I, as a student of international relations, occasionally read some texts by feminist scholars critiquing discourses of ‘sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals.’[4]  The ‘Wake Up!’ call issued by feminists to fellow academics in a world that is changing helped articulate fresh insights into a stagnant discipline stifling with boredom and shallowness.[5] As a graduate student I attended a workshop where a professor very confidently proclaimed ‘feminism is dead.’ Several years later, this same professor came out with a book Fast Feminism.[6]  I, on the other hand, was slow to engage with questions, history and practices of feminism. I am no ‘fast feminist,’ described as a ‘gender risk taker going the distance with her body.’[7]  I am perhaps more of a novice caught up with the ‘pure intensity’ of time.[8]  A time in which I wish to re-issue a wake up call with the forceful ‘intensity and movement’ of ‘fast feminism’ proposed by Shannon Bell.[9]

Fast Feminism is an accidental but lively ‘Grrrl’ child representative of feminism and hypermasculinity.[10]  It is a coupling together of the material body with speed, to ‘queer’ the gaze, destabilize and recode ‘how we look at bodies and sexual acts’.[11] It is a ‘high speed exercise’ that ‘propels you through locations’ and is critical of practices that seek to curb ‘the naughty, kick-ass, confident, loud-assertive, active, curious, prepubescent, joy-for-life tendencies that have been toned down, repressed and castrated in turning woman.’[12]

This ‘high speed’ exercise of fast feminism is painfully conscious of the violence endured by the positioning of a female body for political purposes. It carries within it a ‘Grrrl’ child’s sense of bemusement and is watchful of tendencies that ‘morph’ into a desire for an alternative.[13] The dynamism of fast feminism and its ‘Grrrl’ energy are now redeployed to issue a wake up call in international relations. This wake up call proclaimed, ‘rape as a weapon of war’ with fierce intensity and immediately captured the imagination of academics, activists and policy-makers.[14]  Fast feminism responds to this call not simply as a fight with men but rather with fighting injustices.[15]

In situations of armed conflict, rape as a weapon of war generates immense human suffering. In some conflicts women have been raped repeatedly until pregnant and then these pregnant women were held in captivity until abortion was no longer possible.[16] The ‘new wars’ or ‘ethnic conflicts’ waged in Rwanda, Liberia, the former Yugoslavia and other places generated concern regarding religious commitments and military tactics of using the womb to wage a political struggle. These new wars refuted old arguments of rape as a ‘side-effect’ of war and compelled recognition of the fact that ‘Rape, is literally, a weapon of war.’[17] It is further argued that rape is a ‘bio-political strategy’ deployed to ‘stamp directly on the body’ a mark of ‘sovereignty’[18]. Diken and Lausten suggest, ‘the penetration of a woman’s body works as a metaphor for the penetration of enemy lines.’[19]

This understanding of rape as a weapon of war is imperative to grasp the politics of the womb. In the politics of the womb, excitable speech works always in feverish anticipation of the penetration of enemy lines and exhorts women to bear more children to safeguard the freedom of the nation and the state. While ‘rape’ is viewed as an instrument, the ‘politics of the womb’ requires the skillful art of watching a caterpillar weaving an intricate cocoon. The politics of the womb is interested in understanding the manipulation of a woman’s reproductive rights for political purposes. These practices of manipulation have a long global history that demands careful deciphering and codification of this particular form of violence endured by women.[20] This paper undertakes this exercise by focusing on some contemporary developments in an effort to light a candle of watchful vigilance against this continuous struggle.

The active voice of the victim of rape is encouraged by feminists in order to articulate her experiences of rape and the difficult choices that unwanted pregnancies unexpectedly force upon her. The repeated attempt here is at ‘flipping the obscenity of “distilled perceptions”’ through the verbalization of feelings of guilt, shame and trauma experienced by these women.[21] But these expressions do not seem to hinder or halt the continued drama of the politics of the womb. It is a drama enacted everyday in many iterations: in the form of ridicule hurled against the veiled woman, the ‘scientific’ engagement with the idea of ‘immaculate conception’ and then the vainglorious attempts of paying homage to women’s reincarnations in the form of saints and Goddesses.

But the voice of a woman, even a raped woman, does not seem to register among those whipping up religious and sectarian fervor. Feminists have long been aware of ‘how communalism, operating within patriarchal structure of power, often implies the advocacy of sexual violence towards women.’[22] The nevertheless fragile voices of feminists are in a fierce contest with other authoritative voices that carry their influence in as much as ‘rape pollution aims to strengthen a patriarchal structure.’[23] These authoritarian voices persist in exercising their authority over a woman’s womb. They insist on telling women that they must bear more children to maintain the majority status of a particular religious community.

The strategic purchase of religious, communal mobilization to fuel ethnic riots and sexual violence against women has long been registered in the subcontinent of South Asia.[24] But despite this long history of violence, India, the second most populous country in the world, has recently witnessed a spate of statements issued by male political and religious leaders (even from those sitting in jail) advising women on how many children to bear to help maintain or change the demographics of a particular local area or the nation.

Mohammed Qasim, a Muslim separatist leader in India, urges the male members of his community to ‘marry more than once’, and to ‘have as many children as possible.’[25] He justifies his argument by resorting to the Quran to make a claim, ‘The Quranic tenet on justice between wives is only in providing equal provision and not inclination of the heart.’[26] Justice is to be meted out only by the male members of the Muslim community to their women in the respectable guise of marriage. Any consideration of birth control measures, women’s health issues and economic considerations that factor into make choices about carrying a child are dismissed as nonsensical or irrelevant. Anyone unwilling to share this burden is decried for undermining the strength and future of this community in India.

Similarly a Hindu religious leader and Member of Parliament, Sakshi Maharaj, stipulates in categorical terms, ‘ A Hindu woman must have at least four children’ and that she must give one to the army and the others to religious leaders like himself.[27] This proclamation not only shows the temerity of demanding a particular number of children from a woman but also presupposes her willingness to sacrifice her children at the altar of the state and religious leaders as a matter of duty! These outrageous statements publicized by the media unfortunately gain much visibility and voice in society. There is scarcely any resistance or alternative presented to these demands.

