■Article ■
Play and Eros:Girls'
Swing
Play and
Swing
Songs in Orissa, India
●
Yumiko Tokita-Tanabe
Introduction
This paper deals with a hitherto downplayed aspect of femininity in India that is related to a value found in some of the ritual play among unmarried girls in Orissa and in the discourse of nostalgia among mar-ried women regarding their childhood. Fieldwork on which this paper is based was conducted in Garh Manitri, Khurda district, Orissa, from April 1991 to November 1992, in Puri and Bhubaneswar from Decem-ber 1995 to DecemDecem-ber 1997 and during subsequent visits to Puri and Bhubaneswar. It is my contention that one aspect of "play" of unmarried girls suggests their erotic pursuit of link with the realm of the sacred and the transcendental through their femininity.1) In this paper, I would like to pay attention to elements of transcendental eros2) and existential aspi-ration implicated in the value of femininity in India. It involves the freedom of the self/soul from the limitations and constraints imposed by the body and from the social ties that bind the living being to this world.3)
常 田夕美子 Yumiko Tokita-Tanabe, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science,
An-thropology.
Publications: "Village Politics and Women: Towards a Gendered Analysis of 'Faction' in Rural Orissa," Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No.8, pp. 90-122, 1996.
"Women and Tradition in India: Construction of Subjectivity and Control of Female Sexuality in the Ritual of First Menstruation." In M. Tanaka and M. Tachikawa (eds.) Living with Sakti: Gender, Sexuality and Religion in South Asia, Osaka, Senri Ethno-logical Studies, pp.193-220,1999.
26 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
It allows for possibility of contact with the divine that goes beyond the limits of social reproduction and takes the female out of the social limits of being in this world.4) This freedom, however, is not to be confused with the realisation of a free or autonomous will of an individual in the modern liberal sense.
One of the remarkable comments that struck me during my fieldwork in Orissa was the frequent references by adults to the fact that nowadays children do not play much anymore.5) This notion of "play" seems to refer not only to everyday play but extends to the play that is part of annual festivals and fasts.° That is to say, it is said that children have less fun, and play less during these special occasions. So in this paper, I try to consider how "play" is becoming a scarce and limited aspect of life among today's children in an attempt to understand the context of social changes affecting people's consciousness regarding the notions and prac-tices of play on ritual occasions. I take up a particular kind of play, swinging and singing, performed by young village girls on the occasion of an important annual festival in Orissa and show how this play involves transformation of consciousness of the participants which enables access to the sacred and the transcendental. I then discuss how the same festival is represented as an important part of Orissa's culture and tradition. I argue that the construction of the festival as culture and tradition of Orissa today transforms the meaning of the girls' play in significant ways. Before going on to discuss the content of the play, let me try to contextualise my argument in a broader framework of discussion regard-ing women in India.
Femininity and Indian Society
One of the major concerns in gender studies in India has been to evaluate the status and position of woman within Indian society. We can recognise two major trends here. On the one hand, problems of gender inequality and asymmetric power relation between men and women in India have been the central focus of argument [e.g. De Souza 1975, Shiva 1988]. According to them, there have been continued reproduc-tion of the subordinate status, oppression and subservience of women in India. On the other hand, there have been works, mainly anthropologi-cal, which focused attention on the celebration of women's fertile power and its link with the value of auspiciousness [Fruzzetti 1981, Marglin
1985, Samanta 1992]. Studies along this line emphasised the autono-mous quality and positive value of the generative and regenerative as-pects of femininity.
I have argued elsewhere that insights provided by these two kinds of approaches may be combined in order to grasp the overall complexities regarding the construction of female subjectivity [Tokita-Tanabe 1999]. In fact, women's subjectivity has an overdetermined character in the sense of having the possibility of being contextualised in both the auton-omous world of women that celebrates female generative power and the androcentric world where womanhood is defined in terms of hierarchical gender relations. It is important to recognise that these two aspects are not mutually exclusive but exist simultaneously in complex ways in the lived realities of women. I have noted at the same time, however, there are forces that act upon discourses and practices regarding gender to fix the meaning of womanhood and women's identity, and it is necessary to pay attention to the semantics of gender difference in the changing con-text of history.
It is important, no doubt, to pursue the overdetermined complexity of female subjectivity, but it should also be pointed out that this approach presupposes the existence of a closed society and deals with the question of the position and role of woman within that society. It limits itself to looking at women in terms of their role in social reproduction. I am not trying to deny the importance of this aspect of femininity and indeed women in their generative aspect are very much seen as being embedded in the process of reproduction of this world. In village Orissa, one can observe agricultural rituals that parallel the woman's life cycle, which illustrates that the women's life course is linked with the larger cosmo-logical cycle of birth and death.7 This shows that, as Marglin rightly points out, women "in their procreative aspect are linked to the wheel of time, to birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death. The word samsdra is used to refer both to the wheel of birth-death-rebirth, and to a woman's family"[Marglin 1985:301].
However, there is another aspect of femininity that points to the pos-sibility of going beyond reproduction of society. In this connection, it is worth noting that Marglin, whom I have quoted above as emphasising the importance of reproductive auspiciousness related to feminine gen-erative power, also mentions of the possibility of transcendence of time
28 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
through the manipulation of the meanings of female sexuality and fertil-ity [Marglin 1985:303]. She mentions"a transcendent type of auspi-ciousness"which is outside time represented by the god Krishna's activ-ities in Vrindavan [Marglin 1985:206]. It is this aspect of femininity that I would like to deal with here.
