ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Swetha is a second-year student at SF State from San Fernando Valley, and she adores the fresh change San Francisco has brought her. She started her undergraduate career majoring in Journalism, but she doesn’t think it will stick. She is passionate about feminism and implements this in her writing and life. She has always been fascinated with writing and hopes one day to write a book that will live on beyond her. Until then, Swetha is satisfied spending her days working on her degree, reading, and being a tea enthusiast.
COMMENT FROM PROFESSOR NAN BOYD: Swetha wrote “Her Body, But Not Her Choice” in Women and Gender Studies 300: Gender, Race, and Nation - the Women and Gender Studies department’s GWAR class, a writing-intensive seminar required for all WGS majors and minors. During the semester, students develop skills to write a medium-length research paper by conducting research on a topic of their choice that relates to the politics of gender, race, and nation. Students are also required to effectively utilize an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational analysis in relation to their topic. This isn’t easy! Many students interpret the transnational analysis to be about “over there” or outside the national boundaries of the United States, but a transnational analysis interrogates the function of the nation or nationalism in the production of gendered and radicalized meanings, which is what Swetha Pottam’s essay does so incisively — and well. Her womb and body are no longer hers to imagine. They have been turned over to the imagination of others, and those imaginings are then allowed to reign over her body as law. -Drucillia Cornell, The Imaginary Domain
Trigger Warning: Violent Patriarchy
India has always been a site of unique cultural practices and beautiful festivals that have sparked curiosity across the world. However, the reality of female sexuality in India is not as beautiful. Although Indian society reveres women and considers them equal, they are equal only in name. Contemporary female sexuality in India is repressed and ignored for the benefit of heteropatriarchy and the Indian nation-state. Women’s subjugation is enforced by a prevailing gender hierarchy in both the public and private spheres and is influenced by cultural practices, nationalism, and colonialism.
When Great Britain colonized India, they utilized a fraternalist approach to colonial administration, which enabled the subjugation of female sexuality (Keating 133). To engender a fraternalist relationship between the colonial administrators and leaders in Hindu and Muslim communities across the country, they first established the system of “personal law.” This system of personal law “was the codification and classification of marriage, divorce, and inheritance practices as laws that were based on each community’s religious texts,” (Keating 133). This system was unfair to women because it elevated religious laws over customary laws, which would have been more favorable to women.
After India gained independence, the Constituent Assembly recognized women’s equality because of women’s contributions to the nationalist movement; however, the Assembly’s promises of equality were never fully realized. When the time came to form the Constitution and create a mode of governance free from British involvement, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian prime minister, made it clear that he wanted to form an egalitarian democracy in which discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, and caste would be eliminated (Keating 130). Yet, after India gained independence, the new constitution was modeled after the systems of British colonial rule (strong centralized governance vs. the traditional Indian village level of governance) and Western political theory (Keating 135). They upheld the system of personal law, which separated the public and private spheres. The notion of equality and freedom operated in the public sphere while gendered relations of domination and subordination were practiced and even encouraged in the private sphere. By maintaining the system of personal law after achieving independence from Great Britain, avenues of discrimination against women remained open.
Simultaneously, the postcolonial sexual contract was formed, and thereby the subjugation of female sexuality was maintained for the sake of a unified state. The postcolonial sexual contract is derived from political theorist Thomas Hobbes’ “social contract” which asserts, “legitimate political authority is grounded in an agreement among equals in which citizens consent to exchange their natural freedom for the order and protection a government supposedly can provide,” (Keating 131). Carole Pateman, the author of The Sexual Contract, argues that in Western liberal democratic theory, the contract is a sexual contract as well as a social one.
The postcolonial sexual contract established a gender hierarchy and the legal and social subordination of women in the public and private sphere. The framers of the Indian constitution were aware of the failures of Western democracies to include minority groups and women and vowed that they would not do the same. Delegates understood that to create a democracy that serves all the people, they need “social, political, and economic justice for women” (Keating 134). Where did this go wrong? Delegates passed a legally enforceable fundamental rights measure that promoted equality among the sexes and barred discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, and caste. After enacting the measure, the Assembly had to decide what kind of state this free India would be. Nehru argued for a strong centralized state. Gandhi argued for a decentralized state to stay in line with the Indian practice of decentralized village-level governance (Keating 134). Despite dissent, the Assembly created a strong centralized government whose framework was drawn upon the British mode of colonial administration. The Assembly wanted the authority of the new Indian state to be respected, so they employed a strategy that returned to the familiar rhetoric of fraternity that the colonial administration relied upon to create consent and compliance within the nation.
