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The Hidden Violence of Faith: The Widows of VrindabanAuthor(s): Malini BhattacharyaReviewed work(s):Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 29, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Feb., 2001), pp. 75-83Published by: Social ScientistStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518273 .

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NOTE/MALINI BHATTACHARYA*

The Hidden Violence of Faith: The Widows of Vrindaban

During the last two decades in India, there has been a proliferation of forms of communal violence. Sometimes they appear in conjunction with one another, sometimes separately. In this paper, I shall be only talking on one specific form of such violence, namely that manifested in the Varanasi demonstrations against Deepa Mehta's shooting of her film Water. One cannot go into the merits and demerits of a film the making of which was forcibly stopped; anyway I feel that the incident was merely a pretext for the show of strength that was organised against the film unit, a show that perhaps even acquired a larger-than-life image through the intervention of media.

Unlike certain other forms of communal violence, this demonstration did not consist in a direct attack upon another community, but its stated purpose was to uphold the 'honour' of the Hindu community, as usual conflated with the Indian nation, and to mobilise opinion within the Hindu community to close the ranks on behalf of what was described as 'patriotism'. The argument was that a foreign-based director, with a westernised approach, was trying to spread calumny against Indian traditions, particularly against the status of Hindu widows. So all good Indians must come together to prevent, it. The violent demonstration was a mobilisation to prevent it both at the physical and the ideological level. Consent of those who did not actually join the demonstrations was important.

This demonstration also recalls the show of Rajput pride that followed the protests against the Rup Kanwar incident. On that occasion no Deepa Mehta was involved, but the target of the community mobilisation around the so-called 'Satisthal' was the protesting women activists, who were said to be steeped in western

* Teaches at the Jadavpur University, Jadavpur.

Social Scientist, Vol. 30, Nos. 1 - 2, Jan.-Feb. 2001



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values; their devaluation of the incident of 'sati', the supreme glory of Hindu womanhood, must be stopped. The appropriation of the 'Satisthal' by sword-carrying male proponents of caste-pride was an earlier example of the same kind of phenomenon that is manifested in the taking over of the Varanasi 'ghats' by slogan-shouting protectors of Indian (read Hindu) pride.

The thesis, sought to be established through such a demonstration is that there is a strong, consolidated Hindu community in the country threatened by external forces that operate through Trojan horses like Shabana Azmi or the 'westernized feminists' protesting against Rup Kanwar's concremation. They spread confusion and disruption within the ranks, and this is sought to be counteracted by upholding caste/ community/national pride. The violent demonstration thus aims at disciplining the ranks, keeping in check any cropping up of doubts among them and highlighting certain models of behaviour.

While the consolidation at the place of Rup Kanwar's murder was largely male, the later incident at Varanasi brought the women's organisations of the Sangh Parivar very much to the foreground. Not only did women leaders come out with statements condemning the film's supposed 'denigration' of Hindu widows, but the ranks were also brought on the streets to demonstrate against the film. Their appropriation of public space, their visibility was very important for the organisations. Scholars who have been studying the rise of the Hindu Right in recent years have been pointing out this strategy of mobilisation of women for sometime. We may perhaps describe this feature as an aspect of the gendering of the Hindu Right's agenda. About the reversal of gender roles that we observe in the course of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement itself, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags has this to say:

that suth foregrounding of women demonstrators 'equips the communal woman with a new and empowering self-image. She has stepped out of a purely iconic status to take up an active position as a militant."

But another aspect of this agenda which cannot be overlooked is the way in which this 'communalised female selfhood' as Tanika Sarkar calls it in another article, is itself used to reinforce the same ethos of submission to what is projected as the cultural values of the community.2 A woman who is a 'veerangana' protecting Hindu culture from subversive alien influence, is also, vis-a-vis her own home and community, the bearer and nurturer of the same culture.