This other aspect of womanhood and femininity in India has been largely neglected in the literature about women's lived experiences.8) There has been discussion regarding the place of the feminine in reli-gious discourse, represented by the goddess Radha and the gopis (cow-herdesses who played with Krishna), whose existence is characterised by being in eternal divine play with Krishna, the masculine. It should be noted that masculinity and femininity here are beyond not only the cycle of social reproduction but also hierarchical gender relations.9) This is so since Krishna and Radha are in fact one, that is to say united in essence, but appeared as two entities, or as different beings, for the sake of "play" (lila).10)
This aspect of femininity represented by Radha and the gopis that expresses aspiration for the realm beyond social reproduction and hier-archy can be found in the ritual play of unmarried girls and in the discourse of nostalgia found among married women regarding their child-hood. This aspiration involves desire for freedom of the self/soul from the material constraints of the body and from social relations tying the person to this world. This freedom, however, is not to be confused with the freedom of the individual with an autonomous will. In this regard, as it has been pointed out by Yuasa, eroticism demands special attention in the context of the modern, since it questions the fundamentals of the modern human being as an individuated self-willed subject [Yuasa 1990: 267].
Eros and Immanence
Eroticism as I define it here is the desire not for a real, concrete object or person"now and here"but for"the beautiful"and"the handsome" beyond the everyday experience of this world. "Eroticism describes the joys, anguish and pain of an encounter with divine totality, the eruptive, exuberant continuity of things" [Botting and Wilson 1997:13].The erotic experience is mediated by the body, but at the same time it is a means to escape from the constraints of the body. This eros can be seen
to be linked to the aspiration for the divine beauty based in a particular body but desiring to go beyond and have connection with the higher totality represented by that divine beauty.
Here I characterise the divine as "immanence" or whole that is an undifferentiated state prior to categorisation. Immanence, I would ar-gue, is represented in categorisations such as forest, newborn infant, and uncooked food, among others. In the context of gender, Das says that in
"early childhood
, the body is seen as bearing the marks of a future gender identity but the male and female identities are not crystallised"
[Das1988:194]. It may be termed as prediscursive or preinscriptive [cf. Butler 1993, Segal 1994].h1) I am not presupposing the existence of a preinscribed body here. I am saying that there is a longing for a state of preinscribed body, which is sought by humans, to get out of their limit-ed state as embodilimit-ed beings. At the same time it can be said that humans can long for this state of being preinscribed precisely because they are inscribed.
The limitations of the embodied existence enable human beings to long for merging into this primordial state of immanence. This longing is created by separation from the divine. The ritual play of young girls creates an outlet for this longing, not only for the girls who participate, but also for the community which supports and encourages the play. The play frees the self, albeit momentarily, from the embodied nature of being and the network of social relations in which the embodied person is embedded. The play is encouraged by the community because it is also a means by which the community itself is taken out of its mundane existence, geared to reproduction of this world, towards possibility of union with the divine. It is a telling fact that one of my informants told me that she and her friends used to be scolded by her mother and aunts for not playing during the special festivals. They were told that since they have been given new clothes to wear and goodies to eat they must play and not just hang around or sleep. This indicates the community's interest in the play of young girls.
Swinging and Transcendence
This transcendence of time is represented, expressed and constituted by the swing play of unmarried girls in raja festival. Previous works on swings in India often tended to interpret it as symbolising sexual union
30 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
which leads to fertility and reproduction of this world. For instance, Sakata's interpretation of the swing play among girls during the spring festival and the monsoon season is that it symbolises or implies sexual union [Sakata 1997b:287]. According to Konishi, in Vedic ritual, it
represented the marriage of the sun god Surya and the earth goddess Pritivi [Konishi 1992:647]. Gell mentions in his section dealing with a review of works on swinging that there is"pleasurable"swinging in swing festivals in India which is associated with Krishna, citing the ritual swinging among women in tij festival as an example [Gell 1980: 220-221]. There, he argues, is a "celebration of female (fertile) disorder" as there is "a temporary relaxation of the normal constraints on young women making merry in public". He goes on to point out, that the "spring -time swinging from the boughs of trees is implicitly erotic." Cormack also notes that there is "some ancient symbolisation connected with fertility regarding the swing" and cites her informant as saying that in "songs, romances, and mythology, the love-making is always on a swing" [Cormack 1953: 53].12)
These kinds of interpretations of swinging only consider the aspects of swinging that are related to fertility and reproduction of this world. I would argue, however, that the bodily experience in the act of swinging brings about an altered state of consciousness which is discussed in detail by Gell's work on the experience of vertigo during swinging [Gell 1980]. He says that in all swinging "there is an element of self-surrender to a loss of individual equilibrium" and that "this loss of equilibrium is capa-ble of being invested with religious significance" [Gell 1980: 221]. Swing-ing, according to Gell, induces "vertigo", by which he means not only "the unpleasant sensations of dizziness and disorientation
, but also to a variety of pleasurable or thrilling states as well" [Gell 1980: 247, note 2]. He argues that vertigo "threatens" "the structures of intentionality" which "underlie our sense of `self"' [Gell 1980: 226] . I would like to take up Gell's point about the loss of bodily equilibrium that leads to the loss of the sense of self and argue that this entails a sense of freedom from the constraints of the body which is binding in its materiality. This sense of freedom of self from the materiality of the body allows self to aspire to go beyond this world and to approach "the beautiful" in the sphere of transcendence.
