Introduction

Growing up in a small village in Uttar Pradesh, I witnessed many rituals and traditions that perplexed and at once fascinated me. One such ritual, known as Nakta or Naktaura or Naktauri, which is performed during the marriage of a boy, has been a matter of fascination for me since my childhood. According to tradition, only men are expected to go with the barat (groom’s marriage procession), while women are expected to stay home. It was my maternal uncle’s wedding, and I was not taken with the barat because I was a kid. The night the barat left for the bride’s place, I was jolted awake by the beats of the dholak and the loud, noisy laughter of the women. An interesting scenario unfolded before my eyes- women dressed as policemen (kotwal), their father-in-law (Sasur), their husband’s elder brother (Jeth), or elder men of the family were dancing and singing some folk songs. The songs were filled with satire, vulgarity, and mockery of the sexuality of men. Being a child at that moment, I was unable to comprehend the events I was witnessing before me.

That night, while pretending to be asleep, I watched all the events and performances in whereby women dressed up like the patriarchs of the family whom they serve quietly all year long. Some had fake moustaches, baggy stomachs, police uniforms, and dhoti kurta, and acted like their Sasur, Jeth, or Kotwal, while others held whips made from dupatta or gamcha. They all sang songs full of slang and gestures mocking masculinity and male sexual activities. The next morning, women from the whole village gathered, holding bamboo poles with petticoats and undergarments hanging from them. They all paraded through the village shouting slang, and abusive words, and beating any man who dared to come in front of them. It was amusing to see women who were always docile, never talked to their in-laws in loud voices, always busy with household chores, occupying the streets, and raising slogans like this.

Nakta as Role Reversal

The ritual of Nakta, though very amusing, is more than just mockery and satire. It is a deeply gendered, symbolic ritual that shows women’s resistance against patriarchy as well as their submission to traditions aimed at containing them within the patriarchal structure. While the men of the village go with the barat, the women at home take over the public space and perform plays mocking the power structures within their households. While they ridicule and mock not just verbally, gestures such as waving petticoats and undergarments, also symbolize a strong symbolic resistance against male supremacy, as women are expected to keep their undergarments away from the gaze of male members of the family. While in the village households, women are always expected to wear a sari, the women wearing dhoti kurta or pant shirts symbolize women’s assertion of bodily autonomy once the space is occupied by them. Women’s performances during Nakta can be considered what Victor Turner (1969) has conceptualized as the “liminal phase” – a situation of in-betweenness where norms associated with previous roles are suspended and roles are reversed temporarily (as cited in Wels et al., 2011)

The Demon’s Tale: Resistance with Responsibility

A few years back, when I asked my mother about why women performed Nakta, she narrated the folklore behind it. According to her, once there was a demon named Nakta who did not like any boy getting married and living happily. He loved to enjoy the quarrels and the chaos. He used to go with the barat and disturb the marriage rituals. That’s why women perform and create chaos ritualistically to keep the demon engaged so thatthe marriage rituals go smoothly at the bride’s place. 

The Nakta rituals, on the one hand, represent what James Scott (1990) calls “hidden transcripts”- the hidden and alternate resistance the subordinates develop and express on the back of the powerholders. On the other hand, it enforces the gendered expectations: while men go for the work and women serve as the guardians in the background. Thus, the act of Nakta represents a paradox, while providing women agency to express their resentment, it also puts the responsibility of a successful marriage on their shoulders.

Gendered Space and Controlled Expression

While Nakta represents gendered geographies, it also acts as a safety valve for the oppressive patriarchal structure. Scholars such as Ann Grodzins Gold and Gloria Goodwin Raheja (1994) show that women do not simply assimilate the traditional gender roles but compose their mythologies or oral traditions to actively resist the gendered expectations (as cited in Derné, 1997). The songs sung in Nakta, while abusive on the surface, also seem to carry the long- long-appropriated frustration and pain. Nakta’s laughter is not a simple expression of joy but a release of anger and communal reckoning.

However, the women guarding the marriage, even when they are not part of the ceremony itself, also reflect the layered burden of gender. Women do physical, emotional, and symbolic labour to make the marriage successful, but their efforts often go unnoticed and unacknowledged. While they ensure that nothing disrupts the happiness of the new couple, their happiness comes with confinement and exclusion. 

Rituals like Nakta highlight that resistance is not always radical and revolutionary. It may be subtle, messy, ambiguous, and humorous. In her work ‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal”, Sherry Ortner draws from Pathak and Rajan’s (1989) concept of resistance as ‘refusal to subjectification’ to argue that resistance also lies in rejecting the role expectations placed by the dominant structure (Ortner, 1995). Thus, Nakta rituals, while fulfilling the patriarchal expectations, also provide women with room to express their dissatisfaction and frustration against this oppressive system. Even when the responsibility to protect the marriage from the demon lies on women’s shoulders, they refuse their subjectification by ridiculing and mocking the power structure.

Conclusion

The ritual of Nakta highlights a deeply layered and complex negotiation between resistance and compliance within the boundaries of patriarchy in rural North India. It serves as an interesting cultural expression where women, who remain restricted to private spheres, occasionally take control of the public space and express their anguish through satire, parody, and mockery. In doing so, they not only challenge the gender norms but also create what Victor Turner calls liminal space, wherein the gendered roles are briefly suspended, allowing suppressed voices to come to the surface. However, this symbolic protest is not purely rebellious, but confined within the patriarchal expectations (Turner, 1969, as cited in Wels et al., 2011). The mythical justification of the ritual- engaging the demon to protect the marriage- simultaneously reinforces the patriarchal idea of women being caretakers of family and marriage. 

In conclusion, it can be argued that the ritual of Nakta acts as a safety valve in the patriarchal structure by providing women with a space to express their pain and dissatisfaction with the gender norms, however, within the confines of patriarchy.

References

Derné, S. (1997). Review of Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India by G. G. Raheja & A. G. Gold. International Journal of Hindu Studies.1(3): 628–630.

Pathak, Z. and R. S. Rajan. (1989). Shahbano. Signs. 14:3: 558-82.

Ortner, S. B. (1995). Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 37(1): 173-193.

Wels, H., van der Waal, K., Spiegel, A., & Kamsteeg, F. (2011). Victor Turner and Liminality: An introduction. Anthropology Southern Africa. 34(1–2): 1–4.

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Anurag Kumar Bauddh is pursuing his Master’s in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi. His academic interests include caste, social movements, ecology and social justice.