Women and minorities suffered for the sake of a centralized government and unified state. Personal law detractors passed reforms that would end or relieve women’s subordination. For instance, in the 1930s, feminist nationalists pressed for changes to the Hindu personal law, and an INC Committee designed the Hindu Code Bill that would have introduced major reforms to laws regarding marriage and inheritance (Keating 139). Assembly members overturned the measures that were previously passed to protect women’s rights and the political inclusion of minorities. Despite the gains that the Constituent Assembly made regarding gender equality, the Assembly’s debates over proposed alterations of the personal law system solidified control over women in the interest of preserving fraternal solidarity. This was the impetus of the postcolonial sexual contract, and it is how discrimination against women has persisted despite the Assembly’s attempts to incorporate gender equality within the Indian political framework. Assembly members argued that removing the measures was necessary to build a “homogenous” political sphere (Keating 137). Keating states, “The majority Hindus cast themselves in the role of the ‘responsible, easy-going, benevolent, and self-sacrificing elder brother, indulgent, protective, and accommodating of even the excessive and unreasonable demands of his younger and weaker brothers, the minorities’” (Keating 137). This is similar to the white savior complex because the majority Hindus took it upon themselves to “protect” women and minorities, similar to how white men decided to save people of color from themselves. By casting themselves in this role of the benevolent elder brother, they masked the fact that they were taking away promised power to women and minority groups, which impacted the control of women’s sexuality.
Under colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism, the politics of respectable sexuality served to reinscribe older social hierarchies. “Indian” tradition dictated the construction of gender and the construction of women in post-colonial society. (Sinha 1). After India achieved its independence, the nation and the discourse of sexualities worked together to create a new social arrangement. The new sexual discourse was crucial to forming the image of the modern Indian nation-state. This discourse not only suppressed “abnormal” sexuality but also heightened “normal” sexuality (Sinha 2). As a result, the “Indian” image prioritized family and heteronormative relationships above all other relationships. It was the building block of Indian society.
The rhetoric regarding female sexuality from 1891 to 1929 changed and matured into a force with institutional strength that maintained the “Hindu” and “Indian” image and restructured sexual relations that also upheld hierarchies of gender, caste, and class. Not only was this enacted through colonial administration, but it was also established through the legal realm as well. The “woman question” plagued nineteenth century Bengal but was settled when middle classes “accepted dichotomized lifestyle distinctions, i.e., home/world, spiritual/material, feminine/masculine” (Drew 31). Even though these distinctions were meant to express differences in equality, they worked to strengthen traditional gender roles and to further disadvantage women. Male agency continued to control women’s sexuality due to Britain’s policy of personal law. This subjection of female sexuality was evident in reproductive practices.
Women were regarded as objects or passive beings in patriarchal systems. A legal case during Indian colonial times illustrates this perfectly. Chew, the author of The Case of the “Unchaste” Widow, argues that women in a colonial setting were at the intersection of contested space between domination and subordination. English and Indian men debated womanhood and female sexuality (31). Chew’s analysis of the Kery Kotilany v. Moniram Kolita case exemplifies the aforementioned claim. In this lawsuit, a Bengali woman took a lover after the death of her husband, and subsequently bore a child. Her deceased husband’s cousin sued her, claiming that she violated the chastity she was supposed to uphold after her husband’s passing. The cousin hoped to overturn Anglo-Hindu legislation that allowed propertied widows to remain on the land of their former husband. These property laws were developed because colonialism changed the way in which people sustained themselves. Specifically, traditional joint farms disbanded and men had to seek wage-based employment. As a result, many resource-less widows were left destitute. Only the widows with resourceful relatives were able to exploit the obligations of “maintenance” (a system that required the heirs of the family to look after the widows and allow them to live the same life they lived prior to the dissolution of their marriage) and assert claims to their deceased husband’s property (Chew 33). However, a widow’s unchastity nullified her property rights. This case highlighted the sexual double standard placed on men and women. The notion of an “unchaste” man was unheard of because chastity was and still is a term “used to describe socially unsanctioned sexual activity by a woman” (Chew 32). The notion of chastity and unchastity dictated a woman’s life, whereas for a man, it mattered little. Sexual morality does not exist for men, and male-widowers were encouraged to remarry. Female purity was idealized in a patriarchal value system. “Unlike men, the case literature clearly establishes that for women, sexuality was intrinsically linked to property rights” (Chew 32). This case also highlighted how women were seen as property.