the materiality of the body has social significance since there are notions
about substances being shared through kinship and social interaction
which are associated with the constitution of personhood [cf. Fruzzetti,
Ostor and Barnett 1992; Marriot 1976]. Freedom from the materiality of
the body, then, also implies the freedom from the network of social
relations in which the person is embedded. The longing for this freedom
from the bondage of this socio-somatic network is expressed in the songs
sung by girls on the swing.
Romance and Nostalgia in Swing Songs and the Critique of
World-liness
There are special songs that girls sing while swinging called "raja
swing songs" (raja doli gita).13) These songs are sung on the occasion of
raja parba (raja festival, often referred to simply as raja). Raja is one of
the major festivals in Orissa that takes place each year in on the last day
in the solar month of jyestha (May-June) and the first three days in the
solar month of lisadha (June-July), just before the rainy season. On the
first day of the festival, called First Raja (pahili raja), women and girls
get up before sunrise, bathe and wash their hair, put on brand new
clothes and decorate themselves with make-up. After that they do not
wash their hair until the fourth day, just as they do not do so during their
periods. The second day is called raja samkränti and the third day is
called Burning Earth (bhui dahana), when the earth is said to become red
with heat. On the fourth day, variously called biisumati snarl, basumati
gadhuii ((bathing of earth), or Mand Laksmi buda (bathing of goddess
Laxmi), it is said to rain for the earth to cool down and purify herself.
After this day, the earth is regarded as ready for sowing.14) Many of the
songs sung during this festival have been handed down through
genera-tions by girls and women. The means of transmission have been mainly
oral, and songs possessed peculiar local characteristics. Nowadays,
how-ever, they are readily available in print in cheap booklet form.15)
Most of the songs begin by expressing the excitement of the coming of
the festival.
Song A
ajita.pahili raja Today is the nrst day of raja
32 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999 in a year
asichhi raja lo Raja has come, oh
gheni heba saja baja Let us dress up and get ready
(sung by a girl in Garh Manitri, Khurda District in 1991)
Some begin by a prayer or salutation to the goddess.
Song B
bduiisa kanid beta
The stick of the bamboo branch
ma Mangaldriku lo danda bata
I offer my obeisance to Mother
Mangala
danda bata to
I offer my obeisance, oh
anukula held gita
As the song begins
(sung by a girl in Bhubaneswar in 1998)
The girls indeed look forward to raja very much and the first song expresses their joy. Since the festival is in honour of mother earth, it is considered proper to start the singing after paying respects to the god-dess Mangala. After the beginning, however, there seem to be no partic-ular order to these songs. The girls seem to sing along as they remember the verses. The same verse may be repeated, or if the girls know many verses, these will be sung one after another, but they will not be in a fixed sequence. These songs are neither practised nor performed as such. Many of them contain no explicit meaning and appear to be without purpose. Take, for instance, the continuation of Song A:
Song A (continued)
kuare balia mala A"balia" fish died in the tank upara balia chahatd deld The upper fish shone bright
chahata dela to Shone bright, oh
tala baliati maid The lower fish died
In this way, many of the verses consist of a series of images that do not culminate in anything and there is no sense of intention or purpose. The tune of the songs also adds to the feeling of loss of intentionality and match the swinging motion in the sense that it is repetitive. The same tune is repeated for every verse and there is no variation. The swing goes back and forth and once it is in motion, there seems to be no beginning or end. There is a sense of loss of self in eternity as the swing's motion is
to and fro which is neither linear nor cyclic. A linear motion suggests a
direction with a beginning and an end. A cyclic motion also has a
begin-ning and an end and there is an additional image attached to this motion
in Indian thought that it expresses the cycle or wheel of birth and death
(samsdra). The swinging motion is does not go round in a complete
circle and thus does not get caught up in this cycle of birth and death ,
which involves the process of social reproduction. The combination of
the bodily motion inducing dizziness, the repetitive tune and the rhythm,
and the fantasy-like imaginary in the swing songs induces the sense of
vertigo, loss of self of this world.
