13

Chandra's Death

Mhis essay begins with a transgression-a title that is designed to

violate the intentions for which the material reproduced below
has already served with two authorities-the authority of the
law which recorded the event in its present form and that of the editor
who separated it from other items in an archive and gave it a place in
another order-a book of documents collected for their sociological
interest. The movement between these two intentions-the law's and
the scholars-suggests the interposition of other wills and purposes.
Whatever these were-anthropological, literary, administrative, or any
other-they had, from time to time, given this material names and
functions in some very differently constructed series and under differ-
ent classifications. We know nothing of them except that they must
have occurred. Yet the very fact that they occurred, in whatever unspeci-
fied ways, would justify yet another intervention-a return to the
terminal points of the shift, the only visible sites of legal and editorial
intentionality, in order to desecrate them by naming the material once
again and textualizing it for a new purpose. That purpose is to reclaim
the document for history. Here is to
quote it in extenso.

Copyright 1987 Ranajit Guha. First published in Ranajit Guha, ed.,

Subalsern Studies V(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987),
pp. 135-65.
This document is published as item no. 380 in PMCS, my abbreviation
for Panchanan Mandal (ed.),
Chithipatre Samajchitra, vol. 2 (Calcutta: 1953),
PP. 277-8. It is taken from the archives of Viswabharati University. Its date is
given as 1255 according to the Bengali year. Since the event of which it speaks
occurred in the month of Choitra (see footnote 2 below), the
corresponding
date, according to the Christian calendar, should be AD 1849. Some of the pro
2 The Small Voice of Histor
[MARK OF INvocATION] Chandra's Death
273
.]adose [. .] and I made a paste of the drug again at dawn and
at Towards the end of last Phalgun, Magaram Chasha came to
lage
.

administered it to Chandra. That did nothing to destroy the foetus
The next day when I went again to the same Kali Bagdi
together with
my mother and Chandra, he gave us a herbal medicine which had to
be taken thrice a day (jori tin pan) together with some horituki
(a wild
fruit of medicinal value) and two tablets of bakhor guli (a
preparation
of herbs and rice used to induce abortion) diluted in lime water.
On
12Choitra*I prepared a paste ot the medicine with my own
hands and
administered one dose of it to Chandra at a quarter past the second
hor of the night. Then at about a quarter past the second
prohor the
foetus was destroyed and it fell to the ground. My mother picked up
the bloody foetus with some straw and threw it away. Even after that
the pain in Chandras belly continued to increase and she died when
And Kalicharan
it was still 4 or 5 dondoes left of the night. Chandras
corpse was then
buried near the [rivers] bend by my brother Gayaram, his brother-in-
law and my mother's brother Horilal. I administered the medicine in
the belief that it would terminate her pregnancy and did not realize
and said, 'I have been involved, for the last four or five
months, in an
illicit love affair (ashnai) with your daughter Chandra
Chashani, asa
result of which she has conceived. Bring her to your own house and
arrange for some medicine to be administered to her. Or else, I shall
put her into bhek." Iwo days after that I sent my daughter Brindra and
my sister's daughter Rongo Chashani to Bhabanipur to fetch Chandra.
The same day they returned to Majgram with Chandra Chashani ar
about a prohor after nightfall, and Rongu said that Chandras mother
in-law Srimoti and her husband's sisters husband Magaram Chasha
had given them a brass pot and a bell-metal bowl [in order to pay) for
the arrangements to procure the drug required for an abortion-End
of statement.
Bagdi, defendant, said in his deposition:
It was still some five or seven days to go before the end of the month
of Phalgun in the current year when I was at my
vegetable plot on the
bank of the river one day. Rongu Chashani approached me there at

that it would kill her-End of statement. approximately the second dondo of the day and said, Please call at my
house. When you do so, Ishall tell you all I have to say. The
following
day I went to the house of Bongshi Bagdi of Maigram but failing to
When the other defendants were arrested on the basis of this de-
position, Bhagaboti Chashin, mother of the deceased Chandra, also meet Rongu Chashani there I was
going back home when I happen-
got a deposition written tor her on the same lines as Brindra's, and ed to meet Bhagaboti Chashani who said,
'My daughter Chandra
alleged further: Chashini is in the third month ot her
pregnancy. Please let us havea
drug to terminate that pregnancy and we shall give you a por and a
bowl. I didn't agree fto her request]. The
following day I was at my
per names in the document appear in several variations: the surname vegetable plot when at one and a half dondo of the day the said Bhaga-
Chashani
Chashini and Chashin, and the prenoms Brinda as Brindra, boti Chashin came to me with an
as

Kali as Kalicharan. These variations have been retained in the Rongo as Rongu, elderly peasant of the village Simla.
translation. He is Bhagaboti's sons father-in-law, but I don't know his name.
2
Choitra is the rwelfth month of the
Bengal1
to the second half of March and the first half of
year and corresponds
roughly Bhagaborisaid, Please
give us a medicine to destroy the foetus. We
3
April. shall pay for it in cash, if required.' Since I didnt have the drug
Pohor and its variation, prohor, are a measure of tume
roughly equal to an
eighth part of a rwenty-four hour day. A quarter past the second
for abortion with me that day, I told Bhagaboti, Please meet me here
nigh may therefore be taken to correspond pohor of the at this vegetable plot tomorrow and collect the medicine; your son's
hour past
approximately three-quarters of
to
father-in-law need nottake the trouble to call again.' The next day I
an
4
midnight.
Dondo is a measure of time was at my vegetable plot. When the said Bhagaboti came to me at noon
equivalent rOugniy to 24 minutes, so thar the
expression 4 or 5 dondoes left of
the nignt may De taken to mean
a half to two hours before dawn, and the expression second dondo an hour and Phalgun is the eleventh monthofthe Bengali year and corresponds roughly
ofth
a little less than an hour after sunrise. y to the second half of February and the first half of March.
The habit ofa person belonging to the Boishnob sect.
 Chandras Death 275
274 The Small VoiceofHistory it. This
h i s t o r i a n it o
knowwhat to do with
for the
with her daughter Chandra Chashini and I asked for the prics
context, is
i tis
difticult
material which makes sense only if it
ce of the t, it narrative
of
medicine on the understanding that Bhagaboti's son's father- and comes after it. That is why an urge,
would pay it in cash, as promised the previous ay, the deca in-law isparticular
with
c o n n e c t sw i t
what goes
ea
before

the driving
force behind much of historical
Chandra offered me one paisa (a copper coin valued at cased
lat one sixty-fourth de
constitutes

for more and more

forplenitude
indeed insatiable, urge
and after askingthem. pastand restore it to an ideal
c a r c h - a ni n s a t i a t e d ,
that paisa,
part of a rupee). I accepted take into the
torn fabric ofthe
the vegetable plot. . [AD 1849] that urge to come up
is therefor frustrating for
work
their
.

seat at to
kages It
story. maverick which
the full of f r a g m e n t a t i o n - t h a t
alled
stalls a plot in its drive to
calle
p h e n o m e n o n

lio's estate from time to time,

the
inst
Our specimen is one such
breaks into Clio
and scatters its parts.
How is one to reclaim this document for history? The ordino nary of its irst sentence and the
as the lost beginning
denouement,

apparatus of historiography has little help to ofter us here. ned a

ntamed fragment, An anecdote with no known
for big events and institutions, it is most at case when made to rate the last so clearly testify.
end of the residuum of a dismem-
missing to us simply as
on those larger phenomena which vVisibly stick out of the debris of the come down
ntext, it has
cont

has developed, through recursive

past. As a result, historical scholarship bered past. way of neutralizing
could find
the
a

practice, a tradition that tends to ignore the

small drama and fine detail
It would
have helped if we in a series.
this fragment
decontextualization by situating
ofsocial existence, especially at its lower depths. Acritical historiography effects of which a series is
constructed and the
can make up for this lacuna by bending closer to the ground in order principles according to
For the relevant to one's under
to pick up the traces of a subaltern life in its passage through time. of the constructing authority are all
character know all too well how the
However, that is no easy task, as is made so painfully obvious by the is serialized. Historians
standing of what record room
series in an official archive or company's
a
material before us. The difficulty does not arise from its want of contents ofa
from the intentions and interests of the
authenticity. On the contrary, both the prose and the presentation of derive much of their meaning
material under study also
the document speak ofit as a genuine testimony to the event described. the firm concerned. The
government o r
constructed series in a book of
Writen in rustic Bengali (some ofwhich has inevitably lost its flavour belongs editorially
to a series-an
in translation), it abounds in spelling errors. Characteristically, too, it documents. But this has, alas, been designed
with such scant regard for
contents have been arranged
has no punctuation and paragraphing (like those introduced by us in the contiguities of time and place, and its
in this
serialization,
the English rendering). It begins with a mark of invocation which under rubrics so excessively broad in scope, that
combines the customary sign anji (resembling the Bengali numeral search, for a context.
particular case, is of no assistance at all
in our

