The Subaltern of Your Dreams, and Mine: Egyptian Women in Tahrir Square

Over on facebook, Leil Zahra-Mortada has collected an album of photographs of women protesting in Cairo over the past weeks. Here are a few particularly striking ones:

My first impulse, after I broke out in tears, was to think about theories of subjectivity and the challenge of Berkeley anthropologist Saba Mahmood to feminist notions of agency in her book Politics of Piety. Mahmood had studied women who participated in the Islamic revivalist mosque movement in Egypt and focused on how they ethically "trained" their bodies and sensibilities to meet the demands of Islamic norms. In so doing, and building on the work of Talal Asad, she questioned the understanding of "agency" as a reflection of a subject's conscious will and desire. Instead, it was possible for women to express agency even in the very act of following norms that Western feminism would deem oppressive and patriarchal. This, of course, set her on a collision path with those feminists who allied themselves with neo-conservative imperialism in order to "liberate" the women of Afghanistan, Iran and the wider Middle East. In a 2008 essay entitled "Feminism, Democracy and Empire," Mahmood refuses to allow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Azar Nafisi and Irshad Manji to serve as spokeswomen for all Muslim women. Why not listen, instead, to the myriad women's movements and organisations, across the political and religious spectrum, in the Muslim world?

The Revolution in Egypt, and especially the photographs above, have shown to whoever cared to listen that Muslim women can make their voices heard alongside with men, demand those same political and social rights that supposedly belong to the Western "liberal" tradition, and scream, cry, bleed and die for them. Of course, Ayaan Hirsi Ali doesn't care to listen. In a recent op-ed, written while Mubarak's security apparatus was still beating people to a pulp in the streets of Cairo, she worried about the Muslim Brotherhood's hypothetical takeover. Bemoaning the supposed weakness of the "secular democratic forces," she paints a dark scenario based, it appears, on some turgid autobiographical stories from when she was 15. It is assumed throughout, based on her previous books, that one of the bad things about the coming reign of Sharia will be women's oppression.

And then it hit me: what all these critics, from Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Glenn Beck to French legislators banning the veil, have done is to effectively de-humanise the majority of Muslim women. Any woman who wears a scarf and/or niqab, who bears the outward signs of the patriarchal oppression that lies beneath, cannot be heard in her own voice. Look again at those photos. Those women, caught in a snapshot of anger or passion, are not calculating their own future status under the Muslim Brotherhood, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali does for them while safely ensconced in the US. They are not theorizing how conservative or liberal they are, or how much agency they get. They stand side by side with women in jeans, T-shirts and fashionable scarves. Because what they're wearing doesn't matter, even their being women qua women ceases to matter for the moment. They are demanding Mubarak leave and the country see free elections. Subalterns do speak, and when they do they may not be the subaltern of your dreams, or mine. They don't say, "Freedom, but as long as what comes next isn't too Islamic, in which case we should just stay put." They say, "Freedom. Now."
So these are not Ayaan Hirsi Ali's subalterns. But they aren't Saba Mahmood's either. At this moment, they're not out in the streets to challenge Western norms from an Islamic perspective. They're not questioning Western secularism or ethically training themselves for modesty. They want to topple the dictator, vote in elections, and live a better life. Egyptian women, Muslim women, Arab women, all different kinds of women, do not belong to theories and models, even those put forth by women in the West like Saba Mahmood or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They belong to themselves, and all we can do is try and listen.

To her credit, Hirsi Ali (unlike Beck, for example) does seem to support the Revolution and is more concerned with the future. Rightly so, it must be said. But it still begs the question why she is writing against a hypothetical oppression and not against a real one that has gone on for 30 years. Why has she not worked tirelessly against the Mubarak regime and other corrupt Middle Eastern dictatorships, and written books about the struggle of women's organisations in Egypt instead of shock-value memoirs about general Islamic oppression? What better example for her promotion of "Enlightenment values" to the Islamic world than women standing up for the right to vote? The hollowness of this kind of politics is here revealed. Because when the Revolution is made by women wearing niqabs and Muslim Brothers as well as by Western youths, it's something to worry about and not celebrate.

It's become sadly the norm to say that Egypt and other Arab countries aren't ready for democracy because of their backwardness (including their "treatment of women"). Even the writer of this article, which otherwise highlights the role of women as active participants in the protests, is most impressed by the fact that she wasn't groped! All the men were, you see, too busy making a Revolution.

Dealing with Darlymple, or the Prude Critics

William Darlymple's popularity as a writer of travelogues and popular histories about India in the West is no great mystery; he is a charming, erudite writer with a keen sense of narrative and literary presentation. Why an expat who knows no Indian languages and has arrogantly dismissed Indian historians for not doing enough research (in Urdu!) on the Mutiny Papers in the National Archives, for not writing well enough, and for not selling enough books, should command such astronomical credibility and popularity in India can be more difficult to understand. His Jaipur Literature Festival, incidentally coming up again this month, is a tremendous success that manages to bring together both Indian and Western literary heavyweights. As anyone who's wandered a bit through the bazaars, he sells. A lot. Dalrymple's books are everywhere, and he has become something of an authority of Indian history, much to his own self-satisfaction. And, if he tells a neo-colonial fantasy tale that may be attractive to his Indian middle-class readership, he also is a great lover of Urdu and Muslim culture, which makes him an unusual and welcome voice of reason in the Indian media.

