Seeking history for the Indian female body

by Anu

Not one, not two

Not three or four

But through 84,00,000 vaginas

Have I come

I have  come 

Through unlikely worlds.

Guzzled on pleasure and on pain

Whatever be all my previous lives

This one day, you show me mercy

Cennamallikarjuna

O Lord white as jasmine

O Cennamallikarjuna

Not one, not two

Not three or four

But through 84,00,000 birth cycles

Have I come. 

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This is a verse from one of 300 odd vacanas written by Akkamahadevi, the kannada mystic poet-seer from 12th century, during the fabulously democratic period in Karnataka. A time when women intellectuals numbering well over sixty held discourse with a few hundred fellow male truth seekers, philosophers and spiritual leaders as a normal course. The dialog between the male head at the assembly of the learned, at Anubhava mantapa and Akkamahadevi, who sought to participate in the discussions is lore. The questions and answers specifically referring to her naked body, and her spiritual quest in the public forum are rendered to this day as songs.

Prabhu to Akka: “Can you be one with God with a human form, a female body?”

Akka to Prabhu: “Would the sandalwood cease its fragrance when it's cut into pieces? Would a piece of gold, even when cut and heated, lose its lustre?  

When you search for my bygone sins and hurl them at my face, the deprivation is yours.

O Lord, though you may slay me, I will never cease to love Lord Siva.”         

Here she illustrates the superficiality of external appearance and the integrity of the inner core, and demonstrates the willingness to question authority, while putting her case across for acceptance into the fraternity of devotees.

Akkamahadevi, the one drunk with love for her lord Cennmallikarjuna, is beloved to the kannada people, her vacanas were not poems, but 'sayings', a given promise or commitment, for this was the time when the veera-shaiva movement challenged every tradition that lead to inequality, and that included trashing poetic rules of scale and metre. 

In Chaitanya's word's: 

"The Vacana literary form arose as a part of people's movement against oppression in the name of Sanskrit as the 'divine' language. The veera-saiva poets wrote in Kannada, refuting the millennia-old belief that 'native' languages were incapable of dealing with universal verities."

Of the many vacanas that I've heard while growing up, I chose the above one, as it is one that I read only as an adult, first in English then in Kannada. There are many works on Akkamahadevi, trying to understand her quests of dualities; of mind and body, the profane and scared, she will remain one to whom I will return again and again, for her sayings will reveal other dimensions of truth with passing age and changing experiences. 

I am now at the stage when the physical body fascinates me. Menzes and Angadi in their book describe her thus:

"Her body simply did not exist -a burnt-up corpse, a dried up tank, a burnt cord. If she partly covers herself with long hair, it is for the sake of others, not her own. How else could she be Cennamallikarjuna's bride?" And to her narrative, they say:

"Akkamahadevi appears as a master-psychologist of a woman's heart. She dreams of her lover by night, and dreams of him by day.... she provides a probing of the feminine heart that offer a thorough, clinical analysis of love" and in comparison they say even, "Proust did not use his microscope for more realistic details of our consciousness when moved by passion."

I am not that inclined to explore the romantic or spiritual in me as much as I am interested in understanding the physical body. It is however difficult to separate these elements in Akka's vacanas, but I try, as girls and women negotiating the 21 century paradoxes, one needs to locate the one possession that we can fully claim as our own.

My body is my own. Not my mind, in the organic sense, for it has too many other influences that are not mine.  Why is it important I know the body? Is it not enough to know and command just the mind? I could use Foucault's treatise to explain to myself the power-relations, oppression-subjugation and so on, of the male and female bodies and their relationships, with the entire society itself being centered around this one possession. And the myriad ways the mind is controlled through the manipulation of body ownership. 

However, his methods of exploring the questions of body and sexuality are primarily through the Christian narrative. This leaves me quite inattentive and unable to relate it to my Indian reality. The institutions through which we receive and process information about our bodies in India are quite different.

There are a number of female poets who have unflinchingly addressed the body. But I choose Akkamahadevi not just for the completely radical approach she took to resolve issues, but more because of the familiarity with the language of her vacanas. Kannada is the language of my childhood and many of these verses are voices that inform my consciousness. 

Though Foucault has few answers for the Indian women's narrative of the body and sexuality (at least to me), I strangely depend on the English language to reinterpret vacanas in adulthood. Is it because it is the language that first allowed me to know my body, at least in the biological sense? Quite possibly so! 

Since the 12th century she has been written about by others, it has been noted that they have been mostly men, and the English translated books that I have been reading are also by men. I do not question their interpretation; I use their translated vacanas to study Akka's verses that explicitly refers to the body. Something that seems to have become completely out of reach for several centuries, right up to the present times for us. 

Rarely will you come across Indian women comfortably addressing their body, its desires, its function and their control over all these. The disruption in the narrative of the body for which Akkamahadevi so simply and clearly leads the way, is astounding in its near complete silencing of women being able to talk directly about their bodies. This loss in vocabulary has contributed to it being relegating to some unnamable entity buried in layers of modesty, which are but, neat guises for the society's spin that continues to put women in ever reducing spaces, to be free as humans. 