seven, capped by a crescent) and the honorific word 'Sree', mediation of the
duplicated That search is made all the more difficult by the
for effect with the name of the deity, Hori. All this, taken but it is
together with law. Each of the statements in this document is direct speech,
an awkward mixture
of country idiom and Persianized phrases borrowed speech prompted by the requirements of an
official investigation into
from the language of the courts, speaks
as the work of a
unmistakably of this writing what is presumed to be amurder. 'Murder is the point at
which history
village scribe drafted in the service of the local law- intersects with crime', says Foucault, and the site
of that intersec-
enforcing agents. As such, it is witness to the torce of the The
thrust made by the colonial regime into Indian disciplinary tion is, according to him, the 'narrative ofcrime' (récit de cerime).'
rural society by the discourse of the broadsheet where this genre is represented in its most
middle of the nineteenth century.
the scale,
But with all its authenticity
this popular and accessible form has it as its function 'to change
document
important condition required by the normal
still fails to
satisfy an
It is the condition practice of historiagranhu This and the other extracts quoted in this paragraph are taken
from Michel
of contextuality. For unlessl
less his ograpl
material relate Foucault, Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et monfrère (P'aris:
 The Small Voice ofHistory Chandra's Death 277
276
m i n u s c u l e grain of history visible Brindra's and alleged further.. However, what is not so straight-
make the
enlarge the proportions, its access to the
narrative.'It is indeed forward is the disparity between the actual sequence of events and its
and open up for the quotidian
able to play a role in the exchange representation in the document. It emerges clearly from the information
such narratives are
in this way that between the quotidian and we have that the initiatives taken by Bhagaboti on hearing abour her
between the familiar
and the remarkable,
c o m m o n murder,
trivialized by the tolerance all daughters pregnancy and the transaction with Kali Bagdi preceded the
the historic. The administration ofthe drug by Brinda and death. Yet, in the
cultures have of cruelty,
uses precisely
this discourse as its vehicle to her sister's
which separates it from
the 'nameless order of the depositions Brinda had speak first. Consequently, the
to
uncertain frontier
cross the
and make its way into history-a history telling' began in medias res with an account of her part in the story
butcheries of a battle
crowded with frantic
autonomousand and Chandra's death, and retraced its steps analepticaly to fill in the
history
background by rwo other accounts-Bhagabotï's and Kali's. In other
a
without masters,
which fell foul of
level of power and one
events, a history below the words, the narrative in the document violates the actual sequence of
intervention
the law.
a path for crime what happened in order to conform to the logic ofa legal
If the discourse of the function helps discourse as a genre to
broadsheet to open
which made the death into a murder, a caring sister into a murderess,
to history, it is the
enter of judicial all the actants in this tragedyinto defendants, and
what they said ina
crime in its specificity, by reducing its
cut off that path by trapping of state of into ekrars. Construed thus, a matrix of real historical,
grief
defined legalities, and by
range of signification to set narrowlya
experience was transformed into a matrix of abstract legality, so that
assimilatingit to the existing order ofits negative determinations.
as o n e
the will ofthe state could be made to penetrate, reorganíze part bypart,
The ekrars (a legal for confessions or acknowledgements of guilt)
term
and eventually control the will of subject population in
a
much the
text are witness precisely to
such a process of de- human
which make up to impose itself upon mere
way as Providence is brought
our
same
as an
context and setting it up
taching experience from its living
an
of destiny.
empty positivity outside history.
It is a process intended to take out The outcome of this hypostasis is to assimilate the order of
the

these statements all that stands for empathy and pity and
leave nothing and order, to select
depositions before us to another order, namely law
deixis-the then content has to their
to show for their content except the dry bones of a only one of all the possible relations that their connotation
and there of a 'crime'. expression and designate that relation-that particular
as crime. It is that privileged
or
How this process is put in operation by the discursive strategy as the truth of an event already classified
a utterances recorded,
the law, how the latter gives the event a name and stamps it with connotation which kneads the plurality of these
from concerned individuals-from amother, asister,andaneighbour
purpose, is shown by the order of the ekrars. In an-all-too
obvious
the stentorian voice i\
sensc this
corresponds to the punitive procedure ofan initial deposition into a set
ofjudicial evidence, and allows thereby
followed by other depositions. The authorial volce voices which speak here
leading to arrests humble
of the state to subsume the and peasant the latter is to defy the
of the law register
interjects berween the first two statements in our text to s in sobs and whispers. To try
so: When the other defendants arrested the basis of which insists on naming this
were on tn pretensions of an abstract univocality
as a case. For,
|
Brindas deposition, Bhagaboti Chashin, mother of the decease many-sided and complex tissue of human predicament thing'
Chandra, also got a deposition written for her on the same linesas to take that word to mean, as it usually does,
an 'instance ofa
judice," is to conter on
oCcurring or a 'statement of facts in
cause sub a5 a
function of describing this death merely
these statements the
1973), pp. 269-71. My translation of these
faithful extracts is intended to
Dc 1976). p. 152.
to the
original than that of the
English edition of this work putD The Concise Oxford Dictionary,6th edition (Oxford:
as , Pierre Rivière... (Harmondsworth:
1978), pp. 204-6.
 279
Chandras Death

The Small Voice of History

278 III
thing's occurring, as a fact shorn of all other determinations than hateing of the colonial society
nether end
in such description that
was no room for a will to make them
subjudice. It was as if theresaid was meant to speak of a n event witho Bagdis
belonged
nd
and. abject pollution
converged to
in
or purpose and all that was The poverty
One
ne
authoritative description
the criminal' is, according H extreme

class and
caste.

The particular will of

to
dominant caste
amongstthellowest in the pale of the
where
a subject. which the injury possesses. To ase
9
them beyond
the sole positive existence officialliterature placed and another
10a
outskirts ofHinduism)',
exclude that particular will' of the so-called ellers o n the whose history in the
criminality and yet to
society
ower Sudra people
criminal and substitute the empty
factuality of 'mere state of afai
a Hindu
itself (low
Bengal
history
In Birbhum, a
w e s t e r n district of
of Chandras 'injury in one's readino is lost).''In
outside
for 'the sole positive existence cluster of villages
majority ofthe
cases

their kin lived in

a
their authors and their experience our family and
of these ekrars would be keep to
particular thana,12 they
the a r e a under LDubrajpur
where chis
read these statements as an archive is to
of history. By contrast, to northernmost part of male and female
as the
site for a struggle to reclaim for history an at the by occupation,
dignify them as the textual crevice of o u r past.
obviously agriculturists
and chashin being varia-
were chashani (chashini
experience buried in a forgotten chasha and
thus be said to belong to the
than a contest between two kinds of Surnames
indicate. They could
That struggle is nothing less the latter) ethno-
its aim to try and appropriate the event tions of
caste' assigtned to
them by Risley in his
politics. Each of these has it as of "cultivating actual function
But considered in the light of their
behalf of the state in one category
of Chandras death as a discursive site -on glossary. understood
in the other. However, the fact graphic m u s t be
case and on behalf of
the community in the local society, that designation
had already arrived at the site and standing For e v e n until fifteen years
is that the law, as the state's eaissary, as an euphemism
for a rural proletariat.
with
the Bagdis could be described, together
the event
before the historian and claimed it as its own by designating before the end of the Raj
as a 'crime, and the
utterances which describe it
district, as 'in the main...
as a 'case, the death
has been to clip those the other subaltern communities of that for
as 'ekrar. The consequence of this appropriation the entire series of services
incident within the life ofa community agricultural labourers' who provide[d]
perspectives which situated this time of three thanas, including
of anxieties and interventions endowed it with its agriculture. A survey made at that small percentage of
where a mulitude
Some of those perspectives could perhaps Dubrajpur, showed what a 'disproportionately district. While
real historical content. interests' they held in the real landed property ofthe
statements to the
be restored if the stratagem of assimilating these the Brahmans who constituted only 6.48 per
cent of the population
law were opposed by a reading that acknowledged
processes of the the land as proprietors, the Bagdis-9.13
them as the record of a Bagdi family's effort to cope collectively, if un-
owned 72.25 per cent of all while the
per cent of the population-owned no
land at all. Again,
with a crisis.
successtully,