On the contrary, there is much support for a political party that has come to power thumping its chest championing nationalism. In this understanding of patriotic and patriarchal nationalism, not a single opportunity is to be missed in reminding the ‘educated and enlightened new woman’ of her responsibility to ‘act as guardians of national culture, indigenous religion and family traditions—in other words to be both “modern” and “traditional.”’[28] A political party can slap a show cause notice on Sakshi Maharaj, its representative, and urge restraint as it damages the image of the party.[29] But the portrayal of a subservient woman, and the community’s subsequent expectation from her as a woman carrying the seeds of a (national) family within her is not to be decried.

This political rhetoric reduces the body of a woman to the status of a kickball tossed between communities and conversations. These conversations, especially among the educated middle class cosmopolitan contingent, are first encouraged with  a look of disbelief, followed by indifference, and then are silenced. There is a quiet assertion to the effect  of ‘Indian women can no longer be taken for a ride. They are much aware and capable of taking their own decisions.’[30] Yet, are they? Which Indian women? Surely if nothing else the statements issued by the leaders of these communities have made it abundantly clear that there are no homogenized Indian women. Their divisive appeals, made on sectarian grounds, play upon the religious differences among women. Their appeals also take note of the cloaks of socio-economic class differences that shroud the world of these women from each other, and at times pit them against one another.

The unifying image of Mother India invoked in a classic Bollywood film served its purpose in representing a woman’s sacrifice and suffering to evoke emotions helpful in consolidating and stabilizing a state structure. It did not necessarily generate conditions of authentic respect and security for women.  Respect for a woman’s autonomy unravels as soon as she steps out of her home and, due to economic necessity, tries to make use of the public transport system. She becomes the victim of six men that abuse her physically and psychologically, and assault her with an iron rod that is left as a memento of their willful act of barbarity inside her body.[31]  The victim died as a result of her catastrophic wounds. The voices of women are now hoarse shouting in anger and frustration making stringent, vocal demands. Nothing less than a ‘death-sentence’ is demanded to punish the perpetrators of the crime, even if one of them is a minor.

This 2012 ‘rape that shocked the world’ and became the pet project of domestic and international media sensationalism labeled and shamed New Delhi as ‘rape capital’ of the country.[32] The victim Jyoti Singh is now labeled as ‘Nirbhaya’ meaning ‘the fearless one’ and she is morphed into an embodiment of women’s struggle for security and justice within the state. Her violated body is now represented as ‘the bridge between India, old and new.’[33]  The suffering of ‘Nirbhaya’ is medicalized as doctors treat ‘the atrocious, unbelievable injuries she had sustained.’[34]  These medical practitioners communicate their sense of shock at the ‘horrific brutality’ experienced by the victim.[35] A violence so intense it startled the sense of resilience cultivated by experienced practitioners of medicine. This is the price the young victim must pay to seek some remedial measures from the state.[36]

The failure of the state in addressing gendered violence is also exhibited in a desecrated church in Rwanda. This desecrated church is now a memorial to the dead, and displays ‘a skeleton of a victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia.’[37] Coomaraswamy notes, ‘There she was preserved for posterity. Such horror in the most sacred of places.’[38]  But unlike the skeletal remains of the ‘victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia’ in Rwanda, the victim of ‘the rape that shocked the world’ has caught the attention of the West. The panoramic view of candlelight vigils, peace marches and popular tactics of naming and shaming deployed by the civil society against the state has captured the gaze of the West. The mobilization of civil society against the everyday practices of rape in the urban life of the city presents a challenge for a democratic country struggling to maintain its respectability and its secular credentials, touting the principle of freedom of speech, even of mavericks, in a language much understood by the West.

The powerful, civilized West that defies the powers of censorship of a state and makes readily available a film on rape culture in India. It shows a particular tenacity of purpose in investigating the particular case of Nirbhaya through the film, ‘India’s Daughters.’ But this film makes little attempt to ‘focus on rape speech that we encounter daily in our socio-political context’, fails to understand the pervasive influence of ‘rape speech’ and the culture of silence around rape deliberately construed in civilized societies.[39] The ‘white savior complex’ of the West is held responsible for in fact giving voice to the rapist with his incendiary observations and silencing a culture of protest that has emerged in India around sexual violence.[40] The film, in addressing the problem of sexual violence, does not even ‘begin to tell the story of how Indian girls are treated even before they dare to emerge from their mother’s wombs.’[41]

While a rapist gets a voice through the film ‘India’s Daughters’, the beseeching voices of teenage mothers in Guatemala finds expression through another documentary, ‘Too Young to Wed: Guatemala.’[42] In Guatemala, the state and the Church sanction marriage at the age of fourteen. This painful documentary of young mothers barely out of their own childhood, pregnant and burdened with the responsibility of caring for another life with no income and no education, compels one to question one’s own ethics in indulging in this spectator sport of viewership. It compels one to think whether the word ‘happy’ should be removed from International Women’s Day and question the violence of a middle class morality that exalts marriage and motherhood, while the price of this morality is often paid by these poor young girls with no right to vote.

While Western film-makers have made strident efforts in depicting sexual violence in developing countries, one cannot ignore the politics of the womb played out even more vociferously in the West. The War on Terror waged from here encourages a proliferation of ‘hero discourses’ in the public sphere.[43] These ‘hero discourses’ deliberately construct  ‘a morality tale where forces of the good combat the evil’ and ‘nation becomes a family; during war more than ever.’[44]  They advocate a ‘vision of a unified nation where women, the protectors of the family at home, serve as the counterpart to the boys on the front, the mighty men in battle.’[45] These hero discourses reinforced in public life through the media have actively marginalized ‘feminism and activism as possibilities for political expression.’[46] They have made the American debate on abortion a ‘spectacle’ a ‘war flick with overtones of melodrama’ for the world to watch.[47]

