Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation. Cutting Off The Nose Among Tribal Societies in Pakistan

Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation.
Cutting off the Nose among Tribal Societies in

Pakistan
Author(s): Jürgen Wasim Frembgen
Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Nov., 2006), pp.
243-260
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
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Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation. Cutting off the
Nose among Tribal Societies in Pakistan
JURGEN WASIM FREMBGEN
Bodily mutilations, such as nose-cutting, are recorded worldwide from different cultural
settings. Hence the custom is not solely an example of "Oriental violence and cruelty" (at
times quoted in Orientalist sources from the colonial period). I want to emphasise that I am
not arguing from the vantage point of a colonial discourse with its criticism of "degenerate
and barbaric" social customs. Instead, this paper deals with the human body as a symbol
of society. It is particularly focused on the symbolic significance of nose-cutting and on
understanding this violent impulse as a social practice. The underlying notion is that cultural
categories, such as "honour" and "shame", are encoded in body morphology and affect
behaviour.
Excurses into psychology, sexology, medicine, mythology, history, folklore, and literature
are intended to highlight the diversity of phenomena related to this form of bodily mutilation
as well as to identify the nose as an important site of symbolic production and thereby to
ground the limited number of ethnographic references found in scholarly works. Because
of the paucity of data daily papers and a few older somewhat outmoded and odd archival
sources have also been taken into account. Additional empirical notes on ideal notions of
the "beautiful nose" were collected during conversations with people in the Punjab and
in the North-West Frontier Province (Pakistan). Thus, I try to elucidate a specific practice
of bodily mutilation beginning with a rather general view and then focusing on embodied
emotions and punitive actions prevalent particularly among tribal societies in Pakistan and
neighbouring regions of South and West Asia. Nose-cutting is understood as an ultimate
sanction reacting to the transgression of social and moral norms due to a shameful act and as
a brutal means of dishonouring a person, for instance in times of war.
Notes on the Sexual Symbolism of the Nose around the World
The homology between nose and genitals (phallus and clitoris) is well-known in philosophy,
literature, psychology, and sexology.1 On the one hand there is a sort of formal resemblance
between these projecting organs and bodily margins. In folklore, nose and penis are thought
to correlate: "... the length of one supposedly corresponding to the length of the other, both
spewing contaminating substances of similar consistency".2 Both nose and penis protude in
1 Freud, 1948: 392; Bakhtin, 1987: pp. 136-137, pp. 357-358; Miller, 1997: p. 94; Himberg, 2001: pp. 86-94.
2 Miller, 1997, p. 94.
JRAS, Series 3, 16, 3 (2006), pp. 243-260 ? The Royal Asiatic Society 2006
doi:io.ioi7/Si356i863o6oo6444 Printed in the United Kingdom
244 Jurgen Wasim Frembgen
a grotesque realistic "doubling" from the smooth borders of the body as a closed corpus.3
In addition to the fact that both the nose and the private parts have orifices, the peak of the
nose is said to correspond to the clitoris and the nostrils are said to remind us of the vulva.
The homology is present in many folk traditions around the world; in India, for example, a
popular Mithila-painting shows an androgynous form of Shiva with the nose in place of the
phallus,4 and among the Brasilian Mehinaku Indians of the Amazon basin the clitoris is called
itsi kiri which means "nose of the vagina".5 Following a similar idea of the displacement of
the genitals upward, in German the vulgar expression "Fotzengesicht" (cunt-face) refers to
the phallic nose as clitoris and to the rest of the face as the vulva. In Punjabi it is seriously
insulting to call somebody naka ("nose"), because the nostrils refer to the body openings of
the private parts. Likewise, in other languages vernacular terms for the nose are also used as
expressions for the male sexual organ.6
In folklore, there is the widespread belief that people with big noses (such as the phallic
grotesque nose of Cyrano de Bergerac in the drama written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand)
have an excessive sexual power. In medieval Rabelais-inspired tradition, sayings like "to
carry the nose high" not only means to be proud (equivalent to the German "hochnasig"),
but also obliquely refers to an erection.7 "To show somebody a long nose" can be explained
as a gesture of phallic threatening; comical aspects are highlighted in the use of long noses
in carnival costumes and in caricatures. Sneezing is sometimes called "the little orgasm".
Southern Slavonic folklore has a number of vulgar expressions and stories referring to
fucking with the nose and fucking "in the nose".8 Equally revealing for this inversion of
the body-hierarchy is a saying from Alsace "Er hat d'Rotznas" ("he has a running nose"),
meaning that the person suffers from syphilis.9 Here allusion to disgusting mucus serves as
a clear reference to promiscuity. Following Islamic rules of purity, according to the hadith
(sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad), the believer is required to clean his nose
three times "for the devil spends the night in the interiors of the nose" (Sahih Muslim, Kitab
al-tahdrah, No. 462).
Thus, one is aware of the close correlation between the olfactory organ and
eroticism/sexuality. Obviously the nose, with its veiny and arterial folds connected to the
cranial cavities, is the preferred sensitive channel for smelling pleasures of a sensual kind.
Erotic intoxicants, such as sweet perfumes and fragrances, associate a dimension of pleasure
and delight. If a person is sexually aroused, both the nose and the genitals are filled with
blood, get hot, and begin to swell. Sexual practice can include the mutual rubbing of the
nose on the partner's genitals,10 which clearly demonstrates the importance of smell in the
vita sexualis.11 This particular erotic sense is related to the two vomeronasal organs (VNO)
which are situated behind the nasal cavities and are connected to the brain by nerves. If a
3Bakhtin, 1987, pp. 38, 76.