Calcutta: 1981),
Hegel's Philosophy of Right, translated with notes by T.M. Knox (Oxford: HH. Risley, The Tribes and Castes ofBengal, Vol I(rpnt,
1967), para. 99, p. 69. Knoxs comment on this passage is relevant to my P. 43
Surveyandthe Settlement Operarions
" Government of Bengal, Final Report
argument:'Crime exists as a fact, an event, and it is "positive" to that extent, on

he writes, 'but as an event it is not difterentiated by any ctiminal character from in the District ofBirbhum, 1924-1932 (Calcutta: 1937), p.
17. All further rete-
other events such as accidents. As a Tme it exIStS only for those who understand rences to this work will be to Final Report.
it from the inside, i.e. as a purposuL action, arnd so considered, it lacks the posi-
See footnote 24 below for further details of this identification.
tivity of a mere event; it is made something genuinely positive, crime and not Risley, Tribesand Castes, p. 37.
a n accident, by the presence
in 1t or the criminal's wil, and in this sense it is 14
Final Report, p. 15.
it out his
"positive" only because carries
conscious
purpose. Ibid., p. 331.
15
Tbid.. p. 15.
280 The Small Voice of
History Chandras Death 281
Brahmans held 56.73 per cent of the land as
tenure-holders and:
per cent as raiyats, the Bagdis' share was 0.24 and 2.37 figured
figu. in patriarchal lore as c r e a t u r e s of
5.08
per cen nale lust;
and yet they
themselves available as objects of sexual
pectively. The proportions are reversed, significantly enough. all ready to make
which an indigenous
of such hypocrisy, in
t o o
case of land held as
virtue

under-raiyats: 4.85 per cent by Brahmans andn9 1the ratification.

For a
measure

anthropology, one has simply

by Bagdis.16 Nothing could speak more blends with colonialist
eloquently of the uneaual udal ideology the lascivious Bagdini, who
distribution of resources between the purest and richest at how the Brahmanical fantasy of
the social spectrum and the end oe one to
notice
Siva himself in
Rameshwar Bhattacharya's Sivayan
impurest and poorest at the other durino tempts
the god ot that ballad),
"
converges on the
the 1930s. In this respect the in the Bagdini Pala
progress of British rule over a period of (especially
in Risley's lribes and
Castes about the lax views
fifry years appears have done little to change the condition
to
learned insinuations of sexual morality-as was supposed
of
Bagdis. For, as Risley observed on the basis of the 1881 Census: the of the Bagdis...
on the subject
to 'allow their women
been demonstrated by their willingness
have
castes' and their tolerance of 'sexual
to
Most of the Bagdis are also to some extent with m e n of other
engaged in to live openly
ally as kurfa or under-raiyats, and comparatively few haveagriculture, usu- license betore marriage among
their girls."
attained the strain the
by patriarchal morality could
such
more
respectable position of occupancy tenants. In Western Bengal we The pressures exerted
That
find large numbers of them resources of an
entire community of Bagdis to breaking point.
cash or kind, or as nomadic
working as landless day-labourers, paid in in the instance given in our text.
cultivators, tilling other men's lands on is what seems to have happened
the bhag-jot system, under which of this crisis w a s headed at this
they are rernunerated by a definite The unfortunate family at the centre
share of the widow. (The document makes no
produce-sometimes one-halt, sometimes less, may be as
time by Bhagaboti Chashani, a
other than a son, and all
arranged with their immediate landlord. I can recall no instance of a mention of any male member of the family
Bagdi holding zemindari, or even a superior tenure, such and death,
a
the crucial decisions bearing, literally, on matters of life
mukarari, of any importance ... as patnior most unlikely thing to
seem to have been left to Bhagaboti herself--a
She had
Thus, as a labour force the
happen if a patriarch, in the person of aspouse, were around.)
Bagdis constituted a fertilizing sedi three children, including a daughter called Chandra. It was Chandra's
ment at the base of Bengal's involved the rest of the
the same time as a filthy
agrarian economy, while being despised at pregnancy and the efforts to terminate it which
deposit at the
very bottom ofits rural
Tamily and their kin in the developments that followed. Brinda,
the
The comprehensive society.
they were
exploitation-economic
thus subjected robbed them of
and cultural-to which other daughter, is the only female for whom no reference is made to any

Since this omission o c c u r s in the context of

a
their relatives
peasants they produced the wealth on the land prestige as well. As by marriage.
total mobilization of the kin group, it can only mean that she
was a
lathials and by hard work, and as
nightwatchmen guarded it for their
girl still living with her mother. There was nothing
unusual
and yet they were
stereotyped by the latter as landlord masters; Single
about this, for in the nineteenth century the Bagdis of West Bengal
criminality. Again, it was the dominance of theincorrigibly prone to both infant and adult marriage indiffer-
elite over this community which
made upper-caste landed were known to practise
Bagdi to walk wayto all the
women a prey to ently. Brindawas obviously grown-up enough
be entrusted to administer
16
This statistical information is derived
her sister's
village and back within a day and
from
showing the interests in land of certain Castes ina 'ComDarar Statement Sivayan, edited by Jogilal Haldar (Calcutta: Calcutta
Dubrajpur in the District of Birbhum', Thanas Suri, Siva-Samkritan va

17
Risley, Tribes and Castes, p. 42.
ibid., p. 71. Khayras
rasol and University, 1957), pp. 225-77.
1Risley, Tribes and Castes, pp. 39, 41.
20
Ibid., p. 39.
 Chandra's Death 283
282 The Small Voice of History
her way back to her parental home and as one of
the drug to the latter and generally to look after her-a woman
on

chore
the drug. Help also came from kinsfolk
prcgnant

negotiated
would be customarily assigned, under similar circumstances t which
theparty Chandra by her marriage-from
her mother-in-law, Srimoti,
unmarried daughter in a traditional Bengali household. any closest to

Gayaram, the widow's son, helped in husband, Magaram. Together, they contri-
husband's sister's
different way.
he mobilized the assistance of his wife's family. His Being married,
a and her
and a bel-metal bowl to pay for the abortion. But
brother-in.aw buted a brass pot
contributio qualifies as help is another matter-
Pitambar is mentioned in Brindas ekrar as one of the three whether Magaram's

ochers being Gayaram himself and his uncle,

men-th point of this aftair,
as wepresently
shall see.

Bhagaboti's brothe a moot

and the bowl, as the text tells us, were obviously not pay-
Horilal-who removed the corpse and buried it. Yet another member The pot
of Pitambar's family was his father, the
elderly chashi of Simla whose rment enough for the drug. The herbalist would not sell it except for
rash. In rural Bengal
under the Raj it was customary for such house-
was what
presence apparently persuaded Kalicharan Bagdi to sell the its most
hold utensils, usually regarded by poor family amongst
a as
drug for abortion. This is an important detail which illuminates both valuable possessions, to be exchanged for goods and services or hypo-
the cohesion of a kinship network and the
weight of male authority thecated for small loans. Kalicharan's refusal to accept this mode of
within it. The widow's word was not
enough for Kalicharan; she had insistence might cash have had something to do
payment and his
on
to be sponsored by a man whose
standing, in terms of seniority, was with the seasonal scarcity that generally hits the countryside towards
the same as that of her late husband. In other words, the lacuna
of male the end of the Bengali calendar year. At this time, in Choitra (March-
authority within the widow's own family had to be made up by that April), the village poor would have exhausted whatever savings in grain
borrowed from another family allied to it by
marriage. and cash they had made out of the winter rice harvest. Left with
nothingafter payingfor some oftheir debtsandthosesocial obligations
Chandra's Kin which occurred in this season, they would be busy soliciting loans
again in money and grain in order to answer the landlords' and
the to clear all arrears of
Unnamed Old Man A Horilal A superiorsettlement
tenants call by punyaha-the
rent
=
Bhagaboti O Srimoti of
(S) (M) (B)
ceremonial
well to stock
accounts due early the following month-as
as
up grain for sowing in monsoon and for consumption
during the lean period until the next harvest. In Birbhum, as in all of
the western Bengal tract known as rarh, this is the season of heat and
A Pitambar O =
Gayaram O Brinda Chandra =A O =

