Today our topic of discussion is Changing Notions Of Sexuality .
Changing Notions Of Sexuality
The home was the legal site of sexual transactions i.e. the area where society allowed, in fact encouraged men and women to enter into sexual relations. In the early part of the present century, existing notions of sexuality and sexual relations, underwent some subtle changes. As already pointed out in Chapter II, male sexual apetite was recognized and amply accommodated by polygamy and concubinage in Islamic sexual discourse.
There female sexuality was also acknowledged by the right of women to satisfaction and the right to seek divorce on grounds of husband’s impo- tency or insanity. Later, after Ghazzali had magnified female sexuality, the maxim that it must be regulated and contained gained ground.
The notions of woman’s voracious sexual apetite and the power of her sexuality were also embedded in the Indian subconscious as exemplified by countless mythological stories in which irresistible apsaras descended from the abode of the gods to destroy the meditation of sages. Parvati herself had tempted Lord Shiva out of his meditation as Menaka had destroyed Viswamitra’s.
But where Shiva, repository of strength, was not any worse off for the cosmic union, Viswamitra, a human, was undone. The popular Sanskrit proverb – nari narakasya dwaram (woman is the gateway to hell) – was oft cited.
But as the nineteenth century wore on, woman was recast by reformist ideology which reconstructed her to a great extent along puritan-romantic lines, and she emerged as a lofty, pure, bountiful being, receptable of many virtuen. She was divested of her threatening sexuality and even her sensuality which found favour earlier, to suit the needs of reconstructed middle class culture.
Sometimes fragile and placed on a pedestal (depending on her family status and wealth), sometimes hard working and thrifty, but feminine (a class function again), she was always virtuous and chaste.
Elements of puritanism now entered into the articulation of bhadrolok gender ideology and sexual codes (like Victorian London, however, prostitu- tion thrived in Calcutta during the period). As far as the women in the bhadro household was concerned, she had to owe allegiance to a chaste, if romanticized ideal of womanhood, sometimes reminiscent of Ruskin’s Lily. sometimes of Thanawi’s Zewar, sometimes Tagore’s Manos-sundari cum Griha-lakshmi/Kalyani.
Thus was Ghazzali subverted. Popular tracts and novels were the best instruments of this subversion. In north India, seat of Muslim culture, while Thanawi, Altaf Hussain Hali and Sayyid Mumtaz Ali were conjuring up the figure of the ideal Muslim woman equipped for the exigencies of the “modern age’, each in his own way, Urdu novelists such as (Deputy) Nazir Ahmed and his nephew Rashid-ul Khairi were producing more delectable matter.
The heroines of their highly popular novels (which were also widely read in Sharif Bengal) were stoic in suffering, and chaste in the face of all adversity, never losing their feminine charm. Heroines who were wido- wed or abandoned could not afford to be idle and frivolous (traits never thought well-off).
They were depicted as hard working, thrifty, etc. The puritan work ethic was operative here. The bhadromhila fed on puritan values would not have liked to talk about prostitution as it would involve the topic of sexuality. One female writer however, broached the subject once. Razia Khatun, in a passage on loveless marriages, said:
People have transformed this cooperation [sic] which is marriage into a sale of the self. Where enticement and entertainment are forced activities, that is the site of prostitution.
We despise prostitutes but are not aware that it is rampant within the walls of our homes. The husband does not cherish his wife, yet she has to entice him. You may call this ‘loyalty to one’s husband” but I do not. How many children are born of ‘love’ and how many out of the “Just we have learned to condemn .
The writings of the well-known social reformer Lutfur Rahman (1889-1936) contravened the average bhadrolok attitude to prostitution in that they displayed a genuine compassion for prostitutes and their fate.
Unlike others. Rahman laid the blame squarely on men rather than the women themselves, as was the wont in bhadro society. ‘Nari Tirtha’ was Rahman’s home for destitute women in Calcutta.
Rahman wrote about his project in an article titled “Pather Meye” (literally: Girl of the Street) in Sadhana (Baishakh, 1329 BS). He drew a picture of the girl who was forced into exile (and hence prostitution) from respectable, but cruel, middle class society, for a single slip. The boy who committed the act of lust was acc- epted back into the fold the girl forever turned out by irate parents. (compare this with the portrayal of Victorian attitudes to girls who had given in to temptation).
The compassion of Rahman’s stand became evi- dent when he argued that the flesh is weak, to err is human but to con- demn the sinner rather than comprehend human failings was cruel. The repetitive use of ‘sin’/’sinner in this and almost all other writings on the matter pointed to the obsession of the middle class with the concept.
But sin, sex and temptation were not supposed to be the genteel lady’s concern. According to the new school of thought, the Prophet had never viewed woman as an organ of the devil, but as muhsunah (the chaste) and a “fortress against Satan” 59 Scholars of Hadith (Tradition) such as Tarmidi and Muslim were now quoted to establish the capacity of women for purity, along with Koranic verses.
The old attitudes did not disappear from the mental world of Muslims but on it were juxtaposed, new ones, by a reformist culture that now required that women be considered fully capable of maintaining her purity in the wicked, wide world (though a modified and narrowed one for her), In Bengal, attitudes to sexuality were varied and reflected the changes taking place among the Muslims all over India.
There was the conservative attitude which stood for the status quo in gender relations i.e. women should contain themselves within the andarmahal and a liberal one which advocated a greater role outside the home. In 1923 Islam Darshan published an article which attacked the activities of the ‘liberal’ section:
There is a section which represents the so called ‘new creed’. They see that in the cities girls and boys from certain communities enjoy the joy of unrestrained mixing together.
It must be for this that these new Muslims have set up associations bearing names such as “Nari Swadhinata Mission’, ‘Nari Tirtha’ etc., so that members of the opposite sex may enjoy each other’s company at gatherings where they interact freely, brush hands, and pour forth ardent passages from the latest books to hearts seeped in thoughts of romance and love; in short, enjoy the pleasures of these veritable carnivals.
All these are not available in traditional Muslim society. The modest, bashful, downward glances of fair maids in the secluded Muslim antahpur do not appeal to the new liberals:60
Such conservatism was offest by a parallel growth of reformist liberalism among a section of the Muslim intelligentsia. Whatever the stand, none could deny the importance of sexual relations and the necessity to control the discourses on it.
The “Taujihul Adab”, a Bengali manual written by M. Ghiyasuddin was published from Calcutta in 1924 with the purpose of sett- ing down rules of sexual behavior for the new generation.
In a section titled ‘Sahabas Pranali (Rules of Cohabitation), detailed instructions were set down regarding sexual relations including the act of copulation (The Behesti Zevar also contained a similar section). The instructions of the Adab were comprehensive: “… call your wife by her name as this is a sign of love”, etc.
It was recommended that sexual intercourse should ideally take place two to three times a week, more if desired. Rules regarding the days and manner for intercourse were given. Withdrawal of male organ before wife’s satisfaction was discouraged.
Mernissi provides a theoretical explanation for the emphasis on sexual satisfaction of both partners in Islamic didactic literature: “Sexual satis- faction for both partners is seen as necessary to prevent adultery.
As a protective device against zina, marriage is highly recommended to believers of both sexes.”62 zina paved the way for the ultimate horror termed fitna. Islam also discouraged celibacy as it considered a sexually frustrated person to be dangerous to society.
Inspite of the injunctions of religious and didactic manuals it was doubtful how many women of the period covered here would testify to the concern and consideration that their husbands were enjoined to show towards them.
Conjugal life was a region which the most thorough of the empire’s census statisticians could not enter. Various evidence subtly suggest that sexual joy between married partners may have been more a normative ideal than a reality in most households. This could have been due to two major factors in conjugal relations callousness on part of the husband and puritanism on part of both.
Like his Hindu and Brahmo counterpart, the Muslim bhadroloklok set down clear boundaries to his sexual vision. Two of the clearest indicators of this “limitation’ or ‘puritanism’ were his predilection to platonic love and eulogy of motherhood.