Culturally prescribed gender roles bind women and their bodies. The body is the site of emotions and experiences and also a site that is subject to social, political, and cultural constructions and regulations (Bannerji 124). This is due to a prevailing gender hierarchy that asserts itself in the public and private sphere. Women with more than two children are forbidden to receive anti-poverty subsidies and medical benefits (Hussain 36). The women’s movement advocated that reproductive rights were fundamental and included intimate issues such as their sexuality, whom to marry, how many children women choose to have, and how to protect their health. However, the unfortunate reality is that women often have no choice and their bodies “become pawns in the struggle between the individual, the family, and the state,” (Hussain 30). Female sexuality is controlled at the macro-level by policies and programs, while at the micro-level, it is controlled by male domination. The entire reproductive process, from conception to childbirth, is shaped by patriarchy and male domination in the private sphere. For instance, in a study done by Sabiha Hussain, when women were asked about their family size preference, the majority of women negated the idea of a “desired family size” and said that expressing their desires does not necessarily mean it will be implemented (35). In this way, women’s concerns are ignored and invalidated for the preservation of the family.
Sons are considered essential for social and economic security, social dignity, and to perform the last rites for parents. In India, the last rites is a ritual reserved primarily for the sons of the family. Especially when cultural norms require a great deal of expenditure on the part of the girl’s family. For these many reasons, sons are preferential. If a woman fails to have a son, the husband has legitimate cause to divorce her and seek a second marriage (Hussain 29). Society accuses the wife of failing at her primary duty, and allows the husband to shed his marital vows. In some places, like Kallar, Tamil Nadu female infanticide is common practice. People in rural India comment on how easy it is to “set women free” soon as they were born; The methods were simple, they told me with candor. A little spoon of steaming hot curry down the infant’s throat. A drop of milk from a poisonous plant with a little sugar so the baby doesn’t spit it up. A few grains of rice, mixed with a pinch of snuff (Hedge 28).
Female infanticide is often reported as a natural death so no concrete numbers exist, even though they have been reported in the northern state of Rajasthan and the southern state of Tamil Nadu (Hedge 29). Since these incidents happen in rural areas, police intervention is scarce. The only people that keep tabs on incidents of female infanticide are social workers, who classify “high-risk” cases and counsel the women regarding female infanticide. The “high-risk” classification has nothing to do with the health of the baby but rather the willingness of the mother to commit female infanticide (Hedge 29). Women who are considered “high-risk” are women who are older, are widows, have survived abandonment, have two or more daughters, or have only one son.
Women are expected to be caretakers and birthing machines and are discouraged from discovering or advocating for their sexuality. If a woman cannot conceive a son, she is either forced to repeatedly conceive, risk her health, and then care for more children then she can adequately support, or she can take action and assert her agency, but become ostracized in the process. Take the case of Shabana, a 38-year-old illiterate housewife. She was married when she was 17, she had five children by the time she moved to Delhi with her husband, and she had herself sterilized to prevent further children because she did not know of any other birth control methods. When Shabana went back to her village, her family and friends shunned her for getting a sterilization. She was not allowed to perform namaz (prayer) and was socially alienated (Hussain 38). A woman’s worth is dependent on the number of boys she brings into the world.
Sterilization and the resulting estrangement are preferential to horrors demonstrated in another one of Hussain’s case studies. The woman’s husband’s desire to have a son can sometimes be so strong that it comes at the cost of her life (Hussain 40). This tale was recounted to Hussain not by the woman afflicted but by her mother. Kanti, a 29-year-old, had three daughters and her husband wanted a son. She conceived again and her husband took her to the health clinic to determine the sex of the fetus (female) and her husband forced her to have an abortion, even though she was in the second trimester of the pregnancy. She conceived again, and when her husband took her to the clinic and learned the baby was female, he forced her to have another abortion. Kanti resisted because she was already weak and anemic from the prior abortion, but to no avail. Her husband took her to a private clinic for the operation. Kanti never came back from the operation table (Hussain 40). The toxic desire for a male heir, at whatever cost, further illustrates that women are seen simply as birthing machines, and their desires are not heeded or heard.