Magaram O Rongu drought when, traditionally, starvation combines with

(S) (M) (M (B, M
(B) (M) and rentiers to start the village poor again on their annual circuit of
creditors
A Deceased Male B Bhabanipur M
Majgram S Simla hypothecaion of household goods against small loans of money and
grain. Phullora, the heroine of the Kalketu episode of Mukundaram
Alliance by marriage brought heip from other
well.
daughter,wwho,quarters
There was Rongu, the widow's sisters In
as Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Pasher Panchali a bell-metal dish
own statement
Kalicharant was a member of judging by
and her dnges hands from a
poor Brahman woman to the village barbers wite for hai
household, a clear indication of her status as a Bong
ongshi Bagdis *upee. The time of that story is the early decades of this century, but the
ever, there is no way to find out if Bongshi wasmarried
her I wor
voman. How Practice has
apparently continued well into the post-colonial period. dee
in-law. Whatever the relationship, he has no role assigned
sband
to him
or father 5sbbutirachanabali, Vol. I (upnt, Calcutta: Bengali Year 1386), pp. 145-6, ana
document. By contrast, Rongu figures prominentyo to min the Chandra, Agricultural Workers in Burdwan', in R. Guha (cd.), Subalier"
Studies II (Delhi:
scort for the 1983), pp. 243, 247.
284 The Small oice of Chandra's Death 285
History
Chakrabarty's Chandimangal, spoke for all the indigent and low. TV
people of that region in her lament:
had its territorial base in a clus-
this crisis
anol shoman pory choiter khara inspired by
The solidarity
in the south-western
corner
of Birbhum--within and
chalusherey bandha dinu matia pathora. ter of villages not mention
d o c u m e n t does not
thana area. The document
Dubrajpur
around the But we know for
certain that his sister,
(The drought of Choitra scorched like firel I pledged Horilal came from.

bowl
my earthenware where were both married
to Majgram men.
just tor a seer ot rice.) Bhagaboti, and a niece, Rongu,
elsewhere:
children, however, had to findtheirspouses
Bhagaboti's own the daughter, in Bhabanipur.
That was in the sixteenth century. Two hundred and in Simla, and Chandra,
the son, Gayaram,
later, under colonial rule, the rigourof the season still droveseventy years to which the
latter belonged was headed at this time by

the The household

go begging for rice, but with a difference: what had to be peasant
is no mention
to
Srimoti, presumably a widow (there
pledged her mother-in-law,
was married to Magaram ofthe
same
now was not earthenware but
metalware. And yet, as bell-metal and of her husband), whose daughter
brass objects piled up with the creditor, the which insisted o n partners being selected
amount of grain lent
per village. Bagdi marriage rules,
unit of weight in metal would same subcaste," appear thus to
decrease.
By contrast, the seasonal from two different sections within the
scarcity of cash increased preference for the latter in three
have resulted, in this case, in a web ofalliances covering
particular
actions. At such a time ordinary trans-
of the year, during the first fortnight of Choitra, of these, Majgram and Bhabanipur, were situated,
Kalicharan Bagdi was astute
villages. At least two

the map shows, within about six miles of each other-indeed,

an

his services, which were as

enough to insist on payment in cash for as

highly specialized as they were urgently in easy walking distance: for, said Bhagaboti in her ekrar, one day in the
demand. A poor peasant, forced of Phalgun she had sent Brinda and Rongu to Bhabanipur to
by the drought to withdraw from month
paddy culture and left to till in his day tending a fetch Chandra and they returned to Majgram the same evening. Simla,
he knew the price of his skill, as is patch of vegetables,
evident from his ekrar: 'When the the other village, was about two miles to the south of Majgram not
said Bhagaboti came to me at noon too far for an old peasant like Gayaram's father-in-law to walk on an
with her
Chashini and I asked for the price of medicine daughter Chandra
that Bhagaboti's son's the on the
understanding occasion so urgent as this, but a little too much, perhaps, to cover on
tather-in-law
mised the previous day, the deceased
would pay for it in
cash, as pro wo consecutive days. Taken together, these villages formed kinship
a

Chandra offered me region for six Bagdi fanilies, all of whom felt seriously threatened by
accepted that paisa. One paisa!
1 one paisa.
Not a great deal Chandra's pregnancy.
.

pertise as valuable as his, or for a

to ask for an ex
life and death. But by drug meant to deal with a matter of
insisting on that particular mode of remuneration,
Kalicharan, though a
Bagdi by caste, put
23 A Bagdi cannot arry outside the sub-caste, nor inside the section to

clearly distinguished from the network of himself on a cash nexus C he belongs. Thus a Tentulia must mary Tentulia, a but a man of the

guinity and marriage. And this relations based on a woman

consan
transaction-the intrusion ofmoney dirishi section, to whatever sub-caste he may belong, cannot marry
into a tissue of anxieties shared of that section. Risley, Tribes and Casses, p. 38.
by r
to
undermine the abstract kinsfolk-helps
considerably
legalisim or the text and heighten iderably
onList of Villages,
My identification ofthese villages is based Alphabetical Otfice
typescript, ot the
by play between the contrasting
a
elements of its drama est Bengal, edited by PC. Banerjee (unpublished Calcutta
venalitu ty and solidarity. uperintendant of Census Operations, Government of West Bengal,
956), and Final Report, appendix VIll part II (map) and index to appendix V
Kavikamkan-Chandi,
22
Part l, edited by partl (Village List). Majgram has been identified with the only village ofthar
Biswapari Chowdhury (Calcutta: Calcutta Srikumar Band. List. Bhabanipur could be
Universiry, 1958), yopadhyay
p. 262.
and ame (though spelt Majhgram) in the Alphabetical from Majgram
either of the two villages of that name, both nearly equidistant
286 287
The Small Voice of History Chandra's Death

panchayats, prescriptions, prohibitions, etc.

RAJNAGAR
THANA and instruments

all
ofalliance. Speaking specifically of rural
the s y s t e m
hich governed
whic
that the government of
sexuality there.lay within
ch the institutional aspects of
could sa
which
(a t e r m in
one
Bengal
Pratappur o 8AKRESWAR Hajraput of samaj collapsed).
the
urisdiction
moral and political
are
attributes happily
Rampr Haridaspur yand their
society. c o n s t i t u t e d either
er by a caste or subcaste or by a
Karamkel local samaj exercised its
How a based on one or
more villages
community
multi-caste conduct of its
members can be seen from a
Khayerban the sexual
over
Ag0a authority
documents
collected from the s a m e region. They too
ofother

River
Pupsirn
Haisot Bhabetniur THANA
TapasDUE
number
Speak of
halfofthe
conditions in the
nineteenth
rarh tract
century.40 Territorially as
ofwestern Bengal during
well as chronologically
dramatized, for
the first

to a tradition
of rural politics which was
belong
HANA NoapareB
DUBRAPUR
OHETANPLUR
Kendua
kre5Wa

Thapçaon
Police Station
Piaces ot imoortne
ViagesMenstionod
they
one poignant moment, by
they may be used
to
the Majgram
illuminate s o m e
incident of 1849. As such,
of the mechanics of discipline and
explicicly mentioned,
punishment which are presupposed, though
Lohagram never
Renguni in the x*
So Rtara Chandra's death.
er Vitages in the ekrars o n official
this material does not relate to
However, unlike those ekrars,
Map of apart of Dubrajpur thana in Birbhum district showing the and wrong which was
justice. It belongs to that subcontinent rightthe historic, if largely
of
mentioned in the text villages
never painted red. As such,
it is witness to
to incorporate some of the
most
unacknowledged, failure of the Raj
They felt threatened because a
child born of an illicit, i.e.
socially vital issues ofindigenous social conflict within its hegemonicjudicature.
forbidden, liaison berween persons related as kin could have dire For each of these documents was addressed to
a tribunal which

consequences for an entire community. For, unlike Europe, where to the network of
colonial
functioned independently of and parallel
according to Foucault the deployment of sexuality' had already em- courts. Constituted at the village level by Brahman priests acting
erged as an independent apparatus ofsocial control since the individually or collectively, or by the leadership
ofa caste or subcaste,"
century and superimposed itself on the
eighteenth and the
'deployment of alliance,25 in operated by 'a system of rules defining the permitted
nineteenth-century India sexuality was still subsumed in alliance for t that had little to
all social transactions-tor forbidden, the licit and the illicit,28 in a manner
ain and adalat.
marriage, kinship, and 'transactions of do with the codes and procedures of the sarkar's
names and possessions-and for all the
theories which informed
them. The control of sexuality theretore docu-
devolved on those authorities PMCS, pp. 166-8, 175, 176, 179-83. The
serial number ofthese
nents-all from Birbhum and Bankura-and
their dates as shown in parenthesis,
and 247
240 (1823), 241 (1824),
at about six miles to the north 225 (1840), 227 (1804), 229 (1819),
within Kajnagar thana in one case and to the are
sOuth within Dubrajpur thana in (1834). prescriptive author-
the other. ipreter the latter, as forming a
cluster, if taken with the third Vilage, specimens of an individual constituting
such a
dimla, In better ror
The collective authority
of a
abour two miles south of Majgram. abbreviation for Simlakuri, ty, see PMCS, documnents no. 225 (pp. 179-80).
167-8).
document-no. 227 (pPp.
25
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuali Brahmans is sought in another
Vol. I group ofsix the petitioner addresses
the leadership of his
caste.

