Book Review: The Gendered Nation

The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia
Author: Neluka Silva
[Sage Publications, New Delhi. 257 pp. Rs. 320. Published 2004]

“The feeling of nation-ness is the most legitimate value in the political life of our time.” Neluka Silva quotes Benedict Anderson to underline the importance of a debate on nationalist discourses in South Asia. The contribution of the use of nationalism in recovery of colonized peoples’ identities is now a well-discussed subject. However, as Tharu and Lalitha (1993, 52) have pointed out, ‘nationalism is not the awakening to self-consciousness of a nation and a tradition that already exist at some deep level. Nations, like traditions and works of art, are (artificially) made, built, created and imagined.’ The processes that construct national identities using ‘pre-determined differentials’ (Silva 2004, 15) such as religion, language, ethnicity and also gender, entails favouring of one factor over the other. In the context of South Asia, the hegemonic constitutions of identities will typically marginalize low-caste groups, working class, minority religious groups and women.

Neluka Silva’s thesis is on gendered underpinnings of nationalist discourses in South Asian countries, particularly on how they are reflected in the literatures of these countries. She also analyzes feminized images of the nation in popular culture, political rhetoric and media, where terms like ‘motherland’, ‘mother tongue’ and ‘mother country’ are naturalized in every day language, literature and cultural idiom. She observes that while the nationalist iconography is predominantly feminine, the practice of nationalism remains a male prerogative. The image of nation as a female body comes with corresponding images of men as the actual actor and protector - as soldier, administrator and fraternal figures. Furthermore, the idealization of motherhood has excluded all non-reproductive sexualities and assigned women the responsibility of preserving and transmitting a nation’s culture. Female body images and references are used as terrains where nationalist battles are fought to create distinction between the submissive and ravaged colonial period and the resurgent purity and newfound strengths of the post-colonial period in South Asia. Silva argues that, when looked closely, the power structures in the post-Independence phase have, however, remained the same, with mere reinvention of the modes of domination.

Neluka Silva usefully illustrates her arguments by choosing specific moments from post-Independence ‘nation-building’ phases in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. She highlights two registers of gendering: one in which there is a recurrent pattern of women heads of state who rise to power through male family connections, and the second, in which women are ‘constructed as the emblems of the authentic community’ (Silva 2004, 35). She discusses certain literature-texts by native and émigré South Asian writers, to both produce evidence for her arguments and help decide ‘the place of literature in constructing, reinforcing or challenging nationalist ideologies’ (ibid. 44).

For example, Silva traces Indira Gandhi’s rise to power, and her political maneuvers to design a political mask for herself by adopting a cluster of gendered images - daughter, wife, mother and widow. Neluka Silva draws resemblances between Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Chandrika Kumaratunge, the women heads of the state in South Asia who confirmed to the patriarchal codes of behaviour and political practice. They adopted gendered images for political purposes but largely dissociated themselves from women’s issues. Silva argues that co-opting mythical or familial or religious icons for political expediency is ultimately disempowering for women because these icons are fundamentally constructed and situated within patriarchal discourses. She discusses two texts that critique the type of political discourses deployed by Indira Gandhi. Nayantara Sahgal’s ‘Rich Like Us’ exhibits how the national emergency period in India (1975-1977) had challenged and destabilized gendered identities in the country. The effects of Indira Gandhi’s leadership and policies are felt by characters ranging from elite middle class to the subaltern woman. Silva also appreciates the complexities created by the multiple identities of the Widow in Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’. While pointing to the book’s misogynist underpinnings, Silva admits that the Widow character has been effectively and innovatively used to portray the male protagonist’s sense of betrayal and the masculine reaction to the threat posed by a woman (and a widow at that) who gains power and agency. Similarly, Silva’s discussion of the literature from Sri Lanka reveals the denial of histories of multi-ethnicity and cultural mixing. The question of identity becomes the central issue in contemporary Sri Lanka, where the ideal of the ‘pure woman’ works against women who are of mixed ancestry. Indu Dharmsena’s play ‘It’s All or Nothing’ unveils popular prejudices against the Burgher woman while Michael Ondaatje’s ‘Running in the Family’ deals with the impossibility of a fixed, homogenous and natural identity in Sri Lanka.

The role of religion and language in the process of formation of nation’s and individual’s identity is Silva’s main concern when she discusses texts from Bangladesh. The valorization of mother tongue (Bengali) as being central to one’s notion of self, and women’s marginalized position in the liberation struggle is the subject of Munir Choudhary’s plays. Sangari and Vaid too have pointed to how language can become a reason for contest and pivotal in identification of class and gender. They cite the case of the purification of female vernacular in the nineteenth century Bengal, where linguistic sophistication becomes a marker for social status and gender (Sangari and Vaid 1989, 12). Through discussions of Rushdie’s ‘Shame’ and Rukhsana Ahmad’s ‘We Sinful Women’, Silva illustrates how religious fundamentalism impinges on the rights and identities of women both at the level of culture and national polity in Pakistan. Silva elaborates on Rushdie’s concept of ‘palimpsest’ and its subversive potential to expose elements that are suppressed or erased in the nationalist rewriting of history. In ‘We Sinful Women’, the woman author is argued to have used a traditionally male-dominated genre to expose the patriarchal devices of manipulation. Neluka Silva’s discussion of the various aspects of the nationalist debate is well informed and detailed. However, at times it threatens to go beyond the stated agenda of analyzing its gendered underpinnings. A less detailed description of the background of the context of the source texts would have given Silva space for including more contemporary writings from South Asia. The texts she has chosen well reveal how literature can be used as a tool to challenge the nationalist ideologies. However, there is little evidence that shows how literature can be used also by the state to construct and reinforce gendered national identities (as is one of the stated aims of her book). Also, a discussion on the place assigned to women in the nation’s economy and analysis of claims of the nationalist ideologues on women’s role in reform and development would have enriched the author’s arguments. Nonetheless, the book makes a valuable and original contribution to the existing debates on gender and nationalism. The strength of the book lies in the insightful details and the connection it makes between the common past, culture and political traditions of the South Asian countries. The book should interest academics and students of gender studies, postcolonial theory and cultural studies.

[This review was published in Progress in Development Studies journal, UK, 2006]