Silence is a distinct language women speak, and it has registers that cannot be reduced to a single meaning of submission or subversion. In the valorization of âvoiceâ as a physical manifestation of womenâs agency; we often tend to not notice the many-ness of voices inherent in silence. Womenâs silences, just as their invisibilities, may mean more than one thing or different things at different times. This is one of the themes in the chapter that follows, built upon long-standing fieldwork in the state of Gujarat in India. Prefacing fieldwork (2000â2006) with Sindhi-speaking Hindu women who migrated from Sindh (now in Pakistan) to India during the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, it moves to fieldwork-related narratives (2008â2013) by Sindhi-speaking Muslim and Dalit women in a border region called Banni, situated at the edge Indo-Pak boundary near northern Kutch, Gujarat. The observations stem from efforts to listen, understand, and contextualise narratives â an act of translation â but not without the linguistic process of moving from a marginal language such as Sindhi to English. The discussion also hopes to complicate the idea of âaccessâ in fieldwork, which assumes two extreme positions of possession and non-possession. Access granted is not the same as access guaranteed, so that women may have better access to other women than men and yet not enough. This also brings us back to the half-revealed, half-hidden part of stories.
Prefacing: Sindhi Hindu migrants
When the province of Sindh went in its entirety to Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu minority that constituted approximately 25% of its population began crossing the newly formed border to live in the independent new Indian republic. The move was not complete, in the sense, a trickle of Hindu Sindhis continue to move in smaller groups even today. However, the bulk of Sindhi Hindus migrated to India between 1947 and 1950. Partition is a heterogeneous discourse, mediated by caste, class, gender, and of course, personal experience. A range of contexts mediated not only the process of migration but also the resettlement and the shaping of the Partition memory. In interviews conducted with the generation that had vivid memories of the Partition, women from rural and urban, rich and poor families also formed a part.
It was found that through womenâs narratives we learn more about the patriarchal and feudal aspects of Sindh than the historical and political event of Partition. This is not to say that women do not have a sense of history, but that they were not involved in the nitty-gritty of historical details. They have participated in âHindustan-Pakistanâ without very often knowing the month and year. Their narrative does not provide the details of leaving and travelling which become central in the menâs experiences. Women were not the ones deciding or implementing decisions. Very significantly, the women did not see themselves as individuals undergoing the Partition experience. Also frequent use of the plural âweâ in their narratives showed an intertwining of individual and collective selves. However, Partition did impinge on the womenâs individual lives in very serious and irrevocable ways (see, for instance, Bhavnani 2014). Meanwhile, the complex erasure, denial, and recuperation of memory and the mediation of class observed during fieldwork with urban Sindhis had left with me with the confidence of being able to talk with Sindhi women elsewhere. Whether the conversations about Partition with women had provided me with complete truth was not the question, but by being a member of a witness generation of the âsameâ community the conversations had certainly inspired its own certainties and comfort. Therefore, while turning to another phase of fieldwork, this time with Sindhi-speaking rural women in a remote part of India had seemed a part of the same continuum, of sorts. The account below unveils the erroneous assumption that âsharingâ the same language and gender lends to complete possibilities of translation.
In the extreme west of India, where north Kutch touches the border of Pakistan is a region called Banni, very often missing from maps. Situated in a corner of the hyper-industrialised state known for its aggressive nationalist politics, Banni is quite an oddity. Peopled entirely by Muslims, save small sections of Dalits and another underprivileged group, Banni has no upper-caste Hindus. Since 2011, one of its villages has emerged as a site for an annual desert festival. Extended fieldwork in Banni, carried out over four years and focusing upon its pastoral communities, sense of self and community, shifting ideologies of religion, and responses to forms of regional and global changes constituted the crux of research. The discussion below draws from the same larger study (Kothari 2013; and see also Ibrahim 2008).
Ideologies of invisibilising
It is absolutely possible to go to Banni and not see any of its women. Secluded in and confined to their homes, women go out rarely, and almost always accompanied by men. Meeting women there can happen only in two ways: Either they come out of the house and you happen to see them as passers-by or in shops, buying or selling things. The second possibility is that men take you home to meet the women of the family. Both possibilities shrink in the face of a general norm in the entire region by which women are simply expected to stay away from any contact with strangers â especially men â and very often, women too.