In this ‘spectacle’ the battle lines are clearly drawn between the pro-life and pro-choice activists and all activism is ‘tarred with the same brush.’[48] These battles have been fought with abortion clinic bombings and continue to be waged against each abortion clinic with Biblical chants and efforts to alter the wording of each piece of legislation on abortion. Followers of the abortion debate in the US argue that it is a ‘tug of war of language’ in which ‘linguistic victories translate into political victories.’[49] The coercive power of law and the moral authority of the Bible are both invoked to the effect that not more than seven abortion clinics are available to women in the state of Texas, and the survival of one in Mississippi is contested.[50] The tenuous survival of these abortion clinics in Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi has raised the question: ‘who calls the shots on abortion laws?’[51] The question of power and responsibility does not clearly reside with women, although their  ‘vulnerability and poverty’ is often conveyed through television shots of ‘Latina and Black women’s bodies.’[52] The burden of travelling long distances to get any medical assistance is visualized as ‘bleeding episodes’ of disempowerment of women.[53]

The question of responsibility is configured more abstrusely. Its history is traced to the struggle for power between the Church and the State, and the politics of the womb is the grey zone encrypted in a play of constitutional provisions that can be written, rewritten and erased. The players are on the one hand,  ‘politicians’ seeing the passage of state laws forcing closure of abortion clinics on the premise that they want to secure safe conditions for women seeking abortion. On the other hand are the stewards of religious diktat asserting their operative hand through the Church and its influence on the State. The Catholic Church’s position has

consistently been outright condemnation of abortion in all cases.[54] Abortion is seen as a sin, and the key to ‘subversion of women’s destiny to be mothers.’[55]

Feminists have long critiqued the Church’s position on abortion as representative of a ‘deliberately misogynistic, power-hungry institution, seeking to extend its reach into every all spheres of social life.’[56] Feminists also express deep concern for the suffering endured by women due to botched up abortions. But the power of the Church over the abortion laws in many places, such as in Ireland, remains enormous. This became obvious in recent times when the medical authorities in a hospital failed to assist Savita Halappanavar, who had been undergoing a painful miscarriage.[57] Her hopeless struggle to exercise her autonomy over her womb came to naught. This despite her pleas that she belonged to a different faith and it was only on medical grounds that she was seeking assistance with an abortion. She was refused and died three days later. The laws of the state promise protection and those that seek to enforce them listen attentively to the ‘fetal heartbeat’, but are mindless towards the tremendous pain experienced by a woman undergoing a miscarriage for several hours, or the septicemia (blood infection) that prolongs her suffering for another few days, and the price of death she pays for her womb.

The laws of the Catholic state of Ireland and those that seek to uphold them promise an investigation based on list of procedures. These ritualistic procedures question legality and illegality of providing medical assistance to a woman seeking medical help with a miscarriage. There is an indulgence of precious time with legal hairsplitting on procedures that permit abortion when a mother’s life is at risk and procedures that prohibit abortion when a woman’s health is at risk.[58] These promises and procedures are normalized to the extent that they benumb the voices of pain and protest endured by those carrying a womb. It is only when a woman shares the pain of her womb, endured seven times and ready for the eighth with a Pope, that she receives an assurance that there is no need for Catholic women to ‘breed like rabbits.’

The Pope argues that the Bible suggests natural birth control measures instead of the use of contraceptives. He exercises his authority in telling women not to breed like rabbits. The authority of his statement based on listening to a woman carrying an eighth child in her womb at great risk to her health emerges as an authoritative statement apparently giving coherence to the Church’s position on birth control. The denigration of the status of a woman to a rabbit does not even evoke the need for an apology. The woman remains anonymous in her suffering. But the Pope is applauded for his penchant for ‘straight talk’ and ‘colloquialism’.[59] It is with convenient ease that one statement from the Pope seems to erase all memory of the active participation of the Church in the politics of the womb and its harmful legacy registered on the body of a woman/rabbit. A persistent participation that once again finds expression in the Pope’s concern with ‘ideological colonization’ interpreted as the imparting of education on gender theory to question the traditional division of male and female roles in developing societies.[60]

The traditional division of male and female roles is a subject of much debate even in the corporate sector. But it is the politics of the womb or pregnancy discrimination that ‘can only be experienced by women’ which is of critical significance in the workplace, as pregnancy discrimination is ‘most prevalent among corporate practices.’[61] The vulnerability of pregnant women in the workplace is the subject of several articles, books and lawsuits registered on how pregnancy discrimination in the workplace undermines women’s self-esteem, increases stress and economic loss. These concerns need to be taken seriously in a neoliberal economy, a neoliberal economy in which corporate bosses exhibit a sense of naiveté or innocence of ‘corporate profiting from women’s work’ while women are still struggling for equal pay and promotions in the workplace.’[62]

This pretentious innocence became starkly visible at a recent corporate conference convened especially to celebrate the skills of women in the high-tech field of computing.

Satya Nadella, Chief CEO of Microsoft as a mentor in high-tech field of computing was questioned on how women should most effectively ask for a raise.[63] His prompt reply was that women should not ask for a raise. He offered reassurance to women that their efforts will be rewarded in the ‘long run’ when their good work was ‘recognized’ and therefore there was no need for them to ‘ask for more money.’[64]  He justified his advice in a warped logic of ‘good karma’ and the operative principles of human resource systems.[65]

This observation drew criticism from some for striking ‘an international high watermark for tone-deafness and being flat out wrong.’[66]  But there were others that continued to dole out trite advice that women entering the workforce must, ‘be prepared to advocate for themselves when they negotiate salaries and subsequent raises.’[67]  These voices are willing to make allowances:

I don’t doubt for a minute that Nadella, along with many other-tech CEOs right now, considers himself a strong advocate for women in computing…But he obviously still has some things to learn, as do many people in this field. There are many hearts and minds that need to be changed across the computing and technology companies, and even some of our best allies have a lot to learn.[68]

A language of ‘best allies’ and ‘strong advocate’ is still being deployed in the defense of Nadella a powerful male executive, despite his gender insensitive comments.