The girls' play is not part of social reproduction. It is notable in this
context that there is a cultural importance placed on friendship between
unmarried girl friends which is considered to be a pure kind of
relation-ship outside of family interests. Narayan gives an interesting account of
such kind of relationship between unmarried girl friends in Kangra in
the context of marriage songs [Narayan 1986]. In Orissa, two girls forge
a special relationship between themselves and call each other by names
such as chanda and baula for the rest of their lives.16)
This is akin perhaps
to the idea of having a "best friend" among young girls in Britain, but
whereas these "best friends" often tend to go through the traumas of
falling apart and coming back together again, chanda and baula are
in-vested almost with a religious significance and are talked about with
much affection. It is also importantly reminiscent of the relationship
between Radha and her sakhis, girlfriends who help Radha in her
ro-mance and union with Krishna. There are many stories and songs
re-garding this relationship in Orissa, many found in the Odissi songs which
accompany dance.17)
Another aspect of the raja swing songs, then, is that
many of them contain references to romance. Romance, however, is not
part of a traditional marriage where the girl's parents and other elder
members of the family choose the groom. Marriage is typically referred
to as being a part of samsdra, which can be glossed as the "worldly",
involving husbands, children, relatives and all the joys and sorrows that
come along with them. It has to do with social reproduction which the
girls have no part in at their stage of life. The raja swing songs express
fantasies and feelings that are not usually talked openly about. Take the
following verses of song for instance:
34 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999 Song C
phutila nali mandeira Red flower blossomed
siirhi pindhi disu kere sundara How beautiful you look dressed in a saree
kere sundara lo How beautiful, oh
tani neba to nagara You'll be carried away by your
lover
ant bharigd gulikati Your figure bends like a betel nut
crusher
tora sarige nahin bhdbapirati I feel no love for you
bhiibapirati lo No love , oh
karati heuchhi chhati My heart is broken
(written by a girl in Garh Manitri in 1992)
The songs sung on the swing on this occasion show the unmarried girls' tendency towards indulging in erotic and romantic imagination. They express longing for freedom and carefree existence outside the context of social relations in which they are normally embedded. The girls' songs do not express that they have actual persons in mind as object of their love. That is to say, they do not mention any personal names18) and there is no specific object of desire in the form of a concrete person. Their longing to dally with an imaginary lover, or longing for "the beautiful" may be said to represent a longing for an "eternal lover"
who is Krishna.19) It should also be pointed out that one of the songs mention a "bent body" (alga bharigli) which is a familiar expression used for Krishna, who is very often represented as standing with his body bent at the waist with his flute. It can be argued then that the above song can be interpreted as referring to Krishna.
The song cited below contains more explicit nostalgic references to the forests of Vrindavan where Radha and Krishna played and the swing-ing has powerful association with Radha and Krishna who are portrayed as swinging together.
Song C (continued)
totaku totii lagichhi Orchards after orchard
madhubana tot bharigi parichhi The Madhubana20) orchard has disappeared
bharigi parichhi lo Has disappeared, oh
bhauja basi kiinduchhi The sister-in-law sits crying
(written by a girl in Garh Manitri in 1992)
The romance has a dream-like quality and girls are aware that their days of this kind of imaginings and fun they enjoy during raja are limit-ed before they get marrilimit-ed and go away to their in-law's house. This is expressed in the following songs:
Song C (continued)
edina aji iisichhi This day has come today
chaligald dina kebe peruchhi When will the days gone ever return
kebe peruchhi lo Ever return, oh
bhabile nira jharuchhi Tears come down when I think
of this (written by a girl in Garh Manitri in 1992)
Song D
ana mora guda guli
Swing up my sweet dear
e barasa basi khelud doli Play on the swing this year
mo duhkhisarikhiili lo My dear friend of trying times,
oh
mane paduthiba dui oli Remember me twice daily
(from a pamphlet printed in Ganjam district)
Girls see their sisters and friends get married and go away and are
painfully aware that they will be separated from each other. Marriage
marks a dramatic change in the life of a girl, since her status is
trans-formed from a carefree girl to a woman responsible for bearing and
nurturing children, serving her husband and his parents and taking care
of the welfare of all other members of the household. There is a certain
poignancy in the way girls tell their friends to remember them, as in
many cases especially in villages, the girls may never see their friends again after marriage. Even if they happened to be visiting their parents at the same time, usually during a festival, they know that their friendship can never be the same and that it is lost forever. The same does not apply to friendship between boys, since they are not separated. They remain in their natal lineage and live in their village or at least maintain strong ties
36 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999 with it even if they go to live in towns.
In this way, the raja swing songs give us an idea of the special nature of girlhood in Orissa. The life stage of an unmarried girl is not directly related to social reproduction, that is, the cycle of birth and death. It is also marked as a very limited period and this adds to the feeling that it is something apart from the profane. In raja, the friendship and solidarity between girls is encouraged by the whole community as they are allowed to invite each other to eat in their houses and play. Even houses with only sons and no daughters invite neighbourhood girls to eat as a group. It is as if the whole community is celebrating the special nature of girl-hood.
These songs are nostalgic, then, because they remind the girls and women that they cannot remain on the swings forever and must get off and return to the world where they will become a part of the social reproduction. They are reminded of their limitations as embodied be-ings and their condition of humans who must have certain roles and positions in life and be a part of society in order to exist. Married women often talk about how happy they were when they used to play particular-ly during raja. Needless to say, married women have more responsibil-ities and their movements are more restricted. When they remember their carefree girlhood, they are reminded of how they used to long for romance for the sake of romance, and long for an imaginary lover. This love or eros represents not kiima (sensual desire), which is the basis of
reproduction of the world but prema (divine love), which is outside time and beyond reproduction of this world [cf. Marglin 1985: 201-206].
Modern Songs and Disembodied, Objective Gaze
So far, I have been arguing that the raja swing songs are about aspira-tion for "the beautiful" beyond this world and lack the sense of realism.