Women have few options for reproductive health and lower-class women are even less likely to know about different types of birth control methods. The preference and desire for male heirs is so strong that it shapes whatever remaining agency women have regarding their sexuality (Hedge 29). Whether a woman exhausts her body to provide a son and fulfill the “duty” of a woman, or she tries to protect her body from bearing more children, her agency is forever shaped by the overwhelming desire to have male heirs. Lower-class women who live in the slums of Delhi or Kolkata, or women who live in rural areas, are uneducated regarding different forms of birth control and often think that their only options are permanent sterilization or condoms. If men refuse to use condoms, women are left with few options due to lack of information. Even the women who are aware of various birth control methods are often abused for asserting agency and control over their bodies.
The Indian gender hierarchy permeates every aspect of a woman’s life, devaluing women by prioritizing the interests of the family and insisting on male heirs. The hegemony portrays women who cannot bear sons as occupying one side of a binary—the poor victim or the cruel murderer. However, women have constructed modes of survival that do not conform with this dichotomy, despite it being the preferred narrative of the international and Indian media (Hedge 29). Women commit acts of resistance, but they also comply with the patriarchy in order to survive in a society that considers them voiceless and a financial drain on the family. The story of Jaya, a woman from Kallar (a rural area in Tamil Nadu), exemplifies this paradox. She resisted her husband’s desire to commit infanticide but eventually succumbed to his wishes. She felt shame at what she had done, but her mind was resolute. “I will give him his male child,” Jaya says (Hedge 31). Jaya’s resolve is similar to that of Kumari, who gave birth to five daughters but only raised three. Kumari has been ostracized for her inability to produce a boy. As a result, she continues to kill her girl children to prevent further ridicule and alienation. She relays her anxieties quite aptly in front of her husband, who clearly cannot be bothered with “women’s talk.” Kumari says,
I have given birth to five girls, this is my third living daughter. I am a totally useless, uneducated woman, but I am angry...If I kill, then they say she has no conscience. If I don’t, they ridicule me that I have all girls, good for nothing girls…Because of this girl, I am humiliated every day. And when she gets married, they’ll taunt and harass her because she has no brothers... Listen I don’t give a damn about my health, I will have another and another till I have a son (Hedge 32).
While one may view Kumari as someone overwrought with internalized misogyny, Hedge sees her as a liberator, saving her children from their inevitable suffering. In this way, she and Jaya construct themselves as saviors, sparing their girl children from a miserable fate. This is Jaya and Kumari’s mode of survival, and it defies the poor victim/cruel murderer binary.
Cultural roles bind women and their bodies. Female sexuality is shaped by the macro policies that pave the way for discrimination in the private sphere. Their bodies are bound by the toxic desire for a male heir, and their sexuality is shaped by male agency. Through cultural practices, a prevailing gender hierarchy, and discriminatory policies, female sexuality is subjugated in both public and private spheres. Women do not have agency over their bodies in a world that demands sons. When left with little choice, women do what they can to survive. This problem is imbedded within the framework of Indian society and severely impacts India’s women and their freedom. This issue will not be resolved without a radical paradigm shift.
Works Cited Bannerji, H., & Bagchi, J. (1997). “Modernization, Poverty, Gender and Women's Health in Calcutta's Khidirpur Slum.” Canadian Woman Studies, 17(2), 122. Chew, D. (1993). “The Case of the ‘Unchaste’ Widow: Constructing Gender in 19th-century Bengal (Kery Kolitany v Moniram Kolita case)." Resources for Feminist Research, 22(3), 31-40. Hegde, R. S. (1999). “Sons and M(others): Framing the Maternal Body and the Politics of Reproduction in a South Indian Context.” Women's Studies in Communication, 22(1), 25-44. Hussain, S. (2001). “Do Women really Have a Voice? Reproductive Behavior and Practices of Two Religious Communities.” Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 7(4), Keating, C. (2007). “Framing the Postcolonial Sexual Contract: Democracy, Fraternalism, and State Authority in India.” Hypatia, 22(4), 130-145. Sinha, M. (1995). “Nationalism and Respectable Sexuality in India.” Genders, (21), 30.