The danger here is of a failure to realize that gender games are ‘deadly games’ played by some that are simply oblivious, and others that are playing with an acute awareness of participating in a ‘cultural hallucination’ undertaken with ‘variations according to time and place.’[69] A month after Nadella’s so called faux-pas, President Erdogan in Turkey, speaking at a forum on Women and Justice, appears to engage with the question,  ‘what do women need?’[70] He responds to this question by endorsing a logic of ‘equivalence’ and not ‘equality’ for women.[71]  These arguments are buttressed by iterating the ‘natural’ differences between men and women. It is emphasized that the same conditions of work cannot be imposed on a pregnant woman than a man and therefore ‘what women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal.’[72]

This politics of equivalence and not equality within the state structure encourages stereotypes and endorses ‘a subordinate role as supporters, but not an equal role as agents.’[73] Thus women as recipients of male exhortations are to bear more children and embrace motherhood. It is only in the status of a mother that a woman is expected to exult in the glory of her sons bowing at her feet, shed her tears, glance ‘coyly’ at her sons sharing her mythical state of ‘paradise.’[74] It is only in this status that a man appears willing to concede ‘motherhood is something else’ and dole out ‘respect’ for a woman.[75] Any resistance to these male exponents on the politics of the womb brings fierce and speedy condemnation against feminists and feminism for their rejection of the concept of motherhood.’[76]

Media sensationalism of such prejudiced statements by corporate and political bosses sometimes evokes an apology, and occasionally expedites a court trial.

Efforts are made through social networking sites to retract particular statements in a face saving exercise. These retractions and apologies qualify their jingoistic observations in terms of lacking in tact and being caught off-guard, on the spur of the moment. [77] But these efforts do not conceal a mind-set operative in the corporate world that acknowledges and plays the politics of womb in practices of hiring, promotion and salaries of women. In the ‘fast-track trials’ the perpetrators of violence sometimes still continue to laugh, crack jokes unashamed and lacking in remorse.[78]

These recent experiences bring center-stage the continuous political battle being waged between the religious-political ideologues and feminists against the politicization of the womb. The feminists are conscious of the painful struggles wrought to bring the voices of women to claim a stake and participate in political discourses. This attempt to map the contemporary terrain of the politics of the womb endeavors to re-issue the ‘Wake Up’ call. We can no longer sit complacently and enjoy the benefits of struggles waged by our predecessors.  Asha Devi, mother of ‘Nirbhaya’ was rendered speechless as she watched her daughter suffer and die. She attested that it was the public protests on the streets that made her feel that humanity still prevails on this Earth.[79] My effort is to no longer remain listless to the calls of ‘fast feminism’ that seek to wage a speedy battle against those engaging in a war of attrition, a politics of the womb, looking to assert their masculine dominance against the body of women.

In re-issuing this ‘Wake up’ call, fast feminism reminds us that ‘we are to the degree that we risk ourselves.’[80] It issues a call to resistance with one’s body, it insists on action that will ‘queer’ the gaze that looks at the womb.[81]  This resistance is not against motherhood, but on a woman’s right to assert ‘ownership’ of her body and demand respect.[82]  The act of resistance performed in writing this text publicly expresses a wistful desire to confront the political violence of the womb.  It is not radical politics, but a demand for respect every day. The persistent lack of respect for the female body incurs the danger of in ‘no way predicting what women influenced by fast feminism will do.’[83] Grrrl!!

The author would like to dedicate this article to Dr. Shannon Bell, Political Science Department, York University, Toronto.

The post Excitable Speech and the Politics of the Womb – Wake Up Grrrl! appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Arctic Summer stands apart from fiction that either speaks back to empire or belongs to its ideology, in a third space all of its own. It offers the colonial written by the postcolonial: a writer imagines the writing process of something already written. Forster’s novel is dedicated to Syed Ross Masood, the Indian Muslim who was his lifelong friend, and with whom Forster fell painfully in love. Galgut is a frequent visitor to India and his own book is dedicated, in language that mimics and echoes Forster’s, to his friend Riyaz Ahmed Mir. Is Galgut’s Arctic Summer homage, appropriation, or simply an evocation of a writing life? Is it a biography or a travelogue? Reading it one experiences a certain kind of vertigo, as when cave paintings are illuminated by flashes of electric light, and the ghosts of centuries past seem to speak.

Arctic Summer is a novel that looks both ways – to its past and future – even while it postdates and pre-empts some formative tropes of postcolonial thinking. Mimicry forms a chain of echoes through it. The title is taken from the eponymous novel that Forster began in 1911 but never finished, and one of Galgut’s themes is writer’s block. Galgut’s style is very much the spare, heart-piercing voice of The Good Doctor (2003). All the repressed anguish of In A Strange Room (2010) is intact but the focus in Arctic Summer is reminiscent of Forster’s Maurice: the inner life of one central character dealing with his sexuality. Though it was not published until after Forster’s death, Maurice was written in 1913, during the eleven-year gestation period of A Passage To India, and this writing forms a rare moment of exhilaration for the fictional Morgan inside Galgut’s novel. Here, the writing of Maurice, which occurred when homosexuality was still criminalised and considered shameful in England, becomes Morgan’s working out of his own sexuality – the darkness he must confront. For it is only by doing this, Galgut imagines, that Forster gained the confidence and the courage to leave blank what actually happened to the young, impressionable, evocatively named Adela Quested, “an English girl, fresh from England”[1] in the Marabar caves, masterfully allowing the reader’s terror to rise alongside the outrage of the English at her “assault” by the native Dr Aziz, and creating a suspense that could only be constructed by an author who understood that the greater fascination and horror lies in the acts we privately imagine.

This choice effects a striking reversal into an act of subversive mimicry, one that Forster only approaches in his previous novels. The white English author inhabits the position of the “other”. Instead of following Adela, Forster remains with Dr Aziz as he ducks out of the cave in confusion over the social faux pas Adela makes in asking him, a highly educated and cultured Muslim, if he has more than one wife. Forster remains with Aziz, full of worry for Adela and fear for himself when he thinks she is lost. His relief upon seeing her below glosses over any residual anxiety he might have felt when he finds her binoculars at the entrance to a cave. Forster nearly lulls the reader into Aziz’s confident sense of security when he writes, with such a sense of finality, “The expedition was over.”[2] In the 2005 Penguin edition of the novel, the eye travels from the bottom of the page to the top of its facing partner. This tiny pause does not prepare readers for what comes next: the shock that hits Aziz and breaks any fragile concord that he has attempted to spin between himself (as host, yet subordinate to his British ‘guests’). “…[A]s they sat up in the gloom and prepared to enter ordinary life, suddenly the long drawn out strangeness of the morning snapped. Mr Haq, the Inspector of Police, flung open the door of their carriage and said in shrill tones: “Dr Aziz, it is my highly painful duty to arrest you.”[3] “Ordinary life” is no more – the reversal is complete – and the reader is fully on the side of the wronged party – Dr Aziz, the ‘other’, who cannot be guilty. Forster breaks the coda described by Ania Loomba, “Perhaps the most binding imperative of colonial life was to stick to one’s own,”[4] and tricks his readers into recognising the morality in doing the same.