In the following song which represents certain changes in the concept of romance, however, the aspiration is represented in more realistic terms. In today's Oriya village, one can notice rich layers of different kinds of desire and subjectivity, both old and new. It is not my intention here to pin point the moments of the changes, but rather to describe multiple semantics of eros as they exist in today's Oriya society. The modern raja songs cited below suggest changes in the concept of romance which represents certain transformation in the sense of self.
Song E
ghataku ghata lagichhi The planks are joined with one
another
to mana mo mana miszjil-uchhi Your mind and my mind are be-coming one
sajani - go jeitiku bhaya laguchhi My friend, I fear the caste (written by a girl in Puri town in 1997)
There is a reference here to caste (jeiti) which gives a realistic twist to the romance. In the first two lines of the song, the girl is singing that her mind and, presumably, her lover's mind are becoming one. In the last line, it seems that she is singing to her friend that she fears the difference in caste between herself and her lover. This shows that the romance has become a real possibility as the object of the girl's desire is no longer an imaginary or an "eternal" lover, but a concrete person belonging to a certain caste. The object of desire is not "the beautiful" beyond all rela-tivity but a certain one of this world who is differentiated and particular. Here there is a secularisation of desire in the sense that there is no longing expressed here of merging with the sacred. The longing instead is rather like the kind of "romantic love" we find in popular Indian cinema where often lovers are represented as facing the class barrier in the course of their romance.21)
Here too we note that there is a longing to escape from the social relations in which persons are embedded, but this is clearly different from the longing to escape the material constraints of the body. The reference to fear of caste suggests that social relations be seen as an obstacle hampering the fulfillment of desire or interest of individuals. There is no sense here of a wish to overcome the materiality of the body, since the desire is directed towards a particular body marked by caste affiliation. There clearly is a transformation in the nature of the desire and subjectivity towards creation of desiring individuals, who feel bounded by social norms.
Kumar gives illustrations from late 19th century Malayalam writings of "moments of transformation" regarding the construction of an erotic, desiring subject [Kumar 1997: 269]. He shows how there were historical moments in which an individualised "inner sense" was formed and val-orised. To quote his concluding paragraph at length:
38 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999 "The valorisation of inner sense as the site of eroticisation
, reflection and transformation constitutes an important moment in the history of self-articulation in Malayalam writing. Pleasure and pain, in their ulti-mate intensities, would become irreducibly individual in its task of self-articulation and in its self-affirmation as desire."[Kumar 1997:270].
Kumar's point is that there came to be attached a value to an individ-uated inner sense in this moment of transformation. I would also argue that there are similar traces of the transformed subjectivity of an individ-uated inner sense in the above quoted song, as a site of eroticisation towards the object of this world.
In addition to the above kind of new raja swing song, there is another type of song which describes the festival from an objective gaze.
Song F:a-sail-re raja paraba (Raja festival has come)
khardku bidezya debez pad" ebe Now to bid farewell to the heat
raja parabati asila Raja festival has come
sapuri panasa gachhe pachi jai Pineapples and jackfruits ripened on the trees
maha maha hoi basila Giving off a wonderful scent
chakirielmane sajabizja hele Salaried persons are getting ready
pherzjiba pai gaku To go back to their villages
nua posaka mo anibeta bezpii Whether father will bring new clothes
pacharanti pila maaku Children are asking their mother
poda pitha sabu ghare ghare rahi Rice cakes kept in the houses
ki sundara sobha paila How beautiful they look
jie paharichila adarare khande Whoever comes to visit is fondly given a piece
khusi manare khdilii
Which is happily eaten
raja doli khela jamilei totare
The raja doli swinging is
heat-ing up in the groves
jhia manarikara melare
Amongst the gathering of girls
budhamane jai basigale sabu
The old men have sat down
paid tdsare khelare
To play games of dice and cards
bagudi khelare meitile Wake
The boys are absorbed in the
game of kabadi
near the village
ma mausie pithei panel khiii
The mothers and aunts having
cakes and drinks
basile kaucli pälire
Sit down to play with cowry
ratire aperd dekhigald kie
At night some people go to watch
operas
kie gale bandhu gharaku
And some go to visit friends
tinidina käla mauja katila
Three days pass in fun
apanara mani paraku Strangers are valued as one's own
barasake thare ehi parabati Once a year this festival comes
ekatei manare bharai Filling the mind with a sense of
unity
baras rtuku nimantard dei se It invites the rainy season
sabhirikara kasta harai Removing everyone's suffering
(written by a girl in Puri town in 1997)
It is interesting to compare the difference in the way these songs are composed. Raja swing songs are composed, or used to be composed, as the girls swung on the swings. They would see or remember something and would make that the starting line. They are composed and sung in the course of the swinging action. They are spontaneous, dynamic, sub-jective and experiential. The gaze and the feeling expressed in the songs
are that of the girl on the swing. The new type of song is probably composed and performed for the radio and could have been composed by any person familiar with the raja festival, that is to say, not necessar-ily by an unmarried girl. There is no mention or hint of romance in the song. It is clearly not a gaze from the swing, since one of the verses describe a scene of girls playing on swings. Whereas the raja swing song is sang in the act of swinging, and brings about a sense of momentary liberation from the embodied state through bodily motion, the new type of raja song is probably performed standing up or sitting down in a stationary position. It does not involve the transformation of conscious-ness through bodily movement on the swing.