Pp. 106-7. ondon: 1978), In

no. 229 (pp. 169-70)
Vol. 1, p. 106.
4
Foucault, The History of Sexuality,
 Chandra's Death 289
Voice ofHistory
The Small and The paucity of male offenders in our sample is a telling index ofpatri-
convention,
288 caste

archal concern to exercise greater control over female than male

custom,

of local recollection-of the

an amalgam just
Those rules
often to sexual deviance was not the
were

reading -more with their help

in the form
came sCxuality. For the response of a samaj
rough-and-ready
Since the prestige of a caste was higher or lower
known as byabostha same for both genders.
constructed
a

shastras. The
judgment technically the physical constitution of
for ritualized
penalty,
word vyavasth ).
Nothine according to the degree of its purity-and
ofa prescription of the
Sanskrit
of the shastric and women as well as their cultural construction as objects of male lust
vernacular adaptation compromise
(a
eloquently ofthe
uneasy
word byabosta,
bebosta, or made them, in men's eyes, potentially the more polluting of the two
speaks
more
of that a widow's chastity, and a wife's sexual
sexes-a maiden's virginity,
rustication
than the verdicts appended
the c u s t o m a r y scribes, o r the
hands of village all highly valorized by a samaj. Any
brobosta at the Sanskrit to the inelegant fidelity to her husband were
even bastardized
in could pollute all of an offender's kin,
semi-literate
Brahmans violation ofnorms in this respect
by of these petitions. her and undermine the group's ability to
consanguines,
Bengali prose hardly
undernmined by heteredoxy especially
reproduce itself by recruiting and exchanging
was women
But the force ofa byabostha That it was sought, without ex- sustain and
first whispers of a gossip (janorob)
ofidiom or disregard of grammar.
offenders was itself evidence of that force. through marriage. As a result, the entire kinship
to its power-alerted
most of the petitions testity
self-confessed an

ception, by from the authority

of a samaj working
The latter derived directly network, and a father, brother, or husband would presume, willy-nilly,
panchayat and priesthood and ideologically tor a byabostha,
instirutionally through a woman's guilt
without any further evidence, apply
its system of alliance
shastra in order to prevent to whatever
through custom and
For the offence arose, and make peace withpriests and panchayats by submitting
unauthorized sexuality.
from being subverted by limits of was imposed by them. These impositions
penalty
could be oppressive
a liaison outside
the socially approved for a writ and
in cach instance, from for some of the less affluent villagers: one of them asked
for a prescriptive writ happened a desperate
sexual relationship, and the applicant protested his poverty (iha ati daridra) at the same
time in
one of the partners
in that liaison. To ask
invariably to be a relative of incriminate attempt to persuade the
tribunal-in this case his caste council-to
circumstances was therefore to
for a byabostha under such limit the price of exculpation to a sum he could afford.50 It was a
by prayash-
oneselfdeliberately and court the certainty of punishmentand feasting measure of their fear of exclusion from caste that people put up
with
chitta penitential
or
made up of fines, fasting,
measures
the tyranny of such prescriptions and their disciplinary jurisdictions.
tactic on
But willing submission to such discipline was a pre-emptive That fear was the reciprocal ofsolidarity under these circumstances.
sanction of out-
ward off the ultimate social
the petitioner's part to
The two must be taken together for any proper understanding of a
word
casting, the terror ofwhich is conveyed accurately by the Bengali community's reaction to the kind of crisis that irrupted on the Bagdis
for that practice-jatmara, literally, the destruction of caste. In short, was also the person who could,
it was fear rather than choice that induced people to seek byabostha
otMajgram. For the object of solidarity
d submit to prayashchitta.
by her transgressions, bring shame upon those she would most expect
The nature and extent of that fear can perhaps be best understood
to stand by guilty and share the rigour of all the
her when found
penalties prescribed by her samaj. Consequently, limitsofsolidarity
the
by considering petitioner's relationship to the transgressor. In each
a
within a kin group coincided with those ofits members dread ot caste
of these documents a
villager named the transgressor as a relative-
sanctions, and the terms used to call forhelp would evoke a sym-
by ego
indeed
consanguine in all instances but one (where
as a
it concernea but apprehensive response in reciprocal terms from
the rest of
a brother's
wife). In every instance, again, the relative was a woma pathetic
and referred to as tne
group. Thus, between siblings, a sister's cry in her distress woula
"My daughter, 'My sister, or "My sister-in-law
50
29
PMCS, no. 240, 175.
Ibid., no. 229, pp. 169-70.
p.
 290 The Small Voice of History
be addressed to her brother and his answer
inspired as ch by his meL Chandras Death
291
sense of obligation owing to a sister as by the fear ofhis own culh ned above. In each of them it is a man who comes forward to
accruing from any moral lapse on her part if such assistanceability
ere
m e n t i o n e

(paap), it is some other men who validate his

sin'
offered. In other words, the reciprocals that made up a not port
a
woman's

andiit is the authority of a male-

kinship terminology corresponded to the reciprocities of lexico by forma witnessing it,
s t a t e m e n t

and fear within thatparticularkinship group. A correspondenceof

solidar ninated samaj, personified by
a pandit or institutionalized by a
which issues the verdict of guilt and the writ for prayash
order c a n be discerned quite clearly in the mobilization of
panchayat,

Chand Lera By contrast, man's power over woman and over society as a

relatives during the four critical days betore her death. For, as sho in the Majgram ekrars by a formal absence-the
whole is documented
below those who rallied to her support as her brother, brother's wiC of Magaram Chashi. Although deeply implicated in all that
es absence
he stands outside the
brother, brother's wife's father, mother's brother, and of cou
rse as leads to abortion and death, purely legal deter-
There is no ekrar taken down from him, for
mother, sister, mothers sisters daughter and mother-in-law were also minations of the incident.
the ken of the law: the law does not see him-
those who had the most to dread from caste sanctions because of the he is technically beyond
misdemeanour of one who related to them respectively as sister, sister's it doesn't
have to.
too is absent andwhoseabsence corresponds
husband's sister, sister's daughter, daughter, sister, mothers daughter Yet, unlike Chandrawho
we have of her alive is when a paisa
or daughter-in-law. to her silence (the only glimpse
presumably in silence), he is given a
from her to Kal1,
changes hands Chashin who quotes
Table voice in the text. He speaks through Bhagaboti
four o r five months,
him as T have been involved, for the last
saying:
Kinship Terms and their Reciprocals Designating Relatives in an illicit love affair (ashnai)
Chandra Chashani,
with your daughter
Who Helped Chandra (Ego) ofwhich she has conceived. Bring her
to your own house and
asa result

s o m e medicine to be
administered to her. Or else, I shall
Relative's Ego's Terms Reciprocal arrange for
Names for her Kin Terms put her into bhek.
uttered by the speaker
Three short sentences, and e v e n these are not
document and
Gayaramn brother sister himself. But that does not stop them takinghold ofthe
Pitambar brother's wife's brother sister's husband's sister the
Pitambar's father brorher's wife's father daughter's husband's sister charging itwith the speaker's will. Indeed, the reported character of
Horilal mother's brother speech helps, somewhat paradoxically, to emphasize its commanding8
sister's daughter
an u n s e e n but pervasive authority.
Bhagaboi mother
daughter aspect. It resonates like the voice of
is allowed to
Brinda SiSter
sister For it is Magaram's will which thanks to this reporting,
Rongu mothers sister's daughter mother's sister's daughter set the scene, define its context, and determine
all the action in it. The
Srimoti mother-in-law made clear by their
daughter-in-law three sentences work together to that end, as is
and declarative first sentence
modal differences. The unmarked merely
imperative and intentiona
V stands in sharp contrast to the markedly fulcrum for all
function of the other two. Taken together, they
act as a
It is this interplay of solidarity and fear which situates this tragic ne which follow from that utterance-the alerting of a