Forster’s great theme in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with A View (1908) was the English abroad: their sense of superiority, their manners and habits, their prejudices and, in Lilia, Philip and Lucy Honeychurch, the yearnings for something more. ‘Others’ – the Italian Gino and liberally raised George, upset English sensibilities so thoroughly that they provide a vision for how life could be lived, if, as Margaret Schlegel observes in Howards End (1910) we could “only connect”[5]. In A Passage To India, begun two years after Howards End, Forster attempts a supreme feat of connection – placing himself alongside Aziz’s point of view, leaving Adela in the dark. Here, Galgut effects the same, casting himself into the mind and body of a writer haunted by his own banned desires, living in a time when to be a “minorite”[6] as he termed it, was as socially vilified as the idea of the dark native thinking he could accost a young white woman.

But mimicry is deeper and subtler than a fiction writer’s effective evocation of the ‘other’. In Arctic Summer Galgut is dealing with a real person and his writing process. Writing in the close third person, Galgut shadows, echoes and mimics Forster in creating an English voice in tune with the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The difficulty of such an act of ventriloquism was perhaps made easier by the apparent similarities between the two authors. Both are fascinated by male relationships and the intimate distance they exist within: Philip and Gino in Where Angels Fear to Tread and Dr Aziz and Fielding in A Passage to India. In A Strange Room gives us a fictional Damon, written by the real Damon in remembered fragments, through travels with various equally solitary companions: Ranier and Jerome. The search for love – and not only of the romantic kind  – is at the core of Galgut’s questing third novel, and in Arctic Summer he casts himself into that intimate, distanced communication with a Forster both real and imagined. Galgut drew on his own experiences of growing up in apartheid South Africa to imagine the internal life that Forster kept so private. As BBC Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter noted in an interview, the younger Galgut was “a white liberal gay man benefiting from a system of racial privilege,” just as Forster was in colonial India. Galgut said, “You can’t grow up in apartheid South Africa without being aware of matters of race, matters of power and how they connect, and of course that leads directly to Forster’s experience.”[7] Galgut understands what it is to live through a time of great division in a position of unasked for superiority and yet, still, be regarded as ‘other’ in terms of mainstream ideas of sexuality. He holds that no one thought apartheid would ever end, and that this enabled him to write from Forster’s perspective about colonialism while it was still very much in force. Of apartheid he said, “It was an astonishing shock when it ended. It was inconceivable… Being in the middle of a system shapes the way you think about it retrospectively.”[8] Of course as he goes on to say, the desire for Indian independence was already in the air when Forster made his first visit there. By the time he went again in 1921, the Independence movement had found its figurehead in Gandhi. Though Gandhi only has a fleeting mention in Arctic Summer and does not figure in the inexplicit chronology of A Passage to India, Forster was aware, according to Galgut, of horrific injustices perpetrated by the British in India including the Jallianwalabag Massacre at Amritsar in 1919. Here is Galgut, imagining Morgan’s encounter with Indian nationalism following those events:

For the past six months, Morgan had been among Indians who were attached, sentimentally and politically to the British crown, and it was startling to suddenly hear the opposite. How hated they were, the English! How unwanted, how mistrusted! And how very far from understanding what they had done.[9]

There is a direct connection between this moment, imagined from Forster’s diaries and letters by Galgut, and Aziz at the end of A Passage to India:

Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: “Down with the English anyhow. That’s certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we will hate you the most. If I don’t make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it’s fifty or five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then” – he rode against him furiously – “and then” he concluded half kissing him, “you and I shall be friends.”[10]

This connection shows just how much Galgut was aided by Forster himself, and how A Passage to India, with its effective reversals, can be called a postcolonial novel.

Half of the joy of Galgut’s novel is the seamless weaving in of his deep research into Forster’s own diaries and letters, which fed Galgut’s ventriloquism and provided a rich source for imagining how his extraordinary Indian novel was formed. In Arctic Summer, Morgan meets the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy, and Galgut imagines Cavafy saying, “I myself have always been poised between history and poetry”.[11] That seems a fitting description of Galgut’s style and the hybrid nature of this novel – a merging of biography, broader historical detail and the writer’s imagination. In fact ‘hybrid,’ that key postcolonial term, is one that the novel does not shy away from: Galgut’s fictional Morgan even uses it to articulate why he is drawn to Alexandria.

[W]hat stirred him most deeply was that it was a mixture: an inbred miscegenation, a bastardy of influences and traditions and races. He had learned to mistrust purity, rather, because the real thing didn’t exist. Everybody by now was a blend; history was a confusion; people were hybrids.[12]

And later, thinking of himself as a mixture of sympathies – English born and bred, changed by his visit to India, having consummated his desire and fallen in love, Galgut writes of Morgan, “His own hybrid self missed Mohammed terribly.”[13] Subtly inflected is a mission statement against the 19th century meaning of ‘hybrid’, connected to miscegenation, but also captured is Forster’s own sense of ambivalence,

He himself, as usual, was subtly conflicted. […] he couldn’t help believing that on a certain level, this great dream [of Empire] was dying because of petty rudeness in railway carriages.[14]

This internal sense of conflict Forster feels between his various identities – what one should feel as a proud Englishman, and what one should feel as a human: empathy towards one’s fellow being – is the real subject matter of Arctic Summer. Structures of power – racial, sexual and gendered, that prohibit real connection – are Forster’s, and they become Galgut’s. If anything this novel is a consummate last word in the exercise of speaking back. That it comes via a South African voice, when South Africa (with its formative impact on Gandhi) forms a vital echo to the Indian-British relationship only makes Arctic Summer a more nuanced novel.