Abul Fazla founding member of the Muslim Sahitya Samaj of Dhaka, notable writer, critic, advocate of women’s emancipation – wrote for the book review section in Saogat a critique of Akhtar Mahal’s Niyontrita. It was a novel of unrequited love, in which Ayesha nursed her love for her married cousin Anwar; Abdul Kader nursed his burning love for the married Ayesha.
This was the way Abul Fazl viewed the situation: “Abdul Kader fell in love with Ayesha. That love was noble, devoid of lust. Its glory filled the emptiness of his lifelong bachelorhood. He had loved Ayesha, he had not lusted for her.”
Abul Fazl could condone and sympathize with love outside of marriage. But such love had to be free of lust. His frank essay Joun Gayan (Science of Sex), published in 1924, perhaps epitomized the liberal attitude to sex.
In place of terms such as fitna, zina, women’s gaid power and the need to regulate it through simultaneous gratification and containment, the machi- nations of Satan, etc.- one comes across phrases such as the mutual attr- action of the sexes as Nature’s way of perpetuating the species, natural expression of sexuality its sublimation and repression, perversion, etc.65 Names such as Havelock Ellis and Freud were invoked. The writer emphasi zed sexual compatibility as a basis of happy conjugal life.
To substantiate his point he referred to a survey of prostitutes where one fourth of the sample had indicated sexual dissatisfaction as a cause for their taking to that trade. These statements were made in a matter of fact tone without any onus on women. He felt that it was time to break the taboo on sex and speak of it without secrecy.
This was the same Abul Fazl who had lamented the fate of Muslim women sentenced to the andarmahal who had befriended the much older Mamlukul Fatema. Separated from her husband by her own choice, Fatema was then struggling to make both ends meet and to raise her children. She had worked in Rokeya’s school at Calcutta; built up Posta Girls’ School in Dhaka and in the midst of all this, affectionately entertained the rising young writers of a Dhaka throbbing with new life.
Fatema who was always alone, always in widow’s white, finally succumbed to that illness without a name’ (to use Betty Freidan’s phrase) which we can now identity as a severe mental depression to which was added the travail of a gallstone.
The illness had kept her from what she most loved her writing and her work. Abul Fazi, in a tribute to Fatema Khanam in the year of her death (1957), wrote: “Surprisingly she lived for 23 long years after her health broke down. But she never recovered nor wrote after that.”
As already mentioned in this Chapter, Abul Fazl’s second wife Umrat-ul Fazl has left behind a record of their conjugal life in her memoir. If one removes the veneer of euphemism that bhadromahila invariably used in personal narratives, one can decipher a few frank references to a joyous physical relationship.
Love emotional and physical had drawn Fazl and Umrat together to an extent where none could bear the thought of parting from each other. Fazl was forever fresh and new in Umrat’s eyes as she was in his. Moments of touch and adoration are described with pride.
In an earlier period, Faizunnessa had made a few brief references in the preface to Rupjalal to her short-lived conjugal bliss. But conjugal happiness was not her lot in life, she regretted and soon due to the machinations of her co-wife, her husband’s attraction towards her vani- shed, a state to which the proud and passionate lady could never recon- cile.
Rupjalal itself, predating the ‘modern’ writings of the subsequent generation of women, abounded with sexual imagery, and scenes of mutual attraction between the hero and heroine.
But, by and large, later narratives seldom dwelt on sexuality. The later writers were silent on this aspect of their lives. Rokeya Sakhawat Hussein, the most renowned Muslim woman of modern Bengal, had no place for sexu- ality in her fiction or non-fiction.
A content analysis of other fiction writers (eg. Nurunnessa, Mamlukul Fatema, Razia Chaudhurani, Akhtar Mahal) reveal that others displayed less uneasiness with the ‘physical’ than Rokeya. But by and large, even with the growth of liberalism perhaps on account of it, the puritan attitude had imbued the minds of the bhadro community in its transition to modernity.
See more: