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In the language of modernity and civic consciousness the Indian indifference to notions of 'private' and 'public'
in their use of open space contrasted with the immaculate 'order' of the European quarters. This paper aims lo
contest and critique modernist readings of the use of open spaces in India by opposing to these readings certain
structu al speculations based on a preliminary examnination of somiie relevant historical anid anthropological material.
a mismatch between, say, the modernist view is practised. Housekeeping is also meant to his village border[ed] on the adjoining
village':
of the city and the urbanism of the Banarasi, express the auspicious qualities of the
her description of the galis, of the suppos- mistress of the household, her Lakshmi-like The deity is thus propitiated and carried
ed incapacity of the Banarasi to respond to nature that protects the lineage into which beyond the village limits. The villagers of the
questions of sanitation and health, invests she has married.'4 As 'outsiders' who have adjacent village in their turn carry the
the modernist complaint (about popular to be received into the bosom of the karagain [the offerings] to the border of the
'blindness' to these questions) with a certain
patrilineal and patriarchal family, women next village, and in this way the baleful in-
degree of objectivity. This is precisely the ob- fluence of the goddess is transferred to a safe
are particularly subject to the rituals of
distance.
jectivity of the outsider, which is the only
auspiciousness. For, the outside, in this con-
position from which a modernist-it mat- ception, always carries 'substances' that The worship of Peddamma in the Telugu
ters little for our argument whether the par-
threaten one's well-beipg. The 'negative country also included activities that ritual-
ticular speaker is of white or brown skin- qualities and substances that may afflict per- ly inscribed village boundaries.22
can speak on this subject. As Thompson sons, families, houses and villages: as Gloria Catanach has written recently of Punjab
says of the passage from Naipaul quoted Goodwin Raheja has recently noted, are villages where, during the plague scare of
earlier: 'Only the outsider can see that all seldom 'one's own': they achieve their 'entry' 1896-98, 'the village site [was I surrounded
of India is the Indian's latrine. It is all too through lapses in the performance of with a circle of stakes, with demons' heads
easy as an outsider to spot the Indians' con- auspicious actions. "All forms of in- roughly carved on top to serve as super-
spiracy of blindness'.12 I shall return later to auspiciousness are said to originate in en- natural guardians'.23 More contemporary
this question of the relationship here bei- tities and events that are 'different' and 'dis- evidence comes from Ralph Nicholas's study
Ween modrnism and ethnosociology. tant' from the person or other afflicted en- of the smallpox goddess Sitala in south-
tity" writes Raheja, "they are alien". '5
j ,j jV 4.P,- . .h.,s Vi per is to contest and western Bengal where worship rituals include
critique tty.: nsoejaulst readings of uses of Auspicious acts protect the habitat, the in- the taking out of processions that circumam-
p*t ipSgipW India, by opposing to these
side, from undue exposure to the male- bulate the village 'planting flags where path
readings certain structuralist speculations volence of the outside. They are the cultural cross the village borders, or otherwise boun-
based, on a preliminary, and by no means ex- performance through which this everyday ding the village before her [Sitala's] pujaqis
haustive, study of some of the relevant 'inside' is both produced and enclosed. The begun'.24 Diane Coccari has studied similar
historical and anthropological material. I am ev'eryday practice of classifying certain things processes in urban Banaras-the Bir babas
aware of the limitations of structuralist as household rubbish marks the boundary who act as boundary gods of neighbour-
methods and also of those that arise from of this enclosure. hoods in the city.
the somewhat ahistorical character of my Nirad Chaudhuri's cultural puzzle thus The deity is described as "the god" or "the
argument. This paper is in the nature of a contains themes that, I suggest, are quite protector of the neighbourhood" . . There
beginning with all the tentativeness that pervasive in Indian popular culture. The are hundreds of Bir... shrines in the city
beginnings entail. A deeper and more con- figure of the outsider as the troublemaker ... Like the village deities, the urban Bir con-
vincing analysis would no doubt need to was strongly conveyed by the Santal term trol the boundaries of their domaidis,
locate the argument in a more historically 'diku' so prominently used in their rebellion especially with regard to the exit and entry
grounded context. of 1855.16 In the Munda country, jealousy, of the intangible agents of illness, misfortune
I should also clarify that a major aim of which is seen as corrosive of communal and disease.25
this exercise is methodo-philosophical. It is bonds, is attributed to mischievous out- If the house, thus, is only an instance of
to.show, through a critical reading of some siders.'7 Hatred of people conceived of as
a theme general to south Asia-an inside
aspects of Kumar's otherwise excellent 'outsiders' is a universal feature of so-called
produced by symbolic enclosure for the pur-
ethnosociology, that when it comes to ques- ethnic conflicts in India and elsewhere.'8 pose of protection-what is then the. sym-
tions relating to 'health: that is to life rather
Correspondingly general is the practice of bolic meaning of the outside which can in-
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Bengali Society, Delhi, p 106. health and long life by removing the con- Medicine and Indigenous Societies, Delhi,
30 S P Punalekar (1957), Weekly Markets in ditions for epidemics-which after all do p 125.
the Tribal Talukas of Surat Valsad Region,
Surat, p 37.