But perhaps the most daring feat of imagination in Arctic Summer comes when Galgut writes Morgan’s visit to the real ‘Marabar caves’ at Barabar. To venture into the caves with a Morgan who has yet to write Aziz or Adela, to bring to light that moment so carefully protected by Forster’s later maturity and worshipped in literary studies, is a risk. Yet with his careful evocation of Morgan’s voice, his concentration on the ambivalent feelings of love and shame that Morgan feels towards his friend Masood, the cave becomes a place where yearning fights with horror, race, desire, the humiliation of rejection by the beloved who is also the ‘other’, and finally, the need to give voice to these emotions is born from the rock, from the darkness:

It would be good to have a few minutes sequestered in the rock. Looking out from the first arched room through the entranceway, he had a sense of the sunlight world beyond as a remote dream, which he was looking at through a window. Then he retreated into the second chamber. Instantly, he felt sunken profoundly into the world, or into himself. He spoke his own name aloud. The cave repeated it endlessly. He said Masood’s name too, and then the word “love” – all of it rumbled back at him. […]

In the darkness […] he experienced what he had done with a fresh wave of shame. Aie-aie-aie! It was terrible, terrible, to have been wanted so badly, to have been pushed so firmly away.[15]

Here are the pre-emptive echoes of Adela’s yearning: her fear of exposure and her own half articulated desire. The scene works because Galgut sets it before Adela is even imagined and long before she is named. The echo Morgan hears is the absolute opposite of the dull, almost narcissistic “boum”[16] Mrs Moore is disappointed to experience when she sounds a noise in the caves on the fateful, fictionalised Marabar visit.

This sensitivity to the workings of successful appropriation means that Arctic Summer avoids sounding such a dull “boum”[17] of echo. The sweep of history that takes place in the eleven-year period against which Forster grappled with A Passage to India provides an epic backdrop for Galgut. He includes Forster’s first trip to India, the writing of Maurice, the start of the First World War and a posting with the Red Cross to Egypt where Forster finally fell in love and consummated his desire with Mohammed, a poor young man. Galgut imagines Forster in moments of doubt, thinking Mohammed “was flattered, of course, to be courted by an Englishman, and eager for the financial help too.”[18] These events provide startling moments and moving insight, even if they are imagined into the minds of two writers whose novels feel so much for the delicate threads of human relationships.

It is difficult to remember that Galgut’s Morgan is a hybrid of biography and fiction. Forster said himself that he only writes about “The person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be.”[19] Galgut has followed this lead bringing to life a Morgan that perhaps Forster would have ‘liked to be’  – compassionate, ambivalent, self-doubting, and yet determined and adventurous, with insight far beyond his times.

In A Passage To India, Forster wrote: “Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.”[20] Galgut’s sparse writing is elegiac without being sentimental, and urgent without resorting to polemic. The position it occupies in contemporary postcolonial fiction is a unique one, an act of compassionate mimicry for the troubled inner life of a man whose interest in the humanity of others was the true forerunner for this book, and for the difficulties of the writing life itself.

The post The Art of Compassionate Mimicry: Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut (Book Review) appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Track Two diplomacy pertains to policy oriented discussions that are non-governmental, informal and un-official in nature, but which are quite close to governmental agendas and often involve participation of the people who are close to governmental quarters and influential in policy matters, such as retired diplomats, retired civil and military officials, public figures, and policy analysts. On occasions it may also involve the participation of government officials in their private capacities.

The concept and practice of ‘Track Two’ diplomacy as a conflict resolution and conflict prevention approach originally emerged during the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union.[2] Since then, it has been used as an important tool to advance the dialogue process among parties in dispute in many conflict zones across the globe, for example Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland—Great Britain, India-Pakistan, and so on. The Track Two process is a more comprehensive and broader approach, encompassing a variety of non-official dialogues between members of adversary groups or nations which aim to develop strategies, influence public opinion and organise human and material resources in ways that might help to resolve conflict. The exponents of Track-Two diplomacy value the psychological and cultural awareness associated with the Track-Two dialogues in addressing the human aspects that are appropriate in a workshop setting and in similar activities, but which tend to create difficulties in official processes. The agenda of Track-Two work is fluid and responsive to the psychological and systemic barriers to conflict resolution, thus overcoming them. Moreover, Track Two proponents are of the view that such unofficial initiatives broaden the range of participation in the dialogue process among the antagonist groups, allowing consultation with parties that need to be represented but are not officially involved. In fact, it is now quite widely recognised by Track One diplomats that it is unlikely that modern day conflicts can be resolved without the cooperation of Track Two diplomacy, as it helps in easing the various barriers between adversarial groups.

Given its focus on both fostering relationships and on strengthening civil society, Track Two is especially useful with regards to India and Pakistan. India-Pakistan relations have been intricate and strained following independence from British colonial rule in 1947. It is a well-established fact that over the last six decades both nations have remained at logger-heads with each other, primarily because of the political dispensation of the Jammu and Kashmir problem[3]. The two countries have always used their substantial resources to outwit  each other, economically, diplomatically and militarily. Three full-fledged wars in 1947, 1965, and in 1971, the first two explicitly over the Jammu and Kashmir issues, were fought between the two countries.  In addition, there have been a number of serious but localised military confrontations, for example, Operation Meghdoot (1984), Operation Brasstracks (1986), and a small-scale war at Kargil (1999). During the rest of the time, the relationship can be at best characterized as a state of Cold War or Cold Peace. The relationship between the two states came to its lowest point in 1989-90 with the eruption of militancy in Kashmir. It was believed in India that Pakistan had a direct role in supporting cross-border militancy first in Punjab and then in Kashmir, creating a dangerous and explosive situation in the region. Simultaneously, the two nations sought nuclear parity. It was subsequently late in 1998 that both India and Pakistan exploded nuclear devices; on 11 and 13 May at Pokhran and 28 and 30 May at Chagi in 1998, respectively.

The failure to achieve substantial progress on issues confronting the two countries made a strong case for unconventional diplomacy, particularly in post-1990 situation when violence in the state of Jammu and Kashmir became a medium of asserting political will. Prevailing tensions between the two nuclear states became a genuine cause of alarm to the international community and for citizens of the two states, each with much to lose in an escalated conflict. It was in this context that the Track Two initiatives began to be mobilized and used to influence the relations between India and Pakistan in a positive direction.

The first prominent Track Two initiative between India and Pakistan was the Neemaran dialogue that took place under the auspices of the United States Information Services (USIS) in 1990 and was later joined by American foundations and German nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Its first meeting was held in Neemrana Fort in Rajhasthan, India in October 1991. The group was comprised of former diplomats, former military personnel, media persons, NGO workers and academics from India and Pakistan. Since then, there has been a significant increase in the number of Track Two initiatives between India and Pakistan. Of late, some new such initiatives have started, such as the Chaophraya Dialogue, the WISCOMP annual workshop, the Pugwash Conferences, Ottawa Dialogue, and so on.  There exist more than twelve highly institutionalised Track Two groups, as well as over twenty other people-to-people exchange programmes operating between the two nuclear powers[4], with both external and internal funding.

However, given its western origin there have been varied views and opinions vis-à-vis the role and relevance of Track Two diplomacy in the South Asian Context. Critics generally argue that the various non-official dialogues-particularly Track Two initiatives-have largely remained confined to the quasi-official realm with a few retired government officials, both civil and military, dominating most of the activities. The situation becomes further complicated as most of these people have represented their governments at some point in time, and thus they tend to adopt positions very similar to those of their governments once the core issues come to the fore.[5] Furthermore, given the prolonged hostile atmosphere between India and Pakistan, questions and queries over the role and relevance of Track Two dialogues have intensified. The ‘track two’ activists, however, hold the view that it is a useful and effective conflict management mechanism. For instance, it has led to increased understanding and a prevention in escalation of tensions. Moreover, it may help resolve on-going disputes by preventing the emergence of new disputes, as well as build confidence between the parties involved. A general consensus has evolved among many scholars and peace practitioners that the Track Two diplomacy between India and Pakistan has been able to:

• Facilitate the track one dialogue process between the two countries
• Keep the channels of communication open even during the times of crises at the official level
• Effectively break down the stereotypical and enemy images of each other
• Expand the peace constituencies across the border

Just a few years back, it was taboo in both India and Pakistan to discuss peace and reconciliation with each other. Contrary to that, the situation has significantly changed. Government as well as civilians on both sides of the border have recognised the pros and cons of peace and conflict. There is a very strong realisation among civil society groups operating on either side of the border that the costs involved in maintaining animosity against each other are much higher than any gains from the current hostile situation. At a time when the relations between India and Pakistan have lurched from crisis to crisis, Track Two has been able to sustain an element of unbroken engagement. For example, immediately after the Kargil crises [6]in late 90’s, when the interactions at the official level completely ceased to exist, several dialogue processes through Track Two and other unofficial means were in progress to prevent exacerbation of the situation. Similarly, after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, despite complete suspension of official diplomatic relations, many Track Two initiatives were pursued by the two governments to ease tensions and resume a state of normalcy.

Conclusion

Despite some of the limitations and constrains within which Track Two diplomacy operates, it has been an important medium to explore new policy options between India and Pakistan. It has acted as a platform upon which to have discussions about many contentious issues such as Kashmir’s political dispensation, demilitarization of the Siachen glacier, and cross border terrorism. It has been helpful in bringing down the psychological barriers, bridging the cultural differences, promoting mutual trade and developing an atmosphere conducive to the betterment of the region. Furthermore, the bilateral Track Two dialogue processes have also played a pivotal role in bringing key issues to the forefront and applying intellectual capacity and civil activism to broad policy stalemates where the state has essentially failed. While non-official diplomacy should not be a panacea for the mistrust amassed over decades of hostility, it provides a unique opportunity for the citizens of India and Pakistan to prevent the bitterness of the past from tainting the future. The future role of Track Two in South Asia may be minimal without a concurrent improvement in relations at the official level, as a sustained multi-faceted dialogue will help build confidence and prove constructive for both sides’ perceptions of one another. This in effect will ease domestic tensions and hostility and pave the way for enlightened political action.

The post Track-Two Diplomacy between India and Pakistan: A Study in Diplomatic Overture appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

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The West, as the representative model of order and stability in the international system, surveys the possibilities of peace and conflict in potentially significant geo-strategic zones. The West as the global policeman is also seeking potential allies that can help regulate and facilitate access to resources. An election in a postcolonial country is an important barometer in making these calculations, and therefore a subject of intense surveillance by the West. Elections in a postcolonial country come under the gaze of the West usually if it is with regards to a former colony ravaged by warfare and subject to the reconstruction efforts of the West.

The West is often involved in sending election monitors to supervise elections in these countries. But this year the elections in India, an independent country with a vibrant democratic system, has gained unprecedented visibility and is the subject of intense debate in the West.[1] The ongoing trauma of postcolonial experience has come alive during the current elections in India. Newspaper and academic articles introduce this subject with numerical citations on the size of the electorate (814 million) and are keen to label the political system as a stable ‘democracy’ in order to weigh in on the significance of an election in a postcolonial country.[2] These enormous figures and political labels on legitimacy help attract the attention of Western audiences by helping to focus their gaze on a far away landscape and give a sense of importance to the subaltern.[3]

These elections have made visible in an unprecedented manner the agony of a painful colonial legacy that the nationalists tried to subvert. The old and dirty colonial legacy of divide and conquer, playing upon distrust between the Hindus, the Muslims, the Sikhs and many others continues as  these are now regarded as ‘vote banks’ for parties contesting elections. Take for example, the two main political parties: the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) issues a majoritarian appeal to the Hindus to unite, and the Congress woos the Muslims as a minority that needs to be protected by a secular force. Sonia Gandhi, the current president of the Congress party has made deliberate efforts to reach out to the Muslim clergy to ask them to mobilize popular support in their constituencies in support of her party.[4]