4 Doniger, 1980, pp. 327.
5Duerr, 1990, p. 231.
Donner and Menningen, 1987, p. 136.
7 Donner and Menningen, 1987, p. 137.
8Krauss, 1904, pp. 205, 341; Trgjic, 1905, p. 17.
9 Godeliick, 1906, p. 138.
10Duerr, 1993: p. 263; see also Malinowski, 1979: pp. 278, 282-283.
11 Bloch, 1905, pp. 445-446; cf. Himberg, 2001, p. 91.
Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation 245
person smells another's pheromons, that is to say alluring substances emitted as body odour
(i.e. sweat especially from the glands in the armpits), which has an effect on the hypothalamus
through the VNO and it will stimulate sexual desire. Pheromons therefore control a number
of emotions, particularly sexual attraction.
Meanings attached to the Cutting off of the Nose around the World
Psychoanalytic perspectives based on Freudian categories assume correlations between the

nose and sexual pleasure. According to the above-mentioned arguments, nose-cutting would
quite literally fit the transgression of moral norms. Psychologists like Kakar have interpreted
nose-cutting as symbolising clitoridectomy or female "castration" as well as male castration.12
In the Freudian sense, it could also be related to a male inferiority and a fear of sex complex
following the 'loss of face' (aberu), which has been discussed with reference to Iranian
culture.13
Actually, in many cultures under specific, culturally encoded circumstances, a persons
nose - a key organ of sense - was cut off as a severe form of punishment. As the
nose is probably the most conspicuous feature and surely the most prominent part of
the physiognomy, this atrocious form of violence was tantamount to an outlawing of the
respective man or woman. The practice has nothing in common with other well-known
forms of bodily mutilations, such as circumcision, clitoridectomy, knocking out of teeth,
decorative scars and tattoos, etc.,14 which can be interpreted in the framework of rituals of
transition. Nose-cutting has to be viewed against the backdrop of the notions of "honour"
and "shame" (in the moral-sexual sense) and within the discourse of ritualised emotional
force.
The barbaric act of disfiguring victims thereby turning them into "Ungestalten" (a
medieval term still used in Modern German which can be roughly translated as "Freak"
and equated with the Latin "deformitas") is known since antiquity.15 In Ancient Egypt an
adulteress was proscribed in that way.16 Likewise in Europe during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, adulteresses, men who seduced married women, homosexuals, and
prostitutes were mutilated by having their nose cut off, in Spain, their nostrils were slit
open.17 The same gruesome punishment awaited a seducer in Russia if he copulated with
his fiance, even without using force.18 There are also reports that the nose of an adulterous
gypsy woman was bitten off by her husband.19 Similarly in the case of Native North
Americans and Mexicans, men bite off their wife's nose if she committs adultery. In 1938,
the Swiss medical doctor George Montandon, proposed that all Jewish women, younger
than 40, who had sexual relations with non-Jews, should have their noses cut off "because
nothing is more ugly than the removal of the nose".20
12 Kakar, 1978, p. 99; cf. Narayan, 1992, p. 144; Wilson, 1995, p. 80.
13Bakhtiar, 1994, pp. 137-141.
14 see also Greenblatt, 1997.
15 cf. Groebner, 2003, pp. 10, 71-88.
16 Wrede, undated, p. 404.
17 Wrede, undated, p. 324; Duerr, 1990, p. 290; Himberg, 2001, p. 98.
18 Duerr, 1993 p. 632, endnote 33.
19 Laszlo Vajda (personal communication, 2 July 2003).
20 Groebner, 2003, p. 71.
Ample evidence of nose-cutting can be found throughout the twentieth century. Usually
sexually deranged serial killers, for example Ed Gein in Wisconsin during the 1950s, or
the murderer Georg H. of Munich (1994) who mutilated the dead bodies of his victims by
chopping off their nose, lips, genitals, etc. Several other cases were reported in the world
press during the 1990s, particularly from the Far East (Taipei, and Shanghai), where men
bit off the nose of their wife or girlfriend who had allegedly been unfaithful to them.
The sensational character of such a bodily mutilation has been exploited in films such as
'Die Umarmung des Wolfes' ('The embrace of the wolf, by Rainer Wolffhardt, 1992) for
instance, a wife, betrayed by her husband, bites into the nose of her younger rival. In Roman
Polanski's 'Chinatown' (USA 1972), the hero's nose is slit open because, while investigating
corruption, he 'poked his nose in' too deep.
The aforementioned examples should suffice to show that bodily mutilation by nose
cutting occurs here and there in various contexts in tribal, rural, and urban societies in
order to shame a person for his or her whole life. Before examining the main ethnographic
material from a number of tribal ethnic groups in and around Pakistan, it will be useful to
present a short survey of nose-cutting as a theme in the mythology and folk tales of this
region.
Cutting off the Nose in South and West Asian Mythology and Folklore
The severed nose appears as a powerful narrative motif in oral tradition as well as in factual
reality The first example refers to the relationship between nose and shame: within Indian
mythology, a passage in the Skandapurana (5.82.18) mentions that Parvati once became very
enraged, recalling an insult of her former father Daksa-Pracetasa, and as a reaction rubbed her
nose.21 In that moment, a terrifying and fierce female named Bhadrakali emanated from her.
A famous case of nose-cutting is reported in the Ramayana where Lakshmana, the younger
brother of Rama, chops off the nose as well as the ears of the cannibal giantess Surpanakha,
the sister of the demon-king Ravana. The reason for this mutilation was that she felt a strong
desire for Rama and had tried to kill his wife Sita. This incident is also part of the Ramlila
performances and a particular focus of the nakkatayya-^zmdez in Benares.22 Ancient Indian
legal texts, such as the laws of Manu and the Dandaviveka of Vardhamana Upadhyaya, already
specify the cutting off of noses as a punishment for sexual transgressions.23 This traditional
form of punishment is also reflected in a story about the 'nose-cutters' (nak katne wale) which
deals with false gurus and gullible disciples.24 The underlying motif is the noseless scoundrel
(marked as a criminal), who had declared himself a guru and dupes others to cut off their
noses as well in order to get the spiritual vision of a god ("not blocked by their nose"), is
well-known in Indian folk tales. In the context of the destruction and desecration of Hindu
temples by Muslims, in many cases the noses of the sculptures are chopped off.
In Indian Buddhist literature of the post-Ashokan period, there are descriptions of women
whose bodies are spectacularly disfigured through various bodily mutilations, for instance by
21 Granoff, 1980, p.87.

