religious, p. 87.
Pandey, Construction, p. 180.
100-21May 1910, A, Home Poll (NAI); 7 1-3IJanuary 1912, A, Home Poll
(NAI); Pioneer, 31 October 1913; 511011938, Home Poll (NAI).
89 Manhar, Gauraksha, p. G.
 The Icon of the Mother 1 21 7
The cow was now much more directly linked with building a
strong nation, a nation of Hindu men who had grown weak and poor
from lack of milk and ghee. For a body of healthy sons, cows were
essential. It was imperative that cows thrived, not so much for
themselves as for the nation.90The material body of the mother cow
was the Hindu nation: she was the benevolent mother whose womb
could provide a home to all. Like a mother, she gave her sons milk,
making them stronger. This message was strengthened by images dep-
icting a woman milking the cow and the woman being transformed
into Yashoda.
This was not the only image associated with the cow. In another,
the Hindu goddess Ashtabhuja Devi was depicted riding a lion and
furiously attacking two butchers who had just decapitated a cow.
Matchboxes with this picture were in circulation in UP as well, with
the government occasionally debating if they should be pro~cribed.~'
The image of the cow could thus evoke an aggressive and gendered
image: the cow now embodied and had been reincarnated as a fero-
cious goddess. Myths were reinvented and reinterpreted in such ima-
ges, aiding Hindu nationalist aspirations. The cow was directly linked
to the well being of the nation.
This strong association between the Hindu nation and the cow
could be strengthened by giving it a concrete and physical base via
gender. The distressed nation had to be provided physical power.
This may explain why petitions, memoranda and appeals submitted
to the government by various gaurakshini sabhas, gaushala societies,
and Hindu individuals and groups often relied on hard economic
'facts'. The usefulness of the mother cow in straightforward ways-
giving milk, ghee and energy-was emphasised. A memorial of one
Parmanand Sadhu of hshikesh, ~ e h r a d u n which
, claimed to be
signed by five lakh people, contained elaborate statistics showing that
the cow could in one day provide food for 436,108 people.92 (This
was considerably better than Jesus had managed with loaves and fish
in the analogous New Testament stdry of his famous prowess via
90 Prayagnarayan Tiwari, 'Gau Mata', Adarsh Hindu, 5, 1 (May 1926), p. 32.
8G104lFebruary 1912, B, Home Poll (NAI); 7-131May 1912, B, Home
Poll (NAI); 9lDecember 1913, Deposit, Home Poll (NAI).
" 1-41December 1913, A, Home Poll (NAI).
2 18 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
miracles.) A Bill 'to provide for protection and improvement of milch
and Agricultural Cattle' was drafted by one Girdharilal Agarwal.
Complicated statistics were deployed to highlight the present pathetic
state of kine: 'this unsatisfactory state of things both as regards the
number and quality of cattle has led to an abnormal rise in the price
of cattle, crops, milk and milk products on the one hand, and on the
ocher to the poor physique of many within the p ~ p u l a t i o n . ' ~ ~
Another aspect of this commercial appeal was that it could become
yet another way to pursue the economic boycott of Muslims and
make Hindus more . prosperous.
-
Muslims had been condemned ear-
lier in the name of the Gau Mata; now they had to be beaten economi-
cally. Handbills and posters were distributed to this effect. One hand-
bill, printed at Kashi and later banned, appealed to Hindu 'brothers'
and said if they really wanted to protect their Gau Mata from gau-
bhahhak Muslim mlecchas, then they must take an oath before God
that they would boycott Muslim shops.94A similar handbill was titled
'Message from Mother-Cow: For the Protection of the Cow, Buy
Every Item from Hindus Alone'.95 Both handbills asked that they not
only be read but also narrated to others. In most of the villages of
Faizabad, letters were circulated claiming that an akashvani had warn-
ed not to give charity to Muslims, not to sell them cattle, and to have
no dealings with them.96Emotional appeal and economic logic com-
bined in this movement.
This dual appeal was also visible elsewhere. The language of cow
protection could transcend barriers, as well as stereotypes of modes
of communication and language. The movement could with equal
ease adopt an attacking, aggressive, masculine language on the one
hand, and on the other take on the mode of 'soft' poems, bhajans,
requests and tears, 'feminising' its appeal and address:

93 78611922, Home Poll (NAI).

94 Gopal Das, Sri Ayodhyaji ki Sacchi Yatra (Kashi, 1933?). Such derogatory
terms were constantly used against Muslims, especially in cow-protection pro-
paganda.
95 Ayodhya Das, Gaumata ka Sandesh: Gauraksharth Harek Vastu Hinduon se
hi Kharidzjv (Kashi, 1933?).
96 I-41December 1913, A, Home Poll (NAI).
 The Icon of the Mother 1 2 19
Aansoon baha rahi hain, dukhia ho hat gaiya.
Sansar paalti hain, bharat ki hain ye maiya.
(The cows are shedding tears of sadness. They nourish the world, they
are the mother of India.97)

At che same time, the appeals for the protection of the cow were
addressed by and to Hindu men, largely of the upper castes, and later
extended to intermediate castes, especially the Yadavs. The interme-
diate castes manoeuvred the movement to fulfil their own caste
dynamics and needs. A significant feature of the movement was that
it led to an entente benveen publicists of the Arya Samaj, Sanatan
Dharma sabhas, and other Hindu bodies. Its leaders were mostly
Brahmin officials, schoolmasters or pleaders, and its main adherents
in 1893-4 were the Hindu trading and banking classes, with several
prominent rajas giving support.98Over 19 10-1 3 the leading enthu-
siasts of the movement in U P were Suraj Parshad, a Brahmin of
Kanpur; Awadh Behari Lal, a Bania of Mainpuri; Gauri Shankar of
Allahabad; Maheshanand of Moradabad; Swami Atmanand of Jalaun;
and Bhagwan Das of Haridwar. All of them gave extensive lectures
and distributed pamphlets and booklet^.'^ 'Snowball letters', using
gendered imagery, became a significant feature of the propaganda.
The sin of incest was constantly evoked in many of the patias addres-
sed to men.'OOThecow as mother was not so useful in her own right
but her utility rested precisely in producing a body of brave and strong
men who could build and defend the nation."' Thus the responsi-
bility for her protection also rested on them:
Prati varsh ghat rahi hain, kuch hain bachi bachai.
Kyon dhyan ho na dete? hokar kathor bhaiya.
(Every year they decrease and only a few are left. Brothers why don't you
pay attention to them and become strict?'02)

" Pushkar, Hindu, p. 17. Also see Narayan, Bhajan, pp. 7, 9, 28.
98 309-414/January 1894, Public, 3,Home Deptt (NAI).
" IlllDecember 1913, A, Home Poll (NAI).
loo Pandey, Communalism, p. 185.
lo' Achalram Maharaj, Hindu DharmaRahasya(Agra, 1939,2ndedn),p. 255.
'02 Pushkar, Hindu, p. 17.
220 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Another said:
Mard unhi ko janen hum jo rakshak hain gau mata ke.
(We consider as men only those who are protectors of mother cow.Io3)

The cow was frequently personified and her condition lamented;

the Aryan race was called to come to her protection, as sons must arise
in defence of their mother.'04 At the same time, these strong men were
not identified with all Hindus. It was emphasised that, for the protec-
tion of Gau Mata, each household had every day to contribute from
its food supply one chutki, equivalent to one paise, per member, and
that the eating of food without setting apart this chutki was an offence
equal to that of eating a cow's flesh. The very same rules also stated
no cowwas to be sold to a Chamar, Nat or Banjara, and that a Chamar
was not to be employed to look after cows.'05 This was an indicator
of the movement's artificiality, in as much as it made an implicit divi-
sion between Hindus. But it was also perhaps another reason for the
potency of the symbol of Gau Mata, which could divert attention
from such divisions on the ground.
Cow images were also important because of the cow's association
with domesticity. She was seen as a foster-mother, as an integral part
of India's family.'06 Like the woman at home, the cow was a domestic
animal; the woman at home and the domestic cow were mother fig-
ures. Like women's breasts, cow udders were meant to provide nour-
ishment and livelihood. Milk flowed from both, both signified a
domestic space in which invasion and penetration were intolerable.
In fact the cow was even better than the woman: she did not need
to think, speak, argue or write, and accepted her domestic status with-
out protest. The cow's dumbness and muteness were repeatedly em-
phasised: they made her body even more sacred than that of the real

lo3 Sanyasi, Bhajan, p. 8.

Io4 Jagatnarayan, 'Gaupukar', Gaudharma Prakarh. 1, 5 (December 1886),
pp. 2-6. This was a monthly magazine published by Haridwar Gaurakshini
Sabha.
' O 5 210-13 and 2 K.W.1December 1893, Public, A, Home Deptt (NAI).
Io6 309-414lJanuary 1894, Public, B, Home Deptt (NAI).
 The Icon of the Mother / 221
mother.lo7She could be possessed and protected. The British and the
Muslims, it was said, had not only increased the suffering of the
Hindu people, and invaded their private space, but had even dispos-
sessed them of their chiefwealth, the cow. The cow-protection move-
ment thrived on this crisis-in family and domestic space, in the
health and well being of the nation. Mother cow symbolised their sor-
rows and hopes and gave a sanctity to family, community and nation.

In UP, as in many places elsewhere, icons of motherhood were re-

thought and reinvented. The nation's map, the Hindi language and
the cow all became issues in their own right, performing separate yet
converging functions. The mother metaphor gave them all a common
underlying meaning and was used to send distinct yet socially similar
messages. Bharat Mata took the shape of a geographical genealogy.
Similarly, matri bhasha in the form of Khari Boli Hindi used the
metaphor of origin and nurture through the emotional icon of
mother, wife and daughter even as it critiqued other tongues as effe-
minate. Gau Mata's symbolism was bolstered by emotional appeals
and intensified by economic arguments in favour of a strong nation
of Hindu men. 'Mother', applied in different situations and even in
areas where it was not explicitly needed, reinforced the symbolic and
actual roles of women in the construction of a Hindu nationalist
identity.

'07 Poem o n the cover of Gaudhama Prakash, 1 , 5 (December 1886); 71-731

January 1912, A, H o m e Poll (NAI).
H aving largely focused on how notions of obscenity and sexuality,
and the domestic, social and public spaces of women were re-
worked in the writings of Hindu publicists, we now turn to identity
politics and the making of the 'Other': i.e. the relationship between
Hindu identity, gender, and constructions of the Muslim male.
With increasing assertions of religious community identity, espe-
cially in the context of the shuddhi and sangathan movements of the
1920s, gender became an important means of defining and contrib-
uting to sharper divisions between Hindus and Muslims. There were
attempts to construct a full-bodied masculine Hindu male through
these movements, the man who could at once strengthen commun-
ity identity and undertake a militant nationalist struggle. The Hindu
woman became a resource for this aggressive Hindu chauvinism. At
times she was even called upon to participate in the communal con-
flict and take on a masculine image in defence of community honour.
Hindu publicists used the figure of the victimised and the abducted
Hindu woman to promote an identity agenda, emphasising fear of
a common 'enemy'.' This period saw an orchestrated campaign

Abduction ofwomen has mostly been highlighted in the context ofpartition.

See IGtu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India?
Partilion (Delhi, 1 998); Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voicesfroin
the I'rrrrition ofIndia (New Delhi, 1998). There are few works which refer to an
earlier historical context. See P.K. Datta, ' "Dying Hindus": Production of
Hindu Communal Common Sense in Early Twentieth Century Bengal', EPI15:
28, 25 (19 June 1993), pp. 1305-17; idem, ' "Abductions" and the Constella-
tion of a Hindu Communal Bloc in Bengal of the 1920s1, SH, 14, 1 (1998),
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 223
through several media, and the circulation of many stories by a large
section of Hindu communalists about abductions of Hindu women
by Muslim goondas. Many Hindus came to perceive abductions as
a characteristic Muslim activity. This was counterposed to the heroic
Hindu male who wooed the Muslim woman with romance, not
abduction. 'Abductions' by Muslims became one of the main deter-
minants of Hindu identity and consciousness, providing Hindu
publicists with a common reference point, significant for larger mob-
ilisation. Campaigns and writings on abductions offered a section of
Hindus a basis of information and interpretation of their daily experi-
ences while underscoring their sense of a Hindu identity.
While examining the general background ofshuddhi and sangathan,
we shall see how masculinity became an important motif in the move-
ments. Hindu men and women were defined first and foremost as
members of their community and then invested with 'masculine'
ideals to uphold their community honour. Fear and anger mobilised
against the Muslim male helped particularly in pushing, at certain
moments, Hindu patriarchal and caste exclusivities to the peripheries.
Threats of the abduction of women provided an emotional chord to
forge abstract unities. Varied methods were adopted by Hindu pub-
licists to build campaigns around abductions.

I. From Malabar to Malkanas: T h e Shuddhi

and Sangathan Movements
In the immediate wake of the decline of Non-cooperation and Khila-
fat, the campaign to u n i Hindus
~ gained a new urgency in UP, be-
coming more aggressive and influential.' As part of their community

pp. 37-88; Papiya Ghosh, 'The Virile and the Chaste in Community and Nation
Making: Bihar 1920s to 1940s', Social Scientist, 22, 1-2 (January-February
1994), pp. 80-94; Charu Gupta, 'Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Feminin-
ity: Shuddhi and Sangathan Movements in UP in the 1920s1,EPK 33, 13 (28
March 1998), pp. 727-35.
'There had been attempts at unifying the Hindu community in the late
nineteenth century by the Arya Samaj, the Hindu Sarnaj of Allahabad, the
Sanatana Dharma Mahamandal and the Sanatan Dharma Sabha. People like
Bharatendu Harishchandra and Madan Mohan Malaviya had declared the need
to rejuvenate Hinduism. See C.A. Bayly, LocalRoots oflndian Politics: Allahabad
224 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
and nation-making rhetoric, theArya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha
launched a programme of shuddhi and sangathan on a large scale in
1923. The communal character of these movements has been dis-
c ~ s s e dbut
, ~ little note has been taken of their gendered messages. The
campaign against Muslims left bitter legacies: sections of Muslims
grew more aggressive and launched tanzim and tabligh, which aggra-
vated the s i t ~ a t i o n . ~
The reasons for the growing movement of Hindu reformist, reli-
gious and communal organisations in this period are ~ a r i e d The .~
wider context was constituted in part by the recognition of commu-
nal representation in the political and constitutional reforms intro-
duced by the British government after World War I. More important,
Hindu publicists saw in the Khilafat Movement and Moplah revolts
the threat of a thoroughly united, well organised and militant Muslim
population poised to wipe out Hindus and their ~ u l t u r eT. ~o add to
this, asection ofthe Congress leadership in UP, led by Madan Mohan
Malaviya and actively supported by Swami Shraddhanand, adopted

1880-1920(0xford, 1975), pp. 1 0 4 1 7 , 214-17; Sandria B. Freitag, Colkctive

Action and Cornmunip: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in
North India (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 208-9. However, at this time they became
much more strident.
R K. G hai, Shuddhi Movement in India: A Study of its Socio-political Dimen-
sions (Delhi, 1990); J.F. Seunarine, Reconversion to Hinduism through Shuddhi
(Madras, 1977); Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dhann: Hindu Consciousness in
Nineteenth-Century Punjab (Berkeley, 1976); Nandini Gooptu, 'The Political
Cultureofthe Urban Poor', pp. 131-5; Frietag, Collective,pp. 230-41; Gyanendra
Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in UP, pp. 115-1 7.
* Pandey, Ascenhncy, pp. 128-35; 6/IX/1924, Home Poll (NAI); 15011934,
Home Poll (NAI).
Richard Gordon, 'The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Cong-
ress, 1915 to 1926', MAS, 9, 2 (1975), pp. 145-203, highlights the growing
power of the Hindu Mahasabha and to some extent of the Arya Samaj in UP
at this time.
Gyanendra Pandey, 'Hindus and Others: The Militant Hindu Construc-
tion', EPU;: 26, 52 (28 December 1991), p. 2998; T.C.A. Raghavan, 'Origins
and Development of Hindu Mahasabha Ideology: The Call 0fV.D. Savarkar and
Bhai Parmanand', E P X 18, 5 (9 April 1983), pp. 595-9.
 'Us'and 'Them' I 2 2 5
a Hindu rhetoric to oppose the growing power of the Swarajists. In
our region, Hindu publicists and the Congress had much in com-
mon. T o a large extent, the Hindu Mahasabha in UP was the creation
of educated 'middle class' leaders of the cities of eastern UP, the same
men who had been pioneers of the Congress.' Thus the sense of reli-
gious, caste and community identity was far more widespread and
more keenly marked than ever before. There was a spate of Hindu-
Muslim riots from 1923 onwards. According to British commenta-
tors, UP witnessed more riots in this period than any other province
of India.' The Hindu Mahasabha and other sectarian organisations
now attained new importance and conversions were challenged in an
organised manner through sangathan and ~ h u d d h i The . ~ political
energies of the Hindu reform movement were harnessed for a more
militant public expression.
The Moplah rebellion,1° especially, gave urgency to Hindu orga-
nisationsl1 and an opportunity to argue for con~olidation.'~ The full
horror of the rebellion was made immediate by the distribution of
' Gordon, 'Hindu', p. 154. Sometimes Hindu Mahasabha sessions were held
along with those of Congress, in the same pandal: Interview with Ganpat Rai
by S.L. Manchanda on 7 July 1974, Oral History Transcript, no. 330, pp. 9,
32 (NMML).
' 411927, Home Poll (NAI).
' Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, pp. 233-5; Frei-
tag, Colkctive, pp. 220-48.
''The rebellion is well documented. See R.H. Hitchcock, Peasant Revolt in
Malabar: A History of the Mala6ar Rebellion, 1921 (1925, rpt. New Delhi, 1983);
K.N. Panikkar, Against Lordandstate: Religion andPeasant Uprisings in Makzbar
I8361921 (Delhi, 1989); idem (ed.), Peasant Protests and Revolts in Makzbar
(New Delhi, 1990).
' I Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political
Mobilisation in India (Delhi, 1982), p. 167; Sitaram Chaturvedi, Madan Mohan
Makzviya (Delhi, 1972), p. 42; Harald Fischer-Tine, "'Kindly Elders of the
Hindu Biradri": The Arya Samaj's Struggle for Influence and its Effect on
Hindu-Muslim Relations, 1880-1925', in Antony .Copley (ed.), Gurus and
Their Fo [lowers: New Religious Reform Movements in ColonialIndia (New Delhi,
2000), pp. 1 1 6 2 0 .
I * Bhai Parmanand, Hindu Sangathan (Lahore, 1936), p. 151; File 12, B.S.
Moonje Papers (NMML).
226 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
newsreels in the commercial cinema.13Stories of the forcible conver-
sion, rape and abduction of Hindu women by Moplahs were given
particular p r ~ m i n e n c e .In
' ~ UP a large number of tracts emerged, giv-
ing vivid descriptions ofwhat had supposedly happened in Malabar. l5
This orchestrated campaign revealed that Hindu organisations sought
to use the revolts for wider political mobilisation of an all-India char-
acter. Swami Shraddhanand seized this opportunity to launch the
shuddhi campaign in UP to reclaim 'victims' and protect the 'faith-
fu1'.l6 Though the movement had older origins, a note prepared by
the Criminal Investigation Department stated that 'its application to
mass rather than individual conversion gave it a special prominence'
in 1923." The Arya Samaj made a determined bid to convert the
Muslim Malkana Rajputs of Western UP to Hinduism.I8 In an Arya
Sarnajist tract, written as if by a Malkana, conversations were shown
between two Malkana Rajputs and then between a maulvi and a
Malkana:
Hum shikha sutra ke dhari hain, kshatriya dwijati kehlute hain,
hum gau brahman ke sevak hain, hum duniya ko dikhlute hain. . . .
Shuctdhi karwane se apni jo koi is dam chukega,
wah bhrasht hamesha bana rahe, sansar usi ko thukega.
l3 Leader, 7 September 1923.
l4 156111/1924, Home Poll (NAI), p. 4.
I5A series of thin tracts written by Bishan Sharma, and called Makzbar ka
Drithya No. I : Drin Sankalp fir, Makzbar ka Drishya No. 2: Satyawati Vimkz
ki Pukarand Malabar ka Drithya No. 3: Bholc Swami ka Dwht Naukarwere pub-
lished by a Chuttanlal Swami from Meerut in 1923, and distributed free in UP.
Also mentioned in SPBR, June 1923. Another popular tract was Satyavrat
Sharma (pub.), Malabnr aur Arya Samaj (Agra, 1923,3rd edn, 2000 copies). At
one place it described how a Hindu woman of the region, who had been con-
verted to Islam, 'tore apart her Moplah clothes and adorned the Hindu clothes'
when the Arya Samajists reached there (p. 52), clothing having become ofcourse
a sign of identity.
l 6 Though Arya Samaj had stronger roots in Punjab, the shuddhi movement
was more effective in UP, 14011925, Home Poll (NAI).
" 14011925, Home Poll (NAI).
IsThe Malkanas were scattered through a large number of villages in the
Mathura, Agra, Etah and Mainpuri districts of UP. Nearly all of them reported
themselves to be Muslims in the decennial census of 191 1: CensusofIndia, 1911,
UP, Vol. XI/, Part I (Allahabad, 1912), p. 118.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 227
(We bear the top-knot and the sacred thread, we are known as twice-born
Kshatriyas. W e show the world that we are the devotees of cows and Brah-
mins. Whoever doesn't perform shuddhi this time will always remain cor-
rupt and the world will condemn him.19)
Another tract talked of how our 'dear Malkanas' had been separated
from us by 'unfair means'.20One poem went:
Pyare bhai hain malkane,
uchh vansh ke hain ujiyare,
Arjun, Bhim, Karan ke pyare.
(Malkanas are our dear brothers. Luminaries of high birth, they are dear
to Arjun, Bhim and Karan.")
The efforts of the Arya Samaj were facilitated by various resolu-
tions of orthodox Hindu groups. In August 1922 the Kshatriya Upa-
karini Mahasabha, an association for inter-clan unity among Rajputs,
had decided at Kashi to reconvert all Rajputs who had earlier been
converted to Islam.22The relationship between the Arya Samaj and
the Kshatriya Upkarini Mahasabha became more intimate in UP. An
Arya Samajist wrote:
Shubh ghari main sun raha, dhanya shubh ghari adj,
Kthatriya Mahasabha nein rakhi kul ki hj.
(This is a moment ofjoy. T h e Kshatriya Mahasabha has kept the honour
of the Hindu family.23)
The Maharaja of Darbhanga and learned pandits of Banaras, speaking
in the name of the orthodox Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, gave their
approval to the reclanlation of the Malkana Rajputs. The movement
grew as more Hindu bodies like the Gujar Conference passed reso-
lutions in support o f s h ~ d d h iIn
. ~1923
~ the Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi
l9 Rarnswarup Sharrna, Malkanon ki Pukar (Agra, 1924).
*'Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya (ed.), Humare Bichure Bhai (Prayag, 1923,l lakh
copies printed till date), pp. 3-12.
Ganeshbaksh Singh (comp.), Krhatriya Nauyuuak (Awadh, 1926).
l 2Swami Chidananda Sanyasi (Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha), Shuddtli
I/yavactha (Delhi, 1928), pp.12-13.
23 Sharrna, Malkanon.
'* J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes (Delhi, 1981),
p. 134.
228 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Sabha was founded with its headquarters at Agra.25Swami Shraddha-
nand became its president.26 The Hindu Mahasabha also decided to
support shuddhi in its Banaras session held in August 1923, presided
by Madan Mohan Malaviya.*' Some of the decisions taken at this
meeting were important: Samaj Sewak Dals should be formed to en-
courage physical culture amongst the Hindus; the advancement of
sangathan is necessary for the progress of the community; and shuddhi
should be recognised and extended to an agreement that all converts,
of whatever caste, be admitted to their former caste. Hindu Raksha
Mandals were to be activated to organise local bodies to protect
Hindu interests in communal riots.28The most important outcome
of the Banaras session was that the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan
Dharma movement sank their differences in a common programme
ofshuddhi, particularly in UP. The high emphasis of the Hindu pub-
licists upon UP can be gauged from the fact that in this annual session
of the Hindu Mahasabha, 56.7 percent of the delegates came from
UP.29 Its rural base also swelled considerably.30
However, though the orthodox Hindu groups had accepted shuddhi
in principle, there were strong caste tensions in the movement. It was
reported in 1923 that, at Saharanpur, feelings were embittered as a
result of Arya Samajist efforts to bring Chamars within the pale of
orthodox Hinduism. In the same year, the local Rajputs of Mainpuri
refused to admit converted Malkanas into full br~therhood.~' In a
subsequent meeting of the Mahasabha, held at the Kumbh Mela in
Allahabad in January 1924, it was stated that under the Sanatan
Dharma and shastras, and on account of public propriety, the lower

25 Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha ka Sankshipt Itihas tatha fiuran: 1923-50

(New Delhi, n.d.); Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour ofthe Dying
Race (n.p., 1926), p. 124.
26 Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha, Pratham Varshik Report (Agra, 1923),
pp. 1-2.
27 14011925, Home Poll (NAI).
28 19811924, Home Poll (NAI); 14011'925, Home Poll (NAI).
29 Gordon, 'Hindu', p. 174.
30 Ibid., p. 179.
31 25lMay 1923, Home Poll (NAI).
 'Us'and 'Them' / 229
castes were not entitled to wear the sacred thread, to learn the Vedas,
and to inter-dine. It was also affirmed that any non-Hindu was wel-
come to enter the Hindu fold, but he could not be taken into any
specific c a ~ t e . 3However,
~ we will see that when it came to questions
of the Hindu woman's chastity and honour, or constructions ofMus-
lim lustfulness, a superficial unanimity was swiftly established.
The campaign developed with remarkable speed and spread rap-
idly from Agra to Mathura and Aligarh and neighbouring districts.
By May the shuddhi enthusiasts claimed no less than 18,000 converts
in Agra and its neighbourhood.33 Another government record stated:
'Swami Shraddhanand and his lieutenants threw themselves into the
struggle with great zeal to bring back the Muslims in Agra to the fold
of Hindu religion. . . as many as 300 converts had been obtained
from one village alone.'34 More than 30,000 Malkana Rajputs were
stated to have been converted by the end of 1923, and in 1927 it was
reported that more than 1,63,000 Malkanas had entered the Hindu
fold.35
Gandhi w'as quite critical of the movement; he believed it would
lead to a great communal division.36It has also been said that the con-
versions stressed, essentially, the giving up of certain Islamic customs
such as the burial of the dead, nikah, visiting dargahs, and circumci-
sion, rather than the imparting of Hindu religious knowledge to new
converts. The movement was motivated much less by the desire to
promote spirituality and religious values than by strong anti-Muslim
passion.37

32 66lVI11924, Home Poll (NAI); Satish Kumar Sharma, 'Shuddhi: A Case

Study of Role of a Religious Movement in the Status Improvement of Untough-
ables', Indian Journal of Social Research, 24, 1 (April 1983), pp. 70-7.
33 66lVI11924, Home Poll (NAI), p. 10.
34 61IXl1924, Home Poll (NAI), p. 17.
35 Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, Arya Samaj (Mathura, 1924); Yoginder Sikand
and Manjari Katju, 'Mass Conversions to Hinduism among Indian Muslims',
EPK 29, 34 (20 August 1994), pp. 2214-1 8.
36M.K. Gandhi, Communal Unity (Ahmedabad, 1949), pp. 5 6 7 .
37 Sikand and Katju, 'Mass', p. 221 5.
230 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

11. Evoking Hindu Male Prowess, Community

and Nation
Shuddhi and sangathan derived one of their main strengths by cons-
tantly engaging with notions of Hindu m a s ~ u l i n i t y The. ~ ~ British
influence on this emphasis on masculinity cannot be denied,3' but
there were also versions of gender identity, negotiated and contested
from within, by which ideas of the Hindu past and masculine images
were reshaped by a section of Hindus themselves. They were a pro-
duct of the changing dynamics of community politics at this period,
wherein new definitions of Hinduism were being worked out and
modified in combination with and in reaction to pre-colonial legacies
and colonial influences. There had been earlier attempts to emphasise
the martial aspects ofHinduism, but now they became more effective.
Hindu publicists bemoaned the pathetic state of Hindus, who
were portrayed as living carcasses and as cowardly, weak and lazy.40
The Hindu male body had been mutilated, stripped of its traditional
martial activities by colonial efforts at pacification and demilitarisation.
This was contrasted to a mythical past of Hindu masculinity, espe-
cially of brave and strong Rajputs and Marathas. Certain legends and
histories became charged with contemporary political significance,
appropriated for the creation of a new narrati~e.~' These then became

" Masculinity has received increasing academic attention in recent years. For
example, see Clara A. Lees, Thelma S. Fenster and Jo Ann McNamara, Medieval
Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Miah% Ages (London, 1994); Harry Brod,
Theorising Masculinities (London, 1994); Peter Middleton, The Inward Gaze:
Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture (London, 1992); J.A. Mangan
and J. Walvin (eds), Manliness andMorafity:Mid& C h s Masculinity in Britain
and America, 1800-1740 (Manchester, 1987); R.W. Connell, Masculinities
(Cambridge, 1995); David Jackson, Unmmking Masculinity (London, 1990).
39 See Chapter 2.
Varrman, NNR, 15 September 1923; Chandkaran Sharda, 'Hindu Jati ki
Durdasha ke Karan aur Uske Nivaran ke Upaye', Madhuri, 3, 1, 2 (September
1924), pp. 290-5; Editorial, 'Hindu Manovriti ka Vyapak Svarup', Chmd 6,
1, 5 (March 1928), pp. 546-54; Krishnand, Hinduon Cheto (Agra, 1929),
pp. 11-13.
4 ' Indira Chowdhury Sengupta, The Frail Hero and Virik History. In UP,
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 23 1
received wisdom. A large number of tracts of the early twentieth cen-
tury elaborated Rajput and Maratha tales of re~istance.~'Maharana
Pratap and Shivaji became the leading models of the time.
Shuddhi and sangathan claimed a restoration of that masculinity.
The emphasis on Malkanas was linked to a need felt to draw in Raj-
puts, associated with the culture of physical prowess.43Conversion
from Hinduism represented loss of power, weakness and misery.
Shuddhi represented a reversal of this loss and a restoration of mas-
culine power to the Hindu male.44 Poems highlighted this.

however, the preoccupation with masculinity and Kshatriya status can be noticed
significantly among peasants from the nineteenth century and is not as linked
to the image of effeminate man, as in the case of the Bengali babu.
42 Haridas Manik edited many so-called history books, famous as Manik
Granthmala Series. For example, Chauhani Talwar (Benaras, 1918), which
depicted the early struggles of King Prithviraj of Delhi with the Muslim invaders
of India, or Rajputon ki Bahaduri, Part I and II (Banaras, 1918), which had
chapters like Hardaul Bundela, Rana Sangram Singh, Shivaji ki Durg Vijay and
Haldighati ki Larai. Also see Chunnilal Gaur, Shivaji ki Bavani (Kanpur, 1921).
Tod's Rajasthan became so popular that many Hindi works were inspired by it,
like Maithlisaran Gupt, RangMein Bhanguhansi, 1927,9th edn) and Chaturvedi
Dwarkaprasad Sharrna, Prachin Arya Virtu Arthat Rajputane ke Viron kc Charin
(Banaras, 1927). Alhakhand the great ballad of Rajput chivalry, with its heroes
Alha and Udal, was the property of illiterate minstrels in north India, handed
down from generation to generation. Wandering bards sang it. The tale attracted
attention in this period and many Oriental scholars studied it. At least twenty
versions of it were published. See William Westerfield (partly trans.), The Lay
ofAlha, with an introduction and abstracts of untranslated portions by Sir George
Grierson (London, 1923). The book received great reviews: Indian Antiquary,
53 (1924), pp. 65, 208. Many Hindi versions, in different forms, also appeared:
Banke Lal,]amuna Haran (Etawah, 1927); Rama Naresh Tripathi, A h a (Allaha-
bad, 1933).
43A large number of peasants and caste associations and the urban poor also
invoked kshatriyahood to argue for a higher social status, and to assert their
martial valour. See William R. Pinch, PeasantsandMonks in British India(Delhi,
199G), pp. 81-114; Gooptu, 'Political', pp. 130-74.
44 Seunarine, Reconversion, pp. 85-6. Singh (comp.), Kthatriya, for example,
juxtaposed the ancient glory of Aryas and the medieval praise of Rajputs with
the power of shuddhi.
232 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Ai hinduon utho ab kyon dukh utha rahe ho,
kis shoch mein pa& ho, jo muh ki kha rahe ho.
Sahas vihin hoke bekar ji rahe ho,
shuddhi mein derpyare, nahak lagd rahe ho.
Mardangi tumhari thi kal jahan mein roshan,
aphsos humko api, kayar bana rahe ho.
(Hindus rise, why are you bearing pain. What worries load you down and
defeat you? You live without courage in vain. You are unnecessarily de-
laying shuddhi. Your masculiniry was once praised the world over, but
alas you are making yourself weak today.45)

Another poem stated:

Buzdili chorke maidzn mein ana hoga,

hinduon ab tumhe kuch karke dikhana hoga. . . .
Nasal viron ki ho viratva dikhana hoga.
Vir ho dhir ho bar baat mein zyadz sabse,
sangathan shuddhi 5e bal apna jatana hoga.
(Hindus, you must leave offcowardice and come to the field and dosome-
thing. You are the descendants of the brave and you have to show your
bravery. You are strongest of all, and you have to show your prowess
through shuddhi and ~ a n ~ a t h a n . * ~ )

These movements repeatedly asked Hindus to avenge their humili-

ation, regain courage a n d become warriors o f a proud H i n d u race.
Physical prowess was seen as the remedy for surrender, loss a n d defeat.
Abhyudaya stated: 'It cannot be gainsaid that sangathan is a sine qua
non for eradicating the evil effects of years o f emasculated existence
o f the Hindus a n d infusing manliness into them.'*' T h e principles
o f ahimsa were attacked: 'The sermon o f ahimsa has emasculated the
H i n d u nation. . . . W e d o not need Gandhi's advice. W e have to fol-
low the teachings o f Lord K r i ~ h n a . ' *An
~ article titled ' H i n d u Sabha
a n d Shuddhi' claimed: 'There is one solution to the Hindu-Muslim

45 Bandhusarnaj, Hinduon ki Tez Talwar (Kanpur, 1927).

46 Gaurishankar Shuki Chaudhry, Kya Swami Shraddhanand Apradhi Thhe?
(Kanpur, 1928).
47 Abhudaya, 8 August 1924, pp. 2-3.
48 Sudharak, NNR, 27 September 1924.
 'Us'and 'Them' / 233
problem. Hindus must bundle their glorious religion of ahimsa into
a corner and organise their society, until they are able to present be-
fore the oppressors and hooligans the Indian prototype who will give
blow for blow with equal merciles~ness.'~~ The ingenious way in
which Gandhi was inverting, or at least trying to problematise, no-
tions of femininity and masculinity by his emphasis upon 'feminine'
strengths, was not the answer sought by militant Hindu ~ r ~ a n i s a t i o n s . ~ ~
Disgust with the supposed image of a docile, tolerant and peaceful
Hindu was obvious here; this was dropped in favour of the self-reliant
militant hero.
One of the stated aims of the All India Hindu Mahasabha was to
'improve the physique of the Hindus and promote the martial spirit
amongst them by establishing military schools and organising volun-
teer ~ o r p s . ' It
~ 'was resolved that the Mahasabha should have provin-
cial, district, tahsil and village branches to arrange for compulsory
physical education among Hindus.52An important tract, Sangathan
ka Big~l,~~.declared that, first, in every mohalla there should be gym-
nasiums and, at least once a month, a dangal should take place.
4' Leader, NNR, 1 1 April 1925.
50 For Gandhi's views on women, see Madhu Kishwar, 'Gandhi on Women',
E P K 20, 40 (October 1985), pp. 1691-1702 and 20, 41 (12 October 1985),
pp. 1753-8; Sujata Patel, 'Construction and Reconstruction of Women in
Gandhi', E P K 23, 8 (1988), pp. 378-9.
5' 20611926, Home Poll (NAI), p. 14.
5 2 Karta ya, NNR, 23 September 1922.
53 Swami Satyadev Paribrajak, Sangathan ka Bigul(Dehradun, 1926,3rd edn,
4000 copies). Previous editions, published in 1925, also had 4000 copies each
time. It was a thick tract of 130 pages, written often in gendered tones. It stated
that this book should be 'in the pocket of all the soldiers being admitted in the
army of Hindu sangathan'(p. v.). The book was very popular and was sold at
numerous meetings and abstracts were read from it. Swami Satyadev lectured on
Hindu sangathan at Basti on 13 January 1926 a d 184 copies of his pamphlet
Sangathan ka Biguiwere sold: PAL 23 January 1926, no. 3, para 72, p. 43. O n
4 and 5 February 1926, at meetings of Hindus in Fyzabad city, extracts from
the book were read and copies sold: PAL 13 February 1926, no. 6, para 138,
p. 84. O n 10 March 1927, while addressing a meeting at Kanpur, Swami Satya-
dev announced that the 4th edn of the book was ready for sale. A thousand copies
of this pamphlet at 8 annas were sold at the conclusion of the meeting: PAI, 19
March 1927, no. 11, para 23 1, p. 96.
234 1 Sexuality, Ob~cenity,Community
Second, even on the occasion of national festivals, especially at the
time of Vijay Dashmi, dangals should be organised so that Kshatriya
dharrna might be made popular among the masses. Third, 'foreign'
games like boxing should be made popular. The tract describes other
ways to increase the physical strength of Hindus.54In the social realm,
Hindu akharas flourished with sangathan, reinforcing the discursive
emphasis on body-building, wrestling and l a t h i - ~ i e l d i n ~ . ~ ~
These movements constructed Hindu masculinity as a contrast to
the colonial image of the emasculated, effeminate and militarily in-
competent Hindu male. For militant Hindu organisations a show of
physical strength was their psychological defence, their reply to the
images of the powerful, rational British and the lustful Muslim. A let-
ter by Lajpat Rai to Madan Mohan Malaviya, written when he was
travelling on a ship with an Englishman, outlined the Englishman's
views:
I am writing to you about his view on our movement-I mean the Hindu
movement. . . . H e is against shuddhi and the sangathan movement, like
all English officials. They seem to think that the shuddhi movement if
successful, is bound to lead to Hindu raj . . . it threatens to spoil their
plans of weakening the Hindus in numbers and influence. Their chief
hopes seemed to have so far been on the chance ofthinning their numbers
with a view eventually to make them politically impotent. This makes it
all the more necessary for us to d o all we can to push on the movement.56

Sangathan could also serve as nationalistic rhetoric, as a powerful

force for unity and consolidation in the Hindu community. Sangathan
ka Bi'l stated: 'The protection of Hindu community is the most
important question at present. . . . We have to search for new ways
to make the Hindu community powerful. . . . This is no time to argue
for caste divisions. . . . We have to bring together all parts of the com-
munity to make it a solid whole.'57 Hindi vernacular newspapers of
all shades of opinion emphasised the need for organisation among
54 Paribrajak, Sangathan, pp. 62-70.
55 Gooptu, 'Political', p. 135. Also see Freitag, Colkctive, p. 225.
56 Quored in Indra Prakash, A Review of the Hirtory and Work of the Hindu
Mahasabha and tl~eHindu Sangathan Movement (New Delhi, 1938), pp. 46-7.
s7 Paribrajak, Sangathan, preface, p. i.
 'Us' a n d 'Them' 1 23 5
Hindus. One said: 'All our sufferings will cease the day Hindu society
is 0r~anised.'5~ It was held that unity among various sections and
classes of Hindus was more important than Hindu-Muslim unity.59
The assumption that swaraj was unattainable without Hindu-Mus-
lim unity was declared incorrect. If the Hindus united, they were
strong enough to do it alone. Distinctiveness and identity were there-
by deepened. V. D. Savarkar, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, later
observed: 'In a country like India where a religious unity tends inevit-
ably to grow into a cultural and national unity, the shuddhi move-
ment ceases to be merely theological or dogmatic, but assumes the
wider significance of a political and national movement.'60 A poem
went:
Vishva ko pyara hai voh, pyara hai jisko sangathan.
Kaum ki kismat ka hai, uncha sitara sangathan.
(The nation loves him who loves sangathan. Sangathan is the star of the
fate of the c ~ m r n u n i t ~ . ' ~ )

Sangathan therefore added to religious dogma a politicised idea of the

nation, which evolved out of the notion of Hindu community: thus,
a dominant current of the movement was the political advance of the
Hindu b ~ d ~ - ~ o l i tImplicit
i c . ~ ~ was the assumption that conversion
to Hinduism was an act of n a t i ~ n a l i s mThe
. ~ ~ only true patriot was
a Hindu and, for those who were not, shuddhi was the answer. The
campaign around abductions gave the movement additional fervour.