This kind of song is also nostalgic but not in the same way as raja swing songs are. Whereas the raja swing songs are erotic and nostalgic about the lost contact with the sacred, and long for a union with the divine that is beyond society and time, the new type of raja song is not
40 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11,1999
erotic but nostalgic about a lost sense of community and neighbourly
love in society that is supposed to have existed in the past. This type of
song contains positive evaluations of family and community ties, which
are considered to be "traditional" values that are gradually disappearing
in modern times. This song expresses an utopian state of community
harmony devoid of longing for the sacred beyond society. Since this
utopian state of community is the ideal of this world, and placed in the
linear conception of development of time, it is not only the object of
nostalgia that is of the past but also becomes the ideal to be realised in
the future.22)
This kind of song representing secularised mentality does not address
the existential problem of the human condition. Whereas the raja swing
songs sing of a nostalgic longing for the pristine state of union with the
divine through references to romantic one to one union with an
imagi-nary lover, the new type of raja song constructs an imagined community
to which the individual can belong. The search for a sense of belonging
is common to both, but the latter is not grounded in an existential search.
The New Transformation
and the Old Source of Power
The changes in the nature of the desiring agent and the object of
desire may be related, in one way, to the transformation in
communica-tion and technology. Although swing songs have been transmitted
main-ly oralmain-ly, with the increase of literacy among females, some girls and
women also recently write them down in notebooks so that they can
remember them for the following festival. These notebooks also get passed
down through the generations. Nowadays, raja swing songs are also
printed in cheap pamphlets and are readily available in the market. Also,
besides print culture, there are important cassette, radio and television
cultures which have an increasing influence even among those who do
not read. The presentation of raja festivals and swing songs in these
media have probably contributed to standardising the content of swing
songs in a larger geographical area, and may have served in objectifying,
substantialising and supporting the idea of common Orissa culture.
These changes, however, should not be seen as a simple linear
trans-formation from "traditional-religious" to "secular-modern". There are
some like Anderson [1991] and Gellner [1993] who share the assumption
that in a"modernisation"
process, "traditional" social system and the
"sacred" language and community will gradually fade away .") There is a kind of sociological determinism seen in Gellner's and Anderson's theo-ries on nationalism [Chatterjee 1986: 21]. Both assumes an inevitable teleology in which traditional societies, somehow or other, develop to grasp the fruits of modernity in the form of nationalism. However, this kind of view does not give sufficient explanation to the continuing, if not increasing, importance of religious idioms.
It seems necessary to consider the place of the sacred and tradition in the modern contemporary times more seriously than Anderson or Gell-ner do. In this connection, it is important to note firstly that technolog-ical development in communication did not necessarily erode the do-main of "tradition" and the "sacred" and, in some cases, even reinforced them. Parry argues, in relation to the discussion of the process of so-called Sanskritisation, "modern communications are...just as likely to
reinforce 'traditional' religious values, to lend a helping hand to the `civilising' process of Sanskritisation
, as to contribute to a process of secularisation." [Parry 1985: 215]. Indeed, as van der Veer says, techno-logical change is not linked to change from a religious culture to a secular one. [Van der Veer 1994].
Secondly, it should be noted that the impact of"modernisation" and the introduction of the very framework of modern/traditional provided a new significance in the domain of "tradition". In discussing the place of "tradition" in contemporary society
, we must not adopt a kind of tradi-tion/modernity dichotomy that fits eras and societies into two categories and sees "tradition" as a remnant of the past about to vanish in due course of modernisation. On the contrary, in modern times, nation, tribes, religious community, regional community, caste and other groups placed special importance in preserving and strengthening their "tradition" in order to preserve their idiosyncratic identities.24)
The dichotomy of modern/tradition here functions as a framework which people adopt to evaluate and politically utilise history and culture. In this framework, the newly re-imagined and substantialised traditions are supposed to guarantee specific characters of the groups and thus preserve their cultural identity. The ritual form of communication, with its repeated bodily practices and the contact with the sacred, is especially powerful for representing what the participants consider to be tradition-al, and thus ritual can be said to have a special place among traditional
42 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
resources utilised for cultural-politics of identity.
The modern raja songs lack the erotic aspiration for the beautiful of
the transcendental sphere, but utilises the power of embodied ritual
tradition for a different purpose of creating an image of "nostalgic Oriya
life" in this world.25) This clearly has connection with identity politics of
cultural nationalism which attempts to present an image of a "beautiful
Orissa" that used to be and that would be realised in this world. This
kind of modern nostalgia draws on embodied tradition and presents
itself to be traditional. However, it should be noted that an important
shift has taken place regarding the object of desire. That is to say, the
nostalgia expressed in the new song is about an ideal community in this
world, and not for the beautiful beyond this world as sung in the raja
swing songs.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have tried to show that there are significant moments
of shift from a conceptualisation of a transcendental eros to a modern
mentality in the swing play and songs performed by unmarried girls in
contemporary Orissa.
Transcendental eros, I have argued, has to do with an aspiration for
the freedom of the self/soul from the limitations of the material body
living in this world. The aspiring agent is gendered as feminine, and is
represented as goddess Radha and the gopis. The raja swing songs point
to the same kind of erotic aspiration by young unmarried girls towards
the beautiful beyond this world, which represents an aspect of
feminin-ity that have been hitherto neglected in previous studies of South Asian
women. It is my contention that the analysis of swing songs in raja
festival in Orissa reveals an aspect of femininity that not only enriches
our understanding of the idea of the feminine in India but also to widen
our understanding what constitutes our lived world.
