Locating Female Prostitute in Jayanta Mahapatra’s Poetry: An Analysis from the Subaltern Perspective
Abstract:
The concept of subalternity as a complex socio-political-cultural construct has gained momentum in the late 20th century and has been one of the major dimensions of postcolonial cultural and critical discourses which are essentially grounded upon the colonial experiences of subjugation, otherization, subordination, marginalization and domination. Although virtually colonialism came to an end with the arrival of political sovereignty, the colonial legacy of hegemony and oppression continue in the postcolonial states where millions of people remain the silent victim to the politics of caste/caste, gender, language, ethnicity etc. The subjugated female constitutes a major part of the subaltern world and their otherization under the rigid ideological norms of class, caste patriarchy together with poverty and starvation remains a continuous affair in the male-dominated society in which she is objectified thereby standing as a commodity. The process of ‘othering’ is systematically ritualized through the politics of space, culture and body as well and it is prominently witnessed in the ostracized lives of the female prostitutes. In this direction, the paper attempts to locate the unheard voice of the female prostitute in Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry. Through analyzing selected poems of Mahapatra, the paper aims to highlight the subaltern space of the female prostitutes wherein they are situationally forced to survive without identity, dignity and voice.
Key Words: Subaltern, Otherization, Female Prostitute, Poetry, Jayanta Mahapatra
Subaltern philosophy became increasingly popular in the backdrop of Postcolonial thinking that tended to interrogate Eurocentric discourse, colonial hegemony, cultural imperialism and the imposition of grand narrative and hero worship. Edward Said, in his Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993) contests the detrimental spirit of western imperialism which subjugated the colonies to Eurocentric cultural hegemony and subordinated the culture(s) of the colonized as ‘other’. The concept of ‘other’ which is central to the postcolonial literary theory, owes its origin to the philosophical doctrines of the German philosopher Hegel and the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas who had theorized the ‘master-slave dialectics’/ ‘lordship and bondage dialectics’ and the ‘ethics of the other’ respectively. Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) theorized his ‘master-slave dialectics’ through an encounter between two self-consciousnesses in which ‘one’ masters the ‘other’, whereas Levinas in his Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961) remains critical about the ontological view of ‘Infinite Other’ which is indicative of the hegemonic outlook of the imperialists and colonial masters and deprecates the notion of totality-one that curtails the freedom of the other in empirical sense of the term. Further, Levinas’ ‘the ethics of the other’ can be aptly correlated with Derrida’s ‘ethics of the ear’ which points to the ear and voice of the ‘other’. Further, Hegelian, Levinasian and Darridian viewpoints can aptly be compared with that of German philosopher Karl Marx whose elaboration of history in terms of perpetual class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat (The Communist Manifesto 65) denotes the constant tension and conflict between the dominant and subjugated social class of people.
The conflicting binaries of self /other, dominant/dominated and power/powerless create the fertile ground for Subaltern Studies which emerged to interrogate capitalist exploitation, cultural hegemony and social subjugation of the ‘dominant’ over the ‘dominated’, and vigorously advocated the idea of resisting grand narratives, hero worship and elite power politics in favour of minority/marginalized histories so as to protect/highlight the language, history, culture and literature of all those groups of people who are forced to be at the periphery as a ‘subaltern’. It is in this context that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) used the term ‘subaltern’ – ‘sub’ (inferior) and ‘alter’ (other) to denote a subjugated social category of people of inferior rank who are constantly otherized in the hegemonic power structure of the colonial paradigm due to their class, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, language, cultural orientation and geographical position (Prison Notebooks). As such, the term signifies those groups who are subordinated and excluded from the dominant history/elite historiography thereby compelling them to stay at the periphery with their marginalized identities. As both the elitist historiography and bourgeois historiography are ideologically constructed in order to maintain the interest of the upper class and middle class of people respectively, Subaltern philosophy aims at providing an alternative history to reconstruct and represent the marginalized with renewed historical sense.