111. Hindu Woman as Sister-in-Arms

Most of the time the Hindu woman was depicted as a victim of Mus-
lim aggression. However, at certain moments images of masculinity
took her over too and she was 'empowered' as an agent of violence.
58 AbhudaYa, NNR, 21 October 1922.
59 Leader, 2 April 1923, editorial, p. 3.
'O V.D. Savarkar, 'The Hindu Mahasabha', The Indian Year Book 194243
(Bombay, 1944), p. 826.
"Ayodhya Prasad Goyaliya 'Das', Sangatban ka Bigul (Delhi, 1926).
'' 14011925, Home Poll (NAI).
63 Ghosh, Krik, pp. 80-94.
236 / Sexuality, Ob~cenity,Community
I

The Scmgathan,

Illustration 7. Sangathan
Source : Vyanga Chitravali (Kanpur, 1925). p. 2. It was a collection
of political and social caricatures and was published by Prakash
Pustakalaya.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 237
Legends and myths of brave Rajput and Aryan women of the past
were invoked here, these being seen as at once pativrata and heroic.
It was emphasised that, in order to defend their honour and chastity,
they had taken to arms, especially against Muslims. Tracts eulogising
courageous Kshatriya women were written at this time.64The legend
of Padmini and Alauddin was frequently narrated.65
The Hindu woman was now told that in order to preserve her
chastityand honour she too had to be apart ofsangathan. Stitvaraksha
led to the articulation of atmaraksha, and the woman here emerged
as the virangana. She was not just weak and suffering but a sister-in-
arms. It has been argued that the figure of the 'sister' de-sexed the
woman and helped the idea of an activist masculinity.66 Sangathan
ka Bigul especially addressed itself to 'sisters':
Every sister who joins the army ofthis revolution called sangathan should
definitely have a sharp knife with her which she can use whenever she
needs. T h e knife should be made like household knives, which can be used
immediately. Every sister should practise for 10-15 minutes with this
knife.-And this can easily be done by cutting various fruits, such as the
custard apple and the water melon. It is a prime religious duty of all wo-
men who enter the army of sangathan to be able to defend their chastity
and honour.67
At the annual anniversary meetings of the Arya Samaj at Moradabad
in 1923, Murali La1 of Bulandshahr suggested that every Hindu girl

"Kashi Nath Khatri, Bharatuarsh ki Vzkhyat Raniyon ke Charity (Allahabad,

1914, brhedn); Hari Das Manik, Bharat ki Kthatrani(Kashi, 1916); Sher Singh,
Durgu (Meerut, 1917); Harisharad Tiwari, Padma ki Paini Taluar (Kanpur,
1927); Master Dayal Jhalu, Bharat ki Vzr fihatvaniyan (Bijnor, 1929);Jagdish-
prasad Tiwari, Turkon par Tara ki Talwar (Kanpur, 1932, 10th edn).
65 The tale was included in many books mentioned in the previous footnote.
Also see Radha Krishna Das, Maharani'l'adfiauati (Kashi, 1903,2nd edn). For
an analysis of this see, Purshottam Aganval, 'Savitri, Surat and Draupadi: Legi-
timising Rape as a Political Weapon', in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia
(eds), Women and T/7e Hindu Right: A Colkction ofEssays (New Delhi, 1995),
pp. 29-57.
66 P. K. Datta, Carving Blocs: Cornrnunal IdPology in Early Twentieth Century
Brngal (Delhi, 1999), pp. 224-5.
67 Paribrajak, Sangatbun, p. 50.
238 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
keep a dagger so that no Muslim could possibly dishonour her. This
proposal was accepted and it was decided that girls would in future
receive dagger prizes; 25 daggers were promised on the spot.68At the
district Hindu Conference at Dehradun in March 1924, women
came armed with kukris in order to defend themselves against Muslim
goondas." A book published in Bareilly contained a cartoon portray-
ing Bharat Devi, a Hindu woman armed with sword and spear, who
had killed Muslims and was standing sword in hand over the prostrate
corpse of one of her victims.70
Some Hindu women joined in. Saraswati Devi and Satyavati Devi,
both members of the Arya Samaj and Congress, spoke at length on
the danger to Hindu womenfolk from the shameful methods of Mus-
lims. They appealed to women to be armed for their own protection
and gave support to the sangathan movement as a general communal
defence against Muslim aggression.71Satyavati Devi gave anti-Mus-
lim speeches, almost warlike in tone, for a whole week at Kanpur in
June 1924.72One Ranavati Debi ofAllahabad, writing in Arya Miha,
warned Hindu women to be on their guard against unscrupulous
Muslims who appeared to be bent on ruining them, and to be ready
to punish those who attempted outrages against them.73
These women were participants in the public sphere and were
acting like men. They were seen to have the potential for 'masculine'
traits as well. Power was handed to the powerless, who were asked to
seize control. In the supposed exclusive arena of 'warfare', women
were included and freed from certain traditional restrictions. Hindu
woman was constructed as a victim to 'empower' her. Sangathan and
shuddhi thus gave scope for two distinct but not mutually exclusive
possibilities. The figure of woman could be invoked as a marker for
the defence, safety and honour of the community. As repositories of

" PA4 21 April 1923, no. 16, para 321, p. 266.

69 PAI, 22 March 1924, no. 12, para 102, p. 111.
70 Mentioned in Rohilkhand Gaztte, NNR, 23 May 1925, objecting to publi-
cations offensive to Muslims.
'' 14011925, Home Poll (NAI).
72 PAI, 14 June 1924, no. 23, para 187, p. 191.
73 Arya Mitra, NNR, 3 1 May 1924.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 239
community honour, Hindu women's purity and chastity had to be
safeguarded by men of their communities. On the other hand, wo-
men themselves could take on militant activism, an ideal obviously
very different from the patient suffering advocated by Gandhi. How-
ever, the sister-in-arms was simultaneously constrained by male stand-
ards of cultural behaviour. The two faces of women, as victims and
as agents, here became complementary, both linked to the preserva-
tion of woman's chastity and community honour. Hindu women
who did not fit into either of these frames had to be controlled; these
were usually sexually active women. Attempts to facilitate female
agency are not necessarily progressive.74

IV. Conceiving the 'Other'

Hindu masculinity had to be built in opposition to the 'other'. The
spectre of the lustful Muslim male was evoked aggressively in this
period.75 Before examining why such imagery was important, and
how it was upheld and developed, let us consider the attitude of
Hindu publicists towards Muslim women, for it was an ambiguous
one.

IV. 1. Approaching the Muslim Woman

A Hindu male who managed to attract the love of a Muslim woman
was glorified as the ultimate hero. Novels written or translated in
Hindi at this time took this view. The most famous was Shivaji va
Roshanara, a supposedly historical story from an unspecified source,
embodying the Maratha tradition according to which Shivaji way-
laid Roshanara, the daughter of Aurangzeb, and eventually married
her, Sambhaji being the issue of this union.76 The novel reads like a
'* Recent studies on women and the Hindu Right stress women's active parti-
cipation, at times in Right-wing movements. See Sarkar and Butalia (eds),
Women.
7 5 140/1925, Homc Poll (NAI); Shashi Joshi and Bhagwan Josh, Struggkfor
Hegemony in India, 1720-47, Vol. III (Delhi, 1994), pp. 194-258; Datta,
'Abductions'; Ghosh, Virik.
76 Kalicharan Sharma (trans.), Shivaji va Roshanara (Bareilly, 1926, 3rd edn),
240 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
passionate love story: Shivaji's physique, so central in the Hindu
communalist construction of medieval Indian history, is described in
vivid detail. His dramatic entry in front of the seventeen-year-old
Roshanara is as a handsome specimen of manhood, with a well-built
body, fair complexion, and bright eyes. She slowly falls in love with
him.77At one point the novel says: 'Roshanara started preferring, and
was happier, being called the queen of a small king than being called
the daughter of the emperor.'78 Hindu men were exhorted to follow
Shivaji's example.79In an earlier work than this, Razia Begum is like-
wise portrayed as having bestowed her affection on a Hindu of low
position.80
In 1926 Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra', one of the leading dra-
matic writers of the time, wrote Chand Hasinon ki Khutut, a sens-
ational romance between a Hindu boy and a Muslim girl.81 This
proved to be one of the Hindi bestsellers of 1927, and it was said that
every college student had a copy of it alongside course books.82The
novel appeared when stories about abduction were afloat. In such
times a tale of love between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman sug-
gested the strength of the Hindu male. The novel ends with Nargis,
the Muslim girl, becoming a Hindu and deciding to campaign against
Muslim culture.
Stories of love and romance between a Hindu man and a Muslim

2nd edn mentioned in SPBP, September 1917, 4th edn mentioned in SPBP,
Decem ber 1928.
77 Ibid., pp. 9-18.
78 Ibid., p. 21.
'"other incident reflecting the attitude of Shivaji towards Muslim women,
however, was severely condemned by no less than Savarkar-when Shivaji and
Chinaji Appa honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor
of Kalyan. Savarkar stated that the plaintive screams of millions of molested
Hindu women did not seem to have reached the ears of Shivaji. For details, see
Aganval, 'Savarkar', pp. 48-52.
Riynz-ul-Akhbar, 4 November 1904, NNR, 12 November 1904, p. 386.
Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra', Chand Hasinon ki Khutut(Calcutta, 1927).
8 2 Francesca Orsini, 'Reading a Social Romance: Chand Hasinom ke Khutut',
in V. Dalmia and T. Damsteegt (eds), Narrative Strategies: Essays on South Asian
Literature and Film (Leiden, 1998).
 'Us'and 'Them' / 24 1
woman provided titillation and a general sense of elation. For the
Hindu male there was a thrill in seeing the Muslim heroine fall at the
feet of the Hindu hero. It endorsed images of heroism without vil-
lainy, bravery without cowardice, and romance without abduction.
It signified control, subjugation and victory over Muslim women-
made all the more potent because it did not involve force, coercion
and suppression. An article published in 1931 stated that Akbar was
prepared to give girls of his clan to Rajputs in marriage, but Hindus,
with their limited vision at that time, would not accept them. This
was a matter of deep regret because, had this happened, India would
have been a huge nation of Hindu religion, feelings and culture, a true
Hindustan indeed.83
The conversion of Muslim women to Hinduism was encouraged.
Shiam La1 of Mathura remarked during his visit to Allahabad that
there were instances on record of the conversion ofwives of m a u l v i ~ . ~ ~
At the anniversary meeting of the local Arya Samaj at Rai Bareilly,
Pandit Dharam Bhikshit of Lucknow said that Hindus should abduct
Muslim women not for adultery but for s h ~ d d h iO. ~n ~16 April, at
one of the annual meetings of the UP Hindu Sabha held at Lucknow,
Kedar Nath said that Muslim women should be kept in Hindu houses
in order to attract other Muslim women.86 However, though there
seem to have been very few cases of Muslim women actually convert-
i r ~ g , ~the
' point made was that whereas Hindu males were 'recovering'

83 Rai Krishnadas, 'Akbar Kal ka Hindu Pehnawa aur Uski Parampara',

Hindustani (April 193l), pp. 227-9.
PAI, 3 April 1926, no. 13, para 342, p. 195.
85 PAI, 24 April 1926, no. 15, para 371, p. 21 9.
s6 PAI, 1 May 1926, no. 16, para 397, p. 227.
'I came across just one case where, in March 1926, a Muslim woman con-
verted on her own at Gonda and married a Hindu: PAI, 27 March 1926,
no. 12, para 294, p. 171. This may signify that they did not find conversion to
Hinduism to be elevating their position in any hay, or the Hindu family structure
any better than the Muslim patriarchal one. In cases where males converted, as
did some Malkana Rajputs, women followed, though here also there were ten-
sions. Some conversions through shuddhi were reported in Meerut in March
1924, but the question of the womenfolk of those converted was causing some
difficulty: PAI, 29 March 1924, no. 13, para 107, p. 116.
242 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Muslim women for something better, Muslim abductors used force
and created misery for the Hindu woman. The woman was just a
medium for progeny. The point was how to enlarge the Hindu fold.
This rhetoric about absorption of the Muslim woman into the
Hindu fold was complemented by an aggressiveness towards and
humiliation of this woman of the 'other'. Blaming the Muslim male
could also be used to justify attacks on women of minority commu-
nities. The pamphlet Islam ki Tilli Tillijhar stated that Islam used
Muslim prostitutes for proselytising and went on: 'When prostitutes
have been entrusted with the work of religion, how can such a despi-
cable religion live?'88The attack became more venomous in certain
other situations. Hindus had taken serious objection to an old farman
extant in Bhopal whereby apostasy from Islam was a penal offence.89
At this particular moment, moreover, there was a woman ruler. The
Begum of Bhopal became a special target for sexist statements in the
vernacular press. She was portrayed as a threat, as mad, as totally un-
r e a s ~ n a b l eA
. ~paper
~ called her as cruel as Aurangzeb and made a
series of appeals to Lord Reading to send her to a mental hospital for
treatment." Another said it would be well ifshe recovered her mental
balance even Addressing a meeting at Badaun on 16 February
1926, Badri Prasad of the Arya Samaj declared that the Begum of
Bhopal had ordered the forcible conversion of Hindus, and she was
totally mad.93The attack on her was to defile an autonomous symbol
of honour of the enemy community. Invoking images of the 'mons-
trous regime' of a Muslim woman who did not conform to norms
of Hindu patriarchy helped supply a subtext to the idea that women
rulers were disastrous, more so if they were Muslim. Political power,
ifconceded to women, could create havoc; it was much better to keep
men in charge and women under their control.
140l1925, Home Poll (NAI). Muslim singers were also attacked. See Chap-
ter 3.
G/IW 1924, Police, Home Deptt (NAI).
Deveshwar Siddhantalankar, Swami Shraddhanandji ki Hatya aur Ishm ki
Shiksha (Banaras, 1927), p. 57.
" Awaaz, NNR, 24 May 1924.
" Lokrnanya, NNR, 3 1 May 1924.
93 PA/, 13 March 1926, no. 10, para 231, p. 135.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 243
IV.2. Abduction Campaigns and the Lustfkl
Muslim Male
In UP, at least since the nineteenth century, certain cultural stereo-
types of the Muslim were created, often deploying the figure of wo-
man. The majority of Hindi literary writers of the late-nineteenth and
earlynventieth centuries cannot be easily classified as communal or
nationalist, pro- or anti-Muslim. It is entirely possible that conflicting
attitudes coexisted in their works, but most of them implicitly subs-
cribed to the view that Hindu and Indian were synonymous terms.
Whatever their motives and intellectually stated ideals, this belief
helped in the creation of a new Hindu national consciousness.94
Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850-85), Pratap Narain Misra (1856-
94) and Radha Charan Goswami (1859-1 923) often portrayed medi-
eval Muslim rule as a chronicle of the rape and abduction of Hindu
women.95 The first generation of popular novelists in Hindi-
Devakinandan Khatri, Kishorilal Goswami and Gangaprasad Gupta-
who started writing in the 1890s, depicted similar prejudices. Lech-
erous behaviour, a high sexual appetite, a life of luxury, and religious
fanaticism were inscribed as the dominant traits within Muslim

We have seen how sexually explicit material was often branded as

obscene in this period.97However, not all kinds of 'obscenities' were
viewed with suspicion. A section of Hindus, especially those belong-
ing to the Arya Samaj, wrote a string of 'politically obscene' pieces
aimed at slandering Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, and past and
present Muslim rulers. The debauchery of Muslim rulers was often
94 For an analysis of trends in modern Hindi literature in the nineteenth
century, see Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditionr, Sudhir
Chandra, The Oppressive Preient: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial
India (Delhi, 1992); Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: The Noveland
Society in India (Delhi, 1985).
'' Chandra, Oppressive, pp. 1 1 9-26.
'"ukherjee, Realism, pp. 60-3; Meenakshi Mukherjee, 'Rhetoric of Iden-
tiry: History and Fiction in Nineteenrh Century India', in Alok ~ h a l l aand
Sudhir Chandra (eds), Indiari Responses to Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century
(New Delhi, 1993), p.40.
97 See Chapter 2.
244 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
freely commented upon and vividly described. At times, the British
supported such political obscenities in print-these fulfilled the
needs of both Hindus and the British in different ways.
The government of NWP authorised the publication of a history
textbook, Itihas Timirnasak, for use in vernacular and anglo-vernacu-
lar schools in the early 1860s. The first volume was written in Hindi
in 1864 by Babu Shivprasad of Banaras." Subsequently, two more
volumes were written. The book was translated into English and
Urdu, and many editions, with minor changes, appeared. There was
a massive controversy surrounding the book, discussed elsewhere.99
The book contained vivid descriptions or insinuations of immoral
conduct on the part of Muslim rulers: Sultan Mubarak Shah (13 16-
20) of the Khalji dynasty and the late Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah
(1 7 19-48) were depicted by Shivprasad as particularly outrageous.
Kempson, who had otherwise raised severe objections to the publi-
cation of sexual treatises and romances, defended this book as a port-
rayal of 'truth', and this was a view he shared with Elliot and other
British officials. After various debates, the depiction of royal orgies
was allowed to stand in the book. Such politically obscene material
was thus allowed to filter downwards, and even schoolchildren could
read it.looNot even Akbar was spared. He was charged with having
an adulterous nature, for during Nauroz ka Mela he dressed in femi-
nine attire and went around leering at Hindu women.'01
These attitudes were mirrored in views of contemporary Muslim
nawabs and rulers. At the end of 1899 and the beginning of 1900,
the vernacular press carried on a virulent attack against the Nawab
of Rampur, who was portrayed as a symbol of the lascivious lifestyle

" Shivprasad was an extremely influential personality of Banaras in the

second half of the nineteenth century. See Dalrnia, Nationalization, pp. 132,
330-2; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics ofthe
UP Muslims, 1860-1923 (1974, new paperback edn, Delhi, 1993), p. 434.
99Avril A. Powell, 'History Textbooks and the Transmission of the Pre-
colonial Past in North-Western India in the 1860s and 1870s', in Daud Ali (ed.),
Invoking the Past: The Usei of History in South Asia (Delhi, 1999), pp. 108-33.
l o o Powell, 'History', pp. 108-33.
"'Anon, 'Parde ka Itihas', Kayastha Mahila Hitaishi, 1, 5 (July 1918),
pp. 4-7.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 245
of earlier Muslim rulers and the general decadence of courtly rule and
aristocratic immorality. Jami-ul-Ulum, a newspaper published from
Moradabad by Amba Prasad, a Kayastha, took the lead in this slander,
with almost every issue of the paper describing the nawab as a homo-
sexual, as surrounded by laundas and prostitutes, as indulging in
decadent pleasure.102Though the nawab's character was far from
exemplary, these attacks on him by Hindus served a symbolic pur-
pose. 'Obscenity' was being selectively appropriated and the sexual
styles of the nawab were graphically described to mount political
positions. The government took notice of these articles. 1°"he Chief
Secretary of the government of the NWP noted in a confidential letter
these 'scandalous articles' which 'outstepped all limits of decency'.
However, the government decided just to give a warning to the
editors, instead of prosecuting them for obscenity, 'because a prose-
cution would not be dissociated by the public from an attempt to
shield the nawab against disclosures affecting his ond duct.''^^ The de-
bauchery of Muslim rulers was linked here to poor standards of gov-
ernment and a breakdown of public order.
In keeping with this reconstruction of a negative, immoral image
of Muslim rulers, all evil practices in Hindu society, especially in rela-
tion to women, were attributed to the Muslim interregnum. Acom-
mon viewpoint developed through various tracts, stories and essays
whereby the purdah system, sati, child marriage, and in fact social evil
generally were attributed to the 'lecherous character' of Muslims.
This was said to be especially the case in UP 'as the terror of Muslim
rule was much more in this state'.lo5 It was declared: 'The habit of
keeping our women in purdah had its basis in the lustful Muslim. The
evil system of child marriage began because it was better to give girls

I o 2 Jami-ul-Ulum, 28 December 1899, NNR, 2 January 1900, p. 6; idem,

7 January 1900, NNR, 16January 1900, pp. 25-6; idem, 14January 1900, NNR,
23 January 1900; idem, 28 February 1900, NNR, 6 March 1900, p. 96.
Newspapers by Muslims from Moradabad in turn severely criticised Amba
Prasad for publishing such material.
lo3 7911 900, LIP&J/6/529 (IOL).
Io4 86811900, LIP&Jl6/540 (IOL).
'05A teacher, 'Sanyukt Prant mein Stri Saniaj', Stri Darpan, 29,3 (September
1923), p. 448.
246 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
to a Hindu, so that their chastity could be protected, than to wait for
them to flourish into youth, as a sheer glimpse of their beauty would
result in them becoming a prey of the evil and cruel yavan.'lObHistory
books perpetuated similar claims: 'The impact of Muslim rule on
Hindu women was extremely bad. All Muslim rulers became attract-
ed towards Hindu women and started abducting them. Thus purdah
was introduced among Hindus, to protect our womenfolk. . . It
became impossible for women to venture out of homes. . . Thus
slowly their education, knowledge, art and culture completely van-
ished."07 Several writers reconstituted the past to suit the needs of the
present, using real and invented histories. Chronicle and imagination
mingled in their texts. There was a clever appropriation of certain le-
gends which fed a collective Hindu memory, depicting the medieval
Muslim rapist.'OR Popular tracts followed the same pattern well into
the twentieth c e n t ~ r y . ' ~ T hdiscourse
e of the 'other' created such ef-
fective cultural stereotypes that they were constantly at work, and
even a writer like Premchand failed to dissolve them.'1°
A phenomenal number of other polemical tracts, published chiefly
by the Arya Samaj at this time, especially in the 1920s, decried Islam
and the Quran." ' A series ofsuch pamphlets, in circulation at Bareilly
and Rohilkhand, was typically abusive. ' I 2 The pamphlet Islam ki Tzlli

'06 Dularelal Bhargav (ed.), Sahitya Sumen [Collection of essays by the late
Balkrishna Bhatt] (Lucknow, 1937, 5th edn). Also see Vishambharnath Jijja,
'Parde ki Pratha', Stri Darpan, 3 4 , 2 (August 1925), pp. 345-6; Shraddhanand,
Hindu, p. 95.
lo' Ambikacharan Sharma, Bhartiya Sabhyata euam Sanskriti ka Kkas (Agra,
1940), p. 21.
log Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Vioknce: Culturallakntities, Religion and Con-
flirt (Chicago, 1996), pp. 17-18.
lo' Jagdishprasad Tiwari, Aurangzeb ki Khuni Talwar (Kanpur, 1933, lGth
edn, 54,000 copies till date).
"O Joshi and Josh, Srruggk, 111, pp. 206-14.
Shiv Sharma Updeshak (Arya Prarinidhi Sabha, UP), Musalmani ki
Zindagani (Moradabad, 1924); Lekhram, Jihad, Quran ua lslami Khunkhari,
trans. Raghunath Prasad Mishra (Erawah, 1924);Anon., Quran ki KhuniAyaten
(Banaras, 1927).
' I 2 Some of these were Yavnon ka Ghor Atyachar, Munh Tor, jarput, Lal
 'Us'and 'Them' / 247
TdliJhar was available in most of the big towns of The Pro-
phet Muhammad was specifically maligned in several; many of these
were written in the form of 'gupps', parodies and satires. The scan-
dalous publications of Rang& Rasul and VichitraJivan in the 1920s,
which were Arya caricatures of the Prophet, and the celebrated cases
that surrounded them, have been discussed elsewhere.l14 Various
other pamphlets were written on similar lines.'15 In all of them the
Prophet was accused of gross sensuality and low sexual morals. For
example, said one: can he be paigamber who has committed incest
with his own daughters? Can he be paigamber who has indulged in
sex with a large number of ~ o m e n ? " ~
These stereotypes of licentious Muslim rulers and the debauchery
of the Prophet were extended to the Muslim male. In the 1920s, espe-
cially, there was a proliferation of popular inflammatory and de-
magogic appeals as never before, based on stories of atrocities against
Hindu women, ranging from allegations of rape, aggression and ab-
duction to luring, conversion and forced marriage by Muslim males."'

Jhandi, Taranai Shuddbi, Makzksh Tor and Islam ka Bhanda Phut Gaya, 1401
1925, Home Poll (NAI).
Il33G3/1924, Box 52, Police Deptt (UPSA).
' I 4 G.R. Thursby, Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India: A Scudy of Con-
troversy, Conjlictand CommunalMovements in Northern India, 1923-28 (Leiden,
1975), pp. 40-62. Rangila Rasuf (Merry Prophet) was first published in Urdu
at Lahore, in May 1924. It aroused immediate interest, and reported brisk sales.
Muslims soon protested against it, and a case followed. For further details, see
10/50/1927, Home Poll (NAI); 13211/1927, Home Poll (NAI); 103/1928,
Home Poll (NAI). The book was translated into Hindi, and published and cir-
culated clandestinely in UP as well, in spite of being proscribed. I saw a Hindi
copy in 132/11/1927, Home Poll (NAI). VichitraJivan (Strange Life) was written
in Hindi by Kalicharan Sharma, an Arya Samaj preacher, and first published by
the author in Agra in November 1923. I saw a 2nd edn of it, published from
Moradabad in 1925.
' I 5 Kanhaiya Lal, Muhammadjivan Charitr (Banaras, 191 1,3rd edn); Prem-
saran (Arya Pracharak), Devadut Darpan (Agra, 1926).
' I 6 Premsaran, Devadut, pp. 24-5.
' I 7 Kalpanan Kannabiran, 'Rape and Construction of Communal Identity',
in Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis (eds), Embodied Violence:
Co~nmurralisingWomen i Sexuaiiry in South Asia (Delhi, 1996), pp. 32-41.
248 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Here were crucial continuities but also significant differences and ad-
ditions. Firstly, lechery, abduction and conversion were no longer
limited to rulers, the Prophet and villains. They were not just extra-
ordinary events or a thing of the 'bad' medieval past. Now, average
Muslims were depicted as being involved. 'I8 The image of the violent
and virile Muslim thus gained current significance, strengthening
shared prejudices and further justifying shuddhi and sangathan.l19
In 1923 Madan Mohan Malaviya, in a speech delivered when he
was President of the Hindu Mahasabha at Banaras, made one of the
first attempts to create a history of present-day abduction^.'^^ Simi-
larly, an article headed 'Kidnapping' said:

Hardly a daypasses without our noticinga case or two ofkidnapping ofHindu

women and children by not only Muslim badmash6 andgoondas, but also
by men ofstanding and means, who are supposed to be uery highly connected.
T h e worst feature of this evil is that Hindus do not stir themselves over
the daylight robbery of their national stock. . . . We are convinced that
a regular propaganda is being carried on by the interested party for kid-
napping Hindu women and children at different centres throughout the
country. It is an open secret that Juma Masjids at Delhi and Lahore are
being used as headquarters of these propagandists . . . W e must do away
with this mischievous Muslim propaganda of kidnapping women and
children. There must be no mincing of matters or winking at hard facts
in this matter ofvital importance to the Hindu community.'2' (emphasis
mine)

In 1924 there was a case in which Raza Ali, the Deputy Collector
of Kanpur, was accused of abducting and then seducing a Hindu girl.
H e was blamed for having converted her forcibly. The vernacular
Hindi press launched a virulent campaign against him, arguing that

'I8 Editorial thoughts, 'Muslim-Manovritti ka Vyapak Swarup', Chand 6, 3

(January 1928), pp. 315-21.
'I9 In riots, Muslims were usually depicted as originators and aggressors, which
I am not elaborating here. See Jagdishprasad Tiwari, Kanpur ka Vihat Sangram
(Kanpur, 1731), pp. 5-9; Anon. (A Home Ruler), Dussehra mein Muharram
(Allahabad, 1717), pp. i-6; Anon, Hindu-Muslim Ekta kaSawal (Kashi, 1923),
p. 49.
I2O Datta, 'Dying', p. 1314; 661VI/1924, Home Poll (NAI).
12' Patriot, NNR,24 October 1724.
 'Us' and 'Them' 1 249
abduction activities were not just confined to low-caste and loutish
mu slim^.'^^ A meeting of the Hindu Sabha was held in Kanpur on
28 June, attended by some 2000 persons who demanded severe action
against Raza Ali.lz3At Unnao, a Hindu Sabha meeting advocated the
recovery of the Hindu woman from Raza Ali's house. What seems
to have inflamed anger in particular was that the woman involved was
actually a Brahmin widow from Sultanpur; her caste and status had
crucial ramifications for the Hindu forces.
It was argued that abduction campaigns demonstrated the 'lack of
character' of Muslim men for they showed scant respect for Hindu
women. Muslim virility was seen as uncontrollable, and therefore
censured. Muslims were depicted as waylaying Hindu women at
wells, at hospitals, at neighbourhoods.124Orthodox Hindu organisa-
tions participated in such accusations as much as the Arya Samaj,
revealing a certain unity around abduction campaigns.125In August
1924 communal leaflets of an anti-Muslim strain were posted at
Pratapgarh, with allegations that Muslims in the disguise of sadhus
were moving about to secure Hindu women.lZ6A newspaper referred
to an incident in Bareilly in which a Muslim youth, disguised as a
Hindu mendicant, was caught taking photos of Hindu women bath-
ing in a river. The writer suspected some conspiracy behind the matter
and stated that Muslims were trying to convert Hindu women by
strange and inhuman practices.'27 A poem written at the time, and
later banned, called Chand Musafmanon ki Harkaten, stated:

Iz2 The Hindi newspapers of the time were full of it. Pratap referred in con-
demnatory terms to the action of Raza Ali, and remarked that this incident
strengthened the belief among Hindus that Muslims could not be trusted, espe-
cially regarding women. Rzad also deplored the incident. Abhudaya remarked
that Raza Ali's actions were a clear example that such activities extended to all
Muslims. Arya Patra warned Hindus to learn a lesson from this incident. All in
NNR, I 2 July 1924.
123 PAL 12 July 1924, no. 27, p. 220.
12* File C-611934-35, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha Papers (NMML).
'25 Bharat Dharrna, a Hindi weekly published from Kashi, and a supporter of
Sanatan Dharma, constantly accused Muslin1 males of seducing women: See for
example, 29 July 1924, p. 1; 5 August 1924, p. 12.
126PAI, 30 August 1924, no. 34, p. 276.
'21 Varfrnan, NNR., 23 May 1925.
2 50 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Ai aryon kyon so rahe ho paipasare,
Muslim yeh nahin hoyege humrah tumhare. . . .
Shuddhi va sangathan kiya tabhi se difjab. . . .
Taahd badhane ke liye chaf chahi
Muslim banane ke fiya scheme banayi. . . .
Ekkon ko gali gaon mein fekar ghumate hain,
parde ko ah1 mwfim aurat bethate hain.
(Dear Aryans, why are you calmly sleeping? Muslims will never be your
companions. Since we launched shuddhi and sangathan, they have been
jealous of us. They are making new schemes to increase their population
and make people Muslims. They roam with carts in cities and villages and
take away women, who are put under the veil and made

Muslims faced constant public harassment as a result of such pro-

paganda. In Jaunpur, in 1927, a Muslim and his wife were twice stop-
ped by Arya Samajists in Shahganj and the woman was forced to show
her face and hands in order to prove that she was not a Hindu being
abducted.129Abduction and kidnapping allegations affected Hindu
and Muslim alliances even in the Congress. With the decline of Non-
cooperation, tensions increased. In June 1922 the Congress Com-
mittee at Saharanpur was busy devoting all its energies in pursuit of
a kidnapping case against a sub-inspector, Masih Ullah. T h e case
wrecked Hindu-Muslim unity in the area and Mufaat Ali, the vakil
for the defence, who was an ardent Congress worker, resigned from
membership. 130
Stories of rape and abduction highlighted the vulnerability and the
moral blight of Hindu women, who often appeared as passive victims
at the hands of inscrutable Muslims. Sympathy for the downtrodden
and victimised Hindu woman was constantly evoked and Hinduism
and Hindu society urged to change its ways and accept them. How-
ever, in the process, the reference point of public/sexual violence

I Z 8 Raghuvar Dayalu, Chand MzrsaLnanon ki Harkaten (Kanpur, 1928),

pp. 2-9. Also see Arya Patra, NNR, 12July 1924; Mahatma Premanand (Hindu
Dharma Rakshak), Musabani Andher Khata (Awadh, 1928).
I2VAI, 1 October 1927, no. 38, p. 378.
130 PAI, 1 July 1922, no. 25, para 780, p. 1068.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 251
shifted to Muslims (and sometimes Christians), ready to convert and
absorb such women. Thus the campaign focused its anger on Mus-
lims and got its currency from various media, deploying its supposed
emotional bonding with the victim. I-Iere, Hindu femininity was
shown to possess an innocent essence. In Meerut, during June 1924,
handbills dealing with the alleged kidnapping of Hindu women and
children were circulated and a meeting to discuss the subject was held;
some 2000 attended.I3' The powerful image ofvictimised Hindu wo-
men could prove a highly profitable venture for some Hindus. A case
in point is Kedar Nath, a prominent member of the UP Arya Samaj
and assistant secretary of the Hindu Sabha as well. H e launched a
massive campaign around abductions and, during the 1920s, addres-
sed a series of meetings in various parts of UP, the chiefplank ofwhich
was to attack Muslims for abducting Hindu women. With other
shuddhi sabha volunteers, he visited Mathura district on 4 August
1924, spreading such rumour. H e remained in Mathura till Septem-
ber and proposed a widows' institution to protect women.132Kedar
Nath and Tribhawan Dutt were then discovered to be making money
by selling stray women at Fyzabad, whom they had ostensibly brought
to the Arya Samaj to save them from M ~ s l i m s . The ' ~ ~ depiction
Hindu of women as victims could prove a way to control them by
restricting movement: various public places were declared unsafe for
them.'34
The abducted Hindu woman was metamorphosed into a sacred
symbol violated, and hence a symbol of the victimisation of the
Hindu community. Tracts with provocative titles appeared, written
exclusively around the Hindu female victim and the Muslim male
abductor. One was called Hindu Auraton ki another was
13' PA/, 28 June 1924, no. 25, p. 204.
PAI, 23 August 1924, no. 33, para 259, p. 266 and para 269, p. 271; PA4
6 September 1924, no. 35, para 287, p. 287 and para 289; PA/, 13 September
1924, no. 36, para 296, p. 296.
133 PA/, 26 July 1924, no. 29, para 235, p. 240.
13* See Chapter 7.
'j5Suraj Prasad Mishra, Hindu Auraton ki Loot (Lucknow, 1924). Also
mentioned in SPBR, March 1924.
252 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

The Vultures.
(And so Hinduism remains untarnished
and the vultures chuckle)

Illustration 8. Victimised Hindu Women and Muslim

Eagerness to Absorb Them
 'Us' and 'Them' / 253

Fallen Hindu Woman

Hindu Woman-God, my feet slipped by mistake, give
me some corner in Hindu society to cover my head.
Upholders of Hindu Society-Ram, Ram, it is a sin
even to see your face. Will you pull down society too
along with you?
Christian-Sister, come into the peaceful lap of Father
Christ!
Muslim-For God's sake, direct your faith towards Islam,
we'll take good care of you !

Source : Vyanga Chitravali (Kanpur, 1925), p. 9.

254 / Sexualily, Obscenity, Community

-
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 255

You have Fallen

Panchayat-When Maula Baksh says you have drunk

the water from his pot, you must have done so.

Woman-No father, he wanted to rape me. He says this

because of my refusal.

Panchayat-No, you have now fallen, get out from here.

Source for lllustration 8: Baijnath Kedia, Vyanga Chitravali, Part I

(Kashi, 1933),p. 40.
256 I Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
named Hindu Striyon kiLootke Karan, an Arya Samajist tract showing
how to save 'our' women becoming Christian or Muslim.13G
The concern with female chastity and purity was conducive to
justifications for Hindu male prowess. The virility of the community
came to hinge upon defending women's h 0 n 0 u r . l ~The
~ Hindu wo-
man was after all the exclusive preserve of Hindu men; safeguarding
her virtue was the prerogative of the Hindu male. In 1925 the Hindu
Sabha was trying to organise a volunteer corps in Banaras to prevent
women and children at railway stations from falling into the hands
of mu slim^.'^^ Subscriptions were collected for this purpose.'39In the
same year, notices warning Hindu men of the kidnapping of women
and children by Muslims were in circulation at Hamirpur. In Jaun-
pur, notices advising the protection of Hindu women and children
against Muslim goondas were received. These had come from Allahabad
and were distributed by one Babu Ram in March 1926.14' When
branches of the Mahabir Dal (Group of the Brave) were set up in UP,
the name was explained thus: 'The organisation of Hindu ~ o u t hcan
be called by many names like Sarnaj Sewak Dal, Hindu Yuvak Dal,
etc., but Mahabir Dal sounds most appropriate. It has its own attrac-
tion as it reminds one of Hanuman and the way he aided in Sita's

136 Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya (ed.), Hindu Striyon ki Loot ke Karan (Allahabad,
1927). Also mentioned in SPBR,June 1927.Also see Suraj Prasad Mihsra, Musal-
man Gundon ke Hinduonpar GhorAyachar, Part I (Kanpur, 1924), which was
a collection of excerpts from the public press. Also mentioned in SPBR, March,
1924.
I3'It has been argued that when confronted with the phenomenon of conver-
sion from Hinduism, whether in eighteenth-century Kerala or in contemporary
India, a certain kind of Hindu loses herlhis logical faculties. The politics of
cultural virginity is inevitably shadowed by a myth of innocence, combined wlth
rantings against violation, invasion, seduction and rape. See Alok Rai, 'Religious
Conversions and the Crisis of Brahminical Hinduism', in Gyanendra Pandey
(ed.), Hindus and Others: The Questzon of Identity in India Today (New Delhi,
1993), pp. 225-37.
13* PAI, 4 July 1925, no. 25, para 207, p. 271.
'39 PAI, 4 July 1925, no. 25, para 208, p. 273.
140 PAI, 15 August 1925, no. 31, para 250, p. 329.
1 4 ' PAI, 27 March 1926, no. 12, para 31 1, p. 177.
 'Us'and 'Them' / 257
release who was abducted by Ravan. In the same way we have to aid
the release of our women from present-day abductor^."^^ There were
repeated calls for Hindus to come forward to protect their women.
Awhole series of meetings was addressed to Hindu males. During the
ninth anniversary celebrations of the Arya Kumar Sabha at Moradabad,
Sher Singh of Muzaffarnagar referrecl to the apathy of Hindu failure
to protect the honour of their women.'43Tribhowan Dutt of the Arya
Samaj addressed a meeting atAyodhya and implored Hindus to guard
their womenfolk against Muhammadan goondas.'44 The Meerut
Hindu Sabha held a large meeting in June 1924 to disciiss means of
counteracting what was asserted to be an organised campaign by Mus-
lims to kidnap and forcibly convert Hindu women.'45At Rai Bareiilly,
during the anniversary meetings of the local Arya Samaj, held from
9 to 12 April 1926, Pandit Debi Charan, vaid of Lucknow, asserted
that Hindu women were daily being used by Muslim goondas but
Hindus were doing nothing. They should kill those responsible for
such a b d ~ c t i 0 n s .The
l ~ ~ central argument being used by Hindu com-
munal organisations was that to protect 'our' women, all steps were
justified. This was the self-image of a community at war.
The attack on Muslims was linked to the phenomenon of the
enemy as neighbour; earlier attacks on Christian missionaries on simi-
lar gounds now shifted to Muslim abductors. A tract, published in
question and answer form, squarely asks who is a bigger threat to
Hindus-Christians or Muslims, especially with regard to conver-
sions? Bhai Parmanand smoothly replies:
Though both are trying it, we are more scared of the Muslims, because
Muslims are our neighbours in every village, every city and every nook
and corner. They are aware of our weaknesses and thus can harm us much
more . . . Intolerance is the basic nature of Muslims and thus both
Hindus and Muslims have to change. their basic nature. Either Mus-
lims quit religious intolerance, or Hindus also become totally and equally

'42Thakur Rajkishore Singh, Hindu Sanpthan (Ballia, 1924), p. 75.

143 PA/, 16 June 1923, no. 23, para 443, p. 345.
144 PAI, 31 March 1923, no. 13, para 263, p. 203.
145 25lJune 1924, Home Poll (NAI).
'46 PAI, 24 April 1926, no. 15, p. 219.
258 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
intolerant. Otherwise it is impossible for glass and stone to unite. . . . I
definitely consider Muslims worse than the British.14'
Neighbourhood could thus be seen as both threatening and support-
ive. The presence of Muslims in neighbourhoods meant divided
spheres, where allegiance to community became more importan': than
to locality. This was crucial for Hindu identity.
Allegations of abductions caused a number oflocalised affrays, and
even the occasional riot where Hindus united against Muslims. At
Kanpur in June 1924 a group of Hindu speakers was responsible for
causing serious apprehensions regarding the kidnapping of women,
and some Muslims were in consequence forcibly ejected from a bath-
ing festival at one of the city ghats on the Ganges.'48 In the same year
at Unnao, Hindus beat up Muslim fakirs because of a kidnapping
scare.'49 A serious communal riot occurred on 7 March 1928 at 01,
a large village in the Mathura district on the Bharatpur border. Trou-
ble was reported to have arisen by Hindus from Dharampura march-
ing on 01and attacking the Muslims of that village because a Muslim
had eloped with a Hindu woman.'50 Hindus at the Sarnath fair in
Banaras in 1938 beat up some Muslims for allegedly touching a
Hindu woman 'impr~perly'.'~' At Gwaltoli in Kanpur, in the same
year, a communal fracas ensued when a Muslim was accused of
molesting a Hindu woman.152A fight occurred between Hindus and
Muslims in Aligarh city on the morning of 25 August 1939: it was
alleged that Muslim loafers made rude remarks at Hindu women and
the Hindus 0 b j e ~ t e d . I ~ ~
Abductions, including those of the lower castes, provided a peg to
ideologically reconcile the differences between lower- and upper-caste
Hindus, while clearly demarcating them all from Muslims. One
Ganga Singh, who had been preaching against Muslim highhandedness
14' Bhai Parmanand, Hindu Jati ka Rahasya (Lucknow, 1928), pp. 19-22.
'4s 25lJune 1924, Home Poll (NAI).
'49 PAI, 5 July 1924, no. 26, p. 21 1.
I5O 177-Pl1928,Foreign and Political Deptt (NAI).
15' 3 August 1938, p. 10.
Leader,
152 Pratap, 11 September 1938, p. 8.
'53 PAI, 2 September 1939, no. 35, para 346, p. 228.
 'Us'and 'Them' / 259
in abducting Hindu women at Jaunpur, created a commotion at the
railway station when he prevented a Bhat woman from accompanying
her Muslim husband to Calcutta in September 1 9 2 8 . ' ~In~ 1938, in
Kanpur, when a sweeper woman was cleaning the road near the Kele-
wali Mosque, some Muslim goondas kidnapped her. Upon hearing
her screams, other sweepers rescued her. Following this, the Mehtar
Sabha (a body of the sweepers) resolved to boycott local M ~ s 1 i m s . l ~ ~
A communal riot occurred in the Sheoratri fair in PC Kotwali, Basti,
on 17 February 1939 as a result of the alleged molestation of a Cha-
mar woman by a Muslim, the trouble assuming serious proportions
due to the rivalry between the Hindu and Muslim lathi akharas in
that vicinity.156Abductions not only touched an emotive nerve
among lower-caste men; women were crucial for their material, eco-
nomic existence. Hindu publicists could thus use such incidents to
project Hindu homogeneity, and even lower-caste men could develop
a greater identification with the Hindu community-at times over-
powering the realities of caste hierarchies.

V. Innovative Propaganda Manipulation

The abduction stories illustrate the remarkable aptitude shown by
Hindu communalists, in a range of media, to propagate the image of
lustful Muslim males violating the pure body of the Hindu woman.
The role of Hindu and Hindi newspapers was specially marked in this
campaign. Many became more communal in tone. A direct interven-
tion by leading Hindu publicists paid rich dividends. Newspap-
ers and magazines, especially after the Non-Cooperation Movement,
became supporters of Hindu sangathan. Vartman of Kanpur was
prominent among them; so was Vikram.I5' Abhyudaya, the leading
newspaper from Allahabad, owned by the influential Malaviya fam-
ily, was closely aligned to Hindu publicists and to the nationalists of

15* PA4 15 September 1928, no. 36, para 738, p. 372.

'55 Pratap, 27 March 1938, p. 8.
' 5 6 PA/, 25 February 1939, no. 8, para 73, p. 40.
'51 Brahmawnd, Bhartiya Swatantrata Andolan aur U P ki Hindi Patrakarita
(Delhi, 1986), p. 256.
260 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the region -these were frequently the same pe0p1e.I~~ C.Y. Chinta-
mani, the editor of Leader of Allahabad and a leading English-
language journalist of the province, was a member of the Executive
Committee of the UP Hindu Sabha.157The paper adopted a clear
anti-Muslim attitude and gave full support to the shuddhi move-
ment.IG0According to the 1923-4 Report of the UP Government,
many of the newspapers and magazines published at this time in UP
were mainly responsible for the increasing communal tension.I6'
From 1923 a growing number of supposed cases of abduction of
Hindu women were reported in the local newspapers.lG2The reports
were usually brief but they appeared regularly and sometimes even
became headlines. More and more space was given to such stories.
One prominent news item categorically stated that a Lalita Devi had
been kidnapped by a Muslim. 163Ten days later, a small item appeared
saying the words 'alleged to have been' had been left out in the report
by mistake!lG4What suited the dominant pattern became significant
news; what was uncomfortable was either not stated or relegated to
the inside pages. Headlines served the purpose of dramatising the
various abduction stories and played an inflammatory role aimed at
rousing Hindu sentiments. The headlines ignored contrary evidence
and presented 'facts' boldly, singularly and uniformly. They often
ran counter to the contents of the report. The headlines included:
'Communal Tension in Court Compound: Alleged Conversion of
Hindu Girl';lG5 'Azamgarh: Lalita Devi's Kidnapping Case',IGG

15' Interview with Kshem Chandra Sumen by Hari Dev Sharma on 17 Sep-
tember 1971, Oral History Transcript, no. 210, pp. 12 to 15 (NMML). Born
in Meerut, Kshem Chandra Sumen was an Arya Samajist and a writer and journ-
alist. His interview gives many names ofwriters and journalists of this period who
were also members of the Arya Samaj.
' 5 9 Gordon, 'Hindu', p. 152.
I6O 25lJune 1923, Home Poll (NAI).
16' Report on the Administration of UP, 1323-24 (Allahabad, 1925), p. 91.
' 6 2 I noticed this while looking at the NNRand some local newspapers within
the period of my study.
Leader, 17 November, 1938, p. 14.
16* Leader, 27 November, 1938, p. 6.
165Leader, 30 September 1938, p. 12.
'" Leader, 17 November 1938, p. 14.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 26 1
'Unprecedented Communal ~nterest';'~''Miyanji lu Kartut' (Sinful
Act of a Muslim);168'Musalman Utha le Gaya Hindu Yuvati KO'
(Muslim Abducted a Hindu Woman).'" It was not just a question
of particular cases: these moved readily from the particular to the
general and abstract. Reckless and venomous generalisations were
made, and almost every day the Hindi vernacular press published
statements, without concrete proof, of abductions. Statements were
freely issued portraying the Muslim as one who abducts Hindu
women, with no ~ubstantiation.'~~ Pratap of 28 May 1923 called the
attention of the Hindus of Fyzabad to the seduction ofHindu women
generally by Muhammadans of the district.I7'
Hindu-owned newspapers not only started giving more space to
abduction stories but built up a range of communal stereotypes
which, to some extent, provided the basic grammar of the abduction
of Hindu women. In complex and subtle ways the newspapers de-
fined,.constructed and sustained these stories. They were not only a
powerful source of ideas of abductions but also a place where these
ideas were articulated, worked on, transformed, elaborated and popu-
larised in a vivid vernacular. The fact that generalisations about ab-
ductions and kidnapping of Hindu women and children could now
be made openly, legitimised their public expression and increased the
threshold of public acceptance for them; this also made them 'true'.
Propagating stories of abductions, both in newspapers and in every-
day conversation fed by them, sustained abductions as an active
cultural, and therefore political, issue.
Lawyers and courts provided additional public space in which
abduction spectacles could be produced. Newspapers also showed a
lively interest in court proceedings. Leader carried two pages every
fortnight devoted exclusively to court proceedings. Thus newspapers
and legal institutions operated in tandem. The newspapers translated

167 Leader, 16 September, 1938, p. 6.

Ib8 Bharat Dhanna, 5 August, 1924, p. 12.
'" Abhyuduya, 3 February 1923, p. 5.
For example, Prem stated that abduction has become a feature of the times
in almost all the provinces. The Hindu Sabha must raise Hindu volunteers to
put an end to such atrocities, NNR 3 1 May 1924.
17' Stated in PAI, 16 June 1923, no. 23, p. 345.
262 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
legal proceedings into written form. Stories written in newspapers
were occasionally culled from court proceedings. The courts and local
kaccheris became major sites for panic about abductions. Communal
tension ran high in the court compound of Lucknow when one
Abdulla made an application before the city magistrate that he should
be given custody of Rasul Bandi, a Hindu girl who had embraced
Islam. It was reported that Draupadi, the girl concerned, became a
Muslim. As the guardian of the girl disputed the story of her conver-
sion, the police took the girl into custody and lodged her in a Mahila
Ashram (Woman's Home). "*
One case, in which the courts and lawyers played the central role,
shook Kanpur in 1938. There was a major scandal and great tension
when Bimla Devi eloped with a M ~ s l i m . "The~ case acquires special
significance because of the interest it generated. Its importance can
be judged by the fact that H.G. Haig, Governor of UP, thought it
fit to mention it at least twice in the secret letters he exchanged with
the Viceroy at this time. Thus a letter said:

Another matter affecting a High Court has come up recently. There was
a sensational incident in Cawnpore. T h e daughter of a well-known
Hindu vakil eloped with the son of a prominent Muslim merchant, and
apparently the girl embraced Islam and was duly married to the boy. A
charge of abduction was brought against the boy. After some weeks the
girl was discovered and pending the trial of the criminal case, her father
made a claim to custody of the girl under the civil law. T h e High Court
were moved to intervene and transferred the civil proceedings to them-
selves. Meanwhile the girl and her father disappeared and have not yet
been found. T h e whole matter has given rise to acute communal feeling
both in Cawnpore and Allahabad, and allegations were made against the
imparrialiry of one of the Muslim judges of the High Court. An appli-
cation was made to the Provincial Government to transfer the case to an-
other High Court under the amended form ofsection 327 of the Criminal
Procedure Code. T h e g o u n d s advanced were that there was danger of
a breach of peace owing to acute communal feeling and that on the same

The Lender, 30 September, 1938, p. 12.

I am grateful to Nandini Gooptu for initially mentioning this case to me,
which I was then able to follow up.
 'Us'and 'Them' / 263
p u n d they could not expect a fair hearing in the province. The Minister
for Justice, Dr. Katju, who is perhaps naturally inclined to accept the
Hinduversion, has taken a perfectly proper line. He asked the High Court
for their comments and inquired from the District Magistrates of Cawnpore
and Allahabad whether they anticipated any difficulty in maintaining
order if the case continued as at present. Armed with the replies of these
various authorities which were on the lines to be expected he has rejected
the application for tran~fer."~

The sensational case rocked the UP press for many months. Many
of the leading papers followed it graphically and gave lengthy details
of court proceedings. 175 Many such cases dragged on for years. News-
papers gave dramatic power to the proceedings in court and bestowed
an aura of public acclaim to the prosecuting lawyers. In this case it
was Bijendra Swarup, a leading lawyer of Kanpur and one of the stal-
warts of the UP Arya Samaj, who was the hero. In a brilliant legal
performance, he secured custody of the girl on behalf of her parents.
She was reconverted to Hinduism through shuddhi at the Arya Samaj
temple in Kanpur, and Swarup even managed to arrange her wedding
to a 'suitable' Hindu man! It is interesting to note that Bimla Devi
herself was never allowed to appear in the court.
Both lawyers and journalists, it should be added, were highly
vulnerable to communal influence in this period. Many of the leading
personalities of the Hindu Mahasabha were lawyers by profession.
Sarkar Bahadur Johari, an advocate of Allahabad, was the President
of the UP Hindu Sabha; Wati Wishnu Swarup, advocate, was the
President of the Bijnore Hindu Sabha in 1939; Ram Mohan Lal,
advocate of Moradabad, and Rai Bahadur Vikramjit Singh, advocate
of Kanpur, were also leading lights of the Hindu Mahasabha move-
ment.'76 At one point, of 24 members of the executive committee of

"* Letter dated 8 November 1938, written by Haig to Linlithgow, Haig Pap-
ers, Eur. Mss. F. 1 1512A (IOL).
See Leader, Pioneer, Vartman, Aaj, Pratap between September 1938 to
February 1939. As to specific dates for example, see Leader, 21 and 23 September
1938, p. 6; 8 October 1938, p.5.
Names gleaned from various sources, like Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha
Papers (NMML); Sri Bharat Mahamandal Directory (Benaras, 1930).
264 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the UP Hindu Sabha, 16 were lawyers by profession, including peo-
ple like Gokul Prasad, Mahadeo Prasad, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Rama
Kant Malaviya, Sunder La1 Dave and Iswar Saran.177Earlier, Bishan
Narayan Dar, leading lawyer and Congressman of Lucknow, had had
clear sympathies with the cow protection movement.'78 Most be-
longed to the upper castes, being usually Kayasthas or Brahmins.
The urban bias of most abduction stories can also be seen. Most
leading lawyers of U P who had links with the Hindu publicists were
urban-based. A large number lived in Allahabad, for the High Court
was located there. However, although most abduction stories began
principally in urban spaces, they were not confined to them. The
kaccheri was a place where rural litigants picked up news and ideas.
This conduit for abduction scares thus spread to rural areas as well,
and stories came pouring in from there. Abduction stories in the press
stimulated a large number of correspondents from mofussil areas to
write to metropolitan newspapers of UP about instances of abduc-
tions. This created a vast, interactive field that, to some extent, was
self-perpetuating. There was a proliferation of public places where
debates and discussions occurred. Court cases became self-generating
and lawyers and journalists were intertwined as both objects and
subjects, history and historians, actors and agents.
Gossip and rumours added spice to this uproar. Gossip about
Muslim goondas involved curiosity about the life of an 'other'. Rum-
ours of abductions helped in the g o w t h of a collective Hindu body.
They were strengthened by posters and handbills which appeared
specifically on the issue of abductions, either distributed or pasted on
walls. A novel method of propaganda work was adopted in Allahabad
during a week in May 1926. Inflammatory messages were written on
kites, which were then flown over the city.179Innovative lantern slide
shows were screened in many meetings of the Arya Samaj, depicting

177 Gordon, 'Hindu', p. 153.

'78 Bishan Narayan Dar, An Appealto the EnglithPublicon Behalfoftbe Hindus
ofNWP (Lucknow, 1893). For detailed analysis of Dar, see Pandey, Construction,
pp. 218-24.
17' PAI, 15 May 1926, no. 18, para 473, p. 262.
 'Us'and 'Them' I 2 6 5
the horror unleashed by Muslims on Hindus."' Railway stations, one
of the important public spaces, were also targeted. The use ofvehicles
was part of the spectre of abductions, and railways were thus an easy
target.
Rumours and kidnapping stories were widely reported from many
places like Agra, Pilibhit, Meerut and Unao in 1924. Meerut reported
that friction continued unabated and that the provocation came
chiefly from the Hindus, and that rumours regarding the kidnapping
of Hindu women and children were an occasion for a good deal of
unease. l s l SOpowerful were the rumours that even the fortnightly re-
ports of UP were forced to acknowledge them.ls2 In May 1926 it was
rumoured in Jhansi that a gang of Muhammadans disguised as
Hindus had appeared to kidnap Hindu women and children.lg3In
June 1927 there was a rumour current in Agra that a Muhammadan
minister of Gwalior and his brother, having gained control over the
maharani, were conducting a campaign to convert Hindus to Islam,
and in that context many women and children had been kidnapped.18*
Sometimes there was immediate evidence to prove the depth of fallacy
and fantasy involved. Thus on 13 April 1927, Hindus spread a rum-
our in Muzaffarnagar that a Hindu girl had been forcibly converted
to Islam and was being married to a Muhammadan. They proceeded
in crowds to inspect the alleged pervert and found the girl had always
been a Muslim. The girl's brother was forced to lodge complaints
against certain Hindus, including the prosecuting inspector and Dis-
trict Intelligence staff s u b - i n ~ ~ e c t oInr .Kanpur
~ ~ ~ in 1939, in a state-
ment given to the police, a Hindu youth accused Muslim volunteers
of kidnapping Hindu women. This led to a search of the Muslim
League office to find the kidnapped women-which yielded no trace
of them. Muslims closed shops and the Muslim League organised a
lso PA(, 23 June 1923, no. 24, para 456, p. 355.
lS1 PA4 5 July 1924, no. 26, p. 21 1.
ls2 251June 1924, Home Poll (NAI).
183 PAI, 29 May 1926, no. 20, p. 298; Also see Jordens, Shraddhananda,
p. 133.
Is4 PAZ, 18 June 1927, no. 23, p. 229.
185 PA/, 7 May 1927, no. 17, p. 169.
266 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
protest meeting.ls6 The spread of rumours did not require massive
organisation or capital, and rumours became a major source of ab-
duction stories.

Notions of Hindu masculinity that came to dominate the discourse

of this time reveal the destructive potential of any militant Hindu
assertion, even one forged in the crucible of anti-imperialist and
nationalist struggle. Religion, caste and class, too, mediate gender, as
is revealed through women becoming agents of violence against Mus-
lims. Re-imagining the Hindu woman within the community was
intended to make women active and consenting constituents of a
communalised community. Women were both active and passive
markers of communal difference; they were not simply by-products
of history; they acted and were acted upon. Yet even when women
were assuming an activist role in this communal rhetoric, their role
was being determined by men.
Abductions became one the main determinants of Hindu identity
and consciousness and can be regarded as one of the key factors polar-
ising Hindu-Muslim politics of the decade. Abductions provided an
explanatory system that held Muslims as the central target. Hindu
publicists deployed abductions in multiple propaganda sites. Draw-
ing on diverse sources like newspapers, pamphlets, meetings, novels,
myths, rumours and gossip, these publicists were able to operate in
a public domain and monopolise the field of everyday representation.
Communication, more than direct experience, created a systematic
Hindu communalism, an ideology of abductions. At the same time,
there were attempts to link such 'discursive performatives"87 to
material realities and events like the Moplah rebellion. Representa-
tion, performance and event thus fed into each other.

ls6 PAL 20 May 1939, no. 20.

18' I have borrowed this term from Judith Butler, Excitabk Speech: A Politics
of the Perfirmntive (New York, 1997), pp. 71-102.
 'Us'and 'Them' 1 267
Hate speech is always repeatable speech, drawing its,strength from
stereotypes and rhetoric.18' Here too, abduction was represented as
a general phenomenon of the period, and became a recurrent central
proposition of Hindu publicists. Different events were made to ap-
pear to follow a similar pattern-a narrative of Muslim male aggres-
sion and Hindu female victimhood. In repetition lay strength and one
of the primary sources of communal power: its ability perpetually to
renew itself through reiteration, and its authority as supposed truth
and 'common sense'.lg9
The abduction ofwomen provided an emotive basis for arguments
in favour of Hindu homogeneity and patriarchy. In such a context,
the fantasies surrounding daily interactions and sexual relations
between Hindu women and Muslim men fed into many cultural dis-
courses where control over women had to be reiterated. Anxieties
about shared social practices, elopements and conversions threw up
a whole lot of instructions and regulations for women. It also led to
some reformist endeavours by which women, even those who were
normally conceived as being on the margins of Hindu society, and
the lower castes, could be co-opted and at the same time controlled.

ls8 Butler, Excitabk p. 102.

'81 Datta, 'Dying', p. 1305.
H indu pamphleteers and campaigners went all out to keep Hindu
women away from Muslim men, and from symbols, customs
and culture seen as 'Muslim'. Even day-to-day contact with Muslims
was perceived as a serious threat to the Hindu patriarchal order and
community identity, leading to a new set of instructions for Hindu
women. These attitudes paralleled high-caste exclusivities but sought
to extend them to a putative Hindu community.
Communalism has usually been linked to violence. However,
'spectacular' moments of strife, be they riots over cow protection, or
at festivals, or over music near mosques, do not tell us the full story
of communal antagonisms. Conflicts are more often generated from
the frictions of everyday life. Everyday life and practices-reading,
talking, walking and cooking-should not be treated merely as obs-
cure background or social activity.' The material circumstances of
daily existence-at work, at home and at play-and exploring social
history in its experimental and subjective dimensions have been stres-
~ e dEveryday
.~ life reproduces social currents; it reflects thesocialisation
of nature and the degree and manner of its h ~ m a n i s a t i o n .Larger
~
public arenas tend to be more impersonal or notional; the everyday

'Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life,trans. Steven I;. Rendall

(Berkeley, 1984), pp. xi-xxiv.
2Alf Ludtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Histori-
cal Experiences and Ways of Life, trans. William Templer (Princeton, 1995),
pp. 4-30.
SAgnes Heller, Everyday Life,trans. G. L. Campbell (London, 19841, p. 4.
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 269
is more personal and interactive, and therefore, possibly, more per-
vasive. Larger collectivities are also easier to disparage and protest
against because of their visibility, whereas daily individual interaction
is more hidden and muted and thus more difficult to control. The
realm of the everyday is even more crucial from a gender perspective,
for women usually play a more central role in this arena.4 T o engage
with this history of everyday life as a history of gender is to inquire
into the meanings of sexual affiliations, and of the repeated exchanges
between women and men, as well as castes, classes and communities.

I. Regulating Women by Fracturing Shared

Spaces in Everyday Life
The daily social intercourse between Hindus and Muslims, the relat-
ive malleability and fuzziness of religious and cultural boundaries in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in India, and the
growing fractures of the later period have all been a subject of much
interest and debate.5 It has been argued that many earlier symbiotic
activities had their basis in popular culture and the sharing of rituals,
beliefs, practices and festivals:
T o understand premodern Bengali society on its own terms requires
suspending the binary categories typical of modern observers. . . . Instead
of visualizing two separate and self-contained social groups, Hindus and

Dorothee Wierling, 'The History of Everyday Life and Gender Relations:

O n Historical and Historiographical Relationships', in Ludtke (ed.), History,
pp. 149-68.
Many studies of different regions have pointed this out. For Bengal, seeAsim
Roy, The Islamic Syncretic Tradition in Bengal (Princeton, 1983), pp. 207-48;
Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760
(Berkeley, 1993), pp. 269-315. For South India, see Susan Bayly, Saints,
Go&esses And Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700-1900
(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 73-86, 1 15-50, 203-1 5. For Punjab, see Harjot Obe-
roi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in
theSikh Tradition (Delhi, 1994), pp. 130-203. Also see Richard M. Eaton, Sufis
of Bqapur 1300-1700: Socinl Roks of S u f i in Medieval India (Princeton, 1978),
pp. 89-105, 243-306; Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian
Environment(l964, rpt. Oxford, 1994), pp. 157-66; Rasheeduddin Khan (ed.),
Composite Culture of India and National Integration (Simla, 1987).
270 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Muslims, participating in rites in which each stepped beyond its 'natural'
communal boundaries, one may see instead a single undifferentiated mass
of Bengali villagers who, in their ongoing struggle with life's usual tribu-
lations, unsystematically picked and chose from an array of reputed
instruments-a holy man here, a holy river there-in order to tap super-
human power.'
Obviously, this is not 'syncretism', implying the existence of dis-
crete traditions melded through cultural ~ o n t a c t Most
. ~ premodern
Indians lacked the notion of a uniform, religious c o m m ~ n i t yreadily
,~
identified and enumerable9 as Hindu," and precolonial society was

'Eaton, Rise, p. 28 1.
' Vijay Prashad argues that in Punjab religion was not syncretic but historical-
ly diverse and popular: Vijay Prashad, 'The Killing of Bala Shah and the Birth
of Valmiki: Hinduisation and the Politics of Religion', IESHR, 32, 3 (1995),
pp. 287-325. Shail Mayaram prefers the term 'liminality' as, according to her,
it suggests a potentially anti-structural questioning of categorical identities and
deliberately fuzzy boundaries: Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory
and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity (Delhi, 1997), pp. 3 6 4 8 . More recently,
Amiya Sen has drawn a distinction between conscious syncretism and occasional
eclectic borrowing: Amiya P. Sen, 'Bhakti Paradigms, Syncretism and Social
Restructuring in Kzliyuga: A Reappraisal of Some Aspects of Bengali Religious
Culture', SH, 14, 1 (1998), pp. 89-126.
Some have taken this to extreme lengths. It has thus been remarked: 'The
composite culture in India originated in an environment of reconciliation, rather
than refutation, cooperation rather than confrontation, coexistence rather than
mutual annihilation of the politically dominant strands.' See Rasheeduddin
Khan, 'Composite Culture as a New National Identiry', in Khan (ed.), Compo-
site, p. 36. Also see H.K. Sherwani, 'Cultural Synthesis in Medieval India', Jour-
nal of Indian History, 41 (1963), pp. 239-59.
Sudipta Kaviraj, 'The Imaginary Institution of India', in Partha Chatterjee
and Gyanendra Pandey (eds), Subaltern Studies 1.71: Writings on South Asian
History and Society (Delhi, 1992), p. 26.
' O Romila Thapar, 'Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and
the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity', MAS, 23, 2 (1989), pp. 209-30;
Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, 'Introduction', in Vasudha
Dalmia and Heinrich von Stierencron (eds), Representing Hinduism: The Con-
struction of Religious Traditions and Nationalldentity (Delhi, 1995), pp. 17-32;
C.J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism andsociety in India(Princeton,
1992), pp. 10, 257-8.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 27 1
too fragmented by sub-caste and local loyalties to allow larger reli-
gious allegiances to predominate,11or rather to be sharply articulated,
other than among the privileged and at certain times.12
Scholars argue that structural and cultural links between the
Hindu and Muslim elites of UP became particularly strong in early-
nineteenth-century Awadh.13 Many of the Hindu literate castes had
~ r a ~ m a t i c amastered
ll~ Indo-Persian revenue management,14 and
many north Indian Hindus employed Persianised Urdu as their lite-
rary medium.15 Some lower-caste Hindu families followed Muslim
practices of cross-cousin marriages and burial.16 In everyday life, in
employment, leisure, eating habits, daily economic needs and so on,
elements of sharing between Hindus and Muslims were widespread,
even at the end of the nineteenth century.'' A substantial number of
Hindus, especially lower castes and women, participated in tazia wor-
ship, Muharram celebrations and visits to pirs. Plurality also took the
form of specialist occupations. A large number of mirasis, bhands and
prostitutes were Muslims;ls they were often invited to perform at

'I Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, p. 199.

l2 Cynthia Talbot, 'Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the SelE Hindu-Muslim
Identities in Pre-colonial India', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37,
4 (1995), pp. 692-722.
l 3 Richard B. Barnett, North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughak and
the British 1720-1801 (Berkeley, 1980), p. 246 argues that the tolerance and
indifference to religious allegiance which characrerised the middle Nawabi of
Awadh was a need of the times, as it was necessary to increase their legitimacy.
This lead to a more intense and visible cultural syncretism and eclecticism in the
eighteenth century. For a more romantic picture of cultural synthesis, see Peter
Manuel, 'Music, Media, and Communal Relations in North India, Past and Pre-
sent', in David Ludden (ed.), Making India Hindu: Religion, Community andthe
Politics of Democracy in India (Delhi, 1996), p. 122; Peter Manuel, Thumri in
Historical and Stylistic Perspectives (Delhi, 1990), pp. 55-6.
'* C. A. Bayly, Rukrs, Townsmen and Bazaars, p. 30.
l 5 Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 2 4 5 .
l 6 Bayly, Rukrs, p. 49.
I' Census ofIndia, 1901, NWP, Pdrt I (Allahabad, 1902), pp. 373-5.
I s Manuel, 'Music', p. 122. Bhands were mostly Muslinls, and were an integral
part of the cultural life of Lucknow till the early nineteenth century. They were
invited on marriages, Holi, Diwali and other festive occasions. Their decline
272 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Hindu marriages and festivals. Many bangle-sellers were Muslims,
from whom Hindu women naturally often bought bangles.'9 There
were frequent dealings between Muslim weavers and Hindu mer-
chants, though these declined in the early twentieth century as more
Hindus took up weaving and often maintained ties with Hindu mer-
chants2' At Banaras, Muslim kunjras sold vegetables in the famous
sabzi market at Chaukhamba in Gudaulia; these too were ousted in
the 1920s and 1930s and replaced by Hindu vegetable sellers.21
Earlier, there had been various commensual, purity-pollution, con-
tractual and connubial restrictions and divisions,22but they did not
provide an unambiguous boundary between large and inclusive reli-
gious communities.
O f course people could share beliefs and practices and interact in
a plural culture without effacing their differences of perspective, label
and custom. Sectarian divisions were not produced only with the
coming of the British. Hindu and Muslim identities existed, though
they were not fixed over time, or all-embracingwithin 'communities'.
For the medieval period it has been argued that Hindus and Muslims
shared activities in the public realm but were segregated in the pri-
~ a t e . In
~ 3the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the public
sharing was fractured and there increasingly arose sharper and broader
categories that encompassed all 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' by defini-
tion. These changes found their expression in everyday life, as well as
in organised politics and religion.
We need to examine efforts made by Hindu publicists to wean

began in the late nineteenth century and by 1947 their journey had almost ended:
Raushan Taki, Lucknow k i Bband Parampara (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 23-8.
l 9 Hanuman Prasad Poddar, Samaj Sudhar (Gorakhpur, 1929), pp. 2 6 2 .
20 Nica Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture andldentity (Prince-
ton, 1988), p. 51.
2' Interview with Dr Anand Krishna, 73 years, at Banaras on 18 February
1998.
22 Shiva S. Dua, Sociery and Culture in Northern India 1850-1900 (Delhi,
1985), pp. 63-74.
23 Muzaffar Alam, 'Competition and Co-existence: Indo-Islamic Interaction
in Medieval North India', Itinerario, 13, 1 (1789), pp. 46-55; Sudhir Kakar, The
Colors of Koknce, pp. 1 6 2 4 .
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 273
away Hindus, and especially women, from shared spaces between
Hindus and Muslims in the late nineteenth century. These became
more offensive in the 1920s.

I. I . Economic and Social Boycott

Hindu publicists attempted to outlaw nearly all spheres of Hindu-
Muslim interaction. They tried to extend occupational divisions
more sharply along religious affiliations, drawing lines between Muslim
and Hindu prostitutes, workers, weavers and vegetable sellers. As ear-
ly as 1890, Hindus held a large meeting at Aligarh which instructed
Hindus not to buy goods from a Muslim or engage his services which,
in turn, had an adverse effect on Muslims for they were forced to
submit a petition to the government which stated:

Prostitutes, players on native drums and buffoons, bhagciyas have all been
Musalman for centuries and have all along been sewing in their respective
capacities, all the baniyahs, kayasths, brahmans . . . and the British Gov-
ernment might as well ascertain for itself whether all these professional
persons'have been any other than Musalmans. . . . T h e Government can
now form an idea of what a large number of men have been deprived of
their means oflivelihood on account of the Dharma Samaj Hindus having
boycotted t h e m z 4

Again in 1911, the leading Hindus of Haridwar decided to boycott

Muslim vegetable and shoe-sellers, bamboo basket-makers, and not
rent their shops and houses to Muslims.25Suggestions and advice for
discipline and a code of conduct for Hindus in their dealings with
Muslims became more detailed and specific with time, especially in
the 1920s. Tracts proliferated. One title that proved extremely popu-
lar for many such tracts was Alarm Bell, with slight modifications.
Most of its versions were written by prominent members of the Arya
Samaj in UP, who were often shopkeepers, traders, lawyers or teach-
e r ~There
. ~ ~were endless lists of suggestions to Hindus to have no
2454 B11891, Box 7, Police Deptt (UPSA).
253991191 1, Box 246, GAD (UPSA).
2 G ~ n o n(Hindu
. Sabha), Alarm Bellurfi(arrekiGhanti(Banaras, 1925); Shiv
Sharma Updeshak (Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, UP), Alarm Biguk (Moradabad,
274 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
dealings with Muslim tailors, milkmen, vegetable-sellers, bangle-
sellers, policemen, bhands, prostitutes, washermen, nais, ekkawallahs
and c h i k ~ a s . ~ '
Numerous meetings were held and notices issued to that effect. A
boycott was proposed of Muslims and their services during social oc-
casions and entertainment. O n 12 and 13January 19 11 several small
meetings of Hindus were held at Agra, organised by the Arya Samaj,
and it was decided that neither Muslim dancing girls nor musicians
would be employed in weddings. O n 18 and 19 January there were
some thirty Hindu marriage processions at Agra, and except in one
instance not a single Muslim dancing girl or bandsman was emp-
1 0 ~ e d .A
~ *visiting Muslim circus company was boycotted by Hindus
at Etawah in 1925.29Notices were issued at Etawah warning Hindus
against attending cinemas and theatrical performances in the district
exhibition as theywere run byMuslims.30When posters were placarded
at Banaras in November 1926, urging Hindus to boycott the New
Alfred Theatrical Company staging dramas there, it was stated that

1924); Mathura Prasad Shiv Hare, Alarm Bell Arthat Khatre ka Ghanta (Akhil
Bharat Varshiya Sadhu Mahamandal, Haridwar, 1924. This time 4000 copies
to be distributed free); Swami Shraddhanand, Khatre ka Ghanta ArthatMuham-
madi Shadyantra ka Rahasyabhed (Delhi, 1923). It was noted that several copies
of Alann Bell, written by one Ramanand, had appeared in Etah in May 1926:
PAI, 15 May 1926, no. 18, para 473, p. 261. Even notices and posters of it ap-
peared. Avakil distributed notices at Mathura in 1925, with references to Alarm
BelE: PA4 27 June 1925, no. 24, para 195, p. 255. Posters entitled Alarm Bell
were ~ o s t e din Banaras in 1926: PAI, 8 May 1926, no. 17, para 435, p. 248.
Many of these ostensibly claimed that they had been written in response to
Khwaja Hasan Nizami's book Daiye Islam, which purported to teach Muslims
the quickest and most comprehensive way of converting kafirs to Islam. How-
ever, in the process they went far beyond their claims and used it as an effective
pretext to propagate militant Hinduism and aggressively assert a community
identity.
27Updeshak, Alarm, p. 31; Hare, Alann, pp. 4-41; Anon., Alarm, pp. 15-
20.
28 l-41March 191 1, B, Home Poll (NAI).
29 PAI, 1 August 1925, no. 29, para 233, p. 312.
30 PAI, 3 December 1927, no. 46, para 1138, p. 454.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men I 275
the Company had already been boycotted in Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad
and M i r ~ a ~ u r . ~ ~
O n the other hand there was an economic boycott of Muslims, this
time in relation to employment and shopping At the District Hindu
Conference at Dehradun on 4 March 1924, Dr Kedar Nath, a promi-
nent member of the UP Arya Samaj, advocated the boycott of all
Mus~imsand was supported by Swami V i ~ h a r a n a n d . ~ ~a A
Naga
t Kir-
tan meeting in Gorakhpur on 14 November 1925, attended by some
1000 people, Hindus were advised to boycott all Muslim shops.33In
June 1926 the Yatri Sabha at Haridwar prevented Hindu pilgrims
from engaging tongas driven by Muslims.34Posters were distributed
at Badaun in 1926 by the Dharam Rakshini Sabha, advising Hindus
to abstain from social intercourse with Muslims.35At Jaunpur the
Arya preacher Ganga Singh exhorted Hindus to boycott Muslim
vegetable-sellers.36These campaigns seemingly had an adverse impact
on occupations traditionally and largely run by Muslims. Referring
to the general boycott of Muslim bandsmen and makers of fireworks
in Hindu marriages, especially in Meerut, an Urdu paper remarked
that the Hindus who first favoured the Muslim boycott indirectly
were now openly encouraging the movement, with the result that
even Muslim masons, tailors and blacksmiths had been di~carded.~'
A linked aspect of these suggestions, the other face of the coin, was
to employ the services of only Hindu dhunia, kori, chikwa, ~ h u r i h a r . ~ ~
Hindus were asked to take up professions which were exclusively in
the hands of Muslims.39At a private meeting of Hindus held in the

31 PAI, 3 December 1927, no. 46, para 1138, p. 454.

32 PAI, 22 March 1924, no. 12, para 102, p. 1 11.
33 PAI, 28 November 1925, no. 45, para 400, p. 495.
34 PAI, 12 June 1926, no. 22, para 553, p. 320.
35 PAI, 18 September 1926, no. 36, para 838, p. 508.
36PAI, 22 September 1928. no. 37, para 771, p. 391. Also see PA/, 6 June
1925, no. 21, para 169, p. 224; PAI, 30 October 1937, no. 42, para 489, p. 605.
37 Aiena, NNR, 15 May 1926.
3R Premanand Banprasrhi, Ghazi Kaun Hai (Awadh, 1927), p. 7.
3"Arya P a m , NNR, 25 August 1923. Hindus were exhorted to organise their
own bands, for safery of marriage processions: Vartman, NNR, 8 May 1926.
276 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Panchaiti Dharamshala at Roorkee, it was resolved that Muslims
should be replaced in the menial trades by Hindus, and Hindu mast-
ers should get rid of their Muslim servants.40In 1925, in a town of
UP, Hindus were boycotting Muslim drummers and training Chamars
to replace them4*In Allahabad, khatiks were employed to sell vege-
tables in place of Muslim k ~ n j r a s There
. ~ ~ were various artisanal
groups in which Muslims were often the majority.43A Barah Sabha
was formed in UP, the purpose of which was to protect and expand
the number of Hindus in jobs and occupations. Its explicit aim was
to encourage Hindus to take up those trades, jobs, occupations,
professions and enterprises with which they had not traditionally
been associated. For this it even aided the opening up of certain shops
run only by Hindus.44Thus, negative appeals were followed by posi-
tive suggestions to open up new arenas for Hindu males, to create
more jobs for them, diversify occupations into unexplored areas, and
reduce the insecurity of employment and poverty faced by the Hindu
poor.45Class, caste, occupation and community were woven together
to demarcate Muslims and promote the material advancement of
Hindus. In the process, shared economic arenas of interdependence
were challenged.
Sometimes, lower castes also took up such recommendations for
their own specific reasons. A pamphlet of the Ahirs said Muslim
masons and bricklayers were increasing in number and posed a threat
to Ahirs in the construction industry.4GChamars too-alarge number

40 PA/, 24 May 1924, no. 20, para 168, p. 174.

25/July 1925, Home Poll (NAI).
42 PAI, 6 April 1938, no. 14, para 162, p. 91.
43 Pandey, Constvurtion, p. 56; Kumar, Artisans, pp. 49-50.
44~dvertisementof aims and objectives of the Rarah Sabha, published in
Anon. (Hindu Dharma Rakshak), Musnlmani Andher Khata (Awadh, 1928),
inside front cover.
45 It has been stated that as the labour market in UP was becoming more and
more crowded, the Shudra poor in the towns faced growing occupational conflict
with other groups of the poor, in addition to their increasing economic insecurity
and marginalisation: Nandini Gooptu, 'The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism
in Early Twentieth-Century UP', MAS, 31, 4 (1997), p. 888.
*' Baijnathprasad Yadav, Ahir Jati ki NiyamavaG (Banaras, 1927), p. 39. Also
mentioned in Gooptu, 'Urban', p. 888.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 277
of whom were rural tenants who had considerable interaction with
poor Muslims-differentiated themselves from both lower-caste and
high-caste Hindus, but at the same time sought upward mobility
within Hinduism. Their economic and social aspirations led them at
times to call for a boycott of M ~ s l i m s . ~
A' Charnar conference, held
at Meerut and attended by 4000 Chamars in 1922, passed a resolu-
tion not to accept food from people other than Hindus.48 Similar
resolutions were passed at meetings of the Charnars of Mathura, Jaun-
pur and D e h r a d ~ n . ~ '
Deviations from the norms created by Hindu publicists were con-
demned. Voices recommending cooperation and working together in
everyday life were suppressed. At Colonelganj in Gonda, when a
boycott of Muslims by Hindus was reported, certain Hindus who did
not fall in line were themselves boycotted and threatened.50At Azarn-
garh, two Ahirs were fined for selling their cattle to Muslims in
contravention of the orders of the panchayat.51
The usual suggestions given to Hindus were more specifically
aimed at Hindu women. This was because of the particular relation-
ship ofwomen to the everyday arena under scrutiny, and on account
of the growing fear that they were deciding many aspects of their lives
on their own. Exchanges with servants, sweepers, bangle-sellers and
vegetable-sellers-the bargaining for commodities of everyday use-
was a domain in which women played an important role. Now, more
than ever before, women's day-to-day lives-their forms ofentertain-
ment, cultural practices, religious feelings, and the people from whom

*'The relationship between lower castes and Hindu reformists was tense and
complex in UP. However, it has been argued that, especially from the 1920s,
Hindu organisations felt they must reclaim the untouchables to Hinduism, and
wean them away from all ostensible 'Muslim' practices and rituals. The lower
castes in turn absorbed, accepted, appropriated, contested and reconstructed
these concepts from different perspectives and reasons. See, Prashad, 'Killing',
pp. 287-325; Gooptu, 'Urban', pp. 879-918; Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social
History, pp. 358-90.
48 PAI, 4 November 1922, no. 42, para 1269, p. 1577.
49 PAI, 17 March 1923, no. 8, para 170, p. 124; PAI, 9 October 1926,
no. 39, para 904, p. 544; PA/,12 March 1927, no. 10, para 225, p. 92.
50 PA/,5 April 1924, no. 14, para 116, p. 128.
5 1 PA/,6 May 1933, no. 17, para 296, p. 234.
278 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
they bought objects of daily consumption--came under the scrutiny
of Hindu publicists.
In the paradigm which sees the outsider violating the Hindu
household, Muslims began to replace Christian missionaries. Every
Hindu Sabha was asked to keep a detailed list of jobs that Muslims
performed which brought them in contact with Hindu women.52Im-
plicit here was also the fear of Hindu women losing control of their
sexuality and falling prey to Muslim desire. An economic and social
boycott was intended to facilitate the isolation of Hindu women from
Muslims, and to reduce the anxieties of Hindu men. Thus, Hindu
women's lives, experiences and identities were made a matter for ins-
truction by men. A whole new language was employed for women
vis-h-vis Muslims, telling them how to move, whom to talk to, where
to go, and what to do. All places of possible contact between Hindu
women and Muslim men, public and private, came under this surveil-
lance. In the process of regulating their lives, cracks appeared in more
and more shared spaces. It seemed that women themselves had been
guilty of participating in such arenas, and so it was through women
that the intended separation could now be achieved. This was publicised
through Stri Shiksha, an Arya Samajist tract on 'proper' behaviour for
Hindu women, written by a prominent pandit of the UP Arya Prati-
nidhi Sabha:53
(1) Never worship at a grave. (2) D o not worship tazias, Muslim Gods
and jesters. (3) D o not get amulets, charms or incantations done from
Muslims. (4) D o not go to Muslim priests who read prayers in mosques.
(5) At marriage and other times, do not do embroidery of the Muslim
kind. (6) D o not get assessments and measurements done from Muslims.
(7) D o not listen to the invocations of pirs. (8) Stop taking out money
in the name ofpirs. . . . (10) Never visit Muslim fairs. (1 1) Never sit alone

52 Hare, Alarm, p. 50.

53 Shiv Sharma Mahopdeshak, Stri Shiksha (Bareilly, 1927). The tract was
later proscribed, 1121 H (NAI). Also mentioned in Graham Shaw and Mary
Lloyd (eds), Publications Proscribed by the Government of India: A Catalogue of
the Collections in the India Ofice Library and Record and the Department of Ori-
ental Manwrripts and Printed Books, British Library Reference Division (London,
1985).
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 279
on a Muslim's vehicle. (1 2 ) Never have your children taught by Muslims.
(13) D o not let your children sit with Muslims alone. (14) D o not buy
toys and fruits from Muslim hands for your children. (1 5) D o not buy
or wear bangles from the hands of Muslim bangle-sellers. (16) D o not
buy household items from Muslim homes or shops. (17) Do not go to
deserted places. . . . (19) D o not walk in front of Muslim rulers and
magistrates. . . . (24) Leave your home with a sharp dagger. . . . (29) D o
not give alms to Muslim beggars. Never come without ~ u r d a hin front
of a Muslim servant and never cross him. . . .
If a woman is lost: . . . Women often get lost at stations, fairs. . . . D o
not be afraid. . . . Directly reach sewa samiti, Hindu Sabha or Arya Samaj.
Never go to a Khilafat person. Never trust a Muslim policeman. But defi-
nitely and without any fear take the help of an English white policeman
or officer. . . .You can even take the help of a Hindu porter. . . . Stay firm
on your Hindu dharma. . . . Encourage, and let your husband and sons
join, the Hindu Sabha, Arya Samaj and Shuddhi Sabha.54

These detailed instructions affirmed the agenda of religious and

community distinctiveness by means of social and economic separa-
tion. At the same time, the image of the Muslim became more mena-
cing, far more dangerous than that of the British.
Commands were endorsed through other sources. Muslim manihars
at Bareilly were prohibited from calling upon Hindu women at their
homes to supply bangles.55 Hanuman Prasad Poddar, the son of a
Manvari business family associated with the famous Gita Press of
Gorakhpur, wrote a caste tract calling for social reforms, which stated:
In our society, women wear bangles made of lac. I think this is very bad.
Women become impure by wearing them. Most of the lac manihars are
54 Mahopdeshak, Stri, pp. 5-10. Various other newspapers and pamphlets
cautioned Hindus not to allow their women to have dealings with Muslim
traders, teachers and servants. They were warned not to let their women talk to
Muslim vegetable-sellers, shopkeepers, sweepers, and not to send children to
Muslim rnadarsas. See Arya Patru, NNR 12 July 1924; Anon., 'Stitva Raksha
ke Prati', Dampati, 1, 1 (August 1930), pp. 87-9; Brijmohan Jha, Hinduon ]ago
(Etawah, 1926, 2nd edn), pp. 12-15; Banprasthi, Ghazi, p. 5; Hare, Alarm.
Similar demands were made in other regions as well, see File 4211935, B. S.
Moonje Papers (NMML).
55 Dnhdnba-i-Qaisari, N M 22 July 1893.
280 / Sexuality, Obsceniry, Community
Muslims. T h e money earned by selling these bangles goes to their homes
and can be used against our religion. Further, women have to touch and
be touched by Muslim hands. Thus women should not allow Muslim
bangle-sellers inside their homes. They should abandon wearing lac ban-
gles and adopt the swadeshi glass bangles instead. 56

Muslim bangle-sellers were also attacked because bangles were

identified as a sign of the purity of Hindu women, and to have the
Muslims touch this purity was to vitiate it. Though caste distinctions
were important, the greatest pollution and impurity was identified in
relation to Muslims. Purity-pollution rituals and taboos were thus,
in a sense, redirected and reformulated. In various meetings during
1927 at Mathura, Khurja, Kanpur and Tinva, Hindu women were
coerced to boycott Muslim bangle-sellers. Gomti Devi of Kanpur, a
prominent member of the Arya Samaj, said that in order to prevent
their enticement she had set up Hindu widows in the business of
selling bangles and established 'Hindu Gomti Churi Mandals'. 57
Successful efforts were made to boycott Muslim manihars in Agra,58
and as a result Hindu bangle-sellers reported brisk sales.59
These various injunctions sent out various messages. They endors-
ed the vulnerability of the Hindu woman and the strength of the
Hindu man. They constructed notions of decency, propriety and
dharma and, above all, they revealed a growing suspicion ofany aspect
of the cultural, social and economic life of Hindu women which was
~erceivedto be outside the control of the Hindu community. Women's
practices were attacked in the name of religion. The desire to spread
norms of female seclusion, especially from Muslim men, in order to
create a single Hindu standard and community, was extended to the
lower castes, and their 'unorthodoxy' in such matters was seen as a
source of vulnerability. A special issue of Abhyudaya, devoted exclu-
sively to the Hindu Mahasabha, revealed anxiety about working-class

56 Poddar, Samaj, p. 25.

5'PAI, 30 July 1927, no. 29, para 729, p. 294; PAI, 3 September 1927,
no. 34, para 838, p. 336; PAI, 24 September 1927, no. 37, para 912, p. 368;
PAI, 19 November 1927, no. 44, para 1086, p. 438.
58 3211927, Home Poll (NAI); PA4 2 July 1927, no. 25, p. 248.
59 PAI, 24 September 1927, no. 37, para 912, p. 368.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 28 1
Hindu women who worked constantly and every day within mixed
sex groups. Such places were seen as the breeding g o u n d s of regular
interaction between Hindu women and Muslim men. Their close
proximity and workinglstaying together was depicted as the main
reason for elopement of such women, and Hindu working-class men
were specifically instructed to keep a watch on their women.'O Lower-
caste Hindu males were told not to allow their women to work in
Muslim households, factories or shops.''
Mahatma Premanand Banprasthi, a member of the Arya Samaj,
wrote numerous thin pamphlets62containing a personal and simple
conversation, where a bhikshu initiated the discussion and then the
whole community joined in with questions, answers and suggestions.
There was no distinction here among Hindus-women and men, low
caste and upper caste, urban and rural, literate and illiterate. The form
of address assumed a single community.

1.2. Attacking the Cult of Ghazi Mian

Hindu women were more specifically instructed to avoid Muslim
religious festivals and pirs. In UP vast numbers of lower-caste Hin-
dus, women and children had long participated in popular cults, tazia
worship, and visits to pirs, mazars, and melas around these.63Women
60 K.K. Malvi~a,'Hinduon ka Kartavya', Abhyudaya, 11 April 1925, p. 23
(Special Issue on Hindu Mahasabha).
61 Hare, Alarm, p. 50.
62 Banprasthi wrote at least fifteen of them, mostly between 1926 and 1928.
They were published by Baba Tribhuwan Nath, Secretary, Arya Samaj, Sultanpur,
Awadh, and printed at the Leader Press, Allahabad. O f each tract, at least 4000
copies were published. They were part of a series and seem to have been distri-
buted free. They were published separately and sometimes one tract contained
many others. The titles themselves are revealing: Musalmani Gorakh Dhand?,
Brahman ke Chheh Karm, Barah Bhagwan, Ghazi Kaun Hai, Larkon ki Loot,
isaion ki Chalbazi, G u n j a t i Musalman Hui aur Kyon, Moharram Hujsain aur
Tazia, Ghazi Mian ki Kartoot, Panchon Pir Auliya, Punch Paon ki Gai, Avtaron
ki Philosophy, I'remanand Sandhya, Premanand Bhajanavali.
6 3 The shrine of Saiyad Salar at Bahraich was resorted to by both Hindus and
Muslims if a wife was childless or family quarrels could not be composed. Disease
could be cured by a visit to the shrine of Shaikh Jaddo at Punroha in Moradabad,
282 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Covmunity
particularly venerated saints' shrines because it was believed they had
miraculous powers, especially cures for infertility.64 Babu Lall G u p t a ,
belonging to a very rich johari family o f Agra, described h o w his
brother had been seriously ill as a child:
There was an old Mohommedan woman in our neighbourhood. All the
girls and boys of the street occupied by us were in the habit of calling her
grandmother, owing to her silvered head. She directed my mother to carry
the sick child to Sayyed Ahmad Bokhari's tomb, a few miles far from Taj-
ganj, on the opposite bank of the sacred river Jamuna, on every Thursday.
She further assured her that it was her experience that several children had
recovered through the blessings of the pious hermit. My poor mother soon
acted on her good directions and did not hesitate in carrying the child
to that place. She did not disclose the secret to my father as he is a man
with little belief in such matters. She continued her weekly visit to that
sacred place with an offering of !garlands and sweetmeats. . . . After an
year's regular attendance, the little baby was totally cured. . . . We, with
our near relatives, went to the tomb of that sage and offered our cordial
prayers to our Almighty Father as well as to the blessed soul of the de-
ceased Hermit.65
T h e desire for male progeny a n d the fact that being a banjh was
considered the worst o f fates attracted w o m e n t o pirs. T h e y also

while for help in legal difficulties Shah Mina's dargah at Lucknow was renowned:
Census, 1901, W P , p. 94. In Bijnor, a local saint known as Goga pir was vene-
rated by Hindus and Muslims alike: H. R. Nevill, Bijnor: A Gazetteer, Vol. XIV
of the District Gazetteers of UP (Allahabad, 1928), p. 87. Also see E.A.H. Blunt,
The Castesystem ofNorthern India: With SpecialRcference to UP (London, 193I),
pp. 291-4. Saints' shrines were part of the multifaceted cultural systems of many
regions. See Roy, Islamic, pp. 207-48; Bayly, Saints, pp. 73-86; J.J.Roy Bur-
man, 'Hindu-Muslim Syncretism in India', EPW 31, 20 (18 May 1996),
pp. 1211-1 5; C.W. Troll (ed.), Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History
and Signijunce (Delhi, 1989); Ahmad, Studiej, pp. 157-66; Eaton, Sufi,
pp. 19-79.
'* W. Crooke, 'Notes on Some Muhammadan Saints and Shrines in the
United Provinces', Indian Antiquary, 53 (1924), pp. 97-9.
65 Babu Lall Gupta, A BriefMemoirofKL. Gupta(Agra, 1895). Shaikh Saddo,
also called the Miyan of Amroha, was much revered by women who desired to
obtain the upper hand over their husbands: Blunt, Caste, p. 291.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 283
provided relief to women from the recurring crises of family life. Here
they could ask for jobs for their husbands, health for their children,
and express their fears of tyranny within the household. Women met
whoever might offer them the promise of an improved life, regardless
of caste, class and religious boundaries. Women also found in such
religious activities an emotional and recreational satisfaction, and
freedom from household chores. Thus, there were potent existential
reasons for women to turn to saints for solace.66Hindu women of
the region considered it particularly auspicious for small children to
walk across from underneath the ta~ias.~'Along with Muslim women,
they chanted dirges in groups, on the night of the ninth and tenth
day of Muharram, and had faith in the supernatural and benevolent
powers of Imam Husain, his family members and companions.68
Equally remarkable was the reach and spread of tazia and pir worship;
equally noteworthy was the way zealous Hindu purifiers made them
a special butt of attack, again addressing themselves to Hindu women
in particular.69
There was a strong element of contempt, of ridiculing the audacity
of women for participating in such cultural and religious practices
that had been identified with Muslims. Women were seen as culprits
and looked upon with disdain for 'corrupting' Hindu society. In the
case of tazia worship, Stri Shiksha said:
Due to lack of Vedic education in present times, women do not have any
understanding. . . . Hindu women should be so firm in their Hindu
religion that no craftiness can sway them. . . . They must understand
that . . . tazia worship . . . is against Hindu religion. . . . Have you com-
pletely lost your mind? . . . Who are Hasan, Husain to you? . . . What is
your relationship with them? Why do you offer sherbet in their name?

"A.R. Saiyed, 'Saints and Dargahs in the Indian Subcontinent: A Review',

in Troll (ed.), Muslim Shrines, pp. 2 5 4 5 .
67 Dua, Society, p. 6 1.
68 Amir Hasan, Palace Culture of Lucknow (Delhi, 1983), p. 45; Meer Hasan
Ali, Observations on the Mussulrnauns of India (London, 1917).
69 This was visible in other regions like Punjab as well. See Anshu Mdhotra,
'Pativratas and Kupattis: Gender, Caste and Identity in Punjab, 1870s-1920s1,
unpublished PhD thesis (SOAS, University of London, 1998), pp. 160-78.
284 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

Illustration 9. Pir Worship and.Hindu Women

 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 285

Pir Worship

Abandoning 33 crore Gods,

abandoning all prestige of the family !
D a Li'

See the frenzy of these women

who worship pirs !!

Source: Vyanga Chitravali (Allahabad, 1930).

286 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Pay homage by offering sweets? Beat your breasts? Make your children
wear green clothes in their name? Make sweets? . . . What has happened
to your brain? . . . Read your ancient history. In spite of staying for
months in the home of Ravan demon, Maharani Sita did not become a
female demon.70
This separation helped define Hindu religion as being established
within rules and texts and definable norms. Another tract, Hindu aur
Tazia, ended with the following:
According to Sanatan Dharma, Hindu women break the bangles of their
hands when their husband goes to heaven while they are alive. But these
female devotees of tazia, these religiously debauched Hindu women break
their bangles during the ten days of tazia and wail. Thus in some senses
they treat their alive husband as dead. Are Hasan and Husain their hus-
bands that they moan like this? In my understanding these women are
no less than Hasan's wife Zaada, who poisoned and killed her god-like
husband. Not only this, these women even keep roza for ten days. Is this
not a matter of great shame and tragedy for us?"

Tazia was seen as a 'moment of disorder': it challenged notions of

the pativrata Hindu woman. In spite of possessing a husband, she was
wearing mourning clothes and expressing her grief in
Pirs were especially attacked. A collection of new poems sang this
for Hindu women:
Nq priyatam taj pir pujo, budhi hai kaisi pathrani.
Mian madar mare m u r h n mein, muhn baiye phirti baurani.

(You are totally senseless because, abandoning your own gods, you wor-
ship pirs. Like mad people gaping everywhere, you go to Muslims, saints
and graves.73)

70 Mahopdeshak, Stri, pp. 2-5.

7' Nandkishore Jaiswal, Hindu aur Tazia (Allahabad, 1919), pp. 16-17; also
see Jha, Hinduon, pp. 12-1 5.
"There were attempts to shift mourning, a public ritual, to the realm of the
private. This was not just an attack on tazin bur was also a rhetoric of removing
women from public spaces into the home, as a restrained woman was preferred
to an excited one. See Malhotra, 'Pativratas', pp. 181-5.
73 Ramanand Saraswati, Navin Gyan Gajra (Aligarh, 1924).
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 287
The greater the popularity of a particular pir, the sharper the
attack. The cult of Ghazi Mian was the most visible example of this.
Sayyid Salar Mas'ud Ghazi, popularly known as Ghazi Mian, was the
best known of the saints and the oldest. According to William
Crooke:
Pirs and Sayyads . . . are usually of Muhammadan origin, but most of
them are worshipped indiscriminately both by Musalmans and low class
Hindus. . . . Similarly at the Muharram celebration and at pilgrimages to
tombs, like those of Ghazi Miyan, a large number of the votaries are
Hindus. In many towns the maintenance of these Muhammadan festivals
mainly depends on the assistance ofthe Hindus. . . .Ghazi Mian's . . . tomb
is visited as much by Hindus as by Muhammadans. Besides his regular
shrine at Bahraich, he has cenotaphs at various places, as at Gorakhpur
and Bhadohi in the Mirzapur district, where annual fairs are held in his
honour.74
Ghazi Mian had been one of the Panch Pir (Five Saints) for a very
long time. The names of the Panch Pir differed from district to dis-
trict, but broadly they were Mohammed Gori, Ghazi Mian, Subhat,
Palihar and Sati Amina. The Panchpiriya sect was followed by the
mass of peasantry in eastern UP and had a very large number of ad-
herents, no fewer than 13.5 million in the late nineteenth century,
including some fifty-three castes, of whom forty-four were wholly or
partially Hindu. O f that number, no less than sixteen were of 'good
social standing' and only eight could be reckoned as 'unorthodox'.'5
At the end of the nineteenth century, Ghazi Mian was reckoned
foremost among the Panch Pir.76
74 W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, Vol. I
(Westminster, 1896), pp. 201-2, 207. Jafar Sharif, Islam in India or thrQanun-
i-Islam: The Customs of the Musalmans of India, composed and trans. by G.A.
Herklots, new edn, revised and rearranged with additions by William Crooke
(1921, rpt. Curzon Press, 1972), pp. 9, 166. It stated that Saint Salar Masud
was worshipped by large crowds, ofwhich the majoriry were Hindus, and that
this pointed to the close association of Hinduism and Islam among the lower-
class votaries of both religions.
75 Blunt, Caste, p. 292.
76 Pmdey, Construction, pp. 86-7; R. Greevan, 'Benaras: An Account of the
Worship of the Panchon Pir', North Indian Notes and Queries, 2 , 2 (May 1892),
288 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
He was seen as a bestower of fertility and a patron of children.
There were many tales about how Ghazi Mian came to the rescue of
Hindu women,77 specifically of the lower castes. One legend had it
that the barren wife of a Hindu milkman, Jesu Ahir, had been blessed
with a son on praying at the shrine of Ghazi Mian, and as a result
he rebuilt Ghazi Mian's grave with pure cow's milk and costly lime.78
Another story said Ghazi Mian came to the help of an aged widow
named Sardani, by caste a Malin, whom he found weeping hysteri-
cally. She told him that, every year in Banaras, one human being was
sacrificed at the temple of Somnath-where sorcery was practised. O f
her six sons, five had been slaughtered. Now it was the turn of her
last son, and it was his wedding day. Ghazi at once offered to stand
in as a s u b s t i t ~ t e . ~ ~
Some women considered him a sincere lover who was never finally
married, resulting in renewed marriage celebrations each year at his
mela.80A huge Ghazi Mian ka Mela was observed at many places in
eastern UP. The biggest annual fair took place at Bahraich, as his
grave stood in the village of Singha Parasi, located very near the town.

p. 20; Premanand Banprasthi, Isaiyon ki Chalbazi aur Panchon Pir [collection

of two tracts, which were also published separately, the one on Panch Pir being
titled Panchon PirAuliya] (Awadh, 1927), pp. 5-6. Also available in Premanand
Banprasthi, Musalmani Gorakh Dhanda (Awadh, 1927), which is again a col-
lection of seven tracts, which were published separately and also together.
77 It has been argued that Muslims particularly narrate this aspect of Ghazi
Mian. By so doing, they attempt a reversal of the negative image of Muslim
personhood presented in the dominant legends. His chaste life is stressed, show-
ing him to be an exemplary Muslim hero, defending Hindu women especially:
Mary Searle-Chatterjee, 'The Muslim Hero as Defender of Hindus: Mythic
Reversals and Ethniciry among Banaras Muslims', SocialAnalysis,28 Uuly 1990),
pp. 78-9.
78 Tahir Mahmood, 'The Dargah of Sayyid Salar Mas'ud Ghazi in Bahraich:
Legend, Tradition and Reality', in Troll (ed.), Muslim Shrines, p. 29.
79Story given in R. Greevan, 'Benaras: An Account of the Worship of the
Panchon Pir', North Indian Notes and Queries, 2, 4 (July 1892), p. 55; Searle-
Chatterjee, 'Muslim', p. 72.
Interview with D r Anand Krishna. It is said that he made seven attempts
to marry, but each time he was prevented by some untoward event: Searle-
Chatterjee, 'Muslim', pp. 72-3.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 289
Sikandar Lodi and Aurangzeb had unsuccessfully tried to stop the
mela, regarding it as repugnant to the traditions of orthodox Islam.81
At the turn of the century it regularly drew an assembly of over
103,000 people, many ofwhom were Hindu.82A picturesque feature
of the fair were flags brought by pilgrims, worked in gay colours with
figures of men and animals. These were mounted on high bamboos
with coins tied up in a knot on the point. Ghazi Mian was in fact
identified with a flag, which was a symbol of his worship. Daffalis
sang songs in his praise and were given alms by Hindus and Muslims.
Women charmers predicted the futures of people during the mela.
It ended with kite flying and wrestling matches.83
Hindu publicists focused chiefly on Ghazi Mian for their attack,
as he not only challenged caste and community boundaries but, by
attracting women, posed a serious threat to Hindu masculinity and
patriarchy. At least a dozen tracts were written between 1924 and
1927, censuringGhazi Mian and his worship.84For Hindu reformers

'IMahrnood, 'Dargah', p. 25.

82Pandey, Consiruction, p. 87.
s3Account of Ghazi Mian and his rnela based on Motichandra, Karhi kaltihas
(Bombay, 1962), p. 404; Mahrnood, 'Dargah', pp. 24-43; Iqridar Husain
Siddiqui, 'A Note on the Dargah of Salar Mas'ud in Bahraich in the Light of
the Standard Historical Sources', in Troll (ed.), M u ~ l i mShrines, pp. 4 4 7 ; Kerein
Grafin von Schwerin, 'Saint Worship in Indian Islam: The Legend ofthe Martyr
Salar Masud Ghazi', in Irntiaz Ahrnad (ed.), Ritualand Religion Among Muslims
in India (New Delhi, 1981), pp. 143-61; Crooke, Popular, Vol. ll,pp. 203-8;
H.R. Nevill, Bahraich: A Gazetteer, Vol. XLV of the District Gazetteers of UP
(Allahabad, 1903), pp. 149-50; A. Fuhrer, The Monumental Antiquities and
inscriptions in NWP(Allahabad, 1891),p. 292. Many provinces of UP witnessed
the fair. For example, at Allahabad, on the first Sunday in Jeth, the fair was
celebrated a t Sikandra, Daryabad and Patti Jalal, H.R. Nevill, Allahabad: A
Gazetteer, Vol. XXIII of the District Gazetteers of UI-' (Allahabad, 1928), p. 67.
'*To mention a few, Bhagirath Prasad Dikshit, Ghazi Mian aur Unki I'uja
(Agra, 1923 and Banaras, 1925);Ram Piare Tiwari, Ghazi Mian ki jivani (Bena-
ras, 1926); idem, Ghazi Mian ki Puja (Banaras, 1926); Brajesh Singh, Ghazi
Mian ka Bhanda Phor (Allahabad, 1927); Banprasthi, Ghazi; Nandkishore
Jaiswal, Ghazi Mian Arthat Masood Gl~azika Sacca jivan Charitr (Allahabad,
1916); Brijrnohan Jha, Saiyid Salar Mmud ka jivan Charirr (Etawah, 1925);
Jagatnarayan Sharma, Gl~aziMiyan ki Puja: Hinduon ko Kya Sujha (Etawah,
290 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
and revivalists the conspicuousness and widespread nature of the
Panch Pir, where everyone intermingled, was a serious threat to the
Hindu community's redefinition of identities. The worship of Ghazi
Mian was not a 'hidden', private act; it was a highly public show. The
cult was perceived to blur individual, caste and religious identities and
carrya wide, emotional appeal. It is entirely possible that people parti-
cipated in the worship of Ghazi Mian from different perspectives, and
that he carried different meanings for them. However, a highlyvisible
celebration which challenged Hindu community identity inevitably
became an object of attack.85Thus, a main concern was that 'Hindu
people worship tazia, Ghazi Mian in the open, in front of everybody';
'all can see it, experience it and know it'; 'millions of Hindus worship
hi~n'~~-allsuggesting that Ghazi Mian's popularity, and the com-
municative reach of his worship, ought to be stopped.
Hindu women, including upper-caste women, and lower castes
were particularly ordered not to worship Ghazi Mian: women, be-
cause they were seen as icons and carriers of faith, and lower castes
because they were seen as embodying a debased form of faith. Devi-
ation in the first had to be curtailed and the second had to be weaned
away from their 'corrupt' practices. Jati reformers made similar ap-
Every year, when the mela drew near, usually in the months
of May and June, the campaign acquired a feverish tone. A movement
was launched in the shape of ~amphlets,posters, resolutions, pick-
eting, and warnings. At Sultan~ura movement of this kind was afoot

1905). Though Ghazi Miyan was specially targeted, there were others like Miran
Mulla Sadaruddin, popularly known as Saddo, who lies buried at Amroha, who
were also vilified: see Shankar Dutt Sharma, Miran Puja (Moradabad, 1925).
Also see SPBP, 1924-27. It is interesting that the worship of Ghazi Mian is
repugnant even to orthodox Islamic teachings: Mahmood, 'Dargah', pp. 25,41.
s5The expanding public arena became a major place for Hindu religious
resurgence and assertion in north India: Sandria B. Freitag, ColfectiveAction and
Communiry.
Banprasthi, Isaiyon, pp. 5-7.
Editor, 'Ghazi Mian ki Puja: Vidyarthi Utho-Hindu Dharma ki Raksha
Karo', Kurmi Kthatriya Diwakar, 2 , 3 (May 1926), pp. 2-8; Anon., 'Sri Sabha-
pati Mahodaya ka Bhashan', Kalwar Kerari, 1, 12 (Lucknow, 1923), p. 715;
Yadav, Ahir Jati, pp. 28-32.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 29 1
in May 1924.88Next year at Gorakhpur there was an attempt to boy-
cott the fair, and intending Hindu visitors were dissuaded from going
to it. Similar notices were issued at M e e r ~ t . In
~ ' 1926 the movement
spread wider. At Azarngarh a Hindi letter of the 'snowball' variety was
received from Ayodhya, and contrary to the usual custom Hindus did
not give alms to daffalis on the occasion of the Ghazi Mian mela in
Didarganj. At Jaunpur a pamphlet prohibited Ghazi Mian's worship
and the approaches to the mela, held in the city on 26 May, were
~icketedby Jagannath Pandey, a vakil, and other Hindus; no Hindu
attempted to attend. At Azamgarh, khatiks and mallahs were persuad-
ed by the Arya Samaj not to attend the mela that year. Another Hindi
notice appeared at Kheri, and opposition to the mela grew at Gorakh-
pur. At Banaras, Arya Samajists were actively employed in preventing
Hindus from attending the local Ghazi Mian mela.'O In 1927 this
campaign reached its peak. At Fyzabad, Hindi notices printed by the
Narayan press and issued by Baldeo Sahai urged Hindus against going
to Bahraich for the mela. At Bahraich itself the Arya Samajists started
a massive propaganda in April, as the mela was to be held that year
from 18 to 22 May. At Pratapgarh the raja of Kalakankar joined the
Arya Samaj to campaign for the boycott and was successful in per-
suading some Hindus. Parties of pilgrims were turned back to avoid
the rnela. At Gonda, during the annual conference of the U P Kshatriya
Sabha, Hindus were exhorted not to attend the Syed Salar fair at
Bahraich. At Fyzabad, Kedar Nath spoke against the mela and notices
were posted against it. Here some Brahmins forbade Hindu shop-
keepers from attending i t and proposed to outcaste those who did.
In Allahabad handbills appeared against the Ghazi Mian mela held
at Phulpur. At Banaras, notices were circulated and at Sultanpur local
Hindus attempted to discourage attendance at the mela.''

PAI, 31 May 1924, no. 21, para 171, p. 177.

I'AL 23 May 1925, no. 19, para 156, p. 210; PAI, 6 June 1925, no. 21,
para 169, p. 224.
I'AI, 22 May 1926, no. 19, para 498, p. 277; PAL 5 June 1926, no. 21,
para 533, p. 308; PAI, 12 June 1926, no. 22, para 553, p. 320; PAI, 19 June
1926, no. 23, para 560, p. 327.
PAL 23 April 1927, no. 15, para 371, p. 144; PAI, 30 April 1927, no. 16,
292 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Many of these campaigns were aimed at women. At a series ofArya
Samaj meetings in Meerut, Subhadra Devi begged Hindu women not
to make offerings at tombs.92At the annual meetings ofthe UP Hindu
Sabha at Lucknow, women were warned to stay away from 'Muham-
madan' me la^.^^ At a meeting of the Ahir Sabha in Fyzabad, men were
advised not to allow their childless women to visit the Saiyid Salar
'Muhammadan' mela at Bahrai~h.'~ Volunteers endeavoured to pre-
vent Hindu women from attending the fair.95At another meeting it
was said that Hindu women should not visit the Ghazi Mian mosque
with bedridden children because Muslims would spit at themg6Con-
cern was expressed, too, that women be saved from Ghazi Mian's
trap." Husbands were asked to persuade wives that Ghazi Mian was
a very inferior being.98 It was argued:
God believes in the worship of only one husband for women, but they
pay service to Ghazi Mian for many years. . . . Where before Hindu
women worshipped their husband with a lot of love and produced a child,
today they leave their husband and go to the dead Ghazi Mian and at his
defunct grave, ask for a child. It is not women, but men who are to be
blamed for this hateful act. Even when they are alive, instead of asking-
their wife to be a true pativrata, they allow her to go to the dead grave
of a T u r k to ask for a child and become an infidel. Today such a husband
should commit suicide whose wife thinks of him as impotent or does not
fear God, and instead of asking her husband to protect the child, is asking
a dead grave to protect him. This is a slur on the prestige of the Hindu
religion."
Visits to Ghazi Mian and other pirs had implications for the sexu-
ality of Hindu women, Hindu men and Muslim pirs. Implicit here

para 379, p. 154; PAL 21 May 1927, no. 19, para 487, p. 186; PA/, 28 May
1927, no. 20, para 500, p. 192; PAI, 4 June 1927, no. 21, para 530, p. 202.
92 PA4 13 March 1926, no. 10, para 233, p. 136.
93 PA4 1 May 1926, no. 16, para 397, p. 227.
94 PA/, 23 April 1927, no. 15, para 371, p. 144.
95 PA4 7 May 1927, no. 17, para 432, p. 169.
96 PAI, 22 June 1929, no. 22, para 3 1 1, p. 246.
97 Banprasthi, Ghazi, p. 4.
98 Sharrna, Ghazi, pp. 11-12.
99 Jaiswal, Ghazi, pp. 52-3.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 293
was the fear of a sensuous 'play' between the pir and the body of the
woman, which could subvert authority at home. There were anxieties
about women gaining power o,ver Hindu men. Women's private,
secret alliance with the pir was seen as an open challenge to Hindu
male prowess, and their husband's power to give them a male child
was undermined by their dependence upon Ghazi Mian. The Hindu
male appeared emasculated in relation to the increasingly fertile
Muslim pir. T o overcome the impugning of the sexuality and mas-
culinity of the Hindu male, much was made of the alleged sexual ex-
ploitation of Hindu women by unscrupulous pirs.
The sexual prowess of the pir, and his control over women's
sexuality and reproductivity, were called into question. In one tract,
a character says Ghazi Mian has tremendous powers and once be-
stowed a son on a banjh woman. Another character ridicules this,
saying that Ghazi Mian himself had no son, so how could he bestow
one? Pointing to another worshipper, he goes on to say that this
person has a banjh in his house, but Ghazi Mian had no hand in it.'OO
Another work argued: 'Can there be any progress of Hinduism
through the religion of the Masjid? Can Ghazi Mian show the path
of freedom? Can he bestow any favour? Clearly no."O1
Combined with these persuasive tactics, there were open threats-
a rhetoric which inspired fear on the one hand and promised rewards
on the other. Women and low castes were warned that worshipping
Ghazi Mian would spell disaster, and a sense of foreboding was
created. If they stopped worshipping Ghazi Mian, it would pay them
rich dividends and they would soon be rewarded. Threats of dire
spiritual and material misfortune were raised. At a general level it was
predicted:
Hindus! There has been a forecast at Prayag Raj that no Hindu should
go to worship Ghazi Mian at Bahraich, as Devi is very angry because of
it. It is due to this that small-pox is spreading into every house and causing
you great pain this year. . . . Stop worshipping Ghazi Mian immediately,
else there will be a massive drought in the country, children will face dire
consequences, animals will increasingly fall ill, your clan will decrease and

loo Prernanand Banprasthi, Larkon ki Loot (Awadh, 1927), p.1.

lo' Sharrna, Ghazi, p. 3.
294 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
there will be all-round misery. If you do not worship him then Devi will
be happy and you will reap fruits equal to feeding a hundred Brah-
mins. . . . Whoever listens or reads this forecast should definitely tell it
to eleven Hindus and send the news to five villages, or else he will be ac-
cused of killing twenty-one cows.lo2

Fear was inculcated among Hindus in various meetings, especially

the dread of committing a crime equivalent to killing cows via wor-
shipping Ghazi Mian. At Banaras in May 1927 a notice issued by one
'Yamdut' (God of Death) was circulating in the city. It was headed
'Sri Gao Mata ki Jai' and stated that Hindus who attended the Saiyed
Salar fair would be guilty of the death of eleven cows. At Jaunpur in
1928 Arya Samajists gave the same warning, and this was repeated
at Bahraich in 1929.'03
The fear could be evoked among women in diverse ways. A tract
warned that women who worshipped Ghazi Mian became widows
within days. The foul breath ofcow-killers made their sons ill.lo4WO-
men and boys were influenced by Muslim customs, ways, and man-
ners, and were susceptible to conversion.105Emphasis was laid on the
sin committed by Hindu women in going to the tomb to pray for
a child.'06 A newspaper said that if Hindus were not already a dead
nation, they would become so by their women's worship of dead
bodies.lo7Terror was raised by suggesting the mela was a place where
Hindu women were abducted and outraged.los In May-June 1925
various newspapers raised the fear that the position of Hindu women
visiting the Bahraich fair had become very perilous because the deputy
commissioner of the region had prevented Arya propaganda being
distributed there."' Hindu women were warned of the probability

'02 Banprasthi, Musalmani, p. 6. Also see Anon., 'Bale Mian', Adarsh Hindu,
1, 5 (May 1926), p. 31.
I o 3 PAI, 28 May 1727, no. 20, para 500, p. 192; PAI, 17 May 1928, no. 19,
para 381, p. 187; PA/, 28 March 1727, no. 12, para 147, p. 100.
lo*Jha, Hinduon, p. 12.
lo5 Sharma, Ghazi, p. 13.
lo6 PA(, 21 December 1727, no. 49, para 792, p. 708.
lo' Gyan Shakti, NNR, 30 May 1925.
I o s ~ n o n .'Bale',
, p. 31.
Hindustani, A ~ y aMitra, l'rarap, all in NNR, 23 May 1725.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 295
of outrages committed against them at the fair."' Vartman said
Hindu volunteers recovered 99 Hindu women from the possession
of Muslim rowdies at the Syed Salar fair. The ill treatment of Hindu
women was shocking and it was too 'indelicate' to say what had be-
fallen them inside the mausoleum.'" Muslim goondas were accused
of outraging women at the fair almost at all times.'I2 The circle was
completed with an inverted proposition: 'If you stop worshipping
Ghazi Mian, you will be blessed with a son.'Il3 By such claims the
Hindu male asserted power over the Hindu woman.
In the process, the very history of Bahraich was reformulated. It
was argued that before the coming of the Ghazi Mian dargah, there
had been a celebrated Suryakund here, as important as Tirthraj Pra-
yag, which was host to a big mela. This was known as Balakarth Tirth.
In the month ofJeth, when the sun was at its peak, people would come
and bathe in Suryakund's holy water and it cured all their illnesses-
the blind could see and every skin ailment was healed. But ever since
Feroz Tughlaq built the grave of Ghazi Mian in 1351 by filling the
Suryakund, people were no longer cured at Bahraich. The holy place
of sun worship of a single community of worshippers had thus been
transformed into the grave of Ghazi Mian. Now, on the very same
day, the Bahraich mela of Ghazi Mian was celebrated. Hindus still
gathered, but instead of worshipping the sun, they worshipped the
evil Ghazi Mian. It was also hinted that other Hindu holy places had
been converted in a similar manner into dargahs and graves of pirs.''4
The story, a part of 'a new Hindu history',Il5 at once attacked the
violent invasion of Muslims, stressed the power of Hindu beliefs,
evoked a golden age of Hindu civilisation, denied the capacity of
Ghazi Mian to heal, and built a Hindu history of the place on which

'I0 PA(, 6 June 1925, no. 21, para 169, p. 224.

"I Vartman, NNR, 20 June 1925.
"* PAI, 29 May 1927, no. 20, para 500, p. 192; PAI, 5 May 1928, no. 17,
para 325, p. 165; Jha, Hinduon, p. 12; Banprasthi, Larkon, p. 18.
Banprasthi, Larkon, p. 4.
"*Anon., 'Bale', pp. 28-9; Editor, 'Ghazi', pp. 2-6; Dikshit, Ghazi.
Gyanendra Pandey, 'A New Hindu History', South Asia, 17 (1994),
pp. 97-1 12. H e uses the term to underline the appeal of such a history in the
specific context of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the Hindu Right.
296 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
the grave rested, thereby undercutting the basis of the Ghazi Mian
cult.
Ghazi Mian, a symbol of the transcending of sectarian boundaries,
a figure renowned for dispensing health, was now recast in the role
of an evil character. An alternative history of Ghazi Mian was painted.
It was said that he came to India and plundered temples, broke idols,
killed thousands of cows, murdered and converted Hindus, outraged
their women, kidnapped Hindu girls, violated them and then married
them off to mu slim^."^ He was also connected to a more common,
popular, identified memory: he had destroyed the Somnath temple
along with Mahmud Ghaznavi,"' and he was the same as the killer
of Swami Shraddhanand. A conversation between Puttu (a Muslim
and devotee of Ghazi Mian) and a bhikshu went thus:

Bhikshu: Mahmud Ghaznavi was the uncle of Ghazi Mian who destroy-
ed temples at Mathura and Somnath. . . .
Puttu: T o kill kafirs is not against religion.
Bhikshu: Thus a cruel Muslim killed the King of Hindus-Swami
Shraddhanand.
Puttu: Take his name with respect. He is Ghazi. His photographs are
sold.
Bhikshu: Photographs are even sold of Tantiya Bhil robber.
Puttu: Ghazi is one who kills kafirs. . . . This is the speciality of Ghazi
Mian's family.
Bhikshu: What are those hairs on top of the Ghazi Mian flag?
Puttu: They were the chotis of people that were cut to make them Mus-
lims . . . Some were tails of cows."*

In this situation, it was said:

jisne tr4mhara kar diyd sab bhanti banthadhar hai.

Ghazi mian ko pujte ho, hinduon! dhitkar hai!

Il6~anprasthi,Larkon, p. 12; Anon., 'Bale', pp. 29-30; Editor, 'Ghazi',

pp. 3-4; PA/, 28 May 1927, no. 20, para 500, p. 192; PA/, 28 March 1929,
no. 12, para 147, p. 100.
' I 7 Jaiswal, Ghazi, p. 9.
I l 8 Banprasthi, Ghazi, pp. 7-8.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 297
(Ghazi Mian has utterly destroyed you. Shame on you Hindus for
worshipping hirn.I19)
Notices and circulars were issued at Pratapgarh exhorting women
to worship Lakshmi Devi instead of Ghazi Mian.l2' It was categori-
cally stated that the Hindu religion, its texts and gods, were superior
to any other. It was a religion which worshipped many gods who were
symbols of life, not tombs like Ghazi Mian's.12' It was argued that
it was a Hindu king, Suhaldev, who finally defeated and killed the
evil Ghazi Mian in a war and saved the Hindu religion, but his name
had completely disappeared from memory. H e was as brave as Shivaji,
and if Hindus should worship anyone, it was precisely S ~ h a 1 d e v . l ~ ~
Women were told they had 33 crore gods to choose from, so why
worship Ghazi Mian? Kalwars, who had been devout worshippers of
Ghazi Mian, took up the campaign earnestly.lZ3&/war Kesari, a
journal of the Kawar caste, appealed to Hindu women to abandon
Ghazi Mian and worship Hindu gods and !goddesses, since their
children would then be firm Hindus.12*Ahir women were asked to
keep away from Muslim symbols, rituals and practices and follow
Hindu gods.125The reiteration that Hindus should worship only
Hindu gods and goddesses continuously reaffirmed and partially legi-
timated relations within the Hindu fold.
In light of such a powerful campaign, the damage to the forms of
shared cultures was considerable. All was not lost because it was orga-
nised bodies, associations and groups--claiming to represent caste or
Hindu interests, a relatively educated and articulate section-which
consciously or unconsciously tended to speak in the same language.
These did not wholly prevail. As late as 1920 it was estimated that
'I9 Banprasthi, Musalmani, cover.
lZ0 PAI, 21 May 1927, no. 19, para 489, p. 186.
I z 1 Sharma, Ghazi, pp. 2-3; Anon., 'Bale', p. 32; Editor, 'Ghazi', p. 2.
I2*Anon., 'Bale', pp. 28, 30-1.
Iz3 Nandkishore Jaiswal, who wrote Ghazi ~ i i Arthat
n Masood Ghazi ka
Sacca Jiwan Charitr, viciously attacking the cult of Ghazi Mian, was a Kalwar
by caste.
Iz4 Anon., 'Sri Sabhapati', p. 71 5.
' 2 5 Yadav, Ahir Jati, pp. 3 1-2.
298 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
more than 13.5 million people worshipped the Panch P i r ~ . Some '~~
Hindu low castes and women did attend the fair in 1926, and again
in 1927 the fair passed off harmoniously. 12' The lower castes had few
alternatives, since they were debarred from many Hindu places of
worship.Iz8
Yet even lower castes were influenced by the new fissures in the
shared culture of UP.I2' In 1925 the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, repre-
senting 363 Arya Samaj branches of UP, claimed slow and steady
success in its 29-year campaign against the Syed Salar Fair in Bahraich
(and especially, in the previous four years).'30In May 1928 the Hindu
Mahasabha held meetings in each of the three districts of Gorakhpur
division and, along with the Arya Samaj, dissuaded Hindus from
attending the fair, which was poorly attended in consequence that
year.131AS we have seen, even the spokespersons of intermediate and
lower castes like the Ahirs, Kalwars and Chamars reiterated some of
the separatist arguments, though for different reasons.

11. Hindu Wombs, Muslim Progeny:

Shifting Debates on Widow Remarriage
Hindu communalists showed an increasing concern with population
and demographic politics. The heightened fears of sexual contact be-
tween Muslim men and Hindu women, especially those on the mar-
gins of Hindu society, led to reformist endeavours: these were also
efforts to control the sexuality of women.
Census reports made population a crucial category of analysis, im-
pacting not only on official understandings but also on communal

'26 Pandey, Construction, p. 87.

'21 PAI, 19 June 1926, no. 23, para 560, p. 327; PAI, 4 June 1927, no. 21,
para 530, p. 202.
IZ8 In fact, Ghazi Mian ka Mela continues to this day, attracting people from
far and wide. See Mahrnood, 'Dargah', pp. 24-43.
'*'Hindu participation in Muharram declined drastically: Shaligrarn Shri-
vastava, I'rayag Pradip (Allahabad, 1937), p. 103.
130 701/1925, Box 457, GAD (UPSA).
13' 1/May 1928, Home Poll (NAI).
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 299
preoccupations. Arjun A ~ ~ a d u r a iBernard
, ' ~ ~ C ~ h nand
' ~ Kenneth
~
Jones134have stressed that the colonial decennial censuses had a deep
impact on sharpening caste solidarities and community boundaries.
Censuses became a tally sheet for registering the progress or decline
ofeach religious community. Religions became communities countkd
and compared in hard numbers with other communities. Census data
was used not just for enumeration but also for comparison. The im-
plications of censuses for questions of gender and sexuality have been
less explored, although it has been emphasised that population fears
were especially 'used' by communal discourses to construct myths of
'dying Hindus' and raise fears ofdeclining Hindu numbers. '35 Widow
remarriage is significant in this context.
There is some debate over the dominant ideological construction
of widowhood in colonial India. For example, one scholar has high-
lighted how brahmanical patriarchy in early colonial Maharashtra, in
order to establish its control, constructed widowhood as social death.
It enforced permanent widowhood on women and stringently alien-
ated the widow from her own sexuality and reproduction. '36An~ther
has argued that the Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856, administered
I3'Arjun Appadurai, 'Numbers in the Colonial Imagination', in Arjun
Appadurai, Modernity a t Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Delhi,
1997), pp. 1 1 4 3 8 .
133 Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays
(Delhi, 1987), pp. 224-54.
13* Kenneth W. Jones, 'Religious Identity and the Indian Census', in N.G.
Barrier (ed.), The Census in British India: New Perspectives(Delhi, 198 I), pp. 73-
101.
'35 P.K. Datta, ' "Dying Hindus": Production of Hindu Communal Com-
mon Sense in Early Twentieth Century Bengal', E P W 28, 25 (19 June 1993),
pp. 1305-19.
136 Unla Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Lifeand Times ofpandita Ramabai
(Delhi, 1998); idem, 'Gender, Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material
Structure of Widowhood', EPW 30, 36 (9 September 1995), pp. 2248-56;
idem, 'The Myth of "Patriots" and "Traitors"': Pandita Ramabai, Brahmanical
Patriarchy, and Militant Hindu Nationalism', in Kumari Jayawardena and
Malathi de Alwis (eds), Embodied Vioknce: Communalising Women > Sexuality in
South Asia (Delhi, 1996), pp. 190-239.
300 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
by Brahmin lawyers and Victorian judges, tended to drive out cus-
tomary law-under which most widowed women had certain rights
of inheritance-in favour of brahmanical values and statutory laws
which disinherited them.13' A study of Tarabai Shinde and debates
in mid-nineteenth century Maharashtra on the 'problem' of widow
remarriage highlight how the widow became a means to consolidate
social hierarchy and assisted in the construction of colonial hege-
In early-nineteenth-century Bengal, in the official, mission-
ary, conservative and Indian reformist discourses around sati, women
appeared merely as symbols of the moral health of 'tradition' itself,
and were denied any agency of their own.13gO n the other hand, there
seem to have been variations in local norms regarding widowhood:
in colonial Haryana it has been shown that the practice of levirate
(remarriage of the widow to the late husband's brother) was enforced
by certain castes as the most effective and sociallyvalid form ofcontrol
over the property, labour, sexuality and fertility of widows.140A
common thread running through all these studies, however, is that
control over a widow's sexuality was crucial for Hindu patriarchy.
In UP too, as in Maharashtra, the sexuality and reproductivity of

13' Lucy Carroll, 'Law, Custom, and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu
Widow's Remarriage Act of 1856', in J. Krishnamurty (ed.), Women in Colonial
h d i a (Delhi, 1989), p. 379.
13' Rosalind O'Hanlon, 'Introduction', in Rosalind O'Hanlon (ed.), A Com-
parison Between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender
Relations in Colonial India (Madras, 1994), pp. 1-62; idem, 'Issues of Widow-
hood: Gender and Resistance in Colonial Western India', in Douglas E. Haynes
and Gyan Prakash (eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and Eveyday Social Rela-
tions in South Asia (Delhi, 1991).
'39 Lata Mani, 'Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial
India', in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in
Colonial History (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 88-126.
I 4 O Prem Chowdhry, The Veikd Women: Shijiing Gender Equations in Rural
Hayana, 188&1990 (Delhi, 1994); idem, 'Popular Perceptions of Widow-
remarriage in Haryana: Past and Present', in Bharati Ray (ed.), From the Seams
ofHisto~y:Essays on Indian Women (Delhi, 1995), pp. 37-66; idem, 'Customs
in a Peasant Economy: Women in Colonial Haryana', in Sangari and Vaid (eds),
Recasting, pp. 312-21.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 30 1
the widow was seen as a profound danger to Hindu patriarchy. What
was most valuable to the husband in his lifetime turned into an
awesome menace to his community after his death. Outside the pro-
tection of the domestic identity of the chaste female, the widow repre-
sented both an invitation and a threat. Ascetic widowhood thus
remained the highest model. At the same time, as in Haryana, widow
remarriage became a focus of common concern in early-twentieth-
century UP, though not through levirate, which was rare. Instead,
especially in the 1920s, the desire to control the sexuality of the widow
was linked to questions of Hindu-Muslim population ratios and
increasing fears of a supposed decline in Hindu numbers.
Attitudes to widows had divided Hindus in UP, at least at an ideo-
logical level. There had been grave differences between Sanatan Dhar-
mists and orthodox Hindus on the one hand, and the Arya Samaj on
the other; and also between upper and lower castes. In early-twenti-
eth-century UP, the widow provided an occasion for wider, abstract
Hindu unities that camouflaged deeper differences. In the 1920s,
especially, when the focus was on shuddhi and sangathan, abductions,
and a declining Hindu population, there were related anxieties about
conversions of Hindu widows by Muslims and suggestions that the
reproductive capacities of widows could enhance Hindu numbers.
This led to subtle shifts in debates around widow remarriage, even
though the actual condition of widows may have remained the same.
Though the widow's sexuality remained a problem, the reassertion
of Hindu community identity enabled Hindu publicists to turn it to
their advantage, not only by suppressing it but also by valuing it. Thus
the alleged carnal desires ofwidows and their ability to reproduce, for
which they were greatly chastised, provided in some senses the key
to their acceptability and utility in the construction of Hindu identity
in this period.
An apparent ideological acceptance ofwidow remarriage in various
writings was a way of projecting a humanising face of Hinduism,
reflecting the 'flexibility' in Hindu society to fulfil a 'larger' object-
ive. Conversely, widows provided another effective channel to cen-
sure Muslims as the 'other'. The question of widows remained very
302 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
much at the heart of debates among Hindu reformers, revivalists and
publicists in the early twentieth century.141 The literature produced
around widows in this period far surpassed that of the previous
century. In fact the 1920s and 1930s in UP were marked by most
extensive and intense public deliberations on women, including
widows.

II. I . The 'Problem ' of Widows' Sexuality

Census figures of 1921 for UP recorded that there were more than
1200 widows under the age of 5 and more than 12,000 under the age
of 10.14*At a conference of social reformers held in 19 18 at Aligarh,
figures were presented to show that the greater number ofwidows was
in the age group of 15-20, a total of 49,555.143Widows were denied
participation in festivals and auspicious occasions. Their lives were
greatly restricted. The widow was a cook and a servant, a nurse and
a h 0 ~ s e k e e p e r .The
l ~ ~ Brahmin caste was particularly stringent with
its widows, and most of those recorded as widows belonged to the
upper castes. Sacred widowhood among the upper castes was believed
to ensure the purity of their women. It established and reasserted their
caste status. Conversely, as Crooke reported at the turn of the nine-
teenth century, the lowest proportion of widows was found among
the 'sweepers, pasis, julahas and chamars, in all of which the woman
is peculiarly a helpmate to man."45
Throughout this period the widow was considered dangerous by

14' Implicit in some works on women, including on widows, is the assumption

that the women's question disappeared from the agenda of public debate towards
the close of the nineteenth century, primarily due to a focus on Bengal and the
influence of Partha Chatterjee. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Frag-
ments: Colonial and Postcoloniai Histories (Delhi; 1994), pp. 1 16-1 7; idem, 'The
Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question', in Sangari and Vaid (eds),
Recasting, pp. 249-50.
Census of India, 1921, UP, Vol. X U , Part I (Allahabad, 1923).
143 Mentioned in Vir Bharat Talwar, 'Feminist Consciousness in Women's
Journals in Hindi: 1910-20', in Sangari and Vaid (eds), Recasting, p. 217.
14* Dua, Society, pp. 146-7.
' 4 5 W. Crooke, The Trihes and Castes ofthe North Western India, Vol. I(1896,
rpt. Calcurra, 1974).
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 303
Hindu campaigners,
- - above all because of her sexual urge. The widow
was often referred to as 'rand', which was interchangeable with the
word randi, an abusive term for prostitutes. As early as 1871 a tract
brought out by the Vidhotsahini Sabha, an organisation working for
widows in Banaras, stated: 'So many widows suffer from carnal de-
sires, and thus they blacken the face of their clan. They satisfy their
fleshly urges secretly and, to hide this hideous act, they commit the
crime of abortion and disgrace the whole of ~ h a r a t v a r s h a . "The
~~
basis of these assertions was the idea that women had eight times more
sexual urge than men, and that it was extremely difficult to control,
especially in the case of widows, who did not have 'legitimate' access
to sex.147
In the late nineteenth centuryArya Samajistsand Sanatan Dharmists
sought different ways to resolve the problem, leading to a bitter con-
flict between the two groups. Sanatan Dharmists, supported largely
by brahmanical patriarchy, resisted widow remarriage. They per-
ceived it as an onslaught on their high-caste status. They defended
enforced widowhood and argued that widows must suppress their
sexuality; stringent codes of behaviour ensured that licentious im-
pulses would not occur. The widow was not to decorate her body in
any way nor eat 'heating' foods. She could not sit among men nor
sleep on a soft bed, neither apply perfume nor adorn herselfwith flow-
ers. The use of mehndi, jewellery, betel and kajal was prohibited.
Orthodox Hindus stated that if widow remarriage was accepted,
love between husband and wife would greatly decrease, and wives,
dissatisfied with their husbands, would poison them.'48 It was even

146VidhotsahiniSabha, Vidhotsahini (Banaras, 1871), p. 3. Also see Murli

Dhar Kakkar, BaI Vidhwa Kuah (Aliahabad, 1918), pp. 2, 7.
14' Brijmohan Jha, Vidhwoduah Mirnansa Arthat Kdhwa Vivahpar Shastriya
Vzchar(VidhwaVivah Sahayak Sabha, Agra, n.d.), p. 18. Even caste organisations
stated this, J.P. Chaudhry (Head Pandit, DAV High School), Kushvahafihatriya
(Kuhari, Kacchi, Murau, Kushuaha) Parichaya (Kashi; 1926, 3td edn), p. 50. As
late as 1939 it was said that widows eloped because they were on fire with their
carnal cravings. Their primitive torrent of sex was uncontrollable: Achalram
Maharaj, Hindu Dharma Rahasya (Agra, 1939, 2nd edn), pp. 170-2.
14' Lala Tikaran~,Punaruivah Vichar athwa Vidhwa Viuah Nishedh (Meerut,
1909), pp. 12-1 4; Ramswarup Sharma, Vidhtua Vivah Mimansa (Sanatan
304 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
argued that widows would kill their legitimate children in order to
remarry. One newspaper narrated the case of Musarnmat Hanso, a
widow and resident of Meerut district. It was claimed that she threw
her child into a well as she was unable to get herself remarried because
of having it. This unfortunate case was to be a warning to those be-
nighted men who blindly advocated widow remarriage. The editor
was afraid that the introduction of widow marriage would lead to
even more scandal and outrage.'*' Another newspaper referred to
twenty-four murders committed by widows and said that the ban on
widow marriage among Hindus was a great safeguard to the honour
of their families.150Widows had no way out except a life of asceticism
and austerity:
T h e supporters of widow remarriage say that men and women are equal.
There can be nothing more hilarious than this. If only the existence of
body, flesh and bones is the criterion for equality of men and women,
then where does this equality not exist? Then insects, animals and birds
will also have no difference from human beings, and should not then all
living things have equal rights? . . . When the physical build and charac-
teristics of men and women are different, then will there not be any dif-
ference in their nature as well? They can never be equal.15'
The ascetic model remained the highest goal for widows well into
the next century.'52 The women's movement in the region, too,
focused on the need to find ways to keep widows busy to mitigate
their loneliness and the emptiness in their 1 i ~ e s .Itl ~has
~ been shown

Dharma Press, Moradabad, 1906). This tract was as thick as 428 pages, trying
to prove that widow remarriage was against Hindu shastras and so should not
be brought into custom. The Sanatan Dharma Press at Moradabad brought out
a large number of tracts at this time, slandering Arya Samaj, Dayanand Saraswati
and his teachings, and a chief target of attack was widow remarriage. See Shib
La1 Ganeshi Lal, Dayanand Charitr (1906); idem, Dayannnd ki Buddhi (1906);
Jagannath Das, Dayanand Mat Darpan (1 907).
AAlmora Akhbar, 15 October 1898, NNR, 19 October 1898, p. 554.
I5O Advocate, 11 October 1898, NNR 19 October 1898, p. 554.
15' Sharma, Vidhwa, pp. 413-15.
15' Mahopdeshak, Stri, p. 11; Poddar, Samaj, pp. 7-12; Editorial, 'Sati aur
Vidhwa', A ~ y aMahila, 12, 1 (April 1929), pp. 3-5; Surajbhan Vakil, Kdhwa
Kartavya (Saharanpur, 1927).
'53 Talwar, 'Feminist', pp. 216-20.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 305
that some widows referred education to re-marriage,15* and that
some educated, upper-caste widows adopted this ascetic model to
their advantage. They found that functioning within the norms of
'purity', 'virtue' and 'austerity' offered them implicit power and ena-
bled them to develop professionally. Many opened schools.155
O n the other hand, the Arya Samaj reformists, while still consi-
dering the ascetic model as the highest, thought it impossible for a
large majority of widows. They were also guided by a certain human-
ist and social zeal and their arguments implied some criticism of
Hindu society. This small but articulate minority advocated modest
change and argued for widow remarriage, especially for virgin wid-
O W S However,
. ~ ~ ~ reformists from the outset located themselves in
what they regarded as 'real' tradition. They did not concede that they
were pushing for innovation; rather they claimed to be 'restoring the
days of our past history'. They pointed out that they were attacking
specific social evils and priestly despotism while preserving the gene-
ral authority of the Vedas.15' They thus gave evidence from the shas-
tras that if a widow had had no sexual relationship with her husband,
if she was a virgin, then she should be remarried.lsg However, one
of their main arguments when advocating widow remarriage remain-
ed that widows were unable to control their lust, and that this led to
abortions, infanticide and p r o ~ t i t u t i o n . 'Some
~ ~ newspapers sup-
ported widow remarriage to check moral laxity: they were seen as

15* Francesca Orsini, 'The Hindi Public Sphere: 1920-40'.

'55 Nita Kumar, 'Widows, Education and Social Change in Twentieth-
Century Banaras', E P K 26, 17 (27April 1991), pp. WS-19-25; idem, 'Orange
for the Girls, or, the Half-Known Story of the Education of Girls in Twentieth-
Century Banaras', in Nita Kumar (ed.), Women as Subjects: Southhian Histories
(New Delhi, 1994), pp. 21 1-32.
156Sabha, Vidhotsahini; Kakkar, BaC Jha, Vidhwodvah, p. 18; Bakhtawar
Singh, Vidhwa Vivah Prachar (Shahjahanpur, 1907); Dwarka Prasad, Vidhwa
Vipatti Prakash (Kanpur, 1915); Mahasevak Patha, Punarvivah Vidhan (Prayag,
1925).
15' Chakravarti, 'Myth', p. 203.
'58 Kakkar, Bal, pp. 10-15; Arya Darpan, May 1902, NNR, 14 June 1902,
p. 397; Arya Darpan, November 1902, NNR, 6 December 1902, p. 738.
IS9 Sabha, Vidhotsahini, pp. 3-4, 16; Jha, Vzdhwodvah, p. 18; Singh, Vidhwa,
pp. 3-10; Prasad, Vidhwa, Patha, Punarvivah.
306 1 Sexuality, Ob~cenity,Community
leading immoral lives.160Through these arguments, and the reported
cases of widows killing their new-born children, they supported
widow remarriage.16'
The intermediary and lower castes also supported contradictory
readings. O n the one hand the adoption of upper-caste norms and
social customs like the prohibition of widow remarriage was seen as
an effective tool for upward social mobility and claims to high-caste
status.162O n the other hand, given the reformist agenda of many caste
associations, it could be suggested that widow remarriage was desir-
able. Taking their cue from the Arya Samaj, such reformers tried to
show that it was sanctified by tradition and shastras and in no way
undermined their social status. Most caste associations adopted reso-
lutions to this effect.163By the early twentieth century, though for
different reasons and from diverse perspectives, the principle of
remarriage came to be accepted at least theoretically by almost all-
reformists and revivalists, upper and lower castes.
Comments made in various women's journals of UP,164and also

Rabbar-i-Hind, 29 July 1876, NNR, 5 August 1876, p. 394; KhicriSama-

char, 14 June 1890, NNR, 23 June 1890, p. 406; Godharma Prakash, September
1891, NNR, 17 September 1891, pp. 642-3.
I" Alwaqt, 12 October 1892, NNR, 19 October 1892, p. 386; MusaJr, 30
April 1908, NNR, 2 May 1908, p. 395.
16zSomewell-to-do Chamars of Kanpur, for example, were prohibiting
widow-remarriage: G.W. Briggs, The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920), pp. 40, 47;
Blunt, Caste, p. 265; Census, 1921, UP, pp. 103-4. Also see Shekhar Bandyopa-
dhyay, 'Caste, Widow-remarriage and the Reform of Popular Culture in Colo-
nial Bengal', in Ray (ed.), Seams, pp. 8-36. However, I think that Bandyopadhyay
places much emphasis on impositions from above and marginalises how different
situations can have opposite results. There was a much deeper process of interface
at work, than the paper seems to imply.
'6"rayag Samachar, 21 January 1885, NNR, p. 6. The Jat Conference at
Meerut in 1890 supported widow remarriage, Report ofthe Ninth NationalSocinl
Conference (Allahabad, 1892). Even conservative organisations like those of
Agrawals, started supporting it, Rookishore Agrawal Bajaj, 'Bal Vidhwa Vivah',
Agrawal Hitflithi, 1, 3 (1925), pp. 11-14.
'" Francesca Orsini, 'Domesticity and Beyond: Hindi WomerL1sJournals in
the Early Twentieth Century', South Asia Research, 19, 2 (1999), pp. 137-60.
Orsini has done an extensive study ofwomen's journals, especially of Chand and
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men 1 307
through the novels and stories ofwriters like ~ r e m c h a n d , demand-
'~~
ed a public condemnation of domestic cruelty and social hypocrisy
vis-a-viswidows. At the same time, there was a certain ambiguity even
in these writings, often reflecting an acceptance and endorsement of
traditional attitudes regarding widows.166As we shall see, Hindu
publicists were, however, successful to an extent in blunting the attack
on Hindu society in the twentieth century, by diverting attention to
the enemy within and without.

11.2. The Numbers Game

An added dimension to the debate, which became more profound
with time, was an obsession with numbers. The concern with an
alleged decrease in the number of Hindus grew rapidly following the
introduction of an all-India census in 1871. The Census Report of
191 1 for UP not only acknowledged that Muslims were prolific in
comparison to Hindus but also linked this fertility to the status of
widows: '

It has long been known that Musalmans are more fertile than Hindus and
that their chances of life are better: and the figures of the last decade
merely strengthen this view. . . . T h e prohibition of the remarriage of
widows does not affect the Muhammadan. T h e figures bear this out. . . .
T h e Muhammadan widows are only 14 percent of the female population
as against 1 7 percent among Hindus. . . . At the child-bearing ages (1 5-
40), when this factor will chiefly effect the rate of increase, under 3 per
cent of Muhammadan women are widows whilst the Hindu rate is over
4 per cent.I6'

interprets many of the articles published in these journals in a 'positive' manner.

Some letters particularly allowed the female character to raise questions and judge
the system from her position as a 'fallen' woman.
l G 5 Charu Gupta, 'Gender and Culture: Women in Premchand's Writings',
unpublished M.Phil. thesis (University of Delhi, 1991), pp. 11 1-16; idem,
'Portrayal of Women in Premchand's Stories: A Critique', Social Scientist, 19,
5-6 (May-June 1991), pp. 96-8.
Ibid., also see Sudhir Chandra, 'Conflicted Beliefs and Men's Conscious-
ness about Women: Widow Remarriage in Later Nineteenth-Century Indian
Literature', EPN 22, 44 (31 October 1987), pp. WS-55-62.
Census of India, 191 1, UP, Vol.XCI: Part I (Allahabad, 1912), pp. 109-10.
308 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
The 1921 census said: 'Both relatively and absolutely Hindus
have lost. . . . Hindus have decreased during the last decade by 347
per 10,000, or just under 3.5 per cent.'I6'
Such statistical formulations aided the Hindu fear of numerical
decline, which became much more intense in the specific context of
the 1920s. A tract written in 1922 stated: 'Some Hindus argue "what
do we have to do with increasing our numbers. We should be more
concerned with preserving the seed ofour true Aryan identity". Dear,
what do you mean by protection of the seed? In every census, the
number of Hindus is decreasing while that ofMuslims and Christians
is increasing. And you are just concerned with protection of the seed!
O u r aim should be to increase the numbers, first and foremost.'169
Changes in the Hindu population were larnented-from 33 crores,
the numbers had now been reduced to a mere 20 crores.170 Using
statistics from the 191 1 and 1921 censuses, it was said that over the
past ten years Hindus had been reduced in number by 8 lakhs while
Muslims had increased by 21 lakhs. If this continued, after some
years, no Arya would be found in India.I7l Newspapers, magazines
and even caste journals propounded similar myths, with catchy titles
like 'Hinduon ka Bhayankar Haas' (The Terrible Decline of Hin-
d u ~ ) . "The
~ numerically defined strength of the community became

Census figures were used in newspaper reports and magazines to lament the
supposed decline in Hindu numbers: Saruswati, July 1902, NNR, 9August 1902,
p. 491.
IG8 Census, 1921, UP, p. 53.
169 Babu Bhagwandass, Hinduon ka Sangrakshan aur Atmarakshan (Kashi,
1922).
170 Chandrika~rasad,Hinduon ke Sath Kshwasghat (Awadh, 1917, 4000 co-
pies), p. 14.
Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya (ed.), Humarz Desh Sewa (Prayag, 1923, 2nd
edn, 1 lakh copies printed till date), p. 3; idem, Kdhwa Kuah Mimansa (Allaha-
bad, 1927, new edn), pp. 226-33.
172Editorial, 'Hinduon ka Bhayankar Haas', Chand 7, 1, 3 ('January 1929),
pp. 450-60; Kunwar Chandkaran Sharda, 'Hindu Jati ki Durdasha ke Karan aur
uske Nivaran ke Upaye1,Madburi, 3, 1, 3 (5 October 1924), pp. 290-5; Daya-
shankar Dube, 'Bharat mein Hinduon ki dasha', Madhu~i,4, 1, 2 (23 August
1925), p p 146-53; Anon, 'Kshatriya Sankhya', Kwhwaha Krhatriya Mitra, 1 5 ,
9-10 (September-October 1928), pp. 43-4.
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 309
a significant component of communal consciousness, and helped
stabilise Hindu identities around new orientation^.'^^ With such
arguments, even a demographic majority could yet perceive itself as
an endangered minority.
O f the various reasons given by Hindu publicists for the alleged
decline of Hindus and the simultaneous proliferation of Muslims,
one of the most important was the increasing frequency of alliances
berween Muslim men and Hindu widows. A tract said that large
numbers of widows were now entering the homes of yavanas and
mlecchas, producing children for them and increasing their num-
bers."* Another said that Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya widows,
particularly, were walking into Muslim hands and decreasing the
number of Hindus.'75 The famous Hindi poet Ayodhyasingh Upa-
dhyaya 'Hariaudh' penned these lines at this time:
Gode mein isaiyat islam ki
betiyau bahuein lita kar hum late!
Ah ghate par humen ghata hua
man bewaon ka ghata kar hum ghate.!'
(We have made our daughters and daughter-in-laws lie in the lap of Islam
. ' ~ ~have suffered loss after loss. By not respecting
and C h r i ~ t i a n i t ~We
widows, we have dwindled in numbers.'77)
The loss of a Hindu widow was not just the loss of one person,
but of many more. These numbers subtracted from the Hindu popu-
lation but added to the Muslim, doubling the loss to Hindus.178One
'73 Bhai Parmanand, Hindu jati kaRahasya(Lucknow, 1928), p. 90. He stated
that the main reason for Hindu-Muslim conflict was the question of numbers,
where Muslims were constantly increasing and Hindus declining. In such a
situation, the main aim of shuddhi and sangathan was to stop the decline of
Hindu numbers.
Maharaj, Hindu, p. 172.
Bhumitra Sharma, Niyoga Mardzna ka Wmardzna (Meerut, 1917), p. 9.
Also see Upadhyaya (ed.), Humari, pp. 3-9.
'76 There were references made to Christians in early-rwentieth-century de-
bates amung Hindu publicists, but the central attack remained on the Muslims.
It was in the late nineteenth century that Christianity was much mentioned in
other contexts, but there is no space to deal with it here.
ln Quoted in Upadhyaya, fidbwa, p. 1.
Upadhyaya (ed.), Humari, pp. 3-9; Sharma, Niyoga, p. 9.
3 10 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
tract, Humara Bhishan Haas, a collection of articles reprinted from
the newspaper Pratap, dwelt on the catastrophic decline of Hindus
via conversions. A calamitous picture was painted by quoting exten-
sively from census reports: 'Our sexually unsatisfied widows espe-
cially are prone to Muslim hands and by producing Muslim children
they increase their numbers and spell disaster for the Hindus . . .
Muslim goondas are especially seen outside the houses that have
Hindu widows. . . . Pray, tell us, would you like our Aryan widows
to read nikah with a Muslim?"79The numbers obsession is combined
here with 'negative' portrayals of Muslims, and stereotypes about the
sexual desires of widows, as well as fears of the widow's agency.
The anxiety over declining Hindu numbers and widow's reproduct-
ivity helped in focusing the attack on the enemy without-the Mus-
lim goondas who were charged with abducting widows. Now, blame
could be targeted on Muslims to justify widow remarriage. The at-
tacks on Hindu society concerning the condition of widows had
remained general and abstract. However, when Muslims were ac-
cused of abducting Hindu widows, the attack could acquire definite
form and be applied to specific individuals. Moreover, child mar-
riages, and with them the increase in widowhood, were attributed to
Muslim rule in India. It was claimed that the number of Hindu wi-
dows had increased because Hindus had been forced into child
marriages to protect their girls from the clutches of mu slim^.'^^ Thus
was created both the myth of a glorious Hindu past and a negative
image of Muslims. Muslims were depicted as behaving according to
their 'nature' in enticing widows, and hence increasing their num-
bers.'*' Such essentialisms were as crucial to the definition of the
17' Mannan Dwivedi, Humara Bhishan Haas (Kanpur, 1924, 3rd edn, 2000
copies), pp. 1, 26, 35.
Is' Swanli Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race (n.p.,
1926), p. 95; Sharda Kumari Devi, 'Vidhwa', Chand 2,2, 5 (September 1924),
p. 433; Aryn Darpan, May 1902, NNR, 14 June 1902, p. 397.
Is'PAI, 12 July 1924, no. 27, para 216, p. 219; PAI, 19 July 1924, no. 28,
para 229, p. 233; PAI, 9 January 1926, no. 1, para 6, p. 5; At Jalaun, Arya Samaj
lecturers warned Hindus against four Muslim beggars who, according to them,
had come from Bijnor intending to entice away Hindu widows: PA/, 24 April
1926, no. 15, para 371, p. 219. Some Urdu newspapers protested against the
manner in which certain Hindi newspapers were conducting propaganda for the
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 3 1 1
'problem' as of the community. A tract stated that two and a half crore
Hindu widows had been enticed by Muslims through devious meth-
ods. ls2
The Vidhwa Sahayak Karyalaya (Office to Help Widows) at Agra,
which appears to have been one of the biggest homes for widows in
UP at this time, reiterated: 'At places Muslim goondas sing romantic
love songs near the houses of widows; at others Miss Sahiba knits
socks and reaches the gate of widows. Muslim leaders have now even
decided that to win over Hindu widows, they must open an ashram
in every city and in front of it stick a signboard in bold letters, so that
widows come immediately to them.'ls3 Thus widows were instructed
never to reside as neighbours of Muslims or Christians, and to keep
away from all Muslim males-friends of their brothers, masters who
came to teach in their homes, doctors and 1 a ~ ~ e r s . l ~ ~
More crucial was fear of widow's agency, leading to a condemna-
tion of widows themselves as the enemy within who brought shame
to their community by eloping with Muslims. Widows were depict-
ed as vulnerable by 'nature' and elopements and conversions some-
times came to be rewritten as cases of abduction.185The widow's
selfconscious-ness as a woman, as a convert, as a person with sexual
agency, was here consistently and completely denied. It was not pos-
sible for Hindu publicists to recognise that women were capable of
exercising control over their bodies and minds.
It was also unthinkable that a woman could be happy when

protection of Hindu widows in the 1920s, as they were inciting Hindus against
Muslims in the process: A1 Barid NNR, 29 August 1925.
Is2 Gaurishankar Shukl Chaudhry, Kya Swami Shraddbanand Apradhi The?
(Kanpur, 1928), p. 12.
Is3 Narayan Duct Sharma, Kashyap, Bhartiya Vidhwaon ki Karunapurna
Kntl~ayenArthat Hindu Vidhwaon par Atyachar, Part III (Agra, 193I), p. 1.
Is* Mahopdeshak, Stri Siksha, p. 14; Updeshak, Alarm, p. 32; Jha, Hinduon,
pp 5 4 .
I s 5 For an interesting look at the way colonial law intervened to side with
Hindu patriarchy in the case of those women who converted to Christianity in
the nineteenth century, see Gauri Viswanathan, 'Coping with (Civil) Death: The
Christian Convert's Rights of Passage in Colonial India' in Gyan Prakash (ed.),
Afier Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Di~placements(Princeton,
1995), pp. 183-99.
3 12 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
moving outside the Hindu fold, not even if she did this voluntarily.
Even sympathetic accounts of Hindu widows which criticised Hindu
society for its oppression could not resist highlighting the 'sad' state
ofwidows because of their alliances with Muslims. T o enhance their
message and make their narrative more convincing, some of the maga-
zines and widows' organisations themselves started speaking in the
language ofwidows. In 1926-7 Zahur Bakhs (1897-1964), a teacher
and prolific writer for children, began writing in Chand (the most
popular Hindi magazine in UP) a series of 'first-person confessions'
under the heading 'Samaj Ke Agni Kund' (Well of Fire of Society).
In these he frequently took the woman's voice and wrote pieces like
'Main Musalman Kaise Hui' (How I Became a Muslim)1s6and 'Main
Isai Kaise Hui' (How I Became a Christian).ls7 While ex-pressing
compassion for widows and blaming Hindu society, these articles ar-
gued that conversions had actually made the state of wi-dows worse
and blamed the 'other' community for abducting and converting
them. There was a mixing up, here, of realitywith fiction, instruction
with entertainment. The supposedly personalised accounts height-
ened the impact of a melodramatic narrative.
The Vidhwa Karyalaya of Agra brought out a three-part series on
widows in the 1920s. One of the main themes here was the moral
contamination of Hindu society due to widows running away or
being abducted by Muslims.18sThe introduction to the second part
stated that the first part had received a very warm reception and had
been translated into Urdu, Bangla and Gujarati. Not only did the
author of the series adopt the language of widows, the widows
themselves came into these accounts. The series had short stories, sup-
posedly based on true accounts narrated by the widows themselves,
recounting their miserable plight. Accompanying them were pic-

'''Chand December 1926.

Is'Chand March 1927.
"'Narayan Dutt Sharma, Kashyap, Bhartiya Vidhwaon ki kkrunapurna
Kathayen Arthat Hindu fidhwaon par Atyachav, Parts 1, 11, 111, published by
Vidhwa Sahayak Granthrnala Kayalaya, Sultanpura (Agra, 1927, 1929, and
1931 respectively).
 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 3 13
tures in which was depicted, on one side, the Hindu widow in 'Hindu
clothes', and on the other the same woman as a married Muslim in
'Muslim attire'. The stories had titles like 'Rampyari urf Shirdara
Begum', 'How I Became Fatima from Champa', 'Shahzadiya Devi,
Who was Rakko Before'. In the narrative style adopted, each widow
recited her sad story, and the stories had broadlysimilar patterns. The
widows talked of how they had been abducted by or had eloped with
various Muslims. They went on to build a picture of their misfortune.
In the process of recitation, the widow, though ostensibly telling her
own story, was denied a will of her own. Not only was elopement
sometimes rewritten as abduction, but also, if a widow did run away,
she was depicted as leading a dreadful life. It was assumed that, by
the act of marrying and staying with a Muslim, her unhappiness was
ensured. At one place, various widows who had been 'saved' from the
clutches of Muslims by Arya Samajists, narrated their tales at the
Kashi Vidhwa Ashram (Widows' Home).ls9
Such stereotypes could be used to justify unlawful conduct. At
Agra, Kedar Nath Vaish carried off a Hindu woman and a Muslim
girl to the Vidhwa Ashram on the grounds that a Muslim was ab-
ducting them for the purpose of conversion. A report was made to
the-police and Kedar Nath was arrested."' At Jalaun the promoters
of the Vidhwa Ashram were prosecuted on corruption charges. Local
Arya Samajists made every effort to help them, declaring that the
accused had saved widows from the clutches of Muslims by taking
them over to Hindus.19' In 1936-7 there was another huge contro-
versy over the embezzlement of the Widows' Home Funds in Agra,
run by the Arya Samaj.192
Within the narratives of widows as victims, however, were also
implicit constant fears of assertion by the widows themselves. In the
1920s, particularly, widows started sending letters to women's maga-
zines, particularly Chand, linking their fate to child-marriage, dowry

Is9 Ibid., Part IIZ, pp. 1 6 2 0 .

PAL 20 March 1926, no. 11, para 279, p. 155.
'"PAI, 13 March 1926, no. 10, para 233, p. 136.
l g 2 PAZ, 9 January 1937, no. 1, para 4, p. 27.
3 14 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community

Illustration 10. Hindu Widows and Conversions

 Hindu Women, Muslim Men / 3 1 5

Source for illustration 10 :Narayan Dutt Sharma Kashyap, Bhartiya

Vidhwaon ki Karunapurna Kathayen Arthat Hindu Vidhwaon par
Atyachar, Part I1 (Agra, 1929), front and back cover. The back cover
depicts a Hindu widow in 'Hindu attire', and then after her conver-
sion and marriage, in 'Muslim attire'. It also says that Part Icontains
14 pictures of similar kind.
3 16 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
and mismatched marriages. These letters offered a bold critique of
Hindu social and family norms, forcefully belying the ideal of the
Aryan family.193Some male Hindu publicists offered their critique.
Swami Shraddhanand declared:
Out of the 7.25 lakhs of child widows, there are thousands who lead a
life of strict chastity, and it is perhaps due to their tapsya that Hindu
society still ekes out its existence. But an overwhelming majority consists
of those who are compelled to leave their homes on account of the brutal
tyranny and lustful attacks of their female and male relatives, and to seek
shelter under Muhammadan roofs or to add to the numbers of the
daughters of shame. In this way, while reducing the numbers of Hindus,
they add to the numerical strength ofbeef-eating religious societies . . . One
reason of Hindu-Mohammadan riots and ill will between the commu-
nities is the problem of the Hindu child widow . . . Ifthe onrush of Hindu
widows towards prostitution and Muhammadanism, on account of the
brutal treatment of their relations, is not stopped by allowing them to
remarry in their own community, the number of beef-eaters will increase
and gauraksha will remain only a dream of unpractical ~entimentalists.'~~
But there was a thin line between the victim forced out of her home
and the apostate acting against her former community. A pamphlet
said t b t Gulab Devi, a Hindu widow converted to Islam, had cau-
tioned;
Find some way to protect the reproductive and mothering capacity of the
Hirrdu community. Otherwise these devis of yours, who produced Ram,
Krishna, Bhim, Arjun and Harishchandra will produce Khudabaksh,
Rahimbaksh and Karimbaksh. They will get cows cut and temples des-
troyed. Then the identity of this Hindu community, which could not be
wiped out even by tanks and swords, will vanish into thin air."5
The Vidhwa Karyalaya series also made the widows potent actors
and agents of their own fate. In one a Hindu widow was seen warning
Hindu males:
]is din than jayegi man mein, kahin nikal main jaoongi.
Kisi yavan ka bath pakarkar, usko main apnaoongi.
Paida karke barrhe usse, uski shakti bharaongi. . . .
193 Orsini,
'Domesticity', pp. 1 5 0 4 .
"4Shraddhanand, Hindu,pp. 97, 100, 138.
19' Kashyap, Bhartiya, Part II, p. 33.
 H i n d u Women, Muslim M e n / 3 17
Gauon ko katwaungi nit, mandir main turvaungi.
Devsthanon ko rnitvakar, masid main banvaungi. . . .
Dharma-granth jalva dungi main, chutiyon ko katwaungi.
(The day I decide, 1'11 go somewhere. I'll catch the hand of a Muslim and
make him mine. I'll bear his children and increase his potency. I'll have
cows slaughtered daily, and temples broken. I'II destroy temples and cons-
truct mosques instead. I'II burn religious books and get the choti cut.'96)

Adding to the apprehension of Hindu publicists was the fact that

many widows were adult, and thus charges of their being abducted
against their will (assumed for minors) could not be easily established
in court. G u n r k u l Samachar lamented the widow's agency:
It is known to all that the Hindu community had to pay a heavy price
for stopping the remarriage of child widows. Recently two Brahmin, one
Baniya and one Bhatnagar Kayastha widows adopted Islam. The first
Gaur Brahmin widow read nikah with Tazzukhan in Badaun. The second
Brahmin widow became Muslim at Mirzapur; the third lay down in the
house of a Julaha of Moradabad and the fourth Bhatnagar widow read
nikah with a bhishti. This news is heartbreaking and agonising. Girls of
this Hindu community had at one point set themselves on fire and com-
mitted sati to save the honour of their religion. But today they are be-
coming Muslims due to the deeds of Hindu and Muslim men.I9'
Undoubtedly, some Hindu widows did voluntarily elope with
Muslims and convert to Islam. In 1927, a Hindu widow of Pratapgarh
eloped with a Muslim, whom she married.19*When three widows
arrived at Etawah in February 1928 proposing to live on their own
in the town, the Hindu Sabha who wished to reclaim them frustrat-
ed their plans. One of them then sought the protection of some
mu slim^.'^^ There was thus a siege within-to hound these Hindu
widows for eloping with Muslim men. This was a sign of the moral
contamination of Hindu society, of an ultimate social and political
transgression by Muslims-but also of the insatiable will of the
widow.
lS6 Ibid., p. 11.
'"Anon., 'Bal Vidhwa Vivah', in Gurukul Samachar, 2, 7-8 (February-
March 1910), p. 4.
O8 PAL 15 September 1928, ho. 36, para 744, p. 372.
"'PAL 25 February 1928, no. 8, para 159, p. 80.
3 18 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
The solution proposed was to preserve each widow as potential
mother of children. The 'horror' of induced abortion by widows was
invoked not just on humanitarian grounds, but because it signified
loss of Hindu progeny. Under no circumstances was a Hindu widow,
impregnated by a Hindu male, even under 'wrong' conditions, to kill
the foetus. The birth of a Hindu child had to be ensured even in the
most adverse circumstance^.^^^
More important, it was declared necessary to support widow
remarriage and control the widow's reproductivity within the bounds
of Hinduism. The liberal promise ofwidow remarriage was overturn-
ed by a community need for a better economy ofpotential childbearing
wombs. Hindu men were asked, in this hour of crisis, as part of their
religious duty, to marry Hindu widows or have them remarried
within their community.201The protection of widows was seen as a
compulsory step to prevent the decline of Hindus.202Thus by the
1920s even opponents of widow remarriage had come round to sup-
porting it203-even, it was noted, Manvaris and Sanatani Hindus.204
It was argued that there was no harm in upper castes adopting the
customs of lower castes in such circumstance^.^^^ Hindu sadhus and
bairagis were advised to marry widows to prevent them committing
other offences.206It was bluntly stated: 'It is sinful to take the name

200 U~adhyaya, Vidhwa, pp. 230-52; letters and replies by editor on the
question of abortion for widows: Chand 8, 1, 6 (April 1930), pp. 998-1001.
20' Chaudhry, Kya, p. 23. Also see Upadhyaya, Vidhwa; Parmanand, Hindu,
pp. 70, 94; Mahopdeshak, Stri, pp. 12, 15.
202 Aaj, NNR, 27 March 1923, p. 5; Aaj, NNR, 15 September 1923.
203 Kunwar Madansingh, Hinduon Kab Tak Chetoga (Mathura, 1923), p. 8.
Mannan Dube, Hindu Vidhwayen (Mathura, 1924). This tract was published
by the Secretary, Vidhwa Sahayak Ashram, Mathura, and advocated remarriage
of widows not as a rule but only under certain undesirable circumstances,
especially in relation to eloping with Muslims. Also mentioned in SPBP, March
1925.
204 Sharmishtha Devi Mathur, 'Vidhwa Vivah', StriDarpan, 37,5 (November
1927), pp. 495-7; Bajaj, 'Bal', p. 11.
205 Badrinath Joshi, Kdhwodvah Mimansa (Prayag, 1928, 2nd edn)
20G PAI, 28 July 1928, no. 29, para 569, p. 282; PA/, 11 August 1928, no.
31, para 61 5, p. 305.
 H i n d u Women, M u s l i m M e n 1 3 19
of remarriage in front of those dear widows who are lost in the love
of their deceased husbands. But remarriage must be used in situations
where due t o their lust and carnal madness, Arya widows are convert-
ing t o Islam or C h r i ~ t i a n i t y . ' ~And
~ ' thus:

This is the period of Kaliyug for all Hindus. . . . The stage at which Hindu
community proposed the ideal of no widow remarriage, and when this
ideal became a practical reality, was the highest moral stage of Hindu
community. . . . At that time there was only Hindu community, Hindu
culture and Hindu religion in the country. . . . We ourselves severely op-
pose widow remarriage. . . . There can be nothing more tragic than the
remarriage ofwidows. This is a clear proof of the moral decline of Hindu
society. But the acceptance and willingness of Hindu widows to live, reside
and many with Mzrslims is so appalling andfeatfir1 that widow remarriage
by comparison appears very good indeed.208(emphasis mine)

Within these negative arguments was the positive suggestion that

widows' sexuality could actually give an advantage to the H i n d u com-
munity by reversing the decline in Hindu numbers. T h e Hindu
woman's reproductive capacities were to be directed to produce a
H i n d u child. By marrying widows, H i n d u men only ensured increase
even as they strengthened the claims of patriarchy by properly chan-
nelising widows' sexuality.
W i t h the debate o n widowhood, we come full circle. In militant
H i n d u psychology, conversions had to be simultaneous with the pre-
vention of conversions by others of one's own kind. T h e converted
widow was perceived as dangerous
-
to the vaunted H i n d u nation. She
put at risk the grand strategy of Hindu identity formation, of both
difference and the right-
to difference.
During this period of the campaign around widows, one gleans
subtle shifts in the arguments of Hindu organisations. These were
shifts from a complete rejection of widow remarriage to its accept-
ability, partially d u e to certain emotional, humanising concerns.
Later, especially in the 1920s with the coming of shuddhilsangathan
and the abduction campaigns, the reasons for supporting widow
Dwivedi, Hurnara, p. 35.
Thakur Rajkishore Singh, Hindu Sangatban (Ballia, 1924), pp. 9 4 7 .
320 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
remarriage were placed upon a'new footing. Widow remarriage now
was to be advocated because widows were going into the homes of
Muslims, because they were increasing Muslim numbers, because
they were producing gau bhakshak, because the Hindu religion was
in danger.
 I have tried to show how gender was central to the creation of a
sexualised and communalised Hindu identity in colonial UP.
Hindu publicists sought to establish the honour, prestige and respect-
ability of the Hindu household and family, to work out a definable
community identity and a vibrant Hindu nation. The period was
marked by conservative sexual politics and a growing fear of romance
and bodily pleasure. This was reflected in the devaluation of specific
literary styles and women's entertainment. Literary works were sub-
ject to new aesthetic standards and women's popular and oral cultural
practices to a moral ethic. Cultural representation occasionally spilled
into social settings, and there was a geographical displacement of
prostitutes and dais.
Through their writings, Hindu publicists were able to 'normalise'
disciplinary strategies without overt coercion, by gaining access to
and commenting upon the mundane. Mechanisms of surveillance
were imbued with new meanings via reworked codes of conjugal-
ity, law, clothes, hygiene and health. The vast didactic literature of
the time reveals shifting narratives of respectability and chastity,
stressing changes in the social and customary behaviour of women
and a realignment of gender roles. These reformist endeavours im-
plied the need for insidious control over women even as they had an
affinity with Hindu nationalist civilising rhetoric. Liberal advoca-
cies such as education for women, doing away with purdah, and
widow remarriage were subverted: reforms were often synonymous
with regulation. The formal script of reforms moved in a pendulum,
C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity and Community
© Permanent Black 2001
322 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
throwing up limited avenues for women but frequently ending up
prescribing further gender and sexual norms, or vindicating com-
munity authority.
The rhetoric of respectability and community identity did not just
enclose women. It also laid bare the crisis of Hindu men and their
anxieties. Denunciation ofmale-male bondings, alternative sexualities,
and advertisements for aphrodisiacs jostled with promotions for
sexual containment of the male and brahmacharya for national re-
generation, and of assertions of masculinity in language debates.
Hindu publicists desperately needed to promote masculinity: it en-
abled them to conflate denunciations of weakness and the cowardice
of Hindus with images of the cruel and lustful Muslim male.
Hindu publicists were culturally adjusting and responding to new
opportunities and tastes, considerably influenced by the West, with
a drive for 'modernisation' and 'civilisation'. At the same time, the
anxiety and economic insecurity felt by a number of castes led them
to seek 'indigenous'
- and 'traditional' methods of cultural distinctive-
ness and respectability. Thus, their vocabulary embodied a modern
India without jeopardising tradition, as the apparent oppositions
of indigenous and Western, moral and material, Hindu piety and
science-all remained points of reference. Both domestic and public
arenas were important for articulating this distinct Hindu identity.
Equally significant-as seen in discussions around Holi, prostitutes,
education and the law-colonial authorities were often influenced by
and drew from indigenous concerns. In fact the patriarchal inclina-
tions of Western and Hindu voices often converged and overlapped.
Identities are not fixed or singular. The projection of a cohesive
Hindu community identity had constantly to negotiate with other
collective identities, such as caste and class, for in social ways Hindus
are vertically and horizontally divided. Yet caste distinctions and
communal divisions are not necessarily contradictory. They can co-
exist in an uneasy relationship, with a constant shifting of emphasis
according to context and moment. It has been argued that identity
is the very process by which the multiplicity, contradiction and insta-
bility of subjectivity is signified as having coherence, continuity,
stability; as having a core-a continually changing core but the sense
 Some Conclusions and Beyond / 323
of a core nonetheless.' A projection of Hindu homogeneity could at
times overpower the reality of caste hierarchies.
In this period, especially through Hindu women and vis-ri-vis the
'other', the middle classes-which included a large number of inter-
mediate castes-found ways to level out internal social differentia-
tion. Hindu publicists attempted to project a Hindu coherence even
over those who were at the margins of the Hindu community. Recur-
rent arguments em~hasisedthe separation between Hindu women
and Muslim men much more in this period than, say, between upper-
caste Hindu women and lower-caste Hindu men, signifying that for
Hindu publicists, communal identities became more crucial than
caste identities. In this discourse lower-caste Hindus were much
better than all Muslims. According to Rajkishore Singh in his book
Hindu Sangathan :
T h e Hindu religion is the highest religion in the world. W e have to protect
our god-like women from the ravishers. . . . Unfortunately in the present
kal-chakra we think more of jati than communiry, more of family than
jati and more of individual than family. . . . Same community, same
birth-land, same religion, same history, same culture, same language and
same political ambitions-these are more than enough of a basis to unite
the Hindu community. . . . For the Hindu Sabha, Sanatanists, Arya
Samajists, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs all are considered Hindus. What-
ever be your caste, you are all H i n d w 2
Yet even as Hindu publicists were arguing for religious unity, they
were doing this by imposing a uniformity based on the universal
validity of 'superior' upper-caste values and practices. A tract contain-
ing poems attacking the caste system nonetheless urged upper-caste
Hindus to immediately bring lower castes within its fold-they were
otherwise becoming Muslims. In turn, lower castes were to ensure
that they adopted upper-caste manners and customs, especially in
relation to women.3
' Avtar Brah, Cartographies ofDiarpora: ContestingIdentities (London, 1996),
pp. 123-4.
..
* Thakur Rajkishore Singh, Hindu Sangathan (Ballia, 1924), pp. 1-2, 27,
43, 71.
3 Sukhnandan Prasad Dube, Chuachut ka Bhut (Lucknow, 1933)
324 / Sexuality, Obsrenizy, Community
However, obvious tensions on the ground could not be wished
away so easily, implying a conflict within Hindu discourse. The
strong opposition, especizlly among upper-caste Hindus-for exam-
ple to inter-caste marriages-indicates that reality intruded on t h e ~ r y . ~
Even if the issue of widow remarriage had been resolved, to an extent,
in debates, not many such marriages took place. Simultaneously,
constructions of Hindu unity may have been related in part, though
in significantly different ways, to efforts to respond to 'pressures from
below' in the form of lower-caste aspiration^,^ or to counter the ac-
tions of some women. It was also entirely possible that shared con-
cepts had contested meanings, and that the lower castes tactically
subscribed to dominant ideologies and gave weight to values of 'res-
pectability' as a means of political self-expression-to assert them-
selves in various competitive situation^.^ Moreover, the active eco-
nomic contribution of women in low-caste households, their greater
freedom of movement, and a weaker attention to civilisationd con-
cerns may have meant that reformist values, despite being proposed
in the rhetoric of leaders, were often not implemented. Thus, some
accorded more social room, though not necessarily equality, to wo-
men.' Entertainer castes, Teli women and Chamar women as mid-
wives, continued with their occupations, though the nature of their
work may have changed. Oppression occurred at many levels and the
views, movements and linkages of different members of the lower
castes represented mixed voices and supported contradictory read-
ings.* The picture was much more tangled than is suggested by studies
*This perhaps suggests that in the public realm religious divisions were in the
forefront, while in the private sphere there existed strong caste tensions.
Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi, 1997), p. 360.
Nandini Gooptu, 'The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twen-
tieth-Century UP', MAS, 31, 4 (1997), pp. 917-18.
' P..S. Khare, The Untouchablr as HimseF Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism
Among the Lucknow Chamars (Cambridge, 1984), p. 1 12; Mary Searle-Chatterjee,
Reversibk Sex Rolrs: The Special Case ofBanaras Sweepers (Oxford, 1981), p. 46;
Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among the Historians, pp. 315-16; G.W.
Briggs, The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920), p. 57.
Steven M. Parish, Hierrlrciy and Its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of
Consciousness in Caste Society (Delhi, 1997), pp. ix-xxii, 2-17.
 Some Conclusions and Beyond / 325
emphasising the growing rigidity of caste hierarchies or the integra-
tion of a wider Hindu community.

Elopements and Conversions: The Recuperative

Possibilities of (1m)possible Love?
The protagonists of my work have largely been male Hindu publi-
cists. Women, especially of the upper castes but not exclusively so,
were often com~licitin practices that put taboos on their sexuality
and desires on the one hand, and censured Muslims on the other.
However, women seem to have simultaneously accepted and rejected
caste-bound hierarchies and boundaries; they both appropriated and
questioned homogeneous Hindu identities, both assimilated and dis-
trusted religious symbols and rituals, both acquiesced in the social
order and sought to disrupt it.
Some vocabularies of enjoyment, desire and love have been scat-
tered through this book. The efforts of publicists not only meant
constraints and increasing oppression but also created avenues for
women. Sometimes reformist agendas and literary canons were not
clear-cut; certain commercial publications and women's movements
revealed either an indifference to 'proper' norms or moulded and
derided them. Women addressed their entertainment thus and miti-
gated their burdens through songs, 'dirty' literature, ambiguous rela-
tionships, and public movements.
At critical moments, individual voices and the actions of some
women questioned Hindu rhetoric and posited an alternative world.
These hint at the incompleteness of any neat model and singular
id en tit^.^ At times there were cultural reversals of the abduction
This can also be seen by the development of other movements in this period,
and there was a radical content in nowBrahmin and untouchable movements.
The most important example of this in UP was the emergence ofAdi Hinduism,
Khare, Untouchable,pp. 79-92; Nandini Gooptu, 'Caste and Labour: Untouch-
able Social Movements in Urban UP in the Early Twentieth Century', in Peter
Robb (ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meanings ofLnhour in India (Delhi, 1793),
pp. 285-98. Other regions witnessed even stronger movements: Gail Omvedt,
Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Socieq: The Not!-Brahmin Movement in Western
India, 1873-1930 (Bombay, 1976); Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social
326 / Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
discourse, fracturing the myth of the saintly Hindu and the lascivious
Muslim. In Allahabad, a lrloskar Sangit Company staged a play
entitled Bharatvarsh, on Hindu-Muslim unity. The play depicted the
readiness of Muslims to protect the chastity of a Hindu woman,
whereas a Brahmin was ready to outrage her.1° Some Hindu women
chose to speak against the vicious anti-Muslim campaign. There was
great communal antagonism in Allahabad for it was alleged that two
Muslims had outraged a Hindu woman. The Malaviya family did
their best to exaggerate the affair and Abhyudaya published alarmist
reports. However, Hindu ardour was seriously dampened by the
statement on oath of the woman, a Pasin. She said she was not out-
raged and that the whole story originated in a dispute over the price
of vegetables which she had brought to market." At times women
chose to defend their conversion as well. Thus in Basti a khatik wo-
man who had been converted to Islam was taken to the Arya Samaj
office with a view to reconversion. She refused to listen to the argu-
ments used, and one of the Aryas, annoyed at this, boxed the ears of
a Muslim boy who was whistling as he passed the building. He alleged
that the boy was trying to entice the woman.''
There had always been elements of defiant love and sexual pleasure
in the face of a culture that continually sought to restrict them. Elope-
ments and conversions hint at love and romance.13 Particularly in
a communally charged atmosphere, when abductions and the mal-
igning of the Muslim male acquired importance, inter-religious

Vision: The Movement Against Untouchability in Twentieth-Century Punjab

(Berkeley, 1982); Rosalind O'Hanlon, Caste, ConfIict and Ideobgy: Mahatma
Jotirao Phuk and Low-Cacte Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cam-
bridge, 1985); Saurabh Dube, Untouchabk Pasts: Religion, Identity and Power
among a Central Indian Conimuni~,1780-1950 (Albany, 1998).
' O PA/, 24 March 1923, no. 12, para 247, p. 186.

' I PAI, 16 January 1926, no. 2, para 61, p. 36.

l 2 PA4 6 March 1926, no. 9, p. 127.
l 3 Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief
(Princeton, 1998), p. 163, remarks that in the cases of conversions in Bengal,
reported in the 1901 census, the cause of the vast majority was neither proselytism
nor doctrinal conviction but romance.
 Some Conclusions and Beyond 1 327
marriages, elopements and conversions posited a different world.
They highlighted the messy complexities of reality, the inchoate ways
of life; they suggested a different order of rationality against efforts
to categorise, classify and project a homogenised community iden-
tity.'* Women, who were often perceived as victims by Hindu com-
munalists in their discourse on abduction, may from a feminist
perspective have been actors by choosing elopement and conversion.
Some lower-caste women resorted to elopement and conversion
too. In Banaras, a Chamar woman left her husband in March 1924
in favour of a Muslim, by whom she was converted. This caused a
lot of alarm in Arya Samajist circles.l 5 A ]at woman married a Muslim
in Agra after being converted, on 5 February 1926.16A sweeper wo-
man of Punvah, Unao married a Muslim and converted." A Kori
woman, kept by a Muslim contractor at Banda, converted, and this
caused a sensation among the Hindus ofAtarra.18Certain prostitutes
were converted. Quite a storm was raised in Jhansi in April 1927 over
the keeping by a Muslim of a prostitute, originally a Hindu, who later
embraced I ~ l a m . 'Zahurran,
~ a kanjarin of Bareilly, converted and
took her place among the local Muslim prostitutes of Pilibhit.20These
unnamed women, in their own way, broke social norms ofsociety and
put a question mark against the Hindu patriarchal order and myths
of community homogeneity.
Such incidents together weave a narrative thread which illuminates
certain ruptures in the Hindu logic. These cases suddenly belied the
ideal of the Hindu family and diew attention to the woman's sexu-
ality, needs and desires. Women here were 'using' the instruments of
conversion and elopement as a mode ofcoping with, challenging, and
within limits transgressing an oppressive social order. They were
claiming a limited arena of independent action. Such alliances and

I* Viswanarhan, Outside, p. xi".

I S PAI, 29 March 1924, no. 13, para 107, p. 118.
PA4 27 February 1926, no. 8, para 19, p. 114.
l7 PAI, 1 December 1928, no. 46, para 1021, p. 522.
I R PAI, 1 May 1926, no. 16, para 41 5, p. 235.
''PA(, 30 April 1927, no. 16, para 409, p. 161.
20 PAI, 11 June 1927, no. 22, para 550, p. 218.
328 1 Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
conversions also suggest that, sometimes, identities were recast to
disrupt the logic of communal boundaries. The actions of such wo-
men provide moments ofvulnerability in the dominant discourse and
upset the relentless communal polarisation.
Transgressive alliances are perhaps more observable in this period
because social and cultural boundaries were being deliberately or
inadvertently hardened. In a different time, they would have had
quite a different resonance for both participants and observers. Such
transgressions were also more possible in this period because of the
emergence of a new womanhood in the domestic and public spheres.
Women participated a lot more now in public activities, both in the
national movement and the print world. Yet the subversive activities
of some women helped patriarchal chauvinism win over caste exploi-
tation. As in the case of widows, anxieties about alliances between
lower-caste Hindu women and Muslims could be used to win over
lower-caste men to the cause of Hindu unity. Caste orthodoxy here
converged with communal boundaries. When a bhangi woman mar-
ried a Muslim in Aligarh in March 1926, communal feelings were
largely embittered. The city bhangis struck work. Many shops in the
city were shut down.21 Trouble arose in Kanpur between sweepers
and the Muslims of Patkapur mohalla when it became known that
a Muslim had a female sweeper as his mistress. Arya Samajists seized
upon it as a pretext for anti-Muslim propaganda. They succeeded in
bringing about a strike of sweepers who, for a day, refused to work
for Muslims.22 Relations between Hindus and Muslims in Jianpur
village of Azamgarh became strained as a result of the conversion of
a Barin to Islam and her subsequent marriage to a fakir.23Following
the elopement of a sweeper woman with a Muslim in Dehradun in
1938 and her subsequent conversion to Islam, the sweeper commu-
nity threatened to boycott Muslim houses.24
Here, lower-caste men colluded in the production of a sense of
reality that stipatised them. While they questioned the dominant

21 PAI, 27 March 1926, no. 12, para 31 1, p. 176.

22 PAI, 3 April 1926, no. 13, para 342, p. 195.
23 PAI, 29 September 1934, no. 38: para 534, p. 556.
24 PAI. 21 May 1938, no. 20, para 183, p. 124.
 Some Conclusions and Beyond 1 329
order, they could also, at times, identify with it. I suggest that the pro-
jection of anxieties of lower-caste Hindu males around women vis-
h-vis the 'other' was, in some senses, a more potent weapon than the
cow-protection movements or the movement to establish Hindi as
'the' language. Both these movements had a limited appeal for the
lower castes, but discourses of elopement and conversion could trans-
cend these limitations and draw such castes more closely in a pro-
jected homogeneous identity. Any transgression by women denoted
a failure not only of women but more so of patriarchy--of all Hindu
men, of the entire family and community.
Inter-religious love offered a potential model of cultural syncre-
tism but was not able to hold its own against the irreversible loss of
community caused by romantic attachment. The Hindu widow pros-
cribed by Hindu patriarchy in general, and the lower-caste Hindu
ostracised by the upper castes, both came to be co-opted in the
discourse of a homogeneous Hindu identity. They did not signifi-
cantly disturb existing power equations within the community.
 Brief Background of S o m e H i n d i Writers
a n d H i n d u Publicists
This book has drawn the bulk of its sources from thin tracts and didactic
literature in Hindi which specifically talks about Hindu women. It has been
interested more in the viewpoints expressed in these tracts than the back-
ground of its authors. Some of the writers of these pamphlets were not weil
established literary personalities, but rather rustic writers, writing a popular
style, and usually promotingviewpoints of the Arya Samaj, Sanatan Dharma,
or their caste affiliations. Information on them is not available easily. Well-
established and known leaders and writers are briefly mentioned below:
Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya 'Harioudh': (1 865-1 947). Born in Azam-
garh. A Kayastha and a senior teacher at the Kashi Hindu University. In
1924, president of the fourteenth Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. Started writ-ing
poetry at the young age of 16. Established the prestige of Khari Boli poetry
and regarded as its first great poet.
Baijnathprasad Yadav: Ahir caste reformer. Advocated a series of reforms,
rules and regulations for the Ahir caste. Laid down practical guide-lines and
directives for Ahirs in the tract, AhirJati ki Niyarnavafi, to uplifi their status.
Balkrishna Bhatt: (1844-1914). Brahmin and a Sanskrit teacher in an
Allahabad college. Supplemented his meagre salary through petty trading in
stationery and the occasional practice of astrology and indigenous medicine.
Launched Hindi Pradip in 1877.
Banarsidas Chatuwedi: (1 892-1981). Born in Firozabad. Came from an
Arya Samajist family. Mostly based in Calcutta. As editor of Virhal Bharat
in Calcutta, launched a scathing attack and movement, known as the ghasleti
andolan, against Ugra and his literature, particularly the book Chakkt.
 Appendix 1 33 1
Basdeo Sharma: Based in Agra. An Aganval caste reformer, active in the
Aganval panchayat of Agra.
Bhagirath Prasad Dikshit: (1884-1 976). Born in Agra. Studied in
Allahabad. Considered an authority on h t i Kal, particularly the poetry of
Bhushan.
Bhai Parmanand: Born in Punjab. Leading light ofthe Arya Samaj move-
ment in Punjab. Became a Professor at DAV College, Lahore, after complet-
ing his education. Regarded as the first Vedic missionary.
Bharatendu Harishchandra: (1850-85). Born in a rich ancient Bania
family of Jagat Seths in Banaras. A devout Vaishnava. Created new forms
ofHindi literature and has been regarded as the Father ofmodern Hindi lite-
rature. Though he died very young, he wrote numerous plays, prose and
poetry. As a publicist and a practising journalist, he coined and shaped views
on a variety of issues. His journals set new standards for Hindi journalism.
Bishan Narayan Dar: Leading lawyer and Congressman of Lucknow.
Elected. President of the Indian National Congress in 19 11. Advocate of
social reform, especially within the Kashmiri pandit community. A part of
the Hindu nationalist intelligentsia. Drawn in the debates around cow-pro-
tection movement of the 1890s.
Bishan Sharma: An Arya Samajist pracharak from Meerut. Active in the
1920s. Wrote a series of thin pamphlets, highlighting the 'pathetic' state of
Hindus in Malabar, especially during and after the Moplah rebellion.
Brij Mohan ]ha: An Arya Samajist based in Etawah. Writer of thin pam-
phlets, attacking Ghazi Mian, supporting widow remarriage and expressing
anxiety over supposed decline in Hindu numbers.
Chandravati Lakhanpal: (1904-69). Born in Bijnor. Graduate from the
Gurukul Kangri University. Wrote Striyon ki Stithi, in reply to Katherine
Mayo's Mother India.
Chimmanlal Vaishya: (1854-1933). Born in Etah. Supporter of Arya
Samaj. Supporter of brahmacharya and wrote Narayani Shiksha in 1926, a
book on the familial duties of women.
Chuttanlal Swami: (1872-1951). Born in Meerut. Influenced by Arya
Samaj. For three years, editor of Brahman Samachar.
Dr Dhriendra Verma: (Born 1897). Born in Bareilly. Lecturer of Hindi
at the Allahabad University. Compiled a SelPction ofHindi Poems for the use
of high school students in 1928. Was to become the chiefeditor for the com-
pilation of Hindi Vishwakosh after independence.
Dularelal Bhargav: (1895-1975). Born in the prestigious family of
Munshi Newal Kishore in Lucknow. Editor of Madhuri for a long period.
332 1 Appendix
Established the Ganga Pustakmala Karyalaya, one of the biggest and most
prestigious shops of Hindi books, located in Lucknow.
G.P. Srivastava: Specialised in writing humour. In many of his stories,
novels and plays, love, kisses and sex intermingled. The titles were catchy,
promising light and romantic entertainment in a simple language.
Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya: (1881-1968). Born at Etah. Studied at the
Allahabad University. During school days only, attracted towards the Arya
Samaj. Resigned from his government job to serve the Arya Samaj. Writer
of more than 75 tracts on varied subjects, like abduction of women, widow
remarriage, Hindu decline and progress, etc. Wrote in a simple style and his
tracts went into many editions with a large number of copies. In 1921, laid
the foundation for a Tract Department in Allahabad, which mostly pub-
lished popular pamphlets related to various issues raised by the Arya Samaj.
In 19 18 became the Headmaster of DAV High School in Allahabad, and
served there until 1939. Head of U P Arya Pratinidhi Sabha over 1941-5.
Gomti Devi: Prominent Arya Samaj member from Kanpur. Addressed
various meetings of women in UP in the 1920s. Established Hindu Gornti
Churi Mandals in some cities of UP, to set up Hindu widows in the business
of selling bangles and preventing women from buying bangles from Muslim
manihars.
Hanuman Prasad Poddar: (1892-1971). Son of a Manvari business
family. Active in the Manvari Aganval Sabha. After education, in 1922 start-
ed the publication of Kafyan magazine and established the Gorakhpur based
Gita Press. He wanted to present Hindu religious texts in an accessible
fashion.
Haridas Manik: Based in Banaras. Edited many so-called history books,
famous as Manik Granthmakz Series. Most of them were historical accounts
of the bravery of Rajputs.
Haridas Vaidya: (1873-1948). Born in Mathura. Worked in the army
for some time. An ayurvedic doctor as well. Wrote extensively on health is-
sues. Translated Brahthari's texts, including the Shringar Shatak.
Indra Vidya Vachaspati: ( 1 889-1 960). Born in Jalandhar. Son of Swami
Shraddhanand. Got his education in Gurukul Kangri. Taught in Gurukul
Kangri for eight years, and was even its head. Greatly contributed to its
growth. A successful Hindi journalist. Editor of Saddbarmn Pracharak, which
was first taken out from Kangri and then from Delhi. Wrote a history of the
Arya Samaj, called Apya Samaj ka Itihas. Worked for the spread of Hindi.
Jagdishprasad Tiwari: Based in Kanpur. Took out a series of thin tracts,
known as Jagdish Granthmala Series. Most of them were written between
 Appendix 1 333
1920 and 1922, and went into several editions, with thousands of copies.
They were thin tracts of 10 to 30 pages, and very cheaply ~ r i c e d Most
. of
them were in poem styie and attacked Muslim rulers or eulogised Rajput
bravery.
Jyotirmayi Thakur: Based in Allahabad. Writer of didactic literature on
domestic science, role of women and ideal Hindu family.
Kalicharan Sharma: Education in Punjab and Banaras. Arya Samaj
preacher. Editor of Hindu for some time. Active supporter of Hindi. Writer
of VichitraJivan, a tract viciously attacking Prophet Muhammad, which was
proscribed and the case went to the court. Also translated Shivaji va Roshan-
ara, attempting to show that Shivaji and Roshanara were involved romant-
ically and that Sambhaji was their child.
Kamta Prasad Guru: (1875-1947). Wrote the first authoritative Hindi
grammar.
Kashiram Verma: A wealthy Kurmi-Kshatriya zarnindar of Unnao Dis-
trict, on the southwest border of Lucknow. Wrote a caste tract, attempting
to establish that Kurmis were Kshatriyas.
Kavivar Chanchrik: Hindu nationalist. Writer of Gram Gitanjafi, a col-
lection ofpoems for women, which was praised by a number ofleading Hindi
writers of the time, and even prescribed in school syllabi for girls.
Kedar Nath: A prominent member of the UP Arya Samaj. Addressed
many meetings in the 1920s, advocating the boycott of all Muslims.
Keshavkumar Thakur: (1897-1974). Born at Kanpur in a Kshatriya
family. Writer of didactic literature on marriage and familial life. Also wrote
some tracts on health, including on brahmacharya.
Kriparam Mishra 'Manhar': (1897-1975). Born in Garhwal. Active in
the Garhwal Congress. A successfuljournalist. Supported the cow-protection
movement.
Kumar Cheda Singh Varma: A Rajput and barrister-at-law in Agra. Advo-
cate of the Allahabad High Court. He wrote the book Kthamyac and Would-
be Xrhatriydc in 1904, which was translated into Hindi in 1907. It attacked
the claims of other castes for Kshatriya status.
Lala Baijnath: Leading personality of Agra. One of the secretaries of the
All India Hindu Sabha and wrote at length to define what he considered to
be the scope and organisation of the Hindu Sabha.
Lala Bhagwandin: (1 866-1930). Born at Fatehpur. Started teaching in
a Kayastha school. Later taught at the Kashi Hindu University. Wrote in
favour of brahmacharya.
Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya: (1861-1946). Born in
334 1 Appendix
Allahabad. A symbol of the national movement in UP. Active member and
supporter of Prayag Hindu Samaj, Sanatan Dharma sabhas, Bharat Dharma
Mahamandal, Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress. Strong
advocate of the use of Hindi, especially in courts. Active contribution in
Nagari Pracharini Sabha and Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. His life's most
important work was perhaps the founding of the Banaras Hindu University
(BHU). In 1907 established Abhudaya. Also contributed in the opening of
the Leader.
Mahatma Premanand Banprasthi: Arya Samaj updeshak. Wrote numer-
ous thin pamphlets, in the form ofa personalised, simple conversation, where
a bhikshu often initiated the discussion and then the whole Hindu commu-
nity joined in. He wrote at least fifteen such tracts, mostly over 1926-8. They
were published by Baba Tribhuwan Nath, Secretary, Arya Samaj, Sultanpur,
Awadh, and printed at the Leader Press, Allahabad. O f each tract, at least
4000 copies were published. They were a part of a series and seem to have
been distributed free.
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi: (1864-1938). Born in Rai Bareilli in a Brah-
min family. Over 1903-25, in a way led the direction of Hindi literature,
and adopted the role of an educator of the Hindi literati, so much so that
a whole period of Hindi literature is referred to as the Dwivedi Yug. In 1903
became editor of Saraswati, published from Allahabad, and established it as
the most prestigious magazine ofthe time. Remained its editor till 1920, after
which he retired to his village. Especially contributed to the promotion of
Hindi prose and, through Saraswati, carried an extensive movement to deve-
lop Khari Boli.
Maithilisharan Gupt: (1886-1964). Born in Jhansi. One of the most
famous poets of this period, who has been labelled the 'Rashtra Kavi'
(Nation's Poet). Influenced by Vaishnavism and supported Varnashram
dharrna. Came in contact with Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, and began to be
extensively ~ublishedin Saraswati. First book Rang mein Bhangwas pub-
lished in 19 10. His leading work is Bharat Bharati, first published in 19 12.
The book glorifies Indian culture, which is largely identified as Hindu. Signi-
ficant contribution in the development of Khari Boli and spread of nation-
alist ideas in north India through his writings.
Mathura Prasad Shiv Hare: (Born 1886). Born in Fatehpur. Education
in Allahabad. An Arya Sarnaj updeshak in UP. Active in politics. Established
the Anglo-Sanskrit School. Manager of the Vaidik Yantralaya established by
Dayanand. Translated the four Vedas into Hindi.
Nand Kishore Jaiswal: A Kalwar by caste. Wrote treatise attacking Ghazi
Mian.
 Appendix l 335
Narayan Dutt Sharma 'Kashyap': Manager of the Vidhwa Sahayak
Karyalaya at Sultanpura, Agra. Supporter of widow remarriage. Combining
this with anxieties of declining Hindu numbers and attack on Muslims.
Wrote a series on the state of widows.
Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra': (1900-67). Editor of Matuakz and Aaj
for short durations. Took to writing sensational romantic fiction, one of the
most popular genres of the 1920s. His Chand Hasinon ki Khututwas a best-
seller of 1927. His book Chaklet drew a lot of flak on charges of obscenity.
Moved in later years to Bombay, to write for cinema.
Pandit Ambika Dutt Vyas: (1858-1900). Born in Jaipur. Came to Bana-
ras and became close to Bharatendu Harishchandra. Exensively published in
Kaui Vachan Sudha. Attached to Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Staunch sup-
porter of the cow-protection movement, and wrote a play, Gausankat
Drama, which became very successful.
Pandit Badrinath Bhatt: (1891-1934). Born in Agra. First Hindi lecturer
at the Lucknow University, where he continued to serve till his last years.
Opposed to Riti Kal poetry and Braj Bhasha. Wrote only in Khari Boli.
Wrote plays mainly. Disapproved of the Parsi theatre tradition.
Pandit Gauri Datta: (1836-1906). Born in Ludhiana, Punjab. Came to
Meerut at a young age. Teacher at the Mission School in Meerut. Resigned
from it soon, and spent his life serving for the spread of Hindi and Deva-
nagari. He roamed on the streets, campaigning against Urdu. He would greet
people with 'Jai Nagari'.
Pandit Kaluram Shastri: (1888-1 944). Born in Delhi. After completing
his education, he went to Kanpur. A leading advocate of Sanatan Dharma.
Published the monthly magazine Hindu. Wrote a detailed treatise, attacking
Dayanand and Arya Samaj.
Pandit Krishnakant Malaviya: (1883-1 941). Nephew of Madan Mohan
Malaviya. Known at the time as the 'Kumvar Kanhaiya' ofAllahabad. Author
of controversial 'useful' books on sexual relations and the family. Editor of
Abhyudaya.
Premsaran: An Arya Samaj prachar'ak in UP. Wrote a tract attacking
Prophet Muhammad.
Purshottam Daa Tandon: (1882-1962). Born in Allahabad. A Kayastha
and a lawyer. Prominent member of the UP Congress Committee and
Allahabad Municipality. Sometimes called 'the Gandhi of UP'. An active
supporter of Hindi and the leading light of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan.
Raja Shiv Prasad: (1823-95). Worked in the British state service. Wrote
Itihas Timimasak, a textbook for children, widely used in NWP.
Ram Bahori Shukl: (Born 1903). Studied in Allahabad. In 1921 left
336 1 Appendix
school during the Non-cooperation movement. Wrote extensively in Chand,
Madhuri and Hindi Pracharak. In 1923 elected Head of the Kashi Nagari
Pracharini Sabha. Very active in Hindi Sahitya Sammelan.
Ram Piare Tiwari: Based in Banaras. In the 1920s, wrote a biography of
Ghazi Mian and another book on him, chiefly attacking him. Composed
poems against his worship.
Ramchandra Shukl: (1884-1 940). Born in Basti. Edited Nagari Prachan'ni
Patrika for sometime. Professor ofHindi at BHU. In 1237, became the Head
of the Hindi Department there. Composed his landmark Hindi Sahitya ka
Itihas in 1929, which was to become a reference point for future generations.
Ramswarup Sharma: Member of UP Arya Samaj. Involved with shuddhi
campaign and in attempts to reconvert the Malkana Rajputs.
Rudra Dutt Sharma: (Born 1853). Edited a large number of journals.
Ardent follower of Dayanand.
Santrarn: (Born 1887).An Arya Samajist and founder of the Jat Pat Torak
Mandal. H e went on to write books like VivahitPremand Rativikzs, and sup-
ported 'true' publications on sexual science.
Saraswati Devi: Member of Arya Samaj and Congress. Addressed many
women's meetings in UP in the 1920s, attacking abductions by Muslims,
and urging women to take on arms in support of their chastity. Supporter
of the sangathan movement.
Satyvati Devi: Member ofArya Samaj and Congress. Gave anti-Muslim
speeches, almost warlike in tone, in Kanpur in 1924.
Shib La1 Ganeshi La: Based in Moradabad. A supporter of Sanatan
dharma. Wrote a series of tracts attacking Dayanand.
Shivprasad Gupt: (Born 1883). Born in Banaras. Belonged to a wealthy
Agarwal, Vaishya family. A philanthropist. He was initiated into the Vallabh
Sambraday at an early stage. Later he was attracted towards the Arya Samaj,
and in 1904, he became a member of the Kashi Agarwal Samaj. A staunch
nationalist and a member of the Indian National Congress. He was close to
Madan Mohan Malaviya and Swami Shraddhanand. He was also the
founder of Kashi Vidyapeeth at Banaras, and of the newspaper Aaj. Built the
Bharat Mata Temple at Banaras.
Sumitranandan Pant: (Born 1900). Born in Almora. Most of his school-
ing was in Banaras. Left school in 192 1 during the Non-cooperation move-
ment. An important poet of the Chha~avadperiod. In the introduction of
his book Palhv, he attacked the Riti poets and Braj Bhasha.
Suraj Prasad Mishra: An Arya Samajist in UP. Wrote tracts attacking
 Appendix 1 337
Muslims, especially alleged abductions by them of Hindu women. Published
excerpts from the press in this regard.
Swami Chidananda Sanyasi: Active member of the Bhartiya Hindu Shud-
dhi Sabha and involved extensively in shuddhi, especially in Delhi.
Swami Satyadev 'Parivrajak': (1 879-1 961). Arya Sarnaj pracharak. Work-
ed as a Hindi preacher for Hindi Sahitya Sammelan from 1913-14. Travel-
led extensively in Europe. Attracted to Nazism. Staunch supporter of Hindu
sangathan. Inspired many younger minds. Criticised Gandhi.
Swami Shraddhanand: (1856-1 926). Born in Jullundur. Also known as
Munshi Ram. Famous Arya Samaj preacher and leader. Very early in life in-
fluenced by Swami Dayanand. Led the shuddhi movement. Klled by a
Muslim, Abdul Rashid. Though he had a good knowledge of Urdu, once
in active public life he wrote extensively in Hindi. He was a lawyer earlier.
Thakur Rajkishore Singh: (1915-74). Born at Ballia, in a middle-class
peasant family. Involved with the 1942 Quit India movement.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: (1883-1966). The most prominent ideo-
logue of Hindu nationalism. Delineated the term Hindutva.
Yashoda Devi: Born and based in Allahabad. One of the most famous
ayurvedic practitioners at the beginning of the twentieth century in north
India. She received her education and training in ayurveda from her father,
and at the young age of sixteen she began active practice. She established her
Stri Aushadhalaya at Allahabad around 1908. She was a prolific writer and
wrote more than 40 books on different aspects ofwomen, and not only on
health and sex. She had her own printing and publishing house, known as
Devi Pustakalaya.
adarsh ideal
Agarwd Hindu trading caste of north India
Ahir non-elite Hindu peasant-pastoral caste of north In-
dia, also known as Yadav, sometimes associated with
the milk trade
akashuani heavenly announcement
andolan movement
Arya Samaj activist Hindu revival association founded in 1875
ashfif obscene, indecent
atmaraksha self defence
bairagi ascetic
Bais jati of Rajputs in Awadh
Bania used for members of castes associated with com-
merce, trade or money-lending
banjh barren woman
basti makeshift settlement (of the poor)
bhabhi elder sister-in-law
bhagtiya dancing boy
bhand a type of entertainer (mostly from among Muslims,
especially in Lucknow)
bhangi sweeper
bhavaj elder sister-in-law, another word for bhabhi
bhikshu holy man living by begging alms
bindi mark on forehead of (Hindu) woman (often signifies
married status)
 Glossary l 339
boli dialect, language, speech
brahmacharya (male) celibacy and chastity
Chamar major untouchable caste of north India, sometimes
associated with leather work
chikwa butcher
churihar bangle seller
chutki pinch (a system of contribution used in the cow-
protection movements of north India)
daffali fakir who plays the tombourine
dai midwife
dangal wrestling tournament
devar younger brother-in-law
&vi lady, goddess
dhai surrogate mother (for wet nursing)
dharmashastra body or code of precepts with religious sanction (as
Hindu law)
dhunia cotton carder
ekkawalhh coachman
farman injunction, order
gali abuse, obscenity, also refers to songs sung by women
at marriage
gande dirty
gaona ceremonial bringing of a wife from her father's to her
husband's home (on reaching puberty, or after mar-
riage)
PPP gossip
garbhdan ceremony performed after menstruation to favour
conception
gari (abusive) songs sung by women, usually ofthe bride's
side, at the time of marriage, playfully ridiculing
various members of the groom's side
Gau Mata mother cow
gaubhakshak cow killer
gauraksha cow-protection
gaurakshini sabha cow protection society
gaushah home for cattle, byre
ghasleti here means inferior
340 1 Glossary
git song
goonda scoundrel, evil character
gopi girl herder
grhini lady, mistress of home
guda maithun sodomy
PPt venereal disease
hakim doctor
hast maithun masturbation
havan oblation with fire and ghee
Hindu Mahasabha all-India Hindu body founded in 1915
Hindutva politics of Hindu identity; term popularised since the
1920s by some Hindu campaigners
hundi mercantile note of credit
janani janmabhumi motherland
Jat important Hindu agricultural caste of north India
jeth elder brother-in-law
johari jeweller
kabir type of 'indecent' song sung at the Holi festival
kaccha uncooked food
kaccheri court, public ofice
kahani story
kajal lampblack
kal chakra epoch, wheel of time
Kaliyug in Hindu mythology the fourth and most degenerate
age of human history
Kalwar Hindu caste of liquor distillers; some became traders
and landowners
kam sexual (desire)
kamini amorous woman
kamshastra sexual science
knthn (sacred) tale, legend
Kayastha Hindu caste of north India, mainly; with adminis-
trative and scribal traditions
khrrtik vegetable seller
Khatri Hindu caste of north India, mainly connected with
military and scribal traditions
khayal a north Indian style ofsinging or instrumental music
 Glossary l 341
Koeri Hindu market gardener caste
kori weaver
Kshatriya Hindu upper caste, placed just below the Brahmin
in the fourfold varna scheme, with kingly and war-
rior traditions
kukri Gurkha's knife
kunjra vegetable seller
Kurmi Hindu peasant caste of the eastern Gangetic plain
laj~a sense of decency and modesty
launda 1ad
mahant head of a Hindu religious trust
mallah boatman
manihar bangle-seller
matri bhasha mother tongue
maulvi Muslim religious teacher
maur tomb or shrine of a (Muslim) saint
mehndi henna
mela fair, large gathering
mem madam; used often for a European woman
mleccha non-Hindu, barbarian (often used for Muslims)
mofitssil suburban
mohalla (urban) residential locality and neighbourhood
m zigdha an artless and immature young girl
nai barber
nanad sister-in-law
nautanki a rype of folk-drama in north India
nayak-nayika bhed detailed taxonomy of hero and heroine
nayika heroine
nikah (Muslim) marriage
nitishnstra a work on ethics or politics
nirskhe prescriptions
paigamber prophet
pakkn cooked food
panchnynt court of arbitrators (in a village), usually consisting
of a community's elders, often elected
panda Hindu ritual specialist, usually applying to those of
Banaras
342 / Glossary
panditayani wife of a pandit, Brahmin woman
parakiya not married to the hero
pativrata faithful and devoted wife
pavitra pure
pir local Muslim deity or Sufi saint
prabhati kirtan group singing of hymns in the morning
pracharak (religious) propagandist, promulgator
prakrti nature
Purana collection of Hindu sacred texts, generally dating
from the first millennium AD.
woman kept in veil (a sign of high status and respect-
ability)
qissa tale
rahasya secret
rais nobility, rich
rand widow, promiscuous woman
randi prostitute
ras mood, pleasure
raslifa dance drama usually dealing with Krishna and girl
herders
ratishastra science of passion
Riti hhl period dominated by mannerism in Hindi literature,
mainly 16th-19th centuries
riti mannerism and style dominant in Hindi verse on
poetics, 1Gth-19th centuries
YO24 Muslim fasting during the month of Ramazan
sa bhya civilised
sahitya literature
samaj society, organisation
sangathan organisation, here used for Hindu organisation in
defence of 'Hindu' interests
dl.amatic performance with song, music
gold or silver merchant, loosely applied to Hindu
traders
sas mother-in-law
sasural in-laws' house
sehanshilta power of endurance
 Glossary l 343
sewa samiti service organisation
shastra a body of knowledge and writings, usually of the
Hindu scriptures
Shitaka goddess of small pox
shringar decoration, romantic beauty
shringar ras erotic mood
shuddhi purification; Hindu movement in the late nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries to reclaim those who
had converted from Hinduism to other religions
sithni abusive songs (sung by women at weddings)
stitva virtue, faithfulness (of a wife)
stitvaraksha protection of women's chastity
stri-dhan a wife's personal property (especially that given to
her on her marriage)
sunar goldsmith, jeweller
swhilta. virtuous character
svakiya married to the hero
suang mime, masquerade
suapn dosh nocturnal emission
swayamscvak volunteer
tabligh a movement seeking conversions to Islam
tahsil revenue sub-division of a district
tanzim call for Muslim organisation, to promote education
and unity among Muslims
tapasya religious austerity, ascetic fervour or practice
tawaif courtesan, prostitute
tazia models of the tombs of Shia imams Hasan and
Husain carried in procession over the Muharram
festival
Teli Hindu oil-presser caste
thumri a type of song for two voices (sometimes identified
as a courtesan's song)
to nga horse carriage
up&shak counsellor, mentor
vaid ayurvedic (an Indian medical system) doctor
Vaishnava a sect and cult having to do with the worship of the
Hindu deity Vishnu
344 1 Glossary
uakil a senior legal practitioner or pleader; lawyer
vidhwa widow
vir rar brave mood
uirangana brave woman
yauana foreigner, barbarian (often used for Muslims)
zenana women's (compartment)
ztnani boli women's vocabulary
 Government Archival Records
India Ofice Library and Record, London
Linguistic Survey of India Records, c. 1900-30, Sl115.
Public and Judicial Papers, LIP&J/6.
National Archives of India, New Delhi
Proceedings and Files of the Government of India, Home Deptt, including
the Public, Judl, Sanitary, Education and Police Deptts, 1872-1926.
Files of the Home Poll Branch, 1910-38.
Files of Foreign and Political Deptt, 1928.
UP State Archives, Lucknow
Proceedings and Files of the Government of UP in the GAD, Judl, Police
and Municipal Deptts, 189 1-1 933.
Regional Archives, Varanasi
Varanasi Division Records, 190 1-29.
Regional Archives, Allahabad
Post-Mutiny Records, Commissioner's Ofice, Varanasi.
Criminal Investigation Department Ofice, Lucknow
(Secret) Police Abstracts of Intelligence of UP Government, 1922-40.

Private and Institutional Papers

Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha Papers (NMML).
Archer Papers, Mss. Eur. F. 236 (IOL).
B.S. Moonje Papers (NMML).
Butler Papers, Mss. Eur. F. 116 (IOL).
Haig Papers, Mss. Eur. F. 1 15 (IOL).
346 1 Bibliography
Official Publications
Age of Consent Qoshi) Committee, 1928-29, Evihnce, VoL VIIIand LX [On
UP] (Calcutta, 1929).
Age of Consent goshi) Committee, 1928-29, Report (Calcutta, 1929).
Annual Report of the Director of Public Health of UP (Allahabad, 1923-35).
Census of India, 1901, NWP,Part I, Report (Allahabad, 1902).
Census of India, 1911, UP, Vol. XI/; Part I, Report (Allahabad, 19 12).
Census of India, 1921, UP, Vol. XVI, Part I, Report (Allahabad, 1923).
Census of India, 1931, UP, Vol. XVIZZ, Part I, Report (Allahabad, 1933).
Cochrane, A.W.R., Triennial Report of CivilHospitaLandDispensaries of llP.
years 1920, 1921 and 1922 (Allahabad, 1923).
Committee of the Exhibition, Sanyukt Prant ki Pradarshini [Exhibition of
UP] (Allahabad, 19 1 1).
General Report on Public Instruction in UP [Also called Annual Report on the
Progrcss of Education for certain periods] (Allahabad, 1860-1939).
Hoey, William, A Monograph on T r a h and Manufactures in Northern India
(Lucknow, 1880).
Indian Cinematograph (Rangachariar) Committee, 1927-28, Evidence,
Vol. II [Includes Lucknow] (Calcutta, 1928).
Indian Law Reports, Alkahabad, Vol. 2 8 (Allahabad, 1906).
Legislative Assembly Debates, Oficial Report, IC: 6 2 (15 September 1927).
Native Newspaper Reports of UP, 1870-1940 [Also called SecIections from
Vernacukzr Newspapers and Notes on the Press for certain periods. Com-
piled weekly. Available at IOL and NAI].
Nevill, H.R., Alkahabad: A Gazetteer, Vol XXIIIof the District Gazetteers of
UP (Allahabad, 1928).
, Bahraich: A Gazetteer, Vol. XLV of the District Gazettctrs of UP
(Allahabad, 1903).
, Bijnor: A Gazetteer, Vol.XZVofthe District Gazetteersof UP (Allaha-
bad, 1928).
, Cawnpore: A Gazetteer, Vol XTX of the District Gazetteers of UP
(Allahabad, 1909).
, Meerut: A Gazetteer, Vol.Nofthe District Gazetteersof UP(Lucknow,
1922).
N W P Municipalities Act, 1900 (Allahabad, 1901).
Official Handbook, UP Exhibition, Alkahabad, 1910-1 1 (Allahabad, 191 1,
2nd edn).
Primary Education for Every Boy and Girl in UP (Allahabad, 1928).
Report of the Department of Industries in UP (Allahabad, 1 925-37).
 Bibliography 1 347
Report on the Administration of UP (Allahabad, 1905-26).
Report on the Working of the Local and District Board in UP (Allahabad,
1900-30).
Royal (Whitky) Commission of Labour in India, Evidence, Vol. IZI, Part Z
[Includes UP] (London, 1931).
Selectionsfrom the Records of Government, NWP, Vol. II (Allahabad, 1866).
Selectionsfrom the Records of the Government, V/23/ 12 1-3 1 (IOL).
Shilberrad, C.A., AMonograph on Cotton Fabrics Producedin NWP(Allahabad,
1898).
Statement of Particulars regarding Books and Periodicah published in UP,
1900-30 [Compiled quarterly in the Office of the Director of Public
Instruction. Available at IOL as Catalogue ofBooks in UP, and for some
years at NAI].
Statistics of British India (Calcutta, 1879-1 927).
UP Jails Inquiry (Stuart) Committee, 1928-29, Report (Allahabad, 1929).
UP Unemployment (Sapru) Committee, 1935, Report (Allahabad, 1936).
Walton, H.G., A Monograph on Tanning and Working in Leather in UP
(Allahabad, 1903).
White, Edmund, Report on the Census of NWP, Preliminary Dissertation
(Allahabad, 1882).
Unofficial Reports
AIWC, Annual Report (Calcutta, 1934).
, Twelfh Session (Ahmedabad, 1937).
Bajpei, Lakshmidhar (ed.), Ekadesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Part II [Pro-
ceedings of the Eleventh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan] (Prayag, 1926).
Bharriya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha, Pratham Varshik Report [First Yearly Re-
port] (Agra, 1923).
Pancham Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Part I [Proceedings of the Fifth Hindi
Sahitya Sammelan] (Lucknow, 1928, 2nd edn).
Report of the All India Khatri Conference, 18th Session (Lucknow, 1937).
Report of the Ninth National Social Conference (Allahabad, 1892).
Sanatan Jatiya Sabha ki Dwitiya Varshik Report [Second Annual Report of
the Sanatan Jatiya Sabha] (Agra, 1895).

Hindi Tracts (Pre- 1947)

Certain printed catalogues in various libraries have been particularly useful:
Barnett, L.D., J.F. Blumhardt and J.V.S. Wilkinson (comp.), ASecondSup-
plementary Catalogue of Printed Books in Hindi, Bihari and Pahari in the
Library of the British Museum (London, 1957).
348 1 Bibliography
Bharati Bhawan Pustakalya, Vibhag Suchi [Deptt List] (Prayag, 1990).
Blumhardt, J .F. (comp.), Catalogue of the Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi and Pushtu
Printed Books in the Library of the British Museum (London, 1893).
, Catalogue of IOL, Hindi, Pushtu and Sindhi Books, Vol. I/, Part IIZ
(London, 1902).
, A Supplementary Catalogue of Hindi Books in the Library of the
British Museum Acquired during the Years 1893-1912 (London, 1913).
Catalogue of Hindi Books, IOL, 1903-44, 8 Voh (IOL).
Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Aryabhasha Pustakalaya ka Suchipatra, Vol. I
[Classified List of Books at Aryabhasha Library] (Kashi, 1941).
Shaw, Graham and Mary Lloyd (eds), Publications Proscribed by the Govem-
ment of India: A Catalaguc of the Collections in IOL and the Department
of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, British Library Refirenre
Division (London, 1985).

Agarwal, Kamalnath (comp.), Pavitra Holi [Pure Holi] (n.p., 1940).

Agarwal, Kanhaiya Lal, Kamrahasya [Secret of Sexual Desire] (Allahabad,
1932).
Agnihotri, Angan Lal, Lodha Rajput Mimansa [A Treatise on Lodha Rajputs]
(Bulandshahr, 1905).
Agnihotri, Jagannath Sharma, AFli Kok Shastra arthat hmshastra ka Vrihad
Granth [An Original and Detailed Treatise on Sex] (Banaras, 1935,2nd
edn).
'Anand', Brahmashankar Mathur, Stri Git Prakash [Light on Women's
Songs] (Kanpur, 1927).
Anon. (A Home Ruler), Dussehra mein Muhawam [Being the Hindu Version
of the Moslem-Hindu Fracas of Allahabad] (Allahabad, 19 17).
Anon. (Hindu Dharma Rakshak), Musalmani Andher Khata [Black Deeds
of Muslims] (Awadh, 1928).
Anon. (Hindu Sabha), Alarm BellufKhatre ki Ghanti [Alarm Bell, Meaning
the Bell of Danger] (Banaras, 1925).
Anon., Hindu-Muslim Ekta kaSawal[ADialogue Between Shri Bhagwandass
and Maulana Azad Sobhani on Hindu Muslim Unity] (Kashi, 1923).
, Cali Sangrah, Fourth Series [Collection of Coarse Songs Sung by
Females on Ceremonial Occasions] (Lucknow, 19 17).
, Gande Mahila Giton ka AMY [Impact of Dirty Songs Sung by
Women] (Allahabad, 1923).
, Holi Hriday H u h [Songs on Holi] (Kashi, 1932).
, Holi Madhur Murli [Songs on Holi] (Kashi, 1932).
, Holi ya Dhund [A Critique of Holi] (Kota, 1924).
 Bibliography / 349
, Mekz Ghumni Bhanvarva [Songs Attacking Women who Wonder
in Public Fairs and Advocating Reform] (Banaras, 1923).
, Navin M e h Ghumni [Songs on Social Reform, Attacking Women
who Visit Public Fairs] (Banaras, 1931).
, Quran ki Khuni Ayaten [Bloody Verses from the Quran] (Banaras,
1927).
'Ashq', U~endranath,Swarg ki Jhahk [A Glimpse of Heaven] (Allahabad,
1939).
Baijnath, Lala, Dharma Shiksha [Teachings on Religious Duties] (Meerut,
1910).
Bais, Bhagvan Vats Singh, Bais Kjhatriydtihas [History of Bais Kshatriyas]
(Lucknow, 1931).
Bajpei, Baburam, Stri Gayan Prakash [Songs ofLight for Women] (Lucknow,
1933).
Baldevsingh, Ahir jati Mein 31 Rog [31 Diseases of the Ahir Caste]
(Shikohabad, 1924).
Bandhusamaj, Hinduon ki Tez Talwar [The Sharp Sword of Hindus]
(Kanpur, 1927).
Banprasihi, Premanand, Ghazi bun Hai [Who is Ghazi] (Awadh, 1927).
, lsazjon ki Chalbazi aur Panchon Pir [Deceit of Christians and Five
Saints] (Awadh, 1927).
, Larkon ki Loot [The Loot of Boys] (Awadh, 1927).
, Musalmani Gorakh Dhandu [Frauds of Muslims] (Awadh, 1927).
, Panchon Pir Aulzja [The Five Saints] (Awadh, 1927).
Bhagwandass, Babu, Hinduon ka Sangrakshan aur Atmarakshan [Protection
and Self-Defence of Hindus] (Kashi, 1922).
Bhagwandin, Lala, Bihari Bodhini [On the Poet Bihari] (Kashi, 1925).
, Brahmacharya ki Vaigyanik Vyakhya [Scientific Explanation of
Brahmacharya] (Kashi, n.d.).
Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, Brahmacharyashram [Stage of Brahmacharya]
(Kashi, n.d.).
Bhargav, Dularelal (ed.), Sahitya Sumen [Flowers of Literature] Collection
of Essays by late Balkrishna Bhatt (Lu~know,1937, 5th edn).
Bhargav, Rarneshar Sahai, Pavitra Holi [An Exhortation to Purify the Social
Observance of the Holi Festival of all Obscenities and Intemperance]
(Bulandshahr, 1925).
Bhatt, Badrinath, Miss American (Prayag, 1929).
Bhushan Granthavali, ed. Ram Naresh Tripathi [Collection of Writings of
Bhushan] (Allahabad, 19 18).
'Chanchrik', Kavivar, Gram Gitanjafi [Collection of Songs for Village
Women] (Gorakhpur, 1938, 3rd edn).
Chandrikaprasad, Hinduon Re Sath Vishwacghat [Treachery with the Hin-
dus] (Awadh, 1917).
Charangupt, Babu Devi, Braj ki Hofi [Holi of Braj] (Kanpur, 1934).
Chaudhari, Badri Narayan, Kajali Kautuhaf [An Essay on the Origin and
Characteristics of fijafi Songs] (Mirzapur, 1913).
Chaudhry, Gaurishankar Shukl, Kya Swami Shraddhanand Apradhi The?
[Was Swami Shraddhanand a Culprit?] (Kanpur, 1928).
Chaudhry, J.P., Kushvaha Krhatriya (Kuhari, Kacchi, Murav, Kushvaha)
Parichaya [An Introduction to Kushvaha Kshatriyas] (Kashi, 1926,3rd
edn) .
Christian Vernacular Education Society, Ratanmala [A Manual for Women]
(Allahabad, 1869).
Darbarilal, Gauhar Jan [Book of Erotic Songs named after the famous
Calcutta Singer Gauhar Jan] (Lucknow, 1936).
Das, Ayodhya, Gaumara ka SandPsh: GauraksharthHarek Vatu Hinduon st
hi Kharidiye [Message from Mother-Cow: For the Protection ofthe Cow,
Buy Every Item from Hindus Alone] (Kashi, 1933?).
'Das', Ayodhya Prasad Goyaliya, Sangathan ka Bigul [Trumpet ofsangathan]
(Delhi, 1926).
Das, Babu Prahlad (cornp.), HofiRasbhari [Songs on Holi] (Banaras, 1927).
Das, Bhikari, Kayactha VarnaNirnaya [Decisions ofKayastha Caste] (Etawah,
1914).
Das, Brijbasi, Braj B i h [Sensuous Pleasures of Braj] (Banaras, 1939).
Das, Gopal, SriAyodhyaji kiSacchi Yatra [The True Journey ofSri Ayodhyaji]
(Kashi, 1933?).
Das, Jagannath, Dayanand Mat Darpan [A Tract Attacking Dayanand]
(Moradabad, 1907).
Das, Radha Krishna, Maharani Padmavati [Queen Padmavati] (Kashi,
1903, 2nd edn).
Datta, Pandit Gauri, Nagari aur Urdu ka Swang [A Mime of Hindi and
Urdu] (Meerut?, 1883-1900?).
Dayalu, Raghuvar, Chand Musafmanon ki Harkaten [Deeds of Some Mus-
lims] (Kanpur, 1928).
Deshraj, Thakur, Jar Itihas [History of Jats] (Agra, 1934).
Devi, Gopal, Diya Deviyan [Stories of Divine Hindu Women] (Prayag,
1926).
Devi, Rukrnani, Mem aur Saheb [Madam and Sir] (Banaras, 19 19).
Devi, Sphurna, Abakzon ka Insaf [Eight Stories and a Dialogue, Illustrating
 Bibliography / 35 1
the Disabilities of Women and the Justice Needed] (Allahabad, 1936,
3rd edn).
Devi, Yashoda, Nari-Niti Shiksha [Teaching on Ethics for Women]
(Allahabad, 19 10).
, Saccha Pati Prem [A Story of a Wife's Devotion] (Allahabad, 19 10).
, Adarsh Pati-Patni aur Santati Sudhar [Ideal Husband-Wife and
Child Reform] (Allahabad, 1924, 2nd edn).
, Arogya Vidhan Grhini Kartaya Shastra [Manual for Housewife for
a Healthy Family] (Allahabad, 1924).
, Kanyd Kartaya [Duties of Girls] (Allahabad, 1925).
, Pati Bhakti ki Shakti Arthat Pati ki M a y a h [Power of Devotion
to Husband, Meaning Husband's Honour] (Allahabad, 1925).
, Pati Prem Patrika Arthat Pati-patni ka Patra Vyavahar[Manual for
the Love of Husband, Meaning Letter Correspondence between Hus-
band and Wife] (Allahabad, 1925, 3rd edn).
, Pativrata Dharma Maka [Duties of a Wife] (Allahabad, 1926).
, Dampati Arogyata .Jivanshastra [Manual for Healthy Couple]
(Allahabad, 1927).
, Nari Dharmashastra Grh-Prabandh Shiksha [Education on Home
Management for Women] (Allahabad, 1931).
, Adarsh Balika-Bhai Bahina [Ideal Girl-Brother Sister] (Allahabad,
1932).
, Grhini Kartaya Shastra Arogyashastra Arthat Pakshastra [Manual
on Cookery and Health for Housewife] (Allahabad, 1932, 5th edn).
, Dampatya Prem aur Ritikriya ka Gupt Rahasya [Secret of Love and
Sex between the Married Couple] (Allahabad, 1933).
, Nari Sharir Vigyan Stri Chikitsa Sagar [Women's Physiology and
Women's Medical Treatment] (Allahabad, 1938).
Dikshit, Bhagirath Prasad, GhaziMian aur UnkiPuja [An Arya Samajic tract
Denouncing the Worship of Ghazi Mian] (Agra, 1923 and Banaras,
1925).
Dube, Mannan, Hindu Vidhwayen [Hindu Widows] (Mathura, 1924).
Dube, Sukhnandan Prasad, Chuachut ka Bhut [The Ghost of Purity and
Pollution] (Lucknow, 1933).
Dwivedi, Channulal, Chumban Mimanstl [Treatise on Kiss] (Kashi, 1929).
Dwivedi, Mannan, Humara Bhithan Haas [Our Severe Decline] (Kanpur,
1924, 3rd edn).
Gandhi, M.K., Brahmacharyn keAnubhau [The Experience of Brahmacharya]
(Prayag, 1932).
3 52 1 Bibliography
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troll (Banaras, 1934, 2nd edn).
Ganesh, Jaidev Nirbhay (trans.), Ratimanjari [A Treatise on Love]
(Moradabad, 1906).
Garg, Mahendulal, Kahvati Shiksha [Precious Education for Girls and
Women] (Prayag, 1930).
Gaur, Chunnilal, Shivaji ki Bavani [Poem in Praise of Shivaji] (Kanpur,
1921).
Ghisaram, Chaudhry, BhajanJat Kshatriya Jati SudharaurJat Utpatti [Songs
on the Origin of the Jat Kshatriyas and on the Introduction of Social
Reforms Amongst Them] (Meerut, 1920, 2nd edn).
Girdavar, Babu Sannulal Gupt, Stri Subodhini [Manual on the Ideal Con-
duct of a Woman] (Lucknow, 1922).
Gupt, Durga Prasad, Ek Raat ki Vardzt [Incident of One Night. Tract
Denouncing the Burhwa Mangal Annual Fair of Banaras] (Banaras,
1929,2nd edn).
Gupt, Ganga Prasad, Gupt Prachin Kok Shartra [Secret Ancient Treatise on
Sex] (Aligarh, 1916, 2nd edn).
Gupt, Maithlisaran, Padya Prabandh, Part I [Collection of Poems] (Prayag,
1912).
, Rang Mein Bhang [Collection of Poems] Uhansi, 1927, 9th edn).
, Bharat Bharati [A Poem] Uhansi, 1937, 14th edn).
Gupta, Mohan Lal, Kok Sagar [Treatise on Sex] (Aligarh, 1908, 2nd edn).
Gupta, Sheo Dayal Sah, Sri Vaisbya Vamsa Vibhushan [The Ornament of
Vaishya Community. A Book of Social Reforms on Religious Lines]
(Sitapur, 1907).
Gurukul Kangri, Gurukul fihwavidyahya Kangri Haridwar ki Niyamavali
tatha Bhin-bhin Vidyalya Mahavidyalayon ki Pathvidhi [Body of Rules
of Gurukul Kangri University at Haridwar and Methods ofTeaching of
Different Schools] (Haridwar, 1924).
Hare, Mathura Prasad Shiv, Alarm BeIIArthatKhatre ka Ghanta [Alarm Bell,
Meaning the Bell of Danger] (Haridwar, 1924).
'Harioudh', Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya, Priyapravas [A Poem on Radha's
Sorrow in Her Separation from Krishna] (Banaras, 194 1).
Harishchandra, Bharatendu, Agarwahn ki Utpatti [Origin of Aganvals]
(Banaras, 1918, 2nd edn).
Hukrnadevi, Mahifa Manoranjak Prashnavafi, Vof. II [Entertaining
Questionaire for Women] (Lucknow, 1932).
'Indra', Ganeshdutt Sharrna Gaur, Santan Shastra [Science of'child Man-
agement] (Allahabad, 1928, 2nd edn).
 Bibliography / 353
, Svapn Dosh Rakshak[Protection from Nocturnal Emission] (Banaras,
1929).
Jaiswal, Nandkishore, Ghazi Mian Arthat Masood Ghazi ka Sacra Jivan
Charitr [Ghazi Mian, Meaning the True Life Sketch of Masood Ghazi]
(Allahabad, 19 16).
, Hindu aur Tazia [Tract Denouncing Hindu Worship of Tazia]
(Allahabad, 19 19).
Jha, Brijmohan, Saiyid Salar Masud ka Jivan Charitr [The True Life Story
of Ghazi Mian] (Etawah, 1925).
, Hinduon Jago [Hindus Awake] (Etawah, 1926, 2nd edn).
, VidhwodvahMimansa Arthat Vidhwa Vivahpar Shastriya Virhar [A
Thoughtful Tract on Widow Remarriage] (Agra, n.d.).
Jhalu, Master Dayal, Bharat ki Vir Kthatraniyan [Brave Kshatriya Women
of Bharat] (Bijnor, 1929).
Joshi, Badrinath, Vidhwodvah Mimansa [A Book Advocating Widow-
Remarriage] (Prayag, 1928, 2nd edn)
Joshi, Janardan, Grh Prabandh Shartra [The Science of Household Manage-
ment] (Prayag, 1918, 2nd edn).
Kakkar, Murli Dhar, Bal Vidhwa Vivah [Marriage of Child Widows]
(Allahabad, 1918).
Kannomal, Mahila Sudhar [Reforms for Women] (Agra, 1923).
Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Hindi Kya Hai [What is Hindi] (Banaras,
1900).
Kashyap, Narayan Dutt Sharma, Bhartiya Vidhwaon kifirunapurnafithayen
Arthat Hindu Vidhwaonpar Atyarhar, Parts I, II, III [The Moving Tales
of Indian Widows, Meaning the Atrocities on Hindu Widows] (Agra,
1927, 1929, and 1931 respectively).
Kedia, Baijnath, Vjanga Chitravali, Part I [Collection of Cartoons] (Kashi,
1933).
Khatri, Jivaram Kapur, Stri Dharma Sar [Essence of Women's Duties]
(Mathura, 1892).
Khatri, Kashi Nath, Bharatvarsh ki Vikhyat Raniyon ke Charitr [Stories of
Brave Rajput Women of Bharat] (Allahabad, 1914, 6th edn).
Khemka, Madanlal, Stri Shastra [Treatise on Women] (Banaras, 1934).
Khubchand, Ramlal (trans.), Hindu Dharma ki Prashnottari [Questions Ad-
dressed to Annie Beasanr and their Reply in Simple Language] (Lucknow,
1921).
Krishnakumari, Bharat ki Vidushi Nariyan [Learned Women of Bharat]
(Lucknow, 1925).
Krishnanand, Hinduon Cheto [Hindus Awake] (Agra, 1929).
Kurnar, Jainendra, Sunita [A Novel] (Delhi, 1935).
Lakshrnanacharya, Goswami, Bhishan Bhavkhya [Terrible Future] (Mahabad,
1909).
Lal, Banke, Jamuna Haran [A Ballad Series on Episodes Connected with the
Alha Cycle] (Etawah, 1927).
Lal, Bhagwati, Hindi Gun-Gan [Songs in Praise of Hindi] (Banaras, 1921).
Lal, Cheda, Koeri Mahte Xrhatriyon ki Vanshavali [Genealogy of Koeris]
(Farukhabad, 19 19).
Lal, Ganeshi, Kachhwaha Jati Uddhar ki Sirhi [Steps for the Regeneration
of Kachhwaha Cornmuniry] (Agra, 19 16).
Lal, Kanhaiya, Muhammad Jivan Charitr [A Tract Attacking Prophet
Muhammad] (Banaras, 191 1, 3rd edn).
, Rashtriya Shiksha ka Itihas aur Uski Vartman Avastha [History of
National Education and its Present State] (Kashi, 1929).
Lal, Shib Lal Ganeshi, Dayanand Charitr [A Tract Attacking Dayanand]
(Moradabad, 1906).
, Dayanand ki Buddhi [A Tract Attacking Dayanand] (Moradabad,
1906).
Lekhrarn, Jihad, Quran va Islami Khunkhari, trans. Raghunath Prasad
Mishra [Murderous Jihad, Quran and Islam] (Erawah, 1924).
Madansingh, Kunwar, Hinduon &b Tak Chetoge [Hindus, When Will you
Awaken] (Mathura, 1923).
~ a h a r a j Achalrarn,
, Hindu Dharma Rahasya [Secret of Hindu Religion]
(Agra, 1939, 2nd edn).
Maharaj, Gaurdas, Brahmachari Bano [Be a Brahrnachari] (Agra, 1928).
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi Rachnavali, Vols 1-13, ed. and comp. Bharat
Yayavar [Collected Works of Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi] (New Delhi,
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Mahopdeshak, Shiv Sharma, Stri Shiksha [Women's Education] bare ill^,
1927).
Malaviya, K.K., Manorama ke Patra: Apne Premiyon ke Nam [Letters of
Manorarna: T o Her Lovers] (Prayag, 1927).
, Suhagrat: Bahurani ko Seekh [Wedding Night: Advice to the Bride]
(Prayag, 1930?).
'Manhar', Kriparam Mishra, Gauraksha Prakash [Light on Cow-Protection]
(Moradabad, 1925).
Manik, Haridas, Bharat ki Kshatrani [Brave Kshatri~aWomen of Bharat]
(Kashi, 1916).
, (ed.), Chauhani Talwar [The Sword of Chauhan] (Banaras, 19 18).
, (ed.), Rajputon ki Bahaduri, Part I and II [Bravery of Rajputs]
(Banaras, 19 19).
 BiSliography 1 3 5 5
Mihir, Brijmohan, Dampati Xzrtaya Shastra [Treatise on Duties of a
Couple] (Prayag, n.d.).
Mishra, Chandrabali, Adarsh Hindu Nan' [Ideal Hindu Woman] (Banaras,
1930).
Mishra, Suraj Prasad, Hindu Auraton ki Loot [The Loot of Hindu Women]
(Lucknow, 1924).
, Musalman Gundon ke Hinduon par Ghor Atyachar, Part I [The
Extreme Excesses Committed by Muslim goondas on Hindus. A Col-
lection of Excerpts from the Public Press] (Kanpur, 1924).
Mukhtar, Jugal Kishore, Kvah ka U&shya [Purpose of Marriage] (Agra,
1922, 2nd edn).
Narayan, Badri, Bhajan Gauraksha Gopal Darpan [Songs on Cow Protec-
tion] (Lucknow, 19 17).
Nigam, Sushila Devi, Dampatya Jivan [Married Life] (Allahabad, 1930).
Nirbal (comp.), Holi ki Rakh [Treatise on Holi] (Banaras, 1922, 3rd edn).
North Indian Christian Tract and Book Society, Hindu Dharma ke Phal
[The Fruits of Hinduism] (Allahabad, 1905, 2nd edition).
, Hinduon ki Nirdhanta [Causes of Hindu Poverty] (Allahabad,
1909).
'Pagal', Gupt, Grhini Bhushan [Ornament of Household Mistress] (Kashi,
1921, 2nd edn).
Pandey, Ramtej, Nari Dharma Shastra [Treatise on Women's Duties]
(Kashi, 1931).
Pant, Durgadutt, Brahmacharyopdesh [Preachings on Brahmacharya]
(Haridwar, 1908).
Pant, Sumitranandan, Palkzv [Collection of Poems] (Allahabad, 1926).
Paribrajak, Swami Saryadev, Sangathan ka Bigul [Trumpet of Sangathan]
(Dehradun, 1926, 3rd edn).
Parmanand, Bhai, Hindu Jati ka Rahasya [Secrets of Hindu Community]
(Lucknow, 1928).
, Hindu Sangathan (Lahore, 1936).
Patha, Mahasevak, Punawivah Vidhan [Treatise on Widow-Remarriage]
(Prayag, 1925).
Pathak, Sridhar, Manovinod [Collection of Poems] (Banaras, 19 17).
Poddar, Hanuman Prasad, Samaj Sudhar [Social Reform] (Gorakhpur,
1929).
Prakash, Bishambhar, Nari Updesh [Instructions to Women] (Meerut,
1912).
Prakash, Vishwa, Striyon ke Rishte [Relations of Women] (Prayag, 1935).
Prasad, Bhagawat, Mefa Ghurnni [Tract Attacking Women who Wander
About in Public Fairs] (Muzzaffarpur, 1925).
3 5 6 / Bibliography
Prasad, Dwarka, Vdhwa Vpatti Prakash [The Revealer of Widows' Distress]
(Kanpur, 19 15).
Prasad,. Gajadhar, Brahmankuf Parivartan [Changes in Brahmin Caste]
(Allahabad, 191 1).
Prasad, Ganga and Dhirendra Varma, Sekctions of Hindi Poems (Allahabad,
1928).
Prasad, Manoranjan, Rashtriya Murafi [Collection of Nationalist Poems]
(Kashi, 1922).
Prasad, Munshi Sohan, Hindiaur Urdu Ki Larai. [The Battle Between Hindi
and Urdu] (Gorakhpur, 1929, 2nd edn).
Premanand, Mahatma, Musalmani Andher Khata [The Dark Deeds of
Muslims] (Awadh, 1928).
Premsaran, Devadut Darpan [Pamphlet Attacking Prophet Muhammad]
(Agra, 1926).
Purshottam, Stri Bhushan [The Jewels of Women] (Banaras, 1932).
'Pushkar', Jagannarayan Dev Sharma, Hindu Gayan, Part I [Hindu Singing]
(Banaras, 1927).
Raghuvanshi, U.B.S., Chanvar Puran [A Caste Tract on the Chamars]
(Aligarh, 1916).
Ram, Lala Mangtoo, Brahman Sudhar [Brahmin Reforms] (Ramgarh, 1922).
Ramkrishna, Stri Shiksha [Women's Education] (Allahabad, 1874).
Ramsharan, Hindu ki Gai [Hindu's Cow] (Banaras, 1927).
Sanyasi, Swami Alaram, Bhajan Gauraksha UpdPsh Manjari [Songs on Cow
Protection] (Prayag, 1892).
Sanyasi, Swami Chidananda, Shuddhi Vyavastha [The Working of Shuddhi]
(Delhi, 1928).
Saraswati, Ramanand, Navin Gyan Gajra [Collection of Songs] (Aligarh,
1924).
'Saroj', Lakshmi Narayan, Nari Shiksha Darpan [Mirror of Woman's Edu-
cation] (Banaras, 1929).
Sharma, Ambikacharan, Bhartiya Sabhyata evam Sanskriti ka Vikas [The
Development of Indian Civilisation and Culture] (Agra, 1940).
Sharma, Basdeo (ed.), Agarwal Jati Prabandh [Social Reorganisation among
Aganvals, Being an Account of Certain Reforms Sanctioned by the
Aganval Panchayat, Agra, in Respect of Certain Ceremonies to be
Observed among Local Aganvals] (Agra, 1916).
Shacma, Bhumitra, Niyoga Mardana ka Vzrnardana [Tract Defending the
Practice of Niyoga, and Opposing a Book Written by Kaluram Shastri
called Niyoga Mardana, which Refutes Niyoga] (Meerut, 19 17).
 Bibliography 1 357
Sharma, Bishan, Malabar ka Drishya No. I: Drin Sankalp Vir [The Scene
at Malabar No. 1: The Hero Firm in his Resolve] (Meerut, 1923).
, Malabar ka Drishya No. 2: Satyawati Vim& ki Pukar [The Cry of
Vimla the Faithful] (Meerut, 1923).
, Malabar ka Drishya No. 3: BholP 'Swami ka Dusht Naukar [The Evil
Servant of the Innocent Boss] (Meerut, 1923).
Sharma, Chandrikanarayan, Manavotpatti Vigyan, Part Z [Science of the
Origin of Man] (Banaras, 1938).
Sharma, Chatuwedi Dwarkaprasad, Prachin Arya Virta Athat Rajputane ke
Viron ke Charitr [Ancient Aryan Bravery, Meaning the Character of the
Brave of Rajputana] (Banaras, 1927).
Sharma, Goswami Brijnath (comp.), HardwararthRishikulBrahmacharyasram
ki Niyamavafi [Rulesand Regulations of the 'Rishikul Brahmacharyasram',
an Institution for the Teaching of Boys on the Old Lines of Orthodox
Hinduism at Haridwar] (Agra, 19 14).
Sharma, Hanuman Prasad, Sukhi Grhini [Happy Housewife] (Banaras,
1931).
Sharma, Jagatnarayan, Ghazi Mian ki Puja: Hinduon ko Kya Sujha [Tract
Attacking the Worship of Ghazi Mian] (Etawah, 1905).
Sharma, Kalicharan, VichitraJivan [Strange Life] (Moradabad, 1925, 2nd
edn).
, (trans.), Shivaji va Roshanara [Shivaji and Roshanara] (Bareilly,
1926, 3rd edn).
Sharma, Kanhaiya Lal, Kok Shdstra athva Yauvan B i h [Treatise on Sex or
Youthful Pleasure] (Moradabad, 1900).
Sharma, Lalita Prasad, Bharatvarsha ki Sacchi Deviyan [The True Goddesses
of Bharat] (Bareilly, 1923, 5th edn).
Sharma, Mehta Lajjaram, Adarsh Hindu [Ideal Hindu] (Prayag, 1928).
Sharma, Pandit Chotelal, Saptkhandi Jati Nirnaya [Book Disputing Lower
Castes' Claims to Higher Status] Uaipur, 1923).
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Sharma, Pannalal, Yuva Rakshak [Protection of the Youth] (Agra, n.d.).
Sharma, Rameshwar, Gauraksha Prachar Natak [Poems on Cow-protection
Propaganda] (Moradabad, 19 19).
Sharma, Ramswarup, Vidhwa VivahMimansa [ADissertation Against Widow
Remarriage] (Moradabad, 1906).
, Malkanon ki Pukar [The Cry of Malkanas] (Agra, 1924).
Sharma, Satyavrat, Malabar aur Arya Samaj [Malabar and Arya Samaj]
(Agra, 1923, 3rd edn).
3 58 / Bibliography
Sharma, Shankar Dutt, Miran Puja [A Tract Denouncing the Worship of
Miran, a Muslim Saint Buried at Amroha] (Moradabad, 1925).
Shastri, Ramchandra Vaidya, Balopyogi Viva-Rahasya [Secrets of Semen
Prorection for the Young] (Kanpur, n.d.).
, Kamya Yogavali [A Treatise on Sex] (Aligarh, 1939).
Shitlasahai, Hindu Tyoharon kaItiha[HistoryofHinduFestivals] (Allahabad,
1927, 2nd edn).
Shraddhanand, Swami, Khatre ka Ghanta Arthat Muhammadi Shadyantra ka
Rahasyabhed [Alarm Bell, Meaning the Disclosure of Muslim Cons-
piracy] (Delhi, 1923).
Shrikrishnalal, Adhunik Hindi Sahitya ka Vikas [Growth of Modern Hindi
Literature] (Allahabad, 1942).
Shrivastava, Shaligram, PrayagPradip [An Account ofAllahabad] (Allahabad,
1937).
Shukl, Mahadev, Ragvinod [A Collection of Thumris, Ghazals and Khayals]
(Lucknow, 1889).
Shukl, Ram Bahori (ed.), Yuthika [A Collection of Essays Approved for the
BA Examination of the BHU] (Kanpur, 1936).
Shukl, Ramchandra, HindiSahitya ka Itihas [A History of Hindi Literature]
(Kashi, 1952, 8th edn).
Shyamkumar, Striyon ke Liye Prithak Sahitya ki Avashyakta [Need for Sepa-
rate Literature for Women] (Agra, 1935).
Shyamsundardas, Hindi Sahitya [Hindi Literature] (Allahabad, 1944).
Siddhantalankar, Deveshwar, Swami Shraddhanandji ki H a w aur Islam ki
Shiksha [Murder of Swami Shraddhanand and the Teachings of Islam]
(Banaras, 1927).
Singh, Adityaprasad and Ramprasad Singh, Hindu Parva Prakash [Light on
Hindu Festivals] (Prayag, 1934).
Singh, Bakhtawar, Vidhwa VivahPrachar[Campaign for Widow Remariage]
(Shahjahanpur, 1907).
Singh, Bhagwan, Mahila Git [Women's Songs] (Prayag, 1933).
Singh, Brajesh, Ghazi Mian ka Bhanda Phor [The Disclosure of the Hollow-
ness of Ghazi Mian] (Allahabad, 1927).
Singh, Ganeshbaksh (comp.), Ktharriya Nayuvak[KshatriyaYouth] (Awadh,
1926).
Singh, Lakshminarayan and Bhagwari Prasad Singh (eds), Orb Xthatriya
Chandrika [Caste Tract on Orhs] (Hathras, 1936).
Singh, Sher, Durga (Meerut, 19 17).
Singh, Shivram, KurmiKrhatriyn Itihas [History of Kurmis] (Banaras, 1936)
Singh, Suryabali, Brahmacharya ki Mahima [Greatness of Brahmacharya]
(Banaras, 1928).
 Bibliography 1 359
Singh, Thakur Rajkishore, Hindu Sangathan (Ballia, 1924).
Singh, Thakur Vija~bahadur,Dampatya Shastra [Treatise on the Married
Couple] (Prayag, 1933).
Srivastava, G.P., Gangs-Jamni u f P r c m Rahasya [Secrets of Love] (Banaras,
1934, 2nd edn).
, Dil ki Aag ufDiljaL ki Aah [Fire of the Heart, Meaning the Grief
of Heartburn] (Allahabad, 1936, 2nd edn).
Swami, Chuttanlal, Atya Samaj ke Upkar [Favours ofArya Samaj] (Meerut,
1918).
Tandon, Gopaldas, Mela Ghumni [Tract Attacking Women who Visit
Public Fairs] (Banaras, 1931).
Thakur, Jyotirmayi, Gharelu Viaan [Domestic Science] (Allahabad, 1932).
, Adarsh Patni [Ideal Wife] (Allahabad, 1935).
Thakur, Keshavkumar, Vivah aur Prrm [Marriage and Love] (Allahabad,
1930, 2nd edn).
, GrhasthJivan [Familial Life] (Prayag, 1932).
Tikaram, Lala, Punarvivah Vicharathwa Vidhwa VivahNishedh [Reconsider-
ation on Remarriage or the Abolition of Widow Remarriage] (Meerut,
1909).
Tiwari, Bindeswari Prasad, Chautal Champakali [Collection of Erotic
Poems] (Gorakhpur, 1932, 3rd edn).
Tiwari, Harisharad, Bharat ka Saccha Sanyasi Swami Shraddhanand
[Shraddhanand, the True Sanyasi of India] (Kanpur, 1927, 2nd edn).
, Padma ki Paini Talvar [The Sharp Sword of Padma] (Kanpur,
1927).
Tiwari, Jagdishprasad, Kanpur ka Vihat Sangram [Massive Battle of Kanpur]
(Kanpur, 1931).
, Turkonpar Tara ki Talwar [Tara's Sword on the Turks] (Kanpur,
1932, 10th edn)
, Aurangzeb ki Khuni Talwar [The Bloody Sword of Auranpeb]
(Kanpur, 1933, 16th edn).
Tiwari, Ram Piare, Ghazi Mian ki Jivani [The Biography of Ghazi Mian.
Anti Ghazi Mian tract] (Banaras, 1926).
, Ghazi Mian ki Puja [Poems Against the Worship of Ghazi Mian]
(Banaras, 1926).
Tiwari, Rup Narayan, Ganga Snan [An Arya Samajic Criticism of Women
Bathing Semi-Nude in the River Ganges] (Kanpur, 1923).
Tripathi, Chetram, Sarda &noon Aur Sanatan Dharrna [Sarda Law and
Sanatan Dharma] (Kashi, 1929).
Tripathi, Rama Naresh, Alha [An Account of the Alha Khand Epic Cycle
and its Story] (Allahabad, 1933).
360 / Bibliography
'Ugra', Pandey Becan Sharma ,ChandHasinon ke Khutut [A Love Story, Told
in a Series of Letters] (Calcutta, 1927).
, Chaklet [Chocolate] (Calcutta, 1953, 3rd edn).
Upadhyaya, Ganga Prasad (ed.), Humare Bichure Bhai [Our Lost Brothers.
An Arya Samajic Tract] (Prayag, 1923).
, (ed.), Humari Desh Sewa [Our Service to the Country. An Arya
Samajic Tract] (Prayag, 1923, 2nd edn).
, Arya Samaj (Mathura, 1924).
, (ed.), Hindu Striyon ki Loot ke Karan [The Causes of the Plunder
of Hindu Women] (Allahabad, 1927).
, Vidhwa ViuahMimansa [AnArya SamajicTract Advocating Widow-
Remarriage] (Allahabad, 1927, new edn).
, Mahila Vyauahar Chandrika [Manual on Women's Behaviour]
(Prayag, 1928).
Updeshak, Chaudhary Baldevsingh (comp.), Ahirjati ke Liye Char Nuskhr
[Four Remedies for the Ahir Jati] (Allahabad, 1923).
Updeshak, Shiv Sharma, Alarm Bigule [Trumpet of Alarm] (Moradabad,
1924).
, Musalmani ki Zindagani [Life of a Muslim] (Moradabad, 1924).
Vaidya, Haridas (trans.), Shringar Shatak [A Treatise on Erotics] (Mathura,
1933, 3rd edn).
Vaishya, Chimmanlala, Virya Raksha [Protection of Semen] (Meerut, 1928,
10th edn).
Vaishya, Munnilal Sahu, Bal ViuahNishedh Khnoon [Law on Prohibition of
Child-Marriage] (Banaras, 1929).
Vaisya, Melaram, Gandc Git Bahishkar [Boycott Dirty Songs] (Bhiwani,
1932, 2nd edn).
Vajpei, Balmukund, Hindu Viuah [Hindu Marriage] (Lucknow, 19 19).
Vakil, Surajbhan, Vidhwa Kartaya [Duties of Widows] (Saharanpur, 1927).
Varma, Dhirendra, Hindi Bhasha ka Itihas [History of Hindi Language]
(Allahabad, 1933).
Varma, Kshatriya Bansidhar, Ishvaku Kul Krhatriya Vanshauali [Genealogy
of Ishvaku Caste] (Aligarh, 1916).
Varma, Kumar Cheda Singh, KrhatriyaaurKritram Krhatriya [Kshatriya and
Would-Be Kshatriya] (Agra, 1907).
Verma, Banarsi Lal, Kashmiri Kokshaswa [Treatise on Sex] (Prayag, 1928).
Verma, Kashiram, Kurmi Krhatriya Darpan [Caste Tract on Kurmis]
(Lucknow, 1907).
Vidhotsahini Sabha, Vidhotsahini[OnWidow Remarriage] (Banaras, 1871).
 Bibliography 1 36 1
Vidyalankar, Jaidev Sharrna, Dampati Rahasya [Secret of Married Life]
(Banaras, 1921).
Vyanga Chitrauali [Collection ofcartoons and Caricatures] (Kanpur, 1925).
Vyanga Chitrauali [Collection of Cartoons and Caricatures] (Allahabad,
1930).
Vyas, Arnbika Dutt, Gausankat Drama, trans. Shiv Nandan Sahai [Drama
on the Crisis of Cows] (Bankipore, 1886).
Yadav, Baijnathprasad, Ahir Jati ki Niyarnavali [Body of Rules for the Ahir
Jati] (Banaras, 1927).
Yadav, Dilip Singh, Ahir Ztihas ki Jhalak [AGlimpse into the History of the
Ahir Community] (Etawah, 1914).
Yoganand, Brahmacharya par Maharshi Dayanand [Dayanand on
Brahrnacharya] (Lucknow, n.d.).
Zarnindar, Pyarelal, Kok Shastra [Treatise on Sex] (Aligarh, 1905,7th edn).