22 See Tandon, 1961, p. 198; Kumar, 1988, pp. 180-197; Narayan, 1992, p. 17; cf. Kakar, 1978, p. 99.
23 Wilson, 1995, pp. 79, 96.
24 Narayan, 1992, pp. 132-157.
nose-cutting.25 These women are represented in the texts as being monstruous and thus men
who seek to overcome their sexual desires and practice celibacy are deterred from feeling
lustful.
In folk versions of the Central Asian Kesar epic, narrated in parts of the Karakoram, the
hero eventually cutsoff the nose of his wife because she was kidnapped and thus was probably
"unfaithful" to him.26 Furthermore in a myth of the Parun-Kafirs in the Hindukush it is
recorded that Munjem Malik, a god with a demonic character, chopped off the nose of his
wife because she did not give birth to a child.27
In the Muslim period, we find, for example, a Timurid miniature painting in a copy of
the fable Kalilah wa Dimnah (painted in 1431 for Baysunghur Mirza in Herat) shows, as
the caption says, how "the shoemaker cuts off the nose of the barber's wife".28 Similarly
in an Afghan folk tale from Herat, which is framed after that fable, it is a shoemaker who
first cuts off the nose of a gypsy woman and then the one of his own wife on account of
immorality.29 The mentioned occupations might be taken as an indication that in those days
the custom of this bodily mutilation was predominantly found among the lower strata of
the society, where shame is not denied or hidden. Finally, in Persian folk tales, nose-cutting
occurs as a particular motif: one story deals with a man who, on his wedding night, cuts
off the noses of his 40 wives; in another story a cunning woman lures three punters into
her home, outwits them, and chops off the nose of the first one, cuts off the ears of the
second one, and emasculates the third one.30 The threat of cutting a woman's nose can also
be found as a motif in contemporary short stories.31
The Beauty of the Nose in Pakistan
Considering that in a number of Muslim (and non-Muslim) societies the act of unfaithfulness
and sexual misconduct is punished by nose-cutting,32 it is reasonable to focus briefly on the
culturally coded human body in Pakistan, the main regional focus of this paper. Emic views
specifically deal with the beautified and sexual nature of the body. As far as the face is
concerned, beside a fair skin-colour, a long and slender nose is part of the local ideal of
physical beauty, particularly for women. In the Punjab, for instance, people admire a straight
nose (khan nak) which is in poetry also described as a satwin nak - a slender nose whose peak
is slightly turned upwards. Within the plains of the Punjab and the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP), the tall, straight-nosed women from Kunja (the birth place of the folk
hero Mahinwal near Gujrat) and from Mardan as well as those from Kashmir are especially
praised for their beauty. Newborn sons are praised by the women of the family by saying
in Punjabi edi nak mate gai which means that the child's nose resembles the mother's nose.
25 Wilson, 1995.
26 Skyhawk, 1996, p. 188; cf. Jettmar, 1975, p. 78.
27 Jettmar, 1975, p. 76.
28 Grube, 1988-89, p. 188, 111. No. 5 (the copy is kept in the Topkapi Sarayi Library in Istanbul, H. 362 folio
36v); cf. Mills, 1991, p. 245.
29 Mills, 1991, pp. 234, 236.
30Marzolph, 1984, pp. 247-248, 246, cf. 166.
31 Abbas, 2000, pp. 133, 220.
It has to be emphasised that nose-cutting does not belong to the corporal punishments (hadd) of the Islamic
penal law.
To quote Zadran, who writes about the Pashtun in Southeastern Afghanistan: "... when
a mother goes out to hunt for a beautiful bride for her son, she discusses with him upon
return the quality of the nose's prominence and height in addition to the eyes and the hair.
A woman who lacks the attributes of a prominent and high nose, black eyes and long hair
lacks beauty and consequently does not attract the attention of the man".33 Likewise, from
Southern Punjab, it is recorded: "An eagle nose is considered very beautiful, the nose of
the infants is accordingly pulled and moulded".34 This is reminiscent of the Persian poet
Nizami's description of Shirin's delicate nose as being shaped like a sabre made of silver. It
is not without reason that, in Pakistan, a general non-verbal gesture denoting the female sex
is to place the index-finger of the right hand on the right side of one's nose, the seat of the
lady's nose-ring. As far as the male sex is concerned, a strong (phallic) nose is associated with
masculinity. In Indian literature, poets praise the slender curved "parrot-nose" (shukdndsa,
shukandsika) with narrow nostrils.35
The reverse of a long, slender, and straight or aquiline nose is a flat and crushed-looking
one, known in Urdu and Hindi as chapii. The latter word is also used as a noun for a "woman
with a flat nose" and for "a lesbian woman". In Hunza (Karakoram/Northern Pakistan),
women tease a man by saying gunikish imupush - "you have an ugly nose". In Punjabi and
North Indian folk belief, witches are thought to have similarly flat and crushed noses. As
demons are known to select beautiful, perfect looking children as victims, especially in the
Northwest, but also in other areas of the subcontinent, parents sometimes pierce the right
nostril and the right ear of boys and call them Chhiddd ('nose-pierced') or Nathd indicating
the wearing of a nose-ring like a girl.36 Particularly those small children whose elder siblings
have already died are protected against malevolent beings and against the "evil eye" through
such bodily mutilations.
Embodied Emotions and Punitive Actions: The Mutilation of the Nose in

Pakistan and Adjacent Regions of South and West Asia
Cutting off the Nose Metaphorically and related Notions of Honour and Shame
In traditional societies of South and West Asia as well as in the Near East, honour is of utmost
importance within indigenous value systems and therefore fiercely defended. Honour is
almost regarded as a norm with a religious dimension, even if not directly related to Islamic
doctrine. When male honour is at stake in a time of crisis due to the behaviour of women
belonging to his family, shame is the accompanying cause propelling men to violence. Both
constitute an ideology that affect the whole kinship group (compare the Punjabi proverb
"One doesn't share the bread, but one shares the shame!") and especially contribute to the
power of men over women.
To determine the correlation of this concept to the nose-metaphor, a glance at dictionaries
is revealing. In Arabic, derivations of anf ("nose") are the words and expressions kasr
33 Zadran, 1983, p. 260.