Many previous works on Indian society have concentrated on finding
out the key value dichotomy that defines social configuration, whether it
is "purity-impurity" or "auspiciousness-inauspiciousness". The
limita-tion of these views seem to stem from the limited view of the world
represented by structuralism approach which can only deal with systems
of difference within society. However, as Girard points out, the "sacred
concerns itself above all with the destruction of differences, and this
non-difference cannot appear as such in the structure" [Girard 1977:
241]. Hence, structuralism fails to put into perspective the sacred which
"remains outside the structure
, . . . banished by structuralism" [Girard
1977: 241-242]. Ironically, however, structuralism contributed in
"dis-covering the sacred", according to Girard, as it made it "possible to
distinguish the finite quality of sense•\of structure •\from the infinite
quality of the sacred, that reservoir from which all differences flow and
into which they all converge" [Girard 1977: 242].
The aspiration of transcendental eros, as represented by girls on the
swing singing for the love of the beautiful, suggests the existence of the
realm of the sacred which is beyond value dichotomies within society.
One path towards this realm of sacred as enveloped in femininity in
India is the love for the beautiful beyond this world. It is a means to
destroy the subordination of the self to "the world of things" structured
by the everyday "real order (l'ordre reel)" and to attain a "return of the
intimacy, the immanence between the human and the world" [Bataille
1976:307]. It is this lifting up of the everyday order separating the
sacred and the profane that provides human society the means to regain
the intimacy with the preinscribed immanence of the world.
However, we have seen elements of transformed mentality in the new
raja songs. They represent certain changes in the nature of the desiring
agent and the desired object. The desired object is no more of the
tran-scendent realm but of this world. The new kind of raja songs sing of love
fantasy with a particular lover in society where social norms are seen as
barriers for the desiring self. There is no sense of loss of self but rather
of confirmation of an inner individuated sense of erotic desire here.
An-other written raja song sings of new kind of nostalgia towards an
"imag-ined community" of ideal Oriya festivity with familial and communal
bond and affection.26)
The establishment of desiring self and of the notion of the idealised
community reflects the new changes where there is reflective and
recon-structive gaze upon self and society which are substantialised. There is
no desire to lose the self or to search for the ideal beyond this world, but
desire for looser social ties to realise individuated sense of erotic desire,
or for an imagined community that existed in the ideal past and to be
reconstructed in the future. Both the aspiration for a "free individual"
44 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
related to the birth of cultural nationalism.
It is important to remember here though that the erotic imaginary of
individuated desires and the idealised imagination of communal ties take
different evaluative stands towards "tradition". For "free individuals", tradition is seen as obstacles for realising one's desire, but for those
aspiring to re-establish idealised community, tradition is seen as the
basis of its very existence. There is an inherent contradiction here to-wards the evaluation of the re-imagined and substantialised "tradition" of the modern era. In the context of India as a colonised country, this kind of contradiction surfaced politically in such a way that "indepen-dence" had often been seen to bring about the "freedom" of both the nation and the people as individuals. With the politicisation of "tradi-tion" in modern politics, there is an appropriation of traditional and religious idioms by political groups as well as resurgence of critics of tradition as hindrance to individual freedom.
I am not in a position here to give any comment on these moves, but would like to point out only that these substantialised "traditions" share the limitation of viewing society as a system of differences confined to
this world. Both modernists who argue for the linear modern
transfor-mation eroding the traditional and anti-modern traditionalist who argue
for the importance of continuing tradition often forget to consider
an-other realm beyond society called the sacred, the existence of which
supports the lived world of now and here.
We may begin to pay attention to cultural resources for approaching the realm of the sacred without reducing them to "tradition" as political emblems. I have tried to show that one path to approach this domain of the sacred in India was enveloped in femininity in their erotic pursuit for
the beautiful. How this kind of cultural resources are to be put into
practice in the contemporary changing situations remains to be seen.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dibyadham Yogashram, Puri, and the women
and girls of Garh Manitri, Puri and Bhubaneswar who helped me collect
the songs dealt with in this paper. I am also grateful to Professor
Ram-chandra Tripathi, Sabyasachi Mohanty and Sheela Mahapatra for their
help in translations. Earlier drafts of this paper have been presented at
in Williamsberg in July 1998, the annual meeting of the Japan Associa-tion of South Asian Studies in October 1998, a seminar session of Insti-tutions, Networks and Forces of Changes in Contemporary South Asia (Scientific Research on Priority Areas Programme (A), the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science Sports and Culture) at Rikkyo Universi-ty in October 1998 and a seminar on gender at the Foundation for Ad-vanced Studies on International Development (FASID) in October 1998.
I benefited very much from the discussion and comments raised in these meetings. Special thanks to Dr. G. Arunima, Professor T. Sakata, Pro-fessor M. Tanaka, ProPro-fessor M. Usuda and A. Tanabe for their encour-agement, valuable comments and criticisms. I am fully responsible for the shortcomings of this paper. This research has been funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education Research Grant for Science, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellowship for Young Scientists and FASID for which I am very grateful.