But I digress, because my post is not actually about Dalrymple himself. It's about this essay by Hartosh Singh Bal in OPEN that tries to explain the Darlymple "phenomenon." Indeed, the curious fact of a foreigner's success (and a British one's, to boot) in the post-colonial Indian literary scene troubles Bal. How could Dalrymple have become "the pompous arbiter of literary merit in India?" Mostly, the answer comes down to a lingering cultural hierarchy whereby the approval of British publishers and critics is fawningly sought after by Indians. The Jaipur Festival, according to this view, is only successful because Ian McEwan shows up, not because it showcases good Indian writing. This critique makes a lot of sense, if only because there is still a difference between the audience, resources, and critical attention received by Westerners or expats who write about India and authors who write from within India. With increasing access to media, the Indian reading public may just be accepting a set of standards without much thought. The problem is, however, that good Indian writing is starting to get out through these channels, much of it encouraged by Dalrymple and the Jaipur Fest.

What really gets me about Bal's critique is his astonishing prudishness, otherwise surprising for someone making an argument that might be termed "nationalist" or even somewhat Marxist in its attention to the aftereffects of colonialism. He believes, perhaps rightly, that "constant need for British approval allows writers from the UK to produce and sell books that should be junked in India." He uses the example of Jad Adams's book on Gandhi, Naked Ambition. He doesn't like it because of this quote: "‘When Gandhi was tormented by sexual thoughts, perhaps his impacted colon was pressing on his prostate gland and stimulating him sexually. This would explain why some diets, by reducing his constipation, would help him feel less sexual.’" Essentially, Bal is shocked that a Founding Father of the nation, the most sacred of cows, is being smeared by *gasp* talking about sex. And it's a foreigner who's doing it!

I can't really say what Bal's motivations are - maybe I am misreading his intentions. But it looks like a subconscious prudishness has reared its head. It's a sentiment echoed by the vehement denunciations of Jeffrey Kripal's book on Ramakrishna (which used psychoanalysis to explore the homoerotic dimension of tantric practice) and the hysterical reactions by Hindus to Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History, again because her analysis was deemed "pornographic." We might also see this in the attacks on James Laine's biography of Shivaji, which was banned in Maharashtra from 2004 to 2010. The chief accusation against Laine was that he was spreading "injurious gossip" by proposing that Shahaji was not Shivaji's biological father. In other words, sex and family drama as neo-colonialist backdoor. In each case, the critic assumes that the objectionable parts of Western scholarly books are deliberately sexually titillating in order to symbolically and politically debase a community under siege: Hindus, Hindus who are devotees of Ramakrishna (or maybe even Bengalis as a whole), and Maharashtrians. This is exactly the kind of reaction Bal has to Adams' discussion of Gandhi's sexuality - it's all part of the same old colonialist plot to discredit Indians, successor statements to Churchill's famous condemnation of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir."

The larger problem is that, even if a Western author makes scholarly errors, particularly linguistic ones (as both Kripal and Doniger were credibly charged with doing by fellow scholars) or displays a more or less subtle Orientalist bias (as both Dalrymple and Adams may very well do), he or she should not be condemned on the basis of a prudish and defensive reaction concerned with upholding Indian-ness, or Hindu-ness, or Marathi-ness. Indeed, if these books were simply bad scholarship the battles would be fought on the pages of specialist journals. They become the focus of popular and media attention only when they are attacked for explicitly or latently chauvinistic reasons. I am not suggesting Western scholars who are being deceitful, careless or even deliberately provocative should get a pass. But they should be evaluated by Indian critics calmly, dispassionately and above all on a case-by-case basis. Sure, Adams's book contains a maybe silly passage about Gandhi's sexuality. But what about the rest of it? Is it a good book on Gandhi, should be the question. We know that Dalrymple's book is mostly a good book on the Mutiny, some would say even a great one. Maybe that's more important than the colour of his skin, his personality, or how much money he makes.

"The State of Pakistan," a new genre of journalism

I don't know what it is about the piece I am about to comment on that made me finally write this post; it could have been one of hundreds of others that have appeared in print and online, from both Western and South Asian sources, over the past few years. Perhaps it is because I am so used to dismissing them as temporary effluvia from the security politics crowd lacking the requisite sense of history, but this time something in me responded to the message. This is Aaatish Taseer's recent article in Mint, entitled "Losing faith in Pakistan."
http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210142/Losing-faith-in-Pakistan.html

The interesting thing about this article is that it manages to be half remarkably insightful and half pernicious nonsense. Let's start with the good: Taseer's basic claim is that contemporary religious extremism in Pakistan aims to "cleanse the Islam of that country of its cultural contact with the Indian subcontinent." In practical terms, this refers to the imposition of Saudi-derived ideological puritanism and the political programme of Maududi's Jamaat-e-Islami set up against "the full world, the world of culture, of stories, of songs, of dress, of ornate ritual" epitomised by the "syncretic" Sufis. Taseer is undoubtedly right in saying that the societal conflict tearing Pakistan apart has far, far less to do with clashes of civilisations between West and East than with the largely internal political struggle over the forms public religion should take in Pakistan. Such a position compels us to understand the different fractions and cleavages within the various Muslim movements within Pakistan, as Manan Ahmed pointed out during the height of the "failed state" hysteria in the Western media, aka that "the Taliban are 20 miles outside of Islamabad" time:
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/homistan/just_a_thought_v.html

The recent attacks, first on the Ahmadi mosque, then on the Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore, seem to have awakened even the most hopeful and progressive commentators to the existence of a very real threat. If the country as a whole is in no immediate danger of being "Talibanised," still the audacity and increasing frequency with which the attacks are coming raises the question: who is not a kafir now? Alarmism may not be such a bad word anymore. See Raza Rumi's impassioned appeal:
http://lahorenama.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/stop-lahores-talibanisation/

Taseer also very justly points out that far more of an outcry followed the Sufi attack, even among the lamenters. In the official media, of course, passing off the Ahmadi attack as a Zionist conspiracy was not only easier but also de rigueur. On the other side, with the exception of Manan Ahmed's excellent series on the history of anti-Ahmadi legislation (archived here: http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/category/homistan), the debate is dangerously close to reproducing a "good Sufi"/"bad Wahhabi" dichotomy that has plagued the literature on Pakistan for quite some time.

One take-away point from Taseer's piece is that historians need to pay more attention to the "Islamisation" of Pakistan under General Zia and to the connections, especially via labour migration to the Middle East, between Islam in Pakistan and outside. But we should avoid imposing a dualistic frame over all past events, as William Dalrymple does when he recasts even the history of the 1857 Indian Mutiny as a struggle between the tolerant Sufis of Bahadur Shah's court and the North Indian rebel forerunners of Osama bin Laden. Such wishful thinking avoids the uncomfortable questions about Sufis' role in upholding the feudal order in Pakistan, somewhat forcefully asked in the following article with the provocative title, "The Bad Sufi":
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/03-the-bad-sufi-ss-02

To better grasp what made me uncomfortable with Taseer's presentation of the story, I re-read the introduction to his otherwise excellent translations of Manto, where he claims that he is rescuing Manto for India out of the ghetto of being considered a "Pakistani writer." By implication he is doing the same thing for Urdu. Similar to his suggestion that Pakistan's problems could be resolved by a rapprochement with some forgotten essence of "Indianness," or as he puts it, the "Indian pink" underneath the "black Arab abaya," this claim has the air of denying the validity or legitimacy of the Pakistani nation itself. Towards the end of the article, the argument gets more and more intense, and in one sentence the problem of Kashmiri azadi is thrown away as a mere fixation of insecure Pakistanis in search of an identity -- which is remarkable, even offensive, considering the massive violence and curtailment of freedoms unleashed by the Indian Army in Kashmir even as we speak. The flavour of the month:
http://kafila.org/2010/07/10/curbs-continue-on-kashmir-media-is-it-martial-law-in-srinagar/

I am, first of all, no nationalist, and least of all a Pakistani nationalist. I have repeatedly said in various conversations on the topic that Pakistan, "moth-eaten" as it was at birth and caught in the paradox between being a "state for Muslims" that was not meant to be a "Muslim state" (Jinnah's utopian dream), divided between Punjabi elites and waves of regional separatism from Bengalis to Balochis, crushed by the army and the centre, has had a sorry run of historical luck. But all that has been over the past 60 years, sab ho gaya and we cannot un-wish Pakistan out of existence. Every single time a Western or Indian commentator suggests that Pakistan is facing an "existential" crisis and goads this enormously diverse and stratified population to breezily "re-think" the basis of their country and to learn "new narratives," the implication remains that the people of Pakistan are somehow a "problem people," engaged for over half a century in the illicit enterprise of having a country. History can't be re-written overnight; as Marx once wrote, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." In Pakistan's case, the fight for social justice, democracy, and pluralism can only start from the rubble around us, brick by brick. It might also have to happen under the same green-and-white flag at the end of the day.

Ayesha Jalal began her Manzur Qadir Memorial Lecture of 1989 in Lahore, by saying that she loved Pakistan "with the same complicated and consuming passion" with which Braudel loved France. The problem with most of the purveyors of the "State of Pakistan" brand of journalism in India and the West is that they wish to save Pakistan without ever having loved it, at least a little bit.