episode firmly within the

politics of initiatives
ir is the direct outcome of a
patriarchy in rural Bengal. For social network to the gravity of an unwanted pregnancy in isn

village; the quick

itself from the consequencespatriarchal society's Chandra back her own
ot female
sexual
concern to protect the mission to bring to
the desperation
transeression. That consultation and medication;
concern is cleardy inscribed in the
series of
petitions for Png or resources for and save her sister;
the
sad
bvabostha Or Drindas
attempt to destroy the embryo
 Chandrd's Death 293
The Small Voice of
Histor
292 and her nondai (husband's sister's husband)-the reciprocal terms
Magaram's voice thu
dawn dispose of the corpse.
designating Chandra and Magaram as kin-turned into an ashnai,
to
furtive digging at providing a cue for its
docs not merely by
dominates the text. lt so
i.e. whether it developed out of mutual affection or some force of
its politics
drama but by clucidating the open an element of
circumstance subjectinga poor widow to the lust ofa man of authoriry
out into
For. what he had to say brought was left to him relaives. Whatever the truth of the beginning of
in all the statements, among her close
which. though implicit this affair, there is nothing in these depositions to illuminate any
power plav because he was not directly
involved
He could do s o
loneto spell out. unlike the others, he was not a secrets of the heart. They only throw a lurid light on its end as the
of the law himselt:
in the processes voice in the text
to escape heartless rejection of a woman by the man who got her into troubie.
was the only
detendant. Indeed. his That rejection shows where a liaison, with all that it might have meant
order-the only u t t e r a n c e
the discourse oflaw and
superimposition bv as a relation of intimacy berween rwo persons, stopped and social
for it to speak in terms
As such, it was possible
that was not an ekrar. forbidden love took
was sited at a depth
within the indigenous opprobrium against over.

of a power relation that In transiting from his role of the lover to that of a custodian of
arm of the colonial
the reach of the disciplinary
society. well bevond of a still active feudal
patriarchal erhics Magaram speaks for all men in a semi-feudal sociery
state. There. in
the unredeemed obscurity
and for male dominance itself. There is noching remotely of a iover's
and comprehensively sub-
culture. female sexuality was so relentlessly sentiment in what he says, no acknowledgement at all of sharing any
relief a woman could have from the
jected to surveillance that the only sexual pleasure with his partner. What comes through is the other male
domestic drudgery lay in
combined rigour of a loveless marriage and
some of the
voice-not the one that croons so exquisitely about love in Bengali
subtertuge and Subterfuge enabled her to dissolve
secrecy.
of interdicted desire in a socially approved
discourse-that of lyrics-but the disciplinary voice that identifies and indicts an offence
gall the voca- against public morality to pronounce: 'Abortion or bhek!' Or, is
the joke. Indeed, the joking relationship-a genre which, in it simply the same male voice speaking in one of its rwo distinct
bulary anthropology.
of marries thefigure of a social contradiction to
but complementary idioms-an idiom ot feudal love rooted firmly in
i.e. the tensions of unauthorized sexuality to those
a
figure speech,
of
the inequality of gender relations and a penal idiom used for policing
of ironywas not only allowed but positively encouraged, as wit
the second sex? In any case, by pronouncing his ultimatum as he does,
ness the mulütude of usages to that effect in the Bengali language.
But sexuality that was not contained and subdued by joke could be Magaram Chasha transcends his particularity and emerges as the
universal male trying to make his sexual partner pay for a breach of
driven underground and flourish in the secrecy of an illicit and re
moralityof which he is at least equally guilry. For that is precisely what
prehensible passion. is involved in his threat to force a Boishnob's habit on Chandra as the
The slide from subtertfuge into secrecy was as common in Bengal1
only alternative to abortion.
society of that time as it was commonly suppressed, although nothing
To wear a Boishnob's habit, that is, to adopt the dress, ornaments,
could be more difficult to document than the path such a slide actually
and body markings which make up the semiotic ensemble called
took in any given instance and its critical moments. For a
transgres bhek, is to move out of caste. As Akshaykumar Datta wrote in his
sion of that order, born in secrecy, survived
by stratagems secrecy.
of
Silence and evasion, fear and shame-all
least look away from, whatever exceeded the
conspired ro tolerate, or at

limits I think Ronald B. Inden and Ralph W. Nicholas are a bit too restrictive in
prescribed
politics within a kinship group, so long as it was not forced out into
of sexual
their description of the range of joking relationships in Bengali society. The
the light of day by violence or salaj-nondai relation, together with a few others they do not mention, could be
by a rupture in the mute complicity or
horizontal loyalties. We shall never know, quite legitimately added to their list. Inden and Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali
therefore, how that en.inently Culure (Chicago: 1977), pp. 31-2.
permissible joking relationship berween a salaj (wife's brothers wite)
 295
294 The Small Voice of Chandras Death
History Ghose, found guilty
authoritaive work, Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampraday, called
cal
Ramkumar
Saki and a
man,

to leave the village

when the
temporary of the text under discussion, "Those who a ner w
forced
w i d o w

were
liaison,
of caste (jatmara) was
a

and families and seek leave the o

Tfhaesru
cedly illicit
ep p o s e d l yi l l i c i t

the destruction
[spiritual] asylum with Lord Gouranoa asteg tomarily
used for
for them by denying the right
of
urge for world-abdication, must take the bhek."32 impossible
But to thie. their
made
engine
and life the ritualy indispens-
voluntary withdrawal from the institutions of Brahmanical and by cutting off
interdining with their kin
a on

mela sakole
turned

in favour
H of
barbers (amara napit puruhitget
of a way of life inspired by Chaitanya's úsm iests and
themselves initiated into
meaning accreted over time to make this word into an euphemicn anot teachings, atok
ofpriests
able koriachhi). However, the couple got
services

in Bahmon-
loss of caste. The result was a semantic called Jagomohon Fojdar
spread which for faith by someone bosta after some
reversed, the force of choice that was there in the reduced, ind and returned to
the
Boishnob
deed neighbouri village,
authorities who had
bhek came to signify loss of caste by original idea, an.and
khondo, a
among the
c o n s t e r n a t i o n

expulsion rather than by abdi.

cation. For a conversion to the Boishnob faith was often rime, causing
much
For, as the latter complained, the
woman

their expulsion. household and

the last refitoe rganized with her lover in the
same
of a person excommunicated by his or her to ive
samaj as began openly the basic rules governing
violation of caste codes. It was as a measure by whichpunishment for thereby s o m e of
now
meals, detying
a local
Hindu share his a Hindu
widow's life. She w a s e v e n
commensality in
society sought to defend its hierarchical and sacral structure. But such sexuality and
-an emblem of marital
status
o n her arms-
surgical operation did not always have the desired effect. The wound seen to w e a r bangles
a widow. Yet
there was little that the village
it inflicted could fester and infect the for
community by those strictly prohibited for they recognized,
freedoms which it was the object of the discipline to exclude in the very such outrages in their midst,
first leaders could do about no obligation [to
that 'Boishnobs were under
place. For an outcaste could his her to their great chagrin,
return to or
village in bhek and paksho daya nai).33
undermine the authority of the samaj by transgressions for which, as abide by any caste discipline]' (boishnober
casteism to embrace the Boishnob
a Boishnob, he or she was no Not all who w e r e driven thus by
longer answerable to the guardians of her lover to stand up to the
Hindu morality. faith had the courage of this widow and
home and village. On
An local despots who had muscled them out of
incident, mentioned in a petition of 1853, tells us how two
victims of caste oppression in Nabosta (within the Nanoor thana of the contrary, most of those who were forced
into bhek drifted into
of Boishnobs
akhras. These were a type of communal settlement
Birbhum) rurned the tables on their persecutors in precisely this way. ritual
which served not only as the principal site of their residence and
Here
32 activity but also as a limbo for all the dead souls of Hindu society.
The ritual of bhek is described in this work (edited
by Benoy Ghose [Cal- the disenfranchized of all castes gathered into a secondary society, a
cutta: 1970], p. 105) thus: [Sect leaders called Goswamis
usually rely on their large part of which was constituted by women
excommunicated
assistants called] Foujdars and Chhoridars for this
ceremony. The latter would their deviation from the approved norms of sexual conduct-a
get an acolyte to go through the ritual of head-shaving and bathing, confer on ror and brutality.
him a stylized knot on a waist-band (dor), a loin-cloth an (kopin), garment
outer deviation encouraged, and often imposed, by male lust of
(bohirbas), a characteristic mark of the sect on his forehead (tilak), a lesson in
t was, therefore, not uncommon to find a large congregation
and seduction,
ritual gestures (mudra) as well as a water por (koronga: derelict womanhood in akhra-victims of rape
telling beads (japomala) and a three-stringed necklace forghoti),
a necklace for an