Notes
1) This aspect of "play" has been defined and discussed by some scholars as the "ludic" [Kapferer and Koepping 1996]. I am aware of some of the discussions regarding this aspect of play in relation to ritual, religious experience and aestheticism [e.g. Gada-mer 1986a, 1986b] but further development of its implications will be a project for future research.
2) Many of the ideas on eros in this paper have been inspired by Tanaka [1997]. 3) Butler presents a comprehensive discussion of Foucault's references to the "soul" in
relation to the body in the context of the project of modernity [Butler 1993: 33-35]. Needless to say, this concept of soul is not congruent to what I am referring to here. 4) This aspect has been discussed in previous literature as being represented by the cowherd goddess, Radha, and the cowherdesses, gopis, whose existence are charac-terised by being in eternal divine play with Krishna.
5) This might be said to be a part of the complex processes of institutionalisation of modernity as described by Bose in his analysis of the "new normative discourse" on pedagogy in 19th-early 20th century Bengal that "generated a radical separation between work and leisure, public life and private life, childhood and adulthood" [Bose 1996:118].
6) Minturn points out from her experience of fieldwork among women in Rajasthan that there is no secular recreation and all recreation are religious festivals or ceremo-nies observed in the house [Minturn 1993:178].
7) I have dealt with the parallel between the woman's life cycle and the earth's cycle in another paper [Tokita-Tanabe, in press].
8) Sangari's, and more recently Mukta's, works on the medieval female saint-poet, Mirabai, are important exceptions, but I have reservations about their treatment of the saint's poetry purely in terms of its significance for socio-political relations.
46 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 11, 1999
9) It might also be argued that the Shaivaite symbolism of lingam (symbol of male principle) and yoni (symbol of female principle) is also an expression of eternal union which is comparable to the state symbolising the union of female and male principle in Radha and Krishna. Marglin also gives a brief account of the lingam and yoni symbolism representing the state of non-hierarchical "transcendental auspi-ciousness" [Marglin 1985].
10) See Sakata for a concise etymology of the Sanskrit term lila and related words referring to "play" and "games" [Sakata 1997a: 271-272]. Kinsley looks at the rela-tionship between play and religion with reference to Krishna lila (lila = sport, play, dalliance) and "the apparent significance of play itself as a positive religious symbol and activity" [Kinsley 1979:ix].
11) The terms prediscursive and preinscriptive are often used in the context of feminist critique and elaboration of Foucault's work on sexuality. See Butler [1993], Sawicki [1991].
12) There are other interpretations of the symbolic significance of swings. For instance, Beck argues that indoor swings found in wealthy, high class South Indian homes "resemble cradles in their womblike coziness" and "express the helpless
, childlike qualities" of the women who sit on them. She argues that the swing, which does the moving for them, indicates the closed lives of these women who are "dependent on male protectors and rarely leave their homes". She also points out, however, that the swing has an additional significance in ritual contexts, and is associated in ritual contexts with "exhilaration, terror and ecstacy", citing Gell [1980] [Beck 1982: 153]. 13) Other works on female expression through folk songs in India include Narayan [1986, 1994] and Raheja and Gold [1994]. Stoeltje [1988] gives a general theoretical background to the study of women and folklore. Rao's work on the thumri presents a interesting argument regarding the creation of female space within Indian classical music [Rao 1990]. There is an important genre of female poetic expression known as barahmasa which is sang by married women longing for their husbands [Sakata 1990, Vaudeville 1965, Zbavitel 1962]. In coastal Orissa, the local term is baramasi gita and I was told that it used to be accompanied by two to three women dancing. 14) For a description of the festival in Orissa, see Behura [1963], Marglin [1985, 1994,
1995], Tokita-Tanabe [1999].
15) Chakrabarty notes in the context of modern history of Bengal that print culture eroded relatively autonomous domains for women though he deals with what is said in print [Chakrabarty 1994: 53]. It might be said that similar processes were and are happening in Orissa with regards these raja swing songs but historical documenta-tion and analysis of this process is beyond the scope of this present paper. 16) It is significant that friendship between two girls who call each other chanda is made
during the festival of Kumar Parnnima on the full moon night of the month of Alwina (September-October).
17) See Marglin [1985] for an account of history of Odissi dance form.
18) This is in contrast to the fact that personal names are mentioned in some of the songs presented by Raheja and Gold [1994].
19) On Kumar Pfirnnima mentioned in note 15, girls sing songs about Krishna. 20) Madhubana is a name of a forest in Vrindavan where Krishna and Radha played.
21) See Uberoi [1997] for relationship between popular Hindi cinema and female desire.
22) Felski makes the same point that "yearning for the past may engender active at-tempts to construct an alternative future, so that nostalgia comes to serve a critical
rather than a simply conservative purpose" [Felski 1995: 59].
23) Gellner in his more recent work suggests the possibility that non-western societies may not choose the form of liberal civil society and tend towards other forms [Gell-ner 1994].
24) Such examples can be found in Chatterjee [1986, 1993] and Bloch [1986].
25) A similar process of construction of nostalgic songs and its relationship with indi-viduated desire and the nationalism project is discussed by Tsuchiya in the context
of Indonesia [Tsuchiya 1991].
26) I am not suggesting here that a historical change took place between 1991 and 1997, but that both old and new aspects coexist.
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