Gramsci contributed substantially to the theorizations of hegemony, ideology and subaltern historiography. In fact, Gramsci develops a range of concepts which are all interrelated and serve as foundation for his conception of hegemony and subordination. His work gained attention for the first time in Italy between 1947 and 1951 when his prison writings were published in six volumes and which stirred a body of scholarship on the concepts like the formation of intellectuals, hegemony and passive revolution, state and civil society, subaltern historiography etc. Gramsci first uses the term ‘subaltern’ with regard to social class and in this direction, he comments, “Subaltern classes are subject to the initiatives of the dominant class, even when they rebel; they are in a state of anxious defence” (Notebook 3, 14). For Gramsci classes are not merely groups; they are rather complex social structures with dominant and subordinate elements. It is in this sense that subaltern groups are subordinate to a ruling group’s policies and initiatives. In fact, Gramsci believes that power operates mostly at the level of mutual interactions of culture, economy and politics within the realm of a hegemonic structure. While highlighting the role of hegemony in civil society together with the separation of powers in his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci brings to the fore the perpetual struggle between power centres in a specific historical context which fosters the “unstable equilibrium between the classes” (245). In this direction, both civil society and political society mutually support and reinforce their respective power politics. The hegemony within civil society supports the leading group’s authority over political society, and the juridical apparatuses of political society protect the dominant group’s hegemony within civil society through coercive measures. Gramsci also believes that the economic structure remains the underlying form of political society as well as civil society and it is precisely the reason why structural imbalance in terms of class difference is witnessed thereby resulting hegemony and subordination.
The formation of South Asian chapter of Subaltern Studies in the 1980s under the leadership of Ranajit Guha is an important landmark in Subaltern discourse. Popularly known as the ‘Subaltern Collective’, the group comprises historians, social critics and academicians among which mention may be made of Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sumit Sarkar, Gyanendra Pandey to name a few. In his preface to the first volume of the Subaltern Studies (1982), Guha made it categorically clear that the aim of the subaltern project is to rectify the elitist bias, and that the subalternists would evince interest in minor narratives, not in the ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ aspects of the subaltern condition, but in their history and society. At the same time, the subaltern historiographers tended to contest the traditional method of historiography and forwarded a new method by interrogating the ‘colonialist mainstream historiography’ on the one hand and the ‘bourgeois national elitism’ on the other. They tended to highlight the hitherto overlooked issues like agrarian economy, peasants’ unrest, plight of the factory workers, and host of other issues pertaining to the socio-economic political condition of the marginalized section of the society.
The gravity of the situation is intensified when a woman becomes a subaltern. As the present paper centres on female prostitutes, it is profitable to note that females are historically colonized by several power-centres including patriarchy. The objectification and commodification of female body get a brilliant theorization in the hands of Simone de Beauvoir according to whom, woman is “defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her....... he is the Subject, he is the Absolute--she is the Other” (The Second Sex 44). Her body/nature is the socio-politically inscribed entity in which she is always seen as feeble and passive. Further, from the biologically essentialist and determinist paradigms her body literally stands as the receptacle for the desires of the male and incubator for his offspring; a creature driven by emotion and instinct; a slave to her reproductive organs/hormones.
Gayatri Chakravoty Spivak’s seminal article “Can the subaltern speak?” makes a powerful plea for gendered subalternity and characterizes the subaltern as voiceless, and this is all the more so in case of woman as a subaltern in an otherwise orthodox and patriarchal society. She vindicates her point by citing the instance of ‘sati’ system (widow sacrifice) in the 19th century Indian society and also the suicide committed by one teen-aged Bhubaneswari Bhaduri in Calcutta in 1924 and then clearly states that woman’s voice has been silenced under the cruel clutches of British colonialism on the one hand, and Hindu patriarchy on the other. Therefore, the subaltern, and more predominantly the female subaltern, ‘can’t speak’. In this essay she comes to the categorical conclusion that ‘the subaltern cannot speak...there is no space from which the subaltern can speak’ (271- 313). In the light of the above theoretical musings on subaltern consciousness, the paper is designed to bring to the fore the subaltern space of the prostitutes as depicted in the poetry of Jayanta Mahapapatra.
A physicist-turned poet and a story writer Jayanta Mahapatra has carved a niche in the realm of Indian poetry written in English in the post independent era. As a powerful ‘New Poet’, Mahapatra stands unparalleled for his wonderful observation of and critical insight into the socio-cultural environment in which he lives. The ‘otherization’ of female prostitutes in Indian society has been realistically articulated by Mahapatra in his poetry. He foregrounds the pathetic condition of prostitute who remains victim to the inhuman politics of space. Due to her state of disgrace in the eyes of mainstream community, female prostitute remains permanently voiceless. She is deliberately ignored in every respect of life and is subjected to endless indignity and ignominy thereby forcing her to bear the burden of shame.
