A Question of Silence?: The Sexual Economies of Modern India

Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2002 by Hewamanne, Sandya

While Susie Tharu examines Gujarati writer Saroj Pathak's fiction to demonstrate the importance of female subjectivity and sexualities for articulating citizenship, Ravi Vasudevan analyses how the lack of narrative integration in the popular cinema affects the perceptions of sexuality and authority. Both articles appear cryptic and somewhat incoherent due in most part to the authors' propensity to address every possible link connected to the specific issue being analyzed. Tharu and Vasudevan's analyses on the early post-independence period foreshadow several works on contemporary sexual economies at varied Indian sites. V. Geetha attempts to identify violence as symptomatic of everyday sexuality. Based on her experiences at a domestic violence support group in Tamil Nadu, she engages in a passionate exploration of the relationship between violence, love and desire. Written in a journalistic vein, the piece commendably argues for alternative sexualities but overgeneralizes about masculinity and conjugal relationships in India. Particularly problematic is Geetha's disregard for women's claims to sexual pleasures within marriage. Her assertion that such feelings are effects of strong patriarchal structures, and thus result from "habit," seems paternalistic and erases different experiences within the institution of marriage. Prem Chowdhry analyzes another form of violent acts: the ones commuted against those who resist cultural codes on inter-and intra-caste marriages in Haryana. Recounting some case studies, Chowdhry laments that those who perpetrate these crimes go unpunished. Chawdhry repeatedly uses the terms "girl" and "boy" to denote the young adults-she does not mention whether they are underage- involved in these cultural code violations. This identification of young married people as children not only reproduces existing norms of self-hood and young love but also is anti-climactic to an otherwise politically savvy collection of essays.

Based on ethnographic research in a coastal, Christian community in Tamilnadu, Kalpana Ram explores the way women articulate an alternative modernity in which "modern" discourses on female sexuality co-exist with precolonial beliefs and practices. Through discourses on puberty ceremonies, Ram aptly explicates the ambivalences generated by this uneasy alliance. Mary E. John's complex analysis of the connections between globalization, visual fields and sexuality yields fine insights into the evolving sexual economies within India's current political culture. According to John, consumer capitalism's attempt to recruit women as consumers/actors in effect leads to a gradual recognition of women as desiring subjects. This very process raises many questions about the changing, intertwined relations among sexuality, marriage and the state. John's thought provoking essay is the final one in this anthology.

In their introduction John and Nair declare that they are not trying to recover a coherent, unique "Indian sexuality" that can be used as a cultural emblem but are seeking to open up some major domains that have accommodated questions of sexuality (p. 7). True to this declaration the essays present twelve varied manifestations of sexual economies in India. In so doing, the authors recover different sites, thereby opening up fertile fields for further research. All in all, A Question of Silence is a significant contribution to the feminist debates on sexuality in India.