34 Gazetteer Muzaffargarh District, 1910, p. 51; cf. Rose, 1907, pp. 239, 242.
35 Personal communication by Renate Syed (Munich).
36 Temple, 1883, pp. 22-25, 28; Masani, 1911, p. 169.
37 For a more recent discussion of this concept see Wikan (1984).
anfahu - "to humiliate somebody", anafa-t ? "sense of honour", anuf? "chaste (woman)".
Likewise, in Persian, bini zadan not only means "to turn up the nose", but also "to despise".
A veil covering the nose is called hint-war. And probably also binah ? "the place in a bath
where people undress" is related to this semantic field. In Urdu, a proud and arrogant person
wears a "high nose" (unchT nak) or has his "nose turned up" (nak charha). Interestingly,
rubbing each other's nose is part of the traditional formal greeting among Arab nomads.
In the following, we focus our attention geographically to the Eastern Iranian world and
to the Northwest of the subcontinent, namely to the area of the Pakhtun, Baluch, Sindhi,
Kohistani, Punjabi, and Rajput. Among these basically tribal societies we learn that, for
instance, in rural Rajasthan the collective honour of the villagers is expressis verbis called the
"nose of the village". Any act, that violates the moral code, evokes personal and collective
dishonour (for example to the family) and renders one the subject of malevolent gossip.
Accordingly, "loss of face" or "to lose honour" is considered shameful and expressed in
Punjabi as "to lose the nose", for instance, if one were to invite wedding guests to stay for
less than the usual seven days.38 Similarly, a father is considered dishonoured if the dowry
of his daughter does not correspond to the social status of the family. If a Punjabi is shown
up and ridiculed by somebody in the presence of others, he will complain tu ne men nak
kat-wadi ("you have cut my nose"), meaning "you are ruining my self-respect". This kind of
"nose-cutting", which is called in Urdu and Punjabi nak-katke or ndk-katwdna, is expressed
in Pashto as pozah de rata prekhrha or in the saying thdza ma pozah prekhrha - "you have
cut my nose". Among the Pakhtun shameful acts by which a father's "nose is cut" are, for
instance, if a son steals, has male-male sex, or gambles. The dishonoured husband, who is
unable to control the sexual honour and purity of his wife, would say as reported from Bannu
(North-West Frontier Province): "A nose-cut-off misfortune fell on my matting".39 Women
in Afghanistan would tell a person, who has violated the family honour: binT-te boborl ?
"Cut your nose yourself!" And a Pakhtun mother, who gets angry with her daughter, still
uses the common threatening expression "May your nose and ears be cut!".40
Popular sayings and proverbs mentioning the nose reveal further layers of meaning related
to the key roles of honour and shame: Thus, in Southern Punjab there is a saying which
goes: oh nak kappan kon phirdd hai, oh akhendi hai hula ghard de - "The husband is trying to
cut off her nose, and she asks him to make her a nose-ring".41 This proverb, which is also
known in Pashto, is said about a woman who is not loved by her domineering husband and
might even be dishonoured through his affairs with other women, but she still demands his
care and attention. The notion of self-humiliation is expressed in India through the formal
address: "I will draw a hundred lines on the earth with the tip of my nose".42 In fact, in the
Punjab, it was the most humiliating traditional punishment to be ordered to rub one's nose
a hundred times on the ground.43 Likewise, an extreme gesture of submission to somebody
or to beg God or a saint for forgiveness is to press one's nose three times on the ground
38 Tandon, 1961, p. 82.

39Thorburn, 1876, p. 407.
40 Zadran, 1983, p. 259.
41 Gazetteer Bahawalpur State, 1908, p. 204.
42 Anand, 1945, p. 98.
43 Sheikh-Dilthey, 1976, p. 191.
(in Urdu tin dafa ndk zaniin par ragarna; thus, the expression ndk ragarnd means 'repentance').
The same meaning has the expression ndk ghisni. Here the nose refers to humility which
represents a particular type of emotion with connotations of modesty, but also of awe and
reverence. On the other hand, "to harass somebody" is sometimes expressed in Urdu by the
idiomatic formula ndk channe chabwa diye ? literally meaning "to make somebody chew gram
with his nose". Another component of this metaphorical sense of the nose is highlighted by
the following proverb from Bihar (North India): mom ke ndhkjene nawdin tene nawe - "One
with a wax-nose is easily led".44 This is said for somebody who has no will of his own, being
a tool in the hands of others, and consequently shows a weak sense of personal honour.
The Bodily Mutilation of Women
Apart from metaphorical expressions of nose-cutting creating a sort of literal reality, actual
mutilations inflicted upon women happen in serious cases of shame (as disgrace) related to
the improper behaviour, particularly of a woman who is found to be indiscreet, flirtatious
with other men or# unfaithful. If a woman breaches a taboo, especially if she allegedly
behaves immorally and her chastity is violated, the husband, who is exposed to dishonour, is
thought to have the right to implement the customary law of punishing his wife by bodily
mutilation. According to legalistic orthodox Islam, neither men nor women are allowed to
commit adultery (zina), but in practice this rule applies to women only. The immorality of
women is considered to be an outcome of the dangerous human desire of fitna (temptation,
disorder), which constitutes a disruptive force threatening the social order. If a woman
commits adultery, meaning the most serious transgression of moral norms, she could be
punished according to local customary and tribal law with the cutting-off of her nose. But
the latter is considered to be an individual decision and a domestic affair, not a public issue
to be dealt with in the village courts which handle cases of traditional unwritten law. It
is said that, nose-cutting is (or more frequently was in the past) carried out if the woman
belongs to an inferior social group where retaliation is not to be feared. Frequently, even
mere allegations of flirtatiousness or infidelity seriously threaten sexual honour and can lead
to such bouts of violence within the family. The /ztfdd-punishments of Islamic religious law
(not based on the Qur'an), stipulate that in cases of adultery, a married woman would be
stoned to death and an unmarried woman would receive ioo lashes. (The adulterer, by the
way, would meet the same fate or, following local customary law, he would be emasculated.)
Within North India and Pakistan, nose-cutting was a common form of punishment and
proscription in areas such as Uttar Pradesh, Madya Pradesh, Rajasthan as well as Punjab,
Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.46 In former times it was more
widespread than it is today (now women are killed directly), but it still occurs, for instance,
in Indus Kohistan and Chilas (Northern Areas) as well as among the Pakhtun living in the
Tribal Areas and in the area of Kohat and Bannu (NWFP). As far as their fellow tribesmen in
neighbouring Southeastern Afghanistan are concerned, we learn that "... in ancient times,
when a Pashtun woman committed adultery and it was known to her relatives and husband,
44 Christian, 1891, p. 88.

45 Chaudhry, 2002, pp. 54-55.
46 Cf. Sen, 1991, pp. 67-68.
the woman's father, brother or husband would cut off her nose and ears and would break
her legs and shave her head".47 The author adds that, according to customary law, it was not
allowed to kill the woman. He attributes the later change from mutilation to killing to the
law of Islam which requires that adulterer and adulteress both have to be killed.
References to nose-cutting in the Pakistani press are numerous and bear testimony to
continuous gender-based violence. Here are a few examples of this sort of "privatised"
crime which have been documented over the last 15 years. In the context of numerous cases
of rape in Pakistan, a particular horrible incident was reported in October 1991 from the
Sindhi village of Kehrore Pakka, where a woman was attacked and raped by eight armed
men. It is said: "After the assault, the assailants cut off the victim's nose and fled with her
clothes, as a mark of accomplishment".48 A gruesome incident of marital abuse happened
in May 2001 in a village in upper Sindh: "... one Mohammad Malook Khoso chopped off
his 10-year-old wife's nose and ears in a flash of anger".49 Without further commentary, The
Nation reported on 23 rd August 2001 that a husband chopped off the nose of his young wife
and cut off her hair in a village near Abottabad (Hazara District). On 2nd November 2002,
the Daily Times (p. 10) mentions that in Lodhran near Multan (Southern Punjab) a cousin
was so much angered by the refusal of a young woman to marry him that he cut off her lips,
nose, and one hand. In Sheikhupura near Lahore, a man cut off the hair and nose of his wife
over a domestic dispute.50 Another case from the city of Multan highlights the matter of
honour among affinal relatives: "Ashiq Hussein cuts off his wife Mumtaz s nose and lips after
her parents' refusal to allow their two daughters to marry Hussein's brothers. In retaliation,
Mumtaz's brother Buddhay Khan assaults his wife who is also Hussein's sister. Both women
are taken to a nearby hospital and stated to be in critical condition. But the family refuses
to register a case maintaining that the feud is a private matter".51 Recently it was reported
that a young woman and mother of three children (sheltered by a women's organisation in
Lahore) had been accused of being unfaithful and afterwards had been mutilated whereby her
husband held her arms behind her back while her own brother cut off her nose.52 Nowadays
such cases rarely happen even in rural areas, and, in comparison to the more widespread
honour killings, they are considered minor affairs within the male-dominated public and are
consequently not pursued in the court. Finally the mutilative act of ripping nose-rings off
the faces of women (such as reported from military confrontations) should be mentioned,
this appears as a sort of symbolic rape.53
47 Zadran, 1983, p. 259.

