Devi: The Goddess and the Modern Indian Woman

Mukulika Banerjee, London School of Economics, writes on the lecture series that looks at the Goddess and the Modern Indian Woman which is taking place on 6, 13, 20, 31 October, 7pm at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, School of Oriental and African Studies.

We are now half way through this lecture series, sponsored by the Bagri Foundation, that aims to explore and celebrate the different facets of Indian womanhood. Devi is the term for the great goddess and for divine energy and the curator Katriana Hazell, in proposing the series invited speakers to explore the contradictions of womanhood in India -of being held simultaneously sacred and profane – in society.

So far, we have had two sets of lectures. At the first, the art historians Prof. Partha Mitter and Prof. Parul Dave, explored the evolving nature of the female form in Indian art, from the civilizations of Harappa until the present. Through Prof. Mitter’s talk, it became apparent that art and sculpture of the sub-continent had its distinct style. Unlike Greek classicism for instance, Indian gods were always transcendental (not simply modelled on the human form) and their sexuality did not contradict their divinity. This is most clearly brought home in the worship of goddesses, who embody shakti, the feminine principle that is essential to the workings of the universe.

Astonishingly perhaps, artistic experiments with the depiction of the female form have been carried out in a fairly unbroken tradition in India, culminating in the work of twenty first century painters and artists who continue to portray the feminine divine form in increasingly iconoclastic ways. Prof. Dave in her discussion of art in the past two centuries raised the important question of who has the power to make the equation between women and tradition. Through her analysis of the controversies surrounding the painting of India’s best known painter M F Hussain on the one hand and the appropriation of women’s festive garba dance in Gujarat for state sponsored tourism, she showed that in a patriarchal society, ultimately women’s bodies and their portrayal is controlled by others. More recently, especially since the colonial period, the female form in India had also come to be associated with her traditions, thereby vesting in Indian women the responsibility of safeguarding a nationalist tradition. 

Artistic imagination that continues the celebration of feminine sexuality however, has fallen foul of a modern, right wing chauvinism that seeks to control the authorship of such portrayals, thereby implicitly recognizing the power these depictions have on women’s and popular imaginations.

These discussions therefore took us some way in helping to explain the conundrum that Indian society throws up. Namely, why does a culture that continues to practice a flourishing and living tradition of worshipping the goddess, the Devi, in all her power and glory, also display shockingly high instances of female infanticides? How can the same culture that glorifies the importance of feminine power in the cosmos also direct such violence towards living and unborn human females?

These themes were explored through literature and film in the second set of lectures. Beeban Kidron, based on her research for her Film 4 documentary on devdasis (divine prostitutes) in modern day India showed how the pressures of economic need can force families to sell their daughters to the trade for sheer survival. While the traditional model of a devdasi was to serve the goddess and be available for sex work, its modern model is one of prostitution, stripped of its religious veneer. And yet, Kidron also highlighted the subtle distinctions between a sex worker and devdasi in today’s world concluding that even the waning power of a goddess could provide succor to the women who are meant to serve her by according them a modicum of dignity and protection that is otherwise unavailable to a profane sex worker.  This ability of women to extract from tradition meanings that empower them, was further highlighted in Lakshmi Holmstrom’s second talk of the night, in which she presented the audience with Dalit poetry, written by members of some of India’s most depressed social strata. Here too, goddesses of high tradition and local village level deities were re-imagined powerfully through women’s poetry and accorded new meanings to flout the norms of patriarchy and power.

The lectures thus far have addressed the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Indian womanhood in a multiplicity of ways. In the following weeks, the speakers to follow (Patricia Uberoi, Rosie Thomas, Madhu Kishwar and Mukulika Banerjee) will examine through India’s material culture and clothing, its films and women’s movement, the themes of androgyny, motherhood, work and labour and much more.