deserted wives, women hounded out of homes for rebelling against

aalomala). They would then instruct him in
wearing (trikonthika women
They chargea minimum marriages to which they had been committed as infants,
a mantra.
fee of one and quarter rupee tor all
a this.
Moreover, offerings of food (bhog persecuted by their husbands families for their parents' failure to pay
have to be addressed to Lords Advaita, Nityananda and
cion and Boishnobs fed in large banquet. lt is popularlyChaitanya on this occa
a
believed that the insti- 35
tution of bhek (bhekasram) was created by Lord Nityananda PMCS, no. 248, pp. 180-1.
 296 The Small Voice 297
of History Chandras Death

up the dowries contracted for spoke this observer with

to
marriage, women with child. ale informants
out of wedlock, or local w o m e n . This w a s
simply women left in thelurch n born of the of religion to corrupt

largest group of female outcastes was made up,byin their lover But
Some made
the bout the
uses
in so far as
bitterness

all the force

and falsity of a halt-truth

Hindu widows ostracized for defying the controls most akhre a

which had
c e n s u r ew h i c h .
the heart of rural society, but
failed
sexuality by the local patriarchies. exercisedof th
tified
i t c o r r e c l yi d e n t i t a
canker a t
refusing to acknowledge
by
disce its aetiology
time to did Thus,
By an ironical twist, however, the asyluma same
religion to women.

complicity in
the what

be a transfer from one variation found :in.

woman at
akhra could turn out to an the
factor of male
of these
sebadasis you s e e here,
are genuine
of patriarhal How many Nobody knows
flotsam. Nobody
dominance to another. This other dominance did not said o n e ,
majority of them a r e
ideology Brahmanical Hinduism or the caste system rely on the devotees? The great lt is the s a m e
devotees? Th
of I hey are
r e c r u i t e d by procurers.
for its a e they
come from. would bring
culation. It knew how to bend the
relatively liberal ideas of Vaishnavimarti- Corrupted
themselves, it is they who
all akhras. and
and its loose institutional structure for its own story for here in the n a m e of religion
ends, demonstratino wives and daughters 'abor-
thereby that for each element in a religion which responds other people's described these akhras as
Another villager
to the well.
of the oppressed there is another to act as an si corrupt them
as

opiate. It is the
opiate of centres. According to him
bhakti on which the engine of tion

make of the
oppression turned in this particular case rural parts sometimes bring
an unmarried daughter
sebadasi-literally, Parents in these
to
a woman devoted to and leave her there for a
divinej service-an object of male exploitation for manuallspiritual akhra, if she happens to conceive,
or
to such an
labour and a r e told that the girl
has been sent to serve
sexual gratification. Indeed, exploitation of this order has month or so. The villagers
been esta after a successful abortion that the girl
blished long enough to constitute tradition that has the family's guru. It is only
a
continued well a girl dies [in the process].
Well, there are
into times. It is returns home. Occasionally,
our own a
continuity which feeds on the tragic insti- m e n who will
undertake to dig a pit in the sandbank
ofa river and hide
tution of Hindu widowhood in rural
subaltern population. As a
Bengal, especially among is the corpse there. The police would look away.
The police station is

of his
sympathetic and acute observer reflects on
far away. The guru sends his votive offering
there at regular intervals.
some
findings
from a recent visit to an akhra in a West Bengal
village not far from where Chandra died: Everything is in order.35
lt was as a variation on this theme that Magaram Chasha had
I couldn't help wondering where all these sebadasis must be
came from?... an pronounced his ultimatum: 'Arrange for an abortion, or she
answer
occurred immediately to my mind. In this wretched land there dumped in an akhra!' This attempt shirk parenthood by the des-
to
is no dearth of widows, hence of sebadasis either. Is there consigning its carrier to living death
no want in
anyscarcity of poor, dependent, childless widows in the truction of an embryo or by of
How they go through the ritual of countryside? an akhra earns for Magaram a place in a historical relationship
adopting a guru in order to escape lt
i5
from the aggressive lust of their husbands
elder or younger brothers, power-a relationship of male dominance mediated by religion. the laws
how they happen to congregate in a
relationship which is overlaid and obscured, in our text, by
akhras, who are the
tract them, seduce them and infect them people who at ncern to assign criminality to one or more of the
'defendants' in this
is to write the social history of all with venereal diseases-who case. But reclaim this material for history
the calls for a
that:34 project to
of abstract
movement in the opposite direction, so that the pall hand as that
g s m is penetrated in order to identify the murderer's
34
Sudhir Chakrabarty, 'Gobhir Nirjon Parher Ulto
(March-April 1985). p. 4. Bankey, Saromas, 6:2
35
Ibid. pp. 4-5.
 298 The Small Voice Chandras Death
299
of History
overruled
ofpatriarchy in its dual role of the
cynical lover and is deed aa
indeed
classic
classic
of choice
instance ofc
w a s killed by by
ian samaj. the here Chandra was
hort. For Chandra
authoritar What
we

rably by
have
necessity-by
fate, in short.
to
living death
save her
from death in a ghetto
ghetto
VI meant
e helped
act which khere, as in all tragedies, the triumph offate
mexo
was
which
act

of
In the end, as this document shows in the very
iects, Yet
rejects.
Yet
diminish human
dignity-the dignity
uncertain
no
of social
ultimatum produced the terms, Dat. iarchy
than
of rather determinationto
won out.
Magaram's desired efe . The enhance
and their
the pregnancy
they picked
to terminate
choice to which
pregnancy was terminated. Both the foetus and the through
carried it for three months were put out of the body that had w o m e n s

according
according
to
t o
The contradictions
it. Th
a measure
both of its gravity and
way. But it that choice w e r e
means an easy victory. The solidarity born out of fear hu.no was
act

to
arrive at
of the samaj to the
contained with their way
They could not defy the authority
it another solidarity activated by a different, complexity.
child born out of wedlock to live
indeed its widow with a
principle-namely empathy. If it was the of
contradictor extent
of enablinga
local society. lt
would be a long time yet before such
power
patriarchy which
brought about the first, it was the understanding of honourably in the Historically, therefore,
abortion
inspired the second. women which could happen in rural Bengal. defeat the truly cock-eyed
a thing
available for them to
The ekrar taken down trom Brinda is was the only
means
illicitchildbirth,
instructive in this themother alone culpable foran
Here she concentrates
meticulously, for the most part, on the
respect. morality which made and allowed the father to go scot-free. Under
curement, preparation, and pro- threw her out of society, termination of
administration of the drug that killed their decision to go ahead with the
Chandra. This is precisely what the law wants these circumstances different from what
her deposition to do. In a content very
its eye she stands nearest to Chandra's pregnancy acquired
the crime as its immediate when he confronted her mother with that
therefore, required to describe the agent and is,
of its commission in all Magaram had on his mind for
process alternative. lt was for him merely a ploy
to save his o w n face. But
detail. So we are given an account of
her part, spread over four this crisis the
inobtaining the ingredients for the days, the women who had gathered around Chandra at
drug,
by the right dosage twice a night, and mixing them for medication destruction of the foetus was a desperate but consciously adopted
stra-

for the caring for the pregnant woman y to prevent the social destruction of
another woman, to tight for
next
rwenty-four hours until the latter ejects the foetus, bleeds decision to
to death in extreme pain, and is her to a life with honour within her own sociery. The
right
the sequence of medication,
buried. It is only when, at this which Bhagaboti, Brinda, Rongu, and Chandra herself were party
abortion, death, and burial
point,
thar she exclaims: "I grinds to a halt of resistance againsta patriarchal tradition
administered the medicine in amounted thus to an act
would terminate her the belief that i tnat was about to claim yet another woman as its victim; and their
and did not realize
her. With these wordspregnancy that it would kill
she comes out of
the
metonymic resistance took that characteristic form often adopted by the oppressed
deposition identifies herself no longer as a
and trance of her
o Subvert the designs of their oppressors in the guise of contorming
person speak1ng of her sister anddefendant
a crime but as a

of another woman. The as a

speaking
of to them.