It is interesting to note that although presently prostitutes belong to the otherized group of society, they were not so in the earlier days. Prostitution has long been in practice in the world since hoary past and bears a long history across time and location. The root of prostitution lies in the fertility rites and divine marriage in the backdrop of religious context thereby giving birth to sacred prostitution/temple prostitution/cult prostitution. The sacred sexual rites in ancient shrines and temples can be traced to the practice of ritual dancing performed by dancing girls to fulfil the ritual services to please deity. Besides pleasing deity through dance and music, such custom also attracted several devotees thereby generating wealth for the shrine/temple. Because of such profit, the dancing girls remain associated with the temple environ which is aptly reflected in the documentation of shrines/temples made by the Greek historian Herodotus in The Histories. Such custom was also widely in practice in ancient Egypt where temples of Osiris and Isis witnessed the active presence of dancing girls in huge numbers. Even in the ancient Greece, women dedicated themselves to Venus and sold their bodies for the benefits of temple (The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization 185). Further, among the Hebrews and Babylonians, such custom remained prevalent thereby pointing the fact that religious prostitution was mostly socio-culturally sanctioned widespread activity in the West. Much in the same fashion, under the system of ‘devdasi’ (slave of God) in ancient India, women were employed in various temples to assist priests in religious rituals. Besides extending their services to the day today activities of the temple, they performed songs (kirtan) and dance praising the name of the Lord which was latter impaired due to the laxity of morals among the priests. The system of ‘devdasi’ draws attention of several scholars including Kautilya and Kalidasa. Kautilya’s Arthasastra hinghes upon the life and duties of dancing girls whereas Kalidasa in his Meghdutam pointed to the presence of ‘devdasi’ in the Mahakala temple of Ujjayani at the time of evening worship.
Besides the system of ‘devdasi’, Indian society also patronized the custom of courtesans (rajavesya) who remained an indispensable part of the royal court during ancient and medieval periods. The courtesans held different positions at the royal palace and their duties included singing and dancing at the royal court, entertaining the royal guest, giving company to the royal family during garden parties, boat trips and hunting etc. In fact, courtesans had formed a class of their own in which hierarchical order was maintained in respect of their designation, duties and life style as well. The chief courtesans enjoyed prestigious social status as they remained the custodians of fine arts who were even alternatively known as ‘nagarasobhani’ (ornaments of the city). According to Vatsyayana, a courtesan, endowed with a good disposition, beauty and other winning qualities, and also versed in several arts, obtains the name of a ‘Ganika’, or public woman of high quality, and receives a seat of honour in an assemblage of men. The ‘ganika’ in India can aptly be compared with the ‘hetaira’ in ancient Greece who remained the embodiment of intellectual and aesthetic attributes, thereby occupying a prestigious socio-cultural position.
However, we get a dismal picture of prostitution during the British administration in India. With the advent of British colonialism and the introduction of capitalist economy, a radical shift was seen in the socio-political, economic and cultural scenario of India which also remained influential in governing life style, sexuality and morality. Parallel to the colonial hegemony and exploitation one can also witness the emergence of local aristocratic culture of Zamindar class of people (Babu culture) in the 19th century Indian socio-cultural ethos which represents an opportunist mindset to meet with the personal profits through mimicking colonial way of life. This had resulted in the proliferation of a life style characterized by extravaganza and flamboyancy thereby encouraging the vigorous presence of the proxy wives, baijis, and private courtesans; who helped in gratifying the lust of several aristocratic classes including Zamindar, trader, businessman, professional and bureaucrat. Prostitution gains steady increase due to the hedonistic life style of several aristocratic classes who generally advocated corruption in livelihood and morality. But the increase of prostitution in the backdrop of social corruption and capitalist exploitation of the Zamindari culture ironically degrades the life of prostitute by transforming prostitution into a commodity and prostitute to a ‘sex worker’ who is devoid of all categories of social and religious implications that she used to enjoy previously.
Besides the adverse impact of the ‘Babu culture’ on prostitution during the 19th century colonial India in general and Bengal in specific, several British regulations had helped in erasing the past glory of prostitution. Colonial administration brought prostitution under the penal laws which are the reflections of colonial mindset governed by exploitation and hegemony. This is clearly evident in the enforcement of the Cantonment Act (Act XXII of 1864), the Indian Contagious Diseases Act of 1868, Lock Hospital Act and so on that regulated prostitution primarily for the British military establishment in India in order to reinforce imperial dominance through sexual control of Indian women. These Acts were purposefully implemented to fulfil the colonial agenda of taking care of the sexual needs of the British soldiers and protecting them from venereal disease as well. Under the influences of these Acts, British soldiers in India were not only permitted but promoted to hold native young and good-looking girls as prostitutes for their carnal pleasure. This had resulted in the rapid growth of brothels within regimental bazaars known as ‘Chaklas’ which became the shelters of commercial sex workers where they were physically exploited and abused by the British troops. The past glory of the ‘ganika’ is no more visible during the British Raj as she stands simply as an object of pleasure. Even they were denied the dignity of labour and remained voiceless situational subaltern.
The subaltern status of the female prostitutes gets brilliant poetic representation in the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra and in this regard, his ‘The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street’ stands significant in exposing the otherized world of prostitution. The poem chronicles the life of prostitutes who are bereft of identity and voice. This process of otherization is clearly marked in the beginning of the poem where the poet throws light into the restricted location where generally prostitutes operate their flesh trade at the backstroke of repressive socio-cultural conditions:
Walk right in. It is yours
Where the house smiles wryly into the lighted street.
(‘The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street’)
The poet hinges upon the fact that whorehouse is the construction of society to provide sexual alternative to men. It is the oppressive elite and cultured world which primarily remains responsible behind the construction of whorehouse. Ironically, it remains that same elite and cultured world which also condemns its existence. This fact becomes evident in the poem when we get the picture of the whorehouse which ‘smiles wryly’ to the so called cultured and sophisticated world, aptly represented by the ‘lighted street’. The whorehouse is the realistic manifestation of the dirty politics of exclusion in our society which always remains instrumental in categorization. So the acceptability of prostitution as an immoral, indecent and vulgar profession also directs us to question the superficial purity and dignity of the aristocratic class as prostitution is the direct result of the prolonged deprivation, exploitation and suppression of women by the hegemonic forces of society.
That prostitutes are in vulnerable position in our society is appropriately foregrounded by Mahapatra. Besides the socio-cultural and economic deprivation of the mainstream society, they are also severally victimized inside their own world of prostitution. Often the lives of young prostitute girls are strictly controlled by the brothel keeper who makes use of them simply as money making machine. As violence is an inevitable aspect of sex industry, besides being abused, beaten and humiliated by the brothel keeper, many times girls are also kept in the dark cages under lock and key, thereby forcing them to experience the unbearable torture and humiliation. Mahapatra realistically articulates this fact in the poem:
The sacred hollow country ward
that harbours the promise of a great conspiracy
Yet nothing you do
(‘The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street’)
The life of female prostitute is not only shattered by her disempowering experiences of poverty and gender but also further devastated by the conspiracy which is designed and executed upon her by the middlemen, procurers, pimps and policemen as well. Often the secret negotiations between pimps and policemen are made with the aim to manipulate the rules in order to protect their own respective interest and to prosecute only the poor brothel girls. They are doubly ill-treated and tortured- first by the so called cultured society and secondly by those people who are directly or indirectly involved with the world of prostitution, thereby forcing them to the silent victims of endless injustices. In the poem, Mahapatra brilliantly exposes the wretched life of prostitute through the image of ‘lonely breath’ which essentially vindicates the fact that her life is enfolded by socio-cultural isolation thereby enforcing her to be at the margin for ever.
Mahapatra’s ‘The Lost Children of America’ situates both ‘the big-breasted, hard-eyed young whores’ and ‘corrupt politicians’ against the same background of Cuttack’s ‘dusty malarial lanes’ where they open their own respective shops for trade. The whore opens her shop to sell her body whereas the ‘corrupt politician’ opens his shop before election to sell false dream to the common innocent people. And thus, the place, which is frequented by young whores, has also become the spot for the corrupt politicians to deliver their pre-election speeches:
in the crowded market square among rotting tomatoes
fish-scales and the moist warm odour of bananas and piss
passing by the big breasted, hard eyes young whores
who frequent the empty silent space behind the local cinema
by the Town Hall where corrupt politicians still
go on delivering their pre-election speeches.
(‘The Lost Children of America’)
The poem ironically criticizes the mindset of those politicians who destroy the democratic values like trust and tolerance by spreading the germs of corruption, exploitation and immorality in the society. Instead of doing any constructive effort to rehabilitate the prostitutes, such politicians only make use of them in the forms of votes and sexual favour thereby fostering the suppression of those who are generally illiterate, apathetic and ignorant. The poet articulates:
Lying in bed I remember things:
ripe berries, wild coriander, springtime
and hawks gliding on a day's first updrafts.
And Hara, the familiar whore
I last saw walking down my street
a year or so ago,
her life-sweet walk of freedom
drawn to a shape of pain
(‘Autumn and Illness’)
That a whore is bereft of freedom is essentially highlighted by the fact that her apparently seen ‘walk of freedom’ constantly encircles her into the world of pain and despair. For her, freedom becomes simply an illusion as her life is totally imprisoned by financial crisis, social stigmatization and cultural isolation thereby standing completely opposite to the socio-cultural prestige and flamboyant life-style of the past ‘ganika’ as vindicated in Kautilya's Arthasastra.
Women usually enter in to the sex trade as a last resort, due to poverty and loss of family support. And Mahapatra’s poem ‘Slum’ records the life of an old whore who desperately waits on the road for a client. Mahapatra exposes the fact that the whore’s breasts look tired as she has exposed her breasts to many clients in order to earn money for her living. The poet pertinently observes that often poverty and prostitution go side by side and it gets a brilliant poetic depiction in the poem titled ‘Hunger’. His poetic voice becomes sad and heavy when he delineates the poverty stricken fisherman community in Odisha who have nothing except daughters to sell for survival. The poet describes how poverty and sexuality play havoc in the life of man and woman debasing them to sub-human levels. Mahapatra poignantly presents the shocking instance of a poor father forcing his girl child to take prostitution under the backstroke of economic circumstances. The rotten economic status of the fisherman gets explicit poetic space when the poet says: ‘I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.’ Poverty is so much intense in the case of the fisherman that even his ‘white bone’ can be seen. Moreover, the depiction of the fisherman’s shack covered with soot, where only darkness prevails except an oil lamp with flickering flame, sufficiently foregrounds his financial sickness. Further it is evident in the portrayal of the physique of the fisherman’s daughter: ‘Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.’
Due to extreme poverty, fisherman’s daughter becomes the victim to malnutrition and it is reflected through her ‘long and lean’ body. Her ‘long and lean’ body becomes the sellable product on the part of her father in order to gratify his hunger for food. It is the most unfortunate and ironical that the creator himself is responsible for polluting his creation by luring a prospective customer:
I heard him say; my daughter, she's just turned fifteen....
Feel her. I'll back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
(‘Hunger’)
It is needless to say that the after-effects of this forced prostitution are more humiliating on the part of the victim. At the tender age of fifteen, the girl’s traumatic experience of sexual violence is going to cast a long lasting negative impact on the victim’s perception of herself, of events, and of others. At the community level, it stigmatizes the victim, depriving her of any social status or intrinsic value as a person as the victim will mostly be seen as unfaithful or promiscuous in the male dominated society. In Indian socio-cultural context, such a victim is generally prevented from speaking out, prevented from marrying, forbidden to take part in auspicious occasions and also excluded from school and work and simply she becomes an object of endless ridicule. Wherever she goes and whatever she does, victim of sexual violence is made to feel ashamed and is ostracized both by her family members and community as well. Social stigmatization and otherization will undoubtedly jeopardize her personal life and mental health as well, thereby forcing her to a voiceless subaltern.
According to Mahapatra ‘Hunger’ is a ‘significant’ poem because it contains the truth of life. He has strong conviction on ‘poetry of witness’ wherein the poet exposes the naked reality of the world and in this regard it is pertinent to listen to the poet:
The poem is based on a true incident; it could easily have happened to me on the poverty-ridden sands of Gopalpur-on-sea. Often have I imagined myself walking those sands, my solitude and my inherent sexuality working on me, to face the girl inside the dimly-lit, palm-frond shack. The landscape of Gopalpur chose me, and my poem. To face perhaps my inner self, to see my own debasement, to realize my utter helplessness against the stubborn starvation light of my country (Door of Paper 20).
The heart-breaking experiences that the poet accumulates during his stay at Gopalpur in Odisha aptly reveal the fact that poverty still remains the hallmark of our land where people have been continuously fighting a lost battle against poverty and hunger to survive, thereby fostering the trade of prostitution to such an extent which even bedevils father-daughter relationship as we have seen in the poem ‘Hunger’. The issue of hunger and its devastating impact on human life further gets explicit poetic expression:
I once heard in a remote mountain village
strung on three hundred days
of starvation in a year
At times I’m like a desperate mother
who has to sell her daughter
because I can’t see her die of hunger.
(‘Like the Haze of Faraway Tea Gardens’)
Mahapatra shows his deep concern for the teenage girl who is ruthlessly pushed into the world of prostitution by none other than her own mother. He projects the decadent mother-daughter relationship where mother treats her own daughter as a commodity.
An analysis of different poems of Jayanta Mahapatra reveals that the poet remains admittedly aware of the politics of exclusion that the female prostitutes are subjected to. His poetry exhibits the fact that female prostitutes are the cursed creations, victimized by the spatial politics and the culture of difference. The poet has displayed unwavering objectivity in showcasing the existential truth of female prostitutes which encompasses their loss of self esteem, dignity, and rights as well. Their gruesome existence aptly substantiates the theoretical paradigm that subalterns are bereft of voice.
References: