The Paradis’ Sanskritizing effort to raise their ritual status in Hindu society is paradoxically accompanied by what can only be called attempts at de-Sanskritization in the socioeconomic sphere. This is because of the reservation policy of the Indian state which seeks to benefit the historically backward and deprived sections of society through preferential quotas in school admissions and government jobs. The Pardis, who were once classified as a ‘scheduled tribe’ and were thus on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic totem pole (thereby having first claims on the state quotas in education and employment), have been recently reclassified as a mere ‘backward caste’. The elevation has brought with it the loss of many economic benefits, and the Pardis are currently engaged in a battle with the bureaucracy to prove that their backwardness is greater than that of a backward caste and thus to recover their earlier, lower status.
With very few exceptions, anthropologists have generally not described the many reasons why a community reveals itself to an outsider. Perhaps this reserve is because many anthropologists believe that the information they receive is primarily due to their personal qualities, such as a special gift for establishing rapport with strangers, fluency in the community’s spoken language, evident sympathy with its ways, or other markers of an irresistible personal attractiveness which it would be immodest to talk about in public. The community’s expectations of the researcher, which both encourage and skew a community’s self-revelations in a particular direction, are rarely discussed. These expectations may be frankly material, as in the case of Napoleon Cagnon’s Yanomono Indians of Venezuela who expected a constant stream of presents in exchange for their cooperation in furthering the anthropologist’s academic career.2 There, the community operated according to the principle of the goose that Laid the golden egg: ‘If you want more eggs, be nice to the goose.’ In other communities, the expectations may be linked to more nonmaterial benefits: the prestige of associating with a white sahib if the anthropologist is European or North American, or (in a more literate community) help with admission and scholarships for a relative to the sahib’s university. As far as the Pardis were concerned, it was evident that their initial ambivalence toward me, the motivation both to hold back and to talk, was coloured by their preoccupation with getting themselves reclassified as a scheduled tribe. Their suspicion was of strangers who might be agents of the government, gathering data which would harm their cause, like the researcher who had come twenty years ago and on whose report the government had acted: Tor his own career, he ground a whole community into dust.’ The hope, which finally triumphed over the doubt, was of my being a potential helper in their dealings with the state, given my obvious high status. The motivation of the Muslims in talking to me—or, rather of their leaders in sanctioning our conversations—was of a different kind which can be expressed in words thus: ‘You want to write about us and we would like to be written about in a way which suits our political purpose of appearing as victims.’ In contrast to the Pardi leaders’ faintly whining, complaining tone, the leaders of the Karwan Muslim community were firmly courteous, barely betraying their slight contempt of a Hindu liberal and do-gooder whose guilt about the Muslim minority they hoped to manipulate. I was thus aware that the accounts I heard were not only self-representations of individuals and the community but were also designed to accomplish particular pragmatic actions. Thus their conversational context needed to be kept constantly in mind.
A Pardi Family
The two-storeyed house of Badli Pershad, of the Naukod Mata clan, is smack in the heart of Pardiwada. On top of the doorway, which opens into a courtyard, are two painted baked clay idols, each about a foot high. The monkey god Hanuman, with a golden mace resting on his powerful shoulder, stands on the left side, guarding with his legendary strength the inhabitants of the house from the evil forces that surround human beings. The idol of god Rama stands on the right side, with a smaller Hanuman kneeling in front of the god in his equally legendary devotion. Badli Pershad, who is about seventy years old and blind for the last five years, is usually to be found in the room to the right of the courtyard. Except for a cot, the room is empty and scrupulously clean. Its floor, made of grey paving stone, is swept and washed every morning.
Badli Pershad has four grown children, two sons and two daughters, of which his youngest son Rajesh and his family live with him. The others live separately in different parts of the city. Both his sons are college graduates who reluctantly took up the traditional family occupation of vending fruit from pushcarts because they could not find other jobs. Their feelings of bitterness and humiliation are very close to the surface. Besides his son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, Badli Pershad’s ninety-year-old mother also lives with him. His sister, Laloo Bai, stays in a separate part of the house, occupying most of the second storey, with her eldest son and his family. The kitchens are separate but on many evenings, especially in the summer when it gets very hot, the sister and her family come down to the courtyard with the food they have cooked, and both the families eat together.