Some professedly 'anti-secularist' - critics of communalism set up



THE WIDOWS OF VRINDABAN

'religion as faith' and 'religion as ideology' as contesting binaries in order to avert what they see as the failure of secularism to understand the depth of cultural values. Ashish Nandy perceives the first 'as a way of life, a tradition which is definitionally non-monolithic and operationally plural'.3 On the other hand 'religion as ideology' which emerges as communalism is described by Nandy as a 'sub-national, national or cross-national identifier of populations contesting for or protecting non-religious, usually political or socio-economic interests'. R. Bharucha, while admitting that ideologies of and faiths in particular religions 'do impinge on each other and affect each other's stabilities and power affiliations', still prefers to uphold the categories in a 'predominantly oppositional context.'4

But in the situation we have been describing, 'religion as faith' appears to provide the social substratum out of which 'religion as faith' appears to provide the social substratum out of which 'religion as ideology' emerges. Only when 'faith' or a devout commitment to what is projected as the culture or the values of her community is deeply imbibed, consent to the need for protecting these militantly against foreign/subversive influences may be generated. Consent to communal militancy cannot be attributed merely to manipulative designs of the state or of political forces controlling the boundaries of the state or of national/subnational groups. To describe faith as 'definitionally non-monolithic and operationally plural' is to present it as an abstraction. In reality, the quietism of the woman of faith, her perception of her devoutness as a private virtue imbibed through tradition often acts as the silent backdrop from which communal ideology reinforces itself. In other words, faith is no more beyond politics than communal militancy is. Only here the political dimension may be less obvious.

The Hindu widow as the icon of submissive piety is thus very important for mobilisers along communal lines: to protect her good name is seen as a 'patriotic' act. But a crucial aspect of this phenomenon is the way in which the icon becomes a living one, the way in which the iconic status is internalised by women themselves. Faith does not generally act in an oppositional manner to 'ideology' here; its supposed loose and tolerant values while allowing the woman some relief from the stifling boundaries of domestic duty, only help to make her subservient to a different kind of stereotyping. This process of socialisation also makes her a helpless object of communalising politics.

Recent studies on Bengali widows in Vrindabandham reveal the

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complexities of the process of socialisation that faith embodies. Prior to a complete enumeration survey of destitute Bengali women in Vrindaban commissioned by the West Bengal Government, some of us went there last June, 2000 on a reconnoitering trip. When we visited the 'Bhajanashrams' where such women come daily to sing the names of Radha and Krishna and are given some rice, some 'dal' and 1-2 rupees, in exchange what struck us first were the signs of acute economic distress. Those who clung to this and mendicancy as the only source of income were generally senior women, broken in health. The long queues in front of the 'bhajanashrams' and the frequent altercations that took place among the waiting women made it evident that the supply of 'bhajan'-singers outstripped the demand. Some have merely taken the 'kanthi', the sign of the Vaishnav, after coming to Vrindaban in order to get access to 'bhajanashrams'. Yet it would be very simplistic to think that it is only the economic compulsion of destitute women - widows in the main - and the exploitation of this compulsion by religious middlemen that keeps the 'bhajanashrams' going. The widows' perception of themselves and of their spiritual role in Vrindabandham is a crucial factor here.

Just before our visit to Vrindaban, the then central minister for woman and child development, the redoubtable Uma Bharti, had gone there to inaugurate a home for destitute women. While speaking to a gathering of widows, she had in her usual parochial style apparently commented on the propensity of Bengalis to throw out their widowed mothers and sisters on the streets so that they were forced to seek shelter in Vrindaban. It was reported to us that this comment offended those present very deeply and they protested against the minister's comment, saying that this was an insult to the devotional motive which had actually brought them to Vrindaban. They said that their stay in Vrindaban was the outcome of a voluntary decision to serve Radha and that they would like to die in the holy place chanting Radha's name. Uma Bharti had to retract her words in the face of strong resentment.

I think what is described as voluntary migration may itself be subject to indirect economic pressures; this account of the widows about themselves thus may not be an exact reflection of the real situation, but may on the other hand be mediated by what some may describe as faith. Versions of the widows' self-reflective accounts would also vary in accordance with who these accounts are coming from. An account given by an illiterate, distressed, utterly destitute old woman would often differ from that of a relatively well-placed




literate, middle-aged woman who has as yet no need to depend on anybody else. Class, caste, age, marital and familial status are some of the factors that may create variations in the accounts. But on the whole, faith is no less potent a motive than the economic ones so far as the widows are concerned. It is not just a veneer, but a deeply internalised attitude. Most of the women, when interviewed, give faith rather than economic constraint as the reason for their migration to Vrindaban.

The faith is Vaishnav in character and it has been observed that about 2/5 ths of the total number of Bengali women (1211 exactly) come from a Vaishnav background. Many come from those castes, for instance, the Namasudra castes, which at one time came under the strong influence of Vaishnavism. One reason for this was that even when not altogether repudiating the caste hierarchy, Vaishnavism in Bengal under the inspiration of Shri Chaitanya and Nityananda, provided a special space in the framework of devoutness for the humble and the lowly. Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal enumerates 41 castes and sub-castes influenced by Vaishnavism. They were mostly artisan and agricultural castes. The prioritisation of 'Radha' and the Gopis in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as the supreme embodiment of devotion and divine love and the theory of 'Raganuga bhakti' also emphasized womanly submissiveness as a general virtue, an exemplum of the highest status in the hierarchy of Bhakti. But here submissiveness was translated to a different level of connotation, which elevated it beyond the purview of domestic virtue. For the Vaishnav - also for the Vaishnav woman, renunciation of the domestic pattern of relationships could emerge as the outcome of total submission to the cause of divine love.

Ramakanto Chakraborty in Bange Vaishnavdharma, says on these tensions within Vaishnavism: 'Non-brahmins could acquire a degree of autonomy by adopting Vaishnavism. So could Vaishnav women. But even after this, in the Vaishnav community, as in Brahmin- dominated community, casteism, splits and schisms continued.'5 While accepting this, we may at the same time point out that for women Vaishnavism did offer an alternative space outside domestic constraints, just as for so-called lower castes it provided an alternative space where social hierarchies could to some extent by ruptured.

While the 'Gosains' who settled in Vrindaban placed Gaudiya Vaishnavism within a highly philosophised and basically conservative framework, its relationship with its peripheral heterodoxies was never quite erased. The pilgrim route from Bengal to Vrindaban was the

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conduit of such heterodoxies as practiced by jat-Vaishnavs, Bairagi- Vaishnavs and the practitioners of the Sahajiva cult. According to some accounts mentioned by Chakravorti, even the Gosains experimented with the Sahajiya mode of devotional practice. Heterodox ideas about women's status as devotees were to be found among all these sects.

Our contacts with the women who had migrated to Vrindaban and were spending a life of piety through the 'bhajanashrams', revealed that many of them had renounced domestic life voluntarily and felt a strong apathy against it. Some of them go back every year to their families, but are eager to come back to Vrindaban where even while they suffer from many privations, the superincumbent pressure of domestic life is absent. To interview some of these women is to find out the hollowness of the stereotyping of women as profoundly attached to home life by nature. But it is not just the element of relief from domestic pressures that leads these women to a life of devotion as an escape route. The process of becoming attuned to the rhythms of such a life undertaken in the community of other women within the institutional framework of a 'bhajanashram' also acts as an inner compulsion. The daily routine acquires a mystic significance. So much so, that if they are asked to abandon this life to be rehabilitated within the family circle or in and old age home, they often feel that the dignity of their vocation is being endangered. It is mostly women in an extreme state of destitution who would agree to this. Many of them also feel deprived and demeaned if an alternative non-religious vocation is proposed to them.

The women of faith whom we encountered in Vrindaban are in a way extremely courageous persons who are trying to live on the dignity of their devotional lives in the face of unimaginable physical and emotional difficulties. We would be mostly wrong if we try to locate here any traces of that 'communalised female selfhood' that Tanika Sarkar correctly finds among the women's wings of the Sangh Parivar. What we are discussing here is a different phenomenon altogether. The fact that a contradiction seems to exist between the widows and a central BJP minister may lead us to think that these represent oppositional entities. The multifarious social milieu from which these women came, the different cultural traditions they represented, also make their community in Vrindaban quite a loose and flexible one. Thus of the categories mentioned earlier, it is that of 'faith' that seems to be applicable to them, while Uma Bharati's hints towards an 'Operation Pushback' makes her a representative of the politics of




religion. But the equations are not so simple. It is my submission that the faith of the women devotees of

Vrindaban, while it may have no conscious associations with the politics of religion that we find in BJP leaders is still deeply embedded in it and an inextricable part of it. One idea that incurs the wrath of the Sangh battalions and is strenuously denied by the women devotees of Vrindaban is that the holy precincts of Brajadham are also the hotbed of sexual exploitation of destitute women who come here through direct or indirect religious connections. The motives for denial may be different in the case of the women of faith. But there is plenty of evidence that such exploitation indeed occurs - has been occurring for a long time. Texts like Durgacharan Roy's fantastic travelogue Debganer Martye Agaman in the 1880s and Dinabandhu Mitra's Jamai Barik (where one co-wife taunts another senior one with the words: 'An old prostitute-turned-holy woman am I and I have come to Vrindaban) in 1872 bear literary proof that even then Vrindaban was seen as sheltering 'fallen women' who could be further exploited. The 'Sevadasi' system, prevalent for a long time among Vaishnavs also made younger women dependent on ashrams/akhras quite open to such exploitation even while they themselves saw sexual service to rich pilgrims and religious guru's as part of their devotional duty. Thus liberation from domestic servitude for a woman even today may make her also extremely vulnerable to other kind of servitude including sexual servitude embedded within religious institutions. The large number of abortion clinics in Mathura city bear witness to this. The convergence of interests in denying such occurrences that seems to take place between the meek and submissive widows on the one hand and the champions of muscular Hinduism on the other is in fact symptomatic. The widow's world of intense devotional ardour is bounded by the protective presence of muscular Hinduism for the preservation of its dignity. It is woven into the same ideological fabric. The two depend upon each other for mutual reinforcement although there are many contradictions between them.

I have no doubt that were one to make a political analysis of the proprietors and the management of the 'bhajanashrams', the ubiquitous and influential 'pandas' who sometimes act as 'gurus' to the women devotees - in fact of all those middlemen who dominate the religious establishment in 'Brajadham', one would find them overwhelmingly to have BJP affiliations. With the increase in land speculations, we also find a class of local mafia, who occupy old mansions belonging to defunct trusts, rent out rooms to the widows

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at high rates, while reserving the right to throw them out at any time. I am sure that today most of them would be found participating in BJP political shows. But even if the direct affiliations were not there, even if they owed allegiance to some other political party, their project of annexing the widows and reserving the right of using and abusing them would coincide with the political programme of the Hindu Right. They are mainly concerned with the management of religion, but the mode of management and the internal emotional structures of religious faith would have to be attuned to each other. The fault lines in their close relationship must ever be kept under check. The widow must not see herself as a mere victim. The construction of consent, of a certain sense of being empowered is very important.

These factors had always been there. The 'bhajanashrams' had always mixed profit with piety very skilfully. For this they had needed the widows. Now for one thing, the vast reserve army of labour in the hinterland of the industrial belt stretching along the bank of Jamuna from Delhi to Mathura, in the search for alternative employment, puts pressure on the over-loaded political-economic framework of Brajadham. Wives of local labourers vie with Bengali widows for patronage at 'bhajanashrams'. Also globalisation and the emergence of pilgrim tourism (in which ISKON has a very big role to play) is opening up new ways of profit. Many 'bhajanashrams' are turning into opulent 3-star/4-star guest houses. For these reasons, a degree of readjustment is required in the relationship of the religious establishment with the widows. The contradictions in the relationship are more evident in this transitional situation, putting the widows in a position of not only economic but emotional and spiritual disadvantage.

When we talk of the gender question in the context of communal violence, we often think of problems of women caught in violence between communities. Forms of gender violence and gender repression within minority communities is also sometimes highlighted. What I have discussed in this article is a form of gender violence within the majority community. It is violence made largely imperceptible by the velvet weft of consent generated by faith into which this violence is woven. The women devotees are themselves caught in it. I do not see the anti-secularist privileging of 'faith' as offering any possibility of resistance against this from within.



THE WIDOWS OF VRINDABAN 83

NOTES

1. Khaki Shorts, Saffron Flags, Tapan Basu, Pradip Dutta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar, Sambuddha Sen, Orient Longman, 1993, pp. 81-82.

2. 'Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses' in Secular Challenge to Communal Politics: a Reader, Ed. P.R. Ram, 1998, p. 184.

3. 'The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance' in Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia. Ed. Veena Das, OUP, 1992, p. 70.

4. The Question of Faith, Rustom Bharucha, Orient Longman 1993, p. 12. 5. Benge Vaishnav Dharma, Ekti Oitihashik Ebgng Samajtativik Adhyan.

Ramakanto Chakraborty, Calcutta, 1996, p. 167. (translation mine), Malini Bhattacharya.

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