Chandra's body racked by fever and of that night of speaking

recollections woman the activity of women assumes a remarkable
een in this light
pain, of a violenceof ience in this text. Indeed, such activity is one of the most visitbie
haemorrhage and death, of a
corpse plucked foetus, of of an event which is otherwise soshrouded in secrecy and
darkness before dawn, and the surreptitiouslyburied in the pects
of the movement in it. Men
violence of a man's rejection ot arecollection, above all, of the name. lt is women who generate most
bine to produce an utterance woman supreme Va part to play as helpers, but they do so clearly
as auxiliaries: Kali
confers on this text the
which defies impregnated him-com
the ruse by who has the
be coaxed to sell the drug; elderly peasant trom
dignityof a
tragic discourse law and Dagdi to
s
Sumla mobilized simply to add a nodding consent to Bhagaboti
male relatives
decision to go ahead with the abortion; and the three
 The Small Voice of History Chandra's Death 301
300 that followws
the initiative for all exclusion of that body from domestic space immediately after parturi-
who figure as
undertakers. By contrast,
the party
make up
It is they who tion; the quarantine imposed by prohibitions and purificatory rules to
lies with the
wonmen.

Magarams threat and brings the young widow back to her ensure the safety of the social body from parturitive pollution, and so
which travels to Bhabanipur herbalist, get hold on. That such prescriptions should so often be accompanied by an
clinch the deal with the
village. It is they again who lies convulsed
administer it, and care
for Chandra as she equally prescriptive male chorus in praise of motherhood is quite in
of the drug, from these interventions is hardly For such idealization serves a twofold purpose-on the one
exclusion of m e n order.
with pain. The
excluded because such
interventions relate to a
hand, as a foil to those bans and exclusions which symptomize the fear
fortuitous. They are
woman's own. It is the
domain ofthefemale body
by which male dominance seeks to and, on the other, as
defend itself,
domain regarded as
Simone de Beauvoir, pregnancy
is above all a atechnique defuse the threat which womans consciousness poses to
to
where, according to
drama that is acted out
within the w o m a n herself in
terms of the
patriarchy at every childbirth in a traditional society.
immanence of her body and its transcendence: That is why the Bagdi women of Majgram chose a far from instru-
contradictory pulls ofthe the time mental role for themselves even as they pooled their resources and
the immanence ofher body at just
the pregnant woman feels
The rhetoric and development of this wit to arrange for an abortion demanded by a man speaking for all of
when it is in transcendence.3
immanence of that body as it 'turns the local As a role situated within the social domain of
patriarchy.
drama lie, on the one hand, in the
in nausea and discomfort, making
the flesh feel like childbirth it defined their independence negatively by excluding men
upon itself from all those decisions and initiatives which were vital to the termi-
on the other, in the body's
nothing but'a gross and present reality, and, and blossom.. a
nation of Chandraspregnancy. What is equally, if not more, important
transcendence as 'the flesh becomes root-stock, source
.

foetus within her is that even in their apparent complicity the women acted in accordance
stirring towards the future, when by carrying [the with a project that was by no means identical with Magaram's. The
she feels herself vast as the world.
natal latter had made out his ultimatum as a choice between abortion and
If, therefore, in many societies like the one under discussion bhek for Chandra. Either ofthese would have served his own purpose,
care lies exclusively with women, this is so not simply
because men
which was to get himself off the hook and escape social sanction. Since
would have it that way. On the contrary, this may well be a sign of
her all he wanted was to destroy the evidence of his guilt, it could have been
patriarchy's retreat in the face of woman's determination to assert achieved as well by the physical destruction of the incriminating
control over her own body at a time when, in pregnancy, she knows it.
that her body is at last her own, since it exists for the child who belongs embryo as by the social destruction of the person who carried
the
However, for the women who had rallied in support of Chandra
to
her.This knowledge constitutes a challenge which is genuinely alternatives were by no means of equal value. In their judgement
dreaded by male authority. For it operates in an area of liminality not a choice
abortion with all its risks was preferable to bhek. This was
striccdy governed by the will of husbands and fathers-an area which the engine
made by women entirely on their own in order to stop
the latter as fraught with
appears to
uncertainty and danger, since of male authority from uprooting a woman from her place
in the
women speak here in a
language not fully comprehensible to men and
conduct themselves by rituals that defy male local society.
reasoning lo explain this resistance merely in terms of the obligations of
Hence the elaborate structure of self-defence set up
patriarchy's Kin and kutum is to ignore what is
distinctive about it and sets it apart
precisely
to meet this challenge-the shastric injunctions which con solidarity
from kinship solidarity. It is a fundamental the ofsuch
condition
demn woman's body as
impure by definition at childbirth; the physical that the relation berween the genders within
group, whatever its

and non-antagonistic. For without

0 structure, should remain cohesive
These and the other extracts
species, hence no kin
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
quoted in this paragraph are taken from Such cohesion there can be n o reproduction of a termination
of
37
Ibid.,
(Harmondsworth: 1984), pp. 512--15. Sp. But that relation turns antagonistic whenever
p. 513.
 303
302 The Small Voice Chandra's Death
of History relations. In
limits of kinship
pregnancy is enforced by patriarchy. Onsuch the
the sentence

occasions
t r a n s c e n d e d

they defied
stands
theological
so clearly opposed
or
sociological,
towoman's interest that
can hide the truth
an'sauthori
no suhr.
of their relation.
women
of
Majgram

abortion
as

oflivingd e a t h t h a t had
an
a l t e r n a t i v e

been already
m a d e by
made
to bhek,

pronounced upon
other w o m e n to
the other
Chandra. That

women

ath that
choosing
.
effort
one
of dominance and subordination. No experience, other hip as life as a
result of
this
this eftort
Brinda's despair
as she said:
'I
T
of rape, elucidates sexual
politics more forcefully for the tha that she lost
her
save her is the truly
tragic import of
belief hat it
t e r m i n a t e her
would terminate
it would
Betrayed and bleeding, she sees a core of coercion in what wom: m e d i c i n e in that
the at tragedy was was
"That tragedy
was mutual consent and an abstract
she belie administered
the
realize that it would kill her.
and its
masculinity in the person
thought was her lover. Simone de Beauvoir writes of the she
and did
pregnancyand
not

of the strength
of women's solidarity
for its
time,
this disillusionment thus: bitternessof a
measure,

limitation.3

when the better to succeed in

man,
fulfilling his destiny as man,:asks
woman to sacrifice her reproductive
possibilities, he is exposing
the hypocrisy of the masculine moral code. Men
abortion, but
universally forbid
individually they accept it as a convenient solution ofa
problem; they are able to contradict themselves with careless cynicism.
But woman feels these contradictions in her wounded flesh; she is as
arule too timid for open revolt
against masculine bad faith;she regards
herself as the victim of an injustice that makes her a
criminal against
her will, and at the same time she feels soiled
and humiliated. She em-
bodies in concrete and immediate form, in
herself, man's fault; he
commits the fault, but gets rid
of it by putting it off on her... Itisat
her first abortion that woman
world will never be the same.8
begins know. For many women the
to

It is this knowledge of man's bad faith which makes woman wiser

about the limits of
a
solidarity that pretends to be neutral to gender.
The rounded, unitary world of
kinship can never be the same tor her
again. "Soiled and humiliated she has recourse to an alternate
solidarity-a solidarity of women. Not an 'open revolt
armed witn
trumpet and banner, it is stilla visible and
loud enough protest in
a
society where initiative and vOICe are given to
man alone. For when a
victim, however timid, comes to regard
she already steps into the herself as an object of injustice,
of a critic of
role the system that
het, And any action that follows
from that victimizes
elements of a critique
practice of resistance. In rallying round contains the
hour of her rejection by
garam and the Chandra at the editorial
team as

samaj he spoke for, the to my colleagues of the Subaltern Studies

Scott for cheir com-
lam grateful Rajyashree Pandey, and James
38
Tbid., 509-10. Kamal,
pp. well as to Ahmed
ments on this essay.