This is a snapshot of the family at one particular instant in the winter of 1991, since a major feature of a Pardiwada family is its fluidity. Family members come and go and stay for varying lengths of time depending upon the impact of external events on their lives and the ebb and flow of internal family life and relationships. Badli Pershad’s eldest son, Satish, lived in the same house with his family till a few months ago and moved out to a safer area after the December riot of the previous year. If his economic situation worsens, he may soon be back again. In this kind of shifting family, expanding and contracting like a giant membrane with an irregular rhythm, the only constant presence for young children is their parents (and, to some extent, their grandparents), especially the mother. Although it is both exciting and reassuring to have many caretakers who can compensate for parental shortcomings and mitigate the strong emotions aroused in a small, nuclear family, the frequent comings and goings of other adults in an extended family can also make children cling to their own parents, especially the mother, with a marked intensity as they seek to establish an intimate, enduring and trusting relationship in their inner, representational worlds—to establish Object constancy’, in psychoanalytic language. In one of my earlier writings, I had attributed the intense bond between mother and son in Hindu India solely to the vicissitudes of a woman’s identity—to become a mother of a son is to finally become a woman in the eyes of the patriarchy—with all the radical improvement in her status in the family that such a transition implies.3 I increasingly realize that the son, with his need for at least one figure to stand out clearly from a labyrinthine flux of relationships, actively furthers the mutual emotional investment of mother and son.
The experience of fluidity is not only from within the family, which constantly constitutes and reconstitutes itself, but also in relation to the wider community which, in fact, is an extended family. Badli Pershad’s eldest son is married to his sister’s daughter and his youngest daughter is married to one of his sister’s sons. There are so many such interconnections by marriage in the Pardi community that Badli Pershad would not be surprised to discover that he was the nephew of his daughter! One of the consequences of their being such a closely knit community is the great similarity in their views and opinions on different issues and in the way they think and follow a shared logic. This can be helpful in the sense that one can be reasonably sure that even a small sample would be accurately representative of the larger community. On the other hand, it can get boring to listen to very similar responses and a shared, common discourse unenlivened by individual quirkiness.
Badli Pershad’s wife, one of the economic mainstays of the family, who earned fifty to sixty rupees a day selling fruit, died in 1988. He misses her terribly. ‘Her absence is unbearable at times. She used to look after all my needs. Since I cannot see, she brought me my food and medicine, took me to the bathroom. I have been a diabetic for thirty-five years and can only eat a restricte
d diet of wheat rotis and vegetables. I am not allowed to eat rice or meat. She understood that these restrictions upset me and sometimes added meat gravy to my food.
‘Although my children and grandchildren are quite obedient, I feel they get tired of taking care of me to such an extent. Sometimes I think I am a major burden on them because of my lack of sight. If only I could have this [cataract] surgery, I would be more independent. My mother here, who is probably ninety years old, is still fit and healthy, and people say she is my daughter and not my mother in the way she looks after me. She brings me my food, takes me to the bathroom, bathes me, and sees to all my comforts. Even at this age, she is active and alert. When my daughter-in-law goes off to her mother’s house, she does all the cooking by herself.
‘I had more say in family matters when I had my eyes. My children were also younger. I was strong, worked hard, and people looked up to me to make all the major household decisions. Now I feel dependent, a burden on the family. They still respect me and are concerned about my needs and wishes. I, too, feel it is their life now and they should be allowed to do what they want to. Therefore unless someone asks my opinion I try not to force my views on others.’
The deference paid to Badli Pershad is not only perfunctory but extends to issues vital for the family’s welfare. His sister and his sons want him to sell the house and move out of Pardiwada since their sense of security has diminished precipitately after the last riot. In the past, Badli Pershad had resisted the demand although he is now resigned to the move: ‘This house carries memories of my youth, my wife, my children, and the good times that we spent together. Given a choice, I would not like to leave this house till I die. But under the circumstances, where we cannot hope for security or peace, I am forced to think of selling. The reason I have not done so is because the buyers are mainly Muslim who are offering very low prices for such a good house.’
Pardis and the Modern World
Badli Pershad’s younger son, the forty-year-old Rajesh, is bitter that he could not find the job he feels his college education entitled him to. It is with a sense of aggrieved humiliation that he drives an auto-rickshaw to earn a living, in addition to helping out with the family’s vegetable and fruit business. He has a baffled feeling of betrayal, of unkept promises, although he would be unable to say what the promises were or who made them. He blames the changing times, as do many of his friends, for this feeling of nagging dissatisfaction. Rajesh mourns the passing of an earlier era when the world was a simpler and kinder place and the bonds between the Pardis much stronger than they are today. ‘In Hyderabad, our jaat [a word denoting both a caste and a community] was once the best in the mango and grape business. No other jaat could even touch us. Now we compete against each other. We have become the best in the infighting business. Everyone is running after wealth, looking out only for himself. We were happier when we were together.
‘In olden days after you earned twenty thousand rupees, you relaxed. There was enough to eat for six months and after that we’ll see. We went back to the village, lazed about, talked day and night. Now no one’s desires are ever satisfied. Everyone wants more—bigger house, better food, more this, more that. It is good that a person thinks “I must progress, I must raise myself. But this raising is done by pushing someone else down. We were happier when we earned less but lived in friendship and love.