Therefore, visitors are made to sit in an otaak, an exclusively male domain in the form of the first bhunga (conical-shaped mud-baked house) as you enter a waandh (community-based neighbourhood) in Banni. Tea or meals are served in the otaak and the ones serving are the younger men of the family. On very rare occasions, a woman visitor may be allowed to go behind the otaak, accompanied and watched by the men. The title of the essay invokes the spatial authority of the otaak, the male/main room in the Banni household, which has to be traversed to reach the women in the interior part of the waandh. The narratives that emerge out of those spaces are extremely complex, hinting at simultaneous processes of dis/continuities, submission to ideologies of male control, accompanied by a desire for change.
In his travels to Sindh in the nineteenth century, author B. Brenton-Carey discovered that there was reluctance among pastoralist men in rural Sindh to admit to another man that women could read and write.
Every girl in Sindh â except among the least educated classes â learned to read the Koran and also the Nurnama, a book describing the Prophet and the Saints, written in ancient Sindhi by Abul Hasan of Tatta, but this without learning to write. Writing is still considered a dangerous accomplishment for women.
(Brenton-Carey 1916: 176â177)
The three contexts of Sindh, pastoralism, and Islam in the sociology that Brenton-Carey refers to is also the sociology of Banni, notwithstanding the century dividing the two. It is not being suggested that there is a seamless continuity from one to the other, but to draw attention to studies that document the role of Sindh as a society that sustained for centuries structures of patriarchy, a matter far from peculiar to Sindh alone.
In her research on Sindhis in Jakarta, Hong Kong, and Manila, Anita Thapan notes that among women of the Sindhi diaspora, âattempts to transgress gender roles are few because Sindhi women have internalised the patriarchal system predominant in Sindh and they tend to conform to its normsâ (Thapan 2002: 55). The women who form Thapanâs assessment are the well-heeled, upper-class, Hindu women whose families spread themselves far and wide as part of a long-standing global mercantile network amongst the Sindhi Hindus. Physically away from a traditional and feudal Sindh, cushioned with economic privilege and social opportunities of meeting other cultures, they represent one end of a spectrum. Muslims, rural, poor, isolated from other societies and discourses and confined to their homes, the women of Banni represent another. Somewhere between the two are urban middle- and upper-class Hindu Sindhi women who, as I discuss elsewhere, find the gender norms in their community unjust and constricting, leading them in many cases to a degree of disaffection with all things âSindhiâ. I have also discussed the social economy of Sindh that may have contributed to severe gender inequalities which continue to be perpetuated even today, despite many outward signs of affluence and westernisation1 (see Kothari 2007). Having said that, it is the complex web formed through demography, religion, class, and patriarchy that makes Banni womenâs invisible needs delineated and underlined.
Zaheda Mutwa (name changed) lives in the village of Gorewali. She is one among 40 members of what is called Moosa jee waandh, or Moosaâs enclave. Moosa Mutwa is her father, the patriarch of the family. His wife, three children, and parents, his younger brother and his wife with their three children live together. Between them, they share a kitchen and three bhungas. However, a small threshold divides this entire group from the family that Isaâs wife hails from, which again forms a large unit of 20 members with sons and daughter, brothers and their wives and their children adding up to what looks like a clan of people when you visit Moosaâs house. Itâs easy to lose sight of Zaheda.
When I first met her, she was a 12-year-old girl, studying in grade six. âThe school is right next to our houseâ, she told me. âI do both padai and bhaani thereâ, thereby referring to the fact that her Koranic education, as well as school education, took place in the same compound. She had learnt some Sindhi, some Arabic, and a smattering of Urdu and Gujarati. âHow much are you going to study?â I had asked her when she was 12. I had my answer on my last visit. Zaheda had turned 15, quit school, and was about to get married. She would continue to live in the same waandh, except move one house away, since she would be marrying someone from amongst the same clan and house next door. This is exactly what her mother and grandmother did.
The indistinguishability of one generation of women from another in Banni manifests in a few outward ways such as clothing. Zaheda would wear synthetic frocks and shalwars because as she said, âthis is in fashion in Pakistanâ. The older women wear embroidered kanjri (blouses) and heavy silver jewellery. In terms of education and marriages and even possibilities of physical movement outside the home, the difference is marginal, if not non-existent. In a population of over 15,000 in the region of Banni, only one girl in its entire history has studied up to standard ten. A local newspaper found this newsworthy, and I was proudly shown the clipping by the girlâs father, considered to be perhaps the most progressive man in Banni. âIs she likely to study further?â I had asked, to which I was told, âNo, there are no higher secondary schools in Banni and no âlady teacherâ to teach. So itâs out of the questionâ.