The legacy of a colonial education too has had visible effects on the electorate. In order to establish its own ideological supremacy, colonial education deliberately castigated any nationalist attempts to foster an alternative ideology such as Hindutva as inferior, subversive and a threat to modernization.[5] The imported ideologies of liberalism and communism have been taught for generations, but any engagement with indigenous ideologies such as Hindutva is actively discouraged and dismissed as rabid. This has generated an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that has little patience for investigating the factors that have encouraged the BJP to resort to Hindutva, and the impact of electoral politics on this ideology. The BJP is repeatedly attacked as a divisive and anti-secular force trying to rewrite history in a manner that will split the country and undermine its democratic institutions. These insecurities and fears became most visible with the unprecedented act of a college principal issuing a special message on the college website and sending official emails to students in a deliberate attempt to influence their decision to vote a day before the polls opened.[6]

The subaltern has tried to thwart these colonial legacies of ‘divide and rule’ and colonial education through the civilizing catharsis of a written constitution with its antidote of secularism. This helped the subaltern gain recognition as a sovereign state within the international community. It is respect for this constitution that is now being reiterated by the established political parties as they try to temper and discipline new political parties such as the Aam Admi Party (AAP) entering the political fray. The lack of respect for constitutional procedures has generated concern about impending anarchy should this party come to power. In an act of frustration or in an effort to propose an alternative identity that is capable of even questioning this constitution, Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of this political party did not even hesitate to proclaim himself an anarchist.[7] This rash proclamation sent alarm bells ringing through the corridors of power both within the country and overseas. The strong backlash has now compelled Kejriwal to retract and issue a statement that he is committed to working within the modalities of the Indian constitution.[8]

These experiences have created a paradox where a postcolonial country is on the one hand applauded for being a vibrant democracy while on the other there is an embedded sense of fear, trepidation and uncertainty among the political pundits. At regular intervals alarmist trumpet calls alert the West to the unpredictability of the outcome of these elections and the future political trajectory of this country.[9] The seriousness of these dangerous threat perceptions is complemented by the old game of caricature and stereotyping. This strategy of deploying political cartoons is claimed by the West to have been introduced to the illiterate Orient that only with the help of simple visuals could learn to appreciate politics and political humour.[10] This strategy has now gained much popularity and traction in Indian culture and politics. The Oriental stereotypes of the ‘pandit’ and the ‘mullah’ created by the West are now regenerated and reinvigorated to lampoon political candidates and their religious affiliations. The caricature of Baba Ramdev in his saffron robes is a case in point.[11] The satirical intonations and depictions of ‘Madame Sonia’ as a gesture towards her Italian ancestry invoke loud laughter from mass audiences attending public rallies.[12]

Similarly other ideological tropes such as Fascism, Nazism and ghettoism are being evoked as threats to the much vaunted secularism and feminism.[13] The sly civility in the evocation of these particular tropes should not blind us to the politics behind their careful deployment. The politics of engaging and educating the West in its own language about other locales is based on a subtle assumption that the West can only comprehend violence if the subaltern willingly partakes and shares a vocabulary familiar to the West, crafted in its own experiences of epistemic violence. Any narration of suffering can be of sustained interest only if it finds resonance in the West. The universality of experiences of suffering and any struggle against them can only be described in a language of human rights as a standard of civilization sourced from the West.[14] So immersed is the subaltern in her Western experiences of learning and conceptualization that there is little need to pause or any attempt to articulate these experiences in local terms such as the need for sadbhavna (goodwill towards all)  or satyagraha (sacrifice and penance). The articulation of these concepts by some politicians that escaped the Western fount of learning still imparted in missionary schools in the Orient is dismissed as nonsensical.

The acute sense of vulnerability and shame that is experienced by the subaltern now  scrutinized by the West is couched in assurances of a predictable foreign policy and ministers treading the beaten old path regulated by an elephant bureaucracy.[15] The clerks under a colonial regime were always the acclaimed loyalists and in a post-colonial India their briefings to the elected candidates would secure their proper adaptation and adherence to the international protocol. These assurances mimic the confidence of a new post-colonial intellectual and political elite that in the immediate aftermath of its new found independence is eager to demonstrate to the West its capability to govern in a responsible manner.  In this election as soon as the manifesto of the BJP suggested a possibility of revising India’s nuclear doctrine this was taken very seriously by the West.[16] The party leadership had to issue an immediate clarification of adhering to a no-first use policy. These gestures are representative of a desire to assure and appease the West by the postcolonial elites that no matter which political party comes to power India will not make any radical changes in its nuclear policy.[17] These practices continue as exercises demonstrating the rational mind of the subaltern.

As the elections are being constested these facile attempts at mimicry to reconcile and assure the West that we will be rational and steer the beaten path in our foreign and economic policy continue unabated and find a place in leading academic and journalistic publications in the West. Regular assurances are issued that India will not deviate from the path of neo-liberal economic reforms and will maintain the status-quo vis-à-vis its neighbours and the West.[18] Political candidates are evaluated in terms of their relationship with the US and China as two powerful economies interested in doing business with India. The US is still ambivalent about issuing a visa to Narendra Modi, the BJP candidate, but has not hesitated in making overtures by sending its ambassador for a private meeting with him.[19] The hesitation of the West to embrace an electoral frontrunner renders Modi a more palatable candidate to non-Western countries such as China that have expressed much faith in his ability to do business and improve relations.[20]

The postcolonial trauma of the subaltern is unending. It is only in moments of crisis such as these elections that it becomes visible with such force. The ritualistic exercise of an election will run its course. But how will the subaltern sustain the gaze of the West? How will the subaltern escape the violence of being subject to the West’s scrutiny and discipline? Will the subaltern continue to suppress its need to question the divide and rule politics taught by the colonizers? Will the subaltern keep aspiring to the ‘superior’ status of the modernized and condemn as inferior any conversation with its own remnant ideological strains? Will the subaltern cling to the constitution as its only recourse to any demonstrated capability to reason and govern? The spectacle continues, and the West is for the time being mesmerized.

Postscript: Narendra Modi is now India’s Prime Minister-elect.

Photo credit: Al Jazeera English via Compfight cc

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