The ‘family’, the most ‘tangible’ form of the private, is assumed to be so central to human existence that it is taken to be natural. One does not need any special ‘training’ to ‘talk’ about family. This has led to ahistorical discussions on the family being the defining character of Indian civilization. At the same time, this notion of a family or, more precisely, the biological family is assumed to be so taken for granted that any attempt to interrogate the same is questioned or looked at with a great amount of suspicion. For instance, as observed by Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive (2008), whatever happens within the bounds of the family is treated so sacrosanct even by public policies that it is out of bound for state intervention (Joy Deshmukh Randive 2008: x).
In this context, a sociological understanding of the ‘commonsensical’ discourse of the family is not easy. At the same time, this commonsensical nature of the discourse of family makes it a valid subject matter of sociology. In other words, it would be interesting to recall here how Satish Deshpande defines ‘common sense’. According to Deshpande, ‘the kind of knowledge – the kind that we are taught to regard as untaught – those sociologists refer to as ‘commonsense’ (Deshpande 2003: 2). In this regard, the discourse on family is certainly the product of the social processes which make this ‘profound and powerful phenomenon’ (ibid) called commonsense; thus, begging for sociological scrutiny.
The ‘personal sphere and its articulation’[i] has been central to the subject matter of sociology and anthropology. While tracing a kind of brief genealogy of such studies around family and kinship, Das does point out an important moment in the journey configured by the political context of colonialism. As part of the elaboration of this point, she also states how this was the invention of legal scholars of the time who were interested in carving out a framework for determining the ‘personal laws’ for Hindus and Muslims (Das 2003: 1058). Here, she also points to the hurdles in specifically developing a critique of the family due to the notion of normatively attached to it. Feminist studies have also contributed to the field. For instance, as Sujata Patel argues, feminist studies have posed a theoretical and methodological challenge that unsettled the received sociological paradigms in significant ways. As she observes, this feminist questioning of the family, caste and religion for that matter ‘create new possibilities for more eclectic and parallel paradigms to emerge’ (Patel 2016: 320).
However, more specifically, one of the ways of critically engaging with this taken for granted ‘reality’ called family is to understand the discursive production of the categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’. This small essay is an attempt to throw some light on the discursive production of these categories (and more specifically, the category of the private) under certain historical/political conditions.
I begin this exercise by looking at the scholarship that has emerged from the well-defined field called feminist historiography in India, the discipline that helps us look at history as a discursively produced entity against a mere collection of chronological ‘events’ and ‘facts’. This would enable us to critically look at the discursive production of the categories such as ‘public’ and ‘private’ under the colonial regime in India. Ashwini Tambe (2000), in her attempt to review important feminist texts, which primarily constitute a comprehensive sort of a comment on the role of the colonial state in shaping women’s question in a particular way, hopes to present to us a line of inquiry in Indian feminist scholarship. As part of this exercise, she is mainly drawing from feminist historians who help us contest the notion that the colonial state was incapable of affecting the domain of intimate relations. As they further show, through the clear-cut demarcation between public and private, the colonial state, in fact, helped constitute the private in a particular way (Tambe 2000: 589).
Not just colonial state but feminist historiographers also problematize the whole discourse of reform in colonial India, which according to them, was also instrumental in shaping the private in a particular manner. For instance, Uma Chakravarti (1998), while articulating the Brahmanical Patriarchy theory, demonstrates how the family became the site of conflict engendered by different world views, in process then carving out a particular kind of upper caste/class private/conjugal space in colonial Maharashtra. Thus, both the discourse of colonialism and the discourse of reform were responsible for restating and recasting the notion of the private of which the notion of womanhood was an integral part and caste, and sexuality was the regulating feature.
In this context, it would also be interesting to re-read Lata Mani’s (1989) work. She is trying to push us to look at the ‘discursive aspect of the debate’ around Sati in 19th century colonial India. To further extend its logic to understand its implications for the formation of discursively marked terrain called private in that particular time of history. Lata Mani relies on three kinds of sources representing three contesting discourses: the official discourse, the progressive discourse of the reformers, and the conservative discourse of revivalists, taking positions for and against Sati abolition. Through her work Mani primarily argues that though these contesting positions regarding Sati abolition seemed on the surface concerning women’s rights, they were contesting the authenticity of the tradition. Thus, according to her, the debate around Sati demonstrated the complex process of reconstitution of tradition and for which ‘correct’ interpretation of Brahmanical scriptures was the locus of their authenticity. As Mani (1989) shows thus ‘women and Brahmanical scriptures became interlocking grounds for rearticulating of the tradition’ (Mani 1989: 90). What logically follows from this argument is – for such a woman, as the torchbearer of the tradition to be imagined, a particular kind of private sphere has to be in its place.
Though Mani (1989) does not explicitly talk about such a space, her engagement with the discursive aspect of the debate around Sati does help us to imagine its implications for the creation of such a space. For instance, while arguing for her case of ‘contentious traditions’ in the context of the debate around Sati, Mani is also discussing the popular notion around Sati abolition that ‘due to its barbarity and horror of burning the woman British were compelled to outlaw Sati’ in terms of its futility. However, this popular notion should not be ignored merely in terms of its futility. For instance, the barbarity invoked in this notion, though, can not be simply understood as genuine concern for women; it certainly had implications for the process of formation of a particular kind of private sphere. In other words, residences of middle-class reformers turning into ‘home’ as an affective and moral unit with ‘schooled’ women as companionate wives (Chakravarti 1998) certainly did not have room for ‘barbarism’ such as Sati. Thus, like the debate around Sati as Lata Mani (1989) shows was not so much about women’s rights but about contesting traditions; similarly, the popular notion around it invoking its barbarism can not be simply ignored as futile but need to be seen in a different light as having implications for imagining and creating a particular kind of private/conjugal space which suited the colonial regime of the time.
Through this essay, one has tried to understand the process of creating a discursively marked terrain called private under certain historical and political conditions in a particular region. Such an approach to look at the category of private as discursively produced; help us sociologically question its ‘givenness’ even in contemporary times and spaces.
References:
Chakravarti Uma (1998) Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai, Zubaan, New Delhi.
Das Veena (2003) Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (Volume II), Oxford University Press.
Deshpande (2003) Contemporary India: A Sociological View, Penguin Books.
Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive (ed) (2008) Democracy in the Family: Insights from India, Sage Publication.
Mani Lata (1989) ‘Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial India, (ed) by Sangari and Vaid, Kali for Women, New Delhi.
Patel Sujata (2016) ‘Feminist Challenges to Sociology in India: An Essay in Disciplinary History’ in Contribution to Indian Sociology, Vol 50, no.3, October 2016.
Sinha Mrinalini (2012) ‘A Global Perspective on Gender: What South Asia Got to Do with It?’ in South Asian Feminisms (ed) by Loomba and Lukose, Zubaan, New Delhi.
Tambe Ashwini (2000) ‘Colluding Patriarchies: The Colonial reform of Sexual Relations in India’ in Feminist Studies 26, No. 3, (Fall 2000).
[i] Veena Das (2003) has used this term as a title of her introduction to the section 7 in Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (Volume II), Oxford University Press.
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Mayuri Samant is a PhD scholar at the department of Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune University.