Although it is difficult to say where patriarchal rationalisation begins with what is understood as âSindhâ and ends or tapers into the idea of âIslamâ, the rhetoric is worth examination. For instance, Hashim Halepota, back from his travels to Mirpur Khas in Sindh, says, âWe see our culture in its purest form in Sindh. The same hospitality, the same Sufi music and poetry, and everyday lifeâ. âWhat about women?â I ask. âThere is no difference in the way women live here and there. It is part of Sindhi culture to safeguard womenâs honourâ. To maintain this sameness, as is the case with many other things, is part of what we discussed as asli shafqat [real culture] and it helps reinforce Sindh as a place of pure origins. The implication is that Banni is a derivation of the original, and it needs to approximate Sindh as closely as possible. It is in that understanding of Sindhi shafqat or tehzeeb (culture or mores) that women in Banni follow specific norms of behaviour. Deviations from such norms have not been heard of, and if differences do exist in the way women live, they have largely to do with class.
Intertwined with this ideology is also the vocabulary, some of which is derived from the idea of asli shafqat (real culture) and some from Islam. The practice of keeping women secluded among Sindhi Muslims is that women cannot be allowed gairat. It is explained as the need to keep women away from âoutsidernessâ â the gaze or the proximity of an outsider â and also make them abstain from things that would pollute their purity and respectability. The twin terms employed to suggest this is through two interrelated words, gairat and parhez. The noun gairat has a Perso-Arabic origin, and its more common use is the adjective gair, meaning âsomebody elseâ or ânot your ownâ. To commit gairat is to have contact with an outsider (male), a situation perceived as an unreligious one. The word parhez means âprevention or abstinenceâ, again with Perso-Arabic origins. It carries connotations of self-restraint by which individuals are required to stay away from things that are âbadâ for them.
Interestingly, the elliptical reference to âmaleâ stranger should make it easier for women to meet other women. However, such situations are few and far between. Villages in Banni are scattered across distances and situated on a highly difficult terrain. Women from one clan may meet their own clan members during weddings or funerals, but on a day-to-day basis, âgoing outâ is highly controlled, if not forbidden. As for parhez, it is also a part of a larger idea in Islam, as understood in Banni, in that it marks off things which might be distracting for those pursuing the true path of Islam. Both intertwine, gairat and parhez as rhetorical strategies and Sindh and Islam as long-standing contexts of identity, to ensure that womenâs contact with the world beyond their bhunga is as minimal as possible.
When translated into practice, the above leads us to the two components â separate worlds and symbolic shelter â characterising the purdah ideology in Islamic communities (Papanek 1971). However, men and women do not use the word âpurdahâ. They explain this by saying that unlike certain Hindu groups, women in Muslim families in Banni do not cover their faces in the presence of men in the house. They interact with all-male members of the husbandâs family without covering their faces. Even when they accompany their husbands and go out of their homes, to attend marriages in other villages or visit a doctor in the city of Bhuj, they cover their heads but not their faces. Besides the semantic disagreement with the word âpurdahâ, there also exists an ideological dimension to the issue. The status and safety of women, claim the men of Banni, are very important, a legacy that they insist carries over from older traditions and is not a newly acquired habit. It is true that when it comes to restrictions upon entertainment and singing, the Koranic injunction applies to both men and women. However, concerns about womenâs status and safety addressed by their confinement to the safe haven at home, they insist, are part of a longer tradition.
This system is a part of our ancestral culture. Women in Sindh also do not come to the otaak, and we try to keep our culture as similar to Sindh as possible. The better kept a woman is, the more it enhances the manâs personality. Therefore, you would not see the more respectable families giving too much chhoot-chhaat [permissiveness] to their women.
(Mazhar Mutwa, personal communication)
Papanek remarks that in purdah societies women are simultaneously defined as being very important and very vulnerable when they move into the world outside their homes (Papanek 1971: 518). The men in Banni seldom talk about their women, but when they do, it is with a great degree of care and paternalism. Any threat to women is a threat to tradition and a slur on men who have not been able to ensure that traditions get maintained.
It can be concluded from the above that invoking Sindh gives far more legitimacy and weight to the ideas of gairat and parhez, although it also finds support in the patriarchal interpretation of Islam that the men may have, unconsciously, forged. The differences between the âSunni Muslimsâ and what they term as Hadis waalas, or more tellingly, jeke phiri vaya (âthe ones who changedâ) discussed (in Kothari 2014), have no disagreement about the status of women. Old and new ideologies, Sindhi and pastoral traditions, as well as Islam â in the understanding of otherwise divergent groups â point to the same thing as far as women are concerned. Womenâs position is a non-negotiable subject ...
