Sexuality, Obscenity, Community:Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India

Comparative Feminist Studies

by Charu Gupta

The cultural imagination of Hindu India is the subject of this book. Anyone interested in the prehistory of present-day tensions between Hindus and Muslims will find it exceptionally valuable. Charu Gupta shows how gendered notions about women's sexuality and Muslim debauchery were used to pull together a heterogeneous populace into a coherent Hindu community in colonial north India. She traces the deliberations of (largely male) publicists on how to make Hindu women 'pure', on how to distance Hindus from Muslims, and on what constitutes Hindu sacredness and purity as opposed to Islamic lust and perversion. The book explores moral and sexual worries among an aspiring section of Hindu middle-class caste reformers. This group epitomised male fears over women’s autonomy. It fused a coercive regulation of women with a larger project of replenishing Hindu patriarchy. This involved redefining literature, entertainment, and the domestic arena in order to forge a ‘respectable’, ‘civilised’ and singular Hindu cultural and political identity. Semi-pornographic works, advertisements for aphrodisiacs, and popular culture are examined to reveal the complex and contested terrain of Hindi literature and Hindu identity.

Genres: History, India, Queer, Hinduism

388 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2002

Reviews

[Ila · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

This was a difficult and rather shocking read for me. Charu Gupta holds no qualms about dissecting long-cherished opinions and historical figures and analyzing them to the T.

Several times I had to take a deep breath before rereading about persons I had come to respect, in particular, Dayanand Saraswati and Madan Mohan Malaviya since the book blasted my esteem for them into smithereens. It was quite something to know how incredibly complex and at times sheerly bigoted the situation was. To learn that so many of these reformists only supported women's rights because the "danger of Muslims" was more important is galling.

Ever since I read Tawaifnama, I knew that many male women rights activists actively stigmatized and shamed courtesans and prostitutes in an attempt to portray "respectability". But Gupta highlights how wedding songs such as gaari and kajri (thanks to YouTube I have an idea about how they were sung), erotic literature, participating in fairs, and the very festival of Holi came under the scanner.

It is also quite frightening to read about how rumors about abductions and conversions by Muslim men were reported in the media and led to communal riots since the present-day situation is eerily similar. A hard-hitting book and a must-read for every Indian.

[Neha Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess I’ll keep coming back to this one. Mind-boggling !

[Conrad Barwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent exploration of sexuality and gender in late colonial India. Only misleading bit is that it confines itself to the United Provinces and the Hindi public sphere.

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for graduate school. Anthropological text.

[Ishaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only had to read a couple chapters for a project but I ended up reading the whole thing. History really does repeat itself; who knew!

[Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

An activist history of obscenity laws, the Hindi-Urdu controversies, Partition violence, Sati, and other issues of gender in Colonial India.