Magazines, Journals and Newspapers

(Sporadic Issues Consulted)
Aaj (Banaras, 1936-9).
Abbudzya (Allahabad, 1907-27).
Adzrsh Hindu (Mathura, 1926).
Aduocate (Lucknow, 1907-1 0).
Aganval Hitaishi (1925).
Arya Mahila (Banaras, 19 18-30).
Balabodhini (Banaras, 1874-7).
Bharat Dharma (Kashi, 1924).
Bharat Jiwan (Banaras, 1890-4).
Brahman Saruasua (Etawah, 1901-20).
Central Hindu College Magazine (190 1-9).
Chand (Allahabad, 1924-36).
Chaturuedi (Agra, 1895- 19 16).
Dampati (1930).
Gaudhama Prakash (1 886).
Grhalakshrni (Prayag, 1900-20).
Gurukul Samachar (Meerut, 1908-1 1).
Hindi Pracharak (Banaras, 1922-37).
Hindi Pradip (Allahabad, 1877-1 903).
Hindustani (Allahabad, 1931-4).
Znu5pendent (Allahabad, 19 12-2 1).
3 62 1 Bibliography
Indian Antiquary (1 9 14-26).
Indian Music Circle (1 9 12).
Journal of the Association of Medical Women in India (19 16).
Khlwar Kesari (Lucknow, 1923-4).
Kalwar fihatriya Mitra (Allahabad, 1908-23).
Kanya Manoranjan (Prayag, 19 13-1 6).
Kanya Saruasua (Prayag, 19 13- 16).
Kayastha Mahikz Hitaishi (Faizabad, 19 18).
Kayastha Samachar (Allahabad, 1878-1905).
Kurmi fihatriyd Diwakar (Kashi, 1925-30).
Kushwaha fihatriya Mitra (Kashi, 1926-30).
Leadpr (Allahabad, 1910-39).
Madhuri (Lucknow, 1922-32).
North Indian Notes and Queries (1 872).
Pioneer (Lucknow, 1913-39).
Pratap (Kanpur, 1938-9).
Prayag Samachar (Allahabad, 189 1-4).
Saraswati (Allahabad, 1900-38).
Stri Darpan (Allahabad, 19 18-27).
Vaishya Hitkari (Meerut, 1885-95).
Vartman (Kanpur, 1924-39).
Yaddvesh (Banaras, 1935-9).

English Books (Pre- 1947)

Agha, Sharkeshwari, Some Apects of the Education of Women in UP with a
Foreword by C. Y Chintamani (Allahabad, 1933).
Ali, Meer Hasan, Observations on the Mussulmauns ofIndia (London, 1917).
Baijnath, Lala, Social R@orm for NWF: Proceedings of Public Meetings, With
Two Papers and a Preface (Bombay, 1886).
Balfour, Margaret I. and Ruth Young, The Work ofMedical Women in India
(London, 1929).
Besant, Annie, The Education of Indian Girls (Banaras, 1904).
Blunt, E.A.H., The Caste System of Northern India: With Special Reference to
UP (London, 1931).
, (ed.), Social Service in India: An Introduction to Some Social and
Economic Probhms of the Indian People (London, 1938).
Briggs, G.W., The Chamars (Calcutta, 1920).
Burton, Sir Richard and F.F. Arbuthnot (trans.), The Kama Sutra of
Vatsayayana (London, 1963).
Carroll, Joseph, Our Missionary Lifc in India (Allahabad, 19 17).
 Bibliography 1363
Cartoon Booklet, Containing50 Interesting Cartoons on Swadeshi (Allahabad,
1938).
Chapman, Priscilla, Hinabo Female Education (London, 1839).
Clayton, A.C., Preachers in Print: An Outline of the Work of the Christia*
Literary Society for India (London, 191 1).
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Voh X, MII, W N I I (New
Delhi, 1975-6).
Cowan, Minna.G., The Education ofthe Women ofIndia (Edinburgh, 1912).
Crooke, W., The Popular Religion and Folklore ofNorthern India, Voh Iand
11 (Westminster, 1896).
, The fiibes and Castes of the North Western India, Vol. I(1896, rpt,
Calcutta, 1974).
Dar, Bishan Narayan, An Appeal to the English Public on Behalfof th Hindus
of NWP (Lucknow, 1893).
, Signs of the Times (Lucknow, 1895).
Dass, Ishuree, Domestic Manners and Customs of the Hinhos of Northern
India (or more strictly speaking, of NWP of India) (Banaras, 1860).
Dubois, Abbe J.A., Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, trans. Henry
K. Beauchamp (Oxford, 1906, 3rd edn).
Fallon, S.W., New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras, 1879).
, A Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs (Banaras, 1886).
Fuhrer, A., The MonumentalAntiquities andlnscriptions in MYP(Allahabad,
1891).
Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography: The Story ofMy Experiments with Truth
(Boston, 1929).
, Communal Unity (Ahmedabad, 1949).
Grierson, G.A., The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (Calcutta,
1889).
Growse, F.S., Mathura: A District Memoir (1882, rpt, New Delhi, 1979).
Gupta, Babu Lall, A BriefMemoir of X L . Gupta (Agra, 1895).
Hindu Mahasabha Papers (Banaras, 1923).
Hitchcock, R.H., Peasant Revolt in Malabar: A History of the Makzbar
Rebellion, 1921 (1925, rpt, New Delhi, 1983).
Hooper, W., Christian Doctrine in Contrast with Hinduism and Islam:
Intendedfor Young Missionaries in North India (London, 1887).
Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India [Being a Collection of
Opinions, For and Against, Received by B.M. Malabari, from Represen-
tative Hindu Gentlemen and Oficial and Other Authorities] (Bombay,
1887).
364 / Bibliography
Jafri, S.N.A., The History and Status of Landlord and Tenant? in UP
(Allahabad, 1931).
Johnson, Agnes (comp.), About Signs Following: The Work of C.E.ZH.S
(London, n.d.).
Keay, F.E., A History of Hindi Literature (London, 1920).
Lloyd, H., Hindu Women: With Glimpses into their Life and Zenanas (Lon-
don, 1882).
Malabari, B, M., Gujarat and Gujaratis: Pictures ofMen and Manners taken
ji-om Lifr (London, 1882).
Malaviya, M.M., Court CharacterandPrimaryEducation in Nlts7)(Allahabad,
1897).
Meston, Lord, Nationhoodfor India (London, 1931).
Mill, James, The History ofBritish India, Vol. I, with notes and continuation
by H.H. Wilson (London, 1858, 5th edn).
Murdoch, John, Hindu and Muhammadan Festivals [Compiled from Wil-
son, Wilkins, Crooke, Sell, Hughes and Other Writers] (London, 1904).
O'Connor, Percival C. Scott, The Indian Countyide, A CalendarandDiary:
Description and Travel UP (London, 1908).
O'Malley, L.S.S., Popular Hinduism: The Religion of the Masses (Cambridge,
1935).
Pi tman, Emma Raymond, Indian Zenana Missions: Their Need, Origin,
Objects, Agents, Modes of Working and Results (London, n.d.).
Prakash, Indra, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha
and the Hindu Sangathan Movement (New Delhi, 1938).
Prospectus of the Gurukul fingri Mahavidyakzya (Haridwar, 191 1).
Ram, Sewa, The Aims, Ideals and Needs of the Gurukul Vishwavidyakzya
(Bijnor, 1914).
Robinson, A.M. (cornp.), Weaving Patternsfor Eternity: The WondelfirlStory
of C.E.Z.M.S Industiral Missions (London, n.d.).
Roe, H.R., Guide to Muhammadan and Hindu Festivals and Fasts in UP
(Allahabad, 1925).
Ruswa, Mirza Muhammad Hadi, UmraoJan 2da; trans. Khushwant Singh
and M.A. Husaini (Hyderabad, 1987).
Saksena, Babu Ram, Evolution ofAvadhi (A Branch of Hindi) (Allahabad,
1937).
Shah, Hasan, Nashtar or The Nautch Girl, trans. Qurratulain Hyder (Delhi,
1992).
Sharar, Abdul Halim, Lucknow: The Last Phase ofan Oriental Culture, trans.
and ed. H.S Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (London, 1975).
 Bibliography 1 365
Shargha, Ikbal Kishen, The Moral Education ofIndian [Reprinted from the
Hindustan Reviewfor the monthsofAugust andSeptember19051 (Bareilly,
1908?).
Sharif, Jafar, Islam in India -or the Qanun-I-Islam: The Customs of the
Musalmans of India, composed and trans. G.A. Herklots and new edn,
revised and rearranged with additions by William Crooke (1921, rpt,
London, 1972).
Shivprasad, Memorandum Court Character in the Upper Provinces of India
(Banaras, 1868).
Shraddhanand, Swami, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race (n.p.,
1926).
Singh, Kuwar Lachrnan (Deputy Collector), Historical and Statistical Mem-
oir of Zila Bulandsbahar (Allahabad, 1874).
Sivananda, Swami, Hindu Fastsand Festivalsand TheirPhilosophy(Rishikesh,
1947).
Smith, Vincent A., A History ofFine Art in India and Ctylon:From the Earliest
Times to the Present Day (Oxford, 191 1).
Sri Bharat Mahamandal Directory (Banaras, 1930).
The Indian Year Book 1942-43 (Bombay, 1944).
Varma, Kumar Cheda Singh, Kthatriyas and Would-beKthatriyas (Allahabad,
1904).
Westerfield, William (partly trans.), The Lay ofAlha, with an inroduction
and abstracts of untranslated portions by Sir George Grierson (London,
1923).
Wyatt, E.H., Maternity: A Simpk Bookfor Mothers and Maternity Nurses in
India (Allahabad, 19 18).

Hindi Books and Articles (Post-1947)

Aganval, Ramnarayan, Sungit [Book on Nautanki] (Delhi, 1976).
Anon. (VHP), Chetavani-2: Desh Khatre Mein [Warning-2: Country in
Danger] (Delhi, 1990).
Awasthi, Lalit Mohan, Khari Boli Hindi ka Samajik Itihas [Social History
of Khari Boli Hindi] (Bombay, 1977).
Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha ka Sankshipt Itihas tatha Vivran: 192.3-50
[A Brief History and Description ofthe Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha]
(New Delhi, n.d.).
Brahmanand, Bhartiya Swatantrata Andolan aur UP ki Hindi Patrakarita
[Indian Independence Movement and Hindi Journalism of UP] (Delhi,
1986).
366 / Bibliography
Chugtai, Ismat, 'Ek Mukadme ki Dastan', trans. Javed Iqbal [The Tale of
a Case], Hans, 11, 4 (November 1996), pp. 29-34.
Gaur, Harprakash, Saraswati aur Rasht+a Jagran [Saraswati and National
Awakening] (New Delhi, 1983).
Gupta, Jagadish, Ritikalya Sangraha [Collection ofRitika1Poetry] (Allahabad,
1961).
Hathiram, Mahant Baba, Pajwa Ramlib Committee Smarika, No. I [Souve-
nir of Pajwa Ramlila Committee, No. 11 (Allahabad, 1980).
, Pajwa Ramlila Committee Smarika, No. 2 [Souvenir of Pajwa
Ramlila Committee, No. 21 (Allahabad, 198 1).
Krishnanath (ed.), Rathtraratn Shivprasad Gupt [National Jewel Shivprasad
Gupt] (Varanasi, 1971).
Mathur, Usha, Khari Boli Vikas ke Arambhik Charan [Initial Phase of
Development of Khari Boli] (Allahabad, 1990).
Mishra, Shitikanth, Khariboli ka Aandolan [Movement for Khari Boli]
(Kashi, 1956).
Mittal, Prabhudayal, Braj ka Sanskritik Itihas [ACultural History of Braj]
(Delhi, 1966).
Motichandra, f i h i ka Ztihas [AHistory of Banaras] (Bombay, 1962).
Pande;, Manager, 'Ashlilta ke Bahane Nari ke Prashn par Vichar' [Discus-
sion on the Women's Question on the Pretext of Obscenity], Ham
(November-December 1994), pp. 27-30.
Pandey, Ratnakar, Ugraaur UnkaSahitya [Ugra and His Literature] (Varanasi,
1969).
Pandey, Ravi Prakash (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi &hi Vidyapeeth: ffiustubh
Jayanti, ffiwtubh Granth [Mahatma Gandhi in Kashi Vidyapeeth: Great
Occasion, Great Volume] (Varanasi, 1996).
Pathak, Madhulika, Yashpal ke ffitha Sahitya mein ffirn, Prem aur Parivar
[Sex, Love and Family in Yashpal's Literature] (Bombay, 1992).
Puri, Usha, Braj Bhasha f f i y a Mein Radha [Radha in Poems of Braj Bhasha]
(Delhi, 1990).
Sharma, Ramvilas, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi aur Hindi Nayagran [Mahavir
Prasad Dwivedi and Hindi Renaissance] (New Delhi, 1977).
Sinha, Bhagwati Prasad, Ram Bhakti mein Rasik Sampraahy [Rasik Cult in
Ram Bhakti] (Balrampur, 1957).
Taki, Raushan, Lucknow kiBhand Parampara [BhandTradition of Lucknow]
(New Delhi, 1993).
Tandon, Ramnarayan (ed.), Hindi Scvi Sansar, Vol. I [World of Hindi
Devotees] (Lucknow, 1951, 2nd edn).
Tiwari, ~ameshchaidraand Krishnanath (ed.), h h i Vidyapeeth HiraR
 Bibliography 1 367
jayanti Abhinandan Granth [Golden Jubilee Facilitation Volume of
Kashi Vidyapeeth] (Varanasi, 1983).
Uttar Pradcsh, 9, 9 (February 1981). [Special Issue on Munshi Newal
Kishore]
'Varij', Indra Sharma, Swang Nautanki [Book on Nautankrl (New Delhi,
1984).
Yadav, Rajendra, Atharan Upanyas [Eighteen Novels] (Delhi, 1981).

Select List of English Books and Articles (Post-1947)*

Ahmad, Aziz, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (1964,
rpt, Oxford, 1994).
Ahrnad, Irntiaz, 'Caste Mobility Movements in North India', IESHR, 8, 2
(1971), pp. 164-91.
, (ed.), Ritual and Religion among Muslims in India (New Delhi,
1981).
Alam, Muzaffar, 'Competition and Co-existence: Indo-Islamic Interaction
in Medieval North India', Itinerario, 13, 1 (1989), pp. 46-55.
Ali, Daud (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (Delhi,
1999).
Allen, Douglas (ed.), Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia: India,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka (Delhi, 1993).
Alter, Joseph S., The Wrestlrrj Body: Identity and Ideohgy in North India
(Delhi, 1993).
, 'Seminal Truth: A Modern Science of Male Celibacy in North
India', MedicalAnthropology Quarterly, 11, 3 (1997), pp. 275-98.
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Refictions on the Origins and
Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983).
Archer, Mildred, 'The Social History of the Nautch Girl', TheSaturday Book
(1962), pp. 243-53.
Arnold, David (ed.), ImperialMedicineandIndigenouSocieties(Manchester,
1988).
, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nine-
teenth-Century India (Berkeley, 1993).
Bagchi, Jasodhara, 'Representing Nationalism: Ideology of Motherhood in
Colonial Bengal', E P R 25, 42-3 (20-27 October 1990), WS-65-71.
, (ed.), Indian Women: Myth and Reality (Hyderabad, 1995).
Bahadur, K.P., Folk Tales of UP (New Delhi, 1972).
'This section of the Bibliography is selective: the relevant footnotes carry full de-
tails of the sources consulted.
368 1 Bibliography
, (trans.), The Satsai of Biharikzl (Delhi, 1990).
Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudps
and Policies and their Critics, 1793-1905 (London, 1980).
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, 'From Alienation to Integration: Changes in the
Politics of Caste in Bengal, 1937-47', IESHR, 31, 3 (1994), pp. 349-
91.
Banerjee, Sumanta, 'Bogey of the Bawdy: Changing Concept of "Obscenity"
in Nineteenth Century Bengali Culture', E P Y 22, 29 (18 July 1987),
pp. 1 197-1 206.
, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth
Century Calcutta (Calcutta, 1989).
, 'The "Beshya" and the "Babu": Prostitute and Her Clientele in
Nineteenth Century Bengal', E P K 28, 45 (6 November 1993), pp.
2461-5.
Barnett, Richard B., North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughalr, and
the British 1720-1801 (Berkeley, 1980).
Barrier, N.G. (ed.), Roots of Communal Politics (Columbia, 1976).
, (ed.), The Census in British India: New Perspectives (New Delhi,
1981).
Barz, Richard, The Bhakti Sect of Valkzbhacarya (Faizabad, 1976).
Basu, Aparna and Bharati Ray, Women? SftlrggIr: A History of the AIWC,
1927-90 (Delhi, 1990).
Bayly, C.A., Local Roots of Indian Politics: Alkzhabad 1880-1920 (Oxford,
1975).
, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of
British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983).
, 'The Pre-History of "Communalism"? Religious Conflict in India,
1700-1860', MAS, 19, 2 (1985), pp. 177-203.
, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Commu-
nication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1996).
Bayly, Susan, Saints, Godderses And Kings: Muslims and Christians in South
Indian Society 1700-1300 (Cambridge, 1989).
Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the
Present (New Haven, 1993).
Bhalla, Alok and Sudhir Chandra (eds), Indian Responses to Colonialism in
the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi, 1993).
Bharucha, Rustom, 'Dismantling Men: Crisis of Male Identity in "Father,
Son and Holy War" ', E P Y 30, 26 (1 July 1995), pp. 1610-16.
Bhattacharyya, Narendra Nath, History of Indian Erotic Literature (New
Delhi, 1975).
 Bibliography 1 369
Bidwai, Praful, Harbans Mukhia and Achin Vanaik (eds), Religion, Religi-
osity and Communalism (New Delhi, 1996).
Bock, Gisela, 'Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compul-
sory Sterilisation and the State', Signs, 8, 3 (1983), pp. 400-21.
Bond, George Clement and Angela Gilliam (eds), Social Construction of the
Past: Representation as Power (London, 1994).
Borst, Charlotte G., Catching Babies: The Profcssionalization of Childbirth,
1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1995).
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
trans. Richard Nice (London, 1984)
, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature
(Cambridge, 1993).
Brar, Avtar, Cartographies ofDiaspora: Contesting Identities (London, 1996).
Brass, Paul R., Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge,
1974).
, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (New Delhi,
1991).
Bridenthal, Renate, Atina Grossman, and Marion Kaplan (eds), When
Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New
York, 1984).
Bristow, Joseph, Sexuality (London, 1997).
Brod, Harry, Theorising Masculinities (London, 1994).
Burman, J.J. Roy, 'Hindu-Muslim Syncretism in India', EPW; 31, 20 (18
May 1996), pp. 1211-15.
Burton, Antoinette, Burdens ofHistory: British Feminists, Indian Women and
Imperial Culture, 1865 191.5 (Chapel Hill, 1994).
Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Pe$ormative (New York,
1997).
Bynum, Caroline Walker, Stevan Harrell and Paula Richman (eds), Gender
and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbolr (Boston, 1996).
Caplan, Pat (ed.), The Cultural Construction of Sexuality (London, 1987).
Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Eveyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall
(Berkeley, 1984).
Chakrabarry, Dipesh, 'Open SpaceIPublic Place: Garbage, Modernity and
India', South Asia, 14, 1 (1991), pp. 15-31.
Chakravarti, Uma, 'Gender, Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material
Structure ofwidowhood', E P K 30,36 (9 September 1995), pp. 2248-
56.
, Rewriting History: The Lifc and Times of Pandita Ramabai (New
Delhi, 1998).
370 1 Bibliography
Chanana, Karuna (ed.), Socialisation, Education and Womcn: Evplorations in
Gender Identity (New Delhi, 1988).
Chandra, Sudhir, 'Conflicted Beliefs and Men's Consciousnessabout Women:
Widow Remarriage in Later Nineteenth Century Indian Literature',
E P K 22, 44 (31 October 1987), pp. WS-5542.
, The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colo-
nial India (Delhi, 1992).
, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women i Rights (Delhi,
1998).
Chartier, Roger, Cultural History: Between Practices and Reprrscntations,
trans. Lydia G. Gochrane (Cambridge, 1988).
, (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early
Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Gochrane (Cambridge, 1989).
Charu and Mukul, Print Media and Communalism (Delhi, 1990).
Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial Worlri:A Derivative
Discourse? (Delhi, 1986).
, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
(Delhi, 1994).
, (ed.), Texts ofPower: Emerging Disciplines in ColonialBmgal(Min-
neapolis, 1995).
Chatterji, Joya, Bengal Divided. Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-
47 (Cambridge, 1994).
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar, LanguagesandLiteraturrrofMo&rn India (Calcutta,
1963).
Chaturvedi, Sitaram, Madan Mohan Malaviya (Delhi, 1972).
Chawla, Janet, Child-Bearing and C u l t u r b Womcn Centred Revisioning of
the Traditional Midwifc The Dai as a Ritual Practitioner (New Delhi,
1994).
Chowdhry, Prern, The Veiled Women: Sh$ing Gender Equations in Rural
Haryana, 1880- 1990 (Delhi, 1994).
Cohen, Stanley, Fofk Devils andMoral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and
Rockers (London, 1972).
Cohn, Bernard S., An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays
(Delhi, 1987).
Copley, Anrony, Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Con-
version in Late-Colonial India (Delhi, 1997).
, (ed.), Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Rrform Movements
in Colonial India (New Delhi, 2000)
Crafi, Christopher, Another,KindofLove: Male Homosexual Desire in English
Discourse, 1850- 1920 (Berkeley, 1994).
 Bibliography 1 371
Crook, Nigel (ed.), The Transmission of Knowkdge in South Asia: Essays on
Education, Religion, History and Politics (Delhi, 1996).
Dalmia, Vasudha, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
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Lectures, Unpublished Papers, Theses

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Interviews
Interviewwith Dr Anand Krishna, 73 years, at Banaras on 18 February 1998.
Interview with Dudh Nath Chaturvedi, ex-Vice-Chancellor KashiVidyapeeth,
at Banaras on 18 February 1998.
Interview with Ganpat Rai by S.L. Manchanda on 7 July 1974, Oral History
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Interview with Kshem Chandra Sumen by Hari Dev Sharma on 17 Septem-
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History Transcript, No. 103 (NMML).
 Index
advertisements, 28, 53-4, 59, 84
for aphrodisiacs, 30, 34, 67,
72-83,322
abductions, 29, 223, 226, 235,
240,243,247-51,257-62,
264-7, 311,319,325-7,
also see kidnapping
Abhyudaya, 39,213,232,259,
280,326
Agarwds, 16, 25, 93, 104, 199,
33 1-2
Agra, 15, 24, 37, 50, 52, 58-9,
64, 80, 93, 97, 120-1, 130,
132, 135, 155, 184,228-9,
265, 274-5,280,282,
311-13
Ahirs, 26, 93, 99, 276-7, 288,
297-8,330
akharas, 234, 259
Allahabad, 19, 21, 36, 39, 47, 5 1,
64,97, 100-1, 118-19,
138, 162, 166, 180, 188-9,
204, 21 1, 213, 228, 238,
256, 259-60, 263,264,
275-6, 291,326
Arya Sarnaj, 18, 21-2, 26-8,48,
69, 99, 102, 115, 125, 139,
146, 168, 199, 207, 219,
224, 226-8, 237-8,241-3,
246, 249-5 1,256-7,
263-4,273,275,279-80,
291-2,294,298, 301,
305-6,3 13,326,330-7
ashlil, see obscene
bhabhi, 87, 90, 151, 154-60
Bharar Dharma Mahamandd, 21,
132, 136,227
Bharat Mara, 198-203, 22 1
Bharatendu Harishchandra, 43-4,
92, 103, 187, 207, 210,
243,331
brahrnacharya, 34, 67-7 1, 79,
81-3, 104,322, 331,
333
brahrnanical, 24, 26, 214,
299-300,303
Brahmin, 28, 132, 146, 168, 201,
206, 219, 227, 249, 264,
291, 294, 300, 302, 317,
326
butchers, 112, 114, 118-19, 193,
215,217
census, 17, 20, 179. 298, 302,
307-8,310
Charnars, 15, 25, 28, 87, 99,
177, 182, 193, 220, 228,
386 1 Index
259,276-7, 298,302,324,
327
Chand, 39,61-2, 155, 174,
312-1 3
churihar, 275, alro see manihar
colonial, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12-13, 20,
29, 31, 48, 63, 66-8, 90-1,
97, 101, 1 1 1 , 116, 124-5,
140, 142, 161, 177,
179-80, 184-5, 190, 193,
195-6, 199,216,230,234,
299-300,322
perceptions of obscenity, 34-8
law, 129-30
colonialism, 2, 12, 22, 123, 199
communal, 1,6-7, 11, 13, 21-2,
204, 224, 228-9,243,249,
257-62, 266-8, 298-9,
321-2,326,328
communalism, 4-7, 29, 266,
268
conjugal rights, 128-9, 135
conjugal relations. 71, 83, 194
conjugality, 24, 59, 66, 124-5,
321
coversion, 27-9, 162, 225-6,
229,231,241-2,248,260,
262, 267, 294, 30 1,
310-13, 319,326-9
cow, 21, 27, 29, 197, 213-21,
264,268,294-6,317,329,
331,333,335
dai, 177-86, 193-5,32 1
devar, 87, 90, 15 1, 154-60
education, 12-13, 16-17,22-3,
26, 29, 32, 51-2, 70, 8 1 ,
123, 154, 161-76, 194,
207,283,305,321-2
elopements, 10, 28-9, 258, 262,
267, 281, 311, 313, 317,
325-9
enrertainment, 12,61, 69, 85-6,
90-1, 105, 111-12, 117,
274,312,321,325
everyday, 6, 20, 23, 28,72, 107,
123, 154,261,266,268-9,
271-2,277,281
Gandhi, 58, 62, 68, 71, 82, 141,
200,229,232-3,239
Gau Mata, see cow
Ghazi Mian, 287-97, 331, 334,
336
Holi, 26, 36, 85, 89-92, 97-102,
104-7,322
identity, 1,4, 6-8, 10-14, 22,
27-30, 32, 39, 40,49, 63,
69, 82-3, 103, 108, 114,
123-5, 138-9, 166, 194,
197-8,200,202,204,214,
221-3,225,230,235,258,
266, 268, 290, 301, 319,
32 1-2,325,327,329
Jars, 25, 327
jewellery, 140-1, 146-7, 303
Kaliyug, 18, 69, 81, 83, 141,
163,216,319
Kalwars, 15, 297-8
Kayasthas, 16-17, 25, 28, 162,
207,245,264,273, 317
Kedar Nath, 241, 251, 275, 291,
313,333
Khatris, 24, 28, 93, 155
kidnapping, 248, 250, 257-61,
265,296
Kshatriyas, 16, 25, 28, 146,
226-7,234,237,291,303
Kurmis, 25, 28
love, 28, 35-6, 41, 45, 47, 52,

Madan Mohan Malaviya, 60,
137, 166-7, 199,208-9,
2 13,228,333-4
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, 39, 44,
48, 57, 83, 126, 205-6,
210--1, 334
Maithilisharan Gupt, 44-5, 48,
92,201,205,334
Malkanas, 223, 226-9, 231
manihar, 279-80
masculine, 23, 43, 65, 67-9, 173,
206, 21 2-1 3,218, 222-3,
230-1,238
masculinity, 1, 23, 29, 43, 67, 79,
82, 124,212-13,222-3,
230-5,237,239,266,289,
293,322
migration, 15, 19, 64, 154-5
Nagari Pracharini Sabha, 171,
204,206
nautanki, 33, 55, 71, 84, 90
newspapers, 10, 27, 29, 39, 50,
52, 70, 72-3, 80-2,
98-100, 119, 188, 192,
199, 201, 213, 215, 234,
245,249, 259-64,266,
294, 304-5, 308, also see
press
obscene, 24, 26, 28, 31, 36, 38,
44-5, 47, 49, 55, 57-8, 73,
79-82,89,91-4, 98-9,
101-2, 104-5, 116, 147,
243-4
obscenity, 1-3, 28, 30-2, 34,
36-7,39-40,45-6, 50, 53,
56-7, 61, 83, 85, 97-9,
101, 103,210,243-5
Index l 387
Pandey Bechan Sharma 'Ugra':
60-3,240,335
pativrata, 24, 95, 124, 126, 155,
194-5,237,286,292
patriarchy, 1, 28-9, 34, 81-2,
107, 125, 129-30, 242,
267,283,300-1,303,319,
329
plague, 1 14, 190-4
pleasure, 12, 28, 40, 43, 45-6,
49, 54-5, 59, 64, 66, 68-9,
72-3, 79, 81, 83, 108-9,
127, 134, 140-1, 154-5,
166, 172, 176, 245, 321,
326
press, 14, 33, 39, 50-2, 56-60,
79-80,82, 100, 103, 1 15,
123, 173, 242, 244, 248,
260, 263-4, also ree
newspapers, propaganda
print, 2, 10-11, 14, 16, 27, 30,
32-3,39-40,43, 50, 52-3,
55, 66, 69, 72, 84-5, 106,
173, 215,244
propaganda, 4, 27, 190, 219,
248,250,253-66,291,
294, 328, also ree
newspapers, press, rumour
prostitute, 20, 28-9, 44, 72, 85,
96, 108-22,242,245,
273-4,303,322,327
and Urdu, 206-7
public, 6, 8, 11-12, 16, 23, 26,
28, 38-40, 62, 64-5, 72,
79-80, 86-7, 89, 92, 98,
101-2, 105, 109, 113-14,
116-17, 119, 121-4, 132,
135, 139-40, 146-7,
150-1, 173, 190-1, 194-5,
225, 228, 238,245, 250-1,
261, 263-6, 268, 272, 278,
286, 290, 302, 307, 322,
325,328
publicists, 4, 6-7, 10-13, 20, 24,
27, 29, 68, 80, 82-4, 92,
97, 100, 104, 113, 116,
120, 123-4, 129, 175, 194,
197, 219,222-5,228,230,
239, 259, 264, 266-7,
272-3,277-8,289,301-2,
307,309,311,316-17,
321-3,325
purdah, 25, 142-3, 146-53,
191-2, 194,245-6,321
riots, 6, 23, 191-2, 214, 225,
228,258-9,268,316
railways, 15, 18, 146, 150-1,
192,265
railway stations, 56, 123, 146,
152-3, 191, 194,256,259,
265
rumour, 190-2, 251,264-6
Radha, 31,35,40-2,47-8,58,
176
Ramchandra Shukl, 39,43,336
Riti Kal, 41, 43-5,47, 56
sangathan, 29, 222-5, 228,
230-8,248,250,259, 301,
3 19
Sangathan ka Bigub 233-4
Saraswati, 39, 57, 209-1 0
ShivpraSad Gupt, 199, 202, 336
shuddhi, 29, 222-32, 234-5,
238,248,250,301,319
Stri Shiksha, 278, 283
Swami Shraddhanand, 197, 199,
224, 226, 228, 296, 3 16,
337
tazia, 271, 278, 281, 283, 286,
290
violence, 6-7, 27, 235, 250, 266,
268
widow, 9,28-9, 134, 146, 173,
182, 193, 198, 249, 280,
299-307,309-13,3 16-20,
328-9
widow remarriage, 25-6, 29,
299-301,303-6,310,
318-21.324
Yashoda Devi, 174, 187-90,337