|
11 See Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Family" in H L Shapiro (ed.), Man, Culture, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press), 1956. See also Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex" in Rayna Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press), 1975, pp 27-62.
12 "The perfect match takes place within the same caste, and the father's position testifies to his care and love for his daughter. For a discus- sion of Manusmriti, see Wendy Doniger ed., The Laws of Manu (London: Penguin), 1991: xiv-lviii; for a discussion of the logic of caste endogamy see Uma Charkravarti, Gendering Caste, Through a Feminist Lens (Calcutta: Stree), 2003: 52-53, 27-36. For a discussion of Manu in relation to this play see Dharwadker, Theatres of Independence, 286-87.
13 Charkravarti, Gendering Caste, p 54. The power dynamics of inter-caste coupling is analogous to that of inter-racial pairing. Black men's pos- session of white women is considered far more transgressive than liaisons between black women and white men, particularly as such liaisons were part of the patriarchal structure of slavery and colonialism.
14 For example, one website suggests that inter-caste (intervarna) marriages "numerically far out- number all other types put together, 'Intervarna' is synonymous with the union of a Fair Upper Caste Caucasoid Aryan female & a Black Low Caste Negroid-Australoid Shudra male.... Sci- entists trace this well-documented craze for dalit men among our Aryan women (both Hindu and Muslim) to the superior size of the Shudra Penis as compared to the Indo-Aryan Penis", http://www.urbandictionary.com/de- fine.php?term=Intervarna%20Marriage&defid=6274534, accessed on 24 March 2012.
15 Although the tone of this comment seems ironic, in the context of the play, Nath is entirely serious.
16 Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste, edited by Frances W Pritchett, XX, 42, http://ccnmtl.co- lumbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/in- dex.html. Other editions place this passage in section XVII.
17 "Does the Mahatma practice what he preaches?
One does not like to make personal reference in an argument which is general in its applica- tion. But when one preaches a decline and holds it as a dogma there is a curiosity to know how far he practices what he preaches. It may be that his failure to practice is due to the ideal being too high to be attainable; it may be that his failure to practice is due to the innate hy- pocrisy of the man. ....The Mahatma is a Bania by birth. His ancestors had abandoned trading in favour of ministership which is a calling of the Brahmins. In his own life, before he be- came a Mahatma, when occasion came for him to choose his career he preferred law to scales. On abandoning law he became half saint and half politician. He has never touched trading which is his ancestral calling. His youngest son - I take one who is a faithful follower of his father - born a Vaishya has married a Brahmin's daughter and has chosen to serve a newspaper magnate. The Mahatma is not known to have condemned him for not following his ancestral calling. It may be wrong and uncharitable to judge an ideal by its worst specimens (pp 63-64)... Insofar as he does think, to me he really ap- pears to be prostituting his intelligence to find reasons for supporting this archaic social struc- ture of the Hindus. He is the most influential apologist of it and therefore the worst enemy of the Hindus" (pp 69-70).
18 This is, of course, metaphor; Nath being a brahmin could have officiated at the wedding.
19 Dharwadker, Theatres of Independence, 290.
20 Periyar E V Ramasamy (1879-1973) and the founder of the Self-respect Movement was in fact even more radical than Ambedkar in in- sisting that marriage should not involve the parents of the bride and groom at all, and upon gender equality.
|