‘Even the nature of our business has changed. Nowadays, it is all just calculation. Earlier, we would go into an orchard and estimate the yield of trees and come to an agreement with the owner. Most of the time the fruit would be more than the estimate and one made a little extra money. Then came these packing boxes. We do not buy the fruit on the trees any more but get it in exactly weighed boxes. You have to deal with agents, contractors, truck owners, each one measuring, weighing, calculating. There is no more of walking around in orchards in fresh air, looking up at the trees, and estimating the yield.’
Of course, a part of Rajesh’s mourning for the ‘good old days’ may well be the normal expression of what Christopher Bollas calls a ‘generational consciousness’ as it gives place to the consciousness of a new generation.4 Rajesh’s nostalgic ruminations are thus also occasioned by the waning of a youthful vitality which made the world come alive at a particular time of his life. The inner feeling of the dimming of life for a whole generation then gets expressed in a sense of loss which is attributed to changes in the modernizing outside world. Many of us pass down this consciousness of loss to our young, although it is not strictly their own, and which most of them thankfully succeed in renouncing sooner or later. On the other hand, the raising of a generation’s consciousness occurs precisely because of severe dislocations such as the process of modernization. Without a crisis of this historical magnitude, the demarcation between the consciousness of a preceding and a succeeding generation is not so marked; the change is not big enough to become a subject of reflection.
Rajesh’s elder brother, the forty-five-year-old Satish, although sharing some of his brother’s feelings of bitterness and disappointment—he too could not get a job in spite of his education—would confront the dislocations of modernity more actively. He is a passionate advocate of change in the community’s attitudes and values. A small, intense man, whose sense of his own dignity is in constant conflict with an anxious desire to please, Satish would make the next generation a vehicle for his hopes rather than weigh it down with despair.
‘You know our business is such that we cannot earn a lot of money to buy property or have savings. It is a hand-to-mouth existence. Our most valuable property is our children. So we are very careful about how we bring them up and what they will make of their lives. That is why we not only want to feed and clothe them properly but also give them the best education we can. We do not want our children to get into bad habits, Therefore I have bought a black-and-white television so that if they want to watch a film they can do it at home. Otherwise once the children are in their teens it is easy for them to fall into bad company and spoil their lives. But I know that not everyone in our community feels like this. They think that children are there for the financial support of the parents in their old age, and this is why they want to make them study and find a good job. Not for the children’s sake but their own. We [indicates his wife] are not selfish like that. It is our duty to bring up the children as good people and if they feel like taking care of us in our old age then it is our good luck.
‘Our people have certain fixed festivals like Bonal, Holi, and Dussehra which we have celebrated since the time of our ancestors. But now, seeing other Hindus celebrate so many festivals, our people also want to celebrate them. Festivals like Ganesh, Diwali, Ugadi are nothing but occasions for wasteful expenditure. In the name of the festival it becomes compulsory to buy new clothes, prepare good food, spend money on useless things like crackers and decorations. It is the spirit of sacredness and not the show that is important. Unfortunately, these days show and the amount of noise one can make seem to have become a sign of one’s importance. And sometimes although the menfolk may not be interested in celebrating all the rituals of a festival, they may have to do so because of their wives. I am lucky that my wife shares my ideas. Many of my friends complain that they are unable to meet these expenses but have to undertake them to please their wives. These women have no thoughts of their own. They want to do everything other women do. I am very particular that blind customs and useless rituals are discarded.
‘Another custom I would like to change is the burial of dead bodies. I feel it is better to cremate than bury the dead. This is because space is becoming a major problem these days. Our ancestral village of Jalpalli is now only full of graves. The sad part is that these graves do not get respectful treatment from those who are alive. After a few years, the land is dug up and used for construction. Therefore I feel it is better to finish off once and for all so that there is neither a problem of space nor disrespect to the dead. Moreover, many times some of my Hindu friends have ques
tioned me about this practice. They ask why despite being Hindus we bury the dead like Muslims. I feel very embarrassed. Now it is a mixed situation. Some families have started cremating their dead and some continue to bury them. This kind of behaviour makes you the laughing-stock of others, especially these Muslims. They are always on the lookout for our customs that are odd. This is the main difference between their religion and ours. They have fixed rules which no one can flout.
‘The other thing I would like to change is our custom of marriage between members of one family. Earlier, people followed it because it ensured that all family members lived in one place. Now there is no need for such a custom because there is so much overcrowding. I feel that one must send our daughters to different families and get girls from new families because it will help us establish new relationships.’
Satish’s main strategy in dealing with the dislocations caused by rapid change seems to be aimed at reducing the isolation—of the family by integrating it into a network of other families, and of the community by bringing it closer to the customs and usage of a Hindu ‘mainstream’. He exemplifies the spirit of agency among the Pardis, both individual and collective. In their vigorous pursuit of community self-interest which manipulates all the levers that can influence decision-making in a modern democratic state—from preparing detailed, petitioning briefs for the bureaucracy to persistent lobbying of their elected representatives—the Pardis are by no means mere passive victims of the modernizing process.
The Night of Long Knives
Colours of Violence Page 14