48 Herald, January, 1992, p. 51.
49 Herald, June 2001, p. 65.
50 Daily Times, 18th March 2003.
51 Herald, May 2004, p. 29.
52 Die Zeit, No. 28, 1 July 2004, p. 14.
Here it might be insightful to give an excursus into the imagery of the nose-ring: Among Pakhtun nomads,
women wear an especially big nose-ring {peza, pezwan) drawn through both nostrils which is a particular sign of
beauty. The word nath for nose-ring refers to virginity and is also used as a denomination for the hymen. This sheds
some light on the wedding-like defloration of a courtesan's daughter, as reported from Avadh: "Her first patron
removed her nose-ring and replaced it with a nose-flower" (Shah, 1993, p. 55). This ritual is called nath utarwai
among the community of dancing girls and prostitutes in Lahore. In Urdu, the expression nathnT utarna (lit. 'to
take off the nose-ring') therefore also means 'to deflower a virgin'. When, in Iran, the bridegroom found his bride
already deflowered by somebody else, he had the right to cut off her nose and ears and to chase her away (Masse,
1938, p. 77). As far as the piercing of the nose and the wearing of a nose-ring in Indo-Pakistan is concerned Dar
252 Jiirgen Wasim Frembgen
These ethnographic references show that the nose is considered the main focus of female
shame and punishment. The underlying psychological principle is that, through a shameful
act, the moral order of the honour's defender has been shattered and his integrity has come
apart. Experiencing (from his male perspective) disgust and anger (felt in his own swelled
nostrils!) when visualising his wife's immoral behaviour and also fearing public shame and
ridicule, he seeks to balance the debt of honour through retaliation. Among the Pakhtun
the latter is known as badal which constitutes an important concept of their code of honour
known as pakhtunwalu54 Therefore the response of the dishonoured man must be reciprocal.
By cutting off the woman's nose, more as a "rational" act (keeping the above-mentioned
social relations in mind) rather than in a fit of rage, he imprints his power on the surface of
her body. Thereby he violently turns his wife's or daughter's beauty into ugliness, leaving a
person whose face is distorted. The disfigurement is so serious that "noseless" even means
"faceless". The victim, whose life is torn apart, is deprived of an important medium of
emotional expression.
The visible deformity itself tends to create feelings of disgust in the victim as well as
in others. As significations of potential disgust, body-orifices, such as the nose, ears, and
mouth, are particularly related to the notion of the "grotesque body", the antithesis of the
"aesthetic body".55 In this context, Miller also mentions the crucial importance of the nose
in sexual disgust referring to the contaminating mucus coming out of it. He adds: "Certain
advocates of celibacy in the early church thought it a sovereign remedy for intrusive sexual
desires to meditate on the presence of snot inside beautiful female exteriors".56 Bakhtin
has pointed out that mutilating the nose creates a crater and exposes the "bottomlessness"
and "openness" of the interior body, it reveals the "body-grave" or "body-hell".57 The
gaping wound corresponds to the gaping maw of the vagina in its vision as a disgust-evoking
polluting locus. Thus, we realise that nose-cutting is firmly integrated within the moral
matrix and (terrible) logic of honour and shame. The mutilation, which alters the integrity
of the victim's body, finally helps the mutilator to reclaim his honour and status within the
social relationships existing in a village.
This act of brutal punishment serves as a permanent stigma on the woman, who can at
best eke out an existence by working as a despised servant. The disfigurement of her face
not only displays the nature of the crime, but also renders her ugly and evokes feelings
concludes: "It would seem as if this ornamental nose-clasp was a symbol of an earlier form of female "infibulation",
which was a device used in certain parts of the world to prevent illicit sexual intercourse. Obviously in the language
of this symbolism the removal of the nose-ring would, like the "defibulation" of the genitals, denote a state of
sexual licence or marital consummation. Where, as among certain Muhammadan tribes, the bride received the
gift of a nose-ring from the bridegroom on marriage, it is conceivable that the bridal gift was an emblem of the
obligation of sexual chastity imposed on the woman by the man - the meaning of the symbol being drawn from
those iron links and padlocks (known as chastity belts) which have played a very prominent part in the erotic history
and folklore of the Middle Ages. In such cases the nose-ring would essentially be a post-nuptial ornament. The
subject illustrates how the same symbolic conception may sometimes give rise to quite different customs centred
around a common material base" (1969: p. 161). (cf. Cole, 1988, p. 228).
54 Steul, 1981, pp. 129?177; Lindholm, 1982, pp. 209-238; Grima, 1992, pp. 70-79.
55 Bakhtin, 1987, p. 357; Miller, 1997, pp. 89-108; Menninghaus, 1990, pp. 86, 90?105.
56 1997, p. 93.
57 Bakhtin, 1987, p. 78.
of disgust among others. She no longer inspires desire in her husband and, if he divorces
her, nobody will marry her again. There is an element of display in branding a victim in
this way, who will in reverse cover his/her gaping wound? (unlike in the case of men, women's
noses are rarely surgically restored).58 The stigmatised woman will in any case try to conceal
her face behind a veil and she is in future excluded from public view. She has literally "lost
her face", which is the main fear within Muslim cultures driven by shame.59 More than that,
the disgrace inherent in the mutilation also represents a punishment of her soul. In this way,
she becomes the embodiment of suffering and grief, emotions which are well-rooted, for
instance, among Pakhtun women in the NWFP.60 But, unlike other women who ritually
narrate and perform their misfortunes, shame and the stigma of immorality prevent an alleged
adulteress from doing so. Rather it is the husband, father or any other male relative as the
cause who "performs" his anger and rage vis-a-vis the public, less as an individual expression
than as a strong social statement to reinstate their reputation.
58 As punishing people by cutting off their noses, ears, and lips has happened frequently since antiquity, local
physicians, for instance in India, specialised in plastic surgery and reconstructed the mutilated parts of the body.
Operation thereby became a means to alter the mark of stigma (being apparently an option for men, but usually
not for afflicted women). Within the Muslim world, the Prophet Muhammad reportedly allowed the use of an
artificial nose, made of gold, if a warrior's nose was cut off by an enemy during a battle (Krawietz, 1991, pp. 255,
264). This was legitimised by the particular medical necessity (dariira) to remove the bodily fault.
Referring to Leroux's early account on such a particular type of surgical treatment of facial injuries, published
1817 in the 'Journal de Medicine', Joseph reports that Indian physicians as early a 1000 BC took skin-flaps from
the bottom, beat them with clogs for animation, and transplanted them to the nose (Joseph, 1931, pp. 564, 598;
Kastenbauer, 1977, p. 166). More widespread was the kind of rhinoplasty, already mentioned in the sushruta samhita,
whereby an arrowhead-shaped skin-flap with stem was turned down from the forehead and used for reshaping the
nose (Diepgen, 1949, p. 44; Margotta, 1967, p. 33; Schott, 1993, p- 59; Porte, 2000, p. 143). This famous surgical
technique of Ancient India was later taken over by European medical science and is still known as the 'Indian
method'. In addition, Europeans used the so-called 'Italian method' consisting of the gradual transplantation of a
skin-flap from the upper arm, first described in 1597 by the Italian surgeon Gaspar Tagliacozzi (Gurlt, 1964, p. 507;
Schott, 1993, p. 157; Goerke, 1998, p. 28). Nowadays modern operative procedures following the Indian method
are used, such as transplanting facial skin-flaps.
Surgeon Dr Giles, a member of the Lockhart-mission to Gilgit (Northern Pakistan) in 1885 had a lot of
reconstructive surgery to do on noses, because "... plastic surgery had a great future in a place where the normal
punishment for the pettiest of crimes was mutilation" (Keay, 1979, p. 130). Similarly, Pennell, who was in charge
of a medical mission station at Bannu (NWFP) at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, reports:
"Every year in the mission hospital we get a number of cases, many more women than men, where the sufferer
has had the nose cut off by a clean cut with a knife, which sometimes cuts away a portion of the upper lip as well.
This being a very old mutilation in India, the people centuries ago elaborated an operation for the removal of the
deformity, whereby a portion of skin is brought down from the forehead and stitched on the raw surface where
the nose had been cut off, and we still use this operation, with certain modifications, for the cases that come to
us" (1909, p. 193). Nevertheless, in some cases Pennell also procured artificial noses from England (Pennell, 1909,
P 194)
Cosmetic surgery, which is not based on the principle of medical necessity (dariira) and only tries to enhance
beauty, is generally not permitted by the shari'a law as it would be an infringement of the 'integrity of the human
body' known as hurma (Krawietz, 1991 pp. 270-271, 274, 276). The straightening of the nose (tashih i'wijdj al-anf),
however, is a matter of controversy, a case between healing treatment and purely cosmetic surgery. At present,
particularly Iranian women are eager to beautify their noses through cosmetic surgery. It is reported that about 80%
of the young women of Teheran below the age of 30 visit a beauty-surgeon; each week 300?400 women have an
operation on their nose (Brunner, 2001). They do this not only to reconstruct their bodies in line with particular
western ideals of female beauty, but also as a form of resistance against the officially imposed covering of the female
body.
59 Cf. Bakhtiar, 1994, pp. 107, 141.
60 Grima, 1992.
The Bodily Mutilation of Men
Although women are no doubt the main target of "honour-mutilations" (and "honour
killings"), men are also subjected to it. In this context, honour is associated with the idea
of keeping an unscathed body.61 Such honour represents a counter model to physical defeat
where aggression leaves its marks on the body.
In 329 BC, Alexander the Great ordered that Bessos (Artaxerxes), who had murdered
Dareios III, should be punished first according to Persian law by cutting off his nose
and ears before executing him. Under Ottoman rule, the mutilation of Marco Antonio
Bragadino the Venetian defender of Cyprus is a famous case.62 When Lala Mustafa Pasha,
the commander of the Ottoman forces, conquered Famagusta in 1571 after a nine month
siege, he ordered first that the nose and ears of Bragadino was to be cut off and then
he was to be tortured to death (in retaliation for the killing of Turkish hostages). In the
Mughal empire, its founder Babur (r. 1494-1530) reports that he ordered that the noses of
his soldiers were to be slit if they did not perform their duties as watchmen in the night
or if they behaved improperly towards local people.63 Interestingly, his descendant Jahangir
(r. 1605?1627), upon his accession to the throne, forbade the cutting off of noses and ears
for any crime whatsoever.64
Nevertheless, the custom persists still. A few decades ago, in South Waziristan (NWFP),
a Mulla s nose was cut off because he behaved disloyally and did not follow the boycott of a
particular mosque.65 Earlier, among the Pakhtun, not only in cases of adultery, but also in
other conflicts, the man's nose was cut to shame him in the public.66 As a retaliatory measure,
North Indian dacoits mutilated some policemen in the same manner.67 Usually, the brutal
chopping off of extremities (nose, ears, genitals) happens in war. In 1793, a Maratha, who
fought for the British army, was taken prisoner by the soldiers of Tipu Sultan and subjected
to the cutting off of his nose and one hand.68 During my ethnographic fieldwork in Nager
(Karakoram/Northern Pakistan), I was told that, in the first half of the nineteenth century,
the cruel invader Gauhar Aman killed twelve people from the Nager-village of Budalas
through cutting their noses and chopping off their hands and feet. Sven Hedin reported such
a punitive torture towards enemies from Caucasia in the early twentieth century when Tatars
killed their Armenian victims through first cutting off their noses, ears, and tongues, and
then piercing their eyes.69 Also envoys sometimes had to fear death and bodily mutilation if
they were received in a hostile way. In the Mughal period, the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri
(r. 1540?1545) sent an embassy to the Safawid Shah Tahmasp requesting the extradition of
emperor Humayun, but the Iranian monarch ordered the envoy's nose and ears to be cut
off.70 Referring to the early twentieth century, we learn that "... the residents of a village
61 Groebner, 2003, p. 88.

62 Miksch, 1992, 242 ff.
63 Beveridge, 1969, pp. 234, 383.
64 Thackston, 1999, p. 26.
65 Ahmed, 1999, p. 79.
66Pennell, 1909, p. 193; Zadran, 1983, p. 259.
67 Sen, 1991: photograph after p. 192; Frain, 1994, p. 53.
68 Porter, 2000, pp. 142-143.
69 Hedin, 1910, p. 97.
70 Ahmad, 1999, p. 26.
in the Deccan cut off the noses of three Brahman money-lenders, who had been, in the
opinion of the villagers, unduly active in enforcing the repayment of debts. The mutilated
money-lenders fled to the nearest town, in which there were a hospital and a civil surgeon,
and besought the latter to stitch on the severed fragments of their noses".71 According to
a narrative from the valley of Gor in Northern Pakistan, tax-collectors coming from Gilgit
were similarly treated by the locals: in one particular incident, two were pushed into a
gorge and killed while a third was humiliated by having his nose and one ear cut and then
being sent back to Gilgit.72 In relation to honour-and-shame complexes, my colleague Are
Knudsen reports from the remote Palas valley in Indus Kohistan: "Currently, even minor
infractions such as using a pocket mirror to deflect the sun's rays in the direction of a girl,
is [sic] severely punished by disfiguring the accused by cutting off his nose, in some cases,
in conjunction with one or both ears".73 Recently, in December 2002 in Northern Iraq,
warriors of the Islamist group 'Ansar-e Islam' mutilated their Kurdish opponents by cutting
off their noses, ears, and hands.74
Conclusion
In the sections above, I have tried to decode the bodily symbolism of the nose. Within the
epistemology of the body social, a part of the physical body is representationally used as
a natural symbol.75 According to theories of unconscious motivation derived from Freud,
this symbolic form is shaped by psychic energies inherent in the correlation between nose
and sexuality. On the one hand, nose-cutting (with its related moral and sexual innuendos)
is often used metaphorically in everyday speech in Pakistan against the backdrop of the
notions of honour and shame. On the other hand, we are reminded that "... in so far
as we are hostages to the physical, the symbolic cannot but be expressed through physical
means".76 Thus, there are cases where honour (as disgrace) is felt to be at stake to such an
extent that another person's nose is actually cut off. This dimension of reality becomes clear
in embodied emotions and punitive actions. Nose-cutting appears as a special punishment
inflicted on someone in retaliation for his deeds. Culture-specific ethnographic data show
how - alongside ideals of chastity (sexual purity) and marital fidelity - the complex of
denigrated honour and the strong emotion of shame is dealt with in actual behaviour among
different rural and tribal cultures of Pakistan and adjacent regions. Because of its close
association with morally and sexually defined honour, it is the nose which is cut off and not
other bodily parts such as the eyes, the tongue, or the sexually less meaningful ears which
have different symbolic connotations.
Anti-individualistic local codes of honour constitute the normative basis for a system
of dominance and strict control of bodies to the point of brutality.77 The female body
particularly is considered to be a vessel of male honour and through domestication is turned
71 Edwardes, 1925, p. 94.

72 Schmitt, Ms, p. 152.
73Knudsen, Ms.: 16.
74 Die Zeit, No. 11,6 March 2003, p. 13.
75 Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987, pp. 18-23.
76 Ahmed, 2002, p. 75.
77 Cf. Turner, 1984, p. 120.
into a passive, docile body. Following a Foucauldian line of reasoning, we realise that
particularly in the case of sexual shame, the female body is marked by the brute power of
male authority.78 But, although nose-cutting remains an atrocity predominantly perpetrated
by men on women, the underlying discursive framework of honour and shame is an ideology
not only of men, but to which also women assent. Similarly, studies on tribal Arab societies
have shown that shame moralities are both shared by both men and women.79
Based on a moral system reflecting the folk-traditions of various ethnic groups, the margins
of the body and especially its orifices symbolise especially vulnerable points of entry and exit
and are therefore carefully controlled.80 Cases from past and present reveal that, in the context
of transgressing moral boundaries and norms, the body is regulated by the humiliating act
of mutilation embedded in indigenous systems of punishment. Local concepts in South and
West Asia, although nowadays representing marginal traits within their cultural systems, focus
in their punitive and denigrating actions for adultery on the nose as a mark of the beautified
and sexual nature of the body Being a crucial body part of attractiveness, its distortion leads
to a lack of "wholeness" of the body with repelling reactions by others.81
If one follows the homology between nose and genitals cutting off the nose in case of
female sexual immorality, which is considered as evil, is atoned for. The message is telling
and the act of mutilation thus represents a type of "symbolic" torture, much as the tongue
of a blasphemer was cut in medieval Europe.82 The penalty so-to-speak is inscribed in
detail on the body, the change of status is displayed. The chopped-off nose thereby becomes
a mark of the "crime", a lifelong "sin-sign" for the loss of sexual honour: the heinous
mutilation reflects the heinousness of the "crime" - nose-cutting constitutes a "reflecting
punishment". The disfigured and defaced body functions as a bearer of symbolic value: the
mutilation of the body causes the mutilation of the self. As the nose-metaphor is in Pakistan
deeply embedded in active body vocabulary, "honour talk" and also body care (with respect
to the beauty of the nose), the archaic act of mutilation is specifically directed against this
protruding organ of the face. In any case the result is the destruction of the person's face,
"a loss of face". Nowadays, we observe an impoverishment of the symbolic meaning of the
nose83 as the notion to destroy the face seems to become the basic motive for mutilation.
This is shown by the current customary practice in South Asia and Turkey where the cutting
of the nose has been mostly replaced in sections of the society (lower middle-class) by the
even more atrocious practice of throwing acid onto the face of the victim.
I am arguing that nose-cutting is a form of punishment or, perhaps more aptly, a "ritual
of degradation"84 mediated through the cultural categories of honour and shame, and,
simultaneously, showing an intense emotional force inherent in and "performed" respectively
"managed" by (male) individuals. At first glance, the act of mutilation appears as a primal
force arising from jealousy and feelings of anger, rage, and hate, that is to say from the anti
rational domain of life. In this regard, it may be compared to the Ilongot of Northern Luzon
78 Foucault, 1976.
79 Abu-Lughod, 1989, pp. 285-286.
80 Douglas, 1966, pp. 121, 126.
81 Cf. Jones, 1984, pp. 49-56.
82 Foucault, 1976, p. 60.
83 Cf. Himberg, 2001, pp. 84, 101-102.
84 Turner, 1984, p. 40.
(Philippines), where headhunting could be a means to "... relieve hearts burdened with
the 'weight' of insult, envy, pain, and grief".85 But, at the same time, the mutilation seems
to be driven by a rational "performative" impulse following the culturally-motivated logic
of retaliation expected by the social community. Thus, nose-cutting represents an extreme
public outcry, a demonstrative violence, constituting an ultimate sanction for the sake of
male honour. When the social order is threatened, that is to say in our context when male
honour is devastated, physical torture can be a means to subordinate the individual body to
the body politic.86 However, nose-cutting should not merely be understood as a function
of the cultural dimension, representing culturally-constructed emotion and behaviour, and
also not as a mere product of the individual psyche. It rather constitutes both embodied
emotion and embodied social practice. Following Lyon, "... this emphasis permits the
acknowledgement of the bodily dimensions of emotion through the understanding that
social relationships are necessarily bodily: social processes are not just given being through
ideas, rules, and customs". Thus, the conventional pattern of nose-cutting is seen from a
social-relational perspective, referring to the body as a field of dominance between husband
and wife, master and subordinate, oppressor and suppressed, etc. Often the social rather
than the individual seems to dominate the atrocious act of mutilation. Particularly in cases
of alleged or actual female adultery strongly concerned with sexual purity, the boundaries
between the individual body and the body politic become blurred. The mutilation of men,
for instance during war, comprises the whole complexity of the act ranging from corporal
punishment, public degradation, and forcefully imposed stigma to trophy-hunting. Finally,
both facets of the shaming act of nose-cutting, be it inflicted on women or on men, appear
ritualised through executing punitive powers. Through their effective visualisation the latter
maintains a moral order and social structure which is dominated by notions of honour and
shame. To sum up it could be said, in line with Douglas, that "what is being carved in
human flesh is an image of society".87
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Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation. Cutting Off The Nose Among Tribal Societies in Pakistan

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Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation. Cutting Off The Nose Among Tribal Societies in Pakistan

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Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation.

Cutting off the Nose among Tribal Societies in

Nose among Tribal Societies in Pakistan

JURGEN WASIM FREMBGEN

Notes on the Sexual Symbolism of the Nose around the World

3Bakhtin, 1987, pp. 38, 76.

Psychoanalytic perspectives based on Freudian categories assume correlations between the

21 Granoff, 1980, p.87.

The Beauty of the Nose in Pakistan

Embodied Emotions and Punitive Actions: The Mutilation of the Nose in

33 Zadran, 1983, p. 260.

38 Tandon, 1961, p. 82.

The Bodily Mutilation of Women

44 Christian, 1891, p. 88.

47 Zadran, 1983, p. 259.

The Bodily Mutilation of Men

61 Groebner, 2003, p. 88.

71 Edwardes, 1925, p. 94.

85 Rosaldo, 1983, p. 137.

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