31 Ibid, pp 93-94.
DISCUSSION
32 Ostor, Culture, op cit, p 135.
33 Alexander, k?ural Java, op cit, p 181.
34 This statement, of course, in no way denies
Agrarian Reform and Economic
the validity of Meaghan Morris's percep-
tive and stimulating analysis of how modern
Development in Nicaragua
shopping centres can become focal points
for social life even in 'post-industrial' Gail Omvedt
cultures. But this could happen in spite of WHETHER it is the fault of the original over what is to be done with the land, over
their designs. See Meaghan Morris (1988), or not, Madhura Swaminathan's review how a largely rural economy is to be treated
'Things To Do With Shopping Centres' in (February 1, 1992) of Harvesting Change: in an overall process of economic develop-
Susan' Sheridan (ed), Grafts: Femninist Labour and Agrarian Reform in Nicaragua ment. In spite of their democratic openness
Cultural-Criticism, Londo n. gives oversimplified praise of the Nicaraguan and devotion to indigenous tradition, in spite
35 Anthony D King (1976), Colonial Urban efforts at agrarian reform which neglects the of the invocation of Sandino's 'worker-
Development, London, pp 52-53. Sandinistas' own self-criticisms of their peasant' themes, the Sandinistas followed
36 Punalekar, Weekly Markets, op cit, pp 89
developmental policies. In the process, it the Soviet model ("Cuban, Russian
and 105.
leaves revolutio,nary movements and masses socialism-this is what we knew; socialism
37 King, Colonial Urban Developinent, op cit,
helpless before their enemies, both their means nationalisation, socialisation of the
p 56.
external enemy, US imperialism, and their means of production"), i e, one that pro-
38 Ostor, Culture, op cit, pp 95-96.
39 On the mythology of Ganesh, see Paul B
internal enemy, the bureaucratic statism moted bureaucratic management of a
which has turned revolutions up to now into burgeoning state sector within a mixed
Courtright (1985), Ganesa: Lord of
Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings, New York rubble. economy, which treated the 'petty.bourgeois'
40 Ostor, Culture, op cit, pp 100-01. In an August 1990 workshop at Bangalore, peasantry.and urban artisanal sectors 'as
41 Freitag, Collective Action, op cit, pp 1941. attended by a representative of the Sandinista backward while making alliances with a
42 Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras, op cit, Liberation Front, there was extensive discus- 'national bourgeoisie', and which oriented
*p 79. sion of the Nicaraguan revolution in the con- development to give priority to large-scale
43 Guha, Elementarv Aspects, op cit, text of events in eastern Europe and the ecologically destructive and bureaucratically
pp 258-59. challenge posed by new social movements dominated agro-industrial projects.
44 Punalekar, Weekly Markets, op cit, pp 48-49 in India. It was in the period just following The revolution gave many peasants land,
Part 11. the shocking electoral defeat of the but those who were given land were given
45 Kumar, The Artisans Qf Banaras, op cit, Sandinistas-a defeat which was, for many low prices for their produce and pushed and
p 89. of us, even more of a blow than the fall of coerced into co-operatives controlled from
46 Raj Chandavarkar, 'Workers' Politics and the statist regimes of eastern Europe. The the top down. As Maria described the pro-
the Mill Districts in Bombay Between the
letter we had always seen as flawed; but cess, the nationalised property of the
Wars', Modern Asian Studies, 15, 3, pp
Nicaragua was the heroic revolution in the Somoza family-which constituted a whop-
606-07.
very backyard of US imperialism, under ping 30 per cent of total land-was first put
47 Quoted in Faisal Devji (1990), 'The Move-
heavy siege, but functioning from the begin- into big state farms; this was resented by the
ment for Women's Reform in Muslim India,
1857-1900'. Paper presented at the Asian
ning, we had believed, with more democracy peasantry and led to resistance and rebellion.
Studies Conference, Chicago, April. and flexibility, less dogmatism, a loyalty to After that policy was changed. But 'co-
48 John Foreman quoted in Carlos Quirino the indigenous traditions of the people. This operatives' were also flawed by bureau-
(1979), The First Filipino: A Biographv of was, it seems,, an unrealistic assessment craticisation. Peasants were not given credit
Jose Rizal, Manila, p 25. 1 am grateful to which left sympathisers as well as much of or tractors if they didn't join; and so there
Joseph Sales for referring me to this book. the Sandinista cadre unprepared for their was a lot of 'cheating' to get these and as
See also the very illuminating discussion in defeat. I promised Maria, the FSLN a result many co-operatives existed on paper
Timothy Mitchell (1989), Colonising Egypt,representative, to write an article on the only. Peasants resented. both the compulsion
Cambridge. Nicaraguan experience before their party that was pushing them to collectivise and the
49 See John' Campbell Oman (1908), Ctults, congress; but work pressures, the lack of fur- forced procurement of food at low prices.
Customs and Superstitions of India, ther communication and congress docu- The co-operativisatpn/collectivisation pro-
London, Part 2, pp 218-28. ments, and a feeling of diffidence at being cess was also damaging to the ecology and
50 David Arnold (1986), 'Cholera and too distant from the scene of struggle let this encouraged the gulping up of energy
Colonialism in British India', Pust anid fall behind. resources: for instance, co-operatives were
Present, no 113, November, p 127;
Now it seems necessary to say something. given trucks and tractors, provided cheaply
Oldenberg, Colonial Luckn ow, op cit. pp
by the USSR. There were problems with
These comments are based on a few recent
99-144.
these both for parts supply and because of
articles, the Sandinistas' own self-criticisms
51 Michel Foucault (1975), The Birih of the
and our workshop discussions,' and they shoddy manufacture; and they encouraged
Clinic: An A rcheology of Medical Percep-
-ion, New York, p 25. should be taken not as an effort to give the an unsustainable use of energy resources.
'final word' but to open up discussion. The When their use became literally impossible,
52 Chaudhuri, Autobiog'raphv, op cit,
dedication. issues are applicable to India as well. peasants could only see the use of their own
S3 Arnold, 'Cholera' op cit. Agrarian reform-giving land to the oxen, donkeys and mules as a 'retreat'; they
54 All this, of course, is true only of the ideals. landless-is only the beginning of the story had been taught to think of tractors as a sign
The Indian reality continues to be marked for any revolution; the major issue comes of progress.