I leave you with this movie clip by Madhushree Datta with score set by Iliayaraja. 

 

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Sources: Songs for Shiva. Vacanas of AkkaMahadevi. Translated by Vinaya Chaitanya.

Women writing in India. Vol I 600 BC to the early twentieth century. Susie Tharu and K Lalitha.

Vacanas of Akkamahadevi. Armando Menzes and S.M. Angadi. 

History of sexuality. Vol 1. Michel Foucault.

History of sexuality. Vol 2. Michel Foucault.

Comments

[Tim Buck]

A well written analysis. Not being a woman, it's hard for me to catch the essence of those 12th-century feminine fires...the depth of meaning there. But I'm a human being, so I can share in anyone's sense of being repressed or ostracized.

[Crazyfinger]

Anu: The disruption in the narrative of the body for which Akkamahadevi so simply and clearly leads the way, is astounding in its near complete silencing of women being able to talk directly about their bodies. This loss in vocabulary has contributed to it being relegating to some unnamable entity buried in layers of modesty, which are but, neat guises for the society's spin that continues to put women in ever reducing spaces, to be free as humans. 

Your first point in the above paragraph is saying Akkamahadevi is somehow the root of the reason why women are silent from being able to talk about their bodies. Really? Big leap, don't you think? Or are you being rhetoric? : -)

The second point is a bit perplexing. Perplexing not because it is false, but saying it that way, that it is "society's spin to put women in ever reducing spaces, to be free as humans," just kills the conversation. I've read this similar point being made in a few blogs. Often women in Indian blogs bemoan this very same point but I was never convinced they were speaking from an insight, just out of frustration.

The point about subjecting women to unreasonable constraints in the name of modesty (which happens all the time) is not in question. But bodies, physical bodies, almost always recall sexuality and that is a charged mine.

When it comes to figuring out why their freedoms are restricted (such as being stared at when caught in a wrong place, a simplistic example), both women and men have this unavoidable problem of distinguishing whether it is because of their gender or is it just a human condition.

If a man goes to an evening party in his pajamas, he will be stared at not because he is a man in pajamas, but that they see a person in pajamas at an evening party. If a woman has existential questions about her body, is it because she is a woman or is it that these questions do occur to men also, but that they just don't speak about it.

I am way too simplifying the issue but my point is: how can one make a leap into a political sphere of power (over women, in your above quote) without connecting the dots? And the dots that do connect run through that charged mine of sexuality where invariably everything blows up and a particular form of silence ensues. Perhaps that is the particular form of silence which we should talk about and break it, the silence from the awareness of sexuality.

So let me ask a direct question: are women afraid to talk about their bodies because they are afraid of being perceived as immodest, or because they are simply responding to a natural embarrassment we all have in talking about our bodies?

Regards, Crazyfinger

[anu]

Hi Tim,

Thank you. The depth of meaning/feminine fires as in akkamahadevi’s case is terribly out of reach for us women too, even in the 21st century. For, she never meant to be a role model, her quest for the supreme love was intensely individualistic, its only we women who pin our aspirations on her. We hope and crave to get some enlightenment into her strengths, like eager children, thinking if we do what the grown ups do, then we are almost all grown up.
But our minds blanch at the thought of discarding material and marital supports. We may sing of her ability to walk naked into an auditorium of learned people and command an audience of 300 to value her intellect and her distinct approach of spiritual pursuit. This is liberating not just for women, but it is also a celebration of the audience –the times. I wonder if any other culture, east or west has a similar luminous personality who was respected in her own time and since, despite the extremely radical approaches to upsetting the norm.

Repression and ostrazition. She had access to truly democratic institutions and attitudes, which are not easily available to us today –we have regressed a plenty since the bhakti period, in gender relations, and pursuits of the mind and spirit. We find ourselves several milestones behind the women of those times.

I wrote this without bothering to give an adequate introduction to the poet or the period. Thinking, that this little virtual space will somehow attract only fellow Indians, who don’t need an introduction to her, as she lives in our collective memory. My sincere apologies. This is a good source for a quick background.

[Crazyfinger]

http://www.ourkarnataka.com/religion/akka_mathapati.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8u_Pxxpr5I&feature=PlayList&p=DB023EA4473CD7F0&index=3&playnext=4&playnext_from=PL

[/Crazyfinger]
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In the embedded vacana, are the deeper meanings/feminine fires as you put it, more or less opaque to you? Would love to know.

[anu]

CF,
>>Your first point in the above paragraph is saying Akkamahadevi is somehow the root of the reason why women are silent from being able to talk about their bodies. Really? Big leap, don't you think? Or are you being rhetoric? : -)

Akkamahadevi leads the way in giving us a narrative of the body, the disruption there afterwards…… better?

the rest of comment, needs a separate post :) but rest assured i will respond to it.

I think the embedded links in my previous comment did not get through. I am posting it here, please see if you can fix it.

http://www.ourkarnataka.com/religion/akka_mathapati.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8u_Pxxpr5I&feature=PlayList&p=DB023EA4473CD7F0&index=3&playnext=4&playnext_from=PL